by John Metcalf
Peter filled the kettle and plugged it in.
“I’ve been upstairs,” said Henry. “Having a wander round up there.”
Grunting with the effort, he bent down and unlaced his boots. Peter looked at the black dome of his bowler hat.
“What did you say?” said Henry.
Peter shook his head and smiled.
“I’m a bit hard of hearing, you see.”
Peter opened cupboards, searching for the tea caddy.
“There’s some nice pieces up there,” said Henry. “A few as’ll fetch a pretty penny. You don’t find so many now with the right brasswork on ‘em.”
Peter filled a milk jug and put it on the table.
“You know what I saw up there? On the landing? One of those big Chinese vases. Put me in mind of my old auntie.”
“Why’s that?” shouted Peter.
“Why’s what?”
“Your auntie!”
“Ah, that’s right,” he said.
“Chinozzery,” he went on, “that’s what they call ‘em. Collectors’ items now, those things. Pictures of ‘em in books. All that kind of Chinese item. Chinozzery.”
He nodded.
“Sixty years ago, seventy years ago, you couldn’t give ‘em away. Nobody wanted ‘em. You know what they called ‘em? Dust-gatherers. Ah! Dust-gatherers.”
Peter filled the teapot and put it on the table. Henry nodded slowly.
“It’s a different story today though, eh? My word, yes! They pay a pretty penny for ’em now. Hardly a sale goes by but what there’s one and the bidding’s sharpish.”
He pulled the teacup and saucer in front of him.
“My old auntie, now she had one. Lived in Brighton. She had one in her hall full of walking sticks and umbrellas. That one upstairs put me in mind of it. My Auntie Clara. ‘Course, she’s been dead and gone these many years.”
He supped at the tea.
“Warm and wet, eh?”
Peter smiled and nodded.
“It’s all right so long as it’s warm and wet, eh?”
He wiped his loose lower lip with the back of his hand.
“Ah, in the hall it was. Nobody wanted ‘em, you see. Same sort of colours but bigger than that upstairs. Handles made like lions with big, snarly faces. Quite took my fancy they did, when I was a little ‘un. Orange heads with big black eyes. Square eyes, as I recall.”
He smacked his lips.
“Drop more sugar, have you?”
He took off his bowler hat and put it on the table. The fringe of white hair at the sides of his head was fine and fluffy, soft like the down of a dandelion clock.
He stirred the tea.
“Oh, ah. Marvellous took with ‘em, I was. Though you’d never see a lion with square eyes. Marvellous took. Now, Henry, she’d say, don’t you go breaking my vase, she’d say. I’m stroking ‘em, I’d say. Stroking ‘em. Oh, a house-proud woman, that one. A proper Bessie! Up at six polishing the doorknob, whitening the step. Don’t you go trailing dirt through my house. Don’t you go breaking that vase, Henry, she’d say.”
George! You’re getting cloths over all that stuff?
Yes, Mr. Arkle!
I don’t want nothing scratched!
“Ah, it isn’t that easy, Mrs. C,” said Mr. Arkle’s voice.
They came into the kitchen.
“Oh, there’s Henry. We was wondering where he’d hid himself.”
“Why can’t you give me a price?” said Jeanne.
“Don’t you go breaking that vase, Henry, she’d say.”
“What?” shouted Mr. Arkle.
“Why can’t you?” said Jeanne.
“Is there another wet in the pot?” said Henry.
Mr. Arkle unhooked his glasses. His naked eyes squinted towards the window. He pulled the front of his shirt out of his trousers and rubbed the thick lenses.
‘’It’s the class of piece, you see,” he said.
He hooked the glasses back on.
“Most of the stuff what we’ve got here is antiques. And Henry says it’s right. He may wander a bit but Henry knows wood. And if he says it’s right. . . .”
“So?” said Jeanne.
“I can’t handle that class of stuff.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t dare, Mrs. C.”
“What do you mean?” said Jeanne.
Mr. Arkle leaned over and tapped the bib of Henry’s overalls. Henry took out his hearing aid and screwed the pink bulb into his ear.
“What’s that table and the six chairs?” bellowed Mr. Arkle.
“Chippendale,” said Henry.
“Is it right?”
“Ah.”
“How much is it worth?”
“Couple of thousand quid,” said Henry.
“Two thousand!” said Jeanne.
“No repairs? Nobody been antiquing on it?” bellowed Mr. Arkle.
Henry shook his head.
Turning back to Jeanne, Mr. Arkle said, “Perfect, see? Now how many places round here—within fifty mile of here, if you like—how many’s got perfect Chippendale? Eh? You get my meaning? Eh?”
Jeanne nodded.
“Ah,” said Mr. Arkle. “The bogues’d have us in no time. No trouble at all. They’d be onto this quick as a flash of duckshit. I do beg your pardon, Mrs. C!”
“So what do we do?” said Jeanne.
Mr. Arkle chuckled. He groped in his torn pocket and pulled out a block of pink stickers. He stuck one on the fridge.
“Ere!” he bellowed. “She wants to know what we’re going to do!”
“We’ll be going up to see Sammy in Sheffield,” said Henry.
