Drawing the Line (14 page)

Don’t think I wasn’t curious. I strained my ears for
any stray conversation seeping up through the kitchen ceiling. Sometimes Griff told me what they’d been talking about and what he’d bought. Sometimes it wasn’t things he brought, but gossip – when there’d be a good sale, and what the word on the street was about certain items tucked away with cheap tat. Other times Griff stayed mum, though I could tell he was embarrassed at not being able to tell me. Today I should imagine Griff would be after titbits of information about the outbreaks of thieving that seemed to be following us round the country. He might – and now my pulses quickened and I had to put down my scalpel in case it slipped and did expensive damage – even be asking about the
Natura Rerum
page.

Well, if Griff couldn’t open the shop, I’d better. It always gave me a sense of power, fishing the keys and the float out of the safe and swaggering the two or three yards along the street to open up, checking always and certainly today that no one was lurking to jump me. Once in, I dived across to the control panel, hidden behind a picture, tapping the code swiftly into the alarm touch-pad. There. Peace and quiet. And then I went back to the door again. Like many rural antiques shops, ours was locked even when we were in it. Genuine customers understood, generally.

Mrs Hatch had left a note of what she’d sold, including a hideous brass planter from her own stock and three matching lustre jugs, ones with dancers on them. As a trio, they’d fetched more than three single items. I dusted round a bit, and settled down to study the contents of the manila envelope I’d brought with me. In a dusty corner were some old Ordnance Survey maps, no
longer much use except to the most trusting motorist or walker. But if roads and footpaths moved, things like Tudor manors and Palladian mansions didn’t. I could locate all the ones Griff and I had found interesting and plan approximate routes to them.

Griff had to tap on the bolted door to be let in. As I pulled back the bolts, he was already telling me to come back home quickly. Now. This minute!

What had happened? Had my dad –? Even as I told myself to get real, my fingers shook so much that I could hardly set the alarm, and then it took me valuable seconds to lock up. Griff didn’t wait for me – he was already back in the kitchen when I let myself in. No middle-aged man. Just a very old lady, appearing from the newspaper in which she was wrapped.

‘Look at this! Look at this!’

I took her from him: although the figurine was old, the woman herself, despite her wig, looked very young. She seemed to be reading some sort of list.

So what? I plonked down on a chair and stared into space.

‘Isn’t she lovely? And look – look under here. What can you see?’

It wasn’t his fault, was it? And it wasn’t often I heard him so excited. I looked. His swollen finger jigged around a blue letter L.

‘Longton Hall. It’s so rare I’ve only ever seen it in reference books. Goodness knows what it’ll fetch. Oh, yes – I shall put it in a top-class auction. Or there’s Archie at the BM who may want to buy it! My God, Lina, Longton Hall ware. We’re talking high hundreds, maybe even thousands. Oh, certainly thousands.’

‘What’ll you tell Joe?’

‘Nothing at all! Dear heart, that would give the darling man ideas quite above his station.’

‘But Griff –’

‘Enough, Lina. I know we don’t see eye to eye on this matter, never have and probably never will. That’s how Joe and I function. I never know how much or how little he’s paid. He never knows how much or how little I make. Sometimes it’s nothing, remember.’

‘Not very often,’ I grumbled.

‘This concern for the underdog is entirely understandable and does you credit – as a person. But not as a businesswoman. Now, would you be kind enough to bathe this lady – I find I can’t trust my hands at the moment. And I shall find the times of the afternoon trains to London.’

So I was to be stuck in the shop all afternoon, was I? Just when I wanted to be out and about, rubbernecking mansions. I snarled at the little lady. But she smiled hopefully back, and I hadn’t the heart to be cross with her. With Griff – well, that was quite another thing.

I was even crosser when I got our first customer of the day. She emerged from a four-by-four big enough to have done service in the Iraq war, abandoned about a foot from the double yellow lines that were intended to keep traffic flowing down the village street. You might think I’d have welcomed her with open arms, since it was now well after three-thirty, but it was the contents of her arms that worried me. A child of about four. There was also a child in one of these massive pushchairs, the sort that look as if they’re going drag-racing
any moment, but since that one was fastened in, it didn’t present quite such a hazard – not if it was parked out of arm’s reach of all the little things it was grabbing for. Its older sister – complete with a dripping ice cream – was the problem.

