The Apartment Store #21

Chapter 11, Part 1; in Lydia recieves some complaints

The Apartment Store is the story of Lydia, a little girl who lives in a ramshackle attic apartment, in a ramshackle apartment building, down the ramshackle end of town. All Lydia wants is a proper Christmas, but it doesn't seem likely until a new tenant arrives in their building and changes Christmas for everyone in it.

The Apartment Store is a book length Christmas story of twelve chapters, split into twenty four episodes for Advent.

And they came, too. It began simply enough, with two cars already parked at the kerb as Lydia and Artie opened up the Lydian for business the next morning. They were both friends of Mrs Mountjoy, and also old acquaintances of Artie, and so he insisted on showing them round the store himself. They were very pleased with what they called ‘the personal touch’ which as far as Lydia could meant being the only customers in the store. She thought that that ought have made them feel like they were in the wrong place, especially with the Delian across the square already busy with shoppers but instead they seemed to think they had been let into a secret of some kind. 

There are two kinds of people, people who want to do what everyone else is doing because that must the the right thing to do, and people who want to do what no one else is doing because that must be something special. The trouble for the second lot of people is the others find out and start doing it too and it stops being special. Unless the reason no one else is doing it is because it’s rubbish and they end having a miserable time. On their own. The trouble for the first lot of people is queues.

Mrs Mountjoy’s friends certainly had a special time of it. Everyone was so delighted to have customers that they made quite a fuss of them. John made them breakfast as they looked at Fairuza’s prints and the Misses Pleasaunce gave them tea as they showed all their photographs of their wild youth and Ivy talked to them for ages about dresses while George Joseph dashed back and forth with cups of coffee. Even Door gave them both a snow globe to take away with them.

It was just like the first time that Mrs Mountjoy had come to the Apartment Store and everyone had a wonderful time. But the day just got stranger after that.

Lydia and Artie were seeing the ladies to the door when they discovered another car drawn up outside. It was a huge, black car with dark windows and the engine still running. It sat there was the other two ladies drove away and Artie and Lydia stood on the step by the front door staring at it. Nothing happened for a while.

“Who is it?” asked Lydia, “What do they want?”

“Give ‘em time,” said Artie, “It’s like stalking game.”

“A what kind of game? A stalking game? What’s that?” said Lydia.

“It’s like hunting,” said Artie, “You have to stay very still and wait for them to come to you.”

One of the rear doors opened and a young man climbed out. Lydia’s first impression was that he was clean. Very clean. His shoes were clean and bright and shining, his suit was clean and plain and neatly pressed. His hair was clean and smoothed down in a neat wave. His face was clean, his nails were clean, even his voice was flat and calm and clean.

“Is there anyone else in the store?” he asked.

“Not a soul,” said Artie.

“Then we shall come in,” he said and stood aside, holding the door open. An immensely tall woman folded herself out of the back of the car with an elegance you would not have expected from someone so large in such a small space. She flowed out and up, her long, black, sheer coat and long, black, sheer hair making her seem like a slick of oil flowing out onto the street.

The young man bounded up the stairs, took the door from Artie and held it open for her. She flowed up and past them without a word.

“We’re interested in clothes and furniture,” said the young man to Artie, “And we have a list. We’ve been told you sell cards. And snowglobes.”

“We do,” said Artie, “If you’d like to follow me, I can show you where to go.”

The lady was standing in the hallway of the Lydian looking like a piece of expensive art found unexpectedly in a junk shop. She looked at Lydia with no expression and then looked at the young man.

“I think not,” said the the young man, “Is there somewhere we can sit? Somewhere suitable?”

“The Misses Pleasaunce,” whispered Lydia to Artie.

“Of course,” he said.

Artie led the way, the lady flowing after him up the stairs and they ushered her into the pale green drawing room of the Misses Pleasaunce where she sat up right in a delicate chair and stared at the Misses Pleasaunce on the sofa opposite.

“Coffee?” said the young man, “Cake? And dresses to begin with, I think.”

Lydia scurried across the corridor to fetch John and then up to George Joseph for the coffee, while Artie went to fetch Ivy. She came dashing down the stairs with her arms full of clothes and a tape measure and tailor’s chalk, but the young man was having none of it.

“You won’t need to measure, Mrs Serpentis is not measured, I have all the necessary details here,” and he handed Ivy a piece of paper.

