She was in full flight and Peter was listening.
‘But I still don’t understand her taste. It’s truly eclectic. She likes silk and wool and jersey, she doesn’t mind innovation or the relatively modern, and she likes all sorts of different shapes in the end. Big shapes and no shapes. Look at this, entirely different. It’s typical Christian Dior. A white silk and satin ball gown flocked with black carnations. Boned bodice, skirt too big for a taxi. She could certainly dress to surprise, this lady. And in all the colours.’
‘And what is Miss Joyce wearing today?’
She put one hand on her hip, turned her profile away from him, posing.
‘A Charles Creed suit, circa 1953. Lightweight herringbone tweed jacket with huge lapels and padded shoulders, fitted dead close to the waist. Fastened with three enormous buttons, detail repeated on the cuffs. Skirt like a pencil. You have to hold your breath in this and you’d have to bend at the knees to pick up anything off the floor, but apart from that it’s quite comfortable really. A real power suit. I prefer the Valentino pink chiffon evening gown with the ostrich feather stole. Great with a tan, but not with buzz-cut hair like mine.’
She sat down. Peter winced at her almost bald head. The crew-cut hair, beginning to grow, was a vast improvement on the tufted and bloody scalp he had first seen outside WJ Storage. She refused to discuss it. It needed restyling, she said. Hair will grow. A finger wouldn’t; it was so much better than what I thought he would do.
‘No,’ she went on. ‘I can’t guess her taste. She’s got all sorts of labels, all nationalities, French, English, Japanese, American, as if she was picking the best from all decades. Diane von Furstenberg, Sarmi, Missoni, Hartnell, Chanel. She goes from demure and severe, like this, to vamp. There’s a very girly thing in mint-green organdie, a floor-length shirt-waister I wouldn’t have thought was her at all. She’s got the labels, and she’s got the fakes. Not fakes, but handmade copies. Things she must have got made. The Fortuny’s genuine, though. Belongs in a museum.’
‘Or on the back of a woman who needed to feel important. Like that suit you have on.’
Hen flushed.
‘I’m not criticising,’ he said. ‘But I prefer your own label.’
She moved out of his line of vision. Reluctantly he kept his eyes fixed on the new racks of clothes crowding the dressing room. How had all that been marshalled into a trunk and two wardrobe bags, and then expanded to such sweet-smelling volume? He could taste the scent of lavender and soap. Hen was taking off the suit: he could hear her doing that from the rustle of it and the sound she made when she let out her breath. A constricting suit, fit for a funeral where no one either sat, or cried. She came back into his line of vision, clad in denim. Ms Shearer might never have worn denim.
‘Did you ever know,’ he asked, ‘where you and Angel came from?’
‘The stork brought us,’ she said. ‘The stork brought along a selection, and we were chosen because we were lovely. That’s my version.’
‘Yes, of course the stork did. Via an adoption agency who kept the birth certificates. Your parents probably never even saw them. But whatever her name, your mother might not be dead. Marianne Shearer’s detective found the originals. Do you want to know any more?’
‘No, not now. Perhaps in a year or two. I’ve got too much else to do and what would it achieve? I’ll settle for the stork and what I’ve got. Is it wrong to feel so liberated? Am I so frivolous that happiness lies in the conservation and repair of all these brilliant clothes? Yes, I am. My sort of aunt has dictated my immediate future and I’m bloody grateful. Do you want more tea or shall we bypass that and go straight to the bottle?’
‘You were right, you know. She did have her clothes made, quite apart from what she collected. The everyday clothes were all handmade.’
‘Why did she leave me this legacy, Peter?’
‘Because you were the one who tried to rescue her child? Because she respected you? I don’t know. Nobody knew her. Let’s go out. Have you tried on every single thing?’
She blushed.
‘Not the underwear, of course, but yes, most of the others. I’ve got to make an inventory. I had to see what condition they were in, trying them on is just one way to check. She was a good conservator. I had to check for repairs. They aren’t really mine, you know.’
He laughed at her embarrassment, at the excitement she could not conceal. She leant over him and kissed his cheek.
‘Peter, you’re the only man I’ve ever met who likes shopping.’
He stood up to hug her. That was easy. He was thinking how strange it was that all of Marianne Shearer’s collected garments, the priceless and the ordinary, should be her size.
Loving her a little helplessly, and wondering how he could ever make a person of such self-sufficiency need him. Wondering if he would ever break that lifelong habit of arriving too late, such as arriving outside that terrible storage building with a phalanx of police after dark, only to discover the ambulance already there. Still wondering, too, after what he had been told, exactly how it was that Rick Boyd had come to die.
She was like a very adult child who has been given a dressing-up box. The joy of it was unseemly on the eve of a funeral. He felt Ms Shearer might approve.
‘I think the lingerie was made by nuns,’ Hen said. ‘Convent-made items from between the wars. You can tell by the stitching. Nun’s stitch. My mother taught me. I like the irony of Marianne Shearer’s negligee being made by nuns.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
January 14
‘Pray stand for Her Majesty’s Coroner.’
They all stood. This Coroner bounded into the room like a greyhound let out of a trap, all businesslike energy, noticing quite a crowd and the eye of the world on him, determined to be heard and admired for clarity, rather than producing fodder for journalists. If they thought he was in any sense corruptible or persuadable, they had another think coming. He knew his verdicts; he was not going to be swayed by any other consideration, such as other people’s money. That was not the business of this Coroner’s Court, but oh, dear me, what an unpleasant woman she seemed to have been and so utterly selfish in the manner of her dying. Such an attention-seeker. His sympathies, such as they were, were with the people who had been forced to watch and pick up the pieces. Photographer, policeman, the ambulance man with the shovel for the brains. Not fair. Not his business, but still, more interesting than most and oddly moving, so disturbing he was more impatient than ever.
‘Mr Noble, I understand you’re representing the deceased in the absence of her sole relative who is in prison at the moment? Yes? Fine. DC Jones for the police? We established continuity of the body and identification last time, didn’t we? I suggest we do a short cut on the narrative, since there’s not much disagreement about the facts.’