by Alan Judd
While I was thinking this she moved on to the pros and cons of living in Winchelsea, the factions and jealousies to be found in all allegedly close-knit communities, the difficulty of keeping anything private. I was half-listening but was recalled from my musings when she placed her cup onto the saucer with a decisive clink and then stood. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.
I stood, taking my time over it as I struggled for an answer. Were we reverting to seduction after all? How was I supposed to respond? I tried a smile. ‘In general or—?’
‘Not generally, or not entirely.’ She nodded at the sword on the sofa. ‘It’s plain that you want that, your eyes have hardly left it since we came in here. What I meant was, what else do you want?’
‘In life or just—?’
‘I mean, is it just the sword? In which case, you can’t have it. But if you want it badly enough to want everything that comes with it, we might find a way.’
I apprehended her meaning without quite believing it. We stood within touching distance, eyes fixed on each other’s. Hers again had that strange light which might have been playful, or might not. ‘What I mean,’ she continued slowly, ‘is that you can have everything.’ She paused. ‘But only everything.’
She was the Snow Queen, beguiling, untouchable. ‘I’m not sure how we could arrange that.’ We were already speaking of it as a transaction.
With a shrug and another glance at the sword, she turned and led the way back into the hall. ‘That’s what you have to decide.’ She opened the front door for me.
‘Thank you for dinner,’ I said. ‘And for food for thought.’
She leaned forward, brushed my lips with hers and then firmly closed the door on me.
Chapter Five
I once read an account by an MI6 man called George Hill who had spied in Russia during the 1917 revolution and who, chased through the streets, ran one of his pursuers through with his swordstick. He made good his escape but paused a few streets away to examine his swordstick, noting ‘only a slight film of blood halfway up the blade and a dark stain at the tip’.
That had the ring of truth for me. One would stop. It would be irresistible, just as a dog goes on sniffing at a rat it’s killed but doesn’t want to eat. This and related thoughts never left me during the next fortnight, prompted by the ever-present memory of the sword on the sofa, clean and deadly, ready for use. Presumably it was back in the hearth now. Normal life continued – I opened the shop, closed the shop, bought a little stock, sold less, lived with Stephanie. My obsession – as Charlotte would have it – with the sword did not eclipse consideration of her but it kept her somewhat to the rear of the stage, for some reason always slightly out of focus. I found it difficult to picture her precisely. If I had apprehended her meaning correctly – it was hard to put any other construction on it – she was offering me the sword on condition that I also took on her, the house and everything else. Except, presumably, her husband. Such deals may be proposed more often than we think but they are rarely so explicit. Life, including personal relations, is a series of transactions, but we don’t like to admit it. Shopkeeping is more honest.
In the darker reaches of my apprehension I was aware of the implication that Gerald would somehow have to be removed from the scene, but I did not admit it fully to consciousness. Nor did I know how far she shared my apprehension. Did she have a plan or was she just vaguely aware that something would have to be done but preferred to leave it to me? That was perhaps part of the reason for the lack of focus when I tried to picture her, a symptom of my inability to fathom her. Except that I could always picture the playful, equivocating light in her eyes. But what was she playing with – her proposition, me, herself? Did she actually want the physical relationship with me she appeared to offer or was it merely a bargaining chip to be dangled as a prospect before me? In which case, how could she be so confident that I would want such a relationship that she was prepared to reveal herself so completely? Whatever my desires, my reactions had been – I hoped – outwardly as cool as hers. Perhaps her belief in her powers of attraction was such that she simply assumed all men wanted her. Or was it a phenomenon I had occasionally observed in both sexes: the fire of her own desire burned so bright that it seemed to her to set any man aglow with the same flame?
Or was she, like me, at once attracted and undecided, while, unlike me, lacking any equivalent of the sword to bring her on? Yet the manner of her proposal hardly smacked of indecision. Maybe she did have an equivalent of the sword: her determination to rid herself of Gerald.
Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, they both came into the shop. I was engaged with a customer interested in my seventeenth-century lantern clock, the one that had remained unsold since the day I bought the shop. He was the only person to have shown any interest in it apart from the solitary collector, the obsessive who had lectured me on it. This man was no expert. I had told him it needed restoration, that it wasn’t a Richard Savage but was probably of his school. He was mulling over whether to buy it and have me restore it at unknown cost or buy it as seen and get it done himself. I was reluctant to break off, so when the Coombses entered I acknowledged them with no more than a nod. Charlotte smiled and turned to my silverware cabinet. Gerald stood monumentally where she had left him, in the middle of the shop, staring at the long-case clock without a face, each seemingly as blank as the other.
‘Where’s the best place to take it if I have it done myself?’ asked the customer.
‘Bill Bruce in Lewes. One of the best in the country.’
‘If you have it restored, where would you send it?’
‘Bill Bruce.’
‘You don’t know anywhere else?’
‘It’s not worth a quick fix, by which I mean it’s worth much more than a quick fix which would work out dearer in the end anyway. Either do it properly or not at all.’
He nodded and bent again to examine the workings, breathing loudly through his nose like the doctor I used to be sent to as a child. I could tell he didn’t really know what he was looking at but wanted me to think he did. He probably sensed a bargain if he made a low offer for it as it was. Well, he would be wrong there. I excused myself for a moment and went over to Gerald.
Incongruously for the mild weather, he was wearing a tweed shooting jacket and deerstalker. I was about to attempt a feeble joke by offering to sell him gun and boots but decided against it on seeing his face. He stared at the empty clock, his red cheeks unmoving, his eyes fixed, his lips slightly parted. He reminded me of a stuffed bear – Byron’s, I think it was – I had once seen in an exhibition at the V&A Museum many years ago. Except that Gerald was taller.
‘The works have gone off for repair,’ I told him. ‘It’s a fine clock, a reputable maker, but not as rare as your local piece, your Bourn clock. We must arrange a time for me to come over and fix that chime.’
There was no response. For a moment I wondered whether I had spoken or whether I had imagined I had, mistaking the intention for the act. Then, incrementally, like an old ship of the line slowly changing tack, signs of life and recognition flickered fitfully across his features and he turned towards me. He turned his whole body, not just his head. ‘Father won’t have it.’
‘He wouldn’t like it? Your father wouldn’t like it if I stopped the chimes?’
‘Father’s dead.’
‘Yes, I—’
‘Chap coming over to do the chimes. Simon Gold. Knows all about chimes.’
Charlotte came between us, her hand on his arm. ‘It’s all right, darling, this is Simon. He knows about that. We will arrange for him to come over.’ She turned to me, her eyes urgent with appeal. ‘He’s a little confused today, often happens when he’s getting a cold. Could you come tomorrow, after you’ve closed? And bring Stephanie, if she likes the idea.’
The unlikely customer was holding the lantern clock aloft now, peering up at it. I didn’t trust him with it. I nodded to them both as I went back to him. ‘I shall, yes. About six.’
The man left a while later, saying he would think about it and call back. He never did, of course.
Stephanie laughed when I told her what we were doing that evening. ‘Will Millie be there?’
‘Who is Millie?’
‘Millie lives there.’
It turned out that Millie was Charlotte’s cat and that Charlotte had promised to introduce Stephanie to her. I had not seen Millie but remembered warily noticing a water bowl on the kitchen floor – warily because I can’t abide cats, whereas Stephanie loves them and longs to have one. I suffered occasional spasms of guilt for not permitting it – it would be a daily delight for Stephanie – but I really didn’t want to share the flat with a feline. It’s something to do with their furtive predatory presence and the way those pale merciless eyes follow you everywhere; you know very well that if you were smaller they would kill you and eat you. Besides, they make me sneeze.
‘I expect Millie will be there,’ I said. ‘Also, Charlotte may have some work for you to do, some cleaning work.’
