5
Next day Luke is at the shop by 9.15am. He knows he needn’t be at work so early. If customers phone in his absence, there will be no loss of business: Russ is totally reliable and there is no chance he will write down a wrong name, date or time. But today is different. As Luke sits at his desk, turning the pages of an auction catalogue, he is hit by a wave of guilt that he hasn’t mentioned Rhona to Eva. But then, why should he? The invitation to tea is simply a business visit and, after all, Eva has a limited interest in shop affairs. True, most Saturday mornings she calls in for a chat and a coffee, and several times when he’s been away at an auction and Russ has been on holiday, she has minded the shop, but she has never been deeply involved in the world of mirrors. Certainly she is pleased when things go well and when trade seems dead listens to what she calls ‘the dealer’s dirge’, but she has no more interest in the business than he has in counselling, apart from his own experience. As Russ places coffee on the desk he thinks again of that Hammersmith counselling room – its dry smell, like the corner of an old library, the sage green armchairs, the cream emulsioned walls, the geometric pattern on the curtains. If only memories of Rhona were as detailed.
Russ looks down at the catalogue to a mirror in the form of two intertwined bodies. ‘I’m not a great one for the ’60s.’ he says. ‘Didn’t really go for it at the time.’ He points to the mirror. ‘But if we had that in the window it would certainly cause a stir in town.’
‘I think they’d close us down, Russ.’
‘It’s a very over-rated time in my opinion.’ He settles into a Regency chair. ‘I remember one Sunday afternoon in ’67 or ’68, I was wandering through St. James’s Park and I heard all this angry shouting . . .’
Why didn’t I give her my mobile number? Those bloody Elmans threw me.
‘. . . well, I followed the racket up to Whitehall and there were all these marchers, shouting their way through a completely empty street, going ‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Min.’ And they were waving homemade banners at empty government buildings . . .’
Of course she might email me – the email address is on her invoice along with the shop phone number.
‘. . . and at that moment I looked up and saw a hand draw back a curtain about three floors up. And there was this woman. She took one bored look, then disappeared behind the curtain again . . .’
She did say ‘I’ll phone tomorrow’, didn’t she? Or was it ‘I’ll phone in a day or two?’ No, definitely tomorrow. She’s got to phone today.
‘Whether she was a cleaner or a member of MI5, I’ll never know.’
The question is, when?
‘And after they had all gone past it was as if nothing had happened. So I went back to the park and carried on with my walk.’ Russ stands and pushes his chair to the wall as if dismissing a whole decade.
Luke says, ‘Somewhere, Russ, there’s a photo of you in the Chiswick shop wearing a very hippy-looking floral shirt.’
‘Your father didn’t approve of me wearing them for work. Made it quite clear: “Not the sort of thing our customers expect. Wear what you like weekends.” I was annoyed at the time. Funny, I wouldn’t be seen dead in them now, not at work anyhow.’
The phone rings. Russ looks at Luke, waiting for him to answer it. Luke wants to move his hand to take the call, but his body refuses to respond. The phone continues ringing. Russ answers it and Luke strains to hear the caller’s voice.
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ says Russ. ‘We can’t possibly value a mirror over the phone. It’s almost impossible even from a good photo . . . Alright, send us a good image and we’ll see what we can do . . . Goodbye.’
Luke relaxes. Russ looks down at the catalogue and points to a sampler depicting a building like a doll’s house surrounded by lollipop trees.
‘Now I like that,’ says Russ. Supposing we buy a few more needleworks? What do you think?’
‘You should have kept your ’60s shirts. They would sell even better.’
‘They were torn up for dusters ages ago.’ He returns to his gilding.
By 12.50pm there have been no more phone calls. In frustration, Luke leaves the shop and walks across the market place to the deli where he buys a pork pie. But as he returns to the shop he is convinced that the break has been a mistake and that Rhona must have phoned during his eight-minutes’ absence. But on his return Russ says nothing about a caller and there is no note on the phone pad.
‘Lunch in today?’ asks Russ as he locks the shop door.
‘The deli’s new organic pies taste as good here as at home.’
‘Guinness? I’ve a spare in the fridge.’ Russ mutes the phone. Luke is annoyed at this but the lunchtime routine is sacrosanct. If she phones in the next hour, it will be necessary to phone her back at 2.00pm. He follows Russ into the workshop. Here Russ pulls out a small side table, removes from its drawer a tablecloth, spreads it and goes into the kitchen for plates and glasses. Luke pulls up two paint-spattered chairs and sits on one.
Russ, now without work coat, appears, tray in hand, with their lunch. He gives Luke his pork pie, sliced in four, on a plate as white as the tablecloth on which he places a mustard pot and a jar of chutney. ‘Green tomato. My final batch from last year.’ He places his own sandwiches and two glasses of Guinness on the table, sits and relaxes. ‘Cheers.’
‘Good health,’ says Luke as Russ recounts the latest goings on of his neighbour. Luke hears details of ‘her first husband’ and ‘her next boyfriend’ but takes little notice, wondering if even now Rhona may be listening to the recorded message.
