A Luverly Bit of Short Fiction for you
Author Alison Lloyd's newsletter #55
In this post you’ll find a brand new, entire story to bring a shine to your day. I scrapped my first go at this newsletter halfway through because it bored me, and wrote this short story instead. Much more sparkle to it, as I hope you’ll see!
This story is great for fans of Dickens or Downton Abbey, or The Paradise (if you’ve watched that BBC series). It’s about work, hope, creativity — I can’t pin it down to one thing. You might remember I mentioned a jeweller in my current novel last month? Here’s his early story, as an ambitious apprentice in 1850s London. Meet Jack…
Luverly
On his second Monday behind the jewellery counter, as he was doodling a design, Jack saw the carriage pull up. The grid of the window glass graphed its arrival. Top left: liveried coachman. Centre left: hindquarters of matched greys. Bottom left and right: imperial blue wheels. Centre square: a varnished door, green as emeralds. A smart equipage.
Look lively, he thought.
He swivelled the customer mirror and tweaked up the loops of his necktie. Dingley the master jeweller had promised commission on sales. Not much of a commission, a blighty five pence in the pound. Not even a round sixpence. Jack only got behind the counter on Mondays, the slow day. The rest of the week, every day but Sundays with his mother, he was in the workshop, smelting, soldering, buffing. Last Monday he sold a gold watch for two pounds. Ten quid of sales and he could make his mum something pretty.
The windowpanes were divided like tic-tac-toe, the game Jack and the other urchins had scratched it on walls and footpaths, before he was apprenticed. Jack liked to go for the centre square, where he now saw the coachman, opening the carriage door. A pale, gloved hand reached for the coachman’s assistance, then a woman in a bonnet and veil ducked her head to step out.
Luverly.
He took in the soft lilac of her silk dress. She would set off the sapphire parure something marvellous. Necklace, earrings, brooch – a tidy three hundred and fifty pounds worth of tom foolery.
Or the diamond choker. Diamonds went with anything, although they looked most flash on crimson, or black velvet.
Jack wasn’t planning something so fancy for his mother. Even if he could afford it, she wouldn’t wear it. ‘Mutton dressed as lamb,’ she’d say. Poverty was like coarse sandpaper — it wore a person down. Ground away their expectations. But the time she first brought him here, when he was a lad of nine, the two of them stopped to look at the window display. He’d promised her then, fiercely, that he would make her something beautiful. He hated their life of chipped crockery, wooden washboards, and worn seams. He’d drudged through his apprenticeship for the sake of the smooth and shining jewellery. Now he knew how to make it. He’d have the needful to spend on materials when he made enough sales.
Which he might do in one strike with Lavender-lady, now alighted on the footpath. Unless she was shopping for a gentleman’s gift. In which case the best Jack could hope for would be a watch paired with a gold-handled cane. Not ten quid’s worth.
The young woman entered the shop door with a little pirouette that swung her crinoline deftly away from the hinges. She was quite the package this one — gift-wrapped with a large silk bow at her waist. She lifted her veil with both hands and folded it over her bonnet. Dainty, like porcelain. She should wear amethysts, Jack thought. Or aquamarine. And pearls. White gold, the same shade as the long curl of hair draped over one shoulder.
He saw the surprise in her large blue eyes when she looked at him. She’d been expecting someone else behind the counter. She could be here to pick something up. No, she would expect delivery to the house. Her eyes wandered greedily around the shop, looking for something. She was not much older than he was. Somebody’s daughter, Jack would have thought, except she’d no mama in tow.
He could do this. Better than old Mr Dingley.
‘Afternoon, ma’am.’ He spoke softly. The senior jeweller was taking his lunch out the back. Jack didn’t want to alert him to the presence of a customer.
‘What if I’m ‘miss’?’ she said archly.
He smiled.
‘The ring.’ The glove wrinkled on the third finger of her left hand.
‘Clever boy.’ She rubbed at the ridge on the glove, and pulled the seam tip on her ring finger, as if it bothered her slightly. ‘Are you clever enough to sell me what I need?’
‘What do you need, ma’am?’
She lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘To impress my husband’s business partner. Potential business partner. But –’ she whispered, ‘within an allowance.’
If she was after glass, instead of jewels, they didn’t do that here. Jack reined in his expectations a couple of notches. ‘May I ask how much, ma’am?’
‘No. I’ll tell you when it’s too much.’
She had a sharp business sense under the silk exterior.
Jack smiled again. ‘Our best pieces are on display here.’
May as well start at the top. He ushered her to the locked cabinet.
The best way to sell jewellery was to dress the customer in it. Let them wear it. Feel the drape of the setting on their breastbone. See the sparkle at their throat. Let them imagine the piece as theirs. Jack had seen it. He’d felt the same want in himself. But he didn’t have the cabinet key. He’d have to ring the bell and ask Dingley, and there would go his fee.
He let her look, while he hovered at a respectful distance.
Her eyes were drawn to the sapphires. She tilted her head to read the price tag and pursed her lips.
‘What’s the occasion?’ Jack asked.
‘That’s confidential.’
‘You don’t have to tell me where, or who,’ Jack said. ‘But lunch is a different proposition to dinner.’
She looked at him, pert and a little sly, as if there might be a hidden meaning to his words. There wasn’t, but Jack was flattered. He wondered who the lucky cove was with the fortune to lure a pretty piece like her, and dress her in jewels. Not aristocracy; there was no crest on the carriage.
‘How so?’ she asked.
‘Dinner means candlelight. And a neckline.’ He scooped one hand suggestively across his breast. Dingley would never say that. Most customers would take offense.
Not this one.
‘Ah yes!’
‘May I ask what you’ll wear, ma’am?’
