The Rectory

by Ivan B

  “I don’t understand it,” he said, “they must have come in the middle of the snowstorm to dig them up and have known exactly where they were.”

  “Really?” I replied, knowing full well who’d dug them up.

  “Really, they must have used a mini-digger with caterpillar tracks.”

  “And nobody noticed?”

  “Not in this weather.”

  He looked so embarrassed that I put his mind at rest.

  “Look, we did our bit in burying them, there’s no body parts involved and nothing of material value, so lets just shrug it off as one of those things and get back to living.”

  He looked relieved.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure, we don’t want people getting the wrong idea that bodies are being dug up do we?”

  He turned white.

  “Definitely not, and thank you.”

  He shot off to get some coffee and I hoped that the Du Pres family, or whatever they were really called, were helped by having at least some mementoes of their young lives.

  Monday Yolande and I journeyed to the Radio museum, we went there first just in case; just in case we found some more bonds. We were expected and ushered into a small room that had a sort of varnished table, well it must have been varnished at sometime as the edges still retained some of the brown substance. As requested we were left alone and Yolande set to work, beginning, in a perverse female manner, with the smallest radio. By the time she got to radio number five I was already both bored and excited. Radio seven yielded a small black and white photograph of Mr Grant. Radio ten yielded a one dollar note and the last radio yielded a small plastic box that was empty. Yolande sat back and I stretched.

  “Well that was a waste of time.”

  She sat at the table and counted the radios, I was keen to just go. She re-counted the radios, “I thought that you said there were seventeen, there’s only fifteen here.”

  Fifteen, seventeen, what did it matter.

  “So?”

  “So, we’ve come all this way.”

  I sought out the museum curator who became so sycophantic I almost vomited. Ten minutes later the museum technician carried in two more, much larger, radios and gave me an apprehensive look. I went straight in for the kill.

  “I guess you know what we’re looking for?”

  He turned red and gave the door a furtive look.

  “I’ll pay it back, I didn’t think that anybody knew it was there.”

  “Does that make it right?”

  He sat down and put his head in his hands.

  “My wife said that I should put it back.”

  “Put what back?”

  “The £1000 I found in the Grant Superior.”

  I felt for him, I imagined what I would do if I found £1000 tucked away in an old radio.

  “What did you do with the money?”

  “I bought a swinging Moses basket for the nipper, a new dress for the misses and put the rest towards a holiday; I’ll pay it back, honest.”

  “Did you look in any other radios?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged, “They’ve got wax seals over some screws.”

  “Then why the Superior?”

  “It went faulty and I knew that the problem would be one of the soldered connections to the loudspeaker.”

  “And it works now?”

  “Of course.”

  “OK, keep the money, call it your repair fee, but next time ask.”

  His face lit up and he stammered his thanks as Yolande took the back off of the last radio; it was empty of anything but circuitry. She put the back on and the technician gathered the radios together. He frowned.

  “Do you want the loudspeaker cabinets as well?”

  “What loudspeaker cabinets?”

  “We’ve got a set of Grant megaphone type speakers and another set of Grant full-box speakers, I believe they were intended for an American group, but they never collected them and Mr Grant passed them to us.”

  I nodded, he frowned again.

  “They’re rather large, it would be easier if we went to them.”

  We followed him through the museum and two things struck me, firstly the museum was laid out superbly and secondly there were no visitors.

  “Where is everyone?”

  I got a bored reply.

  “School trips don’t start till next week and we don’t usually get many visitors on a Monday.”

  Yolande whispered to me.

  “How does this place pay for itself?”

  I had no answer, but unfortunately I was to find out later. The technician took us into the final exhibition hall and led us to a huge stack of loudspeakers, I counted eight grey boxes. Yolande took the backs off of them all and found absolutely nothing. I turned to the technician.

  “And that’s all the Grant items?”

  He nodded.

  “Except for the Sporadismon, but that’s not on display.”

  Yolande raised an eyebrow.

  “What on earth is a Sporadismon?”

  “It’s a radio juke box, I think he had it made for some display. You put in your money and choose a radio station, just like a juke box. You then get ten minutes before it turns off.”

  I was not impressed.

  “What’s special about that?”

  He grinned.

  “You can also choose a type of music option and it will only play music from selected radio stations and hunt around for another piece of music of the type requested from another radio station, hence it gives you sporadic pieces of radio to monitor – Sporadismon!”

  We went into a back room and he showed us the beast. It did indeed look like a juke box. Yolande and the technician took the back off after pulling it out from the wall. Inside it was a total mess, wires ran everywhere and there were various pieces of circuitry at odd angles in odd places. I turned to the technician, “Does it work?”

  He shook his head, “That’s why it’s out here. We did write to Mr Grant asking his permission to try and repair it, but he never replied.”

  I smiled at him.

