Authors: Jonathan Gash
The celebration was held in the Romeo and Giulietta in Romsey Street, Soho. Several youngsters had a drink then left. To his embarrassment Bray found himself shaking hands with several. Three youths from former cabinet-making courses also dropped in. One had started an antiques business, repairs to Long Acre eighteenth-century antiques a sideline. Bray was quite moved. The lad had journeyed all the way from Bromley. “Making sure the old bugger’s gone,” one joked, getting a laugh.
Bray was glad when the talk became technical. Alice and her friend Josh were perennial jokers from two years before. They had brought with them a fragment of wood on which they couldn’t agree.
As the party grew and the waiters circulated, Bray told them he admired Australian Mountain Ash.
“
Eucalyptus regnans
,” he said, lovingly examining the piece. “Close cousins, they are. This light brown colour would’ve been almost pink. Looks like oak, doesn’t she? Easy wood, never picks up when you plane it. Did you polish this?”
“Me,” Alice claimed, staring hard at Josh, who laughed.
Bray squinted along its surface. “Look out a figured piece. It comes up lovely. I used it for veneers, four Regency copies.”
Josh shook his head. “How the hell d’you remember?”
Bray looked at him. “Just because wood lies still doesn’t mean it’s stopped living, Josh.”
“Mr Charleston recognises furniture he worked on as an apprentice,” Mr Winsarls claimed. “If I could do it, I could sack the lot of you!”
He was sweating heavily in the restaurant lights. His wife was chatting to Lottie and other wives nearby, discussing the menu.
“Only, we want to come back,” Alice said suddenly. “Me and Josh.”
“I said to wait,” Josh cut in under his breath.
Alice said, “Are there vacancies, Mr Charleston?”
She was a stocky girl. Bray remembered her as a vigorous worker, eager but careless. Josh was a promising youth lacking in patience. Bray suspected that they lived together at an antiques shop in Camden Town.
“Perhaps when I come back from the USA,” Bray temporised, making a silent appeal to Mr Winsarls.
“How long will you be away, Mr Charleston?”
“He’s staying,” Suzanne said laughing. “He’s got a blonde.”
Bill Edgeworth was talking with Dick Whitehouse. He chuckled.
“Then I’m going too. We’re not sending young scruffs like you lot!”
There was general laughter. Loggo was already on pints even though the meal hadn’t yet begun, with James Coldren, third master joiner.
“Aren’t the publishers coming?” Mrs Winsarls asked her husband.
“No,” he said. “Lottie’s representing them. They’re sulking because Lottie did a better job than they ever could.”
Lottie edged into the conversation, smoothly dislocating Bray from Alice and Josh. “They were glad to stick me here with you lot.”
The meal went off in a melee, how the publishers should allow a third volume. Mr Winsarls worried about the restaurant’s arrangements. It was a starter/buffet, wives and friends allowed. Mercifully the talk never faltered. Bray found himself with Lottie as the meal ended. He had wondered if she had been trying to avoid him.
“Not long now, Lottie,” he managed to say.
They found themselves in a lacuna of quiet. One or two of the guests were slightly tipsy by then, Gilson Mather supply merchants arguing about coastal ports, nobody sure of the roads. Mr Winsarls was with Bill Edgeworth and the masters’ wives, discussing recipes. Everybody was slightly flushed. The restaurant was packed.
Lottie poured Bray a glass of red wine. He carefully did not sip.
“Still working the alcohol out?” she asked wryly. “You’ve only had one glass.” Bray coloured. She’d been watching. “In case your mobile phone rings?”
“Sorry.”
“Your endless apologies, Bray.” She seemed close to laughing, except it threatened to be something else.
“What will you do now, Lottie?” The place was becoming fairly raucous. “Stay with the firm, I hope?” Bray felt a near-panic. He’d almost said
stay with us
, leading to all sorts of heartache.
“For a while. Until the anniversary escapade is done with.”
“You’d better!” Bray made light of it. “That third volume’s trends and specials. You’re badly needed.”
“Then what, Bray?”
Even as she spoke she could have kicked herself. Was anything worse than a petulant woman who couldn’t get her own way? He had a dream forcing him to sacrifice his life. Let him get on with it.
