The Rich And The Profane (18 page)

The grub filled me. I was invited to watch the telly, stay up at least until X, Y and Z ‘get here because it’s not often we have an impressario come to cast his new summer show...’ I began to hate Jonno Rant, wished I’d never thought to nick his identity. If I’d guessed right and Prior George had arrived back here, I’d never dare make surreptitious inquiries about him. With Guernsey’s gossip velocity it’d be like giving him a ring. I tottered upstairs to bed.

They had hold of me and dragged me along the grass. It was dark as pitch. I tried screaming but it was like one of those dreams where you’re trying to shout, Help please, Grandad, and you can’t utter a sound.

Somebody had filled a great net with flintstone cobbles. It trailed along roped to my ankles. They were bleeding. The nylon cut my skin. I struggled, tore at the gag round my face, couldn’t free it.

Then I got hold of some small cylindrical object, slender and thin like ... like a torch, a pencil flashlight. I yanked it from my pocket even as I heard the muted splutter of the hot pool, and I dug the slim metal into the soil and for a second felt them halt as it bit.

They cursed. Someone’s familiar voice said, ‘What the fuck’, usually so friendly but now utterly venomous, and I was dragged and gripped by three of them and the metal thing scraped on some flint cobble and then bent and was gone—

‘Chuck the bastard in,’ the voice said, breathless. ‘Not that way, stupid. Feet first. Why the fuck d’you think the stones are there?’

‘Bet it takes longer than twenty seconds,’ somebody said.

‘You’re on,’ said the educated, venomous voice.

Somebody chuckled. I screamed without managing to, now so near the hot pool’s quiet but totally evil sounds, and then I was hurtling through the air a short distance and I screamed and was dragged down into the heat.

‘Mr Rant?’ some woman was saying cheerily.

‘Help!’ I bleated, battling to get the gag out of my mouth, flailing.

‘My goodness!’ the lady said, coming into the room. ‘It’s that flight that did it. Will I give Bill a piece of my mind! I had a visitor last year came to visit the North Beach Marina who was positively terrified of flying, well luckily my sister’s husband - he taxied you from the airport - has a connection with the Condor boats from Weymouth, isn’t that a lovely place ...’

I was drenched with sweat, the bedclothes tangled. I emerged, eyes screwed against the light, and found safety.

Guernsey. A boarding house, locally a ‘guesthouse’.

This lady with the tray of tea and whatnot was the one I’d come to stay with. I remembered the taxi driver. I was not sinking weighted down with flint cobbles. Life was great.

‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘You’re beautiful.’

‘I hope you mean that!’ she trilled, laughing. ‘Shall I open the curtains?’

She did, and it was truly beautiful. I could almost see down into the harbour. She put the tray on my knees and poured the tea, started to butter the toast. I watched weakly.

‘Mrs, er ... ?’

‘Mrs Vidamour, Mr Rant.’ She judged me, decided, ‘Rosa to you. I’m a Guemesiaise born and bred, widow, and very proper. I have four guests presently. They’re tourist workers, so are almost
never
in!’ She served me the toast and tea. ‘You’re the sort who wants sugar I can tell so drink up because breakfast will be in thirty minutes and I expect you to eat it and not leave it like folk tend to nowadays but you’ll want to know about Guernsey before you start out—’ ‘Ta, Rosa,’ I said, recoiling, still overcome with relief at not being Gesso sinking into some place I didn’t want to think of. ‘Er, two things. Where’s Bailiwick?’

She drew back, the better to inspect me. ‘Bailiwick? The Bailiwick
is
Guernsey, and four small islands. Jersey is its own Bailiwick. The second?’

‘Have you any museums, art galleries?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, dear, Mr Rant. It truly
was
a ghastly flight, wasn’t it? I can see we’ve quite a way to go. Guernsey has everything the mainland has. Let me tell you about them.’

‘Please, Rosa,’ I said, loving Guernsey. ‘Call me Jonno.’

Rosa Vidamour’s house was about a mile from the harbour. Nice, but I wasn’t here to stare at water, with or without distant ships. Prior Merivier and his clique had used the O’Conor masterpiece to clear his gambling debts, sure. But he’d got another windfall, courtesy of me. That Chinese Warring States handle that I’d divvied was about as valuable as the O’Conor, so Metivier probably had a bit of money spare. And word was, he’d scarpered home to Guernsey. Fine by me. I wasn’t here to suss his reasons. I was here to express my sense of reproach. And I honestly wasn’t thinking of vengeance, retribution, reparation, all those ugly tit-for-tats that keep politics and wars going.

So I walked down the slope into the bonny town of St Peter Port.

