Читать книгу The Bookshop on Rosemary Lane: The feel-good read perfect for those long winter nights - Ellen Berry - Страница 7

It wasn’t a train she was trying to catch but her mother’s last breath. So Della couldn’t be late. ‘Start, dammit,’ she muttered, repeatedly turning the ignition key: nothing. Her car appeared to be dead. Her mother could be too, very soon, if her brother was right. He’d called just a few moments ago.

‘Della,’ Jeff had barked, ‘things aren’t looking good. You’d better get yourself over here right away.’ It was the phrase that had stung her: get yourself over here, implying that she’d spent the past three days lying prone on the sofa, posting chocolates into her mouth, rather than keeping an almost permanent vigil at their mother’s bedside. In fact, even before Kitty had moved to the hospice, Della had done most of the caring, driving over to Rosemary Cottage every day after work, not to mention weekends. Jeff, who was based ninety minutes away in Manchester, was generally ‘too tied up’ to assist. As for Della’s younger sister, Roxanne: despite their mother’s decline, this was the first time she’d deigned to venture to Yorkshire from London in three weeks. And just when Della had dared to pop home to catch up on a little sleep, it had started to happen.

Cursing under her breath, she turned the key over and over. It was as effective as repeatedly jabbing at the button to call a lift.

She scrambled out of her car – a scuffed red Fiat Punto – and glanced around the quiet residential street in panic. Running to the hospice wasn’t an option. Della wasn’t built for speed, and Perivale House – which sounded like a luxury spa rather than a place where people went to die – was a couple of miles away on the outskirts of the bustling market town. You couldn’t just hail a taxi in Heathfield – they had to be booked in advance – and Della couldn’t think of anyone she knew who’d be around, ready and willing to drive her, at 3.17 p.m. on a grubby-skied September afternoon.

Whilst pacing at the bus stop she tried Mark on his mobile, knowing he wouldn’t pick up; his working days were filled with back-to-back patient consultations. Often he didn’t even break for lunch. ‘Going to the hospice,’ she informed his voicemail. ‘It doesn’t sound good, love. Jeff and Rox are with her right now and, can you believe this, my bloody car won’t start. I’ll call you later, okay? Or call me. Yes, please call me, soon as you can. ’Bye.’ She tried to calm her breathing before calling Sophie, their daughter, who didn’t answer either. Not because she was working – she was probably in Starbucks hanging out with her best friend Evie, or perhaps Liam, the boyfriend who seemed to be fading from her affections – but because MUM had flashed up on her phone. These days, Della was always pleasantly surprised and faintly honoured when her daughter did answer a call.

Finally – finally – the bus crawled into view. Della perched on the edge of the front seat, as if that would get her there faster as it trundled through the bustling market town. Her mother was dying, for goodness’ sake, couldn’t the driver put his foot down? Of course, it wasn’t his fault that Heathfield was especially busy today, it being the first Wednesday in the month and therefore farmers’ market day. Never mind a seventy-seven-year-old lady with terminal cancer: people needed their onion marmalades and artisan cheeses. And the driver had to let passengers on and off; it was his job, Della reminded herself, conscious of her thumping heart. And her job right now was to be with Kitty, to hold her bony hand as she slipped away to … where exactly? Although Della didn’t believe in the afterlife, she hoped her mother might drift away to a place where pain, confusion and toxic chemicals would be replaced by a steady trickle of gin.

Come on, bus. Come ON! It had stopped, not at a bus stop but due to a van parked outside Greggs, hazard lights flashing, blocking the lane. Seven minutes, it took, for a man in unforgiving tight jeans to reappear and drive it away. Della felt herself ageing rapidly as the bus finally nudged its way along the tree-lined residential roads and out into the soft, rolling North Yorkshire countryside towards Perivale House. The turreted Victorian manor came into view. The bus doors opened and Della sprang off.

Roxanne and Jeff looked up from Kitty’s bedside in the small private room. Jeff muttered something – it might have been ‘Here you are’ – but Della couldn’t hear properly. All she could do was look at the tiny old lady whose facial skin had settled into little folds around her jawline. A little downy fuzz was all that was left of her hair now.

‘Oh, Mum,’ Della whispered, kneeling down on the rubbery floor and taking her mother’s hand. Kitty’s slim fingers were cold, her ring with its chunky emerald a little loose. ‘I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. I’m so sorry.’

