I posted one off. The following month, learning who I was, he tried to get me arrested.
I eeled out by threats of wrong publicity. Luckily, his Florence thought what I'd done was sweet. The old lady's still doing her hairdressing. That was how I encountered the Giverills.
You get the point? My rescue of the old lady was fair. Timothy Giverill saw it as doing down Ordered Society, though much later he asked for advice about an antique swing-topped table Florence wanted to sell.
What were they doing here, fish out of water? I wandered among the cars and motorbikes as Sandy's performance reached a tuneless crescendo. Lot of costly motors.
Plush leather, wooden dashboards, a couple with chauffeurs who frostily wound the windows up when I approached. No limos of the sort I'd seen at the Martello tower, and none with diplomatic plates.
Funny expression Timothy had used. What was it, Who'd have thought my world would crash this way? There was another: the Christie-Sotheby business. Had he really said that? Timothy had never done anything else except insurance, and they're all zombified.
You never meet a happy one, like farmers. And his gripe, Insurance seemed so safe.
They make money out of everything, don't they?
'Time they ended, eh?' I said to one limo driver.
'Two more hours. It'll be sodding dark.'
He spoke in disgust. I thought, hell fire. I had to meet Quaker's Maud for a genteel snog, perhaps, or a heartrending tears-and-jam butty out in the sticks. Holy people, Henrietta for instance, think my attitude's reprehensible. But holiness doesn't know that life is basically any port in a storm, and being without a woman is a truly terrible storm.
What can you do? I'd been deprived since Olive's feats in her motor. I thought, aha.
A quick search of the adjacent tennis courts and I found a frayed ball in the undergrowth. I borrowed a penknife from a driver, and slit the ball into hemispheres.
'My girlfriend's car,' I explained to his knowing grin.
Olive Makin's motor I knew well. I shoved the half ball flat over the lock, driver's side, and let it resume its shape. Couple of goes, the lock sprung. I got in and lay down to kip on the rear seat. I thought of switching the radio on but that would have meant scraping the wires. I wanted at least one week without a split nail.
Sleep came easily.
21
EVERYBODY WAKES DIFFERENTLY, don't they.
There was somebody talking, somebody whose scent was familiar answering back. Was it a row? I was back hearing my parents rowing. I was five, and she was going to be absent when my brother and I returned from school that night, though I didn't yet know it. That wasn't right, though, because she wasn't screaming hate. And the man wasn't Dad, who never raised his voice but just took what was coming.
When dreams go wrong, slip back into the doze and maybe when you start again things will all come right. It's what I used to do when I was little, so I tried.
Male said in tones of iron, 'You've got any alternative, Olive dear?'
'No, Mel.'
'Then what are you saying? That you've discovered oil under your pseudo-Mediterranean patio? Or a hundred new Names clamouring to come aboard?'
Silence, then sounds of a backhander. Olive yelped. A fleck of spittle fell cold on my closed eyelid. The motor rocked. Mel and Olive in the motor with me, but doing more than bickering. It had all the sounds of a lover's tiff.
That couldn't be right, my sluggish brain went, because Mel and Sandy are ... And Olive and me had been ... Suddenly I didn't want to hear this. I wanted sleep back.
'You'll be witness, dear.' Mel at his most vicious. 'They'll start home the minute Sandy waves them off, capeesh?'
Silence. A sudden bounce in the motor's suspension, and Olive whimpered. Mel swung at her, three savage slaps, his voice shaking with rage.
'You ... shall... do ... it.'
Olive wept and cringed. My eyes opened. Mel was the beater in the passenger seat, Olive the beatee. I'd never heard him speak with such venom. The jokey waspishness of the avowed person of his proclivities, the barbed wit that amuses women so and always sounds audience-aware, made for titters. But this? Savagery.
Outside was dark, except for slashes of yellow glim from the village hall. I didn't want to be discovered.
'Promise, dear.' That dear was the frightener. As bad as Big John's quiet voice.
'Yes.' Her whisper didn't please him because he sighed.
'I can't hear it, Olive, dear.'
'Yes, Mel. I'll do it.' She sounded so weary. 'Look. If—'
'No, Olive. There's not a single if left. Not since Lovejoy's by-blow scuppered us all.
Understand?'
I thought, Mel means Mortimer. I almost got up and clobbered him but wanted more.
'We're all in it. You too.'
He opened the passenger's door and to my horror the interior light came on. I froze, wishing I'd had the sense to cover myself with a blanket. Except Olive never does carry a blanket in her motor, the stupid cow. See the trouble you get into, depending on women?
'Let the Giverills drive out of the car park, then follow.'
'What do I say when somebody asks me what I saw?' Olive sniffed.
'Use your head, you stupid mare.'
He slammed the door, almost perforating my eardrums. The light dowsed. I thought, God Almighty, I'd never heard Mel speak like a gangster before. A betrayed lover, sure, when Sandy was doing what Sandy gleefully calls pub rubber, or taunting Mel across crowded auction rooms when they'd disagreed on some colour scheme. We all go embarrassed and look at the floor. Mel gets bitter and sulks for days. Sometimes he storms out, even drives off to his cousin's shack near Cherbourg, yet always returns.
The most remarkable thing was, he threatened Olive Makins! Olive, doyenne of affairs of the heart and wallet, the one woman who you'd put your money on to survive.
Queen of cut-throat competition, she ran the local auctioneers' society, and was a hard-dealing contract agent for most. I'd heard Gimbert himself call her Mother Shark. Hard as nails, I'd seen her sack two women for simply getting tired in the Mile End central office. And Olive was a serious investor in trust funds, where you pay in monthly and bankers pretend they've made you a fortune that's always smaller than they promised.
I've seen her throw ledgers in a high street bank.
That was the lady currently weeping at the wheel while I hid. If I sat up, might I try pretending I'd just woken up? I'd never get away with it. Maybe I could eel out, then stroll up and beg a lift to town? Except the light would come on.
No. Stay put. Maybe she would go to the loo? Or go and find Sandy, try to argue him out of whatever course of action he was bent on?
I heard Sandy call, 'Byyyeee peoples! Missing you alreadeee!'
Not far away an engine fired, small motor by the sound of it. It slowly rose in pitch. I heard the motor falter as it took to the highway. Hardly Fangio driving, more your staid middle-of-the-road elderly bloke who'd wax the bonnet to a gleam every Sunday after church ... A horrible thought took hold and I almost sat up, but Olive turned her ignition and moved off, tyres crunching. As the car tilted and picked up speed, I heard Sandy give a shrill scream of laughter.
Well, in for a penny. At least I'd find out what promise Olive had made and who else was involved.
The motor hummed, trying to lull me to sleep. I made myself stay awake. Easy, because the mention of Mortimer – it was Mortimer he'd meant, wasn't it? – had scared me badly. I felt clammy, this time not because of antiques. Maybe Olive secretly realized I was in her car and, sly cow, was chortling away, bent on exposing me at some horrible moment.
Except she had other things on her mind. She started crying again as she turned onto the main arterial road, sniffing and coughing. I heard her handbag click open. Getting a hanky? The last time she'd made that same click, I thought guiltily, was to find something else in her handbag when we were making smiles. I began to hear lorries and heavy wagons overtaking. Olive was not driving fast, so the car she was presumably following was trundling along the same.