The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper (3 page)

The Great Escape

IT WAS STILL
dark the next morning when Arthur woke. The digits on his alarm clock flicked to 5:32 a.m. and he lay for a while staring at the ceiling. Outside a car drove past and he watched the reflection of the headlights sweep over the ceiling like the rays of a lighthouse across water. He let his fingers creep across the mattress, reaching out for Miriam's hand knowing it wasn't there and feeling only cool cotton sheet.

Each night when he went to bed, it struck him how chilly it was without her. When she was next to him he always slept through the night, gently drifting off, then waking to the sound of thrushes singing outside. She would shake her head and ask did he not hear the thunderstorm or next door's house alarm going off? But he never did.

Now his sleep was fitful, restless. He woke up often, shivering and wrapping the duvet around him in a cocoon. He should put an extra blanket on the bed, to stop the cold from creeping around his back and numbing his feet. His body had found its own strange rhythm of sleeping, waking, shivering, sleeping, waking, shivering that, although uncomfortable, he didn't want to shake. He didn't want to drop off and then wake with the birds and find that Miriam was no longer there. Even now that would be too much of a shock. Stirring through the night reminded him that she had gone and he welcomed those constant reminders. He didn't want to risk forgetting her.

If he had to describe in one word how he felt this morning, it would be
perplexed
. Getting rid of Miriam's clothes was going to be a ritual, to freeing the house of her things, her shoes, her toiletries. It was a small step in coping with his loss and moving on.

But the newly discovered charm bracelet was an obstacle to his intentions. It raised questions where once there were none. It had opened a door and he had stepped through it.

He and Miriam differed in how they saw mysteries. They regularly enjoyed a Miss Marple or a Hercule Poirot on a Sunday afternoon. Arthur would watch intently. “Do you think it's him?” he would say. “He's being very helpful and his character adds nothing to the story. I think he might be the killer.”

“Watch the film.” Miriam would squeeze his knee. “Just enjoy it. You don't have to psychoanalyze all the characters. You don't have to guess the ending.”

“But it's a mystery. It's supposed to make you guess. We're supposed to try and work it out.”

Miriam would laugh and shake her head.

If this were the other way around and (he hated to think this) he had died, Miriam might not have given finding a strange object in Arthur's wardrobe much thought. Whereas here he was, his brain whirring like a child's windmill in the garden.

He creaked out of bed and took a shower, letting the hot water bounce off his face. Then he dried himself off, had a shave, put on his gray trousers, blue shirt and mustard sweater-vest and headed downstairs. Miriam liked it when he wore these clothes. She said they made him look “presentable.”

For the first weeks after she died, he couldn't even be bothered getting dressed. Who was there to make an effort for? With his wife and children gone, why should he care? He wore his pajamas day and night. For the first time in his life he grew a beard. When he saw himself in the bathroom mirror he was surprised at his resemblance to Captain Birdseye. He shaved it off.

He left radios on in each room so he wouldn't have to hear his own footsteps. He survived on yogurts and cans of soup, which he didn't bother to heat. A spoon and a can opener were all he needed. He found himself small jobs to do: tightening the bolts on the bed to stop it squeaking, scratching out the blackened grout around the bath.

Miriam kept a fern on the windowsill in the kitchen. It was a moth-eaten thing with drooping feathery leaves. He despised it at first, resenting how such a pathetic thing could live when his wife had died. It had sat on the floor by the back door waiting for bin day. But, out of guilt, he relented and set it back in its place. He named it Frederica and began to water and talk to it. And slowly she perked up. She no longer drooped. Her leaves grew greener. It felt good to nurture something. He found it easier to care for and chat to the plant than to people. It was good for him to keep busy. It meant he didn't have time to be sad.

Well, that's what he told himself, anyway. But then he'd be going about his daily tasks, kind of doing okay, holding it together. Then he'd spy the green potpourri fabric leaf hanging in the hallway or Miriam's mud-encrusted walking shoes in the pantry, or the lavender Crabtree & Evelyn hand cream on the shelf in the bathroom—and it would feel like a landslide. Such small, meaningless items now tore at his heart.

He would sit on the bottom step of the stairs and hold his head in his hands. Rocking backward and forward, squeezing his eyes shut, he told himself that he was bound to feel like this. His grief was still raw. It would pass. She was in a better place. She wouldn't want him to be like this.
Blah, blah.
All the usual mumbo jumbo from Bernadette's leaflets. And it did pass. But it never vanished completely. He carried his loss around with him bowling ball–like in the pit of his stomach.

At these times he imagined his own father, stern, strong:
Bloody 'ell. Pull yerself together, lad. Crying's for sissies
, and he would lift his chin and try to be brave.

Perhaps he should be getting over it by now.

His recollections of those dark early days were foggy. What he did recall was like seeing it on a black-and-white TV set with a crackly picture. He saw himself shuffling around the house.

If he was honest, then Bernadette had been a great help. She had turned up on his doorstep like an unwelcome genie and insisted that he bathed while she cooked lunch. Arthur hadn't wanted to eat. Food held no taste or pleasure for him.

“Your body is like a steam train that needs coal,” Bernadette said as he protested against the pies, soups and stews she carried over his threshold, heated and then placed in front of him. “How are you going to carry on your journey without fuel?”

Arthur wasn't planning any journey. He didn't want to leave the house. The only trip he made was upstairs to use the bathroom or go to bed. He had no desire to do anything more than that. For a quiet life he ate her food, blocked out her chatter, read her leaflets. He really would've preferred to be left alone.

But she persisted. Sometimes he answered the door to her, other times he wriggled down in the bed and pulled the blankets over his head or thrust himself into National Trust statue mode. But she never gave up on him.