The port itself had two marinas. One wasn’t enough to cope with the number of yachts. The main harbour had ferries. Esplanades ran along the sea front. From there the town rose quite steeply to a skyline where the port’s taller buildings showed - churches, a castellated turrety sort of tower. The cafes and shops were busy, people all about. Mrs Vidamour’d told me cars were forbidden on Sark, but you could hire one on Guernsey. ‘Cheaper,’ she interrupted herself sharply, ‘than on Jersey.’ Swift into local camouflage, I agreed that wicked old Jersey was extortionate about motor cars, the rotten lot.

Antique shops weren’t plenteous, but there were some. In two hours I’d drifted past the main ones, and started hunting out others. By confessing myself the famous impressario, I received attention and advice from everybody. St Peter Port is lovely, the people a delight.

At the gallery, visitors were being taught about paintings. I listened to the gent who was giving the talk. Very knowledgeable. I heard him out and went to him after the group moved on.

‘Morning,’ I said. ‘Liked your talk.’

‘Dealer?’ He was a rubicose man in a blazer, brass buttons with nautical emblems, club tie, moustache, innocent beery face except for the eyes.

‘Me? No. I’m in showbiz. Just came in out of the rain.’

‘Not across the harbour on a bicycle, presumably what?’ he twinkled. I still hadn’t got the hang of that saying. ‘How can I help you?’

‘Who’s the expert on paintings?’ I asked politely. ‘Is it yourself?’

‘Hardly. I’m a guide. Jimmy Ozanne. Old Guernsey name.’

‘Good, er, good.’ I tried to look pleased. ‘Only, has anywhere here got a massive collection of modernist paintings? Expressionist, that sort of period? I’m due to meet a pal, and I’ve forgotten the name of the place he told me.’ He said, endearing himself, ‘Your pal’s possibly going to tackle Victor Hugo’s house. Hugo wanted to be near Normandy, and lived here.’

Airs Vidamour had already shown me how to look for the Normandy coast, ‘should you wish to, Jonno’. I hadn’t yet felt the need.

‘Thought Victor Hugo was French?’

‘Rum cove, him,’Jimmy Ozanne said. ‘Settled here after being exiled, in 1855. Lived here fifteen years. Bought Hau-teville House the following year and packed the place with bits of everything. He sliced up old furniture, diced and restitched carpets. Wandered half the night. Amusing old codger, what what?’

‘Are his furnishings still there?’ I asked, ill at the notion of an antiques slicer.

‘Yes. You OK, Mr Rant?’

So much for secrecy. ‘Bad crossing yesterday.’ The thought of some silly old goon wantonly murdering antiques made me feel worse.

‘There are tablets for airsickness. Ask Rosa Vidamour.’ ‘Ta,’ I said. ‘How do I find Hauteville House?’

‘It’s way out facing South Beach, Jonno. Quite a walk.’ He meant just over a mile. I made it at speed.

Three hours later I was sitting in a nosh bar - they’re posh in Guernsey - almost sobbing into my coffee. Victor Hugo must have been a psychotic nut. The guide books seem so proud, of how he took pieces of craftsmen’s genius and dissected them, then assembled the chucks as he thought fit. He painted and wrote, but at what cost? I went all over Hauteville House and felt ravished, my brain clattering about untethered in my skull from the daft old buffoon’s massacres. OK, he did design tapestries and ‘created’. And he collected, so it was well worth a robbery or two. Or three. But honour for Victor Hugo? He gets none from me, the destructive swine.

He built a glass-walled studio at the very top of the house. Sometimes he’d go and stare at France. Myself, I wish he’d done more gazing and less decorating. Everywhere, they give his quip,
‘J’ai manque ma vocation
. . .’ Whatever it means, I hope it was a profound apology.

No Expressionist-like paintings there, though.

A shabby portly bloke with a garden gnome’s beard and bedraggled attire came and sat opposite. He wore a grubby knitted wool hat, but it couldn’t keep his locks in. I’d never seen so much hair on anybody. He watched me eat.

‘Bit underdone, this,’ I said, stopping. It was one of those long thinnish sandwiches, cheese and tomato, lettuce. I’d just started.

‘Going to waste, hey? Pity.’ He said it pit-ee. A local.

‘Unless you could finish it for me?’

‘If it’d help.’

‘Ta.’ I pushed it across. He fell on it. I gave him my tea. He slurped it. I was hungry, but hadn’t much money left and dared not risk my last groat while he was around.

‘You hate Victor Hugo, eh?’ he said, scooping up the crumbs.

‘I didn’t. But any genius who uses a Sevres dinner service as wallpaper is a prat.’

He guffawed, clapped. A waitress wagged a finger and called over, ‘No trouble from you, Walt. Y’hear?’

