The Ladybird Book Club

“I’m sick of the book club.  It’s just another chore, isn’t it?  Having to read a novel by a certain date takes all the enjoyment out of it.”

“Do you know, these days I feel guilty when I’m not reading – then guilty when I am reading because I’m not doing something else that I should be doing.”

Laura and Charlotte sipped their tea in turn.  A mother opened the café door and led in a pair of grizzling toddlers. Charlotte sighed and picked up the biscuit which sat in her saucer. They had come in the café to escape childish noises.  And to share notes about the latest book club text, to avoid making idiots of themselves at the next meeting.

Laura pushed her notebook to the edge of the table.  “Shall we leave then?”

“I don’t know. It’s something for the CV isn’t it?  If I ever get my career back on track.  If I ever find a job that fits around everyone else.”

“We could suggest doing shorter books.”

“Can you imagine the look Ellie would give us if we suggested that?  She already thinks we’re as thick as pudding.”

“Another reason. I’m leaving.  That’s it.  I’ve decided.”

The toddlers were fastened into their high chairs by the window and had been given a book each.  One of them began to bang the book on the tray.

“I know how you feel, mate.” Charlotte raised her cup at the child. 

Laura turned and smiled. “Are those Ladybird books that they’ve got?”

“Oh yes, so they are!” Now that is something I’d like to read for the book club. Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty!”

“Ha!  I remember Rumplestiltskin best.  He really stuck in my head – oh the horror!”

“Let’s start our own Ladybird book club.  I bet you can get them on ebay or in charity shops.”

“I’ve still got mine at home!  Yes!  Let’s do it!”

They sipped their tea again. The toddler’s book fell onto the floor with a slap.  Charlotte opened her notebook.

“So what do we do then? How does a Ladybird book club actually work?”

They mused over and discussed the finer details of their new club.  Eventually, as the teapot was drained, they decided that they would take one book per month and meet at the end of it to share one favourite thing and one thing that they had been inspired to do by it.  They envisaged arts and crafts, a society and all kinds of spin-offs.

Charlotte and Laura paid their bill and went to leave. The mother with the toddlers dabbed jam off her sleeve and lifted her hand at them as they passed.

“I’m sorry for listening but I couldn’t help it.  Can I join too?”

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Green Buttons

Rita had almost finished making her new dress.  She slipped a padded hanger into the neatly gathered shoulders and hooked it over the door frame. The hem needed a little extra work, she would have to unpick that section at the back and re-do it.  And then there was the button trim to do.  The photograph on the pattern cover showed four pearlised buttons making a short line down from the neck.  The model demurely fingered the top one while staring out to a distant horizon.  Rita admired this look and hoped to recreate it at some point at the party that evening.  She decided to pop down to Woolworth’s immediately and immerse herself in haberdashery.

She selected a card of four green iridescent buttons, which would contrast wonderfully with the pale yellow of the fabric. She went back home and tackled the hem, chanting “four green buttons” to the tune of Four Green Bottles.  Her haste got her into a terrible tangle.  She ended up having to unpick much more than she had intended.  Time stole her finishing touches and by the time she was ready to add her buttons, Peter was waiting for her in the front room. She pulled on the unembellished dress and scraped her hair into a pony tail, held in place by a band of fabric daisies.

Rita’s dress was envied at that party.  She took three orders for exact copies and made enough profit to buy herself a train ticket to London.  That card of four green buttons was never used yet never discarded, for ever to remain in her tin of bits and pieces.

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Clem Travel Iron

It was Nora’s birthday.  She had tried not to be too expectant, but Harold always bought her a little surprise.  He was in good spirits lately too, as he had finally got that promotion at the office.  They had more money coming in than they had ever had before – things were looking up.  Nora battled with a wish for a delightful little package to open.  A new chain necklace to replace the one that she had snapped, perhaps.  Or a hairdryer would be nice.

She went downstairs to fetch the morning tea.  When she returned with the tray, there was a neat, square package resting on her pillow, along with her card.  She opened the card first and leaned over to kiss Harold on the cheek.