“But it’s not just the measurements,” said Ivy, “I mean you learn so much taking them, you know, how someone stands, how they move, you know. This isn’t just about making clothes fit, I mean it is, but not just the body, you know, I mean clothes are you, aren’t they? They’re how the world sees you, they’re how you want to be. It’s not just the measuring, you see, it’s getting to know someone, knowing what they like, knowing what they’re like, what will suit them, finding what they clothes need to say about them, you see. It’s talking, mostly.”

“Mrs Serpentis does not talk,” said the young man, “Mrs Serpentis does not wish to be got to known. If you could just model the dresses for us, that will be perfectly good.”

Mrs Serpentis did not talk. Mrs Serpentis appeared to barely move. Even as she ate John’s petit fours and drank George Joseph’s coffee, you could hardly catch her doing it. All her movements seemed to happen out of the corner of your eye, a little fluid flash of black and then you’d look and another cake would have disappeared or her cup would be suddenly empty. She just sat and watched as Ivy stumped back and forth in different dresses, muttering to herself and the young man said:

“Oh, I don’t think so,” and

“Not at all,” and

“That, but with a higher neckline,” and

“This in gold, please,” and finally,

“Excellent, that will do nicely. Is there someone we could speak to about furniture?”

“Lydia,” said Artie, “Could you fetch Mr Krebs?”

“Couldn’t Ivy?” said Lydia.

“No I couldn’t,” said Ivy, “I’ve got to get on with all this.”

Fortunately Lydia was saved from having to descend into Mr Krebs’ basement because she met her father on the stairs accompanying a red faced man with a large white moustache.

“This man wants to talk to someone about golf clubs,” said Door, “Heaven knows why. Not so much a sport as a good walk spoiled.”

“Not just clubs!” said the man, who had the loud voice of the hard of hearing and consequently, Lydia hoped, had not fully heard her father, “Whole swing’s shot. Screaming yips!”

Lydia had no idea what Yips were but from the way he bellowed the word they sounded terrifying and she could see why he needed help.

“I’ll take him up to George Joseph,” she said, “By the way,” she tried to sound casual, “They want Mr Krebs to go up to the Misses Pleasaunce.”

Her father looked at her, amused but just said:

“Well, if you were already on your way... No? I'll go then and find him then, shall I?”

Lydia was just returning to the Misses Pleasaunce to see what the enigmatic Mrs Serpentis wasn’t doing now, when she discovered a lady in a fur coat on the landing.

“My friend Mrs Mountjoy told me there was a wonderful artist here,” said the lady.

“She must have meant Fairuza,” said Lydia, “She is wonderful, too.”

“I do think artists are wonderful, don’t you?” said the lady, “What a gift it is, to see such beauty in the world and bring it to the rest of us. I do so love the company of artists. So unlike the rest of us. Gifted, you know, special.”

“Well,” said Lydia, “I haven’t met many, but I think Fairuza is very special. She’s just in here.”

“Is this the Lydian?” called a voice from below.

“Just coming!” called Lydia and pelted down the stairs.

A cheerful young lady was standing in the doorway holding the lead of a very serious looking fox terrier.

“Is this the Lydian?’ she said as Lydia came down to her.

“Yes, it is,” she said, “I’m Lydia.”

“Well met!” said the girl, “Look, Asta, this is Lydia, you’re the girl it’s named after right? This is the girl it’s named after, Asta. Lydia, this is Asta, Asta, this is Lydia.”

The fox terrier raised a solemn paw.

“Shake,” said the girl.

Lydia shook the paw.

“We’re here for Lady Mountebank,” said the girl, fishing a stiff visiting card out of her pocket and handing it to Lydia, “She wanted Asta to do some Christmas shopping.”

“Asta?” said Lydia, “Shopping?”

“Asta does all her ladyship’s shopping,” said the girl, “He has impeccable taste.”

Asta the dog gave Lydia a hard stare from under his bushy eyebrows.

“Just show us where to go,” said the girl, as if there was nothing strange about it at all.

“Um,” said Lydia, wondering whether Mr M would relax his no dogs policy for Asta, “A lot of people have customers at the moment but we could start at the top. That’s toys.”

Her father was sat at his crazy desk, working away at a piece of doll’s furniture, when Lydia, Asta and the girl arrived on the top floor.

“I’ve just been ushered before that strange woman in the Misses Pleasaunce,” he said without looking up, “If this is the new elusive Lydian, we’re being found by some very odd people.”

“I’ve got a customer with me,” said Lydia, pointedly.

“A normal one, I hope,” said Door.

“It’s a dog,” said Lydia.

“I could have sworn you just said ‘dog’,” said her father.

