Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘That’s great,’ said Rosie.

  ‘I like it too,’ said the woman, peering in. ‘You’ve done a lovely job. It looks just like a proper old-fashioned place.’

  ‘Oh well, it is,’ said Rosie. ‘This is all genuine. I didn’t change a thing, just polished it up a bit.’

  The woman smiled. ‘Well, I like it. I hope it does really well. I’m Tina, by the way. Tina Ferrers.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m Rosie Hopkins.’

  The woman had very neat white teeth, Rosie noticed. ‘Oh, I know who you are,’ she said. ‘The whole town knows who you are.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Rosie. ‘Is that good or bad?’

  ‘Oh, they all know me too,’ said Tina, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s the country. It’s just how it is. Come on, Kent, come on, Emily. We should have coffee some time and you can tell me about this place,’ she said to Rosie as they dinged their way out of the shop, and Rosie tried to pretend she wasn’t pleased that someone was being friendly without her having to save a dog first. And Tina seemed interested in the shop. That could be useful.

  The entire morning passed busily, although at one point Rosie was a bit shocked to look up and see Mrs Isitt peering at her through the tiny panes of glass. She did not come in. Rosie made a mental note to herself to deliver a portion of coconut ice to Mr Isitt as soon as was humanly possible.

  1943

  There was no denying that it helped, none at all. Gordon had a week’s leave from the North African front and had fought his way home over seventy-two hours, hitching rides on supply boats and trucks and, finally, had pootled over the hills from Derby in a slow-moving green single-decker bus, his kitbag on his knee, in time for Saturday lunch. Lilian could see it in her father’s eyes; the first spark that had been there for a long time. She reflected, briefly, on the fact that she hadn’t been the one to put it there.

  The two men did not hug – they didn’t do that in their family – but her da held Gordon’s hand for a long time, and clasped his shoulder, with water in his eyes. Gordon seemed older, more grown-up, but he still had a look of mischief about him, although he was crumpled and weary. The men sat in near-silence at the table as Lilian served up two weeks’ meat ration of chops; but she could tell that, although they merely muttered and made remarks about army food, both of them were happier than they had felt in a long time. And so, inside, was she. Every time she thought about Henry, her insides lit up with a nervous, excited kind of joy; her guts twisted up in disbelief. She had planned to steal away that night to meet up with him, but now Gordon was back maybe … just maybe it might be time to bring him home.

  ‘So what’s the talk of the town tonight, sister of mine?’ asked Gordon. ‘You know, I visited that Piccadilly Circus in London.’

  Lilian bit her lip. She would love to see it. Maybe one day she and Henry … but that was such an impossible dream she brushed it off immediately, and pressed Gordon on the lights. He was far keener on telling them about how one of the privates had had his trousers and his money nicked by a vagabond in London; and about Tangiers, the shimmering hot city of sand and bazaars and little children who ran after you shouting, ‘Charlee Chaplin! Charlee Chaplin!’ It was so many worlds away. Gordon told them funny stories about his commanding officers, and how clueless they were, and how their equipment broke down, but when Da asked him about any skirmishes he went quiet for a while. Lilian thought about Ned and turned away. But Gordon couldn’t keep his natural ebullience down for long. After a pause he looked up and remarked, ‘Da, I was scared out of my bally wits.’

  Lilian’s dad let out a huge guffaw, the first Lilian had heard from him in months.

  ‘Ha,’ he said. ‘Ha. Yes. Exactly. It’s exactly like that. Ha.’ And he laughed so hard he had to wipe a tear from his eye, and resettle himself in the old wooden chair. ‘You are,’ he said, ‘you are a tonic, son. It’s good to see you.’

  Lilian had never heard anything so effusive from her dad before.

  ‘Come on,’ said Gordon, after he’d had a bath and a nap. ‘If there’s nothing doing down the church hall, we might as well go to the Red Lion. I’ll take you to the lounge bar.’

  Lilian snuck a glance at her father, who just waved his hand. ‘Aye, on you go, young ’uns,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in the morn. Behave yourselves.’

