Dovetail

by Bernard Pearson

  Price and time agreed (two weeks or thereabouts), Eric let him out of the big gate. Bill couldn’t help shuddering as he looked in his rear-view mirror and watched the horrible little man lock it and then scurry back into his workshop.

  Stopping in a layby, he phoned Lucy and suggested they have a bite at the supermarket café before returning home. Lucy said she and Clive would meet him in the seating area outside. She also added that she had bought a big packet of antiseptic wipes. Bill laughed, blessed her, and drove there as fast as he could.

  They sat in the weak sunshine drinking mugs of coffee, and Bill told Lucy of his meeting with Eric. In describing the man, he resorted to a sort of visual shorthand using film actors he knew. However, his knowledge of movies was so out of date that it turned into a game along the lines of ‘Do you remember so and so? Well, a bit like him but thinner and with a different face.’

  When Bill recounted Eric’s stranger than usual behaviour and the way he accepted the price offered without whining or protestations of crushing poverty, Lucy asked, ‘Do you think he might be going to try a bit of blackmail? Could he have recognised the carving as being from a valuable set of chairs?’

  Bill agreed it was possible. ‘After all, I knew about them before I set eyes on them, so Eric might, too. The Blakeney Chairs are famous in their way and he might have seen some illustration of them somewhere. Sod’s law the little shit is currently looking through old catalogues and antique trade journals for confirmation.’

  That gave them both food for thought, of the sort that causes mental indigestion.

  Lucy drove them home, Bill’s exertions of the morning having made him very weary. Instead of driving straight into their yard, however, Lucy drove up the narrow lane to Miss Templeton’s cottage. She had seen them coming and met them at her gate, acknowledging Bill with a kindly smile and telling him he was looking wan. Bill thought ‘wan’ sounded just about right.

  After tea had been offered and politely declined, Miss Templeton told them there had not been any visitors to the farm in their absence, but a motorcycle, a big one, black in colour and with a short, thick-set man in leathers riding it, had stopped at the junction. The man was wearing one of those all-encompassing helmets, so she could not see any features. He had not got off his bike and would only have seen an empty yard. When he left, she had used her powerful binoculars to track him as far as she could up the road towards Brewton. He had not stopped.

  It was Warren, they were sure. Whether he had slipped his leash and come on his own account or whether he was under instruction from Skates was impossible to know.

  Looking at Lucy, Miss Templeton suggested she might like to pop up for a chat once Bill was home and settled in. Bill was happy to reach his comfortable chair in front of a warm stove, and Lucy was glad to have someone to talk to while he napped, especially someone as interesting as Miss Templeton.

  During their visit, Lucy asked her how she had gotten involved in the war. Elenore Templeton had been a schoolgirl when war broke out and had joined the WAAFs just as soon as she could when she was 17½. She spoke perfect French and, with the help of a friend’s introduction to the ‘right sort’ of people, joined the SOE when she was 19.

  ‘Only 19!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘You were still a teenager!’

  Miss Templeton laughed at that. ‘There were no such things as teenagers in those years, my dear. They are a post-war phenomenon and delightful they are too, all gaudy and vibrant, like so many exotic birds all strutting and showing their finery. But I sometimes feel sorry for them, too. They have so much need to prove themselves and no great cause in which to do it. No wonder so many of them end up in trouble.’

