‘Cato Hamilton, meet my mother, Annabel.’ There’s no getting round the ‘my mother’ bit. ‘Cato deals in antiques.’
‘How do you do?’ Cato says, wiping his feet on the doormat and summing up my mother in a glance as a person who wouldn’t appreciate a ‘Yo!’ as a salutation.
‘Come in,’ my mother says to him, and for the first time she notices the bin bag over his shoulder and turns her warmth down a notch, glancing at me quizzically.
I block his way. ‘Cato – I meant to call you. I’m giving up the shop because—’
‘She needs a regular income,’ my mother finishes for me over my shoulder.
‘I see. So you don’t need any more stock,’ he says to me.
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘No problem. Goodbye, Mrs Banks.’
I’m gutted as he turns away and I have serious second thoughts about my willpower. ‘Hang on, Cato. Anything interesting? What’s the provenance?’
‘They belong to a hypnotherapist, Alexandra Booth. She was given a Marie Kondo book for her birthday and she’s had a clear-out. Clothes, silver, paintings. I’ve got a van full of her stuff. These are great times, Fern,’ he says cheerfully. ‘This is going to be known as the Year of the Great Uncluttering. And when everyone decides that it’s just not a home without knick-knacks, the next big thing will be people flocking in their droves to buy everything back.’
He does make me laugh.
‘I wouldn’t mind having a quick look,’ I tell him, desperately feeding my addiction.
Throughout this conversation, my mother has been standing behind me, close enough for me to step on her foot if I wanted to. Predictably, she wants to argue against having any more second-hand clothes in her flat, but Cato Hamilton hasn’t felt the full power of her charm yet, so she’s torn. Not for long, though, because a few seconds later he dumps the clothes on the sofa.
There are a couple of short, animal-print dresses with flounces around the hem, a sleeveless pink-and-brown pleated dress, a formal, backless, full-length column dress and a jacket of a glorious, glossy, milk chocolate brown with shoulder pads and a narrow belt that would be just perfect for my interviews to come. I try it on and look at myself in my mother’s new mirror.
It’s a perfect fit. If I saw anyone wearing this jacket, I’d hire them on the spot.
When I turn back, my mother’s holding up the pleated dress against herself.
‘Very becoming,’ Cato says to her.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Oh, absolutely.’
I’m beginning to realise what my father feels like and why he wants her to find an interest of her own. She seems so aimless, somehow, as if she hasn’t so much got interests as distractions.
‘Fern?’ she asks.
‘Fantastic. Try it on.’
For a moment I have a brief fantasy that we’ll bond over this dress, that this’ll be the moment our relationship changes and she begins to understand the way I feel about my clothes.
But she drops it on the sofa as if she wishes she’d used tongs and tightens up her mouth in distaste.
‘I’ll have the jacket,’ I tell Cato and we fold the rest of the clothes back into the bin bag. I walk with him up the steps and pay him for the jacket by his van, out of earshot of my mother.
‘The business not working for you?’ he asks.
‘It’s not that; it’s going all right, actually. It’s just that I need something a bit more stable because I need to get another place, before we drive each other crazy.’
‘Sorry to hear that. It’s a shame.’
‘Fern?’ I can hear my mother calling again.
He fist-bumps me and gets into the van.
Back in the flat, my mother’s annoyed that I went outside with Cato, so I put the brown belted jacket back on and look at myself in the mirror to calm myself, reinvented once more.
LOT 25
A post-war make-do-and-mend parachute silk wedding dress, 1949, fit and flare, with long sleeves, sweetheart neckline, short train. Size 8/34
I’m kneeling on the floor in the shop wearing a neon pink dress that outdazzles me, neatly marking out Closing Down Sale on the reverse of the Bespoke Tailoring and Alterations sign, when Alexa and Jenna turn up bright and breezy in sports gear, hugging David like a long-lost friend. I get to my feet awkwardly, not sure what to expect after Alexa’s previous visit.
‘Where are you off to?’ David asks them.
‘We’ve just come from Pilates,’ they say together.
‘We’ve got a new teacher,’ Jenna adds. ‘Gigi’s gone to Spain.’
‘And not with Max, either,’ Alexa adds.
