Hide My Eyes (5 page)

“Details urgently required of the following persons:—Woman, seventy to eighty years, brown complexion, wearing grey or green shepherd’s plaid shawl and dark brown hat decorated with large metal beads. Man similar age, white hair round lower part of face, hard hat …”

Bullard stared at the streaming traffic in the Barrow Road. An idea had occurred to him which was credible yet so bizarre that it made him feel dizzy. It was followed by another consideration and in sudden panic he turned back to look again across Garden Green. The seat was bare. The misty sunlight spreading over the little glade showed it forlorn and empty. The young people had gone.

Chapter 4

NUMBER SEVEN

IT WAS A
pretty little house, built near the corner and separated from those on either side by a mass of shrubbery on the left and a high walled garden containing a studio-like building, presumably the museum, on the right. The plaster work of the house itself had been restored and painted a delicate pink, the front door was a shiny peacock blue, and the sheer curtains at all windows were frilled and festooned.

This glory contrasted violently with some of the neighbours, but here and there down the short road which connected Garden Green with Edge Street the same sort of effort had been made. The street was on the upgrade once more.

Richard watched Annabelle’s progress from the corner. She had refused to let him go with her but at the same time had appeared gratifyingly loth to part with him, and he had arranged to wait and see her safely inside.

There was a small paved garden between the house and the road and he watched her cross it and mount the steps to the porch, but after a while she emerged, made him a covert sign to indicate that there was no one at home, and walked on to the door in the garden wall outside which there was a notice in gold on a black board.

COLLECTION OF CURIOS

Interesting Animal Furniture and other Items

acquired by the late Frederick Tassie Esq.

Hours 10 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

Monday to Friday, Admission Free

Please enter

Annabelle paused for a moment to read the neat professional script. Her hair spilt on to her tweed collar, her shoulders were tiny and rounded under the rough cloth,
and
her travelling bag was held behind her in her gloved hand. For Richard she made one of those inexplicably momentous pictures, a pinpoint of wonder, gone as soon as it is born but not to be forgotten in a lifetime.

Presently she glanced back up the road towards him once more, made a little gesture of farewell and disappeared through the door in the wall, leaving him alarmingly bereft.

Once inside she negotiated a glass-covered passage paved with coloured tiles and mounted three red steps to a second door, which opened into a large dim room with an unpolished parquet floor. It smelled violently of naphtha and the uneasy musky scent which hangs for ever round the cured skins of wild animals, and at first glimpse appeared very crowded.

As she stood hesitating, she saw that practically the whole of the room save for the gangway, which was roughly loop shaped, was crammed with unexpected objects whose only common denominator appeared to be the staggering human folly which had perpetrated them.

Some were protected with glass cases but others were not so fortunate, and the centre of the hall was taken up with a sort of big game exhibit with a difference. On a carpet-covered dais two monstrous chairs faced one another. One had been constructed with dreadful cunning actually inside the carcase of a small elephant who knelt, trunk at the salute, to permit the sitter to rest within its quilted stomach, whilst the other had been made in the same unlikely way out of a giraffe whose sad head rose disconsolate just above the occupier’s own. Beside them towered a moth-eaten grizzly whose ferocious snarl was offset by the fact that a statue-of-liberty flambeau adapted to electricity sprouted from one menacing paw, and a moulting ostrich supporting an oil lamp with a pink silk shade completed the group. All four were genuine period pieces, witnesses to a fashion as barbaric and humourless as any in history.

As Annabelle walked round the platform the explanation of the show occurred to her at once. Here, she realised, must be the lifetime’s bag of someone who had played the time-honoured undergraduate’s game of Who Can Bring Home
The
Awfullest Thing with the abandon of youth and the cash of middle age.

She turned aside to the cases, noting the pair of clogs ornamented on the soles with the Lord’s Prayer in coloured nailheads, the coat for a French poodle in black sequins and monkey fur, the six-foot replica in plaster of the bridal cake of nineteenth-century royalty, and the collection of moustache-cups decorated with crowned heads and the flags of all nations.

