Drawing the Line

by Judith Cutler

  ‘All the same,’ Brent began, stopping for his tongue to chase a dab of jam.

  I passed him what I called a paper serviette but Griff insisted was a napkin.

  ‘All the same,’ he continued, ‘it sounds as if you could have been badly injured last night. However stupid the name we gave the gang, we should take the incident very seriously. I suppose you didn’t get a glimpse of a registration plate?’

  ‘The driver doused his lights as soon as he realised I’d escaped. And I’m sorry – I’ve tried and tried but I can’t place the car.’

  ‘With a bang on the head like that, I’m not surprised.’ He leant towards me, concerned.

  I pulled back. I didn’t want his attention and I didn’t want his sympathy.

  ‘That was done today, I’m afraid,’ Griff put in. ‘I came back from the supermarket to find the house like a new pin and Lina clutching ice to her forehead and looking as if she’d gone a couple of rounds with Lennox Lewis.’

  ‘A drawer stuck – and then came unstuck,’ I said, adding ruefully, ‘I’d have thought the arnica should be working by now.’

  ‘There’s something I always use when I’ve had a rough game of rugby,’ Brent said. ‘Lasonil or Lanosil or something. Shall I drop some by? When I report back on this video?’ he added, as quickly as if he needed some sort of excuse.

  Before I could suggest I simply nipped along to Mr Elworthy’s the next morning, Griff jumped in. ‘That would be more than kind, er –?’

  ‘Dave.’ Brent produced what Griff would instantly accuse of being a winsome smile. I was never sure about men and winsome smiles. Especially when I didn’t know whether they were directed at Griff or at me.

  ‘The funny thing is, Dave, that Lina had already involved herself in a spot of heroism on Saturday evening. Not here, but up in Harrogate. A distinctly non-feline interloper had broken into a number of caravans and she managed to trip him as he tried to escape. I believe that ultimately he eluded the security staff, alas.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be suggesting that the two individuals are in fact just one – and an Oxford don, to boot?’

  ‘Put that way my theory does indeed seem far-fetched. Now, are you sure I can’t offer you a tiny drop more coffee?’

  The following morning Griff summoned me to the computer to check the list of houses I’d found.

  ‘If you double-click there,’ he pointed, ‘you get a description of the house. Some have photographs too – oh dear, how very amateurish. When will people learn that there’s more to photography than merely pointing the camera and pressing the shutter? Now, click through the whole lot and tell me if anything rings any bells.’

  ‘All I remember,’ I said, sitting down and grasping the mouse, still warm from his hand, ‘is a grey marble fireplace and big windows, deep set, going almost from floor to ceiling.’

  ‘So which of these could we eliminate without further thought?’ he asked, peering over my shoulder.

  One of Griff’s little tests. I’d like to pass it. I peered at the first, a lovely black and white Elizabethan manor house overlooking a deep valley. ‘That one – unless someone’s made some alterations we can’t see.’

  ‘What you speak of would be a major alteration, structural, not just cosmetic. Is there a rear view?’

  There was. It hadn’t been altered. I tried the next. It was an early Victorian rectory. Click on photos: no, nothing.

  ‘We could be at this all morning,’ I said. ‘Shall I press on while you phone Mrs Hatch and warn her about the police?’

  ‘I fancy “inform” might be a better word, Lina. And if you think I’m going to leave you on your here so you can have even a smidgen of the temptation to hurt yourself the way you did yesterday, you can think again.’

  I was hurt. ‘I promised you I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Smokers promise never to touch another fag – but under pressure far less extreme than you might be enduring, they soon light up again.’

  For smokers read drinkers. I said no more. I clicked away, sometimes bringing up a photo that sparked a response in him.

