by Ruth Rendell
Mr. Finbow got up out of his chair and turning his back on Stanley, addressed Vera in a cold courteous voice, “If you’re dissatisfied, Mrs. Manning, perhaps you would prefer to find another firm of solicitors to act for you?”
Red with shame, afraid to look at Stanley, Vera stammered, “Oh, no. No, you mustn’t think that. I don’t think my husband quite …”
“I understand all right,” said Stanley, not at all put out. “Not that at any of that matters a damn. We said we wanted you to sell and we do. You can sell the lot right now, this afternoon. It’s our money and that’s what we want. Right?”
For a moment Mr. Finbow looked as if he would have a seizure. Then he said very icily, “I am not a stall-holder in a street market. I am a solicitor and senior partner in a firm of unblemished reputation. Never—never have I been spoken to in those terms before in my own office.” Momentarily he closed his eyes as if in pain. Stiffly, he addressed Vera, “May I have your instructions, Mrs. Manning?”
Vera looked down. Her hands were trembling in her lap. “I’m sorry, Mr. Finbow. Really, I’m very sorry.” She raised her eyes miserably. “Of course, you must do whatever’s best. We’re not in actual need of the money. It’s just—just that there were one or two things …”
Mr. Finbow said quickly and slightly more sympathetically, “There are several insurance policies also which matured at your mother’s death. If it was a question of, say, five hundred pounds, I will be happy to give you a cheque for that immediately.”
“Five hundred pounds would do very nicely,” said Vera more happily. She waited, her head turned away from Stanley, while Mr. Finbow drew the cheque. “And please don’t do anything about selling those shares until you and the stockbroker think it’s right.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Finbow, shaking hands with her and behaving as if Stanley wasn’t there. “May I say I think you’ve been very wise, Mrs. Manning? Good afternoon.”
“Oh, Stan, how could you?” Vera said as they went downstairs. “I don’t know what Mr. Finbow must have thought of you.”
“Blow that for a lark. He can think what he likes, pompous old bastard. Now, if you’ll just write your name on the back of that cheque I’ll take it along to Barclay’s and open an account. Here’ll do, on that table. You’d better get back to the shop or you’ll be late.”
Vera stopped, but she didn’t open her handbag. “I don’t have to be back till two. I thought I’d miss lunch today and go and look at some fridges in the Electricity Board.”
“Good idea. Get cracking, then.” Stanley held out his hand expectantly.
“When I said ‘look at,’ I meant buy. You know I’ve been longing to get a fridge. I can’t buy one without any money and I shan’t have any money till I get a cheque book. We’ll both go to the bank first. Don’t you think it would be nicer to have a joint account?”
“Nicer,” in Stanley’s mind, was hardly the word. He saw, however, that under the circumstances it was inevitable and they entered the Croughton branch of Barclay’s together.
The manager wasn’t in the least like James Horton to look at, being short and stout, but he reminded Vera of James perhaps because, like James, he was a manager of another branch of James’s bank. She hadn’t thought much about James since her return but now he returned vividly to her mind, a gentle, courteous and thoughtful man, and she couldn’t help contrasting his civilised behaviour with Stanley’s conduct at Finbow and Craig.
“There you are, Mrs. Manning,” said the chief clerk, bending over the manager’s desk. “Your cheque book, and Mr. Manning’s too. And a paying-in book for each of you. Naturally, we’ll send you cheque books with your names printed on them as soon as they come through.”
The manager showed them to the door.
“That,” said Stanley, “is what I call a gentleman.”
He had deciphered the last clue in the crossword puzzle (“Golden Spaniel”—“The marksman’s 9—carat companion”) when Vera came in, pink with excitement.
“I’ve bought it, dear, a lovely refrigerator with a place to keep salads. And, oh, I know it’s very extravagant but I’ve bought an automatic washer, too. They’re sending both of them up tomorrow.”
“What did all that lot cost?” said Stanley, replacing the cap on his pen.
“Just on a hundred. Having all that money went to my head, I suppose. But I’ve made up my mind, I shan’t touch another penny until the rest comes through from Mr. Finbow.”
