A Pack of Lies (6 page)

‘Oh Mr Singh, I couldn’t . . .’ said Mrs Povey.

MCC held out the box and the book, and the newsagent’s arms closed around them as the arms of India once closed around her sweet Independence.

‘But the box has no key!’ said Mrs Povey sadly.

Mr Singh hugged it closer to his chest.

‘Oh but Mr Singh, it’s Sunday and I shouldn’t . . .’

Ailsa crossed to the mantelpiece behind Mr Singh and held up the red electricity bill behind his shoulder so that it was in plain view of her mother.

‘Well, if you’d really like it, I’m sure Mr Berkshire can tell you how much it’s worth.’

MCC took the electricity bill out of Ailsa’s hands and read off it unhesitatingly, ‘Forty-three pounds thirty pence, including
VAT
.’

As the shop door was pulled to behind Mr Singh, Ailsa said to MCC Berkshire, ‘How did you know the combination on Mr Singh’s bicycle padlock?’

‘Guessed it,’ said MCC unswervingly, as he tossed the pith helmet on to a hat-stand.

‘You must have done.’

And there she left it. For, after all, there was no other explanation.

Chapter Four

The Plate:
A Question of Values

Of the hundred pounds nothing remained. Other larger purchases MCC Berkshire had made at the car boot sale and flea market arrived later in the day: a set of bookshelves and a stuffed salmon in a glass case. The little shop seemed to groan at the prospect of swallowing yet more indigestible junk, and if it had not been for the sale of the clock, the bookshelves would never have found a piece of wall to lean their backs against.

Mrs Povey said to her daughter, ‘Maybe he’s right to open up the book side of the business.’

But when a teacher from Ailsa’s school came in one day and thumbed his way through the fiction, he was brought gradually to a halt and a shiver by the feeling that someone was watching him. He looked up, and found MCC Berkshire standing a word’s length away from him, scowling. The teacher rummaged for his wallet. But MCC said, ‘I haven’t read those yet,’ and prised the books out of the customer’s hand. ‘I’ve been saving the fiction, you see.’

‘Ah! Quite!’ exclaimed the teacher, and turned tail and fled, casting a look of bewildered pity at Ailsa and Mrs Povey. (The word got about school after that, that Ailsa had a strange, deranged brother at home and that he was the reason the shop was in such dire financial trouble.)

‘
That’s
how to sell a thing,’ said Ailsa sarcastically,
when her teacher was gone. Then Berkshire looked down at the books cradled against his stomach and stroked the spines with his fingers and seemed too ashamed to speak. And Ailsa wished she had kept silent, and wondered what had possessed her to be so rude. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Books don’t pay enough to make any difference. They’re not worth anything. Mum sells them for pennies, second-hand books.’

‘Some are worth hundreds!’ said MCC, perking up.

‘We don’t have any like that.’

‘It’s all a question of values,’ he said, appraising his new bookshelves, full of dilapidated paperbacks, and his eyes when he said it were as deep as Chancery, full of glints of gold from the lamplight. ‘Money isn’t everything.’

The sky outside was almost black with rain and every car that went by had its lamps switched on. With a loud crack, a thundercloud broke overhead. Two lovers, joined at the hands like Siamese twins, came bursting into the shop, laughing, and shaking off the rain. It was plain they had dashed into the first handy shelter and had no intention of buying.

‘Oh, this is pretty . . . Oo, look at that dear little vase . . . what a pity this has lost its lid,’ said the girl from time to time. But her boyfriend was only watching for the rain to go off. She picked up a little book of Chinese folk tales lying open on the
chaise longue
. When she lifted her eyes from browsing through it, she found herself being watched, from the dark recesses of the shop, by a young man.

MCC pressed the palms of his hands together and bowed from the waist. He moved silently round the
chaise longue
and took the book out of her hands as if to read its title. ‘Ah! You are interested in ancient China, then!’ She recoiled in alarm. ‘In that case, permit me to draw your attention to this charming plate.’

‘Oh look, Brian! What a pretty plate!’ cried the girl, dubiously. MCC slyly slipped the book into his pocket.

Brian came and looked at the blue and white plate balanced between two urns. ‘Oh yeah. Willow Pattern. Your Gran’s got a whole service like it. Is that the only one?’

It was the only one — and even so, Ailsa could not remember seeing it before, though she knew the kind of thing. Well, the Willow Pattern is a common enough design.

