Latest / Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep / Poppy's Teashop of Second Chances

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Poppy's Teashop of Second Chances · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome in. Wherever you are as this begins,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: whether you are tucked beneath a blanket or standing at
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a sink with warm water running over your hands or
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: sitting very still with your eyes half closed, I am
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: so glad you have come. I am your storyteller, here
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: at Muggle Snuggle, the friend who sits at the end
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of the sofa with a mug of something warm and
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: tells you a tale while the world outside goes quiet.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: You do not need to do anything at all for
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the next while. You do not need to keep up
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: or sit up straight or remember a single thing. You
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: only need to arrive. So let your shoulders come down
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: from wherever they have been hiding. Let your jaw loosen.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: We have plenty of time, you and I, and we
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: are going to spend it kindly. If you have been
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: here before, if you have been settling in with these
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: stories for a good while now, thank you. I mean
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: that it matters to me that you keep coming back
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and that you trust a little corner of your day
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: to a warm voice and a slow story. I picture
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: some of you with a cat on your lap and
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: some of you with a heating pad on your back,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: some of you in a parked car with the engine
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: ticking as it cools, some of you in a quiet
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: kitchen long after everyone else has gone to bed, and
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: if this is your very first time, Then welcome, truly,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: you found us and I am glad of it, there
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: is nothing to catch up on. Just a story, and
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: you exactly as you are. This is a good tale
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to have playing softly while you get on with ordinary things.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Folding laundry, stirring a pot, tidying a desk, or lying
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: in the dark with your eyes closed, or doing nothing whatsoever.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: You do not have to follow every word. If your
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: mind wanders off somewhere pleasant, let it wander. The story
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: will keep going, gentle as a lamp left on in
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a hallway, and it will be right here when you
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: drift back. It is companionship without any demands. That is
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: all a story like this wants to be. A small
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: warm presence in the room, like a friend who is
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: content to sit beside you and not talk, about anything important.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Before we begin, a little request offered softly. If these
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: stories bring you comfort, please follow the show wherever you
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: listen so the next tale finds its way to you
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: without any searching. And if you know someone who works
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: too hard or sleeps too little, someone who could use
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: a slow, kind story, share this one with them. A
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: story passed from one friend to another is among the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: oldest kindnesses there is. That is the only asking I
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: will do. Now let us put the asking away the
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: way you put away a good tablecloth folded and smoothed
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: until it is needed again. Let us take a breath
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: together before we step into the tail, in through the
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: nose slowly, as if you were bending over a teapot
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and catching the first warm scent of the leaves. Hold
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: it for a moment, just at the top warm and full,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and now let it go, long and unhurried, the way
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: steam lifts from a cup and drifts away into a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: cold room. Once more in slow and easy, a small pause,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and out, all the way out, until your chest feels
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: loose and soft. Good. Your body has known how to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: do this since the day you were born. We are
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: only reminding it that there is nowhere it needs to be. Now,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Picture a town in the middle of the autumn, which
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: is turning, slowly and without any fuss, into winter. It
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: is a small town, the sort of place where people
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: nod to each other in the street and know which
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: dog belongs to which gate. The town is called Dunnock Row,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: and it sits in a shallow valley with a slow
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: brown river on one side and a long ridge of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: dark pine trees on the other. In summer, the ridge
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: is green and humming with bees. In autumn, it turns
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the color of old copper, and at the beginning of
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: this story, on the first evening when the air has
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: gone sharp and silver, the ridge is wearing a soft
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: gray hat of cloud, and the people of Dunnock Row
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: are looking up at it and saying to one another
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: in low voices that it smells like snow. The main
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: street of Dunnock Row is called Kettle Lane, and nobody
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: remembers why. The cobbles are round and gray and polished
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: by many years of boots. Houses lean toward one another,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: shoulder to shoulder, with chimneys puffing, and each has its
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: own little front stack, scrubbed or mossy or chipped, depending
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: on the character of whoever lives behind the door. There
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: is a bookshop with a bell that sticks, a tailor
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: who hums when he pins hems, and a small lamplit
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: grocer whose window is always full of oranges in winter.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And at the quiet end of the lane, where the
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: cobbles give way to packed earth and the houses grow
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a little further apart, stands a shop that has been
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: closed for two years. It is a narrow building. three
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: stories tall and only two windows wide, painted a faded
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: green that was once the color of a young leaf
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: and is now the color of an old one. The
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: paint is flaking at the corners. The steppe is thick
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: with dry leaves. There is a hanging sign above the door,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: a wooden board shaped like a teapot, with words carved
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: across its belly that have almost worn away. If you
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: stand directly below it and squint, you can still read them.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Bellwether's Teas, it says. Fine leaves send kind welcomes. The
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: windows of the shop are what you would notice first
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: if you were walking past. They are tall, with small
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: square panes set in thin white frames, and they are very,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: very dusty. Two winters of cobweb and street grime and
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: little smears from rain have layered themselves across the glass
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: until it looks like the surface of a pond in
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the evening gray and soft and secretive. You cannot see inside.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: You can only see your own pale reflection, and behind it,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: if you press your face near, the vague outline of
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: tables and chairs turned upside down on top of them,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: and a long counter that seems to be holding its breath.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: The people of Dunach Row slowed down when they passed it.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Some of them touched the glass with one finger. the
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: way you might touch the shoulder of someone who is
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: sleeping and sighed a small, fond sigh. That shop had
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: once been the warmest place in the whole town, and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: everyone who had ever sat inside it remembered exactly how
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it felt. It had been run for 40 years by
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: a woman named Hedy Bellwether, who was small and round
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and brisk, with silver hair pinned up in a twist
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: and spectacles that sat low on her nose. She had
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: a laugh that came out all at once, like a
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: flock of sparrows leaving a hedge. She wore cardigans in
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: every shade of green and carried a pencil behind each
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: ear in case one went missing, and she had a
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: way of looking at a person across her counter, over
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the top of those spectacles. That made them feel they
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: had been expected all day. Nobody ever walked into Bellwether's
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Tees without being asked to sit down, and nobody ever
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: sat down without finding a cup in front of them
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: before they had finished saying hello. Hattie served tea to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the whole town. She served it to farmers with mud
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: on their knees. and school children crowded onto the long
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: bench by the stove, and widowers who had no one
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: to cook for, and new mothers who had not slept.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: She never asked anyone why they had come. She only said, Sit, sit.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: You look like you could use a cup. And she
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: would be right. Every time. And nobody ever learned how
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: she knew. Then, two winters ago, in the quiet part
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: of the year just after the long dark nights began,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Hetty Bellwether caught a chill that would not lift. She
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: lay in her bed above the shop for several weeks,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: wrapped in her green cardigans with the neighbors bringing soup
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and the doctor visiting every second day, and on a still,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: gray afternoon, with a pot of tea cooling on the
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: table beside her bed and the cat asleep across her feet,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: she closed her eyes and did not open them again.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: She was very old, and she'd been very loved, and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: it was as peaceful as these things ever are. The
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: whole town came to the funeral. Afterward, the shop was
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: locked and the key was put away and the windows
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: began slowly to gather dust. Nobody had the heart to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: do anything with it. Hetty had left the building to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: her granddaughter who was away, so the shop waited. It
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: waited through one long winter and a spring and a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: summer and another autumn with its chairs upside down on
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: its tables and its kettle cold on the stove and
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: its dusty windows watching the lane. And the granddaughter, as
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: it happens, is the heart of our story. Her name
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: is Poppy Bellwether. She is 25 years old and has
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: always felt a little older than that. She has her
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: grandmother's round face and her grandmother's habit of tucking a
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: pencil behind one ear, though hers is usually missing. Her
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: hair is dark brown and curly and tends to escape
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: any pin you give it. She has freckles across her
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: nose that come out in summer and gray eyes that
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: look serious even when she is only deciding what to
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: have for lunch. She is not brisk as her grandmother was.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: She is careful and a little shy, and she is very,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: very tired. Poppy had left Dinah Crow at 18 with
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a suitcase and a letter of introduction to a firm
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: of accountants in the city. She had been good at numbers,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: and everyone said so, and it seemed a sensible, steady
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: thing to do. Her grandmother had hugged her at the
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: station with both arms, and said, Go and see what
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: you are made of, my love, and the door will
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: be here when you come back. Poppy had cried the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: whole way to the city, and then she had arrived
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: and found a small room and a desk, and a
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: great many columns of figures, and she had stayed She
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: stayed through seven years of columns, and cold mornings on
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: crowded trams and lunches eaten at her desk, and evenings
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: in a flat so quiet that she could hear the
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: refrigerator humming to itself. She wrote home. Every week and
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: her grandmother wrote back on thick cream cards in a crooked,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: looping hand. She meant to visit more than she did.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: There was always a deadline or a long week or
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: a train that was too expensive, and then one gray
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: afternoon the telephone rang at her desk, and it was
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: the solicitor, speaking gently. She came home for the funeral.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: She stood in the cold churchyard beside the neighbors she
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: had not seen in years, and she held a handful
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: of dried tea leaves that Mrs. Pennywhistle had given each
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: mourner to scatter. and she felt like a person standing
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: outside her own life, looking in through a window. Then
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: she went back to the city because there was work
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and because she did not know what else to do.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: She told herself she would deal with a shop in
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the spring, then in the summer. Then she stopped telling
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: herself anything. Two winters passed in the shape of columns
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and trams, and this morning a small grey and velo
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: arrived at her flat, forwarded from the solicitor, and on
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: the front, in thick cream ink, in a handwriting she
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: would have no anywhere were the words, for Poppy, to
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: be opened on the first snow. Poppy did not open
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: it that day. She put it on the shelf above
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: her little stove and looked at it all evening. It said,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: in the quietest possible way, come home, and in the morning,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: before she could talk herself out of it, she asked
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: her employer for the week and packed one bag and
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: caught the early train. All the way along the valley,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: she watched the world turn from brick to field to hatch,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: The sky sat low and white like a lid on
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: a pot. When the train pulled in at the little station,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the platform was empty but for a stack of milk crates,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and the air that met her was so cold and
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: clean that it made her eyes sting. She stood there
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: for a moment with her bag in her hand and
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: breathed it in. It smelled of wood smoke and wet leaves.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: And something sharp and mineral beneath the smell the air
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: has just before it decides to snow. Her whole body
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: remembered it. Her shoulders, her chest, even her toes. It
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: was the smell of being a child and being safe.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: She walked from the station along the river path and
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: up through the town, and every few steps someone nodded
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: to her. Nobody made a fuss. They simply lifted a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: hand and let her pass, the way you let a
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: shy bird settle on a branch. Then she turned onto
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Kettle Lane and walked past the bookshop and the tailor
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and the grocer with the oranges, all the way to
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the quiet end and there, in the thickening gray light
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: of the afternoon. stood the narrow green building with the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: teapot sign swinging very slightly in the wind. Poppy stopped
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: on the other side of the lane with her bag
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: at her feet. In the nearer window, she could see
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: her own reflection, a young woman in a long coat
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: with tired eyes and a scarf wound twice around her neck,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and behind it the dim shape of the shop. She
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: felt something shift behind her ribs, small and warm and friend,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: like a bird turning over in its sleep. I would
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: like to tell you, here, that she crossed the lane
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: and went straight in, but that is not how it happened.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And this is not that kind of story. What Poppy did,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: in fact... was to stand there with her hands deep
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: in her coat pockets and her breath making small clouds
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: until a voice behind her said, quietly, Well, I never.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: And she turned around, and there stood Mrs. Pennywhistle from
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the post office, bundled in a plum-colored coat, with her
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: spectacles misted over and her mittened hand pressed to her chest.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Poppy Bellwether. said Mrs. Pennywhistle. As I live and breathe,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: your grandmother always said you would come when the snow did.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Poppy opened her mouth and found that nothing came out
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: of it. Mrs. Pennywhistle did not seem to mind. She
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: only stepped forward and gave Poppy a brief, firm, sideways hug,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the kind that smells of lavender soap and peppermints. And
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: then she stepped back and patted Poppy's arm twice, as
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: if to say that was quite enough of that it
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: is going to snow by dark, she said. Mark my words.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Then she looked at the shop for a moment and
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: at the dusty windows and her face went soft. Then
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: she nodded at Poppy, once, and walked away down the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: lane toward the warm glow of the post office. And
