The Mirrror Shop

by Nicholas Bundock

  ‘Don’t you think you deserve to waste a little time on yourself now?

  With a derisive laugh, Agnes sits back in her chair.

  Eva says, ‘Now last week you were telling me about your first long-term relationship.’

  ‘The Richard era. A two-year mistake.’

  ‘When did you feel it was a mistake?’

  ‘After a month if I’m honest.’

  ‘Were you honest?’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘Why do you think you continued with him?’

  ‘I hoped things would change. I thought . . .’ Agnes looks at Eva as if expecting her to complete the sentence.

  Eva remains silent.

  Agnes explodes. ‘It’s all very well for you just sitting there. I suppose you have the perfect husband, two children, a sweet cottage in the country and holidays in Umbria financed by losers like me.’

  ‘Did you hope Richard would be the perfect partner?’

  ‘Why do you tell me nothing about yourself? Here I am, pouring my sodding heart out, and you sit there like a block of ice. I bet your dad’s a judge. I’d get more sympathy if I stopped a bag lady in the street.’

  ‘Is it sympathy you’re looking for?’

  ‘There you go again. So smug. Miss Perfect. Miss Anonymous.’

  ‘If it helps, no, I’m not married, I’m divorced. I have a daughter who lives in Australia. Yes, I live in a cottage. I have a long term partner, but I prefer holidays in Britain to Italy.’

  Agnes stares from her chair past Eva towards the window and the sky above the city. ‘I should have sussed early on that Richard was always going to use me.’

  ‘But you did suss, surely – after the first month.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘You said so, Agnes. And you hoped things would change.’

  ‘Deep down I knew they wouldn’t.’

  ‘But you stayed with him.’

  ‘I’d have stayed with the last one if he hadn’t chucked me and slunk back home. I’d seen him promise other women the world, yet I still fell for it. Why do I pick them?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘Stop turning it back on me all the time.’

  ‘OK, could it be a case of a certain type of person always picks you?’

  ‘My God, you sound like my mum. Bit posher maybe but you’re probably the same age.’

  Being fifty-two, Eva knows this is possible. She also thinks that some therapists would explore the comment and focus on Agnes’s mother. Instead she asks, ‘Was there any similarity between your various boyfriends?’

  ‘All bastards, I think.’

  ‘And who used to make the running?’

  ‘They would ask me out, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘And in the early stages who was the more keen to continue the relationship?’

  ‘Him, me, I don’t know. I may have played hard to get a couple of times. My main rule was avoid the married ones. Which I did, until this last disaster.’

  ‘Do you feel you need a boyfriend?’

  ‘I work with a gang of women all day – OK? I sometimes like the company of a man. Is that abnormal?’

  Eva wonders why Agnes is angrier today than during the preceding two sessions. ‘Tell me about your work.’

  ‘My boss designs clothes. I and the team make the design into the basis a garment we can show to the trade. Mainly children’s stuff. Very exclusive. Very competitive.’ She looks around the uncluttered room with its small table and three chairs. Her eyes brush past two Dufy prints on the wall, views of a harbour seen through an open window. She pauses at the oil sketch. ‘The studio’s nothing like this place. Swatches flying everywhere, radio on, stuff all over the floor, pressure to get it right, finish by deadlines. I’m good at what I do but in fashion forget security. We know we could all be out of work tomorrow. Not like your business. We fight to get our clients, fight even more to hold on to them. Yours ring up for an appointment.’ She looks with contempt at Eva’s dress. ‘Perhaps I should become a counsellor.’

  ‘And you have worked for the same person for seven years?’

  ‘Since we both left art school.’

  ‘And the affair with her husband hasn’t jeopardised your relationship with her or threatened your job?’

  ‘Not really. They have a weird marriage. She was away in the States for a lot of the time. She knew of course but never took it seriously. We still get on fine. She often confides in me as her oldest friend. I suppose I do with her, but I haven’t told her I’m coming to counselling. Do counsellors ever get fired?’

  ‘So your job, to date at least, has been secure?’

  ‘As much as fashion ever is.’ Agnes gestures round the room. ‘Never been your worry, has it?’

