Lynn Fletcher was a Shallowfield girl born and bred.
When she was born in 1958 her father Colin was a Forrester for the
Dancingdean Forestry Commission and up until she fell pregnant her mother Laura
worked at Addison’s bakery.
Baby Lynn’s arrival brought great joy tinged with a good deal of sadness
when complications almost cost Laura and Lynn their lives.
After a tense and difficult couple of days, they both survived but at a
cost, Laura was left unable to conceive again.
As an only child Lynn grew up as the apple of her parent’s eye and as a result
she was spoilt but she was not spoiled.
Lynn was a popular girl, kind and thoughtful, who made friends easily and
kept them through her gentle nature.
Shallowfield’s fortunes had always relied largely upon forestry and agriculture
for its survival.
In the post war years with rationing and a shortage of work a lot of
people moved away, to Abbottsford, Abbeyvale and beyond and it only barely
survived.
And the community around Teardrop Lake fared even worse.
Only a few of the houses
around the Lake were thriving, a lot of the houses had been rented out and
those that hadn’t were in a poor state of repair, some too such an extent they
were little more than ruins.
But by the 70s things were
beginning to change, thanks mainly to tourism and an increase in leisure time.
More importantly these people
had money in their pockets.
This trend was reflected by the fact that the derelict Shallowfield Lodge,
which had been inherited by a young couple from Lincolnshire, Rob and Sheryl Brown, was being turned into a hotel.
Its completion formerly marked the rebirth of Teardrop Lake.
When Lynn started school at St Mary’s in Abbottsford, Laura was able to
return to work at Addison’s Bakery.
And by the time Lynn left school the bakery had expanded into the shop
next door and opened a tea shop which provided Lynn with her very first job as
a school leaver aged fifteen.
Paul Cooper was a year younger than Lynn and he too had a troubled entry
into the world, however his mother did not survive it, and it was touch and go
for Paul.
When Paul was born his father Harry was a Captain in the Downshire Light Infantry, he’d already seen action in
Korea and Cyprus and was set to deploy to Aden.
Paul had an older brother
named Simon who was 8 years older than him but they were never close.
Simon was already at boarding
School when Paul was born and when it was time for him to go, Simon had already
moved on to a military college.
When he was at home Paul was
cared for by a nanny who was by definition a woman, but looked and acted more
like a sergeant major.
He was jealous of Simon,
partly because he was his father’s son, but mainly because he resented the time
he had with his mother.
Simon himself resented Paul
for killing his mother.
In 1969 Simon followed Harry into
the Downshire’s regiment and was rewarded with three tours of duty in Northern
Ireland he did not return from the third after he was shot dead while on patrol
on the streets of Londonderry in 1972.
The loss of his son almost
broke Harry but Paul felt nothing and for that he felt guilt.
And it was a guilt that almost
consumed him and had he not taken shelter in Addison’s Tea Shop one rainy day
it may well have done.
It was Lynn’s first day in
the shop and she was quite nervous, it wasn’t what she wanted to do for the
rest of her life but she working as a waitress in a Tea Shop and she wanted to
do it well.
The weather was foul and the
shop had been open for half an hour and not one customer had come in, which
wasn’t helping her nerves at all.
So when the little bell above
the shop door rang and a sad looking, sopping wet teenage boy walked in, she
sprang into action with great efficiency.
He sat down at the table by
the window, and pushed the hood of his raincoat off his head.
Lynn recognized the boy,
though she didn’t know his name, she knew he lived in one of the posh houses by
the lake.
“Good morning” she said brightly
and took out her little note book and pencil
“Hey” he responded
“I only started today, you’re
my first customer” she whispered
“So be gentle with me”
“Just a Coke” he said flatly
Lynn nodded and turned to
walk away and he added
“Please”
Which made her smile.
After the first occasion he
went to the Tea Shop the conversation didn’t become any deeper than it had the
first time but he became a regular fixture over the coming weeks.
It was the only real human
contact he had that summer despite the fact his father was home on leave, they
were only really speaking in monosyllables, when they spoke at all.
There were added tensions
because when he re-joined his regiment at the end of the summer he was to join
them on deployment in Northern Ireland.
The Tea Shop was the only
oasis in his desert of unhappiness and he looked forward to his daily visits.
It was almost the end of the
summer holidays before Paul finally worked up the courage to ask Lynn out.
And when he did he rather
spat the words out at her.
He’d been in twice already
that day and bottled out both times and then he walked up and down outside the
shop for half an hour before he went back in again.
“Hi” she said “Back again?”
“Yes” he replied
“Coke?” she asked
“No” he barked
“Ok, so what do you want?”
Lynn said cheerfully
“Pictures” he said abruptly
“Sorry?”
“Will you come to the
pictures?” He blurted
“When?”
