Read A Time for Friends for Free Online

to finish and it was a treat to spend time in the capital and go shopping in fancy
Grafton Street, although Roches Stores on Henry Street was her favourite department store of all.
    ‘Perfect. We’ll plan it when I bring the curtain material down. Love ya, Mam.’
    ‘I love you too, son,’ Nancy returned and Jonathan smiled as he hung up the phone. He would take Nancy to BT and buy her a new outfit, although she would protest as she always did
and say Clerys or Roches Stores would suit her just as well. He would bring her to those stores too. She particularly enjoyed shopping in the basement section of Roches, which had everything from
china to bed linen, and other household goods and knick-knacks. On her last shopping spree there both of them had bought a set of little forks in a round wooden barrel to eat cobs of buttered
sweetcorn with. ‘Ever so posh,’ Nancy had enthused, debating whether to buy fish knives as well. ‘I don’t be giving swanky dinner parties like you do.’
    ‘Why don’t you cook a dinner for some of your quilting friends? If everyone hosted a dinner every so often, it would be something for you all to look forward to,’ Jonathan
suggested, tossing the knives into the shopping basket.
    ‘Aren’t we all fed up cooking? That’s why we go
out
for a meal,’ Nancy retorted, putting the knives back on the shelf.
    ‘Mother, you’re absolutely right!’ Jonathan agreed. ‘Let’s go to the Shelbourne for afternoon tea, and we can go to the pictures and have dinner afterwards in The
Commons or the Troc, and spot the celebs and theatre folk and discuss what they’re wearing. I love it when you pick holes in their crooked seams and hanging hems.’ He grinned.
    ‘Well honestly, Jonathan, some of those designers should be ashamed of the finishes on their clothes. Clothes that cost a fortune, I might add,’ Nancy declared. ‘I’d be
embarrassed to send someone off wearing a dress or jacket with threads hanging and seams and necklines and armholes puckered. Some of those designers are right chancers, I can tell you, looking
down their noses at us when they go to London and get too big for their boots. Remember one of those snooty ones, in the sixties, who designed for the jet set, and she was passing off the lace
crochet as her own. And I happen to know the lady who made some of those pieces. Beautiful intricate work and she never got the recognition for it,’ Nancy said indignantly. ‘When you
make it big with your interior design don’t forget where you came from,’ she added, wagging her finger good-humouredly.
    ‘I won’t, Mam,’ he had said, fondly enveloping her in a bear hug right in the middle of Roches Stores basement.
    Jonathan sighed as he filled the kettle. His mother had such faith in him. She had always encouraged his love of decorating as a child and let him wield the paintbrush, at first in their small
back yard when there was more whitewash on him than on the walls. But as he’d grown older she’d taught him how to wallpaper and paint, and how to sew on her trusty Singer sewing
machine. He had a flair for colour, and knew instinctively how a couple of bright cushions here, or a lampshade there, would lift a room and coordinate the colours on the walls and curtains. One of
the best presents he had ever got was a subscription she had bought for him for
Interiors & Design
and he had devoured each edition, cutting out pictures and articles that particularly
inspired him. He had folders, kept meticulously, divided and subdivided into furniture, fixtures and fittings, materials, colour schemes, and miscellaneous. They were his pride and joy. His best
friend Alice shared his passion and they had spent many happy hours when they were children building doll’s houses from the shoeboxes from her father’s shop and decorating them to their
hearts’ content. Nancy loved to watch the pair of them sitting in front of the fire in the kitchen on a wintry afternoon,