Authors: Jonathan Gash
Disturbances at Gilson Mather never bothered Bray much. The firm had its moments of course, but they were beyond control. Destruction in Indonesia, wars halting hardwood shipments, strikes on distant waterfronts, all wore patience down. Worst of all was the slowness of supplies, especially when forest fires seemed pandemic.
These things the young did not understand. They listened but never took them in. Suzanne, reorientating into her new career, couldn’t comprehend. She caught half a conversation between himself and Mr Winsarls about having to abandon a pair of serpentine fronted knifecases because of delayed delivery.
“Why don’t you order from somewhere else?” she asked.
Bray looked at the floor. Pleasant to see wood shavings about, but this time of day it should have been swept. Mr Winsarls began a convoluted explanation about matching orders to shipping.
“Calamander’s not in the book,” Suzanne accused Bray.
“Look it up under Coramandel.” Embarrassment came too easily, Bray always found. “And under
Diospyros
quaesita
. Many joiners mean any sort of variegated ebony, and assume the wrong wood.”
Suzanne went to grumble at Harry Diggins about the loss of her corner clamps. Bray mentioned that chain moulding was an error in something so compact as a knife urn.
“It’s what’s been ordered, Mr Charleston,” Mr Winsarls said.
The owner’s exasperation had lately been on daily show. He invited Bray to come up to the office and closed the door.
“I’m beginning to think we’re understaffed, Mr Charleston,” Mr Winsarls began. “Nobody ever seems to finish a job. I’m not,” he interposed hastily, “saying the whole workshop floor’s gone to pot.”
Bray helped. “The anniversary volume, Mr Winsarls?”
“That’s it.” Winsarls was relieved. “I wonder if we should postpone it.”
“I’m sorry to have —”
“No, no, my decision, your advocacy. How long is it, nearly three months? Perfectly proper.” Winsarls sighed, tipped back his chair. “I mean, how many London firms with our history haven’t had commemorative publications?”
“None, sir. We are the only one without.”
“Right! But just look!”
A separate, tiresomely modern, table had been set up in the corner of the owner’s office. It was stacked with letters, faxes, papers.
“Sorry, Mr Charleston, but every one of those asks for information, or has historical news about our pieces. There are three messages from one Arkansas lady who has a Loudon style kitchen dresser made by my great-
grandfather
.
Christ Almighty, Bray. She wants a bloody pen pal back in 1833.”
“It could be fairly —”
“No.” Winsarls seemed broken. Bray carefully showed compassion. He’d known this was coming, and was ready. “A fortnight ago I counted. That stack represents seven hundred items, plus descriptions of four hundred others. That’s eleven hundred pieces of restored antiques, or our own repros. Auction houses alone fax us a hundred a month.”
Bray’s lie was ready. “I’d no idea it would grow like this.”
“Danny’s all right.” Mr Winsarls waved Bray to silence and swung his chair, a sure sign of testiness. “But he hasn’t a clue what the hell we’re talking about. He misclassifies every damned thing. I’m coming unstitched, and that’s a fact. It’s not his fault. The lad can’t even copy right. The girls are just typists. Not like old Mrs Elton.”
“Is Mrs Elton…?” Bray began with seeming hopefulness.
“Afraid not. She’s gone to live in Carlisle.”
“I rather feel it’s my fault, Mr Winsarls. Can we back out?”
“No. We’ve gone too far, sowed the dragon’s teeth.” He gave Bray a wry smile. “I’m in the classical dilemma. Stop or go on, either’s catastrophe. The problem’s reaching the work floor. Just listen.” They made a show of listening. Raised voices about the loading bay not being cleared, the outer doors still ajar, and Harry Diggins having to ask Bill Edgeworth and Dick Whitehouse, master joiners no less, to spare him Loggo. “Hear that? There’s been such a response. It’s mushrooming. In fact, a real bastard.”
Mr Winsarls lowered his feet.
“Apologies, Mr Charleston. I’m not quite a ruined man.”
It was a poor attempt at humour, but they were back on the rails. Anyone looking in would see a boss quietly talking things over with his head craftsman, nothing amiss.
“The youngsters on part-time day-release never contribute,” Bray said. “I think we must exclude them.”
“My opinion too,” Mr Winsarls said, guardedly waiting for more.
“They’re a falsehood, sir, with respect. How many will ever have the knowledge Loggo will acquire? And he’s the last near-apprentice we will ever see. New starters like Suzanne are sometimes good, but truculent because they want to skip learning, seeing only status.”
“Go on.” Mr Winsarls began to look hopeful, knowing his man.
