The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper(46)

Once he had looked back and viewed everything in Technicolor—the sky, the sand, his wife’s clothes. With each discovery the color of his memories was fading to a murky mingling together of hues. He wanted to stop, to turn back the clock, to put Miriam’s brown suede boots into the charity bag without first slipping his hand inside. Then he would be oblivious. He could be a widower in peace, looking back at his life with his wife through rose-tinted spectacles. Thinking that everything had been perfect.

Except it hadn’t been. He knew that really. He had two children who had drifted away from him. He heard the worry and love in Lucy’s voice when they spoke, but she kept her distance a lot. He hadn’t felt able to tell her about the charm bracelet yet. She was keeping things from him, too; he could sense it. When he sporadically called Dan there was always noise and the busyness of family life. They hadn’t managed to find the rhythm of being a family without Miriam.

He needed to bring back some control. Just as he was taking charge of the charm bracelet, of not letting its mysteries remain hidden, he had to do the same with his family. He had to find out the roots of the reason they were no longer tight-knit and pull them back together again.

He felt as though he was a seed that had been thrown away into a field onto fallow land. But against all odds there was a root emerging, pushing into the hard soil. A green shoot was peeping through. He wanted to carry on growing. Frederica’s leaves had once been withered and tinged with brown. He had nurtured her with water and attention and he was doing the same for himself.

He felt brave.

He decided that he should thank Mike for his troubles and found himself nearing the post office. He would risk going behind enemy lines to purchase a thank-you card.

When he arrived at the little red post office the sign said Closed for Lunch. It would reopen at one thirty. He knew that Vera stood by the door and took great relish in turning over the closed sign at precisely 12:25 p.m. Latecomers might rattle the handle, but they were not coming in.

With fifteen minutes to go, Arthur paced up and down on the uneven pavement outside. Many a pensioner had gone sprawling on the flagstones.

He looked down the road with its identical tiny stone cottages. Miriam used to live in the one with the red door. There was a young family who lived there now—two women and their children. Rumor had it (as he had overheard from Vera) that they had left their husbands for each other.

Miriam had been an only child. Her mother had been very protective. Arthur had tried to win Mrs. Kempster around by making sure his shoes were highly polished, by bringing cake and listening for hours about the story of how she got her finger trapped in the machinery at the cotton mill. He and Miriam stole knowing smiles whenever she chirped up, “Did I ever tell you about my accident...?”

Their wedding photos showed the smiling newlyweds, faces pressed cheek to cheek and grinning about what their future held. Mrs. Kempster looked as if she belonged in a different photo. She clutched her giant brown leather handbag to her chest and her lips were pursed as if she had eaten sour sherbet.

When they cleared her house, her belongings had fit into the back of a small transit van. She had been most frugal. He wondered if the charm had been passed on to Miriam at this time, though again he couldn’t remember his wife telling him about it.

He paced some more and found himself standing outside Number 48 when the door opened. One of the women came outside. “All right, there?” she asked cheerily. She wore a purple scarf tied around her hair and a green vest top with no bra. Her hair was coiled in black springs and her skin was the color of coffee. She wrung out a dishcloth onto the front step, then shook it out.

“Yes. Righto.” Arthur raised his hand.

“Are you looking for something?”

“Nope. Well, kind of. My wife used to live in this house, you see, when she was young. I always have a little think when I walk past.”

“Ah, right. When did she leave?”

“We got married in ’69. But it would have been ’70 or ’71 when her mother died.”

The women jerked her head. “Come in and have a little look, if you want.”

“Oh, no. There’s no need. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

“Not at all. Feel free to have a nosy. You’ll have to clamber over the kids’ stuff, mind you.”

He had been about to protest again, but then reconsidered. Why the heck not? It might spark a memory. “Thank you,” he said. “That is most kind.”

The house was unrecognizable. It was colorful and bright and cluttered. It felt happy. He pictured himself and Miriam, sitting primly in chairs at opposite sides of the fireplace. Mrs. Kempster sat in the middle, clicking her knitting needles and proudly displaying her gnarly finger. The walls had been brown, the carpet frayed. He could still smell the coal fire and the dog that sat so close to the flames that its fur smoked.

“Does it look familiar?” the woman asked.

“Not really. I mean, it’s the same layout, but everything is different. It seems happier now. Modern.”

“Well, we’re trying our best on not much money. The view’s not bad, though the woman at the post office disapproves. I live with my partner, you see. Even worse, in her eyes, that we’re both mixed race.”

“Vera isn’t very diverse. She likes to gossip.”

“Tell me about it. What that woman doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.”