Mourning Doves (30 page)

She sat back in her chair, and told Celia, ‘I know you can do it!’ And privately hoped to God that she was right.

‘Mr Fairbanks says to come to dig your garden – a shillin’ for three hours.’

As Edna faced the blond giant standing on the back step, she dried her hands on her apron and stared at him – white knights sometimes arrive in strange disguises.

Absolutely calm pale-blue eyes stared amiably back at her. ‘It’s a right mess!’ He gestured over his shoulder with a huge, grubby thumb. ‘I looked at it. Want the bushes took out as well?’

Edna swallowed, and found her voice. ‘Yes, please. And your name is …?’

‘Ethelred. What’s yours?’

Though she was shaken by his impudence, she answered him, ‘Mrs Fellowes.’

Ethelred smiled hugely and stuck his thumbs in his leather belt. ‘Now we know each other, like me mam told me we would.’

Edna smiled a little stiffly, and asked, ‘Do you have a spade, Ethelred?’ She knew that some gardening tools had accidentally been sent to the barn instead of to the cottage. They had yet to be retrieved.

Ethelred’s face crumpled up like a baby’s about to cry. ‘No,’ he said sadly. Then he brightened as if enlightenment had dawned. ‘Mam said if you didn’t have one, Mr Fairbanks would lend us one.’

‘Good,’ said Edna, whipping off her apron. ‘Let’s go next door and ask him.’ She walked round the outside of
their cottage, Ethelred ambling behind her, like a friendly dog being taken for a walk. She thankfully handed him over to Eddie, who offered to instruct the boy in exactly what should be done.

Since Edna had no ideas about the garden, she readily accepted the offer.

Ethelred was not the fastest worker, but once a job was explained to him, he went at it steadily. He received with excessive pleasure a large mug of cocoa at mid-morning and quaffed it happily as he stood in the sunshine. Then he handed the mug back to Edna, and announced, ‘I’m goin’ to pee,’ and strode straight through the wild hedge at the bottom of the garden on to the common behind it. Still buttoning his fly, he returned to removing the sod and bushes off the original garden beds before actually turning the soil over. At the very bottom of the garden a pile of rubbish began to grow.

‘When I’m done I’ll make a good bonfire of it,’ he promised Edna cheerfully. ‘We can roast some potatoes in it.’

Edna prayed that he would not accidentally set the house on fire.

Though Ethelred’s mind might lack a tack or two, he proved to be wonderfully helpful when the two women began to fix up the shop. He was a gentle creature and became very fond of Edna. When she handed him a yard broom, to sweep out the shop, he kept on going right into John Philpotts’ workshop and Edna had to persuade him that it was not her domain. She suggested that, perhaps, he would kindly sweep the pavement round the corner shop and also the front doorstep. This latter job took rather longer, since he knew absolutely everybody passing by, and some of them stopped to ask him what he was doing. He had a very sociable morning.

Urged on by Betty, Ben Aspen quoted Celia a very small
sum for lending one of his labourers for a couple of mornings to paint the interior of the shop. The price of the white paint was included. Since Celia did not as yet have any money, Betty simply added the charge to what the Gilmores owed for work on the cottage.

Ethelred helped to sort out from the barn the shabbier furniture which was to be sent for auction, and the auctioneer took it away in a lorry. After a closed van came from Liverpool to collect the barrels of silver, Celia was able to retrieve a couple of carpets which had been stacked at the back of the barn. She laid them on the newly scrubbed shop floor.

Edna and Celia had never been so tired in their lives. They found they worked quite well together, though they often disagreed about detail. As promised, Edna paid Ethelred for his work in the garden, and then lent Celia enough to pay him for his help in connection with the shop.

‘We simply cannot function without him,’ she said flatly.

Celia was glad to see Edna’s complexion improve in the fresh sea air, which was inescapable in blustery Hoylake. She was naturally a dark woman, but she lost much of the unhealthy yellow look which life in the Tropics had given her. Because she smoked less, she was also eating better and her figure filled out. She seemed to enjoy helping Celia set up her little shop, and spent more and more time there.

She got on very well with John Philpotts, and sometimes talked to him about her life in Brazil.

Because Edna had been married, John felt more at ease talking to her, rather than to Celia, and, from a number of small hints, Edna guessed that he was impotent as a result of his wounds.

Neither woman would allow John to move furniture; they feared that he would damage his already wounded leg.

‘I have to move pieces in the course of my own work,’ he protested. But they laughed and told him they were not
going to make a beast of burden of him. They did, however, borrow a small trolley cart, which he himself used for moving furniture round his workshop, and, since Ethelred had obviously become their devoted slave, John left the lifting to him.

Having Edna with her eased Celia’s first days with John Philpotts, and her shyness slowly ebbed away. With regard to Ethelred, his almost childlike attitude made her protective of him; she never considered him as an adult male. He had, however, tremendous physical strength and was a real asset. He could lift almost anything.