‘You may, but I haven’t had it made. Yet.’
‘Might I suggest grey velvet?’ That would shine like silver under the candles. The cloth was luscious in Jack’s imagination. ‘With a tiered necklace like the sapphires.’
‘Yes, it would.’ She touched her lips with a finger, contemplating the jewels behind the glass. ‘But I wasn’t thinking of the sapphires.’
Oh yes you were, Jack thought, and they were too expensive.
But if her dress hadn’t been ordered yet, there was time…
‘Not sapphires,’ Jack suggested. ‘Amethysts are warmer. And classy. Especially with pearls.’ Amethysts were also less expensive.
‘But you don’t have any.’
‘Not on display. We can make something — just for you.’
‘Like that one?’ She tapped the cabinet.
‘Certainly.’ Jack was still hoping not to call Dingley. ‘Although, for you…’
He let his eyes measure her up – the length of her neck, the width of her shoulders, and the depth of her bust. Something delicate for her small frame. But a proper necklace, not just a pendant.
‘Can I see your hands?’ he asked. He wanted a better look at the colour of her skin.
She pulled off her left glove, and touched her wedding ring coyly. The ring was very clean and new. She had fine, slim hands. Ivory-white. Not like his mother’s, which were permanently reddened and chafed by laundry lye, because her main customer, a posh hotel, wouldn’t pay for soap. Jack didn’t like the caustic stench, and he hated looking at her hands. He wanted her to have better. This customer was his opportunity.
He nipped around the counter, pulled out the designs he’d been sketching and laid them on the countertop. He’d drawn them from memory, copied from wallpaper in a place they’d delivered to in Park Lane. A scrolling pattern of stylized leaves.
‘See this.’
She inclined her head. ‘Pretty.’
‘What we could do –’ he liked that ‘we’. It sounded professional. Assured. Although this was his idea alone, and way above his station. But if he could talk the customer into it, Dingley couldn’t say no.
Jack spun the paper round and started sketching rapidly. ‘We can twist the leaves around each other to make a festoon, and hang a single leaf from the middle. If we make all the leaves in outline, it uses less gold. And we can set an amethyst in the centre of each one. Like this…’ He sketched in little hexagons, to give her the jist. If he had time he’d mix red and blue inks to liven it with colour. But he didn’t. He could hear Dingley in the back room, clearing his chest after his pipe. ‘There. You see?’
He wanted her to see. Because he wanted the sale fee, but also because this was his design. He’d been dreaming of a necklace like this one since he saw the wallpaper. He’d meant to make a single silver leaf for his mother. He could still do that, after this.
‘Oh yes!’ She flashed him a pearly smile. ‘But – how much will it cost?’
‘About half the price of the sapphires. Give or take.’
The young woman pressed her fingers to her lips again.
The door to the back room opened and Dingley came into the shop.
‘Ma’am.’ He acknowledged the customer with a solemn bow of his head. In talking to customers Dingley always dropped his voice so deep that he scraped along the bottom. Jack thought it was affected, but he wouldn’t say so while he wanted his job.
‘How may we help you?’ Dingley looked at Jack.
Jack knew he was supposed to hand over. But he said nothing, and let the young woman reply.
‘This young fellow has already helped me,’ she said.
The Lord bless her and keep her rollin’ in riches.
‘I want to know how much a necklace like this,’ she tapped Jack’s drawings, ‘will cost.’
Dingley’s face lengthened as he looked down at the sketches. Jack was going to cop it if the lady didn’t come through.
‘Fourteen karat,’ Jack hastened to explain. ‘Cast in outline. Amethysts. And pearls here.’
‘I see.’ Dingley’s had never made a design like it. Their look was usually more stately. But the young woman was looking hopefully at the senior jeweller.
‘We could do that for two hundred pounds, ma’am,’ he said.
She pursed her pretty lips. ‘I need it to cost under two hundred pounds.’
‘Hmm. If you exchanged the rope chain for a cable, that would be lighter. Say, £195.’
‘And nobody else will have one like it?’
‘Nobody, ma’am.’
She smiled triumphantly at Jack. ‘Lovely. Yes, please.’
Because she was a new customer, the jeweller asked for a deposit. Jack got out the accounts register and wrote in it as Dingley dictated the details of the necklace and its price. He put his initials, J.N., in the ‘salesman’ column, the letters sharp and perky.
‘What name shall we put it under?’ The jeweller enquired.
‘Brown,’ the young woman said.
A dull name for her, in Jack’s opinion.
‘As in…?’ Dingley wasn’t satisfied either. He most likely suspected some sort of dodge.
‘Brown of Brown’s Hotel, Mayfair.’
‘Ah.’ Dingley nodded to Jack to write it down.
Ah. A hotelier. That’s whose money the young woman was spending. That’s what was paying for Jack’s first commission. All those pennies and shillings saved on soap. Now Jack had to smelt down their value himself, and pour it into the necklace of his own design. He hoped it throttled her.
J.N. Jack Ninny. Jack Numbskull. What had he been thinking? That customers were fine, deserving folk, a cut above the crowd, because their clobber was swish and their pockets were deep? He’d fooled nobody but himself.
Then he remembered his mother — her chapped hands smoothing a pile of washed linen. Her pride in the cleanliness she’d achieved was undinted, even by his bitter complaints.
‘Doesn’t matter ‘oo it’s for, Jack,’ she’d said. ‘Do it luverly.’
And so he would.
I’d love to hear what you think — what the story made you feel. Or if any parts were confusing, I’d be glad to know so I can fix it.
Blessings and best wishes until next month!
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Alison, what an engrossing story. I was there is the jewellers , watching. Just wanted more!
Geraldine