Hearts and Arrows

by David G. Pearce

  He knew she was totally wrong. He knew what love was and he knew that Rebecca would always have a piece of his heart even if she had broken it.

  The rest of the term was difficult. Christopher and Rebecca still walked around holding hands at lunchtime, but their closeness had already started to disappear. It returned just once, at the end of term play called Lady Precious Stream.

  Christopher had given a fantastic performance as the Emperor and he had been cheered by the whole audience when he took his bow. He looked out and saw Rebecca cheering along with everyone else. She looked at him, smiled, and mouthed the words ‘I Love You’. The electricity was still there and he felt the heady mixture of love and applause rush through his system.

  He never had forgotten her, even thirty five years later. After a long search through Google he had finally tracked Rebecca down. She had been reluctant to reply to any of his messages, but she was married now and he could understand it. Eventually he forced the issue by sending her a single ticket for his latest triumph at the Garrick Theatre. It was a revival of a little known play called Lady Precious Stream with Christopher Parker as the Emperor. If she didn’t turn up he had been wrong and his Mum had been right.

  He saw her as soon as he came on stage that night and gave the performance of his career. As the crowd cheered he saw Rebecca, older but still beautiful, mouth the words ‘I Love You’. The electricity coursed through him once more and the Manchester United blush was back. All of a sudden he was nine years old again and he knew for certain his Mum had been wrong.

  David G. Pearce, author of

  The Girl on the Train

  I am a lecturer in English as a Foreign Language and have been teaching for nearly 20 years. My serious writing career started about 5 years ago, although I have always enjoyed writing. I have a second book at the editing stage and a third book at the planning stage. I love Kindle, because without it I could never have got published.

  A Romantic Quest

  By Cecilia Peartree

  The first time I saw Flora, she stood in front of a Dutch winter landscape. Yellow-grey skies, an expanse of blue-grey ice, very small stick-figure skaters. She wasn't looking at the painting. It was just a backdrop for her startling red hair and plain black dress. Somehow the demure string of pearls at her neck didn't succeed in toning down her angular beauty. She was too thin, of course, as most of us were after wartime deprivation and subsequent food rationing. But still, anyone would have been pleased to have the chance to paint her.

  I wasn't an artist, only a policeman. I was sure there were quite a few artists present. We were in a gallery, after all, for the preview of an exhibition of Dutch paintings. I knew most of the other people there were art dealers, collectors, painters or members of the committee which had organised the show. I wondered which category she fell into.

  As if she had noticed me staring, she turned her head and smiled at me. It was a disconcerting smile because the open friendliness of her mouth didn't match the watchfulness of her eyes. She was hiding something - but what could it be?

  I was there because the chairwoman of the organising committee had badgered Scotland Yard into sending me along. She had already spent months badgering everyone involved, so I suppose it was now second nature to her. The exhibition was being held in aid of refugees, and it was due to be opened formally by someone from the Dutch embassy. I had been sent along to try and avert any embarrassing incidents. I don't know why the chairwoman imagined something was more likely to go wrong with a preview where everyone was there by invitation than when the exhibition opened to the public and anyone could walk in off the streets and buy a ticket, but there it was. My superiors knew I had an interest in art; I had just started an art history degree when the war intervened and changed my plans.

  Was this woman with the Dutch delegation? She did have an indefinably foreign air about her and she didn't look as if she belonged on any committee.

  She began to walk towards me. Did she sense fear, as a wild animal might?

  She stood in front of me.

  'Do we know each other?'

  The Scottish accent came as a bit of a surprise, but it was overlaid with something else, as if she hadn't lived in her native country for some time.

  'I don't think so,' I said, and held out my hand. 'Quest. Frederick Quest.'

  'F-Fiona M - McFlannery.' I did wonder why she stumbled over her own name, but she had a very firm, decisive handshake, equal to my own. We gazed at each other. Her eyes, with their wary expression, were greenish-hazel. Her skin didn't need the layers of make-up some women went in for these days. She just wore lipstick - and perhaps a little rouge, but I couldn't really tell.

  Her smile seemed more genuinely amused now.

  'You'd know me again, wouldn't you, Mr Quest? Now tell me, what are you doing here at this private view? You haven't been taking much notice of the pictures.'

  'I've seen all I want to see,' I replied.

  'No, I don't think so! Here, come with me.'

  She took my arm, almost as if we had known each other for ages, and propelled me away from the cold grey skating scene and past a painting of an interior with a chequered floor, which she said was by Pieter de Hooch. Just round the corner we stopped and there, in an alcove near the lift, was a small square painting in a deep frame. Like much of Dutch art it was a very brown picture, except that a shaft of bright sunlight fell across the top left-hand corner.

  'Rembrandt,' she said reverently. 'A man at a writing desk.'

  I peered at the picture. The man sat, not in the ray of sunlight, but in the penumbra, and you could only just see the darker outline of his head and shoulders, bent over whatever he was writing.

  'It's a bit on the small side,' I commented.

  'Small and exquisite,' she said. I noticed the intensity of her stare, and I had the feeling that she had left this London gallery and gone somewhere far away.

