2. May, 2020

'Charity Shop'

There were times when it was hard to believe you were working here in a voluntary capacity,  thought Mavis, a neatly petite lady with a precisely cultured air and an immaculate silver white hair cap, styled into springy sausages on top.  Politeness was too ingrained in Mavis to protest directly at the amount of bossing about that went on all the time from the manageress.  This was Claudia who, in her thirties, was a large 'girl-woman' in dress style, put together as if her particular favourites had been randomly assembled on a whim.  Today's choice of jester striped leggings gave her backside, in Mavis’s amused view, the stretched  proportions of a hot air balloon trying to get off the ground.  Knowing Claudia, she probably thought that the white angora sweater she wore with them gave her the arty but cuddly image she liked to foster.  It didn’t, in Mavis’s opinion although, perhaps fortunately, she wasn’t often asked for it.  For added effect, this morning Claudia wore a gold coloured scarf wrapped round turban style.  It gave her a lopsided grandeur, her superb indifference to how it made her appear carrying at least that part of the ensemble off.

“Who’s accepted this being brought in?” Claudia was demanding, rootling through a bin bag of missmatched lego and holding up a child’s plastic toddler trike like an accusation.

“Well, I did, obviously,” returned Mavis a little tartly.  “Who else has been in this morning?  Is there a problem?” she enunciated loftily.

It occurred to Mavis, as it had done before, that in her teaching days, had she taught her,  Claudia would have been one of her problem pupils - forthrightly domineering and mostly indifferent to learning.  Claudia would have wanted to be out there, bagging boys and babies, not listening to the finer points of poetry.

“You should have refused it.  It’s much too dirty.  I would have done straight off," Claudia told her.  Mavis shuddered slightly, having witnessed Claudia’s somewhat brutal rebuffing of what she considered substandard items, her description of things as not being clean enough clearly encompassing the person and household of the unfortunate would be donor of such played out items. “Throw  it away in the dumpster bins at the back, Mavis.”

“I’m serving this lady,” Mavis said firmly, as a browser wandered up with a couple of books.  She made great play of finding the right code on the till system and had a nice long chat about authors while she was about it, exuding her best coffee morning charm.

Claudia next turned her attention to the window display, which, according to her, was not making the most of things they could showcase in it.

“ Why have you put these in, Mavis?  They’re nothing special.   We’ve got that newborn baby moses crib with the lace and ribbons.  Let’s put that out with the big stuffed giraffe and the alphabet bricks.”

“Why not?  We can get Chucky back out and sit him in there too,” said Mavis.  “He’ll be perfect for a nursery scene.”

Chucky was a life size one time babyshop model, who now had one drooping eyelid giving him a louche, sinister air, which had led to the obvious nickname from the 'Childsplay' horror film.  Since Mavis had hand knitted whole sets of outfits for him, bootees and all, out of a mischievous spite, even Claudia couldn’t bin him off because, as the other volunteers, rallying round when it was once mooted, had said, it would upset Mavis.  This would have made it undoubtedly personal if Claudia had gone ahead with defenestrating Chucky (her stated preferred option) so Chucky remained. 

Threatened with his public re-emergence now, Claudia said no more about dressing the window again, which Mavis had just done that morning, quite fetchingly, she thought. She had included some of the best pairs of shoes, a stand with modern costume jewellery in shining necklace loops dangling from it festooned round the back and some resplendent pastel coloured hats with netting and artificial flowers on, wedding or christening leftovers, arranged at the front like a peculiar shrine to their vanished celebrations.  Mavis enjoyed pulling these slightly poignant remnants together and occasionally wrote wistfully questioning poems to place with them about their imagined  provenance.  Claudia was a little beady about Mavis’s poems intruding on the merchandise but pronounced her efforts ‘sweet’, if, the implication was, a bit pointless.  Claudia, though, demonstrative about her often claimed  'top mum’ status, was all for up front sentiment, so Mavis’s conscientiously inked calligraphies were allowed to stay.

