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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
Lina Townend, the orphaned natural daughter of somebody, somewhere, has been in care all her life. For the first time, at nineteen, she's pretty happy, living with kind-hearted antique dealer Griff, who combines the roles of grandfather and employer. But there is still something missing: she wants to find her real family, despite Griff's fears that she may uncover things she'd rather not know. When Lina comes across a page from a rare sixteenth century book, "Nature Rerum", which she remembers from early childhood, she snaps up the chance to buy it. She has a vivid memory of being taken as a child to a stately home, where a man she believes must have been her father gave her this book to keep her quiet. If she can locate the book, maybe she can find her father. However, in the weeks that follow, a series of violent burglaries and attacks make Lina realise that what she found might have been more than just a link to her father. Undeterred, she carries on in her dangerous search, but will it lead her to happiness, or bitter disappointment?
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Drawing the Line
JUDITH CUTLER
For Alan Miller of Applecross Antiques – a dealer on the side of the angels.
Contents
Chapter One
QUALITY ANTIQUES FAIR. They didn’t intend you to miss did they? It was AA-signposted for miles. The trouble was, once you’d got off the road, you had to drive all the way round what seemed like an entire farm just to reach the car park. Detling. The windiest exhibition site in the world, according to Griff. It’s really Kent’s county agricultural show ground, which might explain why they expect hardier souls than antiques dealers.
‘Go and don your thermals, Lina, ducky,’ Griff had said that morning as we sat at the breakfast table. ‘It may be almost May but put plenty on. Layers, that’s what you need at Detling. Layers, and plenty of them. None of your crop-tops showing your belly-button.’ He waved a pudgy finger. ‘Or you’ll get a spare tyre, you know you will! Did I ever tell you…’
I knew it was rubbish, of course, Griff’s theory that if you exposed flesh to the cold you’d grow a layer of fat to keep yourself warm. Blubber, he called it. All the same, I’d pick out a couple of sweaters and a body warmer. Better blubber you could take off at will than blubber that you couldn’t. And I really couldn’t risk cold hands, not when I was handling china all day. I’d rather have looked beautifully svelte for Marcus but the chances were he wouldn’t have noticed anyway: he’d be too busy keeping his eyes open for customers.
‘My dear child,’ Griff interrupted himself suddenly, placing his teacup with an emphatic little tap on a saucer that was equally fine china but from a different century, ‘milk in Earl Grey! Didn’t your mother teach you anything?’ Before I could say anything, he got up, going bright red and wringing his hands. ‘Silly me! No, worse than silly! I’m so sorry.’
I got up too, to give him a hug. ‘You’ve been better than any mother,’ I declared, quite truthfully. ‘Any of mine, anyway. Apart from Iris, maybe – and the best thing she ever did was introduce me to you.’
How many mothers had I had? Not ‘real’ ones, of course. Foster mothers. Iris had been the last in the line. Halfway through my stay with her they’d decided she was really too old to be fostering, but she’d kicked up such a stink when they suggested I should move for the eighth or ninth time that they let me stay. She had hated the idea of casting me off alone at sixteen, when social services decided people in care were officially ready to tackle the world, so I’d stayed, paying what little rent I could afford from my earnings in a number of jobs that Griff described as sweated labour. When I was eighteen and we both reluctantly agreed it really was time for me to move on, she’d somehow persuaded Griff to take me on as his live-in assistant. They’d been friends ever since she’d been his landlady when, as he put it, he’d trodden the boards. If she was anything like she’d been to me, she’d have been the softest touch around, so kind that you really didn’t want to take advantage of her and felt awful if you did. The deal was that Griff would teach me all he knew about antiques, which was a great deal, and I would do the housework, which in a cottage like this was very little. Although the scales were balanced heavily in my favour, the deal suited us both very well. What memories I had of less happy arrangements were polished over, if not quite wiped out, like the scratch marks on this table.
But there was one memory I did wish I could bring back. Occasionally a tantalising snippet of a visit I must have paid with my birth mother slipped into my mind, but it would slide out as quickly as it had come. I had a little box of treasures some kind social worker had preserved: a few photos of people I didn’t recognise, a handful of books Mother must have read to me, a couple of strings of beads that made Griff shake his head and tut, and what I suppose must have been her engagement ring. The stone was so tiny and of such poor quality it spoke of a young man – my father? – with more hopes than money. When Mother’d died – no, there was no drama about it, much as I’d dreamed there might be in my early teens – in a bus crash, there were no aunts or grandparents to take on her toddler. If the giver of the ring had still been around, he didn’t offer either.
‘Iris is a dear soul,’ Griff agreed. ‘But her ways with tea and coffee are truly deplorable.’ He produced half a lemon from the fridge. He slipped the merest sliver into another china cup – this one Victorian Spode – and returned the lemon to the fridge. The knife went straight on to the washing-up pile. No dishwasher for Griff. No point, really: all our meals at home were served on finest china, absolutely not guaranteed to be dishwasher-proof. The only difference between our china and the sort you see in museums or stately homes was that theirs matched. Nothing in our kitchen matched anything. Nothing in the cottage matched anything else, come to that. Perhaps that was why it was so cosy and homely. Griff always referred to himself as a snapper up of unconsidered trifles – ‘but at least you’ll never find my hand in a placket,’ he’d giggle. ‘A Winter’s Tale, dear heart, and King Lear, both plays you say you’ll get round to reading one of these days. Whatever are our schools coming to if they don’t encourage you young things to read the Bard?’
‘Not the schools’ fault,’ I sighed. ‘I wasn’t at any of them very long.’
‘If you’d spent a lifetime at the best, I don’t suppose you’d have read enough Shakespeare. Certainly not Chaucer in the original. Now that’s what I call a cup of tea.’