  “Well you have my permission and you can have a go at getting it to work.”

  He licked his lips in anticipation and I watched Yolande ease a piece of familiar looking paper out from under a circuit board – bearer bond number six was now in my grubby palms.

  Out of courtesy I went to see the curator before I left and he obsequiously passed me an envelope, “Minutes of the last two trustee meetings, I hope that you will be able to come to this years meeting.”

  I became wary of curators bearing gifts.

  “Am I a trustee?”

  “You are if your Mr Grant’s heir.”

  “What does it involve?”

  He looked surprised that I should ask.

  “Two meetings a year and the occasional appearance if we have royalty or suchlike looking round.”

  I relaxed, that wasn’t too onerous. Yolande asked casually.

  “Any financial responsibilities?”

  He held his hands together in a deferential mode.

  “Of course, Mr Holmes will be one of our financial guarantors.”

  Warning bells rang in my head, loud and clear.

  “Which means?”

  He picked up a ‘History of the Museum’ leaflet. “It’s all in here. Mr Grant of Grant Radios, Mr Smedly of Smedly Electronics and Mr Weber of Weber’s Wirelesses set up the museum in the early 1980s. They set up a core fund of a million pounds between them and bought the premises. They specified that entrance to the museum must be free and that wages and purchases funded from the interest on the core fund. Over then next few years they each topped up the core fund until it stood at three million pounds.”

  I relaxed.

  “So you’re financially solvent?”

  He smiled.

  “Oh yes, we can adequately pay the wages and buy interesting radios and as long as the guarantors cover
major building repairs there is no inkling of us having to close down.”

  I heard the warning bells again.

  “Building repairs?”

  “Nothing grand at the moment, but sometime in the not to far future we will have to replace the lifts, they’ve been in situ for twenty-five years and I believe they were second-hand when we acquired them.”

  Yolande suddenly grinned, I didn’t see what was so funny.

  “How much will it cost?” She innocently asked.

  He gave a tremulous smile, “Around £64,000 I’m believe.”

  I sighed with partial relief, “And that will be split three ways?”

  He looked slightly embarrassed.

  “In theory, but Mr Weber and Mr Smedly pulled out of the museum in the early 1990s and Mr Grant was our only active guarantor.”

  Phrases like ‘He giveth with the left hand and taketh away with the right’ crossed my mind.

  “What happens if I don’t pay up?”

  He became glum.

  “We’d have to nibble away at our core fund,” he sighed heavily. “There is after all no legal obligation for you to pay up as both Mr Smedly and Mr Webber pointed out.”

  Yolande put her head on one side.

  “And how big or small is the core fund at the moment?”

  He licked his lips.

  “Just about 3.3 million pounds.”

  I could almost see Yolande’s mind whirring.

  “And what’s the staff costs per annum?”

  He looked away.

  “There’s me, the technician, two security staff who double as reception staff and three part-time tour guides. All in all some quarter of a million.”

  “And what’s your annual yield on the core fund?”

  He fidgeted.

  “About 8%, we have some very good investments in the far East.”

  Yolande grinned, but I got there first, as I said numbers were my strong point.

  “So you have more than enough to cover the wage bill and pay for the lifts.”

  He raised his hands as if requesting an offering.

  “I always like a margin of safety.”

  I stood up.

  “Not at my expense, I’ll see you at the trustees meeting.”

  We left and I put my arms over Yolande’s shoulder.

  “You’ve just saved me making a fool of myself, I was certain that I’d lose the money from these bonds; after all that is the story of my life.”

  She moved closer to me.

  “Well let’s say that I’m working hard to change the habits of a lifetime – your lifetime that is.”

  After another visit to DeMills Bank and another eighty-eight grand into my bank account we did some shopping. I bought a new parka and persuaded Yolande to let me buy her a new overcoat; you know I never realised that women’s clothing was so expensive!

  Come Friday Yolande made the statement that I had been dreading, she had finished her work and the house wiring was complete. She came up to the flat, but announced that it didn’t need re-wiring, nor did the power feed to the stable block need replacing. All in all she had nothing left to do. I knew that I was going to greatly miss seeing her every day. I took her down to the garage and sat her in Miranda.

  “A little bird tells me that it’s your birthday next Thursday?”

  She half-smiled.

  “I stopped counting when I was threatened with twenty-two.”

  I passed her the registration document for the Metropolitan, or Miranda as she affectionately referred to it.

  “Well here’s the first instalment of your birthday present.”

  The smile on her face made the gift worthwhile. In truth I had investigated selling the little car, but the classic car market was in one of it’s doldrums and I had decided to hang onto it just before I heard it from Barney that it was her birthday on Thursday. She ran her hands over the steering wheel.

  “No-ones ever given me a car before.”

  “Not so much a car as a motorised pram.”

  She leant over and kissed me on the cheek, I took my chance.

