“They were terrified of the London dealers, and rightly so. They were offered pennies for treasures that had been in their families for generations. There was so much being sold, you see, and so few people with money to spend. So Alexander began seeking these people out, and when he found something he liked, he would buy it for twice, three times, sometimes as much as ten times what the dealers were offering.
“He bought only the best and tried to pay a fair price. An honorable price, was the way he put it. He was building friends as well as a collection, you see. That has always been his way. And these friends remember him still, him and his honesty and the respect he gave them when they had nothing and were no one. Those who are still alive come to him even today, to buy or to sell. And their children. That, Jeffrey, is the measure of Alexander Kantor.”
“So what did he do with those first pieces?”
“Alexander was a man with vision. He knew that prices would eventually rise, especially if he dealt only in the very finest. So he rented a bank box and placed all his purchases in there for safekeeping. Then the box was replaced with a larger drawer, then two, then three, and so on.” Her eyes shone with remembered pride. “I can still recall the first time he showed me his collection. It was the day before my wedding. He took Peter and me to Claridge’s for lunch—you must go there once for me, Jeffrey. Promise me you will.”
“All right.”
“Thank you. Yes, then after lunch he took us down into the bank vault and opened up all five of these great drawers that he and a guard pulled out of a wall of locked boxes. He opened them up and said that we were to pick out whatever piece we liked the most as a wedding present.
“You should have seen the treasure. When I collected myself, I told him I couldn’t possibly do such a thing. So he gave me an emerald necklace, pressed it into Peter’s hand because I refused to touch it, it was all too much for me, I had only met him once before. I still have it over there in the rosewood box on my vanity. I intend to give it to whichever of you boys marries first. I do so hope I’m still around to see that day.”
Jeffrey leaned back in his seat and said softly, “Incredible.”
“Yes, that is the perfect way to describe Alexander. He is an incredible man. Always a gentleman, always generous and gallant. Yet always a loner, preferring to go his own way. All his life he has held who he is and what he does out of sight from the rest of us. I truly believe that is why he decided to remain in London and set up his business there. Because he preferred to be alone.”
“I have to go.” Jeffrey rose his feet, leaned over to kiss the withered cheek. As he raised back up he asked, “Why doesn’t he ever come to see you?”
“Because it is his nature,” she replied simply. “You will discover with time, Jeffrey, that people do not always act in a logical manner. Alexander loved my husband. He has not been to see me since the funeral. Period. I could become angry and destroy the affection I hold for him, or I can accept what is beyond my power to control. He writes me with unfailing regularity, at Christmas, on my birthday, and again at Easter. He never fails to mention how he misses my husband. I do not agree with how he chooses to deal with Peter’s absence, but I will not allow this to come between me and the memories of a man my husband adored. I simply will not allow it.”
As he was leaving, his grandmother called after him, “Jeffrey, please. Do it for me.”
He stopped, felt the old familiar tug-of-war begin inside himself. His hand gripped the doorknob with white-knuckled intensity.
“Think of it as a last request from one who has loved you all your life,” she pleaded. “Go and see your brother.”
He nodded, not trusting his voice, and left.
* * *
Jeffrey’s Tuesday morning began as usual. The trash men and the builders arrived at half-past seven, banging dustbins and racing heavy diesels and trading curses in broadest Cockney. Jeffrey swung out of bed, checked the weather by craning and locating the one patch of sky visible in the corner of his bedroom window. He decided to skip his morning run through Hyde Park and instead take breakfast in Shepherd Market.
Even in early June there were mornings when low-lying clouds clamped themselves firmly over the city, a lingering reminder of winter’s steel-gray cold. But if the air was dry, as it often was, by midmorning the clouds would lift away, leaving an afternoon of breathtaking beauty. On such days lunch hours were stretched to include lazy strolls through Mayfair’s numerous parks and squares. Every bench was full, ties were cast aside, blouses opened another notch. Every possible square inch of sun-starved skin was exposed to spring’s gift.
