by Alan Judd
Fortunately, business picked up a bit during those few days so there wasn’t too much time for pallid musings. A very nice Georgian dining table and chairs flew out of the shop along with a restored Victorian couch and several lamps and other small items. Then one afternoon Charlotte appeared, with the sword.
She had wrapped it in a travelling rug or blanket, the sort people used to have in cars before cars routinely had heaters. I didn’t realise what it was at first as we stood talking about the unendingly grey weather. She spoke at a breathless gabble, leaving me worrying about what to say next because any subject was likely to be exhausted within seconds. I hadn’t yet learned that she was comfortable with silences, and indeed was adept at exploiting them.
‘How is Gerald?’ I asked.
‘He’s away, golfing thing in Norfolk. He’s not – not awfully well, probably shouldn’t have gone but he’s with others so I let him go.’ She laughed.
‘Golfing widows not allowed?’
‘On the contrary, spouses encouraged. It’s supposed to be a treat for them. Some of the other wives are going but I’ – she laughed again as she unrolled the blanket – ‘I brought you this. Thought you might like to examine it properly while Gerald’s away. So long as you bring it back before he returns the day after tomorrow. You’ve seen how it can set him off when things leave the house, even temporarily.’
She held the sword by the hilt, gingerly as if fearing contamination, the point almost on the floor. Stephanie, who was polishing the brass hinges and locks on a Victorian trunk in the window, stared openmouthed, cloth in hand.
I took the sword. ‘That’s more than kind of you. I’ll be most careful with it and I’ll certainly get it back to you in time, I promise.’ I held it horizontally in both hands, like a baby presented for christening. ‘It’ll be difficult – I’ll examine it as closely as I can but without cleaning it I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell you much about it. I assume if I were to clean it Gerald would notice?’
‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll say I asked our daily to clean it, or say I did it myself. He knows I have cleaning fits now and again.’
‘He won’t mind?’
‘Ring me when you’re ready to bring it back. Make sure I’m in.’
‘It really is very kind.’
She turned for the door as if suddenly realising what the time was, though she hadn’t looked at her watch. ‘I must go, I’m sorry, I’ve got to meet someone. Thank you, thank you so much.’
It was unconvincing, not least because she had made it sound as if I were doing her a favour. I laid the sword reverentially on my desk.
Stephanie stared after her as she crossed the street towards Church Square. She looked back at me, beaming. ‘Nice lady.’
‘Isn’t she? Very kind.’
‘Will she come again?’
‘I’m sure she will.’
She laughed loudly. ‘I hope she does.’
I worked on the sword with cleaning fluids all evening, beginning with the blade and taking care not to use anything that would discolour or corrode. Some of the years – decades, centuries? – of ash and smoke-blackening came off relatively easily but in places the heat seemed to have burned into the metal. I could have done more but didn’t want to risk damaging any marks or engravings. Also, if Charlotte had notionally cleaned it herself, it wouldn’t do to have it gleaming as if industrial cleaners had been at work. Many of the blades I had seen at the Wallace Collection were far from gleaming, often pock-marked or speckled with age.
But cleaning revealed nothing of its ownership. I had no serious hopes of finding Shakespeare’s coat of arms, initials or name; although technically feasible, that was not customary. A maker’s mark was much more likely but there was nothing until rubbing revealed ‘ME FECIT SOLINGEN’. A German blade, then, as so many were in the years before the swordsmiths of Hounslow came on stream. Solingen was where the best blades in the world were made, then and for centuries to come. It was so famous that other makers would fraudulently imitate its marks but I wasn’t expert enough to tell whether this was genuine. It was no surprise that the edges and the point were blunt. Restoring it to its pristine sharpness would demand machinery I didn’t have and anyway it would be an unlikely thing for Charlotte to have done. It was best left as it was. I was saying that to myself even as I began gently to file it, surprised at how easily an almost respectable edge and point emerged. It was indeed a quality item.
