Drawing the Line

by Judith Cutler

  It would have been nice if the police had had to hold back huge queues while they were conducting their enquiries, but the day was a repeat of the previous one. Another football match? I drifted over to ask Marcus. He was engrossed in his painting, looking like – hell, Griff would have told me who he looked like. That flash pianist whose music he said was out of fashion these days, the one who started the fashion for pianists to sit side on to the audience when they played. Whoever. Anyway, there he was, with a couple of women practically touching him up and a thin middle-aged man wearing more cosmetics than me ogling him. I’d always meant to ask why he didn’t do his painting at home. You wouldn’t catch me mending my china in full view. And now I realised why. Copeland was obviously using the gorgeous Marcus to attract customers, not just to see the work being done but to be allured by the young god who was doing it. Men and women. Hell, did this mean the reason Marcus wasn’t specially interested in me was because he was gay too? Surely not. Unless he was using me as – what had Griff called it? – a beard. Sweat trickled down my back, like it did when I’d bought a wrong ’un. I’d have to ask Griff: he’d know.

  Copeland was hovering discreetly in the background, ready to relieve Marcus’ fans of their money.

  Trying to be polite, while I worked out what I was feeling, I flapped a hand. ‘Looks like another quiet day,’ I said.

  ‘It’s the play-offs for promotion to the premier league, of course,’ Copeland snapped, as if my presence might put people off. ‘Don’t you and that old queer ever read the papers?’

  ‘Not those pages, no,’ I said, prickly on Griff’s behalf. ‘I believe if you read the other pages you’d find the correct term was “gay”.’

  ‘It’s certainly queer that you’re living with him.’

  ‘We’re housemates, that’s what. Nothing queer about that.’

  ‘What do you when he brings his boyfriends home? That can’t be very edifying sight, not for a kid your age.’

  If only I knew what edifying meant. I didn’t, so I simply snapped, ‘His sex life is no more your business than mine is.’ I wasn’t going to tell this brute about Griff’s occasional and very discreet away-days with friends. And certainly not about his long-term friend Aidan.

  I turned pointedly away from Copeland, and drifted over to Marcus. I know: I was off my head. But I’ll swear the words came out of their own accord. ‘That drink we didn’t have last night – why not make it tonight?’

  ‘Because,’ came Copeland’s voice, ‘he’ll be packing up here, that’s why. Not making sheep’s eyes at a cunning little tart like you who he lets sweet talk him into selling my property at a crazy price. Just piss off, will you?’

  The punters abandoned Marcus for much better entertainment. He flushed and looked everywhere except at me.

  Cunning little tart, was I?

  I looked Copeland in the eye. ‘I’d have thought you’d be grateful to me, paying though the nose for something with no provenance at all. Come off it, Copeland – have you been taking lessons from Titus Oates?’

  And then I beat it. Fast.

  Chapter Five

  If anyone kept a list of things in history better not said, that would have gone down as one of them, wouldn’t it? I didn’t dare tell Griff, because he’d know I’d only lost my cool because Copeland had been snide about him and our relationship. And by losing my cool, I’d lost any chance of wheedling out of Copeland – and possibly Marcus – where the frontispiece had come from.

  Sh – No, Griff didn’t like me to swear. Poo, then or even Pooh, as in Bear! I wished I’d never seen the thing.

  No, I didn’t. I was glad I had and I was desperate to know all about it.

  Which meant that somehow or other I’d have to catch Marcus on his own and be extra nice to him so that he’d raid Copeland’s files. Otherwise I’d simply no idea how to find out anything about the frontispiece’s origin. Correction – provenance.

  During the course of the day several people were extremely nice to me, far nicer than usual; others cut me dead. It didn’t take me long to work out that all this was because everyone had heard about my spat with Copeland. Two lovely old friends of Griff’s, who might not have been flattered by his private description of them as ‘absolute darlings but the ugliest dykes in the Western world’, insisted on buying me an ice cream, which I hadn’t the heart to refuse, though I’d just had a burger and chips. Fortunately Titus Oates himself wasn’t gracing this fair, but I knew the grapevine would carry the news swiftly and unerringly to him, and he might just want to sue me for slander, with which he’d been known to threaten customers who queried some of his absolutely genuine Shakespeare letters.

