by Nina Jon
“It’s extraordinary that you still sell wool, as you have done every day for, well, seventy years now,” Dan said, in his soft Northern Irish brogue.
“We still enjoy it,” Dotty explained. “We love talking to people you see. We learn all sorts of things about people. Things their nearest and dearest don’t know about them.”
“We once helped a woman leave her cruel husband,” Lettice said. “Dotty distracted him in the street outside the shop and kept him talking on the subject of the government of the day, while Nellie and I helped her flee out of the back door. Nellie drove her to the station herself, even though she’d only ever been behind the wheel of a car twice before.”
“And never since,” Nellie herself said. “It wasn’t that difficult, although it did stall more than once.”
“It wasn’t even her car. We’ve never had a car,” Dotty said.
“It belonged to the squire. He’d parked it outside the shop. I helped myself to it. I left it at the station and walked back. No one ever knew who took that car,” Nellie finished her story.
“Have there been any other interesting people you’ve met over the years?” Dan asked.
“We once served the Prince of Wales’s chauffeur,” Dotty said. “Not the current one, of course.”
“We’ve never met him,” Lettice said. “Or the Prince of Wales.”
“Nellie was once proposed to by a customer in the shop, or was that me?” Dotty said. “It was all so long ago now I can’t rightly remember who the subject of the proposal was. He got down on bended knee though, and I remember a bouquet of flowers.”
“One customer once bought every ball of wool in the shop and the needles. I can’t imagine what for,” Nellie said. “We couldn’t take any more orders until we’d restocked.”
“Trade isn’t what it once was,” Lettice admitted. “But we do so love our wool shop and our customers. At our age, we do think we should be allowed to live out our days doing what we love to do, if we wish to do so.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Now tell me ladies, are you enjoying the attention all this is bringing you?”
The ladies looked at each other. “Well we didn’t to begin with,” Nellie said,” but now we’re beginning to rather enjoy it, aren’t we girls?”
“Everyone is in such a hurry these days,” Dotty said. “At our age it’s difficult to keep up, but since this has happened, people have been in touch from all over the world and we do so love talking to people, particularly the young people, and they do seem to like talking to us.”
“We don’t feel as though the modern age has left us behind anymore,” Lettice said. “We suddenly feel quite in tune with it. Do you see?”
“I’m sure our viewers will have a lot to say on the subject of your wool shop,” Dan said. “Now, please tell the viewers, where did you get that unusual name from Lettice?”
“It was my dear Mama’s name and her Mama’s name before her. It’s a family tradition. I’m the eldest you see. I’m ninety next birthday, if I make it.”
“I’m sure you’ll all be here for many a year to come,” Dan said, “and from all of us here on Breakfast TV, I hope and pray that your shop will be as well, with you still in it. Please put aside some of your best wool for my dear old Ma, will you?”
As the camera pulled away from the three sisters, and closed in on Dan Slack, Nellie’s voice could be heard saying,
“Are you married young man? You’re very dashing, isn’t he girls?”
II
“Makes our little poster campaign seem a bit tame, doesn’t it, Penny?” Mirabella said in the rectory’s kitchen, TMTV playing in the background.
“Everyone will be on their side,” Felix said, in exasperation. “We’ll have flying pickets outside that shop before we know it.”
“Pickets? Why didn’t we think of that, Penny?” her grandmother asked.
While her grandmother clapped and chanted, “Keep our wool shop open! Keep our wool shop open!” Penny walked around the room, pretending to hold up a placard.
Felix could only slap his forehead with his hand, when Dan Slack read out a text from a TMTV viewer.
‘The council should let the old ladies live out their days in their home if they want to. For heaven’s sake, that market square of theirs, or whatever it is they wish to bulldoze, has survived up to now. Where’s the harm in leaving things as they are for a few more years?’
“That pretty much sums up the sentiments we’re receiving on this one,” Dan said.
