Ring of Guilt

by Judith Cutler

  Using the other handle, plus Sanditon’s emailed details of the other vase, I got the template as accurate as I could, every measurement verified with calipers. Then I mixed the first quantity of epoxy resin putty. I’d leave it a couple of hours to harden very slightly – I’d still have an hour before it became too hard to work. Time for a lunch break, then. I popped into the shop to join Mrs Walker for a sandwich and a cup of tea and with a couple of orders from our website for her to attend to: she’d pack the items, and nip down to the post office early enough to ensure they arrived next day.

  And then it was back to my workroom. Pure pleasure. First I rolled the epoxy resin putty into a long thin sausage, which I formed as closely as I could to the template. Then I stood the vase in a sand box, to make it absolutely stable, then put a lump of plastic modelling clay in place. This would support the new handle, which I attached to the broken edges of the vase with some epoxy resin adhesive, with a little filling powder added. There. I stepped back to look at it. Things were going well.

  Griff came back at four, with a couple of cardboard boxes for us to open and exclaim over together. He called Mrs Walker over from the shop – it was pretty well closing time – so she could share the treat.

  He regaled us with the gossip – who’d been outbid, who’d paid through the nose for rubbish. ‘And of course Titus Oates sends his love, my sweet one,’ he added.

  ‘I’m sure you sent mine,’ I replied, equally straight-faced.

  ‘Of course. Tell me, do you know anything of Dilly Pargetter’s background? She sells often deeply regrettable tat she glamorizes with the description costume jewellery,’ he explained to Mrs Walker.

  I scratched my head. ‘Nothing at all. Should I?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I only registered her because she sold you that dress ring – the one with pretty beads,’ he added. Clearly there were some things he preferred Mrs Walker not to know.

  I nodded.

  ‘She was there today, scooping up Woolworths rubbish as if she’d bid for the Crown Jewels. It wasn’t her dreadful taste I noticed, but her black eye. And I fancy she was short of a tooth.’

  ‘An accident?’ I asked sharply, with a particularly nasty vibe I couldn’t begin to explain.

  ‘Who knows? She’d done her best with concealer, but there was no disguising the swellings. The funny thing was she kept on looking at me, as if there was something she wanted to say. I gave her one or two of my encouraging smiles, but I must have lost my touch. She obviously took them for bared fangs, and took off pretty sharply at the end of the sale.’

  ‘Titus would have known what was up,’ I declared.

  ‘Of course he would,’ Griff agreed. ‘But he didn’t choose to entrust me with whatever secrets he knew. Here – I bought these for the village hall: I know they’re running short.’ He produced a load of thick Duraflex tumblers. ‘I don’t know that it’s even worth unpacking them,’ he added, as Mrs Walker reached out tumbler after tumbler.

  ‘I’ll give them a good wash before you take them over,’ she said. Then she took what looked like another, rather taller drinking glass from the same box. She rubbed it with a scrap of newspaper, and six panels appeared. Her eyes and mouth rounded and she put it down rather too sharply on the table. ‘Is that . . . no, it can’t be . . . Is it—? No, surely not.’

  ‘My goodness,’ Griff said, beaming with pleasure. ‘Lalique, if I’m any judge. Well done, dear lady. Is it signed?’

  She picked it up and looked at the base. ‘R. Lalique.’ She grabbed some kitchen towel and rubbed some of the dirt off. ‘Look at these pretty blue figures. Heavens!’

  ‘Who says you’re not a divvy, Griff?’ I chipped in.

  ‘I actually was after the glasses, you know. May I look?’ He turned the pretty goblet in his hands. ‘It’s a mite out of our period, of course.’

  Mrs Walker responded with a grin of her own. ‘One of our regulars collects glass. Do you think I should phone her?’

  ‘Let me do my homework first, dear lady. I’d hate to overcharge her. Or worse still,’ he added, apparently joking but, knowing him, dead serious, ‘undercharge her . . .’