David rubs the edge of his jaw and his eyes narrow. ‘I know. I heard.’
Alexa turns to me. ‘Fern, I’m sorry I was such a bitch last time we met,’ she says. ‘Emotionally, I was a mess.’
‘She’s not usually like that,’ Jenna says. ‘It’s been on her conscience.’
‘It has,’ Alexa agrees.
‘Oh, sure, yes, that’s okay, forget it,’ I say, trying not to wonder how David knows Gigi’s in Spain. Not that it’s any of my business, obviously.
‘Max wants to come back home,’ Alexa says.
‘What an idiot,’ Jenna comments, but there’s a wistfulness in Alexa’s eyes that tells me she’s thinking about it.
‘Bloody hell, it’s the runaway bride,’ Alexa says suddenly, pointing across the yard.
Stuck in the archway from Gilbeys Yard is Dinah, wearing an ivory wedding dress, looking like one of those touchy, snobby old ladies that you see in Claridge’s, holding their chins high to smooth out their necks. Also, slightly crazy. I wonder with great trepidation whether recent events have tipped her over the edge.
I run over to help her. ‘Dinah, what are you doing?’
‘The way people stare,’ she says indignantly, ‘you’d think they’d never seen a wedding dress before. So let them, it’s a free country last time I looked.’ She adds, with some satisfaction, ‘I took up a whole seat on the bus for myself. Fern, where’s my chair?’
I fetch her a chair and she sits happily in the front of the shop in her frothy nest of silk. Who doesn’t like an audience?
‘This is the dress that Moss made for me to be married in. It’s based on Norman Hartnell’s design of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress. You recognise the sweetheart neck and the long sleeves, of course.’
‘Absolutely,’ we agree.
‘It’s made from parachute silk,’ she tells us. ‘I’m thinking, this dress has brought me seventy years of happiness and Moss made it with his own hands.’
I can see where she’s going with this, her rationale. ‘So you’re going to forget about the Chanels?’
‘Bof! I can’t forget,’ she says irritably, frowning at me. ‘Wouldn’t that be convenient? But I am choosing to forgive him. My choice.’
For a moment it doesn’t seem as if she’s sitting down and we’re standing around her.
It’s more as if she’s way above us and we’re sitting at her feet, because none of us says anything at all, it’s that simple and that profound.
David seems miles away.
‘Yeah,’ Alexa says at last, breaking the silence. ‘Like you said. Your choice.’
‘You,’ Dinah says, pointing at David, ‘and you,’ pointing at me, ‘are coming with me to the hospital after work.’ She spreads her hands, encompassing Jenna and Alexa. ‘I don’t know you, but you look like decent people and if you want to come with us to visit an old man, a stranger, I won’t stop you.’
After we close, David, Dinah and I get the number twenty-four bus to the hospital, Dinah causing a stir in her wedding gown, and we go to see Moss. This journey has become familiar; we go up the steps, into the lobby, queueing for a lift and watching the floor numbers change with everyone else.
Moss is asleep when we get there. He’s not attached to the drip.
‘You know how he is,’ Dinah says. ‘No change. Alw
ays asleep.’ She drags her chair nearer to him. ‘Moss, it’s me, your bride.’
The green sheet is rising and falling slowly with his breathing.
‘Look at him! So thin!’ Dinah tells us loudly, pushing me forward. ‘He won’t eat. I’ve tried pressing food against his teeth and he keeps his mouth shut, breaking my heart. Enough.’
Moss isn’t thin. But his head is resting back on the pillows and his jaw has dropped open, so he doesn’t look good, either.
‘He’s giving up,’ Dinah whispers, playing with the neckline of the dress and staring at him intently with fear in her dark eyes. ‘This is something that I’ve seen before. Death doesn’t take you; it invites you home and every day we march towards it, that bit closer, and look behind us to see how far we’ve come. Oh! Not far at all! It’s all there still, everything that we thought we’d left behind.’
David frowns and catches my eye.
Moss grunts in his sleep as if he’s heard her. ‘Dinah, where is the girl?’ he asks suddenly, and we all sit upright and pay attention. His eyes are closed but the words are strong and fluent.
