A Story in Three Parts

By Suzanna Stanbury

Part One

It was a blustery spring day, people were tethering down the lighter offerings on their trestle tables to stop them blowing away.

“Do we have to stay long Dave? It’s very windy today and I doubt we’ll find anything interesting. Hardly anyone has shown up because of the nasty weather.”

“Honesty Jan, with that attitude you never will find anything. Boot sales are like hunting; you have to keep alert and tuned in for the kill.”

“It’s a ruddy boot sale, Dave. Not a big game hunt on the Serengeti.”

But Dave had spotted something and he dived away through the crowd. Jan followed him, grumbling under her breath as she drew her waterproof coat across her chest. She found him crouched down by a table, up to his elbows in a plastic box full of shelf brackets. He was matching up pairs and laying them on the ground. Jan walked around him to look at the items ranged across the blue tarpaulin that was covering the grass. She decided it looked like a house clearance pitch: all the items were old fashioned; it looked like someone’s life was spread out before her eyes. Jan glanced curiously at the people on the stall and let her eyes roam over the man. He was middle aged, cross-looking, with thinning hair and a leather jacket. The woman was in her late thirties. Her good looks were on the slide and her neat hairstyle was wind-blown out of shape, making her look like the last cream cake in the shop.

Jan allowed her eyes to sweep back to the tarp; there was a nice dark wood bedside cabinet on the edge, almost hidden by a battered 1970s sideboard. She put her hand out and tipped the little cabinet backwards to examine it for damage. She opened its door and peered inside allowing a fusty smell of stale scent to escape. She sank back onto her heels to have a better look at its interior. The gloss paint was a faded pale green and she got a sudden image in her mind of an old house, furnished with dark wood furniture and lots of lacy antimacassars. She was seized by a sudden impulse and rose to her feet.

“How much for this cabinet?” she called out towards the stale-looking woman on the stall.

 “Fiver?”

“Done.” Jan fumbled in her bag for her purse and extracted a crumpled five pound note. She picked up the cabinet, holding it close to her chest; it was heavier than she’d expected. She staggered over to Dave who was busy paying for a handful of shelf brackets.

“Look what I bought, Dave.”

He turned around and looked dismissively at her purchase. “What did you buy that for?”

“It’s a bedside cabinet, I’m going to do it up and paint it white. It’ll look lovely on my side of the bed.”

She felt a burn of annoyance as he tutted at her.

“Well at least it’s more interesting than a bunch of old brackets,” she retaliated, thumbing her nose at her husband’s purchase.

They traipsed back to the car in silence. Jan was determined not to ask for his help in carrying the cabinet. When he opened the boot of the car she gratefully placed it inside and shut it into darkness.

When the car purred into their driveway, Jan opened the passenger door at once and jumped out.

“I suppose you’re going to crack on with your new project now are you?”

“You bet, you know what they say: strike while the iron’s hot.”

“Or what’ll happen if you don’t?”

“Um, the iron goes cold I guess. Open the boot Dave, come on, hurry up!” Jan struggled to wrestle the cabinet out of the boot as Dave unlocked the house. She lugged it inside the porch and bustled off down the hallway, unlocked the back door and headed for the shed. After a good forage in the dusty depths she came up with some sandpaper and a tin of white paint.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Oh, you bugger, you made me jump. Getting stuff for my cabinet, of course. Where are the paintbrushes, Dave?”

“In that jar, up there on the shelf. See it?”

“Oh yes, thanks.”

Jan worked hard sanding the little cabinet’s outsides. When it was smooth and ready to paint, she opened the door and looked inside, running her fingers along the green painted shelf. She decided to leave the inside as it was. She ran her hand across the faded yellow newspaper that was lining the bottom of the cabinet and tried to lift the edge with her fingers, but it seemed to be stuck down. She fetched a screwdriver and tried to prise the newspaper upwards, but it still wouldn’t budge. Making a fist, she knocked on the floor to see if it was solid. It sounded hollow. Puzzled, Jan ran the tip of the screwdriver along the walls of the cabinet where they joined the base. There was a sudden dip to her elbow as the screwdriver found a slot on the right hand side. Jan levered the tool’s tip until she felt the floor give way and begin to move. Very carefully, trying hard not to lose her fragile hold on the base of the cabinet, she slipped the shaft of the driver under the flimsy balsa wood base until it lifted right out. She looked at the board in her hand; someone had painstakingly cut out newspaper, folded it to look like a rough lining and glued it into place on top of the board. She put the base behind her on the floor and looked into the false bottom of the cabinet. The first thing which caught her eye was a slip of paper with numbers written in two columns. She took it out and examined it, trying to make sense of the figures.

