One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [51]
‘I’m wasting your time,’ I said flatly.
‘No, I laugh because I know. You smell.’
‘What?’ I flushed.
‘Of babies. Sick. Eets fine. You juggle le bébé, and I’ll talk to the management. We’ll manage.’
We did. Christian, having been a stall holder for twenty-odd years and part of the fabric, let alone the antique furniture, had considerable sway in Antiquarius. In the day when the King’s Road treasured its eccentrics, he was regarded as something of a character. The people there were kind too. They didn’t want to see him go, forced out by illness; knew it was his life, his passion, and if his partner – his partner! – could enable him to stay, they were delighted.
‘And the baby?’ I breathed down the phone to Christian when he rang to report back. ‘What did they say about Seffy?’
‘They say he be fine, but bound and gagged.’
‘What?’
‘No, no, I tease.’
I was beginning to see why Christian’s reputation went before him.
‘No gag,’ he wheezed, ‘just doped. Drugged, and they say he be fine.’
They were an eclectic bunch at Antiquarius: shabby, but faintly glamorous, in a bohemian sort of way, and I soon realized everyone was juggling something. Pamela, next door (oriental china), had her incontinent mother, whom she couldn’t bear to put in a home. Paddy, opposite (clocks and watches), had his wealthy gay partner who wanted him beside him at the bar of the Chelsea Arts Club, and came in to drag him out in a strop. Sally-Anne (ancient garden implements) had teenage children who constantly called to say, ‘What’s for lunch?’ Everyone seemed to have a dependant of some kind. And they loved Seffy. He was a good baby and was passed around with much indulgent clucking. Even one or two sniffy old-school types who’d muttered about having ‘a screamer’ in their midst, softened when they crouched down to his pushchair and he instantly beamed. He smiled at everyone. Customers, tourists, and particularly the two little girls who belonged to Marie-Therese (maps and military prints), and who had a lovely time wheeling him around when they came home from school, flying up and down the aisles to make him chuckle. The market spawned a little community, and Seffy and I became part of it, although without Christian’s sheltering wing, I dare say it would have taken a lot longer.
Françoise du Bose, or ‘French Living’, as she called herself – or ‘feelthy copy cat’, as Christian referred to her – was the only one who kept her distance. She hardly even deigned to look up from her stunning collection of wooden bowls full of dried herbs, fabulous old church lanterns, plaster busts, statues and huge garden urns as I walked past her stall every morning. I always gave her a cheery hello, but never got anything more than a tight little smile back. I gathered she was new too, which surprised me. Her savoir-faire suggested she’d been here for ever.
‘She won’t last, either,’ Christian told me. ‘Stuck-up beech. What her problem? She no speak to no one.’
‘Needs a good seeing-to,’ observed Toby (antique books), opposite. His answer to most things. He sniffed and blew some dust off one of his books.
‘Her stuff’s good, though,’ I said. ‘Lovely and rustic.’
‘Ah yes, she ’as good taste,’ Christian conceded. ‘But she should learn to smile a beet more, she ’as a mouth like a cat’s arse. Now, Provence…’ He turned to me anxiously as Toby wandered off in search of a Pot Noodle. ‘I worry about this trip, Hattie. Ees not like Caen, just across the channel. Ees a fuck of long way down.’
‘I know, Christian, I’ve looked at the map, and don’t worry, we’ll be fine.’
My last – and inaugural – trip to France, I felt had been an unqualified success. Just me and Seffy across on a night boat, then rumbling on in Christian’s Transit van to Caen. We’d found the market easily and parked without difficulty, and although the sun had burned through