‘. . . being an electrician, I suppose gave him an excuse to be round there during the daytime. But even last Sunday night . . .’
Luke tries to relax as Russ narrates the dramas of Redwell Street.
‘Our Victorian semis don’t have very thick dividing walls and I could tell . . .’
Luke struggles to concentrate on Russ’s story, to forget Rhona, but finds his mind drifting back to an earlier experience of being a captive audience. For a moment he is sixteen and back at school in a history lesson where the voice at the blackboard explaining nineteenth century politics only makes him ponder the more vital subject of Victorian frames. Russ’s animated voice summons him to the present.
‘Heaven knows what will happen when her husband gets back from Dubai.’
Luke finishes his glass, looking up at the workshop clock. Twenty minutes to go.
Unhurried, Russ clears the table before bringing in, as lunchtime tradition dictates, china cups and saucers and a coffee pot. He is about to continue his saga when the peel-of-bells ringtone of his mobile calls him back to the kitchen.
‘I do apologise,’ says Russ, running to his phone. He closes the kitchen door behind him.
Could Rhona be phoning Russ’s mobile? No, she can’t possibly have known the number. But who else? Russ never gets personal calls at the shop. A cold caller? Why close the door?
After two minutes Luke knows it cannot be a stranger who has dared to interrupt the sacred hour, a guess confirmed by Russ’s face on his return.
‘Margaret’s dead. Very sudden. Last family link with London. Funeral’s next Wednesday. I’ll have to go.’
‘Russ, I’m so sorry.’
‘She was the only cousin I ever got on with.’
‘Have a couple of days down there. Take Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off.’
Russ mumbles a thank you and slowly clears away the coffee things.
For an hour after lunch the phone remains silent. An eye on his computer clock, Luke occupies a few minutes with bookwork, but lacking concentration soon returns to online auction catalogues. When the search for mirrors has been exhausted, he wanders through oriental art, impressionist paintings, tin-plate toys, Judaica, fishing ephemera – anything which will provide an effective opiate against the pain of waiting. Once he is disturbed by an email alert, but it is only an advert for a seized assets auction. He moves to Continental porcelain where the elegance of a pai
r of Meissen figures of a suitor and lady reminds him he could do with a new pair of lightweight trousers. He goes to a favourite online site and places an order.
At 3.30pm the phone rings. He lifts the handset and presses the answer button before it can ring a second time. But his face drops when he hears the voice of the town council secretary, asking for a donation for the summer fete.
‘Yes, we’ll donate our usual bottle of whisky,’ Luke tells him. He replaces the handset and stares at it, waiting for another call. In the next half hour a few customers come and go, but otherwise the phone and the shop remain silent. If Radio 3 is on in the workshop, the volume is so low he cannot hear it.
At 4.00pm a sombre Russ arrives with the afternoon tea, and sitting without a word in a corner of the shop, sips in silence. Luke is torn between wanting the phone to ring and longing for closing time when the torture of waiting will be over for the day. Tomorrow it may begin again but at least in an hour’s time there will be respite when the shop sign is turned to closed. He carries his mug to the door and stares into the afternoon. If Rhona is not going to phone, perhaps she will call in person. On one side of the market place the greengrocer’s has a small queue; on the other side youngsters on holiday have congregated around the newsagent, but there is no-one he recognises.
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you . . .’ says Russ.
Luke turns on his heels.
‘I heard yesterday from the woman opposite me whose brother’s a builder, that Rhona Mills’s husband is involved in some play abroad.’
‘Really?’ says Luke, thinking, why the hell didn’t you tell me earlier?
‘Apparently Alden said it was hard to adjust to working with a local drama group. “Provincial amateurs,” he called us. Hasn’t been here ten minutes and wants to change everything.’
‘Eva and I will be seeing some of those change-the-town fanatics at the Cantisham Society tonight. Her neighbours are giving a drinks do. They haven’t been here a year and . . .’
‘Don’t tell me, they want to give us a heritage trail with little plaques popping up like measles everywhere. Now what could they stick outside this building?’ Russ plants himself in an armchair. ‘Perhaps we should invent a famous former occupant and put our own sign up. Can’t you see it . . .?’
Luke nods in bored assent, knowing it is one of those afternoons when Russ, unless coaxed back to his workshop, will gossip until closing time. But today there will be no cajoling. He suspects that Russ’s meanderings about commemorative plaques are less time-wasting chatter than a way of facing bereavement. He listens, looks surprised or smiles where appropriate, his eyes never leaving the phone. It remains silent.
6
Now you’re not from round here, are you?’
‘No, I was brought up in Chiswick,’ Luke tells a long-faced woman in an orange twin set whom he’s never seen before.
‘I thought you had a twang in your voice. Now, aren’t you the person they call the mirror man – which I assume refers to your shop not your daily paper.’
Luke attempts affability. ‘I do sell mirrors, yes. You must call in and see us.’
‘Oh, I daren’t in case I want to buy something. I’ve downsized. I’ve too much furniture as it is.’
‘If you ever wish to sell anything . . .’
