by Minnie Darke
All this hard work was paying off, though. Hello Petal’s bottom line had tracked steadily upward to the point where Fern had felt ready to take on an assistant. She’d found young, big-eyed Bridie, who—with her wispy hair and apron of faded red and white ticking—looked like something straight out of a sooty Dickensian street. Now, Fern had decided, Bridie was ready to tackle a day’s trade on her own. Which meant Fern could take a long-overdue, deliciously exciting, all-to-herself, magnificent day off. She sat up in a froufrou of white bed linen, grabbed at the strong glasses on her bedside table and blinked the room into focus.
What would she do? Oh, there were so many things she longed for. She wanted to sort through her stash of vintage dresses and fabrics, and sew a skirt, or maybe even two. And she wanted to spend the entire day in the bath rereading I Capture the Castle, topping up the hot water as many times as she damned well pleased. And she wanted to hop in her classic VW bug and drive to the seaside so she could walk the tideline collecting shells, then finish off the day with a soothing G&T at some nice little pub on the esplanade. But most of all, she decided, she wanted to go on a charity-shop crawl through the entire city and come home with new treasures to revamp. Dresses! Cardigans! Fabrics! Who knew what else?
Fern tore a page out of her current annual journal, unfilled since late January, licked the tip of the blunt pencil that lay beside it and drew herself a rough map of the city. If she was strategic, she could hit three shops before lunch, and two more afterward. And that would still leave time for her to get home, admire her purchases and put Pretty in Pink on in the background while she ripped skirts from bodices, or ruffles from necklines. It was going to be a good day. No, it was going to be a great day.
Fern’s first stop was a specialty retro charity shop in a deeply hip neighborhood with a main street lined with shops that sold Swedish minimalist furniture, handmade soaps, wooden clogs or obscure fruits. Fern paused to admire the color-coordinated irony of the window display, where a glowing, plug-in statue of the Virgin Mary was surrounded by mannequins dressed in skirts, shirts, cardigans, vests and shoes that covered the spectrum from periwinkle to Prussian. The backdrop was a chrome yellow screen hung with small devotional images of the Madonna, but Fern did not fail to observe that one of the pictures was of Madonna herself, in the “Like a Virgin” phase of her career.
Inside, Fern leafed through the long dresses and the short. In the mirror, she held up against herself a mushroom-colored chiffon dress with a pussy bow at the throat and a skirt of delicate pleats. But although the fabric of the dress was in good condition, the mirror revealed that the color didn’t really do much for her. And while it was at it, the mirror also revealed to Fern the proliferation of silver streaks in her dark curls. And, for its final trick, the mirror showed Fern a man hunting through the bins of vinyl records just behind her. She smiled at the way his shoulders pulsed faintly to whatever was playing through his over-ear headphones. He had good hair—nut brown and close cropped. He had nice hands, too: large and tanned. There was an outdoorsy quality to him that made Fern imagine how his worn plaid shirt would smell of fresh loam and eucalyptus smoke.
Stop, stop, stop, stop it, Fern, she told herself as she returned the mushroom-colored dress to its rack.
Behind the counter, a pink-haired girl was pinning gloves together in pairs. Astrid, read her name tag.
“Hello,” Fern said, and smiled. “I wonder, have you got any fabric in at the moment?”
Astrid blinked thickly kohl-rimmed eyes, then smiled back. “Um, actually, we do. An amazing batch came in the other day. Deceased estate, yeah? Must have been a whole cupboard full. Fifties stuff. Sixties. Seventies. So cool. It’s out in the back room, if you can stand the mess.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Fern.
But once she beheld the mess, she was. It was a hoarder’s paradise, a cataclysmic firetrap of discarded stuff. One side of the storage room was piled floor to ceiling with garbage bags full of donations, while the opposite side was a presumptive avalanche of clothing, books and bric-a-brac. The back wall was no better: a teetering stack of cardboard boxes with a dangerous inward lean. A small clearing had been left to allow access to a tiny washbasin, but there was a makeshift shelf over the top of it, stacked to the roof. An electric kettle balanced precariously on the lip of the sink, which was filled with a jumble sale of coffee mugs. Astrid smiled at Fern’s evident shock.