  Lilian didn’t quite know how to tell Gordon, but in the end she didn’t have to. As they walked down the blacked-out road together he quite naturally asked her, ‘Got a fella?’ And when she paused for the briefest of moments, he laughed and nudged her.

  ‘Anyone decent?’ he said. Lilian bit her lip. She wondered how he’d feel when he knew it was one of his cronies; the one Lilian had most disliked. Gordon had stood around many times when Henry had teased her or made comments, and he hadn’t stood up for her much either. This could be rather sticky.

  ‘It’s … it’s Henry Carr,’ she said, so quietly it was nearly a whisper. Gordon had to strain to hear her, then translate the words in his head. Then he let out a guffaw.

  ‘Carr! ’E managed it at last. By gum, I thought he’d never get round to it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Lilian, completely surprised.

  ‘’E always had a soft spot for you, didn’t he? Terence warned him off often enough. Well, there you go. Good on ’im.’

  ‘But he was always really horrible to me.’

  Gordon gave her a sideways glance.

  ‘You know, I’d have thought having three brothers would have taught you a little bit more about chaps, sure enough.’

  Lilian felt the blush steal up her face. Was it true? Had he always cared for her, all this time?

  ‘Is that why you never stood up for me?’ she said. It came out more accusingly than she’d intended.

  Gordon smiled. ‘Neh,’ he said. ‘That was because you were such a po-faced wee shrew. No offence.’

  The pub wasn’t lit, but slits of warm light could just be seen at the windows, poking out of the blackout curtains and the convivial chatter of a Saturday night. Lilian felt excited and a little bold, but mostly nervous. Then, to her relief, she saw Margaret home from Derby, and heading over from the opposite direction with a gormless big chap in a naval uniform. Seeing Lilian she shrieked and waved mightily.

  ‘You’re out of the widow weeds!’ she yelled, tactlessly, then gave her a hug, which Lilian found herself reciprocating.

  ‘Didn’t you get my letters?’ she scolded. Margaret had written to her faithfully with stories of the big city and all the fun she was having at the factory with the women, and the nightclubs and the men they’d met. Lilian had found them almost impossible to read; the idea, in the earliest days after Ned’s death, that someone else’s life was continuing gaily on, improving, if anything.

  ‘This is George,’ said Margaret proudly, pushing forward the lanky chap with freckles and bright red hair, who muttered something so quietly she could barely hear it.

  ‘I brought him down to meet Ma and Pa.’ With this she winked massively at Lilian, in a slightly confusing way, obviously intended to be confiding. It took Lilian a minute or two to realise the message she was trying to convey.

  ‘Are you … are you two …?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Margaret. ‘Isn’t it the most romantic thing ever! I have to tell you the whole story!’

  George did not, at that moment, look like the world’s most romantic man – if Lilian had had to pick something, she would have picked him as the world’s most embarrassed man – but Margaret linked her arm and they headed inside, into a fug of tobacco smoke and the smell of dogs and warm ale. Lilian had been inside before, sometimes, from when she was a little girl, sent down to make change for the shop in lunchtime opening hours, but today she was going in for the first time on her own, as a woman … She felt a little exposed, though having Margaret clasping her elbow tightly was a definite help. Gordon was on her other side.

  ‘Now I have no regrets about missing out on the lovely Margaret,’ he sai
d to her, sotto voce, ‘but there’s someone over there I always hoped I might take a crack at one of these days.’

  For there, in a cosy corner table by the fireplace in the ladies’ lounge bar, nursing a port and lemon and deep in what appeared to be a very intense conversation, was Ida Delia Fontayne with Henry Carr, once again only a heartbeat away from one another.

  Lilian found herself polishing off some scones Rosie had run up yesterday. She couldn’t deny it; even though she’d always wanted to be thin, she couldn’t deny that Rosie putting a little bit of meat on her bones was making her feel slightly better; slightly more able to get through the day. It felt like her joints weren’t quite so stiff; her extremities not so blooming cold all the time, even when she huddled in front of the fire. She was sleeping better too, possibly because Rosie, unbeknown to her, was bulking up her night-time cocoa with calorie powder. And yet, paradoxically, feeling slightly better was making her more worried, not less, about the future.