Individuality was more likely to be found on the hilt. Blades demanded craftsmanship but they could be, and often were, replaced. The hilt, on the other hand, was an exhibition of artistry and the most obvious indication of the wearer’s status. The knuckle guard was dented and I discovered that the cross-guard or quillon was missing the bent swan’s neck on its lower end; the metal felt rough to my fingertip where it had broken off. Detailing was impossible to see under the blackening and soot but I could feel it was encrusted. Further cleaning revealed carved designs on the bits that stood proud. They looked as if they had been overlaid with silver so that they would stand out against the dark ironwork a fraction of an inch beneath. The knuckle guard itself was fashioned into entwined leaves and deformed in the middle, pushed in towards the grip as if by a sharp blow. The ovoid pommel was fluted, solid and unadorned but the grip was the most difficult to clean because of the silvered twist-wire I could feel beneath the dirt. Eventually it all came up nicely enough, without appearing overdone, but there was still nothing to indicate ownership.
I was not disappointed; most swords had no such indication. What Shakespeare would most likely have wanted, and been prepared to pay for, was the best sword he could buy that was appropriate to his status. What we know of him – and we know quite a bit compared with what we know of most of his contemporaries – suggests that although status mattered significantly, he did not seek undue attention for himself. Doing what he did, he cannot have been a shrinking violet, of course; accounts indicate that he was sociable and agreeable but never one of the roistering boys. Money and security obviously mattered but the upstart crow seems never to have donned the plumes of the strutting cockerel. I would have liked the man, I told myself as I posed late that night before my bedroom mirror, sword in hand. A little unconvincing in striped pyjamas, perhaps, but the weapon handled nicely despite its length and weight. I kept it with me overnight rather than risk leaving it in the shop, laying it within reach on the carpet by my bed as if ready for action.
In the morning I posed with it again, slashing this way and that, pointing and stabbing. It was hard to imagine Shakespeare fighting, sword in one hand, dagger in the other, but I fancied that in the right clothes I might cut a threatening enough image. Less than dashing, admittedly, but purposeful, as if I meant it. After only a minute or two the weight of the sword made itself felt but the thought that my hand clasped what his had clasped – almost certainly, I was convinced – gave me strength. There is life in things we touch and use, something of ourselves clings to them.
I waited until after eleven to ring Charlotte, not wanting to appear too keen. ‘Bring it this evening,’ she said, ‘at about eight. Don’t eat. I’m cooking supper.’
Male vanity is impossible to underestimate but it is surely not unreasonable to speculate that a married woman who invites you to dinner when her husband is away may have something in mind. Nothing blatant, perhaps, but possibly the creation of circumstances in which I could be induced to feel that I was the seducer. If so, would I oblige? I found her attractive and had no moral qualms about deceiving Gerald. My reservations were the selfishly practical ones I had mulled over already: would an affair make it more or less difficult to secure the sword? How would it affect my business in our small community if it came to light? What if she, seeking a closer and more permanent relationship and suspecting I wanted the sword more than I wanted her, became embittered, went public, caused scenes? There is nothing I hate more than scenes.
Desire is of course a complicating factor. Mine was
what might be expected of a middle-aged man in reasonable health who had grown accustomed to celibacy in recent years; hardly torrential, therefore, and with little danger of it breaching the dam of self-interest. But it was there; she was an attractive middle-aged woman with striking eyes and a figure that was lasting well. It helped significantly that she appeared to find me attractive, and it was pleasing to anticipate a modest revival of those carnal pleasures that had once been a principal preoccupation.
Of course, I should have asked myself why such a presentable woman would find an overweight, ageing shopkeeper with thinning hair and well-ploughed features an exciting proposition. But few of my gender are prone to such critical self-examination. Even if I had been, I should probably have concluded there was no accounting for taste, and felt grateful for it.
‘Where?’ Stephanie asked when I said I was dining out that night. When I told her she added, ‘I like her.’
‘She’s very nice.’
‘Can I come?’
‘Not this time. Another time.’
