China Court

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by Rumer Godden


  ‘An ordinary Victorian missal,’ said Mr Alabaster again. ‘What we are looking for is this,’ and he said patiently, ‘I will read you the description again.’ Even in Eliza’s flymark writing it took eight of the little notebook’s pages, ‘But I will read you the general description,’ he said.

  THE HOURS OF ROBERT BONNEFOY.

  HORAE BEATAE VIRGINIS MARIAE (USE OF PARIS) WITH CALENDAR, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM, written in a very clear and regular gothic script in red and black. 13 HALF-PAGE MINIATURES IN ARCHED COMPARTMENTS, MINIATURES OF THE 4 EVANGELISTS AND 11 SMALLER MINIATURES OF SAINTS, all the pages containing the large miniatures surrounded by full borders decorated with flowers, leaves, fruit, grotesques, animals and birds, each page of the calendar surrounded by a full decorated border containing a small painting of the appropriate occupation of the month, 25 illuminated and historical initials with three-quarter borders painted with flowers, leaves and fruit, numerous smaller illuminated initials and line-terminals, faded red velvet binding of later date with silver clasp and catch.—small quarto (8 ins by 6 ins approx.)

  (Paris, early 15th century.)

  ‘Someone must have taught her to describe it,’ said Mr Alabaster. ‘Well, she must have had many bookseller friends.’ Instead of the double asterisk ‘of worth’ Eliza had written at the foot of the last page ‘of great worth’, with a note: ‘found wrapped in a piece of calico in the bottom of a workbox in the sale of Eileine Manor (gave workbox as a Christmas present to Polly) Paid 12/-.’

  ‘And nobody knew it was there, I suppose,’ breathed Bella.

  ‘Twelve shillings,’ said Walter. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m not at all sure,’ said Mr Alabaster, ‘but one thing I have learned this afternoon, and that is to trust this Miss Eliza; besides, as you see, there is another note: “Showed privately to Tarrant. Offered two hundred pounds. Refused.’”

  ‘Did she offer it at two hundred pounds or was she offered that? It isn’t clear,’ said Mr Prendergast.

  ‘Nothing is clear,’ said Mr Alabaster, ‘but there are descriptions of the larger miniatures,’ and he read out: “‘Matins. The Annunciation. The Virgin kneels in her bedchamber with her hands crossed on her breast in an attitude of the deepest humility. She has a charming childlike face expressive of sublime innocence. The Angel stands before her with his right hand raised. The Holy Ghost descends on golden beams shining through an open arched window …’”

  ‘Golden beams through a window.’ Tracy could not hold herself back any longer. ‘I have seen that,’ she said.

  ‘Seen it?’

  ‘Yes, often with Gran. We used to look at it almost every morning. Yes, I’m sure. It was a little book, only about that big.’ She measured with her hands. ‘The pictures were in the middle of the pages, with an edge of flowers and patterns round the writing. You could look and look. The more you looked the more you saw,’ said Tracy.

  ‘Where did she show it to you?’

  ‘Where did she keep it?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where?’ but, ‘I don’t know,’ said Tracy, ‘I think—’ But she broke off. ‘No, I can’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t think Mother sold it?’ said a Grace horrified, but Walter shook his head.

  ‘She wouldn’t have known that it was worth so much.’

  ‘She might have lost it,’ said Bella. ‘You know how careless she was. She often left a book out in the garden all night.’

  ‘Ouch!’ said Mr Alabaster but Tracy protested, ‘She had great r-respect for anything old and beautiful, and it was very beautiful.’

  ‘It must have been,’ said Mr Alabaster.

  ‘Ring for Cecily,’ said Walter. ‘We must have more light and if the book is here she ought to know. Ring,’ but at that moment Cecily knocked, bringing in the lamp and, ‘Good gracious me!’ said Cecily, inside the door.

  ‘Cecily,’ began Walter, unfailingly pompous. ‘We are looking for a book—’

  ‘So I see,’ said Cecily and as she set down the lamp her eyes looked distressed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry they are so dirty;’

  ‘They might have been dusted,’ began Bella but, ‘Cecily was alone,’ cried Tracy, ‘alone where there used to be four, five, six servants,’ and she put her arms round Cecily. ‘Don’t mind them,’ she whispered.

