Page 83 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘Of course, what I’m secretly hoping to find up here is some more of Rosa-May Garland’s belongings – maybe even another journal that would give some clue about what happened to her after her twin boys were born,’ I said.
‘Now you’ve told us, it’s not a secret hope any more,’ Thom pointed out.
‘I don’t know how far you’ve read in the journal, Garland,’ said Honey, ‘but she does mention that her husband gave her two blank notebooks, and since she totally filled the first one, she might have started the second, so you never know.’
I suspected she was just saying that to keep me going, because by now even Simon’s first flush of treasure-hunting zeal had worn off and we were all pleased when Viv, who had vanished some time before, came back up with a tray of coffee.
‘The journal sounds interesting,’ said Pearl, ‘but it’s amazingonevolume survived, not to mention the costume you loaned to the V&A, isn’t it?’
‘The Titania costume was a great find,’ I enthused. ‘It’s going to be the centrepiece of the Rosa-May Garland Room on the ground floor. The journal will be on display too and blown-up extracts round the walls.’
The coffee revived us a bit, and as soon as we’d drunk it, Honey said briskly, ‘Come on, let’s get going again! Forward, the Famous Five.’
I always suspected her of being a mind reader.
‘Six,’ came the merest breath of a whisper from Viv.
*
We all helped to push, pull and drag out the unwanted furniture, but found little Honey wanted to keep, until she came across a box containing the remains of a lovely tea set.
‘Minton,’ she said. ‘I’ll take that down with me when we go, Viv, and it can go in the glazed cabinet in the study, instead of those old school and university sporting trophies of Hugo’s.’
She put it near the stairs and we carried on a bit longer, though we were flagging by then and couldn’t raise a lot of enthusiasm when Thom discovered a Victorian scrap screen.
Simon helped him carry it into the other room and open out the folds.
‘I’m not sure the light improves it,’ I said dubiously, when the full glory of the pasted scraps under a thick soupy coating of yellow-brown varnish was revealed.
‘If that was a nursery screen, those leering cherubs must have frightened the children into fits,’ said Pearl.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I think it’s sort of charming,’ said Simon, surprisingly. ‘And those cherubs aren’t leering, they’re puffing out their cheeks to blow clouds away, I think.’
‘As far as I’m concerned, they can blow the whole screen into Arthur’s Cave,’ said Honey frankly. ‘Although I think they’re quite collectable now, so we’d better look them up on the internet first, Viv.’
Viv made a note. She’d now filled several pages and we’d barely started!
We worked on for another half-hour and when we finally called it a day, dirty and dishevelled, we’d cleared over a quarterof the room. The survivors of the cull now huddled together in the middle of the space, as if for protection.
We’d made a few more small finds and we all seemed to have come out of it with something: Honey had awarded Thom an ebony stick with a round silver handle that he’d admired, and Simon a red lacquered Chinese box that had taken his fancy.
Pearl succumbed to the offer of a china water jug painted with roses, but missing its washbowl, which she said would be perfect to put large bouquets in. ‘Or big things like dahlias and sunflowers.’
‘Since I’ve already had your uncle’s office furniture, I feel greedy taking that cute little miniature chest of drawers, too,’ I said, for it was a perfect piece of furniture in miniature, down to round white porcelain knobs.
‘You’re all welcome to any odds and ends you take a fancy to,’ Honey said, then stretched. ‘I think I’m going to ache tomorrow and we’re all certainly grubby, but it’s been sort of fun, hasn’t it?’
It had, too, and once we’d washed some of the grime from our hands in the downstairs cloakroom, we all settled round the long table in the kitchen and demolished a huge Indian takeaway, which Honey had ordered, washed down with tins of lager.
Refined dining, it wasn’t.
The wolfhound Rory watched every bite with wistful eyes, but wasn’t allowed any because it would upset his stomach. In the end Honey gave him a rawhide bone and he retired to his bed and gnawed that to a soggy pulp instead.
‘I’m ravenous,’ declared Honey, helping herself to another piece of naan bread and a second helping of prawn biryani. ‘I shouldn’t be, because Viv cooked a wonderful Sunday lunch, but I am.’
‘I think we all are,’ said Thom. ‘But hefting all that heavy furniture about must have burned off the calories!’
We were all so full afterwards that we declined the offer of fruit and cheese, and just had coffee in the sitting room instead, once we’d helped clear the table.
