The Customer’s Chair

The message arrived on Tuesday evening, between a payment request and an offer on shoes. Wednesday, half ten. You need to collect something. Can you bring a car?

Mara read it standing at the washing machine with one sock on. The other was somewhere in the bedding. She pulled a fitted sheet from the drum and replied: What is it?

The two ticks turned blue. No answer appeared.

On her laptop, Wednesday morning’s meeting was still open. An hour with Lotte and the woman from the regional archive, going through the captions beneath the photographs. Four versions of the same list were still circulating. Mara had wanted to compare them, preferably with everyone round the table, before somebody sent anything else to the printer.

She rang her mother. After four rings, it went to voicemail. A clock struck three times behind Ada’s recorded greeting; Mara heard those chimes more often than she heard her mother.

‘I just need to know how big it is,’ she said. ‘So I can book the car.’

She went back to the washing machine. The sock was caught in a corner of the sheet, wet and flat as something washed ashore. She draped it over the basket. Her phone lit up. An ordinary car will do. Back seats need to fold down.

Mara thought of the printer that had been printing only the right-hand half of each page for months. Or boxes of old invoices. Last time, Ada had sorted the envelopes by colour. The blue ones were out of sight under the workbench. Mara had opened them that afternoon while her mother explained to a man that his mechanical clock did not run on batteries.

She booked a car-club car from ten until two and messaged Lotte to ask whether they could move the meeting to the afternoon. The woman from the archive couldn’t make it. Lotte suggested Friday, Nora added a thumbs-up, and that settled it. Mara sent another message asking which caption list they should use until then. Nobody answered that one.

On Wednesday morning, the car smelt of sweet air freshener. A flattened packet of chewing gum lay beneath the passenger seat. Mara took the photographs the app required, moved the seat forward and drove out of the car park. Her phone rang at the second junction. She couldn’t see whether it was Ada and left it ringing.

Nothing was wrong, she told herself. If something really were wrong, her mother would say so. She tried hearing that in Ada’s voice and had to reconsider by the next red light.

A laundry van was blocking half the shopping street. Mara drove slowly past it. A few doors further along, her mother was standing on a kitchen stepladder, her screwdriver pressed against the opening-hours sign. The bottom of her apron was trapped between her knee and the top step.

Mara stopped in a loading bay, got out and went over.

‘Don’t touch the ladder,’ Ada said without looking round.

Mara kept her hands at her sides. ‘Good morning.’

‘The left leg’s crooked. If you hold it, you’ll make it wobble.’

The shopfront was supposed to have been cobalt blue. Ada had mixed more paint into it herself, and in sunlight there was green in it. Beneath the window, a pale rectangle marked the place where a payment company’s sticker had spent years. Mara looked up at the two screws. The top one came away as her mother pulled the sign off the wall.

‘Watch out, it’s falling.’

Ada caught the screw in her apron. She climbed down and put it in the inside pocket, as though she’d had a pocket made for precisely that purpose.

‘You can’t park there.’

‘I know. I didn’t know whether we’d be loading something straight away.’

‘We can’t yet.’

Mara went back to the car and moved it into the side street. She paid for an hour and a half. By the time she returned, the stepladder was lying beside the door and Ada had put the sign on the workbench.

Inside, the coffee smelt as though it had spent too long on the hotplate. Beneath the amber lamp lay a pair of tweezers, two broken springs and a sandwich on a till receipt. A sheet of tissue paper kept the crumbs off an open movement. The customer’s chair was occupied by a tall, narrow clock case.

Mara recognised the damage beside the glass door. She had caught it on a door frame when she moved. The pale wood in the scratch had darkened since then.

‘That’s mine.’

‘That’s what I called about.’

Ada hadn’t called, but Mara didn’t correct her. She put her bag on a corner of the counter and looked through the glass. Four holes showed where the dial had been. There was a line of dust along the bottom.

‘Is it ready?’

‘There’s no movement in it.’

‘I know. I thought—’

‘In that box. It’s all there.’

The box was under the chair, inside a shopping bag bearing an old shop name. Mara had brought the bag herself. Six years ago, soon after she and Daan split up. Just for now, she’d said. There wasn’t a suitable wall in her new place. Since then she’d moved again, to somewhere with a wall that could easily have held three such cases.

She put the car key beside her bag.

‘I thought something was wrong.’

‘Something is. I need that chair.’

‘I needn’t have moved a meeting for this.’

Ada glanced at her sandwich and pushed the tweezers away from it. ‘I didn’t ask you to.’

Mara unzipped her coat. A narrow strip of sunlight reached her shoes through the window. On the way over, she had worked out what to ask about the rent, whether her mother had called the bookkeeper, whether they could finally get rid of the little chest of drawers and make room for all the paperwork. And here was her own clock case.

‘You could have said something sooner.’

‘It was here yesterday too.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

Ada put her sandwich on a small plate. It was one of the blue-rimmed saucers that used to stand beneath the plant pots at home. Things acquired second uses in the shop for which, Mara thought, they were never quite suited. There was still a faint brown ring on this saucer.

‘Coffee?’

‘Only if you make fresh.’

Her mother picked up the jug and emptied it into the little sink. No argument. Mara took off her coat and hung it over the corner of the counter, rather than the chair.

