They explained that there’d been some trouble and that they had this incriminating photograph of his children with a valuable painting. They showed him the Polaroid. Dad laughed, went indoors and came out with the painting by numbers of Sunflowers. He held it up for them.
‘Painting by numbers,’ he said. ‘Three quid at Bala Sea Scouts car-boot sale. I think, gents, you have been taken for a ride.’
Barry and Tone looked uncomfortable.
Tone looked at me and said, ‘They took twenty quid off us.’
Dad looked surprised. He said, ‘That doesn’t sound like them.’
Barry said, ‘That’s beside the point. We’re here to talk about the Mini Cooper.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Dad.
This was it. Now they really were going to arrest him for trying to defraud the insurance.
‘It went missing and then it was recovered.’
‘There’s a stroke of luck, then,’ said Dad.
‘Any damage?’
‘None whatsoever,’ said Dad. ‘Thinking of selling it on eBay.’
‘Don’t do that,’ said Tone.
Dad looked at him. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ he said.
‘Barry wants to buy it,’ said Tone.
‘I’ve always wanted one of them,’ said Barry. ‘Ever since I saw The Italian Job.’
‘Right,’ said Dad. ‘That’s good. That’s very good.’
And it was very good. It was the best thing ever. Dad said he could get five grand for it on eBay. Barry said he didn’t want to pay that much but he could pay cash there and then if the price was right, so they talked about prices for ages while Barry kept walking round and round and looking at the tyres.
‘Bit worn on the inside front passenger side,’ he said. ‘Makes me worry about the tracking.’
Dad opened the driver’s door and that’s when Barry saw that the indicator arm had a little light on the end that flashed on and off. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s got the original thingy. Let’s just take it.’
So they did. Barry handed Dad what looked like a triple-decker BLT but made of cash. Then he said, ‘Hold on.’
And he took a twenty-pound note off the top of the pile and said, ‘That’s what your kids took off us. I’m having that back.’
Then Barry jumped in and started it up. The first thing he did was put the indicators on and giggle at them. Then off they went. I stood on the little wall and watched the two cars go all the way down the Blaenau Road (B5565). Every now and then the indicator on the Mini would randomly signal right or left, but the car just kept going until it was gone.
‘I hope they’re insured,’ said Dad with a smile. Then he held up the wodge of money and said, ‘We have now generated a small capital sum that we can invest in our business.’
Which is what we did. And soon everything was fixed. Which is exactly what my dad is good at. Fixing things.
22 August
MENU
THE BIG PICTURE – two sausages, bacon, egg, black pudding, tomatoes, toast
THE STILL LIFE (vegetarian option) – tomatoes, beans, egg, mushrooms, toast
THE SKETCH – sausage or bacon toastie with coffee
THE COLLAGE – selection of any five items with coffee
Welsh lamb casserole with barley
Welsh rarebit
Selection of cakes and coffees
Takeaway sales: Ms Stannard (2 Twixes and an ‘FT’)
Note: NO ONE LIKES BARLEY
We are no longer just the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel and Copier Centre. We are now also a cafe, Manod’s premier indoor attraction. Minnie wanted us to be called the Bandits’ Hideaway, but she was outvoted. We’re called the Masterpiece Cafe. We still keep a petrol log, but Mam’s in charge of that now. I’m more involved with the menus. The lunch menu changes daily. I write it up in the petrol log and put some notes about it. For instance, no one likes barley. So everyone had Welsh rarebit. Which was a problem as we had to make each one separately, whereas the stew was in a big stockpot.
I remember we had to do twenty Welsh rarebits, because this is the day the paintings went back to the National Gallery. All the vans parked up behind the gate and all the drivers came in for lunch. Even Lester came in and had poached eggs on toast. He said he didn’t eat eggs!
We’d solved the mystery of why Michelangelo never laid any eggs, by the way. She was a bloke hen. A cock. And we solved the mystery of why Donatello stopped laying. She’d had half a dozen little white chicks. We showed them to Lester and asked him to name them. He said, ‘What about Splinter and April and Shredder and . . . I’m afraid I can’t think of any more.’