Felix had seen enough. He switched the TV off. Millions of people watched TMTV live, and many more watched it online, sometimes over and over again. He knew what was going to happen. The ladies wouldn’t be through the door of their wool shop before they were offered the chance to sell their story to a national paper. Anyone who had not yet heard of them soon would. In no time they would be telling the whole country their side of the story, and no doubt the whole country would take their side.
Felix knew full well if a local authority took on three extremely elderly ladies, then no matter what justification the council had for doing so, no matter how many people supported the redevelopment, the council and its individual members would always be perceived as the villains of the peace. No one would be interested in the reasons why the council wanted to redevelop the market square, he thought bitterly. All anyone would know or care about was that three old ladies were being thrown out of their lifelong home, so it could be bulldozed to the ground. The council would be notorious. He had never thought himself to be a particularly bad person, but he knew that soon he was a going to find himself depicted as someone only marginally above a puppy boiler. At least things couldn’t get any worse, he thought to himself.
III
A few hours later, on the other side of the Atlantic, Bart Bartholomew, the presenter of a top-rated US chat show, the Chat Hour, sat in the studio’s galley with the show’s producer and director watching the sisters appearance on TMTV.
“They got an agent?” Bart said. “If not, think I’ll volunteer my services.”
“These old gals for real?” the producer asked. “They’re to die for.”
“We’ve got to get them on the show,” the director said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Book of Lies
I
The large red-brick hall-entrance terraced house on the outskirts of town, given as Peter Wilson’s Sheffield address, wasn’t dissimilar to the house he shared with Orla.
Jane parked across the road from it at seven a.m. and at nine a.m. watched him say his goodbyes to another family. The woman he kissed goodbye on the doorstep of this house, a good deal older than Orla, was dark haired, portly, and the mother to teenage children. One, a girl, started to cry as Peter Wilson, the man Jane supposed to be the girl’s father, bid his farewells. The second child, a boy of about fifteen, looked withdrawn and uninterested in the proceedings. He’d grown used to his father’s comings and goings. His mother too, judging by the stoical expression on her face. The family accepted this man’s absences, as Orla did.
What story did he tell them by way of explanation, she wondered. The same one he told Orla, or another one? Did he carry on him somewhere a book containing the lies told to each woman? Did he refer to it between visits, to ensure he didn’t slip up?
She watched Peter get into his car. The ‘Baby on Board’ sign had been removed, she noticed. He drove away, followed by Jane. Keep your eyes on the car, and your foot on the accelerator, Jane, she told herself. The heavy, slow moving traffic helped her endeavour. After an hour, and still on Peter’s tail, she found herself driving around the ring road of a different city – Manchester. Is this man addicted to commuting, she said to herself. As she said it, she had that sinking feeling again. Where was Peter Wilson going? Not another family, surely, she thought, knowing in her heart of hearts, the answer was almost certainly going to be yes.
Peter Wilson’s final destination turned out to be a car park behind a sma
ll block of newly built flats. Jane pulled in behind him quite certain he wouldn’t recognize either her or her car, despite her having followed him all the way from Sheffield. Peter Wilson, she knew, had other things on his mind. She was right. He walked past her car without a glance. He hadn’t reached the block of flats, when the door to a ground floor flat was flung wide open and a woman ran out of it. Peter Wilson opened out his arms and the woman almost jumped into them and the couple began a passionate kiss. For heaven’s sake, Jane said out loud from behind the wheel of her car. Put him down woman, he’s married. And to more than one woman, she said, this time under her breath.
Two children, a girl and a boy of about ten and twelve appeared in the doorway. Were they Peter’s children, or the woman’s children from a previous marriage, Jane wondered. They watched the scene sullenly. Unnoticed by their mother or Peter Wilson, the boy looked at his sister, put his fingers in his mouth and pretended to make himself sick. Jane would have put their mother’s age as lying somewhere between Orla’s age, and the age of the woman in Sheffield. In complete contrast to the other women in Peter Wilson’s life, this woman was glamorous. She wore a knee-length, brightly patterned silk dress; high-heeled, open-toed sandals and lashings of makeup and jewellery. Jane felt really rather plain by comparison. She was close enough to spot that the third woman in Peter Wilson’s life wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Not yet anyway, she thought.