He came back to the table, helping himself to toast from a silver Christopher Dresser rack I’d picked up for him last Christmas. As always, he turned it so I could see a different facet. ‘Details, dear heart. Look at those details. Not that you haven’t an eye for them. But occasionally you let your mind wander. Now, for instance. We have to leave the house in fifteen minutes and you haven’t even started your coffee, child!’
It was a very twenty-first-century cafetière, but the coffee it produced ended up in an eighteenth-century Derby can. No, nothing to do with tins of peas. It’s the term for tiny handleless cups. Griff had been right to wean me from crock mugs: the coffee really did taste better. Honestly.
If I’d been on my own and in a hurry like we were now, I’d have scraped marg out of a tub and with the same knife scooped jam from the jar. But Griff held that if one got sloppy in little things, one could get sloppy in big ones. So despite our haste, I passed him butter in a Shelley dish and marmalade in a glass saucer of unknown provenance. The marmalade’s provenance was immaculate. It came from our own kitchen, made from genuine Seville oranges cooked in Griff’s own jam kettle. I didn’t know how it compared with other people’s marmalade, but it sure as hell beat the supermarket stuff.
We might have been on the road a minute or two later than scheduled, because you can’t just dump old china in the sink and leave it to soak. The village was still asleep, however, as I pulled the van on to the main street. Bredeham might be a cosy village, but Griff still made sure we locked the van up in the garage every night; the six-foot high garden gates were electronically controlled. Like the shop – a retired lady called Mrs Hatch was looking after that today – the white Kent boarded cottage and its tiny garden had the latest in security systems. As Griff pointed out, it wasn’t that we had much worth stealing, it was the damage criminals could do while they were hunting, or, worse, their revenge when they’d realised that there was nothing worth stealing.
Griff double-checked every lock behind me, pithering around until I was ready to scream with frustration. It wasn’t as if I was driving a nippy little sports car and could make up for delays by putting my foot down once we’d picked up the motorway.
If I was anxious, Griff didn’t seem to give a damn. He sat in the passenger seat waving his hands in the sort of gestures he probably used to make on the stage. He’d point at the countryside, admittedly very pretty at this time of year, and come up with snippets of poetry to do with cherry trees and others heavy with blossom. Being Griff he didn’t observe that after a day bent under wind like this the trees would shed all their lovely petals, littering roads and fields alike with confetti.
‘I told you our late start wouldn’t matter,’ Griff observed complacently. ‘The gods have blessed us with virtually empty roads.’
They had, and I wasn’t about to argue. The roads in the south east have got stuck in some time warp, narrow and twisty, like in some Fifties movie. Don’t ask me why major towns should be joined by winding lanes, not decent dual carriageways. But then, don’t ask me why once flourishing towns like Dover and Hastings should have become so out at elbows that no sensible holiday-maker would want to stop off there when they’re within spitting distance of France. Perhaps that was why they’d built the M20 and the M2 – to make it easier for people to spend all their money in Europe, not at home. At least the M20 was a boon to two of Kent’s residents, Griff and me. Though we didn’t go to every antiques fair, not by any means, we set up our stall at enough to need motorway access to major sites all over the country. Did the M25 help or hinder our progress? That was a matter of frequent, if not deep debate. OK, bickering.
Detling was only on our doorstep – spitting distance, as Iris would have said. Our stall there – it was really Griff’s but in business just like at home he treated me more like a partner than an employee – was at least indoors. It was in one of the couple of big halls, a couple of hundred yards apart. Ours was no better than a barn really, matting covering uneven bare earth. Whenever anyone moaned, someone would point out that floorboards would be much less convenient for the usual occupants, sheep or cattle.
Outdoors, even in this arctic blast, were dozens of poor saps of stallholders who couldn’t rake up the indoor pitch fee. They smiled and waved cheerily as we lugged our boxes and they lugged theirs. But we knew they’d keep at least as anxious an eye on the weather as they did for punters: if you’re selling rugs or upholstery the odd April shower can be a pain, a downpour a disaster. Most of them were much lower in the food chain, however, selling all sorts of ‘collectables’ that Griff despised – especially when people bought them instead of the proper stuff we had on sale.
Our beady eyes wouldn’t be on punters yet. There’s always a couple of hours for dealers only – or Joe Public rich enough not to worry about the hiked up admission charges designed to keep him out. First we set up. When you watched Griff it was obvious why he’d needed a young fit assistant: maybe Iris really had been thinking of him as much as of me. He was getting very stiff about the knees, and he always found some excuse to let me handle the most delicate stuff. He wouldn’t admit it, but one or two of his knuckles looked shinier than the others, and if he thought no one was looking he’d rub a finger as I would if I’d shut one in the door. His stage photos suggested he must be nearer seventy than sixty. I made sure I tackled not just the expensive china but also any heavy lifting. I might be only five foot two and fool people into thinking I’m delicate, but I’m whippy with it and can lift weight for weight with most of the dealers here.
As soon as we could, we started prowling around, buying here, selling there. Yes, to other dealers. Sometimes a stallholder specialising in, say, eighteenth-century glassware would have picked up a Victorian first edition, or an Art Deco person wanted to shift some Derby. So swaps or little deals were taking place wherever you looked. My brief was to look out for Victorian china, and some early twentieth-century pottery called Ruskin, which a collector down in Devon was after and was willing to pay silly prices for next time we were at West Point. It was silly prices that kept Griff and me in marmalade.
Not as silly as the labels put on that row of teddy bears. If they’d been Stieff or Merrythought, they would have been good quality toys in the first place. These might have been lucky to claim their origins in Woolworths: why didn’t people realise that tat was tat, whatever its age? I wouldn’t have paid in bottle tops what these people were asking for in pounds.
Griff caught my eye.
I blushed.
‘Dear heart, it’s no shame to be searching for your heritage. I know what you’re looking for – that teddy in the little photograph. But I fear you’ll have to settle for your old Griff buying you one for your next birthday. But not,’ he added, flaring his left nostril, ‘one from this stall.’
