‘I’ve just been talking to Mr Watson, Ponsonby.’
‘He’s gone, sir.’
‘So he was here?’
‘He never stays long, sir. This shop is just a backwater to him, now . . . more for buying stuff and storing it than selling. He’s mainly busy with his other shops.’
‘Other shops . . .’ My voice acquired an incredulous squeak. ‘What other shops?’
‘London . . . Brighton . . . Stratford. Paris is next, they say. He’s a big man in the trade now, sir.’
‘And he told you to give me a good discount?’
‘Yes. Very warmly he thinks of you, Mr Ashden. Says you made his fortune.’
I stormed out, and didn’t go back. But I did a fair bit of detective work. There were Watson Antiques branches in London, Brighton, Stratford and Paris. And later in New York and in the South of France. Clocky indeed had the luck of the Devil. And I even paid a call on the Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe. They exist; they’re a spooky tourist attraction now; not to my taste – a bit garish, with their shop-window dummies dressed up in monks’ habits, and their canned spooky music conveyed over a loudspeaker system. And there was indeed a Francis Dashwood, and a Higginson, though I could find no trace of a Franciscan called Ormandby . . .
But the oddest thing of all is that the caves, being carved from chalk, are pretty dry, without the sound of dripping water anywhere.
So I shrugged, and forgot the whole business. Until the day Clocky died.
He died in his Rolls-Royce, on a road called the Grande Corniche; on the Riviera, where he had a villa. The Corniche had some pretty steep hairpin bends, and on one of them, at the age of sixty-six, Clocky met his death in the form of a large tourist-coach.
His death wouldn’t have caused much fuss, even though he was by that time a multi-millionaire, except for what the coach-driver said at the inquest.
He said that Clocky was on the wrong side of the road, wasn’t looking where he was going, because he was laughing and fooling around with a young girl in the front seat of the Rolls. The young girl was plump and pretty, with rosy cheeks and long fair hair, and she had her arms round Clocky. And they were still laughing when the Rolls went off the road, and fell a thousand feet down the cliff. The driver was deeply shocked, kept on saying, ‘That young girl, and that old man.’
When they got to the crashed Rolls, Clocky was dead, still with, they said, a smile on his face. And the doors of the car had not jolted open – they were still locked shut. In fact, they were jammed, and had to be prised open. And of the young girl who had been laughing, there was no sign. Neither in the car, nor on the hillside, nor for many miles around.
The Doll
It started with the bloody-mindedness of Henry Prendergast, auctioneer and valuer (established 1852). Working in our market town, Henry’s burning and only interest is in auctioning farms and livestock. But sometimes, when somebody’s inconveniently died, he has to sell off the contents of the house as well. Which brings him perilously near the realm of antiques. And in Henry’s estimation, antiques are of interest only to poofters.
So he doesn’t so much sell furniture as insult it. A chair is simply a chair to Henry, whether it’s a Chippendale or 1940s Utility. Cups are cups, whether Spode or chipped mugs. He’s fond of creating large cardboard boxes, of mixed contents: anyone start me at a pound? I’ve had a profound respect for Henry’s boxes ever since I found, under the red plastic orange squeezers and aluminium hardboiled-egg slicers, a hand-blown ruby-glass jug I sold for twenty-five pounds.
He does house contents first, so he can settle to the real business of the day; and does it at such breakneck speed that he frequently knocks down stuff to people at the front while there are still some London guys waving frantic catalogues at the back. He likes faces he knows and names he remembers, like mine; I am the poofter he sells mixed boxes to. Like the box with ‘Old Clocks’ scrawled on it; in the depths of which, under a long-dead Sectric wall-clock and a two-bell alarm rusted solid, I found the blackened works of a Tompion.
