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Authors: Judith Cutler

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BOOK: Silver Guilt
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She met me in her car, which seemed reassuringly small. Her husband was away, working in The Hague, she said, which ought to have meant something but didn't.

‘So if you don't mind, we'll eat in the kitchen. Warm there. Here we are,' she concluded, pulling into a circular driveway in front of a lovely double-fronted house – the Old Rectory. ‘Drink now or do you want to freshen up first?'

‘If freshening involves a loo, I'd like to freshen,' I said.

‘In that case I'll show you your room.' She opened the front door and dived through to silence the burglar alarm. ‘Straight up the stairs.'

I would have spent ten minutes stroking the banister rail if I hadn't had to follow her. Her clothes weren't so much casual as scruffy, her moccasins worn right down the back.

She installed me in a big square room, with a huge double bed in the middle and a single one at the side. ‘Bathroom's next door. Come down when you're ready.'

The bathroom might be measured in acres but the towels were thin and grey. No bathrobe. For a moment I thought even my father would be shocked, but I told myself I was exaggerating.

Nella hadn't left a trail of breadcrumbs or a piece of string to guide me, so I just had to guess and pray she wouldn't mind if I got it wrong. I wasn't going to hang about worrying. I might freeze to death if I did. I turned on the huge cast iron radiator before I set out, but apart from a few hostile clunkings, it didn't seem about to deliver anything else.

Once you've slept on the streets, you learn how to keep warm. So I rolled myself in the old-fashioned eiderdown from the big bed and cocooned myself on the smaller. But I wanted to cry. Why had Griff sent me up here to this arctic house to stay with a woman who must have had antifreeze running through her veins? Why had I agreed to help a woman who'd produced undercooked rabbit pie, which I'd always hated on account of their little white tails, and a strange lumpy mash of all sorts of root vegetables that were supposed to be good for you? Why had I got to get up before six so I could go and set up a stall full of items I knew nothing about and cared less? I'd have put my head down and cried, except I'd learned a long time ago that there's nothing worse than tears for leaving your cheeks cold, and maybe chapped.

‘You don't half owe me, Griff, you old bugger,' I muttered. And then I remembered one more thing. I'd managed to squeeze Tim the Teddy into a corner of my case, and he was probably as cold and pissed off as I was. So I pulled him into bed with me and for all our grumblings we fell asleep remarkably quickly.

FOUR

‘N
ow, Lina, what you have to do is this,' Nella said. ‘Forget you've spent hours arranging things and adjusting lights. Imagine you're a punter. What do you see? For God's sake, don't just stand there: do it properly. Go out into the foyer and turn round and come back into the hall. Look at the other dealers' displays. Then look at mine. And tell me what you think.'

Mine, not ours, I noticed. Well, it was her stall. Argentia Antiques. The name board was in tasteful silver on a black ground, with Lady Petronella Cordingly in smaller but distinct letters underneath. So I mustn't get stroppy. As for the display, I'd done the donkey work, of course, but that was what I'd come for. I'd unpacked thousands of pounds' worth of metal and given it a last polish and placed it exactly where Nella had told me. Only I'd never got it exactly right. She'd tweaked every last salver. So I was glad to get away from her for a bit, before I lost my temper.

Very well, what would a punter see? The entrance hall was a big carpeted space, with a bank of tables on the left; behind them sat well-dressed ladies (they'd definitely call themselves ladies, not women) with extravagant hairdos. They were pretending that they were doing real work when all they were doing was checking pre-bought tickets and handing out expensively produced guides to the stands. The ticket office proper was the other side.

Some burly Brummie men checked tickets; later they would be checking people as they came out. Every punter had to show the documentation from people like me to prove that he or she had bought whatever it was, not just nicked it. One of the men spotted me and winked.

‘Bloody brass monkey weather! Is it any warmer in there?'

‘Got to be, hasn't it?' said one of his mates. ‘People are supposed to leave their coats over there. You get back in, my wench, before you freeze.'

