‘After all, Daphne Selfe’s a model, and she’s older than we are,’ Betty tells me.
‘If you’re wearing Fern’s clothes for the party, I suppose you will be modelling them,’ I reason.
We’re helping Cato to roll up Betty’s kilims.
‘That’s not modelling,’ Mercia says, keeping out of the way. ‘That’s just wearing them. We need a catwalk to strut down.’
‘I can’t see the point of modelling the clothes she’s sold you,’ Cato says. ‘You want to model the clothes that she’s got left, the rest of the stock, because she’ll have to get rid of it all when she closes.’
‘They won’t necessarily fit us.’
The kilims, despite being what Enid would describe as a mat rather than a rug, are incredibly heavy. I help Cato to carry them out to the van and we shuffle along with them, dead weights. It’s like carrying a body out of the house.
Back inside, Betty has made the tea and a plate of home-made shortbread biscuits.
‘We could have an auction,’ Cato says. ‘I’d willingly be the auctioneer. It’s an ambition of mine. It could be a charity auction.’
‘And how would that benefit Fern?’ Mercia asks.
‘Publicity,’ Cato says.
‘Why does she need publicity if she’s going to work in a high-street store?’ I point out. We seem to have drifted a long way from the thank-you party that I’d envisaged. ‘But I do like the idea of a catwalk.’ I can see myself on it, in my blue dress, with a spotlight on me.
‘You know her better than we do,’ Mercia says. ‘What would Fern want, do you think?’
‘That’s what it all boils down to,’ I agree. ‘It’s not what we want, it’s what she’d want. That’s what we’ve got to think about.’ But the truth is, I know exactly what she’d like. She’d like to see us being our best selves, as we look through her eyes.
It would be the perfect tribute.
LOT 26
Men’s black cashmere sweater, medium.
‘Let me look at you,’ my mother says as I’m about to leave for my interview in the luscious, fitted brown jacket that I bought from Cato.
I’m half expecting her to spit on a handkerchief and wipe my face with it.
‘You’ll do, I suppose,’ she says. ‘Try to look animated, at least.’
I bare my teeth at her, a fake grin.
‘Better,’ she says. ‘Off you go. Do your best.’
I climb the steps from the flat and outside, the sun shines and the world is waiting for me. I think of David and I’m so excited, my stomach flips.
I tuck my hands in my jacket pockets and close them over the business card belonging to Alexandra Booth, the hypnotherapist.
I take it out and read it again.
Phobias.
Last night, after seeing Moss wake up, David and I didn’t go straight home.
Dinah’s story had such a profound influence on us that we felt we needed to be quiet together, to share it and absorb it. I knew he felt the same as I did, because once we were out of the ward, David pushed up the sleeves of his black cashmere sweater. He said, ‘Fern, that was intense. It was as if Dinah brought him back to life. Drink?’
I have seriously never wanted one more. ‘For sure.’
We caught the bus back to Chalk Farm and headed to Camden Beach on the roof of the Roundhouse venue.
The evening was cool and we lay back in stripy deckchairs with our feet in the sand, listening to music and drinking mojitos. The sky was streaked with turquoise and pink.
I felt vindicated, as if Dinah had given her blessing to my life choices, for want of a better phrase. I could see things more clearly now.
I was thinking of Dinah telling her story so matter-of-factly, but so determined to get the message over to me, that she gave me the confidence, I suppose, for me to be honest with David in turn.
‘The night we were going to your house and I ran away, it was only because …’
He turned his head to look at me and the evening sun gilded his lovely face. ‘Because?’
I looked into his eyes. ‘I was afraid of the dog.’
For a moment, he stared back blankly and then it dawned on him I was telling the truth.
‘Oh. I get it. You were scared of the dog, not me. I thought I’d come on too strong.’ Then he grinned, as I knew he would; as all dog owners do. ‘Seriously? You’re scared of Duncan?’
