by Cavan Scott
The art critic pushed her way through the throng. A minute before, she’d been rather intimidated by all this celebrity. Now it was as though they’d all melted away. She stared up at the paintings – at beautiful boats sailing into sunsets; at noble Romans dying nobly; at shoemakers laughing; at vases of flowers – and she just couldn’t believe it.
‘The Reissmann Collection,’ she started yelling, over and over.
Eventually, someone Googled it on their phone and gasped. Two minutes later, everyone in the entire room was an expert on the Reissmann Collection.
Back in the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of precious artworks were stolen by the Nazi Party from doomed Jewish families. After the Second World War, grieving relatives set about trying to recover them, but the process was long and difficult. Occasionally a petitioner would strike it lucky – perhaps they’d be having a meeting with a bureaucrat about a certain work of art and realise it was on the wall. Mostly, it was all very mysterious and murky.
For years, the Reissmann Collection had topped the list of mysterious murkiness. All that remained of a family with exquisitely good taste was a group of amazing paintings – believed to have vanished into a Swiss vault. The Swiss banks had professed themselves entirely innocent. By complete coincidence, Lord Ascot owned a Swiss bank. He’d once told a journalist that he’d love to help, but his bank had never had any Nazi clients, and, even if they had (which they did not), they’d now be long dead. Under the terms of their account, the contents of their private vaults would have been emptied, and he would have, naturally, returned the artworks to their rightful owners.
Only here was the entire Reissmann Collection, adorning the walls of the Ascot Gallery. Alongside framed photos of Lord Ascot posing with some of the more remarkable works of art. Here he was with a Goya, there with a Van Gogh, ah, and pretending to dance with a Michelangelo statue. In each picture, Lord Ascot was wearing SS uniform.
Five minutes later, the waiting photographers were treated to the sight of Lord Ascot running from his own gallery, out into the terrible red rain, rain that had soaked into the walls of his building and was now splashing around in scarlet puddles.
It was only the fear of that horrible rain that caused the furious mob behind him to draw back, watching the panting, pot-bellied man run onto his bridge.
Lord Ascot made it to the middle and then stopped, a stitch snatching at his heart. Catching his breath, he noticed the figure watching him from the other side. She was smiling under her umbrella.
If a spider could smile, it would have smiled that smile.
‘You!’ gasped Lord Ascot, recognising the woman from his club. ‘You!’
The figure nodded. ‘I promised I’d make you sorry.’
‘You’ve ruined me.’
The figure shrugged, then checked her watch with elaborate boredom. ‘Time I was off,’ she said. ‘Could I trouble you to say something nice?’
‘What?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the woman tutted. ‘Just a pleasantry. No?’
She turned and walked away into the rain.
No one quite got to the bottom of what happened next. Many people claimed that the stampede across the bridge had weakened it structurally. Some people came up with some elaborate theories.
What everyone could agree on was that the Ascot Bridge suddenly and dramatically collapsed, plunging Lord Ascot into the churning red waters of the Thames and burying him under the rubble. Even more remarkably, at that precise moment, it stopped raining, and a ghastly sun shone on a river stained the colour of cheap red wine.
That was the last that was ever heard of Lord Ascot.
Bobo Braithwaite woke up tied to some train tracks and wondered if it was another of his stag-dos. It would be just like the boys to pull a stunt like this.
‘I really have to give up drinking,’ Bobo sighed. ‘And getting married.’
Mind you, he thought as he tried to scratch an itch on his nose, he was almost sure he’d know if another marriage was looming. For one thing there’d have been meetings with lawyers. Probably saying, ‘Oh Bobo, not again.’ Then again, his lawyers were always saying that.
Bobo was an entrepreneur – he built motorways, he ran trains, he jumped out of aeroplanes (he owned a fleet of them) – and, gosh, everyone loved Bobo. He wasn’t conventional. He said outrageous things, all of them muttered through a mop of untidy hair. And if you wanted someone to launch your event, then he’d not only parachute in, he’d do it wearing a Union Jack nappy.
