17. A Tale of Two Settees (and other storeys)

Friday 23rd December 2005

So, here we are. The funny season. Two days to go and the world's gone pineapples. The shops are heaving with people, most of whom look like they really should be in hospital: hollow-eyed, slack-mouthed, panicky, broken. In fact, they hardly seem like humans at all. Some kind of lesser primate. Orang-utans, maybe ' hunched up in big shaggy coats, shoulders slumped with the weight of worry and carrier bags. Buggies stuffed with flailing chimps and screeching macaques. Wet-nosed sloths, creeping around the aisles of Woolworths and Tescos. Other animals stampeding about, too. Hippos, arse-outwards, wedged in the checkouts. Permed-up old sheep and bum-butting nanny goats. Squawking parrots, flapping around and pecking your legs. The stamp and prod and jostle of hooves. The snort at the trough. The stinking herd. The jungle. And above all the racket ' the music, of course. The usual soundtrack. Everyone's favourite seasonal songs to strangle by ' piped to each shop from a secret studio, manned by an evil dope-head DJ with a bootload of dodgy 70s tapes.

Who'd want to miss it?

Me.

Better things to do. A mug of coffee. A packet of biscuits. The computer on. An idea for a ghost story working its way down to my fingertips¦

¦but it only got as far as the second knuckles before there was a knock on the door. It was Yoyo ' wanting to know if I could spare an hour to give him a hand with one of his jobs. A bit of furniture moving in town. A fiver in my pocket, plus a beer as a sweetener. What could I say? A fiver's a fiver. A beer's a beer. A mate's a mate. Ghost stories are three a penny.

"It's at that weird clothes shop in The Narrows, he said, as we went down the stairs. "The geezer who runs it's been left a couple of chairs in a customer's will. They've just pitched up and he's got no space at home. Wants 'em stashed in the room above the shop 'til he works out what to do with them.

'Weird clothes shop' would, to most people in the town, mean a place that sold tie-dyed t-shirts, Afghan goatherd smocks, hemp waistcoats, vegan sandals, batik shirts, ripped orange flares, rainbow scrunchies and wispy cotton flower-print dresses with tinkle-bells stitched into the sleeves. None of which, I'm pleased to say, came within ten miles of Yoyo's understanding of 'weird'. So I knew exactly where he meant.

The Narrows is a bottle-neck one-way street at the eastern end of Mariner Plains, running parallel with the last bit of the seafront road before it opens onto the Hummocks. In the digestive tract of the main shopping area, The Narrows is the appendix ' which is not to say that it's of no use and needs taking out. It's actually about the closest the town's got to a bohemian quarter ' except it's probably more like an eighth. Apart from Belshazzar's second-hand shop of previous mention, there's a new-agey-type candle, incense and crystal shop (Grimalkin), a deeply-chilled internet café (The Domain) and the aptly, if naffly named All Washed Up, which sells models and furniture made from driftwood and other bits and pieces dragged up from the beach. Mortimer Mews is just off The Narrows, too, where you'll find Mole's Motors, and The Bean Bag ' wholefood shop beyond equal.

And right on the edge of this alt.Cacksea enclave ' conspicuous as Camilla and Charles at a Slipknot gig ' is Ron Cramphorn's Menswear: purveyors of finest quality made-to-measure suits, brass-button blazers, paisley cravats, Jockey Y-fronts, initialled handkerchieves, cavalry twill slacks, leather driving gloves, indestructible socks, thermal vests, trilbys, slippers and ties. Special discounts for senior citizens. Free cuff links with every shirt over £25 (I didn't know there were shirts over £25).

In short ' Yoyo's idea of 'weird'.

Not that I've anything against it myself. Each to their own. And, in a town like this, Ron Cramphorn does pretty well. As he should. He's independent. He has a commitment to quality. And nothing he's got, as far as I can tell, ever came from a sweatshop. I know where Yo's coming from, though. The only time I've ever bought anything in the shop was about fifteen years back, when I first started hunt sabbing. Well, where else was I likely to get a balaclava? Exactly ' even if I was the only sab with a beige one. But I'm glad Ron's there, nevertheless. And, in a quaint way, I'm glad there's people around who need what he has to offer. Maybe it's the innate small-c conservative in me: the one that's pleased to see some sort of tradition maintained in a world spinning faster and wilder by the day. What did Walt Whitman say? 'Do I contradict myself? Very well, then ' I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.'

Though I'm not as large as Whitman by a good few pounds.

