The Possessions of a Lady (32 page)

'Hello, Mary. I knew yours.' I bussed her. She'd been born four
doors from me. I eyed the heaps of gunge, managed, 'You've done wonders, love.'

Trestle tables were set out, women busy at them. Blokes were
hauling in more. Furniture, discarded clothes, mirrors, paintings you wouldn't
shake a stick at, trinkets on a stand, a reproduction screen, rusting garden
implements.

The whole lot was crud. I was broken.

'Well, Lovejoy?' Stella clasped her hands. What had she told her
teams about Terence's vanished vanload?

'Can I have a wander, love?' I said brightly, not bursting into
wracking sobs, for the sake of morale.

'Of course! People, listen! Lovejoy is going to examine our
antiques!'

'And somebody brew up,' I added. 'I've not had a decent cup since
I were a lad.'

Amid cheery calls, I ambled. There was volume, but no substance.
Piles of old newspapers—but they have to be in pristine condition to sell. The
clothes no collector would give a second glance. The furniture was soiled
wartime, with sliced part-circle
Utility
emblems. Firewood. Electrical fittings, old boilers, decrepit bicycles—the
entire sorry mass was unsellable. Great in a thousand years, for some Third
Millennium Ph.D.s to write a How They Lived Back Then. But now? I feigned
enthusiasm, paused for people's reminiscences. Pretended excitement at the
throwout rubbish while furtively planning escape. The quicker I did a Terence
the better. Maybe what he'd taken was also duff? And did it matter, if he was
already in Monte Carlo?

They'd made a pleasing archway with great double doors. The chapel
was one great space.

'Lovejoy!' Amy greeted me, flushed with exertion. She was marking
the wooden flooring with yellow sticky tape. Students lounged in artistic
attitudes. One lass tried to look pre-Raphaelite, wasn't even close. 'Here to
see the antiques?'

'Hello, love. Is this where your show happens?'

'Yes. They're setting the lighting. We'll soon do an Italian
run—that's a fast test rehearsal. The models drill early tomorrow. We go after
your sale.'

Minus me, I thought. 'Do you need a rehearsal?'

'Of course!' She trilled a he's-not-real laugh.

Rehearsal? To walk about in different frocks? I kept silent. Three
blokes carried in enormous wooden pallets. The students looked tired.

'Oh, good,' I said. 'Glad it'll be, er . . .'

'Meet the mayor, Lovejoy.' Amy pulled me to be introduced. He was
an affable, smiling bloke, thick-set. I'd seen his WH-1 registration limo
outside. 'This is our Lovejoy,' she said proudly. I felt sham.

We made polite noises. Mayor Enderton said how pleased he was, etc.,
and I said etc. likewise.

'We haven't money, son,' he said gravely. 'If things you auction
sell well, we can make this a permanent centre. I donated my grandad's
paintings to it.'

'Oh?' I said, bored. 'Your gramp painted?'

'No,' he puzzled me by saying. 'His three pictures were Mr.
Lodge's, his old friend. Only birds, but nice detail. Odd shine, they had, like
dried cream.'

Dementia woke me. Mayor Enderton had just given a word picture of
the great George Edward Lodge's birds-rocks-moss-bark natural history works.
This genius died in 1954, but was in his eighties before he did his renowned
bird series of 385 paintings for David Bannerman's twelve-volume book. His life
shows why some artists soar and others don't. Aging fast, arthritic
octagenarian George Lodge, a true hero, realised he needed detail in his pictures,
against the fashion— note that please—of the times. Only one medium would do,
the ancient and virtually extinct method of egg tempera painting. So he learned
to separate fresh egg yolk, rub in pigments, and painted. It's lovely to paint
with. You use fine brushes, line by line, over and over, on parchment or sheet
copper. And you can actually buff up the painting with a cloth to a radiant
gleam. Think of cream. Mediaeval monks used egg tempera to illuminate their
parchments. Go to see the Lindisfarne Gospels, and you'll never forget.
Odd shine, detail, Lodge
. Fortune.

'Anything else, Mr. Mayor?' Three Lodge paintings? Unrecorded?
Sell those, he'd have his centre.

