Charlie always slept late on Monday mornings. It was a convention - Jennifer made him coffee and toast and brought him the Daily Mail in bed. She considered it a good way of keeping him from under her feet, because she liked to spend each new week planning ahead, before driving to the shop and swinging into action.
Leticia always opened the shop up, and made coffee. Leticia was Freddie’s niece, a tall, dark, seriously efficient girl of not quite twenty, who helped in the shop and harboured an ambition to follow her uncle. Freddie never appeared before eleven, generally towing an improbably willowy young man named Henry in his wake. Freddie lived with Leticia, and his mother, old Mrs. Agatha Hoskins, and sometimes with Henry, in a large house on the Wexham road, and spent much of his time visiting elderly widows with large houses. The widows all doted on him, and gave him first pick of their possessions when they thought of down-sizing and moving to smaller homes, or going abroad. Jennifer sometimes thought she might also easily dote on Freddie, were he to show less interest in Henry, whom he sometimes called Henrietta, for Freddie possessed a sharp eye and knew a great deal. She had met him first when Charlie had begun making money during the stockmarket boom in the Eighties and Nineties, picking his brains to furnish her home with some nice things. Then she had talked Charlie into buying her a half share in the shop when he had pulled off some really good deals, and Freddie had been down in a bad patch. Charlie had thought it a good idea to give her an independent interest in life, after they had married daughter Veronica, their only child, off to a nice young banker. It was a real shame Freddie preferred men.
She settled Charlie, and then dressed with care, because she always liked to start the week on her best foot, choosing a pale blue silk dress to set her blue eyes and blonde hair off to best advantage. Then she took stock of her French purchases, and jotted down a list of tasks for Charlie to do when he surfaced. She would keep the chandelier and light fittings for herself, because she liked lights. But Charlie could clean up the stove, and then strip the chairs of their coverings. She also had a set of oak diningroom chairs that needed cleaning and polishing, and he could meanwhile make himself a cold lunch, and then work up some meatballs for dinner – for Jennifer had given up cooking when Charlie lost his job, and he was developing into a very passable chef.
She ticked off her list, and prepared to leave, hovering on the landing to brief Charlie, because he always seemed libidinous at breakfast time, and trotted happily out to her little Renault.
The Tindals still lived well, despite Charlie being out of work. Jennifer’s wardrobe was smart, wholly simple and classic, and she was well stocked with shoes. She had bought some nice antiques over the years, as a nest egg, and the Tindal home stood on its own on a large plot, in Fulmer’s most select road, and was possibly worth an improbably large sum, judging by property ads in the South Bucks Express.
Money had grown a little tight, of course, because she and Charlie now had to live on what she could make. But they both had simple tastes, and Jennifer disliked entertaining. She gave Charlie a tenner from time to time, and he was good at dredging markets for currency. But she did sometimes regret the good old days, when she had been able to walk into smart Windsor boutiques and buy dresses by the armful, and missed going to the theatre whenever the whim took her, and abroad on expensive holidays. Perhaps she could make Charlie work harder, and specialise in something rareified. Perhaps he could become an expert of some kind.
She frowned as she unlocked the Renault. Monday mornings were bad times for introspection. She must be cheerful and bright. Customers expected her to smile and be glamorous. Perhaps somebody might bring in some interesting furniture, somebody wanting to sell bits and pieces. Perhaps Denis, the estate agent down the road, might pass her a house clearance. She liked Denis - they lunched together roughly once a month, and Jennifer always gave him a envelope containing a couple of fifty pound notes. They maintained a mutually beneficial relationship.
She found Leticia seated behind the shop desk as she breezed in, smiling brightly. Leticia looked tense, with dark shadows under her eyes, and look as though she might have been weeping.
Jennifer switched immediately from brightness to solicitude. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Freddie.’ Leticia bit her lip. She worshipped her uncle: Freddie had talked his mother into taking her in, when Leticia’s own mother had set her sights on a man across the Atlantic, and sought to take her sixteen year old daughter unwillingly with her. Disagreement had triggered an epic family battle, but Freddie’s determination and grandmother’s money had decided the day, and Leticia had stayed. ‘He’s locked in the loo.’ She motioned towards a door at the back of the shop, leading to a storeroom and the shop lavatory. ‘He went to a gay party on Saturday night, and Henry ditched him for a man with an S-class Mercedes.’
‘Oh.’ Jennifer felt a sudden spasm of something akin to excitement. ‘Ditched?’
