There was a ship’s wheel, a garden hose, a wardrobe, a half-made rug kit, assorted china, a broken scooter, a wheelchair, two dead aspidistras in pots, a sideboard, a fireguard, a fridge and a stuffed ferret. The dealers liked the sideboard and the china, but would not bid at all for the rest, though MCC’s hands twitched hungrily. ‘I knew a man once who owned a laundrette and trained a ferret to fetch out all the socks and handkerchiefs that got stuck in the machines.’
‘Did it work?’ asked Ailsa, tightening her grip.
‘Almost. It fetched them out every time. But it ate them.’
The auctioneer scowled at MCC and said, ‘Did I hear a bid, sir?’
‘No!’ squeaked Mrs Povey.
It was nearing lunchtime. The dealers got out their sandwiches, with a rustle of cellophane and paper bags. As they did so, a huge table was brought up on to the dais: a vast, polished mahogany oval as shiny and reflective as a village pond and almost as big. The dealers stirred in their seats and their frosty breath sprang up in a dozen plumes of admiration. Even Mrs Povey said, ‘Now there’s a lovely piece,’ and absent-mindedly let go of MCC’s left hand. She was dizzy at the sound of the spiralling bids - three hundred, four hundred, five hundred, five-fifty …
‘Seven hundred pounds!’ declared MCC, lifting his right hand as if Ailsa were no more than a handkerchief tucked in his cuff. Suddenly there were no more bids.
Mrs Povey burst into tears. ‘No bid! No bid!’ she tried to call, but it became all tangled with the tears and the shivering and the scraping of chairs as the dealers turned in their seats to identify the bidder.
‘Now are you happy?’ said Ailsa.
‘What’s the matter?’ MCC asked, hurriedly passing Mrs Povey his silk handkerchief.
‘Going once at seven hundred,’ said the auctioneer.
‘We don’t have it!’ hissed Ailsa.
‘But it’s worth much more than seven hundred,’ argued MCC, looking crestfallen. ‘You could make a nice profit.’
‘But we don’t have it!’
‘Going for a second time at seven hundred,’ said the auctioneer.
‘Don’t you worry your head about that,’ said MCC.
‘Sold to Povey’s Antiquary!’
‘Oh!’ howled Mrs Povey. ‘Go and tell him we haven’t got the money! Tell him it’s a mistake! He’ll have to auction the table again. I’ll never be able to show my face here after this.’
‘Now, now,’ said MCC. ‘Leave this to me,’ and he jumped and squeezed his way round and over the chairs to the front of the hall, grinning to left and right at the munching, smoke-breathing dealers. He approached the table as if he were about to plunge into the shiny depths of its reflections, and ran his hands over its legs as a horse dealer might over the fetlocks of a thoroughbred mare. ‘I’m sure! I’m almost certain … it must be … it’s so much like … it’s been a long time since I saw it, of course, but I’m sure …’
The dealers pricked up their ears like a pack of wolfhounds, and for all the auctioneer coughed and said, ‘Shall we get on?’ and the porters came to carry the table away, MCC would not allow it to be removed from the stage.
‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!’ he cried, turning on his audience. ‘I’m glad you’re here today to share in my good fortune. I do believe … though there’s no way of knowing for sure … but this table is so much like the one in the poem!’
‘What poem?’ The murmur ran round the hall.
‘What poem? Oh you must know it, surely! The Night the Prince of Wales came Late to Dine.’
‘The Prince of Wales!’ murmured the dealers, for the mere mention of royalty rings like money in the ears of an antique dealer. And then, because they did not want to look ignorant, they began to nod nonchalantly to one another. ‘Oh yes! By the Poet Laureate, wasn’t it?’
‘I thought Robert Browning.’
‘No - Kipling - I’m sure it’s Kipling.’
‘Or Goldsworthy?’
MCC had somehow edged the auctioneer off his rostrum and now bent his face towards the microphone. His eyes were as large, dark and oval as the table itself, and filled with the reflections of his restless, munching audience.