  Lucy gave this serious consideration. If there had been a war on when she was 19, she probably wouldn’t have ended up in Skates and Warren’s clutches. She hoped not, anyway, but the truth was she really didn’t think she had Miss Templeton’s kind of courage.

  ~~~

  Bill woke in the early evening, refreshed but still tired. He knew now he would never really feel well again, not unless it was due to some chemical crutch. But he was grateful for the rest, the warmth, and the savoury smell that now filled the kitchen. Over dinner, Lucy told him about her visit with Miss Templeton.

  ‘She’s had an amazing life. She didn’t get into too much detail, but hinted at some really scary stuff. Did you know she worked for the Ministry of Agriculture after the war? She said it was awfully dull after the SOE, but they didn’t let women have any of the really fun jobs after the men came back.’

  ‘Fun jobs!’ laughed Bill.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind too much, but I told her the truth about what’s going on with us. She had most of it figured out in any case, and there’s just something about her that makes you feel daft if you try to hold anything back. Like you’re only fooling yourself.’

  ‘It’s probably just as well, lass. As she said, she’s going to keep looking out for us anyway, so she may as well know exactly what to look out for.’

  ‘Well, one thing came across pretty clearly. She thinks our problem is a walk in the park compared with all the horrors she and her colleagues had to deal with. She said our job was simple: we only have two enemies, we know what they look like, and we know where they live. The rest is down to opportunity and timing.’

  ‘Christ, I wish it were that bloody simple!’ exclaimed Bill, mildly peeved.

  Lucy laughed, ‘Simple is not the same as easy, and I’m sure she doesn’t think for a minute it’s not going to be dangerous, she just takes it for granted we’ll be able to cope with it.’

  ‘Well, I hope she’s right,’ said Bill.

  Lucy cleared away the dishes from the table and put them on the wooden draining board. Going to the huge fridge she called ‘Beryl’ after Bill’s ex-wife, she took out some ice cream concoction and placed a small bowl of it in front of him, then sat down in what was now ‘her’ armchair. They discussed Warren’s visit and agreed it was probably just him being his usual devious self rather than a statement of some kind from Skates. That he had not come into the yard was a good thing, but finding a way to keep him away altogether would be preferable. Bill suggested they sleep on it. The truth was he felt very tired and was hurting, so it was out with the big brown bottle and hello to the morphine.

  Chapter 28

  THURSDAY–THURSDAY, 4–11 OCTOBER

  Over the next few days, Bill and Lucy got on with making the components of the chair that needed to be restored.

  Bill thought that by doing this job first he would get his eye in for the big job, which would be making the entirely new chair from scratch. All the timber they would need had been sorted and, with the dismantled chair as a guide, the work would be exacting but not too difficult. The real bugger would come later in the finishing. For Bill, sitting down while Lucy worked took some getting used to. He had to show her what to do, of course, but even that became less frequent as she picked things up. Long years at his craft made the jobs look effortless in Bill’s hands, and trying to emulate his actions was hard for Lucy, as it would have been for anyone, but she was bright and had natural hand skills. They worked together in such a way as to conserve Bill’s strength. It was not easy, but Lucy made light of it and rarely got upset when Bill was a little short or impatient with her. Once again he mused that she would have made a good apprentice, but there was no time now, even if she had wanted it.

  As Bill and Lucy worked, they discussed ideas for keeping Skates at bay. It was not him spying out the work on the chairs that really worried them, it was what might happen if he learned that Lucy was there. There was no way of knowing if Skates had even realised yet that she had broken out of her prison, but one thing was sure: he would try and silence her if he found her with Bill. For that matter, there was no question of her leaving again to hide with Dylan or anywhere else: in his current condition there was no way Bill could complete the work on the chairs without her help.

  By Monday morning the bones of the chair t
