Franklin's Emporium

by Gill Vickery

  ‘One, six, one, two

  Was when the witches made their brew.’

  Mr Polemounter had peered down his long nose and told me to be careful or I might find myself casting a spell by accident. I thought he was being sarcastic and took no notice. Anyway, I didn’t believe in magic, not then.

  As I stood in front of the notice board I found myself muttering:

  ‘I need a haberdashery

  To buy some gloves of white.

  I’m in a fix – slash – hurry,

  Please bring the shop to light.’

  ‘Scuse me!’ A family rushed past me to the lift. They were looking at me a bit strangely. There was a skinny little mum and a very big suede-head dad in a tight T-shirt with a rude motto on it. There were also four children, yelling and scrapping. The draught the family made as they swirled past fluttered a fallen card along the floor like a confused moth. I picked it up.

  Harriette’s Haberdashery, it read in old-fashioned letters. Underneath in small lettering was:

  Come and see our unrivalled collection of ribbons and bows, feathers, sequins and shells; belts, caps, scarves and shawls and a hundred other small delights gathered from all over the world.

  Though it didn’t mention gloves, it was a start. It didn’t mention which floor the haberdashery was on either but I could always ask the liftman, he’d know. It was his job.

  The liftman was another strange thing about Franklin’s Emporium. It was as though he’d been left over from the days when Franklin’s was a thriving store. Apart from being very old he was like those liftmen you see in black and white films. He had a uniform, blue with a crest of three gold crowns on the pocket. And he had epaulettes, with gold edging, on his shoulders.

  I pressed the call button and waited. The lift pinged and the outer doors opened to show a sort of black, concertina grille. The liftman pulled the grille to one side and I got into the lift.

  ‘D’you know where Harriette’s Haberdashery is?’ I asked, waving the card at him.

  He pressed a button to make the doors shut and closed the grille.

  ‘I heard you summon Harriette,’ he said in a dry papery voice. ‘What do you want of her?’

  That wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d been in the lift loads of times before and never heard the liftman say anything much except to ask which floor or say, ‘Mind the doors please’. Besides, I didn’t understand. How could he have heard me say anything? He’d been working in his lift.

  I should’ve known something strange was going on, what with all the fantasy I’ve read but I was in a hurry and I didn’t believe in magic.

  ‘I only want a pair of gloves.’ I held up my watch. ‘And I haven’t got much time.’

  His old eyes were very bright under massive eyebrows sprouting in all directions. ‘Why do you wish for gloves?’

  I was going to be stuck talking to him for hours at this rate. I sighed.

  ‘They’re not for me. They’re for my sort-of cousin and she wants them now, or more like yesterday, because she’s a spoilt brat and she’ll make my life a misery if I don’t come up with them soon.’

  The call sign flashed red and hands hammered on the door.

  ‘Hadn’t you better let them in?’ I said.

  ‘Let them wait.’ Shadows seemed to cluster round the old liftman in his corner, patient as a spider. His eyes glittered.

  ‘Tell me about your cousin.’

  Although it was none of his business I knew I had to go along with him if I was going to get out of that lift. It wasn’t that I thought he was evil or dangerous but he was definitely a bit weird. I decided to try and make him feel sorry for me.

  ‘Oh she’s horrible. She orders me around like I’m her personal servant and she makes fun of me. She calls me BABY all the time even though she knows I hate it – especially because she knows I hate it.’

  Until that moment I hadn’t realised how much Maisie had got to me. I was filled with towering rage that took me by surprise. Without meaning to I found myself accidentally making a rhyme: ‘It’s time that the baby was her – I’d love it if only she were.’

  The lift dropped. It happened so quickly I had to grab the handrail running round the side and I banged my elbow. It hurt.

  We jerked to a stop and the old man pulled back the black grille.

  ‘Basement,’ he said in his papery voice as the doors slid open.

  ‘Thanks.’ I rushed out, glad to be away from the freaky liftman.

