Leaflets

In the end it was later than it was supposed to be, and the summer solstice had slipped past – in itself a grey, gloomy day, with dull drizzle, and below average temperatures, as if it knew, and acquiesced to the anticlimax, and mirrored the melancholy. The days had already started to draw in, and the dawn to come later, and autumn to tinge the air before the last of the restrictions were lifted.

But now they had been lifted, and now lockdown was finally over, and the Prime Minister repeated words like irreversible and used words like resurgence and green shoots. He never actually did say sunny uplands, but an urban myth developed that he had.

Some things were irreversible, though, and some places would never be resurgent and would never see those green shoots. People were supposed to pretend otherwise, the same way they had pretended that virtual could ever replace real, and that they didn’t really mind being told they couldn’t hug their friends or visit their neighbours.

And I am part of the whole hypocrisy, thought Dinah. I agreed to deliver all those bright and shiny leaflets from East Coast Awakes and I know full well that it is not awakening, oh, fair enough, there may be some much-hyped start-ups, and most of those will be closed within a few months, but this town was called “left behind” even before, and it is left behind even further and even more irreversibly now.

Those politicians ought to come to these little seaside towns that have had all the life sucked out of them by lockdowns, she thought.

She had a stack of leaflets, and hardly anywhere was open to deliver them to. She wondered if she should stick them through doors of boarded up shops, knowing that there would be piles of damp mail already, behind those bland, blind doors.

That was the Corner Café. No, that had been the Corner Café. That had been the place where they offered a pensioners’ special on Market Day, but didn’t ask people for proof of age before serving it. There had once been matching gingham tablecloths and curtains there, and matching floral mugs and plates, and the owner, Margie, had remembered just how everyone took their tea and coffee.

That had been the Threads and Beds shop, where they sold craft equipment and bed linen, and where they had been just as glad to help a school child or an old lady who wanted one ball of wool for their school project or their grandchild’s bootees as they had been to kit out new bedrooms for a guest house.

The Hospice Shop was still there, and was offering three books for a pound, and had reduced all its tops and skirts and trousers to £3. Finally I have someone I can give a leaflet to, thought Dinah. She knew the manager, Harriet, and they hugged each other, because they were deeply fond of each other, and because they could, without someone tut-tutting their disapproval, though she supposed that some would, anyway. Harriet was always polite, but there was a sarcastic edge to her voice, not aimed at Dinah, when she said, “Another leaflet, I see. I could paper the wall with them. But none of them will help us pay the back rent, and none of them will pay the plumber to fix the loo that’s leaking.”

“I suppose – there are some funds available,” said Dinah.

“Well, there are supposed to be. But you’ll have to jump through hoops a performing seal would look askance at, and when you get through one hoop there’s another, and as for the forms, once you answer the questions on one page, you find there are twenty more on the next one more or less pointing out that you needn’t bother.”

Dinah wasn’t going to say, for all the Powers that Be at East Coast Awakes would no doubt have said she should, that she was sure it wasn’t that bad. She was inclined to think it most definitely was that bad. She bought some books and asked Harriet to keep them under the counter for her until she got back. “I shouldn’t be long,” she said.

The ABC taxi office was closed. People just hadn’t needed taxis to go anywhere anymore. One of the little town’s cab firms had survived just, but ABC had not managed to keep going. Oh, technically it was “awaiting decisions” but everyone knew what those decisions would be. Dinah still had one of their little cards in her purse, with bright pictures of children’s alphabet building blocks and “All Runs, Local and Long Distance – we are At Your Service” in a bold font.

The taxi office had a glass door, and she could see what she knew was behind the others that pile of tell tale post. She was surprised to see that the large pot plant the drivers called the Triffid and the wireless operator Sharon cherished with intense tenderness was still there, and had apparently been watered – it looked as if Sharon had been in the office to tend her botanical baby. But Dinah wasn’t deluded. The green shoots on the Triffid were the only ones.

Without really knowing why, she did put one of her leaflets through that door. She supposed that Sharon would come in to pick up the post as well as to water the Triffid. And she probably wouldn’t thank her for adding to it. It was odd how sometimes more post seemed to amass in empty properties than occupied ones.

A couple of shops were still open – ones like the pharmacy and the little convenience store hade been allowed to stay open during lockdown. But even they, supposed Dinah, weren’t immune. Once a high street started to atrophy and to be boarded up, it spread. Fewer people came, and businesses that everyone had thought necessary, many of them that had been in the same family for decades and generations fell by the wayside. Dinah could still see the contours on the floor of the stickers telling people where to stand. She wondered if they had made any effort to remove them or where just letting them fade away, like the High Street itself.

The pharmacy assistant and the owner of the convenience store thanked her politely for the leaflets, but she suspected that they would make a rapid transit to the recycling bin, and didn’t blame them. Did they look reproachful that she had made no purchase, or was it just resignation? It was hard to tell. She supposed that the convenience store would survive because it was also the Post Office, but you couldn’t even be sure about that.