  ‘Hush, Bella. Hush, Tracy,’ said Walter. ‘This is a book like a Bible, Cecily,’ and he said testily, ‘Let Cecily pay attention, Tracy. A Bible with pictures.’ He spoke slowly and carefully, as if Cecily were an idiot child, thought Tracy. ‘They would be small pictures?’ he asked, turning to Mr Alabaster who nodded, ‘small on thick paper with writing in Latin, foreign writing that you wouldn’t be able to read.’

  ‘And handwritten,’ said Mr Alabaster.

  ‘But when I say Bible, Cecily,’ said Walter kindly, ‘I don’t want you to think of an English Bible bound in black; this one is red, red velvet.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Cecily. ‘It’s pink.’

  ‘Red velvet,’ said Walter, holding up his hand to stem the others.

  ‘You may call it red,’ said Cecily unmoved. ‘I call it pink.’

  Walter still held up his hand but now the questions came tumbling.

  ‘You have seen it?’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Every day,’ said Cecily, ‘when I dusted,’ she said with a thrust at Bella. ‘Mrs Quin used to look at that book a lot. So did I. Latin and all,’ she said to Walter.

  ‘But she couldn’t have known the value,’ said Walter.

  ‘No, she just liked it,’ said Cecily.

  ‘But where is it?’ cried Bella.

  ‘Where it has always been. In her bedroom. She kept it on the table by her bed.’

  ‘The book by her bed? We might have known,’ said Bella and her excitement abruptly ebbed away. ‘Cecily is thinking of those Day Hours, you know the one, Mother kept a peacock feather in it though we said it was unlucky, and she used to read it every day,’ said Bella.

  ‘Bound in black without pictures. I’m not a zany,’ said Cecily.

  ‘But I looked—’ and Bella went quickly out of the room. They heard her running upstairs, but in a few moments she came back hot and indignant. ‘There’s nothing on the table by her bed but this.’ She held up the detective paperback. ‘It was nearly dark but I’m positive—’

  ‘You come with me,’ said Cecily and picked up the lamp.

  ‘I will wait for you,’ said Mr Alabaster but, ‘No, we may need you,’ said Walter. ‘Please come.’

  ‘But I will wait in the drawing room,’ said Mr Prendergast. ‘I must collect my papers.’

  At the head of the stairs, and on the landing, they paused. Except Bella, they flinched from going into Mrs Quin’s room; a quietness fell on them and they filed silently in at the door, but it was singularly as usual, the windows open to the dusk, the bed glimmering under its white sheet, the roses, dropping now in the vase. ‘I haven’t had time to tidy up,’ said Cecily. As she set down the lamp, its globe and flame were reflected in mahogany surfaces, in looking glasses and in the windowpanes. The curtains shivered in the draught, but nothing else stirred. Even the clock had stopped.

  No one spoke as Cecily went to the bed, drew off the sheet, and turned back the pillow. ‘She had the Day Hours book under her pillow when she died. I put it back and the other with it. Here you are,’ said Cecily. Standing round the bed they all stared at the black book on one side where the pillow had been and a shape, wrapped in yellowed silk, on the other. ‘Is that it?’ whispered Bella.

  Cecily handed it to her and Bella took it and carried it to the lamp, the others crowding round her. Only Tracy held back, standing with Peter and Cecily on one side.

  ‘Be careful, my dear,’ said Walter.

  ‘Careful! when it’s been under Mother’s pillow!’ said Bella with a strangely throttled little laugh. ‘The silk’s nearly
rotten.’ The intrepid Bella sounded almost afraid and, ‘You open it,’ she said and gave it to Mr Alabaster.

  As they watched, Mr Alabaster unwound the old silk revealing a thick, rather clumsy book with a clasp. In the soft lamplight its velvet was faded to a brown rose. ‘It is pink,’ said Tracy.

  ‘But – is that the book?’ asked Bella.

  ‘It may very well be,’ said Mr Alabaster.

  ‘But I remember it,’ said a Grace and, ‘Can it be worth much? We used to touch it,’ said another.

  ‘Look at it on Sundays with Father.’

  ‘It can’t be the one.’

  Mr Alabaster had laid it on the table; now he lifted the clasp. The book opened easily, as if it were accustomed; he turned over a page as it lay on the table and came to a half-page miniature with borders and colours, ‘Like jewels,’ whispered Tracy. Mr Alabaster bent over it, then, ‘Yes!’ he said like a proud showman. ‘It’s the Annunciation. I read its description to you.’

  ‘Then it is it!’ said a Grace incredulously, and the chorus ran around, ‘It is it,’ ‘It’s the book,’ ‘It really is.’