“Ah,” said Mr. Arkle. “There’s your answer, Mrs. C.”
“And you’ll pay me. . . .”
“That’s it. When I’ve seen Sammy.”
He stuck a label on the electric mixer and stood it on top of the fridge.
“Make a nice little nest egg, this lot will,” he said.
Mr. Arkle!
Right here, George!
George came in carrying two leather suitcases and a cardboard carton.
“That’s about it, Mr. Arkle,” he said. “Frederick’s roping the load up now.”
“Where’s Anna?” said Jeanne.
“Helping him, Mrs. Carlyle.”
“And what’s this?” said Mr. Arkle.
“They’re my new suitcases,” said Jeanne. “Smart, aren’t they? I expect these initials’ll come off.”
“And this box was in a cupboard upstairs,” said George.
Mr. Arkle ripped it open and pulled out a silver trophy. The cup was about ten inches high. He took out four more and peered at them.
“Sporting things,” he said. “Not enough weight to ‘em.”
Peter picked up one of the cups and tried to make out the inscription. The silver was badly tarnished. Presented to Lt. Compton-Smythe by the Officers Mess. The only other word he could make out was Hussars.
“Well, there’s just this fridge left, then,” said Mr. Arkle.
“I’ll get the trolley,” said George.
“Ah, and take them cases out to the front door.”
Mr. Arkle opened the fridge and started chucking vegetables and fruit and foil-wrapped packages onto the counter and into the sink.
“Oh!” said Jeanne. “I’d forgotten about it! There’s a bottle of champagne in there. In the vegetable thing underneath.”
She gathered up four of the silver cups and swilled them under the tap. She took the dark green bottle from Mr. Arkle, twisted off the seal and wire, and popped the cork. She dashed the spuming bottle over the cups and handed them round.
“Gentlemen!” she said. “I give you, Captain Compton-Smythe!”
“I’ve had this before,” said
Henry. “At a wedding.”
George, Frederick, and Anna came in. Frederick tipped the fridge and then they tried to juggle it forward onto the metal trolley.
“Push!” shouted Anna.
“Here’s to a successful end to our business!” said Mr. Arkle.
“How about unplugging it?” said George.
“Oh, ah,” said Frederick.
“Ah!” said Henry loudly, beaming at them all, raising his cup.
“Happy days!”
“What about you, Mr. Hendricks?” said Mr. Arkle. “You’re the scholar here. Give us a good one.”
Peter looked down into the silver cup.
“Well,” he said. “Here’s. . . .”
He moved back against the counter as the fridge rumbled past. He waited until they were out of the door.
“Here’s to all of us!”
“Happy days!” said Henry.
“And here’s to Sheffield!” said Jeanne.
Mr. Arkle plonked his cup on the table.
“Very nice,” he said. He belched. “Very nice. Well, Mrs. C! We’d better go and have a look at that load.” Peter followed them out into the hall.
“What about that?” said Jeanne, pointing to the grandfather clock.
“That’s no good to us,” said Mr. Arkle.
“We’re ready! We’re ready!” shouted Anna from outside.
“Why not?” said Jeanne. “They fetch hundreds.”
“It’s engraved, Mrs. C. On the face, on the dial. The maker’s name and date.”
“Mummy!”
“We’re coming!” called Jeanne.
“We’ll just check them ropes,” said Mr. Arkle.
Henry and he went out of the front door. Jeanne lifted one of the suitcases and dumped it on the window seat. She unsnapped the locks and lifted the lid. She took something out.
“Peter?”
He walked over to her.
“I’ve got something for you.”
She held out a flat cardboard box.
“Take it.”
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
He undid the flap and slid out a leather document case.
“Two and a half albums,” she said.
He looked down at the glossy leather. He unzipped the case. It was stuffed with tissue paper. He zipped it up again.
“It’s executive styling,” she said.
She turned away and closed the lid of the suitcase. She snapped the locks shut. She picked the suitcases up and walked to the door.
“Jeanne?”
She turned and looked at him.
Fastened to the tab of the zipper by a loop of thread was a gold-foil disc. He held it out towards her.
“It’s best quality hide,” he said.
She smiled and went out.
He stood in the empty hall, light gleaming on the scratched tiles, holding the document case. He heard the chains rattle as the ramp was closed, the pins banged into place. Footsteps. The slam of the cab door. He heard the motor turn and catch and then the sounds of the van crunching down the drive.
GIRL IN GINGHAM
Following his divorce, frequent dinners with the Norths had become habit for Peter Thornton. Nancy fussed over him and stitched on lost buttons; Alan plied him with beer and had distracted him in the early months with ferocious games of chess. Now, two and a half years later, his family relationship was declared by their daughter, Amanda, to be that of Uncle the Best.
“I’m ready!” she yelled from upstairs.
“No, don’t go up yet, Peter. Have some more coffee,” said Nancy. “She still hasn’t brushed her teeth.”
“TEETH!” bellowed Alan.
“She’s getting so bitchy and cunning,” said Nancy. “She runs the tap, eats some toothpaste, smears it round the basin, but now the little swine’s learned to wet the brush.”
“They all seem to hate it, don’t they?” said Peter. “Same thing with Jeremy.”