I nodded. It wasn’t just the system’s fault that I had hardly any possessions. It was partly mine. You get so used to throwing things away – McDonald’s containers, plastic bottles – that you don’t always value better things. At least, I didn’t, not even the little I’d got. It was only thanks to Iris that the social worker’s cache remained – I’d had a quarrel with myself one night and thrown the lot in the bin.
‘Harrods, perhaps,’ Griff added grandly. ‘Next time I’m in town.’
As if there were just the one.
I shook my head. ‘You know I wouldn’t want anything posh.’
He looked pained. ‘How many times have I told you one should always buy the best one can afford?’
‘You couldn’t cuddle a posh bear,’ I argued. ‘You’d be too worried about wearing its fur out.’
‘Dear heart, you shall have one to cuddle. But ere long you’ll have a young man in your bed to cuddle.’ He suppressed a sigh.
As well he might. Last time I’d flirted with someone – a guy we met in a bar in Stafford – blow me if Griff wasn’t flirting with him too.
He nudged me. ‘I believe that Person wishes to speak to you.’ In an undertone, he added, ‘A young man by all means. But not from this stall. You know, if they allow stuff like this – and have you seen all that plastic rubbish over there? – I can’t see us coming here again.’ He drifted off before I could stick my tongue out at him.
‘’Allo, gorgeous! Lina! ‘Ow are you, darlin’?’
I turned, not bothering to smile. It was Ralph Harper, not one of my favourite dealers. He sold furniture, but mostly wrong ’uns. Oh, all the wood might be old, but he’d attach legs from one table to a top from another and had the brass neck to pretend the resulting mishmash wasn’t a fake. Chests of drawers, dressing tables, chiffoniers: nothing escaped his help. The trouble was he could undercut proper furniture dealers, many of whom no longer did this or other fairs he patronised.
‘And how are you enjoying this delightful weather?’ Ralph asked in the sort of nudge-nudge, wink-wink way he might have asked about last night’s sex.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Looking for young Marcus, are you?’
‘Not specially,’ I lied. Perhaps these extra layers – not one too many! – would make me look attractively curvy, in a sort of Marilyn Monroe-ish sort of way. Michelin-woman, more like.
‘Well, he was looking for you. Something about a ginger jar. High-fired.’
That meant the most expensive type of Ruskin. I shrugged. If I started leaping up and down with enthusiasm Ralph was the sort to beetle over and buy it himself and then try to sell it on to me at a grossly inflated price. Given what the jar should fetch, if perfect, grossly inflated would mean sky high. All the same, once I’d mooched gently away, peering at any trays of junk that might just produce a Worcester loving cup or a Regency spectacle case for another regular client in Birmingham, I made a beeline for Marcus. I wouldn’t do anything indecent like demand to see the Ruskin. No, I’d talk about this and that and ask him about Larry Copeland, his cousin, and maybe drop a hint about a disco I’d seen advertised at a local pub. Marcus would be staying in their trailer’s caravan overnight and might welcome a different sound from his cousin’s snores. He might even welcome a bit of company. Mine. So long as I drove Griff back to Bredeham and promised to be sufficiently awake on Sunday morning to get him back to Detling bright and early he’d be happy to lend me the van.
Marcus’s cousin’s stall specialised in prints, tarted up for punters and beautifully framed. Mostly they came from tatty old books he’d picked up for peanuts at country house sales. The reasoning was that since the books were falling apart anyway it didn’t do any harm to slice out and indeed rescue the odd page. That’s what decent, legitimate dealers did. Others cannibalised books that could – should – have been saved. Both types framed the pages, delicately repairing any damage to any original colour they might have. Opinions differed about how to deal with uncoloured etchings. Some folk left them as they were, plain black and white. Others coloured them, tinting them carefully by hand. That was what Marcus was doing now. Each prettifying brush stroke would make the finished product more saleable and thus more valuable. Except in another sense it took away all the value. I didn’t interrupt. Actually it was quite pleasant simply standing and watching. Marcus had lovely hands, with long thin fingers usually rolling a spliff he was happy to share and the sort of profile that reminded you of those aristocratic young men poncing round in fifteenth-century Florentine portraits. But he was so engrossed I moved away, looking at some of the other stuff already laid out. There was no sign of the Ruskin jar. To my right was a bin full of eighteenth-century maps of all of the South East: Essex; Sussex; Middlesex; Surrey; Kent. Then there were some bird prints, and, Copeland’s speciality, sporting prints. There was also a big sheet, half covered in tissue. I blew the tissue back. Seventeenth, possibly even sixteenth century. A folio sized frontispiece. From a book I knew.
‘Griff, I’ve just found this book I know! A page, anyway. Very old. All these strange plant-things curling round the outside of the title page,’ I gabbled. ‘Then in the middle, just where you’d expect it in fact, the title. I reckon it’s in Latin.’
Griff passed me coffee in the Thermos lid, pretending to be calm. ‘Something else they fail to teach in schools these days, alas. Have you any idea what it might have said? Or must I drift over with feigned casualness myself?’
‘Nature something or other.’ Why had I never worked harder at school? OK, why had I hardly ever gone to school?
‘Nature exactly?’ he pressed. He sounded very interested.
‘Naturam?’ I hazarded.
‘Or Natura?’ There was no mistaking his excitement.
If I wasn’t careful I’d say it was just to please him. But it sounded right. ‘It could have been. Then there was another word. It couldn’t be Rerum, could it?’
He clasped his pudgy little hands across his chest. ‘NaturaRerum! The nature of things. Nothing to do with flora and fauna as such – more a philosophical treatise.’
‘What about all the plants and things?’ My fingers described them in the air.
‘Well, more to do with what makes a plant a plant as opposed to an animal. I suppose you didn’t notice a date?’