  The dark, musty basement was completely different from the rest of the store. For a start there were no people and for another thing it was crammed full of unwanted stuff left over from the days when Franklin’s was a busy department store: ancient counters and display stands; the shrivelled skeletons of dead plants in massive cracked pots; three-legged chairs and splintered tables. And, right down the middle, mannequins with painted, old-fashioned faces leaned against each other in two crooked rows leaving a narrow alleyway between them. Everything was dusty and tied up in cobwebs. Normally I’d have loved it, but not then. I turned back to the liftman.

  ‘This isn’t the right place – it’s all empty down here.’

  He nodded towards the end of the basement, shrouded in darkness. ‘Harriette is waiting for you.’

  The doors closed and the lift whirred upwards before I had enough sense to press the call button and stop it from moving.

  ‘Silly old fool,’ I grumbled. Now I’d have to find the stairs, climb up and check out all the floors till I found where Harriette’s really was.

  A faint light I hadn’t noticed before glimmered at the end of the basement. Maybe it was an illuminated sign over the stairs. I had to go down the alleyway of lurching pink mannequins to reach it.

  At first it wasn’t too bad even though they were creepy, what with them being partly dressed and missing the odd limb or head, but halfway along they were packed closer together. They pressed in on me. I knocked an arm I hadn’t noticed sticking out. It flopped down and hung out of its socket as if it was dislocated. I tried to slot it back and it came away in my hands.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  Why was I apologising to a shop dummy, especially one in a flesh-pink corset fastened up with hooks and eyes? I glared at it. Its painted lips simpered and one eye dropped shut in a knowing wink.

  My heart jumped and so did I – straight into a bald mannequin with a swirly painted moustache. It reeled into the other dummies. They toppled towards me like an army being mown down in slow motion.

  I raced off. They picked up speed and came crashing towards me like huge, people-shaped dominoes. I shot round the corner at the end of the basement just as they crashed deafeningly to the floor. About a hundred years’ worth of dust billowed round the corner and almost choked me.

  I leaned against the wall while the dust settled and I got my breath back. Maisie owes me big time for this, I thought savagely. ‘Next time you can get your own stupid gloves,’ I wheezed.

  A rumbling noise made me turn. A wooden head rolled round the corner and stopped with its blue glass eyes fixed on me. It gave me the creeps. I looked the other way. And there it was, in front of me, Harriette’s Haberdashery, all alone in the darkness.

  Chapter Four

  HARRIETTE’S HABERDASHERY

  Harriette’s Haberdashery stood in the spotlight of a hanging lantern. It was tiny, not much bigger than a tall wardrobe but beautiful, so beautiful.

  It was shaped like a tent and the material was a deep silky blue scattered all over with golden stars. Inside it was mad with colour: scarlet ribbons and emerald scarves looped about like Christmas garlands, glass beads and pearl buttons glittered from jars, huge soft feathers of aquamarine and emperor’s purple swayed in pots, and cushions and rugs were heaped all over the floor. I sucked in a deep breath of amazement and my nostrils filled up with a scent I couldn’t place.

  ‘Can I help you?’ a small child’s voice said.

  I hadn’t noticed the little girl till then an
d I jumped in surprise. She laughed. Nobody likes being made fun of by a little kid and so when I answered I sounded almost as bossy as Maisie. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

  ‘There’s only me.’

  ‘Right.’ This had to be Harriette’s daughter or sister or some other relative, I decided. Harriette must’ve gone for a break and left the little girl minding the shop.

  Her eyes were so dark they looked black, like a raven’s, and her silky dark hair, all beaded and braided with silk threads, was as glossy as feathers. She was like an old-fashioned hippy, what with the beads and her long cinnamon coloured dress sewn all over with tiny pieces of mirror.

  ‘What sort of gloves would you like?’ she asked.

  ‘Pardon?’ The colours and scents were making me feel a bit peculiar and I didn’t remember telling her I wanted gloves.

  The little girl chuckled. For some reason I thought of wood smoke on the wind.

  ‘Silk or satin?’ she asked. ‘Cotton or woollen? Sateen or suede? Velvet, velveteen or lace?’