  “And may I take you out for a meal on Thursday?”

  She looked at me with slightly apprehensive eyes.

  “You won’t do anything stupid will you?”

  As if I would.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as taking me to an expensive restaurant and me having to call the fire brigade.”

  I understood fully were she was coming from.

  “So you choose, what’s your favourite venue?”

  She went slightly pink.

  “I know you’ve got pots of money and I know that you’d be generous, but can we go to the Deben Hotel? They do lovely…”

  I put my hand onto hers.

  “If that’s what you want, that is what you shall have.”

  She looked up at me, “… and Thursday night is karaoke night in their function room.”

  I think I managed to suppress my physical cringe, but I’m not sure and she won’t say.

  Before we reached the Thursday I had to go through the rest of the week and as I suspected I was like a man with a missing part. It’s not as if I was idle, I had my floorboard expert in (despite Yolande’s plan B) and took some time to visit the carpenter, who, despite Yolande’s warnings, seemed to be making good progress. To my surprise Thursday became a sensational day. Firstly the merry floor-board men didn’t turn up as they had to finish a job elsewhere, secondly the chandelier was delivered and thirdly Yolande came to fit it. She’d already installed a huge hook for it to hang on and the process of installing it was remarkably simple and just involved a block and tackle and nerves of steel (from Yolande that is as she balanced on a plank that was resting on the banister rails.) However, we had a major surprise just as she was go into the loft to complete the wiring. She always listened to the radio as she worked and I had got used to the constant background drone. Just as she was about to mount the ladder to the loft she suddenly shrieked and turned the radio up. The DJ was obviously talking about some album or other. “…and the fact that it is a live recording with an enthusiastic audience adds that certain ambience that makes the whole thing rather special.”

  A second DJ interrupted.

  “It certainly does and I must admit that the quality of her voice and his piano medleys mean that although this will probable be a budget album, there is nothing budget about the contents.”

  The first DJ resumed.

  “In fact we like it so much we’re going to make it our record of the week next week, but just to whet your appetite here is Love Letters from ‘An Evening with Yolande and Richard Holmes.’ Now this is just a demo album sent to me, but I tell you if it’s not on release by this time next week I’ll want to know why.”

  To my utter amazement there was the sounds of the familiar piano introduction and then Yolande’s voice filled the echoey hall, she sounded marvellous.

  As the music died away and the DJs went on to discuss the merits, or otherwise, of the latest album from Dollymix on a selection of sea-shanties set to a reggae beat and Yolande turned the radio down again.

  “That was us?”

  “I rather believe that it was.”

  “And we’re going to be record of the week.”

  “I rather believe we are.”

  She looked me in the eyes.

  “Did you know about this?”

  I raised my hands in surrender, Yolande on the warpath I did not want.

  “Not a clue, in fact Sam hasn’t been in touch since he recorded us.”

  I picked my phone up of my pocket and Yolande climbed into the loft. The conversation with Sam was short, friendly and expensive. Yolande appeared from the loft and closed the hatch.

  “Well?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Well apparently he had one CD that he had laid down from his computer and used it to provide background music at some gig he was engineering for. That DJ, what’s his name?”

&n
bsp; “Gerry Hogan.”

  “Well he was at the gig, took the album from Sam and the next thing he knows is we’re album of the week on Radio 2.”

  Yolande wiped her hands on a piece of kitchen roll, I did like the way she did that. She shrugged

  “So we’re not quite hitting the high street yet.”

  “Maybe not next week, but certainly the week after. He’s got a friend who runs a record label, one of those budget jobs, and if we pay five grand for the up-front costs then we’re on the streets as soon as they can print the CDs.”

  She came over and put her hands round my waist.

  “And I know you, you’ve just said you’ll pay.”

  I nodded and she kissed me, I thought that this was rather a good arrangement.

  Yolande left mid-afternoon and I had some serious travelling to do. First off I went to Aldeburgh and saw Sam and gave him a cheque for £6,000, it seems that he forgot about the print costs of the album covers. Then I rushed to a shop in Aldeburgh High Street and finally raced home in time to shoot over to Yolande’s to pick her up for her birthday meal. For once the whole timing was perfect, I didn’t crash, run out of petrol or encounter an inebriated yak; perhaps my life was changing and changing for the better.

  Chapter 20

  After Joy Come Pain

  The meal was pleasant enough, but nothing special, but note that I’m talking about the food here. Yolande was special, she was wearing a dress that made her look like a film-star; mind you she could have worn a paper bag and I still would have thought that she looked like a film star. After the meal we drifted out of the restaurant to have our coffee and Yolande dragged me down a tiny corridor next to the grand staircase. The corridor turned out to be a dead end, but in a nook under the staircase was a two-seater settee that had been squeezed under the stairs. We sat down and as if by magic the porter brought us our coffee. She became demure.