‘Ah! Signor Parchment, I anticipated you might join the ladies!’ His good humour and obvious desire to please break the spell as he swiftly unloads the tray, carefully placing on the table four large glasses and a carafe into which he has decanted the wine. ‘I hope you will permit . . .’ He smiles winningly, seeking permission to join them in a celebratory drink, as he presents the empty wine bottle for scrutiny.
‘Of course!’ chorus the sisters, grateful for his company and the distraction it offers, as they both sit forward to peer at the label.
‘Oh, goodness!’ says Harriet.
‘My word!’ says Hester.
Alfonso beams. ‘Yes,’ he says proudly. He knows these ladies; knows he need say no more.
‘Nineteen eighty-one,’ breathes Hester reverently. She smiles up at the Italian. ‘A great year. A Bersano!’
‘Yes! At such a time, only the best will suffice.’ He hands the cork first to Harriet, then Hester, to smell.
Lionel watches circumspectly; they might be talking Greek for all he can contribute.
With considerable theatre, Alfonso slowly pours the dark wine into one glass and hands it ceremoniously to Harriet. ‘Signora.’ He waits.
‘No, please,’ says Harriet, cradling the glass, tastebuds aglow, ‘let us all drink together.’
Alfonso inclines his head gravely in agreement and pours three more glasses in similar fashion. In unison, he, Hester and Harriet insert their noses into the bowl and sniff; Lionel has taken a sip before he realises his blunder.
A collective sigh escapes the oenophiles; as one they tip the wine to their lips, allow the flavours to flood their mouths, and swallow.
Hester thinks she has never tasted anything more sublime. ‘So firm,’ she says in quiet ecstasy. ‘And . . . is it roses . . .?’
‘And tar, that is what they always say,’ says Alfonso, taking another appreciative sip. ‘Yes, for sure.’
‘Dark chocolate,’ says Harriet, momentarily beyond happiness, her worries temporarily forgotten. She rolls another mouthful over her tongue. Divine.
‘And truffles?’ asks Hester.
Alfonso nods. ‘Very earthy.’
A thought strikes both sisters simultaneously. Hester voices it. She points at the bottle. ‘How much . . .?’
Alfonso adopts a martyred look. ‘Signore! I would not dream . . .!’
Both sisters breathe an inward sigh of relief. In matters vinous, they rarely stint themselves, but this wine would be eye-wateringly expensive.
A further thought strikes Hester. ‘Does Marco know?’ Alfonso’s partner, while expressing enormous sympathy for Mary and Harriet’s plight and making all the right noises, has their business to consider. And now one of his most expensive wines has been opened . . .
Alfonso puts a finger to his lips. ‘Shh . . . the cellar is my responsibility. How do you say: what the eye is not seeing . . .?’ He laughs mischievously.
‘Thank you, Alfonso,’ says Harriet, getting up to kiss his cheek. He smells of lemons and expensive aftershave. ‘I don’t know what—’
‘Please.’ He takes her hand and raises it to his lips. ‘My pleasure, signora, entirely, to be of service.’ He drains his glass with evident satisfaction, then refills theirs, placing the now empty carafe with the bottle and his own glass on the tray. ‘Destroying the evidence,’ he says with a wink, before running lightly up the steps.
‘Magnificent.’ Hester holds her glass up to the light.
‘The wine or the sommelier?’ says Harriet.
‘Both.’
Benign with wine, Harriet looks over to Lionel. ‘How did you find it, Lionel? The wine.’
He jumps, and shifts uneasily. Hester looks out over the vista. ‘Oh! Yes, very . . . er, pleasant. Very pleasant indeed. I wonder if I might propose a little toast?’
Hester and Harriet tense. Hester tries to signal to Lionel: Not now. Please don’t say anything . . .
Harriet thinks, Please, please don’t.
A shadow falls across the table.