‘Freddie said they were slow dancing, he and Henry, when this other man cut in.’ Leticia brushed at her eyes. ‘Then Henry vanished, and he found him five minutes later, upstairs in a bedroom with the man.’
‘How dreadful.’ Jennifer looked shocked. She knew that gay men did such things together. But she always believed in keeping sex behind drawn curtains.
Leticia blew her nose. She had just come through a really dreadful Sunday. Freddie had come home very drunk in the early hours of Sunday morning, weeping and cursing, and grandmother had woken her to help get him to bed. Then grandmother had insisted on sitting in the kitchen to conduct a post-mortem.
Leticia had flatly refused to discuss his sexuality. She knew that Freddie preferred men, it was something peculiar to him, peculiar about him. But it was not something she greatly cared to think about, even less talk about. Freddie was Freddie, and she loved him however he might be. However grandmother had grown tearful, and accused her of being cold and hard, and they had exchanged bitter words, and had both wept themselves to bed.
Sunday lunch had been a silent meal. Grandmother always insisted on certain social rituals, and formal Sunday lunches ranked foremost amongst them. But Freddie had sulked, and Leticia’s heart had been too full to cope with social chatter. She had driven out to Mumsford Lane, out along the Beaconsfield road, and walked the hillsides where primroses blossom in spring, secretly hoping a nice man might walk the same way, and had pictured Charlie Tindal. But she had only passed happy couples, and had driven home quite alone to dinner.
‘Do you think he’s going to stay in there?’ Jennifer wondered what she and Leticia would do if they needed to go to the loo themselves.
Leticia shrugged. Her nerves were shredded, and she was past caring.
‘I’ll go and have a look.’ Jennifer felt, as Freddie’s partner, that she must do something. Freddie could not possibly stay in the lavatory all day, the thought was quite impossible. She must try and talk him out.
The Stag on the shop door rang, and she turned to see a woman customer called Gay Manion. Jennifer disliked Mrs. Manion, and knew Freddie loathed her. She needed to move quickly.
‘Keep Mrs. Manion chatting for a moment, while I go and try and dig him out.’ She pushed Leticia towards the newcomer. ‘Let her natter on for a while – she can usually talk for an army. I’ll go and calm him down. We don’t want a confrontation.’
Leticia nodded reluctantly. She did not much like Mrs. Manion either. She was a large and overpowering woman with reddish hair, well helped to keep it from greying, given to wearing warpaint in lieu of makeup, and billowing dresses in the Barbara Cartland manner. She always wanted to talk and talk, and was very mean with her money. But she was a working girl, an aspirant dealer, and had to do what she was told. She tried to smile welcomingly.
Mrs. Manion possessed a keen ability to scent embarrassment and emotional disorder at a distance. She advanced on Leticia. ‘Good morning, dear. Is something the matter?’
Leticia backed away, realising that her face must still be a mess. ‘Hay fever, Mrs. Manion.’ It was the first thought that came into her mind. ‘I was out walking yesterday afternoon.’
Gay Manion stopped advancing. She did not believe Leticia, and thought the girl had been crying. But she was not sure that hay fever might not be a cover for an infectious case of summer ‘flu, or even for some kind of Aids-related ailment. Everyone knew that Freddie Hoskins was a flagrant homosexual, and it was common knowledge that he lived alone in a big house with only his mother and Leticia for company. It was also said that he had stolen the girl from some relative. Stranger things have happened.
She smiled in what she hoped was a sympathetic, but not wholly approving way, and kept her distance, heading purposefully for a small marble-topped bedside table in a corner of the shop. The table was French, and had been in the shop for several weeks. Gay Manion knew that Jennifer liked to move her French purchases along, and the price must now be negotiable.
‘Can you do anything on this potty table?’
Leticia dabbed at her nose. Jennifer had labelled the table at £80, and always allowed a ten percent discount on request. But she suspected that Mrs. Manion wanted a hefty price cut. She felt in no mood at all to haggle backwards and forwards, and suspected that she might well come to say something quite sharp if Mrs. Manion pushed her too hard.
‘I don’t think Jennifer will do more than ten percent, Mrs. Manion.’
Gay Manion scowled. ‘That’s not very much. It’s been here quite a long time.’
Leticia took a deep breath. She must get rid of this woman. ‘She might take seventy, or perhaps sixty-five.’
‘I was thinking more like forty.’