‘Come on, Griff – all those Xs and Ms! You know I can never work them out!’
‘Author?’
‘A Gentleman.’
Feeling carefully behind him, Griff sat down on the edge of a packing case.
‘Actually,’ I said, trying to think straight, ‘it wasn’t Roman numerals. No, it was ordinary numbers. It said – would 1589 make sense?’
‘NaturaRerum. A Gentleman. 1589. Lina, dear heart – do you know what you’ve found?’
‘A book I know,’ I insisted.
‘More than that!’
‘All right,’ I said, knowing I had to humour him before he’d humour me, ‘tell me.’
‘Lina – unless I’m very much mistaken – you’ve hit the jackpot!’
Chapter Two
‘Natura Rerum is one of the rarest books there is! In the whole world, Lina. Only two or three extant,’ he continued. His voice had risen to a squeak.
‘You mean – only two or three still in existence? Out of how many?’ Funny how my head was working. Half of it wanted to think about the book as precious and important in its own right, the other kept on hammering away about its value to me.
‘No one knows for sure. But who in their right mind would cannibalise one? It’d be worth infinitely more whole.’
‘No one who knew what it was,’ I said slowly. ‘Copeland’s a print dealer, not an expert in old books.’
‘Marcus?’
I shrugged – absolute negative. ‘He’s got some sort of art qualification. When he’s not doing that watercolouring stuff he sculpts embarrassing nudes for the export market.’
Griff looked at me sideways. ‘Dear heart, are you sure, absolutely sure?’ He didn’t mean about Marcus.
‘Sure as I’m standing here,’ I said. But standing still was very difficult when I wanted to go and snatch it and bring it safely here. Or just dance on the spot.
‘I know you’ve got a nose – sometimes you sniff out such unpromising items from such unlikely places I wonder if you’re got a bit of a divvy in you – but for you to recognise it when Copeland doesn’t –’
‘I told you,’ I said, grabbing his hands and shaking them from side to side, ‘the thing is that I’ve actually seen the book itself. The whole book. When I was very young,’ I continued. ‘It’s part of my very earliest memory. It was somewhere my mother took me. It certainly wasn’t her family. So it had to be –’
‘Your father’s side.’
I took a breath. ‘So you see, if I can trace that book –’
‘Maybe you can trace your father,’ Griff finished for me, sighing. He looked at me from under his eyebrows. ‘My child, I’ve said this before, and I daresay I’ll say it again: this may not be wise. Looking to the future is, in my humble experience, far better than looking back. Far less dangerous. Leave it. I beg you: go and flirt with another young man or two.’
‘Flirt! I never flirt!’ I pouted.
‘My cherished one, you never stop.’
‘In any case, shouldn’t we be after that book? It’d make our fortune!’
There was a long pause as if ideas were coming that he should have had five minutes ago. ‘Believe me, if – and it has to be said it’s an enormously big “if” – if that frontispiece is genuine and comes from a genuine copy of Natura Rerum, then the bibliophile world and his wife will be looking for it. And not for sentimental reasons, believe me.’
‘“A big if”! You’re not saying it’s a forgery!’
He nodded sadly. ‘Ralph Harper’s not the only one who tampers with things.’
I couldn’t speak. Giving me something between a hug and a shake, Griff said in his everyday voice, ‘Be that as it may, I noticed a pretty little Worcester posy bowl over on Josie’s stall – ever such an ugly repair. Now Josie said she was interested in that Majolica plate you’ve been working on. If she won’t offer you enough, try that new lad down by the exit to the loos: he looks pretty damp behind the ears. And there’s a darling little Art Deco oil and vinegar set on someone else’s stall – I would have thought that it would repay your ministrations threefold.’
That was Griff’s way of reminding me that I was at Detling to work. Although I was fizzing with a mixture of excitement and anxiety, there was no point in arguing. And, now I needed money desperately – whatever Griff said, I had to buy that page – work made the best sense.
The idea was that each time I bought damaged ware cheap and restored it to a saleable state I would plough the profit into more and more items, thus bringing in bigger and bigger returns to my part of the business. I’d agreed with Griff that I should keep back a small proportion to keep me in clothes and what he called gewgaws. Actually, most of the jewellery I bought was from fairs like this, since I was into retro-chic in a big way. Plus, if I didn’t like something I could always sell it again, usually at a profit. This was my very own money, not something to contribute to the stall. Today I was wearing a big pair of Lalique glass ear-clips, lovely to be seen wearing but murder on the earlobes. I had an original – but not the original – mounting card tucked into my box of tricks. You never knew when such odds and ends might come in handy. I transferred it to my bag. I could always take off the clips – which would be a relief all round – and, attaching them to the mounting card, flog them this morning. Though it cost a month’s gewgaws, a year’s, Natura Rerum would be mine. Well, a small part, at least.
Josie was an elf of a woman, probably never more than five feet tall and now shrunk into a wizened question mark. Griff said she’d got something that hunched spines called osteoporosis. She might have been any age between sixty and ninety. She looked with grudging approval at the Majolica plate I showed her. I’d spent hours soaking off disgusting old glue, which left a thick ugly scar where some hamfisted idiot had tried to repair a nice clean break, and replacing it with slow-setting, practically invisible epoxy-resin. The plate was now almost as good as new. Or old. It wasn’t really valuable anyway, not a sixteenth-century piece a dealer would have given his teeth for. Nineteenth-century manufacturers had twigged that naïve tourists to Italy would give a mint for what they thought were mediaeval plates. I suppose you could call what they produced either forgeries or tributes. This particular plate yelled it was nineteenth century. The young woman in the centre – a damsel, Griff called her – sat there like some drapery-hung sack of potatoes. Queen Victoria on a bad day. I’d been tempted to paint in a double chin, for spite.