“Somewhere behind that,” she said, indicating the barricade of packing cartons, “is the back door.”
“Far out,” said Fern.
Astrid tugged some stacks of pressed and folded fabric out of the pile, and Fern had to fight back a nervous urge to cover her head. But delight quickly overcame trepidation, for in the stacks were meters of 1960s pinwale corduroy with tiny geometric prints, generous lengths of gorgeous floral Viyella, delicate slivers of Liberty lawn, wedges of primrose-colored seersucker and embroidered gingham.
“Hey!” yelled Astrid suddenly. “Hey! No! Hey!”
Fern quickly saw the problem. The shop’s front door was blocked to chest height by a fortress of large cardboard cartons. Astrid ran to the glass door. Just as she pulled it open, a delivery guy in blue coveralls added another carton to the stack.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Astrid shouted.
“Backlog from central warehousing, love,” said the guy, then returned to his van. Fern mentally reran the plan for her glorious day off. Being barricaded into the first shop on the list was definitely not in it.
“You can’t be leaving them there,” Astrid yelled. “This is a fucking shop. People have to be able to get in and out!”
The delivery man gave Astrid an implacable look before heaving another box onto the pile.
“Door to door, love,” he said through a gap in the stack. “I picked this lot up from one door, and now they’re at yours. That’s all I’m paid to do.”
“But you’re blocking the fucking doorway. What do you expect me to do?”
“Tell someone who cares, sweetheart.”
Astrid stormed to the counter to snatch up the telephone, while Fern stood transfixed by the ever-growing pile of boxes. After a moment, she became aware that the good-looking vinyl hunter had appeared at her side with his earphones now slung about his neck. There were maybe eight or ten albums under his arm. The Pixies, Fern observed. And the Sugarcubes. Nice. Together, he and she watched as the last box went onto the top of the stack, fully blocking the doorway from top to bottom. Astrid gesticulated wildly while forcefully explaining the situation to a central warehousing colleague on the other end of the phone. Meanwhile, the delivery guy slammed the back doors of his van and drove away.
“Not good,” the vinyl hunter observed.
“No,” Fern agreed.
“Should we try the back door?” he asked, pointing with one thumb to the rear of the shop.
Fern gave him a rueful smile. “Much of a muchness out there.”
“I guess there’s nothing for it but to dig, then.”
He put aside his record stash, swept a trio of Cabbage Patch dolls off a low armchair and dragged the chair over to the doorway, to act as a stepladder.
“Holy shit, be careful,” Fern said, as he climbed up onto the chair’s unevenly sprung seat.
He tried to maneuver the box on the top of the stack, but it was firmly wedged against the top of the outer side of the door frame.
“I reckon I’m going to have to pull out the one directly underneath,” he said. “Then work from there. With any luck, they’re not too heavy. Give me a hand, just in case?”
Fern climbed up beside him, each of them balancing with one foot on the seat of the chair and one on an armrest. Fern stumbled, and as he steadied her, she became dizzily aware of his sinewy strength. Although she had imagined he would smell earthy, now she was so close to him, she could tell from his
lightly chlorinated scent that he’d recently been to the swimming pool. It was a nice smell, all clean and active.
“You ’right?” he said.
Oh God, he was really friendly, too.
“Yep. All good.”
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop it, Fern, she commanded herself. You are thirty-eight years old, and he’s what? Twenty-five? Thirty at a push. Your career in love has been one of disaster after compound disaster, and now you are going gray. And besides, he’s almost certainly married. Or at the very least shacked up. With an art theory lecturer, probably. Or the owner of a funky inner-city cider bar.
Together, Fern and the man worked away, balancing and rebalancing themselves and the weight of the second-top-most box, until at last it jerked free. It was so heavy that Fern almost dropped her side of it. The box that had been above it slammed down onto the stack and tilted sideways. It seemed to hover for a moment before tumbling onto the sidewalk.