‘Hi, Moss, I’m here,’ I tell him, sitting forward, and his eyes snap open, dark brown eyes edged with a perfect halo of pale grey.
I’ve annoyed him, I recognise that scowl. I’m not the girl he’s looking for. He shakes his head, defeated.
‘Don’t worry. Sleep, dahlink,’ Dinah tells him softly, rubbing his hand. ‘Fern, to think I burned the precious clothes that he made for me with these hands. It makes me ashamed.’ She lays his hand back down on his lap. ‘So. Now, let’s talk business. Have you got your new job yet?’
Thanks a lot, Dinah, for bringing it up. ‘I’ve got an interview tomorrow. I was going to tell you.’
‘What’s this wonderful job you want to leave us for?’ Dinah asks.
‘Stockroom assistant in Topshop.’ The words stick in my throat. ‘The thing is,’ I say, justifying it, ‘they’ve got a vintage line.’
‘Who cares about that? You’ve got your own vintage line, haven’t you?’ Dinah bats her hand at me crossly as if she’s swatting away a fly. ‘Of course, we can’t stop you, can we, David? We wouldn’t want to.’
Good, I think stubbornly. My gaze roves around, from the plastic jug of water on the locker top, to the screen folded back, the felt-tipped name of the consultant on the clipboard, Mr Khan. The clock ticks loudly. The neon of my dress leaves after-images on my retinas. I get the feeling I can’t win. On the yelling front, that’ll do me. I get enough of that at home.
Dinah crosses her legs and her beautiful shoe dangles from her toe. She examines it for a moment before looking up. ‘But Fern, if you could just politely explain to me why?’
‘Because the perfect fit is superficial and trivial.’
‘Oh!’ Dinah jumps to her feet. ‘Superficial and trivial?’ She’s as angry as if I’ve insulted her parents. She turns to David in appeal. ‘Can you hear her?’
David has the apprehensive expression of a man who’s just realised he’s walked into a wasp nest.
‘Listen to yourself! It’s not trivial what you do! The perfect fit, you call it, but there’s more to it than that. Look – you can even make ugly clothes fit. It’s not the point, to fit. What do you do?’
Her anger confuses me. I’m not sure what on earth I do at this very moment. It’s like the interview from hell. ‘I try to make people look good in their clothes.’
‘Look good? Nooo! Come here.’ She beckons me.
‘What?’
‘Come! Look at me!’
As I bend towards her she rubs her fingers roughly against my mouth, startling me. ‘Ow!’
She holds her hand in front of my eyes for me to see. Her fingers are red. ‘What’s that?’
‘Lipstick?’
‘Just lipstick?’
I nod.
‘Pah! Lucky I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. It’s not “just” anything. I’m going to tell you something important for you to understand. What does nineteen forty-five mean to you? David?’
Confused, he sits up in his plastic chair like a kid caught out by his teacher. ‘The year the war ended?’ he asks hesitantly, wondering, like me, where this inquisition is going.
‘Exactly. I was in a camp. The camp was Bergen-Belsen.’
My stomach contracts and my skin tightens, chills. Oh, Dinah. ‘I didn’t know.’
She glances at me and plays with her pearl earring. Her eyes soften. ‘How could you? I never talk about it. I wasn’t in there long, lucky for me. I was there for one winter.’ For a moment she’s distant; lost in thought.
The tick of the clock, Moss’s rasping breath.
‘It was long enough to starve, but by some miracle, not long enough to get sick.’ Her gaze returns to mine, intense and ageless. ‘Day after day we prayed for it to be over, you know? We prayed for the strength to carry on a little longer, not too far ahead, just for one more day because, you know, that’s what we were urging each other, we must go on a bit longer.’ She sighs deeply. ‘Always rumours, that Germany might be defeated tomorrow or the next day or the next month, if we can just hang on. And one day it was over.’
Dinah looks down and rubs her fingers distractedly, wiping my lipstick off them. Her lips tighten as she holds back her emotions.