Leticia tightened her lips, and shook her head with all the firmness she could muster. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Manion. Sixty-five is really our very best price at the moment.’
Gay Manion jutted her chin aggressively. ‘Let me speak to Jennifer.’
But Jennifer had begun to sort out a major crisis. Freddie had locked the lavatory door, and was refusing to come out. He had a bottle of Harpic descaler with him, and some bleach, and had been threatening to mix the two in a death-dealing cocktail.
‘You can’t stay in there all day, Freddie.’ Jennifer spoke coaxingly, as though talking to a child.
‘I’m going to kill myself.’ The locked door muffled Freddie’s voice.
‘You can’t do that, Leticia and I need you to help run the shop.’
‘Nobody needs me at all,’ Freddie’s voice broke. ‘Henry betrayed me. He knew I’d find them in bed together. They didn’t even have the decency to cover themselves up. They were lying on top having it away as I opened the door.’
Jennifer had a vision of two men naked and embracing, and wondered who exactly had been doing what to whom. But it was not a question she could ask, certainly not at a time like this.
‘You’re better off without him.’
‘I loved him.’ Freddie’s voice climbed theatrically.
Jennifer glanced over her shoulder to make sure that the door to the shop was closed tight. This was not a time to have a woman like Mrs. Manion poking around. ‘He behaved like a rotter, if he did that to you.’
The muffled sobbing eased. ‘Do you think so?’
‘He must have been a rotter, to ditch you for a man with a big Mercedes.’
Her words trigger a fresh batch of tearful snuffles, and she bit her lip. She must be careful what she said, because it would really be most embarrassing if Freddie did do something silly, and she had to call a doctor, or an ambulance. The shop would never live down the scandal. She tried again.
‘You’re better off without him.’
Another muffled wail. ‘But I loved him.’
Only love can combat love. Jennifer spoke close to the door. ‘We all love you, Freddie.’
‘But Henry was special.’
‘You’re very special to Leticia, and your mother, and me.’
‘But you’re all women.’
Jennifer took a deep breath. She was entering uncharted waters, and she must sail with very great skill and care. ‘We love you with a different kind of love.’
‘Do you?’ Freddie’s voice sounded a little steadier.
‘We’re your friends.’
‘But Henry was such fun.’
Jennifer was uncertain whether ‘fun’ had a companiable, or a physical, connotation. But she knew instinctively that she must play a friendship card for all it was worth. ‘We care for you, Freddie. We all need you, each in our own special way.’
‘You’re just interested in the shop.’ Now Freddie’s voice held a rather sharp edge.
Jennifer kept her own tone soothing and level. ‘No, Freddie, that’s not true at all. You’re part of our life. We wouldn’t be the same without you.’
‘Really?’ Now the muffled voice held a yearning note, seeking reassurance.
‘Of course, Freddie. We all love you, and we all belong together.’
She heard a deep sigh behind the closed door, the sigh of a man trying to come face to face with his problems, and then the key turned. Freddie peered out, his face blotchy and tear-stained. He was a man in his early fifties, perhaps the same age as Charlie, perhaps half a dozen years older than Jennifer, though he always kept his age a closely-guarded secret. Normally he fancied himself as a bit of a dandy, with a penchant for floral waistcoats and matching bow ties. But today he was a mess, with rumpled hair, red, swollen eyes and puffy cheeks.
Jennifer smiled, and put out a hand to pat his arm. ‘You’ll get over it, Freddie.’
Freddie stared at her uncertainly. ‘Do you think so?’
She was tempted to fold him in her arms, but she held back. ‘You’re a good-looking man. The world is full of Henrys.’
This was just the right thing to say. Freddie thought for a moment, digesting her words, and then seemed to expand and grow, like a swelling balloon. He smiled a watery smile, and she saw that he was fast regaining his spirits.
She touched the side of his face gently. ‘There’s only one Freddie.’
Now his smile brightened, and it was a rebirth. He put out his hand to open the door to the shop, but she covered it with her own. ‘You’d better put some cold water on your face first. Mrs. Manion came in just after me, and she may still be out there.’
Freddie scowled, splashing his eyes with cold water. ‘Go and get rid of her.’
Jennifer shook her head. ‘I can’t. Not just like that. She’s probably after my French potty table – she came in twice last week, trying to beat me down.’
Suddenly Freddie grinned, and he was back to his normal self, gay, and brave-hearted, and a terror to the mean. ‘She’ll get a nasty shock if she sees us coming out of the storeroom together, and me in this state.’
