Chapter Thirty-One
Had she ever been so busy?
These days, Diane’s ‘to do’ list was as long as her arm. Top of the list was Unity’s order, which she had scheduled by the simple expedient of calculating how many garments there were left to make and dividing that figure by the number of weeks before delivery was due, which left her still three garments to make each week; frightening, bearing in mind that she had to take Gareth to his outpatient appointments and physio, which always took hours.
And Diane found herself calling at the supermarket on the way home from these appointments because the fridge and the cupboards emptied themselves quickly and thoroughly now that Gareth and Bryony were both living at home.
Bryony contracted a stubborn chest infection and a cough like an old coalminer, making her hot and listless. Because of her pregnancy, she didn’t want to use a steroid inhaler. Diane, dropping automatically into worried mum mode, found herself driving Bryony to her antenatal appointments even though Bryony had bought a little Ford KA now. Lots of the mums-to-be seemed to have their mums or friends with them, either for moral support or to look after existing children during check-ups and Diane loved the feeling of being involved, but then had to work long into the evening to keep up with her punishing schedule. Somehow she’d squeezed in the meeting about Christmas stock with Unity, resulting in an order that she was trying not to think about, yet.
When Bryony began to get better she embarked on a shopping spree for the baby, an activity that Diane just couldn’t entirely resist.
And when she was at home visitors were a constant interruption. Melvyn and Ivan persuaded Gareth into spending some of his money on an immense new television and satellite TV box — whereupon they called much more often.
Bryony visited Harold to keep him company in his desperate mourning for his daughter and reported that, filleted by his grief, he didn’t seem to care whether he ate or not. Very worrying. Diane began inviting him for meals.
George brought Tamzin to visit Diane ‘to cheer her up’, although Diane did keep explaining to him that Tamzin wasn’t suddenly going to get over her bereavement, as if it were a bad cold.
In between, Diane kept her head down, battling grimly to deliver Unity’s order on time.
Then there was James. Before she crashed into all-too brief sleep, sometimes she’d send him carefully friendly texts. How r u? How r u coping? How r the girls? Do you need help? He’d reply, Lots of crap to get though. Taxman a pain. Tamzin worrying but Nat and Ally spending lots of time with her. Occasionally, he drove Tamzin to the house and Diane’s heart bled at the shock in James’s dark grey eyes as he somehow steered his family through the uncharted land of grief.
* * *
One task on her ‘to do’ list kept sliding down the order: Diane still needed to investigate why a shop in Covent Garden Market was selling her garments at a huge mark-up. But then the day finally came when she could deliver her entire order to Unity — feeling quite important at drawing the Peugeot up to the delivery entrance.
‘I never thought you’d manage the whole lot,’ confessed Unity, slender in a gold tunic that brought out the lights in her hair. ‘You must have worked your poor fingers to the bone.’
‘I did.’ Diane hung the last garment on the hanging rail with a, ‘Phew!’ ready for Unity to inventory and price.
‘You deserve a rest. But I will need the first of the Christmas order ASAP . . .’ She pulled an apologetic face.
‘Some of the fabrics have arrived and I’ll get onto it in a few days,’ Diane had promised. But she knew that before she plunged up to her eyes in beads and bows, she had to face the evil hour.
The train to London took only an hour from Peterborough, yet Diane hadn’t been to London for years. At least ten. She tried not to look too country-mousey as she stepped down from the train and shuffled along the platform at King’s Cross, the voices of fellow passengers battling the thrumming of the trains in the echoing station.
Country Mouse had wanted to wear her ‘best dress’, the beautifully cut black number from Unity’s. But Idiosyncratic Fashionista had dressed in a skirt in dingy pink and drab blue — wonderful colours — overlapping and pockety, and every edge unfinished, dark-pink corduroy dancing slippers belonging to Bryony and a white top spattered with appliquéd metallic blue shark fins.
Almost falling into the stairwell, she descended into the tiled corridors leading to the underground station. Although she’d pored over the map in the back of her diary and knew very well that Covent Garden Station was only three stops down the Piccadilly Line, the diagonal, dark blue one, she still checked again with a large map on the wall before committing her travel card to the slot in the barriers.