“This is Asta,” said the girl.

“First one that won’t talk and now one that can’t,” he said.

Asta sat in their apartment and examined everything that Door showed him very carefully, sniffing it, once or twice licking. Every so often he would look up at the girl and give a gruff little woof in his throat and she would say:

“Oh, he likes that, put that on the list.”

And Lydia’s father would shake his head in bemusement and mark the thing down as sold.

On the way back down the stairs they met the red faced man coming out of George Joseph’s.

“What a splendid chap!” he roared when he saw Lydia, “Invaluable! Just what you need, you know, a good, straightforward, calm chap, take a good look at you, you know, tell you what’s what. Splendid chap.”

Asta gave a little bark.

“In there?” said the girl.

“Splendid chap,” said the man, “Splendid little dog.”

Asta gave the man a look and woofed again.

“Does he have balls in there?” asked the girl.

“Oh yes,” said Lydia, thinking of George Joseph’s consignment of table tennis balls, “Loads.”

“Sporting mastermind,” said the red faced man, “Chap’s a marvel.”

“Alright,” said the girl to Asta, “But remember, you’re not just shopping for yourself.”

And in they went.

Asta worked his way carefully down through the store, visiting every apartment on the way, even the Misses Pleasaunce. Lydia wasn’t quite sure if he was enjoying himself but he was certainly taking it all very seriously.

Other people were definitely enjoying themselves. The lady who had gone to visit Fairuza, for example, could not stop talking about what a wonderful time she had had.

“Two hours I had to hide in the kitchen,” John told Lydia, “That woman just went on and on and on. All I did was make coffee. Endless questions about ink and paint and paper and canvas. She even asked where Fairy got her ideas from. Where do you get your ideas from? Everyone knows that’s the one question you don’t ask an artist.”

“Why not?” asked Lydia, who had often wondered this herself .

“Because they don’t know and it terrifies them that they might not ever have another one.”

“What did Fairuza say?”

“That’s the weird thing,” said John, shaking his head, “I thought this woman would just drive her mad, but she loved every minute of it, as far as I could tell.”

Fairuza wasn’t the only one. If the customers were enjoying themselves, so were the inhabitants of the Apartment Store.

“I said she should but she wouldn’t believe me, so I made her wait while I made adjustments,” said Ivy, “And I was right, even she had to admit it, she said she’d never met anyone who understood her and how she dressed so well before. She said I was brilliant and she’d recommend me to everyone. And do you know what it was, it was the way she sat there holding her tea cup. I knew it immediately, from the way she held herself, you know. And I was right. Empire line. I was right.”

“It’s funny,” said George Joseph, “Not funny like a joke. I mean it’s peculiar. I don’t think I ever realised before how much I know. You don’t, do you, until someone asks you and you realise they don’t. Know, I mean.”

“We showed them all the pictures of Paris,” said Pansy, “And they were all very interested in me.”

“They were all very interested in Mr Picasso,” said Peony, “You were only in the pictures because I was the only one who knew how to work the camera.”

“One of them played the piano,” said Pansy, “He said it was very rare. I said it was the only one that had ever been given to us by a nobleman.”

“Mr Ellington was not a real Duke, dear,” said Peony.

But as the day went on, the cars pulling into the street below and easing through the crowds milling outside the Delian, got larger and darker and more expensive. And the customers got stranger and more demanding.

There was the thin man with the shock of white hair who insisted on everything being blue, which meant that he refused to go into the Misses Pleasaunce’s apartment at all for fear of the light green. Fairuza had had to cover their sitting room in sheets of blue paper and Lydia had been sent to scour the Olympic for blue food colouring so they could give him something eat and drink.

There was the woman who insisted on everywhere smelling the same and who had sent someone in with a perfume atomiser to squirt in all the rooms before she would go inside. It had made George Joseph sneeze and John said it made all his food taste strange.

Then there was the person who had wanted to buy Ivy.

“She wants to what?” said John, perplexed.

“She’s a movie star,” whispered Ivy.

“She’s been in one film,” said Door.

“She wants someone to go with her everywhere and look after her clothes,” said Ivy, “All round the world, going to see films getting made, parties, big cities, all her clothes and dresses and things.”

“It wasn’t even very good,” said Door.

“Ivy, you’d be a servant.” said Fairuza, “It’s insane. You can’t go around buying people.”

“But she thinks I’m special,” said Ivy, “She thinks I’m good.”

