by Jenny Oliver
‘He’s shit. Don’t change the subject.’ Anna glanced over her shoulder to see her dad coming out of the bathroom. ‘What is it, then?’ she hissed.
‘It’s just—’ Hermione paused, smoothed down her acid-yellow top, ‘sex.’
‘Oh Jesus Christ. You booty-call my dad?’
‘If you want to put it like that?’ Hermione snorted a laugh. ‘Yeah, I suppose that’s pretty much hit the nail on the head.’
‘Ready, my darling?’ Anna’s dad appeared next to them, his hair slicked back with water from the tap, his black shirt unbuttoned to his chest like some movie mogul, white chest hair poking out, cream chinos that Anna hadn’t noticed before and were unusually smart for her father, but still wearing his black flip-flops.
‘Always. I’ll call you tomorrow, Anna,’ she said, blowing her a kiss.
‘Don’t bother, I’ve lost my phone.’ Anna slouched back in her seat sulkily.
‘Well, let’s lunch maybe later in the week. Ta-ta.’ Hermione was already sashaying back out of the pub, as if the air was so distasteful she could only stand a short burst.
‘Bye, honey.’ Her dad gave her a quick peck on the cheek and said, ‘Don’t forget what I said about Seb. Whatever’s happened, don’t be too proud to apologise.’
Chapter Ten
Seb never came home that night. Anna lay on top of the sheet, staring across at the whirring fan, listening to the old bed creaking as she turned over, restless, and then the silence of the night change to the sound of birds waking in the fields as the pitch black softened with the faded light of early morning.
She wondered, if she did accept her mum’s money, who would give her away. She cringed at the idea of Seb’s dad Roger, or her mum’s thirty-year-old gigolo, Eduardo. But why pick another father when she had one of her own to strut proudly down the aisle with her?
Would he be proud? She’d always thought it was her place not to be proud of him, to look down at his bad behaviour and choices, but what had she ever done to make him proud?
Anna rolled over, pulled the sheet up over her ears.
What had she ever done to make him proud? He’d come to her shows dressed in an old Barbour, tatty trousers, holey woolly jumper and cravat and she’d pretended that she didn’t know him. He had come whether she was The Swan Queen or not, and at the time she had thought that that made him weak ‒ the fact that he would come and see her just for her.
She had no problem introducing her mother to the school director, dressed in her fur coat and clutching her Chanel, but she’d gloss over the subject when it came to her shabby old dad. And her granny…
She buried her head in the pillow.
Oh god, she remembered watching him wheel her out after Anna’d lied and said that the champagne reception was for sponsors only. She’d made them all sit in a tiny Jewish cafe round the corner and eat salt beef sandwiches and drink lemon tea while her granny said what a shame it was that they weren’t allowed the bubbles. She wished now that she’d visited the old people’s home where she’d spent her last couple of years and showered her with magnums of champagne. But, actually, she couldn’t remember if she’d been more than once to see her. She’d told herself that the sight of all the old people in the grey room eating apple puree with a ninety-inch TV blaring in the background was all too much but, really, Anna had spent all that time wrapped up in herself.
As she listened to the birds outside and the odd car driving past, the heat lying heavy on her body like a blanket, she remembered her father looking round the ornate decoration of The Waldegrave, raising a brow at the Moroccan-tiled spa pool, the trays of espresso martinis lined up on the edge of the sunken bar, and the doormen in red jackets and top hats. How he had made some comment about it all being too grand for him, how he would have to wait outside and chat with the staff, and she had ushered him out before the wedding planner could have heard.
Anna stared up at the crack in the ceiling and prayed for sleep, she felt like Scrooge at the mercy of the ghosts, when would the nightmare memories end?
Crossing the square to the shop the next morning, the air was like soup. Thick and gloopy and moving through it was like groping through hot fog. Anna was exhausted, there were big dark smudges under her eyes that were too much even for Touche Éclat, and she felt like she lacked the energy to push her way through the insidious heat that crept into her lungs and forced short, choppy breaths like being in a sauna.
She almost didn’t see Jackie jogging past her, headphones in her ears, nose in the air, seemingly deliberately determined to ignore Anna.
