A Pack of Lies

by Geraldine McCaughrean

Next day, the Captain came again and leaned through the hatch and said, ‘I know Gryce. A real bastard. He’s lost another ship to mutineers since yours, you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Broome. ‘Another pack of lost souls condemned to wander the world.’

  Next day, the Captain came and leaned through the hatch and said, ‘I’m awful partial to music myself, Broome. S’pose you wouldn’t come …’

  And so Broome was freed from the brig on his word of honour as a gentleman, and played Telemann and Bach on a harpsichord sent him all the way from London by Ned Cox using his bagful of pirate gold.

  A storm hit them in Biscay, and ripped out the foresail like a wolf tearing out a deer’s throat. They ran ahead of it for three days, into the English channel, scattering tackle and jetsam. But they were driven ashore on Chesil Beach. The wind died the moment it had broken the ship’s back on that unforgiving heap of pebbles. Even the next high tide did not shift her, and she sat forlorn but upright while the crew struggled to safety.

  No trace was ever found of the mutineer, John Broome. The brig was flooded early in the storm, and it was assumed that he had been drowned in his chains. A lot of the ship’s cargo was brought ashore, including a harpsichord from the Captain’s cabin, though careless handling meant that it was soaked and stood corroding in a custom-house for months. Finally, some tall, disreputable type, saying that he worked for the salvage company, claimed it and took it away in a horse-cart. A spring tide cleaned the ship off the Chesil Beach in the space of one night and left not a plank.

  Ned Cox, meanwhile, had returned to the dockland home of the ship’s cook and sailed as his pot-boy on a voyage to the East Indies. He was the wonder of the crew, for he had a whole two gold pieces to his name and he swore he had come by them honestly.

  ***

  Ailsa thought for a moment that the telephone engineer had fallen asleep, as children do who are read to at night. The shop had grown dark while MCC spoke, and it was time to close. Suddenly the phone in the engineer’s lap rang once, jarringly loud, and tumbled through his knees as he leapt up.

  ‘Hello? Yes? What? Right. All right, then. Right, I said!’ he yelled into the receiver and put it back.

  Up on his feet now he reeled his sailor’s roll through the furniture, brandishing his rolled organ music in one hand like a cosh. He would have passed for a press-ganger looking for sailors to press into service. ‘Where is it? Is it here? What happened to it?’

  MCC looked at Ailsa and would not answer.

  ‘It’s here. I know it. Saw it biffor. In’t there no lights in here?’

  MCC said nothing, and Ailsa returned his look as if to say, ‘Well I shan’t tell him any of your lies.’

  Just then Mrs Povey came downstairs from having her cry. ‘What is he looking for, please?’ she asked icily. ‘It’s time to lock up.’

  ‘A harpsichord. Yer’ve got one. I seen it when I came in. Turn on the light for gawd’s sake,’ pleaded the engineer.

  ‘Yes, we’ve got a harpsichord,’ said Mrs Povey in some surprise. ‘It doesn’t play, though, I’m afraid. It got wet or something. If it were any good, it would be in a real antique shop. We’ve had it for years.’

  Ailsa and MCC looked at one another and shook their heads and sighed.

  The room flooded with light, and the engineer - reaching out to feel his way in the dark - found his hands poised over the keyboard of a stained, splintery harpsichord, standing drunkenly on three uneven legs. He played a chord - an utterly silent chord. There was only a sound of rust plucking on rust, like a cat sharpening its claws on a bristle mat.

  But inside his head, the music played as loud as a breaking wave, and a light illuminated his weather-worn features like the St Elmo’s fire which sometimes hovers round the mast-top of ships at sea. ‘I’ll rebuild it!’ he exclaimed. ‘The wife’ll skin me, but I’ll do it! I will! And I’ll teach the nipper. I’ll teach the babby to play!’ Ailsa had a sudden vision of the ex-sailor’s living room, its walls hung with pictures of ships, its shelves filled with the souvenirs of distant voyages, and the Yamaha organ and the harpischord eyeing each other across three centuries and a toddler’s litter of toys.

  MCC took his money and helped him put the harpsichord in the Post Office van. It was now long past closing time.

  ‘Is the telephone cut off, then?’ asked Mrs Povey dismally, though Ailsa said, ‘Shshsh, Mother!’ and MCC tried to silence her with a wink.