  ‘There’s a greasy mark on it,’ said Bella.

  ‘Children’s fingers,’ said Walter in agony.

  ‘Will it clean?’

  ‘Does it detract from the value, if the book has been used?’

  ‘At least she kept it wrapped up.’

  ‘If we had dreamed …’

  As their anxious faces crowded around Mr Alabaster and the anxious voices rose, Tracy slipped in between Bella and Tom and pressed near the table to look. Peter edged in beside her. ‘That’s the window I remember,’ she told him, touching the golden rays. ‘Look, there’s her bed and look at the shelf, with her books, and there’s a table with her jug and basin, even a half-folded towel.’ She lifted the book and pored over the tiny painting, her face as unconscious as a child’s. ‘Beautiful!’ said Tracy like a breath.

  ‘Tracy. Are you touching it?’ Bella would have snatched it, but Tracy put it back on the table and spread her hands on it.

  ‘Not your dirty hands!’ cried Bella in a shriek and at once, all the pent-up excitement of Tracy’s elders broke out in scolding.

  ‘When we have all just been told …’

  ‘Have you no respect …’

  ‘Even your Aunt Bella didn’t open it. She gave it to Mr Alabaster.’

  ‘No one,’ declared Walter, ‘should touch it at all. Wrap it up and leave it to the experts,’ but Tracy still kept her hands on the book.

  ‘I th-think,’ said Tracy and, though she stammered and her voice was small, it was perfectly clear, ‘I think you have all forgotten s-something. The b-book is mine.’

  Compline

  Noctem quiétam et finem perféctum concédat nobis …

  MAY HE GRANT US A QUIET NIGHT AND A PERFECT END.

  BLESSING FOR COMPLINE FROM MRS QUIN’S Day Hours

  The Coronation of the Virgin Christ places a rich golden crown on the Virgin’s head. They are surrounded by a host of angels singing and playing musical instruments (long trumpets, harps, regals, i.e. small portable organs, and timbrels, i.e. small drums played by beating with the hand). The haloes, robes, and instruments are lavishly gilded.

  Full border of conventional flowers, fruit and ivy leaves, painted in colours and heightened with gold. Figure of a sheep playing the bagpipes (satire on the angel musicians).

  MINIATURE FACING THE OPENING OF COMPLINE IN THE HORAE BEATAE VIRGINIS MARIAE, FROM THE HOURS OF ROBERT BONNEFOY

  ‘A quiet night and a perfect end,’ but it had seemed as if China Court would never be quiet again; as Tracy said to Peter, ‘You know in the Bible where it says “The evening and the morning were the first day” and there was a whole span of creation in between? This feels like that.’

  ‘It has been three days,’ Peter reminded her.

  ‘And such days,’ said Tracy. They did not suit China Court. It doesn’t like surprises and excitements, thought Tracy, only the ordinary dramas of death and birth and – but she shied away from the third word – love was not to be thought of between her and Peter – yet. But she liked to remember how they had stood shoulder to shoulder when, downstairs in the drawing room, they had faced the family, ‘in the fight,’ said Peter and grimaced.

  It had, Tracy had to admit, been a fight and not a pleasant one. ‘Gran would have turned in her grave.’

  ‘I don’t believe she would,’ said Peter. ‘I believe she would have quite enjoyed it.’

  ‘The b-book is mine,’ Tracy had said, with her hands on it. ‘Mine.’

  There had been a moment’s amazed consternation into which Dick’s detached, rather amused voice had spoken: ‘The child is right.’

  ‘Right?’ Then Bella seemed to choke and had run out on the landing, calling over the banisters and as she ran downstairs, ‘Mr Prendergast! Mr Prendergast!’

  Immediately the others began.

  ‘Tracy’s?’

  ‘Do you mean to say all those books …?’

  ‘The books as well?’

  ‘Look, we can’t wrangle here,’ Peter had said and the third Grace chimed in, ‘No, not in Mother’s room,’ and, ‘M-Mr Alabaster,’ said Tracy, her voice stammering and shivering with nerves, ‘p-please do as Uncle Walter s-said and look after the b-book.’ Then she had turned, trying to brace herself. ‘I had better g-go to Aunt Bella.’

  ‘I will come with you,’ said Peter and the rest trooped after them, gathering around as Tracy and Peter stood facing them, shoulder to shoulder, thought Tracy; though her shoulder only comes halfway up mine, thought Peter. Tracy stood her ground with every appearance of being calm and dignified, but he could feel how she was quivering. He would have liked to put his arm around her – but not in front of them, thought Peter.

