‘Oh,’ Bonnie shrugged. ‘Okay. A coffee would be nice then. Just a dash of milk for me, please.’ She took herself on a quick tour of the shop whilst she waited for him to return and thought it was a shame that so many of the units were empty. She would bet that her friend Valerie, who dealt in quality vintage clothes, didn’t know about this place, and if Valerie didn’t know about it then Jackpot and the dealers they hung around with wouldn’t know either. She recognised the long display cabinets of Thimble Simon, and a small bay in which the walls were covered in framed signed photos. The unit was called ‘Autograph Hunters’ and she knew that the seller was called Starstruck, because many of the autographs were ones he’d collected himself over many years and had provenance for. She could see a sign with the name ‘Mart Deco’ on it. Martin dealt with fabulous antiques from the Deco era: 1925–1939. But there were many familiar traders’ names missing who would help to draw in custom.
Lew returned with two mugs and set them on top of the huge central counter which had once graced a gentleman’s outfitters.
‘You’ve got some good dealers in here,’ said Bonnie. ‘I recognise most of them. You did well to get Uncle Funky and his toys because last I heard he was giving it up. He’s particularly bonkers, isn’t he?’ She laughed and Lew thought what a nice sound it was. Vanda had a shriek of a cackle which he was always afraid would start cracking all the glass.
‘Oh yes, Uncle Funky. I’m presuming that isn’t his real name,’ grinned Lew, picturing the wild-haired tall thin gent, always in a suit complete with waistcoat and novelty bow tie.
‘I have no idea what his real name is. I’m not sure he does any more,’ replied Bonnie. He had stopped renting a unit from Grimshaw’s months ago. He’d been the first person to ever rent a cabinet from Harry and yet Ken hadn’t even bothered to try and persuade him to stay.
‘They’re quite an eclectic bunch of people, aren’t they?’ smiled Lew. Which was a polite way of saying that a lot of them were absolute nutters.
‘I was only a little girl when I first met most of them,’ said Bonnie, sipping her coffee. ‘Billy Boombox must be eighty-five if he’s a day. He deals in ghetto blasters and Walkmans, radios, that kind of stuff. If you haven’t heard of him, you soon will because he’s not selling anything at Grimshaw’s. But then, no one is.’ Bonnie sighed then thought she’d better add some sort of an explanation to that. ‘It’s not my sales technique that’s at fault, just in case you’re wondering. Ken Grimshaw would be better running one of those bargain bin shops. He doesn’t have the passion for antiques that his dad had and he’s not big on fairness or goodwill. And his accounts are a mess which doesn’t help and the dealers expect you to be dead straight with money . . . ’ She realised she was talking too much and apologised. ‘Sorry. I’d better let you get a word in, hadn’t I?’
Lew liked her. He wasn’t the sort of man who would use phrases such as ‘he got a good vibe from someone’ but today he would have broken a rule and said that. He got a very good vibe from Bonnie Brookland.
‘I’m looking for someone full-time,’ he said, putting his professional cards on the table. ‘Someone that I can trust to leave in charge, someone who knows their onions. Nine to four-thirty, Tuesday to Saturday, Sundays ten till two and I shut Mondays, though that might change. I’m pretty easy going if you have a doctor’s or dentist’s appointment or anything like that. Coffee-making duties are split fifty-fifty between us.’ He grinned, a lopsided, lazy and genuine grin that any male Hollywood star would be proud to own, thought Bonnie. He went on, ‘You’ll know lots more about the business than I do, so I’ll be happy for any tips. Seven pounds fifty an hour is what I was thinking as a starting wage. Is . . . does that sound all right to you?’
He knew it wasn’t a lot for her expertise at thirty pence per hour above the minimum wage and he fully expected her to pick up her handbag and say they were both wasting their time, but she didn’t. Bonnie nodded approvingly.
‘That sounds fine,’ she said. She would be up on what she earned at Grimshaw’s by over a pound an hour – Ken didn’t acknowledge the minimum wage – and this looked an infinitely nicer place to work.
Lew knew that he shouldn’t offer her the job straightaway. He should ask for a reference, quiz a few of the dealers who might know her. Acting impetuously had gained him Vanda Clegg, but he found himself sealing the deal without heeding his own warnings, thanks to that ridiculous ‘good vibe’.