  At that moment the lift arrived and a couple emerged from it, arguing with each other. She turned away from the painting at last, seeming almost bereft.

  She gave a small sigh. But when her eyes met mine again they were calm and cool. For a moment I had longed to comfort her, but now it was clear that this woman didn't need comfort from anyone but herself.

  'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I've monopolised you, Mr Quest, and it isn't fair. Maybe you wanted to have a look at the Van de Velde seascapes? You'll find them in the side room across the hallway. Past the skaters.'

  She was trying to dismiss me. Perhaps she regretted getting into conversation with me in the first place. I still wasn't sure who she was. She certainly knew her way around the place. Was she an art dealer? A collector? She didn't have a ring on her finger, so she probably hadn't come along just as someone's wife, and despite the dramatic red hair and the stylish black dress, I doubted if she had the money to be a collector herself. I wasn't exactly a fashion expert, but I thought the dress had been altered from a previous season's style by an amateur seamstress, and her hands, far from being smooth and pristine as they might have been if she were rich and well-cared-for, had a broken nail and scratches across the back, as if she had been doing rough work. Or perhaps she had a pampered, playful cat which she doted on… I had an unwelcome and disturbing vision of her swathed in something black and filmy, reclining on a chaise longue with a white fluffy cat.

  It was definitely time to go and look at the Van de Velde seascapes.

  ***

  There was something about him that started all my mental alarm bells ringing. Not that I was frightened of him, although he was large and solid and looked as if he could hold his own in a fight. It was more that he appeared implacable and uncompromising, his eyes as grey as the ice in the skating picture, and his mouth set in a firm line.

  On the principle of attack being the best form of defence, I went up and spoke to him. He was amenable enough to being led around the gallery, and there was something in his eyes – regret, maybe, or a small spark of desire? – that almo
st made me relent in the middle of sending him away, but it was too dangerous to keep him beside me. I had already taken a risk in speaking to him. He would know me again.

  Taking risks had been like a drug to me at one time, and I still couldn’t resist the lure of it, even if the worst I faced this time if things went wrong was a spell in a British prison, and not the threat of torture and death as it had been in occupied France.

  Even now, five years on, tears prickled the backs of my eyes when I thought of David…

  I breathed in deeply, straightened my back and willed the tears away. I was doing this for him, and for his family. I couldn’t afford to be weakened by sentimentality.

  I circulated through the rooms, careful not to catch anybody else’s eye. After a while there were speeches. I had counted on that. A collector whose paintings were on display thanked the gallery owners for deigning to exhibit them, unworthy though they were of such an honour. One of the owners replied in similar vein. The large woman from the refugee committee spoke at some length. Everybody was in the largest room, either listening or pretending to listen. The time had come.

  I moved swiftly and silently, the way I had learned in S.O.E. I pulled the lift door open again; as I had noted on a previous visit to the building, the mechanism worked smoothly and almost noiselessly. I stood before the little Rembrandt picture. I had already investigated the fittings and found it was suspended on wires from a picture rail. I removed the wire-cutters from my clutch bag, together with some brown paper that I had folded up small. I snipped through the wires, grabbed the painting and wrapped it in one movement. Then I went to the lift. The timing was perfect. I slid into the lift and began to pull the heavy door across to close it.

  It was all going according to plan. I knew the lift would take me to the gallery owner’s apartment, from where I could leave discreetly via the fire escape. I had complete confidence in my ability to open the door at the top of the steps. It had glass panels that could be broken in an emergency, but I thought I could pick the lock. I had been practising with a set of lock-picking tools I had obtained from a war-time friend. One of the tools had slipped and scratched me across the back of the hand.

  I had almost succeeded in closing the lift door, which was hard work, when a dark shape came quickly round the corner and barged in beside me. I was too shocked to say or do anything. He finished closing the door behind us and pushed the button to start the ascent, then he looked at me, his grey eyes even colder than before and his firm mouth now turned down slightly at the corners. He indicated the brown paper parcel I was carrying.

  'May I enquire what you've got there, Miss McFlannery?'

  'I think you know the answer to that, Mr Quest,' I said, icily calm. Maybe I could bluff it out, if I kept my head.

  Quite unexpectedly he produced a set of handcuffs from his pocket.

  'I'm very sorry about this, Miss McFlannery,' he said, 'but I'm going to have to arrest you.'

  'Are you a policeman?' I squeaked. 'May I see your warrant card?'

  He sighed. 'Of course.'

  I could tell by his resigned expression that he had done this kind of thing before. Now that he had revealed himself to be a policeman, it seemed obvious he couldn't be anything else, so that seeing his warrant card was almost unnecessary, but I read it carefully.

  'You won't need the handcuffs,' I said, trying to appear fragile and feminine. 'I'll come quietly.'

  'I doubt that very much indeed,' he said. But he hesitated, handcuffs dangling from one hand as he replaced the card in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  'Let me tell you my story,' I offered. 'You see, I'm not an art thief - not professionally, anyway.'

