by Annie Murray
‘Ah,’ George said absently. ‘Perhaps I’ll call in on her in a day or two, when I’m up that way.’
The thirty-mile or so drive to the auction rooms was a pleasant one. They crossed the river at Wallingford, skirted the Chilterns at Nettlebed and recrossed the Thames in Henley. There was a spring lightness to the air, the sunlight growing in strength. The first boats were appearing on the river, which flowed London-wards, as it eternally did. The fields, furry with shoots, seemed to throb with quickening life; the trees were softening to green and the blackthorn was white with emerging blossom.
Kevin, face turned to the window, began on his first cheese and onion sandwich of the day before they had gone five miles. Oniony smells filled the car. George glanced at him, irritated. It would be better company having Monty with him because at least then he could make inane comments to the dog or sing to himself. A stabbing self-pity seized him. Was this to be his life now – Monty and Kevin? It was hard to say which of them was the more animate. Here was spring coming with all its promise – light, new life! He could just about recall that in his own life, the brief spring part. But what had happened to his high summer? It had been rained off and slumped, unfulfilled into autumn.
After the sandwich had receded and on the way through Crowmarsh Gifford, George decided to banish his own longing thoughts and make an effort.
‘What line’s your father in, Kevin?’ he began jovially. He knew little about Kevin, he realized, except that he lived somewhere near the edge of the village. His mother, a plump, harassed-looking but pleasant woman who he seemed to remember was called Sue, had accompanied Kevin when he first came looking for a job.
Kevin turned his head. ‘No dad,’ he said.
The succinctness of this response rendered it somewhat uninformative.
‘Ah?’ George thought that was the end of the conversation, but more followed.
‘He went. There’s just Mum and me and my sister. I don’t even remember him.’
‘Your poor mother,’ George said.
The boy nodded and looked back out through the window. A long silence followed, before Kevin turned to him and said, ‘Mr Baxter – can I ask you something?’
George was startled. Heavens, did the boy need him to have one of those conversations that fathers were supposed to have? Fill him in on certain facts? Not that his own father had in any way obliged with this. An image of himself at Kevin’s age came to him, a huge, galumphing, clueless boy. He would have been working for Arkwright about then, pursued by the blonde and curvaceous Ellen, old Arkwright’s bold seventeen-year-old daughter; he at once horny as a stag and scared out of his wits. If only he’d had someone to ask at that time of terrifying confusion. The thought of trying to find the right words was appalling, but if it had to be done . . .
‘Yes of course, lad.’ He forced warmth into his voice and pulled his shoulders back, bracing himself.
‘I – the thing is . . .’ Kevin stumbled.
‘It’s quite all right, Kevin – fire away,’ George encouraged breezily.
‘I’m just trying to understand a whole lot of things,’ Kevin began. ‘For one thing, Mr Baxter, is it right that the only English porcelain made in the eighteenth century that’s not soft paste is Plymouth and Bristol – so all the others like Chelsea and Derby and Worcester are?’
George swivelled his head to face Kevin with the look of a man whose horse has just asked him to tell him the time. He wrenched his attention back to the road just in time to avoid swerving into an oncoming dustcart. Kevin was still earnestly awaiting an answer.
‘Er, yes, that’s about the size of it,’ George said. He was no specialist in porcelain but he had a working knowledge. ‘I, er . . . But you’re apprenticed to carpentry and cabinet-making, Kevin – what’s all this about porcelain?’
‘I know. And that’s all right. I like that. But I do like china.’ He had now become quite bouncy in his seat. ‘I got these books, from the library in Wallin’ford. I like the colours – they all mean something, those colours! And I like the words! Qing dynasty! Tea-dust black! Celadon glaze!’ His face was pink with excitement. ‘Famille rouge! Majolica! I don’t even know how you say most of ’em. But they’re lovely, aren’t they, Mr Baxter?’
And George, moved by this rough-hewn enthusiasm, could only agree that they were.
‘We’ll have at least an hour with the catalogue before it starts,’ George said, braking in the yard behind the auction room. ‘Why don’t you go on ahead and have a look round?’
