Framed

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  I was trying to imagine how difficult things would have to be before you could be uplifted by a nut. Not even a real nut. A picture of a nut. Then I remembered that Dad was in London and I wondered if he was having a difficult time. I sort of forgot Lester was there for a minute. I must have looked a bit weird, because he asked me if I was feeling all right. I didn’t want to tell him about Dad, but I didn’t know what else to say. Luckily, just then the man from the football game came in. ‘You should take a look at this,’ he said, and he handed Lester the cake menu.

  Lester started reading, then he started smiling, and then he started laughing. ‘Did you do this?’ he asked.

  This was my chance. I could say, ‘No, it was my sister,’ and then it would all come out about her being the clever one and it all being a big mix-up. But before I could say a word, Lester said, ‘Too modest. Who else could it be?’ Then he said, ‘Well, I think we’ll take some of these cakes, shall we?’

  ‘Will you? Will you really? That’s brilliant!’

  ‘Yes, why not?’ He looked at the menu again. ‘Who would ever have thought it? You really live and breathe art, don’t you?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I try, you know.’

  He pointed to the picture and said, ‘The Meléndez. You probably already know the story.’

  What should I say now? If I said no, I might sound daft. If I said yes, he might test me on it. So I kept staring at the picture.

  He said, ‘Oh, sorry. Sorry. You haven’t seen it in the flesh before. This must be a special moment for you.’

  And he backed off and sat at his desk, and I was trapped. If I stopped looking at the picture, he was bound to start asking me questions. So I had to carry on looking at it. I just stood there, looking and looking. The nuts didn’t get any more interesting but I did start to need the toilet. I tried to hold on. I tried to not think about it. But I ended up bouncing up and down on my toes.

  When Tom came in, Lester shushed him and pointed to me. ‘Been like that for half an hour,’ he said. ‘His powers of concentration are completely extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything like him.’ Then he said to me, ‘Dylan, are you ready to pronounce judgement?’

  I said, ‘I need a wee,’ and ran outside.

  When I came back in, Lester was still talking about me. ‘Utterly absorbed. Even forgot his own bladder while he was standing there.’

  ‘Nice picture this, though,’ said Tom. He was staring at it, quite closely, as if he was trying to pick the best nut.

  ‘Yes, poor Meléndez. He was quite brilliant, as you can see, but because of the politics of the time, he was flung out of court. He wanted to paint great pictures – battle scenes and so on – but of course such things are expensive. You need lots of paint and lots of time. Because he’d argued with the king, he couldn’t find a patron to pay for him to do the work. So that was it. He was stuck. He just painted whatever was to hand, usually food. Still lifes.’

  ‘I’d rather look at this than a battle any day,’ said Tom.

  I nearly said, you should try spending half an hour looking at it, mate. You’d wish it was a battle then. He was still looking at the picture, like he really liked it.

  ‘Do you know the story of Proust and the still lifes?’ said Lester.

  I wasn’t going to get caught again this time. I said, ‘No.’

  ‘Well, a friend came to see Proust, a middle-aged man, who said that he was bored with his life, that he needed excitement and beauty. Proust told him to go and look at some still lifes like this one. And they would teach him that there was beauty in the most boring places – in the pots and pans in his own kitchen.’

  Tom was still staring at the picture, ‘Are they oranges?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Oranges and a melon and, of course, walnuts. We can speculate about what’s in the boxes but I imagine—’

  ‘I’ve never seen oranges with the twiggy bit sticking out of the top before. I mean, I knew they grew on trees, but I’ve never seen, you know, the attachment.’

  ‘Right,’ said Lester. ‘And they look perfectly ripe. Just right to eat, but you can also somehow tell that that won’t last long. As I said before, a moment of beauty rescued from decay.’ He looked across at me. ‘Well, perhaps you should paint a picture, Dylan. A picture that would show us the hidden beauty of Manod.’

  I was so shocked I forgot to be polite. I blurted out, ‘Manod’s beauty’s not hidden. Manod’s lovely. Anyone can see that!’

  ‘Actually, not everyone can see that. It takes someone special to see the beauty in a place like this.’

