‘You work for those old queens up at Druid Lodge.’ He slid a sly glance at me. ‘Those Jew boys.’
‘Yes,’ I answered, taken aback. I tensed slightly, wondering what casual racism might be coming next.
‘I see concert they give for charity’ – he chuckled – ‘very clever, very funny!’
I relaxed a little. ‘Yes, they are.’
‘You married?’ he asked, blue eyes twinkling.
‘You proposing?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Mr Nickolai, I—’
‘Nick. Call me Nick.’
‘Well, Nick, what exactly do you want me to do?’ I picked up my shoulder bag from the floor, grimacing a little at the weight, wondering what the hell I carry round that can weigh so much, and pulled out my diary. ‘Cos I’m pretty busy at the moment. How often do you want me to come?’ The place certainly needed a damn good clean. The table I was leaning on felt ominously sticky and the lino floor was black in the corners with years of ingrained filth. ‘I haven’t seen the rest of the flat, but it’s obviously not large. I could probably blitz it in a—’
‘Clean flat?’ He frowned, puzzled. ‘I not want you to clean flat.’
‘Oh. Shopping?’
‘No. I want shopping, I phone Mr Singh at corner shop, he bring it round.’ He chuckled. ‘We drink tea, play chess. When he get back to shop, Mrs Singh she shout at him for being gone too long.’ He poured tea strong enough to trot a mouse across and pushed a mug towards me. ‘You want sugar?’
‘No!’ I cried, a little too hastily, watching in horror as he spooned repeatedly into his own mug. ‘Tell me, cos I’m curious,’ I pointed at an ancient washing machine with mangle attached. ‘Does that thing still work?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, it work, but is easier to use launderette, three doors down.’
‘Ah! So, what is it you want me to do?’
‘I show you. In minute. Drink tea.’
The interior of the shop was dark and smelt of the past, of ancient dust and polish like the smell of an old church. Something of the same silence too, all the clocks stopped long ago. Solid hulks of dark furniture blocked the way to the shop door. We’d come down the stairs from the flat and entered the shop from a door at the back, down a corridor and past a storeroom. I looked around, weaving my way cautiously between cases of stuffed birds and animals: dead feathers, dead fur, glass eyes staring at me. There were no dollies or fans here, no bright, pretty pieces of china, no bygone fripperies to lift the gloom, just cardboard boxes balanced everywhere, full of unidentifiable objects wrapped in newspaper. A stuffed owl glared.
‘See? Shop is all junk,’ Nick said happily. ‘I get rid. Come to storeroom out back. I show you.’ He led me back down the corridor and into a storeroom piled high with furniture: desks, stools, chairs and tables stacked crazily on top of one another. ‘I need your help.’
I gazed around me and then turned to look at him. ‘To do what, exactly?’
He chuckled and tapped the lid of a dark box like a small coffin on legs.
‘You know what is?’
‘A casket?’ I ventured.
‘Cellaret.’ He flipped the lid open. Inside the box was lined with blue watered silk and fitted with brass holders and cut-glass decanters. ‘See? All need polish.’
He pointed down to the cellaret’s brass, lion-shaped feet. ‘I have bad knees. I cannot get down there to polish any more.’
‘You want me to polish it?’
‘Yes, but no squirting.’
‘Squirting?’ I repeated blankly.
‘No squirt polish. Wax polish only, very careful. I will show you.’ He closed the lid of the box gently and ran a loving hand across its surface.
‘What kind of wood is it?’ I asked.
‘Walnut.’ He pointed a thick forefinger. ‘This cross-banding here is ebony.’
‘And you’re selling it?’
He nodded at the piles of stuff around us. ‘All of this, I get rid.’ He chuckled and pointed to himself. ‘Too old now, my heart not good, I not remember what’s in here any more. You help me. Find good stuff. Sell at auction, or on Internet.’
‘But Nick, I don’t know the first thing about all this stuff …’
‘You learn. I teach.’
‘It’s just not the sort of work I usually do.’
‘Why not?’