‘Yes.’ I slumped back in the deckchair and looked at the beautiful pink-and-blue sky, feeling like an idiot. Here we go. This is the point in the conversation where the dog owners tell you you’ve got it all wrong and push their dog with its mouthful of sharp teeth in your face to show how cuddly it is.
‘Fern, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.’
‘Is it?’
‘Sure. I’ll find him another home,’ David said, bumping his fist against my shoulder.
I laughed, loving him for saying it, even though I knew it was a joke.
His gaze was full of understanding. ‘What started it? Did you have a bad experience once?’ he asked.
‘Not just once. I was a timid kid.’
‘Are you scared of all dogs? Chihuahuas?’
‘Just dogs with teeth. I try not to let them smell fear. My policy is to avoid them.’
‘Aw, Fern, the whole country’s full of dogs,’ he said sympathetically.
‘Yeah, I know.’ We were having this conversation semi-seriously. I was laughing a bit at myself but at the same time it was all true. I scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle slowly through my fingers.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that night? I would have put him out in the garden.’
‘I didn’t think you’d understand.’ But actually, I was wrong about that.
‘If it’s any consolation, you hide it very well,’ he said after a moment. ‘You always look confident.’
I was pleased he was impressed. Hiding was one thing I was really good at. I took a sip of my mojito and the ice cubes chinked against my teeth. ‘You had the dog with you the first time I met you.’
‘So I did.’
‘I was wearing that Fifties-style suit with a pencil skirt. Did you like me when you first saw me?’ I asked, knowing that people’s impressions of me are usually superficial judgements which, to be fair, I’ve always encouraged.
‘I didn’t know you then,’ he replied with his customary honesty. ‘But I liked you when we went to the Cotswolds.’
‘Did you?’ I ask hopefully. ‘What did you like about me?’
‘You weren’t pushy.’
‘Oh. That’s a negative. What positives did you like about me?’
‘You fitted in, I suppose.’
‘And that’s why I didn’t tell you about the dog, because I wanted to fit in here, too.’
I wonder if he’s ever looked at our star signs for compatibility, even if just out of curiosity, even though I don’t believe a word of it. If we were governed by our star signs the world’s population would be divided into twelfths. We’d all be doing the same thing in the same week, and the whole idea is completely ridiculous).
A blue beachball bounced our way and David kicked it back. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at people,’ he said. ‘It’s as if you get inside their heads and know just what they need to feel better about themselves. It seems like a heavy gift to carry around with you.’
‘Why? It’s nice.’ I turned to look at him. I’m not sure how serious this conversation was. I didn’t know whether it was influenced by Dinah’s story and the way she woke Moss, or the mojitos. ‘As for Duncan, I suppose I could try facing my fears rather than avoiding them. When I imagine a dog jumping on me I can feel its paws on my shoulders and smell its breath in my face as if I were a kid, but Duncan’s not a very big dog and he’d probably only come up to my waist.’
‘That’s because you’re a grown-up now,’ David said logically, reaching for my hand.
He brushed the sand from my palms and I felt a surge of exciteme
nt, which tempered the dread from the dog talk, and I tightened my fingers in his.
‘Am I? I’m always hiding behind my clothes,’ I said.
He thought about this, and he smiled. ‘That’s not how I see it. I like the way you let your clothes speak for you,’ he said.
Phobias.
Now, standing on the pavement outside the flat all ready to go for my interview, I’m looking at Alexandra Booth’s card and wondering: am I grown-up? The question is quite depressing.
Harnessing my inner adolescent, I throw it to the fates and dial the hypnotherapist’s number. If Alexandra Booth answers, I’ll go and see her. If I get her voicemail, I’ll go to the interview.
I don’t have to worry about it for long because she picks up on the first ring.
‘Hello? How can I help you?’ she asks.
LOT 27
Baby Dior size 6A silk crêpe dress with full gold net skirt, 114cm, 1990s
First of all, I don’t know if hypnotherapy works but I’m willing to give it a go on the basis I’ve got nothing to lose.
