Hideous things
Ann had endured some awful treatment during her marriage – but revenge is a dish best served deadly cold
Some might have considered it petty. The place smelled of damp and dust and old polish. Ann clutched the plastic bag to her chest and stepped through the doorway.
“Hello, Mrs C. I like the new hair.” It was Cyril on duty this morning, sat in his little reception booth. On a shelf to his left he was flanked by a squadron of porcelain pigs and, on his right were the opposing army of ceramic frogs, a forever-stilled tiny turf war. “Thank you.” “No hubby today? You two are always joined at the hip.” “Not today.” Originally the building had been a Victorian pumping station, a cavernous place made of cream brick with huge, curved windows, now spiderweb-cracked and pasted over with tarpaulin. It had been an antiques market for as long as Ann remembered and Ann could recall everything about this place in minute detail. Nearly every Saturday for most of her adult life – the crunch of gravel in the car park, the creak of the glass and wood door and then the wet, chill kiss of the air inside, heavy with the scent of old, once-loved belongings. They had rarely missed a trip. Eric had been strict about that, among other things.
Ann made her way along a path lined with hatstands, wardrobes and sideboards leaning towards her, the shelves full of brittle dancing women, always waltzing alone, old medals, ashtrays in the shape of leaves, brass door knockers patinaed with age, beads and bowls and boxes made of bone.
An uneven flagstone made her stumble and the bulky object in the plastic bag nearly fell from her grip. Eric’s pride and joy. He had found it years ago, in the first flush of their marriage and flush was exactly the right word for it. Something hot, that started off being almost pleasant but then made you feel as if you would explode if you didn’t tear away your own skin. Not a vase, much more than a vase – this was an antique. Old things were precious as long as they weren’t cracked or chipped. Broken things were worthless
– she sympathised with those.
The vase was hideous. A cross-eyed dragon wrapped itself around the middle of it, painted in a garish red and green, with needle teeth and scales. Ann had always hated that dragon. Once, just as her temple collided with the corner of the table on which the horrid thing was placed, the googly-eyed monstrosity had wobbled and almost fell. Eric had been careful to beat her in a different room from then on.
Ann knew exactly where she was going. “Hello, Ann.” The woman came out from behind the counter, wrapped in two scarves, gloves and a hat to keep out the cold. Her nose looked red. “No Eric?”
“No. He’s dead.”
The woman frowned. There, she had got it wrong, despite the time she had spent in front of the mirror practising it, keeping the smile from her lips, the shine out of her eye.
“Oh… umm… I’m sorry for your loss.”
The woman sounded genuine enough. Possibly she had even liked Eric. He had been a regular after all, quick with a charming smile and ready joke. A gentleman. The kind of man who would hold the door open for his wife and then wait until it had closed before punching her so hard in the jaw that she felt little bones break.
“Eric would have wanted you to have this,” Ann offered the plastic bag to the woman who took it from her and unwrapped the vase from it. “You two used to talk about it, yes? I remember.”
That was true. Eric talked about the vase to anyone who would listen. The famous story of the man who outwitted a car boot seller and came home with a dragon. How much it was worth, thousands and thousands of pounds, bought for pennies.
“Oh, Ann. I can’t… I…”
“I don’t need the money. I can’t look at it any more.” That was also true. “The only thing is, it has to stay here with you. Display only. He loved this shop.”
Ann watched the woman glow with pride. Not true. Eric had detested this small corner of the market, had sneered out of earshot that it only sold cheap and tacky reproductions, tat for the uneducated made of plastic and cheap wood, all prints no paintings. Ann could think of nowhere better for his prized possession to stay forevermore.
“The lid is stuck?” The woman pulled at the tiny pineapple that topped the gilt lid, giving it a sharp wiggle.
“Ah, yes. We don’t know how that happened, it knocks a bit off its worth, but it’s too risky to try and get it free. We were worried about the whole thing cracking.”
The lid however, wasn’t stuck – as Ann knew full well. It was glued. She had bought the superglue at the corner shop a month after Eric had died. Heart attack. Natural causes. She had come home from doing the food shop to find him sprawled on the hall floor, gasping. Dutiful wife that she was, she had called the ambulance, though she might have waited a few minutes until she was sure he had stopped breathing before getting out her phone.
He had come back to her a month later, neatly bagged and boxed, a pile of ash. She could have buried them, scattered them, planted them with a tree so in years to come children could have played in the shade of a man who had once kicked her, over and over, in the womb. The vase had been the natural solution. It was almost kind, sealing him up in the only thing he had ever truly loved. So, to counter that, she had brought him here, to the shop he detested, to stay among the tat and the reproductions, the cheap and the tacky. He would fit right in, among the hideous things.