Antique Dust

by Robert Westall

  ‘It’s a Grade Two protected building,’ said Tetley. ‘The lower walls are sixteenth-century – or earlier.’

  ‘That won’t save it.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Nevinson had it downgraded, first thing he did.’

  ‘Nevinson.’ I disliked having Nevinson mentioned. Nevinson had wrapped his Jaguar round a flyover on the M1, and I got his job. Dead man’s shoes. Which is why I was Chief Technical Officer to Besingfield District Council, the youngest CTO in Essex.

  ‘I’ll be going then,’ said Tetley abruptly. I stared at him in disbelief. He was supposed to be showing me round the district.

  ‘Got a lot to do, back at the office. I’ll have the report on your desk by four o’clock.’

  I shouted, more to hold him than anything else, ‘How soon can the contractors finish the approach-road, once the house is demolished?’

  ‘Three weeks, Harrison says. They’re slack at the moment. If we don’t move by Monday, he’ll have to start laying men off.’

  He said, ‘By Monday,’ without hope, as if he was talking about winning a million on the pools. And went on backing away towards his car like a fat, conciliatory crab. And drove off with a spurt of gravel. Inevitably, his car was a P-­registration maroon Viva.

  I was left standing alone by my Volvo, facing the Ugly House. No sign of life, except for a flutter of pigeons’ wings in the back garden. No smoke from the tall hexagonal chimneys. Yet I had a feeling of being observed. And a much worse feeling that if I just got into my car and drove away, it would be the beginning of defeat.

  As Nevinson had been defeated.

  I told myself not to be stupid. I hadn’t had time to read the file on the Ugly House. Didn’t know what Nevinson had done. Didn’t even know the owner’s name . . . Tetley had no right to drive away and leave me like that.

  I started walking up the access-road; meaning only to look at the house.

  The front door was oak, silvery with the grey sheen of centuries. Studded with hand-made iron bolts. The knocker was a diabolical head, a bit like the one at Durham Cathedral, holding a ring in its slightly rusty teeth. As I reached up to knock, my fingers looked very pale and soft against that iron mouth.

  The door opened immediately, making me step back.

  ‘Come in, Mr Dobson!’ The man smiled, showing gold among his teeth. How the hell did he know my name?

  He led me through a narrow, dark-panelled hall that leaned and twisted dustily to the left. There was a little cramped fireplace, a rusty grate spilling cold ash on to the black-and-white tiles. Who has a fire in the hall these days?

  I followed his upright back, elderly but solid. His dark-blue jersey failed to do anything for his brown trousers and carpet-slippers. Grey hair, short-back-and-sides, combed greasily but neatly on top. A retired fisherman?

  He took me into a dark room with very small windows; he didn’t put the light on. Something caught my sleeve, creaked, wobbled and began to fall. I grabbed to save it, then had to bite my lip to stop myself screaming. Since childhood I’ve had a phobic horror of fur and feathers, and what I was holding was a large stuffed white owl, with only one eye and a dangle of thread where the other should have been. I desperately struggled to put it back on the shelf, but somehow it wouldn’t balance. I had to go on grabbing it, twisting it desperately to make it stay so that I could get my hands off it.

  He took it from me gently. ‘Hard to come by, these. Not many made any more. Not fashionable. I’ve been a lifetime collecting.’

  I stared round, wildly. The dark room was full of shapes, writhing in stillness. A fox glowed red glass eyes at me, a dead rabbit drooping from its mouth. On the mantelpiece, a giant misshapen eagle with a sagging broken wing perpetually prepared to launch itself at my face. They weren’t even in glass cases; the dust of dead fur and feathers tickled my nostrils.

  ‘Admiring my bittern, Mr Dobson? Haven’t seen one round here for a few years. They’re extinct now, in Essex.’ His East Anglian accent was heavy and ignorant, the voice rising at the end of every sentence. The accent of charladies, shouting ‘Goodnight’ after Bingo. Yet he didn’t look an ignorant man, as he settled himself in a chair by the window, his back to the light, his face hidden in shadow, his hands folded in his lap. He reminded me of a doctor in his consulting-room; or my grandfather, who was a Methodist preacher. The same uncomfortable certainty of a cold faith.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Dobson. You’ll have come to inquire after the lovely pen you lost?’