I reschedule my interview at Top Shop and meet Alexandra Booth in St John’s Wood. She has a consulting room in an office block. She’s in her forties, kind and calm, dark hair and a short bob, and she’s wearing a well-cut charcoal-grey suit with high-heeled shoes, so already I have a lot of faith in her.
She admires my jacket and tells me that she, herself, had the exact same one.
I laugh – well, actually …
So already, it’s nice that we have a bond.
She makes a steeple of her fingers while I sit in her claret armchair and tell her about my fear of dogs.
As I lean back in my chair, relaxing and gazing at a spot on her oatmeal wall, she asks about my first memories of being afraid of a dog. I close my eyes and relive the time I was six and chased by an Alsatian in Regent’s Park, when I got knocked face down in the mud in my gold tulle party dress.
I was, as my mother has said, a shy and timid child.
And to my surprise, and probably Alexandra Booth’s, as I relive it, I start to cry. I feel as if my heart is breaking. Every dog that I’ve ever encountered since then has been that dog and every fear of being knocked down has been that fear.
I remember the jangle of its collar getting louder in my ears and running as fast as I can, running like the wind but at the same time experiencing the terror of knowing without a doubt that it’s going to get me. WHAM! It does. It barges into me, stands over me, pinning me down in the cold mud, panting its hot, meaty breath in my ear.
And that’s where my memory ends, right there, as if that was the end of the story and I’d died at that moment. When I see a dog, I’ve died at that moment ever since.
But it’s not the end of the story. When Alexandra Booth lets me carry on viewing my memories in black and white in the cinema of my imagination, I can see my loving, furious mother running to me, picking me up, cleaning the mud and its grittiness out of my mouth with her manicured fingers. She yells at the dog’s owners and at me for the state my dress and yes, it’s true, I have spoilt it, ruined it, trashed it, sullied it. And in my distress and confusion, I’m not crying from the shock of being chased but for my gold dress, my lovely dress, which I’ve failed to protect as my mother has failed to protect me.
I replay the scene again and again in my mind until I can watch it without crying, until its power is weakened and the memory slides gradually from the present to the past.
Alexandra Booth asks me about my relationship with my mother.
‘She’s a bit self-centred.’ I’ve edited the story in my head and left out the important bits.
I tell her the facts. My mother’s parents were in the army, which was how she came to go to boarding school, which she hated. Her parents had an intense relationship. They loved her, but she always felt the outsider. So as soon as she was able to, she looked for someone of her own to love.
What my mother wanted was to be adored. It shouldn’t have been hard. It was why she became a model. She had the kind of looks that attracted people, the kind of face that never took a bad photograph. She had a mouth that curved up at the edges as if she were always on the brink of a smile, as if her thoughts were always sweet and pleasant. Her hair was pale and glossy, wavy, large eyes looking through a heavy fringe.
I know from photographs that I was a beautiful child, a miniature version of my mother, with the same cleft in my chin and my upturned mouth denoting perpetual enjoyment. Our mouths are a quirk of fate, the stamp of genetics, because obviously neither of us was perpetually happy. Having said that, we were mostly happy, that’s how I remember it, to the delight of my father.
She had the world at her feet, my grandmother liked to say, as if she could have been anything she chose and made a success of it. Which really isn’t true. She liked the parties, the fashion, the runway, the attention, but she didn’t apply herself.
In her opinion, life was about her looks. She was never interested in the bigger picture.
Despite the circles that she mixed with in that time, she chose my father because he could see no fault in her. She was perfectly beautiful. And then they had me and I was an appealing child, and she and I were all his. He disappeared to work on a Monday and when he reappeared on a Friday he’d shout, ‘I’m home!’ And his face would light up at the sight of us and he’d stretch his arms wide and we’d run into them – we, his girls, his beautiful girls. As a result, I spent my early childhood feeling totally loved and totally secure.