“It’s your money,” said Stanley graciously. “It’s you your mum left it to, after all.”
“You mustn’t say that, darling. It’s ours. I want you to buy yourself a new suit and any little thing you fancy. You’ve got your own cheque book now.”
Stanley put his hand in his pocket and fingered it, the crisp green book, hard and as yet untouched in its plastic folder. Very generous of Vee really, to look as it in that light, giving him carte blanche as it were. He would have dipped lavishly into the account, anyway, but it was nice getting permission first.
The washing machine and the refrigerator arrived at nine-thirty the following day. Stanley was still in bed and getting up to let the men in put him in a bad temper. Then he reflected that it was Tuesday, a good day for him in two ways. He was going to keep Pilbeam happy and Caroline Snow was off to Gloucester. At one o’clock he put the wireless on for the news, thinking wistfully how one problem would be off his mind forever if the Paddington-Gloucester train crashed. It was amazing what a lot of trains did crash these days. Rail travel was getting as dangerous as going in aircraft. But the news was all about the negotiations taking place to quieten down the Middle Eastern ferment and trains weren’t mentioned.
Vera was too occupied playing with her new kitchen toys to enquire closely into his reasons for going out at a quarter to eight. He told her casually that he had a business appointment without adding that it was to take place in a pub, a venue which rather detracted from the respectable air with which Stanley wanted his new venture inbued.
Pilbeam was already there. He always was already there.
“Sorry about yesterday’s little contretemps, Stan, but needs must when the devil drives. I got the vases and some very pleasing Georgian silver. Time you came down to the shop and looked over the loot. Now, about this van. A mate of mine’s offered me a smart little job. It’s ours tomorrow if we fancy it and only two hundred and fifty quid.”
“I reckon I can find that,” Stanley said.
“Well, I should hope so, old man. After your promises, I really should hope so. I’ve the wife to pay back, you know, and if we’re off to Barnet in our van tomorrow …”
“Leave it to me,” said Stanley.
They bought the van in the morning. Stanley gave Pilbeam’s friend a cheque for it and drew another to cash. The van wasn’t his idea of a smart little job, being battered about the bumpers and chipped on the bodywork, but it started first go and carried them as far as Croughton old village.
Pilbeam didn’t say much on the journey and Stanley supposed he was sulking. But when he pulled up outside the shop he realised he’d been wrong. Far from sulking, Pilbeam had been silent from suppressed excitement and now, as he got out, he said proudly, “Well, old man, what d’you think? Surprise, surprise, eh? You can see I haven’t been idle.”
Stanley could hardly believe his eyes. When he’d last seen the shop the bow window had been cracked and dirty and the doorway boarded up. Now the window was repaired and every pane highly polished, affording a delectable view of treasures within. Above it, expertly lettered in gilt, was the name The Old Village Shop, and there was more gilt lettering on the door, a glass and wrought iron affair with a curly brass handle.
Pilbeam unlocked it and let him in.
Inside, the walls were papered in a Regency stripe and the floor was carpeted in dark red. On an oval table stood a pair of candelabra and a big glass rose bowl. Wide-eyed, Stanley tiptoed about, looking at hunting prints and Crown Derby plates and unidentif
iable pieces of bric-a-brac. What he saw cheered him enormously, for he had begun to lose faith in Pilbeam. The man’s arrival on the previous day to extort money from him by violence if necessary had shaken him, and the knocked-about old van had been almost the last straw. Now, gazing around him at polished wood and gleaming china, he felt his faith renewed.
“Who did all this decorating, then?” he asked.
“Couple of mates of mine.” Pilbeam seemed to have dozens of friends. “I got them to do a rush job as a special favour. Like it?”
“It’s grand,” said Stanley.
“I told them to send the bill to you. That all right?”
“Oh, sure,” Stanley said less comfortably. “About what sort of—er, figure will it be?”
“Say fifty, old man. About fifty. That won’t break you, eh? Then there’s the carpet. Lovely drop of Wilton that is, as you can see. But I don’t reckon you’ll get the bill for that before the autumn. Open up tomorrow, shall we?”