Beside the coffee machine stood a familiar folder. Ribbon had replaced the old elastic bands. A blue envelope stuck out.

‘That’s from last month,’ Ada said, seeing her look. ‘I’ve dealt with that. I just need to send them something.’

‘What?’

‘A figure. I’ll do it tomorrow.’

Mara kept her hand away from the folder. She stood in front of the clock case and tried to lift it off the chair. It weighed less than she’d expected, but its lower edge dragged across the upholstery and she put it back.

‘Glass out first,’ Ada said.

‘Yes. In a minute.’

While the coffee brewed, her mother laid the sign directly beneath the lamp. Wednesday still said nine to six. A strip of cream paper had been stuck over it. The brush beside it was a thumb’s width across.

‘Are you closing for an afternoon?’

‘All day.’

‘Starting when?’

‘Today.’

Mara looked towards the window, at the people passing. A woman held the hand of a child who had pressed his face to the glass to look at a clock with a moving bird. The bird only moved on the hour. As a child, Mara had sometimes dragged a stool over to the window and made noises behind the little curtain. Ada hadn’t found out until a customer asked about it.

‘We’ll have to change the website. And Google. Otherwise people will turn up and find you shut.’

‘Can you show me how?’

‘I can do it now.’

‘I know.’

Ada put the mugs on the counter and pulled up the stool. Mara took her laptop from her bag. There was a white speck on the screen. She wiped it away with her sleeve and opened the page they had made together a year earlier.

Her mother slid her reading glasses down her nose and took a slip of paper from the notebook beneath the phone. She laid it beside the keyboard. Her first attempt produced a red box. She typed again, more slowly.

Mara spotted the wrong letter. Her forefinger was already moving towards the key, but she pointed to the paper instead.

‘That’s a capital I. You’ve put a small L.’

Ada held her finger above the keyboard. ‘It was the other way round on the last one.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I do.’

She changed the letter. The page opened. A photograph of the shopfront appeared, still with the payment sticker on it. Ada studied it as though someone had put an old photograph of her on the table.

‘That could go too.’

‘Opening hours first.’

They found the right box. Ada changed Wednesday to closed and read the line again.

‘Do I click Save now?’

‘Yes.’

She clicked. Then she wanted to know how to check whether it had really worked. Mara showed her how to open a new window and type in the address. Ada almost copied an extra slash after it from a line on the screen. When the ordinary page appeared, Wednesday did indeed say closed.

The other website took longer. Ada had to get a code from her own phone and lost her place halfway through entering the digits. She started again. Meanwhile, Mara let her coffee cool.

‘Your rent’s gone up, though,’ she said.

‘By forty-eight euros.’

‘Exactly.’

Ada put down her phone and pulled her notebook out from beneath the slip of paper. One page held twelve dates with amounts beside them. At the bottom, in red: people will come on Thursday. Beside it, smaller: perhaps not all of them.

Mara bent over the figures. One Wednesday had brought in twice as much as the week before. She was about to ask why, but her mother had taken off her glasses and was looking at the lenses.

‘So you’ve already looked into this.’

‘A bit.’

Across the road, somebody put down a crate of bottles. The brief clatter reached them behind the counter. Mara saw the letter about the new rent tucked between two pages. Ada had circled the amount. The letter was open, slightly torn along the fold.

‘And if they don’t come?’

‘Then I’ll find out.’

Mara blew on her coffee, though it was no longer hot. On the page turned back beneath it was a name and telephone number. Kamal Driving School. She turned the notebook a quarter-turn.

‘Are you having driving lessons?’

‘At twelve.’

‘Today?’

‘I’d be rather early otherwise.’

Mara looked out at the narrow street, the laundry van now standing outside another door with its rear doors open, a cyclist squeezing between two parked cars. Her mother was sixty-eight. She cycled everywhere with a basket wired to the handlebars. For a big shop, she rang Mara. Sometimes only once Mara was already somewhere else.

‘Wouldn’t an automatic be easier?’

‘It is.’

‘And has he taught people who’ve started a bit later?’

‘He’s taught people who can’t drive. I thought that would do.’

Mara looked into her mug. She could hear herself asking about tests, insurance, parking permits. There wasn’t even a car yet. She took a sip and held it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing.

‘I went last week,’ Ada said. ‘Sat in the car first. Looked at the controls. Then he had me drive out of the yard.’

‘How was it?’

‘I took the corner too wide. He said I had to leave some of the road for other people.’

She gave a brief laugh. Mara caught a glimpse of a tooth usually hidden behind the corner of her lip.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because you’d have started looking for the best driving school.’

Mara put down her mug carefully. Ada looked at the strip of paper on the sign. One end had come loose. She pressed it back with her thumb.

‘And once you’ve passed? Will you open on Wednesdays again?’

‘First I’m going to try parking at the supermarket.’

The laptop sounded. A message from Lotte: which list did she mean, exactly, yesterday’s or Monday’s? Mara read the first few words and left the window open. She knew the answer as long as she didn’t have to look at the dates.

Ada pushed her empty mug aside and went over to the case. She tapped the upper hinge with her forefinger.

‘I need you to hold this.’

Mara got up. She laid her phone face down beside the laptop and took hold of the narrow door with both hands.