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: so Poppy was left alone with the shop. The light
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: was going now. In the west, beyond the pines, a
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: thin gold line lay along the bottom of the clouds,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and above it the sky was the color of pearl.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: The lamplighter was working his way down Kettle Lane with
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: his long pole, and one by one the street lamps
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: bloomed pale yellow in the dusk. Poppy crossed the lane. Slowly,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: her boots loud on the cobbles, she climbed the step,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: scattering the dry leaves. She stood in front of the
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: old green door with its brass knob, worn smooth by
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: forty years of hands, and she put her palm flat
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: against the wood, and she felt, very faintly, that the
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: door was waiting for her. The envelope was in her
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: coat pocket. She took it out and held it up
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: to the last of the light for you to be
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: opened on the first snow, it said. It had not
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: snowed yet, but the air felt heavy and close, as
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: though the whole sky were leaning in to listen. Poppy
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: turned the little gray envelope over in her fingers, and
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: she listened too. The lane was very quiet, and on
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the very edge of hearing, so faint that she could
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: have been imagining it, there came the whisper of something falling,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: light as a breath, onto the brim of her hat.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: She looked up. A single flake, small as a pin,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: was drifting down out of the gray, then another, then
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: three more, turning slowly in the lamplight, as if they
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: had all the time in the world. Hoppy held out
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: her hand, and one landed on her glove, a tiny,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: perfect star, and stayed there for a moment before it vanished.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: She laughed, a small startled laugh that surprised her with
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: its own sound, because she had not laughed in weeks,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and she knew, standing on that old step with the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: first snow of the year gathering on her sleeves, that
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: it was time to open the letter, and that nothing
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: in the world would be quite the same afterward. the
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: snow came down slowly, at first in loose, lazy flakes,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: as though it were not quite sure it had been invited.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Poppy stood on the step of her grandmother's shop with
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the little gray envelope in her gloved hands, and she
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: watched the flakes drift past the street lamp and settle
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: on the cobbles. Where they lay for a moment before
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: melting into dark, wet stars, her heart was beating a
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: little faster than she liked. She took off one glove,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: tucked it under her arm, and slid her thumbnail beneath
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: the flap of the envelope. The paper was soft with age,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and it opened without a sound. Inside was a single
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: cream card, the very same kind her grandmother had used
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: to write to her all those years. The ink was brown,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and the handwriting leaned to the right, looping and generous.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: with the long tails on the letters that Poppy had
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: traced with her finger as a child. She held it
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: up under the lamplight and read it slowly, moving her
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: lips a little, the way she had when she was small.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: And I will read it to you now, exactly as
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: it was written, because it deserves to be heard in
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: a gentle voice. My dear Poppy. If you are reading this,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: then it has snowed, and you have come home, and
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I am very glad. I am sorry to leave you
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: a puzzle instead of a proper goodbye, but I never
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: could manage proper goodbyes. I have kept the shop dusty
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: on purpose. It wanted waiting for. The key is where
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the robin lives. Open the doors for one evening only,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: for whoever comes in from the cold, light the stove.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Boil the kettle and pour. Do not ask anyone what
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: needs mending. The pot always knows. And Poppy, my love,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: you were never behind. You were only on your way.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Poppy read the card three times. The first time her
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: eyes simply skim the words, the way eyes do when
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the heart is not ready. The second time she read
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: each line more slowly. and found that her throat had
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: gone tight. The third time she read the last line only,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: you are never behind, you are only on your way.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: And a tear slid down her cold cheek and fell
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: onto the card, making a tiny dark circle beside the ink.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: She wiped it away quickly with her sleeve, as though
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: her grandmother might see. Then she laughed, wetly, at herself,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: because of course Gran would have seen. Gran always did.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: The word Robin sat in her mind like a pebble
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: in a shoe. She turned it over. The key is
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: where the Robin lives. She tried the obvious places first,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: because that is what any sensible person does. She lifted
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the doormat and found only a few damp leaves and
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: a small, startled beetle she felt along the top of
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the door frame and came away with a fingertip gray
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: with dust. She crouched and looked under the old iron
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: boot scraper and under the flowerpot by the step which
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: held nothing now but frozen soil and the brown stalks
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: of something that had once been geraniums. No key. No robin.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Only the snow. Thickening gently around her ankles then from
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: somewhere nearby came a small, rusty, questioning sound. Murp. Poppy
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: looked down. On the lowest run of the iron railing
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: beside the steps sat a cat, a large, plump, striped
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: tabby with white socks and a crooked tail, and a
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: face like a very old and very dignified loaf of bread.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: He was looking at her with great amber eyes, perfectly round,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and his expression suggested that she had been slow. but
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: that he forgave her. Poppy stared, and the cat, apparently
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: satisfied that she had understood him, stood up, stretched one
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: back leg, and sauntered off along the side of the shop. Crumpet,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: whispered Poppy. She had not said that name aloud in years.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Her grandmother's cat. He had been a kitten when Poppy
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: left for the city. A clumsy scrap of a thing
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: who chased his own tail and fell off the sofa,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: she had assumed in the careless way one does when
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: one has been away, that he must be gone by now.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: But here he was, solid and unbothered, with snow on
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: his whiskers, and he glanced back over his shoulder with
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: a look that said, quite plainly, Are you coming, or
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: shall I do this by myself? Poppy picked up her
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: bag and followed. There was a narrow passage beside the shop,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: a gap between the green wall and the gray wall
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: of the neighboring house, only wide enough for one person
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: with a bag. It smelled of wet stone and old moss.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: The cobbles here were uneven, and the snow lay thin
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: and glittering on the ridges. At the far end was
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: a tall wooden gate, weathered silver, with an iron latch,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Crumpet waited by it, tail curled round his feet. Hoppy
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: lifted the latch, and the gate swung inward with a long,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: low creak that sounded like someone clearing their throat before
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: a speech, and beyond it lay her grandmother's back garden.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: It was small, no bigger than a good-sized rug. and
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: walled on all sides with old bricks the color of
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: ripe plums. In summer it had been a riot of herbs.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Mint ran wild along one wall. Thyme and sage sprawled
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: over the paving. Chamomile grew in a drift beneath the window,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: and lemon balm and lavender, and a great spalling bush
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: of something poppy had never learned the name of, whose
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: leaves smelled of honey when crushed. Now the beds were
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: folded under frost and the first snow, silent and white,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and the whole garden looked like a room where the
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: furniture had been covered with sheets. Poppy remembered this garden.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: In every season... She remembered being four years old and
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: sitting on the paving with a wooden spoon, stirring a
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: bowl of rainwater and petals and calling it soup, while
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: her grandmother pretended to taste it and declared it the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: finest soup in the county. She remembered being nine and
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: sent out with scissors to cut mint for the afternoon
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: pot and coming back with the whole bush. She remembered
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: being 16, sulking on the stone bench because she did
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: not know what she wanted to be and her grandmother
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: bringing out a cup without a word, setting it by
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: her elbow and going away again. In the middle of
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the garden stood a mossy stone bench, and on the bench,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: a birdbath, empty and dusted with white, and above the bench,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: fixed to the brick wall at the height of a
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: tall woman's shoulder, hung a small wooden box with a
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: round hole in the front and a santed roof. It
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: was painted green, with a red robin on the front,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: round and puffed and bright. One black eye turned toward
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the garden. Poppy had passed it 10,000 times as a child.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: She had seen it every day for 18 years, and
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: she had never once, until this very moment, wondered why
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: her grandmother had painted a robin on a house for
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: birds that was far too small for one. She crossed
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the garden. her boots crunching, and Crumpet jumped onto the
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: bench beside her with a soft thump. She reached up.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: The box was cold and a little damp. She slipped
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: her fingers through the round hole. felt around inside among
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: old straw and one dry feather, and touched something smooth
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: and thin and cold. A ribbon. She drew it out,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: and with it came dangling in the lamplight from the
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: garden wall a small brass key no longer than her thumb,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: tied to a faded loop of green silk. It swung
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: back and forth, glinting. Poppy held her breath. It was
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the most ordinary thing in the world, and it felt
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: like finding a star. Crumpet, who had watched all this
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: from the bench with half-closed eyes, gave a small approving sniff.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Poppy turned the key over in her fingers. It was
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: warm now, from her hand, and the green silk was
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: soft as a whisper. She wondered how many times her
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: grandmother had stood on this very spot on cold mornings
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and sleepy evenings, reaching up into the robin's house to
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: fetch the key and putting it back again, day after day,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: year after year. It seemed to her that every ordinary
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: habit is a kind of love set down quietly where
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: it can be found. Crump led her to the back door,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: which was low and narrow, set into the wall beneath
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a little tiled porch. Poppy stood before it for a
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: moment with the key in her palm. She was aware
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: of how quiet the garden had become. Snow does that,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: you know. It lays a soft hand over every sound,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: over the traffic and the dogs and the faraway clock,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: until the whole world seems to be holding a single
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: long breath. In that hush, the only noise was her
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: own pulse and the small contented rumble of the cat.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: who had begun to purr against her ankle as if
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: to say, Go on, it is only a door. The
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: key slid into the lock as though it had been
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: oiled that morning. Poppy turned it. There was a heavy,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: comfortable clunk, the sound of a thing that has been
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: waiting patiently and is quite pleased to be asked. She
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: pressed down on the latch and put her shoulder to
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: the wood, and the door swung inward. A breath of
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: air came out to meet her cool and still and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: rich with old scents, dry tea leaves, beeswax, dust and cinnamon,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: and a faint trace of lemon, and beneath all of it,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: so softly that she could have imagined it, the smell
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: of her grandmother's lavender soap, she stepped across the threshold.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: It was dark inside, deep dusky dark. With a little
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: gray light coming in from the garden behind her, Crumpet
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: slipped past her ankles and disappeared into the shadows. Poppy
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: stood still, letting her eyes adjust. She could make out
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the shapes of things slowly, as one does in a
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: room at dusk. A long scrubbed table, a tall dresser
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: against one wall laden with cups and saucers nested in rows.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: a great black iron stove squatting in the corner like
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: a patient old animal, a row of hooks beside the door,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: and on the hooks, still hanging, and a green cardigan,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: with the sleeves hanging as if the arms had only
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: just slipped out. Poppy put out one hand and touched
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: the cardigan. The wool was soft and a little scratchy,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and it was cold, as cold as the room. But
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: when she lifted it to her face, it still smelled
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: faintly of her grandmother, of soap and tea and old
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: paper and a hint of the peppermints she kept in
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: her pocket. Poppy stood there for a long moment with
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: her face in the wool. Nobody saw. The cat did
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: not mind. She breathed in and she breathed out, and
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: slowly the tightness in her chest eased, just a little,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: the way a knot loosens when you stop pulling it.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: She stayed beside the hooks a while, listening to the
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: shop settle around her. Old buildings have a way of
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: talking when they are warmed by a little life. A
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: bee ticked, A pipe sighed somewhere inside the wall. The
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: window rattled gently in its frame as the winged came
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: up off the ridge. None of it was frightening. It
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: sounded like a household stirring in its sleep, glad to
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: hear footsteps again after so long a silence, and Poppy
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: found herself speaking to it softly, the way you speak
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: to a nervous horse. It is only me, she said.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: It is only me, and I have come back, on
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the shelf beside the door, exactly where it had always been,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: sat a tin of matches and a stub of candle
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: in a saucer. Poppy fumbled the tin open with fingers
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: that were stiff from the cold. The first match fizzled,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the second flared, a bright little flower of light, and
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: she touched it to the wick before she could lose
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: her nerve. The candle caught, the darkness drew back like
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: a curtain, and the kitchen came into view in a
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: soft honey glow, small and warm and full of shadows
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: that danced against the walls. It was a good kitchen.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: That was the first thing she saw, and the thing
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: she noticed most, in the flickering light, it was a
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: room made for use and for kindness. The table was
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: scarred with the marks of forty years of chopping and
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: rolling and resting of hot pots. The dresser held more
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: cups than she could count, no two of them alike,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: striped and flowered and gold-rimmed and plain, and on the
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: lowest shelf a row of teapots in every size, from
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: one so small it could hold a single mouthful to
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: one so large it looked like a pumpkin. Copper pans
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: hung from the rafters, Jars of dried herbs lined the windowsill,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: and everywhere, over everything, lay a fine gray blanket of dust.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: On the wall above the stove hung a long shelf,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: and on the shelf stood the tea tins. There were
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: dozens of them, tall and short, round and square, painted tin,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: each with a little paper label tied on with string.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: and every label was written in the same looping brown hand.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Poppy lifted the candle and read them one after another.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Morning Gold, Rose, and Rainy Afternoon, Dandelion, for Doddlers, Hush, Willow,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: and Honey, Second Wind. The slow blend Sunday leaves a
