Framed

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  Suddenly the bolt on the bathroom door shot back and Marie was standing behind me. Almost at the same moment, Minnie appeared in the bedroom doorway. Oh, brilliant. Now there was going to be a big scrap and everyone would know what we were up to. And we’d go to jail and be in the paper and . . .

  Marie glided back into her room. She didn’t even look at Minnie as she passed her in the doorway. She went back in and shut the door.

  I said, ‘She is weird. Luckily. I thought she’d go mad when she saw you’d been in there.’

  ‘She didn’t, though,’ said Minnie, ‘so we’re all right, aren’t we? It’s under her bed. We’re all right.’

  As she said this I noticed something strange: Minnie was crying. I said, ‘What’s up? Don’t do that. What’re you crying for?’

  She said, ‘I’m not crying.’

  I said, ‘That’s a relief.’ But she was crying. She must’ve seen something in Marie’s room. Anyway, just then the stripy-suit man came up the stairs with Mam so luckily I didn’t have to talk about it. The man reached for Marie’s bedroom door and turned the handle.

  Mam said, ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  Marie’s voice came out of the room like a flying dagger. ‘Get out!’ she shrieked. And he did. So our security was good.

  When the stripy-suit man had gone, Mam said, ‘He says we’ll get quite a good price because of the exceptional view and because the garage provides room for development. He thinks someone might want to open a bed and breakfast here or a garden centre or something. Quite exciting.’

  I know it’s mad, but I’d not really thought about us moving out before. I looked out of the window at the exceptional view.

  Minnie said, ‘How long have we got? I mean . . . how long will it take?’

  ‘That depends,’ said Mam, ‘on whether anyone wants to buy it. And if we can get Marie out of her room. No one’s going to want to buy it with her in there.’

  We told Marie about the house being for sale by slipping a note under her door.

  Minnie came and slept in my room. She said, ‘If we can get that painting, we could have that “For Sale” sign down quicker than it went up. We could build our own garden centre.’

  ‘But we can’t get the painting because we are not going to steal a painting.’

  ‘I know,’ said Minnie. ‘I just don’t remember why not.’

  ‘Because, as you said, we don’t know anyone with twenty-five million pounds, so what is the point?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Minnie.

  I turned over and tried to get to sleep.

  ‘Except. . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, we don’t want twenty-five million pounds. Twenty-five million pounds is what the gallery would get if they lost the painting. If we offered it back to them for a lot less than that, they might be quite pleased. It wouldn’t even be stealing. It would just be making a point.’

  ‘It would be kidnapping.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, kidnapping’s not so bad, is it?’

  ‘How much less?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking about this. When you think about it, it’s all the gallery’s fault. Before they moved in, we were ticking over nicely. Dad was happy. Tom was happy. Marie was happy. The gallery is the reason that Mam has to pay the extra insurance. They should pay it. They should pay our insurance. And some wages for Tom. That’s all we want: everything back the way it was.’

  Everything back the way it was was very tempting.

  ‘Maybe a bit of cash to go on holiday or something.’

  I said, ‘No,’ rolled over and pretended to be asleep.

  ‘No completely?’

  ‘No completely.’

  ‘Not even to get Tom his job back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fine. You’ll have to tell Tom, though. You’ll have to tell him soon, before he builds his hopes up.’

  ‘All right then, I will.’

  ‘Great. Goodnight.’

  After a bit I said, ‘Min . . . why were you crying when you came out of Marie’s room?’ But she must have fallen asleep because she didn’t reply.

  Tom was outside school next morning. When he saw me coming, he ran over and shook my hand, and carried on shaking it until I thought my teeth were going to drop out. He kept saying, ‘I’m so happy. I’m so happy.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Minnie says you have a great plan. She says you’re going to put everything back the way it was. I get my job back, even!’

  ‘When did she say that?’

  ‘Just now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’

  ‘Well, the thing is, she shouldn’t have said that. . .’

  ‘Why? Did you want it to be a surprise?’