Jennifer had already begun to open the door into the shop cautiously. ‘She’ll think I tried to rape you.’
‘But I’m gay.’
‘That’s why she’ll think you’re in such a state.’
He giggled, and it was a sign that he was mended. ‘I’ll hide behind you.’
Leticia and Mrs. Manion both turned in surprise as Jennifer and Freddie emerged from the storeroom. Leticia judged Freddie a fright, albeit a little better than when she had opened up the shop, but Gay Manion relished what she saw as discomfiture. She could see Hoskins standing just behind Jennifer Tindal, and his face was a picture. Something had happened in the storeroom, behind a closed door, and it did not take a great of guesswork to work out exactly what. She knew that Freddie Hoskins was queer, but word had it that Jennifer Tindal had been growing bored with her husband, now that he was out of a job, and two plus two always made four.
She greeted Jennifer with the measured disdain she judged appropriate to her conduct. ‘I notice your bedside table had been here for quite a while. I am prepared to pay forty pounds for it.’
Jennifer’s mouth tightened. She was tempted to throw the woman out on her ear, but customers are customers, even when rude. She scrabbled in her mind for something to say that might sound both dismissive and cutting.
The shop door opened, and a small blonde woman in a bright pink shell suit came hurrying in. Jennifer and Leticia stared at her. She was American, and also very talkative. Jennifer took a deep breath. Monday had got off to a bad start.
‘Hi, all you nice people.’ The American woman beamed, pausing for breath. Her face was almost as pink as her shell suit, and she looked as though she had been running. She made straight for the little French bedside table. ‘My, oh, my, you still have it here.’
Gay Manion’s face clouded.
‘I brought my husband to look at it yesterday, in the window, when you were closed. He thought it looked real cute: he likes to read in bed, and reckons he could stow his books away in it.’
Gay Manion glowered. ‘It’s a night table, for a chamber pot.’
‘I know, ma’am.’ The American woman matched glower for glower. ‘But it has no pot, and will serve pretty well for his needs; the stuff he reads is pretty much shit anyway.’
Gay Manion bridled, turning away to make it clear that she was not used to this kind of vulgar language. The American woman smiled triumphantly. ‘I’ll take it.’
Gay Manion tried one last throw. ‘I think I was about to buy it.’
‘Oh, right?’ The American woman looked her up and down challengingly, and then at the label on the marble top. ‘Well, it’s not an expensive piece, so I guess, if these good shopkeepers wanted to hold an auction, that I’d come in at ninety.’
Her words were decisive. Mrs. Manion swallowed hard, gobbling once or twice like an infuriated turkey, turned, and was gone in a cloud of fury. The American woman pulled a chequebook from a shell suit pocket. ‘Who do I made it payable to?’
Jennifer stepped forward. This newcomer had saved Monday a truly spectacular way, and from now everything would be brilliant. ‘Make it out to me.’ She held out a business card.
The woman began to write, and looked up. ‘Ninety, right?’
Jennifer shook her head emphatically and her smile was a ray of pure sunshine. ‘No, no, I couldn’t. The label says eighty, and eighty it is.’
The American woman looked at her quzzically for a moment, completed her cheque and proffered it with a cheque guarantee card. ‘I guess she wanted to beat you down?’
Jennifer merely smiled.
‘She looked pretty much of a cheapskate to me.’
Jennifer was urbanity incarnate. Customers were often a pain. But no good shopkeeper ever tries to knife one in the back.
Freddie and Leticia carried the table out of the shop, followed by the American woman, and Jennifer clasped her hands above her head, executing a little victory dance as she closed the door after them. A bad morning had been made good, and she was a little richer for it.
Leticia made coffee, when she and Freddie had completed their porterage, and the three of them sat and sipped and smiled at each other. They made a good team. Then Freddie had a go at charming a pair of young wives, who were plainly browsing rather than intent on opening their purses. But he worked on them hard, and one bought herself a little china figurine. Leticia talked earnestly to a serious man, but had rather less luck, and all of a sudden it was time for lunch.
Freddie beamed expansively. ‘Let’s shut up shop, and all go over to the Bull.’
Leticia shook her head. ‘You two go, I’ll stay.’
‘But, Leticia…’ Freddie pouted.