And everyone wanted to see Lydia. It was because she was the girl on the sign, the Lydia of the Lydian. They made her traipse round the store with them wherever they went, visiting all the rooms. And there she would have to wait as George Joseph watched them practise their tennis serve - “Please just stand in the corner, Lydia, we need all the space we can get,” - or as John tested types of cheese on them to find their perfect omelette - “Don’t go dear, you just sit there.”

That was the thing. They didn’t actually want her to do anything. Most of them didn’t even talk to her and when they did they mostly just patted her on the head and told her how sweet they thought she was. They didn’t seem to think of her as an actual little girl who had things she would rather be doing than watching a woman parade up and down in her underwear while Ivy tried to decide what cut of material would best suit her walk. She was just their mascot, just there so that they could have the ‘personal touch’, that true experience of the original Lydian.

Lydia couldn’t see why someone else couldn’t have done it. Weren’t they all supposed to be the Lydian? Artie could have done it and done it splendidly, but Artie was barely there. All through the day he kept disappearing, popping his head round the door with an unctuous hallo and then:

“Just have to catch up with something,” or

“Off to drum up the custom,” or

“Had an idea, back before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Whoever was saying Jack Robinson was saying it repeatedly and very slowly.

What this meant was that the moment that Lydia had a problem, the moment she actually needed him, he wasn’t there to help.

The problem found Lydia on the second floor landing as she was running to fetch John ingredients from Mr M’s. The problem was little and elderly, wearing a baggy brown tweed suit with white wiry hair that stood up in a shock on top of his head. And, Lydia noticed, in thick bunches in his ears. He had in his hands a large candle in a glass jar.

“This,” he said, thrusting it at Lydia, “Does not smell of childhood.”

The jar had a sticker on it with a picture of a smiling little boy and a dog. ‘Scent of childhood’, it said.

“Not my childhood, certainly,” said the problem, “That smelled of old books and malt drinks.”

He pushed it under Lydia’s nose. It smelled of clean linen, perhaps, maybe grass. Mostly it smelled of candle.

“It doesn’t even smell of child,” he said. Lydia had to agree.

“I don’t think it smells like me,” she said.

“So you comprehend why,” said the problem.

“Why what?” said Lydia.

“Why I want my money back,” said the man, “I do not want a candle that does not smell of childhood. I wish to return it. And get my money back.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Lydia, who was however surprised that anyone would want a candle that smelled of childhood in the first place.

“Well then,” said the problem.

“Well, then,” said Lydia.

“Well, then,” said the problem, like Lydia hadn’t properly understood what his first ‘well, then’ had meant, “What are you going to do about it?”

“Me?” said Lydia.

“Well, who else?” said the problem, “You are the little girl, are you not? What is the name? Delia, is it? This is your store, it has your name.”

“My name isn’t Delia, it’s Lydia,” said Lydia, “I think there’s a Delia across the road, in the other store, you know, the Delian. Did you buy the candle there?”

“Are you suggesting I do not know where I bought this ridiculous thing?” said the problem indignantly, “Are you, young lady, insinuating that because I am an old man I am in some way confused or bewildered?”

“But no one here sells candles,” protested Lydia, “I don’t think you can have bought it here.”

“I did not come here to be insulted,” said the problem, “I came here to buy a candle and then again to return it. And get my money back. And until I do, I shall not be leaving here.”

The Misses Pleasaunce could not help. In fact they could hardly speak. Peony would not meet Pansy’s eye and that there was a blank space above the fireplace. A square of green wallpaper darker than the rest where something had been hanging for a long time and had now gone. “Where’s the picture with the apples in it?” asked Lydia.

“Not now, Lydia,” said Peony, “We have guests.”

And Pansy blew her nose theatrically.

Lydia was worried that John and Fairuza might also be busy with customers but instead they were having an argument about Asta the dog.

“All I’m saying,” said John, “Is that he didn’t seem very interested in your posters.”

“He was a dog!” said Fairuza, “Dogs are colourblind. And also they’re dogs. He’s not going to be interested in a poster.”

“He liked my cooking, though.”

“He also liked going through the bin!” said Fairuza, “Once again: he was a dog. You were giving him sausages, of course he liked it.”

“You said that the customers liked your art more than my cooking,” said John, “But now you admit that that customer didn’t.”

“That customer was a dog!” Fairuza was shouting now, “And anyway I didn’t say that, I said it was more important to them.”

“Your art is more important than my cooking,” said John.

“Art feeds the soul,” said Fairuza.

“Food actually feeds because that is what feeds means,” said John, “If people don’t eat they actually die. Which means no more art.”