But on this occasion, the box was marked ‘Dolls’. Now I’ve always hated dolls, and Henry knows it. But since two of the ‘dolls’ were classical Parian-ware statues of fair size, and still with all their fingers in spite of the cavalier way Henry had treated them, I bid up and got the box for fifteen. The Parians I went and sold immediately for seventy; I had a buyer before I bought them. But that left me with the rest of the lot, a doll I immediately christened Rosebud. I threw Rosebud on to the back seat of the Merc. By chance, she fell sitting upright; her china eyelids rolled up, exposing china-blue eyes, and she sat watching me drive all the way home. In spite of the quick profit on the Parians, I loathed her. Nearly three feet high, plump and smug. Neither a baby nor a little girl nor a grown woman, but uneasily a bit of each. If you undressed her, God knew what twee prudery you’d find; but I had no desire to, though her sumptuous brocade and lace petticoats had plenty of inviting buttons and poppers. As I watched her in my driving-mirror, I felt more like taking a hammer to her smug china face. But you don’t make your way as a dealer by smashing things . . . dolls, even nineteenth-century dolls, were not antiques in my opinion, but I reckoned some indulgent and pressurized parent would fork up a couple of quid. So when I got home, I threw her on to a Regency sofa I hoped would fetch five hundred.
The next day, who should roll into the shop but Martin Tyzack. He looks like Billy Bunter, height six feet four, with a fringe of red beard, a darned green zipped cardigan and a green combat jacket they probably issued to elephants in the Burma campaign. A fat slob, you might think, and you’d be dead wrong. That paunch is solid muscle; I’ve seen him walk out of a sale with a mahogany chaise-longue under each arm. And slob he is not, either. He says his ancestors were Dutch pirates, and I’m inclined to believe him. He just fills your shop, in body and spirit, poking into everything like he owns the place, and his insistence that the world is as he says it is is so strong that he rolls over you like a tidal wave. The first time I met him I was green, and he nearly talked me into selling a bureau for half what it was worth. Only the telephone ringing saved me, gave me time to throw off his spell, and I sent him packing. We haven’t got on well since.
Anyway, he came in like his usual horde of locusts, pawing this and that, poking at a Viennese regulator hanging on the wall that he reckoned was ticking off-beat, and threatening to knock it off altogether with his sausage-like fingers.
The only thing he didn’t look at was the Regency sofa.
‘That sofa’s five hundred to you,’ I said, ‘and no discount for trade . . .’
He uttered his usual hurt yelp, and walked across to it. ‘You must be joking!’ He poked the delicate, fraying original upholstery.
‘Five, and not a penny less,’ I said, ‘and if you burst that upholstery I’ll sue you.’
He picked up Rosebud instead. ‘And this?’
‘Two,’ I said, meaning two pounds. Now if you name a price too high for Tyzack, he yelps. And if you name one that’s lower than he was going to offer, he gloats unbearably. But when you catch him on the very fringe of what he’s really willing to pay, he writhes silently; a sight that gladdens my soul.
‘Come on, have a heart,’ he moaned.
‘Two.’ What a fuss to make about a doll!
‘I’ll take it,’ he said, fetching out his greasy cheque-book. And wrote me out a cheque.
For two hundred pounds. Then he told me the doll was a thirty-six-inch Jumeau, and he had every hope, at the next London doll fair, of getting five hundred for it.
And so I came painfully to realize that dolls were big money. That night I put a permanent advertisement in the local paper for china-headed dolls. I was venturing into a field where I knew nothing; and loved even less. That was the first time I ever did something purely for money. In view of what happened, I suppose you can say it served me right.
It was always a game that left me feeling dirty. So often the dolls had belonged to somebo
dy who’d died; so often they were being sold by old people, who didn’t produce the doll till they’d finished telling their long, sad tale; or worse still, sat clutching it, so that I couldn’t see it clearly. Sometimes the owner had just died, sometimes many years before . . . those tales were even longer and sadder. And often, when the whole story was told, with me sweating to be off to an auction, the doll turned out to be broken, or merely wax-headed, or in some cases, plastic. And yet not to make an offer seemed like insulting the dead . . . twice I had to stop myself buying total rubbish for far more than it was worth. I’d decided to cancel the advert, when the telephone call came through.
It was late. I was just about to turn in. But the voice was youngish, female, intelligent, cultured.
‘Yes, a lot of dolls . . . oh, there must be four dozen. I used to collect them, you see. There’s an Armand Marseille with the original wig . . . and a closed-mouth Kestner . . .’