‘So, when could you start?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Bonnie replied, barely leaving a beat after his question.
‘You don’t need to work any notice?’
‘No.’ Bonnie shook her head and saw his tilt slightly, the way her dog’s used to when he was trying to make sense of something. Maybe he was thinking that she was walking out of her job and leaving Grimshaw’s in the lurch, not exactly loyal. Oh, that word again.
‘I left Grimshaw’s today,’ said Bonnie and a voice in her head warned her to stop at that. But what if he rang Ken asking for a reference, asked another voice. Tell him the truth. She dropped a heavy sigh, ‘Look, Ken Grimshaw caught me telling an old lady to go somewhere else to sell a big box of items that she’d brought in. He was going to rip her off. She had a white Gulvase in there and he was only going to offer her a pittance for the lot. I couldn’t let him do it. He threw me out on the spot.’
Lew looked back into her large hazel eyes, widened in anticipation of his opinion on that. She was wondering if she’d told him too much, he knew. But he respected her honesty. In comparison to Vanda Clegg, she was like a breath of fresh air in more ways than one.
Lew held out his hand to seal the deal. ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow at nine, Mrs Brookland. Welcome to the Pot of Gold.’
Chapter 5
Lew was just turning off the lights in preparation for closing up for the evening when the doorbell tinkled and a customer walked in. An old lady holding a box.
‘Oh are you shut?’ she said.
‘No, no, you’re fine, come in,’ said Lew, with a smile. ‘I’ll put the lights back on if you want to have a browse. No rush. I never turn a possible sale down.’
‘I’ve not come to buy, I’ve come to sell. I’ll be quick because I’ve got a taxi waiting.’
‘Okay then,’ said Lew, stepping forwards to take the box from her because she appeared to be struggling with it. She gave her arms a grateful shake when the weight was transferred.
Lew put the box down on the counter and carefully took out the most prominent piece, sticking out of the box, wrapped clumsily in newspaper. It was a white Gulvase. This had to be the lady Bonnie Brookland had told him about. He lifted it up to the light, checked it carefully for nibbles and cracks, but it was perfect. And the weight felt right for it to be a genuine piece. It still had the original Holmegaard sticker on it, bearing the Danish flag.
‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Very nice indeed.’
‘Is it really?’ asked the old lady. ‘I went to another shop earlier on but the woman in there told me to go somewhere else to sell it.’ She leaned over as if about to impart an onerous secret and was scared of being overheard. ‘I think I dropped her in it. I feel awful because that bloke Grimshaw was only going to give me a few pounds for everything and she said it would be worth a bit more than that. Look at this.’ And the garrulous old lady plunged her hand into the box and brought out a medal. ‘That’s got to be worth summat, ’an’t it?’
Lew could see instantly that it was a fake. There was no age to it at all. The market was overrun with fakes, some of them clever ones too. The ‘ancient’ Chinese vase in the box which the old lady lifted out was a fake as well but the pot with the chipped top that she almost dropped onto the counter had interesting character marks. People presumed because there was damage to pieces that they were worthless, and Lew didn’t like to think of how many treasures had ended up in the bin because of that misconception. Also in the old lady’s stash was a coloured Chinese saucer, terribly cracked and rep
aired with iron staples. He guessed the saucer started off with a plain blue pattern in the 1600s, but then was painted over and repaired in the 1700s. Those staples were part of its history too.
‘There’s the matching cup in there,’ said the old lady. ‘It’s knackered an’ all.’
Lew felt prickles of excitement creep over his scalp. If this two-piece was genuine, it could be worth a small fortune. It was so hard to tell because there were whole streets in China filled with artisans producing plates complete with overglaze and rivets, ageing them to look like ancient treasures. He’d need to take some time over making a decision whether or not to buy them.
‘And there’s this, look.’ It was a mug commemorating the coronation of Edward VIII. ‘They made these but he was never crowned. That’s got to be rare.’
Funny how people judged what was valuable, thought Lew. You could pick them up for fifteen pounds on markets everywhere yet an unused Nazi toilet roll could fetch eight times that. Wrapped in newspaper in the bottom of the box was a collection of carvings in white stone: a hand, a crab, a disc, a hook. Lew felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and a renewed wave of scalp-pricking ensued.
‘I think these might be jade.’
‘Give over, jade’s green,’ laughed the old lady. ‘You trying to pull the wool over my eyes?’