28 – 4      1

2 – 5        3

31 – 6      2

And so on, the figures running all the way down the page. They made no sense to her at all and she put the paper on top of the newspaper base. The next thing she saw was a small book or diary. She lifted it out. The long-closed little book gave a creak of resistance as she pulled it open. It was a diary, 1951 it said on the first page after the flyleaf. She flipped the pages, reading the clumsy handwriting written in dark blue ink. The writing was quite laboured and loopy, with lots of swirls, making it difficult to read. She put the diary on top of the paper behind her and looked at the next thing in the box. It was a small brass key, with a ribbon tied through the bow. Tucked into the corner of the cabinet floor was a small wooden box. She lifted it out and tried to open the lid, but it was tightly closed.  Jan looked all over the box for a keyhole, wondering if the key she had found would open the box, but she found nothing: the sides, top and base of the box were all completely smooth and blemish-free.

She looked into the cabinet and was disappointed to find it was now empty. She ran her fingers around the edge and drew her hand out quickly as she felt the painful jab of a pin pierce her fingertip. Jan sucked her finger, tasting blood, and examined the wound; a drop of blood sat neatly on the pad of her index finger, like a tiny jewel. She licked it off and picked up the screwdriver. She poked all around the base until she located the sharp source of her recent injury. It was a brooch, one of those diamante clusters popular around WWII. It was quite pretty, she supposed, in a glittery, retro kind of way. The stones were pinkish; the metal had a copper tone. The clasp was just a curl of metal holding the pin in place.

Jan picked up all the bits and pieces she had found and deposited them on the table, meaning to look at them again later after she’d painted her new bedside cabinet. She used the screwdriver to open the tin of paint and dunked the brush.

“Are you ready for this? Prepare for a new lease of life,” she said to the cabinet as she drew the first brushstroke across its top.

“What’s for tea, Jan? I’m starving. Oh, that actually looks quite nice now you’ve painted it white.”

“Doesn’t it? Look at what I found inside the base, I put it all on the table. The cabinet had a false bottom and all those things were stored inside it.”

“Hmm, an old diary, a list of some kind, a key, a box and a bit of junk jewellery. What a haul! When are you taking it to Sotherby’s?”

“Ha ha, Dave. You’re such a comedian.”

“What’s for tea?”

“I was going to make a stir-fry.”

“Not turkey again, I hate turkey; it’s so bland I may as well be eating cardboard for all the taste it has.”

“It’s good for you Dave, that’s why we have it. Now stop moaning and help me clear this painting stuff away.”

Later that evening, when Dave was asleep in a chair, Jan picked up the diary and tried to decipher the loopy writing written inside it. After a few pages, she got used to the writer’s style and began to read more rapidly. The writer was called May and she was 45 years old in 1951. Her husband was called Ted and she had two children named Elizabeth and Clive. Elizabeth was 20 and a secretary, Clive was 22 and he worked in a bank just like his father. The diary was as bland as the turkey meat they had eaten earlier. Apart from notes about her children, it told of nothing more exciting than of changes in the weather, some conversations with neighbours and various achievements such as sweaters knitted and dresses sewn.  Jan could feel her own eyelids drooping, so she shut the diary and stood up.

“I’m going to bed. Wake-up, Dave. You need to go to bed too.”

“What? I wasn’t asleep. I was just thinking with my eyes closed.”

“Of course you were, come on. Shut the telly off and come upstairs.”

Jan fell asleep almost as soon as her head pitted the pillow. She slipped at once into a dream of some intensity. She was in an old house, filled with dark furniture, just as she had pictured the house from where the bedside cabinet had come. There was a woman in the house; she could see her walking up the stairs. Jan realised the woman was limping as she climbed the last few stairs at the top and disappeared onto the landing. Jan ran up the staircase after her, but her legs felt heavy and the stairs were steepening as she climbed them. At the top she watched the woman vanish into a bedroom, the hem of her skirt clinging for a moment with static from the paint on the architrave. Jan walked to the bedroom door and slowly pushed it open; she could hear a quiet weeping coming from somewhere in the room. She looked inside and couldn’t see anyone. Feeling confused, Jan walked around the big brass bedstead; it seemed to take a long time for her to reach the other side. The bed was very high, covered by an old-gold coloured satin eiderdown. The woman was sitting on the floor; Jan could see her shoulders heaving as her miserable sobs wracked her delicate frame. With a start Jan recognised the bedside cabinet as the very same one she had bought that morning at the car boot sale. The woman reached inside it and replaced a few things before she closed the door. She got up and turned around. Jan froze where she stood. The woman was bound to scream when she saw her standing there, she looked like a screamer. But the woman didn’t seem to notice her; she rubbed at her eyes with a crumpled white cotton handkerchief, and walked right past her without a word. Jan was shocked to see the black eye and the split in the woman’s lip; she turned to watch  her on her way out of the room, and noticed a lump on the woman’s leg, protruding through the beige stocking on her right shin. Jan went to the cabinet and removed a few boxes and cotton vanity bags to expose the false base. She took it out and looked inside. The first thing she saw was the slip of paper. The ink was still damp where the woman had just written 10 – 8 and 3 . Jan realised with a sudden shock the 10 – 8 meant 10th August and the number three was the number of injuries she’d sustained. Hastily, Jan returned the cupboard to its former neatly closed condition. She quickly left the room and went in search of the woman.

To be continued.

Copyright Suzanna Stanbury 2009 All Rights Reserved