‘Is it old?’ asked the girl, looking for a price.

‘The story is,’ said MCC Berkshire.

* * *

Long ago, in China, during the Ch’ing dynasty and the days of the Manchu Emperor Ch’ien Lung, there lived a potter called Ho Pa. He was a mean, greedy and spiteful man. But he had an apprentice working for him whose work was so perfect that people called from far and near to buy porcelain at Ho Pa’s pottery. Ho Pa grew very rich indeed. But he did not pay any of the money to the apprentice, Wa Fan, who did all the work. Instead, he cursed and cuffed the young man and made his life miserable and called his pottery worthless and ugly.

If only Wa Fan had known! His beautiful vases and plates and teapots and dishes were bought even by the Emperor’s Court! And travellers from far distant lands paid huge sums to sail away with just one piece of Wa Fan’s craftsmanship. One pattern they asked for more often than any other. ‘Give us Willow-Pattern plates, Ho Pa! We will pay you extra if you make us Willow-Pattern china in blue and white!’

Then Ho Pa would stick his head round the door of the hot, wet pottery and shout, ‘Willow Pattern, Wa Fan! Give me more Willow Pattern, you idle son of a sleeping dog!’

Wa Fan did not mind. The Willow Pattern is a very beautiful pattern and tells the love story of a boy and a girl and a garden, and Wa Fan delighted in painting
(in blue glaze with a very fine brush) the pretty garden with its bridge and pagodas. He painted petals on to the chrysanthemums with such care that the flowers seemed to be alive. He painted the figures so beautifully that their clothes seemed to billow in the breeze.

Sometimes — on the best days of all — his master’s daughter, Liu, would come into the pottery and talk to him about his work and admire the china drying on the racks. She never tired of hearing Wa Fan tell her the story of the Willow Pattern, as she pointed out each detail in turn.

‘And who is this?’ she would ask (although she already knew).

‘That is the cruel father,’ said Wa Fan. ‘A rich merchant who will not let his lovely daughter marry the gardener.’

‘And this is the lovely daughter?’ Liu would say, (although, of course, she already knew). ‘And this is the poor gardener? What became of the unhappy lovers?’

‘The daughter and the gardener loved each other so much that they decided to run away together into the world outside the garden. They hid in the gardens — all night, the delicate lady hid in a spidery, dark shed. But the cruel father discovered their secret and searched the garden at dawn. The only way out was over the lake, across a narrow bridge. When the lovers came out of hiding and made to leave the garden, there on the bridge stood the cruel father, whip in hand, ready to kill the poor young gardener. When the lovers saw that it was impossible to escape, they jumped off the bridge, thinking to drown together in the lake.’

Then Liu would come bursting into his story and exclaim, ‘But the gods smiled on them and turned them into bluebirds, and they flew away to lasting happiness!’

Then Wa Fan said, ‘You know my story already,’ and Liu blushed and covered her mouth with her fingers and trotted to the door on her wooden heels and clattered back to her father’s house.

You see Liu loved Wa Fan the potter, and Wa Fan loved her. But they could no more hope to be married than a fish can hope to fly.

One day cruel Ho Pa said to his daughter, ‘You may thank me, Liu. Prepare yourself. Whiten your face and redden your lips and dress your hair with flowers. For I have found you a husband.’

Liu bowed low to her father. ‘I will indeed thank you, father, if the husband you have chosen is Wa Fan, your apprentice. He is a fine man.’

‘
Who?
’ cried Ho Pa. ‘Ha! Do you suppose I would marry a daughter of mine to a worthless apprentice? No! You shall marry Chu Fat, the merchant, whose wealth is as huge as his belly and whose business sense is as quick as his temper and whose reputation is almost as old as he. He shall sell my pottery, and together we shall grow richer than the Emperor himself. You shall marry tomorrow. Speak no more of Wa Fan.’

Liu said nothing. In old China, during the Ch’ing dynasty and in the days of the Manchu Emperor Ch’ien Lung, a daughter’s words were worth less than dead leaves blowing down a street. But the birds of sadness pecked at her heart.

In those days, Ho Pa rarely went to his pottery, for he had Wa Fan to do all his work and Wa Fan’s china was finer than anything Ho Pa could ever make with his own hands. Now he went straight there, and walked up and down the racks, pretending to examine the plates and vases and bowls.

