He was glad that after twenty-five years in the business he hadn’t become hardened to it, and not just because it gave him a good reputation and the edge on the other second-hand dealers in the area, but because it proved to him that he was still the same old Archie.
‘You always were a soft beggar,’ his mother used to say to him, ‘soft as cottongrass, that’s what you are.’
He climbed into his van, smiled goodbye to the two women whose father’s house he had just cleared. What wouldn’t he give to hear a sentence as coherent as that from his mother these days?
He reversed the van slowly, mindful of the load in the back. None of it was particularly valuable - the best stuff had been taken away for auction - but to mistreat it seemed disrespectful to those who had once owned it. Some of it would end up at the tip - even he couldn’t sell perished bath mats and crumbling cork tiles - but he would shift most of it.
It had been a big job and had taken him longer than he had expected. He preferred smaller houses, not because he was lazy but because he didn’t like to get too involved. If you spent too long clearing a house, you ended up thinking like the family, unable to be objective. He had done it yesterday. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to hang on to this?’ he had asked the two sisters. From the expression in their eyes he had known he’d said the wrong thing. They had probably already put themselves through countless emotional hoops deciding what to keep and what to part with, and here was this outsider making it worse for them.
He trundled the van slowly down the hill, away from the stone built farmhouse and its For Sale board. In his rear-view mirror he could see the two women still standing where he had left them. They were crying. It didn’t surprise him - he had seen it all before. While there had been business to conduct they had held themselves together, but now that they were alone, they could go back to mourning the death of their father.
It was warm in the van and he lowered the window. Immediately he felt his spirits drag themselves up from his boots. At last it felt like spring was really here. He loved March: in lush green fields crisscrossed with a network of drystone walls, sheep grazed while skinny newborn lambs hopped and skipped on bandy legs. In the distance he could make out a kestrel hovering above something on the ground that had caught its eye. He sighed expansively. Despite all the sadness the world wasn’t a bad place, and until someone came up with anything better, he’d stick with it a while longer.
He drove on and wondered what he would find at home that
evening. Since his mother had moved in with them after her stroke, things between him and Stella had gone from bad to worse. ‘Over my dead body,’ had been her exact words when he had suggested it, and he hadn’t been surprised by her hostility: Stella and his mother had never hit it off - but he had hoped she would come round to the idea.
Thankfully she had, and Bessie had moved in last month.
When Archie had invited his mother to come and stay with them, as he had euphemistically put it to her, she had agreed quite readily to his relief: he knew how independent she was. ‘We’ll treat it as a holiday,’ he had said, ‘but without the sunburn.’ He suspected that she knew she would never go back to her house in Derby.
Meanwhile, her neighbours were keeping an eye on it so that she could return when she was able. The fact that a second stroke was likely to follow the first, and that it would probably be more debilitating, was not mentioned.
She had had the stroke just before Christmas, not a massive one but bad enough to knock the stuffing out of her. The tough, uncompromising woman he had always known became fragile and unsure. The stroke had robbed her of nearly all the strength in her right arm and hand, and her right leg had also taken a beating, which made walking slow and difficult. Making herself understood had been a problem too. Her speech was a lot clearer now, and that was down to weeks of diligent speech therapy, although at times it was still a puzzle to know what she was saying. If she was tired or anxious the words came out slurred or just plain jumbled - ‘hum dryer’ for tumble-dryer, ‘rare hush’ for hairbrush. He had tried to turn understanding her into a game, calming her frustration with light-hearted humour, but Stella didn’t have the patience for this and recently had shown signs of losing her temper. He didn’t blame her Bessie wasn’t her mother after all.
