Dovetail

by Bernard Pearson

  They had a bit of lunch, then Bill went into the workshop to get started on the chairs. As he started to sort out the bench he would be working at, Lucy came into the workshop with a broom. She might just as well have come into the place with a flaming torch. ‘Don’t!’ yelped Bill in a panicked voice that stopped Lucy in her tracks.

  ‘No, please. Please, don’t ever!’ he begged in anguish, as if she were going to run someone over or sweep shillings into a drain.

  Lucy just stood there with the broom in her hand, at a complete loss as to what Bill was on about. Parts of the workshop were ankle-deep in shavings, and every surface had a deep layer of dust on it, not to mention all the cobwebs, which were thick enough to make Miss Havisham’s dining room look like an operating theatre by comparison.

  ‘Some of these chippings have been here for years, decades; some are probably older that you,’ he pleaded. ‘I know where everything is and I really like it the way it is, please!’

  Lucy laughed and started back to the house. Bill let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘It’s probably for the best,’ Lucy said over her shoulder as she went. ‘If someone came in here and saw it all cleaned up, they’d know something was up!’

  After a while Lucy came back, this time with Clive. They had been out for a run, and by the look of Clive, it had been a good one. Lucy had brought a bowl from the kitchen and filled it with water. After he had drunk his fill, Clive slumped down, panting, in the doorway. Bill looked over as he was moving the chairs and felt a pang. Bess was still on his mind, but having Clive in the workshop didn’t upset him as much as he had feared it would.

  He put the two good chairs on the bench and, taking a notebook from a drawer, started to measure each component. Lucy reached over and took the pencil. As if they had been doing this for years, Bill stated the measurements and Lucy wrote them down. As they worked, Lucy asked all sorts of questions, not just about these chairs but about antique furniture in general.

  Bill loved it. Lucy was interested in a way his son Philip had never been. Oh, Philip had helped his dad in the workshop whenever he was asked, but it was never really his thing. He did it because he loved his father and liked sharing his company. Lucy was doing it because she was really interested in the subject. Bill had done all the measuring he needed to do and was now drawing each piece in clear, stark lines. Lucy went into the house and came back with two mugs of tea, setting one down by Bill, and just sat quietly watching what he was doing, trying not to spoil his concentration. His old hands were scarred but confident as they drew.

  As they continued to work, it became clear that Lucy had an agile brain; she was not afraid to ask questions and she remembered the answers. Bill watched her as she sat at a nearby bench making her own drawing of a dovetail joint and using callipers to measure the dimensions. In her jeans and T-shirt, with her fair hair tied back in her usual ponytail, she looked delightful. It made him sad to think that if he had known this woman twenty years ago, he might have had a partner by now. Ah, well, other places, other times, he mused as he stood up from his task and lit his pipe.

  On Sunday Bill gave Lucy directions to a large supermarket not too far away where she could get all the provisions and ingredients she lacked to show how well she could cook if she really wanted to. And for Bill she found she really wanted to. He was so appreciative of her meagre efforts thus far that she wanted to see his reaction to real meals with all the trimmings.

  Lucy hadn’t had much occasion to cook for the past couple of decades, but she had memories of quiet, peaceful, safe afternoons when she was a girl, helping her mother’s cook in the kitchen. She had also found a cache of cookbooks that Beryl had left behind. Her current favourite was a first-edition Food in England, rich with pre-war recipes that somehow felt right in her current surroundings. She couldn’t wait to see Bill’s reaction to the roast beef, potatoes, gravy, and Yorkshire puddings she had planned for him.

  His response turned out to be all she could have wished, and her ears were still ringing with his praises as they moved through to the sitting room at the front of the house after dinner. It was a warm evening, and the scent of honeysuckle that came in through the open window was beguiling. Bill lit some candles that were in brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and their soft light was reflected in the glass of a large mirror.