Scattered among these weeks came days when the air took on a jewel-like clarity. Heavy winds and heavier showers scrubbed the air to a newborn brightness. London’s buildings and parks and monuments positively sparkled. Dawn runs through Hyde Park became mystical exercises, each breath a perfume-laden draught.
South Audley Street, where Jeffrey’s minuscule apartment was located, ran from Grosvenor Square and the United States Embassy to Curzon Street. It was by London standards a broad and smooth-running thoroughfare, one long block removed from Park Lane and Hyde Park. So many films and television programs had used its thoroughly Victorian facades as backdrops that the equipment required for a full-scale shoot caused more irritation than excitement.
His neighborhood was flanked on all sides by the lore of centuries and filled to the brim with wealth. South Audley Street was a ridiculously posh address, made affordable only because the American who owned the flat was a friend and client of Alexander’s. In the late sixties—back before London’s property boom had pushed Mayfair prices into the stratosphere—he had purchased it both as an investment and a holiday flat. He let it to Jeffrey half as a favor to Alexander and half as a security measure; in recent years thieves had taken to marking down all flats not regularly occupied and robbing them at their leisure.
According to the agreement, Jeffrey had the flat fully furnished for eleven months a year. In July the owner and his wife flew over from California to spend a month doing the London social scene. For that month Jeffrey moved into rooms at his club. The arrangement was ideal. It brought a tastefully furnished Mayfair flat down to an affordable price, and allowed Jeffrey to savor the experience of making the heart of London his home.
By American standards, the flat was only slightly larger than a moving crate. The living room looked down on a busy city street and was just big enough for a glass-topped dining table, an ultra-modern sofa, two matching chairs, and an unadorned Scandinavian corner cupboard. The bedroom, whose tiny window overlooked an alley, was much too small for its American-size bed. Jeffrey had to do the sideways shuffle to arrive at his clothes cupboard. Dressing took place in the front hall.
The bathroom was down a narrow staircase that was both steep and dangerous, especially after a round of local pubs. The kitchen was an afterthought, an alcove so narrow that two people could not pass each other.
The monthly rent was more than his father’s mortgage for a four-bedroom house on one of Jacksonville’s main canals. Still, Jeffrey was enormously glad he had followed Alexander’s urging to accept the offer. The Grosvenor House Hotel, which was half a block behind his flat, charged four hundred dollars a night for a standard double room. A furnished studio flat two doors down from his was advertised for rent at more per week than he was paying per month. And the location suited him perfectly—two blocks to his shop, one to Hyde Park, and three from the fabulous English breakfasts in legendary Shepherd Market.
Shepherd Market was a collection of narrow winding streets and tiny cottages more suited to a quiet country village than the heart of London’s West End. Tradition had it as the gathering place for drovers bringing their flocks to market, back seven or eight hundred years ago, when London-Town was still confined to its original walls. In those early days, drovers slaughtered their flocks behind local butcheries, and put themselves up in cramped little rooms above the local pubs.
&nb
sp; By the time Queen Victoria began her reign in the nineteenth century, the drovers were no more. Yet Shepherd Market survived the centuries and the transitions, retaining its reputation as a gathering place for the less genteel, and gaining a name as having the largest selection of courtesans and streetwalkers in all England.
Jeffrey’s walk to breakfast was for him a stroll through a living museum. At the Hyde Park end, Mayfair was mostly brick and stone festooned with an abundance of Victorian foppery. Queen Anne cottages stood cheek-and-jowl with more recent construction, yet to Jeffrey’s unabashedly biased eye, the charm had been preserved. In the relative quiet of his early morning walks, he imagined himself transported back to a time of top hats and morning coats and ballooning skirts and hansom cabs.
Jeffrey was in love with Mayfair. All of London held him enthralled; for that matter, the fact that he slept and ate and worked and played on an island perched at the upper left corner of Europe filled him with sheer explosive delight. But he loved Mayfair.