“Saturday” he replied with a
crack in his voice
Lynn did like him, she even
looked forward to him coming in every day, he was a good looking boy and he was
very sweet, but he was younger than her and he was a Lakesider so he was of a
different social status.
So she rather surprised
herself when she said “yes”
And that was how it all
began, a first date to the Cinema in Abbottsford to see American Graffiti.
That first date led to a
second and a third, a fourth and a fifth, there would even have been a sixth
but Paul had to go back to boarding school in Roespring for the start of the
new term but by that stage the bond was well and truly made.
Lynn missed him when he went
away to school, she missed him coming in to the Teas shop each day and ordering
a Coke, she missed his smile.
She also missed holding hands
with him at the pictures, but most of all she missed his kiss.
The goodbye kiss before he
left, it was her first so she had no frame of reference, but she knew she liked
it.
So she counted down the days while
he was away at school and looked forward to October.
By the middle of the second
week Lynn was beginning to think it was a very slow count down when she arrived
at the shop with her mum at the normal time.
They went inside and changed
into their uniforms as usual and were ready to start work when Elsie Addison
walked into the staff room.
She was a lovely jovial lady
in her sixties, she was quite rotund and was always laughing.
“Good morning ladies” she
said
“Good morning Mrs Addison”
they chorused
“I think someone has an
admirer” she said enigmatically and reached a chubby hand into her overall
pocket
Laura and Lynn just looked at
each other and smiled.
When Elsie’s hand came out of
her pocket it was holding a letter
“Someone has a billet-doux”
“I wonder who that might be
for” Laura said looking at her daughter
“Well it’s addressed to L
Fletcher” she said and paused “Miss L Fletcher”
“For me?” she asked
“Yes” she replied laughing
heartily “now you had better go and read it quick before we open”
So she did, and Lynn consumed
every word and digested every romance laden syllable, it was the first love
letter she had ever received but it wasn’t the last time she would read it.
Nor was it the last letter
she received that autumn as she and Paul exchanged letters every two or three
days.
The correspondence which
helped the day’s race by until October when he would be coming home.
But October came and went,
and Paul didn’t come home because his father had instructed the Head Teacher
that he should stay at Roespring school for the half term as he was still in
Londonderry.
When Paul received the news
from the School and not his father it did nothing to improve their already
fractious relationship.
So the letters continued
between them until the Christmas holidays and Paul had pledged that he would be
home for the holidays in spite of his father rather than because of him.
As it turned out Colonel
Cooper and the Downshire’s returned to the UK in the middle of December and
Paul returned home from school a week later.
Paul’s first port of call, after
dumping his bags in the hall at the family home was Addison’s.
He got a cab from the station
and he asked the driver to wait while he dropped his bags off and then drop him
back in Shallowfield.
It was already dark when he
exited the cab.
When he approached the shop,
he looked through the window and sighed when he saw Lynn.
She hadn’t seen him as she
was serving a customer and he stared, mesmerised by her loveliness as he drank
in the picture.
It was the thought of seeing
her looking like that, which had got him through the last term.
He pushed open the door and
the little bell rang which caused her to throw a glance at the door.
There was a moment of
hesitation and then the comprehension of what she was seeing spread across her
face and she smiled.
“I’ll be with you in a moment
sir” she said and went behind the counter
Paul sat down at his normal
table where he could keep Lynn in full view as she finished serving a table of
middle-aged women.
Lynn turned around and walked
to Paul’s table, but kept her eyes averted in case she gave away just how much
she had missed him.
She had not wanted to miss
him. Lynn had not even intended going out with him, he was too young for a
start and he was posh, but then she hadn’t intended to go out with anyone, she
didn’t think she was ready at 15 to have a boyfriend.
But she did go out with him
and she really did miss him.
His love letters to her were
wonderful, she would keep them forever, but he was there in the Tea Shop in the
flesh.
Lynn kept her eyes down until
the very last second, determined to maintain her composure.
But as soon as her eyes met
his she turned to jelly.
“Hello” she said soppily
“Hi” he said grinning like a
half wit
“What can I get you” she
asked desperately trying to keep her cool.
“A kiss” he whispered
“That’s not on our menu” she
said and giggled
“I’ll get you a Coke sir, for
now” then she blushed at her forwardness.
Paul waited outside for her
until closing time and walked her home, the long way round.
“Can I see you tonight?” Paul
asked
“I can’t tonight” she replied
“I have choir practice”
“Oh” he said
“But its half day closing
tomorrow” Lynn said “we could do something then”
“That would be great” he said
“I was going to go Christmas
shopping in Abbottsford” she said “we could go to the pictures after that if you
like”
“I don’t care what we do as
long as I’m with you” he replied and then he got his kiss.
No comments:
Post a Comment