  ‘Lace – white lace.’

  She burrowed under a mound of mossy green cushions like a squirrel foraging for hazel nuts, and pulled out a cedar wood box carved with rosebuds. She opened it. ‘Choose.’

  I picked out a pair of gloves, fingerless, like Maisie wanted, with a frill of flowers round the wrist. ‘How much?’

  ‘Five pounds.’

  It didn’t seem a lot. ‘Are you sure?’ I didn’t want her to get into trouble with whoever owned the unit.

  ‘Quite sure, thank you.’

  She took the money and put the gloves in a paper bag. It was printed in blue and white stripes and on it was a logo of three golden crowns.

  She pointed. ‘The stairs are over there.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I ran. My mind was full of Maisie otherwise I’d have thought, that’s funny, I don’t remember telling her I wanted the stairs. Instead, I thought, never, never will I come back to Golden Bay. Next holiday I’d better be taken to somewhere really good – like Transylvania – to make up for being Maisie’s servant this summer.

  I sprinted all the way back to the house and flew upstairs to Maisie’s room. She was wearing the green dress and strutting in front of her mirror as though she were on a catwalk.

  ‘Well?’

  I held up the paper bag.

  Maisie did her warped-wax face; she was used to designer packaging.

  ‘The gloves are OK,’ I said, a bit defensively.

  She tweaked the bag off me like it was infected with the Black Death and shook out the gloves. They fitted her perfectly. She crumpled up the bag and tossed it into her waste paper basket.

  I waited for her to say something sarcastic and insist I go back and find a better pair. Instead she looked at them in a surprised, sleepy sort of way and said, ‘Hm, very nice.’

  She sat on the bed as if her legs had suddenly turned to jelly and slithered down against the pillows.

  ‘I think I’ll have a little nap,’ she murmured and snuggled up to her pillow like a baby resting against its mum’s shoulder. She dozed off – just like that – in her designer dress and the white lace gloves. She even kept her gold sandals on.

  I was totally astonished. It wasn’t only that she’d dropped off like Sleeping Beauty after she’d pricked her finger on the spindle – it was that she never, ever did anything to crumple her best clothes, or any of her clothes. None of her family did. Even when Adrian mowed the lawn he wore designer casuals. The minute he’d finished the clothes went in the wash and he put new ones on. My dad’s got gardening clothes that look like they came out of the ark and probably had their last wash when the Great Flood arrived.

  I didn’t know what to do. If I woke Maisie she might be in a bad temper, decide she didn’t like the gloves after all and order me back to Franklin’s to get a different pair. I’d had enough of running around for the morning. I decided to fetch my book and go to the Vermin Shed. I’d be safe from Maisie in there.

  I left the house and ran through the sloping garden, past the maze and the pond that’s the size of a small lake, through the copse and into the kitchen garden where the Vermin Shed was, in between the compost heap and the fire pit.

  I pushed open the creaking door and went in. Although it was packed with loads of stuff – half-empty tins of paint, jars of nails and screws, curled up hoses and the gardening man’s own tools – it was very tidy. The gardening man liked it that way.

  I slumped in the old armchair squashed under the window and wriggled into a comfy position with my back against one arm and legs over the other. The shed was as peaceful as an empty church. Sunlight shimmered through the window. A spider abseiled up and down an invisible thread and a woodlouse trundled across one arm of the chair.

  I turned a page of The Curse of the Hunter’s Moon. A werewolf howled its ancient agony at the cold Transylvanian moon.

  The shed door burst open.

  ‘Must find those flares,’ Adrian said.

  I shut my book and stood up.

  ‘No need to move,’ Adrian said.

  I left anyway. I knew I’d never get any peace with Adrian shifting things and upsetting the gardener’s tidy shed. I went back upstairs thinking I might manage to get some reading in if Maisie was still asleep. As I passed by her open door I heard a strange whiffling noise. I poked my head round the door to see what was causing it.

  Maisie was still curled up on her bed, fast asleep, as I’d left her. But she had changed. Totally and utterly changed.