Clutching her safely returned ticket, her stomach rose to meet her heart as she descended into the warm air of the subterranean network. Where were all these people going? Why was she the only one who had to pause to scan each colour-coded sign before selecting her route?
She wished she could have come down to London when she had first learned what was going on and was still good and angry. Then she wouldn’t have felt so trepidatious about storming into some swanky shop in Covent Garden.
The tube was almost exactly as she remembered it; first a crowded platform and then a crowded train, the passengers divided into sitters and standers — the sitters having to watch their feet weren’t stood upon by the standers — breathing overused air as the hissing monster trains clattered and whooshed through the tunnels. Diane clung to a metal pole near the doors and tried not to think about a breakdown in a tunnel. She alighted at Covent Garden and became one of a block of passengers herding into the big sheep-pen lifts. There, she tried not to think about a breakdown en route to the surface.
Relieved to reach fresh air, outside the station she was transfixed by a shop mannequin, wearing a red suit and a stupid hat, unaccountably left on a picnic chair in the middle of the pedestrian street with a guitar across his lap. Three giggling teenaged girls were waving their fingers in his face. Diane seemed to be the only one astonished when the ‘mannequin’ came to life and played a few bars on his guitar. He must be one of the famous living statues she’d read about.
‘What a bloody tedious way to make a living,’ she muttered, disgusted. Further down the busy paved street she found another of these curious creatures, painted entirely in silver and striking a pose he was only motivated to change at the chink of money in his basket. Mr and Mrs Tourist and all the little tourists were out in force and seemingly willing to break off their chatter in order to donate coins to this end. Good luck to them.
Diane turned her attention to the right and a columned building, Covent Garden Market arching over the doorway in gilded lettering.
The shop was in there, somewhere. The Monkee Box .
A highly unlikely name for a clothes shop, it prompted an unpleasant uncoiling sensation in the pit of Diane’s stomach each time it floated through her head. On the journey down, surrounded by passengers on mobile phones or listening to MP3 players, she’d tried, and failed, to visualise marching in and challenging the origins of the shop’s stock.
Too scary! She needed more time to gather herself and 11.30am didn’t strike her as the best time to confront the manager of a busy shop. She would wait until the other side of the lunch-hour and, meantime, explore this famous area of the capital city.
Soon she was absorbed in testing hand creams in Crabtree & Evelyn and drinking tiny samples of tea in Whittards, entering from The Piazza and accidentally leaving by the other door.
And there, on the other side of The Apple Market, hung the newly familiar words. The Monkee Box.
No! She wasn’t ready! Heart fluttering, she swung back towards The Piazza.
A street entertainer was preparing to walk a tight rope slung between two of the four enormous columns of St. Paul’s Church. Diane joined the crowd craning to see him try. But when, after quarter of an hour, all he’d done was talk about walking the tight rope, she detached herself from his audience in favour of a tour around the covered market hall, pausing to admire stalls full of glass and silver jewellery.
At the end of The Apple Market — no apples on sale, but prints of watercolours of London scenes and elegant jewellery that she eventually realised with astonishment was made from forks — she was drawn by the aroma of coffee. Her stomach gurgled. She checked her watch.
After queuing for ages, she then found it difficult to choose between creamy pasta dishes and exotically filled baguettes. Finally deciding on a parmesan chicken baguette, she got flustered trying to order cappuccino where she was meant to order food and then waiting for the food when she was supposed to move to where the food would be waiting for her. She somehow managed to order the cappuccino twice, but that, looking at the length of the queue behind her, was fortuitous, and she settled down at a table to enjoy her meal and watch over people’s heads as a man on a unicycle juggled bright blue clubs, coaching his audience to cheer, clap or boo on his cue.
After the meal — very nice — Diane followed her ears into the next hall and downstairs into the lower courtyard where a string quintet was simultaneously creating wonderful rousing music and causing gusts of laughter. Intrigued, Diane bought a glass of red wine and took one of the little green tables — well back, because it was evident that the musicians considered those in the front row to be targets, especially two polished women who giggled and tossed their expensive haircuts as the musicians stole sips of their champagne.
