The Mirror Shop
Nicholas Bundock
Into my mirror has walked
A woman who will not talk
Of love or of its subsidiaries,
But who stands there
Pleased by her own silence.
* * *
Brian Patten
Prologue
I am a murderer. I have murdered a man. Luke mouths the words to the cell wall. Raising his eyes, he watches the first light give colour to the window above him. From the upper right corner to the lower left it pales from burnt umber to raw sienna. He thinks of the jars of pigments in the workshop back home. He does not expect to see them again. The thought leaves him unmoved. As the light increases, the glass squares set in their iron frame grow larger while the ironwork becomes thinner. The cell, an uncertain space in darkness, now takes shape and encloses him. Not that he feels incarcerated. Far from it. He can ignore the smell of disinfectant and the half-erased obscenities on the walls and see a strange beauty in this room.
From somewhere comes an urge to shout for paper and pencil and to draw this place of rectangles and slow-moving shadows. The French police have been so considerate, he whispers to himself, perhaps they will oblige. Last night they were almost apologetic when they removed the belt from my jeans: ‘We have to follow regulations, you understand.’ He lowers his eyes to the navy tracksuit folded at the end of the bed where they left it. One of them had said, ‘In your condition, even in August on Corsica, you may feel the cold.’ Paper and pencil seems a small request. But he does not call out. To do so would disturb the stillness.
As he sits upright on the bed, no more than a mattress on a shelf projecting from the wall, his eyes drop to the floor and follow the oblique shadow moving from his ankles to his legs. He cannot remember sleeping. It is growing hotter. The cell floor, below ground level, he guesses, is losing its film of damp. Yes, paper and pencil would help. He tries to remember the name of an English pointillist and minor academician who painted the effect of heat. He can see a painting of two girls by railings on a concrete promenade, their forms merging with the distant sea under an unforgiving sun. The artist’s name eludes him.
What time did I arrive here? he wonders. It must have been early evening. I was happy to make a full statement. ‘We will wait until the morning,’ they said. That’s another reason to ask for some paper: if I could write a few notes now, it would be so useful later. Writing would clear my mind. Help me explain what happened.
‘No, no,’ he says aloud. ‘Alden was the writer, the original word man. I won’t write anything. I’m not sorry I killed him. I feel no remorse. I feel nothing.’
He hears the sound of approaching feet. Perhaps they are bringing me breakfast, he thinks. I’m not hungry, but I will ask for paper and pencil so I can draw this place. I’m sure they won’t refuse – they’ve treated me so well. When they shut the door, there was no judgmental bang, no angry twist of a key, no hammering home of a bolt. If a cell door can be closed gently, that is what they did.
The footsteps pass and fade. He is not disappointed. There is an overriding peace here now it is all over. A numbness. The events of the last two months might have happened to a stranger.
Is it only twelve days since I last woke in this room? In the greyness before dawn Eva watches the china animals on the windowsill assume their pale blues and greens. Ornaments from childhood, her oldest possessions, they had spoken to her, told her stories in her first bedroom. Now they seem to be asking her to review her life from those earliest years until now. In time I will – when I am ready, she tells them. She looks away and closes her eyes, knowing that among the small achievements and failures there had been nothing to match the intensity of the recent two-headed crisis. When had it begun? Its origins reached back many years, but was there a particular day it manifested itself – the beginning of the double loss which had changed her world? She slips back to a morning seven weeks ago.
Part I
1
Eva frowns at the unmodernised kitchen, the elm cupboard, the chipped Belfast sink, the primitive painting of a prize ox, the stained poster of some obscure French film. But no mirror to peer into before rubbing away the night’s sleep. For a dealer in mirrors, he could do with a few more in his own home.
She carries two mugs of green tea up the uneven staircase to the bedroom where she places a mug on the floor each side of the bed, slips under the covers, and casts her eyes around the room, resting them on a pitted mirror plate in a red lacquer frame. She watches its gilt decoration flicker as the sun finds a slit between the shutters. Looking down at the steady breathing of Luke’s sleeping form, she wonders why she is awake before him. Isn’t the normal pattern for Luke to be up and dressed and making tea before she has stirred? But then the normal pattern is for their nights together to be spent at her house on the edge of town, not here at his. Perhaps it is the change of beds which has altered her routine. Over the years how many times has she slept here? A few dozen perhaps. It’s not important. So much is shared, having separate homes ten minutes apart is of no consequence. And didn’t last night prove it doesn’t impair fun in bed, never mind whose?
Luke rolls towards her and peppers her shoulder with half-asleep kisses. ‘I’m glad you’re awake.’
Eva returns a single kiss. ‘Sadly, I have my first client at nine.’
Naked, she slips out of bed, walks to the window, opens the shutters and looks down at the empty street. She raises the sash window, admitting July birdsong, restrained with the approach of high summer and underscored by the harsher notes of rooks from the trees beyond the church at the end of the street. She watches a pigeon settle on a window sill of the flint tower, turns back and frowns at the room’s monastic sparseness.
‘Ever thought of a proper bedroom mirror?’
