Remembering Rose (Mapleby Memories Book 1) Page 5

  Chapter Six

  I was up with the lark next morning, all fired up with my plans. I concentrated on getting through the morning’s chores as swiftly as possible. Leah was full of smiles and gurgles when I dressed her. She didn’t even make her usual objection when I changed her diaper but just listened while I carried out our usual one-sided conversation.

  “You’re curious too, aren’t you? You want to know more about the pretty lady who visits us. Well we might be lucky today but you mustn’t tell anyone that you’ve seen her, not when they start talking about the photos. Not a word Leah, or they’ll think we’re both stark raving mad.”

  She beamed at me around the fingers she had stuffed in her mouth. I laughed. “Nobody will understand a word you say if you do that, so we’re safe. Come on, let’s go visiting.”

  It was only as we left the house that I realized Rose hadn’t visited us that morning.

  * * *

  We went to the farm first so I could show Ma the album as well as search through the old chest of drawers that had been stored in the barn ever since Grandma sold her bungalow. Ma was eating her breakfast when we arrived. A lie-in and a late breakfast were the two things she loved most about retirement, not that she had ever had a career to retire from. She hadn’t had time to work, not with seven daughters spread across twenty years and then a rapidly expanding tribe of grandchildren. Saying she had retired had nothing to do with employment. It was her way of embracing the empty nest syndrome with relish and making the most of every moment the house was empty. It was why she peered at me over the morning paper with less than her usual enthusiasm.

  “You’re up and about bright and early.”

  I blamed Leah without a qualm. Then I put the photo album on the table. Ma looked at it in surprise. “You’ve finished it already.”

  I nodded. “I enjoyed doing it and now I want to know who all these people are and whether they are relatives.”

  She flicked through the pages. “I recognize some of them but there are a lot of people I don’t know, people who died before I was born. I wonder if Grandma will remember them.”

  “I thought we could go and see her today and show her the album.”

  Ma shook her head. “I’m meeting Louise at eleven and we’re going into town but you can go if you want to.”

  Louise is my fifth sister, the one who likes buying things and whose husband has some sort of complicated job in a merchant bank that finances her shopping habit. She and Ma were obviously going to indulge in a bit of joint retail therapy. I felt a surge of excitement. Without Ma listening I could ask Grandma all the questions I wanted. I played the dutiful daughter though. “You won’t mind if I show her the pictures without you being there?”

  “Of course not. She will love to see you and Leah anyway, and if you can get her to look at the photos and talk about them, then that will be a bonus.”

  “I’ll go then,” I kept my voice casual. “Before I do though, I’m going to have a quick look in the old chest of drawers in the barn, just in case there’s anything else stored away that might help.”

  * * *

  I left Ma and Leah bonding over a crust of toast and hurried across the yard to the barn. Because it was the place where we all stored the things we no longer wanted but which we weren’t quite ready to throw away or sell, its contents were a jumble of mismatched furniture, sports gear, bags of old clothes and a whole lot of baby stuff that I had refused to take. I worked my way through it, pushing bags and boxes out of the way until I found the chest of drawers right at the back behind some plastic sacks full of old duvets and pillows.

  It took me a while to clear enough space so I could pull open the drawers but when I did the effort proved worthwhile because inside was a treasure trove of memories. I searched around the barn until I spied an old shopping trolley and quickly filled it.

  Ma stopped singing to Leah when I trundled it into the kitchen behind me. “What on earth have you got in there?”

  “A whole lot of things. Look.” I lifted out a battered jewelry box, a bible, several photos in frames and more than a dozen faded notebooks filled with neat handwriting. There were also several pieces of wood shaped like feet without toes, a set of false teeth with very red gums, and a brightly painted ornament that looked for all the world like a very overweight pixie.

  Ma laughed as she picked it up. “Goodness, is he still here? I thought Grandma had finally got rid of him.”

  “Why didn’t she? He’s very ugly.”

  “You know that and I know that, but Grandma would never have a word said against him. Her grandfather won it for her at the fair when she was a little girl and she’s always loved it.”

  Her grandfather. “That would be Granny Rose’s husband wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, your great-great-grandfather. He was called Arthur.”

  “And what about these?” I indicated the rest of the stuff on the table, swiftly moving one of the wooden feet out of Leah’s reach as she made a grab for it.

  Ma stared at them. “I can’t imagine why she kept those. Only a museum would want things like that.”

  I frowned as my hand caressed the smooth silkiness of the polished wood. “I don’t even know what they are.”

  “They’re cobbler’s lasts…copies of people’s feet really. The one you’re holding is an ordinary one but some of these others are different. Look at this one. It’s tiny. It must have belonged to a child. And that one over there has a peculiar bump in it as if its owner had a deformed foot. These must be individual lasts that either belonged to wealthy customers or to people who needed special shoes to help them walk.”

  “So Arthur made shoes.”

  “Yes, he was the village cobbler and very skilled I believe. According to Grandma he could take a shoe that was so worn out it was little more than a scrap of leather and repair it until it looked like new.”