  As long as she had been feeling so awful, she could kid herself that she was run-down and still a little ill after her operation. Now, she had to admit to herself that there was a possibility that this was it: little by little she had gained energy, but there would come a time when that would stop. And whatever she was left with – her arthritic left wrist, her impossibly unreliable knees, just how damn long it took her to get going in the morning – that would be that. Rosie would go – she daren’t admit to herself how much she’d enjoyed the company – and the shop and the house would be sold, and she’d be packed away into some awful home somewhere to drool out of the window and be parked in front of game shows and shouted at in a room that smelled of piss. Every day until the day she died. And she was only eighty-seven, she could easily live another ten, fifteen years these days. Easily. She hadn’t wanted change. She was getting on all right. And now here was Rosie poking her nose in and stirring everything up …

  Shakily, reluctantly, Lilian pulled on a cardigan and applied a little pale-pink lipstick in the large sitting-room mirror with the rainbow rim over the fireplace. She looked at her reflection and sighed. Then she picked up her stick, pushed open the front door, and set out to visit her sweetshop – her place – once more, while she still could.

  Chapter Twelve

  Chewing Gum

  What are you? A cow? A great big cud-chewing cow in the middle of the field? Or do you feel a pressing need to give yourself terrible wind and tie up your intestines? Did your nanny never teach you that it’s rude to open your mouth to all and sundry and eat in public? Are you badly brought up, or a field-dwelling quadruped? Which is it? I must know. Or perhaps your breath is so bad and your dental care is so appalling you have a mouth that smells like the pits of fiery hell and for some benighted reason you wish to advertise this fact to the world. Is that it? Perhaps you would like to snap your gum now, pull it out on a string on your fingers, or throw it in an indelible globule on the pavement. Great. Thank you.

  Now, hopefully our bovine friends will have left this book behind. To all sensible people, may I recommend a Mint Imperial?

  Rosie didn’t notice Lilian straight away for the very good reason that her view was blocked by Anton, the obese man she’d helped Moray treat. He’d arrived ten minutes before, with a walker heavily set in front of him.

  ‘Hello, Anton!’ she said, delighted. ‘You’re out of the house!’

  Anton smiled shyly, his chins wobbling in a pleased fashion. ‘You recognised me!’

  Rosie swallowed a giggle.

  ‘Yes, Anton, I recognised you. And well done for getting out of the house! That’s brilliant!’

  Anton beamed. ‘Yeah, well, Chrissie said … she said it might be about time. She also said if I manage to get up and down the high street she’ll take me to McDonald’s.’

  Rosie looked at him severely. ‘Isn’t that one step forward, two steps back?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Anton. ‘I already eat lots of McDonald’s. I’m just really excited by the idea that I might get to eat a hot one. By the time they reach Lipton they’re always cold.’

  ‘Everyone needs a dream,’ said Rosie. ‘And look, this is mine. What do you think?’

  Anton looked around, noticing but not mentioning that there didn’t seem to be a chair, and when you were somewhere nice like this, there ought to be a chair.

  ‘I think,’ he pronounced carefully, ‘I think it is one of the nicest places I’ve ever been to. It hasn’t changed at all.’

  Rosie decided not to mention that it had changed, then she’d changed it back again.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Would you like one of our free lollies? Please have blackcurrant, none of the children like it.’

  ‘Ergh,’ said Anton. ‘No thanks. Bit too fruity. Got any chocolate?’

  ‘Where’s Chrissie?’

  ‘She’s driving the car down to the other end of the street. She said it’ll make me walk.’ He looked around again. ‘It’s a shame you don’t have a chair in here. I could stay all day.’

  Rosie made a private note not to bring out a chair.

  ‘Also she says she has to pop into the garage and ask them something about the suspension.’ Anton’s eyes rose up the shelves. ‘Oh wow,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to have.’