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: little better. She read them aloud under her breath, and
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: each one made her smile and ache and smile again.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Poppy noticed that the dust lay thickest on the dresser
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: and the table, but on the shelf of tea tins
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: it was oddly thin, as though someone had kept a
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: gentle eye on them. The lids were tight. When she
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: eased up the lid of morning gold, a fragrance rose
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: as fresh as the day it was packed, malty and bright.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: with a trace of orange peel. She sniffed the next one,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: and the next. Every tin smelled alive. It was a
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: small mystery, and she did not solve it. She only noted,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: with the part of her that was good with figures,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: that two years should have staled everything, and had not.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: In the very center of the shelf, a little apart
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: from the rest, stood a single round brown teapot. It
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: was not grand. It was squat and plain, with a
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: chipped spout and a lid that did not quite fit
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: and a small yellow flower painted on its belly, which
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: time had faded almost to white. Poppy knew it at once.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: It was the pot her grandmother had used every single
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: day of her life. the one she had carried through
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: every room and set down upon every table and poured
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: from for forty years, as steady as a heartbeat. The
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: paw was the heart of the shop. Poppy had always
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: known it. Without being told she did not touch it yet,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: something told her it was not the time. Instead, she
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: put the candle on the table and lifted the green
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: cardigan from its hook and, after a moment's hesitation— slipped
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: her arms into the sleeves. It was too large in
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the shoulders and too short in the arms as she
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: remembered it always being on her own grandmother and it
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: fitted her perfectly. She took the apron down too and
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: tied it twice around her waist and straightened her back.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: The mirror above the dresser was too dusty to show
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: anything but a shape. Still, Poppy could see enough to
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: know that she looked... at last, like someone who might
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: know what she was doing. Crumpet had settled on the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: edge of the table, upright and attentive, tail tucked around
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: his feet like the chairman of a small committee. He
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: watched her as she turned slowly around the room, looking
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: at everything. The stove, the kettle, green with age, sitting
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: cold on its hob. the long counter at the front
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: with its brass bell and its cracked glass cake dome,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the heavy wooden door at the far end with a
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: card in the window turned to close it. She could
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: see the dusty tables beyond, and the chairs upside down
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: upon them, their legs stuck into the air, and she felt,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: for the first time since the telephone call, a flicker
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: of something that was not grief, something lighter, something that
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: felt very much like purpose. She went to the window
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: over the sink and rubbed a clear circle in the
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: grime with her sleeve. Beyond it, the garden was going
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: blue and white and the snow was falling thicker now,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: no longer lazy, but steady and purposeful as though it
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: had made up its mind. Somewhere down the lane a
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: door closed and a child's voice called out something glad.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Poppy watched the flakes spin past the glass for a
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: long moment. Then she left a little circle of clear
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: window as it was so that the shop could look
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: out at the evening and the evening could look in.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: There was a piece of chalk on the ledge of
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: the little blackboard beside the stove and written on the
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: board in her grandmother's hand. so faded that Poppy had
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: to step close to read it, were three short lines.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Kettle first, quiet second, courage last. Poppy smiled because it
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: was so exactly her. A recipe for a cup of
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: tea and a recipe for a life in this same breath.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: She rubbed her hands together to warm them. she looked
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: at the cold stove and the cold kettle and the
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: gray old dust over everything she looked at the cat
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: and she said out loud in the quiet to her
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: grandmother and to the room and to herself all right
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: then one evening There is a particular kind of quiet
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: that settles into a place when nobody has spoken in
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: it for a long while. It is not the quiet
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: of a library or the hush of a sleeping house.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: It is a thicker thing, a bit like felt. It
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: gathers in corners and sits on shelves, and when you
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: walk into it for the first time, it does not
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: move out of your way. Poppy felt it pressing gently
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: against her as she stood in the kitchen with her
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: grandmother's apron tied round her waist. She did not mind it, exactly.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: It was only that the shop had been holding its
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: breath for so long that it had forgotten how to
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: let it out. So she began with the broom. It
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: stood in its usual corner behind the stove, a tall
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: straw broom with a worn handle, and when she took
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: hold of it, the wood fitted into her palms, as
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: though it had been shaped around her own hands. Poppy
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: started at the back wall and swept toward the door,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: in long, slow strokes, the way she had been taught.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Never hurry a broom, her grandmother used to say. A
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: rushed sweeping only moves the dust from one place to another,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: and it will come back and complain. the dust rose
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: in soft gray clouds and hung in the candlelight turning gold,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: and Poppy coughed and sneezed and carried on. Crumpet, who
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: had no great opinion of brooms, removed himself to the
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: top of the dresser, where he sat among the teacups,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: like a very large and very fussy ornament. From there
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: he supervised. Every now and then he gave a little
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: sneeze of his own, as the dust floated up to
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: his perch, and each time Poppy said, Bless you, without noticing.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: It is a comforting thing to have someone to say,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Bless you, to. She had not realized how long it
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: had been since he had said it to anyone. In
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: her flat in the city, there had been only the
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: humming refrigerator, and it never sneezed. When the floor was done,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: she found a cloth in the bottom drawer of the dresser,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: a square of soft old linen, folded into quarters, and
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: she dampened it at the pump over the sink. The
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: water came out brown at first, coughing and spluttering, and
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: then ran clear and so cold that it made her
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: fingers ache. She wrung out the cloth and began to
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: wipe down the long table. The surface came up pale
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: and honey-colored under her hands, all the marks of the
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: years showing like writing. Here a white ring where somebody
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: had set down a hot cup long ago. There a
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: dent from the corner of a heavy tin. She did
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: not mind them. They were the table's way of telling
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: its stories. Next came the cobwebs. There were more of
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: them than she had expected, strong across the corners and
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: between the beams like old lace curtains, gray and delicate
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: and heavy with dust. Poppy found a long feather duster
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: hanging on a nail and went round the room on tiptoe,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: reaching up, swirling the dust gently from the rafters. She
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: was careful. She looked closely at each web before she
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: took it down, and any spider she found, she coaxed
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: onto the end of the broom handle and set gently
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: on the windowsill. They were, after all, tenants. They had
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: kept the place from feeling empty while she was gone,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: and a good landlady does not evict her lodgers on
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: a snowy night. Then she turned to the dresser and
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: the cups and She took them down one by one
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: and wiped each with a soft linen, holding it up
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: to the candle to see the glaze shine through. There
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: was a cup with a blue wren painted inside, and
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: a cup with a handle shaped like a curled cat,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: and a cup so thin that the flame showed through
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: it like a sunrise through a leaf. No two were alike.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Hetty had gathered them, Over forty years, from jumble sales
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: and gifts and the hands of customers who had said,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: I found this, and it reminded me of you. Poppy
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: set them in rows along the table, shining, and the
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: whole table seemed to smile. The shop proper lay beyond
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: the heavy wooden door at the far end of the kitchen,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: and when Poppy pushed it open, the hinge gave a long,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: low groan, the sound a very old person makes when
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: they sit down after a day on their feet. She
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: stood in the doorway holding the candle high, the frock
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: room stretched away before her, long and narrow and shadowed,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: There were twelve small tables, each with its pair of
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: cares turned upside down on its talk, legs in the
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: air like patient insects. A long counter ran along one wall,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: topped with a polished brass bell and a cracked glass dome.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: At the front, the two tall windows faced the lane,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: gray with dust. glowing faintly where the street lamps touched them.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: It smelled of cold and cedar. Poppy walked down the
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: length of the room, setting the chairs back on their
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: feet one by one. Each landed with a small wooden clack,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: a sound that echoed up to the ceiling, and seemed
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: to wake something. She straightened them, two to a table,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: angled slightly toward each other the way her grandmother always did,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: so that anyone sitting down would have somebody to look at,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: a table for two, she used to say, is a
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: small kindness. A table for one is an invitation, and
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: when she has set the last chair on its legs,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: the whole room seemed to relax. To sigh and stride,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: as though it remembered what it was for then, Poppy
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: went to the windows, and this, I must tell you,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: was the part she had been saving. She fetched a
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: bucket from the scullery and filled it at the pump,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: and the water was so cold that it nipped, but
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: she did not mind. Into the water she tipped a
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: splash of white vinegar from the bottle under the sink
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: and she tied a rag around her fist. The cold
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: glass squeaked beneath her fingers. She started in the top
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: left pane with a slow circular stroke and the gray
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: smeared and gave way and behind it, bright as a
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: wet pebble, came the evening. She worked pane by pane
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: from the top down, wiping and rinsing and wiping again.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: There were forty-two small squares in the two windows, and
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: each of them as it cleared was like a tiny
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: picture hung in a frame. A square of lamplight, a
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: square of falling snow, a square of cobbles shining like
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: a loaf glazed with egg, a square of the bookshop opposite,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: its bell swinging slightly in the wind. Poppy's arms ached
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: and her fingers went numb. But she did not stop,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: because the thing was happening, the thing she had hoped
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: for and she could feel it in her chest. The
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: shop was waking up, and it could see. When the
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: last pain was done, she stepped back to the middle
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: of the room and turned slowly around. The two great
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: windows glittered. Snow came down beyond them in slow, shining curtains.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: lit from beneath by the street lamps, and the whole
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: lane looked like the inside of a snow globe that
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: someone had just lovingly shaken. Light poured in from outside
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: and lay in long pale rectangles across the floorboards, and
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: for the first time in two years the dust in
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: the air was moving in the glow instead of sitting still.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: It was poppy decided, the best view in the whole town,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: and she had not seen it clear since she was
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: a girl. As she stood there, Poppy noticed that the
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: old quiet had not gone, it had only changed. It
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: was no longer the thick, fel-cost of an empty house.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: It was the clear listening, quiet of a room that
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: expects someone. She could hear her own breathing in it,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: and the small tick of the cooling stove pipe, and
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: crumpets' paws padding across the boards. she decided that this
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: was the right sort of quiet to keep. A shop
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: could be still without being lonely. A person could, too,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: she supposed, though she had not yet worked out how.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: And from outside, I should tell you, the effect was
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: just as wonderful. because as she was wiping the final pane,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: a small woman in a plum-colored coat was crossing the
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: lane from the post office, with her head bent against
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the snow, a bundle of letters under her arm. She
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: was nearly past the shop before the light taught her eye.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: She stopped. She turned. She stood in the road, with
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: the flakes settling on her hat, looking at a window
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: that was no longer gray but warm and golden and clear.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: with a young woman's figure moving behind it in a
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: green cardigan. Mrs. Pennywhistle put one hand over her mouth.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Then she turned around and began, with surprising speed for
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: a woman of her years, to walk back the way
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: she had come. Inside, Poppy knew nothing of this. She
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: was on her knees behind the counter, opening drawers. There
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: was a great deal to find, The first held a
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: tangled of paper bags, and the second held spoons, rows
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: and rows of them in tidy ranks, silver and pewter
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: and plain tin wrapped in a flannel cloth. The third
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: drawer held a ball of twine. a pair of sugar
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: tongs shaped like a swan's neck, and a jam jar
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: full of buttons, which Poppy picked up with great curiosity.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: There were big brown coat buttons and tiny pearl ones
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: and bright red ones from a child's mitten. Taped to
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: the lid was a small label in her grandmother's hand.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: It said simply, Left Behind. Waiting to be claimed, She
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: held the jar to the light and turned it, and
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the button slid and clicked and caught the glow. How
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: like Gran, she said softly, to keep them. A hundred
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: different people had guard out of this door. Into the weather,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: each one leaving a tiny piece of themselves and Hetty
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Bellwether had kept every piece, sorted and labeled and sealed,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: in the confident belief that someone would come back for them.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Poppy set the jar on the counter, where it caught
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: the candle flame and glowed ember. Beside it, after a moment,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: she said a second thing she had found at the
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: very bottom of the drawer, a ledger. fat and brown,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: with a cloth spine, tied shut with a ribbon. She
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: sat down on the stool behind the counter and set
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: the candle at her elbow and untied the ribbon. The
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: pages were soft and a little yellowed, filled from edge
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: to edge with Hetty's looping hand. It was not accounts. Poppy,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: who knew accounts better than any living soul in Den
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Elk Row, saw that at once. There were no columns
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: of money. It was a different sort of record altogether.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Each page was headed with a name, and under each
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: name Hattie had written, over years and years, what that
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: person liked. Not only what they ordered, how they took it,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: And when, and what sort of day they were having
