A Random Act of Kindness

by Sophie Jenkins

  Looking at the stall through her eyes I feel a shiver of panic. I don’t want to think about it. When I’d been saving my clothes from the fire, I’d obviously saved the most expensive, but maybe that hadn’t been my best idea. I should have kept some of the cheaper things, the kind of thing that a person would buy on impulse, just because she liked it, without having to think about it and come back later. ‘My upstairs neighbour had a fire in her flat.’

  ‘Fern! You’re kidding!’ Gigi covers her mouth with her hand. ‘And all your clothes got burnt?’

  ‘No, they got wet. This is the stuff I rescued.’

  ‘Oh, Fern! You’re insured though, right?’ She unhooks a flowing pink fit-and-flare dress and holds it against herself, looking down. ‘What waist is this?’ she asks.

  ‘Sixty-six centimetres.’

  ‘It’s beautiful. Seventies?’

  ‘Yes, mid-Seventies, I’d say.’

  ‘Hey, Dave?’ she calls. ‘What do you think?’

  My neighbour in black emerges from his parallel universe. He grins at Gigi and glances at the dress. ‘Very nice.’

  ‘“Very nice.”’ She laughs and holds the pink dress up to look at it. ‘That’s all he ever says, Fern – very nice.’

  He looks from Gigi to me. ‘Do you two know each other?’

  ‘We were at Camden School for Girls together, briefly. You were a shy little thing, weren’t you, Fern? Always drawing stuff in this little black book of hers. He’s the same.’ She jerks her thumb at my neighbour. ‘You’re always drawing, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘Always.’

  The way Gigi is talking implies it’s some weird quirk that we share, but David doesn’t seem bothered.

  She’s still holding the pink dress.

  ‘Do you want to try it on?’ I ask hopefully. I’ve devised a way of closing the stall off with a muslin drape and crocodile clips.

  She gives David a quick look. ‘Yes, why not. But I’ll have to be quick, though; I’ve got Pilates.’

  I’m glad she’s said yes. I want to see it on her. This is one of those dresses where the genius lies in the cut of the fabric and the way it hangs. It counterbalanced the androgyny of the styles of the Sixties.

  Gigi pulls the dress on over her jeans, but it looks lovely on her with its plunging neckline and the fluid curve of the skirt. The pink is the same shade as her hair. She undoes a couple of the little covered buttons down the front to show her cleavage and she poses for us both with a hand on her hip. It was made for her.

  ‘Gigi, you look gorgeous,’ I say sincerely, my hand on my heart.

  ‘Dave? What do you think?’

  ‘You look like a stick of candyfloss.’ His face softens. ‘Yeah. Gorgeous.’

  She turns the label over to look at the price. ‘You take cards?’

  ‘I do.’

  As I reach for the machine, she touches some other dresses and looks at them briefly but puts them back. She pouts at him, ducks back under the curtain and takes the dress off. She’s satisfied.

  Once she’s paid, she bundles the dress into her bag. ‘Guys, I’ve got to go; I’ll be late for class,’ she says, kissing David enthusiastically on the mouth. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  We watch her leave – I can see her pink hair bobbing above the crowds.

  When she’s lost from view, David turns to me. ‘How many light boxes has that just cost me?’

  ‘Ha ha!’ Hopefully, he means it as a joke.

  He gazes down the alley for a moment as if he thinks she might come back. Then he asks, ‘What was she like at school?’

  I smile. ‘The same! She was such a laugh. She put my new jacket on a friend’s dog once and it ran off and …’ I cut the story short, because he doesn’t need to know I was too scared to go after it and I never saw the jacket again. ‘I never wanted to sit by her in class, though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She never stopped talking. I couldn’t concentrate. I used to get yelled at on account of her.’

  ‘Fern – you were a geek!’

  ‘I know.’ I grin at the thought and add truthfully, ‘She was way too cool to hang out with me.’

  ‘Small world,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’ I give him a sideways glance. ‘You’re the astrologer, you’d know.’

  The flow of people through the market has ebbed suddenly. Times like this, I wonder what the hell happens, where they all go. The place is like a huge maze, with certain crucial landmarks like giant sculpted horses, blacksmiths, ATMs. Even so, I still get lost. So do they.