The price Josie offered, I wished I had. I didn’t like offending Josie, because apart from being an old mate of Griff’s she’d let me loose on odds and ends when I was still at the kindergarten stage. But I wanted at least fifty per cent more. Mumbling that I’d think about it, which meant leaving the posy bowl where it was, I drifted to the exit Griff had told me about, in search of the new lad. The only male stallholder around was about sixty. Still, Griff always did like a spot of poetic licence, so I dawdled to a halt. A rather prissy floral sign at the back of his stall announced, Arthur Habgood, Devon Cottage Antiques.
He seized the plate like a starving man grabbing his dinner. ‘Istoriato Rafaelle ware!’ he crowed.
I pointed out the join. I’d rather not have done, but I had my reputation – and Griff’s – to think of. Never, ever, he’d said, should one ever try to pass off damaged goods as the perfect article. Not if one wanted to stay in the trade. I’d seen plenty of people flourishing in the trade like dandelions while ignoring his dictum – maybe even because they ignored it – but felt better, if poorer, being straight.
Habgood favoured me with a rundown of the genre, full of detail, mostly wrong. I smiled and nodded, not daring to offend a potential buyer by a look at my watch or even a glance back at Marcus. But if he didn’t stop waffling soon, all the profit in the world might be in vain, and that frontispiece in someone else’s hands.
‘And how much did you want for this?’ he asked at last.
‘I’d really keep it on our own stall,’ I lied, ‘but it’s not really our period.’ Not true either: wherever possible, Griff preferred perfect goods. ‘I suppose my best would be –’ I gave a price a hundred per cent more than it was worth.
New to the business he might be, but he hadn’t come down in the last shower of rain. The look he cast under his ill-kempt eyebrows was shrewder than I’d expected. Don’t tell me he’d been playing me at my own game, boring the socks off me so I’d ask for less.
He offered what Josie had offered. But when I picked up the plate, shaking my head emphatically – if anyone was going to get a bargain it would be someone I owed a favour – he shuffled his hand into his back pocket and fished out a few scruffy tenners. When he fanned them out I counted forty more than Josie’s price.
Wrinkling my nose, I made as if to walk away. But we both knew I’d turn back. ‘Throw in that cracked Staffordshire figure – you know you can’t sell it as it is – and it’s a deal. And I’ll let you have first refusal when I’ve restored it.’
He shook his head, removing a note from the wad. ‘That’s my best if you want the figure.’
I picked it up. With a little help from me it would fetch a great deal more than a tenner. ‘Deal,’ I nodded. As money changed hands, I said, ‘You’re new on the circuit, aren’t you?’
‘On the circuit, yes. But I’ve had a shop in Totnes for years. Then there was foot-and-mouth and September 11th and the Americans stopped coming over and flashing their lovely greenbacks.’
‘So you took to the road?’
‘They said this was supposed to be a quality international fair,’ he said gloomily. ‘I didn’t quite expect the NEC but I did expect indoor loos.’
‘There are some indoor ones right opposite the other hall. New ones.’
‘They aren’t here, are they?’
I couldn’t argue. What I needed was some sort of exit cue. ‘So where’s your next gig?’ That wasn’t very good. ‘So I can prioritise this.’ Which might sound as if I were about to dash off and do it straightaway.
‘Stafford. Another agricultural ground.’ He made it sound like a slaughterhouse.
‘Don’t worry: it’s a couple of notches up on this. Not just the ground, but the quality of goods on sale. Look, I’ve got to go and see a man about a dog.’
‘OK. Nice doing business with you – er –?’ His smile showed off more filling than I’d have wanted the general public to see.
‘Lina.’
He came out with a joke I’d come to dread. ‘Lena as in Horne, I suppose.’ The smile broadened. What teeth weren’t filled looked like crowns. Like every other old geezer, he added, in case I’d never heard of her, ‘Lena Horne the singer. More my generation than yours, of course.’
Very true. ‘Lina as in Evelina. Evelina Townend.’
I could practically see his tonsils his grin was so broad. ‘Not every day I meet a character from Fanny Burney.’
Not every day I got chatted up by a man old enough to be my grandfather. I gave what Griff called my winsome smile and slipped away.
Trying to look cool and serene I hotfooted it to Marcus’ stall. To my relief he was still prettifying maps, and my frontispiece was still unsullied, just as I wanted it. A memory in black and white was worth half a dozen blurred by watercolour.
It was priced in letters and numbers, but neither Marcus nor Copeland would have been much use deciphering the Enigma codes, so it took me about five seconds to realise that my bounty wouldn’t buy more than about half of it – and that was before they popped it into a gold-leaf frame.
The only thing to do was lay my cards on the table. Some of them, at least.
At twenty-four or five, Marcus wasn’t much older than me but while I still appeared in my mirror as something like an overgrown schoolgirl – until I’d popped on what Griff called my slap, at least – Marcus had shed anything that smacked of his teens. He cultivated what some of the women I’d met called his Mr Darcy look. I thought he looked more like the Duke of Wellington, in those portraits when he was still plain Arthur Wellesley. Not all that plain, come to think of it. Calculating eyes and a nose to sneer down. But sexy with it. Marcus rarely calculated, except when dealing with punters with more money than taste, and never sneered – not, at least, until he’d stowed their cash in his back pocket. He always greeted older women with a courtly kiss on both cheeks. Since he and I were eyeing each other up as possible dates, he simply flapped a hand as I approached his stall. Maybe I’d suggest that drink for tonight.
Or maybe I wouldn’t. When I brought the conversation round to the frontispiece, he did rather peer down that nose.
‘Out of your league, Lina, I’d have thought. Or has someone commissioned you to get it on the cheap? In which case, add another hundred and we’ll split it.’
‘No, not a commission. And I want it as seen – not tarted up or framed, thanks. So you can give me the real price, not the wish one.’