I hesitated. There was a part of me that really wanted to snoop about amongst all this stuff and have a good look, lift all the lids and open all the cupboards, find out what lay inside. And, despite his reputation, I liked Old Nick, with his twinkly eyes and rich chuckle.
‘Why me?’ I asked and he looked doubtful. ‘Why are you asking me?’ I explained.
‘Ah!’ he said, understanding. ‘I see your van. Also, Mr Singh, he has your card in window. No job too small, it say.’
I laughed and gestured round the storeroom. ‘Nick, this is not a small job! How often do you want me to come?’
‘Every day.’ He spoke as if it was obvious. ‘I pay.’
‘It’s not that simple. I can’t abandon my other clients. I have people who depend on me − and dogs − look, I’ll come whenever I can. How’s that?’
‘When?’ he demanded with a scowl.
At that moment there was a knocking at the side door. Nick frowned and went to open it. ‘Paul!’ he cried, waving someone inside. ‘Come in. Come in.’
‘I’ve come to collect those chairs we spoke about.’ A man appeared in the hallway and did a double take when he saw me.
‘This is Juno,’ Nick told him. ‘My new assistant,’ he added proudly.
‘Really?’ He raised a dark eyebrow. He was about my age, or a little older.
I was tall enough to look him in the eyes, but I’m used to that. Beautiful eyes they were too, very dark, set under long, level brows and fringed with black lashes.
‘Paul,’ he said, holding out his hand. We shook. Firm handshake, great smile − I felt a flicker, a definite vibe, and I knew from the way he held eye contact with me, that he felt it too. ‘You’re working for Nick?’ he asked. His voice was pleasant, educated. In fact, there was something slightly public school about his whole persona: just confidence, perhaps. A cheerful strength emanated from him.
‘That’s the plan,’ I said.
‘Whatever you do,’ he warned me in a murmur, ‘don’t drink his tea.’
‘Too late.’
‘Well, good luck!’ He turned his attention to Nick. ‘Now, where are these chairs?’ They disappeared behind a pile of furniture at the far end of the storeroom and emerged, after a minute or two of shuffling things about, Paul carrying two heavy wooden chairs, thickly painted in white gloss, their seats covered with loud floral fabric. I know nothing about antique furniture but even I could see that a travesty had taken place.
‘Nice to meet you, Juno,’ he called back over his shoulder as Nick opened the door to let him out.
‘Customer?’ I asked when he’d gone.
‘Paul?’ Nick shook his head. ‘He restore furniture. Those chairs, he take off paint, polish, re-cover. Bring back, good as new. You see.’
Well, I thought, with any luck I might. ‘How about Saturday?’ I suggested, although I don’t usually like tying myself up at weekends. ‘I could come on Saturday, just for the day, see how it goes?’
‘How it goes,’ Nick repeated, smiling and we shook on it.
‘And no squirting,’ I told him solemnly. ‘I promise.’
CHAPTER FOUR
At three years of age I was found in a London underpass, a graffiti-scrawled subterranean passageway that stank of piss. I’d been there hours apparently, strapped in my buggy, screaming my head off, whilst on the floor beside me my young mother lay dying of a drugs overdose. I don’t remember it. I have very little memory at all before my fifth birthday; no memory of my mother. I’ve blocked it all out, so they tell me.
When I was rescued from my buggy I was placed in the care of social servic
es whilst a search was made for my family. My mother, it transpired, had been its little black lamb. Granted all the advantages: wealthy parents, an expensive education and a place at university, she’d thrown it all away, getting into recreational drugs, moving on to the hard stuff, dropping out, falling pregnant, and finally getting in trouble with the police. By the time she died, my grandfather hadn’t seen her for four years, during which time my grandmother had passed away. No one had any idea who my father was.
My grandfather, once he was made aware of my existence, wanted nothing to do with me. He blamed his daughter, both for his wife’s broken heart and her early death, and he was probably right. He was not prepared to assume responsibility for the spawn of a criminal or drug dealer. I remained in care.