‘All right, Mr Baxter!’ Kevin, genuinely excited, slid out of the van and hurried round to the entrance.
George let out a long breath, holding on to the steering wheel. He glanced in the car’s rear-view mirror at his shorn hair and crisp white shirt. The gesture reminded him of sitting in the van that snowy afternoon when he had had his vision, his sobbing realization of what he most desired, and it filled him with despondency. Though it was only two months ago, two months since Win’s passing, it seemed a long time now, as if all he had done since was stagnate. Where was his energy? He sat up straight, taking in a meaningful breath.
‘To it, George,’ he said. You never knew who might be at one of these do’s – they drew in people from all over.
The auction room gave the impression of the main living room in an eccentric household where all activities, barring the very most intimate, were crammed into the one space. At the far end the auctioneer’s dais, draped with a tapestry showing hunting scenes, announced on an unfurled poster down the front: ‘Fine Antique Furniture: For Sale by Auction’. A chattering assortment of the coated and hatted, clutching sale catalogues, were milling, peering, poking and exclaiming around the large pieces of furniture which in turn were being used to support the display of smaller items. Upon and round the walls were hung and stacked paintings, fire screens and objects too heavy to be inflicted upon another piece of furniture. In one corner sat an ornate, marble-cased clock and next to it, what appeared to be a lead safe.
George paused at the edge of the room, looking around with approval and excitement. He was in his element, confronted by this array of beautiful things. He nodded to a couple of other dealers he knew across the room. His practised eye roved over the sort of antiques to which he was drawn: the wood and fine furniture, the silver and mirrors, the occasional painting. Almost never did he buy glassware or china – so breakable – unless it was too beautiful to resist.
He had ticked several items on the catalogue as being of interest and set out to find them: a Queen Anne bureau in walnut, a gilt-framed Chippendale mirror, a pair of William and Mary stools . . . He moved through the jostling, excited crowd, looking from left to right over the items. And in the far corner something caught his eye, resting on a chest of drawers. A horse – a bronze – could it be . . . ? She must be somewhere . . . Perhaps today . . .
He shouldered his way over, swiftly, to find not Venus but a military male with moustaches seated on horseback. Disappointed, he moved off in search of Lot 107, a walnut bureau. With dismay, however, he saw that standing in front of it with an already proprietorial air was Lewis Barker from Twyford.
Lewis, a sweaty ox with a butcher’s complexion, who George knew (from Lewis’s relentless boasting) to be a dedicated, prolific and not especially secretive philanderer, obviously already had designs on the bureau.
‘Ah, George!’ He raised a plump hand. ‘See this – got my eye on this, I have.’
And a lot more besides, George thought. A depressing image came to him of the bureau shoved somewhere into the loveless jumble of Lewis’s warehouse. He was damn well going to outbid him for it.
Lewis pushed his hands down into his jacket pockets and leaned back slightly, head on one side. ‘Only thing is . . . No – can’t be . . . It is an English piece, wouldn’t you say, George? I’m almost sure . . . Only that shaping round the doors, and the cornice – unusual.’
If there was one thing that was certain about Lewis, other than his
preference for English over foreign furniture, it was his tendency to disagree with anything you suggested. George stepped forward and pretended to examine the piece more thoroughly, looking this way and that.
‘You know,’ he announced, through an intuitive strike of inspiration rather than any precise information. ‘I’d say it was Dutch.’
‘Dutch?’ said Lewis incredulously. He took a step back as if for a better view and sucked in air through his teeth. ‘No – you’re wrong there, George. That’s English, that – bulldog and roast beef, that one. Dutch! Don’t be a fool. If that’s not English I’m, well, I’m a Dutchman!’
As George was enduring Lewis Barker’s bellows of laughter, his senses were abruptly distracted by a sensuous aroma, tingling through the other smells of stale wool, mothballs and furniture wax. His nose twitched. Perfume – something French, Chanel, perhaps? There she was, passing him without looking in his direction, amid the old-time dealers with gnarled faces, well-to-do retired couples in search of bargains, the usual auction moochers and no doubt the odd criminal: a slender woman in a powder-blue coat. His eyes followed as she moved between the baggy old tweeds and gaberdines. Lewis Barker and his nonsense were forgotten. His very being was focused on her glossy hair, the colour of newly hatched conkers, swept up into a pleat from a face of which he had not yet even caught a glimpse. In seconds he had entered a primitive state. His mind, body and very being were orientated towards one thing: woman. All that was baboon-like within him was crying, move towards her!