  Griff tried to shoo me back upstairs to continue work on Sanditon’s vase, but I refused to be shooed. The news about poor Dilly troubled me in a way I couldn’t understand. I could understand anyone wanting to talk to Griff – the most approachable, kindest soul in the world – but why should she change her mind?

  Griff and I had joked about Titus knowing everything. Maybe I should phone him. This wasn’t just the ordinary, everyday thing you’d think. Titus objected to being phoned from landlines, for a start, though I’d tried to point out that mobile phone records were just as accessible to people who might want to sniff round. Actually he objected to being phoned at all. It was his pre . . . prerequ . . . pre-something or other, anyway, to contact other people. Prerogative? Is that it?

  The other problem was that Griff didn’t like Titus, and really didn’t like the weird relationship Titus and I didn’t so much enjoy as endure. So I said something about needing a breath of fresh air and headed off towards the station, where there was the best mobile coverage.

  ‘Quick question, Titus,’ I said, because he didn’t do flowery greetings and enquiries about health either. ‘Dilly Pargetter.’

  ‘Got beat up by her old man. Husband. Partner. Whatever. Does it sometimes. Bastard.’

  And that was the end of the call.

  Shoving the mobile and my hands in my pocket, I carried on walking. Griff said it stimulated the phagocytes, whatever those might be; I just found it helped me to think. Nothing doing between my ears this time, though.

  Perhaps it was because I had this thing about domestic violence. One of my carefully vetted foster mothers was regularly beaten black and blue by her equally carefully vetted husband Peter, a nice, well-spoken solicitor. And a bastard. Actually I did my first ever bit of whistle-blowing, even though I didn’t know I was at the time. I drew pictures for my social worker of where my foster mother had the bruises – well out of sight, of course. Talk about volcanic activity! What happened eventually I’ve no idea – people say most women just put up with it, don’t they? – because I was whisked off somewhere else. I can’t even remember where, now, I was consigned to so many places.

  I thought back to the triggers that had set Peter off. They ranged from nothing at all to overcooked pasta. So what might have provoked this attack on Dilly? Does it sometimes didn’t give me a lot to go on, of course. The only clue might be that she was looking for me – and the only connection I had with her was the ring currently in the custody of Will Kinnersley.

  It ought to be back in mine, now, surely, along with the one I’d accidentally bought at the auction I’d been to. I could always call Will. Except I wasn’t sure I’d be phoning about the rings.

  Of course I was. I didn’t do policemen, remember. Which brought me, in a very roundabout way, to my body. What had happened to it? I’d found it in Kent, so presumably Will would have access to any database it found its way on to. Why not?

  Because I wanted to talk to someone about it first? Someone had once remarked that I needed friends my own age to hang out with, and gossip with. Well, much as I’d have liked that, I’d not found any yet. The antiques world, at least my corner of it, seemed to be populated almost entirely by old people. Of course there were some younger ones, but the women I’d met had said yah a lot, and tended to talk about their parents’ place in France. As for the blokes, the less said about them the better.

  Which left Griff, of course. Trouble was, once I started confiding in him I might just tell him all about my last trip to Bossingham Hall and all the confusion that had caused me. And that would upset him. He didn’t like my father, any more than my father liked him – and would hate any legacy from him coming my way. Especially something as precious as my own grandmother’s ring. He’d also probe away like a dentist at my feelings about my father’s search for Nanny Baird’s desc
endants, if there even were any.

  Maybe I’d better get a sudden urge to continue the work on Sanditon’s vase.

  No, my head was jumping around too much for me to work on anything so special. I knew as soon as I switched on the lights. But at least I could look at what I’d done so far and decide how much to do the next day. At least I could talk about that when Griff called me down to supper, which he soon did.

  ‘But I thought, dear heart, in view of her discovery, the very least we could do was invite Mrs Walker to join us. She plainly didn’t fancy driving all the way over here and back again in the dark, and I didn’t want to inflict the same on you. So I suggested that new place the far side of Charing. What do you think about that? We can go in tandem, and then come our separate ways home.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Griff never tried to talk while I was driving, and while we ate Mrs Walker wouldn’t let us get a word in edgeways, especially if I encouraged her. Then Griff and I could talk about the meal all the way home. Brilliant. I was so pleased I gave Griff an extra big hug.

