by Simon Brett
Carole waited, not quite sure what to do. Had there been a bell on the counter, she would have rung it. Someone more relaxed than Carole Seddon would probably have called out ‘Hello!’ or ‘Anyone there?’ or even ‘Shop!’, but she only aspired to a couple of loud throat-clearings. There was no response.
The silence wasn’t total, though. Sounds emanated from the closed door at the back of the gallery. Presumably Spider was there, working longer hours than his employer. Really, Carole reasoned, it was him she needed to see rather than Bonita. Spider was the one who was actually framing her photograph, after all, so it’d make sense for her to collect it from him.
Carole moved forward and tapped on the connecting door. The sounds from the other side abruptly ceased, but there was no answering voice. She tapped again, then boldly pushed the door open and stepped forward into the framing workshop.
It was a large space, probably twice the size of the gallery in front, full of machinery most of whose functions Carole could only guess at. The one she could identify was a huge guillotine mounted at the end of a large table. Fixed to one wall was a cabinet making a grid of deep pigeon holes, containing lengths of different framings. Against another different grades and sizes of glass were stacked. Like Spider’s overalls, every space was splattered with paint and glue. There was a haze of white dust and a mixture of smells, among which newly cut wood predominated.
In the centre of the workshop stood the considerable bulk of Spider. The expression on his face suggested he didn’t like having his inner sanctum invaded. He said no word of greeting to the intruder.
‘I’m Carole Seddon. I was in here on Monday with a photograph to be framed. Bonita said it would be ready today.’ He still said nothing. ‘Is it ready?’
After a silence, he conceded two words to her. ‘It’s ready.’
‘Well, Bonita doesn’t seem to be around, so if I could just pick it up and sort out what I owe you . . .’
‘I don’t deal with the money,’ said Spider slowly. ‘Or the packing. Bonita does that.’
‘Oh, I don’t need the photograph packed. I only live just up the High Street.’
‘Bonita does the packing,’ Spider repeated. ‘I don’t, like, want the responsibility. If something gets broken.’
‘I’m sure the photograph won’t get broken between here and where I live? I wonder, could I see it . . .?’
Spider gave this proposition a long moment’s thought. Then, apparently unable to see any harm in obeying it, he bent down to a rack of his recent work and extracted the framed photograph.
He had done a brilliant job. Lily looked wonderful. Carole couldn’t wait to have the picture hanging in pride of place on her sitting room wall.
‘Oh, that’s terrific! Thank you so much. Are you sure I can’t just settle up with you and—’
‘Bonita deals with the money,’ he insisted. His tone was not aggressive, but it couldn’t be argued against. Carole wondered for a moment whether it was just she who prompted this reticence in the framer. But, though normally ready to detect the smallest slight, she quickly decided that it was just Spider’s manner, a form of shyness perhaps, that he would display to whoever he met.
His body language made it clear that he wanted to be alone, but Carole lingered. Rather than asking her to leave, Spider turned pointedly back to his work. He picked up two pieces of wooden frame whose ends had been cut diagonally and lined up their edges together on one the bench-mounted machines. He depressed a foot pedal and a slight thump was heard. Then he picked up the two pieces of frame, now conjoined into a right angle.
‘Sorry, but what is that machine?’ asked Carole.
‘Underpinner,’ came the minimal reply.
‘And what does it do?’
‘Underpins,’ replied Spider with, for the first time, a slight edge to his voice. Carole continued to look expectantly at him, so he provided a reluctant explanation. ‘Fixes the joint, like, with vee-nails.’
‘Vee-nails?’
‘Shaped like a vee.’ Spider turned round the L-shaped section of the frame and showed the metallic heads of the rivets embedded deeply into the joint.
‘Oh, I see.’ Carole moved her hand across to the metal plate of the underpinner. ‘So the vee-nails pop up through—’
‘No.’ Spider immobilized her hand in a tight but surprisingly gentle grip. ‘Don’t go near that. Could do you a nasty injury.’ Then, suddenly embarrassed by the contact, he released his hold.