Celia chose with care the first stock she wanted to show in her shop. When a small furniture remover from the village moved it over to the new premises for her, she got him to bring as much of the rest as could be squashed into the storage shed at the back of John’s yard without damaging it.

There was still an alarming amount left in the barn, so she asked the furniture remover to stack it neatly to one side, and then went to see Betty about keeping it there.

Betty laughed, and said, ‘Leave Father to me. It’ll be all right for a while.’ Then she recommended a sign writer to paint the name of the shop on the front of it. It was christened by the three of them, Celia’s Antiques and Collectibles.

With over twenty-five pounds from the auction of the mass of everyday furniture from the maids’ bedrooms, the kitchen, the servants’ sitting room in the basement, the back hall and the back staircase, not to speak of a hefty stone angel which had stood in the back garden for years, she was able to pay for the remover and for the sign.

‘I still owe you an awful lot, Edna,’ she wailed. Then she added, ‘You know, the angel drew the best bids.’

‘Most appropriate, and don’t worry about the money – I don’t have many expenses. I can wait,’ replied Edna cheerfully. ‘Papa Fellowes sent me a cheque for this month.’

The outside of the shop got a good hose down from Ethelred and, when it was dry, Celia polished the front door and Edna cleaned the windows.

The day before she was to open, Eddie Fairbanks brought her, on a little trailer attached to his bicycle, two heavy white flowerpots crowded with red geraniums. He placed one on either side of the front door.

The whole place looked very pretty in the early summer sunshine.

Celia was overwhelmed when she saw the flowers. She thanked Eddie and then impulsively gave him a big hug. ‘Everybody’s been so kind,’ she said, and took out her handkerchief and blew her nose hard.

Cousin Albert had also helped her with advice regarding a business licence, for which Edna had loaned her the money until the auctioneer paid her.

Altogether, Celia found herself surrounded by helpful friends and, in some wonderment, she said to Edna, ‘I’ve never before had friends – or anybody – who did things for me; even Phyllis wasn’t like this.’

Edna laughed. ‘It’s overdue,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever been out without Mother before. No chance to make any real friends of your own.’

Louise did not come to look at the shop. She said rightly that it would be too painful to see the contents of her old home up for sale. Though her visits to the soldiers in the nursing home often took her into Market Street, she always avoided passing the shop by crossing to the other side of the road.

Celia understood, and she sympathised. Because she was not so much under her mother’s thumb, she was able to understand more fully her mother’s efforts to come out of her grief and create a new life for herself.

One evening, after she had closed the shop for the night, she went over to the Aspens’ yard, to rummage in the barn
for more of the Philip Oppenheim books which her mother wanted. While doing so, she came across a little trunk of her own personal possessions.

Kneeling on the stone floor, she unstrapped it and looked at the curious collection of oddments which she had kept over the years. Wrapped in tissue paper and laid on the top was the dress she had worn for her Confirmation, together with the prayer book given her by Great-aunt Blodwyn. She smiled at the recollection of the excited fourteen-year-old who had worn it; she had felt like a bride. Underneath were letters, which she had lovingly tied together with blue baby ribbon, letters from both her brothers while at boarding school, and, later, when they went to war.

In the failing shaft of light from the setting sun through the great door of the barn, she held them in her hands and bowed her head and cried.

They had thought about their little sister consistently throughout their short lives, she realised. Perhaps, if there had been no war, they would have found amongst their friends some decent young man to marry her. At least she would never have had to worry about her future; one or the other of them would certainly have given her a home – and affection.

Outside, she heard Ben Aspen’s workmen shouting good night to each other, and she hastily put down the letters and delved in the bottom of the box. Two battered dolls, some children’s books, and at the very bottom the only toy which she knew had been given to her by her paternal grandmother, a wooden box of handmade building bricks. She had no real memory of her grandmother, but she lifted the box out and opened it.

Each little cube was about two inches in size and was grubby from much play. On all six sides of each brick, a letter of the alphabet had been carefully carved in relief, so that the letter stood out. She ran her fingers gently along
the bricks, and remembered how her nanny had taught her the alphabet from them and how to spell simple words.

At the thought of Nanny kneeling on the floor with her and patiently spelling out words, she had a sudden inspiration about how her mother could, perhaps, communicate with the two poor deaf-blind servicemen about whom she was so concerned.

She bundled her other treasures back into the trunk and closed it. She would ask Ethelred, some time, to carry the trunk to the cottage. Her personal grief forgotten, she hurriedly pushed the barn doors closed and locked the padlock. She ran across the deserted yard to Betty’s office to say good night before she left.

Betty had on her coat and hat, ready to go home. Her father was with her, so Celia simply paused to say that she had locked the barn up and wished them both good night. Then, clutching her box of bricks, she ran for the train to Meols.

