Authors: Debbie Rix
C
harlie opened his eyes
. At least he was aware that his eyelids’ muscles had changed position. The blackness that enveloped him was so total that it was impossible to know if his eyes were in fact open or closed. He put his hand out blindly and thrashed about. He located his phone, finally, and pulled it towards him. As he turned it on, a comforting glow emanated from the screen. He found the torch app and pointed it into the darkness. The bedroom walls had been whitewashed, and pictures – reproductions of Monets and Picassos – hung incongruously verdant on the walls, in a effort to disguise what was, in reality, an underground room carved out of the red, hot earth. For this was Coober Pedy, South Australia – a mining town in the heart of the Australian desert; centre of the opal mining industry and one of the hottest places on earth.
Charlie had arrived the day before, via Sydney and Adelaide. He had left Hong Kong the day he received a voice mail message from Mr Hennessy:
‘
Mr Manning, this is Michael Hennessy. I wonder if you could call me at your earliest convenience.’
This was followed by a second message, less unctuous, altogether more menacing in tone, one hour later.
‘
Mr Manning. This is Michael Hennessy. I’m afraid there appears to be some rather major discrepancy with the Ming vase. I really must insist that you call me as soon as you get this.’
By the time he got the second message, Charlie was at the airport. He booked a seat on a flight headed for Sydney that afternoon. He would have gone anywhere, but Australia seemed a good bet. It was civilized, they spoke English. He’d do well there. He removed the sim and threw his phone into the waste bin before he went through security. He paid for the flight on a credit card he kept back for emergencies. There was enough credit on it to last a few days.
In Sydney he checked into a small hotel in Kings Cross. Clean, comfortable, nothing special. He took stock. Miranda, it seemed had found him out and doubtless had by now claimed the vase. Her trip to the solicitor would probably have delivered some kind of proof of ownership. He wondered if Anstruthers, or indeed Miranda, would take it any further. Would they bother to report him; would Interpol be involved?
He resolved that he needed to lie low for a while. Going back to the UK wasn’t an option – at least not yet. As he sat in a restaurant that evening, toying with a poorly cooked steak, he glanced at a magazine. An article caught his eye. An interview with a Russian opal miner named Vlad. Just Vlad. He had no surname apparently, surnames being superfluous in the opal-mining town of three and a half thousand disparate souls. Vlad had lived in Coober Pedy for over ten years. The reporter implied that the Russian had a past and it was not a past he chose to share with the readers of
Australian Life
. Back in the hotel lobby, Charlie looked Coober Pedy up on the shared computer.
The following morning he checked out, flew to Adelaide and then on by small plane to Coober Pedy.
As he walked down the airline steps behind the Chinese opal merchants flying in for their monthly buying trip, the heat hit him like a wall. He could scarcely breathe and felt sweat pouring down inside his elegant blue shirt; he was drenched by the time he reached the airport building. Grateful for the air conditioning, he grabbed his bag off the carousel and went in search of a cab.
‘You here long, mate?’ the taxi driver asked on the ride from the airport.
‘Not sure.’ Charlie gazed out at the shimmering red earth.
‘You’d better get a hat,’ said the driver, looking at Charlie in his rear-view mirror. ‘Colouring like yours… You’ll fry.’
The hotel was owned by a large woman known as Ma Baker. She’d lived in Coober Pedy all her life; she looked Charlie up and down as he signed the visitors’ book.
‘Here long? You a buyer or a miner?’ she asked.
‘Neither; not sure; playing it by ear.’
‘You and everyone else here,’ she said as she led him down a dark, almost circular corridor. As they descended, and went underground he realised that the air temperature had dropped dramatically.
‘This is you,’ she said, indicating an unremarkable white door. She unlocked it and held it open for him.
A room carved out of the earth, painted white. No windows. A large bed, comfortable looking. A melamine chest of drawers and a wardrobe stood incongruously in this airless curved cave. She pushed open a louvred door, revealing a simple bathroom.
‘Nothing glamorous, but it’s all there.’
‘Thanks,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s fine.’
Later that day, after he had slept a little in the room with the lights on, he had emerged into the hot, airless reception area.
‘What can I do for you, Charlie?’