But Anna was still suffering from the haunting nightmares of the previous night and the idea of Razzmatazz making her granny laugh. ‘Wait!’ she called.
Jackie either didn’t hear, or pretended to ignore her.
‘Wait, Jackie.’ Anna called again, taking a couple of quick steps forward, her hand outstretched, and this time Jackie did slow and turn, jogging on the spot while pulling one earphone out.
‘What?’ Jackie snapped. ‘I’ve already heard that you’ve dumped them. I can’t talk to you about it,’ she said, then paused and took a step closer to Anna. ‘Do you realise how much they’ve done on their own? They put that group together. They practice because they want to. They meet because they want to. There are no groups here because there’s no one to bloody teach them and no one to drive them all to bloody London so they can go to fancy ballet schools—’
‘I was just going to say that I’ll do it,’ Anna said, cutting her off. ‘I’ll do another rehearsal.’
‘Too late. We don’t want you.’ Jackie shrugged. ‘You’ve missed your chance.’
‘Oh. Right. OK.’ Anna pulled her bag up on her shoulder, feeling a strange sense of disappointment. Surely this rejection should have been a relief, she’d tried to make amends but hadn’t been needed. Woo-hoo, she was off the hook. But how would she let people know? That woman in the pub, for example, who thought her so dreadful, how would she tell her that she’d tried. Or her dead granny, who might have been watching from above at that precise moment.
Anna shook her head, her dead granny watching over her? Really. Don’t start getting sentimental, Anna, she chastised herself. The tiredness and the soupy heat were clearly affecting her. Backing away from Jackie, who had started jogging on the spot, she reminded herself that this was a good thing. Woo-hoo.
‘Just kidding,’ shouted Jackie. ‘There’s a rehearsal tomorrow. Don’t be such a bitch to them this time.’ Then she snorted a laugh to herself and, putting her earphone back in, trotted off in her purple Lycra, disappearing into the mist.
Anna was left momentarily taken aback, alone in a pea soup of hot fog. Fuck it, she thought, her granny had better damn well be watching because otherwise she was teaching this bunch of misfits for no reason other than a bit of Nettleton-inspired guilt. That was where sentimentality got her.
‘Goodness me,’ said Mrs Beedle as Anna walked up to the shop. ‘Isn’t this a surprise? Early.’ She locked her sludge-green Morris Minor Traveller and pushed her massive owl sunglasses up into her grey beehive, then went round to the boot and fiddled about with the rusty lock until it clicked open. ‘Is that a guilty conscience about my clock, Anna Whitehall?’
‘No,’ she said quickly, shaking her head.
Mrs Beedle laughed, hauling open the boot with one hand. ‘So like your father.’
The words made Anna shudder. Especially with the Luke debacle and not knowing what had happened to Seb. Was adultery hereditary? she wondered, then scoffed ‒ adultery! It wasn’t adultery. One meeting didn’t equal a two-year affair with the local flame-haired auctioneer that ripped apart a little family and left her mother with the burden of a lifetime of revenge, and Anna with a lifetime of having to find different ways to agree with her fury.
What’s that, Anna? What’s that you’re wearing? Did he buy you that? With her money, I suppose. He has no money of his own, Anna. She’ll have paid for it. Or if he does have money, he’s h
iding it from me. Buying you that with what? If it’s his money why are we living in this...this dump? My family had a lot of money in Sevilla, Anna. We were important people. I was from an important family. And now look. Look around. Look at that plasterwork? Look at that sink? Look at that oven? And these…baked beans? I didn’t even know what a baked bean was in Spain. Now look at them. I will die drowned in baked beans. If you want to wear that, Anna, don’t wear it in front of me.
‘Come on then, we have work to do.’ Mrs Beedle rested a hand on the boot of her car and beckoned for Anna to come over and join her. ‘Picked this up from a dealer yesterday, needs work but look at that craftsmanship.’ She traced her podgy hand over the wooden inlay and carving along the edge of a shabby chest of drawers wedged into the boot of her vintage van. ‘Don’t look at it like that. Sand, paint and varnish and it might make a dent in the profit lost on that clock.’