  ‘Now you ought to wheedle your way in there. That belongs to that pop star who tried to save the world – I wonder if he still lives there? Such a darling young man he was. I was three-quarters in love with him. But he proved quite irredeemably straight, alas. And that one – no, you should go nowhere near there, not even on public open days. The owner’s nouveau riche – well, I suppose very few owners are descended from the original family, but this one’s got a reputation for being one of the East End’s most successful criminals. Of course,’ he continued, getting thoroughly into his stride, ‘that’s probably all too appropriate. The founding fathers of our so-called aristocratic families were Duke William’s hit men. They’d be tried these days for war crimes.’

  ‘So the great and the good aren’t great or good at all?’

  ‘Mortals like the rest of us. Noblesse oblige, indeed. You wouldn’t expect the descendants of the Kray brothers, if they had any, that is, to be rulers by divine right, would you?’

  I’d never heard Griff quite as forthright in his criticism of the upper classes before. Was it just to put me off my search? What was the point in looking for my dad if he was no better than any other man? Was that his message?

  ‘It won’t work, Griff – I’d want to find my dad even if he were Hannibal Lecter. I might not stay to dinner, mind.’

  ‘It’s not a question of putting you off, child. It’s a question of modifying your expectations.’

  I looked him in the eye. ‘Griff, any man who doesn’t make any effort to see his daughter in nearly twenty years can’t be all that much cop. But I just need to know.’

  ‘So long as you pursue your inquiries in that spirit, I shall worry less. Proceed, dear heart.’

  A couple more blanks and I said, ‘You know your way around the county. You might have some idea of where it is!’

  ‘Might. But don’t. Lina, my child, have you any idea how many great old houses from whatever period are now used for something else? Posh hotels, head offices, schools – even chopped about to make retirement apartments. They wouldn’t be open to the public, not even on the odd day that these admit hoi polloi.’ He shook his head sadly, leaving me to absorb the implications.

  I clicked the mouse again. Jacobean – unusual in this part of the world, I knew even without Griff telling me. But not the period I was looking for.

  Late Victorian; Tudor; Georgian, like the illustration in Griff’s architecture book, in other words. But it wasn’t very big, not very grand. But the next one was very grand indeed. It was a Palladian mansion, and lovely.

  ‘Early Palladian, I would say,’ Griff said. ‘Whereas this one –’ he continued, as I clicked again, ‘is quite late Palladian. Both are likely to have the sort of windows you want to see. Let’s see if they have any rear views – tut, how very frustrating. But neither’s very far away – in opposite directions, of course, one near Tunbridge Wells, the other near Canterbury. I’d certainly mark them down for a visit, dear heart.’

  I already had. There were four other possibles, each of which went on my list. Griff shook his head gently. ‘It will take an age to jot down all the details of opening hours and road access: allow me.’

  Slowly but surely the details of each rolled out of the printer. Patting me on the head, he produced a large manila envelope. ‘There. To be perused at your leisure. Meanwhile, in the words of the poet, “there’s work to be done ere the setting sun”. Did I say poet? Versifier at best…’

  If I hadn’t been working in silence on an especially tricky bit of gilding, I wouldn’t have heard the scratch at the front door. There was only one person who announced his arrival like that, Joe Knight. Joe was half antiques dealer, half layabout, making a living I’d bet my new boots that the DSS knew nothing about. They’d see him as a sad case, barely able to read and write, and crippled with arthritis that would have made the heart bleed of even the hardest DSS doctor. We
knew him as a lively old man, gnarled as a character in Griff’s favourite Hardy, dependent on seasonal vegetable and fruit picking. This was always paid cash in hand – ‘just to oblige a friend’, if anyone asked. He used to oblige Griff, too, drifting to boot-sales or village bring-and-buy sales, picking up stuff for pennies Griff would mostly pay him pounds for. Sometimes he’d bring his wife along, and I’d challenge myself to pick up more than one word in ten, her accent was so thick and her teeth so few and far between; others, like today, he’d be alone, touching the side of his nose when I took him through to Griff, still in the kitchen although he was due to open the shop in half an hour. This meant he’d rather talk to Griff on his own, if I didn’t mind. Since he ponged even more than his wife, I didn’t. I returned to my gilding.

  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?’