I sometimes think, towards the end of a thirteen-hour flight, that we died after all, that we’re in some kind of peaceful grey Valhalla where good little aircrews go. But where are the rest? Blackham and Reaper and Edwards? And Dieter Gehlen?
Don’t ask me. It’s May 1944, and I think I’ve got the little WAAF in the radio stores interested.
Two more pints, please, George.
THE WHEATSTONE POND
Chapter 1
All London feels lonely after dark now. But few districts feel lonelier than Wheatstone. It’s the size of the houses; and their grounds. Whereas Victorian businessmen set up their mistresses in the small neat terraces of St John’s Wood, they built their own Gothic piles in neighbouring Wheatstone. Ugly London brick, embellished with all the turrets and pinnacles and porte-cochères their tormented Romantic hearts could desire. Fretted cast-iron balconies that rusted dangerously; gargoyles that grimaced and blackened through the great Victorian pea-soupers.
The servant problem, after the Second World War, was the houses’ downfall. Their owners moved somewhere bijou in Hampstead or Highgate, leaving them to rot as bed-sitters. Later, the Thatcherite boom brought a feeble gentrification, one family to a floor; and Thatcherite service industries, vulnerable as poppies to the economic winds.
These uncertain newcomers coo about ‘original features’. Desperate house-agents have learnt to stress stained glass and plaster cornices, rather than central heating and double glazing. But all the improvements are within. Outside, in the over-large gardens, the elaborate fountains stand cracked and dry, ornamental trees grow unchecked to darken the windows and everywhere, the dark insidious rhododendrons gather strength to bury all in their shadowy silence. Massive wooden gates rot on their hinges, forever open; then collapse leaving mere gaps of thin, rutted, puddled gravel that lead to parking for a dozen cars where once flowers bloomed. Nobody walks in Wheatstone; grass grows up through the cracks in the pavement, beneath the tall, leaning garden walls. After dark you hear the sudden smash of milk-bottles, or the panicky run of some benighted woman’s footsteps. Plenty of shadows for muggers and worse.
Why do I choose to live there? These uncertain people, with their uncertain money and uncertain dreams, are my livelihood. I prosper by making their dreams a little more real; I sell antiques, of a sort. Don’t come to me for anything good. I have no sets of Georgian dining-chairs for five grand, or decent oil-paintings or Louis XIV commodes.
My commodes are Victorian; with chamber-pots inside. Polished with dark-tan boot-polish to hide the scratches made by long-dead invalids. People use them to stand TV sets on; but they are curiously keen to have the intact chamber-pot inside. The commodes look well alongside my Victorian coal-boxes (complete with shovel, but never the original shovel); my fly-blown Victorian mirrors that you can hardly see your face in; my horrible oleographs of lumpish cows up to their bellies in some unbelievable river, the once-prized possessions of some Victorian pavior or plumber.
Ugly trash, but beautifully polished, to hide the fact that the carcasses of my grandfather clocks, the backs of mirrors, the bottoms of drawers, are new. I am a creature of my time; economical with the truth. Which often makes me grumpy, because I am in love with the beautiful and true.
Like the girl, woman, who walked into my premises one late March afternoon in 1987. I felt a prick of interest, because she was so tall. Odd, but I cannot help respecting women according to their height. I can never take a woman under five feet three seriously. I can be friends with them, spoil them, indulge them, because to me they are no more than pets. Whereas a woman over five feet eight is half-way to being a goddess; until she proves otherwise.
A cruel man would have said this woman was all teeth and eyes. The tips of her upper teeth were always visible, even in repose. But when her wide mouth smiled in greeting, fleetingly, the teeth were perfect. As for the eyes, they seemed full of the grey brightness of the March sky she had just left outside. Beneath heavy eyelids, which I always take as a sign of a passionate nature. Only Rembrandt could have done justice to her bone-structure, so fine she might have been any age from thirty to fifty. Her hair was fashionably streaked, so I had to judge her age by her neck. No trace of crêpiness; just those two horizontal lines that come to women in their thirties. She still had a touching trace of gawkiness, a casual air of being a student, enhanced by the UC London scarf hanging inside her open pink anorak.
