Gold Digger

by Frances Fyfield

  Such as: Gayle and Beatrice had no talent for anything and no appreciation. They had been nurtured to be decorative and never forced to study. Their homes were ridiculously easy to penetrate and he shuddered at the very thought of them. Edward and Gayle in an ugly, high-status apartment unsuitable for a child; Beatrice in her dank, artisan dwelling, both of them revealing an appalling dearth of pictures or books, and oh, dear, they had not been trained to work, just like their mother, only they were in the wrong generation to be kept. No telling what Gayle would have been if she had not married Edward. His place told of a man who always made the wrong investments and while Saul did not particularly relish the level of concentration he would need for their imminent meeting, he found he was approaching it with a degree of malicious enjoyment. Such a game.

  He paused to examine his own motivation, albeit briefly, liking to check on himself, occasionally. His motives were far more straightforward and solid than anything as ephemeral as love, personal loyalty or anything like that. He was a Collector, that was all, and this was a fabulous collection. He’d been terrified that Thomas would behave like others who succumbed to sentiment in old age, leaving a life’s work for a family to chew up and consume like junk food, such a waste. Saul recognised the limits of his own emotions and knew he had no idea about the unconditional love one individual could hold for another, because nothing, absolutely nothing, came anywhere near the way he felt about a picture. And although he could find himself transfixed by the body of a boy, he knew how to turn his face away from that, too, unless it was on canvas.

  Alighting from the train, tucking the leather envelope beneath his arm and steeling himself for his prearranged meeting with Edward, he rather wished they had fixed the meeting for somewhere else.

  Check: Transparencies of the pictures in question.

  Check: Potential values (don’t over-egg your pudding.)

  Check: Remember how to make a stupid brute of a man look clever.

  Check: Remember the purpose of it all, i.e. you relinquish control of two paintings in order to preserve the rest from gross interference. You are going to outwit the claimants by giving them something of enough value to settle their bogus moral claim, and you are going to compromise them in the process so that you can threaten them with blackmail thereafter, and thus enable the Collection to thrive and grow with the best curators it would ever have, Di Porteous and Saul Blythe.

  After that, deal with the other matters. Keep Di alive and out of prison. The Collection needs her eyes.

  He was early, stopped for a coffee and longed for a whisky. He admired the vaunted ceiling of the station: it held such promise, like the cellar in the house. A pigeon pecked around his feet and he did not chase it away. Thomas had been fussy about coffee: the taste of it reminded Saul of the first time they had met. Sipping coffee. The reason he was regretting the meeting place was because of associations. Saul had first tried to cheat Thomas in that little flat, before he loved him and his collector’s eyes. Will you help me, honestly? Thomas had said, and be honest with it, no point otherwise – will you?

  Yes, he would.

  Saul coughed and dabbed his eyes, suddenly angry. Oh, Thomas, why did you have to die? Walking towards the flat through the dark and quaint streets of King’s Cross, he remembered how Thomas had said what it used to be like when he was a student here: teeming tenements, alive with noise, children playing in the street and mothers calling from windows. It was silent now, apart from the distant city hum. He had loved the presence of children, any children, and these were the innocent longings of an only child, brought up in a school. Saul could not give a damn if Thomas had buggered half the underage population and raped the rest. He tucked the pretty leather case containing the laptop under his arm and moved on.

  Inside the studio flat, Edward tried to mend the damage, picking up one smashed object and putting it down again. The mess and the damage would not make a good impression but why the hell should he care about impressions with a nancy boy like Saul Blythe? Gayle said someone else had got in and wrecked the place all over again, but he knew she had done it while waiting for Raymond Forrest to come back with their son. He was late, she said, and she hated waiting. Edward looked around, uneasily. Strange how they foregathered here, staking territory as soon as they knew Thomas was dead. Awful place; he hated it. He heard Saul come in only when he was inside the door. The man was so quiet it was uncanny.

