The Vintage Summer Wedding

by Jenny Oliver

It was only as Anna cycled on Rachel’s bike down the lanes, mentally ticking people off that she couldn’t stay with, that she realised she had nowhere to go. Hermione was at her father’s house which ruled both of them out, it felt too pally to go and knock on Rachel’s door, and she’d had too much to drink with Hermione to drive back to London, where her friends would ask too many questions about why she was on their doorstep at ten o’clock. She pedalled into the square and looked around, it was pretty much deserted, there was low-level noise coming from the pub but no sign of anyone. The bistro had a couple of diners but it looked like they were finishing up their coffees. She knew she couldn’t go home. Couldn’t lie in that house and look at her new bloody shower and know that he was right.

  Nothing had changed.

  When it came down to it, she still didn’t want to be there. She still felt the snapping at her heels of something more.

  Locking the bike to a lamppost, she paused on the edge of the square and wondered what to do next. Where to go. She flicked the bike keys over in her hand and, in doing so, saw the other keys that were attached. The ones to the shop. The ones she had been given only a day or so ago when Mrs Beedle had gone on a buying mission to Ardingly Antique Fair. She had placed them in Anna’s hand and said, Don’t let any more clocks go missing! Yes.’ And Anna had nodded, feeling like she had passed some kind of test. Like she was worthy of being trusted with something precious.

  As she unlocked the door, deactivated the alarm and flicked on a couple of lights at the back so as not to draw attention, she felt the initial trepidation and spookiness of being there alone at night disperse into a sort of excitement. Like sneaking into a sweet shop as a kid. All the familiar objects ‒ the portrait of the young girl, the welsh dresser, the beautifully restored chest of drawers, a row of porcelain ornaments ‒ seemed to move closer, to wink at her in clandestine excitement. She felt like Bagpuss waking up while all the little toys yawned from their day asleep.

  Walking around in the dusky light, Anna let her fingers trail over marquetry boxes she’d polished, crystal glasses she’d wiped, velvet cushions she’d flumped. The eyes of the taxidermy birds watched her as she went. The thumping noise of the cat jumping down off the counter startled her.

  ‘What are you doing in here, still?’ she said, looking down at him as he twirled in and out of her legs. Then, quite unexpectedly, found herself reaching down to give him a tentative pat on the head, their first ever friendly encounter. ‘It’s just you and me, cat,’ she said, before going through the curtain to the stockroom in search of food.

  When she curled up in the armchair and ate a dinner of Marmite on toast while flicking through the only terrestrial channels available, it felt like coming home from school when she was tiny and having nothing to think about bar whether to watch Home and Away or Blue Peter. Time was suspended. Her thoughts pushed to the back of her head like the mountain of chairs and crap at the back of the shop, to be dealt with another day. But as soon as the toast was eaten and the TV descended into absolutely nothing to watch, the thoughts loomed again. Threatening to pick up their endless loop of confusion.

  So she did the only thing she could think to keep them at bay. She stood up, walked round to the back of the shop and gave the first chair in the haphazard mesh sculpture a tug. Three came away at once and another crashed to the floor. The cat scarpered. The welsh dresser seemed to shrink back with a sigh.

  An hour later, the stack was dismantled and lay in its various pieces round the shop like an odd, mismatched musical chairs. Half a set of mahogany antique dining chairs sat next to cult Conran design classics, a pile of wrought-iron garden chairs were stacked alongside a crappy wooden stool that was inextricably interlocked with an old French upholstered nursing chair, while a rattan sixties bucket chair was lounging next to what she thought, if she was lucky, might be an original Eames lounge chair.

  With the stack cleared, she pushed her way further into the sea of junk and found boxes of china ‒ more teacups, saucers and side plates that she put on the shelf in the stockroom with the others. Next she unearthed some white vintage enamel jugs with blue rims, a mismatch of teapots, more cushions ‒ beautiful ones with intricate patterns block-printed on velvet ‒ gold carriage clocks and a whole stack of dusty Kilner jars. With those cleared and put away neatly in the stockroom, she could prop up the old, battered stage set of Manhattan. In doing so, she knocked the glass of the one-eyed fairground fortune-teller who flung forward and back in its seat and croaked, ‘Fortunes told here.’