‘What on earth do you want it for? It’s not your Victorian pretty-pretty china. Not branching out, are you?’
‘I want it for a friend,’ I said, touching the side of my nose.
‘Since when have you had the sort of friend to give something that pricey?’
No, I wouldn’t be suggesting that drink after work. Not unless he stopped being a pain in the bum and named a sensible price. I said nothing and waited.
To be fair, what he asked wasn’t outrageous, not when you considered how rare Griff had said the original book was. All the same, I haggled a bit – not the best move, since I’d be asking for credit, whatever the price. And yes, even if he’d asked double, I’d have had to raise the cash somehow. No, I wouldn’t consider the possibility that it was a fake.
At last he came down another twenty pounds. ‘Strictly cash, mind. And don’t tell Copeland.’
‘You may have to tell him, though. I want to pay in instalments. Here you are. A hundred on account.’
His Wellington eyebrows shot up. Had I met my Waterloo? I almost expected him to send for some pantalooned aide-de-camp to sling me out of his tent. I played the pathos card. ‘Look, it’s for Griff’s birthday. A big birthday.’ Well, all birthdays were big when you were that age. ‘And I don’t want him to know.’
‘So when do you plan to pay the rest?’
‘Soon as I sell my gewgaws and some more china.’
‘Like, today?’
‘More like next fair,’ I said, wishing I hadn’t inherited this truth gene from wherever. ‘Unless you know someone who’d like three old Worcester cups and saucers and a pair of Lalique earrings?’
He stroked his long chin, graced with just enough stubble to be sexy. ‘I couldn’t say – no, hang on! There’s a woman with one of the outside stalls. She’d got a load of costume jewellery.’
I pulled a face. An outside stall implied she needed to keep her overheads really low. My Lalique wasn’t Christmas cracker tat: it was quality glass. But I could try.
As I turned, it was Marcus’ turn to tap his nose. ‘No need to say anything about this to Copeland,’ he muttered.
I hadn’t intended to. How such a dish as Marcus came to have such a ferrety-faced cousin I’d never know.
‘What about when he tells you to start painting it?’
He shrugged. ‘Better get the rest of that cash quick,’ he said.
I nodded and at the sight of Copeland melted away. I’d ask about the Ruskin later.
Clouds, which when we’d set out had been white fluffy pompoms emphasising the blue of the sky, were now congregating in ominous black banks. My heart bled for the poor dealers trying to work out whether to cover all their gear to protect it or to leave it where it was in hopes of a quicker sale. One look at the jewellery stall Marcus had mentioned told me I was wasting my time: it wasn’t even good paste, but cheap brightly coloured glass in fancy absolutely-not-gold settings, the sort of thing Iris said she wore with taffeta dresses and seamed nylons when she went to dances she called hops when she was a teenager. I was drifting sadly away when I remembered the other display hall, a couple of hundred yards from ours. No. Don’t ask. That’s just how it is. Mostly this one held furniture, some of it good quality, but there was sometimes a stall specialising in glass. It was there today, the owners rather belatedly setting up, unwrapping early twentieth-century glass from France and Germany. It might be an acquired taste – Griff loathed it – but I loved the iridescence and the weird colours, which needed clever lighting to show them at their best. I’d have murdered for that bluey-purple Loetz vase… And what were they unpacking now but some Lalique. A couple of birds, which I really liked, though I’d have said they were 1930’s, no earlier, and a nymph: lovely opalescent things. In their professional lights my earrings probably looked just as good. I knew that they were really from the sixties, and not this stall’s period at all, but couldn’t resist a try. And managed it. I never mentioned a date, honestly, and they were so sure they were on to a bargain, they practically tore them off my ears. Who was I to argue? I left the backing card in my bag: it’d come in useful another day, maybe. Meanwhile, I pondered which was worse: the pain of the clips or the pain of the circulation coming back.
No, I didn’t feel particularly proud of myself for conning them, but from day one Griff had dinned into me that I should always do my homework. If I didn’t, and I got my fingers burnt, I’d only got myself to blame. The same rule, he’d added softly, also applied to other people.
So now I had an extra hundred or so in my hand, when I should have had sixty at the most. Marcus was clearly impressed when I pressed most of it into his hand. Most but not all: some sensible bit of my head refused to let me sell my seed-corn. With just a bit of cash, I might do another couple of deals. ‘Say,’ he began, ‘I was wondering –’
But at that point Copeland hove into view. He seemed to have the knack of materialising when he was least wanted. I put on my most innocent smile. ‘Ralph was saying something about a Ruskin ginger jar. High-fired,’ I prompted.
‘Ralph Harper? That bastard spends so much time on his fakes he wouldn’t know the truth if it poked him in the eye,’ he snarled. He softened. ‘Come on, Lina, it’s not our line at all.’
Behind him, Marcus was waving his arms and pulling faces. He might have been practising for a gurning competition.
I took the hint and looked at my watch. ‘Hell. I didn’t realise it was this time. They’ll be opening the gates to the punters any minute.’
‘Tell Griff there’s a nice big queue already,’ Copeland said, meaning I was so shove off and stop cluttering up the place.
I shoved. I needed punters too.
Chapter Three
There are days when punters positively leak money. It oozes straight from their hands into yours. OK, so you give them something back – often something that’s worth half what you’ve put on the price label, knowing you’ll be haggled down. But on days like that they don’t even ask for discount for cash.
There are other days when visitors treat a fair like their own personal Antiques Road Show, bringing their own stuff, ‘just for you to have a look at.’ Yes, they want a free valuation. Other times they’ll simply finger things, observing that they’ve got better at home, and spending nothing at all.
It looked as if today might have attracted the second sort of punter.
‘They come, they touch, they disparage,’ Griff sighed, sipping afternoon tea, his face wrinkled as if he was in great pain. Even I thought the tea tasted nasty, but he’d insisted on having some simply, he said, to pass the time. ‘And then they go.’