  ‘Pen?’ I asked stupidly.

  ‘Your gold pen, Mr Dobson. The one that tells the time as well. The one you lost, first day you were in Besingfield.’

  ‘How the hell did you know?’ Amazement made me rude. He lifted one hand gently, the way a headmaster quietens an over-noisy schoolboy.

  ‘You do set great store by that pen, Mr Dobson!’

  That shook me even more. That pen was the latest thing; with a built-in digital watch. Linda had bought it for me, to celebrate getting the CTO’s job. A good-luck talisman, and I’d lost it my first morning . . .

  ‘But how did you know?’

  Again he raised the soothing hand, and did not answer my question. ‘I’ll tell you where it do be, Mr Dobson. You remember, that first morning, you went up inspecting the gravel-pit? And it came on to rain, and Mr Tetley fetched you his old donkey-jacket? Your pen be still in the pocket o’ that, a-hanging in your staff cloakroom. You won’t leave it there no longer though, will you, Mr Dobson? Mrs Charles, who cleans that cloakroom, has had it out and looked at it three times already. We wouldn’t want her tempted, would we?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘No, of course not.’ And stared at him.

  He paused, putting a big-knuckled hand to his bony forehead. ‘Now, there’s something else you need . . . oh, yes, that cottage you’ve a-bought. Limetree Cottage, Manningtree, they calls it now. Have you found the well in the back garden yet? No? Well, it’s there if you look. In the corner of the orchard, by the back hedge. They’ll have filled it up wi’ rubbish, the last people . . . the water do be fine for plants, but don’t let your Linda go drinkin’ it – not if you do want to have childer.’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘Childer, Mr Dobson. Little babbies – boys an’ girls. You’ll have a boy first, then a girl. If you don’t let your Linda go drinkin’ from that well.’

  I stared at him again, incredulous. He stared back . . . professionally. Like a vicar, or a doctor. Someone who didn’t expect to be argued with.

  I was so angry, all I could do was get to my feet.

  ‘You off, Mr Dobson? Never stop to draw breath, you young folk, these days. Well now, that’ll be five pounds, Mr Dobson . . .’

  ‘Five pounds? For what?’

  ‘For finding your pen, Mr Dobson. And the well.’ He paused at his front door. ‘You don’t have to pay me; till you find them.’ He was quite certain I’d find them. Somehow, so was I. I took out my wallet and gave him five pounds. He drew out a battered black notebook held together with an elastic band, and put the note inside, snapping it shut.

  I’d walked back to the Volvo before I realized I’d never mentioned the demolition. But I would have seemed very foolish, walking back to the house again.

  I drove straight back to the office. The pen was where he said. Mrs Charles, the cleaner, gave me a funny look as I passed her. I drove home at three in the afternoon, a thing I’d never done in my life, and went straight down the garden without letting Linda know I was home.

  The well was there, too, exactly where he’d said. A low rim of masonry, overgrown with couch-grass and full of broken brick. I could have lived there for ten years and never have found it. As I was coming back to the house, my hands all grass and earth stains, I met Linda and Tigger coming to meet me. Tigger sat down short of me, and started washing his whiskers with a thoughtful paw; cats don’t like coming too close when you’re upset. Linda said, ‘Darling, what’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’ She tried to give
me a kiss, then felt the stiffness of rage and shock in my shoulders.

  ‘C’mon, tell me about it. Over a whisky.’

  ‘No!’ I couldn’t bear to tell her that vile old man had been discussing her body.

  ‘You know you’ll have to tell me in the end. You always do!’

  It was a relief. Especially when she laughed.

  ‘Oh, Dave. You are a cuckoo! Really, getting in such a sweat. You know what country people are. Of course they’re discussing every move you make. You’re the biggest thing that’s happened for months in this one-horse town. They notice your gold pen that can tell the time . . . and of course they know where you’re living . . .’

  ‘How did he know it was in Tetley’s coat?’

  ‘Because Tetley told him, stupid. I’ll bet he’s thick-in with Tetley . . . maybe that’s why his house hasn’t been pulled down, yet?’