If I was a reflection of her, the perfect mirror to begin with, it began to warp and distort as I grew up, like a funhouse in a fairground. It didn’t reflect what she wanted. She didn’t want me to be myself if it meant thinking differently from the way she did. She had needs and expectations that I didn’t know how to fulfil. Her anger frightened me. I made choices based on what I believed her choices would be, which was as useless as second-guessing a quiz in a magazine. She was vocal in her disappointment. I’d sit frozen in my lovely clothes, letting her anger flood over me, enduring it, waiting for it to burn itself out.
If I were a different person, it wouldn’t happen to me.
It wouldn’t happen to me if I transformed myself into someone else.
That’s the whole story of my early years.
I drift back to the present.
Alexandra Booth is talking about my experience with the dog and my instinct to run away from it, which may be a result of my fear of my mother’s criticism, which has made me hypersensitive to threat. ‘But you might also find that you’re more sensitive to other people’s feelings,’ she remarks, crossing one leg over the other. ‘You may be more attuned than most to other people’s needs and consequently, they’ll be drawn to your empathy. Some people are like orchids and some are like dandelions,’ she says.’
It’s a consoling thought. ‘So it’s not all bad?’
‘Not by any means. And I want you to remember that dogs bark because that’s what dogs do,’ she’s saying. ‘And you’ll find, knowing this, that you don’t mind it.’
I let my thoughts drift to a shaggy brown dog on a pink lead and David Westwood in a pink floral shirt standing with my suitcase on Chalk Farm Road.
‘In fact, it makes you feel warm and friendly.’
She counts me back to the present and I open my eyes and look around the oatmeal room.
‘How do you feel?’
How do I feel? ‘I’m not sure,’ I say truthfully. ‘I suppose I’ll have to test it out before I know whether or not it’s worked.’
I give her back her empty Kleenex box and leave, clutching the last of the tissues in my damp hand.
Obviously, I’m testing out my dog-worthiness at David’s house. I’m wearing a nude mididress, because that’s the way I feel, as if I’m missing a layer of confidence. I’m standing outside the red front door between two olive trees in terracotta pots and he’s waiting inside for me – the perfect incentive.
I’m mustering up
the magic mantra the hypnotherapist has given, that when a dog jumps and barks, it’s just being a dog.
I ring the doorbell.
The dog barks and David comes to the door. ‘It’s okay, Duncan’s in the lounge,’ he says.
I clutch his blue shirtsleeve. ‘Hang on, just checking – if Duncan does savage me, you’ll pull him off, won’t you?’
David takes me perfectly seriously; there’s not a hint of a smile in his eyes. And isn’t that what we all want, to be understood?
‘Of course, Fern. You can rely on me.’
I can. I know I can. I flex my shoulders. ‘All right then. I’m ready.’
David opens the door and goes inside the lounge first, with me following close behind him on the grounds that if there’s any savaging going to occur, the dog will get him before it gets me. Obviously, he’s a nice guy and I don’t want him to be savaged, but if it happens I’ll be in a good position to run for help.
The flat is painted white and it’s extremely neat.
Duncan, the shaggy brown dog raises his blond eyebrows to look amiably at us. He licks David’s hand and David scratches behind his ear with a rueful smile. ‘Sit.’ The dog sits.
So far, so good.
David looks up at me. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m not sure.’ On the other hand, I know what I’m not feeling – I’m not feeling scared to death. My heart rate is normal. I look at the dog and the dog looks at me with that expression of benign expectation that I recognise from before. And I’m not afraid. I could be afraid. The memory of fear isn’t far away and I could revive it with a snap of the fingers if I wanted, but currently I’m not. I’m just not.
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
In the kitchen there’s an empty light box. I pick it up and look at the construction of the dovetail joints. ‘Will you always just make these?’
‘Well, I enjoyed making the chopping board. I might try making another one for someone who’d appreciate it,’ he says with humour. His eyes meet mine for a moment. He takes a cafetiere out of the cupboard and measures the coffee accurately with a scoop. He does it as carefully and precisely as he does everything else.
A Random Act of Kindness Page 29
