Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  There was still no mobile signal. Rosie cursed, then remembered that there was a telephone next to her bed. It was a lovely old thing, and she’d assumed it was just an ornament, but as she picked it up she could hear the hum.

  How, she wondered, had people ever been able to dial all these numbers? It took half an hour; her fingers kept slipping off the keys. Finally, she got through, and finally it rang. And rang. And rang.

  She tried another number.

  ‘Yes?’ said Mike. She could tell straight away this wasn’t a good time. Giuseppe was muttering crossly in the background.

  ‘Don’t tell him it’s me,’ she said quickly. ‘He hates me.’

  Mike snorted. ‘He hates everyone. Because you hate yourself! Perche mi odio!’ he hollered away from the phone. The flood of invective continued, only slightly muffled.

  ‘Uhm, yes?’ he said.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Rosie quickly. ‘Just … have you seen Gerard about?’

  There was a tiny pause. Rosie assumed Giuseppe was making rude gestures behind him.

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Mike eventually, with a tiny shade of reluctance.

  ‘Oh,’ said Rosie. ‘How’s he looking?’

  ‘You really want to know?’ said Mike warily.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosie, suddenly feeling fearful. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, OK,’ said Mike. ‘But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was looking …’ Mike searched for the words carefully. ‘He was looking … ironed.’

  There was a long silence. Rosie sighed.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ said Mike, to the accompaniment of a door slamming. ‘I know.’

  ‘I can’t … I mean, I really thought …’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can’t believe he’s moved back in with his mum. I just left.’

  ‘She’s got him tucking his shirts back in.’

  They were both quiet. Mike loved Rosie and didn’t want to rub it in by talking about it.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Rosie, ‘sometimes I wonder … if he can’t look after himself, he’s never going to want to look after me, is he? Or …’

  The silence continued.

  ‘I’m sure he was just hungry,’ said Mike, optimistically.

  ‘Yes, for fish fingers and beans done just the way he likes them with lots of ketchup in front of Formula 1,’ said Rosie. ‘Bollocks.’

  Mike started to get a bit twitchy. ‘Listen, I’d better go after Giuseppe … you know what he’s like.’

  ‘He’s a crazy person,’ said Rosie. ‘But at least he doesn’t live with his mother.’

  ‘She’s even worse,’ said Mike. ‘Chin up, sweets.’

  The next morning, still cross, Rosie took to scrubbing with a gusto that would have surprised Angie very much if she’d seen it; taking apart the glass cabinets and washing them, removing every sticky smudge and trace, until they were restored to a pristine condition except for a few scratches. She threw away boxes and boxes of sweets (hiding the bin bags from Lilian) that were past their best, including toffees, a very iffy-looking Marathon bar and some potentially radioactive Wham Bars (she did eat a packet of Spangles herself very quickly just for the nostalgia rush). The hard manual labour, accompanied by the radio, actually worked a little to up her mood; the day was warm and fine and about lunchtime she was considering trying to figure out where Moray had bought that sandwich, when she heard a noise and turned round. Coming up the road into the village was a large party of people, starting with a coach pulled by horses and a huge crowd around it. Rosie wiped her face, which was a little pink, and stood up to get a better look.

  It was a wedding party, most of them on foot, surrounding the coach and horses. In it sat a girl, her dress long and elegant, like a thirties tea dress, and long blonde hair tied back simply with flowers. She was very, very young to Rosie’s eyes; early twenties, her face pink with unusual amounts of make-up and biting her lips with nervous delight. She sat between her parents: the father bald and wearing a ridiculous top hat, his forearms a dark hazel, his belly barely contained by his grey waistcoat, his face one huge smile; and the mother, anxious in fuchsia. Two little flower girls lay on the floor of the open coach, like white posies, their ballet-shod feet wriggling gleefully in the air, their bouquets discarded. Nobody was telling them off. Behind, Rosie could now see, was a smart Rolls-Royce, travelling very slowly, containing grandparents and older members of the party. And all around were laughing, happy people: some older, teenage bridesmaids, looking self-conscious and smoothing down their dresses; young men with stiff collars over sunburned necks and new number ones; fat ladies in big floral dresses and older men with hip flasks and lots of other children, some from the wedding party, some just there to join in the parade.