‘When the Allies came, we welcomed them in triumph. They were our saviours! We were free!’ Her voice drops. ‘But Fern, you see, it wasn’t over. We were still dying. The horror camp, the British called it, repelled by the inhumanity that had done this to us, made rubbish heaps of human beings, living, dead, the infected and the infectious, lying in our own filth.’ She looks from me to David, and we flinch. ‘Do you understand? Nothing had changed.’ David rubs the bridge of his nose.
For both of us, it’s hard to listen to and impossible to comprehend. We’ve grown to love her. We’d assumed that she and Moss were refugees who’d managed to get themselves here before it got too bad; the ones who’d found a home here before war broke out, the lucky ones.
Dinah shrugs and her mouth turns down. ‘There was no great deliverance, after all. We were still hungry, still dying.’ She gives a faint smile. ‘Then the Red Cross came.’ She claps her hands. ‘Hooray! We needed medication and food. You know what they brought?’
I shake my head.
‘Something that was better than food, and better than medication!’ She pushes her sharp little face into mine, puckers her red lips, traces her mouth with her finger and holds it up for me to see. ‘Look! This is what they gave us! Red lipstick!’ And she bursts into gleeful laughter. ‘Red lipstick!’
David and I stare at each other, and then we start laughing feebly with her, not getting the joke.
‘They brought lipstick for you?’
‘Hundreds of them! The Red Cross brought them! Of all the things that we needed, well, we got these scarlet lipsticks. So now the British medics are grumbling. Well, you can imagine – how crazy is this? Who would send something so trivial as this? So now,’ she grips my wrist tightly, jerking me closer to her, ‘and this is the important thing I want to tell you, Fern, so listen to me. Those lipsticks were better for us than medication and they were better than any food! We forgot about our hunger altogether. My friend died of typhoid in my arms two days after liberation clutching her lipstick in her hand. Those lipsticks did more for us than all the doctors put together.’ She reaches out and pinches my cheek. ‘You know why?’ Her eyes are eager, willing me to understand. ‘Because they made us human again.’
Her eyes are shining with tears. She is silent for a moment, staring into space.
Blinking, I look towards David. He is rubbing his jaw grimly.
‘The British soldiers held a dance in the camp,’ Dinah continues. ‘It didn’t matter that during the clean-up, the officers, the Eton chaps, had cleaned the excrement in our stinking huts – those same soldiers put their gentle arms around our skinny bones and we rested our shaved heads against their sweet, boyis
h shoulders, and oh! It was wonderful, such courtesy. This inmate, Moses, he asked me to dance and we were skin and bone and angles, but I was a girl again and he was a boy.’ Her voice tightens as if it’s being squeezed. ‘So now, Fern, I’m asking you. What did those lipsticks do? Did they transform us? Did they change the way we looked?’
‘No,’ I whisper, shaking my head but understanding her, and it’s a revelation, a justification, a flash of comprehension. ‘But they changed the way you felt.’
‘Exactly so.’ Her smile is kind. ‘And is that trivial?’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘So there. That’s how it was. And now you know.’ She nods and gets to her feet, then bends over her husband. His head dents the pillows and she puts her hands either side of his face and holds him lovingly. ‘That’s how I met this boy of mine, my Moses.’ She kisses him on the mouth.
It seems unbearably poignant and I’m about to look away, when I see Moss has opened his eyes a little, enough to let the light shine out.
‘My bride,’ he says hoarsely, and his words are muffled against her mouth.
Dinah straightens up. ‘I kissed you awake!’ She looks at us in astonishment. It’s incredible, miraculous!
David gets to his feet, trying to compose himself.
Dinah gets onto the bed and rests her head on her husband’s chest, and she looks so relieved, and so beautiful in her wedding gown.
I glance at David and he nods back at me, and we leave them be.
KIM
Computers are miraculous things. The World Wide Web means I have the world at my fingertips. I’m rushing along in the full flow of information, working through Fern’s book and sending emails to her clients, and I’m enjoying the replies that I get back. I get one from a woman who went to a wedding and came home with a boyfriend; a girl who went to a school prom and made up with her estranged mother; a young woman with sight problems who’s up for promotion – all sorts of lovely tales. And they all have their ideas for the thank-you party – most vociferously, Betty and Mercia, who fancy themselves as models.
A Random Act of Kindness Page 28
