The Juniper Tree (2 page)

Tears came to my eyes as I backed away from her and made for the door. It wasn’t only her reaction to my scar, but my feet were wet and cold and I suddenly felt weak with hunger. Miss Murray, carefully arranging her shawl, darted in front of me and stood as if guarding the door. ‘Don’t go, Miss Winter,’ she said urgently. ‘You look so cold and I’m sure you would like a cup of coffee. I’m just about to make one. And your shoes. Take them off and dry them by the fire; but remember to put them on again if a customer comes. Now, I was thinking. I have this friend who has a little shop the other side of the river, nothing like this I’m afraid. She wants someone to look after the shop while she runs a stall in some antique market. Would you care to work in Twickenham? It’s not Richmond, of course.’

Within a week I was living and working in Twickenham. My two-year-old daughter Marline, but usually called Tommy, spent her days in a small municipal nursery just across the Green, where seagulls circled and dedicated people exercised their dogs in all weathers. Saturdays were no problem either because Tommy stayed in the shop with me, quietly playing with the contents of a box marked ‘Everything in this box twenty pence’. Behind the shop there was a large kitchen-dining-room with an antique dresser covered in china which was for sale. Everything in the house was for sale except our beds and a few oddments we brought with us. Upstairs there were two quite attractive rooms, but neglected and shabby. There was a wash-place, no bathroom but plenty of hot water. It was far the best home I’d lived in since Tommy was born.

The antique shop was called ‘Mary Meadows Antiques’ after its owner and was the kind of shop that passers-by often stopped to look in. The early Victorian windows were a pretty shape and the jumble of treasures displayed were more carefully arranged than they appeared to be and there were usually one or two bargains to attract people into the shop. The price of nearly everything for sale was clearly marked. Every morning I slightly changed the window and on Saturday I’d display the things that Mary Meadows hadn’t sold in the antique market. I’d worked in several antique shops before but Mary’s was the one that appealed to me most, partly because I had more responsibility and Mary was so easy to work with. It was almost as if the shop belonged to me because she only came round about twice a week unless she had something to deliver. She travelled about a lot in her long grey van, picking up this or that at country sales. Quite often she sold things to other dealers before they even appeared in the shop or antique market.

To begin with I never did any buying but combed through the stuff that was brought to the shop by customers and dealers, and if anything seemed suitable made an appointment for Mary to see it. Some of the customers, particularly old ladies, were rather a trial with their reproduction brass objects which they assured me had been in their family for years, brass-handled hearth brushes with very little brush, umbrella handles, odd hand-painted china cups, small watercolours, usually of flowers or landscapes, useless bits of embroidery and ugly brooches without pins. I tried to be patient with the people who displayed these objects which they thought so valuable, because sometimes they returned with a really good print or engraving (‘Sorry, it’s only a print’), pretty lustre jugs and mugs and occasionally something almost valuable. I was glad we didn’t go in for art nouveau or art deco because neither of us cared for it and it wouldn’t have suited the shop. Mary did occasionally buy it to sell to other dealers but not for display.

Mary was small, with curly black hair nearly as curly as Tommy’s. Her teeth were small and pointed rather as an animal’s, indeed she resembled an animal with her delicate boned face with its merry expression, perhaps a squirrel. She was a darter, darting into the shop with her arms filled with parcels, often wrapped in newspaper. She would pour out a few half-finished sentences, laugh, wave to an acquaintance passing the window, rush to the door and with the handle in her little paw-like hand, she would give last minute instructions: ‘Think it has a haircrack; reduce the price if you have to. Richard should call, or is he Roger? You know, the man with the huge ears. And the accountant! I’d forgotten him. Oh, and the Bristol glass walking sticks,’ and she’d be gone.

On Mondays the shop was supposed to be closed, but if anyone came knocking at the door I let them in and sometimes did a little business. Otherwise I amused myself by painting the living-room-kitchen white and putting a golden carpet on the floor. A cheap carpet made from remnants sewn together and supposed to be washable. I made curtains on an Edwardian sewing-machine all decorated in mother-of-pearl I found in the shop, then sold it for twenty-five pounds although it only had one tubby little bobbin which had to be constantly re-wound with cotton.