‘Where do you live, Mrs . . .’
‘Westover. I’m a widow. We’re the manor house at Westover. My husband’s family have lived here for donkeys.’
It sounded a happy hunting-ground. I reached for my dealers’ guide. ‘I could call about eleven, tomorrow morning.’
‘I’d rather you came tonight.’ Her voice positively crackled down the wire, sharp with anxiety. The kind of sharpness I tend to associate with stolen goods. But the manor house at Westover? Hardly a likely receptacle for hot stuff. I looked at my watch.
‘It’s nearly eleven, Mrs Westover. It must be thirty miles.’
‘It’s a good road, empty at this time of night. I don’t mind waiting up. I’m a late bird.’ Then, almost coyly, though the sharpness hadn’t gone from her voice, ‘I might sell you my big Steiner.’
I looked at my Miller’s Guide; a Steiner had just gone at Sotheby’s for eight hundred.
‘What kind of prices are you asking?’
‘Oh, I’ll look after you, young man. I’m tired of them . . . sick to death of them.’
I sighed. I’d had a long day at the sales, and my back was killing me. ‘All right, I’ll come; if you’re sure you don’t mind.’
‘Just be quick.’ She regained control of herself, poured back the honey into her voice with a conscious effort. ‘Turn right by the parish church.’
I couldn’t have missed it. A big house, standing well back in its own heavily-treed grounds. Every light was on, from top to bottom. There was a car parked outside, with the driver’s door open and the right winker still winking. It had a disastrous look about it. But the grounds were a picture of disciplined calm, in the light thrown from the windows. Neatly clipped topiary, velvety lawns below classical urns.
She answered my ring so quickly that she might have been hiding behind the door. She had a half-full glass in her hand, and a strong smell of whisky on her breath. I began devoutly wishing I hadn’t come. She said in a whisper, ‘Come into the sitting-room. Would you like a drink? I’m just having a nightcap.’ From the way she lurched against the sideboard, making the bottles rattle, she’d had a lot more than a nightcap. But she didn’t look a drunk. Neat tweed suit, pearls, highly polished court shoes, and her hair hadn’t been done this side of Muncaster. She gave me a drink, sat on the sofa facing me, clutching her own drink in both hands as if she was afraid she might drop it. Then she seemed to fall into a daze. Of course, my dealer’s eyes were discreetly everywhere.
And I didn’t much like what I saw. The hearthrug was Persian, I’d swear; but marred with two-inch burn-holes, as if coals had leapt out of the fire. There were five oval-framed paintings on the wall, portraits, possibly eighteenth-century. Or rather, there were four paintings and the oval fade-mark left by the fifth, which was tucked away behind the sofa, with its glass broken.
The silence drew out, unbearably.
‘The dolls,’ I said gently.
She came to, with a start. She must have been about forty; a real classy looker, except that something, maybe the drink, had pulled her face apart, feature by feature, and she hadn’t been able to quite pull the pieces together again.
‘My husband always hated the dolls . . . but of course you want to see them. They’re upstairs. On the bed.’
Alarm bells began to ring in my head. When an attractive widow of forty, having got herself half drunk to ease her tension, invites you up to her bedroom at nearly midnight . . .
‘I find it hard to judge dolls by artificial light,’ I mumbled. ‘Their colouring . . .’
I think she really saw me, then, for the first time; realized that I was a human being, with feelings of my own, with whom some relationship was essential. She smiled, looked a little embarrassed at my embarrassment, then shook her head. ‘Not tonight, Josephine,’ she said, ruefully. And, in that second, I really could have fancied her; she had been some looker. Then the odd fixed look came back on her face. ‘Come and see the dolls – they’re really there. This is a business arrangement, pure and simple.’
But still she spoke in a whisper, as if there were someone else in the house she didn’t want to hear us.
So we went up the old, well-polished oak stairs. There was a magnificent grandfather-clock on the landing, brass-faced, worth a real packet. Except it had stopped, and the glass was gone, and the hands were twisted together, and the inlaid case was split at the corners, as if it had just fallen over in a very expensive accident.
‘What a shame!’ I burst out.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘You’re covered by insurance, of course.’