But next to Ron himself, I'm a veritable podge. He met us at the door, turned out ' as always ' like one of his own window mannequins: dark grey double-breasted pinstripe suit, banker's shirt, cricket club tie, shoes so shiny you could use them as shaving mirrors, wedged hair that's far too perfectly dark for a man in his late fifties ' and all stuck on a body that looks like it's made from wire coat hangers and left-over Christmas turkey. It probably doesn't take much more than two yards of cloth to cover his entire body ' and that's allowing for an overcoat. All of which is probably down to the fact that his main items of daily consumption are cigarettes and tea. I've never seen a bloke smoke like it. He makes Mole look like a schoolboy having a breaktime puff in the bogs. I stood behind him in the supermarket one day when he was getting his weekly supply of tea and fags, and he needed a trolley.

"A man's got to have some vices in his life, he told me, as he handed a roll of tenners to the cashier - leaving me thinking that if his vice had been sex, on that scale he'd have needed 12-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week orgies and would have shagged himself to death about ten years ago. Cramphorn might then have been a very appropriate name for him.

"Thanks for coming so quickly, fellahs, he said, through a haze of lung exhaust. "Only I've got them stuck in the shop and they're blocking up the gangway. I've had to ask two customers to come back already. Bit naughty at this time of year.

Hm, I thought. Yoyo said 'chairs'. 'Chairs' to me means things you push under a table ' not things you use as barricades. I ought to have sussed something when he asked for help. I should have remembered that, with a guy like him, notions of scale are more problematic. A short person is anyone under 6' 2. Size 16 is comfortable in both women and shoes. A 12 deep-pan pizza is a snack. An articulated lorry is a van.

And a settee is a chair.

Though I suspect, judging by the size of the two 3-seater warhorses dumped up against Ron Cramphorn's counter, even Yoyo might concede the addition of the adjective 'big' ' or at least 'roomy'.

"Ted Allen, bless him, had a taste for the ornate that wasn't evident in his choice of clothes, Ron said, noticing my perusal of the sculpted legs, each of which seemed to have been carved from an entire tree-trunk.

"The heavy, too, I added. I put my hands under the end of one settee and lifted. The movement I felt was probably just the floorboards giving under my feet.

Then Yoyo did the same. It was as if the thing was made of balsa wood and filled with helium.

"Not a problem, he said. "Leave it to us.

.

And surprisingly, it wasn't too much of a problem, either. Ron pushed a suit rack aside to reveal a double door near the back of the shop. Beyond that, a short passage led to the stairs, which, whilst narrow, didn't have any complicated turns for us to negotiate. They simply went straight up to the floor above the shop, where Ron had his scullery. Next to this, a doorway led into a large front room, which would have overlooked the street if the blinds hadn't been drawn. Ron used this as a store for spare equipment: display cabinets, window shelves, mannequins, old sample catalogues, shoe boxes. There was plenty of room for the two settees. So we managed to heave them into place, one on either side, without disturbing a thing. I was amazed. The whole job was done in less than twenty minutes.

As we left the room, I switched the light off and went to pull the door closed behind me. And then something prompted me to stop and turn. Partly it was a memory of the thoughts that had been running through my head the other night about empty rooms. But it was partly habit, too: often, when I'm going out, I take a final look around at my place, to make sure all's in order ' shit order though that may be. So I turned and glanced back in¦ and felt the hairs on the back of my neck tingle. In the semi-darkness, the bulking outlines of the settees and cabinets and piles of boxes made the whole tableau seem like an abandoned domestic setting ' or a mock up of one, anyway. Like the set of a play, perhaps, left intact overnight ready for the next day's matinee.

But what really made me jump was one of the mannequins. A harmless wooden dummy in the light, it now loomed over the scene in dark silhouette against the blinded window ' peeping through the slats, maybe, at the people passing in the street below: an unnerving enough thought. But then it seemed that it was facing the other way entirely ' staring across at me in dark admonishment for catching it out and seeing into its secrets¦ as if it was readying itself to bound across the room and pull me back in to where I'd never see the normal light of day again¦

¦on which thought, I pulled the door shut quickly behind me and was back down the stairs before Yoyo even had time to realise I'd passed him.

Which should have been the end of it. Except things, as they often do with Yoyo, took a bit more of an adventurous turn. After Ron had settled up with us, he checked his watch.

"I think a cuppa's in order after that, he said. He took a 'Back in 15' sign from behind the till and walked us over to the door. "My treat, lads. Don't refuse me, as I offend very easily.

So we nipped over the road to The Domain, where we sat at a table in the window with tea and digestives, while all around us keyboards clacked and mouses clicked (I'm still not sure if that should be 'mice').