What do these women see in this man, she wondered. She knew he wasn’t rich and in truth, he wasn’t particularly good looking, but it wasn’t her job to speculate. They all had their reasons. She waited until everyone disappeared inside the apartment block, before driving away.
She returned to Sheffield to pay a visit to its City Hall. There, she set about perusing the online electoral register. The register confirmed that the occupants of 10 Upper Alan St., Sheffield, who would be eligible to vote at the next election, were a Peter Jeremiah Wilson, a Samilla Petra Wilson and a Jeremiah Wilson. This meant that the bored youngster, Jane had seen earlier, was at least seventeen.
Jane walked to the room next-door. This contained the microfiched register of births, deaths and marriages. She sat behind a microfiche reader and began studying the marriage register. The marriage of Peter Wilson and Samilla Hazel had taken place seventeen years earlier, on a Saturday afternoon, in this very building. The record revealed that Samilla Wilson’s first marriage had been dissolved and that she would now be forty-nine. Peter Wilson was described as being the widower of Winifred Gertrude Wilson, deceased. Oh yes, Jane thought cynically. Nonetheless, she did spend some time searching unsuccessfully for both the marriage certificate of Peter and Winifred Wilson and the death certificate of Winifred Wilson. When she found neither, she gave up the search and returned to her car.
She sat in the car for some time, before she drove off. She was worried. How on earth she was going to tell poor Orla Wilson that the man she idolized had been lying to her since the day she met him? This wasn’t the type of news a rational person would receive well, and she didn’t consider Orla rational.
II
The next morning, Jane opened up a database containing the names of every person on the U.K.’s unedited electoral register and the phonebook, and typed in the name Winifred Gertrude Wilson. A few Winifred Gertrude Wilson’s came up and next to the names, came the age range of the person concerned and the region of the country they lived in. Jane read down the list. One was a very young child (Jane wondered why anyone would choose such an old-fashioned name for such a young child) and two were very old ladies. The last Winifred Gertrude Wilson listed was given as being between fifty and fifty-five. Bingo, thought Jane, immediately calling directory enquiries. She asked to be put through to a Winifred Gertrude Wilson, Brentford, outer London, hoping she wasn’t ex-directory.
She wasn’t and a youngish-sounding woman answered the phone.
“I wonder if I could speak to a Mrs Winifred Wilson?” Jane asked.
“Can I ask what it’s about?”
“I’d like to ask Mrs Wilson if she knows or knew a man called Peter Jeremiah Wilson.” Jane had to be direct, if she were to discover anything.
“Mum,” the young woman called out. “There’s a woman on the phone asking about Dad.”
What sounded like a scuffle and arguing followed, although as it was in the background, Jane couldn’t make the words out. She wondered if the phone was about to be slammed down on her.
“Give me that,” she heard someone say. Another woman came to the phone. “Who are you and what do you want?” This woman was older than the first. She was also very angry.
“My name is Mrs Jane Hetherington. Would I be speaking with Winifred Wilson?”
“What’s it to you and what do you want with my husband?” Winifred Wilson said.
Jane didn’t blame her for being angry and suspicious.
“I’m trying to establish the whereabouts of a Peter Jeremiah Wilson, who I believe you were once married to.”
“Worse luck,” was the reply.
“I’m a private detective, you see. I’ve been asked to try and find him by someone.”
“He’s walked out on some other poor cow has he?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, you’re looking in the wrong place, love,” Winifred said, “that son of a bitch walked out on me and my kid sixteen years ago and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him ever since, so unless you’ve got some good news, like he’s died rich, leaving me everything in his will, then I’d rather you left me and my daughter alone.”
