A New Map of Love

by Annie Murray

  Another new bid – George nodded his head to a new and last price: forty pounds. The white hand flitted up again without a pause. The auctioneer was notching it up more gradually now: forty-two. George lowered his eyes, drawing in a breath of relief.

  ‘Going, go-i-i-ing – Lot 49 sold to the lady here!’

  The gavel banged. The crowd relaxed. Kevin let out an anguished groan but recovered himself. ‘I s’pose it was getting rather high. Ooh, but it was close – and you was bidding like a good’un, Mr Baxter!’

  George laughed, oddly affirmed by this impudence. He was impressed by Kevin’s good nature.

  ‘And we wouldn’t want to disappoint the lady, would we?’ He wondered if this might give him an excuse to speak to her. ‘But tell you what, Kevin – I’m going to get Lot 107, if it’s the last thing I do!’

  Lot 107, when it came, was announced as ‘George II, walnut, English’. Lewis Barker turned and leered knowingly at George. George nodded back amiably. Was the bureau English? He eyed the thing, which was placed to their left. He still thought not. Something in his gut told him, though he could see why you might assume it was. It was waist high, no cupboard above, with a steeply angled desk flap and beautifully crafted ogee feet, which placed it in the late eighteenth century. It was an austere piece, with none of the bulbous curves and embellishments that Dutch craftsmanship often displayed. And yet . . . Damn it, he thought. Whatever the hell it is, I can’t let Lewis take it back to that black hole of Calcutta of his in Twyford.

  They bid, faster and faster. Sixty, eighty, a hundred. He and Lewis were soon the only two left bidding. Between bids, Lewis kept turning with a smug grin that clearly said, soon that will be mine. But his head stopped turning, his bidding slowed.

  ‘Go on, Mr Baxter, go on!’ Kevin kept urging sotto voce, as if this were the Grand National.

  ‘Any further bids?’ The gavel hovered. One hundred and seventy-five – a huge sum.

  ‘Yes? Do I have one seventy-five?’ Lewis was back in at the last moment. ‘One seventy-five. Any advance on one-seven-five?’

  People were murmuring around them. George kept his eyes on the auctioneer. All other eyes were fixed on him. He let the tension mount for a second more as the gavel rose and hovered. He gave a small but definite nod.

  ‘One-eighty! Any advance on one-eighty?’

  The next two seconds felt like an eternity. For all his bluster, George knew that if Lewis kept this up, he was going to have to stop. The bang cut through the room’s silence.

  ‘One hundred and eighty pounds?’ A last look round. ‘Sold! For one hundred and eighty to George Baxter.’

  Kevin let out a cheer. If he had had a hat he would most likely have thrown it in the air. ‘We won!’

  ‘It’s not really a race, Kevin,’ George said, though he was feeling very chuffed with himself.

  ‘Well,’ Lewis muttered, shuffling over to him. ‘Glad to see you’ve got such a taste for English walnut, George.’ He shook his head, as if he had just witnessed a great act of folly. ‘Steep price you’ve paid there though. Over the odds, I’d say.’

  George refrained from pointing out that he had paid only slightly more than Lewis had been prepared to offer minutes earlier and gave a serene smile.

  ‘It’s a good piece,’ he said. ‘Good day’s work.’

  In the distance he caught sight of a blue coat moving towards the door.

  ‘Ooh look, Mr Baxter – that’s pretty, that is!’ Lot 108 was a slender bonheur du jour women’s writing table, edged with ormolu, the drawers decorated with blue and white porcelain plaques. ‘Shall we bid for that?’

  ‘Er, what? No! Just one minute,’ George said to Kevin and Lewis. ‘I must just . . .’

  Impelled by he knew not quite what bonkers instinct, George followed the woman in blue outside. She walked round to the car park at the back and he followed, admiring her shapely, gossamer-stockinged legs. He was drawing closer when she stopped beside a sleek sea-blue Bentley, the passenger door of which was being opened by a uniformed chauffeur who seemed ready to hand her into it. George skidded to a halt, but it was no good. As she turned to get into the car she could not miss seeing him.