But a cousin of my mother’s, Brian, a high-flyer in the diplomatic service, home briefly on a posting from South Korea, learnt of my fate and came to see me. He told me later what a little savage I was, a screeching scarecrow of a child, all windmill arms and flying fists. I don’t imagine I was an appealing prospect for adoption, and in any case, in his job, he wasn’t in a position to consider it. But he paid for me to go to a very good boarding school. I think he felt that, if he’d been around at the time, instead of away in the Far East, he might have saved my mother from her fate.
School was a strict, no-nonsense place and I loved it. I boarded during term time but the long summer holidays were a problem. Brian only came home on alternate Christmases. I had nowhere to go.
It was another cousin, Cordelia, who saved me. Brian had contacted her, and although she had never met my mother, she’d offered to take me in. I was welcome to spend my holidays with her, in Devon.
He drove me down to Totnes and made the introductions. I was seven years old and amazed: Cordelia had hair just like mine. Not red – brown streaked with grey – but wild and curly, and she wore it in a great mass down her back, with no attempt to tame it, part it, or make it behave. I think I loved her on sight. She wore colourful skirts and dangling earrings and was unlike anyone I’d ever seen before. She looked deep into my eyes as she extended a long, bony hand to shake mine.
‘You’re an old soul,’ she told me gently. Overawed, I’d gone quiet, and she smiled. ‘You are a solemn little thing. When is your birthday?’ I managed to tell her and she nodded wisely. ‘That accounts for it, then. You’re a Capricorn. Did you know that Capricorns are born old and get younger?’
‘Still into the mumbo-jumbo, I see,’ Brian muttered.
Cordelia smiled. ‘If you mean astrology, Brian,’ she responded, entirely without rancour, ‘the answer’s yes.’
Cordelia ran a little shop in Totnes, that thriving centre of what used to be called the New Age, right at the top of Fore Street. The shop was a place of wonder for me, draped with silk scarves and coloured shawls, crystals dangling on strings in the windows, sculptures of dragons and unicorns. The wooden counter was divided into compartments filled with beads. Cordelia would thread them on to silver pins to make earrings, or string them into necklaces and hang them on black velvet on the wall. She would let me do it too, playing with glass beads from India that glowed rich colours when I held them to the light; some as large as conkers, others as small as seeds, some silver and gold or painted and carved. I would play with this treasure for hours, watching the shop whilst Cordelia gave consultations in a little room behind a curtain at the back, for people who wanted their astrological charts interpreted, or their tarot cards read.
The opening hours of the shop were hit and miss. If she had no consultations booked and the weather was good, Cordelia would hang the CLOSED sign on the door and we’d hop on a bus that would take us over the South Hams or to the Otter Valley, or up on to Dartmoor, where we’d get out and walk miles, squelching our way in our sturdy walking boots across boggy ground, clambering rocky tors or splashing through frolicking streams, striding over the hills with a packed lunch in a backpack. It was Cordelia who gave me my love of the moor, of wild places.
In the evenings, if we’d been shut in the shop all day, she’d build a fire in a small brazier in her tiny back garden and we’d sit there in the dark and eat our supper and she would point out stars and tell me stories of all the places she’d visited, and of all the places she intended to go. She took me along with her to yoga classes, circle dancing, t’ai chi, vibrational healing and anything else that she happened to be going to. I was too young to understand what the hell was going on, but I had fun and I met some fascinating people.
I stayed with Cordelia every holiday until I left school for university. And the sad thing was, looking back on it, that by the time I was old enough to really understand all the things that she had to teach, I was no longer interested. My education had made me too sensible, too rational, to be taken in by her New Age philosophies. I felt I’d outgrown her, that I was more sophisticated. She was just an old hippy. I had begun, tragically, to mock her.
It was ironic that someone who’d back-packed solo around some of the most dangerous places in the world should lose her life through a moment’s inattention crossing a Totnes street. Brian was not able to make it back from the Far East for her funeral, but sent flowers. Later on, I discovered that he’d tried to induce my grandfather to attend, as on many occasions in the past he’d tried to persuade him to meet me. After all, Cordelia was his family too. He’d refused. But all her friends were there and the church was packed.