'Oh, couple of old mirrors.' He gave a sad chuckle. 'My grandad loved
them. Silly; you could hardly see your face. They'd gone sugary. Nice carving,
like faded gold.' He added, ‘It were only wood. A bit was chipped.'

'Frame spread over the mirror?'

'Aye. Hardly room for your reflection. One was crumbling bad, dry
rot.' He eyed me. 'Any value?'

'Don't sound so,' I lied. 'Look, Tom . . .'

He startled me by suddenly perking up. Stella joined us. He began
to babble incoherently about his hopes for developing Scout Hey. I couldn't
help looking from him to Stella, and from Stella to him.

They were astonishingly alive, in a way that can only mean what I
think. 'Oh, good,' I kept saying. He'd fetched architects' drawings. I was
shown them, peered without comprehension, did my Oh, good. They were on a
loser. They'd not raise enough for the nails, let alone total rebuilding, from
auctioning the garbage here. But his mirrors and Lodge funny-shine paintings .
. .

'Stella,' I said, startling her back from gazing into Mayor
Enderton. 'Who's boss? I mean, when does the auction end? Do the dealers get
chucked out and the fashioneers brought in for the frock show?'

The mayor answered for her. 'The auction's yours. The textile show
goes later.'

'Oh, good.' The affinity between Stella and Mayor Tom was charring
the air. I asked to be let go. He said he appreciated my help. I said I was
really glad. Sickening.

The mounds of debris had meanwhile risen. Old—read modern
worthless—books, none with a single vibe, were being stacked amid exclamations
of pleasure. Other loads of clag were approaching. I crouched for a sprint to
freedom out of this hell. Could I use Tinker to nail Terence Entwistle, then
scarper with Mayor Enderton's few antiques? I'd get away scotage free. Terence
couldn't very well report me for
his
theft. Not without exposing himself as the ultimate rogue. It was beautiful.

'That you, love?' an old lady asked. I looked down. She only came
up to my shoulder.

That was another thing. I'm exactly average, but I'd noticed that I
was a bit taller than most. It felt odd, because I'm not.

'Aye, it's me, love.' I stared, and melted. 'Miss Dewhurst?'

'Yes, love.' She beamed with shy pride at the women nearby. 'See?
I lived next door, didn't I, son?'

'Yes.' I hugged her. She only weighed a couple of ounces.

Old Alice, as we called her, had a wind-up gramophone and taught
me music. Beethoven, Italian arias, folk songs, the lot. She had cats. She
alone had managed to grow some trees—okay, two stunted, sooty privets that
never got higher than the slate-slab yard walls—but still a miracle of
gardening. She'd worked as a cotton piecer, still wore her ankle clogs. I could
swear they were the same ones. She'd knock sometimes, just to show me pictures,
pretty women, handsome men, landscapes painted long ago. She lived in a fantasy
world of romance and colour, when our world was grey.

'You'll help us, luv?' she said.

Once, I'd been reading. I was seven. We'd just lit the gas mantle,
pulling its chain to make it pop into light when you held the match to it. Old
Alice knocked with her clothes prop. Neighbours summoned each other like this,
reaching the prop up next door's steps.

'Come and look!' she'd cried. 'Front steps! Quick!'

We rushed to see, Gran puffing, and peered out, wondering. There
was Old Alice in the street.

'See?' She was exultant. 'The sunset!'

Curious, I'd looked. The sky was a mass of scarlets, golds, rose
hues on deep cerulean blue. I stared, too polite to ask. The sky often did
change. Alice was looking at it, tears in her shining eyes.

'Isn't it the most beautiful sky anybody's ever seen?' she said
longingly. Gran instantly went back in.

'Aye, Miss Dewhurst,' I said. I didn't mean it. But, standing
there, a sense of seeing what she saw slowly grew. I went down the steps to
stand beside her, to test if it looked different from the pavement. All was as
I saw. It was just that Old Alice saw beauty above, where I'd seen only a flat
plank. I stood an hour with her, watching the colours, learning more then than
in all my schooling.

'Help?' I asked, uneasy, remembering escape.