‘Oh, yes, my husband saw to the insurance,’ she said; and shuddered.
We went down a corridor, which didn’t contain much but a long dark old table. On which stood a row of Parian-ware statues of a size that took my breath away, except that every one had been broken. The snapped-off arms and heads lay neatly beside each. I screwed up my eyes. I felt I was walking into a nightmare; when I opened my eyes again, the nightmare was still there.
She stopped outside the door. ‘They’re in here,’ she said, in a lower whisper than ever. As she opened the door, I braced myself, expecting anything.
Except what I saw.
A four-poster bed, with old grey antique hangings. And on the bed, a mass of china-headed dolls. And each one had been systematically pulled to pieces. Their pink fat-bellied bodies lay naked and bulging, above a mass of disembodied arms and legs. Their heads peered at me from one heap, like the skulls in a charnel-house. All pink and smug, neither baby, child nor grown woman, but a little of each. And they lay on a mass of jumbled silk and brocade, lace and velvet, that must once have been their clothes.
‘They’ve been naughty,’ said the woman. ‘Terribly, terribly naughty. So they had to be punished.’
It’s one thing being alone with a sex-hungry woman. In my trade, along with plumbers and TV repair men, I see quite a bit of that. But even desperate sex has rules; you can withdraw from the game. In madness, there are no rules; or you might say the mad make up their rules as they go along, and they never bear any resemblance to your rules. I began to back warily towards the door.
But some of the mad use two sets of rules; some are very good at playing sane. She spotted what she’d done, quick as a cat, and changed the rules again, without visible effort.
‘Sorry!’ Her smile was very charming, very appealing. ‘I’ve had a bit too much to drink. Now . . .’ She began holding up dolls’ heads briskly. ‘This is my Steiner . . . big, isn’t she? And this is a Bébé Bru No. 7 – I paid three hundred and fifty pounds for her . . . and here’s a Schoenau and Hoffmeister.’
She achieved her purpose; the dolls had been worth a king’s ransom. I began to look at them more closely, comforting myself that everybody has their funny little ways. She assembled a big Jumeau, swiftly and expertly, from the massacre on the bed. ‘See, it’s all here . . . nothing damaged . . . they just need sorting and reassembling. They’re all complete and unbroken; you have my word on it.’
Oddly enough, I be
lieved her. Mad she might be, but she was no swindler. Now she was running swiftly on, every inch the brisk businesswoman. ‘I’ve put out an old trunk of my husband’s here. They’ll all go in there, easily. We can pack them in their clothes, so nothing will get broken.’ The old trunk was very battered, plastered with labels from the Riviera, Florida, Singapore; an antique in itself. I wondered why her husband had been such a widely travelled man. Which had come first, her madness, or his travel?
But even in that strange house, at that unearthly hour, I remained a dealer. ‘How much are you asking?’ It was a good question to ask; from the world of daylight and sanity.
Her hand flew to the pearls at her throat. She hadn’t even worked out a price; she was having trouble thinking of one now. And that, in my dealer’s world, was unheard of. The first thing sellers ever think of is the price. From the moment they think of selling to the moment you pop the question. It may be a totally unrealistic price; they’ve probably revised it up and down for days. But boy, they think about it.
She swallowed and said, ‘Would five hundred be too much? You could get that back on the Jumeau, once you got her back together. Then the rest is pure profit.’
I picked up various heads and looked at them, playing for time. I knew enough about the dolls by then to know it was all marvellous stuff . . . but the whole thing felt wrong. I may be hard, but I hadn’t descended to cheating madwomen. Besides, she might change her mind. I might have her hammering on my door in the morning, wanting everything back. Probably with the alleged dead husband.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Two fifty. I’m sick of them.’ On the word ‘sick’, uttered with terrible violence, the madness surfaced again momentarily. I suddenly wondered whether the dolls were really her husband’s . . . and the husband away; perhaps with a new mistress. That would be enough to make her break up the dolls, then try to sell them. We get a lot of people trying to sell us other people’s things cheap, for spite. I was in two minds, between fear and desire, and it made me cruel.
Antique Dust Page 6