  Memories play through Eva’s mind of the time, twenty years ago, when it became known she was having an affair with a client: the enquiry, the lost friendships, the move from London. ‘A counsellor can have a crisis at work as much as anyone else,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sorry. Why should I get at you? It’s just that . . . I think I’m scared.’ Agnes becomes red-eyed.

  Eva feels the atmosphere change: panic is welling up in her client. ‘What are you scared of, Agnes?’

  ‘Making another mistake.’

  When Agnes has left, Eva walks to the window. Notes about the last hour must wait. Memories of her own crisis are flooding her mind with an intensity which arouses the pain felt at the time. She looks over the city roofs, breathes deeply and closes her eyes. The pain subsides. There was closure, she tells herself. It has been resolved, was resolved years ago.

  She hears two of her colleagues talking in the corridor outside her room. It is a comfort to know that here she is part of a supportive group. She remembers from her London days another overheard conversation – or had they meant her to hear? ‘It’s all that Jungian stuff she’s mad about. Just because Cranky Carl screwed one of his clients, she thinks that gives her carte blanche to do the same.’ And the other colleague’s comment, ‘Of all people, a dealer in mirrors. Know thyself – I think not. Jung and friend Freud would have had a field day with that one.’

  Eva goes to her chair to make notes. Nineteen years had proved the critics wrong. She was still with Luke. The nature of his business was immaterial.

  In the workshop Russ, with a book of 22-carat gold leaf in one hand and a tip brush in the other is all concentration. Luke follows an online auction on his laptop until more coffee appears.

  As Russ places a mug on the desk, Luke says, ‘When you decide to retire, I’ll pack up the shop.’

  ‘My father did sixty years in all, with your granddad and later with your dad; I’ll do my sixty as well.’

  ‘Don’t you sometimes miss London?’

  ‘I’ve never regretted following you up here. Now I’m almost a local.’

  ‘If you ever think you’ve had enough . . .’

  ‘I’ll probably die with a frame in my hand and you’ll have to prise it from my rigid fingers. Just don’t damage the gilding.’

  A few browsers enter the shop. Two decorators call and take photos and measurements, but for the rest of the morning the showroom is silent, apart from low volume Radio 3 from Russ’s workbench. Shortly after midday Luke watches the market traders pack up under a darkening sky. Within twenty minutes rain is falling. No longer competing with the sun, the mirrors assume another life. A ho-ho bird on the cresting of a chinoiserie girandole glistens, as if shaking its feathers; the carved pagodas below float in a fairy-tale world of rocks and scrollwork. Nearby, in the frame of a circular mirror, gold spheres move in orbit around their convex plate while, by the window, a decorated chair appears to move forward, as if an unseen sitter has shifted position.

  Luke’s eyes rest on a small gilt console table and he remembers that in a concealed drawer is a seventeenth-century needlework, discovered after the table had been bought. Walking over to it, he removes the needlework and studies its design. Faded and dam
aged it shows two courtly women standing in a garden of a country house, a deer park in the distance. He lays the piece on his desk and goes to his stockroom at the rear of the shop to hunt for a suitable frame. Knowing that somewhere there is a group of small stained fruitwood frames, he searches every likely box, arranged by Russ in meticulous order. Returning empty-handed to the showroom, he mutters to himself, ‘I’m sure I saw them recently. Where the hell can they . . .’

  To Luke’s surprise, stooping over the desk is a woman, examining and seemingly mesmerised by the needlework. For a few seconds she appears not to notice his presence. He finds himself rooted a few feet away, the backs of his legs touching the low bookcase of reference works on the rear wall. How, he wonders, has she entered the shop without alerting Russ who, even when engrossed in repairing an intricate carved swag, has never been known to miss the sound of the brass bell above the door? Puzzling over her presence and continuing silence, he notices that she must have been careful to wipe her feet, since there are no wet footprints on the shop’s green fitted carpet.

  ‘Without lifting her head, she asks, ‘May I . . . ?’

  ‘Of course.’ Luke walks to the desk.