The strain of being caught between a rock and a hard place wanting to keep the peace with his wife and do the right thing by his mother - was taking its toll. Initially things had gone smoothly, but then the niggles had turned into rows and recently he and Stella had both said things that should never have been voiced. Until then their skirmishes had been conducted in low voices. ‘She’s my mother,’ he had whispered one night in the kitchen, as Stella slammed cupboards and drawers. ‘She’s not well. What do you expect me to do with her?’ It was a dangerous question, given that he knew exactly what Stella wanted him to do with her. But he would never do that. He saw too often the hurt and sense of betrayal as families, as well meaning as they were, shepherded their elderly relatives out of the houses they knew and loved and into nursing homes. Sometimes they went willingly, looked forward to giving up the reins of running a house in exchange for having everything done for them. But more often than not they were sad and confused, not quite understanding that they would never see home again.
No. He would not do that to Bessie Merryman.
What saddened him most was that his mother apologised
frequently for having become a burden and there was nothing he could do to convince her that she wasn’t. The woman who had brought him up single-handedly, and taught him always to see the best in others, would never be a burden to him.
His shop, Second Best, was situated on the corner of Millstone Row and Lower Have in Deaconsbridge. It was a double-fronted Victorian building of stone that originally had been honey-gold but which was now blackened with age. Positioned just off the market square, it had the bonus of convenient parking to the side where, with Samson’s help, Archie unloaded the van. Samson - his real name was Shane - was the extra brawn Archie relied upon for those larger items of furniture he couldn’t manage on his own. At six feet two, Archie wasn’t a small man, but Samson dwarfed him. His conversational skills were restricted to a nod and a grunt, but he was a
godsend with a wardrobe on his back and a horsehair mattress between his teeth.
On the occasions when Samson was on a house-clearance job with Archie or they were delivering furniture to a customer, Comrade Norm - so-called because his parents had christened him Norman Lenin Jones - kept a part-time eye on the shop. There were days when they could have done with another pair of hands, but business wasn’t consistently good. It could stretch to two and half salaries, but any more and the financial knicker elastic would snap.
He said good night to Samson, checked that all was locked and secure, and set off for home, a ten-minute walk across town. The low evening sun brought a soft glow of light to the square, and now that everything was shut, apart from the Mermaid cafe, which stayed open until seven o’clock, a pleasing calm had descended. The market traders had gone, leaving behind a vacant cobbled square splattered with squashed fruit and veg and discarded hot-dog wrappers. Over by the war memorial, a blue and white carrier-bag was swept along by the breeze until it came to rest at the foot of a litter-bin. It was only a few yards out of his way so Archie strolled over and popped it in. Straightening up, he waved to Joe Shelmerdine, who was just locking his bookshop.
Further along the street was the Deaconsbridge Arms, and
although it had been done up by the brewery to draw in tourists, it was still where the old die-hard drinkers gathered to sup their beer and indulge in local gossip. Archie rarely showed his face in there. He wasn’t a drinker: he had seen alcohol turn his father into a vicious bully and had grown up with a horror of it doing the same to him.
He had come home too many times from school to find his father drunk and ready to take out his anger on the first person to hand.
From a young age Archie had known that it was better for him to take the beating than his mother.
He carried on briskly - it was the nearest he got to working out like Samson did - but slowed when he got to Cross Street: it was one of the steepest roads in the town and it always took him by surprise, squeezed the air out of his chest and turned his relatively healthy fifty-five-year-old body into that of a wheezing ninety-year-old. He paused to catch his breath, leaning against the painted handrail on which generations of small children had swung upside-down like rows of multicoloured fruit bats.
He and Stella had wanted children, but sadly it wasn’t to be, and as the years passed they had resigned themselves to being one of those childless couples who never quite fit in. They had moved to Deaconsbridge not long after they had married and had lived in a rented flat until they had enough money to put down a deposit on a three-storey end-of-terrace house in Cross Street. They had been here ever since. They could have moved, and Stella had been keener than him to do so, but somehow they had never got round to it.
When he reached home he let himself in at the back door and was surprised by how quiet it was. Usually the radio or the television was on, sometimes both competing to be heard.