  I picked up the tiny wooden last. It wouldn’t be long before Leah’s feet were as big as that. I felt a catch in my throat as I thought of it. This was a model of a real child’s foot and I would never know whether it was a boy or a girl, or what color the shoes were that my great-great-grandfather had made. Now I had someone else I needed to find out about as well. Arthur, Rose’s husband.

  * * *

  It was almost eleven o’clock by the time Leah and I arrived at the nursing home. The nurse who let me in gave me a running commentary as we walked down the corridor towards Grandma’s room. It included the state of Grandma’s bowels, how much she had eaten for breakfast and the fact that she seemed more alert than usual.

  “Great, because I’ve brought some photos for her to look at,” I said.

  “She’ll like that, and she’ll like seeing this one too,” the nurse ruffled Leah’s hair. “Babies and dogs, we need more of them visiting because they always cheer us all up.”

  “I’ll bring Leah into the dining room when it’s time for lunch so everyone can see her,” I promised.

  With a smile of approval, she whisked away in answer to a bell from another room, leaving me to it. The door was already open and Grandma was sitting in her usual chair by the window, the one Pa had taken over in the trunk of his car and then tried to carry in without asking for help. I couldn’t remember a time when she had sat on anything else and it was the only thing she had insisted on taking with her when she moved. Its stuffing had molded itself to her shape over the years and she flatly refused to have it recovered and plumped up.

  “It’ll see me out,” was one of her favorite phrases about almost everything she owned, and she said it about the chair most days.

  She didn’t hear Leah and me enter the room because she was too intent on the birds pecking at the crumbs outside her window. The bird feeder had been Daniel’s idea. He had seen it at the wholesalers when he was stocking up on supplies for the shop and brought it home together with a huge bag of birdseed. He had taken both of them to the care home and set the feeder up outside grandma’s window. Ma had been re
duced to tears when she saw it, and tears weren’t something she indulged in very often, not in public anyway.

  “Only Daniel,” she kept saying between sniffs. “The rest of us have been too busy feeling sorry for ourselves to think of ways to make things better for her.”

  “That’s a bit harsh, Ma,” Ruth said. “Look how lovely her room is. You and Pa have worked hard to make it a home-from-home for her. You’ve put up pictures and added cushions and some of the ornaments she loved and it all looks cozy and familiar.”

  “Except she isn’t interested in familiar anymore, is she?” Ma said sadly. “She’s forgotten where most of the things came from. She’s even forgotten where she used to live for goodness sake, but the one thing she hasn’t forgotten is how much she loved her garden and how the birds used to wait by the bird feeder every morning.”

  “I suppose so,” Ruth said reluctantly, and I knew why. She wished she had thought of it or, more specifically, that her husband had. More than anything though she wished it had been anyone but Daniel, because she didn’t want to have to feel grateful for anything else. You see, Daniel was the one who bailed her out the time she bought a new dress instead of the weekly groceries and then was too frightened to tell her husband. I remember the look of relief on her face when he filled a couple of bags and loaded them into her car, telling her she could pay for them when she had sorted herself out. That had been when I was still working of course, so subbing her hadn’t been much of a problem, not when we were taking two wages out of our profits.

  She had paid us back in installments over the next few weeks and we had more or less forgotten about it until it happened again. This time she asked Daniel outright for some help instead of mumbling and sobbing like she had the first time. He gave her what she wanted and then he did the other thing she asked, and didn’t mention it to me. Later, when I found out, he said he hadn’t wanted to cause a family row and anyway what did a few tins of beans and a loaf of bread matter when he knew she would pay us back. She didn’t though, so the third time she asked he was less understanding. Oh, he still let her have the food she needed and he gave her a bottle of wine too, but he also let her know what he thought of her extravagance.

  “You can’t keep doing this, Ruth,” he said. He said a whole lot more too, about how we couldn’t afford to keep subbing her and how she owed it to her husband to tell him she was struggling to manage on the money he gave her. It was a fair comment because her husband expected her and their teenage children to be perfectly turned out at all times, the same as he expected Ruth to entertain his clients and accompany him to company dinners, but all without giving her the funds she needed. Instead he spent his money on whatever was the latest ‘must have’ status symbol while the rest of the family pretended not to notice that he never bought a round of drinks or that none of us were ever invited around to their house for a meal.

  I don’t know whether Ruth did talk to her husband, or what he said if she did, but she never asked us to bail her out again, and she was never quite as friendly, either. Being beholden to people who know your secrets is difficult, so when Daniel erected the birdfeeder outside Grandma’s window and it reminded her how much nicer he was than her own husband, she didn’t like it.

  It reminded me, too, as I pushed Leah across to where Grandma was sitting. I started talking about the birds before she could see me because I didn’t want to startle her. The feeder was full and there were fresh crumbs on the windowsill. I knew that was due to Daniel, too, because one of the caregivers had told Ma he dropped by every morning on his way to work to check on them. I guess it was where a lot of the stale bread from the shop went as well. Daniel never mentioned it though, and nor did I. Now, seeing the pleasure on my grandmother’s face as she watched a fat pigeon greedily clearing up the crumbs outside her window, I thought perhaps I should. In a line-up with all my sisters’ husbands he would win hands down. I resolved to tell him so when I got home, to make up for how mean I had been recently.