  When she lifts the needlework he notices her long, magenta pink fingernails, and as she holds it in the palms of her hands studying every detail, he tries to guess her age – difficult since her face is almost covered by a large black felt hat pulled down so that it meets a pale pink scarf wrapped several times round her neck, the ends tucked into her navy ankle-length raincoat.

  ‘Who are they?’ she asks, looking up at last.

  Luke is surprised to see such deep aquamarine eyes below jet black eyebrows.

  ‘Peace and Prosperity. Peace with the palm branch, Prosperity with the basket of fruit.’

  Her eyes drop to the needlework. ‘How old is it?’

  ‘Late sixteen-hundreds. I’d almost forgotten about it until this morning. I’ve been hunting for a suitable frame.’

  She looks up, wide-eyed. ‘Is it for sale?’

  Luke notices a wisp of black hair has escaped from under her hat. ‘It will be, once it’s framed.’

  ‘And how much . . .’ she pauses, her face halfway between a frown and a smile, ‘. . . approximately will it be?’

  ‘Well, it’s faded and a little frayed. Shall we say five-fifty? And if I find an old frame, another fifty. Six hundred.’

  She replaces it on the desk and steps back. ‘I think I might buy it. Is it rare?’

  ‘All early needleworks are scarce. With bright colours and in good condition they can be thousands.’

  ‘I love this for all its wear and fading. I’d like it, please. Shall I write you a cheque?’ She reaches down to a large canvas bag on the floor.

  Luke is struck by surprise that the sale is so simple – no ‘What’s your very best?’ or ‘How much for cash?’ Is it too cheap? Russ, who is certainly listening, will, no doubt, have an opinion.

  ‘Pay when you collect it,’ Luke says. ‘We’ll have it ready by the end of the week.’

  ‘I think I’m in London until next Tuesday,’ she says.

  ‘It will be waiting for you on Wednesday morning.’

  She looks round the shop, her gaze resting on an overmantel mirror. Luke looks at her back. He sees her reflection in the glass. The aquamarine eyes stare back at him.

  ‘Perhaps one day I’ll buy a mirror from you,’ she says. She turns to face him. ‘I must give you my name and phone number.’ She pulls from her bag a notebook, prints a name and phone number in large childlike writing, tears out the page and lays it on the desk.

  Walking with her to the door, Luke breathes in her perfume – like a flower he cannot identify. He opens the door. This time the bell rings.

  She says softly, ‘Bye,’ and walks across the empty market place to the baker’s. He stares after her. As the church clock strikes one, he closes the door, inhaling deeply as he returns to his desk, but the perfume has disappeared with her.

  ‘Well, she got that cheap,’ says Russ from the workshop doorway.

  ‘We’ve had it for years. I don’t think it’s even in the stock book.’

  ‘I’ll have to dose that bell with WD40.’

  Russ picks up the piece of paper from the desk, ‘Rhona Mills. Local landline number. Hasn’t been in before.’ He walks to the shop door and examines the bell. ‘There’s an Alden Mills who joined the dramatic society three months ago. New to the area. I didn’t warm to him. Very dismissive that we’re doing Blithe Spirit in the autumn.’ Russ twists round the door sign to closed. ‘Staying for lunch? I’ve an extra sandwich and there’s plenty of Guinness in the fridge.’

  Luke shakes his head. ‘I’ve a couple of things to do at home,’ he says, sensing that today he would prefer the quiet of his house to a lunch hour of town gossip with Russ.

  In the kitchen of 7 Back Lane Luke heats some pasta, wondering if Eva is serious about moving in with him and reorganising the place. It had been talked about before but the conversation had always ended by one of them laughing, ‘When we’re both seventy.’ And there was a tacit understanding that the ten minutes distance between them, if anything, had kept them together by affording a degree of independence. ‘Come and live with me,’ she had said when he followed her up here from London. His reply still held: ‘I couldn’t inflict all my junk and clutter on you.’

