Page 75 of Right Place, Right Time
Luca winks. ‘Ah, yes, I bring a message! Well, an invitation, really. We are all going for some drinks tonight at the pub, if you’d like to join us? It’s for Rocky’s birthday.’
I turn to see what Adam thinks.
‘Sure, sounds good,’ Adam says. ‘What time?’
‘Six,’ Luca says. ‘No, I stand corrected. It’s six-thirty.’
‘Six-thirty it is,’ Adam says. ‘We’ll see you there.’
‘Great!’ Luca hops off the counter. ‘Then I shall leave you lovebirds to it! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! Ciao for now, darlings!’
Luca skips out of the shop.
‘Well?’ I ask Adam, immediately turning my attention back to our door.
Adam turns the door around and I see the remnants of another carving just like the one on the clock door. ‘It’s very similar,’ he says. ‘It’s like a mirror image of the other door, so both sides hung together would make up the whole tree. The only difference is this one has a different symbol at the side. It’s the Greek symbol for a woman this time. I looked it up before I left your house.’
I kneel down in front of the door to examine it more closely.
The engraving of the tree has faded over time, like the engraving on the inside of the clock door. But you candefinitely see it, and next to it this time is a circle with a cross underneath. Like someone has drawn a stick man without legs.
‘It is the same,’ I say, looking across the shop at the clock. ‘We should put them both together.’
‘Do you have a toolkit? If you have, we could remove the door from the clock and properly stand them both together.’
I fetch the toolkit I keep behind the desk, and, using a tiny screwdriver, we remove the screws that hold the hinges onto the clock case. Then we stand the two doors together.
‘It’s a perfect match,’ Adam says, looking at the doors. ‘Freddy was right. These doors were once a pair.’
‘But why are there symbols for a man and a woman either side of the tree?’ I ask.
‘Could they be ancient toilet doors?’ Adam asks. ‘What?’ he says when I laugh. ‘I’m serious.’
‘I highly doubt it. These doors look like they’re a lot older than the invention of men’s and women’s toilets!’
I have a couple of customers come into the shop, so Adam steps outside while they look around. They browse for a few minutes, but don’t buy anything.
‘Venus and Mars,’ Adam says as he comes back into the shop.
‘What?’
‘The two symbols. That’s what they originally represented. I’ve been looking it up. In ancient astrology they symbolised Venus and Mars. It was the Romans who named their gods after them. Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war. Eventually they came to represent woman and man. There’s a lot of theories on theinternet, depending on your point of view, how they came about. But this is the most common consensus.’
‘Venus and Mars will guide you to what you need to know …’ I say, staring at the doors again.
‘Who knew it would be a pair of wooden doors,’ Adam says, doing the same as me. ‘The question is, what were they originally attached to? I’m sure they’re too small to be regular doors.’
We both look at the doors, hoping something will spring into either of our minds, but frustratingly nothing does.
‘I feel like we’resoclose to this,’ I say in an exasperated voice. ‘So close, we’re in touching distance of figuring it all out.’
‘I know.’ Adam puts his arm around my shoulders. ‘I’m as frustrated by this as you are right now.’
‘We can’t let this delay the opening of your shop any longer,’ I say, turning towards him and putting my arms around his waist. ‘You’ve worked too hard.’
‘Yes, I have, but—’
‘No buts! You open tomorrow. I know you don’t want to cover up the door in case we need to go down there again. But if we do, we’ll move the bookcase. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.’