  People came out of their houses to watch and shout good wishes, car horns honked, and the bells of the church tower at the other end of town started to ring out. Lilian emerged too, slowly and stiffly, leaning on a stick. Rosie was delighted to see the stick. Accepting that she needed help was Lilian’s worst problem by miles.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Rosie.

  Lilian looked at the procession, but her dark eyes seemed misty and unfocused.

  ‘Yes, well, weddings. Overrated. Waste of time usually.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lilian petulantly. ‘Waste of time, that’s all. Waste of everybody’s time.’

  1943

  They all got their call-up papers in the end, all except the eldest sons, the ones who’d own the land. They got to stay, though many of them didn’t want to, managing the land girls, the elderly workers, the itinerants. But nearly everyone else was off, one by one, household by household.

  Margaret too was off to Derby, going to build munitions in a factory; boy-crazy and half mad with excitement at rooming with other girls and at last getting out of her family house, where as the eldest of six she rarely had a moment to herself.

  ‘You should come,’ she begged Lilian. ‘You must! You know, there are bands playing every night of the week, and the Forces boys through all the time. It’ll be parties and dancing, and we’ll be earning our own money too.’

  Lilian couldn’t admit she was tempted. With the harvest over, the village had simply seemed to shut down; to get smaller and quieter as the pickers moved on and the men all left to go to war, and it was as if she was there by herself, tending what felt very much, at the age of seventeen, like a broken heart.

  She’d seen Henry and Ida together, of course. That was how it seemed to be now; the girl wouldn’t let him alone for a minute. She’d pasted on a cheery smile when she’d seen him, and he’d looked confused, then been dragged away. He didn’t come in the shop for sweets any more, she noticed. She missed him hanging around and teasing her about her wild hair and the freckles she detested. Still. That was then. She worked hard, sat up late at night puzzling over the accounts; organised the coupons and weighed and measured and smiled all day at the little ones counting out sticky pennies, occasionally smacking a dirty, roguish hand that might sneak up over the slabs of peanut brittle that were placed temptingly on the bottom shelf.

  Yes, she was tempted. She didn’t want to go through another year doing this, with no friends left in town, nothing to do, no more dances or parties. Nothing, really. And her brothers had spoken so often of the delights of the big city. So she told Margaret she’d think about it, which Margaret immediately took as a yes, and started planning how they would room together, and found her a job at the same factory. And with the resilience of youth, Lilian found that she did have something to look forward to after all.

  That was before the telegram.

  Her father was not a tall man, but that didn’t matter so much; he had always been so strong in himself, had never stopped or broken down when they’d lost their mother and he had to raise a girl and three boys by himself, or when war had broken out, althoug
h he had certainly been concerned: he remembered the last one. The strain of the boys fighting, the shop only just paying its way, all these things Terence senior handled with a bad joke, a smile, lighting a cigarette and carrying on.

  But not today. When Tom, the wireless boy from the post office, was going through town on his bicycle, hardly anyone could look at him, waiting till he had passed before they turned their heads to see in which direction he was headed; sighing in relief when it was not their road or track. Tom hated his job with a passion, and as soon as he turned seventeen and could pass the medical he was going to join the air force and fly planes, he had decided.

  Lilian, busy in the higher reaches, looking for a box of jellied fruits for a young man on leave to give to his sweetheart, hadn’t even noticed him stop by. Everyone else, she had been thinking that morning, still wrapped up in herself, everyone else had a sweetheart except for her. And she never would, unless she left this place.

  She popped over at lunchtime to have some dinner with her da, to find him, unusually, sitting at the kitchen table. He wasn’t moving, or smoking, which was most unlike him. He didn’t even turn his head when she entered.

