A Random Act of Kindness

I switch on the light cautiously with my elbow. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. You want to hire a dehumidifier to dry the place out,’ he suggests. ‘Make sure you wipe down the walls to get rid of the soot and take the clothes to the dry cleaners so that you can decide afterwards what’s salvageable.’

I hold the phone tight against my face and look around at the ruined room, which has become a travesty of itself. ‘Okay,’ I say with a wobble in my voice.

‘Fern,’ he says gently, ‘you’re all right. That’s the main thing.’

I nod, even though he can’t see me.

‘Do you want to stay at my place? My neighbour has a key.’

For a moment, escaping to his house in Harpenden seems a wonderful option. But I need to be here to get things sorted. ‘When are you coming home?’ I ask.

His voice moves away from the mouthpiece. ‘When are we back, mate? The tenth?’ He says in my ear, ‘The tenth. Not long.’

‘It’s two weeks too long for me. I miss you,’ I say, desperately hoping he’ll tell me he’ll come back earlier.

He hasn’t seen this needy side of me before. ‘Yeah,’ is his hesitant reply.

After the call I go into the bathroom and lock myself away to cry in private, devastated about my ruined dresses. I’m feeling lost and totally alone.

As I sit on the loo, absorbing my tears with tissues, I hear an apologetic cough above my head and glance up. Argh! I pat my heart.

‘Fern?’ Lucy’s looking down at me through the hole that has burnt through her floor and my ceiling.

‘What?’ I say tearfully.

‘About this hole,’ she says. ‘Look, I’m going to put a sheepskin rug over it, okay?’

That’s the problem with actors. It’s all about the illusion. ‘Okay. Now, could you just please leave me be,’ I plead bleakly.

‘Sorry,’ she says and drags the rug into place. The dust captures the light as it floats lazily down.

KIM

Meeting Fern Banks on our secret assignation in Carluccio’s was the riskiest, most exciting thing that I’ve done in years. Life was thrilling again! The secrecy! The lies I had to tell Enid!

And the shame of telling them!

My married life is comfortable and to a lot of people that would be an enviable state of affairs, because who doesn’t long for comfort, the comfort of the familiar? The older I get, the more the sharp edges rub off my emotions. I’ve got used to love and a kiss before bedtime, a shorthand for intimacy, a desultory declaration of attachment. I know how to deal with the embarrassment of slicing a shot in a round of golf, of believing the World Wide Web traps people like flies, of watching crime dramas that show people having sex.

Enid used to spare us that by turning the TV off at that sort of thing. She held the remote at the ready, like a gunslinger in the Wild West, permanently prepared to shoot, but I’m in charge of the remote now. If Enid’s eyes are closed, I mute the sound and I watch it with my emotions removed. In old age, I’ve become used to most things.

Enid used to wear stockings once, but now she wears knee-highs. She calls them popsocks, but if you ask for a popsock in Marks & Spencer, they don’t know what you mean. They’re knee-highs these days. Same thing, different name. I used to be in the flow of things once, but now I feel as if I’m standing still and life is rushing past me and I’ll never catch up with it, I’m too old.

I’ve never had to shop for clothes for Enid; she’s not the kind of woman who needs a second opinion. Enid’s taste in clothes is conservative but feminine. One thing we both agree on is that trousers on a woman over seventy are invariably unflattering and unnecessary – unless, of course, one is a farmer; we’re not unreasonable people.

She knows what she likes. Her clothes are well-made. They’ll ‘see her out’. I listened to her saying that phrase in dismay. I wanted to buy her something worth living for, but it’s a tall order, to buy something to raise the spirits of a woman who’s unwell.

When I arranged the appointment with Fern Banks, I began by looking at everything through Enid’s eyes, by getting into Enid’s head. I can’t say I started out with a vision of what I wanted; it just gradually formed in my mind by a process of the elimination of what wasn’t suitable. It had to be special! Exciting! Evocative of a time when life was full of expectation. Oh, that frock was elusive!

Meeting Fern Banks in Carluccio’s meant leaving Enid for a second time and telling her more lies. I said I was going to the golf club and although I don’t go there much since Stan died, Enid didn’t question it.

When Fern showed me that blue dress, I knew immediately that it was the one! I felt alive again. I was tingling with excitement that I hadn’t felt in a long time! It turned the clock back!

After I bought it, I took it home and as I went through the door, Enid was calling me.

I felt so guilty that I hid it in my golf bag.