“By the way,” said Alan, “nothing new with the woman situation, is there?”
“No. Not particularly. Why?”
“Well, don’t be too long up there. Might have something to interest you.”
“What?”
“This wine,” said Alan, emptying the bottle into his glass, “confirms one’s prejudices against Hungarians.”
“What might interest me?”
Alan shook his head and wagged a solemn finger.
“What are you being so mysterious for?” said Peter. “Oh, no! You haven’t got someone coming over?”
He glanced at Nancy who shrugged.
“Our wife,” said Alan, “privy though she is to our councils and most trusted to our ear . . .”
“READY!”
“Before you get completely pissed, dear husband,” said Nancy, “you can help me with these dishes.”
“Your merest whim, my petal,” cried Alan, “is my command.”
“Oh, Christ!” said Nancy.
As Peter went upstairs, Alan in the kitchen was demanding his apron with the rabbits on it; Nancy’s voice; and then he heard the sounds of laughter.
“The woman situation.”
Whom, he wondered, had Alan in mind for him?
The woman situation had started again for him some eight months or so after his wife had left him. The woman situation had started at the same time he’d stopped seeing Dr. Trevore, when he’d realized that he was boring himself; when he’d realized that his erstwhile wife, his son, and he had been reduced to characters in a soap opera which was broadcast every two weeks from Trevore’s soundproofed studio.
And which character was he?
He was the man whom ladies helped in laundromats. He was the man who dined on frozen pies. Whose sink was full of dishes. He was the man in the raincoat who wept in late-night bars.
That office, and he in it, that psychiatrist’s office with its scuffed medical magazines and pieces of varnished driftwood on the waiting room’s occasional tables, was the stuff of comic novels, skits, the weekly fodder of stand-up comedians.
In the centre of Trevore’s desk sat a large, misshapen thing. The rim was squashed in four places, indicating that it was probably an ashtray. On its side, Trevore’s name was spelled out in spastic white slip. Peter had imagined it a grateful gift from the therapy ward of a loony bin.
It presided over their conversation.
How about exercise? Are you exercising?
No, not much.
How about squash?
I don’t know how to play.
I play myself Squash. I play on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In the evenings.
Following one such session he had gone home, opened the bathroom cabinet, regarded the pill bottles that had accumulated over the months. He had taken them all out and stood them on the tank above the toilet. He arranged them into four rows. In the first row he placed the Valium. In the second, the Stelazine. In the third, the Tofranil. In the fourth, the Mareline.
Uncapping the bottles, he tipped the tablets rank by rank into the toilet bowl. Red fell upon yellow, blue fell on red, tranquillizing, antidepressant psychotherapeutic agents fell, swirled, and sifted onto agents for the relief of anxiety, emotional disorders, and nausea.
The results had suggested to him the droppings of a Walt Disney rabbit.
Following this, he had twice attempted suicide.
In spite of Montreal’s entrenched and burgeoning underworld, the only weapon he had been able to procure, and that in a junk shop, was an ancient .45. Bullets had proved impossible to obtain without a permit.
He shrank from the mechanics of a shotgun—bare feet and the cold, oily taste of gun metal filling his mouth, and the absurd fear that in the second of death the kick of the barrels would smash his
teeth.
His second attempt was with prescription sleeping pills, blue gelatine capsules. He had written to his mother and father, swallowed twenty-five, and lain wakefully on his bed clutching the plastic bracelet that had been secured round Jeremy’s wrist at his birth. His stomach felt distended and, after belching repeatedly, the taste of the gelatine had made him vomit.
Subsequently, with a large weariness and a settled habit of sadness, he had become active in the world of those whose world was broken. First it was the single women of his married friends’ acquaintance, awkward dinners where he had learned the meaning of “intelligent,” “interesting,” “creative,” and “kind.” Later, he had encountered childless women, women married but embittered, divorced women with single, maladjusted children who demanded to know if he was to be their new uncle. He had even met a twenty-eight-year-old virgin who one night confessed that she hated men because when they became excited their things came out of their bodies, red like dogs.
He had acquired an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Montreal’s restaurants.
He had become an authority on films.
He had learned to avoid women who took pottery courses and had come to recognize, as danger signs, indoor plants, Alice in Wonderland posters, health food, stuffed toys, parents, menstrual cramps, and more than one cat.
Amanda was trying to whistle.
He whistled a few notes of the tune she was hissing.
“Come on,” she called.
Her bed was littered with books; she had chosen Paddington Bear and The Sleeping Beauty. The Bear book was one he had recently given her. When he bought books for his son, who now lived in distant Vancouver, he always bought Mandy duplicates. He mailed off a book and a letter weekly into the void from which few answers returned. Mandy snuggled against him as he read.
. . . mounted the Prince’s white charger . . .
“What’s a charger?”
“A big, white horse.”
. . . mounted the Prince’s white charger and rode away to his kingdom in a far country.
“Look at all the flowers in the picture,” she said.
“The end,” said Peter, getting up and kissing her goodnight.
“Peter? How many flowers are there in the world?”
“THE END.”
“More than people? More than cars? Not more than ANTS?”