  ‘Is it always this quiet?’ David asks.

  He sounds anxious and I try to reassure him. ‘In the week it’s mostly tourists. And the kind of tourists who come to Camden Lock … well, let’s just say you can’t get a lot in a backpack. But at weekends, it’s brilliant. The place is absolutely heaving. You’ll be amazed.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He shifts restlessly, looking at the empty stalls on either side of us.

  His mood has changed since he saw Gigi and I don’t really know why. Maybe he, like me, is suddenly seeing his stall through her eyes; not as a dream but in cold reality.

  As though he’s read my mind, he says, ‘I’m not sure about this alley, Fern. If somebody wants to come back to buy something, they might never find me again. I need a bigger unit. Somewhere with storage.’

  I nod. As I’d been the one to tell him about the stall going free, I feel a certain amount of responsibility for the location. ‘Maybe it suits my needs better than yours,’ I tell him apologetically. I don’t add the main reason that it suits my needs is that it’s cheap.

  He looks at my feeble display of dresses and gives me a quick smile. ‘I guess it does. Gigi’s been away for the weekend with more stuff than that.’

  The smile softens it and he doesn’t say it in a mean way, but my doubts come flooding back. As my parents pointed out, I’m not a businesswoman, I’m a market trader. I’ve got little stock and even fewer customers and I’m running out of funds.

  Feeling a bit sick about it, I say, ‘David, you know that day that we first met? And you said no good deed ever goes unpunished? Is that something you really believe?’

  He looks amused. ‘Touch wood, I’ve been all right so far.’

  I haven’t, though.

  David goes back to his side of the canvas and sits down, stretches his legs and opens the book on astrology.

  Without him, I’m at a loose end. I sit down, too, and write a list in my client book to distract me from my self-doubts:

  Cato Hamilton

  Church sale

  Car boot sale

  Tabletop sale

  This list will be the foundation of my new strategy to get more stock.

  It’s dead here now and the time is dragging. I need an energy boost, a sugar hit. ‘David, please could you watch my stall while I get myself something to eat?’

  He looks up from his book. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you want anything?’

  ‘That’s okay, thanks, I’ve got a flask.’

  ‘Oh, fine.’ Obviously, he’s a practical guy with his dovetail joints and stuff. Of course he’s going to have a flask. ‘Won’t be long,’ I tell him and I make my way along the maze of cobbled lanes past the vaults, winding through the steamy stalls selling sizzling street food. It’s exciting, like being transplanted to another continent. Here, with the profusion of smells and multitude of languages, it feels like anywhere but England.

  I cross Camden Lock Place and call in at Chin Chin Labs for a liquid nitrogen ice cream. I like the process, watching the chilly vapour freeze the cream, choosing the flavours and sprinkles.

  Cutting through the West Yard, I lean on the humped black-and-white Roving Bridge to eat the ice cream. It’s a sunny day and the place is busy. Beneath me, clumps of green weed undulate gently on the surface of the sluggish canal.

  By the time I finish off my cone I start to feel more optimistic. I’ll get new stock. I’ll message e
veryone on my mailing list. I’ll begin a new push for sales. I’ll make a name for myself.

  David has started to pack up when I get back. It’s early, just gone five, and the market doesn’t close until seven.

  ‘How did you get on today?’ I ask him.

  He looks at me blankly, as if he’s distracted. ‘It’s all relative, isn’t it?’ he says after a moment. His eyes are tired, but he smiles. ‘There’s no pressure, that’s the main thing. You can’t put a price on that, right?’

  The way he says it makes me wonder what’s been going on in his life, because he doesn’t sound that convincing. I want to ask him, but before I can he’s gone back to packing away his stall.

  The following evening I pick up the Camden New Journal from the doormat, where it lies surrounded by Pizza flyers and taxis offering trips to airports, to find Lucy and me on the front page, standing outside our house. She with her black towel wrapped around her looking amazing in a cloud of the photographer’s apple-scented billowing smoke and me looking shocked and enigmatic in my trench coat, my hair falling over my right eye, holding my beautiful dresses like a wartime heroine.