LOT 5

A pale pink crêpe dress, fit-and-flare style, circa 1975, with plunging neckline and tie waist.

Taking Mick’s advice, I hire a sixteen-litre dehumidifier to dry out the flat. I mop the floors and wash the soot from the walls.

When I go to buy milk, Mr Khan, the newsagent, reassures me that it’s a well-known fact that it’s only possible for a human to detect a smell for a short amount of time before the nose gets used to it, but sadly that isn’t true at all.

I put my front door panel together using outdoor wood filler and my Monsoon loyalty card, which is perfect for smoothing. Despite my efforts, it doesn’t look exactly as good as new, but at a cursory glance it doesn’t look as if it’s been hacked in, either; and it’ll look better once it’s dry and I’ve painted it. This isn’t something I want to bother my parents with if I don’t have to. They’re sure to make a crisis out of a drama.

That’s where the good news ends.

When I pick up the clothes from the cleaners, the woman is apologetic. They’ve done their best, but now that it’s dry, the gorgeous little fuchsia pink wool suit has shrunk a few sizes. Interestingly, the lining hasn’t shrunk at all and it billows like parachute silk out of the sleeves and below the hemline. The Twenties cocktail dresses are drab and insubstantial without their sequins. Their seams have frayed and come undone. I feel a wave of panic coming over me. A few hundred pounds worth of clothes and now they’re worthless, unsaleable, and I’ve just spent a large part of my savings having them cleaned.

When I get to the market at nine o’clock on Wednesday, my suitcase is noticeably lighter. To boost my confidence, I’m wearing a black-and-white check Fifties shirtwaister with padded shoulders and a wide black patent belt. My hair has a side parting, with a heavy wave falling loose over my right eye. It’s a look I’ve taken from Lauren Bacall in the film To Have and Have Not with Humphrey Bogart, 1944; ballsy, feminine, utilitarian. My lipstick is MAC: Lady Danger; my favourite bright, true red. My outfit makes me feel able to face the day ahead.

In our shady alley, a light breeze is snapping the canvas walls, carrying with it the mellow sweetness of the breakfast waffle stand.

As I pass it, I notice that the stall next to mine is in the process of being set up for the ten o’clock opening time. It’s lined with black fabric, and wooden and Perspex boxes are stacked up neatly inside. There’s no sign of the new occupant, though.

I unpack my suitcase, store it under the counter and hang up my surviving dresses, grouping them out so they don’t look so sparse. Humming to myself, I fix my banner, Fern Banks Vintage, on the skirt of the stall.

As I’m working, someone comes up behind me.

‘Morning, neighbour!’ he says.

I turn to greet him and to my surprise, it’s David Westwood. Oh, he’s gorgeous! I’m struck dumb by his ridiculous good looks. His hair is short at the sides, longer on top, thick and wavy, springing up from his clear brow. His eyebrows are straight and stern. He’s wearing black, which makes him look edgy, and I like edginess in a man. His eyes are the deepest blue. Probably contact lenses, I tell myself.

‘Hello! What are you doing here?’ I ask, feeling flustered and breathless and entirely losing my Lauren Bacall calm.

‘I thought about what you said about through traffic,’ he replies seriously.

‘Did you? Well! Good. Welcome to the neighbourhood.’ I’m feeling uncharacteristically buoyant at having a friendly stallholder next to me. We can look out for each other, watch each other’s stalls as we’re having a quick break …

‘Have you got a minute?’ he asks.

‘Sure.’

He beckons me over to his stall. ‘Take a look at this.’

With the flick of a switch, the rows of boxes, the source of his illusions, disappear and a constellation of stars shines brightly – the stand has been transformed into the night sky and suddenly we’re staring into the universe.

‘What do you think?’

‘Wow.’

‘Yeah.’ He looks pleased and he hands me a light box to look at.

I take a neighbourly interest. It’s five-sided, wooden, with the light fitting inside.

‘See the way the sides fit together?’ he says, smoothing it with his thumb. ‘These are dovetail joints.’

‘Nice!’

‘And then …’ He slots into the front grooves two removable dark blue acrylic panels with a pattern of holes drilled through them. Switching it on, the light shines out to create two constellations side by side.

‘Neat. I suppose the idea is to sell the whole set of boxes, so that a person could have a whole night sky for themselves, is that it?’

