Free Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest

diners, pouring wine, shaking napkins. In the open kitchen white-hatted chefs were busy. As she watched, a man in a tall chef’s hat and carrying a large book entered the back of the restaurant through a door that he locked after him. The Executive Chef , Allison thought. Maybe tomorrow’s menu is written in the book. Or the provisions required at the markets. He will, of course, shop for these himself. The man looked up and saw Allison watching. He walked towards her, his face lit up with a strange smile. The intimate interior light in the room made his one brown eye glow but the other, blue, eye was cold and empty. Allison turned away quickly, pleased that she had been acknowledged.
    Is it Rome or Paris? Allison asked herself. Not London, I think. Maybe it’s Madrid, it’s certainly warm enough.
    Back she went down Wickton Street, Siddon Rock, swinging her skirt and smiling, and all the while the strange light wavered around her. Back past the brightly lit windowsof the Farmers’ Co-op, devoid of the usual bags of sugar and flour and now stacked high in a display of baroque excess. An impossible pyramid of brown eggs towered over walls of cheeses of all sorts: gruyère, camembert, gorgonzola nestled side by side with bowls of olives, stacks of onions and bright green and red vegetables and grey herbs. The picture it made, Allison said as she walked by without stopping, should be an exhibit in an art gallery.
    As Allison drew closer to Meakins’ Haberdashery and Ladies’ & Men’s Apparel the light became stronger and began to flash with short and urgent beats, as if caught and reflected in a rotating mirror, urging her on. She refused it, purposefully slowing to a longer, more languorous pace and, as she reached the edge of the display window, paused for a moment before stepping close. From somewhere outside the lights, dogs howled.
    Yes , Allison breathed, oh yes. There in the window stood a tall, thin model wearing the dress from the photograph on the wall of the dressing room. In splendid isolation the model changed poses, holding each one briefly as if for a fashion photographer. As she moved, the dress took on a life of its own and the full skirt flowed and swayed from a tight bodice cinched at the waist, swirling so that white lace petticoats were exposed under the demure surface of grey faille. Allison trembled, she could see nothing else, just the dress and the posing model; all desire was held in the moment.
    This is the House of Dior . This is Avenue Montaigne. This is Paris.
    The flashing, pulsing light softened and slowed to an occasional fluctuation, and in the display window the posing Parisienne in the Dior gown faded away, and plaster models wearing Alistair Meakins’ choices for the ladies of Siddon Rock appeared in stiff and formal postures. Allison smiled tremulously at them, but found she could not speak to reassure them of their worth.
    Quietly now, Allison walked on. At Barber’s Butchery & Bakery a charcuterie and a pâtisserie competed for display space, fading in and out in slow and ever-diminishing ripples; but she merely glanced in the window as she passed. Next door in the telephone exchange Tommy Hicks dreamed an impatient dream of long-legged dancers clothed only in feathers and spangles, as Allison turned the corner into the soft dust and dead grasses of the back lane leading to Alistair’s home.
    Allison discarded her dusty shoes on the back verandah and went into the closed-up house. She relit the candles in the bedroom, unfastened the long row of buttons on the crêpe de chine frock and stepped out of it. Then she removed the hat, and as she put it tenderly into its box the reflected flicker of candlelight in the mirror drew her gaze and she glanced up. There in the glass was a short, soft looking, middle-aged man with greying hair and garish make-up melting down his face. Black silk underwear, crumpled from the heat of his plump body, cut