‘Oh, very nice. Very nice, I’m sure,’ spits Ron Martindale, substantial chest heaving with indignation. ‘You sit here, guzzling wine in the middle of the afternoon, while my wife is recovering in her room after gallivanting around the Italian countryside courtesy of your idiocy and irresponsibility! Mary has a head injury, for God’s sake! It’s only by the greatest good fortune that she didn’t suffer a relapse while you dragged her off to some godforsaken market or something. You just stay away from her, do you hear, you interfering old—’
Hester gets to her feet. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Stay out of this, if you please. It’s this woman—’ he jabs a finger in Harriet’s direction ‘—I’m talking to. This conniving troublemaker, who’s been pouring God knows what poison into my wife’s ears. I swear, if you come within a hundred feet of—’
Hester gathers herself to respond, all her instincts screaming at her to protect her sister against this bully.
Harriet, reading Hester’s intent instinctively, wills her to silence, knowing that, once roused and particularly when anyone attacks those she loves, her sister’s self-control evaporates. Oh, Hetty, please don’t.
‘I must ask you to stop shouting at Mrs Pearson,’ says a quiet voice out of nowhere. ‘You are making a spectacle of yourself and embarrassing us all. Now, kindly remove yourself or I shall do it for you.’
Ron’s bulky frame seems to swell still further with fury. He looks around for the perpetrator of this outrageous interruption. Lionel pushes back his chair and stands up, slight but resolute, interposing himself between Ron and an ashen-faced Harriet.
‘What the hell’s it got to—’ Ron’s face is beet-red, flecks of saliva bubbling on his lips. A vein pulses on his forehead.
‘You might like to ask yourself why exactly your unfortunate wife did not ask you to take her out for the day,’ says Lionel in the same calm tone.
Ron’s mouth drops open comically.
‘Now, please leave. I shan’t ask a second time.’ Lionel makes an infinitesimal move towards the other man and Ron flinches visibly, falling back.
‘You haven’t heard the last of this,’ he blusters in a failed attempt to regain the upper hand. Flinging one last contemptuous look at Harriet’s averted face, he wheels around, throws back his head and stomps back up the steps, shouldering his way through a clutch of gawping onlookers, and disappears into the hotel.
For a moment, everyone is frozen in a shocked tableau, until Hester collapses into her chair, hand already reaching for her glass.
The hero of the hour maintains his flinty demeanour until Ron is out of sight, then, as if his legs can no longer support him, drops into his seat, a look of appalled realisation washing over his face. ‘Good Lord, Good Lord above,’ he mutters almost to himself, one shaky hand to his brow. All around them, bright, over-casual conversation breaks out as their erstwhile audience melts away, eager to rake over events at a more discreet distance.
Harriet gently edges Lionel’s glass towards him; when he fails to respond, she wraps his nerveless fingers around the stem and gives them a squeeze. ‘Thank you, Lionel.’
‘Lionel the lion,’ murmurs Hester in something approaching wonderment.
She catches Hester’s eye; there is a moment of confusion and uncertainty, then the smiles that start to creep across their faces mutate swiftly first into sniggers, then snorts of glorious, slightly hysterical laughter.
Their joint good humour lasts all through the evening. They ignore the surreptitious glances thrown at them by some of the other guests and each secretly sighs with relief when it becomes apparent that Ron Martindale has no intention of braving the restaurant that night. Of Rhona there is likewise no sign; Harriet can only imagine the grief both she and Ron will be visiting upon the embattled object of their joint affections. Weary as she is of the whole saga, she nevertheless continues to feel a certain responsibility towards Mary. But at Hester’s insistence, she has agreed that she
will let matters lie for the moment.
‘I will leave her a note, though,’ she says, regardless of Hester’s frown. ‘I don’t want to her to think I’ve abandoned her entirely.’
Lionel puts out a restraining hand as Hester goes to protest; Hester subsides.
Harriet yawns extravagantly, washed with a sudden wave of fatigue. She pushes aside her half-eaten zabaglione. ‘Golly, I’m exhausted. Forgive me, but I’m ready for my bed.’ She gets unsteadily to her feet. ‘Whoops! It’s not the wine, honestly, it’s just I’m utterly wiped out.’
‘Early start tomorrow,’ says Hester. ‘You need a good night’s sleep. Want me to come with you?’
‘Don’t be daft. You finish your meal. Sorry to be such a . . . anyway, good night, both. And, Lionel, can I just—’
He stops her with his palm. ‘Honestly, there’s no need.’
Harriet nods her thanks and, overcome once more, hurries from the restaurant, as Lionel reaches for Hester’s hand.
A good night’s sleep, however, eludes her.