  Chapter Five

  BACK TO THE EMPORIUM

  I went cold as I stared at her tiny little body, her bald head and her toothless, slobbery mouth. The only familiar thing about her was the waxy sneer that flickered across her dreaming face.

  I stood, skewered to the spot, staring pop-eyed at the shrunken figure lying in the middle of the green dress like a frog in Adrian’s pond, and tried to work out what had happened. Nothing could explain the transformation.

  Then I remembered.

  I remembered the little girl in her starry tent.

  I remembered the old man in the lift.

  I remembered I’d made a crazy wish.

  And I remembered Mr Polemounter’s warning.

  I groaned. I should’ve listened to him. My habit of making up rhymes had got me into trouble, big time, exactly like he said it would. I’d made up a spell that summoned Harriette and then I’d made that stupid wish as well. I’d got exactly what I’d wished for; Maisie was a baby.

  She stirred in her sleep, rolled over and drooled on the dress. There was only one thing to do. Praying Maisie wouldn’t wake up, I wrapped the designer dress round her like a very expensive blanket, picked her up, sneaked out of the house and went back to Franklin’s, fast. By the time I got there my arms were killing me. I was amazed that a thing as small as baby Maisie was that heavy. I lugged her across to the lift and pressed the call button.

  ‘Ain’t she cute!’ a voice said.

  Cute? I thought. Who’d be deranged enough to see Maisie as cute?

  It was the family I’d seen earlier. They stood around me eating super-grande ice creams from Caruso’s Gelateria. The suede-head dad chucked Maisie under the chin with one of his massive, sausage-like fingers.

  She burped. The whole family laughed.

  I felt a warm, damp sensation spreading down my front.

  ‘Y’know, our Nikki, she’s just like our Sarah was at that age,’ the dad said to the mum.

  ‘You’re not wrong, Matt,’ the mum said.

  ‘She your sister?’ one of the little kids asked me.

  ‘No, she’s. . .’ The lift pinged. The doors opened. I stepped in. ‘. . . my sort-of-cousin,’ I finished, glaring at the liftman.

  He drew back the grille and I pressed the ‘Close Doors’ button with my good elbow. ‘Change Maisie back,’ I demanded.

  He didn’t pretend not to understand. ‘You summoned Harriette with your spell, you asked a thing of her
and you made a wish of me. You have what your heart desired.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it when I said I wished Maisie was a baby – not a real baby. It was only a way of speaking. Change her back.’

  The old man stood in his corner, waiting. Maisie burped again and drooled some more. She yawned and stretched as if she was going to wake up.

  ’Please,’ I said quickly to the old man. It came out sort of desperate, although I was trying to sound humble.

  ’You will have to make another request of Harriette and another wish of me.’

  ‘Fine.’

  I thought furiously. A rhyme came into my head:

  ‘I’ll ask from her a second pair

  Of gloves all lacy, white and fair.’

  The damp patch down my front was getting bigger.

  I glowered at the old man and chanted:

  ‘My wish of you is somewhat bolder –

  Please make Maisie much, much older.’

  I was caught off balance as the lift leapt upwards. I banged my other elbow.

  The lift stopped, the old man drew back the grille and opened the doors.

  ‘Top floor,’ he said in his dry, old voice.

  ‘Harriette’s is in the basement,’ I objected.

  The liftman pointed a knobbly finger into a vast, deserted terrace restaurant with a bank of windows overlooking the bay. At the far end was Harriette’s starry tower. I didn’t have time to wonder how Harriette’s Haberdashery had managed to move from bottom to top of the store in such a short space of time. I was too worried about Minty and Adrian finding out that their daughter had turned into a baby and falling down dead with shock.

  I muttered, ‘Go for it,’ to myself and ran to the silken tent through the maze of upturned chairs and tables – which wasn’t easy with a fat baby in my arms.

  Instead of a little girl, an old lady sat knitting just inside the tent. Despite her white hair and wrinkled skin there was a definite resemblance to the little girl. She had the same bird-bright dark eyes and when she spoke the same smoke-on-the-wind voice. She smiled.