  Compared with me, Lucy looks terribly underdressed. Compared with her, I look ridiculously overdressed. I’m not sure what prompted me to grab my raincoat, apart from it being Burberry. I had some vague notion of it being appropriate for an emergency, I think.

  The important thing is, we look good and neither of us looks particularly traumatised, despite the headline: ‘Actress and Fashion Curator in Sauna Trauma’. I like my low chin-tilt. I don’t remember adopting it at all, but then I realise I was trying to keep the clothes from falling.

  I go back outside, hurry up the steps and ring Lucy’s doorbell.

  Lucy flings her door open. ‘Hey, Fern! Come in,’ she says cheerfully, picking up her copy of the Journal from the mat. The word ‘Welcome’ is really faded. It’s literally outworn its welcome.

  ‘We’re on the front page,’ I say, unfurling my paper to show her.

  ‘Oh, great!’ She looks at the photograph critically for a moment or two and reads the headline. ‘Actress? Actress?’

  I try to look sympathetic that the paper didn’t call her an actor, but I’m secretly thrilled at being called a fashion curator in print. I read it aloud for Lucy’s benefit:

  ‘Actress Lucy Mills escaped from a blaze in her sauna on Saturday afternoon. Lucy, who’s currently starring as Lady Macbeth at The Gatehouse theatre, Highgate, said, “It’s a miracle we got out of there alive.” Fellow resident, Fern Banks, curator of wearable vintage fashion at Fern Banks Vintage in Camden Market, lost a sizeable amount of irreplaceable stock in the blaze. “I hope my company will survive this. I intend to be like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”’

  I glance at Lucy. ‘Uh-oh. It sounded good when I said I’d lost a sizeable amount of stock, but now people are going to think I’ve got nothing left to sell,’ I comment gloomily. ‘And they’d be right.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. What you have to do is give it a couple of weeks and call the Camden Journal to tell them you actually are a phoenix rising from the ashes. Get your name out there before everyone forgets it. They always like a good story for the inside pages. You can do an advertorial, with local people rallying around you.’

  I like her optimism. ‘Good idea! Sounds expensive, though. But I’ll think about it, because as we’re on the front page,’ I point out, ‘they might put me rising from the ashes on the front page, too.’

  ‘Aw, Fern. Trust me, they won’t. Because a fire’s bad news. Rising like a phoenix is good news. They never put good news on the front page – who’d buy it?’

  Which is a sad indictment of life today.

  We study the article once more in silence.

  ‘Have you forgiven me yet?’ Lucy asks in a small voice when she comes to the end of the column. ‘I feel really bad about it.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I reply, giving her a hug. ‘After all, it was an accident. The fire officers made more mess than the fire did, what with chopping bits out of my door and the water damage,’ I point out ruefully. I don’t believe in bearing a grudge – I don’t want to be like my mother.

  But it is a big problem, all the same, and it’s adding to my worries.

  So far, the loss adjusters are reluctant to pay out for the hole between our flats, because they see the fire as an act of negligence on Lucy’s part, and the estate management isn’t happy with the fact she’s got a sauna at all.

  I haven’t told my parents about the fire yet, because one way or another, going by past experience, they’re going to blame me for it. Ideally, if I have my own way, they’ll never find out.

  But if the worst comes to the worst and we have to pay for it ourselves, I can’t afford to go halves with Lucy to mend the hole. My priority is to get more stock to sell. The whole ‘rising from the ashes’ bit is all very well, but without stock I’m not going to have a business left.

  ‘I’ve arranged for the flats to be thermo-fogged,’ she says after a moment.

  Apparently, thermal fogging is a kind of deodorising method of blasting out the smoke smell, replacing it with something citrusy and nasally acceptable, despite being toxic to aquatic life.

  ‘Great! No more smoke smell!’ I’m very happy about that. Obviously not the toxic bit, but I love the idea of the flat smelling citrusy for a change.