  ‘Shit!’ Anna jumped back into the stage set and had to stand for a second to get her breath back. The machine seemed to settle back into place as she looked at the scraggy, moley chin of the witchy fortune-teller and the moth-eaten purple robes she was wearing. Hand-drawn instructions pointed to a slot where Anna should place her hand and another to a wheel that she should wind.

  She glanced around the shop, everything seemed to slink back into place, like it had all been leaning forward, straining to see what would happen next. Only the birds in their glass boxes stayed watching as she wound the wheel and the craggy old witch sat up straighter. A light came on above the slot for her hand, and Anna tentatively reached her fingers in. A second later, a stamp slammed down hard on the back of her hand making her jump, ‘Jesus!’ she shouted, wondering if any of her little metatarsals had been shattered by the impact.

  At the same time, the witch raised a broken finger from the desk and said, what sounded to Anna like, ‘Do not mistake temptation for opportunity.’

  ‘Great.’ Anna shook her hand in pain and watched as the fortune-teller slumped back down into nothingness. ‘You could have said that before I met up with bloody Luke Lloyd!’ But, her attention piqued, she was intrigued enough to wind the machine a second time, keeping her hand clear of the stamp, and listened expectantly as the voice said, ‘You are never too old to learn,’ while the mechanics of the old woman’s mouth took a couple of seconds to catch up.

  Anna rolled her eyes, thinking how her father would be nodding in agreement and then raising his brows pointedly at Anna as she sighed dismissively. Advice from a woodworm-riddled fortune-teller was just another stupid thing to notch up on her list of Nettleton-inspired sentimentality.

  Carrying on through the mess was like hacking a path through the jungle, but then when she eventually came to the back wall it all suddenly became worth it. Standing there she discovered that what she had always assumed was a wall was actually white wooden shutters. And, as she peeled them back, she found herself staring back at her reflection in vast floor-to-ceiling French windows. She felt along the edge of the wall and found a light switch which she flicked, bringing a tiny courtyard patio sparkling to life with strings of coloured outdoor bulbs. It was all cobbled stones, a mess of dandelions and higgledy-piggledy with pots. Vines trailed across the back wall, up over a wooden trellis that jutted out from the top of the windows. She stood and stared, her breath steaming up the windows. It was like watching magic.

  Twisting the latch and pushing the doors open, Anna stepped out into air scented sweet with buddleia and lavender and the papery yellow petals of evening primroses crumpled and ghostly in the moonlight. The strings of lights swayed, caught by the corner of the French doors, and beams of blue, yellow and red danced on the cobblestones. The cat wove its way out between Anna’s legs and she followed, walking once around the small plot, her legs catching occasionally on brambles, her arms swiping through old spiders’ webs. ‘Wow.’ She said to no one, ‘This is amazing.’

  And it was then, as her mind already saw her sawing through branches, trimming vines without a thought for her nails, deciding which table and chairs would look best out there, arranging the enamel jugs with big bunches of purple lavender and drooping sprigs of buddleia and setting the scene with candles and delicate cups and saucers, that she wondered if there was an inkling of a chance that she was happier here, in this stuffy little shop, than she had been in her job at the Opera House. The
heart-breaking pressure of quashing her jealousy every day that she worked with the dancers, watching as other people realised her dream, clinging desperately onto a world that had chewed her up and spat her out ‒ the daily reminder of her own failure ‒ was more exhausting than she’d thought.

  Perhaps, she wondered, her unceasing determination to climb to the top, her need for the best of everything, hadn’t been ambition but escape.

  She paused to pluck a grape off the vine and, squishing the purple juice between her fingers, thought how much she actually wanted Razzmatazz to succeed. That she didn’t watch them from velvet theatre chairs, legs crossed, stiletto swinging, half-consumed with envy. That her smile today had been real. Dressed in her crappy jumper and leggings.

  Today she had been the Primark bag rather than the Chanel and she had loved every minute of it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘What the bloody hell have you done to my shop?’

  Anna darted awake at the sound of Mrs Beedle’s voice.

  ‘Have you spent the night here? Why have you spent the night here? And on the chaise lounge. Blimey, Anna, that must have been uncomfortable. Oh my goodness, my garden…’ Mrs Beedle paused, giving Anna a chance to work out where she was, why she was there and to acknowledge that her back killed, she felt filthy and her hand had swollen up into a big red lump.