She touched my gilt clock appreciatively in passing, with long slender fingers. She went up in my estimation; it was the only half-decent thing I had in the shop. I watched the subtle play of expressions across her face, as fluent as wind across a lake on some idle afternoon. Faces like that carry lines early; but these were good lines. Intelligence, a kind of gay, cynical humour. If I might still use that much-abused word . . .
Her first words were a disappointment.
‘The police are dragging the Wheatstone Pond. That girl’s body has turned up. Three days.’
‘Oh!’ I had not had her down for that sort of ghoul. Besides, I had known the girl. She used to come into my shop sometimes. The papers said she was called Margie Duff. She’d been a shy little thing, but I’d liked her.
‘They’ve got frogmen down. Looking for clues, I suppose.’
I just shrugged. She sensed my disappointment and hurried on.
‘They’re bringing up some interesting stuff, that has nothing to do with the murder. Old pop-bottles . . .’
I nodded dismissively. I had not yet sunk to selling old pop-bottles, glass-alleys and Hamiltons, like some I could mention. They fetch seven or eight quid each, but they’re a lot of bother to get clean.
‘Rusty prams . . . bicycles . . . even an old motorbike. The police don’t seem to know what to do with them. They’re just leaving them lying about. Some kids are starting to muck about with them. It seems a shame . . .’
‘Jap bike, is it?’ I still wasn’t really interested.
‘No, it’s a Scott Flying Squirrel. Very much pre-War, I imagine.’
That got me going. Not just a woman knowing about Scott Flying Squirrels, which was strange enough, but the idea of kids mucking about with a classic or even vintage motorbike that, restored, might be worth thousands. I twisted my shop-door sign round to read ‘Back in fifteen minutes’, locked up, and practically ran. She matched my pace easily.
Wheatstone Park’s a bit of a mess. They took the railings away for the War Effort in 1943, only to find they were unsuitable for munitions. So they dumped them in the shallows of the Thames Estuary, along with so many others. Just the gates remain, forever open, forever useless. The bigger trees still survive, and the inevitable rhododendrons. But there is little pleasure in walking there. Too many crushed Coke cans, contraceptives, syringes.
The Wheatstone Pond, from which our whole district gets its name, is about two acres, romantically irregular with one tiny wooded island. Well-escorted children still sail model boats there on Sunday mornings, but it isn’t really satisfactory. The trees at the water’s edge cause wind-shadows and sudden eddying gusts, so that a yacht will halt suddenly, for minutes on end, or change course without warning, as if steered by some ghostly hand. There is green scummy weed that rises from the depths to foul propellers. Beds of dead reed trap expensive plastic electric tugs and liners, far from the bank, where they bob and nod helplessly over the weeks while the sun bleaches their bright reds and blues to a sickly grey.
Around the Pond is a wide path of crumbling tarmac, with sudden mini-cliffs to catch your feet and send you sprawling. Crowds gather there, spontaneously, on certain occasions after dark. I remembered one scene of sheer madness, one Guy Fawkes’, when people had gathered to watch a distant firework display over Hampstead Heath.
Some fool had brought along, for a reason best known to himself, a beautiful scale model of a destroyer over three feet long. He put it into the water, and began to sail it, to the sound of ironic cheers. Bu
t then some other idiot threw a smoking firework at it. The firework floated upright in the water, the fuse still smouldering, like a cigarette-end in the dark. Then it went off, hurling a most realistic spout of white foam across the destroyer’s bows. Like a miniature depth-charge. In a second, the crowd, which had merely been amiably drunken before, went into a frenzy. Suddenly, everyone was throwing fireworks at the destroyer. It vanished into a forest of waterspouts. One firework must have exploded on the deck, blowing the foremast and the radio-control away, for the destroyer began sailing in huge circles, while its frantic owner began attacking the firework-throwers at random.
But there were too many of them, and in the end the little vessel sank by the stern, its bow at last vanishing to a hysterical storm of cheering. A lovely model, made of sheet metal; thousands of hours of work.
I have disliked the Wheatstone Pond ever since.