A sixth sense told him something was wrong - the same sixth sense that had dried his mouth and made his hair stand on end just before Christmas when he had found his mother’s home dark and silent. She had been lying on the floor by the side of her bed, her face twisted, her nightdress exposing more of her than was fair. When she saw him her eyes had filled with tears. She had been there since morning, unable to move, unable to call for help.
He moved fast now, calling her name as he took the stairs two at a time. He burst into what had been the spare room, but which was now her room.
She wasn’t there.
Into the bathroom next.
Nothing.
He was just about to go into his and Stella’s room when he heard her voice. He bent over the balustrade and saw his mother looking up at him from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Ser-late,’ she said, pointing to her watch.
He put his heart back where it belonged and joined her in the hall.
‘Only a little late tonight,’ he said, adrenaline still pumping through him. ‘I had a busy day. Where were you? Didn’t you hear me calling?’
She took his arm for support and led him slowly towards the front room. Once again the hairs on the back of his neck warned him of an impending shock.
On the mantelpiece, between a pair of decorative china plates, was an envelope with his name on it. He knew without opening it what it would say.
Stella had left him.
It was Sunday morning and Ned and Clara were being treated to a brunch-party send-off. While Moira helped Ned to the last of the chipolatas and crispy bacon, Clara watched the goings-on outside where Guy and David were putting the finishing touches to Winnie, the three-year-old campervan that was soon to be Ned and Clara’s new home.
Parting with her lovely Mazda MX 5 yesterday morning had been a wrench for Clara, and even Ned had looked sad when they had watched the smart two-seater sports car being driven away by its new owner - it had always been a source of pride to Ned that he was the only child he knew who always got to sit in the front of his mother’s car. He had brightened, though, when the campervan arrived.
It was second-hand, but in excellent condition, and unlike a brand new car it seemed to have a highly developed personality. There was a cosy feel to it that suggested happy times ahead.
When Clara had first seen it, the salesman had explained that its previous owners were a nice couple who had only parted with it because they were upgrading to something bigger. ‘I had no idea campervans could be so well kitted out,’ she had said, as they stepped inside and she felt the soft fitted carpet beneath her shoes.
‘This is actually what we call a motorhome, and quite a modest one at that. You should see what we have at the top end of the market. The Winnebago, now that’s what we call deluxe.’ He pointed through one of the side windows to a massive bus-like vehicle that looked as if it might accommodate at least two touring rock bands.
‘Heavens! How many does that sleep?’ she asked.
‘Eight. One of the beds is queen-size. There’s even a washing machine and tumble-dryer on board.’
Then, feeling disloyal to the modest campervan they were
supposed to be viewing, she said, ‘Well, how about you show me what this baby has to offer?’
While Ned carried out his own inspection - opening doors, trying the driver’s seat complete with armrests - the salesman had filled her in on the superior coachbuilt workmanship, the elegant interior, the spacious dinette, the two-burner combination cooker, the tilt tolerant fridge and the swivel cab seats. Ned had already discovered those - one minute he was facing the front, the next the back. With growing enthusiasm the young man showed her rattle-free lockers and cabinets. There were recessed halogen reading-lights, upholstered bench-seats, two surprisingly large wardrobes, a drop-down contoured hand-basin in the ingenious bathroom that contained a flushable toilet as well as a shower. He left the sleeping arrangements till last, showing her, with a magician’s flourish, the double bed over the cab, complete with little ladder, and the two single beds in the dinette area that could also convert to a comfortable double.
‘Did the previous owners have a name for it?’ she asked, when at last he drew breath.
He gave her an odd look. ‘Not that I know of. I could check the registration document if you want - it’s in the office.’
‘No, that’s okay.’ She sensed he was humouring her, probably thinking that after everything he had just gone through, she was just another time-waster. ‘May I have a test drive, please?’ she said, keen to re-inflate him. ‘I’d like to see how it handles.’