  Usually if someone contacts me to find out if I’m making progress with a piece I’m either surprised or irritated. Or both. But when Harvey Sanditon emailed me, attaching a picture of the vase’s mate with a label reading LONELY round its neck I found myself laughing, because it was somehow exactly what I’d have expected him to do if I’d thought about it.

  I responded by tying a large piece of loo paper round the injured vase handle and sending a photo back, saying, ‘Still in intensive care.’

  For a while I toyed with sending a photo of my ringless finger to Will Kinnersley, but couldn’t quite manage it – the idea, not the actual photo.

  While I was at the computer, I surprised myself by doing another thing: I started looking up the websites of people who would hunt for missing people – folk missing out on legacies, for instance. I printed off contact details and put everything in an envelope to give my father next time I saw him. If he wanted information, let him find it himself. He wasn’t very keen on making efforts; with luck he’d just give up.

  Which left me feeling very ashamed of myself – I didn’t just have my beadies on that Cartier watch, did I? Or – and this was even worse – did I want to keep all his pretty dilute affection for myself? The worst thing of all was that I knew there really was only one person I could rely on for advice: Griff himself. I shoved the envelope right to the bottom of my knickers drawer, with the photo of my grandmother.

  SEVEN

  At long last it was time to summon Griff to examine the vase. So he wouldn’t know where to look for the damage, I turned it round several times so even I couldn’t remember which handle I’d repaired. As for the tiny flake from the painted marble, I’d fixed that ages ago. I’d cook supper for a week if he spotted the scar.

  Funnily enough, I didn’t open the door to the workroom with my customary flourish and a loud Da-dah. I just ushered Griff inside.

  He put a loving hand on my shoulder. ‘I know, my sweet one – it’s like finishing a long and exhausting run on the stage. You’re bloody glad it’s over, but you know you’re going to miss it like hell.’

  I glanced at him. It was against his house rule to use strong language before seven o’clock. And why had he sounded so regretful? He was so much of an antique dealer I’d actually forgotten how much of his life he’d spent as an actor, and how much he might miss the theatre.

  Nonetheless it was a dealer’s hands he ran over the handles and over the marbling. When they lingered over a slight defect I had a moment’s panic – then I remembered there was a tiny flaw in the glaze, which had been present for nearly two hundred years – no trying to repair that.

  He nodded slowly. ‘I’m proud of you, my angel. Really, truly proud. And before you demur, think back to your concentration span when you first joined me. A goldfish would have been embarrassed. But now – how many hours have you spent on this?’

  I shook my head. ‘Hard to tell. Some of it was thinking and stretching and looking out of the window time. I tried keeping a time sheet, but it looked such a mess.’

  ‘And he’s not paying you for time, remember. He’s paying you for your expertise, which is surely not to be counted in hours and minutes. I think it’s time to make the call, don’t you? Or email, or whatever you do.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, trying to sound casual, ‘I was wondering if I should make another call.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To Will Kinnersley.’

  ‘What a good idea. Though I do implore you to find out his marital status before you start getting fond of him.’

  ‘I’m only going to ask him about the rings!’ I countered more sharply than he deserved. ‘Actually,’ I added, much more tentatively, ‘there’s another call or two I should maybe make. On my father’s behalf. And I truly don’t want to. Oh, Griff.’

  He pulled me to him. ‘Why don’t you tell me all about it over a glass of something nice? Completing a task like that deserves some sort of celebration.’

  Despite clutching a glass of vintage wine – it was a gift from one of our customers to thank us for locating a plate to replace one from a Crown Derby service – I found that I couldn’t stop crying. This wasn’t like me at all, unless a mishap to my teddy bear was involved. Griff called me stoical. But it all came pouring out – the relief of having finished my most challenging job yet; the lack of news about the body; the anxiety about the old rings; my lonely and boyfriend-less state; and the fact that my father cared enough about someone else to seek her descendants out.