“I can’t see that far, Lottie.” He measured the quantity of wine left in his glass. The old predicament: half empty or half full? “Thanks for doing my itinerary. All those places with odd names, a thousand miles between. Hard to believe.”
“I wish you well, Bray. I hope it goes really splendidly.”
They could have been diplomats arranging sanctions. Lottie defiantly accepted wine from a pressing waiter. She had no particular reason to keep a clear head, and no crazy dreams either. His crusade was like all crusades, a lost cause. Reality was here, in some noisy Italian restaurant, not in jaunting across a vast nation neither she nor Bray knew. She would last out until Bray left for New York, and then pick some new job. Her old publishers, Cannon Endriss, had lately made cooing noises after the Gilson Mather success, sensing a market in which, she thought with a frisson of malice, they hadn’t her experience.
She said evenly, “All you have to do is turn up. Couriers will meet you, hotels are booked. Credit’s arranged.”
“I’ll be bewildered.”
“Worried about the public speaking? You’ll be fine. Antiques, joinery, they’re your subjects, Bray.” She smiled determinedly, adding, “James Coldren, Bill, Dick, even the auctioneers, all say you’re a natural. This year’s been one long success.”
Not quite
, Bray thought.
It was getting late by the time they left. Mr Winsarls spoke a few words of caution to Harry Diggins about the youngsters and uncharacteristically shook Bray’s hand. He’d already done a congratulatory speech, raising ironic cheers. It was as they were saying their goodnights that Bray realised that they had all genuinely forgotten about his loss. To them today was merely another day. Perhaps it was the wine, but fright took over: if nothing came of his search, would he too sink into the same dull apathy where time was the mere now of existence, with no past and countless tomorrows? He thought desperately, I must meet Kylee. Now, tonight if possible.
“You all right, Bray?” Bill asked.
“Just a bit squiffy.”
Mrs Edgeworth took Bray’s arm. “Night air, Bray. Deep breaths.”
They made the garish lighting of Romsey Street.
“Are you going home, Bray?” Lottie asked, suddenly there. “The firm’s booked everybody into the Piccadilly.”
“Home, Lottie.”
She went off with the others, not far to walk. Bray caught a bus in Shaftesbury Avenue. The moment he was seated he checked the messages on his cell phone. None. He dialled Kylee.
She wasn’t home, but he spoke haltingly to her recording device.
“Things are coming to a head, Kylee.” He made certain no other passenger could overhear. “I think maybe I’ve talked myself into a stupor, not wanting to face it now it’s here. I want you to formulate the scheme now, please. The one we talked of. You did the test run, remember? Can you do it now, and run it for me while I’m away?” He forced
out the final words, “In America.”
He reached home soon after midnight to find a voice message from her. It was characteristically slurred of speech.
“Wotcher, Bray. I’m with these boring old farts. Tomorrer, ’kay?”
Relieved, Bray got Buster back from Christine and Hal, walked over the fields, and settled him down for the night. Buster kept looking up while Bray wrote under the porch. For once Bray left the porch light on when he went to bed.
Gratitude could be an emotional flux, welding convictions into place. A convert before the city, so to speak. Bray waited for Kylee at the station. An hour after he’d got there, he was still waiting.
So many passengers alighted, football fans joshing two busking girls playing violins. He sat owl-eyed on the platform. Mr Winsarls had said, “Bray. After all these years, why ask if you can have a day off?” And for once the owner had been don’t-bother-me testy, even dismissive. Youngsters saw every handout as entitlement. Maybe, Bray wondered uneasily, I’m a born serf. Disgusting.
He had no idea what Kylee did at Mr Maddy’s firm. His early worries about Kylee had resurfaced. She had grown away even in so short a time. Bray recognised it in Mr Walsingham’s behaviour – he’d phoned Bray twice since his visit – as a sad attempt to encounter his erring daughter. Each time, Bray carefully let Kylee know that her dad had rung in, because she was Bray’s ally, and he was on her side.
He still saw her as the soiled girl snarling curses in that echoing laboratory. Her visits to his hunting shed were
now infrequent, always unannounced, and marked by print-outs on his calendar. She tended to hurtle in, bully him into tackling some shortcut, tell him off for not checking the e-mail, then play with the dog.