The other lots he had been intending to view quite forgotten, he pressed through the crowd. The dark, coiffured head was bent over some items on a table. What, among all such objects – the candlesticks hung with glass prisms, the silver-topped cruet sets, ormolu clock and Chinese snuff boxes – would catch her eye? He caught sight of her in profile, seeing a fine, arched eyebrow, flawless skin and retroussé nose. Why didn’t everyone just get out of the damn way so that he could get near her?
Driven by this compulsion, he tried to shoulder his way through the knot of people blocking his path, a number of whom were gazing into a glass dome that contained two stuffed seagulls.
‘Well I shouldn’t want that in my sitting room,’ a woman in a brimless felt hat remarked.
‘There wouldn’t be much point in going on your holidays if you had that, would there?’ her companion said.
George, just on the point of pushing through the final obstacle, without a thought in his head about what he was actually going to do once he had, found himself greeted suddenly, at considerable volume, from behind.
‘Oooh! ’Ello, Mr Baxter!’
George closed his eyes for a second. His shoulders sagged. There was only one person who spoke in that voice and that loudly.
He turned. There she was, all four foot ten of her in button-boots, a peacock-blue frock and shingled hair the colour of withered horse-chestnut leaves, in every way a relic of her pomp in the 1920s. Her smile revealed a flawless set of dentures. Maud Roberts was unceasingly cheerful, sweet-natured and deaf as a stone dog.
‘Hello, Maud!’ he greeted her, not without pleasure. He would have been wholeheartedly pleased to see her had it not been for two things. Firstly, that his call-of-the-wild instincts were still trying to haul his attention back to the elegant woman in the blue coat, and secondly, that all communications with Maud had to be conducted at the top of your voice, which in a crowded room was embarrassing. He glanced over his shoulder. The woman in blue was moving further away. He forced his attention back to Maud Roberts.
‘Nice to see you, Mr Baxter – how are you getting on without your lovely wife?’ she enquired in broad Cockney, so that the entire room could hear. She kept digging the point of her slim, rolled umbrella into the floor.
George stepped closer to her. He had always liked Maud. Once an East Londoner and a lady’s maid, she had married a dealer called Dudley Roberts. They travelled the world together in their prime, had several times taken ships across the Atlantic. It was one of the things they’d had in common, George and Dudley – they had both been to America. In later years, before Dudley died, he had become a front-room dealer from a small house in Marlow. Many a time on his rounds George had enjoyed a cup of tea, closely followed by a quick snifter for the road, with Maud and Dudley, in their little back room stuffed with souvenirs, the electric-bar fire going full pelt. Dudley had died two years ago, leaving Maud bereft but irrepressible. Her blue eyes twinkled at him from behind her specs.
‘I’m doing all right, thank you, Maud,’ he replied, at the highest volume he could bear.
Maud’s thin face crinkled and she cupped a hand round one ear. ‘EH?’ she shrieked.
Oh dear God, George thought. Instead of attempting more speech he raised one thumb and gave reassuring nods and smiles.
‘Oh good! It’s terrible when they go, isn’t it, but you have to keep cheerful. You must come and see me, George, now we’re both poor lonesome old things!’
George glanced round. This was not a definition of himself that he was anxious to have broadcast about.
‘I’ve missed our little get-togethers – you come over and see me, won’t you?’ She laid a hand on his arm for a moment and announced to all present, ‘You always know how to cheer me up.’
George was nodding in helpless agreement when he saw Kevin shouldering his way through the crowd, hugging something to him, his face shimmering with eagerness.
‘Mr Baxter, look! Can we bid for this? Can we?’
Lot 49 was thrust under his nose, a plate about fifteen inches wide in a gorgeous blend of green, black, coral red and gold.
‘It’s famille verte, isn’t it?’ Kevin said in raptures. ‘Oh can we? They’re starting in a minute.’