  ‘I-if I was wrong, Aunt Bella, I’m s-sorry,’ said Tracy.

  ‘You were not wrong,’ said Bella shortly.

  Mr Prendergast tried to smooth the shortness away. ‘We must look on this find as a windfall for these young people – as I hope it will be.’

  ‘And we have no share in this windfall?’ That acidity could only be the second Grace and the others broke in.

  ‘Why should it all be Tracy’s?’

  ‘Do you mean Mother left her everything?’

  ‘Everything that’s in the house is hers,’ said Bella.

  ‘But all the books?’

  ‘The books as well?’

  ‘But Mother didn’t know they were in the house.’

  ‘That makes no difference.’

  ‘None of it for us?’

  ‘No share at all?’

  ‘No,’ said Tracy baldly. Then she flushed and said, ‘I’m s-sorry but it’s for China C-Court.’

  ‘Is that quite fair?’

  ‘Quite fair,’ said Tracy passionately. ‘We need it, you don’t. You would like to have it, of course, but we need it.

  ‘There are more than a hundred books. It may run into four or five thousand pounds,’ said Walter.

  ‘We need all of it. You said so. There is the roof and the pipes and the dry rot. We need electricity and there’s the farm to put in order and the garden.’

  ‘Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched,’ said Walter, ‘and you must remember, if this is as valuable as we suspect, it will make a considerable difference in the death duties. A considerable difference,’ he said, brightening so visibly that Mr Prendergast had to suppress a smile.

  ‘Still, we hope it will be a windfall,’ said Mr Prendergast, ‘and I’m sure Miss Tracy and Mr St Omer have far too much sense to think that anything can be estimated until we have expert advice.’

  Mr Alabaster’s Mr Truscott did not come. ‘He does not feel competent,’ Mr Alabaster reported solemnly. He was solemn, for this confirmed him in what he thought he had found. ‘If it suits you he will arrange for a Mr Robin Bellamy of Sotheby’s to come down tomorrow.’

  ‘Sotheby’s!’ said Bella giddily. ‘Sotheby’s
!’ and the exclamations ran around while Walter began explaining what Sotheby’s salesrooms were.

  ‘They will charge a stiff percentage,’ he warned.

  ‘Well, how do you think they live?’ said Dick. Only Peter stayed calm. ‘If he could catch the Cornish Express I will meet him in Exeter,’ he said, but objections broke out.

  ‘Exeter? He can come to Bodmin Road.’

  ‘I have to go to Exeter. On business,’ said Peter.

  ‘Business? Now?’

  ‘Yes. Business,’ said Peter.

  ‘Why don’t the aunts and uncles go home?’ Peter had asked Tracy that three days ago.

  ‘They want to see what happens.’

  ‘Even when it’s nothing to do with them?’

  ‘It is to do with them. They are relatives.’

  Peter groaned, but Tracy was firm. ‘A proper family has relatives.’

  Mr Bellamy was not at all as any of them had imagined an expert on books to be. ‘I thought he would be old,’ said a Grace.

  ‘Yes, old and vague.’

  ‘Like a professor, rather dusty and shabby.’

  On the contrary, he was a suave, dark young man, well brushed and groomed; ‘probably with a wife and young children living somewhere like Weybridge,’ said a Grace disappointed. ‘He might be a young stockbroker,’ she complained.

  ‘Not when he talks,’ said Bella and certainly his talking was brief, smooth, and curiously enigmatical.

  ‘More as I imagine a diplomat,’ said Tracy.

  ‘Do you think someone like that can really know about books?’ they asked, but Tracy, peeping into the office, thought, as she watched his hands examining the books, it was as if even his fingertips could read.

  The commercial hotel at Canverisk where Mr Alabaster was staying, and the old village taxi that drove him over every day, did not seem adequate for Sotheby’s, but Mr Bellamy did not appear to mind. Mr Alabaster and Peter had taken him Eliza’s catalogue and account books to study overnight and next day he came to China Court. ‘To work in the office?’ asked Bella doubtfully. ‘Shouldn’t we give up the dining room?’ but again, he did not appear to mind and was closed in the office all day. He was chary of giving an opinion about possible prices of individual books, but, ‘We should, of course, be pleased to offer at auction all the books I have selected,’ he said.

 

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