‘Something to eat. Is there a restaurant?’
‘Sure. Go down the high street – just there. Mac’s bar on the left. They do a good steak, or a piece of lamb and some of the best wine you’ve ever drunk in your life.’
The restaurant was full, bustling. Charlie sat at a small corner table and ordered a bottle of Shiraz. Ma Baker was right. It was very good wine. A man standing at the bar looked down at him as he read the bottle’s label. ‘Good stuff, that Shiraz.’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m enjoying it.’ He was aware that his accent stuck out like a sore thumb.
‘You a Limey?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘You?’
‘Originally, I’m from Europe, but you learn to fit in. Over forty-five nationalities in Coober Pedy. We come from all over, to seek our fortune. That your plan?’
‘Might be,’ said Charlie evasively.
‘Or are you running away from something?’ said the European, sipping his cold beer. ‘Most of us are getting away from something… Or someone.’ He gestured round the room.
It was full of men. That’s what struck Charlie initially: the absence of women. Men in shirts, overalls, work clothes. He ate his steak and drank the wine. He stood up to pay and leave, but the European suggested that he introduce him to a few of ‘the mates’. Reluctantly, Charlie agreed.
He sat at a table with four men. The European was called Mike; there was a man from Russia named Boris; a Serbian called Stefan and an Italian named Fabio.
‘You hoping to stake a claim?’ asked Boris in his thick accent.
‘How easy is it?’ asked Charlie.
‘You’ll need a permit. Stefan here got a big strike yesterday, didn’t you?’
Stefan shifted uneasily in his wooden chair.
‘Yeah…’ he said monosyllabically.
‘Tell you what,’ said Boris. ‘Come down with me tomorrow. I’ll show you the ropes.’
‘Really? Thank you.’
‘Meet me here tomorrow morning at six. We get an early start.’
Ma Baker turned the generator off at night to save money.
‘It will be black as coal if you wake up in the night, Charlie. I put a torch by each bed, so you can find the right place to piss.’ She laughed. ‘Generator goes back on at seven.’
As he stumbled about in the dark using his mobile phone to light the way to the bathroom, he checked the time. It was five forty-five.
He met Boris as planned just before six and they drove out to his ‘claim’, twenty minutes or so from the centre of town. He parked the old truck and led the way to the mine entrance.
‘Here you are,’ he said. He pointed at a rickety-looking metal ladder that disappeared into a hole in the ground.
‘I’ll lead the way, shall I?’
Descending the ladder, Charlie felt the atmosphere change from hot and dry to cool and damp. At the bottom of the ladder, Boris jumped the last few rungs with practiced ease.
‘I’m setting a charge this morning.’
‘A charge?’ asked Charlie nervously.
‘Yup… Going to blow it. Looking for a new seam of opal. Got a good feeling about it.’
He was fiddling with a small quantity of explosive that had been left in the corner of the mine.
‘Shouldn’t we… Go back up?’ asked Charlie.
‘No, mate. It’s fine. We do this all the time. You just stay over there in that corner while I do the business.’
As Charlie stooped in a low corner of the mine, he was seized suddenly by a desperate desire to escape via the metal ladder. He hadn’t come all this way, hadn’t endured all the disappointment of losing the Ming vase, to be blown to bits by a madman called Boris. Suddenly all the planning and ultimately the failure of his scheme overwhelmed him. He had always been successful. He had ‘acquired’ so many beautiful things before and successfully sold them. He had made a lot of money. And he’d spent a lot of money too. Women, cars, houses. They were his weaknesses. He thought momentarily of Callie, sitting at the oversized island unit of their house in Hampshire. He thought of the hand-made shirts and suits left hanging in the cedar wardrobes in his dressing room. He thought briefly even of Miranda, and of Georgie. He had felt an unfamiliar sensation as he stole down the path from her house that day with the Ming vase tucked under his arm. Guilt. He had wrestled with his conscience that day and in the days that followed. But he had continued with the plan, had flown to Amsterdam, picked up a connection to Hong Kong, throwing his phone into a bin outside his hotel on the Herengracht. He wondered how many times Miranda had rung him. It was a shitty thing to do, to leave them both at Christmas. Callie and Miranda – both left waiting for him. He felt bad about that. Not his fault though; the sale was in January. Just bad timing.