  ‘No it doesn’t! Anyone can see it! Tell him, Tom.’

  ‘Oh yes, Manod’s one shell of a town.’

  Tom didn’t really want to go. He wanted to carry on looking at the nuts. I walked out, climbed into the Wrangler and banged on the horn until he came.

  All the way down the mountain I kept thinking, How could anyone be so wrong about Manod? Even as I was thinking about it, we turned the bend and you could see the town snuggled up in the valley. The wet slate roofs were shining blue and there were little spindles of blue smoke rising up from all the chimneys. I said, ‘How could he say such a thing? How could he even think it?’ but what I was thinking was, Poor Dad. I mean, what’s a picture of nuts compared to an inside-out mountain?’ Then I saw my ball – the one I’d dropped earlier – stuck in between two big rocks. Tom let me out to collect it.

  Mam came out to open the gate. She didn’t look too happy. Before we’d even parked, she was going, ‘Where do you think you’ve been?’ and so on. When we got into the shop, the girls even joined in. I waited till they’d all finished, then I told them about the cake order.

  ‘Immense!’ said Marie.

  ‘Legend,’ said Minnie.

  ‘How many?’ said Marie.

  ‘Which kind?’ said Minnie.

  Admittedly I probably should have known the answer to the last two questions. But it was all right in the end because on Monday a van came down, and when Tom opened the gate for it, the driver gave him a proper written order!

  I said, ‘Let’s see it then.’

  He gave me the paper and said, ‘I was talking to the driver. He’s taking that picture off to London.’

  ‘Right.’ The paper was an order for a dozen Crispy Choc Constables and a Picasso Pie. As I said at the time, ‘Cowabunga!’

  Tom just stood there, watching the van go off down the valley.

  Lester was in the passenger seat. He gave us a wave. Tom said, ‘It’s gone now. Gone to London. We’ll never see it again, most likely.’

  ‘What’s that then, Tom?’

  ‘The picture, Dylan.’

  ‘The one with the nuts?’

  ‘It was the oranges that really got me.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Everything’s always changing, isn’t it? Even the mountain is changing. Every second of every day, we get a minute older.’

  I thought about this for a while. Then I said, ‘I’m not sure that’s quite exactly right, Tom. But I know what you mean.’

  6 May

  Cars today:

  BLUE LEXUS – Mr Choi

  Weather – sunny intervals

  Note: PAINTINGS ARE LIKE MUTAGEN

  This is the day that Mr Choi finally offered Tom a job. Even though it wasn’t the job he wanted, it was still good.

  Picasso Pie was easy to make. It was just apple pie with a big pastry nose and one pastry eye sticking out of the pie. Anyone can stew apples. Marie can make pastry and Max was happy playing with the spare bits. In fact, one of the bits of pastry he played with, we used as the eye.

  It was a lot harder with the Crispy Choc Constables. Save-A-Packet doesn’t sell chocolate chips, so we had to use chocolate buttons from the shop. They taste nice, but when you put them in the cake mix they don’t look right. They look like eyes, staring at you. Minnie suggested picking them out of the mixture and breaking them into smaller pieces. No one suggested letting Max help with this bit. He
just sort of did it. He was very good at bashing up the chocolate buttons but less good at giving them back. Also, it was during this bit that he tasted the cake mix, and after that he was like a shark that has tasted blood. We tried to keep him away from the bowl, but he screamed and screamed. So we had to placate him with a big spoonful. While he was eating it, our guard was down and he painted himself with cake mix. It seemed like a waste to wash it off, so we let him sit there and lick himself clean. He didn’t get that clean, though he did stay happy.

  When we put the broken buttons back in, it still didn’t look right. As Minnie said, ‘The ratio of chocolate to cake mix has changed in the chocolate’s favour.’ The finished cakes looked like bits of chocolate buttons stuck together with a tiny mortar of cake.

  Mam was unhappy with the state of Max’s hands. And of the kitchen. And with the amount of chocolate buttons we had used. ‘Please stop eating the food from the shop,’ she said. ‘That’s our stock. You might as well sit down and eat money.’