I nodded, ready to take his advice. There were loos and a restaurant upstairs, apparently, but I wasn't interested in those. It'd be a sandwich on the hoof for me, if the fairs Griff and I did were anything to go by. On the other hand, the coffee at a little stall off to the left smelt good. Probably better than that in the flask Nella had prepared for us. But I didn't think I'd earn brownie points if I returned with a paper cup.

So as Nella ordered me to do, I checked out the competition – and rather enjoyed it, too. One furniture stand had nothing except stunning Regency furniture, all genuine by the looks of it – not to mention the prices. Then there were areas devoted to pictures. I wouldn't know a fake Hockney from a real one, but the price tickets suggested the Hockneys – and the Lowrys – were spot on too. I fell in love with a sketch by Laura Knight, but my affection would have to be unreturned. No, not unreturned. What was the word? I'd put it in my vocab book. Unrequited, that was it. Then there were loads of big unaffordable gilt-framed jobs, all undemanding and unexciting – the sort of thing you'd buy if you had a lot of cash, a lot of wall and no confidence. There was some beautifully lit jewellery, some military stuff, a grand piano on a little platform, a bigger refreshment area – and yes, here was Argentia Antiques, looking extremely pleased with itself. To do Nella justice, she'd been right to make me move things from where I'd put them. She herself looked smart but not chic. On the other hand, I should have used those loos I'd spotted to clean my nails and apply what Griff always called slap. With a quick smile I burrowed under the skirts of the display stand and fished out my bag from the cupboard there, which also held our coats and my book on silver, just in case I had a chance to mug up. I'd marked my place with a business card.

The loos were as different from the glitter of the hall as they could be – I'd seen more luxurious public ones. Anyway, here I was, clean and tarted up, and ready to face the world.

By the time I got back, there was a man sitting down to play the piano, and a photographer was snapping the great and the good. He even photographed me, so I was glad I'd taken some trouble with the lippie. I remembered to hand him one of Nella's cards.

And then it was action stations. Yes, even the well-heeled punters – £10 a time to get in, as opposed to the fiver or less at the fairs Griff and I usually sold at – managed a bit of a rush. At this stage there was a lot of milling round and peering, before people moved on to the next area. I wasn't surprised. At the sort of prices Nella and her colleagues were asking, you wouldn't be making too many impulse buys. Nella greeted a lot of people with air-kisses. I stood around doing my best to look both decorative (not easy), and knowledgeable (quite hard).

In similar circumstances Griff would have sent me off to sniff out bargains on competitors' stalls. The idea was to find something they really knew nothing about and as a result had underpriced. Any bargains here would have been relative – and way beyond my budget. Nella unlocked the cabinet and showed off a couple of fine pieces. She put them back and locked up again. Another punter. A sale! But nothing that involved me, no matter how hard I wanted to help. The purchaser stood and talked for ages. She and Nella exchanged family news, and at one point photos were shown.

So I stood and smiled until my face started to ache. The pianist switched to slow stuff, as if his fingers were tired. One-two-three, one-two-three: I tried to recall what Griff had told me about rhythms when he'd pushed me round the kitchen in an effort to teach me to dance. Waltz-time. That was it. Thinking about Griff made my feet move in time with the music. Not a lot, not enough to draw attention to myself. Just enough to stop me screaming with boredom. If I'd had better hair I might have been happy to swap with one of the ticket ladies.

Griff would be cross with me. Life was too short ever to be bored, he said. Just look at people if you've ever a spare minute. Learn from them. So I blinked my eyes extra hard and started looking. The two men were there again.

I hadn't registered them consciously before. But now it dawned on me that I had seen two men looking hard at one of Nella's cabinets several times. Of course, people do this all the time. They fall for an item but think it's too pricey. Or they think something might do as a gift, only they're just not sure. But there was nothing wistful or thoughtful about these two. Had Nella clocked them? Had the other exhibitors? On home territory I could have sneaked over to one of our friends and asked them for the low-down. Not here.

Did any exhibitors look as if they'd welcome a friendly natter? Not enough to interrupt a possible sale, that was for sure. Wherever I looked, plastic was being shoved into terminals and codes being inserted.

The men had disappeared. Why hadn't I thought of tailing them?