He stood up, banging his head and grazing his shoulders on the damp, stony roof of the mine. He would have to stoop until he reached the ladder.
Boris was fiddling with something in the corner, muttering to himself. He had a bottle stowed in his pocket from which he swigged from time to time.
‘Bloody hell, Boris,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re not drinking, are you?’
The noise of the explosion brought men from mines all around. It was as if they were expecting it. They had all been waiting for the inevitable.
‘That guy Boris – he’s a crazy one. Too much semtex, too much vodka. It was just a matter of time.’
They never found the bodies. Bits of bodies, mixed with dark red earth, pieces of opal sticking to body parts.
‘Jeez, he found a really good seam. Typical of Boris – to go out on a high.’
No one noticed that some of the body parts belonged to a tall, fair-haired Englishmen. Identity, address and destination unknown.
T
he speedboat roared away
from the airport, bouncing over the waves. The driver was tall and dark; he wore beige chinos and a white T-shirt; mirrored Ray-Bans concealed his dark brown eyes, giving him the look of a young George Clooney. Georgie stood next to the driver, relishing the sensation of the salty air stinging her face. Jeremy lounged elegantly on the leather seats at the rear of the private taxi, sent by the Hotel Danieli to collect their VIP guests.
Miranda had never been to Venice before, but it had been on the top of her ‘bucket list’ for a long time. Once the money from the sale had gone through and the auctioneer’s commission had been paid, she made a few charitable donations and set up a trust for her daughter. But there was still a great deal of money left over, and she was determined to do something more than just live a life of luxury. She felt that she had been the recipient of extreme good fortune, and it was her duty, even her privilege, to try to do something worthwhile with the money. She talked at length to Georgie about her plans, and to Jeremy too, of course, but her instinct told her that she should concentrate on helping people to help themselves in some way. It was a grandiose ideal and, at this stage, really just an idea, but she had started making lists of possible projects in a new leather notebook – one of the few new ‘luxuries’ she had treated herself to. She had taken advice, of course, and much of her time was now spent in a relatively enjoyable round of financial discussions, meetings with lawyers and plans made on the kitchen table. She had given Jeremy some money, which meant that he could concentrate on his writing. He kept the book shop open, but now employed two young people who worked there full-time.
Of course, she was not averse to the idea of some improvement in her own lifestyle. She got a few new clothes for herself and Georgie. She bought each of them a new laptop. But she had not yet thought of moving house. She had not even upgraded the old family Volvo. There was something comforting and reassuring in its presence outside her house.
The sale of the vase had caused a sensation, and the press had, of course, got hold of the story. She had endured several articles on the front pages of the tabloids, demands for interviews and so on. Inevitably, begging letters had begun to arrive. She read them all dutifully and sent a few cheques to people or organisations that she felt had a genuine need. For the most part, she managed to keep her feet firmly on the ground, and was relieved and delighted that Georgie seemed almost unaffected by their good fortune. She was too busy preparing for her GCSEs, but did admit that her new-found status as the daughter of a local wealthy celebrity had increased her popularity.
‘It’s funny, you know, Ma,’ she said one day when she came home from school. ‘I’ve never been the most popular girl, as you know. But suddenly everyone is inviting me to their parties, or trying to sit next to me. It’s nice – sort of. But I know who my real friends are. They’ve not changed.’
‘Well done, G,’ her mother had said, passing her a cup of tea. ‘Keep thinking that way. We’ve had a huge piece of good luck, but this money is our responsibility too, you know. It’s not just a green light for us to “have stuff”. I’m not sure what we ought to do with it yet, but together we can work on it and I’m sure we’ll think of something. There are so many deserving causes, and so many deserving people, but it’s vital that we make the right decisions. And the most important thing is that we try very hard not to let it affect our relationships – and it sounds like you’ve made a great start on that already.’
Miranda did, though, plan to use some of the money to travel, and the trip to Venice was the first of what she hoped would be several journeys exploring her family’s history. The impetus was a final missive – a message from the grave almost – from Great Aunt Celia.
