by Rebecca Tope
‘What?’ Simmy blinked at him. ‘What man?’
‘There. See.’ He pointed unselfconsciously at a row of chairs in the middle of the room. ‘Grey coat.’
‘Oh, yes. He came into the shop yesterday. I can’t seem to get away from him.’ She watched the man with a woman she quickly realised was Hannah, trying to judge the relationship between them. It all appeared to be focused on the sale catalogue, and their heads remained a respectable six inches apart as they showed each other items of interest.
‘Malcolm Wetherton,’ said Russell confidently. ‘And isn’t that one of the Henderson girls next to him?’
‘Yes, it’s Hannah. Fancy that! Now shush. It’s starting, look.’
The lots were visible both in reality and on the screen above Christopher’s head. The first was a mink coat from the 1930s, held aloft by one of the women workers. On the screen it looked oddly different. Bidding was slow to start, with Christopher urging, ‘Fifty pounds? No? Forty, then. Come on, someone start me at forty. Okay, how about thirty?’ It should have sounded pleading, the figures dropping so rapidly, but it was all done with a twinkle, and once a bidder raised a hand at twenty, there was a sudden brisk exchange, during which the final bid reached fifty-five pounds.
‘Out of fashion, fur,’ said Russell. ‘Probably cost ten times that when it was new.’
And so the pattern was set for the next fascinating hour and a quarter. Simmy barely glanced at the people in the room, except to try and work out who was bidding, now and then. And every few minutes she glanced at Hannah and the Wetherton man, their presence oddly discomforting. At eleven-fifteen, Russell demanded coffee from the cafeteria attached to the building. They made their way around the edge of the saleroom, Simmy reluctant to miss any of the proceedings. ‘We should be quick,’ she urged. ‘We’ll have lost our place.’
‘Never mind. We can find others.’ Her father was obviously enjoying himself enormously, despite showing no sign yet of bidding for anything. Simmy herself was starting to find the whole procedure somewhat repetitive. The same few people seemed to be buying almost every lot, with whole rows ignoring the business in front of them and chatting rather loudly amongst themselves. She was glad for the break, holding the coffee mug with both hands and wondering what provision there might be for lunch, in another hour or so’s time.
The coffee was insipid, and Russell was obviously eager to go back for another session. ‘I’m going to mark the prices things fetch,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we’ve got a few pieces just as good at home. For a start, what’s happened to suitcases? I’ve seen three battered old objects go for thirty or forty pounds each.’
Simmy could offer no explanation. ‘You’re not thinking of selling anything, are you?’
‘There’s a lot of clutter around the house,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘This is not going to be the start of a new interest, Dad. You’d end up buying a whole lot more than you sell.’
‘I could learn the ropes, and make sure that doesn’t happen.’
She ought to be pleased that he was enjoying himself so much, she told herself. The purpose for their being there was growing fainter as time went on, and the boredom level increased. Christopher was wholly immersed in his work, and had barely nodded her way once. He had to constantly scan the room for bidders, listen to what the women with the computers were telling him, remember where the numbers had got to, and generally maintain concentration. His voice rose and fell, sometimes gabbling so fast the words ran together, and other times pausing for reluctant bidders to yield to temptation. It took Simmy a long time to grasp the rhythms of the process, and to understand when he was addressing someone directly through Skype or whatever system was on the computer. One thing that did surprise her was the blatancy of the bidding. She had expected small gestures – scratching a nose or flicking a finger – but people waved their catalogues or hands quite openly in order to attract attention. Then, once they were under the eye of the auctioneer, everything grew more subtle. A small nod signified an ongoing intention to buy. The traditional fall of the hammer was never omitted, and at that signal, one of the flanking women moved the image on the screen to the next lot to be sold. It was a hypnotic mixture of modern technology and age-old business practice.