***
The visit of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales to the home of The Right Honourable Lady Bowdley, Hampshire, 1899.
First came the linen, like a fall of snow —
A level glacier, glazed by starch and heat,
Falling in sheer, white bluffs to the rug below
To fold across the eight, carved, lion-claw feet;
And then the candelabra - silver trees
Like those which, dragon-guarded, bore the fruit
Which Herakles fetched from the Hesperides –
All along the table, six took root.
No armoury of serried pike and sword
Ever displayed so many prongs and blades
As the cutlery laid out to grace the board
Of Edward, Prince of Wales, by the maids.
Beside the window Lady Bowdley stood,
Her fingers clasped, her noble face dismayed:
Would the Prince be late? And if he would,
Could the quail omelettes be delayed?
The guests trooped in, the cream of English stock:
The County Squire, the Marchioness, the Dean,
The Lady Swann in long organza frock,
The Judge, a second cousin of the Queen.
They stood and eyed the empty, gilded plates,
The empty glasses, bowls, tureens and cups,
And pondered, if the Prince of Wales were late,
When the Lady Bowdley would serve up.
The Breton chef waved temperamental hands
And wept into the simmering serving pans:
‘Monsieur le Prince is ruining my flans!
I cannot answer for my baked meringues!’
The rumblings of the guests grew menacing,
Like distant thunder rolling round the sky.
There was a flicking out and tucking in
Of napkins into bodices and ties.
The Dean began to nibble on a roll,
The Lady Fortescue began to bleat,
‘I think the Prince would want us, on the whole,
Not to wait all night but just to eat!’
So Lady Bowdley summoned up the soup,
The antipasto, whitebait, langoustine, the
Avocados, prawns and cantaloup,
The pâté, lamb and pestoed tortellini.
Fish course began with lobster thermidor,
Then plaice and halibut and Dover dab,
And shark steak, roll-mop herring and yet more
Unidentifiable bits of crab.
Then came water-ices - lemon sorbet -
A frothy frost of egg white, slightly sweet,
To clean away the taste of fish before they
Plunged like porpoises upon the meat.
The Lady Edgar eased undone her zip
And drove her fork into the Vicar’s hand
As they contended for the dish of chips.
The Duchess said, ‘These artichokes are canned!’
Beef bled like a casualty of war.
The pork was pale as snow, with golden rind.
The more the guests devoured, it seemed, the more
The smoky stoves disgorged of other kinds.
The lamb was studded with a hundred cloves
Of garlic, plumed with fronds of rosemary;
The partridge, quail and widgeon sat in groves
Of feathers or on nest of vermicelli.
To sounds of silver trumpets in they bore
A roast swan stuffed with pineapple and dates.
The Bishop loosed his tie and softly swore,
And sped to clear his overloaded plates.
The wine poured down like Iguacu Falls;
It dyed the Squire’s beard a bloody red;
And champagne splashed the oaken panelled walls,
And corks lod
ged in the ceiling overhead.
Glazed ribs and cutlets dipped in creamy sauce,
Slivers of veal and ducklings on a spit:
No sooner had they gobbled up one course
Than dozens more delights succeeded it.
Hastily the Judge took off his coat
And belt and rolled his sleeves up and began
To bawl, demented, ‘Pass the gravy boat!’
And carve great slices from the honeyed ham.
Like Death Valley where the sun-bleached bones
Of buffalo litter the burning ground,
The greasy table sways and rocks and groans
Beneath stripped carcases heaped up in mounds.
But though the muscles of their jaws were flagging,
The greed of man and maid alike was not.
The Marchioness was shrilly heard a-bragging
That she’d like second helpings of the lot.
‘Oh save a little appetite for sweet,
My lords and ladies, gentlemen and friends!’
The Lady Bowdley sweetly did entreat,
As if so mean a meal called for amends.
There was a rending then of dinner suits,
Of shirts and blouses, frocks and cummerbunds,
As trolleys brought in gateaux, tarts and fruits
And crêmes brûlees, compotes and sugar buns.