Celia sat behind a little table which Ethelred had set across a corner at the back of the shop for her. It had a drawer in it in which to keep money, and, in that position, it would be difficult for a customer to ease round the table and open it. She had a brand-new account book in front of her, so that each day she could enter the transactions which had taken place. She also had a receipt book; a pen; a pencil box holding a pencil, India rubber and extra pen nibs; a piece of blotting paper and a cut-glass inkwell. On a corner of the table lay a number of books on antiques, which she was reading her way through very carefully.

All she needed was customers. Though a number of people walked in and looked round, nobody bought anything.

Occasionally, someone asked a price, and she would get up and walk round to them to tell them, and, perhaps, open a drawer to show the fine dovetailing of the piece’s interior or remark that the wood was the finest mahogany and that the piece was over a hundred years old and, therefore, an antique. They invariably remarked that things were too expensive, but she refused to reduce the price.

She was very despondent, and made still more so when she discovered that some of the china ornaments she had put out for display had been stolen.

‘It must have been when I was showing a dressing table to a woman, you know, John,’ she lamented. ‘Her friend was strolling round looking at things. I got distracted. Two
really pretty shepherdesses and a pin tray just gone like that,’ and she snapped her fingers to illustrate the rapidity of the theft.

‘Oh, aye, it’s a common enough ploy – two friends work together – and you’d better watch out if a woman comes in with children – the kids’ll clear a display case while you’re dealing with the mother at the counter.’

‘The children would steal?’ Celia was shocked.

‘Yes.’ John sighed and sat himself down on a wooden rocking chair. He was dressed in a suit and had a heavy portfolio of upholstery samples, which he laid carefully on the floor beside him; he had just returned from seeing a customer in her home. She wanted all her drawing-room furniture re-covered and repolished, a nice job which would help his finances.

He looked round the shop, and suggested, ‘You could put your knick-knacks and – them four mantel clocks – in the big glass cabinet over there and lock it – I see it has a key. Keep the key in your pocket. And keep your eyes open, luv.’

She nodded, and sadly did as he advised.

‘I must go and write up me estimate,’ he said, and heaved the heavy samples into his workshop.

A week later, he knocked on the intervening door between his workshop and the shop, and, as usual, came in without waiting for her answer. He had brought her a rather grubby mug of tea, which he set before her on top of the closed receipt book. She thanked him shyly and put her cold hands round the mug to warm them, before drinking the tea.

He again sat down on the rocking chair, and said, ‘I talked to Alec Tremaine last night. Met him in the Ship Inn. He’s the teacher at the art school that I told you about. If it’s all right with you, he’ll come in on Saturday to look at your paintings. He says he’s no expert, but he’d have a shrewd idea whether they were good or not.’

Acutely aware that the money left over from the auction was being rapidly eroded by the need to pay her rent and Ethelred’s wages, she inquired anxiously, ‘What would he charge?’

‘Oh, he’s not going to charge you; he’s quite interested in old paintings. Paints himself, as well as teaching.’

‘That’s most awfully kind of you and of him. I shall be here all day, needless to say.’

As if he hadn’t heard her last remark, he went on heavily, ‘Him being a teacher and not owning a gallery, I think you’re not likely to be cheated by him in any way – if there is something fairly valuable amongst them, like. A gallery might say they were not worth much and offer to buy them as a job lot very cheap. You could lose a lot of money that way.’

Celia sipped her tea and smiled, ‘Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t recommend anybody who would be likely to cheat. And would a gallery really cheat?’

‘Well, it can happen in any business, and more than anywhere in the antique trade. You can be had quick enough by anybody. When you need to buy stock, you ought to remember to decry whatever’s up for sale, so that you give the lowest possible price for it.’ He grinned slyly at her.

She knew that he was right. Her father’s business adage, often repeated when his wife had been extravagant, had been buy low, sell high. And the value of second-hand furniture was, at best, uncertain; she was sure of that.

John got up and stretched himself. ‘Haven’t seen Miss Edna for a couple of days. Is she well?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you. She’s just catching up in the house. We’ve all been out so much that it’s a mess.’ She looked ruefully round the shop, and said, ‘She can’t do much here, at the moment – I’m not exactly busy.’

‘No, that’s for sure, luv.’

‘Do you think I’ve priced stuff too high for people?’

‘I doubt it. I think you’re not getting the right kind of people into the shop. You need to do some advertising – and I need to do some, too – we could do it together, if you like. Let’s talk about it when Miss Edna comes. Or Betty Houghton might have some ideas – there’s a smart lady if ever there was. Maybe get a little article into the Hoylake paper or, better still, the Chester paper, about the opening of the shop.’

Although she’ had no idea what either Edna or Betty could contribute, Celia agreed enthusiastically, and John went back to his workshop.

The little bell on the front door tinged as someone entered. Celia turned towards it.

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed. ‘Dr Mason! How nice to see you.’