She tosses and turns, punches her pillow in frustration, wide awake still, although her eyes feel gritty with tiredness. The looks between Hester and Lionel that she tried so assiduously to ignore over dinner come back in all their significance: something happened today on their little outing, she’s sure of it. Thank God we’re going home tomorrow, she thinks. Then it’ll all fizzle out, with any luck. She comforts herself with that thought and once more snuggles down into the sheets. But minutes later, her mind is racing again, unpicking her mental comfort blanket, running through increasingly disturbing scenarios. She recalls her conversation with Hester in the town yesterday, that oddly jagged discussion about living abroad, about moving to London—
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ She peers at her alarm clock. Just past midnight. Reading offers no hope of a solution to her insomnia and she’s had enough of lying in the dark, worrying. She gets up, pulls on her dressing gown and creeps through the silent corridors to the room housing the computer, slipping past the deserted restaurant where two diners remain, faces illuminated by candlelight, their fingers entwined.
CHAPTER 46
They’re on their sixth black bin bag. The first five have been emptied out onto the lawn, sifted through and then, at Daria’s insistence, been carefully refilled. ‘Put by gate,’ she says. ‘Tomorrow men come with lorry.’
‘Thank God,’ says Nats, heaving two of the bags around the side of the cottage. ‘Wouldn’t fancy having to hoick this lot off to the dump.’
The sixth bag discharges a mountain of bottles and cans. ‘Were we in less of a hurry,’ says Finbar, ‘we ought to recycle these, as responsible citizens who cherish this fragile planet. As it is . . .’ He stirs the glass and metal with his foot, stopping to peer closely at something half buried in the grass. ‘What have we here?’ Bending down creakily he retrieves a small fragment of—
‘Is it?’ implores Ben, hope stubbornly resurfacing. Heedless of the smell, he leans over the old man’s palm to examine his find. ‘It’s the right colour. Yes! Look, that’s a foot, isn’t it?’ Feverishly, he begins raking through the rest of the pile, but in vain. No further fragments of the shattered shepherdess emerge.
Finbar angles the remnant of china to the light, eyes inches from the surface. ‘I fancy somewhere about my person is my loupe . . .’ As the others exchange bemused looks, he ferrets in his jacket pocket and withdraws a jeweller’s eyepiece that he screws into his right socket. ‘Now then . . . ah! Is that a . . . no, perhaps not . . . I thought for one moment . . . yes, yes, here we go, the lion . . . and the crown . . . Oh, and unless I’m much mistaken that’s the remains of an HN number.’ He whips the loupe away and beams triumphantly. ‘Royal Doulton, without a doubt.’
‘Yeah?’ says Ben eagerly. ‘So we can—’
‘Hold your horses, young man,’ says Finbar. ‘What we have so far is the manufacturer. What we need is the name of the piece, serial number ideally, its date of issue and possible retirement—’
‘What was that number you said? HN?’ says Nats, fishing her phone out of her pocket. ‘What’s that?’ Her thumbs move like lightning.
Finbar considers for a moment, brow furrowed. ‘I used to know . . . it’s something to do with . . . was it a designer? No, perhaps it was . . .’
‘Henry Nixon,’ Nats says, reading the information on her screen. ‘Innovative designer. Appears on any piece after 1913.’
‘Great Scott!’ Finbar is awestruck, looking from the mobile to Nats’ grin and back. ‘How on earth . . .’
‘Welcome to the twenty-first century, Finbar,’ says the girl, waggling her phone in his face. ‘Now, any idea what this statuette thing was called?’
Daria, Artem and Ben look hopefully at each other, then give a collective shrug.
‘Not a clue,’ says Ben miserably. ‘Woman in a dress. Was there a sheep?’ He looks to the others for help.
‘Sheep?’ says Daria. ‘No, no sheep.’
‘Man,’ cries Nats, staring at her screen, ‘there’s hundreds of them on Wikipedia. You sure it was a shepherdess?’
‘I think,’ says Daria.
‘Okay, let’s try that first,’ says Nats, typing swiftly. ‘There’s a few on eBay. Here’s one from 1991. Any good?’ She holds out the phone for them to inspect the image. They shake their heads.