I was very slow opening up. The longer I dawdled, smiling apologetically through the glass door at my clumsiness, the more of that ice cream might find its way into the cupid’s bow mouth than on to our
putti
. But at last I had to defeat the lock, and the little girl more or less fell on to me. The safest thing was to gather her up, looking as if I enjoyed being dabbed with sticky fingers.

‘Aren’t you lucky,’ I cooed, ‘having a lovely ice cream like that?’

The mother manoeuvred the monster-buggy inside. ‘Victoria doesn’t like strangers to pick her up,’ she announced, in the sort of carrying voice Mrs Hatch used, only even more pukka. And not in the Jamie Oliver sense, either. Pukka sahib sort of pukka.

I ignored what she really meant: she didn’t like Victoria to be picked up by strangers. ‘She’ll be all right with me, won’t you, Victoria?’ If I’d had a hand free, I’d have pointed to the discreet little notice forbidding food or drink in the shop. As soon as I could, I’d drop the cone into the bin, accidentally on purpose.

‘Can I help or would you prefer to browse?’ I asked politely, removing the cone from my ear.

‘Just browsing. Look, you can see she doesn’t like being held.’

I could feel. She was arching her body strongly against mine. At least to push she had to remove the
cone from my ear. I helped. ‘What a sticky girl you are,’ I giggled, through set teeth. ‘Has mummy got a hankie to mop you with?’

Mummy managed to be deaf. Perhaps she was. Youngster Two was yelling fit to bust. It was reaching for a Venetian wineglass. In vain, I hoped – but you never knew with will power like that. I’d have moved it, only I was trying to reach the roll of kitchen towel I’d started to keep handy by the till. I’d started to keep something else handy, you see – but Victoria couldn’t get her mitts on it till I’d got the worst off them. The little darling tried to bite me as I wiped.

‘Now if you do that, I shan’t show you something special,’ I said. ‘Come on, Victoria – let’s get those hands clean.’

‘God, all this fuss!’ I wasn’t sure which one of us Mummy addressed

One of us had to win. Despite the screams it had to be me. It was. As a reward for her awful behaviour, I now had to show Victoria what should silence her for a few minutes at least, but then almost guarantee me a bit of profit. The junk box. Correction, my Plan A – the toy box. Then I could rescue the Venetian glass. Mummy had at last realised that Youngster Two was getting loud, so she returned to its buggy – I’d been right in both senses when I’d called it a monster-buggy – pushing it absentmindedly backwards and forwards while she scanned the shelves. In a supermarket the fingers would have grasped baby-height sweets. Here they were within millimetres of fragile glass. And if blood were shed I knew who’d get the blame.

Hooking out the toy box with my left foot, I
managed to reach the wineglass just as the brat did. There. The top shelf for that. But now it was after a Baccarat millefiori paperweight, nothing special, but, in the way of glass things, heavy and breakable. Nearer and further, nearer and further, as Mummy pushed and pulled the buggy.

It wouldn’t take much effort to smash a skull with it.

I resisted the temptation. Moved it into safety.

‘Madam,’ I said over the yells, ‘this isn’t really the best place to park.’

She turned, raising an eyebrow as if our grandmother clock had spoken.

‘These things are very – dangerous,’ I said, replacing
fragile
at the last moment. ‘Look, he’s after that poker now.’

Meanwhile, Victoria was dismembering a doll.

That was OK. They were meant to come apart. Part of my Plan A.

At last, the noise from the brat was so loud it penetrated even Mummy’s cloth ears. With the speed of light I put part two of Plan A into practice, shoving a battered teddy into his hands. Blessed silence.

‘Now, was there anything in particular?’ I asked Mummy, smarmy enough to be Griff.

‘I was thinking of something you don’t seem to have,’ she bellowed, dropping her voice as she realised the din had ceased. ‘A present – something manly, you know?’

Manly? A year ago I’d have shown total ignorance. Now I could produce a hip-flask and a silver mounted riding crop, my face a perfect blank.