  ‘No, but. . .’

  ‘Dylan. Everywhere I go in this town I see the things that you have done. The nice shop windows. The boating lake. The pavilion. The sign. You did all of this to the town. You made the town better. And now you are going to make me better.’

  ‘Well, the thing is . . .’

  ‘Dylan, you are just like your father. You fix everything.’

  That was on Tuesday. So I still had a day before Lester had to decide which picture to send to London.

  When I got home, I put my big coat on, climbed over the gate and started off up Manod Mountain. I knew I had to try.

  I followed the white stones through the cloud again. I passed the big boulder with the staring faces drawn on it. I came through the cloud and into the sun and took my coat off. I’d hardly got to the fence when Lester came out to meet me.

  ‘Nice to see you,’ he said. ‘I thoroughly enjoyed our soirée last week. I hope you did too.’

  ‘Yes, it was good.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Yes, she liked it. Everyone liked it.’

  He was so pleased to see me, and I’d only come to rob a painting from him. I felt like telling him the truth there and then, but then he said, ‘I hear you’re moving on?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where to?’

  I looked at the exceptional view – at the shiny black peak of Blaenau Mountain, at the green slopes of Manod Mountain, at the big duvet of cloud that covered my town. Were we really going to go away and leave it all? I took a deep breath and said, ‘Did you ever hear of a painting called Sunflowers?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s by—’

  ‘I know who Sunflowers is by.’

  ‘You haven’t got it here, have you?’

  ‘Yes, we have. Of course, he painted a whole series of sunflowers, but one of the best is here in our collection. I’m surprised it interests you. I was thinking that perhaps you’d like to see some Velázquez. Really Sunflowers is horribly overrated and . . .’

  It would have been easy to let him talk me out of it. But I said, ‘I’d really like to see Sunflowers.’

  ‘Well, I have to admit I was thinking I’d have to send it up to London at some point. It is such a crowd-pleaser. Why not this week? Come in. I’ve got something to show you.’

  Lester led me inside the mountain and down into the big cavern where the paintings were kept. The lights were off. It was pitch black.

  He said, ‘Dylan, when I came here, I was looking forward to having these pictures to myself. I had come to hate seeing them in the gallery, with crowds of trippers gawping at them. I was going to hoard them here in my cave like an old dragon with his treasure.’

  ‘Shall I put the lights on?’

  ‘In a moment. When I came here, I discovered that I didn’t appreciate these pictures any more than those day trippers did. To me they were just . . . dead, like dead butterflies in a museum case. Then someone came along and opened the case, and they weren’t dead any more. They flew away. And I finally understood them at last.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘That person – the person who let them fly – that was you, Dylan Hughes. I just wanted to say thank you. And now I’ll turn the lights
on.’

  And he did. Then he said, ‘What d’you think?’

  It was immense. Where all the rows of boxes had been, now there were rows of pictures. Big pictures, tiny pictures, huge pictures, pictures of women in mad hats, pictures of men out hunting, cities, seas, ships, lions, tigers, everything.

  ‘Quite an eyeful, eh? I thought the men working here, why should they be looking at boxes all day when they could be looking at the highest achievements of civilization, to quote your teacher? And this was your doing! This is all your doing. You are some sort of genius. Now let’s find your Sunflowers. Impressionism this way . . .’

  He set off down the rows of paintings. I looked at them all and all I could think was, Your fault. If it wasn’t for those paintings we’d still be happy. We’d still have the garage. Dad might come home even. It was all down to the paintings.

  I said, ‘Lester . . . Mr Lester, I . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m not a genius.’

  ‘Well, genius is a much misused word.’

  ‘I’m not even clever.’

  ‘Clever people always think they’re not clever.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about painting.’

  ‘To know we know nothing is the beginning of wisdom. As it says in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Ha ha.’

  ‘My chickens . . .’

  ‘Your chickens? Ah yes. Donatello and Michelangelo . . .’

  ‘They’re not named after the painters. They’re named after the Turtles.’