“Someone’s going to get bloody well hurt,” Astrid enunciated into the phone. “What do I want you to do? I want you to get someone over here to help. No, not in an hour. Now. I’ve got two customers here, standing on a dodgy armchair, lifting down a…Jesus, they’re going to drop it. I have to go.”
Astrid rushed to help and, after some negotiation, the three of them managed to lower the box to the floor. Fern, catching her breath, observed the neat labeling that appeared in thick black marker pen, both on the top of the box and on one of its sides.
“RW 12,” she read. “What do you reckon’s in it?”
“Remnant welding-rods?” the man suggested.
“Renaissance wineglasses?” Fern countered.
“Railroad widgets?”
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Risqué Wellingtons?” she offered.
“Ruby winkle-pickers?”
And this might have gone on for some pleasurable time, except that Astrid produced a box cutter and sliced through the packing tape with the air of an angry surgeon.
Inside the box, cocooned in bubble wrap, and carefully nested together in layers, were an incomprehensible number of china items that had been made to mark the 1981 wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. Plates, bowls, saucers, trinket boxes, clocks and cups, cups, cups.
“Bizarre,” the man said.
“RW is royal wedding,” Astrid decoded, unwrapping a twin-handled Charles and Diana loving cup.
“This box is labeled twelve,” Fern pointed out, as a barely plausible thought dawned on her.
The boxes still blocking the doorway—all of which were identical in size and branding to the one in front of them—might have numbered eighteen or twenty. They couldn’t all, surely, be filled with more of the same?
“Holy fucking nuptials, Batman,” said the man.
“We’re going to need a cup of tea,” said Astrid.
And so it was that Fern Emerson spent her first day off in nine months wading through a sea of bubble wrap and commemorative china, drinking tasteless tea and eating raspberry shortcake biscuits. It was just after four o’clock when Fern returned home with her amazingly inexpensive haul of vintage fabrics. Opening the front door, she had the strange urge to call out hello! into the white-walled hallway, even though she knew that there was nobody there to answer.
It was still a pleasure for Fern to hurry a length of spring-toned Viyella through the washing machine and the tumble dryer, and to lay it flat and press it smooth, and to pin out the pattern pieces for her favorite box-pleated skirt style, and to listen to the arp, arp, arp of her fabric shears as they did their work. But the sad truth was that she was not quite as happy as she had hoped to be on the evening of her first day off in nine months. And although she occasionally looked up from her handiwork to see Molly Ringwald biting her rosebud lips, or Andrew McCarthy looking hurt and bewildered, and although she sang along to “If You Leave,” her evening was not as sweet or simple as she had wanted it to be. The mere presence of the good-looking man in the charity shop, with his earphones and his LPs and his relaxed good humor, had reminded hardworking Fern Emerson that underneath all her busy-ness she was lonely. And now her heart was hurting. She’d have been better off staying home and reading in the bath.
* * *
Grace Allenby—Pisces, once-upon-a-time Commonwealth Games backstroker and retired swim instructor, breast cancer survivor and dragon-boat sweep—arrived at the Holy Rosary nursing home at around 10 a.m. each Tuesday.
This particular Tuesday, she began her rounds, as usual, by visiting Mr. Pollard in the Bluegum Wing. He was an elderly farmer who sat for most of his days with a life-sized border collie soft toy beside him in his Tilt-n-Lift bed. After that, Grace visited Mrs. Hampshire in the Acacia Wing, where she would sit for half an hour and hear more about the spectacular success of her talented son, Dermot, the chef.
Next, she set off in the direction of the Myrtle Ward, where she would visit Mr. Magellan, whom she knew would be sitting up in his plush recliner brandishing a remote control and cussing at his television. He would ignore her, of course, but she would read to him anyway. For Len, Grace always chose cheerful, lighthearted snippets of unnewsworthiness that would irritate him, provoking the mildly abusive hostility that Grace knew was one of Len’s few remaining pleasures in life. Another was his little secret: the one he’d told to Grace, but not to his own children. Fuck ’em, he’d said. He’d cut them out of his will! All three of them. And he’d left every bloody cent of his money to the Dogs Home.