  * * *

  “Hello Grandma, I’ve brought Leah to see you,” I told her when I had her full attention.

  She beamed at me. “You were always such a good girl, Molly. Come and sit beside me and tell me whose baby you are looking after today.”

  My heart sank. Who was Molly? I thought the nurse had said it was a good day. “It’s Rachel Grandma, and Leah’s my baby. Mine and Daniel’s. When she wakes up you can hold her if you like.”

  She patted my hand. “Of course you’re Rachel. Did I say you were someone else?

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. We all look so much alike that I’m not surprised you get a bit muddled at times.”

  Her faded eyes suddenly sharpened as a particular memory came flooding back, although she struggled to voice it. “Not alike, no. Rachel isn’t like Molly…or…no…Rachel is like Rose.”

  I stared at her, not quite able to believe what I was hearing. I’d never ever heard her mention Rose before, or Molly, whoever she might be, so why was she doing so now? I tried to conjure up the picture of the merry, dark-haired girl I’d seen in the sepia photograph but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see the shadowy woman who visited Leah in the morning either. The thought prompted me into remembering why I was there. I laid the album on her lap.

  “I’ve brought you some photos to look at. I’d love it if you could tell me who the people in them are.”

  At first I thought she wasn’t interested. It was only when she started to pluck ineffectually at the cover that I realized she didn’t know how to open it. It shocked me for a moment. My Grandma had forgotten how to open a photo album. My Grandma who, once upon a time, had read the newspaper from cover to cover every day and who, when the rest of us started to buy most of our books over the Internet, still insisted on making her weekly visit to the local library. Then I realized it was the size and unfamiliarity of the album that was the problem and my world tilted back on its axis again as I leaned forward and turned to the first page.

  Grandma stared at the pictures for so long that I began to despair. It wasn’t going to work. She was beyond recognizing anyone, beyond remembering names. I was never going to find out anything about Rose. I was just about to prompt her, hoping to stir a long forgotten memory, when she spoke.

  “That’s Molly,” she said, pointing to the tiny golden-haired girl in the photo I’d pasted on the first page. “She was such a good little girl, always helping her Mama with the baby.”

  I knew I had to tread carefully if I wasn’t to distract her. Ma had told me ages ago that when we asked Grandma questions, it confused her. She had said it was best to try to join in with her conversation rather than make her listen to ours. I wasn’t sure she was right but I thought I would try it anyway.

  “She probably enjoyed looking after the baby more than playing with her dolls.”

  She shook her head and the glint of anger in her eyes surprised me. “She had to do it, even on schooldays if her Mama was poorly.”

  “Poorly?” I prompted when her voice tailed off in confusion.

  There was another silence, then she carried on talking as if she had never paused. “When her Mama had headaches she had to go to bed.”

  “And that’s when Molly had to look after the baby?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes, and she was frightened when he cried and she couldn’t wake her Mama up.”

  Panicking that I was about to upset her, I did the only thing I could think of, and turned the page. “Look, here’s another picture.” I pointed to a small photo of two little girls.

  It was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “That’s Joyce and Molly. They’re playing in Auntie May’s garden.”

  I was getting lost with all these names and she still hadn’t told me who Molly was. Her sudden change of mood was confusing too. Was this a picture of Molly before there was a baby to look after? I peered at the photo hoping to find some sort of clue. Grandma beat me to it.

  “Molly is wearing a blue frock.
”

  I stared at the small black and white print, my heart beating fast. How did she know it was blue? This was going to take a long time, and deciphering Grandma’s memories was going to be a struggle, but at least it seemed to be working. The photos were triggering memories long forgotten by her and not known to the rest of us.

  “Was it a pretty frock?”

  “Rose didn’t like it.”

  My heart leaped when she mentioned Rose again. “Why not?”

  “Because Aunt May sent it over even though she knew Rose wanted Molly to have a new one.”

  Now I really was confused. Who was Aunt May? This whole project was becoming much more complex than I’d anticipated. While I was trying to work out what to say next, Leah woke up. As soon as Grandma heard her cry she leaned forward to look in the stroller and the album slipped from her lap.

  We spent the rest of my visit admiring Leah and agreeing that she was quite possibly the most beautiful baby in the world. I didn’t feel guilty about this because I knew Grandma said the same thing about each one of her great-grandchildren when she saw them, so as far as I was concerned it was Leah’s day of glory.

  I kept my promise to the nurse too, and took Leah into the dining room when it was time for Grandma to have her lunch. We walked to the door together, Grandma pushing her walker and me pushing the stroller. Nearly everyone in the care home used walkers or wheelchairs so the corridors were wide. I parked outside the dining room amongst a jumble of walking aids, and lifted Leah out while a caregiver took Grandma’s arm and led her to her chair. Then I walked from table to table while Leah stared at everyone around the fingers she had plugged into her mouth. Nobody minded that she didn’t smile. Instead they delighted in the softness of her skin and the cushiony plumpness of her legs and arms.

  As I watched old fingers reach out to stroke her and listened to the baby talk they had used on their own children decades earlier, I thought of Molly and the baby again. Who were they and why had I never heard of them before?