CHAPTER FOUR
Kathy had not fallen asleep
during my narrative. She let me wind down without interrupting me once, and
when I had finished, she asked me no questions. But she looked extraordinarily
alert and engaged. Then she announced, “Sophie, suddenly I feel incredibly
hungry. Can you run down to the cafeteria and fetch me a couple of muffins?
Blueberry or banana, anything but raisin bran.”
Truth be told, I felt extremely
uneasy in the cafeteria, as though the staff were outraged that I should be
allowed to use the same food facility as them. Maybe they weren’t thinking that
at all. Maybe people looked at me a little too hard because of my bright and
rather pretty face. Perhaps it was my clothes. Ever since I was allowed to wear
personal clothes and not a uniform, I know that I went overboard with textures,
lengths and colours. I avoided drab shades; they reminded me too much of
Ingersoll. My favourite combinations were pink, green and gold and I enjoyed a
blend of unlikely fabrics: suede with tulle, silk with velvet. Of course, my
articles of clothing all came from thrift shops, but I was a natural at sewing
and a day didn’t go by that I wasn’t at my machine, combining remnants and
concocting a wardrobe that matched my aesthetics, asymmetrical and eccentric as
they were.
There were other carers milling
around in the cafeteria. It pains me to admit that we could always be
differentiated from the others. It was in the way we moved, stiffly,
uncertainly. Our body language screamed of hesitation and trepidation. But
there was also something underpinning that. A kind of stifled defiance. I have
never seen a graceful clone. Now that would have been a brilliant experiment:
to use a ballerina as a model. I wonder if that’s ever been done and the
results studied.
By the time I was back in
Kathy’s room, she had dozed off. I set a cranberry-orange and a cinnamon-apple
muffin down on her tray. It struck me at that precise moment that I really
wanted to buy her a gift, an extravagant gift, but it had to be something that
she found wonderful. And that’s when I noticed how pretty her hands were. I
don’t know why long, slender fingers are so beautiful, but they are. I’ll wager
everyone agrees. It’s simply one of the very few things I’m sure of. At any
rate, admiring Kathy’s beautiful hands got me to thinking that I wanted to buy
her a ring, a ring with a gemstone. It couldn’t be a birthstone because clones
didn’t have those, but I decided that I could find something that matched her
eyes. I had never set foot into a jewelry shop, but I was determined to do so.
And I had no time to waste because it didn’t look as though Kathy was long for
this world. I had a good spatial eye, so even though I didn’t know the ring
sizes for my own fingers, never having owned a ring, it was evident that
Kathy’s fingers were thinner than mine. I felt confident that finding the right
ring could be done, but how would I be served? Would my patronage be rebuffed?
Kathy stirred, shifted to her
left side, moaned softly and fell back to sleep. I decided to begin my quest
without further delay. When she awoke, she could amuse herself with the
fragrant muffins. And I wouldn’t be long. My scouting began inside a dingy
little shop just a few blocks from Kathy’s recovery facility. It was situated
in a peculiar little lane that consisted of ramshackle residential buildings on
one side and derelict-looking shops on the other. The most unusual aspect of
this passageway, however, was the mixed clientele: regulars and clones. I’d been
to a thrift shop on Crinoline Lane as number of times, and I was confident that
the other shops near it also accepted clone customers. The apartments were
inhabited by down-and-out regulars, who never gave me a second glance. I liked
that. I had noticed a jewellery store three doors to the left of the thrift
shop. The displays in the window weren’t particularly appealing, but I felt
certain that I could afford to make a purchase from that store. Funnily, it was
named GoldFinger’s, all one word with an upper case G and F.
The sign itself was
eye-catching, but the merchandise in the window looked dusty and dull. That
shop had been in existence at least as long as I’d been a carer, and who knows
how much longer. I would have loved to live on Crinoline Lane. Even though the
buildings were in an advanced state of disrepair, the architecture was graceful
and you could see that the lane had once been elegant. It seemed secretive, but
not in a hostile way.