Sundays were more or less devoted to Tommy. It was the only day I could give her my full attention. We found a small park tucked away in the back streets, where we could feed the ducks in the stream and roll a large multi-coloured ball down the grassy slopes. At home we’d eat a large lunch, look at silly programmes on television and play with a large Noah’s ark I’d bought in a sale. There were dolls too and books; she loved books but the ark was her favourite toy.

When I was a child, just before my father left us, he gave me a large doll. She had rather an ugly face and stiff hair you couldn’t brush, but I loved her. I held her in my arms all night and rubbed her plain face with cold cream. One hand was burnt away, black and brown and horrible. Sometimes I thought my mother had had something to do with it. One night I couldn’t find her and lay crying and empty armed in bed, but the next morning there she was, sitting in my chair at the breakfast table. I rushed to put my arms around her but it was a wooden box I was holding, with only her legs, arms and head coming out. The square shoulders were very broad and frightening. I threw her to the ground, then, screaming, tried to hold her in my arms again, splinters scratching me from the rough wood. Besides fright I felt a fearful anger, alternately kicking the poor doll, then touching her with careful hands. Eventually my mother had enough of the ‘joke’ and the doll was banished to the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes I would open the door and look at this Frankenstein monster of a doll with its burnt arm, sitting all square amongst the preserving jars, and weep.

I have few happy memories of my mother. She seemed to blame me for my father’s disappearance. After he left us he used to take me out sometimes. There were jaunts on the river to a great palace, most likely Hampton Court, cinemas and ice-cream far better than any I have eaten since. We went to the sea for the day and a lovely woman came too. She came from another land, but spoke English and afterwards I thought she might have been an American. Then much later I heard that she was a Canadian and that she had died before my father was free to marry her. I always remember that outing, particularly because I never saw my father again. After a day with him mother always asked so many questions. If she didn’t like my answers, she would slap my hands until I cried – not that she hurt me physically, the hurt was mental.

My mother was the games mistress at a local school which I attended. At first the girls teased me and called me ‘teacher’s pet’, but when they saw how she treated me the teasing ceased. As soon as I was able to cross the busy main road on my own, my mother and I travelled to school separately. It was as if we didn’t want to spend a moment more together than necessary. Strangely enough, she was remarkably generous towards me in some ways. Although her income was small I was well dressed and fed. At Christmas and on my birthday I was given handsome presents as if they were punishments. I remember a new bicycle once and on my tenth birthday there was a real leather attaché case with my initials stamped on it. No one else at school had such a case. They carried their books in bulging satchels on their backs and looked almost humped-backed as they walked.

I seldom asked school friends to my home. It was a small, impersonal, Kilburn house with stained glass let into the front door and clinkers in the garden. It was furnished with shabby hire-purchase furniture, fully paid for and now almost worn out. The sofa was made of imitation brown leather and when it was hot it stuck to our bottoms, and the dining-room chairs were the same. The general colour scheme was brown, dark green and browny-gold. The only thing that appealed to me in the house was a French gilt clock which had belonged to my mother’s French grandfather. It gently ticked away the hours on the ugly sitting-room mantelshelf. Sometimes it stopped at eight o’clock, but not often or mother would have thrown it out. There was Robinson Crusoe sitting under a palm tree and Man Friday ministering to him and there may have been a sunshade although it seems unlikely. I think it was this clock that started my interest in antiques. As I grew older I’d spend Saturday mornings searching for antique shops. Although Kilburn was not a good place for them, there were plenty not too far away and there was the Portobello Road street market, which seemed like a strange fairyland to me. I had very little money but occasionally bought Victorian children’s books and headless Staffordshire figures and, on one occasion, a plate to commemorate the birth of King Edward of which I was very proud. My mother suffered the china but later on banned books in case they had ‘bugs in their spines’.

