Mourning Doves (32 page)

Lady Tremaine and her companion doted on Alec and were bent on ‘feeding him up’. They were also bent on his paying court to his cousin, Daphne, a nice enough young woman, who would, they felt, be a suitable wife for a younger son who had not inherited much from his father. Alec had dutifully inspected the lady and played a few games of tennis with her. But that morning Alec had suddenly glimpsed something better, not just a woman who attracted him but a whole peaceful, orderly way of life, and his mother found him unusually silent at lunch time. She suggested a game of golf, but he said he felt like a
stroll round the Liverpool Art Gallery, which he had not visited since he returned home, and took himself off to the railway station to catch a train to the city.

At home that night, Louise retired reluctantly to the sitting room to write a reference for Winnie, in reply to an inquiry from Mrs Johnson who was considering her for the post of cook in her new nursing home. Though still annoyed that a servant of hers should go so far as to trespass on her property, she had strict instructions from both her daughters that the reference should be an excellent one. Determined that her old friend should get the position, Celia reiterated to her mother Winnie’s great ability to cook everything, from dinners for large parties to wine jelly for an invalid. ‘Make it a really nice reference, Mama. Winnie is quite a wonderful cook.’

Being fundamentally a conscientious woman, Louise knew that Celia was correct, and in her best copperplate, she assured Mrs Johnson of Winnie’s capabilities and her honesty. In her secret heart, she admitted that she wished she still had Winnie with her, and she quite envied Mrs Johnson her ability to employ a cook.

While Louise was safely occupied, Celia poured out to Edna the story of Alec Tremaine’s visit and the Turner painting and her own dreadful ignorance.

Edna remembered the painting and said she had always known it as ‘the Turner’. ‘There were so many paintings of one sort or another in the house,’ she said apologetically, ‘I never thought of it as anything special. They all seemed to have been handed down to us from the year dot.’

‘I felt such a fool, Edna, and he’s what Winnie would
have called a loovelly man.’ There was a yearning in her voice.

‘You are smitten!’ Edna teased.

Celia shrugged helplessly. ‘Cats can look at kings.’

Edna smiled. ‘Cheer up. What’s he going to do with the two paintings?’

‘We packed them up carefully and he’s taking them to show the principal of his college.

‘It was funny, Edna. He actually insisted on giving me a receipt for both the Turner and the Ramsay, and he promised not to let them out of his sight.’ She sighed. ‘Frankly, I thought he was overreacting.’

‘Oh, no. They are probably valuable. It looks as if he will really take care of your interests.’

‘Not mine. Mother’s.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Mother let me have the pictures, because she thought they were old-fashioned and of no value. Morally, if I get any real money for them, I should hand it to her.’

Edna exploded. ‘What utter nonsense! The paintings, the furniture and the china are all yours. Cousin Albert arranged it legally. And over the years, believe me, you’ve earned every cent of anything you get for them.’

She was truly angry. She got up off her chair, and spun round to walk up and down in the narrow space of the living room. ‘I won’t hear of it!’ she almost shouted. ‘It’s absurd.’

She looked so like her mother in one of her rages that Celia quailed for a moment. Then she laughed. ‘You’re so good, Edna. I feel conscience-stricken, that’s all.’

‘Forget it. Mother’s doing very nicely, what with the money from the silver and the annuity, which Cousin Albert is now arranging for her. Most of the time she’s so absorbed with her boys that she forgets we exist, except to keep the house going.’

‘Mother’s certainly got a hold on life again,’ Celia admitted. ‘She’s trying to get a committee together.’

‘She is. She’s already learning Braille and is beginning to get a grasp of it, and the Liverpool School for the Blind has been quite helpful with advice. Of course, they deal with civilians, whereas Mother’s young men are still in the army. You forget her. She’s fairly happy, and you enjoy whatever comes your way,’ she ordered. ‘Alec Tremaine sounds a dear. Be nice to him.’

‘Yes, Edna,’ Celia replied in mock submission.

