As Sweet as Honey

38




There was an old florist’s off Marylebone High Street, and its bell clanged as Simon and the stroller entered. The woman who ran the place, Birdie Bee, looked like she had decided to remain sixty-five forever. Her silver hair was pulled back, her face refreshed with lipstick, and she wore a smock from whose pockets peered sprigs of something yellow, and green marking tags. She crouched down to greet Oscar with the grace of a woman who had practiced yoga from the very start. Birdie used to sell seashells by the seashore, as she liked to tell people, in a small store in Blackpool. Then she married, moved to Oxford, and learned the city by bike. There was a photograph of a laughing, smiling girl in a tartan tam on a bicycle with a basket in front. After her husband was killed in the war, she came to London with her children to stay at her sister’s, and bought the shop dirt-cheap. She still rode a bicycle, with clips and a helmet and a basket in front.

In the center of the store, artfully arranged nosegays and bouquets, featuring dried pods and tight rosebuds, were featured on a table. The Westminster Watch described this as the place where the cabinet wives got their arrangements. On the back walls, a profusion of blooms fell from long metal buckets, arranged according to color. Where did one get lilacs this time of year? Yet there they were, cut bunches in water alongside wreaths made of bay leaves and lavender. Roses of every color had their own display, framed by hydrangeas and branches of evergreen.

“Parrot tulips,” she suggested at once when Simon described what he needed. “Look at these, just perfect for autumn,” gesturing to a row of flame-colored flowers with feathery tips. They were startling, maybe too showy, but it was Diwali, and they resembled lanterns in their way. In fact, Chinese lanterns made sense as well, plus winterberry. Birdie wrapped the flowers in brown paper and string and expertly tucked the package into the stroller, wishing him a good dinner as an early firecracker burst somewhere nearby.

Outside, the post-lunch crowd had thickened as shoppers hurried to the butcher’s, the cheese shops, the patisseries. World cities never slept, but they had rhythms, waves controlled by business hours. Two major rush hours, a surge during lunchtime. Other than that, it was open to tourists and the self- or unemployed, who tarried on the sidewalks, waited at the gates for the guards to change or for a glimpse of the prime minister. He waited to cross the street with Oscar; his heart was immense. A year ago, he was miserable, about work, about love, and then the devastation of Archer’s death. Now, he had a marvelous life: a wife, a son. At the palace, the flag was up.