* * *

Later that morning, as if she knew he was thinking of her, Bernadette rang his doorbell. Arthur stood in the dining room, still, for a few moments, wondering whether to go to the door. The air smelled of bacon and eggs and fresh toast as the other residents of Bank Avenue enjoyed their breakfasts. The doorbell rang again.

“Her husband, Carl, died recently,” Miriam had told him, a few years ago, as she'd spied Bernadette on a stall at a local church fete, selling butterfly buns and chocolate cake. “I think that bereaved people act in one of two ways. There are those who cling with their fingertips to the past, and those who brush their hands together and get on with their lives. That lady with the red hair is the latter. She keeps herself busy.”

“Do you know her?”

“She works at LadyBLovely, the boutique in the village. I bought a navy dress from there. It has tiny pearl buttons. She told me that, in her husband's memory, she was going to help others through her baking. She said that if people are tired, lonely, heartbroken or have simply run out of steam, then they need food. I think it's very courageous of her to make it her mission to help others.”

From then on Arthur noticed Bernadette more—at the local school summer fair, in the post office, in her dressing gown tending roses in her garden. They said hello to each other and not much else. Sometimes he saw Bernadette and Miriam chatting on the street corner. They would laugh and talk about the weather and how strawberries were sweet this year. Bernadette's voice was so loud that he could hear the conversation from inside the house.

Bernadette had attended Miriam's funeral. He had a hazy memory of her appearing beside him and patting his arm. “If you ever need anything, just ask,” she said, and Arthur wondered what he might possibly ever ask her for. Then she had started to turn up unannounced on his doorstep.

At first he felt irritated by her presence, then he began to worry that she had set her sights on him, perhaps as a potential second husband. He wasn't looking for anything like that. He never could do after Miriam. But in all the months she had been knocking on his door, Bernadette hadn't ever given him cause to think her attention was anything more than platonic. She had a full roster of widows and widowers to call upon.

“Mince and onion pie,” she greeted him as he opened up. “Freshly made.” She let herself into the hallway, pie-first. There she ran her finger along the shelf over the radiator and nodded with satisfaction that it was dust free. She sniffed the air. “It's a bit musty in here. Do you have air freshener?”

Arthur marveled at how impolite she could be without realizing, and dutifully fetched one. A few seconds later and the cloying smell of Mountain Lavender filled the air.

She bustled into the kitchen and put the pie down on the worktop. “This is a mighty fine kitchen,” she said.

“I know.”

“The cooker is wondrous.”

“I know.”

Bernadette was the polar opposite to Miriam. His wife had sparrow bones. Bernadette was fleshy, cushioned. Her hair was dyed postbox red and she wore diamanté studs on the tips of her nails. One of her front teeth was stained yellow. Her voice was big, cutting through the quiet of his home like a machete. He jangled the bracelet nervously in his pocket. Since speaking to Mr. Mehra last night, he had kept it with him. He had studied each charm in turn several times.

India. It was so far away. It must have been such an adventure for Miriam. Why had she not wanted him to know? Surely Mr. Mehra's story wasn't enough for her to keep it secret.

“Are you okay, Arthur? You're in a dreamworld.” Bernadette's words broke his thoughts.

“Me. Yes, of course.”

“I called yesterday morning but you weren't in. Did you go to Men in Caves?”

Men in Caves was a community group for single men. Arthur had been twice to find a group of men with gloomy expressions handling chunks of wood and tools. The man who ran it, Bobby, was shaped like a skittle with a tiny head and large body. “Men need caves,” he'd trilled. “They need somewhere to retreat to and be at one with themselves.”

Arthur's neighbor with the dreadlocks had been there. Terry. He was busy filing a piece of wood. “I like your car,” Arthur said to be polite.

“It's actually a tortoise.”

“Oh.”

“I saw one last week when I was mowing my lawn.”

“A wild one?”

“It belongs to the red-haired kids who wear nothing on their feet. It escaped.”

Arthur didn't know what to say. He had enough trouble with cats on his rockery without a tortoise being on the loose, too. Returning to his own work, he made a wooden plaque with the number of his house on it—37. The 3 was much bigger than the 7 but he hung it on his back door, anyway.

It would have been easy to say yes, he was at Men in Caves, even though it had been too early in the morning. But Bernadette was standing and smiling at him. The pie smelled delicious. He didn't want to lie to her, especially after hearing Mr. Mehra's regret over telling lies about Miriam. He would do the same and try not to lie again. “I hid from you yesterday,” he said.

“You
hid
?”

“I didn't want to see anyone. I'd set myself the task to clear out Miriam's wardrobe, and so when you rang the doorbell, I stood very still in the hallway and pretended not to be at home.” The words tumbled off his tongue and it felt surprisingly good to be this honest. “Yesterday was the first anniversary of her death.”

“That's very truthful of you, Arthur. I appreciate your honesty. I can see how that would be upsetting. When Carl died...well, it was a hard thing to let him go. I gave his tools to Men in Caves.”

Arthur felt his heart dip. He hoped that she wouldn't tell him about her husband. He didn't want to trade stories of death. There seemed to be a strange one-upmanship among people who had lost spouses. Only last week in the post office he witnessed what he would describe as boasting among a group of four pensioners.

“My wife suffered for ten years before she eventually passed away.”

“Really? Well, my Cedric was flattened by a lorry. The paramedics said they'd never seen anything like it. Like a pancake, one said.”

Then a man's voice, breaking. “It was the drugs, I reckon. Twenty-three tablets a day they gave her. She almost rattled.”