Roxanne reached down and squeezed her sister’s arm. Apart from pinkish, sore-looking eyes, she was her usual immaculate self in a plain but clearly expensive black shift, plus an embroidered cream cardi and low, glossy black heels. Della was wearing the leggings and faded turquoise T-shirt she’d napped in. Jeff, the eldest of the three and something important in banking, fixed her with a resigned look across the bed. As her siblings were occupying the only two chairs, Della remained kneeling on the floor. ‘When did it happen?’ she murmured.

‘About ten minutes ago,’ Roxanne replied.

‘Ten minutes! I can’t believe it. That’s when I was stuck outside Greggs …’

‘You went to Greggs on your way here?’ Jeff gasped,

‘No, of course I didn’t. I was on the bus, there was a lorry blocking the road.’

‘The bus?’ gasped Roxanne, who probably hadn’t travelled on one since 1995. ‘Why didn’t you drive?’

Della let go of her mother’s hand. ‘My car wouldn’t start.’

Jeff let out a heavy sigh. ‘For God’s sake, Dell, you’re an adult woman. When are you going to get a proper car that’s not held together with string?’

At first, it had seemed like a terrible idea: for the three of them to drive over to Kitty’s house less than two hours since she had passed away. But then, the Cartwrights weren’t one of those families who gathered purely to be together. They needed a purpose: a birth, a marriage, a significant birthday – or a death. And coming to Rosemary Cottage – in which all three of them had grown up – felt like the right thing to do. They had things to attend to. They needed, as Jeff put it with his customary directness, to ‘figure out what needs to be done’.

Mark arrived, still in his work attire of crisp striped blue shirt and dark grey trousers, with Sophie in tow. ‘Oh, darling,’ he exclaimed, ‘I know how hard this is for you.’ He gathered Della into his arms and kissed the top of her head where her haphazard top-knot was coming loose.

‘Thanks, love,’ she said, momentarily soothed by the embrace.

‘I’m so sorry, Mum,’ cried Sophie, her own tears setting off Della’s. ‘My phone was out of charge. I’d just got in when Dad came home and said Gran had—’ She broke off with a sob.

‘It’s okay,’ Della murmured, hugging her daughter. ‘We knew it was going to happen. And, remember, it’s been tough for Gran for such a long time …’ She turned to Mark. ‘It’s just, I missed it, you know. I was too late.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he insisted. ‘You’ve done what you could. You’ve been amazing … looking after her, sitting with her for hours and hours.’ She caught him throwing Jeff and Roxanne a glance of irritation.

‘I just wish I’d seen her more,’ Sophie said, blotting away tears on the cuff of her faded red sweatshirt. ‘It’s too late now. I should’ve made more effort. I should’ve gone every day …’

‘Sweetheart,’ Della said, ‘you went often enough. Gran knew you loved her. She knew we all did.’ She caught Roxanne’s eye, and a flicker of acknowledgement passed between the sisters.

‘What I feel bad about,’ Jeff announced, looking around their mother’s cluttered kitchen, ‘is the state of this place. How could she have lived like this? We really should have done something about it.’ He cast a derisory glance over the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with ancient cookbooks.

‘Mum liked it this way,’ Della pointed out. ‘You know that. She refused to throw anything away.’

‘But there’s so much stuff!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s oppressive, so dingy and dark. It can’t have been good for her.’

‘Clutter doesn’t make people ill, Jeff,’ Della countered, trying to soften the defensive edge to her voice. ‘Books don’t cause cancer. It was the way Mum wanted it, we couldn’t just barge in and take over.’

He exhaled loudly and peered at the shelves, running a manicured nail along the books’ spines. Their sheer volume lent Kitty’s kitchen the air of a second-hand bookshop. Perhaps, Della figured, the peeling whitewashed cottage did seem pretty chaotic when you visited so rarely. Like Jeff before her and Roxanne soon after, Della had been eager to escape Burley Bridge, the once-pretty, now rather shabby and beleaguered village which had formed the backdrop to their childhood. She had, too – albeit settling only seventeen miles away in the nearest sizeable town of Heathfield. However, as Kitty had become more dependent, she’d been the one to make frequent visits. To her, Rosemary Cottage with its vast collection of cookbooks and the enormous pine dresser crammed with chipped china knick-knacks, seemed normal.