Dinah made her way to the little alcove on the High Street that was officially called Victoria Square, but had obtained an unofficial nickname of Pun Place. It was easy to see why. Side by side there was a florist called Fleurtations and a hairdressing Salon called Hairs and Graces. With a stab of gallows humour, she thought that perhaps it was as well they hadn’t opted for the alternative pun of Curl up and Dye, as it might have been deemed horribly prophetic. Daisy (it really was her name, though not everyone believed it) had struggled so hard to keep Fleurtations open. She had done Call and Collect, and managed to keep it open against all the odds, but the third lockdown had proved too much. There were no real flowers or plants in the shop now, but still bright, or once bright, dust-encrusted pictures of them on the window and on the fascia. Dinah knew that Daisy was at least still in employment, she had got a job at the Tesco in town, but she didn’t like it. Even when she did get to deal with flowers, and that wasn’t nearly as often as she’d been led to believe, her heart couldn’t be in it as she saw the pre-packed, mass produced, cynically marketed bouquets and pots.

Hairs and Graces still opened at weekends and on market days, but there was talk that the market itself might not last for very long now. Some Thursdays you could count the number of stalls on the fingers of one hand.

There had, at least, been hope for the pub, the Links Arms. When lockdown finally lifted, quite a few people who weren’t even regular pubgoers made a point of going, just because they could. But it had been short-lived. The truth was, many people had got into the habit of buying their booze in the supermarket, and there was still this lingering reluctance to be close to other people. It hadn’t closed yet, and goodness only knew the owner, George, and his partner David were doing their very best, but Dinah was pretty sure that the operative word was yet. If it did survive, it might have to be sold to one of the national chains, and it just wouldn’t be the same again if that happened. George was one of life’s born optimists and greeted Dinah with a grin, but she could definitely detect something forced, something bleak behind it, and accepted his offer of a drink, knowing that even now, despite everything, he would be not so much offended as hurt if she offered to pay for it. She couldn’t help noticing the sign that said the pub quiz planned for that weekend had been cancelled, and there was no indication of when it would be re-scheduled – probably because it wouldn’t be. She didn’t comment on it, but George knew she had seen it. “They all like their online quizzes now,” he said, “And I’m not going to blame them, because I quite like them myself. Leave me a few of those leaflets, lovey, I know some folk I can pass them onto.” Dinah was pretty sure it was a white lie and he was helping her deliver her consignment, but she just nodded and thanked him.

Towards the end of the High Street there were a few guest houses – or there once had been. Lockdown and its aftermath had been cruel to them. The Lodge, the nearest the town had to a posh hotel, a little out of town and with its terrace looking out to sea, was surviving, just, but Dinah knew that they’d been forced to cut prices and restrict the “Famous Breakfast Buffet”. But such visitors as did come almost always gravitated towards self-catering in the chalet and caravan parks, and even they were struggling.

It was a terrible shame about all the guest houses, but Dinah couldn’t help feeling especially bad about the Mimosa. Though she lived locally, she had once spent a couple of nights there herself, while her roof was being repaired. Ricky and Bella weren’t your stereotypical chatty guest house owners, but were quiet, kind people, and had always seemed to go the extra mile, whether it was including a couple of sachets of herbal tea and hot chocolate alongside the usual tea and coffee on the refreshment tray or having a little playground in the hotel garden. It was a place where children weren’t just allowed but genuinely welcome, and yet as some of the older guests had said, they never seemed to be any trouble, there was something about the atmosphere at the Mimosa that made them play happily on the swing and seesaw, and when they did squeal and shout, as all children do, nobody really minded.

As Dinah headed towards the Mimosa, she heard the sound of children’s voices, and did a double take. Had the Mimosa managed to stay open, or to reopen, after all? Had it bucked the trend and defied the odds, and all those other phrases?

Her pace quickened, and she even mentally rehearsed the conversation she would have with Ricky and Bella about how pleased she was.

But as she walked up the path, carefully closing the old-fashioned gate behind her, and looked into the bay windows of the breakfast room, she saw that there were no neatly laid places ready for the next day. Maybe they’ve gone onto room only, she thought. They had always said they wouldn’t go down that route, though they were quite happy to reach an “arrangement” with people who needed to leave early. But these were times when people were forced to change their minds.

She rang the doorbell, thinking with a smile that she’d had a brief spell of having a key, but some instinct told her – if only because she had got used to the sound – that it was ringing into an empty property. There might still be some furniture, but there were no people, no activity.

She glanced towards the playground again, and the truth dawned on her. These were ghosts. There was no substance or flesh and blood to them. But they were living ghosts. They were ghosts of what might have been, and what now never would be. They could not see her, and when she looked again, she could not see them.

She didn’t know why she put a leaflet through the door anyway.