Three weeks after the sale had gone through and the money had been transferred to her from Hong Kong, Miranda was sitting in the kitchen writing a list of tasks for the day. The doorbell went, and upon opening it she found the postman holding a long, thin cardboard poster tube marked “special delivery”. She signed for it and brought it back to the kitchen. She put it on the table and wandered across to the window. It was a chilly February day and the garden was encased in a white carapace of frost; the sky was a shade of the palest blue, verging on grey, that matched Miranda’s new sweater. It was the most expensive sweater she had ever bought – two-ply cashmere, with long sleeves and a wide boat neck. It was warm and luxurious and gave her a guilt-inducing sensation of comfort and indulgence. The irony was not lost on her that as a semi-professional knitter, she could probably have made one for herself.
She flicked the buttons on her new coffee machine and returned to the kitchen table to open the parcel. Inserted in the top of the tube was an envelope addressed to her. Opening it, she found a letter from the solicitor, Mr Martin.
D
ear Mrs Sharp
,
I
am writing
, in part, to apologise for the tardy return of this property to you. It was amongst your aunt’s papers and during a further New Year’s clear-out of my storage facility, I discovered it propped in a corner. Upon opening it, I realised that it was intended for you. You must think me very disorganised. I do assure you that mislaying items on behalf of clients is almost unprecedented. May I offer you my sincerest apologies for this unaccountable error. There is a letter from your great aunt which I have not opened, but imagine will explain the enclosed.
Y
ours sincerely
,
Charles A Martin
Solicitor
I
nside the solicitor’s
letter nestled a second, smaller pale-blue envelope, addressed to Miranda in Celia’s girlish hand. Miranda ripped it open.
M
y dear Miranda
,
I
have left
a list of instructions for the solicitor – Mr Martin. He is a funny little man, but seems competent. My dear husband Hubert had a rather splendid firm of solicitors in London when we were younger, but alas, I fear that the senior partner who dealt with the Kaerel family affairs has gone to a better place, hence my using a local man to deal with my effects.
T
he solicitor has
a list of all the items I am leaving you, which I trust you have read. I hope they have given you a little joy, or perhaps even provided you with a little income. I know how you have struggled since that husband of yours let you down. Inside this rather inelegant poster container you will find my husband’s family tree. It was started, I believe, many, many years ago by one of his distant relatives – Maria dei Conti. She returned to Venice with her father Niccolò dei Conti, and her brother Daniele. The family tree has been added to ever since. Obviously, this is not the original, small fragments of which remained when my husband inherited it, but they were so delicate that he paid a professional to put the whole thing together as one continuous piece. It involved a considerable quantity of archive research, I seem to remember, as there were so many missing pages. The original fragments are in a museum somewhere… Amsterdam, I think? Perhaps stored there, or possibly discarded now as being of no interest to anyone other than the family. There are still a few missing people I am sure; the archivist did her best, but not every generation was as dutiful as the last in this project, and records are difficult to check as families spread out around the world; but it gives an indication of the extraordinary breadth of the Kaerels and their forbears. Thankfully, many of the women who kept this tree going were dedicated to the task and wrote small notes on their businesses or where they lived, and these were transcribed where possible. They were clearly a proud lot, the Kaerels and their ancestors!
H
ubert’s mother
always said that the vase had been handed down through the generations of the family. I cannot say for certain that it was brought back to Europe by one of the people in the tree, but it is the most likely explanation; they were such a keen group of merchants and many of their dealings took them down the Silk Road. I am no expert, but I believe the vase dates back to the fifteenth century – the Ming period; that would suggest that dei Conti himself may have brought it back with him from his travels. It is said that he was one of the first explorers to visit China. Did you know that? After the great Marco Polo, of course. But it might have been brought in by one of the later generations of merchants. The only clue, however, is a line that was painted on the fragments of the family tree that we inherited – a line that seemed to go from one daughter to another, starting with Maria dei Conti herself.
W
e had
the vase valued when we inherited it from Hubert’s mother, at one thousand pounds. I imagine it would be worth a lot more now; perhaps even as much as ten thousand! I do so hope that it gives you pleasure, dear Miranda, and if you feel you must let it go, then I do understand. What, after all, is the use of something, however beautiful, if one can’t afford the heating?