hat was being restored had begun to take shape. Making a new arm meant looking for a piece of timber that had been split from the main log rather than cut. Sawn timber was sometimes used, but the craftsmen in Elizabethan times liked to use wood when it was green and would split along the grain. This was preferred because of shrinkage, and its natural shape being sympathetic with its end use. Looking closely at the elegant bend in the armrest, Bill could see that the grain followed the bend. This showed it was a branch, split rather than sawn, and shaped with an adze before finishing with chisels and scrapers. One of the complete chairs had arms made of wood like that. Thankfully, the other was from sawn timber that had been carved into shape, the grain running across the wood rather than following the contours. That was solvable; Bill had the right size oak beam, which he had rescued years before from a demolished cow shed. The beam was old and small enough to have knots. It couldn’t be split now as it was far too dry, but it could be carefully shaped to match.

  The old oak was like iron, however, and Bill was forced to use modern power tools to do the shaping, which meant dust, and dust meant coughing up his lungs. Somewhere Lucy had got hold of a box of dust masks, but Bill hated them; they were hot, uncomfortable, and actually made him cough more.

  It seemed like stalemate as he sat on a chair outside the workshop door, head in hands, emptying his diseased lungs onto the cement beneath his feet. Blood-streaked phlegm pooled in the dirt and sawdust. He could feel his chest crumpling in and out like a greasy paper bag. His arms were weak, his head was hurting, his lungs were wrung dry with relentless heaving, and all he had been doing was using the big, heavy-duty bandsaw. This was a piece of piss in the old days, the work of less than an hour or so. But not now, not ever again, he thought. And they had at least ten more jobs like this to do. They had to use this machine because to try and saw the old oak by hand was stupid. It would take an age, and of all the steps that had to be done, this was the one that could be done on a machine.

  Lucy went into the house, brought out a glass of water, and stood by him as he gulped it down. Her hand on his shoulder moved down to lightly and slowly rub his back. His tweed jacket felt very loose on his bony frame. She wanted to cry. Not for the chairs or what might happen if they couldn’t be finished, but for this lovely man, whom she loved, and who was dying by inches. Tenderly, she took his arm, helped him up, and walked him into the kitchen where she sat him down in his armchair by the stove. ‘Must have been a bit of wood dust went down the wrong hole,’ she said soothingly. ‘No big deal, soon go away.’

  After a slight pause she added, ‘You’ll have to show me how that machine works. It can’t be too difficult as long as I take it slow.’

  Bill’s voice was weak but his reply was adamant.

  ‘That is the one machine in the entire workshop that you are never, ever, to try, love. That bandsaw is probably the most dangerous and unpredictable machine I own. Not just mine, anyone’s. If you’re going to lose a hand, that’s the thing that will do it, in an instant and without even clogging up with bones and gristle. No, it will have to be me, somehow.’

  Lucy told him to rest for a bit and he would undoubtedly think of a solution when he was less tired. Out came the big brown bottle and out stretched the arms of Morphia to welcome Bill into a pain-free dreamtime.

  Meanwhile, Lucy set herself to work on the problem. If it wasn’t for the coughing, Bill would have the energy to work if he was careful, and she was pretty sure she could see that he was careful. That meant something had to be done about the dust.

  Looking through the Yellow Pages for dust-extraction equipment, she remembered something she had seen when staying with Dylan. She made a quick phone call and then drove off, leaving a note on the kitchen table to say she wouldn’t be gone long.

  A short time later she returned to find Bill wandering round the workshop sorting through various hand saws. Under her arm was what looked to him like a space helmet. In fact, it was a full-face protective respirator. It took clean air in through a filtered compressor worn on a harness at the back that fed fresh, dust-free air into the helmet. This blew down over the face and out under the wide, clear visor, which ended below the chin.

  ‘Where the hell did you get this?’ asked Bill. ‘It looks like something out of a science fiction film.’

  ‘I saw a guy wearing one when he came to spray for fungus in Dylan’s shower block,’ said Lucy.

  She had made the man a cup of tea and examined his headgear out of curiosity, finding out a bit about how it worked. Bill was impressed, especially when Lucy told him it was only on hire from a local outfit and would not cost a great deal.

  It worked, though not without Bill moaning at the noise, the draft, the smell, and the dust that occasionally stuck to the outside of the visor and had to be wiped off. The fact that he was moaning from inside the thing without dissolving every half hour into a coughing fit seemed beside the point to him, but not to Lucy. The only member of the team who couldn’t get used to the contraption was Clive. He hid whenever it was switched on.