The customer Mavis had been serving  left and Claudia was now involved in advising another on pairs of second hand curtains, with all the assumed panache of the semi professional  interior designer which, by her own account, she regarded herself as being.  Mavis suspected from Claudia’s outfits that there would be a lot of bright colour contrast involved and probably a renegade approach to use of the Austrian blind for ‘frou frou’ in her decorations, as Mavis’s own mother would once have termed having what she called ‘silly frilly stuff’ in the house.  Minimalism just wouldn’t be Claudia; she’d be like Alice in her gigantic stage, a great girl in  monstrous lace petticoats cramming herself into somebody else’s zen zone.  The image made Mavis smile.  Really, she was getting terribly bitchy in her internal monologues these days, she admonished herself, catching sight of her innocently old lady face in a mirror on the wall opposite, its white ironwork curlicues complementing her top knot of curls in its frame.

“Bit of ‘Vanish’ on that little stain is all you need,” Claudia was concluding, stroking the silky nap, “only you mustn’t scrub at it, just a very gentle application.”

“‘Vanish’ is what I need for you at times, love,” Mavis couldn’t help herself thinking, her inner dialogue seemingly still unchecked although she favoured the customer, who was now approaching holding the curtains, with a serenely gracious smile.

“What do you think?” the customer asked, anxiously, unable to decide now that Claudia had upped the ante on her purchase by making it seem as if she were buying something really quite select and important rather than paying one pound fifty for second hand making do goods, which was an unfortunate occasional side effect of Claudia’s self promotional technique.

“Oh, you’ll never get that out,” Mavis asserted cheerfully.  “I wonder if it’s blood?”

“What? Really?” recoiled the customer, hastily backtracking from the purchase and telling Claudia over her shoulder that she’d think about it and come back later.

“Did she change her mind?” asked Claudia, looking surprised.  “I thought she was sold on those.”

“It seems not,” said Mavis, smiling sweetly at her.

Claudia shrugged, as if to say that there was no telling with some people  and went behind into the back stockroom again to continue rifling through whatever else had been brought in since yesterday that she hadn’t checked over.

“You’re terrible, Mavis!” said somebody else appreciatively.

“Oh, hello, Bob.  I didn’t see you come in”  Mavis exclaimed, turning and looking pleased.  “Are you on with me this afternoon?”

“Just enjoying the sideshow before I said hello. Yes, I’m on.  Madam hasn’t clocked me yet.”

“Think yourself lucky,” said Mavis darkly.  “What’s that you’ve got?”

“Cup cakes, I think, for coffee time.”

“You’re very generous with what your little granddaughter bakes for you, Bob, aren’t you?” said Mavis with a smile, peering in at lurid buttercream toppings and sprinkles through the clear lid of the tupperware container.

“I am, aren’t I?” Bob agreed humorously.  “Sharing and caring, that’s what we’re all about here isn’t it?” he added with a sardonic nod of the head towards the back.  “How is Lady Muck today?”

“Top form, Bob.”

“Ah,” said Bob.  “I thought so.”  He made his active but these days slightly bandy way towards the back and popped his head in, calling, “Aye, Aye, Claudia!”

“All right, Bob?” came a slightly muffled response.

If the truth be known, Bob was slightly intimidated by Claudia.

“Spit of her mother,” he would say occasionally in a wary tone.  “Great church goers.”

By which he meant, they were bullying and self righteous, Mavis knew, as he’d had neighbour clashes with the family years ago he had told her but happily they no longer resided nearby.  Being big in the community, in Bob’s view, wasn’t altogether what it was cracked up to be. 

For all Claudia’s posturing about, Mavis and Bob  were snobbish about her, just as Claudia clearly patronised them, mainly but not altogether, for being old.

“Rough without the diamond,” Bob had described the family as being, during one of their asides about Claudia’s family, flattering Mavis’s more respectable demeanour, 

Mavis’s mobile phone rang, causing them both to look about in confusion before realising what it was.  It took some time to extract it from her handbag, by which time the call had finished and then there was another moment or two taken up by her working out how to ring back.