Two days later, on his way home from the station, Alec dropped into the shop just as she was about to close up.

He whipped off his hat and told her in haste that her pictures were stored in his principal’s office safe, until the principal could give more time to examining them. ‘We’re short of staff,’ he explained apologetically. ‘And there is a real rush of older students returning from the war. We are nearly run off our feet.’

She assured him shyly that neither he nor his principal should go to too much trouble for her. There was no hurry.

They stood looking at each other uncertainly, and then he said, smiling ruefully, that he must not be late for dinner – his mother didn’t like it.

‘My mother doesn’t like it either,’ she said with a small chuckle, and she held out her hand to be shaken.

He grasped it firmly, and said, ‘I’ll keep in touch. Goodbye.’

The feel of the warmth of his hand stayed with Celia, even after he had let himself out. As the sound of his footsteps on the pavement diminished with distance, she was flooded by feelings never before experienced. They seemed, somehow, to be connected with small unexpressed, unexplained longings that she had sometimes felt before; longings that no one else seemed to mention in conversation and which she had assumed, therefore, were vulgar,
like talking about having the stomach ache or wanting to vomit.

Now, for a moment, she felt unsteady enough to think that she might faint, and she sat down suddenly in the nearest chair until it eased.

When finally she did lock the front door after herself, she walked home in an almost dreamlike state.

Some weeks elapsed without a word from Alec Tremaine and Celia began to think sadly that he had lost interest.

He’ll post the paintings back to me, some time or other – with polite regrets that they are worthless, she told herself.

With a neat energetic Welsh woman as daily cleaning lady, Edna had more time to spare and she began to take a solid interest in the shop.

Small advertisements were put in local papers and in the
Liverpool Echo
and the
Evening Express
, which were read quite widely. Aided by Betty Houghton and John Philpotts, the two women emphasised the first-class quality of their stock and the fact that a French polisher and upholsterer was on the premises.

Betty also sent to see them an aggressive young woman who said she was the social reporter of the local paper, and that she would like to do a small article on the opening of the shop. Later, Celia described her to Edna as looking just like a ferret in a smart hat.

Notebook in hand, she breezed round the shop, admiring this and that, while John and Celia watched her as anxiously as if she were a ferret very liable to bite.

Behind her back, John quietly asked for the key to the china cabinet and a puzzled Celia gave it to him, eyebrows raised in silent question. ‘Small gift,’ he hissed. ‘To mark the happy occasion of her visit.’

Celia was quite bewildered but she gave him the key. He quietly picked out a pretty cup and saucer and wrapped them in tissue paper. After about ten minutes and a few
questions addressed to Celia, the lady announced that she had all the information she needed. Celia thanked her for coming, and John saw her to the door. As he opened the door, he handed her the parcel, and said they had enjoyed her visit and would like her to have the enclosed little memento of it.

All coyness and blushes, she accepted the present and they saw her lay it carefully in the basket attached to the handlebars of her bicycle.

John turned and laughed at Celia. He said, ‘Write its value off in your account book as business expenses. It will be some of the best money you ever spent.’

He was correct. A very enthusiastic little article graced the column, next to a report of a local wedding. A number of ladies came to see this interesting new arrival on Market Street. They were a different breed from those who had come and gone at other times, and, as a result, Celia sold a pair of side chairs to one, and a number of delicate glass specimen vases to a collector. There was also an elderly man who bought a pair of pictures by a nineteenth-century local artist, whose work he admired.

Edna’s furniture had arrived some weeks before from South America, and Celia began to show in her shop some pieces of it which Edna had given her when they first unpacked it and put it in the barn. It was very unusual to English eyes, and attracted a fair amount of attention. She wanted to give to Edna the money she received for it, but Edna would not hear of it.

She said, ‘Celia, I am not sure how much I shall receive from the company, but I do know that I shall be quite a well-to-do woman. I don’t even spend half of what Papa Fellowes sends me at present. Except for a few pieces, you can have it. I’m getting a lot of fun out of the shop – and that is enough for me.’ She did not say that the furniture reminded her too much of great unhappiness for her to ever want to use it again.