‘Tell me, Wa Fan, what do you think of my daughter?’ he asked casually. He saw the apprentice’s hand tremble as he painted the leaves on to a blue willow tree.

‘She is the pattern of all beauty, master; a creation more perfect than any vase shaped by hand, any words written by poets, any music sung by minstrels.’

‘And what would you say if I told you you could marry her?’

Wa Fan dropped his paintbrush altogether and leapt
up from his stool. ‘I would say that you are the best of men and that I am the happiest!’

Then Ho Pa held his sides and laughed till the tears ran down his fat cheeks. ‘Hear this, you shineless pebble on a dusty road: my daughter will be married tomorrow to Chu Fat, the merchant, and I shall stop your wages for daring to rest your eyes upon
my
daughter! Ha! ha! ha! What do you say to that?’

Wa Fan said nothing. For in old China, during the Ch’ing dynasty and in the days of the Manchu Emperor Ch’ien Lung, the words of an apprentice were worth less than the ants in a spadeful of earth. But inwardly the dogs of sadness chewed on his heart.

‘Some token of respect — some present for the happy pair — would be acceptable,’ said Ho Pa, sweeping out of the door.

Wa Fan went to the window and looked out at the splendid gardens which surrounded Ho Pa’s still more splendid house. The orange blossom was tearful with rain. The willow tree by the lake slumped with rounded shoulders. The lake glimmered through the reeds like teardrops on the lashes of a great sad eye. Wa Fan looked for a long time at the little bridge hunched over the lake. Then he fetched a plain, undecorated plate of finest pottery and glazed it white as milk, and then began to paint, in a glaze as blue as purple, one last Willow-Pattern story.

It was work more perfect than any Wa Fan had ever done before.

He baked the plate in the kiln and the figures and flowers stood out so brightly that they seemed to move across the little bridge beside the ornamental lake and the painted pagodas. In them the fate of Wa Fan was fastened. He could not turn back now.

On the morning of the wedding, Wa Fan went to the market and bought strawberries, and heaped them on the plate and dredged them with sugar, and took them to the door of the great house where his master lived.
Bowing very low to the doorkeeper, he said, ‘Please set this miserable and worthless present before the bride and groom, and say that it is a token of respect from the insignificant Wa Fan, apprentice.’

The contracts had been signed. Liu sat at table beside the gross and wheezing Chu Fat — like a golden carp beside a whale. The tasselled rods and flowered combs fastening her hair trembled, and her eyes were fixed on her lap. Her father sat at the head of the table, drinking toasts to himself and his ancestors in cups of rice wine, and laughing immoderately.

The doorkeeper brought in a plate of strawberries and set it down between the bride and groom. ‘A token of respect from the insignificant Wa Fan, apprentice.’ Liu started a little, and her father let out a roar of laughter big enough to fill a ship’s sail. The bridegroom plunged a fat hand in among the strawberries and crammed twenty into his food-clogged mouth.

Liu rested her gaze on the blue rim of the plate. She had no eyes for the strawberries. She loved Wa Fan, and so she loved to look at his beautiful craftsmanship. She smiled sadly to see the picture emerge from beneath the strawberries as her betrothed crammed the fruit into his face.

No-one saw her shoulders stiffen, her eyes grow wide, or her fingers crumple the edge of the tablecloth. For during the Ch’ing dynasty, in the days of the Manchu Emperor Ch’ien Lung, a woman learned to be silent and unnoticeable in the eyes of men. She took one strawberry from the plate. And then another.

She was not mistaken. Her own face looked up at her from the blue and white garden of the Willow Pattern. She it was, who stood on the bridge hand in hand with the poor gardener.

Another strawberry.

And there was her father — there was Ho Pa in every shape and feature, standing on the bridge. There was his angry scowl, his vain heap of hair, his big fist grasping the whip, his twisted mouth swearing vengeance.

Another strawberry and oh!

Who was it who stood hand in hand with her on the legendary bridge but Wa Fan, the apprentice, dressed in gardener’s clothes but quite unmistakable to the eyes of one who loved him. A perfect self-portrait.

The plate was a message. The plate was a letter, a plea, a proposal. The plate said, ‘Run away with me, Liu, for I love you as the gardener loved the rich merchant’s daughter in the Willow-Pattern story.’

Liu’s lips parted and she said, so silently that only her ancestors heard her, ‘Yes, yes, Wa Fan. I will come.’

‘Pass those strawberries to me, daughter, or have you no respect for your father?’