‘What do all the other machines do?’ asked Carole, emboldened by the moment of intimacy.
To her surprise, Spider readily answered her question. She decided that he was just deeply shy, but talking on the subject of his work he relaxed considerably. He was almost gleeful as he demonstrated to her the Morso mitre-cutting machine, which produced exact forty-five-degree angles at the touch of a foot pedal. He showed her the glazing gun, which used compressed air to shoot metal ‘points’ into the back of a frame to fix glass and mounts in place. He then moved on to the mount-cutter and the vacuum press for mounting and heat-sealing prints and photographs. And he was starting to describe the ancient and laborious process of mixing gesso and rabbit-skin glue to make mouldings for picture frames, when the demonstration was interrupted by the appearance of Bonita Green.
Immediately Spider clammed up. Again Carole did not think his silence arose from any animus against his employer. He was just embarrassed to be seen in communicative mode, and moved silently back to his work.
The gallery-owner quickly sorted out the credit card transaction to pay for Spider’s work. She was delighted, she said, that Carole was so pleased with the job done and if any more framing was needed . . . well, she knew where to come.
But her customer couldn’t help noticing that Bonita seemed distracted. The Juliette Greco black was a little smudged and the eyes it circled were red. The woman appeared to have been crying.
FOUR
‘There’s a long tradition of mankind seeking out the simple life,’ said Ned Whittaker. ‘One only has to think of Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics. Then of course there are English pastoral poets like James Thomson with The Seasons, and later the back-to-nature writings of Henry David Thoreau. I feel that what we’re doing here at Butterwyke House is a part of that continuing process.’
Carole tried to avoid Jude’s eye. The twitch of a grin from her neighbour might have a destructive effect on her own straight face. Neither of them had expected to hear ‘glamping’ described in such ambitiously literary terms.
As Ned Whittaker pontificated, he stood in the Georgian bay window of his home’s magnificent sitting room. Manicured lawns stretched away to an invisible ha-ha, beyond which sheep safely grazed. From the window, nothing could be seen that did not belong to the Whittakers. And here was the owner extolling the simple life.
Only in his late forties, Ned had a slim, well-toned body. His short grey hair, rimless spectacles, checked shirt and lazy cords gave him the look of a minor academic. His voice retained the South London twang of his modest upbringing. There was about Ned Whittaker a boyishness, which he cultivated.
His wife Sheena was a plump, comfortable blonde who had spread sideways a bit. The couple had met at school, then she’d become a hairdresser and they’d married when they were both nineteen. The wedding had been quickly followed by the birth of two daughters and at that stage the family had lived in a modest rented flat. Ned had worked as a sales assistant in a gentleman’s outfitters.
His success, he always maintained when asked about it, arose completely from ‘being in the right place at the right time’. And that was true. A colleague at the shop where he worked had proposed to him the then novel idea of selling online, getting members of the public to order clothes through their computers. At the time Ned knew virtually nothing about IT, but his friend did, and that was what mattered. What Ned brought to the party was a very good buyer’s eye for sourcing cheap garments from the Indian subcontinent.
The business h
ad been a success right from the start. Within three years profits had increased a hundredfold. Ned and his partner didn’t have a conscious strategy for the development of their company; it was just that whatever decisions they made seemed to generate more income. It was as if they could not help themselves from making money.
And in that heady time bigger rivals looked with a degree of envy at the newcomers’ success. Some of the major High Street names had been slow off the mark developing their online businesses and saw the advantages of buying off the shelf a company that was already up and running. A bidding war developed. As the figures offered became more and more astronomical, Ned Whittaker had been against selling out. He didn’t think they had yet reached their own full potential. But his partner, who had always been the commercial brains behind the company, said it was time to move on, and Ned graciously gave his consent.