  ‘My little garden,’ said Mrs Beedle again. ‘Oh, Anna, look what you’ve found.’ It sounded like there might be tears in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry I was here. I just—’

  ‘Anna, my dear, if this is what you want to do with your time, then far be it for me to stop you. Isn’t it glorious?’ She walked over to the French windows and peered out. ‘Oh my little garden. How I have missed you. Anna…’ Mrs Beedle turned to look at her, her hand over her mouth, her big watery eyes magnified behind her owl glasses. ‘Anna, I had forgotten it was here.’ She laughed. ‘I had forgotten,’ she said again.

  Anna watched her from where she sat on the chaise lounge. Watched as she walked round trailing her hand over the same wild, overgrown flowers that Anna had. Watched her mouth quiver in a smile. Realised that Mrs Beedle had given her a chance when no one else would and this seemed like the perfect thank-you. In the comfort of this nest of a place, with no one watching, judging behind her back, Anna Whitehall had been sanded back, stripped of her layers of crap and was possibly, just maybe, beginning to reveal the original, beautiful, rough around the edges, raw wood underneath.

  They ate breakfast sitting outside on the white wrought-iron chairs, the backs patterned with curling leaves. In front of them a marble-topped Singer sewing table was laden down with croissants that Mrs Beedle had dashed excitedly out to Rachel’s bakery to buy, flaky pastry crisp with almonds and squishy with chocolate still warm from the oven. She’d even forgone her orange tea for take-away cappuccinos, the froth foaming thick over the rims, the bubbles bursting under the weight of cocoa and cinnamon dusted on top. Anna had poured orange juice into two of the gold-leaf glasses she’d found the night before, the edges so thin it felt like they might shatter to the touch, and laid out flower-patterned side plates for the pastries. A bunch of dandelions flopped erratically out of a jam jar in the centre of the table as wasps buzzed lazily around the vines.

  ‘I meant to say the other day how much I like your friend, Hermione, is it?’ Mrs Beedle said, before tearing off a chunk of croissant.

  ‘Really?’ Anna sounded surprised.

  ‘Yes. An interesting character.’ Mrs Beedle nodded, holding her hand over her mouth as she spoke. ‘She’s going to sell me some Hungarian furniture.’

  Anna sat up a little straighter. ‘Is she? When did she decide that?’

  ‘I was in the pub with her and your father last night. You know I don’t remember her at all growing up here.’ Mrs Beedle shook her head. ‘They make a nice couple,’ she added, as if she was pointing out something as pleasant as a sunrise.

  Anna made a face. ‘Oh they’re dreadful. It’s awful,’ she muttered over a sip of cappuccino froth. ‘They’ll never last and the whole thing is disgusting. He’s old enough to be ‒ well ‒ her father. It’s embarrassing and it’s never going to last. Ever.’

  Mrs Beedle sat back and Anna could feel her watching her. The cat jumped up on her lap and Anna was tempted to boot him off, his affection seemed too revealing, too telling of her mood the night before.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure, Anna,’ Mrs Beedle said, looking like she might be holding in one of her knowing smiles. ‘I think she’s quite good for him. He needs a firm hand.’ She took a sip of her own coffee, froth coating her upper lip, ‘I was watching them and I thought,’ she licked the bubbles away, ‘I think he’s finally growing up.’

  Anna guffawed. ‘He’s sixty-eight!’

  ‘Well, some men mature at different rates,’ Mrs Beedle laughed.

  ‘I just think it’s totally wrong.’

  The bell above the front door tinkled and they both turned to see a woman walk in carrying a Dachshund under her arm.

  ‘Anna,’ Mrs Beedle sighed. ‘There is no right or wrong. When are you going to get that through your thick skull! There’s just...how it is. You can’t make everyone fit into your view of the world.’

  ‘I hardly think disliking my friend shagging my dad is a particularly obscure view of the world,’ Anna snorted.

  Mrs Beedle shrugged. ‘Or you could see him as an adult who has had a lot of terrible relationships and perhaps finally found one that fits. You’ve been the spoilt daughter, Anna, you’ve made him pay. You can’t keep it up forever.’