  ‘Da?’ she said. When he didn’t respond, even at the third time of asking, a cold grip of fear clutched at her, and she realised there was a feeling worse than seeing Henry Carr with Ida Delia at the dance. Far worse.

  She spotted it immediately without quite realising what it signified – the ripped envelope, the typewritten sheet. Taking a deep breath, she felt herself go suddenly faint and, conscious she was wobbling, grabbed on to the back of a chair, then sat herself down, feeling her vision narrow and her head grow dazed.

  ‘Da,’ she said again, but he still hadn’t heard her. There was only one thing left to know: which? But she didn’t even have to read the telegram. She knew. It wouldn’t be Terence junior, so steady and thoughtful like her father; responsible, mature, considered. And it wouldn’t be Gordon, the youngest, who was a rascal, a troublemaker, who always managed to get himself out of any sticky situation with a bright grin and a hop and a skip and usually some blackmarket goodies. There wasn’t a German alive who could get the better of Gordon.

  ‘Ned,’ she said, as sure as she’d ever been of anything. Sweet, dreamy, easygoing Ned, by far the most handsome and laziest of the boys, adored by his teachers, petted by the girls, slow to move and respond, but with a smile and a kind word for everyone. It could only be Ned.

  And sure enough, it was. Blown up by a mine on a road. They found out later from a man in the same platoon that he’d stopped to pick everyone some apples. So typical. So like him.

  Everything in Lilian’s life came before and after the telegram.

  It amazed her constantly, later, that something as ridiculous as worrying what another girl thought about her could ever have caused her pain; could ever have mattered, even for an instant. She would never again care what anyone else thought; what anyone else saw. Because when you knew what life really was, what pain and tragedy could do to a person, then all the pettiness fell away and no one could tell you what to do; not really. Because anyone could go, anyone could die, anytime. And it didn’t matter how good they were, how brave, how decent, how kind. Because Ned had been all of those things and it didn’t save him any more than it saved any of the bally rest of them.

  ‘Da,’ she said again, in a blur, and, not sure her legs would hold, found herself suddenly on the floor, hugging his legs, like she had done as a tiny child. And just as he had done then, without words, he put his hand on her hair, stroking it as her tears soaked through his trouser leg; stroking it over and over again, his confused brain moving in circles, trying to comprehend; trying to manage this piece of new information: that he had lost his darling, darling boy and he was never coming home.

  Lilian and her father never spoke of her moving to the city again. By contrast, neither Terence, who took advantage of soldier’s tickets after the war and went back to college and became a successful accountant, nor Gordon, who moved to London and wheeled and dealed and eventually fathered four children, including his beloved youngest daughter Angela, could ever face living in Lipton again, with the constant echo of the boy who did not come home.

  Lilian seemed to come back to herself.

  ‘Oh this,’ she said. ‘It’s Farmer Blowan’s daughter. Taking up with a Romany man. He wasn’t happy about that to start with, but he seems to have got over it now.’

  Rosie watched, fascinated, as one of the children ran up to the coach with a huge knotted wreath of corn. The horses were stopped as the bride took it with grateful thanks, queen for a day, and handed it to her mother, who put it down with care. The little girl practically curtseyed and ran back to the side of the road, to be congratulated by her own mother.

  ‘A summer wedding,’ smiled Lilian.

  ‘She hardly looks old enough to be getting married,’ said Rosie, striving to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Watching the scene under blue skies … She would like something like this. Lilian shot her a look.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked her. ‘Are you and your chap going to tie the knot?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Rosie. ‘We like things just how they are, I think.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘When I’m not here looking after invalids …’

  ‘Oi!’

  ‘We have a lovely time. Not tied down … we’ve got our freedom.’

  ‘Oh yes? What do you do?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘With all your lovely freedom. What do you do?’