Early in 2000 the takeover deal was made, leaving Ned Whittaker and his partner with more millions than they would ever have time to spend. Within weeks the dot-com bubble burst and one large High Street chain was left with a very expensive white elephant and thousands of angry shareholders.
The Whittakers than started spending their legitimately gotten gains. Butterwyke House was one of their first purchases. Once they were established there, they were recognized by local charities as potential sponsors and quickly joined the ranks of the Great and Good of West Sussex. They became generous benefactors to the arts and medicine. As a result, they were invited to all kinds of local events, where they met a lot of other people whose main – and in some case only – point of interest was their wealth.
Sheena, who had developed a woolly attraction towards ecological concerns, encouraged her husband to invest in a variety of worthy green projects. And Ned devoted much of his time to filling in what he regarded as the deficiencies in his education. He read widely, and if his assimilation of all he read was not always very deep, he did not let that prevent him from filling his conversation with frequently inapposite quotations and references.
Jude, who had encountered the couple a few times, knew that they could occasionally court ridicule with their unworldly innocence, but had no doubt that their hearts were in the right place.
Carole was reserving judgement. In spite of her earlier demurral, as the week had progressed there had been less and less doubt that her curiosity would prevail and she would join her neighbour on the visit to Butterwyke House.
They were in the sitting room that Saturday morning waiting for Chervil Whittaker. Ned had said that his younger daughter was really taking over the new glamping part of their activities and it would make more sense if she were to show them round the site. ‘Obviously Sheena and I could do it, but it’s really Chervil’s baby. I think she’s just out shopping or something.’
At that moment he and his wife had exchanged a look, which told Carole and Jude that, whatever was delaying their daughter, it wasn’t shopping. But they didn’t mind waiting. They were in a lovely room and provided with excellent coffee and shortbread biscuits. These had been produced by an efficient young woman in a bright print dress. Though she didn’t wear uniform and was addressed by her first name, there was no doubt that she was staff. And the immaculate appearance of everything outside and inside suggested that Butterwyke House had quite a lot of staff.
Conversation with the Whittakers was no strain. Sheena was one of those people who clearly didn’t like silence. She chattered on about local events and the new season of plays at Chichester Festival Theatre, to which she and Ned were substantial donors. Her husband occasionally chipped in with some literary reference; each time he did so Sheena smiled with admiration. From the way they looked at each other, it was clear that they were still very much in love, an appearance that charmed Jude and made Carole characteristically suspicious.
After a while they heard the sound of a car scrunching to a halt on the gravel outside, then the front door opening. From the hall a young woman’s voice, much more expensively educated than her parents had been, said, ‘I don’t care what you do, but just don’t mess things up for me.’
Another young woman’s voice, similarly educated, replied, ‘I have no intention of messing things up for you. What you do is your own business.’
‘If it’s my business, Fen, then why the hell do you . . .?’
The first voice, perhaps becoming aware that their conversation might be overheard, dried up. Ned Whittaker cleared his throat, ill at ease for the first time since Carole and Jude had arrived. ‘Morning, girls!’ he called out. ‘We’re through here.’
There was a moment’s silence, then in the sitting-room doorway appeared a tall girl with long, highlighted blonde hair. Only a slight sharpness of her features prevented her from being beautiful. She was probably mid-twenties, slender and gym-toned. A designer polo shirt and jeans showed her figure off to advantage.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘This is Chervil.’ Ned introduced Carole and Jude. The girl gave the latter a knowing look. ‘You’re the one Fennel’s had sessions with?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I was thinking Jude might be able to offer some healing services for the glampers,’ said Sheena.
Her daughter had clearly not heard this idea before. She thought about it, and then said ‘Cool.’
‘I thought it’d make sense if you were to show Carole and Jude round the site,’ said Ned.
Again Chervil thought about the suggestion before saying, ‘Yes, good idea.’
Both Carole and Jude received the strong impression that the girl’s parents were slightly in awe of her, slightly nervous as to how she might react to their ideas. It was only a hint in the atmosphere, an anxiety not to upset her.