  ‘I, er, good afternoon madam,’ he said.

  An oval face of alabaster forbiddingness was turned to him. She was a woman of about thirty and of frosty chicness. Fool! His more sensible self bawled at him in his head. Dunderhead!

  The woman made one of those sounds that people of her class seemed capable of producing which does not quite constitute verbal communication.

  ‘You bought the, er, plate – the famille verte,’ he floundered on. Her gaze, with eyes as blue and hard as crystals, did nothing to encourage him. ‘Only it was me, bidding against you. I just, er, wanted to wish you well. With your plate,’ he petered out, idiotically.

  Another undecipherable ‘ew’ sound issued from the woman’s throat.

  ‘Ah well, good afternoon,’ George said, attempting to raise his hat before realizing he wasn’t wearing one and finding himself making a vague, aerial gesture instead.

  The woman slid into the car, sinuous as a cobra. The chauffeur closed the door and walked round to the other side without a glance at George.

  Hurriedly, George moved away. His inner voice seemed to have run out of words of self-castigation. It crouched in silent mortification.

  ‘A hundred and eighty pounds?’ Vera said when they got back. The words well I suppose you know what you’re doing seemed to hang unspoken in the air.

  ‘It was – it was magnificent!’ Kevin said, skipping away towards the barn.

  Vera stared after him. ‘What the heck’s got into him?’

  Clarence did the pick-up from the auction house the next day, in the green Morris. When they unloaded the bureau in the drive, Clarence looked at it, head on one side.

  ‘Nice. Very nice. Is it English?’

  ‘They said so,’ George replied. ‘I’m not sure though. Can’t put my finger on it. When I looked at it I thought, Dutch. Anyway, I kept it out of the hands of Lewis Barker.’

  Clarence gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘Just as well. It needs a good polish. Kevin!’ He gave the lad a gimlet-eyed look, as if daring him to exhibit any more residues of excitement from the preceding day. ‘C’m’ere and help me!’

  The next morning, Clarence appeared in the office holding a scrap of paper. He stood in the doorway like a bird of doom.

  ‘What’s up, Clarence?’ George said breezily. He was in fact feeling gloomy and comfortless himself today, but it didn’t do to encourage Clarence.

  ‘Lady Byngh’s bureau,’ he said with an air of distaste. ‘She’s coming up nicely.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ George said. There was obviously more.

  ‘That other bureau,’ Clarence announced, with a little jerk of his head. ‘I’ve got started on it.’ A considerable pause followed to enable Clarence to fold his arms. ‘There’s a little compartment inside, secret like – you can see it must be there from the dimensions . . . I was feeling my way around the inside and it slid open. Look – this was inside.’

  He released his left arm to hand George the scrap of paper. It was thick, yellow, old. The few words on it were in faded blue ink and a long, looping script. Following a short paragraph George could not make any sense of were the words Jan de Vroom, Nijmegen, 1788.

  He looked across at Clarence.

  ‘Reckon that’s Dutch, that is,’ Clarence said. ‘Nijmegen’s a Dutch place.’

  George felt a grin spread across his face. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’

  May

  Seven

  1.

  George pushed the boat off from the steps by the bridge and climbed in with the smoothness of long habit. He perched on the back seat and let Barchetta glide into deeper water before pulling the outboard’s starter cord.

  Monty, who had tumbled in before him, settled along the duckboards at the bottom with a long-suffering groan. Monty did not approve of water.

&n
bsp; ‘Complain if you like,’ George addressed this large brown and white bolster of resentment. ‘But you wanted to come.’

  Monty closed his eyes, ears arranged on the warm wood, as if dissociating himself from the whole dismal business.

  Setting the engine to a puttering speed, George sat back, holding the tiller and drew in a deep breath. Ah, the smell of the river! It was his first outing of the year and the sun was blazing down. It seemed set to be a good summer. He felt better, as if having the flu and recovering had brought him through a gateway into a place where he was lighter in himself as the year was lightening. He had been out in the garden, planting, tidying. The roses were all in bud and this in itself was a mark of happiness. Every place where he could plant roses, he had done so – yellows, golds and cream at the front; pinks, whites and crimson in the back, sprawling and climbing everywhere, over lattices, the fence, the house: the smile of their beauty everywhere.