To Jeffrey Allen Sinclair, Mayfair had all the makings of a magical land. There were so many hidden nooks and crannies and tales and characters that he could spend a dozen lifetimes within its confines and never drain the cup of adventure.
Jeffrey crossed over Curzon Street, walked the narrow foot passage, and entered a collection of streets never intended for car traffic. Shepherd Market lanes were fifteen feet wide or less, and lined with tiny cottages housing a variety of cafes and shops and pubs and restaurants. Jeffrey’s own favorite was a corner cafe with hand-drawn glass panes, warped as though pebbles had been dropped onto their still surface and then frozen in place. The cafe’s ceiling and walls were plaster framed by ancient uneven beams, its tables set so close together that a diner who ate with elbows extended was simply not welcome. Jeffrey had long since learned to fold his morning paper into sixteenths.
* * *
Once Jeffrey returned home for Ling and arrived at the shop, he barely had time to settle in before the electronic chime announced his first visitor of the day. From the safety of his office alcove Jeffrey glanced up, smiled, tucked the little bird into its new bedding, put on his professional face, and walked forward.
He swung the door wide with a flourish. “Good morning, Mr. Greenfield. Morning, Ty.”
“Hullo, lad,” Sydney Greenfield said. “I’ve always wanted to be your height when I walk into a bar. Isn’t that right, Ty.”
“Gets him proper switched on, it does.”
“Come in, gentlemen. Come in.”
Sydney Greenfield, purveyor to the would-be’s and has-been’s of London’s Green Belt, entered with his normal theatrics. Behind him walked Ty, his shadowy parrot. Jeffrey did not know him by any other name, did not even know if he had one. Ty he had been introduced as, and Ty he had remained. Jeffrey truly liked the pair. They were a part of what made the London antiques trade unique in all the world.
The Green Belt was an almost-circle of suburbs and swallowed villages that stretched through four counties. They were linked to central London by an extended train service and road system, allowing those who could afford it to live surrounded by a semblance of green and still make it to work more or less on time.
Sydney Greenfield described himself as a contact broker extraordinaire, and survived from the hand-to-mouth trade of bringing buyer and seller together. He had somehow attached himself to Jeffrey and the shop during Jeffrey’s early days. They had actually brought him one sale, albeit for the cheapest article in the shop at the time. Nonetheless, following that maneuver Sydney Greenfield had treated Jeffrey and the shop with a proprietary interest, as though their own success were now inexorably linked with his.
Sydney Greenfield was a florid man with thin strands of gray-black hair plastered haphazardly across an enormous central bald spot. Even at ten in the morning his cheeks and nose positively glowed from the effects of too many three-hour pub lunches and liquid dinners—an integral part of the finder’s trade. He wore a tailored pin-stripe three-piece suit made from a broadcloth Jeffrey had long since decided came from the inside of a Sainsbury’s chocolate box, it was so shiny. Beneath it bunched a wilted white starched shirt and an over-loud tie. A large belly strained against his waistcoat.
“With regard to the cabinet,” Sydney Greenfield said. “We’ve been broaching the subject with Her Royal Highness the Princess Walrus. How long has it been now, Ty.”
“Nigh on seven weeks, it is.”
“Yes. Long time to be weathering Her Royal Highness’ storm, seven weeks is. And I must tell you, your asking price for that cabinet has created quite a storm, hasn’t it, Ty.”
“Right stood my hair on end, she did.”
Jeffrey fished out the key ring for the glass display case. “I think you’d better sit down,” he said.
Sydney Greenfield clutched at his heart. “You’re not meaning it.”
Jeffrey raised up a crystal decanter, asked, “Perhaps a little brandy?”
Greenfield sat with a low moan. “You promised me first call. Didn’t he, Ty.”
“Stood right there and gave his solemn word, he did.”
Jeffrey handed over a crystal snifter holding an ample portion, replied, “I told you I’d hold it for seven days. Which I did. And that was almost two months ago.”
Greenfield downed the snifter with one gulp, breathed, “Details, lad. Mere details.”