  ‘And if you ask me, my love, it’s that that upsets you most,’ Griff said, pressing a second linen handkerchief into my hand. ‘But it’s only since he had you in his life that he’s realized the importance of other people. You’ve awakened a long dormant tenderness. Once he had a nanny he assuredly loved, and she left him on his own when she died. And then there was the trauma of being sent to school, and not being able to go home because the Hall was requisitioned. A little cod psychology would tell us that losing her helped turn him into the damaged creature he undoubtedly is. And he was in denial about all this until you showed him love. Tough love, but love.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I hiccuped. ‘So you’re saying that it’s a good sign? The trouble is,’ I admitted, unable to raise my voice above a whisper, ‘I don’t want to find them. I really do covet that Cartier watch.’

  ‘That’s strange: you never really engage with artefacts for their own sake, do you?’ He stroked my hair. ‘I don’t mean you don’t love beautiful things, and enjoy owning them, but you seem to know the difference between loving and admiring them and needing to keep them.’

  ‘And there’s something else I really, really want – his mother’s engagement ring. He said he’d try to find it. But I shouldn’t want it, not if it’s going to upset you.’

  ‘Why on earth should it upset me?’ He sounded really puzzled.

  ‘Because you don’t like it when he gives me things.’

  To my horror, as if his knees had given way, he sat down, covering his face with his hands.

  I knelt in front of him. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’ I don’t know how many times I said it.

  At long, long last he leant forward and stroked my face. ‘You did mean it – and I’m afraid you’re right. I can’t give you my genes or my name. Just my love. And – just like you and the nanny’s descendants – I don’t want anyone else in the relationship. What a bright pair we are,’ he concluded, with a pale smile. He took a long sip of wine. ‘Is that why you’ve not been to Bossingham recently? Because you couldn’t tell him you didn’t want to try?’

  ‘Well, I have been busy, haven’t I?’ I began. And thought better of it. ‘Yes, you’re right. And I haven’t phoned Harvey because I’m afraid he’ll find something wrong, and I’m scared of phoning Will – for all sorts of reasons.’

  ‘He’s not gay, I can tell you that,’ he said.

  I was gobsmacked.

 
; ‘No vibes, angel heart. No vibes at all. Not to mention the fact he only had eyes for you. Go on, phone him. It’s more than time he returned the rings. Or at least gave you an update. In fact, he’s been decidedly remiss.’ It was such a relief to have Griff sounding bossy and businesslike again I told him off for drinking too much wine.

  Over supper, we worked out – or rather, I worked out and Griff nodded – the order in which I’d contact the various people we’d discussed. The first must be Harvey Sanditon, so that the vase could rejoin its twin and go back to its owner. I’d go and see my father with the information the following day. But he wasn’t one for early rising, so before I left home I’d phone Will Kinnersley on his office phone. That felt good. A whole day planned. And then there was the doubtful treat of an antiques fair the day after that – a village hall affair Griff only went to out of kindness to the organizers. I felt so relieved I even allowed Griff a thimbleful of whisky after dinner.

  Then I popped into the office to phone Harvey. Or would email be more professional? I’d have asked Griff, only he was listening to a Radio Three concert, his eyes firmly closed and his mouth decidedly open. Even as I stared at the desk, it dawned on me the best way would be to send a photo, which meant – given the lack of network coverage – a bit of a palaver with cameras and downloading. But within seconds of my having sent the email, while I was trying to work out a wordy order from an American collector, the corner of the screen flashed to show the arrival of a message.

  Had Harvey been sitting glued to his computer?

  And blow me if the phone didn’t ring, even before I checked the message.

  ‘When can I come and collect the patient?’ Harvey demanded, his voice sounding much younger than I remembered – not stuffy at all. ‘I could be with you by midnight.’