‘I was thinking of a print. Or an old map. That sort of thing.’

My stomach clenched. ‘Anything in particular?’

‘Oh, something local. Hang on – a friend of mine’s got the first page of some book or other, you know, coloured and framed. Such a scream.’

‘You wouldn’t know which one?’

She shrugged massively, as if not knowing just showed what an idiot I was.

‘Could you tell me what it looks like?’

‘Christ! Well, it’s got these funny little men on it, all dressed up in really weird clothes, holding spears and God knows what else. Theatre or something. Very pretty colours – amazingly bright for something hundreds of years old.’

I breathed out. Not my frontispiece. But possibly the frontispiece of an atlas I’d once seen Marcus working on. If she wasn’t going to buy anything from here, she might as well buy from him and Copeland. I fished out his card, one of a collection we kept by the phone, and moved as if to hold the door for her. At this point, Plan A came into play again. Summoned by Mummy, Victoria came clutching a doll’s torso. And there was no way she could separate the brat from the unfortunate bear.

‘Fuck,’ she said, producing a credit card. ‘Bloody pricey, teddies, these days, I suppose.’

‘Collectors’ items,’ I agreed sadly. I gathered up the rest of the doll. ‘But I’ll throw in this as a little extra.’

As if getting a bargain, she reached as if on impulse for the crop. I wrapped it before she could blink. If my face had been blank before, it was impenetrable now. But as I locked up behind her, I could hardly stop myself bursting into song. Treat me as an unpaid childminder, would she? Well, she’d paid me now – and at a rate ten times the national minimum wage.

‘So the Longton lady’ll sleep with Archie tonight,’ Griff said mistily. ‘Safe and sound.’

‘That’ll be a first,’ I said, ‘Archie sleeping with a woman.’ But actually, in view of all the recent hassle, I was pleased that she wasn’t anywhere near us.

‘Naughty, naughty.’ He grinned, raising his glass of champagne in my direction. ‘You know exactly what I mean. And the wonderful thing is that he’ll find a buyer for us and preserve our anonymity – no small consideration after these last few days.’

I nodded, and wished I hadn’t – movement joggled my bruises.

‘Now, tell me about your afternoon.’

Full of champagne, plus some stuff he’d added to it to sweeten it called crème de cassis, rather like alcoholic Ribena, I gave him chapter and verse.

Cocking his head like a bird after an especially juicy worm, he asked, ‘How did you feel about screwing all that lovely cash out of Lady Whatever Her Name Is?’

Yes, her credit card had revealed she was titled.

‘Great!’ But then I shook my head. I’d taken advantage of the woman, just as I’d accused Griff of taking advantage of Knight. ‘No, not good. It felt brilliant at the time, but now it feels like – cheating.’

‘
Caveat emptor
, dear heart. Business is business, as Arthur Miller ironically observes. While some things are certainly beyond the pale, some things are entirely legitimate.’

‘As to business – well, it wasn’t the wisest thing in the world to risk antagonising her. She won’t be happy when
she finds out that teddy bear’s worth next to nothing.’

‘I think your original feeling was better, dear heart. She used you. You used her. And she’ll never admit having bought a duff toy. Look at the idiotic prices people were paying for the creatures at Detling. Absolute rubbish, no better than that specimen. Which reminds me, I bought a little present for you in London.’ He hauled himself to his feet. ‘You do realise you might have been talking to your sister, don’t you?’ He asked as he disappeared round the door.

My sister! Being related to a thick, arrogant cow like that?

‘I know,’ I said as he returned. ‘That quip about my sister! It’s all part of your campaign to show me that the aristocracy are nothing to write home about, isn’t it? Like the castles and William the Bastard this morning. I looked him up after work,’ I added.

‘William the Bastard indeed. Wrong side of the blanket birth apart, he confessed on his deathbed that he was responsible for the murders – not deaths in battle, you’ll notice – the murders of five hundred people. Are you sure you don’t want to know what I found for you? Oh dear, Lina, you’re not very enthusiastic about presents, are you? I wonder why that is. It’s no doubt buried deep in your psyche.’