  'So you just steal Rembrandt paintings for fun?' he said, looming over me in the small enclosed space. I shrank back against the side of the lift, still clutching the parcel to me. We arrived at the next floor with a bump. He opened the door and held it for me until I got out. We were in a small lobby with one door facing us. Why hadn't he arrested me downstairs and escorted me out through the gallery? Maybe he didn't want to cause a stir. A tiny ember of hope glowed in my mind.

  He produced a key and unlocked the door to the apartment; we went inside. I knew my escape route: would I get the chance to use it?

  'So,' he said, pushing open another interior door which, I knew from my reconnaissance, led to the kitchen. 'What's your story? Sick mother needing an operation? Sick child? Sick cat? Ransom demand?'

  'It's nothing like that,' I said indignantly. 'I'm not doing this for the money at all.'

  'Sit down,' he said. 'Tell me.'

  We sat at the kitchen table, a utility piece from the war years. I put down the parcel in front of me, keeping hold of it, and stared morosely at the ancient gas cooker which shouldn't have survived the Blitz.

  Something in his manner made me tell the story straight out, without frills.

  'It belongs to an elderly couple,' I said. 'They live in Eastbourne.'

  'And?'

  'They once lived in France. I knew them there. In the war.'

  'Ah, the war. I see.'

  I didn't know what he meant by bringing the war into it. I continued, as baldly as before,

  'The painting was stolen from them.'

  I paused - we had already reached the difficult part.

  'Their son traded it for their lives. To get them out of France. Away from the Nazis. He was captured and killed. I want to give the picture back to them. So I started to look for it.'

  'How did you do that?'

  'It wasn't easy - the painting changed hands twice. Once by private sale and once at auction. That was when I picked up the trail,'

  He looked out of the window, with its view of walls and other windows and a tiny patch of sky. I supposed the view from a prison cell might be like this. But I would do my best not to end up there.

  'And what about you?' he asked after a while.

  'Me?'

  'How do you come into it? What were you doing in France?'

  'I was in Special Operations. I was there to help the Resistance.' I shivered in spite of myself. I didn't enjoy thinking about it even after all this time: it had been like a game of Hide and Seek where the stakes were hideously real. 'I fell in love with David,' I added without any prompting. 'That's how I know his family.'

  'You must have been very young,' he said.

  'I was twenty-one.'

  'I was twenty-two when I joined the RAF,' he said. For a moment our eyes met and I felt we had something in common. Then I remembered we were on opposite sides now, even if we had once been on the same side. He was an upholder of the law and I was a thief. There was a huge gulf between us that could never be bridged.

  He reached across the table and touched my hand.

  'I can see this is very hard for you to understand,' he said, staring at the scratches. 'But stealing the painting isn't the right thing to do. It belongs to someone else now - someone who bought it in good faith... I do have to arrest you. I have no choice.'

  'There's always a choice, Mr Quest,' I said stubbornly, moving my hand out from under his.

  He sighed. 'That isn't how the law works, Miss McFlannery.'

  Thinking about how softly his hand had moved over mine, and seeing the corners of his mouth curve upwards very slightly, I had an idea about how to change his mind. I stood up, deliberately left the wrapped painting where it was, walked round the table until I was standing beside him, and said quietly, 'Are you sure there isn't room for some - flexibility - even in the law, Frederick Quest?'

  I leaned down and kissed him. Even in the circumstances I enjoyed the touch of his mouth against mine and the way his hands came up instinctively to hold me. Then he let me go suddenly and I swayed and almost fell.

  'My friends call me Freddie,' he said, and then frowned. 'But I'm going to have to arrest you anyway.'

  'I'll come quietly, even if it isn't fair,' I said, keeping the fingers of one hand crossed behind my back.

  My chance
came as we went down the fire escape. He had been watching me closely until about three-quarters of the way down, when he remembered about the handcuffs and reached into his pocket for them again. His loss of concentration cost him dearly, for when he brought out the handcuffs, opened them and reached for me, probably hoping to take me off guard and capture my wrist, I grabbed them first and clipped them closed round the metal handrail of the fire escape and then round his own wrist. He almost tripped me up on the last few steps as he flung out one foot in my path, but I jumped over it lithely and ran down to ground level, laughing.

  'My friends call me Flora,' I called back to him. Fortunately I got out of earshot quickly enough not to hear very many of the names he was yelling after me.

  I didn't wish him any harm. He had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And there was something about him, too. In other circumstances we might have become friends. But the gulf between us had opened up even further. Our paths would never cross again.

  I told myself not to feel any regret about that, but there was a sort of lingering sadness for what could have happened but was destined not to happen.

  ***

  After doing a bit of research into the couple from France who had arrived as refugees during the war and whose names and place of residence were therefore on record, I headed for Eastbourne. It would have been madness for her to go there once she had told me about it. But I already knew she was the kind of person who wouldn't be deterred by danger, and who would take risks many people would find unacceptable.

  It hadn't been hard to track down the elderly couple, the Bernards. They lived in a flat near the beach, and that was where I went as soon as I got off the train, struggling through the hordes of day-trippers - it was a Bank Holiday weekend - and thankful I was no longer compelled to wear a dark suit and regulation shoes.

  They were wary and didn't want to speak to me at all at first, but when I told them I wasn't a policeman any more they were more inclined to be helpful.