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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.