‘I already have one.’
‘Useless. It’s only the blind and nuns who have to dress without one. Which do you think I am?’
‘Move in with me and you can have the room next to the bathroom as a dressing room. Furnish it how you like.’
Eva raises her eyebrows, knowing the present arrangements suit them both perfectly. She walks to the door, unhooks her white silk dressing gown, wraps the collar round her head like a wimple, and holds it tight, with her palms together under her chin. Going to the mirror she makes an exaggerated attempt to discern a reflection of herself in the decayed bevelled plate. Slowly she turns to him and says, ‘Bedroom mirror.’
Luke pretends not to notice.
Draping the dressing gown over her shoulders, she walks to the door where she lingers, running a finger over a panel. ‘If you ever want to redecorate this room I’ll give you a hand.’
‘Come back to bed.’
‘What do you call this colour? Brown? Mouse? Drab?’
‘Two hundred years ago drab was a very fashionable colour.’
‘Then this room wants re-drabbing.’ She smiles and goes to the bathroom.
Luke stretches his arms across the headboard. That smile. After all these years the frisson of being its chosen recipient remains. He scans the room, its faded chintz wallpaper – here when he bought the place – the worn Kazak rug by the bed, the otherwise bare floorboards, the walnut chest – almost as old as the house – for clothing not hung in the spidery walk-in cupboard next to the never-used fireplace, the lone bedroom chair piled high with clothes, the William and Mary mirror. She’s right, he thinks, the room is dreary.
He listens to the shower and imagines Eva washing her hair, not as fair as when they first met, and now helped by judicial colouring, but still the perfect frame for that smile and, he thinks, like a great frame, changes in colour and surface which come from age only make it more desirable.
‘I give in,’ Luke says. ‘The place is drab. We’ll get out the paint brushes.’
‘Not before time,’ she says and begins dressing.
Luke watches, relishing the second or two when her head is covered by her navy linen dress, its plain formality adding piquancy to the moment. Living in separate homes, he suspects, fuels their excitement.
Eva enters into the spirit of the reverse striptease, pulling on the dress inch by inch before finally running her hands down her hips, awarding her voyeur with a look of coy surprise. Slipping on her shoes, she says, ‘If you see any autumn crocus bulbs in the market, can you buy me a dozen?’
‘Have you room for any more?’
‘There’s a spot by the shed which needs some end of year colour.’ With a zipping of her overnight bag and another smile, she leaves the bedroom.
For several minutes Luke stares towards the window, wondering if the room would benefit from curtains. Accepting that changes are needed, he rolls out of bed, pulls on yesterday’s shirt and goes down to the kitchen. He finds Eva, toast in hand, standing by the French windows, looking out into the back garden. His own slice is waiting for him on the table.
‘You’re so lucky with these high walls,’ she says. ‘Perfect for climbing roses and good barriers for weeds. My fences never quite counter the invasion of ground elder from next door.’
‘Those walls out there need repair and repointing. And you have enough space for a proper vegetable plot. I have to rent an allotment.’
‘But you love your allotment.’
‘Come and share it with me. Sell Brick Kiln Cottage and move in here. With the spare cash buy a weekend cottage near a trout stream.’
Eva scrutinises the kitchen. ‘This room would need more changes than the bedroom.’ She points to a space on the wall between the cupboard and a row of iron pegs. ‘A mirror there would be handy for a start.’
‘I’ll dig one out of the store. Which style do you want? Georgian? Deco? I’ve a fantastic ’50s French . . .’
‘You’re the mirror man – I’ll leave it to you. Providing it doesn’t have one of those dingy pieces of glass in it – great for connoisseurs but hopeless for make-up.’
Luke strokes her hair. ‘I’ll find one which even disguises your roots.’
‘For that you can cook tonight. My house. And you bring the wine.’
At 9.50am Luke steps from his front door onto the narrow pavement of Back Lane, glancing with approval at the street sign painted on a wooden board fixed to the house opposite. He recalls the recent battle fought and won against newcomers: thank God for no bright new sign and no change of name, gentrified to Church Walk. He looks up with pleasure at the irregular ridges of the old roofs, their dull red tiles in contrast to the sharp blue East Anglian sky untainted by traffic fumes. Filling his lungs, he tells himself that this is one of those mornings which validates selling the shop in Chiswick and moving – all in the face of the accountant and wiseacres who thought it madness. He approaches a dogleg separating the lower part of the street from the market place, and recalls his private myth that at some remote point in the past the thoroughfare twisted its body to protect itself from the forces of commerce.
Among the dozen stalls of Cantisham’s Wednesday market he returns nods to stallholders, pausing at the plant man to buy Eva’s bulbs. He buys his weekly kipper from the fish stall and looks at some farmed sea bass.
‘Still catching you own?’ asks the fish man.
‘We’re trying again on Saturday.’