I said, ‘OK. Splinter, Shredder, April, Renoir, Monet and Massys.’
Later that day we walked up to the top, to get some sunshine. The barbed-wire fence had gone. One of the Technodromes was still there, but it was empty now. You could go right into the quarry. We walked all the way down into the big gallery and turned the lights on. It was, well, it was empty, a big empty space where all the paintings had been.
On the way home I stopped and showed Mam the drawings scratched on the boulder. She looked at the picture of the two women hidden under the moss and said, ‘Blimey, you know who they are, don’t you?’ and she scrabbled around under the moss and, sure enough, right at the top of the boulder, someone had written two names.
Then Dad went and got Miss Elsa and Miss Edna and brought them over to the boulder and showed them the drawing and the writing. ‘Elsa and Edna’, it said. ‘Turning Heads.’
Because the drawing was scratched into the rock, Elsa could feel the shape of it, which she could never do with a painting. Edna put Elsa’s fingers in the grooves for her and helped her move them round the scratches. A big smile spread across Elsa’s face. Because it was a picture of her all that time ago when she was pretty, and her dad must have drawn it, thinking of his girls on a cold day when he was supposed to be cutting slate. And here it was still, after all that time, a moment that was never going to go away.
If you ever feel like trying the Crispy Choc Constables in the Masterpiece Cafe, it’s easy enough to find now. Just follow the sign for Manod on the A496 and keep going till the road ends. Lots of people do. We’re so busy Dad’s built a conservatory extension. It’s called the Gallery. It’s got Marie’s picture on the wall. And one of the panels from the Elvis murals – the one of him in Jailhouse Rock. And our painting-by-numbers Sunflowers. And an exceptional view of the mountain.
The Paintings
The (Im)perfect Crime
Mona Lisa, 1503–06, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
That Madonna, Not the Other One
The Manchester Madonna, about 1497, Michelangelo (1475–1564)
The One with the Nuts
Still Life with Oranges and Nuts, 1772, Luis Meléndez (1716–80)
The One That Makes You Feel Good
A Grotesque Old Woman, about 1525–30, Quentin Massys (1465–1530)
The Party on Sticks
The Umbrellas, about 1881–6, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
Not the Holy Grail
The Wilton Diptych, about 1395–9, artist unknown
The Prettiest Little Girl We’d Ever Seen
A Greek Captive, 1863, Henriette Browne (1829–1901)
Time Is Mutagen
The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, Jan van Eyck (worked 1422, died 1441)
The One That Made Mr Davis Chainsaw Elvis
Bathers at La Grenouillère, 1869, Claude Monet (1840–1926)
A Different Angle
The Ambassadors, 1533, by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8–1543)
The One That (Nearly) Got Away
Sunflowers, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh (1853–90)
You can visit some of these paintings at the National Gallery,
Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN or
www.nationalgalleryorg.uk.
Acknowledgements
The paintings of the National Gallery really were evacuated to th
e quarry at Manod during the Second World War. Jessica Collins of the National Gallery and Dafydd Jones of the Siop Llyfrau’r Hen Bost in Blaenau Ffestiniog were both extremely generous with their knowledge of this story. The lively and beautiful town of Blaenau Ffestiniog is nothing like my invented town of Manod. The story of Maria Pasqua is also true and can be found in a moving biography by her daughter, Magdalen Goffin. Luther Blissett is a real footballer, but it’s a myth that he was bought by mistake. It’s not true about liver; Denny made that up. But it is true that there is a great school in Gumbi. It’s called St Martin’s (www.guardian.co.uk/getinvolved). I know nothing about cars or the Welsh language. I asked Ian Millar about cars and Marc Evans about Welsh. Benedict, Gabriella and Chiara went with me down the mine and round the gallery. Inspiration came from the children of St Raymond’s Catholic Primary, Netherton.
The editor was the immensely legend and hectic Sarah Dudman.
Above all I’d like to thank my parents. I first came across the wonder of art while holding their hands in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and later sitting next to my father while he studied the Renaissance for his OU degree in front of the television, very early in the morning.
F.C.B.
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