At some point after midday, Simmy ceased to be bored. The miscellaneous section had all been sold and attention turned to china and porcelain. Familiar and unfamiliar names came and went. Royal Worcester, Staffordshire, Belleek, Poole – so much high-quality stuff was here for the taking, and some of the prices seemed to her surprisingly low. Lovely jugs, tea sets, ornaments were being bought for the price of a dozen roses. Then she felt a movement at her side, and before she knew it, her father was waving his rolled-up catalogue in a frenzy. He ignored her alarmed whisper of ‘Dad!’ and before she knew it, had secured a gilt-edged dish, with a rosebud pattern in the centre, for twenty-five pounds.
‘Number?’ said the auctioneer, with some impatience.
Russell looked blank.
‘You have to show your buyer’s number,’ Simmy told him. ‘Where have you put it?’
The whole room seemed to focus on him as he searched for the card. Sighs and rustles could be heard. At last he extracted it from a pocket and held it up. ‘Sorry,’ he called cheerfully.
Christopher smiled tightly and moved briskly on.
Then, seemingly for the first time, Malcolm Wetherton caught sight of Simmy and recognised her. He had turned to see the cause of the delay, along with sixty other people, and seen her and her father. She watched him nudge Hannah and say something to her. She too craned her neck for a look, and smiled when she caught Simmy’s eye. A smile that held absolutely nothing of friendliness or even fellowship. Just one of those smiles people gave instinctively when they met another person’s eye. Simmy gave a little wave, and then quickly lowered her hand in case the gesture be mistaken for a bid.
‘When can I have my lovely dish?’ asked Russell, obliviously.
‘Good question. We’ll have to go and ask. You know you’ve got to pay another fifteen per cent on top of what you bid, don’t you? Or even more. I forget what he said.’
‘Outrageous,’ laughed Russell.
‘You were very rash,’ she chided. ‘For all you know, it’s got a great big chip or crack in it.’
‘Oh, pooh. They wouldn’t sell it if it was damaged. That woman wanted it as well, you know. I was determined to outbid her.’
‘Hannah and the Wetherton man have finally seen us. I’ve been watching them on and off all day. She doesn’t look very pleased about us being here.’ She had forgotten that DI Moxon had asked her to come, and that she was apparently supposed to assess the likelihood of Henderson heirlooms being sold by Christopher, now his parents were both dead. If that was what he’d wanted from her. It had been very far from clear. In any case, she was sure she’d failed. All she’d done was learn a tiny fraction of the auction-room procedures and allow her father to make a reckless purchase.
‘What are we doing now?’ asked Russell, like a child. ‘Is it time for lunch?’
‘Very much so. And then we’re going home. It’ll all be finished before five o’clock. I hope you’ve had fun?’
‘Lovely,’ he sighed. ‘Best day I’ve had for ages.’
They went to the office to pay for the dish, but before they could begin the transaction, Simmy felt a hand on her shoulder.
‘Have you got time for a little talk?’ asked Hannah. ‘I think we should.’
‘My dad as well?’
‘Um … preferably not. Let him collect his dish and go and wait in the car or something.’
‘We’re having lunch. You could join us.’
‘All right, then. That’ll be better than nothing.’
Simmy waited, thinking that perhaps here at last was a chance to do what Moxon wanted. She recalled Eddie Henderson’s remark about Hannah’s sourness over something Kit had done. Some tawdry piece of philandering that demeaned France
s. Christopher and Lynn had both talked about Hannah and George being very antagonistic for most of their childhood. There were aspects of Hannah that could well repay deeper enquiry. Ben Harkness would certainly think so.
They left Russell to fathom the procedure required of him before he could lay hands on his purchase, and went to the cafeteria. Simmy bought random items of food enough for two, and let Hannah hustle her to a table and embark on an urgent harangue.
‘I hear you had dinner with Lynn and Chris on Thursday,’ she said accusingly. ‘And you’ve seen Eddie a time or two as well. You seem to be trying to insinuate yourself back into our family, for some reason. All because of that book my mother left you, I suppose. Well, I don’t know what you think you’ll get out of it. They’re both dead – those people who adopted me, and then blackmailed me into never trying to find my natural parents. I can’t help feeling I’ve been short-changed. How do you think it is for me, seeing you get that book? I’m their eldest daughter. It should have come to me.’