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: when they came, Mr. Aldridge Pym. The first page said, Clockmaker,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: the blue cup with the gold rim. Two lumps, never three,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: though he asks. Hands shake in cold weather. Does not
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: like to be noticed. Poppy turned over. Wren Tolliver, who
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: carries the post. Strawn in quick, with Muck always rushing.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: fell from her bicycle on the ice, and has not
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: smiled properly since. Leave the biscuit on the seltzer, she
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: will not ask, turn again, the Mrs. Fairweather, Marigold, and
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Tansy's sisters sit at opposite ends of the room. Same order,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: different tables, fourteen winters, and counting be patient, keep the
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: kettle warm. There was more, Linus Hobb, age seven, the
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: baker's nephew who liked cocoa but pretended to like tea
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: and was afraid of the dark on the walk home, Mr.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: Fenn at the bakery who had lost his taste for
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: his own bread and would not say so, Mrs. Pennywhistle
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: who took her tea the color of a brick and
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: would die before she admitted she was lonely, page after page.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: A whole town in brown ink, kept like a garden,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Poppy read on. Quietly, her finger moving down the lines
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: and her eyes grew hot and bright. She understood, at last,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: what her grandmother had meant by the pot always knows.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: The pot did not know a thing, Hattie knew. She
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: had always known, and she had written it all down
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: so that someone else could. At the back of the ledger,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: on the final written page, the handwriting changed. It was shakier,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: and the ink was darker, as though pressed harder. Poppy
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: had to hold the page close to the candle to
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: read it. Hetty had written in her last weeks a
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: short list, not of names this time, only of small things.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Things that nobody notices when they break, and nobody remembers
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: to mend, and so they stay broken for years. A
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: stuck apology, a lost nerve, a hand that forgot how
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: to be steady, a song that slicked out of the memory,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: a fear of the dark, a tune not hummed for years.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: The list went on a little further and then stopped.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: In the middle of a line, as though the pen
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: had been laid down gently, and beneath it, in the
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: last few inches of the page, Hetty had added just
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: one sentence. Poppy read it twice, and then she closed
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: the book very carefully and held it flat against her
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: chest with both hands. It said, Small things are the
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: ones that matter most, my love, because they're the ones
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: that nobody else will fix. The kitchen was quiet around her.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Crumpet had come down from his perch and was winding
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: himself with great gravity around the legs of her stool.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: The candle burned low and steady. and Poppy sat very
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: still with her grandmother's ledger over her heart and let
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: the warm silence of the shop fall around her like
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: a blanket. When the ledger was safely put away on
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: the shelf behind the counter, she got up and stretched,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: and the whole day caught up with her at once.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: Her shoulders ached and her neck and the backs of
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: her knees. There was a smear of soot along one
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: cheek and dust in her hair. Her stomach, which had
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: been ignored since the early train, gave a small, embarrassed grumble.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: And sees since these men are dataful for others. I
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: can get to the best, in the bottom of the cupboard,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: she full a native base plater than we have in
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: a finding present from the nef to the datas, if
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: you're offs. Think, think, To the emanations that in quell
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: is everything support to the brain. I am still asked,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: I could have weased under this. Think, to the emanations
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: need the vandas, the once and where. Think, think, to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: the emanations needed to famus in the told. Make in
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: your end my minute was creasing other petter gape, as
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: are the edges of you. Think about, see them that
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: with a real dullum stand, stand shot and seven percent
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: make a way under this. Face how it comes from
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: the cumberspeed untrust on the domen of the cupboard she found.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Around ten painted with strawberries and inside riped in waxed
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: paper a dozen shortbread biscuits, crumbly at the edges and
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: smelling of butter. They were as fresh as if they
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: had been baked that morning, which was not possible, and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: Poppy decided not to inquire. She ate one standing up
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: and fed a crumb to Crumpet, who accepted it as
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: his dear. It was the best thing she had tasted
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: in months. There was still the sign to see to.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: She found a small black slate in the cupboard under
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: the counter and a stub of white chalk and she
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: stood in the window for a long time holding them,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: wondering what to write. She tried several words in her head, open, welcome,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: come in all of them seemed too much like something
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: a shop would say, and this, she was beginning to understand,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: was not that sort of shop. At last, in careful capital,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: she wrote, the kettle is on one evening only come
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: in out of the snow. She propped the slate against
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: the glass where the lamplight caught the letters and stepped back. Then,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: in the silence, a sound came from the front of
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the shop that made her heart jump. A soft, uncertain tapping,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: like a bird at the glass. She whirled around. He
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: beyond the door. With her nose pink from the cold
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: and her breath rising in small white clouds, a young
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: woman in a navy coat and a postal cap stood
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: on the stack, one gloved hand raised, as though she
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: was not at all sure she should be knocking. A
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: canvas bag hung from her shoulder. Her cheeks and eyelashes
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: were dusted with snow. She was peering through the glass
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: at the slate and then at Poppy with a half-hopeful, Half-embarrassed,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: look like a person who has seen a lit window
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: at the end of a very long walk, Poppy glanced
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: at the stove. It was still cold. The kettle had
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: not boiled. She had not yet touched her grandmother's teapot
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: or lit a single burner or chosen a single leaf.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: She was not in the least ready. But the girl
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: on the step lifted her chin a fraction and smiled
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: a small, tired, brave smile, and Poppy saw, quite, clearly
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: the page in the ledger, Wren Tolliver, fell from her
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: bicycle and has not smiled properly since. She drew a breath,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: she straightened the green cardigan, and she crossed the shop
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: in six quick steps and drew back the bolt and
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: opened the door into the snow. The cold came in
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: with her, a thin, bright rush of it, along with
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: a few stray snowflakes that spun across the threshold and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: melted on the mat. Wren Tulliver stood in the doorway
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: with her cap in one hand and her canvas bag
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: clutched against her hip, blinking at the lamplight as though
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: she had stepped out of a long, dark tunnel. She
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: was perhaps 23, narrow and wiry, with a freckled nose
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: and straight brown hair cut short at the jaw. She
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: looked as if she had been running and had only
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: just stopped. I am so sorry, she said in a rush.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: I did not mean to bother you. I saw the
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: light and the sign and I was only passing and
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: I did not know anybody was here. Please, said Poppy.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Come in. You will let all the warm out. It
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: was not the cleverest thing to say, since there is
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: not yet any warm to let out. But Ren laughed
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: a short, surprised breath and stepped inside, and Poppy shut
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: the door behind her. The little brass bell above it
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: gave a bright, rusty jingle. Both of them looked up
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: at it. It had not rung in two years. Crumpet
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: appeared in the kitchen doorway, assessed the newcomer, and gave
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: a single approving flick of his tail before vanishing again.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: That means you may stay, said Poppy, and Wren smiled,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: but only with her mouth. I should explain, said Poppy,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: that I have not got the stove lit yet, or
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: the kettle on, or very much of anything. I only
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: arrived this afternoon. Ren looked around the shop, at the
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: polished tables and the straightened chairs and the gleaming windows,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: at the rows of cups on the dresser and the
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: jar of buttons on the counter. Then she looked back
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: at Poppy and said, in a voice gone suddenly quiet,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: You are Hattie's granddaughter. You have her eyes. I used
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: to come in here on my afternoon round. She always
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: had a cup ready. I did not know how she
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: knew when I would arrive. And Poppy, not knowing what
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: to say, said, Sit down, please. You look as though
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: you could use one. She heard her grandmother's words come
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: out of her own mouth, and she felt them settle
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: into the room as though they belonged there. Wren sat
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: at the table nearest the window, in the chair that
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: faced the door. and set her bag carefully on the
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: floor beside her. The leather strap had left a dark
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: line across her shoulder. Her gloves were wet through. She
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: peeled them off and laid them flat on the table,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: and Poppy saw that her fingers were red and stiff
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: and trembling very slightly, not from cold alone. Poppy said
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: nothing about it. She only nodded and turned toward the
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: kitchen and said over her shoulder, It will not be long.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Kittle first. Poppy stood before the great black stove and
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: looked at it for a moment. It was cold and
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: heavy and rather alarming. A thing with a broad iron
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: lid and a door at the front and a flue
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: pipe that rose into the wall like a long black throat.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: She had watched her grandmother, lighted a thousand times. She
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: had never done it herself. She knelt on the hearthstone,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: as Gran would have, and opened the front door. Inside,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: a nest of old ash. She raked it out into
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: the pan. gently, and found beneath it a small neat
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: pile of dry kindling and a twist of paper, laid
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: and ready, as if somebody had prepared it two winters
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: ago and then walked away. She struck a match, and
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: for a moment it shivered in her fingers. Then she
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: touched it to the paper, and the paper caught, and
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: the little flame climbed up through the kindling, crackling. Poppy
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: fed it carefully, a stick at a time, The Way
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: a Person Feeds a Shy Animal The larger stick, then
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: a split log from the basket by the wall. The
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: fire gathered itself and grew and began to roar softly,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: a deep contented sound. Orange light spilled out across the
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: hearth and up the wall, and for the first time
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: that day, Poppy felt warmth on her face, real warmth,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: the kind that goes all the way in. She closed
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: the stove door and stirred. The iron began to tick
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: as it heated, a small patient clicking, like a cricket
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: in summer. Poppy rubbed her hands over the lid and
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: listened to it. and she felt something tight in her
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: chest begin to let go. It was only a stove,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: it was only a fire, but it had been dark
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: and cold in this room for so long, and the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: room had been so quiet, and now there was a
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: living heart in the corner, beating out heat and light.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: The shop, which she had seen as a thing she
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: must tend, seemed instead to be tending her, Slowly, as
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: the stove did its work, the whole of Bellwether's teas
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: began to change. The frost that had furred the corners
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: of the windows melted into fine bright beads and ran
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: down the glass. The cold that lived in the floorboards
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: crept out, and the wood gave a long creaking stretch,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: as though it were easing a sore back. The smell
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: of the place shifted too. from dust and old paper
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: to wood smoke and warm iron and the green, grassy
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: scent of the tea still waiting on the shelf. It
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: was the smell of a room that had decided to
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: be lived in. Poppy stood in the middle of it,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: in her grandmother's cardigan, and was astonished to find that
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: she felt at home. The kettle was green copper, round-bellied
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: and old, with a dent near the spout and a
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: wooden handle worn pale. She filled it at the pump,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: felt the cold weight of the water swing in her hand,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: and set it on the hob. Then she stood beside
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: it and waited as one is supposed to. There is
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: no hurrying a kettle. The first sounds came after a
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: few minutes, a faint ticking at the bottom, then a
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: low shiver as the water began to stir, then a whisper.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: rising to a murmur like the sound of a far-off crowd.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: Poppy found that she was holding her breath. She let
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: it out and listened to the water learn how to sing.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: While it sang, she turned to the shelf. The tea
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: tins stood before her in their rows, each with its
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: little handwritten label. Morning gold rose and rainy afternoon. Dandelion
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: for daublers. She had no idea which to choose. Do
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: not ask what needs mending, her grandmother had written. The
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: pot always knows. So Poppy did what she hoped was
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: the sensible thing, which was to stop trying to choose.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: She closed her eyes and let her hand drift along
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: the shelf, and she felt, very faintly, a small warmth
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: under her fingertips, like the warmth of a cup just
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: set down. She opened her eyes. Her hand was resting
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: on a short round tin with a green lid. Second wind.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Poppy took it down. She eased off the lid and
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: a fragrance rose up, bright and clean, like a window
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: opened onto a morning in spring. There were small curled
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: leaves inside, dark green and silver, flecked with tiny gold
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: buds and and a scatter of something pale like dried petals.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: She breathed it in and felt her shoulders lift. Then
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: she turned to the dresser and took down, from its
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: place in the middle of the shelf, the squat brown
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: pot with the yellow flower on its belly. It was
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: lighter than she had expected. The ceramic was warm, impossibly warm,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: as if it had just come from a hearth. She
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: held it in both hands for a moment, before she
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: set it down on the table. By the time the
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: kettle began to rattle its lid, she knew exactly what
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: to do. Her hands knew it. They knew it the
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: way a person knows the words to a lullaby without
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: having to reach. She poured a little hot water into
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: the pot, swirled it three times round, and tipped it
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: into the sink to warm the china through. She measured
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: the leaves with a small tin scoop that hung from
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: a nail, one scoop for each cup and one for
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: the pot, as Gran used to say, and a pinch
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: more for kindness. The leaves fell into the warm belly
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: of the pot and gave up a great soft breath
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: of scent, and then the kettle reached its pitch and shrieked,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: a loud shining note that filled the whole shop. Ren
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: jumped out in the front room and then left. In
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: the kitchen, Poppy lifted the kettle in both hands and poured.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: The water fell in a long, bright rope into the pot,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: and the leaves swirled and rose and danced, and the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: steam climbed up around her face in a warm white