  There was no one else in the shop. Rosie leaned forward.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘Just for you – and I wouldn’t do this for anyone else – how about I give you a small selection? One of each, in a little bag.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Anton, ‘about maybe two pounds of butter fudge. And a pound of tablet. And—’

  ‘But with this,’ said Rosie persuasively, ‘you get to try a little taster of absolutely everything. Without overdoing it. Just a tiny delicious taste, like pick ’n’ mix. For after your tea.’

  Anton looked unconvinced, and gave a hopeful glance towards the Turkish delight tray.

  ‘And some of that,’ he said.

  ‘A tiny, teeny taste,’ said Rosie.

  The door clanged and Moray walked in, his usual amused look on his face. Rosie smiled at him, then remembered she’d put the mob cap back on again when she was dishing out chocolate and snatched it off her head. Moray grinned.

  ‘I like the way you dress,’ he observed. ‘Every day is an adventure.’ He glanced around. ‘Morning, Anton.’

  ‘Miss Rosie was just saying I could have any sweets I wanted from the whole shop,’ said Anton.

  ‘Was she?’ said Moray with a querying look.

  ‘Not quite like that,’ said Rosie. ‘We’re just going to have a little taste, aren’t we, Anton?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Anton, whose knees were giving him gyp, and who hated conflict of any kind.

  ‘You’re quite the talk of the surgery, Rosie,’ said Moray. ‘Maeve came and shared all her treats with us. Someone else I couldn’t possibly mention shut his surgery door and ate all his on his own. Anyway, I thought I’d pop in to say congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Rosie. ‘Would you like a blackcurrant lolly?’

  ‘God, no,’ said Moray. ‘Got any strawberry?’

  I have so much to learn, said Rosie to herself, handing it over. ‘Nice to see you.’

  But Moray wasn’t looking at her, he was gazing at the shelves.

  ‘Are those …’ His face suddenly looked disarmingly young. ‘Are those bubble-gum Golf Balls?’

  ‘They certainly are,’ said Rosie.

  Moray shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen those for … well, for a long time.’

  ‘Would you like one?’

  Moray was still shaking his head. ‘We used to share them at school. And fight like mad if there was an uneven number, or if we burst each other’s bubbles.’

  ‘Who’s we?’ asked Rosie, but Moray was caught in a flood of reminiscence. Then he snapped himself out of it.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘No one important.’

  ‘But would you like some?’

  Moray shr
ugged. ‘All right, I’ll take two.’

  ‘I always serve my sweets in even numbers,’ said Rosie severely. ‘Small, medium or large?’

  ‘I hate that question,’ said Moray, flirtatiously. Rosie grinned, and made up two bags, one with a smattering of everything for Anton, which both Moray and Anton watched like hawks, and one with some Golf Balls, which Rosie handed over with a smile, then put out her hand for the shiny pound coins.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Anton, making to turn his body round.

  ‘No problem,’ said Rosie. ‘And Anton, please don’t finish them before …’

  But the doorbell had already tinged, and Anton had his big paw inside the incongruously small-looking bag.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s a start.’ Then she noticed, where he had been, the tiny figure of Lilian.

  ‘Lilian!’ she said, delighted and worried again for her great-aunt, who looked even smaller outside the low-beamed cottage. ‘I lied earlier,’ she said. ‘I do have a chair. Hang on.’ And she disappeared through into the back room.

  ‘Hello, Miss Hopkins, how are you keeping?’ said Moray.

  Lilian sniffed at him.

  ‘What?’ said Moray. ‘Come on, I’m not even your doctor.’

  Lilian indicated towards the back room and spoke quietly.

  ‘That’s my niece in there, you know.’

  ‘I do know,’ said Moray, smiling.

  ‘Well, try not to get her mixed up in any Lipton rubbish,’ snapped Lilian. ‘You know who I mean. She’s not here for long and she doesn’t need any of your nonsense, thank you very much.’

  By the time Rosie had extricated the chair from the empty boxes waiting for the recycling run, Moray had gone.

  ‘Where’s he off to?’ she said pleasantly, sitting her aunt down.

  ‘Got more quackery to do, I expect,’ said Lilian, arranging herself.