  Now, with a swelling sense of wellbeing, he looked around him. He had left the Nautical Wheel pub behind him, below which he and two helpful bods had eased Barchetta off the trailer and on to the water. He passed the civic paddling pool, the sounds of screams and splashes in its bright, shallow blue; the swimming pool and campsite, where a few camper vans and tents were already pitched. The town lay behind him, the slender spire of St Peter’s needling the sky. In front, the river eased quietly between pastures of vivid green freckled with buttercups and the ghostly spheres of dandelion clocks. Here and there, to his left among the black and white cows, a few lumps of the old castle stuck up in the field like snapped-off teeth. The willows drooped in on either side and all that was before him now was the quiet green of the water.

  He did not feel the need to go far. Soon he drew in on the left, the same side as the towpath and tied up to a young willow, the boat resting in its shade. Monty half roused himself and looked blearily round.

  ‘No, you’re not getting out. Lie down.’

  Monty eyed the bank with lethargic longing but decided to do as he was told.

  ‘Right – time for some lunch.’

  George wobbled along the boat to retrieve his bag, stowed safely out of Monty’s reach, and brought it back, hearing the tell-tale clinking of bottles of Morland’s pale. Sitting back in the shade, he took the top off one with a promising ‘fssutch!’, poured the contents into a tumbler and sipped.

  ‘Aaaaah. Good old Vera.’

  Although it was Sunday, she had packed his picnic when he said he was planning to get the boat on the water.

  ‘You go and have a nice day out,’ she said. ‘You’re looking quite pale and peaky still – and it’s not been an easy time, has it? I’ll sort you out, Mr Baxter.’

  Poking around in the canvas bag, he found ham sandwiches – plenty of mustard – chicken legs, tomatoes and a packet of cheese and onion crisps. There were a couple of apples and – a slice of pie. Rather more than a slice, in fact: it was about a quarter of a pie. Peering at the side of it, George was encouraged to discover that the filling was apple.

  ‘Wonders will never cease.’ But he smiled. Vera’s pies had been in short supply lately. Dear Vera, he thought, mellowed by ale; she was, among all her talents, particularly good at pastry.

  Another of Vera’s good points was patience. She had waited until George said he was ready. They spent a few sessions, over three days, sorting through Win’s things. Vera seemed to sense the times when she should be there being practical and the moments when it was right to stay away.

  At last he ventured to open the other door of the large bedroom wardrobe that he and Win had shared for eighteen years. Below the neatly hanging clothes, which gave to the air whiffs of old scent and body odour, lay a modest row of her size four shoes. It came home to him again that he was alone, not just at that moment, but alone. Still he felt as if he was in the blizzard, lost with no map.

  He stood holding the edges of the wardrobe doors in each hand as if he were about to ask it to dance. Everything inside it was navy blue or a shade of brown, with the exception of her cream blouse, a pair of black fleece-lined boots and the peach-pink frock that she wore to the very occasional drinks parties they attended. Her summer clothes, dresses in pastel greens and pinks, were packed away in the suitcase on top of the wardrobe. The shoes were paired neatly side by side, like people sitting in a church pew. So familiar. So . . . Win. Each shoe, each garment bore her shape, the imprint of her concise movements. They might almost step out and speak in her voice.

  His arms felt suddenly so heavy that he had to lower them. His shoulders drooped. Twenty-six years . . . Her smell, the shape and textures of her clothes were so intensely familiar. His wife. A woman who, on the face of it, was beyond reproach. Yet the essence of this woman in whose company he had lived for almost half his life was fast receding into the past, into an unknown strangeness.

  ‘Don’t go.’

  He heard the words spring out of him. Too late. He could see Win’s life as a whole now, the top and tail, the alpha and omega of it. Win, wife, whose body he had loved, or enacted love upon, at least. But her soul, her self? Weren’t souls supposed to touch and spark life, like the fingertips in those paintings in the Sistine Chapel? He and Win had never had arms long enough, somehow, even when they were younger and were stretching out, trying. They withdrew and continued with their arms at their sides, as if extending them was a forgotten indecency. Carried on, amiable but unignited.