  ‘You mean, they suckered me? All a put-up job?’

  She shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘And I fell for it,’ I said, bitterly.

  ‘My God, Dave, you are hard to please. Would you rather believe in witchcraft, or that people make suckers of other people?’

  ‘I’ll show them who’s a sucker!’

  ‘That’s my boy! Now drink your whisky and let’s go upstairs. Why waste a free afternoon?’

  I read the file on the Ugly House first thing next morning. Then sent for Tetley. He was supposed to be my assistant; had been Nevinson’s.

  ‘Why didn’t Nevinson make a compulsory-purchase order?’

  ‘He tried. D’you mind if I sit down?’ He settled himself comfortably, pudgy hand compulsively checking the row of pens and pencils that made his breast-pocket bulge. Half of them didn’t even work. He kept those for lending to other people . . .

  ‘Well?’

  ‘We couldn’t trace the owners.’

  ‘Surely he’s the owner?’

  ‘He’s not. Only the tenant. Says his grandfather paid rent to a Mrs Yoxford, who died in 1910. She left it all to a nephew, who vanished.’

  ‘Have you been through the records thoroughly?’

  ‘Not just here. County records . . . Public Records Office . . . last wills and testaments. You name it, we looked. No owners, so no compulsory purchase.’

  ‘Except by Act of Parliament!’

  ‘For one little piddling access-road? Besides, there’s not time – we have to open in two months.’

  ‘We’ll have to get him with a Notice of Time and Place.’

  ‘Nevinson tried all that.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to try it again, won’t we? Shouldn’t be too hard. House is leaning like a drunken sailor.’

  Tetley put his head on one side. ‘Why don’t you leave poor old Burridge alone? He’s not doing you any harm. He just wants to go on living in the house he’s always lived in. Like you and me.’

  ‘He’s defying the law.’

  ‘He was defying Nevinson . . . there’s another way the access-road could go. Up through Rufus’s Yard. Old Rufus would sell for a song – wants to go and live with his daughter in Clacton. It’s a bit swampy, but nothing twenty tons of chippings wouldn’t cure.’ He pulled a crumpled site-map out of his pocket.

  ‘But we’d lose fifty yards of made-up road . . . ten thousand quid.’

  ‘Burridge is willing to buy that bit off us. Made a very decent offer.’

  ‘Has he? Who’s he made the offer to?’

  Tetley had the grace to lower his eyes. ‘Me. After Nevinson . . . copped it. Before you came.’

  ‘You mean – nothing on paper?’

  ‘No. But he’s willing.’

  ‘Does he think he runs the town? Who does he think he is?’

  Tetley shrugged. ‘He’s retired. But he’s not pushed for a penny.’

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot about him!’ I took out my gold pen.

  He didn’t flinch. ‘Everybody in Besingfield knows old Burridge.’

  ‘Oh? What’s he famous for?’

  ‘Oh, he makes up herbal remedies . . . herbal smoking-mixtures. Now he’s retired.’

  ‘Retired fisherman?’ I asked sarcastically.

  ‘In a way,’ said Tetley. ‘You could call him a fisher of men . . .’

  I gave him a sharp look, but his face had returned to blandness. Might as well try to read small-print through a pound of lard.

  By a Notice of Time and Place, you summon someone before the Housing Committee; either to tell him to get his premises repaired pronto, or to tell him you’re going to demolish them because they’re past repair. You do a very thorough survey of the premises beforehand, I can tell you. But in my case, I could see another problem coming up. Some councillor might start shouting that I was victimizing Burridge, carry­ing on an old vendetta. So I needed a complaint about the Ugly House from a member of the public.

  It should have been easy. I was making friends among my fellow-workers, as well as enemies. Someone should have known of someone willing to make a complaint against Burridge. For the price of a drink; as a favour to be remembered; or as an act of spite.

  Nobody would. Not for ten quid, not twenty, nor even fifty, which I offered on the QT and nothing in writing.

  ‘Burridge would get to know who did it,’ said Mike Hargreaves, the Chief Planning Officer.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Burridge has lived a long time in this town; he knows everybody; he bears grudges.’

  ‘So?’