'They're trying to buy this chapel, luv,' she explained. 'There
might be music! And a place folk can stop for their tea on the way to the Lake
District! Maybe dances!' Her old eyes shone. 'A pool for childer! Flowers,
paths for young folk to walk hand in hand!' She turned to me. 'Oh, son! It'll
be beautiful, won't it?' But her old cracked voice, with that absurd lisp she
always did have, didn't hold conviction. Nothing ever did, for wistful old
ladies like Alice. But her dream would be lovely while it lasted, a hope. And
hope was the thing. When that hope came to nothing, then Old Alice would
somehow discover a new one, and keep on.

'Aye, love,' I said lapsing. 'I'll help.'

Signalling to Stella, I smiled and chatted my sorry way outside
into the macadam car park. I walked onto the one remaining patch of bare
moorland grass towards the ruined mansion.

'Where are we going, Lovejoy?' Stella asked.

'Out of earshot, love.'

We entered the stone-walled garden, derelict and overgrown. The
roses had reverted to wild, to stay alive, a lesson for us all. For a moment I
felt a familiar strangeness come into me, stared about, looked up at the gaunt
ruin. The sills were fragmenting, the walls bellying out. It was all crumbling
doorways and sagging brickwork, and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. But
the feeling made me narked. I rounded on her.

'It's all crap, Stella.' I could hardly see from fury. 'Your
Terence nicked the only genuine antiques.'

She recoiled. 'He took a few paintings, a pair of old twisted
mirrors, Lovejoy. What Mayor Tom donated. That's all.'

'He's owffed the only valuable items.' I got angrier. 'What have
you told the helpers?'

'I said Terence had removed them for safe keeping,' she said
miserably. 'To a secret location.'

'The rest wouldn't sell at a jumble.'

'That's impossible, Lovejoy.' She'd gone white. 'We're depending

'An auction tomorrow's out of the question.'

'It can't be!' She filled up. 'Oh, Lovejoy, they've worked so
hard. And people've given everything. They hope Scout Hey will bring jobs . .
.'

'Aye.' I interrupted rudely. 'So you let Terence steal anything
valuable. If the dealers that you've invited even see that shambles, they'll
torch the bloody place.'

'But

My hand on her mouth, I went on, 'Do you know what you're dealing
with? Dealers are maniacs. If they think they've been had, they'll assume that
you've been paid to decoy them here—so they won't go somewhere else where the
real money's being spent! See?'

'No, Lovejoy.' She spoke in a whisper, ashen.

'Listen, Stella.' I leant against the bonnet of a motor, hands in
my pockets. I felt done for. 'A bloke I knew accidentally got the date wrong
for his field auction. He'd sent out cards, got it together. Dealers came on
the date printed on their invitations.'

'What happened, Lovejoy?' I felt like a stoat dancing round a
rabbit, but she had to learn. That's why I'd chosen a true story, always the
worst.

'They put all his belongings into his garage, car and all.

Made him set it ablaze. His antiques they stole, auctioned off
among themselves. Then they set his house afire. He was left naked, not even
shoes to stand up in.'

'But the police, Lovejoy!'

'Stella,' I said wearily. 'For God's sake shut up.'

Well, she'd said it to me often enough.

'But it's too late to cancel now, Lovejoy.' She flapped a hand
towards the chapel. 'You can't leave us in the lurch.'

Why not, exactly? Then I surrendered, habit of a lifetime.

'Give me a lift up the Scout moor, love.'

I started towards her motor, adding over my shoulder as she gasped
in alarm, 'Don't worry. I'll not escape.'

31

Part way up the hill we call Scout there is an ancient hall, the
sort newspapers call baronial. Town buses turn back there. There's a phone box.
I told Stella to hang on a sec, phoned, then we carried on to the empty moor.

'Are you sure, Lovejoy?' She didn't want me unsupervised.

'Sure, ta.' I perched on a drystone wall. 'I used to come here,
stare at the town.'

'Fishing in the lodge, more like,' she said cryptically,
indicating the small upland lake. Shows how wrong teachers are. I'd been taken
fishing when I was six, and caught a gudgeon. First time, last time, never, as
the girls chanted skipping. That poor gudgeon's reproachful gaze. Bad as a
cat's any day.