“I had a buyer who waited through that seven-day period, then paid the price I asked.”
“Seventeen thousand quid?” Greenfield waved the goblet for a refill. “Paid up without a quibble?”
“Didn’t even blink an eye.”
“Tell me who it is, lad. There’s a couple of little items I’d like to show a gentleman of means.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “Seventeen thousand pounds buys a lot of confidentiality in this shop.”
Greenfield drained the second glass, smacked his lips. “Well, it’s water under the bridge then, right, Ty.”
“No use crying over milk the cat’s already drunk.”
“Did I ever tell you why I call him Ty, lad?”
“Only every time you come in.”
Greenfield ignored him. “It’s after the Titanic, because the fellow goes down like a bolt at the first sniff of the stuff. Never seen the like, not in this trade.”
Sydney Greenfield recovered with the speed of one accustomed to such disappointments. He pointed an overly casual hand toward one of the few English pieces that Jeffrey had kept for their own shop, said, “We’ve done quite a bit of analyzing the market for that other little item.”
It was a chest of drawers made in the William and Mary period, and was constructed in laburnum wood, a tree whose seeds were deadly poisonous. The wood had been cut transversely across the branch, creating a swirl effect in the grain which reminded Jeffrey of the inside of oyster shells. The inlay was of darker holly, which traced its way around the outer edges of each drawer; the carpenter had used the inlay to frame the wood’s pattern, rather than smother it. The piece was probably constructed somewhere around 1685, given its similarities to other antiques that Jeffrey had been able to identify and which had more established provenances.
Establishing an antique’s provenance—its previous record of ownership—added significantly to an article’s price, especially if there were either royalty or unique stories attached. One part of the mysteries attached to Alexander’s antiques was that they almost never had any provenance whatsoever. They were therefore sold on the basis of their beauty, condition, and evident age. Jeffrey’s own education had shown that the more valuable the antique, the more often there was a fairly clear indication of lineage. To have no provenance whatsoever with antiques of this quality suggested that Alexander was intentionally hiding the records in order to protect his sources.
The cost of the chest of drawers was twenty-six thousand pounds, or about forty-five thousand dollars.
“We are on the verge,” Sydney Greenfield announced. “Yes, lad,
we might actually be pouncing on that one tomorrow. We don’t have her signed, mind you. I’d be lying if I said that, and as you know I’m a man of my word. But we’re close enough to see the whites of her eyes, aren’t we, Ty.”
“Close enough to steal a kiss and bolt.”
“Yes, that is, if anyone could actually bring themselves to kiss the old walrus. Mind you, I’d probably take the plunge myself if I thought it’d get the old dear to part with her brass.”
Katya chose that moment to arrive at the front door. She leaned up close enough to see through the outside reflection, tapped her fingernails on the glass and waved at him.
At first sight of her, Greenfield sprang from the chair as though electrocuted. “Who’s that, lad? Not a customer. Life’s unfair, I’ve known that for years, but it’d be stepping out of bounds to hand money to looks like that.”
“My new assistant,” Jeffrey replied, opening the door and ushering her in. “Katya Nichols, may I present Sydney Greenfield and his assistant Ty. I’m sorry, Ty, I don’t believe I’ve ever learned your last name.”
Sydney Greenfield displayed a massive grace as he sidled up and bowed over Katya’s hand. “My dear, if this were my shop, I’d have raised the prices ten percent the instant I signed you on.”
Katya had compromised over taking salary from Jeffrey in a way that was uniquely her own; she spent it all on clothes that she wore when she was working at the shop. Today she had on one of his favorite items, a high-collared blouse in gray-violet silk the shade of her eyes. It had little cloth buttons and an Oriental design sewn across the left breast and up both sleeves. It was gathered at the waist with a leather belt of almost the same shade, and worn out and draped over a knee-length skirt of midnight blue. Jeffrey thought the color of the blouse made her eyes look positively enormous.
Florian's Gate Page 8