  Back at mine, determined to do as much as I can to put things right, I make a coffee, get my paintbrush and go outside to paint the front door. I’m kneeling on the doormat, when my phone rings in my back pocket. I balance my paintbrush on the pot. It’s a number that I don’t recognise. Spam, at a guess, but I answer it just to be sure.

  It’s a woman. ‘Fern Banks Vintage?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ I say warily. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Chalk Farm Library. Just a moment, I have a call for you. Here you are.’

  I’m perplexed. I have no idea why Chalk Farm Library is calling me. I’m not even a member. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello?’ The voice is high-pitched and accented, vaguely familiar. ‘Is this Fern Banks who’s in the paper today?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say again, getting to my feet because I’ve been kneeling for ages on the bristles of the doormat and they’re prickling my knees.

  ‘Good! You’re the woman who stopped the bus to give me my money back. You see, I recognised you from your picture. You have a very distinctive style. My name’s Dinah Moss. M-O-S-S,’ she repeats with emphasis. ‘And you’re Fern Banks. B-A-N-K-S. You see how it is? Moss, Fern, Banks.’

  I laugh – I can’t believe it. Something good is happening at last!

  ‘Now, I see from the paper that you have a business as a curator of fashion, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right!’ I reply brightly.

  ‘I’m ringing to invite you to tea to thank you and I’d also very much like to show you my collection of haute couture. It’s evident to me that you’re a woman who’ll singularly appreciate it.’

  The words thrill me. Haute couture is dressmaking perfection, with garments made from the most extravagant fabrics, in the most intricate designs, with meticulous detailing and the finest needlework. And she thinks I’ll appreciate it! (That’s understating it slightly.) Haute couture is stratospherically out of my price range so it’s my equivalent of treasure. ‘I’d love to come to tea.’

  ‘Ah! We’re agreed! And also, I have a business proposition for you that I believe will interest you. But I won’t talk now; I’m in the library. So, now I have your number. And you take my number, too,’ she says imperiously.

  ‘I’ll get a pen.’ I go into the shadowed, smoke-scented flat to find one and she gives me her home number. I read it back to her and write it down on my wall calendar with her name next to it, smiling to myself: Dinah Moss. Moss, Fern, Banks. We agree to meet on Monday afternoon, my day off.

  ‘Excellent! Goodbye. I’ll look forward to it.’ Her voice fades as she says to th
e woman on the desk, ‘Here you are, I’ve finished now.’

  The call ends and I put the phone back in my pocket. I have to say, I’m excited about the phone call, because Dinah Moss who wears Chanel says I have a very distinctive style and a compliment always means more coming from an expert.

  I try not to speculate about the business proposition.

  I have a good feeling about it, all the same.

  From time to time over the past few days I’ve been mulling over David Westwood’s comment that no good deed ever goes unpunished. Not that I’m superstitious or anything, but the fire did come shortly after my good deed.

  More than anything, I’d like to prove him wrong.

  LOT 6

  A blue cotton day dress with five bowling-pin-shaped wooden buttons, fitted waist, patch pockets, size 12, labelled with Controlled Commodity symbol (CC41) to comply with government rationing controls, 1941

  Sunday is a sunny day and the market is busy. However, sadly for me, I’m not busy at all. I was hoping to sell the last of my stock on my practically bare stall so that I’d have the funds to resupply, but the lack of choice is putting people off.

  Gratifyingly, a few people recognise me from the article in the Camden New Journal and sympathise about the fire, but not enough to buy anything. I get them to write their contact details in my client book before they go.

  I lean on the counter and watch the constant shifting tide of people flow past as I listen enviously to David Westwood’s sales patter above the noise, lifting my face to the warm sun, whiling away the time thinking up a patter of my own.

  And then, suddenly, the mysterious lull occurs and the market is quiet again.

  Mick has a theory that any lulls in conversation in a pub or restaurant occur at ten to or ten past the hour, so I check the time. Sure enough, it’s ten minutes past five and I feel a sudden fond urge to ring him and tell him. I’m just getting out my phone, when David casts his shadow over me.

  ‘That was crazy,’ he says, pushing up the sleeves of his black T-shirt, his mood buoyant. He’s grinning, high on success, and looks up at my rails. ‘How did you get on?’