  ‘Bit of a mess, isn’t it?’ Saul said.

  The damage was comprehensive and deliberate.

  ‘Patrick did it,’ Edward said tersely. It was a lie Saul chose to ignore. That child could no more wreak such havoc than he could fly. A child who could draw and who looked at paintings could never do that. The lie made him dislike Edward more than ever, but he smiled at him all the same.

  ‘We’re in business,’ he said.

  ‘I already know where the two paintings are,’ Edward interrupted.

  ‘Yes,’ Saul said. ‘You do. But I’ll tell you again.’

  A pause.

  ‘You’d better look at these transparencies, so much clearer. Take both.’

  Edward looked, closely. The girl on the swing. The two faces of Gainsborough’s daughters. He seemed a little disappointed. Then he looked again, checked the dimensions, scowled, and leered at the images.

  ‘Naughty, naughty. The old rogue. Pictures of kids … he would, wouldn’t he? Are you sure you can’t simply collect them and bring them here yourself? They’re small enough. Save us the trouble?’

  Saul shook his head. ‘We’ve discussed this. You know it’s impossible. They have to be taken, without my knowledge, or I can’t help you later. No, I stay out of the way, I set the scene, make it easy. You collect, you and Gayle, you said.’

  He wants to cut me out already, Saul thought. Patrick was down that cellar for quite a while: I wonder what he told them?

  ‘How much will they be worth?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends on when and where they go on sale. It depends on the provenance. A million for the two’s possible in the right auction, with the right provenance. The sooner they’re in your hands, the better. Two nights hence is really ideal. An anniversary – Di will be thoroughly preoccupied. You and Gayle slip in and collect.’

  Edward hesitated. He was excited, but he did not like taking orders. He’s nothing without Gayle, Saul thought.

  ‘I have a map of the house,’ Edward said, importantly.

  ‘From Di’s father, I presume? Ignore it, and ignore him.’

  ‘I’ve sacked him,’ Edward said, as if the man had been on the staff. ‘He knows nothing about any of this. The boy brought it back.’

  Saul nodded.

  ‘You don’t need a map, because you don’t have to go into the house. In fact, it’s vital that you don’t. There’ll be people in the house. You get in through the steel shutter at the back, down the ramp, I’ll make sure it’s open. You don’t need to go further than the cellar. Don’t go into the house. On no account do you go into the house.’

  ‘Gayle’s cool with that.’

  ‘Your wife is a cool customer,’ Saul said, deferentially. Edward laughed.

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  Saul cast a slow look round the fragmentation of everything in the room. Edward shuffled, uncomfortably.

  ‘Did she do this?’

  ‘No, of course not. I told you, it was Patrick. Shall we go through it again? You’re sure Di won’t be alone?’

  ‘No. Di’s never alone these days. She’ll have her rabble upstairs for a birthday party. A dubious uncle and a girl, celebrating. They’ll be upstairs in the gallery room, getting drunk as they often do, or sleeping it off. I fear Di has rather taken to the bottle. But the uncle fellow, well, he’s nasty. That’s why you mustn’t go into the house.’

  ‘I’m glad she’s not alone,’ Edward said.

  ‘The cellar’s a biggish space. I’m afraid I shan’t be able to label your packages with neon st
ickers, but you’ll know where they are. In front of the drawers, in front of the door … I’ve photographed it for you.’

  He held out his phone, which Edward accepted with indifference and then looked at closely. He seemed mesmerised by the presence of the wall and the door.

  ‘What’s behind the door?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Water, I suppose.’

  They went through it again, and then again. If only Edward would offer him a drink, if only he would finish this and go.

  ‘And afterwards,’ Saul said, ‘Once you’ve got them, you keep them safe in your own attic, or somesuch. Then we’ll work out the provenance. And the best sale programme. Might take a while.’

  The delay troubled Edward. ‘And what will Di do when she knows they’re gone?’