‘Do you really want it? It’s not worth anything.’ Simmy was too startled by the attack to address the more central accusation, which was so outrageous as to be impossible to confront directly.
‘I don’t want the actual thing. But I don’t want my mother – the only mother I’ve ever known – to favour you over me.’
‘She hasn’t. She didn’t. She never did that.’
‘Oh no? Pushing you at Chris the way she did, giving you all your favourite sweets, making such a production over how nicely you speak compared to me and Lynn. It was sickening sometimes.’
‘Twenty years ago, Hannah. I’ve hardly even seen her since then.’
‘Maybe not, but she kept on thinking about you. She saw you as some sort of paragon. I always felt her comparing us to you, to your advantage. And then there was your father, always so loyal and helpful, making us laugh, never mean with money like ours was. It made him look like Scrooge.’
Simmy felt more proud than annoyed, and made no attempt to argue. ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t know what I could have done about it.’
‘Stay away from us now. Don’t go making eyes at Christopher. Lynn told me what you were like at the Belsfield. Following him up here, just so you could sit there all dreamy, watching him for hours on end. Sickening,’ she said again.
Then Russell found them, proudly brandishing his piece of china. ‘Look at it!’ he crowed. ‘It’s even more lovely than I thought. It’s going to look perfect on the sideboard.’ He laughed. ‘God save the child who knocks it off and breaks it.’
Simmy and Hannah both froze for a few moments, and then silently agreed to shelve the acrimony in the presence of this cheerful old man. ‘Well done, Dad,’ Simmy smiled. ‘It’s good to have a souvenir of the day.’
‘I should get back,’ said Hannah. ‘There’s some glass I’ve got my eye on. It’ll be up before long.’
‘That’s Malcolm Wetherton you’re with, isn’t it?’ said Simmy.
‘What if it is? He does a bit of dealing here and there. Has a stall in the antique market down in Barrow, once a month. He’s got an excellent eye for a bargain. Cheryl usually comes with us as well, so don’t you go making anything of it. Jack and I are perfectly happy, and so are the Wethertons.’
‘But it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, with Christopher being an auctioneer …’ Simmy’s mind was slowly forming dark notions about corruption and malpractice in the auction room. But that would involve Christopher in shady dealings, which felt all wrong. For one thing, he would not be such a fool. And for another, he was decent. All her life, she had held him somewhere inside her as a beacon of decency and fairness. His clear gaze could not conceivably conceal guilty secrets and dishonest deals.
‘That’s not what—’ Again she stopped herself. Russell was looking from one face to the other, in confusion. ‘I got you some pie, Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s meant to be hot, so you’d better eat it quick. They’re not very nice when they go cold.’
‘Are you married, my dear?’ Russell asked Hannah. ‘Forgive my forgetfulness. I do remember you very clearly as a little thing on the beach. You and your sister were always so lively.’
‘Yes, married with a little boy. He’s five. Lynn and I were not so much lively as trying to get away from our brothers,’ said Hannah. ‘Screaming our heads off in panic, and you grown-ups all thinking it was harmless play.’ Her brow darkened. ‘I was in terror for a lot of the time.’
‘Surely not,’ said Russell mildly.
‘Oh, yes. Sheer stark terror. I really thought George would kill me one day.’ She paused, and put a hand to the back of her neck, as if in pain. ‘And now somebody’s killed our dad.’
‘Well, it can’t have been George,’ said Russell with a laugh.
‘Can’t it?’ said Hannah. ‘I’m not so sure.’
Chapter Sixteen
Driving back to Windermere, Russell cradling his precious dish on his lap, Simmy rehearsed what she would say to Moxon when he inevitably caught up with her. George had been the shadowy figure in the whole Henderson business from the start. He had attended his mother’s funeral, sitting stiffly in the front pew with his siblings and girlfriend, and then disappeared before the tea and cakes afterwards. Tales of his behaviour towards his sisters had erupted in the following days, leaving Simmy wondering how she could have been so unobservant. And how Christopher could have removed himself so irresponsibly from the fray. As the oldest brother, he surely had a duty to maintain some sort of peace and harmony amongst the others. Instead, he and Simmy had gone off together, fostering both mothers’ fantasies of a permanent bond beyond that of pretend twins.