  A sudden late afternoon rush just at the time we should have been packing up meant Griff was too busy to ask any embarrassing questions. He sold in very rapid succession some highly gilded and therefore very pricey Royal Doulton plates, and some nice early Wedgwood, so there was much less to pack and the promise of plenty of good food and drink for the rest of the month. The Rockingham plate Griff had suggested yesterday I might have to reduce went for its asking price, so I was happy to do a deal with a nice American on some Worcester, the profits being shared equally between my gewgaw fund and repaying Griff’s loan.

  All the same, in the van I felt as I used to when confronted by an irate school attendance officer. OK, anything Griff would say would be more in sorrow than in anger, to borrow one of his quotations, but I’d still feel guilty. Sure enough, he coughed with embarrassment, but just as I was braced for a real wigging, he said mildly, ‘Mrs Hatch would have been proud of you, dear heart. She tells me she likes gals with courage – the sort of gal who made the Empire great.’

  ‘So long as she doesn’t want me for peace-keeping duties! Oh, Griff, it wasn’t very bright of me. To make two enemies in one day. Well, quite a lot more, since people will take sides.’

  ‘But some of them will take sides with you. Old Titus included, I daresay. He’s always told me he likes people with guts. You might just get away with it, so long as you greet him with a cheery grin and don’t look hang-dog like you do now. On the other hand – well, let’s wait before we cross any bridges. Now, let me see: there’s a house sale tomorrow. We should pick up some useful stuff there…’

  Some silly old lady had decided she was going to live forever, and didn’t need to make a will. The result was that a firm of Eastbourne solicitors was no doubt rubbing its collective hands together in glee, just like Griff when he saw a heap of unloved china, at all the money they were going to make from selling up the estate. A meagre knot of relatives stood round looking glummer and glummer as good stuff went for poor prices. Ralph Harper was there, sneering at some lovely Edwardian Regency-style mahogany bedroom furniture by Waring and Gillow. Even without the name, you could see that though the wood hadn’t seen wax polish for a few years, it was high quality stuff. He was next to a sleek-looking man wearing a leather jacket to die for, who muttered occasionally. Did I spot a little ring, dealers promising to keep prices down and then haggle between themselves? I was afraid so, and almost jumped for joy when a young couple forced the price up, just because the suite would look good in their bedroom. We got a complete 1903 Royal Worcester tea service embarrassingly cheaply. The current fashion was for much more highly decorated ware, but as Griff pointed out, at that price we could afford to keep it in the attic till tastes changed and prices went up accordingly. There was some nice Gaudy Welsh, but another dealer snaffled the lot. Since he had to pay well above the odds, Griff didn’t so much as sigh.

  We went home with a lot of odds and ends, too, the usual mixture of ‘best’ and everyday items, with the everyday ones often worth a lot more than those the owner had thought were treasures. I hadn’t spotted that the old dear’s cats had eaten off Coalport plates, but Griff had. For penance, I’d clean off whatever yucky gunge was encrusting them. So we had a week’s work at home ahead of us, a quiet time unless one of Griff’s fellow Thespians popped in for a cup o
f tea and regaled us with what Griff called the latest on dits. You might have thought the prospect was pretty tedious, but I really enjoyed restoration work, from appraising what could and what should be done to putting the final glaze on a piece. Most of my skills I’d learned from Griff himself, but not all. He had friends in the business all over the country, and I’d spent a week with two of them, an elderly brother and sister up in Wolverhampton, picking their brains. They could manage such fine work that people called on them from museums and stately homes; Griff’s hands were now too shaky for all but the most everyday jobs; I was somewhere in-between. One day, if I ever allowed myself to think ahead, maybe I could give up what Griff called the peripatetic life and settle down in the cottage next to Griff’s with roses round the door, a couple of kids I’d bring up beautifully and a little part-time job I could do while they were at school. Not the usual sort of part-time job where employers screw the last drop from their underpaid staff, but one that paid really well. People were actually prepared to fork out more than a vase or figurine was worth to someone who’d make it look right after a disaster with a duster or a family pet. And that someone would be me. So these days if I found a job fiddly or tedious, I’d mark it down as part of my apprenticeship – we didn’t call it that, but that was what it was.