Anna was about to say something, offer an apology or add something in her defence when she looked over and saw the smirk on Mrs Beedle’s lips.
‘Now, let’s see if you’ve still got any muscles. Help me get this thing into the shop.’
When was it, Anna thought, as she lumbered across the road with the wooden chest, that she had lost her strength? She was yoga-fit, but if she looked at her back in the mirror there would no longer be the sinew lines of muscle. She wondered if her calves would even support her on her pointes, how good her line would be if she tried. As she put her end of the chest down on the carpet, she had a momentary pang for the self that used to untie her shoes and compare the blood, blackened toes and blisters with the girl next to her. To inspect the wounds in all their gory detail.
‘Shall I make the tea?’ Anna asked, backing away towards the counter as Mrs Beedle put her overalls on and started wrapping sandpaper round a block of wood.
‘If you want. Or you could just help me with this?’ she said, looking up over her glasses.
‘No.’ Anna shook her head. ‘No, I think I’ll make the tea and then keep on sorting.’ She indicated to the stockroom. Today felt like a day for hiding.
‘Suit yourself.’ Mrs Beedle shrugged and started pulling the drawers out of the dresser and laying them on a sheet of clear plastic. As she pushed the stockroom curtain to one side, Anna glanced back. She thought she had sensed Mrs Beedle watching her, but her head was down, concentrating on taking the first layer of grime off the top of the chest.
When Anna plonked the stewed-orange mug of tea down on the surface with the Gingernuts, she went to go back into the hot-box stockroom but, instead, found herself staying where she was. Watching.
Mrs Beedle had propped open the front door. Cloudy light was streaming in, carrying with it the smells of dewy pavement warmed in sunshine, freshly watered geraniums and the sharp tang of cut grass. The cat was basking on the front step. She could see the hazy outline of a couple standing in the square laughing, the sound just audible over Classic FM, which was playing on an old paint-splattered radio, and the steady, monotonous noise of the sandpaper rubbing.
Anna found that she’d pushed herself up on the counter and was sitting, legs swinging like when she was a girl in her dad’s outhouse, watching him drilling and sanding and sawing, pausing to ask her to hand him a wrench, a screwdriver or hold the nails in her cupped hands that he would take with his rough fingers while shouting the answers to some radio quiz and getting cross with the contestants for getting the answers wrong.
Anna sipped her Lapsang Souchong but tasted instead the Coca-Colas her dad kept stacked in bottles in the corner that, if she was good, she could have one with a straw, while he gulped his back.
In summer sun as dense as today’s, while her mum would try to defy the muggy clouds and top up her tan in the garden, Anna remembered trailing after her dad round car boot sales. They’d drive there with the top down on his vintage Merc, she’d wear her red shorts and an old Lacoste polo shirt, with white Green Flash trainers. If her dad saw something he could make a profit on, he’d walk on and get Anna to go back, briefed with how much to pay and some sob story about only having the motley selection of coins she had in her hand. Before she’d go, he’d stop her and say, ‘Show me.’ And she’d pull her sad, forlorn orphan face and he’d say, ‘Good girl. Excellent.’ And invariably they’d fleece the stallholders from here to the London suburbs of every piece of antique furniture they owned.
When she laughed, caught off-guard by the thought of it, Mrs Beedle looked up and allowed a momentary smile to toy with her lips before putting her hands on her hips and saying sternly, ‘I don’t pay you to sit there, Anna. What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t erm…’ Anna didn’t want to go back out to the stockroom where it was hot and lonely and full of horse brasses. Where there was a danger of other memories clawing their way to the surface. She might, for example, think about the holiday she’d gone on later with her dad and the mistress, Molly. Where she’d lain on a sun-lounger, massive sun hat covering her face and refused to speak directly to Molly the entire trip. Talking to her through her dad. Her aim to be as vile as possible so she’d never have to come again. If she wants me to do that she’s going to have to ask me in a much nicer way. I’m not going with you if she’s going to wear that, it’s embarrassing, it’s far too young for her.
‘I could dust.’ Anna offered.
‘Dust?’
‘In the sunlight everything looks very dusty.’