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: cloud she put on the lid. It sat slightly crooked,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: as it always had, and she did not straighten it.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: She wrapped a folded tea towel around the pot, as
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: she had seen her grandmother do, and set the little
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: brass timer on the shelf, and she stood for a
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: few moments with her hands resting on the table, and
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: she waited, and there, in the quiet, she felt the
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: oddest sense that she was not alone. It was not
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: a frightening feeling. It was the feeling of a hand
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: resting lightly on one's shoulder. It was the sense that
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: the room was full. not of ghosts, but of kindness
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: of all the cups poured here, over all the years,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: and all the people who had sat quiet and were
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: mended a little and went home. She did not turn around.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: She did not need to. She only said, in a
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: voice so low that it was almost a breath, I
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: hope I am doing this right, Gran. And the old
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: stove ticked, and the steam rose from the spout of
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: the pot, and the crooked lid gave one small, cheerful rattle,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: as if to say, there, you see, you always were.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: She carried it out to Wren on her grandmother's old
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: tin tray, with the brown pot, one cup, a small
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: jug of milk, a bowl of sugar lumps, and on
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: a saucer, two shortbread biscuits, which she set a little
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: to the side. Ren's cup was a plain white one,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: thick and sturdy, with a thin glue line round the
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: rim and a handle just big enough for a postwoman's hand.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: Poppy had not chosen it. It was only the nearest
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: cup when she turned. She set the tray on the table,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: and Ren looked at it, and then up at her,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: and her eyes were suddenly wet, though she smiled as
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: if to hide it. It looked, she said, exactly like
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: Hetty's tray. Poppy poured. The tea came out the color
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: of a young apple leaf held up against the sun,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: clear and pale gold, with a thin haze of steam
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: that curled up and bent toward the lamp. She added, Milk.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: A little, because it seemed right, and slid the cup
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: across Durenne and set the saucer beside it. Take your time,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: she said. Nen wrapped both hands round the cup, the
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: way you do when you have been cold for too long,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: and held it there without lifting it. She bent her
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: head over the steam and breathed in, her eyes closed,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: and for a moment nobody in the shop moved at all,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: not the girl, not the cat in the kitchen door,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: not even the snow outside the glass. Then Ren lifted
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: the cup to her lips and drank a small sip
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: and then another. Poppy watched and tried very hard not
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: to watch, which is a thing that cannot be done.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: What she saw I will describe as accurately as I can,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: though it was very small. The tight line between Ren's
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: brows softened, the way a knot of string softens when
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: you work it with your thumbs. Her shoulders... which had
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: been held high around her ears, as if against a blow,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: began to slide down, the tremor in her fingers, so
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: fine that nobody but Poppy would have noticed, slowed and stilled.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: until the cup rested in her hands as steady as
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: a stone in a stream. Wren set the cup down.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: She looked at her hands. She turned them over and
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: back and flexed the fingers one at a time as
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: if she had never seen them before. Then she looked
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: up at Poppy, and her face was so open and
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: young and astonished that Poppy had to look away. I
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: do not know how to say this, said Wren. It
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: sounds foolish, but there is a feeling I have had.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: For weeks, it sits just here. She touched the place
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: below her breastbone, like a clenched fist, all day, every day,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: and it is gone, and is only gone. I did
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: not know how tired I was of holding it. Poppy
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: did not trust herself to speak. She nodded and pulled
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: out the second chair and sat down opposite. The lamp
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: hissed softly. Snow whispered at the windows, and Wren, without
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: being asked, began to tell her. She had been a
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: postwoman for four years. and she had loved it. She
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: had loved the bicycle and the early air and the
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: way the whole town unrolled before her wheels each morning
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: like a ribbon. Then one frosty dawn at the start
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: of last winter, she had come down the hill by
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: the river too fast and hit a patch of black
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: ice and gone over the handlebars into a hedge. It
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: was nothing really a scraped chin and a bruised hip,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: The doctor said she had been lucky, and she had been,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: she knew that, but ever since that morning, she said.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: A small, cold voice had sat in her head whenever
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: she swung her leg over the saddle, it said. Remember
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: the ice, it said, you will fall again. She had
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: started walking the bicycle down the hills. Then she had
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: started walking it on the flat. Then she had begun
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: to leave it at the post office and to make
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: her round on foot and to take twice as long
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: and to be late with the letters and to feel
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: quietly and steadily that she had stopped being the person
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: she used to be. I know it is only a bicycle,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: said Wren, and she wiped her eyes with the back
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: of her wrist and laughed. Poppy shook her head. It
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: is not only a bicycle, she said. It never is.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: Wren looked at her in surprise, and then her whole
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: face crumpled gently into a smile, a real one, a wide,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: crooked one that reached her eyes and made them crease.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: It transformed her. She looked all at once like a
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: girl who could ride down a hill with her arms
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: stretched out like wings. I believe, she said slowly, that
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: I am going to ride tomorrow. Not carefully, properly. Down
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: the river hill, all the way to the bottom, Poppy
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: reached for the pot and poured her another cup and
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: Wren drank it with her eyes closed and the last
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: of the stiffness went out of her. She ate both
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: the shortbread biscuits, one after the other, and licked the
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: crumbs from her thumb and for a while the two
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: of them talked about small things. The weather. the best
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: way to carry letters in a storm, a dog on
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: Orchard Row that bit everyone but the postwoman whom it adored.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: It was easy, in the way that talking with a
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: stranger is sometimes easier than talking with a friend. The
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: stove ticked, the snow whirled, and the cat came out
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: and sat across Wren's boots as a kind of blessing.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: Before she left, Wren stood at the door with her
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: cap on. and her bag across her shoulder, and her
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: cheeks pink from the warmth. She did not seem to
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: want to go. She dug in her pocket and held
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: out three coins, but Poppy shook her head. It is
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: not that kind of evening, she said. Wren hesitated, then
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: nodded and pressed the coins instead into the button jar
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: on the counter. One, two. three, where they clinked gently
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: down among the buttons. Then she pulled the door open
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: and the cold flew in and the bell rang and
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: she stopped with one boot on the step and said,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: without turning, there are lights coming down the lane, Poppy.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: Poppy came to stand beside her. Outside, through the slow,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: soft falling snow, small golden lights were drifting down Kettle Lane, one,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: and two and then a whole scatter of them, bobbing
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: and swaying. Lanterns, candles and jars, a torch with a
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: yellow beam they moved unhurriedly, and under each light, wrapped
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: in scarves and hats and heavy coats, were dark figures
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: making their way carefully through the white. In front, small
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: and quick and unmistakable in a plum-colored coat came Mrs.,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: Kenya Whistle, who had put on her very best hat
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: and who looked as though she had been busy for
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: the last hour telling everybody she knew Wren left out loud. Well,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: she said, it looks as if Hetty Balweather's granddaughter is
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: going to have a busy evening. She touched two fingers
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: to the brim of her cap in a salute, stepped
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: down into the snow, and walked away up the lane.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: Poppy watched her go. The postwoman's stride was long and sure,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: and just before she vanished round the corner, she did
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: a small and unmistakable skip, a hop of pure and
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: ridiculous joy, like a child on the way to school.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: Poppy put her hand to her mouth. Then she turned
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: and ran to feed the stove and set the kettle
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: on again. There was a great deal of tea to
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: be made. They came in out of the snow in
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: twos and threes, stamping their boots on the mat and
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: shaking white flakes from their hats, and the little brass
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: bell jangled over the door until it seemed to lose count.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Poppy stood behind the counter with her sleeves pushed up,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: watching her grandmother's shop fill with people, and she could
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: hardly believe it was the same room. The stove glowed,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: the lamps were lit, Coats were being hung on the
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: hooks by the door and scarves draped over the backs
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: of chairs, and the windows had already begun to steam
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: at the corners. The air rang with greetings and with
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: the particular murmur of people who have not all been
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: in one room together in a long time. Everyone wanted
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: to say something to her. A woman Poppy had known
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: as a girl pressed her hand and said, I am
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: so glad. A farmer in muddy boots, with a face
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: like a walnut, said nothing at all, but gripped her
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: shoulder briefly and nodded, and that said more. Poppy found
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: herself saying, Thank you, and sit anywhere, and the kettle
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: is on, again and again, until the words seemed to
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: be part of the room. she felt something she could
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: only compare to a key turning in the right lock. Mrs.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: Pennywhistle took charge of the seating. Because someone had to,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: and because it was in her nature, she moved among
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: the tables with her plum coat unbuttoned and her spectacles
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: pushed up in her hair, murmuring,' You, there, by the stove,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: and you, dear, on the bench, and mind the cat
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: and the room,' arranged itself around her like iron filings
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: around a magnet. In ten minutes every chair was filled,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: Poppy counted. Sixteen, and a few standing. She put her
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: hand on the scrot, brown teapot, which was standing by
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: the stove, and found that it was warm, and that
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: the lid was rattling softly, as if it could not wait,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: The first to reach the counter was a small, stooped
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: old man in a threadbare tweed jacket with a white
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: mustache stained yellow at the edges and a pair of
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: round spectacles that he kept pushing up his nose. He
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: held his hat in both hands and his hands were shaking,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: a fine constant tremor, like leaves in a light wind.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: Good evening, he said with enormous dignity. I am Alderage Pym.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: I repair clocks. I shall like a cup of tea,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: if it is not an inconvenience. And Poppy, who had
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: read his page in the ledger, said, Of course, Mr. Pym.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: The blue cup with the gold rim, if you would
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: like it. Two lumps. The old man stared at her.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: His eyes, behind the spectacles, were pale and watery and
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: very bright. Two lumps, he repeated. Never three. How did
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: you know that? I asked for three for forty years
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: and she never once gave me three. Poppy smiled and
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: said that it must run in the family and went
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: to fetch the cup. He lifted it from the second
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: shelf and the gold rim caught the lamplight like a
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: thin wire of fire. Her hand went straight to a
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: squat tin with a silver lid, the slow blend. She
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: made it as she had made the first, only slower.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: The leaves were long and dark, with a smoky sweetness,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: like a field after rain and a whiff of old books.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: When the water went in, the leaves swelled and unfurled
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: one by one, as though they had all the time
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: in the world. and the scent that rose up was
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: deep and brown and gentle, the smell of an armchair
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: by a fire. Then she poured and added two lumps
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: and carried the cup and saucer to Mr. Pym's table herself,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: holding them level. He took the cup in both hands.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: They shook so hard that the tea trembled against the rim,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: and a drop ran over and splashed on the saucer.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: He looked down at it, and his face did something
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: small and private, a closing and a bracing, as if
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: he had grown used to disappointment. I am sorry, he murmured.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: It is a nuisance. I used to have the steadiest
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: hands in the county. I could set a hairspring with
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: a pair of tweezers and a gale. And then my
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: wife passed. and the cold came on, and something went
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: out of me. I cannot hold a watch anymore without
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: it rattling like a bird in a cage. Poppy said nothing.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: She only stood beside the table with her hands folded
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: and waited as Gran would have. Mr. Pym lifted the cup, carefully,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: and drank, his eyes closed behind the spectacles. A long
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: breath went out of him. The slow breath of a
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: man who has been holding something up for a very
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: long time and has just been told he may put
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: it down. For a few moments he sat quite still,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: and Poppy, watching his hands on the cup, saw the
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: tremor ease. It did not stop suddenly. It simply grew
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: smaller and smaller until the cup was resting in his
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: palms like an egg in a nest and the tea
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: lay in it flat and bright as a mirror. Mr.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: Pym opened his eyes. He looked at the surface of
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: the tea. Then he set the cup down on the
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: saucer with a tiny, precise click, the sound of a
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: thing placed exactly where it was meant to go. He
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: held out his right hand above the table and spread
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: his fingers. They hung in the air, motionless. He made
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: a fist and opened it again. Not a flicker. Oh.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: He said, very softly, oh, my goodness. Then he reached
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a watch, a
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: small silver one on a chain, dull with age. He
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: laid it on the tablecloth and looked at Poppy and
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: she saw that his eyes were full. It was her watch,
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: he said. My Edith's. It stopped on the day she
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: died and I have not been able to mend it since.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: I have carried it every day for six years, and
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: my hands would not let me open the back. Would
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: you mind, he said, if I'd try them? Not at all,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: said Poppy. And she brought a lamp, and he took
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: a flat leather roll from his jacket and spread it out,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: and in it lay a row of tiny tools, gleaming,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: finer than needles. Around them the other customers had gone quiet.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: Even the schoolchildren watched, wide-eyed, as the old man bent
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: over the table with a glass screwed into one eye
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: and his tongue between his teeth. It took him nearly
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: ten minutes. Nobody spoke. The stove ticked and the snow
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: whispered against the windows. There was a tiny click as
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: the back came off, a pause. Then the soft snick
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: of tweezers closing on something fine, and Mr. Pym said
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: in a whisper, a hair out of place? A single hair?
