‘Anyway, why should I come with you, Jude? You’re not proposing I should masquerade as an acupuncturist, are you?’
‘No, I just thought you might want to have a look around.’
‘But how would you explain my presence?’
‘It wouldn’t need any explanation. I’d just say, “Carole’s a friend of mine. She wanted to have a look round, so she came along with me”.’
‘“Have a look round”? That sounds like snooping.’
‘Only to you it does. Look, Ned and Sheena are running this glamping as a commercial business. For all they know, you’re a prospective client. You might want Stephen, Gaby and Lily to stay there at some point.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. Camping and Stephen never really did get along.’
‘Well, as I say, if you want to come with me to Butterwyke House on Saturday, fine. If you don’t, equally fine.’
It was far too casual an arrangement to match Carole’s standards, typical of her friend’s vagueness in social matters. If the owners of Butterwyke House had actually invited Jude to take a friend along, that would have been entirely different. Carole was rather intrigued by the suggestion, though.
‘Anyway, what we need now,’ announced Jude, ‘is two more of those large Chilean Chardonnays.’
‘Oh, I don’t think we—’
‘Yes, we do,’ said Jude as she sailed magnificently up towards the bar.
THREE
Carole Seddon arrived at the Cornelian Gallery on the dot of ten thirty on the Thursday morning. As she prepared to leave High Tor, Gulliver had got very excited, thinking he was going to get another walk. When it was clear that wasn’t on the cards, he went off and lay down reproachfully in front of the Aga. Soon be time to switch that off for the summer, thought Carole. Gulliver wouldn’t like his source of warmth being removed either. His lugubrious expression seemed to anticipate future annoyances.
The gallery door had a sign on it saying ‘OPEN’ and it gave when Carole pushed, but there was no one inside. Everything looked exactly the same as it had on the Monday. Maybe the odd Monet pencil sharpener had been sold, but all of the framed artworks were still in place on the walls. It was a long time, Carole began to think, since business had been brisk in the Cornelian Gallery.
She looked more closely at the Piccadilly snowscape on the wall and wondered why it intrigued her. The buses struggling up Regent Street were old-fashioned double-deckers, and the clothes of the red-faced people in the streets suggested the work had been done some thirty years before. There was something unusual about the sludginess of the scene, a quality which should have been depressing, but was perversely uplifting. She noticed the painting was signed in the corner with the initials ‘A.W.’
Carole waited, not quite sure what to do. Had there been a bell on the counter, she would have rung it. Someone more relaxed than Carole Seddon would probably have called out ‘Hello!’ or ‘Anyone there?’ or even ‘Shop!’, but she only aspired to a couple of loud throat-clearings. There was no response.
The silence wasn’t total, though. Sounds emanated from the closed door at the back of the gallery. Presumably Spider was there, working longer hours than his employer. Really, Carole reasoned, it was him she needed to see rather than Bonita. Spider was the one who was actually framing her photograph, after all, so it’d make sense for her to collect it from him.
Carole moved forward and tapped on the connecting door. The sounds from the other side abruptly ceased, but there was no answering voice. She tapped again, then boldly pushed the door open and stepped forward into the framing workshop.
It was a large space, probably twice the size of the gallery in front, full of machinery most of whose functions Carole could only guess at. The one she could identify was a huge guillotine mounted at the end of a large table. Fixed to one wall was a cabinet making a grid of deep pigeon holes, containing lengths of different framings. Against another different grades and sizes of glass were stacked. Like Spider’s overalls, every space was splattered with paint and glue. There was a haze of white dust and a mixture of smells, among which newly cut wood predominated.
In the centre of the workshop stood the considerable bulk of Spider. The expression on his face suggested he didn’t like having his inner sanctum invaded. He said no word of greeting to the intruder.
‘I’m Carole Seddon. I was in here on Monday with a photograph to be framed. Bonita said it would be ready today.’ He still said nothing. ‘Is it ready?’
After a silence, he conceded two words to her. ‘It’s ready.’
‘Well, Bonita doesn’t seem to be around, so if I could just pick it up and sort out what I owe you . . .’
‘I don’t deal with the money,’ said Spider slowly. ‘Or the packing. Bonita does that.’
‘Oh, I don’t need the photograph packed. I only live just up the High Street.’
‘Bonita does the packing,’ Spider repeated. ‘I don’t, like, want the responsibility. If something gets broken.’
‘I’m sure the photograph won’t get broken between here and where I live? I wonder, could I see it . . .?’
Spider gave this proposition a long moment’s thought. Then, apparently unable to see any harm in obeying it, he bent down to a rack of his recent work and extracted the framed photograph.
He had done a brilliant job. Lily looked wonderful. Carole couldn’t wait to have the picture hanging in pride of place on her sitting room wall.
‘Oh, that’s terrific! Thank you so much. Are you sure I can’t just settle up with you and—’
‘Bonita deals with the money,’ he insisted. His tone was not aggressive, but it couldn’t be argued against. Carole wondered for a moment whether it was just she who prompted this reticence in the framer. But, though normally ready to detect the smallest slight, she quickly decided that it was just Spider’s manner, a form of shyness perhaps, that he would display to whoever he met.
His body language made it clear that he wanted to be alone, but Carole lingered. Rather than asking her to leave, Spider turned pointedly back to his work. He picked up two pieces of wooden frame whose ends had been cut diagonally and lined up their edges together on one the bench-mounted machines. He depressed a foot pedal and a slight thump was heard. Then he picked up the two pieces of frame, now conjoined into a right angle.
‘Sorry, but what is that machine?’ asked Carole.
‘Underpinner,’ came the minimal reply.
‘And what does it do?’
‘Underpins,’ replied Spider with, for the first time, a slight edge to his voice. Carole continued to look expectantly at him, so he provided a reluctant explanation. ‘Fixes the joint, like, with vee-nails.’
‘Vee-nails?’
‘Shaped like a vee.’ Spider turned round the L-shaped section of the frame and showed the metallic heads of the rivets embedded deeply into the joint.
‘Oh, I see.’ Carole moved her hand across to the metal plate of the underpinner. ‘So the vee-nails pop up through—’
‘No.’ Spider immobilized her hand in a tight but surprisingly gentle grip. ‘Don’t go near that. Could do you a nasty injury.’ Then, suddenly embarrassed by the contact, he released his hold.
‘What do all the other machines do?’ asked Carole, emboldened by the moment of intimacy.
To her surprise, Spider readily answered her question. She decided that he was just deeply shy, but talking on the subject of his work he relaxed considerably. He was almost gleeful as he demonstrated to her the Morso mitre-cutting machine, which produced exact forty-five-degree angles at the touch of a foot pedal. He showed her the glazing gun, which used compressed air to shoot metal ‘points’ into the back of a frame to fix glass and mounts in place. He then moved on to the mount-cutter and the vacuum press for mounting and heat-sealing prints and photographs. And he was starting to describe the ancient and laborious process of mixing gesso and rabbit-skin glue to make mouldings for picture frames, when the demonstration was interrupted by the appearance of Bonita Green.