Mrs Beedle watched her for a moment, narrowed her eyes and to Anna it felt like she too was seeing the little seven year old who would come in with her dad and sit playing with the cat while they laughed over incredulous business deals and eventually settled on a price that left one of them hand on heart saying, ‘I’ve been robbed.’
‘OK, Anna, you dust.’ She seemed to be holding in a smirk as Anna pushed herself off the counter and scrabbled around to find some Pledge and an old yellow duster. She started by the left-hand window and polished the little enamel boxes that sat on top of a large mahogany chest of drawers. Then she picked up a bronze lamp with cherubs on the base and a skewiff lampshade and wiped it down. But instead of putting it back where she had found it, she turned it over in her hands and inspected it, thought how gruesome the fringing was on the lampshade and how dated. She glanced over at Mrs Beedle, who seemed absorbed in her sanding, and when she was certain she wasn’t looking, pulled all the tassels and the strip of braid off the edge of the shade to make it look more contemporary and less old-granny, then put it back on the edge of the chest rather than on the odd three-legged table where it had been sitting, incongruously, at knee height.
Next she moved onto a stack of plates covered in lily of the valley and bluebells. After dusting them down, she arranged them one by one on the welsh dresser that loomed on the side wall adjacent to the mahogany chest. In between the two was the emerald chaise lounge coated in cat hairs. Wiping them off into a nasty fur ball, she walked round the shop gathering up every cushion she could find and plumped them up along the backboard ‒ rich black velvets sat next to blood-red satins and jostled for space next to ornate blue toile, tartans of dense wool in soft greys and creams and beautiful gold and navy brocade ‒ the green sofa suddenly becoming more like a throne fit for royalty. Along the armrest she draped the blankets that Mrs Beedle had stacked in a dark corner ‒ patterned purple lambswool in similar plaids to the cushions and so soft that if it wasn’t so damn hot she would wrap herself in one and curl up to sleep. Rest her exhausted eyes.
To set a proper scene, she pulled over a white, shabby chic standard lamp that was sticking out from a heap of junk at the back and placed it between the chaise lounge and the welsh dresser, before hanging a collection of French christening mugs with tiny porcelain flowers and gilded script onto the dresser’s hooks and repositioning a huge gold mirror on a nail above the chaise lounge.
Standing back, she surveyed her work. All polished and gleaming, it was like the kind of room that drew you in and back to a warm, cosy pas
t of hot chocolate and log fires or, as it was now, dancing with morning sunlight and inviting someone to lift the whole collection up as it was and place it in their front room.
‘Very nice,’ Mrs Beedle was suddenly standing next to her, taking in the newly organised quarter of her shop.
Anna turned to see if she was being sarcastic but decided she was hiding it well if she was. Then she shrugged and said, ‘I am quite good at organising.’
‘So I see.’ Mrs Beedle stepped forward and lifted up one of the cushions. ‘I forgot I even had these.’
‘I saw them, you know, in the back.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, they cost me a fortune. They look good.’
Anna paused. ‘Thanks.’
Then Mrs Beedle gave her a quick tap on the arm before going back to her sanding. ‘Not as much of a waste of space as I thought.’
‘Is that a compliment, Mrs Beedle?’
‘If you want,’ she shrugged and Anna found herself beaming as she watched the old woman walk away.
But she didn’t get to bask in the feeling for long because, when she looked back to admire her handiwork, the bell on the shop door tinkled and, while Anna didn’t look up, she felt the mood change. Then she heard Mrs Beedle suddenly gather up all the dirty mugs and say, ‘I think this one’s for you,’ before disappearing out the back to wash up.
Anna glanced around to see Seb standing in the doorway, silhouetted in the murky sunlight but then, as he walked closer, she felt herself frown at the look of him. Face covered in stubble, shirt tails hanging loose, no jacket, sweat streaking the blue of his shirt. Had he been to work looking like that? she wondered. His hair was sticking up all over the place, his eyes were bloodshot and his lips pale. There was a sheen of sweat over his brow that made her wonder if he’d slept at all or if he was just crazy hungover.
‘You look terrible,’ she said.
‘So do you.’ He stood by the chest of drawers, his hand tracing the outline of the newly sanded carving.