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: That is all it ever was. And he pressed the
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: little crown with his thumbnail, and the watch gave a faint, clear,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: silver tick. Then another tick. And another. The sounds spread
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: through the quiet shop, delicate and exact. Tick, tick, tick,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: like the footsteps of someone coming down a long hall. Mr.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: Pym held the watch to his ear, and tears ran
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: freely down his cheeks into the white mustache, and he
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: made no attempt to wipe them away. He was smiling.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: It was the smile of a very old and very
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: tired child, who has been given back a lost toy. Edith,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: he said, to the watch, in a voice that cracked
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: and held, Edith, my dear, there you are. Then he
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: laid the ticking watch gently on the tablecloth between the
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: sugar bowl and the cup, and let it keep time
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: for the whole room. It was at about this point
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: that the Mrs. Fairweather arrived. Separately, by two different doors,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: I should explain, for those who do not know small towns,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: that this is a thing that can be done. Marigold Fairweather,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: tall and silver-haired and straight as a candle, came in
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: at the front in a gray wool coat buttoned to
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: the chin with a face composed into polite blankness. Tansy Fairweather.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: small and round and pink-cheeked, in a bright red scarf,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: came in at the back, through the kitchen, where she
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: had been let in by Crumpet, as she told Poppy later,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: with a little air of embarrassment, they did not look
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: at each other. They went to opposite ends of the
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: room and sat. There was not a single person in
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: the shop who did not know about the quarrel and
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: nobody who could say what it had been about. It
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: had begun fourteen winters ago over a trifle, some said
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: a borrowed ladder, others said a remark about a hat
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: at a christening. What mattered was that it had grown
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: and hardened, as unspoken things will do, until neither sister
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: knew how to get around it. For fourteen years they
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: had come to Hetty's shop on Thursday afternoons, at tables
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: on opposite sides, and for fourteen years, Hattie had kept
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: the kettle warm and her patience warmer. Poppy looked from
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: one sister to the other, and then at the squat
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: brown teapot, which was giving a slow and patient rattle.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: She did not choose a tin, she did not need to.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: A small tin with a faded gold lid had risen,
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: as it were under her hand, sundae leaves. She took
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: down two cups from the dresser, one with a pattern
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: of blue forget-me-nots and one with a pattern of pink
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: roses that had been sitting side by side on the
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: same shelf for as long as she could remember, and
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: she poured the same pot into both. The tea came
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: out the color of honey, and as the steam rose
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: the whole shop was filled with the smell of warm
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: bread and wood smoke and, faintly, of lavender. She carried
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: the forget-me-not cup to Marigold and the rose cup to Tansy.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: Neither sister looked up. Each took her cup and sat
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: holding it stiff and polite with the air of a
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: person waiting for a train. Poppy went back to the
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: counter and busied herself with the sugar bowl. From the
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: corner of her eye she saw Marigold lift the cup
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: and take a small cool sip. At the far end
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: of the room, Tansy took a small sip too. At
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: almost exactly the same moment, they put their cups down
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: on their saucers together. With the same small clink and
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: the sound haunting the air between them like a bell.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: What happened next took a very long time and also
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: no time at all. It was this. The room grew quiet.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: And in the quiet, each sister looked up. Not at
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: the other. Not yet. Each looked at her own tea,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: and then at the middle distance, and then her face
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: began to change. Marigold's straight mouth trembled, Tansy's pink cheeks
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: went pinker and then pale. They were remembering something, you
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: could see it, something far down, and long ago, a
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: time before the quarrel when they had been girls in
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: matching pinafores, sharing a bed and a bag of toffees,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: and both of them at the same instant turned their
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: heads and looked down the length of the shop at
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: each other. I am sorry, said Marigold. It came out
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: of her like a cork out of a bottle, high
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: and quavering and utterly undignified. I am so sorry, Tansy.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: It was the hat, And it was not even a
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: good hat, and I have been wanting to tell you
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: for fourteen years. Tansy had already half risen from her chair.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Her round face was crumpling. No, no, she said it
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: was the latter. It was all my fault. I should
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: never have said it. And then neither of them. was
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: saying anything that made any sense at all, because they
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: were both crying and laughing and crossing the floor with
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: their arms out and meeting in the middle, between the tables,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: in a tangle of gray wool and red scarf. The
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: whole shop held its breath and then let it go
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: in a long, warm sigh, and somebody at the back began,
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: quite softly, to clap. Poppy found that her own eyes
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: were swimming. Mrs. Pennywhistle blew her nose with a sound
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: like a trumpet. The two old women stood in the
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: middle of the floor with their arms round each other,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: rocking gently, and then Tansy said, in a muffled voice,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: from somewhere near Marigold's shoulder, I have saved you a
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: seat for fourteen years. And Marigold said, I know, and
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: drew back and wiped her eyes and looked at the
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: table in the window. the one with the forget-me-not cloth.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: Come and sit with me, she said. They went to
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: it together, hand in hand, and Poppy brought the pot.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: Next came Linus Hobb, age seven, who had been standing
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: by the door in a coat too big for him
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: since he arrived, chewing his lip and watching everything with
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: enormous eyes. He was Mr. Fenn's nephew, as it happened,
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: very small, with sticking-out ears and a wool hat with
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: a bauble. When Poppy knelt in front of him and
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: asked if he would like a cup of something warm,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: he considered the question with great gravity.' Is it tea?'
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: he asked.' I do not really like tea.' Poppy leaned
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: in and said very quietly,' It is not exactly tea.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: It is Coco wearing a tea costume.' His mouth twitched.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: He allowed himself to be led to a stool by
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: the stove. Poppy found the tin she wanted without looking.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: It was blue, with a picture of a willow tree,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: and a label that said willow and honey. Inside, there
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: was a sweet dark powder as well as the leaves.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: And when the hot water and the warm milk went in,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: the smell that rose was so rich and golden that
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: three people at nearby tables looked up and sighed. She
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: stirred in a small spoonful of honey and put the
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: cup into Linus's hands. It was a very small cup, white,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: with a painted yellow duck on the side. He studied
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: the duck for a while, then he drank. Poppy saw
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: the exact moment when the cocoa reached him, his eyes
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: went round and then slowly closed, and he gave a long,
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: tiny sigh through his nose. A flush came into his cheeks,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: and he put one hand against the front of his
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: coat over his chest and held it there with a
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: look of dawning wonder. It is warm in here, he
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: said in a very small voice, in my middle like
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: a little lamp. He opened his eyes and looked up
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: at her. Like somebody lit a little lamp inside me
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: and it is just staying lit. Poppy did not trust
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: her voice, so she only nodded yes, she managed. That
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: is exactly what it is. I will tell uncle, Fent said, Linus,
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: and then, with an air of confiding a great secret eye,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: Do not like walking home in the dark. There are
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: shadows at the end of the lane. that looked like hands.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: But I believe, he said, I have got a lamp now,
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: so I do not mind, and he patted his coat, twice, solemnly,
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: over the place where it was warm and finished his cocoa,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: down to the last sweet dark drop. Then he handed
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: the empty cup back to Poppy with both hands, as
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: though it were a precious thing, and said, Thank you, miss.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: It was the best cup I ever had. And he
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: went to sit by his uncle, swinging his legs, glowing
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: like a lantern. Mr. Fen the Baker was a large, soft,
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: flowery man with a drooping mustache and worried eyebrows, and
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: he had been sitting at a corner table the whole
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: evening saying very little. When Poppy came to his table,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: he said, with a sort of apology, everything tastes of
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: nothing these days, even my own bread. Poppy said, very gently,
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: then let us find out, and she brought him morning
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: gold in a thick green cup and a single shortbread
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: biscuit on a saucer and left him alone with them.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: He drank the tea slowly, frowning. He set it down.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: He picked up the biscuit and bit into it and chewed.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: His eyebrows, which had been worried for a very long time,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: went slowly up and up until they were nearly in
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: his hair. He swallowed. He looked at the biscuit as
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: if it had said his name. Butter, he said. It
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: is butter and salt. Just a pinch, and the slow
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: brown edge where it caught in the oven— And something else,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: he said, in a whisper, a kind of sunshine. He
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: ate the rest of the biscuit and finished the tea
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: and sat back with his hands resting on his round
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: stomach and wiped his eyes with a flowery knuckle. I
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: am going home, he said. I am going to bake. Tonight,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: all around the shop, Poppy realized. Small things were being mended.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: A watch was ticking. Two sisters were holding hands, a
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: boy was carrying a lamp in his chest, and a
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: baker had remembered the taste of butter. It was all
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: so small, as small as buttons, and none of it,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: she understood now, was small at all. Because a life
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: is not held together by grand things. It is held
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: by buttons and hems and watch springs, by the things
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: nobody notices until they stop. And somewhere in the stove-warm
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: hush of the room, Poppy felt her grandmother smile. By
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: the time the clock above the dresser struck seven, the
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: snow had made up its mind. It no longer drifted
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: or dithered. It fell in thick, soft, steady curtains, big
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: as feathers. And it did not stop. And it did
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: not hurry. It laid itself along the windowsills and neat
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: white ridges. It piled on the sign above the door
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: until the teapot wore a tall white hat. it filled
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: the footprints in the lane almost as soon as they
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: were made, so that anyone looking out would have said
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: that nobody had walked there at all, and against the
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: clear new glass of the windows, it pressed itself in small,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: silent flakes, one after another, and melted, and slid down
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: in shining tracks. Inside, the shop had settled into that deep,
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: Easy warmth that arrives in a room when everyone in
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: it has stopped pretending. The stove glowed orange through its
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: little mica window. The lamps made pools of gold on
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: the tables. People sat with their elbows on the cloths
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: and their shoes off under the chairs. Somebody had found
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: the old cracked gramophone in the corner and no one
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: had bothered to play it. but it stood there looking
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: pleased to be included. The windows were steamed over entirely now,
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: and the lamplight scattered through the mist into a glow
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: so soft that nobody could tell where the room ended
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: and the weather began. Mrs. Pennywhistle stood at the window
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: with a cup in her hand, scraping a little clear
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: patch in the mist with her thumbnail. She looked out
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: at the lane for a long moment and then turned
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: and announced to the room that In the tone of
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: a woman who has consulted the evidence and reached a verdict,
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: nobody is going home for a while. The drift against
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: the post office door is to my knees. The bridge
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: will be shut and the lane will be worse. We
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: are Snowden, my dears, the lot of us, and I
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: cannot say I am sorry. There was a murmur around
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: the shop. It was not dismay. It was the sound
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: of a great many people secretly delighted, and so the
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: evening changed its shape, as evenings do when the weather
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: takes away the option of leaving. Nobody had to hurry.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: Nobody had to be anywhere else. The farmer in the
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: muddy boots, whose name was Dunstan Rook, stretched his legs
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: out under the table with a creak and a grunt
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: and rested his hands on his waistcoat. The schoolchildren made
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: a nest of coats beside the stove and lay in
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: it like puppies. Mr. Fenn untied his apron at last
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: and hung it on a hook and said that the
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: bread could wait one night and that for once in
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: its life, the bread would have to learn patience. Poppy
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: kept moving, filling cups, and found that she was no
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: longer afraid of any of it. Stories began to go round,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: as they do. The tailor, a slight man with a
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: measuring tape still draped round his neck, told of the
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: winter the river froze so hard that the whole town
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: skated to church, and the vicar fell over three times
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: and blessed the ice each time. A woman by the
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: window described the first snow she had ever seen, as
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: a girl who had come from a warm country, and
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: how she had believed the sky was coming apart in
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: little pieces. Everyone laughed in the right places. Everyone gasped
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: in the others. It was the oldest entertainment in the world,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: and it needed nothing but a warm room and a
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: little time. I should like to tell you about the teacups,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: because there is something about them I have not yet said.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: All through the evening, whenever Poppy set a cup down
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: in front of someone, she noticed that it was the
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: right one. Not the grandest, and not the nearest. The
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: right one. A thick white mug for the farmer, wide
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: as a bowl, with a chip in the handle where
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: a thumb could rest, a thin pink one for the schoolteacher.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: with a tiny cracked painted bird. A cup the shape
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: of a tulip for a woman with trembling hands and
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: one with two handles for a man who liked to
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: hold his tea with his whole heart. She never chose them.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: Her hands simply went to the shelf. It was the
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: farmer who found his song. He was a quiet man,
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: a large slow one, who took up a great deal
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: of room and apologized for it. When Poppy set a
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: mud of rose and rainy afternoon in front of him,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: he nodded his thanks and drank it down in three swallows.