  Today’s job was repairing a Worcester figurine using plastic modelling clay. I was shaping a tiny hand – you get the proportions right by studying your own hand. Once you’ve done that, you can use a pair of callipers to make sure the new one matches the intact one. If they’ve both broken off – poor Venus de Milo isn’t the only woman with problems – then you have to remember that a hand is a little shorter from finger to wrist than the face from brow to chin. And it takes two hands to cover the whole face. Easy. OK, it’s easier on crude Staffordshire figures, but not so satisfying.

  I’d almost finished rubbing down any roughness between the fingers when Griff came in, popping a cup of tea on my worktable.

  ‘Another nice day,’ he declared. ‘And the forecast’s good. I think we’ll go to Oxford for this Thursday’s fair.’

  ‘But it’s mainly a craft fair. And you don’t like craft fairs.’ I found them useful because they often included a stall selling specialist paint brushes – I like best quality sable 00’s for this type of work – but our sales never really justified the trip.

  ‘All the same,’ he said, picking up my tea and drinking it before drifting away. At least he took the cup, too. Cup, not mug. Cup complete with saucer. Typical 1920s, nothing special, but pretty.

  There was no question of my arguing or letting Griff go off on his own on the grounds that I’d be more useful either in the shop or at home working on china. I’d seen his driving, and I’d seen Oxford traffic. For better or worse I had to go. It would have made him very unhappy if he’d known I’d turned down a drink with a lad from the village to go with him so I said nothing. To be honest, I was quite glad of the excuse. What would a girl like me have to say to a bloke who was well on the way to being a psychologist? Not a lot, except as a subject for his research or as a guinea pig. And I sure as hell didn’t want to be either. At least the Marcuses of this world took me at face value. Took me, or to be more accurate, left me. On what Griff was desperate not to call the shelf.

  We went up on Wednesday evening, staying overnight with more of Griff’s friends. Not being very tall I was happy to fetch up on the sofa, where I was joined by a cat like a feline teddy bear, the sort of bear that pushes its bed-mate on to the floor, not the other way round. So I was a mite grumpy and surprisingly stiff when we set out, the cat smiling graciously and waving a Queen-like paw in farewell. We were heading for Gloucester Green, just by the coach station, so at least I could follow signposts and didn’t have to rely on Griff’s map reading.

  It didn’t take long to set up.

  ‘There,’ he said, standing back to admire our handiwork, ‘we may be nearer the bric-à-brac end of the range than I like, but horses for courses, Lina. Always remember that: horses for courses.’

  I nodded at his sage advice. OK, I’d heard it a hundred times before, but it would upset him if I told him I had. And he had enough to upset him. It was another slow day. Very slow. And because it was focused on crafts, not many of our mates were there to talk to. I drifted off to do some shopping, but it didn’t take me long to buy the brushes and gold leaf I needed.

  ‘Now,’ Griff said, handing me the Thermos as I returned, ‘there’s no point in both of us hanging round like spare dinners. Off you go to the Bodleian.’

  ‘The Bodleian?’ I repeated, sounding stupid even to my own ears.

  ‘The Bodleian Library. They have a copy of Natura Rerum.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Looking horribly smug and patronising, he touched the side of his nose.

  Think anger management. I breathed out hard and remembered I really needed the answer to something else. ‘You mean you can just go in and ask for it?’ That was better.

  But it wasn’t – I’d somehow upset Griff. He flushed and looked at his feet. ‘I should imagine they won’t just point to a shelf and tell you to take a look. Oh, there’ll be some sort of system, dear heart, but don’t ask me what it is. We poor Thespians had little need of scholarship in my day: you didn’t need to study the Folios to act in weekly rep.’