By the time we got there, it was all over. Even the crowd of expressionless ghouls were starting to break up and drift away. The young police frogmen were packing up and laughing among themselves in that heartless way. A couple of wetsuits, one orange, one fluorescent green, were hanging like flattened corpses from the roof-rack of the police personnel-carrier.
The products of their search lay straggled along the crumbling path. Two ancient prams, five bicycles, and the motorbike. I walked across to inspect it. Three kids who had been spitefully twisting at its levers gave way very grudgingly. Its spokes were as thick as sausages with green slime. Banners of weed trailed from the handlebars. On the saddle the slime was drying and cracking and lifting already, in the bleak sunlight and sharp March wind. Some reluctant hand had smarmed the slime away from the petrol tank to expose the insignia. Probably my woman.
It was a Scott Flying Squirrel all right. And more nineteen-twenties than nineteen-thirties. I gave it sharp pokes, in places where I would have expected it to rust away. I’ll never forget the smell of it: deep, dark, vegetable and oddly alive.
‘Hardly seems to have rusted at all, does it, sir?’ The voice of authority came over my shoulder. I straightened up. It was the Inspector in charge of the diving team. He wore one of their yellow waterproof jackets, with badges of rank, but he didn’t look much like a policeman otherwise, with his thick grey polo-neck sweater and muddy wellies. There was a yellow water-proof stop-watch round his neck on a cord. He had steady calm grey eyes, with a possibility of a grin in them, and a brown weathered face. You could have taken him for a tugboat skipper.
‘No, no rust. Odd!’ I agreed.
‘Probably lack of oxygen in the water. Nasty pond, this. Never like coming here. Slime must be God knows how many feet thick, down there. I shall be glad to get my lads out of it.’
‘You’re not . . . going on, then?’ I looked down into the dark water and could hardly repress a shudder.
‘No point. They’ve done the preliminary autopsy. No external signs of violence. Another suicide, they reckon. That’s seven here, in the five years I’ve been doing this. Though why they choose this place . . .’ It was his turn to repress a shudder.
‘What happens to all this stuff?’ I asked, to change the subject, indicating the motorbike.
‘Awkward.’ He sighed. ‘We’re a scratch team, drawn from all over the Met. All these lads’ll be back on their own beats tomorrow. All we want is to get our gear stowed and get home. By rights this stuff should go down to the local nick, as lost property; but who wants the paperwork? Who wants the stuff, come to that? We had them look up the bike’s registration on the Swansea computer. No sign of it. Reckon the thing’s been here since the twenties. You wouldn’t care to take charge of it, sir? You seem to know something about bikes.’
He looked at me hopefully, and added, ‘We usually just leave the stuff, and it vanishes by the next morning. You know what people are. But it’s usually smaller stuff . . . this could cause trouble if the kids get to it . . . I think there’s still petrol in the tank . . . petrol or water.’
‘I could cope with it,’ I said. ‘But it’s a matter of proving provenance – I’m an antique dealer.’
His face brightened. ‘You could always put people on to me, sir. I’ll tell them where it came from. Here’s my card . . . I’ll put my home number on the back . . .’
‘I’ll fetch my Volvo estate . . . I could do with a hand . . . loading.’
‘We’ll be here ten minutes yet . . . hey, steady with that bottle, Harrison. Any bottles you don’t want, throw back in the lake. We don’t want broken glass.’ He turned back to me. ‘Very keen on old bottles, the lads are. Got wonderful collections in the lounge at home, some of them. I think it’s the only reason they volunteer for the work.’
I was back in five minutes with the Volvo. They helped me load up willingly enough. I took two of the old push-bikes as well – ladies’ models with curved crossbars and twenty-eight-inch wheels, and baskets fore and aft. There’s a growing market for really old bikes now.
I gave them a twenty quid note for their trouble saying, ‘Police Benevolent Fund, if you can’t find a better use for it.’ From their grins, I reckon it vanished down the till of their favourite pub. And who’s to blame them?
The lady who’d started it all was still picking through the stuff on the path. I offered her a lift back to the shop. I reckoned, the way things had worked out, she’d earned herself a drink too. She stood up, delicately holding a shapeless lump of slime, about two feet long.