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: Then he sat very still, looking at nothing, with his
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: hands round the empty mug. After a time he began
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: to hum. At first it was only a low rumble,
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: like a barn door settling, and nobody noticed. Then it
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: took shape, a slow, rising tune, plain and sweet as
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: a field of barley. The schoolchildren looked up. The sisters,
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: who were sharing a cup, fell quiet. I have not
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: heard that in thirty years, said Dunstanrook. His voice came
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: out rough and surprised. My mother sang it when I
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: was small, over the washing. I had it entirely gone.
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: And I could not tell you why I wanted it,
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: only that there was a hole where it used to be.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: He frowned, with the effort of a man pulling a
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: rope up out of a well, and then he sang.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: He sang, quietly, in a deep creaking baritone that cracked
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: in places. And the words were old and homely about
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: a lamb and a lantern and a long road home.
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: And by the second verse, Mrs., Penny Whistle had begun
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: to hum along, and by the third half the shop
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: was singing with him. They sang it twice and then
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: a third time, quieter, and by the end the schoolchildren
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: were fast asleep in their nest of coats with their
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: mouths slightly open. The psalm went out into the room
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: like a warm hand being laid on every shoulder. Poppy
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: stood with the part in her arms at the end
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: of the counter, and for a moment, she could not move.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: She had been given this, she realized. This was what
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: the tea was for, not the dramatic mending of great wounds,
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: but the finding again of things that had slipped down
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: behind the furniture of a person's life. A tune, a
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: tremor stilled, a word said at last. Quietly, she slipped
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: away into the kitchen. She did not want anyone to
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: see her face. She stood at the sink with her
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: back to the door, her hands flat on the cold
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: iron edge, and let out a long shaky breath. The
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: kitchen was warm and dim and smelled of tea and
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: wood smoke. Behind her the singing rose and fell, faint
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: through the door. Crumpet padded across the floor and sat
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: by her feet. and she bent and put a hand
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: on his warm back and felt his purr rumble against
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: her palm. I do not know how to be her,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: she whispered. I do not know how she did it,
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: all of it, every day, for forty years. The cat, naturally,
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: had no comment, but the pump handle dripped, once, into
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: the sink, a single bright note, and Poppy lifted her head,
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: and looked out through the clear circle she had wiped
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: in the window earlier. Beyond it, the garden was blue
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: and silver. The snow lay deep over the paving, and
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: the stone bench, over the birdbath, and the empty herb beds.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: The little greenhouse with the painted robin wore a neat
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: white cap. And in the quiet, in the light that
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: came from the shop behind her, Poppy saw her own
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: reflection in the glass. laid over the garden like a ghost.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: A young woman in her grandmother's cardigan, with her hair
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: coming loose and wet eyes and a smudge of soot,
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: she looked at the reflection for a long while. It
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: did not look much like her grandmother. It looked like
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: a girl who had been away and who was still
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: unsure whether she was allowed to be home. and yet
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: it was holding itself differently from the girl in the
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: window at the start of the afternoon. The shoulders were
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: a little straighter. The chin was lifted just slightly. There
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: was a small steady light in the gray eyes that
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: had not been there before. Poppy touched the glass with
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: one finger and the girl in the window touched hers back.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: It is only one evening, said Poppy. That is all
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: it is meant to be. That is what she asked for.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: Only one. She remembered, then, a snowy evening very like
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: this one, when she was perhaps ten years old and
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: had been put to bed in the little room above
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: the shop. She had crept to the top of the
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: stairs in her nightdress and peeped down through the banisters
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: at the lit room full of people and her grandmother,
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: moving between the tables with the brown pot had glanced
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: up and caught her eye. Gran had not sent her
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: back to bed. She had only winked, one slow wink,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: and put a finger to her lips and got on pouring.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: It was, Poppy realized, the most welcome she had ever felt.
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: It was the shape of the whole shop. Behind her
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: the door to the shop opened a crack. The sound
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: of the room came through, the warm murmur and the
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: clink of china. A small figure slipped into the kitchen
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: and shut the door softly behind her. It was Mrs. Pennywhistle,
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: with her spectacles in her hand and her hat slightly crooked.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: She stood for a moment, looking at Poppy's back. Then
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: she cried. the flagstones, taking her time, and set her
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: empty cup down on the draining board and said without
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: any preamble at all, your grandmother used to come in
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: here and stand just like that, at the sink, with
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: her hands on the iron, usually around seven. Poppy turned. Mrs.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: Pennywhistle's face in the lamplight was very different from the brisk,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: forbidding face she wore at the post office. It was
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: older and softer and very tired. She said, Hedy told
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: me once that she did it because the front room
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: is a great deal of noise and a person has
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: to put herself back together every so often, like a clock.
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: She said that nobody would ever hold it against her.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: She said that if you could not find a quiet
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: corner in a house full of people, you were not
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: doing it properly. Poppy gave a small, damp laugh. Mrs.
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: Pennywhistle smiled, a quick, rare, crooked smile, and went on.'
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: I ought to tell you,' she said, and then stopped
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: and started again. I am not a woman who says things.
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: Everyone in this town knows that and has the sense
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: to leave me alone. But I took your grandmother her
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: letters every morning for 31 years. And in the last few,
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: when she was very old, she used to keep me
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: in this kitchen with a cup of tea and she
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: would say, Ada, you are lonely, you know. And I
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: would say nonsense. And she would pour another cup For
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: two years now, I have walked past this shop with
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: my letters, and I have not had a single cup
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: of tea that was worth drinking. Poppy had no idea
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: what to say, so she did the only thing she
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: could do which was to pour. There was still a
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: little hot water in the kettle on the stove, and
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: Poppy took down the brown pot with the yellow flower
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: and spooned in a few leaves from the tin that
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: her hand found, a plain dark tin with a brick
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: red lead, and poured. She let it steep. Neither of
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: them spoke. The kitchen smelled of malt and clove, strong
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: and dark. At last she poured a cup into a
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: stout little mug, the color of a brick, and held
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: it out. Mrs. Pennywhistle took it and looked at it
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: and her lip wobbled very slightly and she took a sip.
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: I will not cry, said Mrs. Pennywhistle. quite fiercely. Of
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: course not, said Poppy. They stood side by side, looking
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: out of the window at the snow, and Mrs. Pennywhistle
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: drank her tea in small, hard sips. After a little,
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: her shoulders came down by about an inch. Her breath
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: went out of her in a long, quiet stream, and
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: she said, in a voice so small that Poppy almost
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: missed it, I believe I have been waiting for someone
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: to ask me to stay. Not to leave a letter
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: and go. To sit. Poppy put her hand gently on
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: the older woman's sleeve. I am asking, she said. Please stay,
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: as long as you like. Ken, when they came back
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: into the shop, A hush had fallen over the room.
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: It was not an empty hush. It was the full, mellow,
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: almost drowsy silence of a gathering that has talked itself
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: pleasantly out. Dunstanroke was dozing upright in his chair, with
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: his chin on his chest. The sisters had put their
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: silver heads together over a single cup, whispering and giggling
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: like girls. Mr. Pym's watch ticked on the table and
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: and he had fallen asleep beside it, with his spectacles
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: pushed up on his forehead and a very small smile.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: And on the hearth rug, between the stove and the
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: sleeping children, Crumpet lay on his back with all four
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: paws in the air, entirely at peace. It is a
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: rare and tender thing to watch a room of people sleep,
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: and Poppy felt its tenderness keenly. They looked so young,
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: all of them. The lines on Mr. Pym's brow had smoothed.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: The sisters had gone quiet at last. Their hands laid
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: one over the other on the table like the hands
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: of girls. Even Mrs. Pennywhistle who had settled in the
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: best armchair with her shoes off and a quilt over
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: her knees, wore a look of such unguarded peace that
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: Poppy turned away, feeling that she had seen something private.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: Poppy made a quiet round of the room, tucking blankets
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: over the sleepers, straightening a cup, laying more wood in
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: the stove. She found a patchwork quilt in the cupboard
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: under the stairs and spread it over the children. She
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: turned down the lamps by half, The glow of the
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: room went from gold to amber, and the shadows moved
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: slowly on the beams. Outside, the snow had a sound now,
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: if you listened for it. It was not a rustle
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: or a patter, it was more like the sound of
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: a vast, soft breath being drawn and held. The whole
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: world was sleeping under it, and the shop was a
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: single lit window at the heart of a very large dark.
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: Linus Hobb, who had been in the nest of totes,
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: Woke up as she passed and opened one eye. He
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: did not say anything. He only held out his small hand,
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: palm up, and Poppy took it, and he pressed something
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: into her palm. It was a button, a small red one,
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: bright as a berry. She looked at it, and then
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: at him. It came off my mitten, he whispered, last winter.
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: It is for the jar, and then his eyes shut again,
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: and he was asleep. Between one breath and the next,
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: Poppy closed her hand round the button. She carried it
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: carefully to the counter, and slid it into the jar
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: of left-behind things, where it clicked down among the others,
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: and winked once in the light. She stood at the
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: counter a long while, and she let the quiet wash
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: over her. Then, very softly, there came a sound at
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: the door. Not the bell, not a knock, exactly, a
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: scratch and a soft thump as of something heavy being
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: set down on the step. Poppy lifted her head. The
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: room slept on. Crumpet lifted his. One ear turned toward
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: the front of the shop and then lowered it, again,
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: without alarm and Poppy walked down the length of the room.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: Between the sleepers, her stock-end feet silent on the boards.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: She stood before the glass of the door, where the
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: snow was beating at the pane and gentle white wings,
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: and on the other side of it, small and dark
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: against the lamplit drifts, a shape was standing. It was
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: a woman, and she was very young. She wore a
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: thin brown coat much too light for the weather, and
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: a knitted hat pulled down over her ears, and she
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: was carrying a large battered suitcase, tied shut with a belt.
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: Snow had gathered thick on her shoulders and her hat,
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: her face was pale and pinched with cold, and her
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: lashes were stuck with ice. She was looking at the
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: slate propped against the glass, at the chalk letters, the
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: kettle is on, and then, slowly, through the clear pane,
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: at Poppy, and on her face was an expression that
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: Poppy knew from the inside. It was the look of
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: someone who has come a very long way to a
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: place where she knows nobody at all. Poppy opened the
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: door and the cold came in with the snow and
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: the young woman on the steps swayed a little, as
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: though the warmth of the room had hit her like
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: a wave. Oh, she said, I am sorry. I did
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: not mean to wake anyone. I saw the light. I
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: only wanted to ask if you knew of anywhere, but
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: it is late and I should not have knocked. She
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: had a low, soft, rather husky voice. and she spoke
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: very fast as people do when they are afraid of
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: being sent away. The suitcase tilted against her knee. Her
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: teeth were chattering. Poppy did not say a single word.
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: She reached out and took the suitcase and stepped back
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: and held the door wide. Come in, she said. Please,
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: come in out of the snow. The young woman's at her,
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: and Poppy saw how very young she was, no more
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: than nineteen, with dark curly hair crushed flat under her
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: hat and brown eyes too large for her thin face.
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: She stepped over the threshold as if she were stepping
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: onto ice. the door shut behind her, and the bell
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: gave its small, bright jingle, and a hush fell, and
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: then a gentle drowsy stirring in the room, as the
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: sleepers half-woke and settled again. Nobody asked her anything. Mrs.
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: Pennywhistle from her armchair merely lifted the corner of the
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: quilt and patted the cushion beside her. Her name, as
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: it turned out, was Nell Ashby, and she had come
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: on the evening train from a city three valleys away
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: with a letter in her pocket from an aunt who
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: had written that there was a room to be had
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: on Orchard Row. She had found the address and knocked,
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: and there had been no answer. The aunt, she learned later,
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: was snowed in across the river, pacing her sister's kitchen
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: in an agony of worry. But Nell did not know that.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: She knew only that she was in a strange town,
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: at night, in a blizzard with his suitcase and eleven coins. Sit,
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: said Poppy. She settled Nell at the table by the
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: stove and hung her wet coat to steam on the rail.