She came presently to the end of the room where there was a very large glass case set beneath a partially opened window. The exhibit it had contained was dismantled and there was nothing now in the seven-foot cube save a painted backcloth depicting blue sea, a lighthouse and gulls, and, in front, a small double seat which looked as if it had come off a pier.

Glimpses of sturdy iron machinery at the side of the backcloth suggested that at some time the case had housed a working model, and Annabelle, who was attracted by such things, edged round the back to discover if she could find a starting lever. She had found one and was just about to press it when a man’s voice, deep and pleasant, floated in through the window above her.

“There you are, Polly,” it said. “It looks very nice. But I don’t see why you had to wash it yourself.”

“Because I wanted my blankets clean, my boy.” The second voice sounded nice but obstinate. “I appreciate that. I like a man who will help with the laundry. Are you sure you’ve really got to go? If I hadn’t got someone coming in to lunch I’d bully you to stay.”

“Darling, I wish I could, but I’ve got to be at Staines at one and Reading at six. This is a hopeless time to call, I know, but I couldn’t pass through London without looking you up, could I?” He hesitated and added after a pause, “Everything’s all right then, is it?”

“All right?” The query was shocked. “Of course it’s all right. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know.” He had a very pleasant laugh. “I was just fishing to be sure you were glad to see me.”

“Well of course I am.” The elderly voice sounded the least bit flustered. “You’re a good boy, Gerry.”

“Whatever they say?”

“Oh go along with you. When are you coming in again? I can’t promise, but next time I may have something to show you.”

His reply was lost to Annabelle whose experimental tinkering with the lever bore sudden results. Ancient wheels began to turn, the backcloth to revolve, and at the same time the small siren concealed in the top of the case began to blare loudly.

The noise was considerable and there seemed no way of stopping it. The performance, such as it was, went on to the end. A painted jetty appearing on the backcloth lurched jerkily across the scene, followed by a dolphin, and all the time a very fair imitation of a steamer’s whistle continued to fill the dusty air.

Annabelle was still struggling with the controls when a side door to the garden clattered open and a man came sprinting down the gangway. He laughed at her expression and, stooping in front of the case, pulled a concealed lever beneath it. The backcloth shuddered to a standstill and the noise ceased.

“That’s a bit better, isn’t it?” It was the voice she had heard talking in the garden. “Mrs. Tassie thought it might be children. They get in here and play the goat with the place.” He was dusting his hands with a spotted scarf he had drawn from his pocket and now he handed it to her absently. “Scrub on this. It’s impossible to keep all this stuff even faintly clean.”

He treated her as if he had known her for a long time and Annabelle, to whom the approach was new, was delighted. She considered him with interest.

Although he was almost old from her point of view, thirty if not more, she found him exciting to look at. His coarse fair hair was worn en brosse and he had deep actor’s lines down lantern cheeks. Only the heavy muscles of his neck spoiled him. His round brown eyes were bright if not otherwise expressive, and he had a long-boned loose-jointed figure
which
was well suited by the light khaki trench coat which he wore belted tightly round him. Annabelle grinned as she returned the scarf.

“Thank you very much. I’m awfully sorry I meddled with this thing. What was it exactly?”

He did not reply at once and she added awkwardly, “I mean, what was in it? What was on the seat?”

He remained looking at her and her impression was that she had offended him somehow, or raised an unfortunate subject. There was no actual change in his expression but she was aware of a sudden cessation of contact like a flaw in a soundtrack. A moment later he was smiling again.

“Chimpanzees,” he said briefly. “Two chimps dressed as yachtsman, as far as I can remember. They got the moth in a big way and had to be written off. It’s a fantastic collection. The old boy who made it was a charmer, but round the bend I fear. Have you seen the rest? My favourite is along here somewhere, just beyond the stove, a horse’s hat made of fishbones knitted by some insanitary islander. Ah, here is Madame.”

He nodded his excuses and went off down the room to meet the newcomer who had appeared at the garden door. Annabelle saw her with a sense of deep relief. She was just an ordinary old woman, solid and kindly, like thousands of others up and down the country. A mum if ever there was one, with a pink and white skin and smooth grey hair. The sleeves of her dark woollen dress were rolled up and she wore a neat pinafore decorated with forget-me-nots as innocently blue as her eyes.