I left school at sixteen with a few O-levels, few ambitions and few friends. Mother immediately sent me to a business college. I loathed it at the time, but the knowledge I gained there has come in very useful. My first job was in a coal office with bowls of coal displayed in the dusty window. It was called ‘Crimony, the Coal People’ and I typed letters to customers reminding them to order coal before the summer ended and the price went up. There were also invoices and the telephone to answer. The women I worked with were kind but elderly and talked about their knitting machines and their retirement. Should they leave their little flats and move to the coast, Bognor perhaps, or would life in a small private hotel be more convenient? No housework, but what would they do with their time? I listened to their plans but knew it was unlikely they would ever leave their safe little homes, at least as long as their health lasted. They were fond of spring-cleaning and gave a day-to-day account of the cleaning as they did it – how the carpet was sent to the cleaners and the curtains washed, the condensation in the pantry and the surprising amount of dirt they found under the cooker and, horror of horrors, the lavatory pan had a crack Mr Crimony wasn’t difficult to work for although he did sometimes follow me into the basement cupboard where the old files were kept. He’d come very close so that I could hear him breathe and perhaps a dark, hairy hand would come on my shoulder, but that was all. I trained myself to be very quick at finding files, though.

I stayed with coal for six months, then to my mother’s dismay went to work in a second-hand furniture shop in Chalk Farm. It was a junk shop really, but occasionally something good appeared, so hopeful dealers came from time to time and I gradually became involved with the antique world.

In the meantime, there was my mother still at the school. Her severe black hair was slightly grey and the slang words she liked to use were a little out of date now and the girls smiled and called her old Winterbottom behind her back. Sometimes she’d have drinks in a popular pub with her fellow teachers, but they never came to the house. I don’t think anyone did.

We spoke little to each other, my mother and I. She would make remarks like, ‘Really, Bella, you look a perfect guy in those trousers. Your bottom is too fat, so are your hips.’

I’d say, ‘Good, that’s how I like them,’ but I didn’t. I worried a lot about my heavy hips and legs. The top part of me was almost beautiful and still is except for one disfigurement. My black hair is still thick and glossy and falls into lovely shapes whether it is cut short or left to grow long. My eyes are very dark with a kind of glitter, at least they glitter when I see them in the mirror. My skin is fine and white, a healthy white, and my lips are red even without lipstick. I have good teeth too and a good figure now, but in those days, when I was still in my teens, I was heavy below the waist with a largish bottom, rather thick thighs which bulged a bit when I sat down and plump legs that fortunately did taper at my ankles before they reached my small feet.

If I have boasted about my appearance – and I must admit that I used to be rather vain as a girl – I’ve been punished for my vanity and given a disfiguring scar on my left cheek. It used to be nearly three inches long, and lifted one eye in a horrible leer, but now, after treatment, the eye hardly notices and the scar is shorter and no longer purple-red. The stitch marks have almost gone too. At first it was as if I had a fearful centipede running up my face and I covered it with my hand when I spoke to people. I still turn the left side of my face away.

My father called me Bella. The name was an embarrassment at that time.

Chapter Two

I
had been living in Twickenham for just over a month when the shop bell rang and I hurried from the kitchen with a cup of tea in my hand. Standing with her back to the window was a very tall woman dressed in cream-coloured clothes almost like robes. For a moment I didn’t recognize her, but when I switched on the lights, which should have already been on, I saw it was the beautiful woman from Richmond, the one who had cut her hand, the blood dripping on the snow. Her gloves were lying on the counter and as I glanced at her hand she recognized me, smiled and said, ‘It is completely healed. There is nothing to see,’ and we stood there smiling as if we were old friends.

She told me she was searching for etchings and good prints and paintings if she could find any up to her husband’s standard. She said she had often noticed ‘Mary Meadows’ but this was the first time she had stopped to look in the window. She chose some large and ugly engravings for their bird’s eye maple frames and a small print of dogs being clipped under an arch. (The dogs, mostly poodles were tied to a shabby cart. It must have been one of the first dogs’ beauty parlours. I think there is mention of one in
David Copperfield.)
She also bought a little chair made of elm, with a heart cut out of the back, definitely a child’s chair and much loved by Tommy.