The Berbice Chair

Finsbury Park, North London, 1986

LOT NO. 33 WAS a beautiful wicker chair. Alicia felt attracted to it the moment she saw it. It was love at first sight. The chair had an elegant sloping back, a bit like a modern reclining chair, and a long seat - so that when you sat in it, your body slid down into a half-sleeping position. The wicker was woven in diamond shapes and had a tinge of yellow, like hay; the armrests, made of teak, cradled your arms from the elbow to the fingertips.

Best of all were two discreet hinges below the armrests where two planks, rather like flat boat oars, were attached; they could be released and pulled forward to extend the arms. It was this part of the chair that was most interesting to Alicia, because when you swung out the oars you could also make them meet in the middle, forming a bridge where the sitter could rest their legs and watch the world go by.

It was not too expensive either. On the contrary, there were only two other buyers interested in the chair, and so as to waste no time, Alicia immediately bid a full forty pounds even though, as she found out later, her main rival had only intended to pay a straight twenty.

Still, she told herself that she had a bargain and that if she could sell it for fifty, she would have done all right. Alicia's second-hand shop on the Stroud Green Road had existed at number 72 for over fifty years, and during that time she had seen a thousand clients come and go. In the beginning, they were mainly the unemployed or poor immigrants - and it pleased her to think that the items she sold were helpful to others. Everything was reasonably priced and was mostly going to a good home.

As time moved on, she began to see a new type of client. They had a little more money in their pockets; sometimes ate out in the Turkish restaurant three doors down; shopped less in the greengrocers and more in the supermarkets, where the price was sometimes double for the same carrots and greens. They started to call Alicia's stock vintage and demanded more and more curious and exotic things to buy.

Once, she bought an African rosewood mask in West Green Road for ten pounds and sold it in her shop for twenty, although one of her suppliers said that he could have got it for a fiver. Soon, Alicia found that she was becoming more, how shall we say, 'au fait' with the goods that she sold. A set of silver spoons from Hampstead, owned by some Lady or other, could push up the price. On the other hand, a door knocker from the home of a mass murderer could fetch three times what she asked. That is why she began to go to auctions; after all, any good antiques dealer, as she now called herself, should surely know their pieces and what they were worth on the open market. But the story of the chair eluded her.

'Sometimes, something just pulls at your heart-strings,' she told a customer looking for French perfume bottles. He nodded politely and pointed to a deep purple glass bottle with a delicate lid that had a thin gold ring etched around the rim. His eyes glowed when he held it up to the light.

'Is that what they call instinct?' she continued. 'You don't know why and you don't care - you just have a feeling that you have got to have it.'

However, things did not go quite as smoothly as she had anticipated once she brought the chair home. She placed it in the shop window, believing that it would be an attraction for passing trade, but people walked straight past the chair, just ignoring it, not stopping even to admire its beauty. There was one man - shy, perhaps - who walked past three times in a row. The first on his way to somewhere, the second as if he were on his way back, and the third ... well, back again. He didn't stop, just looked, looked and looked again. He was Indian, no longer young, and not quite like the other Indians she was used to. She overheard him greeting someone and noticed that he had a West Indian accent. He was stylish, she thought, with his slicked-back hair, but in an awkward sort of way.

Perplexed, she stood outside the shop and tried to see the chair through the eyes of passers-by. She cleaned the glass inside and out, polished the wooden arms and pulled out the oars to display them, but still not a single customer even came in to enquire about it.

As summer approached, she put it outside in the courtyard and invited people to take a seat, but they did not stop.

Four weeks passed and still the chair was not sold. So, Alicia decided to up her game. She put the chair back in the window, and placed a large floor lamp on one side of it. The lampstand matched the teak, and the green hexagonal lampshade with tassels around the edge complemented the chair. It gave it a colonial look, which was in fashion. On the other side, she set a small round dark wood coffee table. It had white elephant carvings on the tabletop and down each of the four legs. At the back of the chair, she positioned a lush green palm tree in a copper pot and spread out the palms so that they dangled lazily - like a scene from the tropics - over the top.

She was gratified when a few passers-by did stop by the window to have a look at the new arrangement, and when a tall, clean-shaven man with a leather satchel slung over his shoulder entered the shop, she stood up from behind her desk expectantly and led him to the chair.

'Feel how smooth the arms are,' she said, running her fingers along the grain. She invited him to do the same, but as it turned out, and much to Alicia's disappointment, he wanted to buy the lamp. So now she found herself twenty pounds richer but still with no sale of the chair.

By September, Alicia decided it was time for another new approach. She replaced the floor lamp with a table lamp and rummaged around at the back of the shop, digging out three long pinewood louvre doors. She painted each one in a dark wood stain and then went to see the manager of the hardware store next door. She tumbled through boxes of nails and screws and eyed the hammers and drills fastened on the wall. The manager was already serving a dusty, tired builder with paint splashes on his blue overalls. He looked up and winked at her as she stood patiently by the plungers for his attention. He was Cypriot, as she recalled, and on quiet days he would bring her slices of warm baklava bathed in rose-flavoured honey.

They discussed her plans for a few moments before she bought nine gold hinges and a slim screwdriver with a blue translucent handle. She fastened the hinges to the louvre doors and out of nothing had created a stylish divider which she placed at the rear of the chair behind the palm tree.

She then stood back and admired her handiwork - but felt there was still something missing. On the corner of Stroud Green Road, not five minutes' walk from The Emporium, as she now called her business, was a junk shop. It looked tatty from the outside but inside was an Aladdin's Cave of dusty tables and mirrors and odds and ends. Looking around, she wondered why the owner thought that he would be able to sell a...