Sorcha’s stocking up like clothes are going out of fashion – which they may be
FORGET GLENDALOUGH or any of that lot – if it’s peace and quiet that melts your Magnum, the place to go this summer is Sorcha’s boutique in the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, where it’s possible to pass an entire day without seeing another, I don’t know, human being?
I first realised that the shop was in trouble when Donna, her last assistant – stunning but thick as a novel – managed to pass her Mathematics and Theoretical Physics finals while studying during her down-time and Sorcha ended up getting CVs from, like, seven or eight of her friends.
Anyway, the only reason I tipped in there on Friday morning was to tell her the news about my new gaff in Rosa Parks (“Rosa Became The Person She Could Truly Be, Only By Catching That Bus – And You Should Too! Only 756 Apartments Remain!”) and you can imagine my surprise, roysh, when I found her unpacking boxes of what turned out to be new stock. We’re not talking shit you’d wash the car with after one wear either. We’re talking silk maxi dresses by Missoni, we’re talking white knit cordigans by Alexander Wang, we’re talking classic minis by Phillip Lim in zesty ochre.
"Er, what's this?" was my opener and of course she was, like, straight on the defensive. "They're Harem pants with button cuffed hems," she went. "Moho is the new Boho – you'd know that if you took even the slightestinterest in current affairs." I was like, "What I mean is, why are you getting in all this new clobber, especially with the way things are going?" I looked around. I've been at autopsies with more life. "Sorcha, you couldn't sell my used boxers in here for a euro a throw."
It was then that she ended up, like, totallylosing it with me? "So what do you suggest I do?" she went. "Change the name of the shop to Recession Busters?" This at a level that split my basic eardrums. "Give up trying to offer people something that's a little bit different, a little bit outré?"
I was there, "Outré?" and she was like, "Yes, Ross, outré," and then she looked at me with the same look she gave me the day she caught me in the feathers with our Belorussian nanny. "You want me to become just another HM, don't you?" I was like, "Sorcha, that's ridiculous." What I actually want is for her to stop spending my five hundred yoyos a week in vagimony trying to keep this sinking ship afloat. Which I couldn't say to her, of course, because she was having one of her Grey's Anatomymoments. "You do," she went, turning her back on me, suddenly fiddling with the clasp of a Marc Jacob scallop-print clutch. Ronan's idea of burning the place and making it look like an electrical fault was beginning to appeal to me more and more.
I was like, "I'm just not sure it's what people want anymore – with the whole, I suppose, economything?" She turned around again slowly. "Have you any idea," she went, "how many hours it takes to hand-sew a designer bag like this? Of course you don't. And you probably don't careeither. Just like nobody else cares about actual quality anymore. Oh my God, the names that have disappeared from this street – do I have to list them for you, Ross? DoI?"
I was there, “Honestly, no.”
“Genuine heroes of mine,” she went, “whose shops are out there, Ross, boarded up. Or turned into mobile phone shops, which attract all sorts. Do you ever stop and think, what kind of a world have we brought our daughter into?”
We were too busy talking to notice – of all things – a customer, standing just behind me, holding an Elie Tahari Renita dress in fountain. Sorcha immediately put on her business face. "That is sucha lovely item," she went. "Layered ruffles are soRight Now."
"How much is it?" this bird went, obviously in no mood to be bullshitted. "The price is actually onit?" Sorcha went. "It's five hundred and eighty euros." The bird was there, "I know what it says. I'm asking what's your best price?" It might be my imagination, roysh, but I'm pretty sure three or four balls of tumbleweed blew through the shop in the sixty seconds of silence that followed.
"My bestprice?" Sorcha eventually went. "What do you think I'm selling here, livestock?" I turned to the bird and told her it'd probably be wise to leave. Sorcha made a sudden grab for the dress, telling her that someone who'd even ask a question like that didn't deserve to have such an – oh my God– amazing creation. The bird pulled at exactly the same time, pointing out that it's supposedto be, like, a recession and you can probably guesswhat happened next? The sound of woven polyester ripping, then all hell breaking loose. Sorcha made a lunge for her and it took every bit of strength I had to hold her back. Which is saying something. I hate to brag but Jerry Flannery's been told he's going to need a new hip by the time he's forty because of a tackle I hit him with in an Ireland trials match.
“I’m going to kill her! I’m going to kill her!” Sorcha was screaming, over and over again, as the bird – suddenly discovering sense – moonwalked out of the shop, as if in tribute to the great Mícheál McLeithreas himself.
I held Sorcha until her body went limp, then she cried for, like, an hour on my shoulder. She asked me what was happening to the world. I didn’t have any answers. She said she had a dream last night that we were sitting on top of a hill – her, Honor and me – and we were looking out at nothing but fields, as far as the eye could see, and I turned to our daughter, all misty-eyed, and told her, “You know, I remember when this was all apartments.”
rossocarrollkelly.ie