They were so ordinary-looking, trying so hard not to draw attention to themselves, they must have been up to something. Were they planning to steal something? And if so, what? I drifted over to the display case they'd been most interested in. Well, with nothing in it costing less than £4000, they'd have had a good selection. Perhaps it was time to revise my opinion of Nella, which had fallen quite a lot in the last twenty-four hours. She'd put Lord Elham's Hungarian silver dish dead centre, with a couple of spots highlighting it nicely. It looked really good, worth every penny of the £7250 price she'd written in code on the reverse of the card beside it. She'd be able to drop it slightly if anyone asked for her best price on it – if people did such things at exalted events like this.

I felt eyes on our area again. Male again. This time a very expensive-looking man, probably in his later forties. He wasn't looking at the display or at me, but at Nella. I could have sworn he caught her eye and touched his watch. She responded with a swift smile which he returned.

The pianist played on. He'd moved to a piece by Schubert that Griff played when his arthritis wasn't troubling him – an Impromptu, it was called. I hummed it, under my breath, I'd thought, only Nella stared at me.

I stopped. ‘Is there anything I can do?' I asked. ‘It doesn't seem right for me to be standing around doing nothing, and it'd look unprofessional to sit reading, even if it is a book on silver.'

‘It would indeed. Dear me, I thought you'd have more stamina than this.'

‘I can work till the cows come home, Nella,' I said sharply. ‘You ask your brother. Aidan knows I'm happy working sixteen-, eighteen-hour days when Griff and I are under pressure and I don't want Griff to wear himself out.'

‘So what exactly do you do at a sale?'

What did she think I did? Walk round on my hands? And why had she asked me along if she needed an answer? ‘Sell. Griff reckons I can sell sand to Arabs. Or I might mooch and buy from other people. Or just keep my eyes open. Which I've been doing today. Have you noticed a couple of men dead interested in something in that display case?' I pointed. ‘Can't keep their eyes off it – they've been back three or four times now. Look, they're both about forty, one quite good-looking and the other quite steely-eyed.'

She rubbed her hands in very upper-class glee. ‘I was going to ask you to serve while I have some lunch, but if you think there's a likely sale—'

‘I told you, I can sell things. I know the code you use. And if anyone haggles, I can always call you on your mobile.'

She nodded, bending to retrieve her bag from the cupboard. ‘Let me see you put the number in your phone,' she said. She sounded so like my least-favourite headmistress I could have head-butted her. Come to think of it, I'd been wanting to hit her all morning.

Instead I did as I was told. Off she went, followed at a discreet distance by the handsome man who'd signalled to her earlier. She had a nice husband, did she, Griff? Well, it looked as if she had a nice toy boy too.

‘It's Scottish,' I told the gentle-faced woman in her sixties who'd drifted over and pointed at what looked like a toast rack for five thousand. ‘And it's a bannock rack. Shall I reach it out for you?' Griff had dinned it into me that the greatest step to getting a punter to buy an item, even if he'd said it was beyond his price range, was letting him handle it. Would it work now? Without waiting for an answer, I unlocked the case, making sure I locked it again. I pressed the bannock rack into her hand. ‘Robertson of Edinburgh. You can see his mark. And here's the date – 1773.'

She turned it over and over.

‘I always think one of the greatest pleasures of an item like this is knowing how many other people have used it. Like that spectacle case over there, with the chain to attach to a chatelaine.' I adopted a really awful Scots accent: ‘And do ye like your bannocks well or lightly done, ma'am?'

I was rewarded by a laugh, but the shake of the head was regretful. It really was beyond her budget, even when I quoted the discounted price. But maybe the spectacle case wasn't. I reached it without her asking, and fished out the spectacles inside.

‘Sometimes you can even see through them,' I said, extending the sides and perching the frame on my nose. ‘See?'

She tried. And I knew I had a sale. This time I didn't quote the discounted price.

Nella had taken a very long lunch, but her coffers were fuller and her shelves emptier by three more items when she returned. She looked surprised rather than approving, but sent me off for lunch too. My stomach's rumblings would have drowned any protests if I'd tried to make them.

BOOK: Silver Guilt
11.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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