‘No, this is just the display. They’re star signs. Like, for instance, you’re Virgo and if you happened to know a Sagittarian, I’d slot this one in. See? They make a great engagement present. I can also personalise it with lettering underneath and the date.’

‘Romantic,’ I say dryly. ‘I’m not a Virgo.’

He shrugged. ‘Yes, well, you get the idea.’

Putting my face closer to the light box, it is like looking at the night sky, if you imagine you’re looking at it through a very tiny window or maybe a skylight in an attic. Or through two windows, because what we’ve got here are two bits of the night sky that aren’t necessarily next to each other. I’m not sure how I feel about him meddling with the universe. It doesn’t seem ethical. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my dress. ‘What star sign am I?’ I ask him brightly.

He looks up, frowning. ‘What?’

‘My star sign. Have a guess,’ I encourage him. I scoop up and shake my Lauren Bacall hair then let it fall over one eye. ‘The hair is a clue.’

‘Virgo.’

‘You’ve already said that! Virgo? Why would a Virgo have hair like mine? It’s a mane! I’m nothing like a Virgo. I’m a Leo!’ I nudge his foot. Charlatan.

‘Good for you,’ he says cheerfully.

I look at him doubtfully. He seems a down-to-earth kind of person and not the kind of guy who’d be selling myths about horoscopes.

‘Can I ask, do you believe in this kind of thing, star signs and stuff?’

‘No,’ he says.

‘Eh? Oh.’

‘You?’ he asks.

‘No! Per-lease. Of course not.’ That would make Mick and me completely incompatible, because he’s a Scorpio, like my mother. ‘I mean, obviously I read my horoscope, who doesn’t? But I don’t believe in it as such. It’s just for fun, isn’t it?’ I’m expecting him to argue the case for the defence, but he looks at me impassively and doesn’t reply, and I worry I’ve offended him. ‘Obviously, I don’t know the science behind the constellations,’ I add. ‘I mean, what’s the point of knowing about the stars?’

‘Navigation?’

‘Oh, navigation,’ I reply as if it goes without saying.

He takes a cloth out of his pocket and as he wipes my fingerprints off the wood, he says, ‘Luckily, Fern Banks, not everyone is cynical like us.’

Cynical? I don’t know where he’s got the idea I’m cynical.

As he polishes the Perspex, which is as blue as his eyes, he says, ‘It’s nice to believe in something, though, isn’t it? Everyone likes a guarantee; the belief that things are meant to be and they’re not just random occurrences. It’s good to believe that you’re destined to meet that person for a reason – the reason being true love, right? Otherwise …’

‘Otherwise what?’

He looks at me from under those dark, straight eyebrows. ‘It could be any man, couldn’t it? Any man with a decent income.’

Now that is cynical. Despite the stops and starts, I feel I’ve been keeping up with the conversation up until right now, when suddenly he seems to be talking about something else entirely.

I decide to go along with it. ‘In other words, these light boxes symbolically convince people they’re destined to stay together,’ I say, grinning to show I get the joke. It seems artistic but at the same time, cheesy.

‘You’re romantic, right?’ he says.

‘No.’ I’m not the slightest bit romantic, honestly. You only have to see Mick and me together to know that. And I’d absolutely never buy him a light box with two constellations in it, not even ironically. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘I suppose it’s because of your clothes. They’re romantic, from a different era. You look like that Bogey woman.’

‘Thanks.’ The words that no woman wants to hear.

‘Hang on …’ he’s clicking his fingers ‘… it’s on the tip of my tongue. That Hollywood actress. Humphrey Bogart’s wife. Bacall! Lauren Bacall!’

‘Oh, that Bogey woman, Bacall. She had wonderful style, didn’t she? Shoulder pads give such a great figure!’

For a moment his gaze skims over me and he looks away again quickly.

There’s a sudden awkwardness between us and I go back to my stall. I’m easing a dress over Dolly’s head, when I realise that David’s still watching me.

‘That’s vintage, is it? What’s the difference between vintage and second-hand?’

Dolly looks slightly indecent with her dress around her waist, as if she’s been caught drunk in a public place, and I tug it down quickly to spare her feelings.

‘The price.’

‘So how much is this one?’

‘One fifty.’

He laughs out loud – against his tan, his teeth are white and slightly crooked, giving him a roguish appeal.

‘What’s so funny?’ I ask. ‘This could be a wedding dress – see this colour?’

‘Pink, isn’t it?’