He was right. They had gone. And none had come in to replace them. Of any sort.
‘There’s always tomorrow,’ I said, catching crumbs from a slice of treacle tart, no more homemade, despite its quaintly printed label, than the Greenwich Dome. I hoped I sounded more optimistic than I felt. I needed quick sales to get my hands on the frontispiece.
Today’s empty hours had given me rather too long to consider Griff’s theory that it was probably a forgery. I’d sneaked back for another look when I’d seen Copeland sidle off with his outdoors jacket on leaving Marcus in charge. He wasn’t keen on my having yet another look, but as I pointed out, I now owned at least the ink, if not the paper. The paper felt and smelt right, and the ink was the sort of colour that old ink goes. There was even one very neatly cut side, as if someone had sliced it from a book using a razor or craft-knife. I’d casually asked Marcus if he knew anything about its provenance, a word I’d never even heard of before I joined Griff. But now I knew a provenance was essential, for expensive pieces in general and pictures in particular. Even for butter dishes and marmalade. If the seller could tell you where something came from, and, better still, could show you paperwork to back his claims, then the less likely it was to be a piece meddled with by someone like Ralph Harper. The downside was that it was likely to be very much more expensive if it had spent its days in some gentleman’s residence, as Griff put it, than if it turned up dirty and unloved having done time at boot sales. Marcus had sworn he knew nothing about the page’s provenance. And I’d been inclined to believe him.
All the same, I had to bring it home soon. ‘What do they say on the film, about tomorrow being another day?’
Griff loved his old films. Pouring the remains of his tea into the aspidistra we kept handy, supposedly to dress the stall but really, I was sure, for Griff’s slops, he managed a smile. ‘They do indeed. Which is why you mustn’t even think of marking down those Worcester cups and saucers,’ he added in a stronger voice. ‘Now, you did a lovely job on that Rockingham plate, but it’s still a tad battered. You could drop that by twenty pounds for a quick sale.’
‘I might if there were any customers to sell to. Where is everyone?’
‘Some football match, I daresay.’
And even if I sold the pretty plate, I still wouldn’t have enough to take home my treasure, not without leaving myself quite skint. I didn’t doubt that Marcus would keep his word, but I wouldn’t put it past Copeland to hand me back my cash with a smirk telling me he’d simply had to accept a much higher offer.
‘Go and do another circuit, child. Anyone happening to drift this way would think we were about to witness a public hanging. Weren’t you talking about having an evening out with that hirsute young man? Or has the financial deal compromised your relationship?’
‘You tell me.’ Despite myself, I must have sounded very short.
Griff rearranged a couple of items and returned to his seat, hitching a tartan travelling rug round his knees and reaching for Sanditon. ‘I know it’s not Austen’s greatest, but I try to read all her oeuvre at least once a year. You should read her yourself, dear heart. Even though I can’t guarantee scenes where young men who should know better plunge into ornamental lakes.’ He paused for me to laugh at our memories of the TV Pride and Prejudice he’d shown me on video. To please him I did. Now why couldn’t I have a Colin Firth come dripping into my life? Because he was old enough to be my father, that was why. ‘Start with Northanger Abbey – that’s all about a young woman from a humble background becoming a heroine.’
‘Hmm. I’ll try it this evening.’ Yes, I’d be sitting cosily at home listening to the radio with Griff when I’d rather be out in a loud bar with Marcus. Fed up as I was, however, I wouldn’t bite back at Griff. Anyone prepared to become mother, father, teacher and employer all rolled into one to a complete stranger was entitled to a bit of respect. And a lot of love. I knew he was worried about me, so I tried not to sulk. I adjusted a couple of our spotlights, tweaked our sign, and, waving what I hoped looked like a cheery hand, set off.
If I was gloomy, some of our mates looked downright miserable. Hardly surprising: if they didn’t sell – preferably at a profit – stuff they’d paid good money for, they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills.
Despite the morning clouds, it hadn’t rained. That wasn’t much comfort to the hardy outside brigade, whose faces had frozen into the sort of smile Griff called a facial rictus, with which they’d no doubt welcome any passing punters. There were a couple of stalls selling what they claimed were ‘collectables’. I gave them a miss, but felt this pull to the jewellery stall I’d sneered at earlier. Where was it? There was something hidden amidst all that glitter that was calling me so strongly I almost whispered to it to stay where it was.
Chokers. Bracelets. Rings the size of knuckle-dusters. Yes. There in the tray of rings, so small it was almost invisible, was a white gold ring. Someone had thought it was silver. And the emerald, not much to write home about, was set in purple enamel. A few tiny diamonds completed it. I’d no idea why, but I knew the little trinket was important. Thank goodness I’d known not to clear myself out. Perhaps I did have a bit of the diviner’s gift, as Griff always swore I did – antiques, not water, you understand.
I waved it under the dealer’s nose.
‘Twenty pounds?’ She was uncertain, hopeful. And therefore vulnerable.
I pulled a face. ‘Come on. Trade. I’m with Griff. Griff Tripp.’ Kind Griff, honest Griff. Griff who might or might not approve of what I was doing.
‘So you are. Well, say fifteen. And that’s only a couple of quid more than I paid. Pretty, isn’t it?’
Griff popped a jeweller’s glass into his eye and peered. ‘I knew you were a divvy!’ he crowed. ‘Its intrinsic value isn’t much more than you paid, though the band and setting are, as you realised, white gold. Tiny emerald. Diamonds no more than chippings. Enamel. Oh, I’d say a little more than a hundred, so you’re still in profit.’
‘There’s a but coming up. I can feel it. What’s the but, Griff?’
‘A nice but.’
I grinned.
