Reluctantly Home(5)
She girded her loins and mustered a smile. ‘Morning, Audrey,’ she said as brightly as she could manage.
Audrey looked up and rolled her eyes heavenwards.
‘I don’t know why I bother putting up a sign. I really don’t. Do they think we have nothing better to do than carry their stuff around for them?’
In fact, they didn’t have anything better to do. It was a matter of a few feet from the door to the room where they sorted the donations, and Pip couldn’t understand the hardship that Audrey seemed to feel so keenly, but she knew better than to pass comment.
‘I’ll bring it all in,’ she said instead. ‘You go and put the kettle on.’
Audrey gave her a tight little nod, but no smile, and kicked a plastic bag out of the way so she could open the door and step inside.
Pip began to shift the bags from the door to the table one at a time. So little happened here that any study of time and motion was irrelevant, and if she made five journeys and the task used up five times as much time then that was a bonus. The contrast between this and her life in London couldn’t have been more marked.
She opened the neck of the first bag and peered in. Its contents were neatly folded, which boded well. Audrey would be pleased. She liked to get decent-quality stock, although dresses like these from Marks & Spencer or Next weren’t Pip’s idea of decent. Her mind flew to the racks of designer labels that were hanging, unworn, in her wardrobe in Dominic’s flat. Rose had far more sophisticated tastes than she allowed Pip to have, and none of her London finery had made its way up to Suffolk. Now she was here, she had adopted a bland and anonymous style: jeans paired with high street tops just like everyone else wore and, as the weeks rolled by, she could feel herself slowly morphing from Rose back into Pip.
She hoisted the final bag on to her shoulder and prepared to carry it inside, but then she saw that there was a small cardboard box hidden underneath. Boxes tended to be filled with knick-knacks, the sort Pip had rarely seen before and which fascinated and repulsed her in equal measure. Mass-market moulded glassware; cheap plated jewellery, the base metal showing through and destroying any illusion of authenticity; and badly chipped and mismatched cups and saucers, fit only for landfill, that someone had thought others might be prepared to pay good money for. The whole enterprise continued to astound Pip by its very awfulness. But emptying boxes filled with ugly things was infinitely preferable to sorting through overwashed (or in some truly revolting cases, underwashed) garments. Plus, there was always the outside chance of uncovering some treasure.
Audrey was still in the back room with the kettle, so if she was quick, Pip might manage to go through the box herself. With a burst of speed, she lifted the box and rushed inside with it.
It was heavier than she’d expected, and nothing shifted about inside as she walked. It must be books. Books were her favourite find. Second-hand books didn’t turn her stomach in the way other possessions did. Their history was intriguing rather than something best not thought about. Generally, the donations were thick paperbacks, the sort you bought at an airport and then left on a swap shelf before flying home, but occasionally there would be an ancient hardback covering some antiquated skill or a biography of a long-forgotten star of the silver screen. Pip liked those best. It felt good to read about other people’s lives, lose herself in them for a while and have her mind taken away from her own troubles.
She placed the box on the table and cast a quick glance in the direction of the staff room, such as it was, but there was no sign of Audrey. The pleasure of going through its contents would be hers alone.
4
Pip lifted the lid of the cardboard box and peered inside. She had been right. It was full to the brim with books. She plucked a couple from the top of the pile. Judging from their covers, with the unfamiliar fonts and yellowing images, they were at least fifty years old, if not older, and she didn’t recognise any of the titles.
She dug a little deeper and pulled out a selection of paperbacks with the distinctive orange and white jackets of vintage Penguins. Again, there was nothing amongst them that she had heard of, and her excitement began to wane. Boxes of books, it seemed, weren’t always as much fun to open as boxes of knick-knacks. Eventually, she reached the very bottom and her fingers touched something that felt different to the thumb-worn paperbacks. It was hard and smooth with rigid edges and corners and, her curiosity piqued, Pip drew it out to examine it.
It was clear at once that this wasn’t a printed book. She peered more closely at the cover. It was an appointments diary for 1983. Pip sighed. This was just like the bin bags full of unsaleable clothes. What did people think the shop would do with an old diary? Maybe Audrey’s grandchildren could use it for scrap paper, she supposed, but they could hardly sell it.
She started to flick through the pages; but rather than being blank, as she had assumed, every available square inch of space was filled with a neat flowing script.
It fell open on a date in February, inviting her to read but Pip knew she shouldn’t. Diaries were private, personal; everyone knew that. Reading another person’s diary was one of life’s most heinous offences. But it was also one of the most tantalising, and this one was almost forty years old and had been discarded in a box full of charity donations. Whatever rights to privacy there might have been once had surely been forfeited. Pip let herself read.
Friday 25th February