“For heavens’ sake, mum, you have to answer your phone!  What if it was an emergency?” demanded the voice at the other end exasperatedly and clearly not for the first time of saying it.

“If it were an emergency,” corrected Mavis automatically, “I wouldn’t be in a position to answer, would I?  I’d be having an emergency.” Bob chortled as she played to his gallery.  “It’s Russell,” she mouthed, unnecessarily since she’d accidentally put her son on speakerphone when returning the call.  Bob nodded ‘right’.

Claudia called out from the back:

“Bob!  Can you come and help me dump some of this crap?  I can’t seem to get it through to some people to say no to rubbish!”

Bob nodded at Mavis, pulled a wry face and went to answer the summons.

“Crap?” he objected.  “Collectables is what all that pottery is.  You could be throwing away a Clarice Cliff and be none the wiser, Claudia.”

“You want to stop watching ‘Antiques Road Trip’ Bob, then you wouldn’t be needing a skip by way of a  house clearance, “ she retorted.  “Your Joyce was always complaining to my mum about it all.”

“Bloody cheek!” said Bob in mock outrage but laughing nonetheless, as he was continually teased about his bric a brac by all who knew him well enough.  

"So how is young Russell?" he enquired on his return, finding Mavis looking thoughtfully out at passing traffic.  (Bob asked after everybody's children like this, regardless of their actual age).

"He says he's not happy and that he's told Sally he's not happy."

"Ah, I see," said Bob, although sounding baffled.

"He thinks that's reason enough to leave.  Just ‘not being happy.’ "

"You don't agree?"

"No," said Mavis.  "If he tells me he needs to find himself, I'll have a few suggestions about where he should start looking," she added trenchantly, the implication being obvious.  "Childish carry on.  Couldn't say why, just 'if it's not right, mum, I can't stay if my heart's not in it'.  I don't know what his father would have said, I'm sure."

"Is he like his dad, Russell?,"

"Not really.  Des had a penchant for suede.  Suede waistcoats, suede jackets.  Everything had to be dry cleaned, you know.  Not at all practical.   And desert boots!  I couldn't get him out of them.  Great sloppy loose things.  He wasn't a big man, Des.  Gave him cartoon feet, I used to tell him but he was all for comfort." She spoke fondly.  “Russell’s a person who’s always looking for something more and thinking he deserves to have it.  Once, it was the right designer gear."

"I didn't mean what he wears!"  Bob was amused, used to Mavis's conversational tangents.

"Neither did I.  Russell believes the perfect life is just around the corner, if it could just fall into his lap without him making too much effort to find it.  If he's bored, he thinks himself into an existential crisis of dissatisfaction with everything and everyone. Then he wants to move on.  If he'd stuck to his first GCSE choices, he'd be in a better place."

"Ah," said Bob again, finding himself on safer ground.  "Tricky things, careers.  I'm glad I'm retired."

"Oh, so am I!" agreed Mavis.  "He's coming to live with me again for a while, he's just rung to tell me."

"And will he find himself there?" teased Bob.

"I shouldn't think so," said Mavis.  "He never has before."

"I think we should put the kettle on and try some of Callie's buns, don't you?" Bob suggested.

"That's a very good idea," Mavis agreed.

The shop door opened to let someone else in, a black haired young man with blue eyes striking in a strong nosed, brown skinned face.  This was Ricky, their Syrian refugee volunteer, who was working there as part of getting a work permit for his asylum status.  Being Christian, he had been taken under Claudia’s church wing, his route into the charity shop.  Friendly and extremely courteous, his white smiles sent Claudia slightly offside, to Bob and Mavis’s amusement, since she made two of him.  Ricky, immediately on arrival,  was called into the back too by Claudia, so she could make the most of spending time alone with him and when Mavis went through to put the kettle on, Claudia was continuing to organise the stock in there with a great flourish, Chucky gurning down at them from his shelf like an off putting chaperone.