She owned almost nothing. The shop and flat were rented and she was behind with the rent. I believe Brian paid her debts. Her amber earrings and a few books were almost all she had, and these she left to me. She was the nearest thing I had to a mother. I miss her every day of my life.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Receiving stolen goods, you said,’ I reminded Ricky, spearing a garlic mushroom.
He and Morris had invited me out to lunch, ostensibly to thank me for helping them out with The Wizard of Oz costumes, but really because they wanted to find out how I’d got on with Old Nick the day before. I didn’t object. Three-course Sunday lunch in the traditional country comfort of The Church House Inn at Holne is not something I can afford myself, and was worth trading for a little tittle-tattle.
‘It was a long time ago,’ Ricky responded thoughtfully, ‘must be thirty years.’
Morris nodded as he chewed carefully on a bread roll. ‘Whilst he was inside, his missus ran off.’
Ricky was nodding frantically, his mouth too full of crab cake to speak.
‘She went to live with a sister, I think.’ With a napkin, Morris carefully dabbed a droplet of scarlet soup from his tie. ‘The girl would have been about fifteen by then.’
Ricky was able to speak at last. ‘And there was a boy, a bit younger.’
I mulled this over. During my day working for Nick I’d asked him if he had any family, just making conversation, and he’d said no, he had none. None he wanted to talk about, obviously.
At that moment the waiter arrived to take away our first course and enquire if everything had been satisfactory. It had. When he’d carried away the plates, Ricky could contain himself no longer. ‘So, how d’you get on yesterday?’
I hesitated. Something odd had happened and I wasn’t sure how much I should tell.
Things had gone well to begin with; Nick had shown me some items he wanted to sell at auction: the cellaret and an exquisite little writing desk on slender legs, its doors inlaid with marquetry roses. Nick told me it was eighteenth century.
‘See, it is beautiful, even on back? It not meant to stand against wall,’ he told me, ‘but in middle of room, pride of place − in lady’s room. Is called bonheur du jour,’ he added, speaking very carefully.
‘Bonheur du jour,’ I tried to translate, using my schoolgirl French, which is hazy to say the least. ‘A good hour of the day?’
Nick chuckled. ‘A daily delight,’ he corrected me. Behind the doors were rows of tiny drawers, and behind one of these, he showed me, a secret one. ‘Here she keep her love
letters, eh?’
I wanted to search for secret drawers in all the furniture then, but it was time to get to work. I began the job of polishing the cellaret, first washing it down with a solution of a special soap and buffing it dry with a soft cotton cloth, which quickly became filthy as I removed a century of grime. Then I got to work with the beeswax, Nick watching me like a hawk to make sure I always worked with the grain of the wood, never against. He had taken off its brass handles and was sitting in an old armchair with half the stuffing hanging out, polishing them, not with metal polish, but with salt and vinegar, scrubbing at the intricate design with a child’s toothbrush.
‘Is this bonheur du jour valuable?’ I asked.
He made a hand gesture: so-so. I got the feeling he didn’t want to tell me its real value and I made a mental note to look on the Internet when I got home and see if I could find a valuation website for antique furniture.
‘You do good job, Juno,’ Nick said approvingly. ‘See how the wood begin to glow now?’
Suddenly, the doorbell sounded its death rattle, followed by an aggressive banging on the side door. Nick looked taken aback, as if he wasn’t expecting anyone, and then gave me an uncertain glance. ‘I see who is. You stay here, Juno,’ he said and shuffled out to answer the door.
I’d been kneeling on the floor for some time and decided to use the interruption to stand up, stretch and relieve the pins and needles in my legs. Wondering if the visitor might be the rather interesting Paul, I tiptoed painfully to the storeroom door and took a sly squint into the corridor.
It wasn’t him. The man standing in the doorway was shorter, powerful-looking, with blonde hair cropped very short, emphasising sharp cheekbones and small ears set so flat against his skull they gave him an alien, almost android, appearance. He was speaking to Nick with an urgent, hushed intensity, not in English, but something that sounded Slavic or Balkan. Nick was responding in soothing, conciliatory tones. The stranger wasn’t happy.
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