  ~~~

  That night after supper, Bill showed Lucy a large cupboard under the stairs that he said was one of the oldest parts of the house. It was actually more of a small room than a cupboard, but Lucy had to bend in half to get in through the tiny door. Then she went down four or five worn stone steps and into a small, odd-shaped space with a flagstone floor. Bill stood outside the door, directing operations. Thankfully, he had rigged up a light that revealed wide shelves just above floor level on which sat several huge stoneware flagons. The room smelled of damp stone, great age, and apples. Pointing to the vessel nearest where she stooped under the low, cobwebbed ceiling, he asked Lucy to hand out the jar. It was heavy and covered in dust.

  ‘And don’t shake it, for God’s sake,’ he said.

  She handed it to him, then emerged brushing the cobwebs from her hair and the dust from her clothes. Bill placed the old flagon on the table. The small top was sealed with wax. On one side was impressed a maker’s mark, and under that ‘3 gallons’. Bill smiled as he gently wiped it down with a damp tea towel.

  Lucy enjoyed the sight of Bill’s pleasure in unearthing the jar and asked what was inside that was so special.

  ‘Applejack,’ replied Bill, caressing the container and carefully examining its cork.

  ‘What’s applejack?’

  ‘It’s a kind of liquor made from apples,’ he replied. ‘Well, mainly apples.’

  They sat drinking mugs of tea, the large flagon sitting at one end of the kitchen table like another guest, and Bill told her the story of old Jimmer, the best cider maker for miles around, and his illegal still.

  ‘This stuff ’s been down there for years. Jimmer had been given the nod he was going to be raided by the police, so I hid his stock for him. He never wanted it back, too dodgy I expect, so there it stayed.’

  ‘And why are you dragging it out now?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Two reasons,’ Bill answered, with a big and slightly wicked grin. ‘First, we’ve got some wood stain to make. And second, Sid’s coming round.’

  Chapter 29

  FRIDAY, 12 OCTOBER

  Lucy knew of Sid but had not yet experienced Sid. Bill told her enough about him, however, that she felt prepared when his battered old transit van pulled into the yard early the next morning. Out clambered a large, exuberant man, his huge frame enclosed in dungarees that had more patches than pockets and were stained with oil, paint, and other indicators of his many and varied pursuits. Clive greeted him with an enthusiastic nose to the crotch, which Sid brushed away with a practiced air that indicated this was not an unusual occurrence.

  The kitchen smelled invitingly of bacon when he entered it, and Bill sat facing him at the head of the familiar table, brown sauce within easy reach. Lucy turned from the stove, an enormous frying pan in her hand.

  ‘You must be Sid,’ she said.

  Putting a massive pile of bacon on a plate and setting it in on the table, she returned
the pan to the stove, walked over to where Sid was standing, and shook his hand. Her grip was firm, no mere flutter of fingers, but a real grasp, and her smile was easy to return. She then poured him a large mug of tea the colour of teak, just the way Bill had told her he liked it, and pushed the sugar bowl across. Bill had not often seen Sid lost for words, not even when pulled over by the police or challenged by a short-changed barmaid.

  But if Sid had any sangfroid he certainly had not used it as aftershave that morning. He said nothing; as far as Lucy was concerned, he didn’t need to, for his broad smile and the way he demolished his breakfast said it all.

  But as he sat there lathering brown sauce over crispy bacon, Sid was paying attention. He had lived a ramshackle sort of existence, had loved unwisely and too often to keep a wife, and he had no kith nor kin he cared a scrap for, but he was a good judge of character and a wise observer of the human condition. So, as he sat eating the simple meal, drinking his tea, and listening to Bill and this lady natter on, he was fast coming to the conclusion that there was some special connection between them. He noticed how Lucy made sure Bill had everything he wanted, and always had an eye to his comfort. She obviously cared a lot for his old friend. Well, one thing was for sure, this lass knew the way to a man’s heart was through a good breakfast, and that was rare wisdom these days. For Bill’s part, he knew Sid was a cunning man, and so were his ways. Bill was no longer under any illusion: he and Lucy needed all the cunning they could get and then some. For that reason, he had decided to tell Sid everything. As he said to Lucy, he hated to involve Sid in something so potentially dangerous, but he just didn’t see that they had a choice.