‘I know a lady who collects this sort of thing. Women’s Social and Political Union – Suffragettes, to you and me. These were their colours. There’s a story behind this ring. And it’s that story that may bring you in some hard cash. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the lady in question lives in America.’
‘So I may have to wait.’ I could feel my face fall.
‘“One auspicious and one dropping eye”! Poor Lina. Would you like me to make you a tiny advance on your undoubted profit? Enough to buy that damned page?’
The whole hall probably heard that I would. Thank goodness my dear Griff was the sort of gay who liked being hugged by women. Removing his shoe, he pulled out a warm and slightly damp wad of twenty-pound notes. ‘How many?’ Without waiting for a reply, he peeled off five. I was home and dry.
And, of course, frustrated. Completely frustrated. Now I had the frontispiece, how did I find that vital thing, its provenance? It was clear that Marcus neither knew nor cared, and Copeland was in a foul mood over what he declared a completely wasted day. He was no worse off than the rest of us, and possibly better: several people had gone off with his distinctive carrier bags. Admittedly they were small or middle-sized bags but a sale is a sale. Copeland’s presence seemed to quench any desires Marcus might have had for a drink or any other designs he might have had on me. Meek as a lamb he helped pack the more valuable prints and put away his paints.
Not to be outdone I withdrew to Griff’s stall, packing with what I hoped looked like terrifying efficiency.
Griff blinked, and said mildly, ‘So the miserable churl doesn’t deserve your tenderness. But I must tell you that that bit of Coalport does. Gently does it, dear heart. Now, what do you say to treating ourselves at the pub on the way home? It’s been a long day and I fancy we have quite a lot to celebrate.’ He glanced at Marcus, scurrying after Copeland like a whipped puppy. ‘All the same, quite a lot.’ He patted the carrier bag holding my page and a bulge in his pocket, caused by a box holding the WSPU ring.
Yes, I was frustrated in every sense of the word. But Griff was making a real sacrifice in offering to eat out. He hated the noise and smoke of a pub, even when we tucked ourselves into the smoke-free zone, swatting rather pettishly at any stray wisps he fancied might be coming our way. The expression on his face if he had to move a leftover ashtray would make you think he was handling raw sewage.
‘What’d be even nicer,’ I lied, ‘would be to stop off at that big Sainsbury’s in Ashford and pick up some bits and pieces for you to cook. And maybe a bottle of bubbly to go with it.’
It was worth the wait I’d let myself in for while he flitted happily round, making up his mind which vegetables would go with which meat, just to see his face light up.
‘Do you really mean it? Or, dear heart, I saw this wonderful recipe in a magazine at the doctor’s the other day!’ Which meant he’d torn it out and stuffed it in an overfull carrier bag hanging behind the kitchen door.
‘Of course I mean it.’ And I’d buy a small item on my own account from the stationery section while he pottered round the chill cabinets.
‘A loose leaf folder!’ Griff picked it up off the kitchen table. ‘For me? Lina, it’s lovely of you to give me a present –’ He held it as if were no more use than a slice of old bread. He might have asked out loud, ‘But what do I use it for?’
I mustn’t be disappointed. ‘You see these polythene wallets? They’re open at the top. You can slide pieces of paper inside. There. School children sometimes use them for projects or essays.’
‘So you’re expecting me to –?’ His face was still screwed into doubt.
‘You don’t have to do anything. While you cook the dinner, I shall sit down at this end of the table with a pair of scissors and your recipe bag and I shall trim all the jagged tears and pop the recipes in the wallets. So if you like them, you’ll know where to find them, and if you don’t like them all you have to do is fish them out and throw them away.’
He’d put on his glasses to look at the folder. Now he took them off again and polished them furiously. ‘That will be very useful. More than useful. And all the kinder since I know all you want to do is pore over that page.’
He nodded at it: he’d put it flat on the piano he never played but couldn’t persuade himself to sell. He said it would be a sign of giving in – what to he never specified.
‘You think it’s all right?’
‘It’s got all the signs of being authentic,’ he said cautiously, wandering over to peer at it again. ‘But I’d like to have it – very quietly – authenticated. UV lights, ink samples, paper samples.’
‘That’d cost more than a week’s gewgaw money,’ I reminded him.
‘But there’s more than one way, in the vulgar parlance, to skin a cat. We could show it to Titus.’
‘Trevor Oates! That revolting man!’ He was worse than Ralph Harper, with nasty freckled convolvulus hands.
‘Some may say he’s merely a master forger. Others may say you should set a thief to catch a thief. Titus knows every trick in the book. And every rival in the market place. If that’s not kosher he’ll know. And he’ll know who forged it.’
‘Wouldn’t Copeland?’
He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Would you fancy asking him?’
‘I suppose I could always ask Marcus –’
‘Not, I’d have thought, if you still harbour any carnal thoughts of him.’
‘Carnal?’
‘Look it up, cherished one. The dictionary is in its usual place. I, meanwhile, will go and put the van away and lock the garage.’
He always did that, if he was embarrassed about anything, sex, usually. Well, only sex, come to think of it, and heterosexual sex at that. So I didn’t need to look anything up. Instead, I swung the keys from his hand and headed for the van. Even as I checked the electronic locks were doing their job, I could hear in my head what I knew Griff would ask at bedtime: ‘It’s all right and tight? You’re quite sure?’ I’d only just managed to persuade him not to go out in all weathers to double-check. So yes, I was sure, quite sure.
I could have slipped down after supper to the Hop Pocket for a game of darts with the lads, and Griff wouldn’t have complained. He rarely complained. The only time he came near it was when I was planning to embark on some body piercings and told him enthusiastically about where I was going to have them. He let me rabbit on for ages, not saying a word. At last he reached across the table I was working at and picked up a fruit bowl I was trying to rescue. It had been mended years ago, ugly staples reinforcing the blackened glue.
‘What do you feel when you look at those?’ he asked quietly.