  He looked a bit baffled.

  ‘The Ninja Turtles. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They’re called Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Donatello. And Splinter. But he’s not actually a Turtle. He’s a mutant rat.’

  Lester just stared at me for a while.

  ‘That’s who my hens were named after. Not the painters.’

  ‘But . . . you . . .’

  ‘I’d never even heard of the painters.’

  He didn’t say anything. After a while, I said, ‘Sorry.’

  He still didn’t say anything.

  I thought I’d better go. I said, ‘D’you want me to turn the lights out?’

  But he still didn’t answer.

  2 July

  Cars today:

  ROVER 3500 V8 – the Misses Sellwood

  Weather – very wet

  Note: PLAN B

  So first of all we didn’t get to pump petrol any more or help in the shop. And now I’d stopped being a genius. For the first time in Manod there was nothing to do. No wonder we were thinking of turning to crime. Every day was like Wednesday. In fact, Wednesday was more interesting, because at least the Misses Sellwood came. Miss Edna pipped the horn and when I came out she asked for her copy of the People’s Friend.

  I explained to her that we’d closed down.

  Miss Edna said, ‘Elsa, he says they’ve closed down.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Elsa, ‘Have they got your People’s Friend?’

  ‘No, they haven’t. We’ll have to go to Mrs Porty.’

  ‘Closed down,’ said Elsa. ‘And only open the twinkling of an eye.’

  ‘I’ve only just got used to them being here,’ said Edna.

  And they drove off.

  I’d lived nearly all my life in the Snowdonia Oasis. But the Sellwoods had lived all their much longer life on the mountain. To them, we seemed like a novelty. Somehow that made me feel a bit better. That’s why, when Minnie came out, I felt quite comfortable saying to her, ‘The robbery’s off. Lester knows I don’t know anything about art. He’s not going to let the van stop and show us the painting. He’s not even talking to me. I’m not even sure it’s going to be Sunflowers.’

  Minnie said, ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve always got Plan B.’

  ‘Plan B? I didn’t even know we had a plan A!’

  ‘See you in the workshop after school.’

  When we got to the workshop, Minnie had it all set out. Two shop-damaged discount chairs – one for me and one for Tom. A tray of drinks. Notepads and pencils. And, on the workbench, some toy cars and a monkey wrench to help her explain her plan. She’d put a lot of work into this. It made you worry about her. This was Plan B:

  1. Put our painting in a wooden box like the ones from the gallery

  Minnie said, ‘You may be wondering where the shell we are going to get one of those,’ and then she smiled and pulled one out from under the tow truck. It had ‘National Gallery Collection’ written across the front. It was the one Lester had left behind, the time he forgot The Wilton Diptych.

  So that was Step One sorted.

  We left it to Minnie to sneak into Marie’s room, get our picture and put it in the box, which she did. She also borrowed Marie’s phone.

  2. Take the box up the mountain, ready to swap boxes

  We had to wait until Sunday night because that was when Lester put the picture back in its box so that it could be loaded on to the van and driven to London on the Monday.

  On the night, Tom hid in the workshop, waiting for us to come out, which we couldn’t do until Mam had gone to sleep. Mam stayed up really late, though. She was sorting things into boxes – some to take with us and some to take to a car-boot sale (Dynamo Blaenau Floodlit Car Boot Super Sale was coming up). I fell asleep but Minnie woke me up.

  We were quite worried about being seen by the guards. Then I remembered the shoe polish Dad had got from the Cash and Carry. We rubbed it on our faces so we wouldn’t show up so much in the dark. We almost forgot to get Tom out of the workshop. When we opened the door, he said, ‘Look! I brought these!’ He had three Turtles masks. I’m not sure they were that good as a disguise, but he’d always wanted to wear them so we did.

  The box wasn’t so heavy and it was easy to follow the white stones. Every now and then a sheep coughed, which was a bit scary. But we got up to the top.

  3. Swap our picture for their picture

  I said, ‘Hang on. How do we do that? There’s an alarm and—’

  ‘I can get round the alarm.’