I walked briskly while trying
to appear unhurried. I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself inasmuch as
I was operating outside of the rule book. I didn’t know if carers were allowed
to buy presents for donors; as far as I knew, it hadn’t been done. At least, I
didn’t know anyone who had done it.
The door of GoldFinger’s was
partially opened, which seemed strange for a jewellery store. “Good morning,
love,” A heavyset somewhat elderly woman greeted me warmly from behind the
counter. She had a foreign accent, a European accent, but I couldn’t place it
beyond that. She was standing next to an old man, who I assumed to be her
husband. He had very rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes.
“I’m looking for a ring,” I
blurted. “It’s not for me; it’s for a friend. And I don’t think I can afford
gold, so it’ll have to be silver. And I’d like a blue stone, but not glass.
Something real if possible. A real gemstone.”
“I find,” the elderly jeweler
said, “That’s better to mix and match when you want something special. First,
we find a good setting and then we find the perfect stone for it. But I have
some pretty estate-sale settings that have been waiting in a box. And a few of
them are gold, 10k gold. I think we can agree on a price. What size ring are
you looking for?”
"I have no idea. I don’t know
anything about rings. If you show me a sizing chart, though, I’m sure I can
tell you how much smaller her fingers are than mine.” The jeweler rummaged
inside a drawer below the counter and produced a big metal ring with over
twenty smaller rings attached to it. “This is a ring sizer, our starting point.
Which finger, right hand yes?”
“Middle finger on the right
hand, please.”
In the meantime, the woman had
disappeared behind a colourful brocade curtain, and she asked, “Is it time for
tea, Mr. Gold?”
“Yes, Mrs. Gold.”
I smiled. The jeweller’s name
was Gold. That amused me. I don’t know what possessed me, but I asked Mr. Gold
a very personal question. “What’s it like working with your wife? I mean, very
few couples spend so much time together.”
Mr. Gold laughed. “She’s not my
wife; she’s my sister. This is an old family business. Our father did this work
in Berlin. When Hannah and I immigrated to England, we decided to resurrect the
family tradition. From my long experience, I can say that no one will ever
understand you as well as your original family members. Everyone else is like a
stranger by comparison. So your size, dear, is O. That’s quite standard. This
ring here measures M.”
The ring that Mr. Gold
indicated seemed barely smaller than the one encircling my finger. “Hmmm. I
think maybe it should be smaller than that. Her fingers are really thin.”
“What about this one?” The ring
he showed me looked about right.
“Yes, yes. I think that one
would work.”
“Good. That’s a K. Of course, I
can always size it up, but let’s hope that won’t be necessary. Let me show you
what I have. A moment, please.”
Mr. Gold and his sister
switched places. She set down a large silver tray on the counter. Her hands
were very large and she had rings on six fingers. Each stone was a different
colour, but one stone caught my attention. It was pale, but there was a
pink-amber fire inside of it. It was extraordinary. “What’s that?” I gasped,
almost touching the burning stone.
“This? This is an Australian
opal. It’s a birthstone for October. Wearing your birthstone is supposed to
bring you good luck.”
“I’m not looking for a birthstone,
Mrs. Gold.”
“I know that, dear. Have a
biscuit. Home-baked. Ginger-lemon. How do you take your tea, love?”
“No milk, no sugar. Thank
you.”Mrs.Gold began pouring the tea into a beautiful blue cup decorated with
gold and lavender flowers. Each cop was the same size, and was coloured and
patterned differently. Mine had the gold and lavender lilacs, another had pink
and yellow roses and the third had red and cream hollyhocks. I found them
enchanting.
“Sorry about the chips and
cracks. At our age, we have no motivation to buy new things. We make do with
the old.”