  The engineer looked at his watch where it nestled among the hairy tattoos of anchors and sea-snakes on his wrist. ‘Ah well, it’s past my knocking-off time,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to come back and do it tomorrer. ’Less you tell me on your honour yer going to pay. I’d pay if I was you. Reconnection costs a packet.’

  ‘I will! I will!’ promised Mrs Povey, scurrying humbly out of the shop behind him. ‘Mr Berkshire earned some money this morning so I’ll pay first thing tomorrow. On my honour!’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Ailsa, ‘but who was it on the telephone just now?’

  The engineer slapped the side of his head. ‘Almost forgot in the excitement. Some rude creep called Clive’s coming to visit you this weekend. Lord! The wife’ll kill me when she sees that harpsichord. Reckon I’ll tell her it’s a cabinet fer the video. Just till it’s mended.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE UMBRELLA-STAND:

  A STORY OF TEMPER

  ‘But we always put him off!’ groaned Mrs Povey.

  ‘Why? What’s the matter with him?’ asked MCC.

  ‘Uncle Clive? He’s so … so …’ said Ailsa.

  ‘Exactly,’ said her mother. ‘He’s completely impossible, he’s so very …’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said MCC, and had to wait until the Friday to judge Uncle Clive for himself.

  There was just no pleasing Mrs Povey’s brother-in-law. He knew so much better than everyone else. Nobody, from the ticket inspector on the train to the Prime Minister in his newspaper was fit to hold down their job since he, Clive Povey, could have done it so much better. He had a great many hobbies, all of which he did exceedingly well, whether it was restoring the eggshells out of which he ate his morning egg, or compiling a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about tax fiddlers and dole-queue millionaires. The scrapbook was his proof that the country had ‘gone to the dogs’, and to Uncle Clive every high street and bus was more full of dogs than the Battersea Dogs’ Home. He detested litter, whether it was a discarded cigarette-end or a tramp sleeping on a park bench. The trouble with litter was that it sat still too long and therefore smacked of idleness. If there was one thing Uncle Clive detested (and there were a lot more than one) it was idleness. He himself overbrimmed with energy - brusque, bright, battering energy. He blazed a path through the world, and behind him the litter swirled, the trees wilted, the clouds sagged and dogs cowered in terror.

  And, of course, people were nice to him because of it. Eager to keep him from losing his temper, people were always respectful and polite to him, so that his attitude paid off. In fact, he really believed that people found him lovable and bluff, ‘refreshingly honest’ and so forth.

  He was disappointed in his brother for dying. He was bitterly disappointed in the feeble efforts of the widowed Mrs Povey to run Povey’s Antiquary. Time and time again he told her to sell up - but would she listen? A typical woman. She never listened to sound advice. ‘A woman’s place is in the home,’ he said, and sent her advertisements from lonely hearts’ columns and marriage bureaux, which she screwed up.

  Like little crabs balanced on a smooth, round rock, Ailsa and Mrs Povey clung to each other and waited for Uncle Clive’s ocean of spleen to overwhelm them. Always, in the past, they had fended off his threatened visits with desperate excuses, but now here he was, standing in the doorway in his open-toed sandals, tartan socks, ferocious checked suit and alpine hat. ‘What moron wrote that rubbish on the shop front about books?’ he demanded furiously, in his thick, Lancastrian accent. The purple veins were alread
y pulsing in his bull-like neck.

  ‘Hello, Uncle,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘How lovely to see you, Clive,’ said Mrs Povey.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Mr Povey,’ said MCC, rising from the chaise tongue.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘This is Mr Berkshire, Clive,’ said Mrs Povey. ‘He’s been working here for a while.’

  ‘Eh? Working here? Employing staff now, are you? Win the pools, did you? Since when could you afford to pay staff, Audrey?’

  ‘Mr Berkshire is very good with people …’ began Mrs Povey.

  ‘You mean he talked himself into a job! Audrey, you must be even sillier than …’

  ‘… and I don’t pay him any wages — although I’d like to, of course, if I could afford it.’

  ‘Eh? What’s that? No wages?’ Uncle Clive bore down on MCC. ‘What’s your game then, lad? You may pull the wool over a silly woman’s eyes, but you won’t fool me. What’s your game? What’s your angle? What are you up to?’

  ‘I like it here,’ said MCC, simply and quietly.