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: Nell sat very upright with her hands clenched in her lap,
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: looking at all these strangers with their cups and their
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: quilts and their sleeping children. I do not want to
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: be a trouble, she said. Poppy said, there is nowhere
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: to go tonight. You are here. Now what sort of
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: tea would you like? Nell blinked. I do not know,
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: she said. I have never been asked. We only ever
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: had one sort. And the answer, which lay behind her
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: words like a stone underwater, was so plain and so
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: sad that Poppy turned away to the stove to hide
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: her face. She laid her hand on the squat brown teapot.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: It was warm and humming faintly, very faintly, like a
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: held note. She did not look at the shelf. She
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: simply stood with her eyes closed and her palm against
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: the glaze, and the thing she felt was not a
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: warmth but a kind of leaning as of a tall
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: friend bending to whisper. She opened her eyes. Her hand
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: had already gone to a small round tin dented with
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: a worn blue lid. A little better. It was the
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: plainest tin on the shelf, and the oldest, and the
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: label was almost worn away. Poppy eased off the lid.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: The smell that came out was very quiet. Warm toast,
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: and a trace of apple, and the soft green smell
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: of a meadow in late afternoon. It was not a
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: grand smell. It was not trying to oppress. It smelled
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: the way a hand feels when it is laid on
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: a forehead. She spooned the leaves into the pot and
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: poured the water and set the lid on, crooked as ever,
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: and she waited, with the whole room asleep around her,
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: while the leaves unrolled and the steam climbed and the
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: snow whispered against the glass. She took the cup to
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: Nell on a saucer. It was a small, round, honest
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: cup the color of cream with a pattern of faded cornflowers,
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: and when Nell took it, her cold fingers wound round
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: it and held on. She stared into the pale golden tea,
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: a bubble rose and burst. Nell lifted the cup with
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: both hands and drank. At first nothing happened. Then her
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: eyes went wide, as if she had been spoken to.
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: A long shiver went through her, from her scalp to
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: her toes, a shudder of release, like a dog shaking
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: off water. She put the cup down on the saucer,
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: very slowly, and all the stiffness drained out of her,
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: the brace and the bracing. And she sank into the chair,
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: as if someone had unhooked her strings. Oh, she said,
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: the smallest exhalation. I is so afraid. I have been
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: afraid the entire way here. Afraid I would arrive, and
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: it would be wrong. Afraid I would be wrong, she laughed,
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: a shaky, tearful laugh. I do not know why I
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: am telling you this. And Poppy kneeling beside the chair,
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: said gently, because it is a night for telling. It
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: has been such a long road, said Nell, and I
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: was so cold and now I am not. By then
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: the sleepers in the room had begun to wake, one
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: at a time, as people do when something good is
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: happening nearby. Mr. Pym lifted his head and adjusted his spectacles,
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: and in the armchair by the stove, Mrs. Pennywhistle leaned
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: forward with her quilt around her shoulders. And a look
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: of resolve, the sort of look she gave a parcel
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: that was addressed incorrectly. Nell Ashby, she said. Orchard Row.
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: Is it number nine? The house with the green gate
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: and the lopsided chimney? Nell nodded, bewildered. That is my aunt,
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: said Mrs. Pennywhistle in triumph. That is Dora Ashby. Why?
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: She has been telling the whole post office about her
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: niece for a month. And she is stuck over the
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: river tonight. Poor soul. Well, there is a perfectly good
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: spare room in mine with a feather bed and a
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: stove and you will have it and no arguments. She
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: said it all in a single breath and sat back
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: and folded her arms. Nell opened her mouth and shut
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: it again and a tear spilled over and ran down
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: her cheek. and Mrs. Pennywhistle looked intensely at the ceiling.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: I will tell you one more thing, said Mr. Fenn
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: from his corner, sitting up and rubbing his flowery face.
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: I am looking for someone who gets up early. I
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: am looking for someone who likes the dark hours and
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: the ovens, and who does not mind the flower. I
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: have been looking for two years, and nobody will do.
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: He glanced at Nell and at her hands. Can you need?
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: He asked. Nell stared. I have never baked anything in
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: my life, she said faintly. Mr. Fenbeamed. Better still, he said.
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: No bad habits. Come to the bakery tomorrow at four
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: in the morning, and we shall see what your hands remember.
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: And that, I am happy to say, was how it went.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: A room. Found. A trade. Offered. A table. Made welcome.
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: Nell sat among them with her cornflower cup, and the
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: fear that had followed her across three valleys sat down
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: quietly in a corner and fell asleep. It was close
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: to midnight when the last of the cups was washed,
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: the singing had ended, and the stories and the gentle
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: clatter of china, the lamps burned low. Behind her, the
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: shop breathed softly with the slow breaths of many sleepers.
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: Poppy took the scrot-brown teapot from the stove and carried
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: it to the counter and sat down on the stool
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: where she had read the ledger. There was one cup
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: left from the tray, a small white cup, plain and chipped,
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: with a yellow flower. She had not planned to pour
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: for herself. It had not occurred to her. All night
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: she had poured for others and had asked nothing and
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: had been glad. But now she sat in the lamplight
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: with the warm pot at her elbow, and she saw
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: that the cup on the tray was her own and
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: had always been the one her grandmother had set out
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: for her whenever she came in from school. They lit
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: up the pot, gave one soft rattle. Poppy lifted it.
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: The tea that came out was the color of a
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: late sunset, deke amber with a thread of red, and
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: the steam rose in a slow spiral and drifted towards
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: her face like a hand. She held the cup in
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: both hands, and did not drink at once. She looked
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: at the sleepers in their quilts, and the cat on
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: the rug, and the ticking silver watch on the table,
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: still keeping faith time. Then she drank. The tea tasted
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: of warm honey and rain on a roof and the
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: inside of a kitchen on a winter morning, and it
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: went down through her slowly, like a lamp being carried
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: through a dark house lighting one room after another. What
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: it meanted I cannot tell you exactly, because it was hers,
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: and it was small. It was something that had been
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: loose for a long time in the place behind her
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: ribs where she kept the words, I should have been here.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: It was a stitch that had been dropped on the
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: day of the telephone call and never taken up. And
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: as the warmth went through her, she felt it find
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: its way back. thread by careful thread, until the garment
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: of herself lay whole and smooth and ready to be worn.
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: She let out a long breath. It went on for
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: a very long time. When it was done, she felt
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: as if she had put down a bag she had
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: been carrying for years, and her arms floated up all
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: by themselves. Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling.
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: She set the cup down, and for the first time
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: she remembered to turn over the little cream card from
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: her grandmother, which she had tucked into the apron pocket
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: all evening. She drew it out. In the dim light,
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: she saw that the back of the card was not blank.
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: There was a line there, in the same brown ink,
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: written smaller and closer, the way a person writes a
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: thing they almost forgot to say. She tilted it to
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: the lamp. P.S. It read, The shop was never closed,
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: my love. It was only waiting for its next kettle.
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: Keep the key in the robin. Keep the door on
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: the latch. Keep a cup for. Yourself. Poppy laughed out loud,
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: a short, helpless laugh, and put a hand over her mouth.
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: Nobody stirred. Crumpet opened one eye. and closed it again
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: with an air of immense satisfaction, as a cat does
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: when everything has gone exactly according to his plans. She
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: held the card against her heart and cried a little,
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: the good kind of crying, the kind that washes a
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: thing clean. Then she wiped her face on the sleeve
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: of the green cardigan and sat up straight. She knew
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: now what she was going to do. She would not
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: do it all at once. There was the flat in
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: the city to tidy up and the firm to speak to,
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: but on Thursday afternoons, she decided, there would be a
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: kettle on in Bellwether's Tees, and the sign would say
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: come in, and the key would go back into the
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: Robin at night, and on the first snow of every year,
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: the doors would stay open until the last cup was drunk.
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: Poppy would see about the rest as it came. Think,
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: think I found, and then people to Hamel them and
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: prison a certain. Mean as Zalas, make any quote, think,
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: it really less any fear perhaps. They preferver revilance, 100%
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: beruzen of him. Think but over time, deeing the man
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: of their rerumand. This resort is a respected EHB complete trust.
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: But from my soul, she could look about what they
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 1: will do to know the whole road. She had only
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: to know the next kettle. Before she settled, there was
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: one thing more to do. She took the ledger down
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: from its shelf and turned to the first blank page
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: and wrote in careful letters, Nell Ashby, newly come, the
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: cornflower cup, needed only to be asked. Then she turned
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: to a fresh page. and headed it with her own
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: name and left it empty. She would fill it in later,
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: one small line at a time. She rose and went
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: about the room, one last time, and tucked the quilts
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: a little tighter. She laid a fresh log in the stove.
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: She turned the lamps down until the room was a
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: deep soft amber and the shadows lay long and tender
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: across the floor. She went to the window and robbed
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 1: a small, clear circle in the steam. The snow was slowing.
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: The big, soft flakes had thinned to a drift of
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: tiny stars. And beyond them, between rags of cloud, a
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: few real stars had come out, small and sharp, over
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: the dark ridge. The lane lay smooth and blue and unmarked.
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: and at the end of it, the post office lamp
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: burned and the bookshop sign swung and every house along
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: Kettle Lane had one warm window lit. Poppy pulled the
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: old armchair closer to the stove, the one with the
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: green cushion and the worn arms, which she had been
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: avoiding all night, and she sat down in it at last.
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: It fitted her as the cardigan had. It held her
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: like a pair of arms. Crumpet climbed up onto her lap,
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: turned round three times, kneaded the wool and lay down
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: with a sigh like a bellows and began to purr.
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: Poppy rested her hand on his warm side. She listened
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: to the stove tick and the watch tick and the long,
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: slow breathing of the room and she felt the weight
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: of the day settle through her like snow settling through
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: still air. Outside, the night went on being quiet, and
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: all called once from the pines. Somewhere a clock struck one,
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: and the sound was lost in the snow. In the shop,
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: the stove ticked and the watch ticked, and the room
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: kept its long, slow time. The last thing she heard,
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: before her eyes closed, was the old brass bell above
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: the door. No one had touched it. No one had
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: opened the door. It gave one small, clear note, all
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: by itself, a soft, bright chime, as if somebody had
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: come in out of the cold and been welcomed and
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: had sat down among the others and was home. Poppy
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: smiled in her sleep, and the snow fell, softly, softly,
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 1: over Dunnock Row, over the rooftops and the bridge and
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 1: the dark pines on the ridge, over every sleeping house,
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: over every window with a lamp in it, until the
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: whole valley lay white and hushed and silver and kind.
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 1: And that is where we shall leave them, tucked up
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: warm in the glow of the stove, with the cattle
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: on the hob and the snow at the glass, Poppy
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: asleep in her grandmother's chair, Nell in a feather bed,
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: soon with her aunt's lopsided chimney not far off, Mr.
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: Pym with his watch ticking beside him, the sisters, side
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: by side, a baker with a new apprentice, a boy
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: with a little lamp in his chest, a postwoman who
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: will ride the river hill at dawn with her arms
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: spread wide, all of them mended, a little, All of
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: them given in some small way another go. That is
• 2:25:51
  Speaker 1: what a second chance is, I believe. It is not
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: a grand thing. It is a cup poured by someone
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: who did not ask why. If you are still awake,
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: there is no hurry to do anything about it. Let
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: your shoulders sink. Let your hands lie open. Feel the
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 1: weight of the blanket or the chair. or the warm
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: hush of whatever room you are in, holding you up
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: so that you do not have to. Whatever small thing
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: in you has been loose or tired or waiting, you
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: are allowed to set it down for a while, the
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: way Poppy did. Nothing needs mending tonight that cannot wait
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: for morning. The kettle is on somewhere for you. The
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 1: door is on the latch. and a cup has been
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: set aside, with your name on it, in a hand
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: that loves you. Thank you for spending this time with me, truly,
• 2:26:54
  Speaker 1: thank you. It is a gift to have you here,
• 2:26:57
  Speaker 1: whether you have been listening with your whole heart or
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: only with half an ear while your hands were busy,
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: and either way is exactly right. If this tale brought
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: you any comfort, I would be so glad if you
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: would follow the show wherever you listen, so that the
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: next story finds you without any trouble, and if there
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: is someone in your life who could use a kind
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: slow tale, someone who works too hard or sleeps too little,
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: please share this with them. A story passed from hand
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: to hand is a cup passed across a table. If
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 1: this was your very first visit, I hope you will
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: come again. The kettle is always on here and there
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: is always a chair for you pulled up close to
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: the stove. Remember, too, that these stories are made to
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: keep you warm in the background, play them selfly, while
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: you cook or fold laundry or work or while you
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: drift off to sleep. You do not have to follow
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: every word. The tale will keep going, warm and low,
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: like a nightlight glowing in a hallway, and it will
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: be there whenever you need it. There will be another
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: one waiting for you next time, with another warm room
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: in it and another small kindness. Until then, be gentle
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: with yourself, drink something warm, say yes to a second
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 1: chance if one is offered, and rest well, friend. Goodbye
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: for now, from your storyteller at Muggle Snuggle.