Dark-backed éclairs and trifles, cherry flans,
And Baked Alaska, bombe surprise and tubs
Of caramel, and rum babas, and pans
Of flaming crêpes Suzettes and syllabubs.
‘Bring in the port, the brandy, the Cointreau!
The petits fours, the after-dinner sweets!’
Called Lady Bowdley from some spot below
The table, in among a host of feet.
Holding his sides, the Squire sprawled and gasped
Face down among the lemon meringue pie.
The groaning, grinning, gurgling Bishop clasped
An empty brandy glass against his eye:
‘I see no chips!’ he chortled, then expired -
Likewise the Marchioness, so grossly fat.
With sugar-spangled hair and cheeks affired,
They slithered from their chairs on to the mat.
The Prince of Wales drove up with honking horn,
But no reception waited at the door.
The stubs of candles glimmering forlorn
Showed the sad story written on the floor.
Amid the pools of candlewax and wine,
The county’s gentry and nobility
In ragged finery all lay in line -
Victims of too much hospitality.
***
The floor of the hall was littered with half-eaten sandwiches and paper bags. A dozen dealers were scribbling notes on the back of business cards and, as MCC Berkshire stepped from the rostrum and strode back down the hall, they pressed their messages into his hand or into the pockets of the green corduroy jacket. He resumed his seat and read all the notes through, showing now one, now another, to Mrs Povey. At the sight of each one she would give a little hysterical shriek of laughter and begin sobbing again. After a few minutes he leaned across the chairs in front and said to a man in a black wool coat with an astrakhan collar, ‘I hate to part with the table, but my employer Mrs Povey instructs me to accept your offer of one thousand pounds.’
The man in the astrakhan collar paid cash, and MCC was able to give seventy clean ten-pound notes to the auctioneer. ‘Want a job, young man?’ said the auctioneer with a wink. ‘I can always use a good talker.’
‘Thank you for the kind offer, but I’m very content with Mrs Povey,’ said MCC, and Ailsa’s mother burst into tears all over again.
After that, MCC took very little interest in the proceedings, but slipped a small book out of his pocket and read, wholly and completely absorbed, while the auctioneer’s patter rained down on the assembly. Ailsa glanced over MCC’s shoulder. It was poetry he was reading, of course.
CHAPTER SIX
THE HARPSICHORD:
A STORY OF HONOUR AND TRUST
Then they came to cut off the telephone.
Mrs Povey thrust money at the engineer but he only sniffed and said, ‘Shoulda paid it biffor, Mrs. It’ll cost a packet for you to be reconnected now. Yer on a party line or they could just of cut you off at the Exchange. But yer on a party line, see, so here I am to cut you off.’
Ailsa was reminded of the nursery rhyme:
Here comes the candle to light you to bed,
And here comes … the Post Office engineer to cut off your phone.
Mrs Povey went upstairs to have a cry, because of the shame of being cut off.
He was a big, brawny man, the engineer, with tattoos on his forearms. He had short, thin hair, and a face so weather-beaten that the lines and creases showed white like the loose cottons on a teddy bear. He walked with a decided roll, to and from his van, to fetch the dreadful instruments of Disconnection. At the sight of MCC lying along the chaise longue, reading, he bared a few tobacco-stained teeth and muttered, ‘Idle, good-fer-nuffing pansies.’
MCC looked at him coldly over the edge of Plunder of the Spanish Main! and asked, ‘Is it my fault if there’s no work on the ships any more?’
The sneer disappeared so fast from the engineer’s face that it might have short-circuited. ‘Don’t I know it?’ he groaned. ‘What, Merchant Navy, are you?’
‘Not now,’ said MCC dolefully, just as though last week he had been.
‘Which ships? What line? Where? I was on the Avro - beautiful little lady she was, biffor she got herself sold to Sri Lanka. Went for scrap last year. Tragic. Tragic,’ moaned the engineer. ‘These days it’s all supertankers and no-one needed to crew them. It’s curtains fer the likes of us. Got a fag?’