George suddenly felt as if he was the father of a very small boy.
‘It’s a good one,’ Kevin babbled on. ‘See at the edge there – see the way the glaze is against the white? Iridescent. That’s what they say – it must be a good’un!’
‘Well . . .’ George felt he could hardly say no in the face of all this effusion. ‘It does look to be a very fine one . . .’
‘Who’s this?’ Maud screeched.
‘Oh – this is my workshop apprentice, Kevin . . .’
‘EH?’
‘KEVIN!’
There was an abrupt hammering from the dais at the front, which for a second George thought must be his fault and he jumped round. But he saw that the auction was about to begin.
‘Ooh, better be quiet, hadn’t we?’ Maud advised at the top of her voice, a finger to her lips.
George nodded goodbye to her and seized Kevin’s bony arm. ‘Come with me – I want to keep an eye on Lot 107.’ He realized that what with one thing and another he had hardly looked at any of the other lots.
‘So can we . . . ?’
‘Yes.’ For heaven’s sake. This must be what having children was like. ‘Yes, Kevin – we’ll bid. Now for God’s sake put that thing down before you drop it.’
As the crowd settled in expectation, George looked round for Lewis Barker. He spotted his loud checked jacket not far away, just ahead of them. A second later, at the front close to the dais, what felt like an ocean distant, he glimpsed a finely coiffured head and soft blue coat.
Kevin stood beside him, aquiver with anticipation as the bidding began. Lot 10, Lot 11 . . . George found himself in a state of trance-like involvement. He never tired of the excitement of an auction: the item displayed at the front if it was not too heavy to be moved, the starting price, looks and gestures rippling round the room, the tension when the bidding speeded to a frenzy. Finally, after a pause in the auctioneer’s liturgical chanting, eyes darting round to find a last-minute bid – bang! The gavel down and everyone letting out a breath at once.
There was a prolonged session over Lot 19, a painting of horses in the style of Stubbs. It was nothing like as fine in George’s opinion, but still old and desirable. Two bidders – one an agent, George realized – became
locked in combat. The price rose and rose. George felt his body tense with primitive excitement. Kevin seemed about to explode. He kept hopping from one foot to the other. When the gavel came down at last he exhaled like a deflated balloon.
‘Oh that was good, that was!’ he cried. ‘Oh, this is the best day of my life! Aren’t you going to bid for anything, Mr Baxter?’
George smiled at him. ‘As a matter of fact there are a couple of lots coming up I think I’ll go for.’
They were staples he knew he could sell. One lot consisted of old fire irons, which, despite central heating coming in, still sold like mad. They reminded people, he supposed, of evenings round the hearth. And a box of spirit decanters. He’d take those to a silversmith he knew and have him fit silver flanges on the rim. It made them look very nice and they’d sell – they always did. He won both bids.
Lot 49 was coming closer.
‘Are you going to?’ Kevin kept on, as Lot 48 was declared sold.
Seeing the lad’s tallow-coloured face and intent brown eyes straining with appeal, George knew he could not refuse. In any case, Kevin, full of surprises, was right – it was a lovely piece of Chinese porcelain.
Bidding was brisk at first. Hands moved, nods and gestures were made. Kevin’s face turned puce. The price rose and the number of bidders quickly dwindled.
‘Go on, Mr B, don’t stop!’ Kevin urged in strangulated agony.
George was beginning to doubt the wisdom of this. They were already up to £20. There were now three of them bidding: himself, someone to his right and another close to the front. Then two – and then it dawned on him, as he saw a pale hand rise to bid, and the edge of a familiar blue sleeve, that he was bidding against her.
All eyes were moving between the two of them. Kevin was standing with his arms bent close to his body, hands bunched into fists. The price rose, five shillings each time, then ten. Twenty-five, thirty. The small white hand darted up each time with no hesitation.
She’s just going to go on and on, he thought. He felt trapped. How high was she prepared to go – forty, fifty, higher? The thought of paying fifty or sixty pounds for a plate was dizzying. He neither wanted to lose face nor disappoint the eager boy beside him. But the woman was not going to give in. It was he who would have to stop.