‘That Sevres set was a gift from Charles X of France. Hugo did the same with Delft, porcelain from Rouen.’ Walt eyed me. ‘Upsetting, hey? Like the tapestries.’ He stuck out a hand. ‘Waltjethou. You’re Jonno Rant,
n 'eche puis?’

We shook. ‘I’m looking for a decent painting, say 1890s or so, as a present for my cousin Ada. Looks like I’m on a loser.’

‘Painting, hey? You need Gussy, hey?’ He came to a decision with a slap on my arm. ‘I’ll take you! I know everything about every thing on Guernsey.’

A harbour tout. Well, I could do worse. ‘Ta,’ I said. ‘One thing, Walt. Can you stop saying “hey”? It’s driving me crazy.’

‘Oh. Right, Jonno.’ He stood. ‘I’ll get the wheels. Ten minutes, hey?’

Getting some quick replacement grub, I was in the middle of it when I decided to ring Symie at the Hippodrome back home, got him with Gladys’s help.

‘Any joy that end, Symie?’ I asked straight out. I hated the thought of a wasted journey, and this trip was starting to look dicey.

‘No, son,’ Symie said. ‘The bird’s flown after her bruv. Where are yer?’

‘Here and there, Symie. Sure she’s gone from East Anglia?’

‘Sure. Oh, Paula’s brother Horace come in. Asks if you want a cross or a slab.’

‘Cross, tell him.’ I didn’t like the thought of a great single rectangle of stone standing up above the hillside like half a jaw with the other in the earth beneath. ‘Symie? Ask Freddy Foxheath to suss out any of them painting look-alikes, eh?’

‘Right. And Desdemona’s asking what the hell you erecting stones to her old feller for. She’s narked, Lovejoy.’ ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Hang on.’ I bipped, made a burring noise and clicked my tongue, replaced the receiver. People do nothing but quibble.

‘Who’re you trying to get, love?’ a waitress asked. ‘Ask Directory Inquiries.’

For a second I looked at her. She looked back. I thanked her, did as she said. After which I also looked in the phone book. Prior Georges Xavier Metivier was listed, at Metivier Mansion, in the parish of St Sampson.

‘Will you marry me?’ I asked the lass. She said, ‘Get on with you’, and scolded that my tea’d get cold.

They must have a lifetime of handling duckeggs like me, so many cocky visitors. I ate until my money ran out, but things now weren’t all that bad. From the cafe I could just see the place where Guernsey had burnt its witches at the stake in 1580. Maybe Jersey had behaved even worse? I went out to meet my new ally.

Waiting on the
pavement for Walt Jethou’s car, I thought how to get money. Antiques? In a place you don’t really know, fast gelt can be difficult - I mean quick enough to pay for your next meal, your lodgings. And Walt Jethou would need a few bawbees for chauffeuring me about. Plus, I’d need to pay Rosa Vidamour for the pad. I stood watching happy holiday-makers arriving. When you’re broke, happiness makes you think of con tricks, doesn’t it? Being here wasn’t my idea. I’d been driven to it.

A toddler came along the pavement, chuffing at its reins. It clasped my trouser leg.

‘Dadda!’ it bawled. I said hello. Its dad tried hauling it off.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he said, red-faced. ‘He sees a leg and goes for it.’ Passing women laughed, making me redden.

‘Like that for life,’ I said. The little family barrelled on down the pavement.

But a glim of truth shone there. See one, see all. See one painting in the feeble gloaming of a dim chapel, and you think of lots of others. After I’d proved their O’Conor worthwhile by nicking it - Gesso obviously babbled before he’d, well, whatever. Then somebody had stolen it back from my workshop - plenty of suspects for that, including Prince, even including Hawkeyes Summer of the Plod. Then Marie Metivier confidently sold it off. A new big question was looming in my mind. Was their canvas from a hidden cache of many?

A scarecrow flapped up on a wheezing moped which coughed to a standstill in front of me as I waited. The figure wore a bulbous crash helmet, black visor, and beckoned. I was about to tell it to sod off, then peered closer.

‘That you, Walt?’

‘Hop aboard, Jonno.’

Chauffeur, indeed. I hopped and clung. A policeman waved us down.

‘Helmet, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s the law.’

Walt grunted, gave me his. I put it on. Inside it stank of brandy. Walt unfolded some home-made leatherette thing, inserting mysterious slabs into slots. The policeman watched, sighing.

‘I’m not sure that’s legal, Walt,’ he said.

‘It’s my own patent design, Pete,’Jethou told the bobby, muffled.

We puttered off in style. Within a furlong I saw a likely antique shop, but the blighter wouldn’t stop.