Even the people who hated Bobo still admired him in a way. He was a dynamo, a powerhouse. He created jobs, he made things happen, and everyone wanted a piece of him. He was being talked about as a possible transport minister. ‘But gosh,’ he’d said when asked about it. ‘What can they want with me? Politicians are clever chaps, and I’m just a big mouth and I’m always popping my foot in it. No no no. I’d much rather get on with it and get the job done on time and without spending too much dosh.’
After that carefully calculated outburst, the cries to make him transport minister had only grown in intensity. Bobo didn’t intend to take the job, of course, but the talk of it made sorting out contracts for his various ventures much more easy.
But why was he tied to a train track? Bobo gave up trying to scratch his nose and pondered his situation. The train track was not comfortable, but his surroundings were idyllic. What a lovely bit of unspoilt countryside to put a train line through. ‘God’s own country,’ he thought.
Then he understood. That was why he was tied to a train track, of course! Silly Bobo!
‘Publicity stunt,’ he said, happily, and looked around for the cameras so he could give it his Best-of-British all.
Any minute now, why, yes, the director would appear, telling him how splendidly he was doing. Classic Bobo. Doing an advert for his new high-speed train line strapped down to his own track.
Why, he could see a figure wandering towards him across a meadow. Now, if it had been a stag-do then she’d have made a very odd kissogram – dressed up in flowing plum skirts, poking at the daisies with her parasol. Mind you, she was probably the director of the advert. They let women do all sorts of things these days. And very splendidly they did them too.
The woman stopped, seemed to notice him for the first time, and acted with pantomime surprise at discovering him. Bobo laughed along.
‘Hallooo there!’ he called to her. ‘How am I doing? Hope I’m not being too hopelessly dreadful.’ Always good to come across as eager to please. People liked that.
‘Oh no,’ the woman replied. ‘You’re doing a simply lovely job … of being a victim.’ She hopped over a low fence and slid down the narrow embankment onto the line. As she did so she said, ‘Wheeeeee.’
Bobo frowned and blew some hair out of his eyes. Crikey. This woman seemed familiar. Vague memory of her seeming to be quite angry and vowing revenge. Which, given Bobo’s experience of the opposite sex, didn’t really narrow it down that much.
No. Wait.
Gosh.
‘I remember you,’ he said, and, for the first time he felt a slight shiver in this perfect summer’s day. ‘From my club. The woman … well … the woman who wanted to be a member.’
‘I am a member!’ she said, exasperated. She angrily picked up a buttercup, and started to coo, ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ as she pulled at the petals.
‘Oh, well done you!’ Bobo wriggled against the rope tying him down. ‘You don’t need a stuffy old club. Why, look at you – directing this advert. I say. It is an advert, isn’t it?’
The woman dropped the beheaded flower and leaned over him, confidential. ‘Little secret. It’s not an advert.’
‘Oh.’
The woman did an impression of a steam train, including pistoning her elbows.
‘Why are you doing that?’
‘Chuff chuff chuff. Doing what? Chuff chuff chuff.’
‘Pretending to be a steam train.’
‘Because you like
trains, Bobo dear. Poot, poot.’ She stood up, surveying the track. ‘And what a train line this is! High speed. Whoosh. Going through some quite dolly fields at vast public expense and a staggering amount of corruption.’ She winked, slyly. ‘That’s between you and me. But I’ve read the accounts.’ She yawned. ‘What a lot of naughty numbers.’
Bobo harrumphed. That was just how one did business. Something showy and public and very exciting. Oodles of profit for yours truly and no promises broken because one never quite made any.
‘Forgive me if I’m being a dense duffer, but why am I tied to this train track?’
The woman laughed. ‘It’s because I’m going to marry you.’
Ah, thought Bobo, miserably. It had been a stag-do after all. And he really was getting married again. He looked at the woman, uncertainly. Crumbs. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t recall—’
‘You want to get off this train track don’t you?’ The woman rapped the rails with her umbrella. The line sang. ‘I mean, there could be a train heading towards you at any moment. I imagine you’d hear it. Shoof-ta-kuff, shoof-ta-kuff. Wooo Wooo. Most exciting. Well, until it runs you over.’
Bobo considered his options. He’d married worse. ‘All right, I’ll say “I do”.’
