One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [55]
On our final evening I managed not to talk about him. Instead I listened as she outlined an idea she had, for a shop, an idea she’d had for some time. She had a bit of money, and wanted to take out a lease, sell only French artefacts. She wanted to come to the brocante fairs not with a van, but a lorry – a ruddy great one – and take back not tea sets, but furniture: rococo consoles, armoires, mirrors, sets of chairs, sièges courants. Back in London she’d arrange them in vignettes – ‘like in a room set, you know?’ She’d accessorize them with candlesticks, piles of books on tables, huge lanterns above, a trumeau mirror on the wall. ‘D’you see, Hattie?’ I’d nodded. She said how she had to be quick, though, because other people were doing it. A shop called French Home had already opened in Clapham; another, Le Français, in Putney. Oh, it wasn’t original, but she thought she could do it better. Thought Fulham, Munster Road, would be ripe for it – all those terraced houses being gentrified – and she’d seen something suitable, tiny but central. We’d have to be quick, though. These shops went fast.
‘We?’
Oh. Didn’t she say? She wondered if I’d go in with her. She’d seen what I bought, what I liked, thought we’d work well together. Complement one another. My eye for detail, hers for the huge statement. And with her experience – she’d been dealing for six years and spoke the language – and my beginner’s luck – like Christian she’d been secretly surprised at the Limoges bowl: ‘C’est magnifique,’ she told me now – we couldn’t fail.
‘But I’ve no money.’
‘No, but I’ve got a bit, and you can pay me back. And we can get a loan too.’
‘From who?’
‘From the bank, of course. How d’you think small businesses start?’
‘Oh…’ I said slowly, no idea about anything. ‘But… what about Christian?’
‘I know, I thought about that. But we can sell his stuff from the shop, it’s not a problem. He’ll sell more from us, in a proper shop, than he does in Antiquarius. And you can still source it for him. What d’you think?’
I remember looking at her over that gingham tablecloth under the awning outside that café in the starry night, her dark eyes keen and eager. She was trying to disguise the eagerness, though: it was the guarded look of one who’d been hurt before. I gazed beyond her then, so as not to be influenced by her vulnerability; by the wine, the warm night air. After all, I had my grief to nurse and nurture; I’d be busy. And I’d only just met her. But I do remember thinking too, as the stars twinkled back at me, that although something had died out here, something could be born. The beginning of me as someone else: someone whose life wasn’t going to revolve around being in love, around a man. It was perhaps the birth of the career girl in me, channelling passion into something I could control.
I took a deep breath. My eyes came back to hers. ‘Why not?’
12
Ralph de Granville burst into the Abbey kitchen on a blast of fresh air as the Carringtons sat around the table in various stages of soporific Sunday morning stupor. At least, some of us did: the elder teenagers were still in bed, it being only nine thirty, but Daisy was amongst us, gazing dreamily into space in her dressing gown. Mr de Granville, all svelte good looks and resplendent in a lime-green silk coat with mandarin collar, voluminous white trousers and thonged sandals, seemed to have been beamed down from another planet as he suddenly appeared in our midst. He smiled delightedly, hands clasped, as Hugh, who’d gone to the back door thinking it was