“Why not?”
They celebrated with a drink at the Lockkeeper’s Arms and then they took the van up north into the villages of Hertfordshire. At the houses they called on Pilbeam did the talking. He seemed to like best the shabbier among the ancient houses and those occupied by a lone middle-aged or elderly woman whose husband was away at work.
His method was to ask this housewife if she had any old china or silver and mostly she had. While she was up in the loft turning it out, Pilbeam had a quick glance round at her furnishings, and when she came down again he bought everything she showed him, paying good prices until she was bemused by the sudden influx of cash given in exchange for what she thought of as rubbish. Just as they were leaving Pilbeam would offer her ten or twenty pounds for the piece he had had his eye on all the time, a wing chair or a writing desk, and in her greed and delight she usually agreed to his offer. Pilbeam took the attitude that he didn’t really want this particular piece, he was doing her a favour in taking it off her hands.
“I’ll give you twenty, lady,” he would say, “but it’ll cost me the same again to do it up, then I can sell it for forty-five. You see, I’m being completely honest with you. I’m in this for a profit.”
“But I could have it done up and make the profit myself.”
“I said it’d cost me twenty to do it up. That’s not the price a cabinet-maker’d charge you. More like thirty or forty.”
“Well, you know,” the woman would say. “I’m sick of it, anyway. I’m glad of the chance to get rid of it. The last lot of stuff I cleared out I had to pay them to take it away.”
The cash for these transactions came out of Stanley’s pocket.
“It’s not falling on stony ground, old boy,” said Pilbeam. “Now, if you could just let me have twenty-five for the wife, we’ll call it a day, shall we?”
Stanley had to write a cheque for Mrs. Pilbeam. He had no cash left. “Just make it to H. Pilbeam,” said her husband. “Hilda’s her name, the old battleaxe.”
Well, he’d got through the four hundred remaining in the bank all right, Stanley thought. The decorators would have to wait. Still, he wouldn’t have to part out with any more for a bit and Vera had said she wouldn’t touch another penny. In any case, by the end of the week, he’d take his first money out of the business.
The next day he took Ethel Carpenter’s ornaments with him down to the Old Village Shop and arranged them tastefully on the oval table.
17
It was no good Stanley going out with the van. He wouldn’t know, as Pilbeam put it, a Meissen vase from a baby’s chamberpot, so while his partner plundered drawing rooms, Stanley stayed behind to mind the shop. The price of everything was marked on its base or one of its legs and Pilbeam said not to drop at all, not to haggle. They could take it or leave it.
They left it. Stanley made only one sale on his first day and that was a silver teaspoon, sold to a putative godmother for fifteen bob. He went home rather crestfallen to find a tight-lipped red-eyed Vera who answered him in monosyllables when he told her about his day.
“What got into you?”
“You know very well what’s got into me.”
“No, I don’t. You were all right this morning.” Surely she couldn’t have found out about the money he’d had? His cheque book was safe in his own pocket. “I’m not a thought reader.”
Vera sat down, picked at her food and burst into tears.
“For God’s sake!” said Stanley. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You are. You’re what’s wrong with me, you having your girls in this house while I was away.” She lifted to him red eyes full of bitter reproach. “How could you, Stan?”
“Girls?” said Stanley. “What the hell are you on about? I never had any girls here. You must be round the twist.”
“Well, girl, then. One girl, if that makes it any better. The whole neighbourhood’s talking about it. They’re all laughing at me, the lot of them. They always say the wife’s the last to know, don’t they?”
Caroline Snow. Damn her, she was a jinx, an evil genius if ever there was one. Trouble after trouble she was making for him.
“I suppose Mrs. Macdonald told you,” he said.
“As a matter of fact, it was Mrs. Blackmore, but they all know. They’re all talking about it. How this tall blonde girl came here on Sunday, the day after you’d got me out of the way, and then how she was back again on the Friday. Stayed for hours, Mrs. Blackmore said, and she saw you go off down the road together.”
“I can explain,” said Stanley classically. “She’s—she’s a girl me and my partner are thinking of taking on to do the books. I had to interview her, didn’t I?”