Now she knew what was happening, Chervil Whittaker turned the full beam of her blue-eyed charm on to the visitors. ‘I’m ready when you are. It’d be a great pleasure to show you round.’
As they went through the hall, the three of them encountered Fennel Whittaker who was texting a message into her iPhone with some vigour. Though physically very much in the same mould as her sister, Fennel had long black hair and brown eyes. She too wore jeans, with a floppy cardigan over a black T-shirt.
The moment she saw Jude, the girl abandoned her texting and went across, allowing the older woman to enfold her in her arms. Carole felt a familiar pang. She knew she would never have a tiny fraction of the instinctive empathy her neighbour had with people. Jude’s very presence was a kind of therapy.
‘How’re you doing?’ she asked.
‘Oh, you know . . .’ replied Fennel.
‘Hang on in there.’
As the girl nodded wryly, Carole observed the effect this exchange had on her sister. There was a tug of annoyance, even petulance, at the corner of Chervil’s mouth. Her expression reflected the tone of the girls’ earlier overheard conversation.
‘Come on, we’d better be going,’ said Chervil.
As she disengaged herself from Jude, the loose sleeve of Fennel’s cardigan slipped up her arm. Carole saw, on the inside of the wrist, the parallel lines of white scar tissue from old razor cuts.
FIVE
A large field had been given over to the new glamping project. Like everything else on the estate, the site was very high spec. A gate had been set into the surrounding walls, so that visitors would not have to use the imposing lion-guarded main entrance of Butterwyke House. A gravel drive led from the lane outside to a paved car park, from which York stone paths led to the individual camping units. New trees had been planted, so that in time the setting would be well shaded from the summer sun.
The accommodation came in the form of yurts, ‘genuine ones imported from Mongolia,’ Chervil Whittaker assured Carole and Jude. They were quite large, circular structures, squat with a conical roof shaped like a coolie hat. The framework was wooden, and its lattice wall sections and ceiling poles were covered with felt, ‘made from the wool collected from the Mongolian tribesmen’s flocks of sheep.’ The result wa
s a semi-permanent building, ‘warm in winter and cool in summer.’
Chervil Whittaker’s presentation was very slick. Whatever it was she had previously done in the City, the experience had trained her well. Only when she got on the subject of the Buddhist symbolism of the yurt did her knowledge become a little shaky. And she wouldn’t have had a problem with the average potential yurt-renter. But in Jude she had encountered someone who did know quite a lot about Eastern religions.
‘The crown of the yurt,’ Chervil was saying, ‘or toono in Mongolian, takes the form of the Buddhist dharmacakra.’
‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’ asked Carole, who didn’t have much time for any religion but the Church of England (and she didn’t even believe in that one). She certainly thought that Eastern religions were for their ethnic adherents superstition and for any Westerners who subscribed to them sheer pretension.
‘The dharmacakra,’ replied Chervil, ‘is a circular symbol.’
‘Representing what?’ asked Carole.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A symbol can’t just be a symbol, can it? It’s got to be a symbol of something.’
‘Oh.’ But Chervil Whittaker was only momentarily nonplussed. ‘It’s a symbol of the circularity of life . . . sort of, how what comes around goes around.’
‘It’s not quite that, is it?’ said Jude gently.
‘Oh?’
‘Well, Chervil, the dharmacakra is one of the Ashtamagala symbols, isn’t it?’
‘If you say so.’
‘And it’s one of the eight auspicious symbols of Tibetan Buddhism.’
‘Right.’
‘Really it’s the Wheel of Law, representing dharma, the Buddha’s path to enlightenment. And its symbolism as a wheel depends on the number of spokes it has. Eight spokes represent Ariya magga, the Noble Eightfold Path. Twelve spokes represent Paticcasamuppada, the Twelve Laws of dependent Origination. And twenty-four spokes—’