‘No, Freddie. You two are the bosses, I’m just the hired hand.’ She made a pushing motion with her hands as though to drive them out. She had also begun to wonder whether Jennifer might take an interest in Freddie, now that her husband had nothing to do, and the thought had triggered some daydreams in her own mind. She had never really fully understood, nor approved, Freddie’s homosexuality, always considering it little more than a form of rampant exhibitionism. Perhaps, if he and Jennifer were thrown more together now, on a personal basis, they might start taking a more personal interest in each other. They were well suited, and then of course Charlie Tindal would need some comforting. Leticia liked Charlie more than she cared to admit. He was nice looking and kind, and they shared the same kind of interests. Consoling Charlie would keep everything neatly in the family.
She caught Jennifer’s eye and the two women understood each other perfectly.
Jennifer beamed, reaching for her handbag. She pulled out the American woman’s cheque to wave it triumphantly. ‘I’ll pay.’
Freddie waved the cheque aside. He might be queer, but he was also a gentleman. ‘Impossible, m’dear.’ He was now back in the best of form, and as plummy as they come. ‘You quite simply saved my life.’
Lunch at The Bull was a gala affair in an elegantly airy diningroom, dotted with a scattering of expense account diners. Freddie was a regular customer, always granted the very best of service, though the restaurant manager made sure any young male waiters gave him a wide berth. He ordered smoked salmon and a glass of chablis for Jennifer and whitebait followed by fillet steak and a half bottle of claret for himself, and pretended to be hurt when she was adamant that she could not face a main course as well. They munched in a duet of contentment, and she wondered how he might react were she to stroke his leg with her toe, well concealed under the tablecloth, but quickly pushed such a naughty thought away. Freddie was not a man like other men, and there might be a different path to his contentment.
She watched him as he began on his steak, his knife slicing sharply into the blue-red meat, and she was filled with smoked salmon and Chablis, and the world was good.
Freddie munched on for a moment, and then looked up. ‘She wants to pair us off.’
Jennifer pretended incomprehension. ‘She?’
‘Leticia.’ Freddie speared a fresh chunk of steak. ‘I’m positive she’s up to something.’
Jennifer was not sure quite what to say to this, so she looked pensive.
‘Partnered in the shop, partnered in…’ Freddie let his words trail away. Jennifer fluttered her eyelashes very briefly; it was the only possible response.
He leaned towards her. ‘You saved my life.’
Suddenly Jennifer realised that he was really quite serious. She parried deftly. ‘What would your mother say?’
Freddie did not reply for a moment. Then he looked up from his plate, and his eyes were intent. ‘I think she’d be over the moon.’
Jennifer was momentarily lost for words. She shook her head silently. She needed time to think
Freddie stared at her for a moment, and then returned to his plate, munching on silently until the last scrap of his fillet had vanished, and he was trailing a lone matchstick chip around his plate in a vain hope of soaking up every last scrap of gravy. Then he lifted a hand to summon the restaurant manager: the creme brulee at The Bull was a crusted pathway to heaven. ‘We get on well.’
Jennifer shook her head again. He was moving much too fast. ‘I’m a married woman.’
‘And I’m gay.’ Freddie mused over the thought. It was a barrier, and he was suddenly downcast again, because his orientation excluded him from the world of real people, people who made homes together, and had families, and could look forward to living vicariously through their children, and children’s children, and on through descending generations into eternity.
Jennifer watched him collapse in on himself, and was caught by a sudden moment of tenderness, and it was an emotion she had not experienced in many years. She covered Freddie’s hand with her own. ‘Maybe I’ll send Charlie off to France on his own one day, if we ever make any money, and then we could give it a whirl…’
Freddie looked at her quickly, and held her fingers in his. ‘You might get a surprise.’
Jennifer giggled, but then pulled her hand away. Hotel diningrooms have observant eyes. ‘You never know, Freddie.’
She realised that the Chablis had gone to her head, and folded her hands neatly in her lap. They had begun to explore new ground, and she had already taken a step more than she should have done. Fortune can be a fickle mistress, and should never be pushed too far.
They drank coffee together, and then walked back to the shop across the common, and Freddie took her hand again. But this time Jennifer pulled away decisively, for Fulmer was a village where gossip reigned supreme, and gossipers often invented where facts were in short supply. Yet she also daydreamed a little as she walked. Charlie had often talked of moving to France, and her share of the house would comfortably pay for a nice little cottage in one of the Chalfonts. She wondered whether she was being foolish, setting her cap at a man with no apparent real interest in women. She wondered what the future would bring.