MCC cemented the friendship by fetching out a battered pack of Senior Service cigarettes from his jacket pocket (though Ailsa had never ever seen him smoke). It was as if the anchor on the packet cleaved the two men’s hearts together. ‘Tragic. Tragic,’ said MCC lugubriously. ‘Of course the real ships were the sailing ships. Wish I’d been a naval man then. Concertinas on the poop deck. Shanties on the fore bits - and the songs circling up to the crow’s-nest like seagulls on the wing!’
The engineer’s eyes drifted involuntarily towards the ceiling, and his lips smiled. ‘Got a Yamaha electronic organ misself,’ he said.
This seemed to come as no surprise to MCC. But perhaps he had already seen the roll of sheet music protruding from the pocket of the blue overalls.
Ailsa, watching through the kitchen door, pushed aside her homework and hurried into the shop. She dragged the winged armchair up behind the telephone engineer, then curled up herself in a basket chair alongside him. The engineer was put out — irritated that his conversation had been interrupted. ‘What d’you want?’ he said rudely.
Ailsa waved him into the chair. ‘Sit down and listen. MCC’s going to tell you a story. There’s no point arguing. He’ll tell it anyway. You may as well give in.’
Unease, suspicion, curiosity and eagerness, all at one time, shared the weather-beaten face between them. He sat down, but took the doomed telephone on to his lap, as if to say that no last minute rescue bid would save it from grisly execution. ‘Get on wiffit, then.’
***
‘Look what we found, Captain!’
They dragged the little boy out from behind a barrel in the hold, and held him up by his collar and belt. ‘A stowaway, Captain!’
‘Fetch him up. Let me have a look at him!’
A sailor ran up the ladder with the stowaway over his shoulder, and set him down, blinking and dazzled, at the Captain’s feet. ‘Up brat! Up!’ snarled the Captain, examining the trembling heap with the toe of his boot. ‘Name? You do have a name, I suppose?’
‘Ned, sir,’ said the stowaway. ‘Ned Cox, sir. And I didn’t mean no harm, sir, honest!’
The Captain’s top lip drew back off a straggle of s
mall, pointed teeth. ‘Not mean harm, sir? Stow away and not mean harm, sir? Ride without paying your passage? Help yourself to victuals every mealtime, I daresay? Smuggle yourself aboard to save capture for your crimes, I daresay?’
‘Oh no, sir! I never did no crimes, sir, honest!’
‘Honest? But honest is what you are not, sir. And do you know what I do with dishonest little stowaways? I throw them over the side, sir, to feed the sharks on the way down and the crawling things on the bottom. Do it, Second.’
Nobody moved. Beyond the Captain’s shoulder, Ned could see the green horizon slanting first one way then the other as the ship rolled. The hands on his clothing tightened, but still nobody moved. In the distance he could hear somebody crying, and did not realize that it was himself. In the distance, too, a voice said, ‘You don’t mean it, Captain.’
‘Mean it? Of course I mean it! Do it, then perhaps we can all get back to work.’
‘You could put him in the brig, sir, and put him off in the Barbadies, sir …’
‘If you bandy words with me, sir, it’s the brig for you and the sea for him. You do it, bo’sun, if the Second takes a dislike to my orders!’
The hands on Ned’s shoulders changed, but still nobody moved a step closer to the rail.
‘I couldn’t do that, sir. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Right? I’ll tell you what’s right. On board this ship what I say is right and what you think ain’t worth a ladle of tar. Right?’
‘Thou shall not kill. I couldn’t go against my Christian conscience, sir.’ An unhappy murmur of approval ran through the assembled crew, and the sailors who had found Ned and handed him over, murmured loudest of all, and their fists were clenched in their gabardine trousers.
The Captain stepped forward and snatched hold of Ned by the wrists and pulled him so sharply towards the rail that the ragged back of his shirt was left in the grip of the bo’sun. He swung the boy bodily over the side, like the whip-end of a rope, but kept hold of his wrists. Beneath Ned the sea glittered and made mouths - deeper and deeper gullets of dark green water. His feet banged against the planks of the ship and his arms were half out of their sockets.
A Pack of Lies Page 6