“Gilson Mather is either marsupialised or extinct. The former means we’ll survive as a curiosity, slowly continue to get new orders, go on the way we are now. The latter means we must close or get taken over. Extinction will come about by misjudgements,” and Bray paused for effect, “of management.”
“Meaning what?”
“We must go ahead with the commemorative volume, Mr Winsarls. Develop it, not cut it down, make a real show, a splendid effort, two volumes if need be. Go for gold. We’ve done what banks, manufacturers, purveyors of brand goods, would give their thumbs for. We’ve accidentally got the world interested. You say the queries —”
“A deluge, Mr Charleston. We’ve not had this week’s yet. I’ll bet that bloody pile’s from overseas.”
“Then we get somebody experienced who’ll know how
to sift the records of a firm like Gilson Mather. Send the two girls back to routine.”
“I had rather hoped you would have been that person,” Mr Winsarls said wistfully. “You’ve already got too much on.”
“Antiques are becoming priceless. You know that, Mr Winsarls. Now the rest of the world has learned it. It simply means our volumes are overdue!”
Mr Winsarls polished his spectacles, a decision was coming.
“Where do we find such a person?”
“Actually, sir,” Bray said, “I’ve been almost as concerned as yourself lately. An idea came to mind. Nobody’s fault, but that bloodwood caused me lost sleep. And the yellow
Limonia
– did you see the
acidissima
last Friday? Nobody seems to realise how small the Indian tree —”
The owner waved him back to the problem.
Bray cleared his throat. “I’m sure the person would cooperate with a good printer, given precise instructions.”
“Sounds a godsend. Would you sound the notion out?”
“Yes, Mr Winsarls. Could you give me a day?”
The following week, Lottie Vinson started at Gilson Mather in charge of the historical publication. She was given a free hand.
“She here, that old bitch?”
“Mrs Vinson? No. And remember secret.”
They met in the bus shelter outside the town’s Odeon cinema. Kylee carried an immense carton of cola and a sack of popcorn. Mercifully she offered him none. It was headachingly sunny. They sat on the cinema steps. She was going in with friends.
“The picture’s crap.”
He didn’t ask. “Did you think about a system?”
“Coded thirty questions. Got to graph up.”
“The four specials?”
“No, Dumbo. Them all.”
“There might be tens of thousands.”
“What’s one and one, Thicko? That’s my Question One.”
“Two,” he said, startled, glancing about, hoping nobody could hear.
“So Question One gets forty thousand answers all saying the same thing: two. But we get some nerk who’ll say three, and another moron who’ll say it’s maybe two-point-five, okay?”
“Possibly.”
“
You’ll
secretly know that the storybook answer you want is eighteen – because one person Out There knows that. Got it?”
“Ye-e-es.”
“The correct answer doesn’t matter a tinker’s fuck. We only want the one weird answer that matches yours, see?
“So how do we weed out the immense mass of correct answers?”
“We don’t. The computer does. Me.”
Three shabby youngsters were approaching. One waved. Kylee didn’t wave back.
“Don’t worry.”
He left before her friends reached the steps. He felt a million years old. If it was simple to her, why wasn’t it to him?
Her confidence touched him. At home he celebrated with a bottle of the same beer from which Davey used to smell the bubbles.
When dawn came, he’d worked out his four questions
and the answers he wanted. Needed. Had to have, from some child – how had Kylee put it? – Out There. He wrote nothing down, left no trace, no evidence. He memorised them, for when the time came. He went to work breathless.
Subterfuge was unnatural to him. Now, though, news was policy because that’s where deceits came from. You had to stay sane, so he shunned newspapers and mostly ignored the TV news.
Across the road from Gilson Mather’s stood a bingo emporium. Once a cinema, wrestling venue, music hall, it now had a bowling alley where youths played obsessionally on machines that clanged and flashed.
It also had banks of public phones. From a bored girl in a booth he obtained a weight of change, and dialled. It was ten-fifteen. Mr Maddy proved difficult to reach, but Bray stuck it out through layers of doubting receptionists.
“Charleston?” Mr Maddy questioned. “You say I’m expecting your call?”
“Well, no.” Bray had notes. In a flurry he abandoned them. “I’m from Gilson Mather. Seven months ago, a Lancashire settle?”
“I’m in your bloody queue,” Mr Maddy grumbled. “Aye, I remember. A foreigner got in first.”
“Do you still want it, Mr Maddy?”
“Course I do. You’re the head maker I spoke to?”
“Charleston, yes.” He ran on. “I could do it next. At,” he gambled recklessly, “no charge.”
Silence. Then, “What’s the racket?”
Youths were brawling good-naturedly nearby.
