The Backward Shadow (10 page)

‘Henry has £5,000—' (I gasped)—‘which he's willing, subject to finding everything satisfactory, to put into a modern fancy-goods shop run by us—'

‘God, what's a modern fancy-goods shop? It sounds ghastly.'

‘Nonsense, it's what I told you. Glass, wood, ceramics, hand-woven fabrics—toys, perhaps. Since David was born I've been looking at a lot of toys. I've had a million ideas. Maybe we could find some old craftsmen in the countryside near here who hand-carve things or weave and make pots and so on, whom we could employ in a sort of cottage-industry way to supply us. Of course we'd have to show them exactly what we wanted—no fusty old tat, everything's got to be bang up to date.'

So she rattled on. Her enthusiasm was dangerously infectious. By the time we had bounced over the last splashy rut, I could almost see it all myself—the little shop cleaned out and stripped for action, its basic beauties revealed or highlighted to provide the best possible background for our wares, which Dottie would arrange in the finest Heal's tradition of display. The wares themselves would combine Dottie's intrinsic love for the finest in contemporary urban elegance and
taste, with her new-found desire to patronise and nurture the simple talents and produce of the countryside—hand-carved dolls, hand-thrown white-glazed pottery, hand-woven wall-hangings and rugs, hand-hammered iron and copper-ware. Not to mention hand-painted pictures. ‘Because as I see it, it will be part art-gallery as well as shop. I mean, if Catesby's can use oil-paintings as background dressing, and sell them too, why can't we? We can seek out local artists—maybe uncover an unknown primitive like that marvellous man who does the suits of armour in little dots or those gorgeous steam-engines.'

‘They aren't primitives.'

She brushed this aside. ‘Jane, this is going to be wonderful. I know it. Henry falling into my net like that is a sign from heaven that it's going to be a success.'

‘How
did
you capture Henry?'

‘Ad. in the
Times
Personal.'

‘Yours or his?'

‘Oh, his. I wouldn't have thought of it.'

‘So you fell into
his
net, really.'

‘Don't put it like that! Henry's not a bit like a spider.'

‘And you're not a bit like a fly. Still, he doesn't look to me like a manifestation of the Heavenly Will, either.'

‘You know what I mean,' she said impatiently as we climbed out of the car. ‘Why aren't you being more excited?'

‘Sorry,' I said. ‘The whole thing's moving too fast for me. I hope you haven't forgotten that in less than a year I'm going to New York?'

‘Oh, that … Well, you never know, you may not want to go by then.'

‘Oh yes I will. And then you'll be annoyed at my going off.'

‘It may well be running on its own momentum by then.'

Henry drove up behind the Maggot and climbed out backwards, bringing out a small, neat overnight bag.

‘You can put him up for the night?' Dottie whispered.

‘Yes, if he doesn't object to the sofa. Here, we must get David to bed, it's cold for him out here.'

We were soon sitting round the fire eating underdone steaks
from plates on our knees. Dottie was chatting away, I was answering in indistinct monosyllables due to extreme hunger, and Henry was keeping very quiet. I hadn't got Henry's number at all yet. He had vaguely asked if there was anything he could do, but in the end had taken no for an answer and had let me light the fire and get the supper while he sat staring rather moodily into the flames with a glass in his hand. He had brought his own bottle, though, for which I gave him points, even though Dottie had probably told him to.

After the meal Dottie announced that Henry had to leave after lunch the next day to spend Sunday afternoon with his mother, and that we must begin talking business. She said this very briskly and authoritatively and then looked from one to the other of us expectantly. A long silence followed.

‘I'd like to look at the—er—premises,' said Henry at last. ‘In the morning, I mean, of course.'

‘Of course,' said Dottie. ‘We can get the key from the agent, he's sure not to mind, even if it is Sunday. And then we'll start negotiations right away. I'll go back to town with you tomorrow, Henry, and we'll finalise everything. Then I'll drive back, Jane, and while you earn our bread and butter in the pub, I'll drive round the countryside tracking down sources.'

‘Er,' said Henry tentatively.