‘No, I mean white jade. Where on earth did you get these pieces from?’
‘My husband’s dad was a sailor,’ she answered. ‘When he died the family went through his stuff like locusts. This box was all that was left and so they gave it to us. We had it in the cellar for years. I’d forgotten about it but I’ve just moved into a maisonette and had to empty the house.’
‘You do have a couple of nice pieces in here, but I’ll need to have a really good look at them. Do you want to leave them with me? I promise I’ll give you a fair price.’
The old lady narrowed her eyes. ‘Aye, I’m full of them tricks.’
He knew that if she took away her box, he wasn’t likely to see her again. He decided to take the chance that she had something very special. He was absolutely sure the Gulvase was genuine, even if nothing else was.
‘What if I said a hundred and fifty pounds?’
The old lady spasmed so violently that her glasses nearly fell off. She clearly hadn’t been expecting that much.
‘Or, as I say, you can leave them with me for a few days and I’ll—’
‘I’ll take the money,’ said the old lady. ‘That’ll do nicely. I’m going on one of them coach holidays in Italy with my sister in September and that’ll do towards my spend.’
‘Would you like to give me your name and address,’ said Lew. He knew that if the carvings and the cup and saucer were what he thought they might be, he wouldn’t have slept easily in his bed knowing he’d paid so little for them.
‘My name is Pauline Twist.’ She started to recite her details before Lew had picked up a pen, so he had to ask her to repeat them. He sent her away with a hundred and fifty pounds and a big smile on her face. It seemed that Bonnie Brookland might have been a good luck charm to him today.
Chapter 6
Just before Bonnie pulled into the estate, she rang Valerie’s home on her mobile. Valerie was the only person she socialised with these days. One by one, over the years, all the girls who had been her friends had fallen away from her life for various reasons, but Valerie remained firm. It wasn’t the deep sort of friendship where each was laid open to the other. Valerie had always played her cards close to her chest and Bonnie had never told her how unhappy she was in her marriage, though she suspected that Valerie had picked up on that. Theirs was a friendship based on cups of tea and a slice of cake or a scone and nice banter, a respite from whatever problems were demanding their attentions in the background. It was the pleasant froth that rode above the cold, dark waters below. Valerie was the same age that her mother would have been had she not been felled by a ninety-year-old driver who should never have been on the road.
‘Bonnie, how good to hear from you,’ said Valerie in her lovely, rich, plummy voice. ‘How are you, dear?’
‘I’m fine. But I rang to tell you that I’m not working for Ken Grimshaw any more.’
There was a telling sniff on the other end of the line. ‘I’ve seen that coming for some time. Did you walk out or did he find some way to sack you?’
‘He sacked me,’ said Bonnie, adding quickly, ‘but I walked straight into another job. Do you know there’s a new shop up Spring Hill? The Pot of Gold?’
Valerie was disappointingly nonchalant in her response. ‘I’d heard, yes. It’s on the square that the Irish guy built, isn’t it? Jack went up to do a recce a few weeks ago but he said that the shop was dead and wouldn’t last the year out.’
‘Stickalampinit and Starstruck are in there. Oh, Valerie it’s the most beautiful place and yes, it is a lot emptier than it should be, but it won’t be if a few more dealers move in and take a chance. There’s nowhere as good for miles.’
‘Are you asking me to go up and have a look for myself ?’ asked Valerie, with amusement dancing in her voice.
‘You wouldn’t want to see me out of a job, would you?’ replied Bonnie, smiling.
‘Okay, I’ll go and get a feel for the place,’ Valerie said.
‘There’s a lovely little tearoom next door as well – we could pop in for a cake,’ said Bonnie.
‘I’ll have a look tomorrow. When do you start working there?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Perfect. Well, I’ll see you then,’ said Valerie.
Bonnie clicked off the phone and wished she could fast-forward to the morning. In fact she had wished for years that she could fast-forward at the end of every working day to the beginning of the next.
*
Stephen was in the front room reading a broadsheet when Bonnie walked into the house with a bag of shopping. His eyes instinctively dropped to what she was carrying, as she knew they would.
‘Did we need any comestibles?’ he asked, though it was a rhetorical question. He had an inbuilt detector for knowing exactly when they’d run out of milk or sugar or flour.