  ‘Well y’can pack your bags and go and like some other place, son, ’cos you’re out! Got me? Out! Probably some kind of a sex maniac or p-sychiatric case. You’re mad to have him under your roof, Audrey. You’re mad. I always said it. I told Tom on the day he married you: “she’ll be the ruin of you!” … Well what are you waiting for, lad? You’ve had your marching orders. ’Op it.’

  MCC blinked his brown eyes slowly, dispassionately, and Ailsa thought, for a great many seconds, that the bell she could hear was inside her head — a battle alert signalling the outbreak of war.

  But it was only a customer standing on the shop mat, her way barred by Uncle Clive’s huge suitcase. The bell rang and rang and rang.

  ‘If you would permit me, Mr Povey, I shall serve this customer before I go,’ said MCC, with icy politeness.

  It was a nun from the convent. ‘I was wondering if you had such a thing as a coat-rack?’ she said. MCC sprang at once to the side of a beautiful, dark, solid-wood stand with a central pillar thick as a tree, four branching coat-hooks big as reindeer antlers, and a bentwood cage at the bottom to hold walking sticks and umbrellas. ‘Well actually, all we wanted was a little row of hooks — you know - to nail on the hall wall. But thank you anyway …’ said the nun.

  MCC looked aghast. ‘But what about the drips, sister?’

  ‘I beg your pardon. Did you say “drips”?’

  ‘I did! What about the drips from the umbrellas if you hang them on pegs on the wall. The carpet! The rotten floorboards directly below! What a hazard to the structure of the building!’

  ‘Ah, but just for coats …’

  ‘Here for coats,’ said MCC, swinging from the great looping curves of wood to show their sturdiness. ‘And here for the umbrellas. Note the lead lining in the base, allowing the water to evaporate gradually.’ (His whole body mimed the life cycle of a raindrop caught in the Victorian umbrella-stand.) ‘Do you have no umbrellas at the convent?’

  ‘Well … y-e-e-s … I suppose we do. We do have. A dozen or more in fact.’

  ‘I thought so! I mean, I know it would have been better - much better - if the last owner of this stand had never owned an umbrella, but then it seems to me that a convent is one of the few places a stand like this would be safe, given its history.’

  Ailsa closed her eyes and willed and willed and willed the nun to say (and she did):

  ‘Why? Who was the last owner of the stand?’

  It was all the excuse MCC Berkshire needed. Like a ferret in a laundrette’s washing machine, he seized his opportunity.

  ***

  Dafyd Tresillick wore an oilskin when it rained (and it rains a lot on the west coast of Wales). He wore an oilskin and a sou’wester, even though he was no longer a member of the lifeboat crew. The oilskin was so stiff that it stood up on its own account - a headless apparition haunting the corner of the shed. In light rain he wore only an oiled-wool aran pullover, which smelled of tarry sheep when it got warm but which would keep the rain off nicely so long as nobody washed it in detergent.

  Tresillick did not believe in umbrellas. Some people don’t believe in God; Tresillick didn’t believe in umbrellas. In fact, he disbelieved with a pagan fervour. He did not own one. He would not be given one - not for birthdays or Christmas or to please his wife. He said that any man who used one was a pansy, and any woman a public pest.

  There was nothing Tresillick liked so much as a good, healthy, drenching, torrential great downpour of rain. When it did not rain, his allotment suffered.

  The summer of ‘fifty-two was not wet. In fact, there was a drought and, to his dismay, Tresillick toiled under a blazing sun every day only to see his lettuces shrivel, his tomatoes wither, his bean canes break out in a sickly crop no bigger than caterpillars. When autumn came, it blustered the burned leaves off the apple tree and knocked down the pebbly apples, but hardly a drop of rain came in on the wind. It was as if the great western sea itself had dried up in the summer and there were no waves for the winds to sip up and spit out on parched, blighted little Pontieth.

  So it was a happy man who looked out of his bedroom window to see the first cold wet downpour of autumn drenching his thirsty lawn. ‘Time for the winter underwear, Gwen. Where did you stow it away?’

  His wife blushed, put in a burst of activity tidying the bedclothes, then hurried out on to the landing saying, ‘I threw it all out in spring. It was a sight, it was really.’

  After a stunned pause, Tresillick called after her, ‘Well, didn’t you buy new?’