‘You do? Oh lovely. You’ve made me the happiest woman alive.’ The woman did a little dance, then stuck two fingers in her mouth and made a shrill whistle. ‘Reverend! You’re on!’
Footsteps crunched hurriedly along the gravel and a throat was cleared in a uniquely professional way. Bobo wasn’t surprised to see a vicar trot into view.
‘We’re getting married here? Now?’ said Bobo.
‘Why not?’ declared the woman. ‘I’m impulsive. You’re impulsive. And I brought a cake.’ She took her hat off and looked inside it and then frowned. ‘Well. Maybe I ate the cake. Anyway.’ She clapped her fingers together and the vicar opened his prayer book.
The woman put her hand confidentially to the side of her mouth. ‘This is the Reverend St John Colquhoun.’
‘I, ah, used to be the pastor of the parish of St Mede’s,’ the vicar essayed in a plummy wobble. ‘Lovely spot.’
‘I must visit,’ Bobo offered politely.
‘Oh, you are visiting,’ the vicar said dryly. ‘The church used to be right here. Before you had it bulldozed to make way for your train line.’
‘He’s very cross with you,’ the woman confided in a stage whisper.
‘Oh gosh,’ sighed Bobo dolorously. ‘Gosh and golly.’ This tactic had got him out of several scrapes in the past. ‘As Petronius wrote in The Satyricon—’
The woman snapped her fingers. ‘No time for that.’ She tipped her head to one side. ‘Ding-dong, the bells are going to chime.’ She turned to the Rev Colquhoun. ‘GET ME MARRIED,’ she screamed.
So the vicar did, with a steely indifference to the groom being tied to a train line. When he reached the part that ponders ‘If any of you know cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it,’ he magnificently ignored the woman who was jumping up and down and waving her hands in the air and yelling, ‘Me! Me! Me! Pick me, sir!’
The vicar cleared his throat, and cantered to the end of the service. He inclined towards Bobo with a dry smile. ‘You may now kiss the—’
He didn’t get to say ‘bride’ as the woman had already thrown herself on top of Bobo, smearing his cheeks with a thousand lipstick pecks.
‘Done, my love, done!’ she cried, laughing. She rolled off him, lying beside him on the track. She was looking up at the sky calling out the shapes of clouds. ‘That looks like a moo-cow, that looks like a baa-lamb, and that looks like a subdural hematoma.’
‘A what?’
‘Funny thing about high-speed trains – they’re supposed to run in a straight line. It’s what makes them high speed.’ The woman yawned noisily. ‘Trains! I’m boring my own teeth out of my mouth, but it’s true. Straight line equals whoosh. And this train line goes in a lovely straight line from A to B ever so ever so fast. Apart from here, where it does a kinky little detour all the way around the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s constituency. Funny that.’ She stood up and dusted herself off. ‘It goes right over some meadows, some fields full of squirrels and toads and poor St John’s church. And that does cause a little problem which we’ll get to in a moment.’
Bobo wriggled in his bonds. ‘I say, Mrs B – now’s the time to untie me. You did promise, after all.’
Bobo’s wife raised an eyebrow. ‘I think you’ll find I made no promises – a trick I learned from you, hubby dearest. And now that I’ve married you, a little document I recently had notarised by your slightly depleted and traumatised team of lawyers says – in big, BIG capitals – that I have all your money. If I let you off that track I’d only have you following me around trying to tell me not to spend it all on taxidermy and candyfloss.’
‘Gosh,’ said Bobo a few times as it sank in. And then, like a third former who’s found his tuck box scrumped, he burst out crying.
With his head against the rail, he heard a vague hum, a vibration.
His wife started sniffing the air. ‘Shoof-ta-kuff, shoof-ta-kuff! My bridal train’s on its way.’ She grinned. ‘As I was saying, that kink in the track you so kindly included means that the driver won’t see you as he thunders round the corner. He’ll have no time to slam on those lovely expensive brakes. Poot, and I say again, poot.’
Bobo continued to cry.
The terribly wealthy new Mrs Braithwaite strolled over to the Reverend St John Colquhoun and took him by the arm. ‘I do believe that trains are finally about to become interesting, vicar. Shall we stay and watch?’
