novels: the blue handbag
The Blue Handbag focuses on Leonard Mutch, a 62 year old gardener. It's a love story and a mystery... It will be published by Snowbooks in August 2009.Chapter 1: A Posy of Painted Ladies
Leonard is feeding the dusty battered suitcase into the mouth of the wheelie-bin when he catches a flash of azure blue shining from inside. He judders to a complete stop and holds himself perfectly still to give his eyes a chance to focus. There’s something in there. His heart speeds up. He pulls the suitcase back out and opens the jaws of the zips wide, letting in light. It’s a handbag. It must have been one of Rose’s. Rose, his dear dear wife. His body softly crumples in on itself. He presses his forehead with his left palm. It’s been nearly three years now. Three years since that last migraine that wasn’t a migraine at all, but a clot of blood that detached itself from one of her arteries and travelled up to her brain. Setting off an explosion of pain, filling her with a beating, rising fear. His Rose. Three years. It seems like yesterday. It seems like a life-time ago.
He hunkers down on the pavement, his sixty two-year-old knees reminding him to move carefully. He lifts the handbag out, brushing away cobwebs from the material as if he were stroking his daughter’s cheek. He places it on the step beside him, wiping dust from the cold bricks before he sets it down, and checks the inside of the suitcase, sliding a flat hand inside the pockets. A biro lid, a sweetie wrapper, nothing else. He pushes the suitcase back into the wheelie-bin - it just fits and the sides of it scrape the plastic. He looks around nervously to see if anyone has seen him, not knowing why it matters if they have. His heart is slowing down. He sucks in two lung-fuls of late October air and turns away from the road and towards his house. He carries the handbag as if it were a baby. As if it were alive.
He’s on his way to the kitchen when the phone rings and forces him back into the hall. He rests the handbag up against a green glass vase full of pink-spattered lilies on the telephone table. As he picks up the receiver all thoughts of his wife leave him as if he’s flicked a switch.
“Hello?”
All he can hear is a faint squealing noise. His daughter comes onto the line just before his second hello.
“Hi, dad, is that you?”
“No, it’s the Viscount of Prussia. How may I be of assistance to you?” he says, disguising his usual Berkshire accent with his best aristocratic voice, which despite his efforts comes out a little Welsh.
Raine makes a harrumphing noise. Leonard feels a little sad for the giggling girl in pig-tails who got lost – when? When did he lose her? He used to love making her laugh. He seems to have lost the knack.
“Dad, for goodness sakes. How are you?” He can hear a familiar edge of brusqueness in her voice and guesses she’s only asking from a sense of duty.
“Tickety-boo, darling. How are the twins?”
“Oh, fine, fine. Rory has a bit of a temperature. He’s playing up something rotten, I can’t get him to eat anything, the bugger.” She breathes a quick sharp sigh. “I’m sure he’ll survive. He’s annoyed with me right now, I tried to force some bread and marmite down him just before I called you.”
Leonard already feels a rising impatience with the conversation.
“Mh hmm,” he says, to encourage her to carry on. She pauses, waiting. There’s a small fluttering in his stomach.
“Is everything OK darling?”
“Oh, yes, all fine.” She pauses again. “Yes, everything’s fine. I’m just tired I suppose. Are you still coming down this weekend?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Great.” The squealing noise starts up in the background again – it sounds as if it’s coming from a trapped animal. They both listen.
“Look, dad, I’m sorry but Rory is making a fuss. I better go and check on him. You’d think I’d been starving him, the way he carries on. I don’t know what to… well - anyway – I’ll call you in a couple of days to arrange things.”
“Yes darling, talk to you then. I’ll let you know what train I’ll be on.”
“Bye dad.”
“Bye.”
Just as he’s pulling the phone away from his ear he hears her say ‘Oh – wait! Dad?’
“I’m still here.”
“I forgot – the whole reason I rang was to ask you if you liked turkey. Rory, wait a minute! I can’t remember if you said something about… last time I… RORY! We’re… Dad? Turkey?”
She rushes him into answering. He wonders how she ended up like this, never stopping for long enough to catch her breath. So unlike him, so unlike Rose. He slows his voice down, willing some of his calm to infuse into her, to infect her.
“Yes, that’ll be lovely, darling. You’re sure you’re OK now? Is Ed helping you with the boys?”
“Yes dad. Speak soon. Bye! Oh, Ed’s fine! Bye!”
By the time he gets his goodbye out she’s already hung up.
He stands with the empty phone against his ear for a few seconds until his eyes catch on something blue. The handbag! The colour reminds him of Rose’s wedding dress. They were so young - she was seventeen, still a child. He pictures her now, grinning at her friends from work in the congregation, her arm linked through his. The dress was plain, full-skirted and the colour of cornflowers. She told him it was a tradition in their family to wear blue rather than white. She looked so pretty with her painted lips and her dark hair cropped close to her scalp. He’d loved to run his flat fingers against the grain of her softly prickly hair. He gave it a quick skim most days, while teasing her about her temper, or when coming into a room and finding her there. She wanted sweet peas for her wedding bouquet - they’d always been her favourites. They got married in May so he grew her ‘Painted Ladies’, pale pink with a deep pink nose. She held them in a fat posy at her waist and ticked him off for crushing the petals when he kissed her with too much enthusiasm. He’d whispered into her ear that now they were married he’d grow her bucketfuls and bucketfuls until she was sick of them. And he had - year after year, until she really did get fed up of the sight of them. She finally spat it out one night during an argument and it had pierced him in his chest. He didn’t blame her, really. He always did go a bit over the top with things.