‘Have you decided about making a home of your own yet, Edna? You might need the furniture, after all.’

Edna thought of the tender letters going back and forth to Brazil. Because the liaison had originally been an illicit one, she had said nothing about Vital to either Celia or Louise. She sighed, ‘Quite honestly, Celia, I don’t know yet what to do. But you are not to worry. Let’s get you launched first.’

Celia had almost given up hope of seeing Alec again, when he suddenly dropped into the shop late one afternoon, to tell her that examination of her pictures had been delayed, because the college principal was in hospital having further surgery on an old wound in his back.

‘I’m so sorry for the long delay, but it cannot be helped, Miss Gilmore.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Celia assured him. ‘Is it very serious surgery?’

‘Well, back surgery, I am told, is difficult, and he will need some time for recovery. But they hope to alleviate the nagging pain he has been enduring.’ Alec frowned, and then added, ‘They should never have called up men of his age.’

Celia sighed. ‘I expect they were getting short of young ones.’

‘They were indeed, Miss Gilmore.’

They spent a little time chatting about the war, and then a customer came in. Alec said shyly that he would be in touch with her, smiled and left.

With an inward sense of pure happiness, Celia reluctantly turned her attention to the lady who had entered.

Efforts at publicity drew other dealers to view their stock. They offered to buy pieces for ridiculously small prices. Both sisters quickly recognised them for what they were and sent them on their way.

It was not long, however, before more bona fide customers began to stroll in. Unlike many second-hand and antique stores, Celia and Edna took a lot of trouble to make the shop pretty and show off what they had in a good light. Everything shone with polish and the place smelled sweet with bowls of dried lavender.

It had been John’s opinion that the hardest things to sell would be the beds, despite the fact that they were in good condition and had fine, carved bed heads.

‘It’s because folk are afraid of vermin,’ he explained.

Undeterred, Edna got Ethelred to bring them, one at a time, from the barn, and, using some of the enormous amount of bed linen they had, she made them up as if ready to get into. She decked them out with a bunch of flowers or an old shawl or, in one case, a rose-trimmed summer hat laid on the counterpane, as if the owner had just come into the house.

In six months they had not a bed left. In two cases they had sold them complete with the bedding on them. They disposed of some of the others by agreeing to keep the bed until the cost was paid by weekly instalments.

‘I suspect that couples setting up house are buying new furniture for the living rooms and economising when it comes to the bedrooms,’ said Edna shrewdly.

A trip to buy furniture in Liverpool or Birkenhead involved either taking the electric train, which to many was quite expensive, or a complicated journey by bus and ferry. Celia undoubtedly benefited from the fact that hers was the only shop selling furniture between Hoylake and Birkenhead, at a time when private cars were few and there was, anyway, no tunnel under the Mersey through which to drive to Liverpool. She soon learned to stock some old, but good, furniture which was not as expensive as her genuine antiques, and this gave her a steady turnover.

They began early to look for advertisements of estate
sales, where they might purchase new stock. ‘Before we buy, we’d better attend some sales,’ Celia suggested. ‘So that we understand what to do.’

They temporarily formed the habit of shutting the shop on Mondays and Tuesdays, days which seemed to bring the smallest number of clients. And off they went to country estate sales on bicycles which Eddie had obtained for them from a local repair shop.

It was as well they did go, because they learned how professional dealers joined up to keep the prices low at auctions, and yet outbid them. They also learned, sometimes by bitter experience, to examine with care every piece they wanted to buy, and not to be carried away by claims of antiquity.

Though Celia was learning fast, Edna was by far the more astute buyer. She had had much experience in South America of bargaining for everything, and she would pile in with great gusto, when Celia was far too polite to question an offer and would simply refuse it.

It was Celia, however, who really studied furniture as a subject. She read widely, and would shyly stand by a dealer at the showing before an auction and summon up courage to ask questions – and learn how to identify the work of famous furniture makers.