  Minnie said, ‘It’s OK, Mam. We’ve decided to outsource the cake-making part of the business anyway.’ This means we asked Tom’s mam to bake the cakes for us. She said she was delighted to do it. All we had to do was collect the orders and get her the ingredients. ‘I can bake anything you like,’ she said, ‘but I’ve never heard of a Titian Tart.’

  ‘We made the name up. You can put whatever you like in them,’ said Minnie. ‘Use your imagination.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t had do that too often recently, but I’ll give it a go.’

  The men up the mountain ordered cakes every day, and different cakes every time. Sometimes there were some left over, so we sold them in the shop. We were soon selling more cakes than anything else. And we were getting more visitors than usual too, because of what Tom did to the window.

  Tom kept talking about the nut painting and how he was never going to see it again because it had gone to London. Then, on the Saturday morning, we found him in the window of the shop, changing everything round. He’d been down to Save-A-Packet and he’d bought great big bags of stuff: soap powder, raisins, cornflakes, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, everything. And now he’d moved all the antifreeze and screen-wash out of the window and replaced them with big piles of all this random shopping. He’d made like a carpet of soap powder and put a pile of raisins in one corner, next to a big pile of cornflakes. Then he’d put little empty milk and juice cartons round the whole lot and some bits from a barbecue set. ‘I thought to myself, I can’t paint, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make a still life to look at, does it?’

  ‘No, that’s true.’

  Minnie said, ‘Did you ever think of just stealing the original still life and looking at that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Because I’m reformed.’

  Everyone who saw Tom’s window liked it, but Mr Choi was the first one to actually copy it. He said, ‘This is good. You did this? You can do one for me?’

  Obviously Tom didn’t normally talk to Mr Choi or go in his shop because of Mr Choi having ruined Tom’s life by giving the job to the red-headed girl. But then Mr Choi said, ‘I’ll give you a tenner.’ So that won Tom over.

  Mr Choi’s window was empty except for a big blue glass fish and a pie advert. Tom took them out and put a great big basket tipped on its side, spilling lovely new potatoes and onions all over the place. And in among the potatoes he put bits of fishing line, and some floats and a net, and it made you hungry just looking at it. He was doing this first thing on the Monday morning, so everyone stopped to watch him on the way to school.

  After he’d dropped his girls off, Mr Elsie the chemist knocked on Mr Choi’s window and asked Tom if he wouldn’t mind doing the same in his shop window after he’d finished. Mr Elsie’s window used to have this big cardboard foot, advertising corn plasters. When Tom went over there, he found all kinds of old, old-fashioned bottles in the back of the shop and he put them in the window with a picture of an old man with a mortar and pestle. Mr Elsie gave Tom ten quid too.

  The window of the Snowdonia Mountain Rescue Charity Shop, that was a mess – big piles of old clothes and books. They couldn’t pay Tom but they said he could choose something from the shop, so he picked one of those wind-up torches, and on the Tuesday he went in there and dressed up this old mannequin as a climber – bobble hat, boots, everything. He gave him a book to read and put a nice cardigan on him and he put a steam iron in his free hand. The steam iron is a bit random, but it was such a bargain that it went that afternoon.

  The window of Mrs Porty’s newsagent’s used to be all notices and adverts. Then she got Tom in. He cleared the space and put a shelf in the window, with all the boiled sweet jars on it. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the best one really. When the sun shone on them, they looked like jars of different-coloured raindrops or jewels or something.

  The Spar even. They’ve taken that big green Spar sign down and swapped it for a great big photograph of Manod Mountain. It looks bizarre – but in a good way, because the real mountain sticks up behind the picture of itself.

  The new windows were even in the paper, look:

  What’s in Store?

  Window shoppers can find a feast for the eyes on Blaenau Road this month, with displays to match the best of London or Cardiff. Not that I’ve ever been to either of those places. The amazing transformation was started by Tom Egerton, whose display at the Oasis Garage – Still Life with Dry Goods – is now a town landmark. Tom (formerly known as Daft Tom) says he got the idea from looking at a work of art. He can’t remember which one now and he’s not at liberty to say where he saw it. The new displays might attract new visitors, if they ever hear about them. I’ve done my bit, but no one reads this paper unless they live in Manod and, let’s face it, if you live in Manod you already know about this.