  George breathed heavily for a time, pushing against the tightness of his chest. He remembered the way the Cronies had gathered round Win’s bed, better at loving her than he had been. They were leaving him alone now, perhaps felt they had done their duty. But he had run into Pat Nesbitt a couple of days before. ‘How are you, George?’ she said sweetly. ‘Oh you do so miss her, don’t you?’

  Did he? Of course he did. It was true, he missed her in all the shades of every day – he felt lost.

  Standing here now, he felt the present sink into him. Onward – that was what he had to do. Releasing the wardrobe, he went to the door.

  ‘Vera?’ he called. ‘I think we can get started now.’

  As winter passed into spring, through the crocuses, aconites and daffodils, through the frosts and rain and weaving through the daily life of the business, he mourned Win. Grief had no end, it just kept reminding him, often unexpectedly, in many moments of the unremarkable life that they had shared. He felt the acute lack of anyone in the house wearing a pinny. Even Vera hardly wore one these days. Washing which he put in the basket remained there until Vera suggested he have a go at the twin-tub. The sight of a pair of his socks drooping on the clothes horse by the fire in the back room could flood him with despondency. He missed her humming as she went about the house, her delicate snores and the soft movement of her breathing beside him in the dark. He even found he missed her friends and the female clucking which commenced once one of the Cronies tapped on the door. He had spent many nights by the fire with the television on, watching Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green, eking out cans of ale and stroking Monty’s ears.

  Then spring proper arrived. The colour was turned up in everything. Green became greener, buds appeared and the first pale flecks of flowers opened into frothing sleeves of blossom. There was work to do in the garden. Day by day he walked Monty in the village, safely away from the farm or Maggie. He was grateful to her for keeping away from him. He stopped for chats in lanes of thatched cottages and streams sprigged with watercress. People were polite and kindly, constantly asking if there was anything he needed. He could hardly reply, ‘Someone I can love to the depth of my soul, please.’

  The temperature rose. The trees were bursting into matrimonial garlands, caterpillars wiggled fuzzily along the twigs of hawthorn hedges and the birds along the river flapped and honked in a hormonal frenzy. It was warm and it was glorious with lilac and columbine, laburnum and cherry. In tune with the sheer buddy, sappy, blossoming of everything, George’s spirits began to rise and, with them, a recaptured sense
of youth.

  ‘I still have spring in my heart, you know,’ he announced to his shaving mirror one morning. He gave himself a dimpled smile and turned his newly scraped cheeks this way and that. Wiping the last dabs of shaving cream from under his nose he thus presented a more dignified and, he thought, winning façade.

  George settled in the back of the gently shifting boat, sipping Morland’s and looking around him with a mellow tenderness. What could be more lovely than this? He had a feeling of calm and accomplishment. The business seemed to be under control. Clarence had done a fine job on Lady Byngh’s bureau bookcase (known among them now as ‘the pup’). Her ‘man’ had come to collect it and deliver it back to her. Soon after, George received another of her imperious notes: Thank you, Baxter – very satisfactory. At least she’d said thank you. And she wasn’t slow to pay. He smiled at the thought of her with a mellow pity. Poor old girl.

  He could hear larks high above the pastures behind him. Allodola, he thought. The skylark. It was the tiny mark, always somewhere on pieces from the workshop of that time, which distinguished them – the tiny black outline of a bird, close to one of the front hooves of Venus’s horse . . . A branch bobbed in the water close to the boat, seeming stuck. Every so often, lime-coloured flowers dropped from the willow to the water’s surface, sending out tiny, sunlit ripples. Though the boat was not comfortable enough to sleep in properly, George grew snoozy and his eyes slid closed.

  A plash of oars and a giggle woke him. He opened his eyes to see a rowing boat approaching, heading towards the town and the bridge. A couple, their backs to him, were squeezed onto the rowing seat, each working an oar. Though they were apparently trying to keep time with each other, the girl kept giving up in fits of laughter, letting her oar sag and break the water so that the boat skewed.