‘I quite like presents,’ I said, adding fairly, ‘so long as they’re not too useful.’ All those useful knickers and tights and soaps and shampoos for birthdays or Christmas. I should have felt grateful. Perhaps I would have done if I hadn’t been expected to.

‘I think you’ll find this far from utilitarian.’ He produced a large bag from behind his back. ‘I haven’t
ventured to wrap it – it objected too strongly.’

“It” was a teddy bear.

‘He’s a
he
, not an
it
!’ He smiled invitingly and held out his paws. But it was Griff I hugged.

‘Dear, dear – well, I suppose fizz always makes one weepy.’ He mopped his eyes, then mine. ‘I had a bear once not unlike this called Timothy. God, he’d be worth thousands now.’

‘But you wouldn’t have sold him?’

‘Who knows?’ Griff shrugged. ‘I think it might be that you inherited your mercenary streak from yours truly.’

‘Well, I shan’t sell this Timothy. Tim. Ever. Hey, what’s this on his bow-tie?’

‘A little something I also found on my travels. Strictly non-utilitarian again.’

This bear – about an inch and a half tall – was made of gold, clutching a ball made out of a coral bead. His eyes were diamond chips. Griff passed me his jeweller’s eye-piece. ‘Only yours if you can tell me the year and city of manufacture,’ he said.

Knowing Griff he might just mean it. I peered closely. ‘Birmingham. 1930?’

‘1931. No matter. What’s a year between friends?’ Pointing at tiny loops between its ears and on its back, he added, ‘It can be either a brooch or a pendant. I know such things aren’t your actual fashionable gear these days, so I shan’t expect to see you wearing him.’

‘But you can expect to see him sitting around smiling. Is there room for him in that display case?’

Someone rang the doorbell.

‘Tchh. Trust the outside world to interrupt our
charming little sentimental idyll.’

I stayed where I was, sitting on the settee – whoops! – sofa, Tim snuggling up while I held the other bear in the palm of my hand.

‘Lina, my dear – the police for you.’

Jesus! The fraudulent bear. If I grovelled enough, would that get me off? I promised the Guy in Canterbury Cathedral I’d never do anything like it again if he could get me out of this.

Dave Brent peered round the door, just like Griff earlier, producing a little bag.

‘I was surprised he didn’t offer to smooth that bruise cream on your cheeks with his own fair hands,’ Griff said over breakfast the following morning. ‘More black coffee?’

Dave’s visit had been only partly official. He’d returned the videotape, confirming that at least we knew my assailant was male. His colleagues rather thought the car might be a Ford Focus. Which didn’t, as he said, narrow it down all that much. Then, presenting the tube of ointment, the sort Mr Elworthy had rejected, he thought it might be nice to take me out for a drink when the case was over – he almost checked with Griff to ask him permission. Griff reminded him, rather too quickly, that the previous evening he’d said there wasn’t a case, just some information that might help solve other cases. But that was the attempted burglary, I’d chimed in, not liking the fact that the discussion was talking place above my head. Trying to run me over had been a different matter, surely not connected with those damned cats. Which was presumably when we all fell about
laughing and somehow Griff shoehorned me into my first date with Dave.

Next morning, Griff would have loved all the details – ‘Nothing better than a good goss, dear heart.’ I didn’t exactly point out that I’d never asked for or expected a blow-by-blow account of his dealings with Aidan but he did accept that there were some things that I might not wish to discuss until the aspirins had worked.

And then not. I had a morning’s restoration work ahead of me, while Griff looked after the shop. If business was slack, and you don’t expect too much action midweek, than I’d take the van and leave him to it.

Today I was off on my first pilgrimage. Iffin Court. Oh, yes, I’d chosen it especially for the name, and because Griff and I could bury its importance to me under a mound of jokes about its name.

Like the one when he checked I’d got my mobile phone. ‘Iffin difficulty, call me!’

He meant me to squirm so I did. ‘Hang on. Is that what they call a pun? Some teacher told us about puns. Lowest form of wit, or something.’

‘I think he might have mistaken puns for sarcasm. In fact, puns have a long and noble place in English letters. Shakespeare used them regularly with serious intent. As did the poet, Donne. “When you have done, you have not Donne, for I have more.”’