  ‘Well, we go to the pub,’ said Rosie, feeling a bit uncomfortable. ‘And, you know. Out. To the cinema.’

  Actually they hardly ever went to the cinema. Gerard thought most modern movies were rubbish, which was true, and Rosie didn’t like teenagers talking and texting and chucking stuff about, which seemed to be allowed these days, and made her feel really old.

  ‘But mostly we just like being at home and being together,’ she said, conscious again that staying in did not, on current form, seem to be the kind of thing Gerard liked to do at all, seeing as he’d hared off to his mother’s and was out on the lash every night.

  ‘You’ll meet him soon,’ said Rosie. ‘You’ll like him.’

  She hoped this was true. Lilian didn’t seem to like a lot of people.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Lilian. ‘Well. Anyway. She’s twenty-two.’

  ‘What!’ said Rosie. ‘Wow.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Th … uhm, why does that matter?’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ said Lilian serenely. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Twenty-two is ridiculously young to be getting married,’ said Rosie, thinking there wasn’t much point in explaining it to Lilian. It wasn’t as if she were likely to know anything about it.

  ‘Good luck!’ she called to the bride as she passed. Many of the children gazed at her with frank curiosity. Obviously there weren’t that many strangers in Lipton, especially not strangers fiddling about in a sweetshop.

  Impetuously, Rosie turned back into the shop and grabbed a box of cherry lips that weren’t past their sell-by date, but certainly looked a bit bashed. Running back out, she threw handfuls of the sweets into the crowd, and watched the people laugh as the children dived and pounced on them, happy shrieks rending the air.

  ‘Thank you,’ mouthed the bride, and Rosie couldn’t help but smile back, as the coach moved on. Lilian was giving her an old-fashioned look but she steadfastly ignored it. ‘It’s marketing,’ she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. ‘That’s right, opening up again soon!’ she said bouncily out loud.

  The party continued on, and Rosie watched them go, her thoughts far away, until she became aware of a presence at about waist height. She looked down, into a very serious face with an old-fashioned haircut and steel-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘I think you should know,’ said the small boy, ‘I didn’t get any sweets.’

  ‘Well, you
weren’t fast enough then, were you?’ said Lilian. ‘You’ll know better next time.’

  The boy and Rosie regarded each other.

  ‘I can’t bend down in case I lose my glasses,’ explained the boy carefully. ‘Well, Mummy thinks I lose them. Actually sometimes they are knocked off. On purpose. By bad boys.’

  ‘That sounds terrible,’ said Rosie, meaning it.

  ‘Yes,’ said the boy, accepting the fact of the world having bad people in it. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Well,’ said Rosie, ‘here is a sweetie for you. And do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Oh. That’s a shame. Well, would you like a spare one to give a friend?’

  ‘My friend isn’t allowed sweets,’ said the boy. Rosie had an idea of what the boy and his friend might be like.

  ‘OK,’ she said. Then she crouched down and whispered, ‘Would you like to eat his?’

  The boy’s already magnified eyes widened.

  ‘But I don’t want the dentist to come and get me,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ said Rosie. ‘Just the one then.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the boy hesitantly. ‘I think that would be best. Thank you very much for having me. Goodbye.’

  He scampered off down the road.

  ‘What a peculiar chap,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Some academic and his hippy wife,’ said Lilian scornfully. ‘They’ve pampered the bloody life out of him, poor booby. He has a terrible time of it.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ said Rosie, genuinely sympathetic. ‘Well, I like him. What’s his name?’

  ‘Edison,’ said Lilian, ‘short for Edison, have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?’

  ‘Ooh, I rather like it,’ said Rosie.

  Lilian peered over her niece’s shoulder through the shop door. ‘Scrubbing up, are you?’

  Her tone was less peevish and sarcastic than usual.

  ‘Yup,’ said Rosie proudly. She’d covered a lot of ground today. ‘And I’m doing a stocktake.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Lilian, absent-mindedly picking up the box of flying saucers and turning to go back indoors.