Diane resolved that one day she would buy champagne at Covent Garden — with money that she had earned herself — and sip away the afternoon, laughing and clapping and tossing her hair.
* * *
At three, she could shelve the purpose of her visit no longer.
She ate a mint, used the public toilets and forced her anxious legs to carry her to The Monkee Box.
Although she had the garment Natalia had purchased with The Monkee Box and the astonishing sum printed on the receipt, it still seemed too incredible to Diane that something she’d made could sell here for ￡209. She half-expected that somehow there would prove to be some plausible explanation that would make her feel foolish, but relieved, and counting the cost of a wasted day.
Forcing her chin up, she made her way to where The Monkee Box was painted in yellow above a royal blue frontage. Inside the door, a young member of staff beamed at her. ‘Hi!’
‘Hi,’ responded Diane, politely.
‘If you need any help at all, please ask any member of staff.’ She had a slight, pretty accent, perhaps Scandinavian.
‘Thank you.’ Diane moved over to the first rail wondering if that poor little girl had to spend her working life parroting the same redundant phrase to everyone who wandered in. She must be nearly fainting from the monotony.
The shop was laid out on two floors, ground and basement. The clothes hung on simple chrome rails and Diane was soon engrossed in the ground-floor garments. The prices! ￡209 wasn’t unusual for a dress in The Monkee Box — which maybe should be renamed The Monee Box — and there were loads priced higher. And, astonishingly, although silk and linen were immensely popular, sometimes those prices were charged just for polyester. She couldn’t believe it.
The current fashion for unfinished seams and hems had apparently been readily embraced by The Monkee Box clientele, although a requirement for lavish detail did kind of balance that out so far as the work involved was concerned. Diane could see how her own brand of boho would fit right in here, the diaphanous layers, threaded cord, D rings, straps, sequins, lace, rick-rack, ribbon, dull buckles and gleaming eyelets. She drifted among the rails and down to the basement, almost forgetting her original purpose as she stored in her memory bank diagonal waists and big floppy bows.
As she studied a devoré skirt on a rail at the foot of the stairs something caught the corner of her eye. And there it was — a grey linen dress with pink ribbon executing a single twist each time it tacked from side to side of the garment. Snatching it up, she checked for the label and saw the familiar turquoise and yellow. And the price . . . ￡229.
Angrily, she flicked through the rails but found only one other garment, a red skirt with a black lacing and flick-up hem. She carried them upstairs and pre-empted an offer from a smiling member of staff to show her to the fitting room by announcing loudly, ‘I need to speak to the manager about the origins of these garments. Immediately . ’
Like magic, an elliptical woman with skin of amber and a frizzy bun on the back of her head materialised. ‘Can I help?’
Diane held up the two garments that almost blurred before her eyes, she was shaking so much. ‘You can explain to me how my work makes its way onto your racks — as I don’t sell it to you.’
In seconds she was ushered to another door revealing another staircase, upwards this time, and the woman was settling her into a green leather chair and pouring coffee from a jug kept on a hotplate near the window, saying, ‘I’m Amelia Fountain, the manager. I’m astonished by what you’ve just said. Can you add detail?’
Amelia was short and dumpy and draped in a khaki angora shawl over a long linen dress in shades of mud and a silk scarf belt coloured like a sunset. Her hair looked as though it could be knitted from angora, too, and she had a sweet voice that seemed at odds with her forthright manner.
Still trembling, Diane laid the two garments over the pine table that served as a desk. ‘These are mine — at least, I designed and made them. I sold them to Rowan Chater at Rowan’s in Peterborough for sale in his shop.’
Amelia nodded, her elbows out and her hands laid one on top of the other on the table in front of her. ‘There can be no mistake? Similar garments? Copies?’
‘None. My garments. My labels. My stitching.’
Amelia nodded again, thoughtfully, reaching to finger the pink ribbon as if it might tell her its secrets. Her gaze was direct. ‘Are you accusing this company of shady dealings?’
‘I don’t know. Are they shady?’