"Nice of the old boy to remember me like that, Ron said, firing up a Dunhill and looking across at the shop. "Been coming to me for years he had. I made all his suits¦ including the one they buried him in. He used to run the shop that was there before I took over in the seventies. Record shop. Had been since the place was built, apparently. Back in the days of 78s. He pointed towards that blinded upstairs window where the unseen mannequin stood sentinel. "You can still see a trace of the sign. Look.

We followed his finger. It was very faint now, but you could just discern the outline of lettering on the panes: Hubble's Music Store. I'd never noticed it before.

And there was something else I hadn't noticed, too. Above that window was another one ' much smaller, set into what seemed to be a half-size upper storey beneath the roof space. Instead of having a blind or a curtain, though, it was completely vacant ' its panes as dark as if they'd been blacked out.

"What's in the top room, Ron? I asked.

He puffed on his fag, creasing up his eyes against the sting of smoke.

"Good question, he said. "I've never been up there. No access, you see. There used to be some stairs leading up from the first floor, but apparently they were taken out in the sixties to make space for another sales area when rock 'n' roll boomed. The doorway was boarded over.

We sat looking at the window. I know Yoyo was thinking the same thing I was. I could see the way the light twinkled on his shades. Ron obviously keyed in on it, too.

"Yeah, I'm curious, he said. "I mean, it's probably nothing. But Ted was always going on about all the 78s and gramophones they used to store up there in the old days. And it's always made me wonder. Perhaps there's a little goldmine been sitting under my roof all these years, like a Pharaoh's tomb, just waiting to be discovered.

I looked at Yoyo. He looked at me. We both looked at Ron. He grinned.

"So¦ what have you got on this afternoon, lads?

I looked at Yoyo again and nodded.

"Nothing, he said. "Until just now, anyway.

We finished our teas and, pocketing the last of the biscuits, went out and crossed back over the road.

*

Ron had some ladders in the yard at the back, and it didn't take Yoyo long to find the boarded-up door ' high up on the wall above the first floor landing, hidden beneath wallpaper that had been painted over so many times it was as thick as cardboard.

"Don't worry about making a mess, Ron called up from the shop. "No one goes up there anyway, except me.

Within another ten minutes, Yoyo had managed to clear the paper and prise off all the board ' and there was the door, seeing the light for the first time in almost fifty years. It was locked, of course ' but that didn't seem to bother Yoyo. With unnervingly practised ease, he slipped a screwdriver into the gap by the lock and twisted it around a couple of times. There was a crunch and a clunk ' then the door swung inwards, creaking like a coffin lid in a Hammer film. Ron came up then and joined us as Yoyo stepped off the ladder and onto the new floor. He groped around on the inside wall for a few moments, then found a switch and flicked it. Miraculously, a light came on.

"Stone the bloody crows! Ron said, under his breath. Then he followed me up the ladder.

The first thing to hit us was the smell: rot, whichever way you considered it: carpet, wood, plaster and something else¦ dead pigeons, most likely. Like the inside of a damp, primeval cave.

Then there was the dust. Huge boles of it, whipped up in corners, spinning in the draught like grey tumbleweed. Lengths of it dangling from the ceiling like rope cobwebs, or jungle vines. Layers, thick as felt, everywhere you trod.

The final thing was¦ the emptiness. We were in a room about the size of the average living room, basically square in shape, with a ceiling just high enough for Yoyo to stand up straight under. A lone bulb, brown with fly droppings, dangled on the end of a bit of braided two-core flex. The wallpaper had a pattern of vertical crimson and cream stripes, but was so damp in places that black mould flowered across it like ink on a blotter. The carpet ' what there was of it ' was threadbare and mouse-chewed. There were no shelves or alcoves. No pictures. No furniture. No gramophones. No records.

Nothing.

Not even a ghost.

The only thing in there was air as old as the birth of The Beatles.

I stepped over to the window. What had looked like blacking-out on the panes was, in fact, merely years of accumulated grime. I poked my finger into it and drew a crude smiley face. Then, underneath, a circled A.

"Make a nice bedsit," Yoyo said. "You could always do it up and rent it out, Ron. Make it earn its keep.

Ron grinned, though there was an edge of resignation to it.

"Hm, he said, lighting up a cigarette. "Maybe.

Then he turned back to the door. He stepped out onto the ladder again and we watched his head disappear below the bottom of the doorway.

"Can the last one out switch off the light, please, he called.

Yoyo shrugged. "Well¦ at least he knows now.

"Right, I said. "He does.

And thinking yeah¦ and so do I, mate.