‘What?' asked Dottie, raising her eyebrows in surprise that even such a timid hesitation should be shown.

‘Well, only—I mean—you want to finalise everything
tomorrow
?'

‘What's the point of waiting?'

‘Of course I don't know a great deal about business, but isn't that a bit …I mean, wouldn't that be pushing it a bit?' He spoke with a fairly marked Cockney accent—not gorblimey, but quite noticeable. It made him more interesting, because his clothes were so tweedy and Austin Reed—he even had a matching waistcoat on, and very conservative shoes that looked as if he'd had them for years and polished them every night.
It was hard to place him—town or country, posh or com, rich/idle/shrewd/thrifty/Lib/Lab/Tory, or permutations of the same, it was impossible to tell. He didn't, for instance, look the type who would hurry home from a business meeting to have Sunday tea with his mum. I found myself watching him closely for clues, at the same time thinking how Toby would have enjoyed doing the same from a writer's viewpoint.

Dottie looked jarred, like someone whizzing blithely downhill on a toboggan and hitting a submerged stump.

‘Look,' she said, with half-concealed impatience. ‘This whole thing is such a wonderful idea—and everything is falling into place so perfectly—it's obviously destined to be
on
. Can't you see that?' She looked from one to the other of us. I tried to look encouraging but at the same time not wholly committed. Henry looked worried and rather mentally windblown. ‘I can't see the point of delays!' Dottie exclaimed, stubbing out her cigarette. I saw Henry look along the length of her straight, tense, slender arm and stop at the thick silver bracelet on the wrist. There was a faint, puzzled frown on his face; it could have been simply unease at the way Dottie was pushing him into something he wasn't sure of, but to me it looked like the frown of a man who is beginning to feel something that he never wanted or expected to feel and doesn't know how to cope with it. He suddenly got a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses out of his top pocket and put them on, then leaned back with an air of greater assurance as if wearing them made him invisible and he were now free to observe us and the situation from a position of immunity. The glasses became him; I suddenly saw that for all his stockiness and lack of expression, he was not unattractive—he looked like a nice cuddly koala bear in his hairy brown tweeds, and his rather large ears added not unpleasingly to the likeness.

‘I think,' I said, ‘that we shouldn't plan too far or too definitely ahead. Let's look over the shop tomorrow and then see.'

‘I agree,' said Henry. ‘After all, it's no use worrying about “sources” until we're sure we'll have a market. It's only a
little village, after all. Who's going to buy the stuff?'

‘Oh, nobody around here, probably,' said Dottie airily. ‘Not at first, anyway. But look at Tenterden.' She grinned at us triumphantly, like a child who has done its homework.

‘Who's he?.' asked Henry unwarily.

‘“He” is a village in Kent,' said Dottie. ‘It's full of antique shops. Super ones—I drove out there the other day. It's a lot further from London than this, but people flock there to buy antiques.'

‘Dealers.'

‘Not only.
And
it has a modern fancy-goods shop, which the locals now go to—thriving. It's all imported stuff there, too. Ours would be local products, cheaper,
nicer
. And think—we'd be helping to prevent local crafts from dying out. I read somewhere that there's hardly anybody left who knows how to make real rocking-horses any more.'

‘What about all those ones in toy-shops?'

‘Factory made,' said Dottie scornfully, as if they were somehow fakes.

‘And very nice too,' said Henry unexpectedly. ‘I hope you're not going to turn your nose up at everything that hasn't been turned out by some doddering old bugger sitting on a sunny bench whittling away with a bowie-knife.' I snorted into my brandy and received a frosty look from Dottie.

‘What's wrong with that?' she asked him.

‘Everything. I've no objection to a few bits of handicrafts dotted around the place, but the main bulk of the stock's obviously got to be manufactured. I may as well tell you,' he went on, now warming up—it seemed to be a side effect of the glasses—‘that if I go into this—
if
, I said—I'm going into it as an investment. I got this bit of money by working damn hard for it and there's no more where that came from; I'm not planning to chuck it away on any airy-fairy artsy-craftsy nonsense. I'll have another of those,' he said to me, passing his glass.