She laughed. ‘I would like that.’
For the first time for years that night I dithered about what to wear. I no longer had any idea about what might be appropriate to seduction. Perhaps it should be something neutral and relaxed that suggested nothing, made no statement, in case her intentions were not what I thought. Predictably, I settled for the sort of thing I always wear – corduroys and tweed jacket, checked shirt, no tie. Better not to appear presumptive, I thought. Anyway, unless I wore a city suit or dinner jacket, there was nothing else. It’s years since I stopped wearing jeans, having concluded they make older men look as if they’re trying too hard to look like younger men.
She received me wearing a blue silk dress, tight-waisted, flared from the hips and high-shouldered with a suggestive but not too revealing neckline. The blue enhanced her eyes, like the necklace she had worn before, only this time her necklace was a thin gold chain matched by another on her wrist. Her wedding ring was a thick gold band and her engagement ring a triple sapphire set in gold. Gerald had not stinted. I took the dress to be a positive indicator, implying accessibility.
Unwrapping the sword from its blanket, I handed it to her, hilt first, with a mock bow. She took it with her right hand, balancing the blade on her left. ‘It’s beautiful. I had no idea it would clean up so well. Gerald will be impressed.’
‘He might ask how you did it.’
‘That’s all right, I decided to tell him I had taken it to you for cleaning. Best to keep things as close to the truth as possible, don’t you think?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘He rang this afternoon. When I told him he just said he couldn’t see the point in cleaning a dirty old poker. I said that was precisely why, because it was dirty. I didn’t mention that you were coming to dinner. Would you like to see the cellar?’
Drinks in hand, we descended a steep flight of narrow brick steps behind the door under the stairs I had taken to be a cupboard. There, beneath a single dim bulb, were stacked Windsor chairs, armchairs, dismantled beds, chests of drawers, tables and smaller items, enough to fill a small barn of the sort commonly rented by my trade. It was mostly nineteenth- or turn-of-the-century stuff interspersed with a little Georgian, the lumber room of a family that had downsized in successive generations but couldn’t bring itself to throw anything away. There were also stacks of old books.
‘How did you get it down here?’ The door and the stairs were narrow.
‘There.’ She pointed to the back of the cellar where, in the gloom, I made out wider brick steps leading up to a double trapdoor at the front of the house, like many in Winchelsea. Beside the steps, against the wall, were three large wooden chests.
‘What’s in those?’
‘Goodness knows, just old papers and things.’
‘Family papers?’
‘Letters from the outposts of empire. Such great letter-writers, the Victorians.’
‘Older papers too?’
‘Probably, I’ve never been through them.’
I stared at the chests as though staring might make their contents visible. There could be seventeenth-century papers pertaining to the sword and the Combes. I would have to get at them.
‘This is what I was telling you about,’ she said. She opened a violin case on a nearby table. The instrument was resonant with the patina of age. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? It had all the Coombses fooled for centuries apparently until one of them – Gerald’s uncle, I think it was – took it to an expert. Although it’s only a copy of a Stradivari it’s apparently a very good violin. No idea who played it. They’re not at all a musical family.’ She brushed the strings with her forefinger. ‘But it’s that sword that interests you, isn’t it?’
‘As you know. Not for its value or beauty or age or because I’m an obsessive’ – I paused for her to reflect my smile – ‘but because of its provenance. Possible provenance.’ There was no point in holding back now, as we were already conspiring together, but I didn’t want to overdo it.
‘You really think it could have been Shakespeare’s?’
‘Could have, might have, possibly, just.’
‘I love Shakespeare, I’m passionate about him.’
She had never shown any other sign of her passion but I wasn’t going to argue. As I followed her back up the steps – did she exaggerate the swaying of her hips and the swing of her dress, or was it the stirring of lustful imagination? – I began telling her all I knew of the Combe family and of swords in Shakespeare’s day. This continued over the mushroom omelette – she had warned me it would be a light supper – at the kitchen table with a bottle of white wine. The sword, meanwhile, she had laid not in the hearth but on the sofa.