‘I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you,’ gulped the vicar guiltily.
‘Very well.’ Mrs Braithwaite took him by the arm. ‘Then let’s totter off. I can always peep back over my shoulder for the fun bit. When it gets all splatty.’
It was a fine summer’s day and the richest woman in England and the vicar picked their way through the daisies up the bank. ‘You know,’ said Mrs Braithwaite, ‘how do you fancy being Archbishop of Canterbury?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. The present one’s about to have a scuba-diving accident. Poor lamb can’t swim. Utterly tragic.’
The Reverend Colquhoun burst out laughing. The two of them walked away through a meadow that was all that was pleasant about summer.
Behind them, Bobo Braithwaite screamed and screamed louder as one of his newest, fastest, and sharpest-wheeled trains whizzed along the line …
Saffron’s hut was at the edge of the sugar plantation. It was, if you’d asked her, a little too near to the plantation. Often she could hear the screams. But sometimes, the wind was blowing in the other direction, and she could barely hear them at all.
Saffron had her hut, and most of all, she had her freedom. This was reasonably unusual for an African woman on a farm in the south of America in the 1700s. But there were ways.
Saffron had done what she’d had to in order to earn her freedom. She’d had six children and she’d handed them all over to the plantation owner. This had not been without qualms. Indeed, when the wind blew in the wrong direction, you could hear her sobbing.
Giving up her babies had been hard, but it had given her freedom and a tiny bit of property. And she was able to watch her children growing up. She cooked for them. Actually, she cooked for a lot of people (it was how she earned a living), but she cooked especially for her children. Most of them knew who she was, and smiled at her as she handed round the bowls. She treasured those smiles as she sat in the hut at night. They were what she lived for: the smiles and the hope that they’d be free some day.
‘You’re my kind of person,’ said a voice.
Saffron looked up warily. She’d learned only ever to look up warily. The woman approaching had a thin, cruel look to her – not unusual among the plantation owner’s women. Saffron had spent some time working in the
big house on the Mandeville Plantation. It had not been pleasant. She’d had her hair pulled, hat pins jabbed into her arms, and tea and bedpans thrown at her. By contrast, the men seemed almost kindly. And one thing she was certain of: the Mandeville men weren’t kind.
So, of course, Saffron eyed the newcomer carefully. The woman was dangerous, that much was certain.
The woman surprised her by bursting out laughing.
‘Your food!’ she said, gesturing at the cooking pot. ‘I fully expected to have to make up something nice about it. But it’s actually – oh, I can smell it – it’s amazing.’
Saffron nodded her thanks.
‘I would introduce myself,’ said the woman, ‘but I’m still working on the name. A couple of kinks in it. I’m usually referred to as the Master.’
‘You’re all masters here,’ Saffron shrugged. ‘Even the mistresses.’
‘Ooh, nearly.’ The woman laughed again. ‘What a squalid little place in history this all is. I’ve a friend who loves humans. Loves you like pet ants under a magnifying glass on a cloudy day. Sometimes I think he can only love you by knowing when to look the other way. Oh, it’s like he’s married to you.’
Saffron waited, politely.
‘Waaaaaait,’ said the woman. ‘You said “mistresses”. And that’s distracting me as much as that stew.’
‘You want some stew?’
‘It’s quite taking my mind off what I was going to say. And I’m trying to plan here. Properly plan. Like with a capital P. Mistress … Hmm … Oh, so much going on in this head.’ Pale eyes fixed on Saffron. ‘I adore you. I know everything you’ve had to do to get here. This little hut. Your little life. That heavenly stew. Come on.’ She turned on her heels and marched away.
‘Come where?’ Saffron asked.
‘With me. I’m offering you a job, silly. And bring the cook pot. I like morally compromised people but I love good cooking.’
One area where the Scoundrels Club of the twenty-first century did admit women was into the kitchens, and Saffron (out of her time but not her depth) rose swiftly up the ranks. No one cared that the Scoundrels’ new head chef was strange and terrifying – all they noticed was that the club’s food, for the first time in 300 years, was astounding.