  ‘She won’t know immediately. Trust me. And when she does find out, it’ll be too late. She won’t be able to claim back something not on the inventory, and you’ll have retrieved something before she spends it all.’

  ‘I heard. Day after tomorrow, then,’ Edward said. ‘Gayle and I. Inside for five minutes max, you said.’

  ‘Two days hence,’ Saul said. ‘Confirm by phone. More like three minutes than five.’

  Edward had been getting steadily more restless, Saul noticed. He actually wanted this adventure; a proving of self, as if stealing back his wife’s property would make him a man. If Saul got up to go, then Edward would do the same. Saul had the knack of predicting people and Edward rose unsteadily, still trying to maintain the upper hand.

  ‘Shame about the mess here,’ Saul said lightly. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tidy. I’ll stay here tonight if that’s OK with you. No one will know it’s been done over. Housework’s my other speciality. I’ll phone you.’

  Edward went. Saul let out his breath, thought, yes, we’ve got it right. They have to do it this way.

  Then he set about the tidying, wondering exactly who had done such comprehensive damage, which daughter it was, but he did not think about it for long, because he had never really taken to ceramics, although there were exceptions. Ceramics had never been Thomas’s passion, either.

  He had the ironic thought that what had been destroyed might have been the last relics of Christina, and that they had only broken what was hers.

  How ironic was that? He laughed out loud.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Peg had given herself the task of household washing because she liked the smell and the usefulness. The laundry room was another secret place she had discovered, not that it was that secret; just not what you’d think it might be. The building was full of insignificant doors that led into meaningful rooms like this, especially on the middle floor. There were rooms that were not in the place you expected them to be, such as next to the kitchen. Daft place to put machinery, Peg thought, but you may as well carry washing upstairs as well as down. There was a vintage, industrial-sized washing machine, with incredibly simple instructions, a pulley suspended from the ceiling on which to hang clothes, a sink, a fireplace, a table and two chairs and all the impedimenta for ironing, plus a radio and a kettle. There was even a press for sheets. No pictures, except that one of the maid with the copper and the view from the window, and she looked happy enough. Peg could hide in here, listening to the hum of the machine and music on the radio, feeling right in the hidden heart of the house, but apart from it. She liked it even better than the linen cupboard two doors along, where there was a picture on the wall of clean washing pegged out on a line, but she couldn’t stay here all day, could she?

  It felt as if something was going to happen. Something was going to burst and she didn’t know what it was. It had been nice the evening before, without Saul. Peace was fully restored. They had sat in the gallery upstairs with the fire on, Jones and Di teaching her how to play cards and she hadn’t missed her lost mobile phone or the telly, and she finally stopped aching to talk. Wanting to tell them stuff, about her being in more trouble than she said, and not being quite what they thought she was. It wasn’t so much wanting to talk as wanting to be asked. She was sick of their politeness, and her own: she wanted to shout and she wanted Patrick to come back, for the sake of having someone younger around. The old ones weren’t pushing her to talk, they were respecting her relative silence and she wished they wouldn’t. She wanted them to be curious enough to draw her out, and they just didn’t do it. They were waiting for her, and she was waiting for them, especially for Jones. He had at least hugged her goodnight, so that was something. But would he have done it if he had known that she was one of those kinds of thieves he’d been talking about with Saul, one of the stupid ones, who got inside people’s places and trashed stuff? Fucking trash.

  She left the washing humming and went to find Jones, but Jones had gone out mid-morning. That left Di, who was in the gallery, sitting at the desk and talking on the new phone, not the big old phone that must have been around for a hundred years. Di used the new phone for household stuff; she even ordered the food by phone. Peg would have liked to do the shopping but it was mainly done that way. She knew she wanted to tell stuff to Di, and she was suddenly tongue-tied again so she retreated quietly. She went right to the top of the house where she had stood with Jones and let him teach her to focus through his binoculars which he left up there. She scanned the sea and the sky, concentrated on the pier, where she could just about make him out, walking towards the caff at the end. He seemed to be walking alongside a woman and the sight of them made her feel lonely. She wanted to cry and focused on something else. Binoculars were magic: they brought the world inside your brain.