Stephanie stared, open-mouthed and dismayed. ‘I want to work here.’
‘You will, we won’t leave here. But I could take you to Charlotte’s house to do some cleaning once or twice a week. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘I want to work here.’ She was on the verge of tears.
‘You will, Steph, it’s all right. We’ll go there together and we’ll see Millie. And Charlotte will pay you, too. She will give you money. But we don’t have to do it at all, not if you don’t want to.’
She stood still, watching me shut the shop. ‘I do want to,’ she said eventually. We both smiled.
When we arrived Stephanie was reluctant to get out of the car. I got her along the garden path to the front door only by walking alongside with my arm around her. ‘Are you going to stay here?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I’ll be here all the time. It’s all right.’ When Charlotte opened the door we saw a black cat curled up on the stairs behind her. ‘Stephanie is very much looking forward to meeting Millie,’ I said.
Charlotte caught on immediately, smiling and taking Stephanie’s hand. ‘Yes, of course, and here she is, waiting for you.’ She led her to the stairs where Stephanie, encouraged by Charlotte, tentatively stroked the creature.
It was either asleep or indifferent, making no response at all. Stephanie turned to me with a beatific smile. ‘She lets me stroke her.’
From then on all was well. Charlotte scooped up the cat and put it in Stephanie’s arms. We all went into the kitchen where Stephanie stood holding it and smiling, and smiling.
Charlotte turned to me. ‘Drink first or clock first?’
‘Clock.’
As we passed the drawing room she poked her head in. ‘Asleep,’ she whispered. ‘Or reading the paper. Same thing. Seems to sleep more and more now.’
‘Is he unwell?’
‘No more than usual.’
It was the work of minutes to disconnect the chime but I cleaned and examined the rest of it while listening to Charlotte instructing Stephanie downstairs on minor cleaning tasks. Stephanie sounded happy with everything provided Millie was in the room. The clock, as I had suspected, was a pretty crude and simple mechanism, assembled from bought-in parts. But nearly two hundred years later it was still going. I wound it, set it and left it ticking evenly.
At the bottom of the stairs I crept into the drawing room. The sword was back in the hearth with the other implements. The fire was laid but the blade was as clean as when I returned it, so it had not yet resumed its poker services. Gerald was asleep in the far armchair, legs outstretched, one foot crossed over the other, head back, mouth open, a copy of the Daily Telegraph spread across his torso. He wore a checked shirt with a dark-red tie, matching slippers, calf-length black socks and no trousers. A white towel was draped across his knees and thighs.
I stepped back into the hall to find Charlotte observing me from the kitchen door. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘Don’t worry, you won’t have woken him. I gave him something before you came. He’ll be out for half an hour or so and then he’ll go to bed.’
‘You slipped something in his tea?’
She nodded and smiled. ‘Come outside and I’ll explain.’
Stephanie was sitting at the kitchen table cleaning a pile of silver cutlery with Millie curled up on the chair next to her. She was working on a dessert spoon, slowly and laboriously as always when she polished. She was good with silver, taking an unconscionable time but eventually achieving a deep shine. She put down the spoon and solemnly put her finger to her lips when we entered. ‘Millie’s sleeping.’
‘Just like Gerald,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m just going to show Simon something in the garden. You’ll be all right looking after Millie, will you? We won’t be long.’
‘You have a way with her,’ I said when we were outside. ‘She wouldn’t normally accept being left in a strange house.’
‘I’ve had to get used to people who need looking after.’
‘I couldn’t help noticing that when you were in the shop Gerald—’
‘Yes, I want to talk to you about that.’ She led the way through the gap in the hedge to the annex she had mentioned, a narrow, weatherboarded, one-up-one-down cottage attached to the house. ‘Stephanie could stay here, it could be her quarters if she ever – if she feels happy about staying overnight sometimes.’ Her nervous tinkling laugh had reappeared. ‘But, yes, with Gerald it’s – it’s early onset, I suppose that’s what you’d call it. It’s what the doctor said, anyway. Dementia, I mean.’ She looked down at the small patch of lawn fringed with flowerbeds in front of the annex. ‘What a state. Our gardener hasn’t been near this for weeks. He must have forgotten about it. As had I until now. He comes tomorrow. I’ll tell him.’