Some of her visits took place when he was at work. Then, late evening, he’d find notes blinking on his computer, with a barrage of loud addenda, and usually some terse Churchillian imperative to phone her, often gone midnight. She cursed him when his cell phone wasn’t charged. He thought she was unfair.
“Penny for ’em, Bray.”
“Oh, I was just…”
He reddened, caught out, Kylee standing there. To his astonishment she was more than presentable.
“I got wheels.” She bullied her way through the platform mob. “What you carry that fucking bag for? Got a tent in it?”
“No,” he said earnestly. “It’s a book, bottled water, and a brolly —”
She turned to him, laughing, elbowing to make a path.
“I don’t wanter fucking know, gettit?”
He was off kilter. Only one minute, and already she had him stuttering.
A motor stood at the kerb, a portly driver opening the door. “Found him.”
She flung herself in, beckoned Bray, and was instantly on a cellular phone saying no, where the fuck was Del at eleven o’clock. Bray anxiously tried to tell her the correct time. She pushed to silence.
The journey took half an hour. (“Doze, because you’re old!” she ordered rudely.) Old times’ sake, Bray thought wryly, and spent the journey looking at the scenery. The buildings managed to appear temporary despite the array
of flags and the stencilled lawns.
“They say fucking office, not work.” She walked into the front entrance. “Biggest load of shit.”
A stylish receptionist invited Bray to sign in, please.
“No,” Kylee told him. “This way, mate.”
“It’s the rule!” the receptionist bleated. “Miss Walsingham —”
“Piss off, Ca-ssand-dra.” Kylee didn’t even pause, did some magic with a card and they rose in a lift to a corridor floored in thick fawn. “See? Crappy.”
She talked a few minutes with a man of about twenty-five at a console in an office. He was dishevelled, muttering, switching screen numbers and sets. Bray found his admiration for Kylee returning. She focused instantly and gave undivided attention. Three other screens glowed on the wall. Bray felt proud. She had her own desk, her name on it and everything. A suited man of Bray’s age nodded off in an adjacent office. There was quite a vista from the window, parkland and a distant river. A man and woman walked their dog, as he and Lottie had walked Buster at Maldon.
Kylee pressed a button and a partition moved, settling into a groove with a hiss. Without getting up, Kylee’s desk and Bray’s chair were isolated.
“They think it’s natty,” Kylee said contemptuously. “I tellt them it’s pathetic. I want to fuck off out of here.”
“Leave?” he asked in alarm.
“Stay whaffor?”
“Please think before —”
She burst out laughing. “Fucking dodo. There’s your tea.” A small pillar rose from the desk bearing a tray with tea, milk, sugar. “Cola makes me piss all day.”
He’d forgotten quite the impact she had. Everywhere
looked sterile. Kylee hadn’t sat down. He felt an intruder. It must have showed in his face because she flopped to the carpet and hunched her knees.
“Not leave before we finish.”
She still had the unnerving knack of speaking words directly into him, as if actual sounds didn’t quite matter while her thoughts did. She was right. He was a dodo.
“Who finish?”
“Scared I’ll leave you, arncher?”
Careful, he warned himself, and stammered, “Yes. I worry things’ll go bad.”
“Me getting in trouble.”
“No…” He felt his face colour at her sideways look. “Yes.”
“Why d’you not talk straight? You’re scared some fucking words might get out. You say yes so it’ll come out no.”
He was distressed. “My conversation’s not good.”
“Like me.” Amused, casual now. “You drove me fucking mad till I saw we’re the same. Old Stone next door does sod all except he comes to and invents summert. Usually it’s no use, like summat makes your eyes easier. Or a fluid switch that thinks faster. He’s old like you. He farts all afternoon.”
She went sober, for once not vicious. “Me and Porky did your shed over.”
He looked away. She meant burgle. “Yes. I knew.”
“We wondered what you got behind them painted panels. We did the whole frigging wall. I felt a right cunt. Bare wood. Porky give me a black eye.”
Bray remembered the black eye, but had never asked. “I moved it all. A precaution.”
“You guessed we’d do it. See? We’re same. You made replica panels.”
“It’s not that I didn’t trust you, Kylee.”