  One of Bill’s numerous deals had earned him a huge leather Chesterfield. He had re-sprung and reupholstered the sofa, meaning to sell it on, but had never got around to it. Its soft, comfortable embrace acted as a magnet. Bill and Lucy both lounged in cosiness and companionship while Clive spread himself out on the big Turkish rug in front of the fireplace. Bill looked around this room full of old furniture and pictures, all polished and looking loved again after Lucy’s efforts.

  ‘I never come in here normally,’ he said. ‘Silly, really. You live so long in a place and somehow you don’t really see it anymore. Well, I do now, thanks to your magic touch.’

  ‘Magic touch!’ cried Lucy. ‘Elbow grease and a good dose of polish, more like.’ But she laughed, and so did Bill.

  ‘The bugger of living alone is that you just tread the same path,’ mused Bill. ‘You do the same things after work, sit in the same chair, eat the same grub, and then stagger off to bed. Life just becomes a series of habits.’

  Lucy understood this; her own life had been one long, dismal, lonely habit until Bill had turned up, clipboard in hand, and opened up doors that had been slammed shut for years.

  After a while, Bill said decisively, ‘Tomorrow we register and insure that tank of a car of yours. I’ll do it in my name and have you as a named driver; that way I can do most of it over the phone. Then we’ll have a run into Taunton and you can buy some new clothes.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Lucy in surprise.

  ‘We’re going to need a couple of old oak panels to repair the back of the damaged chair and create one for the new chair. And that means scouring a few auctions and having a bit of a tickle round some sale rooms.’

  ‘And the new clothes for me?’

  ‘Arrr, sweet wench. You are going to be the one who buys the stuff. I’m too well known and if I’m seen sniffing around, word will get out that I’m working on something special. And we are going to keep our heads so far down on this bloody job, we shall have eyes in our arses.’

  Lucy laughed and soon afterwards went off to bed.

  Before he locked up, Bill took Clive for one last walk and a pipe. He still missed Bess terribly, of course, but he couldn’t help liking the daft bugger all the same. The warm summer night air was fragrant; moths flittered and bats streaked silently across the yard as they walked under the old yew and into the small garden. There stood the cherry tree under which Bess was buried, a slight breeze causing the leaves to move as if in greeting. Bill stood there for a while, remembering her and the days before his illness and Skates, both of which had crept into his world like some malevolent trailing vine, determined to stifle and destroy everything.

  Turning back towards his house with a sigh, Bill looked up and saw in the grey mass of stone one lit window. A warm light behind faded curtains: Lucy’s room. Well, thought Bill, at least I’m not alone anymore.

  Chapter 16

  MONDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER

  On Monday morning Bill decided it was time for Lucy and Miss Templeton to be properly introduced. Bill had told her about the old lady who lived in the cottage up the lane, but Lucy had never actually seen her. Once or twice, as she had moved around the yard or taken Clive for a walk, she had felt she was being watched. No, not watched, but observed. There was a difference. So it was with some trepidation, as if she was being summoned to the headmistress’s study, that she followed Bill up the leafy lane.

  Miss Templeton saw them before they saw her and came out of the gate to meet them. In the back of Lucy’s mind had been a vision of some old crone complete with black pointy hat and cauldron. She had never mentioned it, of course, because Bill obviously held the woman in much
esteem, but the image was there cackling away whenever Miss Templeton’s name had been mentioned.

  What she saw now was an elderly lady, thin and straight as a pencil, but obviously full of vitality. True, her grey hair was pinned back in a bun, but she was wearing bright, colourful clothes that looked downright exotic in this English garden. The most striking thing about her, though, were her eyes. They shone like bright blue sapphires from under a brow lined with age, and Lucy had the impression they could see right inside her head.

  Miss Templeton held out her hand; Lucy took it, fighting down the urge to curtsy. Miss Templeton smiled and said, ‘I have seen you and your dog about the place, young lady. Are you a relative of Mr Sawyer’s?’

  Quite why she answered the way she did, Lucy could never explain, but she said simply, ‘No, Miss Templeton. I’m in hiding and Bill has given me sanctuary.’

  Bill was about to protest or at least try to explain, but Miss Templeton stopped him by saying, ‘Ah, that’s what I thought, my dear. And you chose the right word; this hill is a place of sanctuary for all of us in one way or another.’