  Anna glared up at her, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Really?’ Mrs Beedle raised a brow in challenge and Anna found herself looking away, at the big swathes of purple buddleia, butterflies hovering around each drooping flower, and tried to hold her cool, her feeling of rightness.

  The customer cut into the silence asking, ‘How much is this bird?’ and pointing at the taxidermy crow.

  Mrs Beedle stood up, now chuckling at Anna who’d jutted her chin out in defiance, and said, ‘That one, my love? Let me see.’ Pausing to drain her coffee cup before going over to the counter to search for a price.

  Anna, who after hours of dusting, polishing and repositioning, knew everything in the shop and its retail value probably better than Mrs Beedle, sat with the price on the tip of her tongue. But she didn’t do the selling, she’d decided that quite firmly. That part of the job wasn’t for her. Yet as she sat there watching, saw Mrs Beedle run her finger slowly down her price list, she was suddenly struck by the flashes of memory that had been darting in and out of her consciousness since she’d started working in the shop. There she was in her red shorts, ponytail swinging, going to the antique fairs and car boot sales with her dad. All their little scams and schemes flooding back, the haggling, the stifled giggling and the belly laughing, the rush of a good bargain, the pat on the head when she pulled off a brilliant deal, an ice cream melting in the heat, the smell of frying onions from the burger vans. The chill of frost-bitten fingers warmed by hot chocolate and mittens in winter and sunburnt cheeks slicked with luminous lotion in summer, the shouts and insults and the stories about old coins and postcards that went on forever, the little dogs that curled up on the front seat of vans and the big dogs that barked when she walked past, the smell of cut grass or the slide of icy concrete. The thrill of taking the crumpled notes that he would strip off the wodge in his pocket and give her at the end of the day if she worked hard enough. The fine line between right and wrong that they were acting out every time they went in for a deal. The worry of whether it would work. The breath-holding wait. The knowing winks, the knowing that everyone was doing it. Everyone was screwing each other for a bargain. And then driving home, the Thermos in the van, the crack across the windscreen, the day’s spoils on the roof bungied on at precarious angles.

  Memories more fun, more precious, than she had allowed herself to believe.

  ‘I
’ll take this one, Mrs B,’ Anna said, jumping up. And Mrs Beedle paused, her finger hovering over the price list, then smiled as she walked willingly back to her seat at the table.

  ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ Anna said to the woman with the sausage dog and they both looked up at the bird. ‘A real beauty. We haven’t had him in long.’ She thought about the beady little eyes of the fortune-teller watching her the night before, remembered the throbbing of her stamped hand.

  Now, what did I teach you, Anna? Go in high. Why knock off fifty straight away when you can add it on straight away. See what I’m saying? That way you all leave knowing you got the price you want. And they think they got a deal.

  ‘I’ve got it on for a hundred and fifty.’ Anna heard Mrs Beedle suck in a breath and pause to lean on the window frame and watch as the woman walked round either side of the glass cabinet.

  ‘And can you do any better?’ The woman asked without looking up from the bird, its iridescent feathers catching the sunlight and sparkling blue, green, pink.

  Everyone wants what they can’t have, Anna.

  ‘I’ll have a look but I know I don’t have a lot of room to move. There’s so much demand for these. They’re in and out the shop like that‒’ Anna clicked her fingers and took a couple of paces forward. ‘Very desirable.’

  The woman traced her finger round the edge of the case.

  Anna watched her, watched her lick her lips, watched her glance out to where someone was waiting for her in the car, watched her hand hover over her bag, watched her look into the glass case again and then step away, unsure. Anna waited, walked over to the counter, pretended to study an invoice. She felt like her eight-year-old self. Her dad would be nodding, just out of sight. Wait, Anna. Not too quick. Wait, patience, wait, wait. Let the desire build, wait, wait, and now...now reel them in. Catch them off guard. Slice it down and they’ll be putty, Anna, putty.

  ‘Best I could let you have it for is a hundred,’ Anna said in the end, without looking up from the invoice. ‘And that’s pretty much cost price for me. I have someone coming in at end of the week wanting similar, so…’ She glanced over her shoulder, held out her hands. ‘It’s up to you.’