‘Won’t anybody tell me who she is?’ Mandy said.
Spilsby was red-faced. ‘It’s my wife.’
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ Mandy said, offering her hand.
She ignored it. ‘Take that carpet back.’
‘It’s a painting of my father’s. Ralph borrowed it one dark night from his studio.’
‘This is my carpet, and you’re stealing it. You belong to a notorious and thieving family.’
‘Mandy and I are engaged to be married,’ Ralph told her.
‘Leave that canvas alone. Your son stole it, not me.’
‘Engaged?’
‘I’m afraid it seems like it,’ her husband said.
Mandy held the door-handle of the Land-Rover, wanting to get away as soon as possible. ‘You’d better be careful if you’re going to be my mother-in-law. I’ll be the one that’s marrying into thieves, and it’s lucky your son wasn’t put away for five years for nicking that painting. My father sent me to get it back, instead of the police. Or my brothers would have come with guns. There’s no messing around in our family.’
Mrs Spilsby let go of the painting: ‘You’re a vicious little liar.’
‘It’s not true,’ Spilsby said. ‘It can’t be.’
‘We love each other,’ Mandy said, tears of rage in her eyes. ‘And nobody’ll stop us getting married.’
Ralph’s peculiar misery made him smile ‘Come on, Mandy.’
‘I’ll get the authorities on to this,’ his mother shouted.
‘Who the hell are they?’ Mandy wanted to know. ‘You’ll get the ground ripped from under you.’
‘You’re a disgraceful little baggage,’ she cried. ‘I’ve heard all about you. You’ll never marry my son.’
‘I won’t, if you’re not careful. You’re a nasty-tempered, dirty-minded, interfering old bag. And I’m not going to put up with it.’
Mrs Spilsby rushed towards her with uplifted hand: ‘I’ll thrash you, I’ll …’
Her husband held her. ‘She’s pregnant,’ Ralph said.
She swung round. ‘What? Oh my God!’
Mandy took the starting-handle from the Land-Rover and held it high with both hands: ‘Don’t let that stop you. Come on, try and thrash me, you domineering bitch. Your sort can’t frighten me. I’ll flatten you.’
Ralph pushed her into the car, got in the other side and sped out of the gate. ‘I’ll have him put away,’ his mother was shouting, and Spilsby’s condolences were scraped by engine-noise.
They drove in silence, until Mandy laughed. ‘Whether you marry me or not,’ she said, lighting a cigarette, ‘you’d better get away from her.’ A lane turned towards green hills, sun and rain mixing on the high crestline. ‘You’re twenty-five,’ she said. ‘How much longer will you put up with it?’
‘I’ll get away,’ he said, ‘when I’m ready. If your father says so we can be married in a fortnight.’
‘He’ll say yes. I would have killed her.’
‘It’s a good job you didn’t. It’s weird though. I’ve never felt like the son of my parents. Either they were born burned-out or I was.’
‘I expect you all were,’ she said. ‘Still, most other people are.’
He drove up the mud lane to Handley’s house. Binoculars were trained on the car when it entered the village. It disappeared under the tunnel of leafy trees, then came out at the turning, spitting mud and twigs from its tyres. Handley, dressed now, pale and tight-lipped, went down to greet them.
‘I’ll carry it into the hall,’ Ralph said, his heart on fire. ‘But first I’ll turn the car round.’
Mandy selected a dry patch of ground and climbed out: ‘Don’t be afraid. He’ll welcome you with open arms to get his painting back.’ And she would have her heart’s desire of a new red Mini, and Ralph after all had unknowingly set off the action which led to it.
‘I have to see someone in Boston,’ he said, ankle-deep in cold mud, ‘otherwise I’d stay.’
Handley stood at the door. ‘If you drop it you’re a dead man.’ Eric Bloodaxe licked Ralph’s hand, which so enraged Albert that he came from the doorway and kicked him between the jaws, sending him back into the kennel without a growl of protest.
They trod silently upstairs to the studio. He remembered Mandy saying Handley was prostrate and ill, but he seemed all right at the moment, albeit silent and grumpy.
‘Let’s open it,’ Albert said when they were inside, ‘and see those pretty games of noughts-and-crosses you’ve been playing.’
Ralph turned to run, but Handley’s scissor legs reached the studio door and slammed it shut. He spun the key in the lock: ‘Let’s be grown up, shall we? I want to see how vicious respectable people can behave. Unroll it.’
Ralph opened a heavy penknife. ‘Put that back in your pocket,’ Handley said. ‘I don’t want any last minute suicide sabotage. Undo them with your fingers.’ They watched. If it weren’t perfect Mandy saw her beautiful spruce car sinking into the quicksands. While knots and string were being undone, Handley lit a cigar and poured out a brandy. He was going to give Ralph one, but drew the bottle back until he saw the painting.
It seemed in perfect condition. Globes of sweat stood on Ralph’s face and his hands trembled. Mandy gasped when the painting lay flat. A hole had been cut neatly in the centre, meticulously measured, as if Ralph had wanted to contribute something to the total effect, a few inches in diameter, small compared to the whole area, but a hole nevertheless, through which all other details of the colourful and complex design seemed intent on flowing. If looked at long enough it hypnotised and psychically unsettled one, and appeared as if all the intricacies of Albert’s art had been born through it.
Something stopped him flying at Ralph across his sea of creation. They pored over it like ghosts, midday lights on, Handley noting the few threads of canvas sticking out loosely from the generally neat edges of the perfect circle. He had violated his painting, gouged out its eye with diabolical patience and delight.
‘So you think you’ve done for me?’ he said, with a faint smile.
Ralph stood up to his full height, a man who always used his courage at the wrong time. ‘No, I don’t. But you deserved it. What else could I do to make you feel ashamed of the way you treated Mandy last year?’
‘What’s he talking about?’ Handley said.
‘I don’t know,’ Mandy wept, her red Mini vanishing. ‘What did you do it for? How stupid can you get? What’s the point of it?’
He was stunned by sudden regret, wary at the sight of Handley who didn’t seem as upset as he ought to be.
‘You want my daughter’s hand in marriage, do you? Is that it? And you want a new Mini, do you? Well, you can have her for your wife with a bullet-hole right through her. And you can have a new car with a grenade-hole through it. Get out of my sight, both of you. Don’t let me see you again.’
Ralph unlocked the door and went down the stairs.
‘I’m not budging,’ Mandy cried, ‘unless I get that car.’
‘Aren’t you? Do you want to go flying out of that skylight window like batman there?’
‘I got the painting back. Now I want that car.’
He took out his wallet, and wrote a cheque for three hundred pounds.
‘It costs six hundred,’ she grumbled.
‘You think I’m buying it cash?’ he said. ‘Get it on the never-never, then we’ll never pay for it. Now get out.’
She kissed him. He called her back. ‘Tell your mam I’ve got the painting, and that it’s all right. And be careful on the roads.’
The sun went and came in again between pale blue water clouds. Fresh air hit him from an open window that he couldn’t yet lock after Ralph’s little job. He’d get Mandy to hem the painting round the hole. Maybe a patch would be possible. The green man of the tree shook its leaves and rustled. He couldn’t imagine leaving Lincolnshire, but lack of imagination was the state in which he committed his most decisive actions. The new record caught his eye, and he put it on the gramophone thinking it might relax him before going down for dinner.