  She then made just enough fuss over Clive for him not to feel left out and, for the first time in all the years Bill had known her, invited them in to take tea.

  They were shown in through a small, well-swept backyard in which there was a large kennel and run Bill had built for the times when Bess stayed there. Clive went into this without any fuss and was rewarded with a large bone.

  Built as a gamekeeper’s cottage in Edwardian times when the land it was on was part of a great estate, Miss Templeton’s small house had all the charm that resulted from the lavish attention to detail paid by builders in those days. Fretwork gables and decorated brickwork sat under a high slate roof.

  Inside the house, they sat in Miss Templeton’s kitchen, which was obviously the room she used the most. A scrubbed deal table and four chairs on a rag rug took up the middle of the room. An old Aga stove sat within a fireplace next to which was a neat pile of logs. One wall was all shelves upon which were books, bowls, cups, jugs, and ranks of Kilner jars filled with heaven only knew what. Bunches of herbs hung from hooks in neat rows and scented the room with the fragrance of summer. There was a butler sink with one tap above, and a large cupboard took up a good part of one wall. No fridge, no hot water by the look of it, and no electric cooker. It was like stepping back into the 1950s, or even the 1940s. Bill bet that somewhere there was a meat safe just like his mother had when he was a kid.

  The only decorative elements in the room were on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. On this, in between two old Berwick figurines, were several framed photographs, some in silver and others in wood or Bakelite. They were mostly of groups of women, some in uniform, but all, dating by the clothing styles, from around the early 1940s. Miss Templeton saw Bill looking at them and came and stood by his side.

  ‘All dead now except me,’ she said matter-of-factly. She then invited them to sit down and began to make the tea. When it was done, she put a brown teapot on the table, got mugs down from the shelves, and poured out. When they were all served, she took one of the photographs down and handed it to Lucy. ‘That’s me in the roll-neck jumper and coverall,’ she said.

  The photograph showed a slim woman with her hair pulled back (in a bun, Lucy assumed) looking directly at the camera. Wearing no discernible makeup, Miss Templeton’s face was nevertheless flawless, with eyes that were bright and intelligent, and a full mouth with just a hint of a smile playing at the corners. Lucy looked at Miss Templeton. The eyes were the same, but they were now surrounded by wrinkles. Her lips had lost their voluptuousness, and her mouth was now straight as a knife edge. As if reading her thoughts, Miss Templeton said, ‘Yes, ‘in me thou seest the twilight’, as Mr Shakespeare puts it. I’ve never minded losing whatever looks I once had, but I do resent not being as fit and agile as I was in that photo.’

  Lucy looked at the picture again and this time noticed that the boiler suit Miss Templeton wore was set off with a very serviceable web belt and pistol holster.

  ‘The gun… was that usual, Miss Templeton?’

  The old lady’s eyes twinkled with mischief and memory. ‘It certainly was for some of us, dear.’

  ‘SOE?’ asked Bill.

  Miss Templeton only nodded, then leaned over and pointed at the photograph in Lucy’s hand. ‘I was very fond of the big chap on my right, but he had a wife back in Prague. We didn’t know it then, but she had been shot by the Gestapo a few weeks before that picture was taken. By the time I found that out, so had he.’

  This was said without any pathos, but Lucy was still unable to respond. Miss Templeton then dispelled the awkward silence with a statement that changed the subject utterly.

  ‘You have visitors who are not always welcome,’ she said.

  Before either of them could reply, she continued, ‘When and if you wish to tell me more, I will always be ready to listen, but either way I shall, of course, look out for you as I have always done. I might not be as active as I once was but I still have excellent eyesight and I’m happy to put it to good use.’

  She then took them to her attic room, three flights up and originally built as an observation point for the gamekeeper. It had clear views across the fields on three sides of the house.

  ‘It used to give almost a complete view of the land all around, but trees have grown since it was built so now I can see only some parts through my field glasses,’ she told them.