‘It’s too good to be a poker again,’ she said. ‘It should be on the wall with the others.’
‘Would Gerald permit that?’
‘Of course not. Everything must always remain exactly as it was. Change frightens him, represents loss of control. I used to think this was just a male thing, made worse by the impotence of age, but now I think it goes deeper than that. With him, anyway. I suspect he was like it as a child. He certainly was in his working life. He usually left his job when he was asked to make changes or when change happened around him. Odd thing is, he was sometimes appointed in order to bring about change.’
She spoke confidently and fluently now without the concluding giggle that always made her sound as if she was withdrawing what she’d just asserted. She sounded familiar with her thoughts, not needing to feel her way. I asked how they met.
‘At a wedding. Dangerous things, weddings. Too many unforeseeable consequences.’ She smiled. ‘And you? How did you meet your former wife?’
I trotted her along the well-trodden path of my marriage and divorce, making light of the whole thing. I didn’t want to waste time on myself. Apart from distracting from my purpose, it would have led to the charade of self-analysis, invariably the more self-serving and futile the more protracted it is. One is what one does and the rest is talk, which means excuse or concealment. ‘I saw a rocking horse in the cellar,’ I said, turning the subject back to them. ‘But you’ve no children?’
‘His grandfather’s rocking horse. No, no children.’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps just as well. We tried, or I did. Awful phrase. There was a time when I couldn’t walk past a shop selling baby things without crossing the road, it so upset me. But it passed. It never bothered you, not having children?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think it would have.’
Had I been more interested in myself, or in what others thought of me, I might have probed that. As it was, I was more struck by the different Charlotte that was showing through, the glint of sun on steel through the sea-mist indicating cannon on a man-o’-war rather than the unarmed merchantman I had supposed. But I was not then concerned to explore, being too concerned with whether or not we were supposed to be seducing each other as a preliminary to my acquiring the sword.
‘Tell me ab
out Stephanie,’ she said. ‘What exactly is wrong with her, if that’s the right way to put it? What is her condition?’
I had discovered that talking about Stephanie was a good way of making myself appear agreeable and caring. Perhaps I am caring, up to a point, at least where Stephanie is concerned; but not in general.
‘So she’s perfectly happy doing cleaning and that sort of thing?’
‘She loves cleaning.’
‘She’d be welcome here with her duster. We have a daily – well, a weekly, really – but there’s always more than she can get round to, with all our clutter. And I hate housework. I’d happily pay her, if you think she’d like to come over.’
‘She’d love it.’ It could be very helpful, not only for Stephanie, who really would enjoy it once she was used to being in a new place, but for me because I’d have to drop her off and pick her up and maybe hang around a bit. This prompted a new idea about the sword.
‘We have an annex, a sort of granny flat built onto the side of the house,’ Charlotte continued. ‘You probably haven’t noticed because you have to go past the front door and through a gap in the hedge. It’s never used but it’s very nice. She could stay in it if you or she wanted.’
‘That might be very convenient, once she was used to being here.’
‘That’s what I was thinking.’ There was an amused light in her eyes as they rested on mine.
We finished the wine between us, though I drank most of it. Afterwards we took our coffees into the drawing room where she sat at one end of the sofa, leaving the rest to the sword and an armchair to me. The message was clear, which was fair enough because my new plan for acquiring the sword did not depend upon intimacy with Charlotte. I had decided to substitute it. I would find another of the same period and similar style, work on it to make it look like the original, then discreetly substitute it. I wished I’d thought of this before cleaning it since I’d exposed a lot of detailing which would make it more difficult to find one with similar patterning of the hilt. But it was unlikely that the Coombses would pay it much attention, especially if I encouraged them to continue using it as a poker so that it became blackened and dirty again. If I’d thought of it when I had the sword in the shop I could have quickly bought the first rapier I came across and returned it as the cleaned-up version and they’d never have been any the wiser.