‘I’ll shove that in the back with the rest,’ I said.
‘Just as long as you don’t drive off with it.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m not saying. But I think I’m about to break your heart, Mr Morgan . . .’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘It’s over your shop, silly.’
‘Suit yourself.’ I didn’t reckon she could break my heart that day. Not with that Scott Flying Squirrel in the back, and a couple of bikes worth a hundred each, and all for twenty quid.
Which just proves how wrong you can be. She caused me heart-breaks all the way, that lady. Smart as a whip, and whips cause trouble.
Chapter 2
I drove into the cobbled stable-yard behind my shop. James and Lenny were waiting on tenterhooks; there’s always excitement with a big new find. My blokes are not nine-to-fivers; sometimes, if there’s a rush, they’ll work the whole weekend. Even James, who’s a Methodist lay preacher; though he’ll take two hours off to lay down the law in some pulpit, on the Sunday. James loves putting the fear of God into people.
We manhandled the motorbike off on to an old waterproof mattress, by the central drain, and Lenny put on his big rubber apron and wellies, and got the pressure-hose on it. It was a pleasure to watch him cutting through that slime.
‘She’s in fair nick,’ said James. ‘Look at that chrome coming up on those handlebars. ‘Course, chrome was chrome in them days – chrome on brass – not like modern rubbish.’ We continued to watch the slow resurrection in silence: the cream, red and gold of the long, flat petrol-tank; the dark shine of the broad saddle.
‘Real leather, that. Hasn’t rotted,’ said James. He shouted, ‘That’ll do, Len. That black stuff’s oil – we don’t want that shifted yet.’ Then he was in, trying gently to move the wheels round, testing the links of the drive-chain. ‘ ’Sa bloody miracle. Hardly a spot of rust.’ He hauled the bike upright and tried gently to push down the kick-starter. It moved quite easily. There was a low suck and sob, as if the engine wanted to fire. He put the bike on the rest and came back to us.
‘Front forks are a bit bent – that’ll be when it hit the kerbing afore it went into the water. Feller musta still been on it, crazy bastard. Bet that cooled his courage . . .’ He looked at me. ‘I think we’d better get her stripped down right away, and into the oil-bath. Don’t want rust starting now. She musta been nearly new when she went in . . . Overtime be all right?’
He worships Mammon, does James, as well as
God.
I nodded. The price that bike would fetch at Sotheby’s . . . pity they have vintage sales so seldom, and take so long to pay out afterwards . . .
I turned to my guest. ‘I’m very grateful for your tip-off. Those kids would’ve wrecked it. Can I offer you a drink?’
‘I’d rather have a sink.’ She held up the long sausage of slime she’d rescued from the back of my Volvo.
‘Your every wish . . .’ I led the way into the workshop. It’s a huge shed of corrugated asbestos that somebody erected in the back garden during the War, before town planners were thought of, or neighbours complained. It’s the reason I bought the place. One of the things I’d installed since was a long row of Belfast sinks. Amazing how often you restore an antique by soaking it in something. Stripper, acid, cat’s-piss.
She couldn’t have been less like our pressure-hose. She filled the sink and dunked the slimy sausage in gently, stroking away the weed with long fingers, pale green under the water. A patch of bright red appeared; then a square inch of transparent celluloid, a tiny steering-wheel. A model car? Too long . . . Then a sharp bow . . . a model boat, a speedboat, and quite a big one. A hatch-cover with a hole for a winding-key. Another cockpit aft, with another windscreen.
‘Oh, you jammy sod!’ I said. ‘A Hornby speedboat. Pre-War.’
‘Number four,’ she said. ‘The one with two cockpits. It’s one of the rarest . . .’
‘D’you want to sell it?’
‘No, Mr Morgan, I want to keep it. Put it on my mantelpiece and gloat over it.’
‘Be a good investment,’ I said grudgingly. ‘Tin-plate toys are going up like a rocket.’
‘There is more to this life than money, Mr Morgan.’
‘Not a dealer, then?’ She puzzled me. She knew a lot more than your average layman, who knows a bit more than your average laywoman, who can’t tell a Mamod steam-engine from a whatnot.
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