“I wonder what this could be?”  She handled the package carefully and could glean no clues as to what was beneath the paper.  It was quite thrilling.  She peeled off the wrapping and the inner box was revealed.  She read out the writing on the label.

“Clem Travel Iron.”

“It plugs into the light socket.” Harold imparted this fact proudly.

Nora wondered if it was a trick and pulled the lid off the box.  But there it was, a small but heavy iron with an electric cord and stand.  She stared at it, wondering what to say. She could accept it gracefully and risk repeat presents of the household variety.  Or she could wail out the displeasure which bubbled in the back of her throat.  Then a thought occurred to her.

“But Harold! We always go camping for our holidays.  In a tent!”

“Aha! Not any more, my treasure!  Your holiday this year will be in a hotel by the sea.  A week in Morcambe awaits my love!”

So it was a red herring all along.  One surprise leading to another, much better one. Nora flung her arms around her husband and whispered her thank yous.

“It’s a smart hotel, Nora, so I will need my trousers to be ironed every day.  This will make it delightfully easy for you, my dear.”

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Official Guide to the Yorkshire Dales

Everyone said that Uncle Arthur was a funny old sod.  He was a fixture of family gatherings, where everyone humoured his often bizarre proclamations.  One of his regular pronouncements was on the folly of ever leaving Lancashire.  He was born in Blackburn, raised in Burnley, holidayed in Blackpool and had retired to Bury – to be near his sister.  He had not once crossed the Lancashire boundary and he had never wanted to.  Why would he want to leave?  Lancashire contained everything a man needed.  Except a wife, it seemed.  He had never married.

Arthur lived in a sheltered bungalow full of books about gardening and wild animals.  He was fond of describing the habits of badgers to anyone who might listen.  When it was time to provide Uncle Arthur with more help, it was his niece that arranged the place in a care home.  She packed away his belongings and arranged the disposal of his furniture.  She boxed up those books that he had chosen not to take with him to the home and took them to a charity shop.  Among the books about wetland birds she found an oddity.  This was a Guide to the Yorkshire Dales.  The niece smiled at the rogue publication, then put it to one side to show her mother and her daughters later. They would laugh at the foreign interloper.

The Guide was still in the niece’s bag when she went to visit Uncle Arthur later that week.  She pulled the book out and asked him about it.

“What’s a staunch Lancastrian like you doing with a book about Yorkshire? You a fifth columnist?” she waved it humorously under his nose. 

He didn’t join in with the jollity.  “Oh, that. It was a lady friend that I found in the ‘60s. She used to come over on the train and visit me in Burnley every other Saturday.  But she couldn’t leave her home in Skipton.  She had ties, you see.  Her mother.   She wanted me to go and live over there and she gave me the book to try and tempt me, like. Looking back I could have done it easily but I was too stubborn wasn’t I?  Too set in my ways, damn fool that I am.  Spent the last 50 years wondering what happened to her.” 

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Dramatic Jewels

Julie found the idea of her daughter at drama school upsetting.  But she was determined not to intervene in Laura’s life.  Julie prayed for Laura to come to her senses and choose something practical to study instead.  Science, Accountancy, Teaching. They led to secure work and a certain future.  But drama? She visualised years of struggle and casting couches.  A lifetime of waitressing, hoping for the break that never came.  Once, Julie vented her frustration to a friend, a relatively recent friend who didn’t know her past.

“But she might be the next Kiera.” The friend had said.  “She’s beautiful.  You’ve got to let her try.”

“You watch too many talent shows on the telly.” Julie had retorted. “She’s just another in a long line of people waiting for fame to drop into their lap.”

“Let her have her dreams.  It doesn’t hurt.”

They bickered on.  But Julie knew that she had to let Laura choose her own way, and then be there for her when it all went wrong. 

The week of the audition for drama school came.  Laura barely left her bedroom.  Julie could hear scenes from Arthur Miller drift through the partition wall, and a periodic thump as the dead faint was rehearsed. She put the ladders up into the loft.  There, she retrieved a mildewed basket and took it down to the kitchen table. There was an old tobacco tin filled with glass and pearlescent beads.  Then, contained within an old Park Drive packet, she found some nylon cord wrapped around a card.   She began to methodically thread one onto the other.