  He shrugged, grinned shamefacedly and shrugged again. ‘People are frightened of him. He’ll know you’re doing this, you know . . .’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘OK. Go ahead and find somebody. Bet you a quid you can’t.’

  ‘Done.’ And it did cost him a quid. I got a mate of mine over from the Architects Department at Ipswich. I invited Gordon down after work one night, and Linda gave him one of her best American dinners. I got him mellow with a couple of bottles of Chablis, and drove him down to the Ugly House. We parked about fifty yards away; quite close enough to see how much it was leaning. But Gordon was out of the car in a flash, walking right up to the Ugly House, which wasn’t in my plan at all.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Gordon, peering over Burridge’s withered hedge. ‘Practically a history of English architecture in its own right. Gorgeous.’

  ‘This,’ I hissed, ‘is the place I want demolished.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ bawled Gordon. ‘You don’t want to demolish a place like this. I wish I had something half as good on my patch.’

  I began to realize I had overdone the Chablis. Burridge must be hearing every word. He’d be in need of a deaf-aid if he wasn’t.

  ‘Look at the way it’s leaning,’ I hissed.

  ‘Leaning doesn’t mean dangerous. You wouldn’t want to demolish the Leaning Tower of Pisa?’ He pushed open Burridge’s gate and began pinching away at the door-moulding like it was Sophia Loren’s thigh. At that point I left him to it. When he came back to the car, he seemed more sober.

  ‘Is there no way you can save it?’

  ‘No – the hypermarket access goes straight through it.’

  He gave me a sad look. ‘I don’t understand you, Dave. But I’ve eaten your dinner, so I’ll write your complaint. Give me your pen.’ He wrote it with set lips and gave it to me. As he did, I felt a wetness on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘What’s that patch of damp?’ He looked at it, baffled. ‘Something must have dripped on it, from the house. Leaky downspout, maybe.’

  ‘That’s a start,’ I said grimly.

  When we got back to my place, he got his coat, said goodbye to Linda, and drove straight home.

  At least, we thought he’d driven straight home. Till we got a call from the Manningtree police.

  Gordon had swerved his car off a perfectly clear road at seventy. The police said from the skid-marks, it almost looked as if he’d swerved to avoid something that was no longer there. He was in intensive care. They’d found our instructions for getting to our house in
his pocket.

  It sounds silly, but I blamed Burridge. When I’d finished with Burridge’s house, he wouldn’t know what had hit him. I summoned all my forces for the attack. I’m a qualified building-inspector – most CTOs are. So was Tetley. Besides that, I had an old inspector called Reg Totton within months of retiring, and a young trainee called Martin Francis.

  When I had them all into my office to brief them, the night before, Reg and Martin looked at each other.

  ‘We did that place last March. With Nevinson. The report’s on file – sound as a bell.’

  ‘There’s no report here,’ I said.

  ‘Item number seven, in the file,’ said Reg.

  I looked. There were some yellowed sheets of paper, looking far older than the rest. And faint brown traces, where typescript had been. But only the figure ‘7’ remained, hacked in savagely with Biro.

  There was a long, haunted silence, then Tetley said, not looking at anybody, ‘That bloody photocopier is always going on the blink.’

  ‘Am I to assume,’ I said icily, ‘that all the copies of this report will be in the same condition?’ They made half-hearted phone calls, to the Planning Department, the Secretaries Department. From the indignant squeaks that came back down the phone, all the copies were. We trooped down to the photocopying-room to dig the original typescript out of their files.

  It was nowhere to be found.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to start all over again, shan’t we?’

  ‘Bloody photocopier,’ said Tetley, with purely ritual annoyance.

  Reg and Martin said nothing at all.

  I drove in next morning through an Essex landscape draped in mist. Line after line of trees swam up at me, and departed behind. I felt so unreal I could hardly bring myself to believe the road-signs, and I got lost twice. The unreal feeling had started the previous night, as I briefed them. I had this ghastly feeling that what I was saying was not entering their minds. They were sluggish, miles away. When I asked them a question, they started and bumbled like men wakened from sleep. I had the growing conviction that my carefully worked-out instructions were meaningless gibberish; a growing conviction I was discussing an event that was never going to happen. It had given me the most restless night I had ever spent in my life.