  There was a guilty silence, and the footsteps on the stairs halted. Gwen Tresillick, who was a Methodist, decided she must tell the truth, and she crept back into the room. ‘The shops’ve stopped keeping them, love. They don’t sell your vests no more.’

  ‘What are you talking about, woman? Don’t sell vests? What do you mean, they don’t sell vests?’

  Gwen winced. She was well-acquainted with her husband’s temper, which was vile. ‘Ah, vests they got a-plenty, love, but not your kind. Not the long-down-to-the-knees kind. Nor long drawers. Nor woollen combinations even. I’ve tried all over. Shops say there’s no call for them these days.’

  Tresillick opened and shut his mouth several times before he was able to ask, ‘What’s wrong with the world these days? Eh? Answer me that! What’s the country coming to?’ He went on to say this many, many times during breakfast, and was only stopped from saying it by an advertisement in the national newspaper which caught his eye … It was for the Army & Navy Stores. He slapped the paper violently with the back of his hand. ‘Now they’d have them. My life on it they would!’

  ‘But they’re in London, cariad,’ said his wife, soothingly. ‘Tell you what. I’ll knit you a nice all-over set.’

  ‘Rubbish, woman! I’ll go up there and buy them, that’s what I’ll do!’

  ‘Up to London?’ whispered his wife. (Tresillick slapped the paper again triumphantly.) ‘But you’ve never been out of Wales, Dafyd! Well you’ve never hardly been into Pontypridd but twice since the War!’

  He was offended. ‘Never been out of Wales? I’ll have you know I was in London the summer before I married you. Filthy smoky place and no air to breathe hardly. But if that’s where I have to go to get decent drawers, I’ve no fear of going there, and don’t you think it!’

  Gwen gnawed her lip. ‘Supposing the Army-and-Navy don’t have your drawers, Dafyd? Terrible advanced they are, up there in London Town.’

  ‘Nothing advanced about not selling a pair of good drawers!’ declared Tresillick, and his wife was silent, knowing it was pointless to argue. For some reason, a great darkness welled up in her at the thought of Tresillick going up to London.

  Next morning it was still raining when Tresillick boarded the first train of the day bound for London, but not so hard that he wore his oilskin and sou’wester — only the oiled aran sweater. His bald head gleamed as the raindrops rolled in great curves
across his scalp like tiny airliners flying over the North Pole.

  The train was almost empty, but as it crossed England it gathered a harvest of travellers heading for the capital. By eight-thirty it was stopping at commuter stations to pick up regular daily passengers.

  Foolishly, Tresillick went to the buffet for a sandwich, and when he got back his seat had been taken by a woman with a child on her lap. The train by now was heaving with wet, steaming people braying in strange, un-Welsh accents:

  ‘Filthy day, what?’

  ‘Oh absolutely. Filthy. What a bane.’

  ‘Different from last week, eh?’

  ‘Can’t complain, I s’pose. Had a good one, didn’t we?’

  ‘Absolutely!’

  ‘Can’t complain.’

  But complain they did, as though the rain were the cruellest blow since God sent the Flood down on Noah. Tresillick rested his forehead against the window and looked out at the Home Counties grizzling by. It wasn’t even raining hard! - a tame, refined drizzle, it was, that left pretty, diagonal, silver streaks on the dirt-caked windows. It was a mystery to him.

  They reached another station and he gazed out at the damp, jibbering commuters who pressed and jostled towards the doors. They wore creased, lightweight trousers and skimpy barathea jackets, and pointed the way they were going with unfastened, flapping, dripping umbrellas, just taken down.

  ‘Umbrellas, pah!’ thought Tresillick. ‘If God had intended us to keep off the rain, he’d have given us shells like turtles or lids like dustbins!’ The newcomers clambered in, and the crowd in the corridor heaved tighter together until people were packed closer than beans in a tin. On Tresillick’s left, a girl in a New-Look dress with a very wide skirt full of petticoats took up twice the space she warranted. And she wore heels so high that now and then she had to rest one foot and lifted it sharply and jagged Tresillick in the shin. On his right, a man in a bowler hat and suit attempted to flap the rain off his umbrella and only succeeded in sending a chute of water into Tresillick’s shoe. Then he pressed himself hard against the Welshman, snagging his suit buttons on Tresillick’s aran pullover, and said with a friendly grin, ‘Terrible weather, eh?’