Page 52 of Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop
‘Oh, that’s a shame.’
‘Yes, Poppy, Jake and myself were very close to him.’
‘Well, thank you for your time, Lou,’ I say, standing up. ‘You’ve been very helpful. It’s good to join up the dots. The diaries are a bit vague, you see.’
Lou nods. ‘If there’s anything else you want to know you only have to ask,’ she says. ‘I’ll do my best to help.’
‘Just one more thing,’ I say, suddenly thinking of it. ‘Do you know who used to own the house up on the hill as you enter St Felix? The one with the blue door. I’ve heard it’s up for sale – Noah from the antiques shop did a house clearance for them.’
‘I think it may have had a few owners over the years. I’m not sure who the last ones were though, sorry. You should ask Anita – that wool shop was home to all the local gossip at one time or another. I bet she’d know.’
‘Great, I will. Thank you again, Lou, you’ve really been most helpful.’
‘Any time, dear, any time.’
I leave Lou’s and head eagerly back down into the town towards Jack’s shop. It was time to take a trip back to fifties’ St Felix again.
Eighteen
St Felix ~ August 1957
Clara stands proudly outside the building in Harbour Street. She still couldn’t really believe this was her own shop.
It had all happened so quickly. One minute she had been sewing dresses for herself and a few other ladies in the town who had come to her with fabric and asked her to make up their patterns for them, and then the next the elderly man who had run his rather old-fashioned tailor’s from this building had died unexpectedly and she had discovered through some local gossip that the landlord wanted someone to fill the premises as soon as possible. When Clara had gone to him and suggested she should take on the lease he had laughed at her to begin with, but as she had been expecting that she had presented him with a very detailed plan of how she would run the shop and, more importantly for him, how she was going to make a profit to enable her to pay her rent every week.
After a lot of persuading, and a month’s rent up front, which had used up all her savings, he’d finally agreed and she’d opened her own dressmaker’s, which after a slow start was now starting to attract more work than she could cope with and she was considering taking on more staff.
‘Nice dress,’ Arty says, appearing in the reflection next to Clara as she gazes at her newest window display. She’d dressed one of the old tailor’s dummies in her very newest design – a red and white gingham dress with small yellow primroses scattered over the bodice, and a full skirt with a huge petticoat underneath. To finish off the display she’d added a small bouquet of yellow flowers she had bought from the florist’s down the street, its vase of water disguised by a big straw hat.
‘Thank you,’ Clara says, feeling herself stiffen. Even though it had been over a month now since she’d angrily pushed Maggie in her chair away from Arty’s studio, she still hadn’t properly forgiven him.
‘How’s it all going?’ Arty asks, keen to keep the conversation flowing. He’d missed seeing Clara and Maggie since Maggie’s painting lessons had been suddenly cut short.
‘Very well, thank you,’ Clara answers brusquely.
‘Good. Good. You’ve certainly made quite the impact here in St Felix. I’ve seen quite a number of ladies wearing your creations already.’
‘Have you?’ Clara says, wondering how he knew they were her designs. Had he been keeping an eye on her window displays? Every time she showed a new design she would get at least five ladies and now young girls too wanting it in their size. She could barely keep up with the demand.
‘Yes, and very pretty they look too. Is that one of your own you’re wearing today?’
‘Of course.’
‘Very nice,’ Arty says approvingly, looking her up and down. ‘I like the colour scheme.’
The dress Clara is wearing today is white with a bright blue and green sea print scattered over it. It looked a little like the painting she’d seen Arty doing on the cliffs the day he’d carried Maggie down to his easel. It was something a bit new for her. She’d experimented with embroidering over parts of the print to give the dress a unique texture and she was extremely pleased with the finished result, but as she’d created it on her little Singer sewing machine she’d tried hard not to think about Arty, even though the fabric made her do exactly the opposite.
‘It looks a bit like one of your paintings,’ Clara says.
‘It looks a bit like one of my paintings,’ Arty says at exactly the same time.
Arty smiles. ‘How’s Maggie?’ he asks, sensing perhaps Clara might have softened a little.
‘She’s fine. Doing well actually.’
‘Good. Good. Is she still painting?’
Clara turns away from him back to the dress in the window. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘You seem to have given her a taste for it.’