‘I’m not the buyer,’ said Amelia, ‘but I do sometimes make recommendations and I recommended these garments be bought in. Rowan Chater came to the shop with an introduction from somebody I used to work with. He made a lot of being in the trade, wishing he could move his operation here, all that kind of thing. He said he had a local designer who was wasted in a small provincial city.’ Amelia replaced her hands tidily in front of her. ‘I agreed to look at it. I liked it. He said that he’d arranged to agent the designs and was taking 15%.’
Diane choked back a laugh that might have become a sob. ‘Agent! He pretended that he sold them in his shop and had a job to get rid of them. He paid me peanuts. And all the time the slimy bastard was bringing my garments to you and making a big profit.’ She swallowed, hard.
Amelia’s eyes were sympathetic. ‘It’s been going on for some time.’ She rubbed one of her hands on another as Diane fought her tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘But I don’t think anyone’s done anything illegal and I had no reason to believe that he was pulling a fast one. Unless you had a contract that he would sell what you sold him from a specific outlet, I think he’s free to sell stock on.’
Diane nodded, throat stretched with tears.
Then the urge to cry vanished as an interesting thought blossomed. ‘Did they sell? My designs?’
‘Oh, yes. No problems there. I like your stuff.’
Sitting up straighter, Diane fixed on what she hoped was a businesslike expression. Miraculously, her trembling ceased. ‘So would you buy garments directly from me?’
Amelia reached again for the coffee jug, with a glimmer of a smile. ‘It does seem the best arrangement. Let’s talk Monkee.’
* * *
Back in Peterborough, James was waiting as the train groaned into the station. Carried by a wave of joy, Diane had bounced over to hug him before she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to.
‘How did you know where I was?’ Somehow, her hand touched his.
His eyes smiled, despite the sadness in their depths. ‘Tamzin and George tried to ring you and Bryony told them that you’d just texted home with the time of your train. I came to see if you’d fill me in with what happened at Covent Garden.’ He grinned. ‘I promise not to press my unwanted and unwarranted advice on you.’
Across a table in the steamy coffee shop she told him about her confrontation of Amelia Fountain in the Monkee Box. ‘It’s Rowan, exactly as I suspected. Nasty little worm. And ,’ she paused, impressively, ‘I offered to sell my garments direct to the Monkee Box and Amelia said yes!’
His face lit up. ‘You’re officially a successful businesswoman. Congratulations.’
She laughed. Then she stopped. ‘Was I rude when you offered to help with Rowan?’
‘Bloody rude, but I didn’t offer to help, I tried to take over. A fault of mine. Sorry.’ His eyes smiled.
She put her head on one side. ‘Humility doesn’t suit you.’
‘Nothing suits me.’ His eyes stopped smiling. ‘I’m in a nightmare. My wife’s dead, my daughters are distraught, my father-in-law is the personification of grief and I think it’s only his anger at his loss that’s preventing his heart from sending him after his daughter. Tamzin has announced that she’s done seeing doctors, counsellors and therapists.
‘Valerie’s affairs are orderly but complex and I’m her chief executor. I would never have believed that she could cause me more stress and paperwork now than she did when she was alive. And the girls are intelligent enough to realise that although it was her injuries that made her vulnerable to the embolism, being a heavy smoker and drinker almost invited it. So their emotions are all over the place.
‘And through it all, the weeks of hassle and heartache and the regret and even despite the awful, ever-present guilt , a tiny piece of me wants you to be sewing something quietly in the same room while I deal with the paperwork tsunami. Whenever the girls dissolve into tears I want you to appear with understanding words and hot, buttered toast.’
He smiled, painfully. ‘You didn’t know how right you were going to be proved about it being the wrong time for us.’
She sighed in unhappy acknowledgement. ‘Apart from Valerie, Bryony needs family stability and so do your girls.’
He examined her hand, caressing the rough patch on her left forefinger with one square fingertip. ‘Do you think you’ll ever leave him?’
‘I don’t know. I’m trying to keep my marriage going in some form for Bryony and her unborn baby. I can’t see far past that, right now.’
‘I suppose you’re right to do that.’
‘I suppose I am.’ Despair tugged at her chest.
He sighed. ‘So I’d better go home and cope with stuff.’
‘Me, too.’
In the car park, they kissed cheeks by her car in an unexceptional manner.