  Bill could see over the hedges and into his yard. There was also a clear view of the road and the parts of the lane that were not obscured by trees. No wonder she had been able to tell him he had had unwanted visitors last month! He picked up a pair of binoculars that were lying on a very serviceable stand that could be wheeled around the room.

  ‘I thought you’d like those, Mr Sawyer. German Navy, the best.

  Spoils of war,’ Miss Templeton said, laughing quietly.

  As they were leaving, she invited Lucy to call again. Bill said nothing, but in all the years he had lived there he had never seen anyone other than the postman go up the lane to her cottage.

  As they walked home Bill said, ‘Well, I think you’ve made a new friend up there on the hill. One more on our side, eh?’

  ‘She’s lovely,’ said Lucy. ‘And I didn’t dare ask in front of her, but what’s SOE?’

  ‘Special Operations Executive. Top secret duringthe war. They had very advanced views on women in armed combat. Did a lot of undercover stuff with various resistance networks.’

  Bill’s voice lowered automatically as he added, ‘Extremely high fatality rate.’

  Next on the list was insuring Lucy’s car, which didn’t take long. That done, they loaded Clive and his kit into the big Volvo and drove to Taunton, about an hour away.

  Bill had fought down his disgust and taken a wodge of Skates’s money out of the dreaded envelope. It helped him to think about what some of this cash would be spent on. It had been years since Lucy had bought herself clothes from anywhere but a charity shop. When she had lived with Skates he had clothed her as he might have done a dummy, primarily to show off his wealth. And some of those garments were for his and Warren’s pleasure, certainly not hers.

  When he told Lucy that it was actually Skates who was paying for this treat, she went to work with a will. And there was no doubt the lady had taste. She didn’t go for the latest fashions, but for classic style and quality. Breeding will out, thought Bill, and Lucy undoubtedly came from the sort of people who knew what to wear in addition to what fork to use. When Bill saw all the bags Lucy accumulated from the various shops he was glad all he had to do was wait outside with Clive.

  ‘What about you?’ Lucy asked. ‘Aren’t you going to get anything?’

  ‘Got everything I need,’ he answered.

  Lucy said nothing but darted into M&S and eventually came out with a carrier bag, which she handed to Bill. They went to a pub, ordered lunch, and sat in the garden so Clive coul
d be with them. After they ate, Bill peeked inside the bag and nearly choked. ‘How did you know I wear that sort? And shirts as well! I normally go to a market stall for them.’

  ‘I washed your only other pair along with your shirts before you were up this morning, and all they’re good for is rags.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ thought Bill, ‘I’m under new management, all right.’

  That afternoon they hit the auction houses. There were five in Taunton: one was top notch, up there with the West End crowd; two were good county houses where the gentleman farmer bought and sold; and two were indifferent to dodgy. Bill was known in them all, so it was Lucy who slipped in and collected the catalogues for the next sales.

  On the journey back they stopped at a nice hostelry and turned some of Skates’s money into a really grand meal. Clive was watered and left in the car, but he looked at Lucy with such sad eyes that she not only asked for a doggy bag for the steak she had left on her plate, but also inveigled the nice young waiter to see if there were any unwanted bones in the kitchen.

  Lucy was on top form. She had had a wonderful day and told Bill so, repeatedly. He drove home, she fell asleep, and Clive put his head out of the back window and enjoyed the night air.

  Chapter 17

  TUESDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER

  Bill spent the next day sorting what old oak he had in his workshop. Lucy explored the depths of the barn and ferreted around in dark corners, emerging regularly with cobweb-covered and dust-encrusted treasures that she would ask him about excitedly. He had never worked with anybody who had such a thirst for knowledge, and although it slowed things down, he was happy to tell her everything she wanted to know.

  That afternoon, when he walked behind one of the outbuildings that backed onto the meadow, he saw Lucy sitting on the grass, leaning against the sun-warmed stone wall, reading one of his books on antiques. He thought she looked about eighteen years old. He said nothing, turned, and, smiling to himself, walked back into the cool dark of his workshop. She was getting hooked.