Leaving the stalls, he glances up at the sundial on the imposing front of the Jodrell Arms. Ignorant of British Summer Time, it reads 9.00am. Hard to believe he has lived here for nineteen years. He turns round to his shop in the corner of the market place. Difficult to remember it as the run-down ironmonger’s no-one wanted to buy. Now so different from the wreck of a building viewed on that wet November afternoon in the company of an even gloomier estate agent. He looks up at the sign above the door, LUKE BREWER ANTIQUE MIRRORS, lowers his eyes to the bay windows either side and checks that a Venetian pier glass is far enough back to be out of the sun.
‘Coffee coming up,’ calls a voice as he enters.
Luke places his purchases on the desk at the far end of the showroom, settles himself in his chair and glances at a few unimportant letters until Russ, in his brown workshop coat, brings coffee and a plate of biscuits.
‘Shall I put your kipper in the fridge?’
Holding the fish at arm’s length, Russ disappears to the kitchen. When he returns he is nursing a large padded envelope. ‘I must show you these. Keith and Michael emailed them last night. I printed them off straight away. Now here’s me on the beach at Kitsilano.’ One by one, he lays them down on the desk like patience cards, with the occasional verbal caption. ‘They stuck that feather in my hair to make me look like a Squamish Indian . . . and that’s me on Grouse Mountain. No comments about the coat – I borrowed it.’
With dutiful enthusiasm Luke says, ‘Really?’ or ‘Good heavens’, sad that his restorer enjoys a freedom with friends in Vancouver he denies himself at home. He is sure Russ has never had a partner, certainly not in England. Even Keith and Michael had been met on some other holiday.
‘And that man dancing on the table is a waiter on the ferry to Victoria. And no, I didn’t join in.’
‘These are amazing, Russ,’ says Luke, aware that in all likelihood no-one else will be shown them.
The final photograph shows Russ wearing a party hat beside an enormous Easter bunny. ‘I’ve no idea where that one was taken,’ he says, before scooping them up and returning to his gilding, a task, Luke knows, which dislikes interruptions.
At 10.00am in a first floor room at the Riverside Counselling Centre Eva’s first client of the day is leaving. When the door is closed she goes to her chair and makes a few brief notes about the last hour, the final session after six months’ bereavement counselling. Her next appointment is half-past. Time to go down to the Centre’s kitchen for a coffee, or choose from one of the many infusions most of her colleagues prefer. She decides to remain in her room, and walking to the window looks down over the city roofs dominated by the cathedral spire. The view evokes memories of another cathedral city, her childhood, her parents. Somewhere below, invisible from her window, is a world of shops, offices and traffic. In the foreground she sees her client walking away from the Centre. Watching him pause and look at the river, she remembers clients who had found a final session difficult, experiencing it as a parting of friends. Others, like the figure now walking towards Foundry Bridge, had said goodbye with a formal handshake and thanks, almost as if a business transaction had been completed. Over the years a few had suggested, ‘Can we meet up sometime – a drink perhaps?’ The suggestion had always been gently declined, the professional distance maintained. Apart from one occasion many years ago.
She turns away from the window, sits in her armchair and looks at the painting over the mantelpiece, a sketch in oils by Jack Butler Yeats. Beside a river two bearded anglers are in passionate debate, their animated exchange conveyed by an economy of paint: a few lines in the distance suggest hills, seven brush strokes in the foreground depict a trout. More detail, she feels, would have detracted from it. The painting was a present from Luke on her fortieth birthday. As she looks at the fishermen, imagining the
ir conversation, she hears footsteps on the stairs. Eva opens the door so her next client can enter without knocking.
A woman in her twenties enters, slams the door behind her and with a disparaging glance towards Eva drops into the waiting armchair. Before Eva is seated her client says, ‘This will be my last appointment. We’re getting nowhere.’
Eva sits, registering the distress in front of her. ‘Agnes, have you given yourself enough time? Perhaps, if we . . .’
‘How many more of these sessions will I need?’
‘It’s too early to know.’
In silence Agnes fidgets in her chair, pressing the hem of her loose-worn pink shirt against her cords. ‘I found this leaflet the other day which said short-term therapy amounts to about twenty sessions. I don’t want to get sucked into the machine. I know someone who’s been seeing a shrink twice a week for two years and she’s still as mad as a box of frogs. Her latest thing is somatic counselling, whatever that is. In Arizona. Three thousand quid’s worth.’ Agnes scowls. ‘I suppose at that price it’s got to work. Good thing she can afford it. You therapists sure know how to cater for every pocket.’ Agnes looks up to the ceiling, running a hand through untidy fair hair, an inch above shoulder length. ‘It does all seem a con. And a hell of a waste of time.’
‘Isn’t it because you were wasting time that you first came here?’
‘Wasting time on men, yes.’ Agnes runs her eyes along the cornice and scowls. ‘God, to think last Christmas I was looking round this amazing flat in Blackheath. My boss’s husband, with the fidelity record of a tom cat. Stupid or what? He could find me a better job with someone he knew, but if I wanted to start my own business that was fine – he had more than enough money to help. The day before we were going to make an offer on the place he dumped me. And he had never left his wife. Wasting time? Wasting my bloody life.’
The Mirrror Shop Page 1