“I don’t know. But if that’s true, why did you say no one came here when I was away. Those were your words, not mine, I didn’t ask you. Nobody came here, you said.”
“I forgot.”
“Nobody ever comes here,” Vera said wearily. “We haven’t got any friends, or hadn’t you noticed? Nobody but the neighbours come in here for years on end, but that girl came and you forgot to tell me. You forgot. How d’you think I feel? What am I supposed to think?”
“You ought to believe me,” said Stanley. “Me, not the neighbours, bloody gossiping mob. I’m telling you the truth, Vee.”
“Are you? You wouldn’t know the truth if you saw it, Stan. Lies or truth, it’s all the same to you. Suppose I ring up this Pilbeam, this partner of yours, and ask him if you’re engaging a girl to do your books?”
“He’s not on the phone,” Stanley muttered. Christ, he’d have to prime Pilbeam in the morning just in case she made good her threat. “I reckon you ought to trust me, Vee.”
“Why? Have you ever given me any reason to trust you the whole of our married life?”
That night Vera slept in the bed she had got ready for Ethel Carpenter.
As the weeks went on the shop did better. Because their funds were exhausted Pilbeam served in the shop on Thursday and Friday and his presence made a difference to their sales. Stanley could see he was a good and relentless salesman with a fine line in persuasive talk. He sold the oval table and the four chairs which each had a fragment of Hepplewhite concealed about them as genuine unblemished Hepplewhite to a woman who claimed her house was furnished throughout with Swedish white wood, and the candelabra as a present for a teenage tear-away. Pilbeam said he could sell central heating to tribesmen in equatorial Africa and Stanley believed him. But when he asked for his cut out of their week’s takings, Pilbeam said they mustn’t touch a penny for a long time yet. All their cash was needed for buying in.
Stanley went home empty-handed.
His relations with Vera had improved but they weren’t restored to normal. Feeling relaxed and happier one evening, he’d rested his arm lightly round her shoulders while she was standing by the cooker, but she’d flinched away from him as if his arm were red hot.
“Isn’t it time we let bygones be bygones?” he said.
“Do you swear that girl was nothing
to you, just a girl after a job? Will you swear you never touched her?”
“I can’t stand the sight of her,” Stanley said truthfully, and after that Vera was nicer to him, asking about the business and planning what they’d do with the money when it came, but sometimes when they were watching television or he was at work on a crossword, he’d look up and catch her staring at him in a strange way. Then she would drop her eyes in silence.
She was beginning to look forward to the arrival of the money now and while Stanley did the Telegraph puzzle she begged the city page from him and studied the markets, well-satisfied that from day to day Euro-American Tobacco and International Tin showed a steady improvement. Maud would have wanted her to have the money, she thought, wanted her above all to have the things that money would buy. She had had one of those snapshots of Maud enlarged and hung on the dining room wall and now when she looked at it she often reflected how sensible and perceptive Maud had been, seeing Stanley from the first for what he was. Money wouldn’t improve her daughter’s marriage, Maud had always known that, but it would make her life as an individual rather than as a wife easier. It was something to be miserable in comfort.
It was nice now to sit at the table while Stanley was engrossed in his puzzle and write out cheques for the gas bill and the electricity instead of having to empty one of the tins she kept in the kitchen dresser and take the money all in coins down to the showrooms. Marvellous just to write eight pounds, nine and three and sign it without having to wonder whether you couldn’t make it less next time by turning the light out every time you left a room….
That week Stanley took ten pounds home with him.
“It could be five times that, me old love,” said Pilbeam, “only we need all the capital we’ve got for fresh stock. The fact is we’re hamstrung till you cough up.”
And Stanley, who had been doubtful about his partner right up until the time the shop opened, now saw that every forecast Pilbeam had made was true. He did know what he was talking about; he was an expert in the antique business. The whole thing was the gold-mine he had promised, a quarry of rich ores which could only be dug out and converted into coin when a sizeable capital sum was invested in it. The terrible thing was that his capital, his own legitimate capital was invested elsewhere in footling tin and tobacco, untouchable until Finbow gave the word.
