Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden

Author:Deirdre Madden [Deirdre Madden]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780571290888
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

TEN

She looks in on Beth as she always does before leaving the house, quietly adding a jug of milk to the tray that had been set the night before: the bowl of cereal with a plate over it; the fruit; the cup inverted on its saucer; the tea-caddy; the little kettle. When she wakes, Beth will prepare her own breakfast and eat it in bed. Mid-morning, Martina will ring her from the shop to check that she’s up and dressed, that everything’s fine. But for now Beth is still fast asleep; and the cat too, curled in the crook of her knees. Martina withdraws and carefully closes the bedroom door.

She reaches the shop at eight-thirty. She raises the external electric shutter with a key; and as soon as she opens the door and goes in, the alarm starts to beep. She hurries through to the stock-room at the back to tap in the security code and immediately the beeping stops. Now she can relax. She walks back into the main body of the shop, and savours the silence.

Martina looks at herself in one of the many large mirrors provided for the customers. Today she’s wearing an olive-green silk dress, simply cut, with an amber necklace. It looks perfect, she thinks, and the shop is perfect too. Recently refitted, it is all pale wood and chrome, with new racks designed to make it easy to put together an outfit: co-ordinating pieces are displayed beside one another, together with accessories, scarves and bags. It always astonishes her that many of her customers, including her own dear sister-in-law, fail to pick up on this rather obvious guidance.

No matter where she has worked, Martina has always loved this moment of being in a shop just before it opens, just before she moves fully into her professional persona. She is sensible to the theatrical nature of what she does; is aware of it every night as she selects from her own wardrobe what she will wear the following day. She likes the slight distance there is in her dealings with the public, enjoys constructing a self for the customers to encounter.

By evening time, when the shop closes, it will be in disarray. There will be empty hangers, garments replaced in the wrong sections or displayed askew, the wooden floors will be grubby and scuffed; but this does not bother her. Before going home she will put everything to rights, and tomorrow morning it will all begin again.

The family doesn’t appreciate what an accomplishment it has been for her, opening this shop and making such a success of it. She’s always proud when it’s mentioned in magazine features as being a special place: somewhere with exceptional stock; hard-to-find labels; things that you can’t buy elsewhere in Ireland. It had always been her dream to have her own shop, but while she was living in London it had never been a possibility. Well, it had all worked out, in spite of the circumstances that had brought her home.

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