‘Help yourself,' I said admiringly, passing him his bottle. He
did so, liberally, while Dottie gazed at him with totally new eyes.

‘I think I'll have another one too,' she said faintly.

‘You shouldn't drink so much,' he said.

Dottie was now flabbergasted. ‘Who says so?' she asked dangerously.

‘I do. It's not womanly.'

‘Don't talk cock,' said Dottie distinctly.

This shocked him into temporary silence. Dottie reached for the brandy and deliberately poured herself a fair old tot. I couldn't help finding all this by-play very amusing, and was watching it with a faintly maternal smile when Henry suddenly turned the full force of his new-found belligerency on to me.

‘And what about you?' he said. ‘You're keeping dead quiet, I notice. What's your contribution to all this going to be?'

‘I don't really know,' I said pleasantly. ‘Work, I should think. You know, nothing skilled—just black-work. There's bound to be some of that, isn't there?'

‘There's black-work behind every success,' said Henry tersely. ‘I know. I've done some.' Clue! But it didn't lead to anything. It seemed Henry was an early retirer, because although it was only just on midnight he suddenly jumped up and said, ‘Here, it's late! I want to get up early tomorrow and I must get my sleep. Can you show me my bed?'

‘That's it you've been sitting on,' I said.

‘Oh, well, that's fine,' he said, and stood rather awkwardly waiting for us to take ourselves off. I brought him sheets and blankets and showed him the downstairs loo and then Dottie and I went up to my room feeling rather ousted; if we'd been alone we'd have undoubtedly sat talking for another couple of hours at least.

‘There's more to that one than I thought,' said Dottie rather grimly as we closed the door of David's room behind us.

‘Who, David?' I asked wickedly.

‘No. 'Ennery.'

‘Did you think he was just a fall-guy?'

‘Really, Jane! One would think I was out to rob him. I
only mean I expected him to be a sort of—well,
sleepy
partner, if not actually a sleeping one; I mean until this evening he hardly had a word to say for himself.'

‘What were you talking about then, all evening in the bar?'

‘Oh, he wasn't talking at all. I was.'

I believed her. ‘Do you like him?'

‘How?' she asked at once.

‘That way.'

‘No, of course not! With those ears? With that funny hair?'

‘He likes you—that way.'

‘Too bad,' she said callously. ‘Or rather, no, it's good. Useful.'

‘Dottie!'

‘Oh, don't look so shocked. I'm fed up with men using me. I'm going to do the using in future.'

‘Even if it's somebody nice?'

‘Show me a really nice man,' she said, ‘a really
nice
man, and I'll use him—till death do us part. But Henry's not it. He's too damn
chutzpahdic
for one thing.'

‘Where did you hear that?'

‘You're not the only one who's had a Jewish lover,' she said as she climbed into bed.

I WAS
more than surprised the next morning, on tottering downstairs in my dressing-gown with David draped over my shoulder and my eyes only half open, to find a brisk and busy Henry, dressed except for his jacket, and neatly shaved, an apron tied under his armpits to protect his waistcoat, washing the supper-dishes at the kitchen sink. The kettle was steaming and various bits and pieces had been brought out of the fridge which indicated that when the ground was cleared he had proposed to begin making breakfast.

‘Good morning,' I said in dopey astonishment. ‘You don't have to do that.'

‘Well, I want my breakfast. I always eat well in the mornings. I hope you don't mind,' he said as an afterthought. ‘I've already had a cup of tea.'

‘Of course I don't mind. You make me feel a bad hostess, that's all. But after all, it
is
barely seven o'clock.' I put David in his Babysitta on the table where he could watch us.

‘You put him on the table, do you?' asked Henry disapprovingly.

‘Yes,' I said rather shortly, starting to prepare his morning cereal and orange juice.

‘Doesn't he ever pee on it?'

‘Babies of that age don't pee very copiously. And he is wearing a nappy.' I find people who are too fastidious very hard to take in my own house.

Now that I'd arrived, Henry allowed me to take over. It would have been nice if he'd finished the dishes, but instead he stood in the middle of the kitchen, his hands in his pockets, gazing at David expectantly as if waiting for him to perform.