“You’re insane!” shouted Fairuza and turned back to her sitting room studio, slamming the door behind her.

“And you’re just jealous!” replied John, slamming the kitchen door behind him.

Lydia stood in the hallway for the moment looking at the two closed doors and then went back out onto the landing where the problem was still waiting.

“I bought it here,” he insisted as soon as he saw her, “And I shall not leave until I have my recompense.”

Come to think if it, Mr M probably sold things like that. Maybe he had bought it there, after all.

“Child Lydia! Welcome to the Olympic!” Mr M was standing behind his new counter, an Olympic apron stretched across his formidable stomach, beaming a slightly forced smile.

“You don’t have to pretend with Lydia,” said Mrs M from behind the deli counter at the other end of the store. She sounded angry.

“She helped make it. She knows you.”

Mr M seemed determined to ignore his wife and carried on trying to be excited and cheerful.

“And what can the Olympic do for you?”

“Do you have scented candles?” said Lydia, “You know, the special flavoured ones like…”

“Scented candles!” cried Mr M “Of course we have! The Olympic has all your needs!”

He said this with a flourish, like he had been practising it, and then turned, and opened a hatch in the wall behind him. Beyond the hatch was the rest of the old store, now hidden by the wooden wall Lydia’s father and Mr Krebs had put up. Mr M leaned through the hatch and bellowed into the darkness beyond.

“Second aisle, third shelves down, second shelf from the bottom, one of each stack!”

“Which is the second one?” wailed a voice from the shadows. The little Ms must be back there.

“This end: one!” shouted Mr M, “Two! This one is two! Third one down!”

“What is it?” said the voice, plaintively, “There are jam jars and cardboard boxes.”

“Second shelf from the bottom,” shouted Mr M, “Candles!”

“What candles?” said the voice.

“Daddy!” cried another voice, further away, “I don’t know where I am. I can’t see anything.”

“Wait there!” shouted Mr M and then turned and gave a sickly smile, “One moment, please.” Then he opened a door in the wall and disappeared through.

Lydia could hear him shouting and blundering about on the other side of the wall.

“Oh, in front of the customers he’s all nice,” said Mrs M from behind the deli counter, “But he shouts at the children. They don’t like it back there, it’s too much for them.”

The door burst open again and Mr M lumbered through, arms full of candles. He slammed them one by one down on the counter.

“We have lavender, vanilla, apple, patchouli, sandalwood and grass, which I was not at all sure about and there are people who like it.”

“Not childhood?” said Lydia.

“What?”

“There’s a man upstairs who had a candle that is supposed to smell like childhood but he says it doesn’t and it doesn’t really and so he wants his money back,” said Lydia, “I wondered if he had bought it from you.”

“I do not have any candles that smell of childhood,” said Mr M, “I thought grass was not a sensible idea and childhood is even less sensible.”

Lydia had now climbed from the very bottom of the building to the top and was rapidly losing what little patience she had with the problem. Ivy took most of what was left.

“Lydia, I don’t have time, I actually don’t,” she shouted through the door, “Please don’t talk to me about it. It’s not my job, it really isn’t. I said I didn’t want to be a shop assistant and I’m not, I am a fashion designer now, a proper one. There are people who want to wear my clothes, who think they’re special. The clothes I mean, but the people are special as well and they think I am too. It’s nothing to do with me, Lydia.”

George Joseph actually shouted at her.

“Stop! Don’t step on that!”

He had drawn a series of lines on the floor of his flat in chalk and Lydia was about to step on one.

“Stay right where you are! Don’t smudge it.”

“There’s a man…” began Lydia.

“Is it the man about the football boots?” asked George Joseph.

“No, it’s about a candle,” said Lydia.

“Then it’s nothing to do with me,” said George Joseph.

“But he wants his money back,” said Lydia, “And I don’t even think he bought it here.”

“Then it’s absolutely nothing to do with me,” said George Joseph, “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get on with these measurements. You heard what Mr Krampus said: what we are selling is ourselves. Well, I am supposed to be an expert in sports. No, I am an expert in sports. So that is what I am doing. You’re the Lydian, Lydia, you have to sort it out. Goodbye.”

She found herself back outside of George Joseph's door practically in tears. She was tempted to just run and hide in her bedroom but the Problem was now sitting on the stairs with his candle on his knees, blocking the way up to her apartment. He started to say something again, but she couldn't bear it, so she just turned round and started back down the stairs. Artie. She had to find Artie. He'd know what to do.