I think of the bell that rings and the floor that creaks and the stairs lined with hats and the tiny upstairs loo where the shelves are crowded with perfume bottles. I think of the writing bureau with chair pushed away as if my godfather has left only moments ago, and the garden table downstairs in the back where we made tea and ate pastries, the low chair, the door pinned with thank you and Merry Christmas! and we’re loving our notes from clients who became loyal, who became friends. I think of the yellow walls and worn out stairs and green, damp yard of pots and wooden wheelbarrow and the hours spent in the basement with porcelain and china and dinner sets, packing and unpacking boxes of plates, the paper wrapping, the fear of breakage, the happiness of that summer. My godmother’s shop, which was also my godfather’s, and in fact it was him who was named at my christening but it was both who took me on, and now that he’s dead long ago I’ve adopted her for the moniker and she agrees, my godmother’s shop is a fairy tale. Not if you have a headache, this antique wonderland is a mass of complication, but if you’re straight out of school and in need of a job, if surrounded by thimbles and drawers of spoons and this is where we keep the snuff boxes and out come hundreds of every kind, if a Lacquer Chest family is what you need then these months of tucking platters in bubble wrap will make you happy. The stairs wind up and up, become narrower, each room a dedicated haven to linen, silver, pince-nez, glass and glove. If you’ve seen a period costume drama, you’ve seen the hankies kept in tissue, the epaulettes stored boxes, the picnic sets and blankets which will be flapped upon a lawn. Elizabeth Bennet will fill these baskets with flowers as she walks in the garden with her father. Anna Karenina will rattle her cup at the samovar as she lowers her eyes to Count Vronsky. Leonard Bast will open an umbrella. It’s a world beyond a street, a labyrinth of old, forgotten, gone. Pipes no longer used in heavy armchairs, hats no longer worn to go to work, a beaded cloth draped over milk jug keeps the flies away, but who needs that. And when I go, I go of course to see my godmother sitting in her chair by the till, but also each time I say do you mind if I just and off I go, upstairs or down, it doesn’t matter, all is a wonder of lost and found time, a Mr Ben magic beyond the green and gold door, a universe hidden from the street, a bell that rings.
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You’ve taken me there this morning. But please take me there another morning. I want to go very badly, so badly I’m not too proud to beg.
Sounds idyllic. When I was a kid, an older cousin had a pizza shop. His mum cooked the pasta out in the kitchen and I would go there over the school hols and hang out. Not quite the same but cool nonetheless.