‘But Iffin a hurry, you’ve got no time for puns,’ I reminded him. ‘I’ve still got my gilding to finish.’

Iffin Court lay between the A28 and the B2068, not all that far from Canterbury. The A20 was nice and empty as usual, people preferring the M20. I’d much rather
have driven up in an ordinary anonymous car, not a van with the shop name plastered all over it. In fact, for general security, a car would be better, wouldn’t it, a nice big estate job? Maybe this Longton Hall figurine would provide the cash. I knew more about cars than I’d ever let on, especially about starting them unofficially, you might say. I reckoned I could sort out something sound at an auction for under a thousand. But that meant confessing a bit more to Griff. On the other hand, I told myself, as I parked neatly and emerged, head high, he knew a lot worse things about me, or guessed, at least.

It was time to chase that memory. There was one pun we hadn’t made. Iffin doubt, turn back.

Head high, I walked towards the ticket office.

My mobile phone rang. Marcus?

‘Hi. How’s your search going?’

‘I’m just going to the first place now. Iffin Court.’

‘Iffin court, plead Not Guilty.’

I groaned.

‘Why go there?’ he asked, rather shirty. ‘It’s not on that list of postcodes.’

‘I couldn’t work them out,’ I lied. I wasn’t going to tell him I’d forgotten all about them. What with Kitties and teddy bears, I’d never got round to tidying out the caravan or even my bag. Maybe it wasn’t entirely a lie, either – given the choice between having not just the full address of a place, plus photo, and just four letters framing two numbers, which would your brain forget to work on?

‘What a good job I’ve had a chance to print off the whole list of Coz’s names,’ he said, sounding kind, to be fair, rather than patronising. ‘What’s your fax number at
the shop?’

I rattled it off. ‘Tell you what,’ I added, ‘I owe you an apology: I gave this poisonous woman your card yesterday. I hope her brats haven’t dabbed their sticky mitts all over your handiwork.’

‘
That’s
how she got hold of us. She phoned last night.’

‘So you haven’t had the pleasure of her kids’ company?’

‘Strictly phone and registered post.’

‘You got a sale, then?’

‘She had her eye on a John Speed frontispiece:
The
Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain
. Didn’t have one in, of course. Then she started asking about other frontispieces. Just thought you might want to know.’

‘You didn’t tell her about mine?’

‘Keep your hair on! Come on: we’re in the same trade, Lina. You ought to know that customer confidentiality is paramount. Even when the customer’s a mate.’

A mate, eh
? Not
my woman
any more. Who was using whom in this little relationship?

‘Thanks,’ I said. Even if I wasn’t quite sure for what. ‘Did you manage to sell her anything?’

‘Why do you think I’m calling?’

To tell me about frontispieces?

‘I only managed to flog her a Robert Morden map of Middlesex!’ he crowed. ‘And she wants us to locate a Saxton one, too. Retouching, framing: we’re talking profit, here, Lina.’

I knew better than to ask how much profit. ‘Great. Drinks are on you next time,’ I said without thinking.

‘Er –’

I could hear his writhe of embarrassment. I’d better
spare him. ‘Look, my battery’s dying. I’ll get back to you. OK?’

I stayed where I was, thinking. Was that why my so-called date with Dave Brent hadn’t exactly set the Thames on fire, apart from the fact I was tired out and already semi-pissed when we set out? Because I still had the hots for Marcus? No, I didn’t think I had. I was damned sure he didn’t have them for me, and if life had taught me anything it was not to give love until you were sure of receiving it. But that didn’t mean I didn’t like him. Yes, as a mate.

So what now? Should I give up, and nip into Canterbury to scour the charity shops for anything worth selling on? And if I spotted anything they’d really underpriced I’d have told them. Or put a donation in their jar. Whatever.

Or, since I was here and it was quite a nice day,
clean-smelling
after all the rain, should I hand over my fiver and snoop round Iffin Court? The grounds themselves were worth a visit. From where I stood there was the sort of view they put on postcards, rolling fields, old churches, even a cricket ground over to my left. Behind me stood Iffin Court. I turned to face a gentleman’s country residence probably built between 1760 and 1800. My period, whatever Marcus had said.

Iffin doubt, do it.