I stared at the lawn, too, but without noticing anything about it. ‘You mean, Gerald has dementia already, now?’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s what I do mean, yes.’ She turned back to me and giggled again. ‘It comes and goes. He seemed better in recent weeks, quite his old self. Not that he was ever very . . . but now he’s suddenly much worse. He got lost the other day. The police found him. He wandered off from here without me knowing and walked all the way down to Winchelsea beach and carried on walking into the sea, fully clothed. For a while I thought – I almost hoped – you know . . .’ She still smiled but no sound came.
‘Why is he wearing no trousers now? Incontinence?’
‘No, not that, not yet, thank goodness. He forgot, simply forgot to put them on. I didn’t tell him because he gets so annoyed when I try to point things out that I feared there’d be a scene when you arrived and that it would scare Stephanie off. It wasn’t long before you came. If he wakes up and notices he’ll go and put them on and then he might be perfectly all right for the rest of the evening. Most of it, anyway.’
‘How awful for you. For you both.’ The latter was an afterthought.
‘Yes, it is, rather.’ Unsmiling now, she looked at me as if expecting something from me. I was about to ask whether she had any plans for if – when – Gerald became unmanageable, when she resumed with her earlier crisp decisiveness. ‘I’ve been thinking of something which, if it appeals to you, would resolve the situation for me – and for him – and would get you what you want.’
‘What is that?’ I didn’t really need to ask but didn’t want to admit that to myself.
‘Kill Gerald.’
I had learned – too late in life to take advantage of it – that if you don’t press your desires upon a woman, and you give her time, she will make hers plain, and that that simplifies everything. You merely have to be receptive and attentive. Charlotte spoke those two short words as quietly and mildly as if correcting me over the name of a plant. Her face was framed by small pink roses growing against the white weatherboarding behind her and her words were accompanied by birdsong from somewhere.
I didn’t pretend to be shocked because I wasn’t. It see
med natural to take the lead from her in approaching it as a purely practical matter. ‘Is that really necessary? After all, if his dementia—’
‘It is if you want the sword.’
I nodded. Already I was deceiving her, thinking how much simpler and less risky was my substitution plan. For that I would need continuing access to the house, however, so it was necessary to pretend to go along with her.
‘And what comes with it,’ she continued. ‘All this’ – she indicated the house and garden – ‘and me.’ She spoke now with the faintest smile and a slight lift of her eyebrows.
I returned her smile, marvelling inwardly at how easily she moved from her giggling, gushing social persona to this cool and intimate clarity. ‘The question is how,’ I said. ‘It would require careful planning.’ Which would take time, I did not add, time in which Gerald might die anyway, or walk off a cliff next time he strayed. Time, too, for me to find a substitute sword.
‘That’s for you to work out.’ She turned back through the gap in the hedge.
It took weeks to locate a rapier similar in period and style to Shakespeare’s. Internet searches, phone calls, visits and viewings, ploughing through catalogues were all unavailing. There were later swords in abundance and even earlier medieval weapons – big two-handed pieces – were not in short supply. But swords designed to be worn in daily or official life came in only during the later sixteenth century and were falling out of regular use by the end of the next. There were plenty in museums but few for sale. Finally, I remembered Stuart Gillingham, whom I had met years before on a furniture restoration course at West Dean College. He wasn’t on my course – he taught metalworking – but we got to know each other and kept in touch after he left to set up his own craft smithy near Chichester. We did occasional business together. He was a real master craftsman and as sharp as some of his products when it came to doing a deal. Because of that I didn’t warn him of my interest but drove over one afternoon and dropped in.