  ‘Nothing to do with wasps, is it?’ said Tom.

  ‘No wasps.’

  ‘Good then,’ said Tom. ‘I hate wasps.’

  I said, ‘No, Tom, not good because not true.’ I turned to Minnie. ‘How can you get round the alarm? What are you? The Fugitoid?’

  The Fugitoid is this robot who was the Turtles’ main ally in their fight against General Blanque on Planet D’Hoonnib in the Sidayom System. He can drill through stone.

  Minnie said, ‘We won’t need any of that. I can do it with a packet of Quavers.’ And she produced a packet of Quavers she’d already acquired.

  On the night, I worried about the alarm all the way up the mountain. When we got to the top, Minnie pulled the bag of Quavers out of her coat. Within a couple of seconds, you could hear sheep crowding in from all over the place. They followed her right up to the barbed-wire fence.

  She hissed, ‘Lift it up. Lift the wire up and let a couple in.’ We did. Then she said, ‘Wait here. I’m going to set the alarm off.’

  ‘What?’

  But she was gone. We hid behind a great big boulder, the one with the doodles on. We could just see her heading towards the Technodrome, where Lester kept the paintings.

  Tom said, ‘She forgot the painting!’ We still had the gallery’s wooden box with us. ‘I’ll go after her.’

  I said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait and see what she’s up to.’

  Suddenly the alarm went off. It echoed round the caves and cliffs like the whole mountain was a massive bell. Blue lights were flashing. Men were running. Sheep were going crazy for miles.

  I was worried. Tom was terrified. But all of a sudden Minnie was sitting next to us, looking at her watch.

  Four quad bikes came roaring out of the dark, their headlights blazing. ‘Two minutes,’ said Minnie. ‘Pretty good.’

  The quads rumbled up and down the fence looking for intruders. We crouched behind the rock. After a while t
hey trundled back towards the Technodrome and the alarm stopped.

  ‘Did you get the painting?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Minnie. ‘Wait about half an hour.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  So we waited and watched. Men were running round with torches. Eventually they found the sheep that we’d brought with us. We could hear them shouting to each other, ‘It’s only sheep.’

  A few of them tried to chase one of the sheep towards the fence, but it wasn’t interested. Luckily they didn’t have any Quavers.

  We sat there, looking up at the stars. They were really, really bright up here, not like in town.

  Tom said, ‘Why was General Blanque so obsessed with the Fugitoid?’

  ‘Because he wanted to use its teleportal device to help him achieve galactic domination.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tom.

  Then Minnie got up. ‘I’m going to set the alarm off again,’ she said. ‘The trick is to make them think there’s something wrong with it, so they end up ignoring it.’

  So off she went.

  A few seconds later the alarm went off again. There was the same palaver with the men and the sheep.

  When Minnie came back, she said, ‘Four minutes to scramble the quad bikes this time. They’re getting slower already.’

  She set the alarm off three more times. Each time it took the guards a little bit longer to come out of their hut. Each time we stayed huddled together behind the boulder and talked about, well, stuff. It turned out that Tom knew the names of some of the stars.

  ‘That one’s Vega,’ he’d say. ‘I wish we’d brought a flask of hot chocolate. And that’s Cassiopeia. I’m freezing.’ And on like that.

  The moonlight made the big boulder shine like silver and it made the lines of the drawing on its side really black, like ink. All the faces in the drawing were looking in the same direction. Up towards the corner where the big mop of moss was. What were they looking at? I don’t know what gave me the idea, but I lifted up the big mop of moss – and tried to see what was underneath. Suddenly there was a noise like a tiny machine gun right next to me. I dropped the moss and crouched down quick. ‘Only me,’ said Tom. He was holding up a torch. ‘My wind-up torch.’ He lifted the moss and shone the beam on the corner of the boulder. There was a drawing where the moss had been. This one was two women with their hair hanging down. The men were all looking at the women. Some of the quarrymen must have scratched it on, years back.