  So he’d never been in the place. And if the thought made him feel nervous, you can imagine how I felt.

  ‘Go on. It’s only five minutes away. Straight down George Street and into Broad Street. Can’t miss it. Go on. Before we have a rush!’ He gestured grandly at the empty aisles.

  I nearly wet myself with anxiety. ‘But –’

  ‘But me no buts! Away!’

  I didn’t know what it was with me and Oxford and Cambridge. I’d done fairs at posh hotels and at provincial universities, and no one had treated me as a sub-human. But these grand buildings, honey-coloured in the May sunlight, both terrified me and filled me with resentment. They said that they were for clever, witty people who knew about things I could never hope to imagine, let alone understand. They said that they were for people who spoke with no trace of accent, who could be relied on to use the correct cutlery (didn’t they say grace in Latin, for goodness’ sake?) and who would go on to hold the top jobs as if by right. Their sort of people could buy and sell my sort of person and not notice the small change.

  But I was resentful too. Why didn’t the schools I attended send pupils here? Why should they be denied because they only had one parent and mostly didn’t eat breakfast or any other proper food and went to schools with rowdy kids and frightened teachers and leaking roofs?

  I was well into my political speech – in my head, you understand – when I was nearly run over by an old trout on a bike. Actually, she wasn’t that old. But she was dressed like a bag-woman, hair in a bun that hadn’t been fashionable for forty years, if then, clothes such unpleasant greens and tans you couldn’t imagine anyone dyeing fabric those colours, let alone making them into complete garments and selling them in shops.

  Oh, dear. I sounded more like Griff every day. And I’d got so worked up I’d walked straight past the entrance to the Bodleian. It felt like an omen. But I couldn’t walk back to Griff and say I’d chickened out. Straightening my shoulders, I strode in as if I owned the place.

  It didn’t last, of course, the courage. It melted away like ice in the microwave as my strides dwindled to a halt by the enquiry desk.

  I was spoken to – not greeted – by a clone of the woman on the bike, except this one wore immaculate black and white. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wish to see Natura Rerum. By A Gentleman. 1589.’ I was gabbling so fast by the time I gave the date I doubt if she understood me. I started again, trying to breathe. ‘It’s a rare book. I understand you’ve got a copy. I’d like to see it.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘On what grounds?’ she repeated, mouthing as if I was deaf.


  At last I worked out that I had to have a reason. ‘I just want to see it.’

  ‘On what academic grounds?’

  I wasn’t going to tell her that I wanted to see if its frontispiece matched mine. ‘Pure interest,’ I ventured.

  ‘This is a research library. We cater for scholars only. Bona fide scholars only,’ she enunciated again, but with a little smile that said that I wouldn’t know what bona fide meant.

  ‘I may not be a bona fide academic,’ I said, producing one of our business cards, ‘but I am a genuine antique dealer and would like to see the book.’

  ‘Volume,’ she corrected me. ‘Anyone wishing to use the premises or any of our volumes has to present a written application, supported by academic references. Unless, of course, you are a student of the University.’ She flipped the card on to the counter. I’d already proved I didn’t qualify, hadn’t I?

  By now there was a little knot of interested spectators. Some were no doubt simply going to pay an entrance fee and gawp, like I’d done at the Book of Kells when Griff had taken me to Dublin for his birthday. That was in another posh university library, oozing pride in itself. Others were fidgeting files and looking at their watches: bona fide students, no doubt. They looked young and vulnerable, just like I felt, perhaps because they were swotting for exams or something. I’d better not hold them up. Flashing them a vague smile they could interpret as apologetic or wistful, I turned on my heel and walked away. I should have said something sarcastic to the woman on the desk, maybe, but I was afraid if I said another word I’d disgrace myself by bursting into tears. Either that or I’d shower her with some of the words I had learned at school – mostly in the playground.