When tea time arrived, Laura came out in search of food.  Julie beckoned her over.

“I wish my Mum was here to advise you.  She could have given you so much guidance.  She could have told you all about her days in rep theatre.”

“And that advert she did.” Laura joined in, smiling.  “Pity the advert wasn’t shown as often as she told us about it.”

“But these were her beads.  She liked an unusual necklace and loved to pull them all to bits and remake them.”  Julie held her work in her cupped hands, and then placed it into Laura’s. “Wear them for me?  Then I know that she’s with you.  Something might rub off them.”

Laura accepted the beads as if she were being handed her first BAFTA statuette.

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Vintage bead threading collection available in the Etsy shop, SewsAttic.

For more short stories from Sarah Miller Walters search for 'Athene and Other Stories' on Amazon Kindle.

Set of 24 Postcards – Isle of Wight

 Carol knew that this would probably be their last family holiday.  The twins were going to be 16 later in the year. They kicked around with hands in pockets, refusing every suggestion that their parents made.  Incessant bickering between all four of the family members pockmarked every day of the fortnight.

She bought a postcard every day, sometimes two.  She didn’t write on them or post them. She tucked them away in the back pocket of her handbag, along with her emergency tenner and her pills.  No-one else in the family noticed her little collection, but then, she doubted if they would notice even if she carried half of the National Gallery around with her.  That was her job, packhorse.

By the time that they boarded the ferry to leave the Isle, Carol had collected 24 postcards in all.  They remained in the zippered back pocket of her handbag throughout the journey back to Surrey.  The following Monday, she saw her husband off to work, and the twins off for their final year at school. She then took a train to Waterloo and found a place under the clock.  She stared at the continually disgorging hoards as they made their way across the concourse, keeping her eye out for that familiar hat. She saw it, then the smile that she loved beaming out from under the shadow of the brim.  After a brief squeeze of hands, they went to their usual café, where she took the postcards from her handbag and placed them in his palms.

“What’s this?” he laughed as he went through each card in turn.  “They’re all blank!”

“Well, I couldn’t send them to you!  So I waited until I could put them in your hand and tell you what I wanted them to say.”

He laid them out on the table and began to count.

“There are 24” she cut in “One for each hour of every day that I missed you.  That’s all I wanted to say.”

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The Measure of Her

Angela pulled her mother’s shopping list from the pocket in her home- made summer dress.  A reel of Sylko in Buckingham Lilac was at the top of the list. The stitching was coming loose at the hem of her dress and this would be used to make the required repairs. Next was a reel of Peacock Blue for mending the tear in her gymslip, then a box of Dorcas pins to replace all those that invariably disappeared.  Finally, a new tape measure was required.  One with inches on both sides.  This last instruction was underlined twice.

“All of our tape measures are metric on one side and imperial on the other” the tiny haberdashery junior whispered to her. “It’s how they’re made now.”

“Haven’t you got any imperial only ones left over somewhere in the back?” Angela almost pleaded.

“I haven’t seen any at all recently.”

An older assistant appeared from behind a curtain and began a brisk tidy of the fabrics.  Her glasses, which she wore on a chain around her neck, bounced on her matronly bosom as she worked.

“Oh dear.  What am I going to do?  Do you know of anywhere else I might try?”

“What’s the problem, dear?” The matron swept up to Angela.

“My Mum needs a replacement tape measure – she snapped her old one – and she really wants one with inches on both sides.  She’ll not be happy at all if I take one with centimetres on.”

“I know just how she feels.  I can’t deal with all this metrication either.  But can’t she just use one side of the tape?”

“She says it bothers her to always have to be looking which side to use.”

“Why don’t you try Hatchett’s round the back of the cathedral?  Or look in the flea market?”

Angela left the department store, thoughts of the incident on Sunday driving her on. The screaming from the bedroom that had taken her upstairs to find her mother frenziedly chopping at her new tape measure.

“I’m not having that!” she had squealed at Angela “I measured my waist and it said 88! Frightened me out of my wits, damn centimetres. I’m not having THAT!”

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