Page 57 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘Bruno must think a lot of your work, if he’s left you in charge for months.’
‘He trained me, so he knows I can do the work, but I’ll never know as much as he does. He comes from a long line of puppet makers, just as the Marinos, who have the puppet theatre next door, come from generations who travelled around the country with Punch and Judy shows.’
‘I’m looking forward to seeingThe Murder in the Red Barn.’
I looked around the workshop and, now my eyes had adjusted, could make out more of the details in the shadows away from the bright central strip lights. Marionettes in different sizes, clothed and unclothed, hung on pegs, or wooden racks. There were tools, wood, pots of paint and jars of brushes; machinery that might be lathes, heavy old metal vices fixed to the edges of the benches and open boxes of sandpaper … It was a clutter, but a workmanlike one, and I was sure Thom would be able to lay his hands instantly on anything he needed.
At the back of the bench we were sitting at was a long, shallow wooden box with the pieces of a marionette laid out in it, reminding me inescapably of photos of skeletons in archaeological digs. The carved head had its face turned to the wall, as if it had been naughty.
I gestured to it. ‘Is that one of the new puppets you’re making for theRed Barnproduction?’
He nodded, though for some reason looking slightly uncomfortable. Perhaps he didn’t like anyone seeing a work in progress.
‘That one’s Maria’s lover-turned-murderer, William Corder. He still needs jointing, painting and stringing. Stringing a marionette is an art in itself and took some learning!’
‘I should imagine it’s tricky,’ I agreed. ‘If you really want me to take over the costume making from Simon, I suppose I’ll have to learn how to adapt them so they don’t impede the movement of the puppets.’
‘It would be a relief to Simon if you did take that off his hands, but there’s no rush. And for this show, there will only be three characters to dress.’
‘It’ll be easy compared to making my mini costume mannequins,’ I said, and then fell silent for a moment, thinking how odd it was to be sitting here with Thom, talking about things that interested us, just as we had all those yearsago – except now there were differences, undercurrents … Too much had happened and we were not quite the same people any more.
Thom finished the rest of his muffin in one bite and then, when he could, said, following on from what we’d been saying, ‘Simple costumes in bright colours work better for the performances. We paint the faces quite boldly, too. Honey suggested we collaborate to make puppets wearing copies of the wedding dresses in the museum, didn’t she? Those could be more subtly painted.’
‘I expect some of the dresses are lovely, but they must all have unfortunate stories behind them, so I don’t know how popular they’d be in the museum shop.’
‘There’s always a market for the macabre or mysterious,’ he said. ‘Like the eternal fascination with the Red Barn murder!’
‘I expect you’re right,’ I said. ‘Do you make most of your marionettes for commissions?’
‘Mostly, although we also renovate old ones and, when we have time, make stock sizes or characters to have handy. I’d like to expand our website to sell more through that, too. I persuaded Bruno to let Pearl set one up for us, but, so far, he’s a bit reluctant to embrace internet selling.’
‘Unlike Honey, who’s dead keen! I’ll be working full-time until the museum is up and running. Then it looks as if I’ll have lots of my own work to fit in after that, what with carrying on with the V&A costume mannequins, some for our museum shop, and then the marionette costumes, too.’
‘You won’t miss your old life … or Marco?’ Thom said hesitantly, looking at me from his unfathomable, dark amber eyes.
‘I’ll miss my old job, but as for Marco, you can’t be serious, after what he did! I mean, even if he turned up wearing sackcloth and ashes and begging for forgiveness, there’s no goingback with relationships – and if you try, things are never quite the same again.’
‘No,’ agreed Thom. I knew he realized I’d meantourrelationship too, twice so abruptly broken off, for he said, tentatively, ‘But perhaps sometimes it’s possible to build something new on the old foundations, if they were solid enough?’
‘Perhaps …’ I said, then got up. ‘I must get back.’
He grabbed the handles of the heavy shopping bag before I could.
‘I’ll carry this back for you.’
‘I can manage,’ I protested, but not too much, because I thought my left arm was probably already several inches longer than the other one, just from carrying shopping since I’d got here.
Jester, pink tongue lolling out, accompanied us, though his steps slowed as we approached my door and a now-familiar unearthly screaming reached our ears.
‘Golightly appears to have woken up,’ I said drily. ‘It’s dinner time and he’s feeling hungry and abandoned.’
‘He has amazing lungs for something so old and skinny,’ Thom said admiringly, but I noticed that Jester had stopped dead and was now slowly backing away.
‘That must be what they mean by caterwauling,’ Thom remarked gravely, putting my bag down in the hall once I’d opened the door. The noise from the living room, where the door was still ajar, stopped suddenly, as if turned off.
‘Will I see you at the book group at Pearl’s, seven tonight?’
‘I don’t really think I should leave Golightly again so soon,’ I said doubtfully.
