I loved my Saturday mornings in Armadale - an early tram ride down to Prahran Market then usually a wander up High Street which was then the antique belt of Melbourne. I'm sure most of the shops were antique shops. There was also a place called Marney's Secondhand Wares where I bought, for $65, a genuine Chesterfield settee which I still have today. Several re-coverings later it's always been the most sought after seat in the house.
Across the road from Marneys, up the Glenferrie Road end and very close, if not next door, to The Green Man, where Philip played guitar several times a week, was Kents Antiques. I was entranced by the things in Kents window but one item drew me back time and time again. I stared at it from the street more times than I could count and marvelled at its translucence and colour. I dreaded the day when I might walk past and it would be gone, sold to someone else. It was a lamp, hanging high from the ceiling on a long chain, emerald green and luminous and way out of my price range.
One day as I stared up at 'my' lamp from the street the proprietor himself came out to talk to me. Well, he came and stood on the marble steps and looked at me enquiringly. Dapper always, this time in a navy blue blazer and red bow tie, William Johnson invited me into the store and together we craned our necks to view my lamp. He told me it was Regency Venetian glass and was in fact originally a candle holder, still having traces of candle wax inside. He pointed out the tiny peacocks at the end of each chain that held the lamp in place.
I didn't know at the time that this was a rare privilege and that William Johnson himself could be a bit picky about who he fraternised with and who came into his shop. I told Philip the story and every time we left the Green Man where I frequently went to listen to him play, we'd stop by Kents window so I could gaze upwards and lust after my lamp.
After we married and bought a house amongst the gum trees out in the wilds of Eltham I was a bit wistful about having left the antique belt of High Street behind and especially about the inevitable lost contact with my lamp. Until, that is, one day Philip arrived home with it, packed in masses of straw and brown paper. I was speechless with surprise, filled with love and gratitude, but he was far more pragmatic.
'Well, I couldn't bear the thought of going back to High Street one day to see it had been sold, and you banging on about it for the rest of our lives. So I just bought it."
At this early stage of our lives together, having just bought a house, we had about $11 in the bank between us so this was a massive outlay, which, forever more, we both agreed was worth every cent. It hangs in our bedroom still and I love it beyond measure, and bask in the reminder of Philip's boundless generosity and thoughtfulness.
This month he will have been gone two years. I sometimes lie in bed and wonder how I will fill in the rest of my life without him but this light above me, this treasure, will always remind me of the joy he brought.
~*~
