The Chemist Shop

It was a London pharmacist who found the room apparently. Many years ago he'd bought a rambling town-house, with rooms all over the place, in one of the old Georgian parts of the city. At the back it faced on to a yard enclosed by other uneven town-houses also, a yard that you wouldn't know existed unless you lived around it. One of the reasons he'd bought this pleasing home was that the estate-agent had told him that he thought it used to be owned by one of his profession, well a chemist actually, some centuries ago.

Then when it came time to sell-up - the pharmacist had decided to retire to St Ives by the sea - and with the furniture already on its way in the van, he walked round the old home to give it a fond good-bye. Closing the door to the little laundry-room he heard a dull rumble. Opening it again he was faced with a part-collapsed wall and most of a wooden door behind. Curious now, the pharmacist pulled away the loose plaster and found that the door opened still. Behind it lay an old chemist-shop.

Complete with two counters, sets of scales, all sorts of curious vessels, and moulded shelves of small glass bottles containing long obsolete powders or tinctures, the room also had a glass-paned window along one side, blanked-off with an outer brick wall now. It was as if, right at the end, the old house wanted to show off its one secret to this pleasing pharmacist.

Then he saw the anachronism; the poster advertising a forthcoming concert by Jimi Hendrix at The Royal Albert Hall. There was writing over it. He read of a decorator; the man, well really a boy so it seemed, had stumbled upon the room perhaps half a century ago, been mesmerized by it, then when his excitement had calmed down, the boy had clearly decided to tell no-one about the room and to plaster the entrance over again.

The boy had signed himself on the note. And quite shocked at the realization, the pharmacist realized that he knew of the man; in fact he was the decorator who did all the local work, the pharmacist had passed his yard with its sign many times, a man who like himself had only recently retired and more, whose yard was scarcely one street away.

He would reveal this lost gem, a little piece of untouched commercial London history, and he would meet this old decorator and talk to him of his former teenage find. He locked-up and set off along the short walk; a pleasant rain was just beginning to fall yet it was a bright evening. And by the time he'd reached the old man's house he'd decided to walk on. Tomorrow he would plaster over the door himself. He'd leave the little shop to sleep for another century perhaps.