‘Pink! It’s not pink,’ I tell him. ‘It’s blush. It’s a great shade for a bride.’ I lift the hem. ‘Look at the quality. It’s hand-stitched – look at that! Where else could you get a hand-stitched wedding dress for a hundred and fifty pounds?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ he says. ‘Good luck,’ he adds, as if I need it, then he unfolds a chair, picks up a book and looks for new ideas for his light boxes.

Good luck? What’s that supposed to mean? I could think of plenty of sarcastic comments to make about light boxes, if I was that sort of person. You can’t use them as a light and you can’t use them as a box, so good luck to him, too.

A young Japanese couple wearing matching outfits come up to his stand and I retreat into my dresses and unfold my stool.

The couple’s interest in the light boxes seem to have a knock-on effect, because a woman wearing a multicoloured floor-sweeping skirt stops to see what they’re looking at, and then another couple nudge in, and I sit and watch while David Westwood starts on his astrological patter, which involves words like ‘air signs’ and ‘moon in Taurus’.

I hadn’t expected him to have a patter but there he is, pointing out the constellations and how these had looked to the ancients like twins, and here, the fish. And he throws in a few more facts as well about light years – and here is the large light box in which they can see the individual stars more brightly. Yes, he can pack it safely, he says, and lo! he produces some cardboard which, with an origami flourish, he makes into a box. Meanwhile, the woman in the long skirt is texting her niece to find out her fiancé’s star sign and the other couple are wanting a set for their bedroom. (Aquarius, I’m going to say, but I think I’m on the cusp …)

I mull over what David said about the right man having a decent income, disagreeing with him in my mind. A decent income doesn’t figure in things at all. I have no idea how much Mick makes, and I’d never in a million years ask him. It’s just about the least important thing in our relationship. I like him because I get him and he gets me; generosity of spirit is vital, the same sense of fun is a must and mutual lust a priority. It’s not a lot to ask, is it? Who’d go for a man just because he has a decent income? A brief vision of Melania Trump flashes through my brain, but that’s just cynicism, because who am I to judge? For all I know she and Donald might have an amazing connection.

I watch the people go past.

There’s not a lot of space in this alley. It’s narrow; it acts like a funnel. But occasionally in the flow of the crowd a woman will catch my eye and in a flash I’ll know exactly how they feel inside the things they’re wearing. I know as surely as if I am them. I know when a baggy top hides a good figure and when dark colours are worn to blend in. I recognise the elasticated waist that’s snug around the belly. I understand the apologetic walk, the wistful glance, because I’ve been there myself. These are the women who I hope will linger at my stand – but, regretfully, they hardly ever do because it’s impossible to wander around and browse. You just have to stand there in full view of me and look; and I know they’re afraid the clothes won’t fit them. They don’t think my lovely dresses, even when they catch the eye, are meant for them. And worst of all, they worry that I might be pushy. We both have our roles, the seller and the buyer.

I generally pretend I haven’t seen them, because the first thing I learnt on this market stall was not to scare people off.

Which is why I don’t look up when a shadow falls over me and I hear a shriek. ‘Fern Banks!’

‘Gigi!’ I squeal back. I recognise her at once – Gigi Martin, who I was at college with until she left mid-term and got a job as a junior in a hairdressing salon in Camden.

‘You haven’t changed a bit!’ she says.

I seriously hope she’s just being polite.

‘You neither!’ I say. In my case, I’m being truthful. She’s model-slim in a polka-dot top and green skinny jeans. She’s got a mass of frizzy pink hair.

‘How’s it going? Man, you’re absolutely rushed off your feet,’ she says, laughing.

‘I know, riiight?’ I reply ruefully.

‘Dave looks as if he’s doing all right, though.’ Dayve, not David. ‘So this is what you do now?’ she asks, looking up at my diminished stock. ‘Have you sold everything?’

Looking at the stall through her eyes I feel a shiver of panic. I don’t want to think about it. When I’d been saving my clothes from the fire, I’d obviously saved the most expensive, but maybe that hadn’t been my best idea. I should have kept some of the cheaper things, the kind of thing that a person would buy on impulse, just because she liked it, without having to think about it and come back later. ‘My upstairs neighbour had a fire in her flat.’

‘Fern! You’re kidding!’ Gigi covers her mouth with her hand. ‘And all your clothes got burnt?’

‘No, they got wet. This is the stuff I rescued.’

‘Oh, Fern! You’re insured though, right?’ She unhooks a flowing pink fit-and-flare dress and holds it against herself, looking down. ‘What waist is this?’ she asks.