“I’m in a bingo place, Mr Maddy,” Bray apologised lamely. “There’s some sort of scuffle.” He couldn’t get started. What did one say when bribing one of the principal collectors?
“There is no catch, Mr Maddy.”
“Look. Winsarls shoved me down the list, and charges me a fortune. Now I get it free?” He chuckled. “Spit it out, man. You want something I’ve got.”
“You run a computering firm, Mr Maddy?”
“I
design
computer
systems
. If you want a cheap PC —”
“Certainly not! I pay the proper price.” He drew breath and went for it, in for a penny. “I have a young, er, relative who’s extremely able. I’d like, please, for her to be employed.”
“If she’s such a wiz, why isn’t she already employed?”
“She has difficulty with words, Mr Maddy. Dyslexic, with some autism.”
“Autistic? A rival firm’s got two – playing the Benefits Agency, squeeze the government. Too much malarky for my liking.”
“No, Mr Maddy.” Bray said, almost not lying. “She’s developed her own colour scheme and, er, everything. She invents computer bits as she goes along.”
“Relative, you say?” Maddy mused. “Very well, I’ll see her. How much longer would I have had to wait for my order if I hadn’t agreed?”
Shamed, Bray confessed. “I moved your order to priority this morning, Mr Maddy. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to bribe you.”
The businessman laughed. “Mr Charleston, don’t ever go into business. You’d starve.”
They made arrangements for an interview.
Roz Saston was pleased by the boy’s progress. He spoke oddly. She told her husband, and put it down to being raised in New England.
“Marvellous that she was able to have a child so late, though of course Clint’s rising seven.”
“Doctors can do anything,” her husband Phil said. “It’s money.”
They discussed Roz’s tutorship’s fantastic salary.
“He’ll probably go to the Gandulfo-Meegeren.” Roz became wistful. “Costliest in the state.”
“It might help you get tenure if he gets in.”
“If?” Roz echoed. “She mentioned funding. Money talks.”
The boy was increasingly alert, his acumen brisker by the day, though the first lessons needed repeating, some twice over. He showed a curiously lopsided ability to take on facts and images to an extraordinary degree. Roz concluded that somebody had worked herself to the bone. Or maybe Clint was just made that way?
“It’s almost,” she told Phil, “as if part of him was asleep.”
“Hospitalisation, poor kid. Once he’s back among kids he’ll be fine.”
“Some Florida doctor visits. I leave him tapes and reports. I don’t get feedback.”
“They’re being mighty careful.”
“Wouldn’t you be, if it was Roberta or Clay?”
They agreed parents never lost that feeling.
Doctor audited the recordings of Roz’s lessons and gave Mom a favourable report. It would necessitate – his term – more two trips to Tain, each a three-day sojourn. Hyme grumbled.
Mom rebuked Pop. “Expertise isn’t only dollars, Hyme.”
Hyme snorted, because life
was
. He’d winced at Doctor’s latest hotel bills. To listen to tapes? “We could mail the tapes, Chrissakes.”
“And see them lost, is that what you want?” Mom fumed. It was late, Hyme still clicking maddeningly at the screen waiting for some numbers so they could sleep. “We do as Doctor says.”
“Once Clint does this, once Clint does that,” Hyme said morosely, eyes on the percentages that plagued him. “It was once Clint gets a tutor. Now it’s school.”
“That’s life.
His
life.” She lay facing him. “You’re not having regrets?”
“Never. Doctor’s taking his time is all.”
Mom promised to phone Doctor’s clinic the very next day and ask outright when Clint could start school. A difficult thing to ask, but she had to. Once Hyme got his teeth into finance he never let go.
The lessons began to make sense.
Clint was surprised that he could delight Roz by remembering something real well. He liked her, tried hard to please.
Manuela was nice, and Maria who sometimes helped Manuela bang pans in the kitchen though Maria was not much good because she kept asking Manuela what to do and Manuela shouted at her in words Clint didn’t know. It wasn’t really bad shouting.
Manuela didn’t mention the jokey boy, and he was careful not to say anything. He could have asked, except that might make her not nice, like that nurse at the clinic where the trees made patterns from sun shadows on the ceiling.
He made some of the same patterns in dough. Manuela kept the knife away, and you needed a knife – any knife, if you hadn’t proper ones – or the patterns got slopey. He never got one right. You needed tools.
He made palm tree shapes but they weren’t any good. Maybe you could do it better with bread. Maria made bread that got hard and Manuela threw it out. She never put bird food in a carved wood thing, but left it on the balcony in a pot.
Clint wondered if it was time for his tablet. He was having fewer now. Manuela said he’d soon go to school. Everybody was pleased with him.