He leaves the handbag on his chair and goes into the kitchen to click on his shiny silver kettle. He can take his time - nothing is going anywhere. One of the advantages of living on your own – nobody will be bursting in to ask him if he can fix the Hoover or get a child a drink. He unhooks his favourite mug from the mug tree, winter-berry red on the outside and glossy green on the inside. Raine bought it for him a few Christmas ago. He readies it with a Yorkshire teabag and turns the lid off the milk. He’s been drinking Yorkshire tea for twenty five years, since a trip to a National Trust property up North. He doesn’t enjoy tea at other people’s houses, it always tastes insipid. He flicks his eyes around his tiny kitchen as he waits for the water to boil. There are bright crayon scribbles from the twins taped up on the fridge. According to Raine the blocks in the middle are tanks – ‘they’re utterly obsessed with the bloody things’, but they have bright yellow suns above them and sit on solid green grass spotted with purple flowers. There’s a single glass, plate, knife and fork on the washing up drainer. He can see his face reflected, ghost-like, in the white kitchen tiles above the work surface. He notices a smear of something greasy and gets out a cloth to disappear it. He’s kept the place clean since Rose died, he prides himself on that. Rose would be impressed. She always kept things neat and tidy.
As the kettle gathers steam and clicks itself off Pickles jerks his head up and looks at Leonard, startled. He lets out a small wake-up growl. His eyes are button black and shiny, perfect rounds. He’s looking scruffy again, his fur choppy as a rough sea, old mud clinging to tufts of hair on his belly. Leonard makes a mental note to tackle bathing him at the weekend. It’s always a messy affair. As soon as Pickles sees there’s nothing to worry about he drops his chin back onto the well-worn fur of his basket and goes back to his doggy dreams. He’s always liked to sleep in the kitchen, even at their old house. Maybe he likes to stay close to his food bowl at all times just in case there are any ad-hoc doggy snacks. Leonard fills his mug and gives the bag a good squeeze, encouraging it to release its dark flavour. Rose used to say it looked like he was milking a cow in there. Finally he jolts in a small splash of milk to stop that horrible floating film you get with black tea. ‘I like it dark and sweet, just how I like my women’, he used to tease Rose – she’d always come back with ‘and I like mine weak and lukewarm, just like you, darling.’ He holds the spoon under the tap to help wash away this memory so he can return to the job at hand.
He sets down his tea on the small table next to his chair, resting it on top of a rickety pile of crossword books, and lifts the handbag into his hands. It feels silky against his fingertips and reminds him of the silvery leaves of the canary clover, Dorycnium hirsutum. He laughs at the memory of sneaking away from his digging in the middle of the afternoon so he could crouch beside a new batch of them and stroke them. They’d have him carted off if they knew. Leonard lets his mind rest on what he’s holding. One of Rose’s handbags. What was it doing in their old suitcase? He can’t remember ever seeing it before. Is it definitely hers? He lifts it to his face and sniffs, tentatively at first, then great sucking-in breaths. It’s only an echo now, but he remembers the original scent so well - a hint of jasmine, sandalwood, and then something underneath… what is that Indian spice called? Cardamom? The handbag was hers alright. He’ll never forget that perfume until the day he dies. She must have kept one of her little bottles in here, where it spilt a golden drop or three. This scent is as familiar to him as her face is – no – more familiar. It’s more of an effort now to remember exactly what she looked like and this worries him. But that smell. Mmm. He feels his eyes prickling and allows a single tear to escape from each one, warming his cheeks, before taking a sharp breath and blowing his nose. He’s done his crying.
He studies the material close-up for a moment. It’s woven, and has lots of tiny hairs like the hide of a strange blue animal. Maybe one with six legs and purple eyes and a huge mane like a lion. He places a flat palm on one side and moves it across and back, across and back. He’s aware of taking his time with it, as if he’s choosing the perfect chocolate from the box. The clasp is one of those old-fashioned metal ones where the metal prongs push hard against each other before finally snapping free. He un-clicks it, and then clicks it shut and un-clicks it absentmindedly a few times before pulling it open and peering inside.
Nothing. Empty. His heart sinks – and then he laughs at himself – what exactly was he expecting to find? A new photograph of her? A bright burst of her laugh? The things she left behind are all souvenirs now – her wedding ring, the favourite cardigan he keeps in his top drawer in the bedroom. He puts his hand inside to feel the silk lining, already thinking about putting it back into the bin outside, and as he slips a thumb under the piece of silk-covered cardboard at the bottom he encounters something sharp. It’s the edge of something. A small piece of paper. He checks first to make sure there’s nothing else there, and then pulls it out and holds it out in front of him so he can see it properly....