‘Sixty-six centimetres.’

‘It’s beautiful. Seventies?’

‘Yes, mid-Seventies, I’d say.’

‘Hey, Dave?’ she calls. ‘What do you think?’

My neighbour in black emerges from his parallel universe. He grins at Gigi and glances at the dress. ‘Very nice.’

‘“Very nice.”’ She laughs and holds the pink dress up to look at it. ‘That’s all he ever says, Fern – very nice.’

He looks from Gigi to me. ‘Do you two know each other?’

‘We were at Camden School for Girls together, briefly. You were a shy little thing, weren’t you, Fern? Always drawing stuff in this little black book of hers. He’s the same.’ She jerks her thumb at my neighbour. ‘You’re always drawing, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘Always.’

The way Gigi is talking implies it’s some weird quirk that we share, but David doesn’t seem bothered.

She’s still holding the pink dress.

‘Do you want to try it on?’ I ask hopefully. I’ve devised a way of closing the stall off with a muslin drape and crocodile clips.

She gives David a quick look. ‘Yes, why not. But I’ll have to be quick, though; I’ve got Pilates.’

I’m glad she’s said yes. I want to see it on her. This is one of those dresses where the genius lies in the cut of the fabric and the way it hangs. It counterbalanced the androgyny of the styles of the Sixties.

Gigi pulls the dress on over her jeans, but it looks lovely on her with its plunging neckline and the fluid curve of the skirt. The pink is the same shade as her hair. She undoes a couple of the little covered buttons down the front to show her cleavage and she poses for us both with a hand on her hip. It was made for her.

‘Gigi, you look gorgeous,’ I say sincerely, my hand on my heart.

‘Dave? What do you think?’

‘You look like a stick of candyfloss.’ His face softens. ‘Yeah. Gorgeous.’

She turns the label over to look at the price. ‘You take cards?’

‘I do.’

As I reach for the machine, she touches some other dresses and looks at them briefly but puts them back. She pouts at him, ducks back under the curtain and takes the dress off. She’s satisfied.

Once she’s paid, she bundles the dress into her bag. ‘Guys, I’ve got to go; I’ll be late for class,’ she says, kissing David enthusiastically on the mouth. ‘I’ll see you later.’

We watch her leave – I can see her pink hair bobbing above the crowds.

When she’s lost from view, David turns to me. ‘How many light boxes has that just cost me?’

‘Ha ha!’ Hopefully, he means it as a joke.

He gazes down the alley for a moment as if he thinks she might come back. Then he asks, ‘What was she like at school?’

I smile. ‘The same! She was such a laugh. She put my new jacket on a friend’s dog once and it ran off and …’ I cut the story short, because he doesn’t need to know I was too scared to go after it and I never saw the jacket again. ‘I never wanted to sit by her in class, though.’

‘Why not?’

‘She never stopped talking. I couldn’t concentrate. I used to get yelled at on account of her.’

‘Fern – you were a geek!’

‘I know.’ I grin at the thought and add truthfully, ‘She was way too cool to hang out with me.’

‘Small world,’ he says.

‘Yeah.’ I give him a sideways glance. ‘You’re the astrologer, you’d know.’

The flow of people through the market has ebbed suddenly. Times like this, I wonder what the hell happens, where they all go. The place is like a huge maze, with certain crucial landmarks like giant sculpted horses, blacksmiths, ATMs. Even so, I still get lost. So do they.

‘Is it always this quiet?’ David asks.

He sounds anxious and I try to reassure him. ‘In the week it’s mostly tourists. And the kind of tourists who come to Camden Lock … well, let’s just say you can’t get a lot in a backpack. But at weekends, it’s brilliant. The place is absolutely heaving. You’ll be amazed.’

‘Yeah.’ He shifts restlessly, looking at the empty stalls on either side of us.

His mood has changed since he saw Gigi and I don’t really know why. Maybe he, like me, is suddenly seeing his stall through her eyes; not as a dream but in cold reality.

As though he’s read my mind, he says, ‘I’m not sure about this alley, Fern. If somebody wants to come back to buy something, they might never find me again. I need a bigger unit. Somewhere with storage.’

I nod. As I’d been the one to tell him about the stall going free, I feel a certain amount of responsibility for the location. ‘Maybe it suits my needs better than yours,’ I tell him apologetically. I don’t add the main reason that it suits my needs is that it’s cheap.