As the man came up to her she put a hand on his coat.

“Thank you, my dear. I can’t bear that row. Must you go? Well, run along. Get all your business done and come and see me again. Is there anything you’d like to take with you?”

He laughed. “The bear, perhaps,” he suggested, pointing to it. “Bless you, Polly, it’s been lovely to see you.” He put his arms round her and hugged her and she patted him, rubbing his shoulder with a funny little gesture which was pure affection.

The encounter surprised and slightly irritated the watching Annabelle. Without realising it, she had been counting on the idea of herself as the only relative. But these two people were fond of each other, she saw, not in love but loving.

“I’ll give you bear,” the woman said, laughing. “You bring me back the others first. Go on, be off with you! Come back when you can. I’m always pleased to see you, you know that. Goodbye, my dear, goodbye.”

“Goodbye, old gal.” He touched her cheek and went, the inspired cut of the raincoat lending his gaunt figure a swagger as he strode through the main door to the passage and the street. Just before he disappeared he raised a farewell hand to Annabelle, still standing by the empty case at the end of the room.

Mrs. Tassie stood looking after him for a moment before she came on down the aisle. She was smiling happily and for the first time Annabelle caught a glimpse of her as she must have been when Uncle Frederick had forsaken home and family and fiancée for her, not only a blazing country beauty but a character, vital as the spring.

She smiled at the girl, cleared her throat, and embarked upon what was clearly a set-piece.

“Good morning,” she began briskly. “Now, the little collection which you see before you is not necessarily of an educational nature. It was made by my late husband, Frederick Edwin Tassie, to entertain himself and to satisfy his own tastes, which were for the remarkable and unusual….” She paused abruptly and looked hard at Annabelle. “Well, dear, you see what it’s like,” she went on relinquishing the formal style with unexpected completeness. “There’s a lot of it, some bits much better than others. You like mechanical things best, do you?”

Annabelle blushed. “I’m sorry I started the siren. I was wondering how it worked, you see, and …”

“Never mind. The things are here to be looked at. My husband loved showing his old toys to people. That’s what gave me the idea. It’s much better than a grave, isn’t it?”

“A grave?”

“A monument.” The old mouth was contemptuous. “You
know
, ducky, lumps of marble in a cemetery, or little glass blisters with ducks or doves or something in them. I thought the old sport would rather have his bits of nonsense kept somewhere where people who were kiddish like himself could enjoy them, so that’s what I did. I spent the money on this place. It can’t last, of course, but then what does? I must go over these blessed animals for moth again soon.”

“That must be quite a problem.” Annabelle, who had experienced it at home, was sympathetic. “That’s how you lost the monkeys, isn’t it?”

“No, we never had monkeys. Frederick didn’t like them. He knew he looked a little bit like one, wicked old thing.” She was frowning and her still pretty eyes had become shocked. “Did Gerry Hawker tell you there were monkeys once in the steamboat? That’s this thing you started.”

The girl was embarrassed. “The man I was just talking to said something about chimpanzees.”

“That was Gerry, the sinner.” Mrs. Tassie spoke mildly. “He didn’t want to be reminded. He’s lost those figures, you know, that’s about it.” She went over to to the empty case and peered in regretfully. “There were two dear old people sitting in there,” she announced unexpectedly. “They were life size and quite wonderfully done. Easily the best thing in the place. The old woman had a nice silk dress and a shawl, and a bonnet with jet bugles on it, while the old man was so real he was quite as good as anything in Tussaud’s. The show was called The Steamboat, or Crossing the Bar, and they used to doze there together looking so sweet. When the jetty went by at the back it was exactly as if they were on a boat, sailing off together somewhere.”

Annabelle, who was too young ever to have encountered any entertainment of a similar unlikely kind, so fashionable at the end of the last century, was rendered temporarily speechless and her guide continued. “Frederick adored it. He bought it in an auction room in Blackpool when one of the showmen sold up, and he’d be livid with Gerry for losing the figures, although he was so fond of him. I must get them back from the boy. They’d got a bit of moth and he took them to have them renovated for me, and of course
that’s
the last I heard of them. It must be nearly a year ago.