Page 44 of Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop
‘I’m not sure,’ I reply, stunned that the people we’d been seeing in the pictures might actually be real.
‘The reason I say that is I remember her mother took a shop around then – dressmaker’s it was, and she began selling all the fashions of the day from there – you know: full skirts, bright fabrics etc. I badgered my own mother to buy me a skirt like that because all the older girls were wearing them that year. All summer I went on and on until eventually she asked Clara to make one for me – it was the best thing I’d ever owned. I remember me and my best friend Rose – that’s who Rosie here is named after – sitting on the harbour wall swinging our legs listening to Lonnie Donegan, Little Richard and Elvis Presley on her portable transistor radio.’ She smiles wistfully. ‘What good times they were.’
‘Clara had a shop?’ I ask intrigued. ‘Where?’
‘Er …’ Lou looks down the street, trying to place it. ‘You know something – I think it might have been where your shop is now. Yes, in fact I’m sure of it. A few doors down from the baker’s, on the opposite side. Back then the baker’s was owned by Dec’s uncle, I think. “Mr Bumbles” it was called back then.’
‘Clara ran a dressmaker’s from the same shop as mine?’ I repeat slowly, trying to get a grasp on this extraordinary coincidence.
‘Yes, that was until …hmm, perhaps the mid-to late sixties? It’s difficult for me to remember because I moved away for a few years with my husband’s job around then. I was a young bride,’ she says wistfully, thinking back. ‘Anyway when we returned to live here it was already the wool shop, and it stayed that way until you opened your craft shop. Why all the questions, dear?’
‘Lou, would you mind if I pop round to your house one day and ask you some more about this?’
‘No dear, not at all. I quite enjoy a trip down memory lane. I’m not sure how much more help I can be to you though.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised, Lou. Your little snippets of information have already helped me out no end. One more question for now though – do you remember an artist back then called Arty?’
Lou thinks. ‘It doesn’t ring any bells, but you have to remember if we’re talking about the late fifties I would only have been thirteen or fourteen. A lot has happened in my life since. Also, like now, there were a lot of artists painting here back then. That’s one thing that doesn’t change.’
‘Oh, talking of painting, I’d better go.’
‘Off to see our local art-shop owner are you?’ Lou asks, her eyes twinkling.
‘How did you know … ?’ I begin, and then I simply say. ‘Don’t tell me –Anita!’
‘I bumped into Lou on the way here,’ I tell Jack as I prepare for our two pieces of artwork to come together.
‘Lou?’ Jack asks. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Lou’s lived in St Felix for ages on and off. She’s the aunt of Jake, who owns the nursery up on the hill, so I guess that makes her aunt-in-law to Poppy at the flower shop, and Bronte’s great-aunt.’
‘Wow!’ Jack says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Is everyone here related?’
‘It seems that way sometimes. A number of St Felix’s older residents have lived here all their lives. If you chat to any of them for long enough they’ll tell you their stories.’
‘I bet. So what did this Lou tell you?’
‘You won’t believe this but she thinks that Clara ran a dressmaker’s from the same shop that I have now.’
‘Really? That’s incredible.’
‘Yes, she remembers Clara and Maggie, but not Arty. There were a lot of artists here in the fifties apparently, like there are now.’
‘It must mean something,’ Jack says, his eyes narrowing, ‘but what though?’
‘Let’s put the pictures together again, and see what happens today,’ I say keenly, sitting down next to him on the chair opposite the easel. ‘Maybe that will tell us more …’
St Felix ~ June 1957
‘It’s an amazing view you have here,’ Clara says, as she stands at the window of Arty’s ground-floor studio that looks out over the sands of St Felix Bay. ‘I’m amazed you don’t sit and paint this vista all the time.’
‘It’s tempting,’ Arty says, watching her from across the studio, ‘but I think my clients would get a bit bored with the same scene all the time. It’s the light that’s truly amazing here – it floods into the room making everything I do seem better.’
Clara turns towards Maggie, who is frantically trying to finish her own piece of artwork for the day. This was the first time Clara had actually been inside Arty’s studio. Before she’d always collected her daughter at the door, even though Arty had always invited her to come in. ‘Maggie, are you nearly finished? We really must be going. You’re already over your allotted hour with Arthur.’
Arty grins at Clara’s continued insistence on calling him by his full name, but he kind of admired her for sticking to her formality. It was one of themanythings he liked about Maggie’s mother, and the list seemed to grow longer every time they met.
‘It’s fine,’ Arty says kindly. ‘You can’t rush art – can you, young Maggie?’