‘Can’t. Family things. Children would kill me. Now, don’t you think the market place would look so much better with a couple of trees. Planes, perhaps, like a French market town?’
‘That would be a revolutionary change by local standards. Arrivistes like you and me daren’t suggest such things.’
‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Nineteen years.’
As the long face opens its mouth and lengthens, Luke spots Eva trapped in a corner. ‘Do excuse me,’ he says, and sidesteps his way through chattering members of the Cantisham Society to where Eva is being quizzed by two well-dressed, half-drunk men delighted to have discovered she is a counsellor.
‘So I guess you people find yourself in one of the biggest growth industries?’ says the shorter man whose hair and blazer makes Luke think of an army officer on leave.
‘Do you think of counselling as an industry?’ Eva asks.
‘Typical shrink answer,’ laughs the other man whom Luke recognises as a barrister with a second home in the town. ‘Answer every question with another question.’
‘I’ve heard the same said about lawyers,’ says Luke.
Ignoring the comment, the barrister moves closer to Eva. ‘Now what really interests me in your line of work is that you’ve probably heard every story – know every trick in the book. So . . .’ He sways towards her.
Eva recoils from his winey breath.
‘. . . So if you wanted, for example, to pinch another woman’s husband, you would know exactly how to do it.’
‘Or if,’ adds the blazer, ‘someone like me comes along and asks you the best way to seduce someone else’s wife, you’d be able to give us a few helpful hints and guidelines.’
‘I try to facilitate relationships, not undermine them.’ She gives Luke a get-me-out-of-here look.
‘No, what I’m saying,’ persists the blazer, ‘is that because you’re an expert on relationships, you are – theoretically, see what I mean? – in a position to help someone who is thinking of . . .’
‘Having an affair?’ says Eva.
Her tone turns his face scarlet. His friend continues, ‘So what advice would you give Simon here if, perish the thought, he fancies another man’s wife and wants to try his luck?’
‘Not the sort of advice you’re looking for.’
‘Oh, come on now . . . just one pearl of wisdom. I mean . . . be fair . . . is he better off staying friendly with the woman’s husband, or should he point out to her what a bastard she’s married to?’
‘Perhaps neither,’ says Luke, muscling his way between them with a force which surprises himself. ‘Excuse us,’ he says as Eva slips through her interrogators and heads for the open French windows.
‘Thanks for the rescue,’ she says as they step outside on to an immaculate lawn. ‘That was a vicious elbow in the ribs you gave him.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘I loathe that sort of conversation. Now let’s discover where my dear neighbours’ ground elder is creeping through to my vegetables.’
At one end of the garden, between the fence and a summer house, is a slatted compost bin. Eva peers over it. ‘Ah, the culprits.’ She glances over her shoulder. ‘I’ve tried asking them politely but this way is better.’ She climbs onto the heap and with the help of a stick begins to root up ground elder, while Luke watches out for other guests. Unable to reach more weeds, she climbs out and works her way along the narrow gap between compost bin and fence. After a minute’s weeding she gathers a small pile of the offending plants with their spaghetti roots and pushes them under the fence and into her own garden. ‘At least I’ll make sure they’re properly destroyed,’ she tells him. Turning round, about to manoeuvre herself back along the fence, she slips but is saved from falling by a post which takes her full weight. She grits her teeth.
Luke reaches out a hand to steady her. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m fine, but is my dress marked?’
‘It still looks lovely.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Pity about the fence post though.’
Eva turns round to see that the post, partly detached from the fence, is slanting towards her garden.
Luke goes over to it and finds he is able to move it backwards and forwards with ease. ‘It must have been rotten at the base. Your weight finished it off.’
‘Oh hell. And it’s my fence too. I’ll have to get it fixed. Another expense.’
‘I can do it – it’s not a big job. Alf can get me some oak posts. Chances are a few of the others are rotten too.’
‘Thanks. While you’re at it I’ll be able to destroy some more ground elder.’
‘Maybe we should get some glyp
hosate to be certain.’
‘What happened to your organic regime?’
‘Fences are an exception.’
In the summerhouse they find half a bottle of wine left behind by another guest. When Luke has refilled their glasses, they drink and watch rain begin to fall. ‘We’ll down these and escape,’ he says.
‘Pity we can’t use the side gate but my coat’s in the hall.’
They slip through chattering groups of Cantisham Society members towards the front door, and have almost escaped when Eva’s way is barred by her earlier interrogators. ‘Just one tip,’ the blazer pleads.
Eva ignores them. When they are outside she looks at Luke and sighs. ‘In my experience, if a man is planning an affair, he needs to be as nice about the woman’s husband as possible. The more he slags the husband off, the more she is likely to defend him. But there’s no way I was telling that to those pissheads.’
In Eva’s kitchen Luke pours himself a whisky as she, despite the rain, goes to the garden to retrieve the uprooted ground elder for disposal. She returns shivering. Luke pours her a drink.
‘Did you cultivate any new customers tonight?’ she asks.
‘One woman may look in sometime, but I’m not optimistic. At least you managed some furtive weeding.’
The Mirrror Shop Page 5