“Dogs!” Len had said, spluttering with laughter. “Don’t even fucken like dogs!”
As she made her way along the hallway of the Myrtle Ward, Grace peeped through the part-open doors into the comfortable, well-appointed, but ultimately sterile suites. She was a few doors short of Mr. Magellan’s room when she noted that his door was uncharacteristically wide open. Then she caught the lethal scent of disinfectant. Her heart beat faster and she hurried, marveling that she still did this, every time, even after all these years.
His room was just as she expected to find it: the carpets damp from the steam cleaning, the bathroom’s porcelain parts gleaming like freshly bleached teeth, the recliner chair pushed to the center of the room and stacked with neat piles of striped pajamas, chambray shirts and old-man corduroy pants. A toilet bag rested on top of one of the stacks.
Grace sat on the stripped bed and closed her eyes in silent prayer.
After a time, she took out the copy of the Star from which she had planned to read to Len. That dreadful footballer with the tight shorts was on the cover, she noted briefly before flicking to the horoscope page. Silently, but with her lips moving, she read the entry for Aquarius.
“Boldness be my friend! Arm me, audacity.” Take heed of the Bard’s words and ride this month’s roller coaster to completion and fulfillment. Now is not a time for timidity. Rather, the moment is right for you to take your endeavors to the next level, to advance to a higher plane. Take the plunge, Aquarius!
Grace made a sad, wry smile and closed the magazine.
“See you around, Len,” she whispered. “You old bastard.”
Then she stood, took a deep breath, and set off to visit Mrs. Mills.
* * *
Mariangela Foster (née Magellan)—Taurus, stay-at-home mother to three sons, compulsive household tidier, eBay shopaholic and uncannily gifted Tetris player—knew what to expect when her phone rang at 6:37 on that Tuesday morning. So too did her husband, Tony. Tony, already in his suit and his paisley shirt with the French cuffs, was standing at the coffee machine, empty mug poised. The phone rang twice, thrice, as he watched his wife compose her face before lifting the receiver. Mariangela’s was an oval face with durable olive skin and mobile features of operatic dimensions, and he could see that she was going for a look of dignity and resignation.
“Hello?” she said, in a voice that perfectly matched her expression.
A pause. Then: “Oh, good morning, Sister Clare.”
Mariangela listened for a moment, then produced a perfect, muffled sob.
“When?”
Pause.
“Was it…peaceful?”
Mariangela listened, and the tear that slithered out of the inside corner of her eye was as fat as a fake pearl. Tony watched it track down the side of her nose and onto her cheek, where she swiped it away with one of her practiced, former-beautician’s hands.
“Thank you, Sister. Thank you for letting me know. I’ll call my brothers and we’ll come by later this morning to see to all his things. I’m sure my father would want me to thank you for all your care…no, no, we all appreciate it so much…yes, of course. Thank you again. Goodbye.”
Mariangela replaced the receiver and turned to Tony, her hands clutched against the bodice of her satin dressing gown.
“Well?” Tony said, setting down his still-empty coffee mug. He did not yet venture the smile that was budding in the muscles of his face.
There followed a moment, a very still moment, in which the kitchen seemed emptied of everything, even air. And then, at last, Mariangela breathed out, and her features collapsed into a reverie of relief.
Tony rushed to embrace his wife, her crocodile tears already being replaced by real ones as the reality dawned that all their troubles were now over, their debts paid, their future secure. No more reminder letters about Luke’s overdue school fees, no need to refinance the credit card again, no more trying to convince debt collection agency hounds that they’d got the wrong number, the wrong Fosters, the wrong information. Doubtless it would take a few months to get through the legalities, but after that, well, they were in the money.