“I quite understand, and I apologise for disturbing you and your daughter,” Jane said, the conversation over.
A cup of coffee in hand, Jane went to her conservatory where she did her best thinking. She settled herself down and mulled over Winifred Wilson’s words. According to Winifred, Peter Wilson had walked out on her sixteen years ago. Yet he would have been ‘married’ to Samilla by then and living with her in Sheffield, and their son either already born, or Samilla heavily pregnant with him. Well I never, she thought, two wives (that she knew about) and a possible third wife on the horizon. She didn’t even want to speculate how many other women there may be in Peter Wilson’s life, which she hadn’t stumbled across.
How complicated other people seemed to make their lives, she, who liked to keep her life as simple as possible, mused. No wonder the couple were short of money.
She took out a piece of paper and jotted down what she believed was the sequence of events. If Winifred had divorced Peter by the time he married Samilla, then Samilla would be his lawful wife, not Orla. However, it wasn’t clear from their conversation, whether Winifred had divorced Peter. All she’d asked was whether Peter had died and left her money. If they had divorced, but hadn’t done so until after Peter had married Samilla, but before he’d married Orla, then the marriage to Samilla would be null and void, and Orla the lawful wife.
This, Jane hoped might at least be of some consolation for Orla. It was a big ‘if’ and anyway, it didn’t really detract from the fact that Orla’s marriage was a lie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Five Thousand Friends
From her study window, Mirabella could see clumps of purple crocuses, royal blue dwarf irises and golden narcissus pushing their way through the rectory’s lawn and flowerbeds. This transient, beautiful spring scene was always worth the year-long wait it took to see. At the end of the garden, Felix helped the gardener tie conifer branches, bent out of shape by the heavy snowfall, back into place. Mirabella slowly turned her eyes from the garden to those in the room with her – her granddaughter, Penny, and Jack, just as he let out a squeal on discovering the number of messages posted on the wool shop’s social networking site.
“They’ve got nearly five thousand friends already, and lots more asking to be friends,” Jack said wistfully. “Wish I had that many. I’ve been saying yes to everyone, but I think I’m going to have to be more selective. What criteria should I use?
”
“You can only be our friend if you cough up some dough for the campaign fund,” Mirabella said.
Penny gently hit Jack on the arm, pointed to the computer screen and said, “You.”
Jack knew what she meant. So did her grandmother. “Penny’s right, Jack,” Mirabella said. “The site’s become so popular because of the time you’ve spent posting all those lovely stories of theirs of times past. You should be the campaign manager, not me.”
With Penny playing with a doll, Jack and Mirabella read through the messages of support.
‘I loved the old ladies’ reminiscences,’ someone wrote. ‘Hope they keep their shop open.’
‘It’s the same old story. An ancient way of life destroyed overnight by corporate greed.’
‘Poor Lettice, losing her fiancé like that.’
‘The story about the poor little boy they knew who died of an infection a year before antibiotics were discovered made me cry.’
‘Most affecting,’ was how one simple blog put it.
‘The sisters have nothing to worry about. Knitting isn’t dying out because the young people don’t do it anymore. Quite the contrary. I’m a student and I knit. So do most of my girlfriends,’ one lady posted.
‘There’s a lot of us still about. I’ve knitted all my life and my 10-year-old twins have decided to take up knitting, thanks in no small part to hearing all about the wool shop. Where can we buy its wool from?’
“I suppose we could set up a pay point on their website, and sell the wool online?” Jack suggested. “A virtual wool shop, to replace the bricks and mortar one. How’s that for a happy ending?”
“Only so long as it doesn’t involve all of us spending hours packing up wool to send all over the world,” Mirabella warned, hoping as she said it, that her words would not turn out to be prophetic.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Man of God
I
With Peter Wilson in either Sheffield or Manchester, Jane called Orla at home. Orla answered the phone after only two rings.