“Oh, I think these cups are
beautiful. At home, all I have are clunky utilitarian-looking mugs in beige and
brown. “I bit into one of Mrs. Gold’s biscuits, which was still warm. I tasted
the ginger and lemon, but also cinnamon and brown sugar and sweet butter. I had
never tasted anything quite so delicious. I felt like crying.
Mr. Gold returned carrying two
wooden boxes, one on top of the other. He set them down on the countertop side
by side and opened them both. One contained rings and a metal stick, the other
multi-coloured small velvet pouches which I assumed held gemstones. He fished
out several rings with the metal stick and lay them down on a piece of black
velvet which his sister had brought out from a drawer. He poked and prodded the
rings for a moment or two until he found one that seemed to please him more
than the others. “Yes, this one. It’s not quite as I remembered it, but it’s a
really fine item. What do you think? Pick it up. Study it. Tell me what you
think. It was a simple-looking gold ring; the band was neither thick nor thin
and the colour looked rich and old. I liked it.
“I think it’s elegant. I like
this gold. It’s not too shiny. But look, one of the claws is broken.”
“Indeed. Don’t worry about
that. I will put in new prongs, four in total. Your ring will be safe and
sound. Now miss, choose a stone, please. I have two different kinds of blue
stones: aquamarine and topaz, but with the gold, you might find another colour
is more striking. I think a blue stone looks good with silver. A cool effect.
Gold looks nice with a warm stone, a garnet maybe, or a dark pink tourmaline.”
My eyes agreed with Mr. Gold’s
words. He had tumbled first a few blue stones onto the black cloth, and even
the darkest one looked somehow insipid next to the gold setting. Then he
delicately removed two stones from a particularly tiny white velvet pouch. The
first was a blood red, and the second a deep pink. “Garnet.” Mr. Gold pointed
at the red stone with his metal stick. “Rubellite tourmaline.” He pointed at the
pinker stone. “Let’s see which one is a more perfect fit.”
His pudgy fingers were
remarkably nimble as he placed the garnet into the empty space. The effect was
spectacular. “Perfect,” he acknowledged, nodding his head. His sister
concurred. “A perfect match, in shape, size and colour. It looks like an
heirloom, Franz, doesn’t it”?
“What do you think, Missy?” Mr.
Gold’s merry blue eyes looked like gemstones themselves.
“I think I can’t possibly
afford this.”
“We’ll see about that. We’ll
see. Let’s try the rubellite now.”
The pink stone also looked
wonderful nestled snugly inside. I couldn’t decide which one. An odd question
popped into my mind: blood or roses?
I began to feel sweetly sleepy.
The tea tasted faintly like peanut butter, the shop was overheated and dusty,
the aroma of biscuits was mouthwatering, Mr. and Mrs. Gold were gracious and
old-worldly. Combined, these conditions made me feel safe for the first time in
my life.
I chose the garnet for its
heirloom quality. Both the Golds seemed pleased with my choice, but I needed to
know the price. I had over 300 £ saved up and I was willing to spend most of it
on the gift if necessary.
“So, how much will it cost?”
It was Hannah Gold who answered
promptly, “One-hundred £, but we can do a layaway if you like. Is that all
right?”
“Yes, that’s fine, but I don’t
have any money on me for a deposit. I can return tomorrow with the entire
amount.”
“Missy,” Mr. Gold shook his
head gently, “that won’t be necessary. I can have the ring set for you by
Friday, and you can pick it up whenever it’s convenient. And don’t worry if it
doesn’t fit your friend. We can resize it for free. And if she doesn’t like it,
we can give you a full refund.”
I should have been suspicious.
Why were they being so nice to me? They knew nothing about me. I blurted, “Mr.
Gold, you know what I am, don’t you?”
It was Hannah Gold who
answered, “Yes, of course, my dear. We know who you are. Oh, not your name of
course. But the rest of it—we know. And we don’t care. No, that’s not true. We
do care, but not in the way that you think. Here’s our card. You can ring us up
when you wish to return.”
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