“It was.” To his alarm tears showed in her eyes, first ever time. “I never seed it before. So I stay on.”
He was lost. “Seen what?”
“I’m allers trouble. No good Dad and his tart trying. I’m not a kid. You’d gone out walking Buster. We took the shed wall to bits and found nothing.”
“I took Davey’s wall away.”
“Made a fake wall, shutters and all, you cunning bastard.” Tears were dripping off her chin. He didn’t know what to do. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’d never seen devotion before. I had to get Del to look it up. Dee-vo-shun.”
“You’re making me out something I’m not.”
“Unconditional love. That’s it, innit? Everything else come second. See? I know what it means.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, rubbed her sleeve on the wall leaving a damp smear.
“Don’t talk like this, Kylee.”
“Porky’s flashlight showed us a blank wall, hearing him cuss me. You’d even copied the scratches, pencil marks. Fucking work of art.”
“You didn’t —”
“Say anything. Nar. I started helping. I’d never known it existed, this love thing. Your old cow got the push, has she?”
He tried to follow. “Lottie? She feels it’s hopeless. She still works at Gilson Mather’s.”
“She’s an iggorant tosser. You never said anyfink.” And to his silence, “Catchpole. The probation hearing. Catchpole. How you’d adopt me.”
He cleared his throat. How terrible females were, speaking when silence was so safe.
“Well, Geoffrey and Shirley, me being on my own, Mr Catchpole said it wouldn’t be proper.”
She said bluntly, “Don’t fuck about. For Davey?”
Bray knew what she meant, for Davey alone or not. This honesty thing was now with the pair of them. “For all your brightness you seemed just another Davey, and just as far from home. I thought it unfair of everybody.”
“Then you sponsored me.” She spat, missed the waste basket. “Catchpole’s a wanker. You meant it.”
“One has to,” was the best he could do.
“One has to,” she mimicked, falsetto. “Let’s get going.” She watched him replace his cup and rise. “You don’t have to wash up, Bray.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He sat down.
She swivelled out a laptop. “Palmtop and laptop security’s pathetic. Watch screen.”
She showed him charts, converting them to graphs and sets, making extrapolations. The sound babbled so fast he couldn’t tell the meaning.
“The basis. We run our competition, papers, telly, bookshops, anywhere. We ask a zillion schools – mail direct, anyhow – questions. We do it e-mail, internet, everywhere. I’ve got Maddy to fund the competition as a project survey. It’s only fucking peanuts. Many won’t answer. The answers graph out like we ask, what colour is sky, and 99 per cent say blue. One per cent says red, yellow, and some nutters saying red-blue-white stripes. But we secretly know we’re looking for the one that says green.”
He got it. “Green is rare.”
“Call them shed answers, the ones we’re looking for. I tell the computer to keep only the shed answers. It’ll pick out the nutters or mistakers, plus Davey. Nobody’ll know except you.”
“Then the other questions.”
“The other
three
questions,” she corrected.
She gave verbal orders to the computer. It showed a screen of sets. With a word it magnified them to show one final overlap marked
D
. It talked in Kylee’s voice.
“I blank all the non-shed answers.”
“Er, probability?”
“Forget your head. You got me.” She shut her computer down, took out a disc and a battery pack. “Weighs a fucking ton. All I need now’s your questions. But.”
“But what?”
“Tell me the questions to ask. Not the answers.”
“One thing, love. Who sorts out the replies we get? I mean, all those e-mails and letters? One of them can’t get lost, because —”
“You learnt fuck all. I’ll show you.” With a word she had the partitions rolling back. “Have a jam butty, then piss off. I’ll knock off and come. I can’t stand this frigging place. The Design-and-Décor cunt’s office is a shithouse.”
She led into the corridor, ignoring the man at the console and the dozing genius, and bawled down the vacant door, “I asked for a fucking air conditioner!” She shook her head as they left. “Talk to the fucking wall. Know what?”
“No.” He felt stricken, expecting some terrible last-minute revelation. “What is it, Kylee?”
“Here,” she said with contempt, “they’re fucking thicker than you. Bone. There’s jam butties in the car. Tarra.”
And she was gone.
He had to ask a reception girl to let him out of the building.