‘Too recent,’ says Finbar. ‘I seem to recall Hester telling me it had been her mother’s. So, working backwards . . . let’s see . . .’
‘Got one here from the 1930s,’ says Barry, who has been following the conversation and quietly conducting his own investigations. He hands Daria his phone.
‘Yes!’ she gasps delightedly. ‘Is the lady! Clever Barry has found her! Look, Artem, is same as Hester and Harriet’s!’ She thrusts the image in her brother’s face. As his face creases in a smile of recognition, Ben feels his tightened muscles relaxing slightly.
‘Can I see?’ says Nats. She examines the picture for a second or two. ‘It’s pretty gross, isn’t it? Still, takes all sorts.’
‘I know,’ says Daria solemnly, wrinkling her nose. ‘Is old lady figure. I don’t like. But Hester and Harriet do. Is their . . . history, yes?’
There’s an air of both relief and excitement in the garden. Daria scoops up her son and makes for the kitchen to assemble lunch. Finbar, Barry and Artem set to shovelling the cans and bottles back into the bin bag. Ben edges closer to Nats, who still has hold of Barry’s phone and is flicking from page to page.
‘It’s a Buy It Now as well as an auction,’ she says. ‘That’s a relief.’ She freezes, her smile dissolving.
Ben’s stomach somersaults. ‘What? What is it?’
‘Er . . . seems this is a collector’s item.’
‘Yeah?’
She looks at him pityingly. ‘It’s four hundred and ninety-nine pounds.’
Ben’s innards slide south. ‘Four hundred . . .’
‘And that’s not all. It’s collection in person. From Edinburgh.’
All three of them—Ben, Nats and Barry—have checked and rechecked every single site that lists the figurine. Three of them are in the States, so completely out of the question given the timeframe, although ironically all three are cheaper (in one case considerably cheaper) than the Scottish one. Over a lunch of bread and cheese, the trio sit hunched over their mobiles until Ben, exasperated by squinting at a tiny screen, goes upstairs to use Hester’s PC. The search results inevitably remain the same. He slumps in the chair, beyond despair, beyond any solution. Nats pokes her head around the door.
‘I’m just off. Rehearsals. Sorry about the shepherdess. Bummer, eh?’
Sunk in misery, Ben is barely able to summon a nod. He needs to get off too: his parents will be home in a couple of hours and he’s promised to have a meal waiting for them.
‘You could just fess up. Tell them you were mucking about and—’
‘Who with? Doing what?’ It comes out as more aggressive than he intends.
/>
‘It was just a suggestion. Suit yourself.’
He hears her running lightly down the stairs. Wants to call out, ‘Sorry!’, thank her for her help . . . He hurries to the landing and leans over to see her disappearing through the front door, fastening her helmet.
‘Hey!’
Nats turns, looks up. Waits.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Forget it. Gotta go.’
‘This play you’re in . . .’
‘What about it?’
‘I might come.’
The tiniest of pauses. ‘Okay.’
The door snicks shut.
Finbar is applying the second coat of varnish to the banister as Ben eases past him on the stairs. Viscous trickles run down some of the spindles like sticky raindrops. Clever, thinks Ben, recalling now the slipshod varnishing of the originals. He’s very observant. And kind.
‘Ta, Finbar,’ he mutters humbly, squeezing past.
‘For what, dear boy?’
‘For . . . you know, like, helping and that.’
‘My pleasure entirely. Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself.’
‘That so?’
‘Marcus Aurelius.’
‘Right. Well, ta anyway. Just gonna . . .’ He flaps a hand in the direction of the kitchen.
He repeats his thanks to Daria, Artem and Barry, then makes his excuses, explaining about his parents’ imminent return.
‘Cook, then study,’ says Daria sternly. ‘No more parties.’ She sniffs with disgust as Milo shouts for attention.
Ben hoists him up and bumps noses. ‘Gotta go, matey. Be good.’ He turns to hand the baby over to his mother, is surprised to find Milo’s sturdy little body lifted out of his grasp by Barry. Milo, no respecter of affections, immediately transfers his attentions to his new playmate, to Ben’s chagrin.
‘What about the shepherdess?’ says Artem as Ben reaches for the door handle.
Ben shrugs. ‘Dunno. I’ll have to tell them, I guess.’
Love, Lies and Linguine Page 29