‘No, we didn’t. I just felt like getting a few extra bits,’ she said and steeled herself for his reaction to her next words. ‘To celebrate my new job.’
Stephen’s eyebrows lifted so high that they almost got entangled in his still-thick, steel-grey hairline.
‘New job? What new job? What are you talking about, Bonita?’
It wasn’t necessary to give him all the details, so she left out what he didn’t need to hear, and added a few small fibs.
‘I’ve not been happy at Grimshaw’s since Harry died, you know that.’
‘Yes, you have commented upon it on more than one occasion . . .’
‘So when I heard that a new antiques centre had opened up, I wrote to them and asked if there were any positions available. There weren’t but they kept my letter on file and rang me today. They wanted someone to start immediately.’
‘Don’t you have a notice period to work?’
‘As soon as I said I was leaving, Ken told me to go.’
She waited for the money question to raise its ugly head, which of course it did.
‘I presume he paid you severance pay then.’
‘Ken Grimshaw? I think I might have to write that off.’
Stephen rattled his paper, as a display of his outrage. ‘Then I expect you’re going to see the small claims court about that.’
‘No, Stephen,’ she replied. ‘I would really rather just forget the whole thing. It would be more trouble than it was worth because he will lie and I’ll end up with nothing.’
Stephen humphed. ‘Money does not grow on trees, Bonita.’
‘I’m well aware it doesn’t grow on trees, Stephen.’ Bonnie tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice but traces of it seeped out in hissing sibilance. ‘I don’t think Ken will be in business for much longer anyway, so I think all things consid
ered, I’ve made a wise move.’
He sighed impatiently. ‘Well, we’ll have to economise for a month or so, I suppose,’ he said, returning to the business page. ‘I just hope you appreciate the tolerance with which I am viewing your rashness, Bonita.’
Bonnie didn’t know if she wanted to scream more than she wanted to laugh. They had no mortgage on the house, Stephen had a good salary from his job in the council, with the prospect of a huge pension to come. They didn’t go out for meals – or anywhere else for that matter, they didn’t drive around in his and hers Ferraris or blow a fortune on drugs, drink and gambling. Plus his mother had left them a considerable sum, she supposed. Bonnie had no idea how much they had in their savings account because Stephen said she didn’t need to know. Expenditure such as new white goods or furnishings, or car repairs, came from the fund, after a lot of deliberation and price-haggling on Stephen’s part, but Bonnie had no direct access to it. Stephen held the purse-strings, and he held them with an iron fist with a five-lever mortice lock on them.
What she did know was that there must have been enough funds in there to keep them both comfortable for the rest of their lives even if neither of them worked again. The real problem was that Stephen did not adjust to any sort of change very well. And he was getting worse with every passing year. God forbid that she brought in Heinz beans instead of the shop-brand ones or the velvety loo rolls of Labrador puppies instead of the cheaper variety. Such subversion could cause Stephen to have an aneurysm.
‘I’ll get on with tea,’ said Bonnie. They had pasta on Thursdays. Pasta Bolognese. They always had bloody, sodding pasta on Thursdays.
Chapter 7
After Lew had locked up for the evening, he didn’t know why he felt so compelled to swing a left instead of the right turn that would have taken him straight home to Oxworth. He just wanted to see what was happening with his old house. He had rented it out for a couple of years because a part of him didn’t want to sell it, but he had two months ago and the family who had bought it moved in last weekend. He didn’t know why he needed to see it, but he went with the feeling. It was the right thing to do to sell The Beeches because it was far too big for just Charlotte and himself and it cost a fortune to heat, not to mention the gardening costs; not that he would have cared about any of that had his wishes come true. He’d bought The Beeches for a snip just after they were married, hoping to fill it with children. As soon as he walked into it, he’d visualised kids skidding down the long wooden hallways, sliding down the polished banister of the great staircase. He’d imagined them splashing in a pool outside, climbing on frames, holding secret meetings in the treehouse he intended to build for them, but his dream of a large family had withered and died. Charlotte had never got over the miscarriage she’d had eight years ago. She had blocked him every time he’d broached the subject of trying again; she wouldn’t even talk about adoption because she’d wanted her own too much. Being near children upset her and reminded her of the one she lost, so they’d decided they’d have to accept their status as a childless couple. It made it slightly easier on them that their friends were childless too.
The Queen of Wishful Thinking Page 3