Roxanne, too, was examining the books. ‘I’d forgotten how many of these she had. What was the point? I don’t ever remember her cooking much.’

‘She did when we were young,’ Della reminded her. ‘Not so much in later years, after Dad left. But, you know, they were important to her and for whatever reason she couldn’t let them go.’

Roxanne smiled, her eerily unlined face looking drawn and pale. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with all of this, Dell. You know I’d have come up more often if I could. It’s just, I’ve had crazy deadlines lately.’ Although Della knew nothing about the world of glossy fashion magazines – apart from the fact that they featured handbags covered in gold buckles and costing £3,000 – she did know that Roxanne’s came out monthly, suggesting that she wasn’t deluged by ‘crazy deadlines’ all the time.

Yet, while more support would have been appreciated, in some ways it was easier for Della just to get on with things on her own, without Jeff hectoring her and Roxanne fussing and dithering and never quite managing to get anything done. Living the closest to their mother, of course Della had been the one to step in. While Jeff could be patronising – making it plain it was a pity she worked in a shop rather than in the loftier professions of banking or journalism – he couldn’t find fault with the way she had managed their mother’s care. At least, he’d better not, Della thought darkly. Kitty’s doctors’ appointments had been dutifully marked on the wall chart in Della’s kitchen. She had taken to batch-cooking meals for her mother and, as Kitty had come to rely upon her, Della had noticed her prickliness ebbing away.

They had settled into a comfortable pattern, chatting about nothing much: the weather, their preferred biscuits, an antiques show on TV. The once-formidable Kitty had softened and, for the first time, Della could figure out how to be with her: calm, reassuring – like a mother, really. As a child, Della had always been rather afraid of her mother’s quick temper. However, towards the end of Kitty’s life, Della could tell that her mother liked her at last, or at least appreciated what she did. So did it really matter than the number 43 bus had been too slow today?

‘So,’ Jeff said, pacing around the kitchen, ‘I suppose we’d better get started.’

Della stared up at him. ‘What d’you mean, get started?’

He blinked at her. ‘I mean, figure out what needs to be done. Isn’t that why we’re here?’

‘Jeff,’ Roxanne said sharply, ‘Mum only passed away a few hours ago. Nothing needs to be done—’

‘And we’re here because …’ Della cut in, before tailing off. How could she put it: that it now seemed right for them to have gathered here in the very place where they’d forever complained that there was nothing to do, yet had somehow found infinite ways in which to amuse themselves? Long, lazy summers had seen them roaming through the undulating fields and rather scary woods, summonsed back for tea by Kitty’s shrill calls from the garden. Winters had featured endless games of Monopoly and copious reading by the crackling fire in the living room. Irritatingly, Jeff had had the best collection of books, all neatly ordered and catalogued in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in his bedroom. It looked – and indeed functioned – like a library. Frequently, Della had been fined twenty-five pence for a late return.

‘Well, I’m glad we came here,’ Sophie said firmly. ‘What’ll happen to this place now, Mum?’

Della grimaced. ‘We’ll sell it, I guess.’

‘I’ll help with that,’ Roxanne cut in quickly, ‘but with the funeral, well … I’m sorry, I just wouldn’t know where to start.’

‘It’s okay,’ Della found herself saying. In fact, she knew precisely what to do, having arranged her father’s a decade ago, when Jeff had been too caught up with his newborn twins to get involved, and Roxanne had been rendered helpless by grief.

Roxanne squeezed her hand. ‘You’re amazing, you know? The way you just … get on with things.’ She swept back her long highlighted hair. ‘I’m sorry, though, I’d better think about getting back. Early start tomorrow, and the weather’s not looking too good tonight.’ A little light rain, was what she meant.

‘Me too,’ Jeff said, ‘but call me, okay, Dell? If there’s anything at all I can help with. It’s going to be a hell of a job, I’ll do whatever I can.’

‘Of course I will,’ Della said unconvincingly. Minutes later Jeff was preparing to head back to his wife, their boys and fancy detached home in Manchester, while Roxanne was itching to return to London, to write about hemline lengths and the ‘silhouette of the season’, whatever that meant.

They hugged, the three of them, despite their differences, as they had never hugged before: the only ones who knew what Kitty was really like. But as he climbed into his gleaming BMW, Jeff cast Della a quick, disapproving look, as if he still suspected she had stopped off for a sly steak bake instead of catching their mother’s last breath.