Sands of Time. Barbara Erskine

was stunning.

      Then Janet hit a problem. The trouble was she couldn’t bring herself to wear her lovely new clothes outside the house. However much the image was one she had dreamed of, she just didn’t have the courage to step outside dressed like that. Disparaging phrases like ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ floated through her head, phrases which she was sure no longer made sense in a world where everyone, except perhaps her, could please themselves as to how they looked. The image just did not fit her, however much she longed for it to.

      She did wear the dress when Annette came over to see her – their bond in the dressing-room had gelled instantaneously into friendship – and she felt exotic and free in a world full of new possibilities. But when Annette and her bubbling enthusiasm went home Janet, crossly aware that this was Steven’s legacy but finding herself incapable of overcoming her inhibition, guiltily crept back into the boring anonymity of her demure image.

      On one visit Annette showed Janet how to rinse her hair with nettles and rosemary and how to scent her skin with rose and jasmine (making herbal potions was her hobby when the dress shop was shut), but when she had gone home Janet angrily brushed her hair back into its neat, permed order, and with the neatness came her old submissive, demure personality. And it made her furious with herself.

      Her life might have gone on like that were it not that one Saturday Annette persuaded her to go to the natural healing exhibition in the town hall. It was not at all the sort of thing Janet would normally have gone to, but Annette was selling some of her prettily bottled mixtures there. Janet desperately wanted to wear her new dress and was perplexed as to why it felt so wrong. She took it off and decided that, as it was so hot, Annette wouldn’t find a floaty summer dress – demure, but cool – too odd. But she went convinced she wouldn’t enjoy herself.

      The place was packed. She began to wander around and was soon lost among the crowds whose dress, she noticed, was completely eclectic. Jeans, dresses, skirts. Long, short, mini. Anyway, you could hardly see what people wore because of the crowds. Comforted by the lack of conformity and the general bonhomie, she forgot to be demure and soon found she was enjoying herself enormously. She loved the sheer dottiness of it all. She loved the people and the things. She bought herself a beautiful ring with a healing amethyst set in knotted silver, a book of cookery recipes to keep her young, and, when at last she found Annette in a small corner stall between a man selling biorhythm charts and another selling runes, she bought herself some bath-oil in a blue bottle tied with a pale pink ribbon. She watched demonstrations of Tai Chi, yoga and Japanese sword-fighting, and stood absorbed by an Adonis who was practising inversion therapy by hoisting a beautiful woman, mercifully clad in jeans, upside down into the air and balancing her on his hands while he lay on his back and peered up into her cleavage with a look of serene transcendence. She had a cup of herbal tea and a flapjack with sufficient roughage to pave the town square, and then wandered over to look at the Buddhist stand.

      The tall man in charge sported the ubiquitous ponytail favoured by many of the stall holders, but his face was a contrast to the rest of his appearance. There was an aesthetic set to his features that intrigued her. She watched him surreptitiously for a moment. He was being assisted by a pretty young girl. Unconsciously, Janet ran a wistful hand through her hair, ruffling it from neat and demure to wild and untidy before she drifted closer.

      ‘Are you interested in singing bowls?’

      She suddenly realised he was talking to her. She blushed and looked down at the small pinky-pewter-coloured bowl he was holding out to her. ‘Go on. Have a go.’ He smiled, a grave, soul-searching smile which seemed to link his eyes to hers. She felt a flicker of sexual excitement in the pit of her stomach – something that had not happened for years, even with Steven.

      She smiled back. ‘How do you have a go at a bowl?’

      He shook his head. ‘I knew you weren’t listening.’ He produced a short wooden baton and, balancing the bowl on the palm of his hand, tapped it smartly. It gave off a deep bronze note like a bell. Then, as she watched and listened in amazement, she saw him draw the baton around the rim of the bowl, stroking the metal until the note caught and rose and steadied, on and on and on, weird and wild and beautiful.

      She listened, enchanted.

      He stopped abruptly, silencing the bowl with his other hand. ‘Do you want a go?’

      ‘You mean I could make it sing?’ She felt breathless and strangely emotional.

      He nodded. He handed her the bowl and the stick, and for a moment she felt the warmth and power of his fingers over hers. And then the bowl was singing. She could feel the vibration of the metal through her palm, up her arm, into her very soul. She went on and on, stroking out the different sounds, until at last she was too tired to go on and she let the singing die away.

      He was watching her again, having served another two customers in the interim. ‘So?’ He smiled.

      She wasn’t sure whether the spell had been cast by him or his bowl. ‘I want to buy it.’

      Instead of looking pleased, his expression clouded. ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ It was expensive – she had glanced at the price on the little sticker – but not that expensive. Anyway, what price that kind of magic?

      ‘What did it do for you?’ He still seemed doubtful.

      ‘It transported me. I could see oceans and mountains. Snows. Skies. Towering clouds.’ She paused, embarrassed, wondering why she had said all that, and then realised it was true. For several long minutes the noisy, stuffy hall with its crowds of people and mingled smells of incense and vegetarian hot dogs and talking and laughter and music and Tannoy announcements had faded into non-existence. She shrugged. ‘It would be coming to a good home.’ Why did she feel she had to justify wanting to buy it?

      He had put out his hands for the bowl but she didn’t want to let it go. She cradled it against her chest possessively.

      He laughed. ‘It’s all right. I was only going to wrap it for you. Look, they come in their own special bag.’ He glanced up and their eyes met again.

      That was all. He put the special striped bag inside a white carrier bag. She signed the credit card slip, filled in her name and address for his mailing list and at last, with no excuse to stay longer, fled the exhibition, exhausted but strangely triumphant.

      The bowl was alive. She stood it on the chest in the corner of her living-room and looked at it in awe, then, gently, tapped it with the wooden stick. The note rang on and on, vibrating down through the wood of the chest, up into the air, into the very walls of the cottage. She sat looking at the card which had come with it, describing its history in Tibet and how it was made of a secret amalgam of seven metals, then she picked up the bowl, held it on her hand and made it sing. Later she put on her new dress, ruffled her hair, kicked off her shoes and danced alone in the vibrating silence of the room.

      It was almost no surprise when he knocked on the front door. ‘I’m sorry to call round. My daughter forgot to give you back your credit card. I thought you’d like it back at once.’

      He paused, eyeing her, and she realised he had been expecting to see the demure ex-housewife who had bought his bowl. She laughed in delight. The woman he was seeing instead was barefoot, beautiful, exotic, a confident goddess with eyes that shone and skin that glowed.

      There was a moment of silence. He couldn’t see the bowl but he could feel the vibrations in the air. It had been singing to her. Ten years before, when his wife died and he had made his first trip to Nepal, he had felt that excitement himself for the first time and he had been hooked.

      He held out his hand with the credit card. As she took it their fingers touched.

      ‘You looked so …’ He floundered. ‘So unlikely a person to own a bowl. But now …’

      She laughed. ‘But now you’ve caught me as my real self. Thank you for bringing me my card. It was silly of me to forget it.’ She couldn’t leave it at that. Not now. ‘Can I offer you a drink to say thank you?’

      He