“I think I should give Mavis a break now,” Ricky said, smiling at the two women beatifically and without any personal vanity at all.  “I will go on the till, Claudia.”

“That’s very kind, Ricky,” said Mavis warmly, giving him his escape route from private moments in the back with Claudia, which she was quite certain would be rather overwhelming given free rein, which, she hoped, they were not.  “Bob and I are having coffee.  Shall I make you both one?”

“Oh, cheers, love,” said Claudia offhandedly,  “Later on, can you put all these blouses out in colour coded order?  I’m pricing them up.”

“Certainly,” said Mavis, as if conferring a favour rather than agreeing to being told what to do, 

The afternoon was always busier than the mornings, Ricky’s advent drawing in more custom these days, since he was easier on the eye than most of the volunteers and always politely ready to chat nicely to people.  Russell barged in at about three,  bringing with him an air of put upon necessity.

“Mum, I haven’t got keys to the house.  I’ve been on the motorway for hours.  Can you give me yours and I’ll go and get settled in?  Are you nearly finished in here?”

“Hello, Russell, how nice to see you,” replied his mother.  “No, I don’t finish until four, I’m afraid.”

“You can go earlier if you want, you know,” offered Claudia.  “You’re only a volunteer.”

“Thank you, dear but if I have made arrangements I like to honour them,” Mavis responded pointedly.

“Oh we’ve started already, have we?”   Russell burst out.

“Not everything is about you, Russell,” his mother observed coolly.  “I have my own things to do, you know.”

“Yes, sorry, I’m not at my best.”  Russell, who had his own charming smiles, rallied and favoured everybody in the shop with one of them.  “Hi, all.”

“Nice to see you once every three years or so, Russell” said Bob, shaking hands with him.  

“How are you, Bob?” responded Russell.

“Still here,” said Bob drily.  “Like your mother.”

Mavis realised that Bob was demonstrating alliance with her in his understated way and it was at this moment, too, that she suddenly realised she wasn’t just an old lady living on her own now doing random bits of things to fill in hours that her son could invade any time he fancied.  She was part of a group of people who knew her and liked her, even valued her.  She had friends. Claudia, Ricky and Bob were all smiling at her now, pleased for her that her son had arrived, and  Bob was even showing that he’d help her put him in his place if necessary.  She realised at the same time that Claudia was being kind in offering to let her leave early, not intending, despite her phrasing, to be dismissive.  She took her house keys out of the handbag under the counter and gave them to Russell.

“Here you are, Russell.  Get yourself off and sort your room out.  It’s got bedding on, it’ll just need airing.  There’s food in the fridge.”

“In that case, he can get some tea on for you, Mavis,” suggested Bob.

“I think they should treat themselves to a very nice take-away,” Ricky suggested.  “It’s a celebration for them.”

Everybody laughed because it was a standing joke between them all that Ricky was a wickedly enthusiastic connoisseur of the fast food outlets which delivered directly, something he still found a luxurious delight in his new home.  Yes, thought Mavis, whatever about Russell’s situation, I’m quite happy really with the people I know and I’m glad he’s seen me with them.

“I’ll see you later, then, Russell,” she told him as he left and spent her last hour contentedly arranging the newly laundered clothing into lavenders, yellows, reds, greens and blues.  Claudia always gravitated to the colour block, Mavis thought critically but decided not to object to it right then.  When they were leaving, Bob gave her the rest of the cupcakes to take home for Russell to ‘enjoy’, later.

“You see he eats his fair share,” he observed with a wink.  “And I’ll see you tomorrow, Mavis.”

“You will,” she assured him cheerfully.  “Have a lovely evening and say hello to Joyce for me.”

“Will do,” said Bob, tipping her a jauntily ironic salute and making his side-to-side way off in the other direction as Mavis, smiling, went to walk home to her son in hers.