I
wish you well
, dear Miranda – health, happiness and love. As you know, I was never fortunate enough to have a child, but I like to think that you, my dear great niece, might think fondly of me now and look upon me as a loving, benevolent grandmother of sorts. Your grandmother, my own dear sister, was so like you.
With fondest love,
Celia.
A
s Miranda read the letter
, a photograph fluttered onto the table. It showed a young and very beautiful Celia – tall, fair-haired, laughing at the camera. She held the hand of a tall dark-haired young man. His other hand rested on the saddle of a bicycle that leant against the low wall of a bridge straddling a canal. In the background was a tall brick house with the classic stepped roof of Holland and the Low Countries. She turned the picture over. It said simply: CELIA AND HUBERT, HERENGRACHT, AMSTERDAM 1937.
Miranda thought back to one of her last meetings with Celia, in the house near Cheltenham. She had told her something of their wartime experiences. Miranda had been spellbound.
‘We had to leave Amsterdam at the start of the war. It was so difficult living there. Hubert had a Jewish grandmother on his mother’s side, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the Germans found out.’
‘Is that when you came to London?’ asked Miranda.
‘Yes – we were fortunate that my parents lived there and we had a place to go. So many others did not. Hubert joined up of course. As an engineer he was quite useful to the war effort. He was sent to the Far East but was taken captive by the Japanese. As it happens, his engineering background was rather useful – he ended up building the Burma railway…’
The old lady had fallen silent at that point, gazing at a photograph of her husband in a silver frame on the small mahogany table at her side. From Miranda’s cursory knowledge of that period of the war, she knew enough not to probe any further. Another cousin of her mother’s had died in Malaya and she knew how brutal the prisoners’ lives had been.
‘It took a long time for him to recover, you know?’ Celia continued eventually. ‘Things were never quite the same again. But we were lucky in so many ways. Hubert got a good job and we travelled a lot. We even went back to the Far East – Hong Kong – for ten years. It was fun, you know? And in many ways, children would have made our life difficult. They would have had to come back here to boarding school, or Hubert would have had to work here in the UK. No, we were lucky that he survived at all really.’ She gazed wistfully at Miranda, who sat on the faded linen chair by the fire in Celia’s pale green drawing room.
Now, seated at her own kitchen table, Miranda felt slightly shell-shocked. Once again, she was touched at how fond her aunt had been of her, and guilty that she had not taken more trouble to visit the old lady, particularly in her later years. She remembered the odd Christmas, as a child, when her grandmother had still been alive. She and her sister Celia would retreat happily to the kitchen to wash up – one washing, the other drying. They were both always keen to be busy and useful, she remembered.
She looked again at the letter from the solicitor – dated the 5th of February. This parcel and the letter it contained should have been delivered, clearly, with her aunt’s bequest, nearly a year before. She would then have known the value of the vase. Once again, she was struck by the incredible stroke of luck that kept the vase safe all that time. On its precarious journey to her house from the inefficient Mr. Martin’s offices wrapped in nothing more than an antique quilt; the time it spent on the hall table, being brushed by Georgie’s big coat; the flowers she’d put into it. Any one of these things could at any time have resulted in the vase’s destruction. And yet somehow it had survived, and miraculously she had discovered its true value just in time.
She carefully pulled out the rolled-up tree and laid it out on the kitchen table, after first wiping away all the crumbs and butter smears left over from breakfast. She moved her coffee cup onto the dresser. God forbid that she spilt anything on this now.
Laid out, the tree measured over three feet. At the top was Niccolò dei Conti. Beneath him were his two children, Maria and Daniele. There was the name of his wife, Roshinara, and two other children who appeared not to have survived into adulthood. In fact, looking carefully at the dates, she realised that Roshinara, Magdalena and Dario had all died in the same year. Maria had married Peter Haas and had four daughters. Her eldest daughter Magdalena had married Cornelius. They, she now realised, were the couple in the painting that Anstruthers showed on the day of the sale. It was fascinating to discover what had happened to them; they had had eight children, two of whom had not made it to adulthood.