She also wanted to debate the matter of Hannah’s resentment at having been adopted and then abandoned by Fran, albeit involuntarily. The woman seemed to feel that a kind of natural justice had been flouted; that if she had at least made herself known to her birth mother, she would have a parent to fall back on, so to speak. Of course, she could still begin the quest for that original mother, who might well turn out to be only in her fifties, and somebody worth knowing.
Then her phone trilled somewhere behind her. ‘Dad – can you reach my bag and answer the phone?’ she asked.
‘Not really. I might drop the dish,’ he demurred. ‘It’s probably nothing important.’
‘I suppose so. I don’t know why I switched the silly thing on, when I’m driving.’ She knew quite well, in fact, that she had assumed she could delegate answering it to Russell. Putting it on the back seat had been the main mistake.
The noise stopped and Simmy kept driving. But it niggled at her for the next five miles. Who would call her on a Saturday afternoon? Moxon was the most likely, but she had a few other ideas. Perhaps Christopher had finished selling all the lots at the auction, and wanted to speak to her. Perhaps her mother was wanting to know how they were doing. Perhaps Bonnie, Ben, Melanie or even Ninian had called. Ninian Tripp had been abandoned as a lost cause, only a few weeks earlier, after a tepid romance that left Simmy profoundly unsatisfied. She felt, perhaps unfairly, that he owed her a sort of apology. And she would really enjoy a long catch-up call from Melanie, her former assistant in the shop.
‘I hope they left a message,’ she worried.
‘Who?’
‘Whoever it was phoning me.’
‘They will if it’s important. Isn’t this a lovely road,’ he sighed. ‘Isn’t it fabulous up here? We’re so lucky to live here permanently. I never get tired of it. You know – I’m planning to ride up and down here on the bus when I get too decrepit to drive.’
She laughed. ‘You’d get a better view that way. You could see the top of Helvellyn, on a nice day.’
They had a pretty good vista as it was. Lakes, fells, almost-bare trees and clusters of blurry sheep lay on all sides. It was a waste to obsess about who was calling her. Her father was right – the person would try again if it was
important.
They wound their way down through Ambleside and on to the very familiar road into Windermere. The lake on their right was gently lapping its banks, birds bobbing on the water and not a single sailboat venturing out onto the chilly November mere. It was three o’clock and the light was dimming. There was no sign of the sun. ‘It does have a certain charm at this time of year,’ Simmy agreed. ‘You can see why people still want to come and use the B&B even now.’
Russell heaved a noisy sigh. ‘Despite one’s secret wish that they wouldn’t.’
She took him home, where Angie was clearly refreshed by the peaceful day she’d had. ‘Have a good time?’ she asked them, as if she really wanted to know.
‘Very interesting,’ said Russell. ‘All those things being sold. It was quite a revelation, I can tell you.’
‘What did you buy?’
He fetched the dish, and proudly presented it. ‘Not a chip or a crack anywhere,’ he assured her.
Angie took it from him and gave it a careful examination. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said, as if surprised. ‘How much was it?’
‘Well, the bidding price was twenty-five pounds, but then there’s another twenty per cent on top of that. And they take fifteen per cent off what they give the seller, so they do very well out of it. It sounds like a swindle, when you stop to think about it, but I suppose they have to pay all those overheads and salaries and such. And there’s all the added drama and serendipity and chance of getting something for a tenth of its value. I think we can cheerfully donate a further two pounds forty, for the experience.’
Angie laughed, after a mildly horrified moment on hearing the price of the purchase, and Simmy felt as if she had personally achieved a distinct improvement in the atmosphere at Beck View. ‘I’ll be going now,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again before long. Somebody phoned me, and I want to see if they left a message.’