  After removing two steaks from the freezer for dinner, he returns to the shop with the intention of phoning his accountant before going to view an auction in Newmarket. But neither task is urgent. He sits at his desk, restless. How had she – he says her name aloud – ‘Rhona Mills’, entered unnoticed? He considers googling her. He must know as much as possible: her address, business, husband or partner, anything on google images. But his fingers hover above the keyboard. An instinct deeper than inquisitiveness says, do nothing, you know all you need to know; electronic information will, perversely, diminish not add to your knowledge. Hold on to your first meeting.

  Again Luke recalls every detail of her visit, her voice, the perfume, her clothes, her finger nails. But why can’t he remember her hands? Was she wearing a ring? Her eyes, yes. Those eyes . . . he joins Russ in the workshop. Once through the door he is in Russ’s kingdom. If Russ says, ‘Mix up some gesso’ or ‘Burnish this moulding,’ he obeys as if he were an apprentice; this afternoon he is in need of distraction.

  During the afternoon tea break Luke examines a William IV mirror, restored for a London dealer. ‘You’ve excelled yourself again, Russ.’

  ‘If I can’t do it after all these years, no-one can.’

  Luke turns it over. ‘Not a hint of where it’s been repaired. Are you performing in the Society’s next production?’

  ‘Not unless they’re desperate. My acting days seem to be over.’

  ‘But you’ll be doing the scenery again, I suppose.’

  ‘I shall try. The trouble is that towards the end of the play pictures start falling off walls, which rather goes against the grain for someone who’s spent his whole life fixing chains and hooks on things to hold them up.’

  ‘Eva and I will be in the front row to see it all.’

  ‘Shall I box up the mirror for the carrier?’

  ‘Let me do it. So your new member, Alden Mills, didn’t like the choice of play?’

  ‘No, but that didn’t stop him offering his services as assistant director – not that we ever have one.’ Russ walks over to a tired-looking mirror, propped against the wall and lifts it on to the workbench. ‘Shall I start on this next?’

  Luke examines a panel on the mirror, depicting a classical scene with a chariot and ghostly shapes under layers of later gold paint. ‘I’ll hunt out an old piece of mirror plate for it.’

  ‘I was thinking over lunch – I’m sure someone said his wife was a designer. But isn’t everyone nowadays? Even the plumber down my road calls himself a heating designer.’

  ‘We’ll have to change your job description.’

  �
�I’ll stick to gilder and restorer, thank you.’

  Luke mechanically wraps up the restored mirror, his mind far away from bubble wrap, cardboard and parcel tape.

  2

  They stand in silence in their waders a short way from the shore, watching their white globe-floats bob and drift on the incoming tide. It is Saturday evening.

  Eva calls across the ten metres of calm sea which separate them, ‘Another minute and I think I’ll cast again.’

  ‘I’m going to wait,’ Luke shouts. ‘I had a hint of a tug but it might be weed.’

  The beach is silent, the air humid. A faint breeze brushes the marram grass on the dunes behind them but leaves the water undisturbed. Luke hears a clicking to his right and knows without looking that Eva is reeling in. He stares out to sea, recalling days when crashing waves had made fishing here impossible. When the clicking stops, he reels in his own line.

  Eva calls, ‘I thought I had a tug too.’

  He shouts back, ‘They may be following the bait.’ He scans the surface. ‘I can’t see your float.’

  They continue to reel.

  ‘Blast it,’ shouts Eva, as her float, in defiance, bounces out of the water ahead of her.

  ‘Perhaps it pulled the bait off.’

  A minute later Eva confirms that the strip of mackerel she was using for bait has gone. They wade towards each other.

  ‘Probably the way I hooked it on,’ she says.

  ‘Shall we switch to a sand eel?’

  ‘I’ll stay with the mackerel.’

  Having exchanged his soggy mackerel strip for a sand eel, Luke looks along the coastline towards Waxham. ‘Most Scottish lochs we’ve fished haven’t been this docile.’

  ‘One of these days I’ll bring a fly rod here and try to tempt the bass.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  ‘Aunt Barbara claimed to have caught several that way.’

  ‘She never taught you the knack?’

  ‘No, only freshwater fishing.’

  Luke surveys a deserted beach. ‘The shop seems a lifetime away.’