  ‘The best of London or Cardiff’!! ‘Amazing transformation’! That’s like the Turtles. They were ordinary household pets until they were tipped down the sewer. They fell into a puddle of mutagen and that’s what turned them into mutants. If they hadn’t been mutants they couldn’t have become Ninjas. When you think about it, the nut painting was like mutagen, transforming our town.

  7 May

  Cars today:

  BEIGE LUTON VAN – Brake Brothers –

  (went up the mountain road)

  ROVER 3500 V8 – Miss Elsa Sellwood and Brake Brothers man

  CARBON BLACK BMW M5 – Mr Lester

  (bought and placed orders for all kinds of things – bread, papers, just tons!)

  RED FORD KA – Ms Stannard (big bag of Revels)

  Weather – drizzle

  Note: CRIMINAL WASPS

  I know it doesn’t look like it, but this was a Wednesday. I suppose the Brake Brothers driver didn’t know that. Well, he probably knew it was a Wednesday but he didn’t know it was a Manod Wednesday, if you see what I mean.

  Terrible Evans had been more terrible than ever since her dad went. For instance, when Ms Stannard told her off for not concentrating during maths, she got up and walked to the front, took a pair of scissors from the art table and cut her pigtails off. Everyone gasped, except Ms Stannard. She just picked up the pigtails, put them in a plastic bag and handed them back to Terrible. ‘In case someone would like one as a souvenir,’ she said.

  Because her dad had asked me to keep an eye on her, I sat next to Terrible in art. We were supposed to be doing paintings of Our Town to send to Gumbi. I was painting the mountain, and so was she. I suggested that we paint half each and make one big painting instead of two little ones. She didn’t say anything, but she shoved her picture next to mine. I said, ‘D’you fancy a kick-around during playtime?’

  ‘Why are you asking me?’

  I wasn’t sure whether to tell her about her dad or not, so I just sort of shrugged.

  ‘Is it because I’ve got short hair?’

  ‘No, it’s because I really want a kick-around.’

  ‘Because I’ve got short hair I’m supposed to like lads’
games, is that it?’ And she shoved me in the chest and I fell off my chair. That time Ms Stannard definitely saw what happened, but all she did was tell everyone to hold up their paintings.

  Most people had painted the mountain, except Jade Porty, who had painted her own house, and Minnie, who had painted the bus shelter. ‘Does anyone notice anything about them?’ said Ms Stannard. ‘What do they have in common?’

  ‘They’re not dry, miss.’

  ‘Anything else? No one? They’re ALL GREY! All of them are completely grey. We’re supposed to be bringing good cheer to our friends in Gumbi, not making them suicidal. If they see these paintings, they’ll get up a collection for us. Paint something colourful, please.’

  Terrible painted a picture of a little boy being punched, with bright red blood spurting out of him. It didn’t look much like me, but I am the only boy in town. I stayed calm, but at home time I went round the backs instead of up the High Street.

  If you go round the backs, you get a really good view of the mountain. That’s when I saw the Misses Sellwood’s car heading for town a lot faster than usual. When I got on to the Blaenau Road (B5565), everyone was walking quite quickly, trying to get home before they arrived, but the car came round the corner and everyone jumped into the shop doorways, waiting for it to pass. But it didn’t pass. It pulled in to the kerb and the driver wound the window down. And it wasn’t Miss Sellwood at all, it was the Brake Brothers man.

  ‘Kid,’ he said, ‘you’re from the garage, aren’t you? Have they got a tow truck up there, d’you know?’

  ‘Certainly have,’ I said. ‘1997 Wrangler, fifty-nine thousand on the clock.’ I think he was impressed.

  I was telling him about the special-edition chrome bumpers when I noticed that the bumper of the Misses Sellwood’s Rover was badly dinted and that Miss Elsa herself was sitting in the passenger seat.