He looks pleased and he hands me a light box to look at.
I take a neighbourly interest. It’s five-sided, wooden, with the light fitting inside.
‘See the way the sides fit together?’ he says, smoothing it with his thumb. ‘These are dovetail joints.’
‘Nice!’
‘And then …’ He slots into the front grooves two removable dark blue acrylic panels with a pattern of holes drilled through them. Switching it on, the light shines out to create two constellations side by side.
‘Neat. I suppose the idea is to sell the whole set of boxes, so that a person could have a whole night sky for themselves, is that it?’
‘No, this is just the display. They’re star signs. Like, for instance, you’re Virgo and if you happened to know a Sagittarian, I’d slot this one in. See? They make a great engagement present. I can also personalise it with lettering underneath and the date.’
‘Romantic,’ I say dryly. ‘I’m not a Virgo.’
He shrugged. ‘Yes, well, you get the idea.’
Putting my face closer to the light box, it is like looking at the night sky, if you imagine you’re looking at it through a very tiny window or maybe a skylight in an attic. Or through two windows, because what we’ve got here are two bits of the night sky that aren’t necessarily next to each other. I’m not sure how I feel about him meddling with the universe. It doesn’t seem ethical. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my dress. ‘What star sign am I?’ I ask him brightly.
He looks up, frowning. ‘What?’
‘My star sign. Have a guess,’ I encourage him. I scoop up and shake my Lauren Bacall hair then let it fall over one eye. ‘The hair is a clue.’
‘Virgo.’
‘You’ve already said that! Virgo? Why would a Virgo have hair like mine? It’s a mane! I’m nothing like a Virgo. I’m a Leo!’ I nudge his foot. Charlatan.
‘Good for you,’ he says cheerfully.
I look at him doubtfully. He seems a down-to-earth kind of person and not the kind of guy who’d be selling myths about horoscopes.
‘Can I ask, do you believe in this kind of thing, star signs and stuff?’
‘No,’ he says.
‘Eh? Oh.’
‘You?’ he asks.
‘No! Per-lease. Of course not.’ That would make Mick and me completely incompatible, because he’s a Scorpio, like my mother. ‘I mean, obviously I read my horoscope, who doesn’t? But I don’t believe in it as such. It’s just for fun, isn’t it?’ I’m expecting him to argue the case for the defence, but he looks at me impassively and doesn’t reply, and I worry I’ve offended him. ‘Obviously, I don’t know the science behind the constellations,’ I add. ‘I mean, what’s the point of knowing about the stars?’
‘Navigation?’
‘Oh, navigation,’ I reply as if it goes without saying.
He takes a cloth out of his pocket and as he wipes my fingerprints off the wood, he says, ‘Luckily, Fern Banks, not everyone is cynical like us.’
Cynical? I don’t know where he’s got the idea I’m cynical.
As he polishes the Perspex, which is as blue as his eyes, he says, ‘It’s nice to believe in something, though, isn’t it? Everyone likes a guarantee; the belief that things are meant to be and they’re not just random occurrences. It’s good to believe that you’re destined to meet that person for a reason – the reason being true love, right? Otherwise …’
‘Otherwise what?’
He looks at me from under those dark, straight eyebrows. ‘It could be any man, couldn’t it? Any man with a decent income.’
Now that is cynical. Despite the stops and starts, I feel I’ve been keeping up with the conversation up until right now, when suddenly he seems to be talking about something else entirely.
I decide to go along with it. ‘In other words, these light boxes symbolically convince people they’re destined to stay together,’ I say, grinning to show I get the joke. It seems artistic but at the same time, cheesy.
‘You’re romantic, right?’ he says.
‘No.’ I’m not the slightest bit romantic, honestly. You only have to see Mick and me together to know that. And I’d absolutely never buy him a light box with two constellations in it, not even ironically. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘I suppose it’s because of your clothes. They’re romantic, from a different era. You look like that Bogey woman.’
‘Thanks.’ The words that no woman wants to hear.
‘Hang on …’ he’s clicking his fingers ‘… it’s on the tip of my tongue. That Hollywood actress. Humphrey Bogart’s wife. Bacall! Lauren Bacall!’
‘Oh, that Bogey woman, Bacall. She had wonderful style, didn’t she? Shoulder pads give such a great figure!’
For a moment his gaze skims over me and he looks away again quickly.
There’s a sudden awkwardness between us and I go back to my stall. I’m easing a dress over Dolly’s head, when I realise that David’s still watching me.
‘That’s vintage, is it? What’s the difference between vintage and second-hand?’
Dolly looks slightly indecent with her dress around her waist, as if she’s been caught drunk in a public place, and I tug it down quickly to spare her feelings.
‘The price.’
‘So how much is this one?’
‘One fifty.’
He laughs out loud – against his tan, his teeth are white and slightly crooked, giving him a roguish appeal.
‘What’s so funny?’ I ask. ‘This could be a wedding dress – see this colour?’
‘Pink, isn’t it?’
‘Pink! It’s not pink,’ I tell him. ‘It’s blush. It’s a great shade for a bride.’ I lift the hem. ‘Look at the quality. It’s hand-stitched – look at that! Where else could you get a hand-stitched wedding dress for a hundred and fifty pounds?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ he says. ‘Good luck,’ he adds, as if I need it, then he unfolds a chair, picks up a book and looks for new ideas for his light boxes.
Good luck? What’s that supposed to mean? I could think of plenty of sarcastic comments to make about light boxes, if I was that sort of person. You can’t use them as a light and you can’t use them as a box, so good luck to him, too.
A