  Di came in, touched her on the shoulder and made her jump. Peg yelped.

  ‘Sorry,’ Di said. ‘Were you looking for me?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘There’s a telescope downstairs,’ Di said. ‘Even better. What were you looking at?’

  ‘I was looking at the boats,’ Peg said, suddenly emotional all over again. ‘I’d like to go on one of those. Sail away. Maybe a job on a boat.’

  Big boats on the horizon, looking so sleek and beautiful and small against the clouds, they looked like toys. She felt Di’s thin arms around her and consented to the embrace. Yes, she could talk now, but all the same she wished it was Jones.

  ‘Dirty old town,’ Monica said, looking back from the pier.

  ‘Only for the dirty-minded,’ said Jones, taking her arm by the elbow. She shrugged it off.

  ‘It’s a shithole.’

  ‘Just look at it, Mon, will you? Raise your eyes to the skies. Look at those boats. Look at the sea. Look at the old houses. It’s beautiful, this place. My, my, you were born and raised here and always wanted to get out, didn’t you? Well, it isn’t too late. You can still go.’

  ‘Wouldn’t matter to you either way, would it?’ she said.

  He took her arm again and this time she let him. They strolled on. The caff looked shut. It always was when you wanted it to be open. It was too cold to sit around in the open for long, but neither of them had long.

  ‘Course it would, Mon love, and a lot of other people besides.’

  ‘A lot of little old ladies who need cheap perms. A couple of old men like you who like a drinking companion and an occasional lie down. This town’s bled me dry.’

  He sat on a concrete bench and felt the cold on his thighs. She sat with him.

  ‘Never could get a man who’d take you away from it all, could you, Mon? The ones you loved were the ones who wanted to stay. But I’m not having this crap. Who’d miss you? Hundreds would, you know. You’ve never done a damn thing except make people happy, you don’t know how much I envy you that. Everyone who goes in your place comes out better, you know that? For a lot of your punters, you’re the difference between staying alive of a morning or not bothering. Even if it’s only for a day. Go into yours feeling like shit, come out feeling OK, that’s quite a fucking contribution.’

  She laughed without any real mirth, slightly mollified.

  ‘Yeah,
I daresay I cheer a few people up. Like that little tart you sent down for a fix up? Honestly, Jones you’ve got a nerve. You go fucking missing and then you send in the scrubber you’ve gone missing with, leaving a clear message about where you’ve holed yourself up. Couldn’t have been clearer. She’s wearing Di’s clothes. You wanted me to know where you are. You’re rubbing my nose in shit.’

  ‘There’s no contest with Peg and you, love. She’s just a runaway kid. You know I don’t do kids. Stop messing about. Quig belted me.The kid was there. Di took us both in. Anyway, it was you phoned me earlier, remember? Are you going to tell me about Quig? Look, I know he’s here and you’ve been feeding him information.’

  She leant into him to light a cigarette, a well-worn routine.

  ‘The man you really wanted to take you away, even though you knew what he was. Is he still here? He’d always come to you, because you were the only one fool enough to take him in. I’d have married you long since, Mon, but you were always stuck on Quig. Must be something about the glamour of muck. Come on, tell me. Where the fuck is he?’

  She moved to the other side of the pier with her cigarette. It was a clear day: they could both see the ferry boats on the horizon, standing out like emblems; the tanker, the cruise ship, the ferry from Ramsgate going to France, the link that was more real than any tunnel. She laughed.

  ‘Remember them days out to France, Jones? Good old days of duty free and booze running? That was fun. Going over for the day, loading up a van, filling the cellar and coming back? Christ, that was the furthest I ever got from home. I loved those ferries.’