Spend Game (18 page)

‘You’re horrid, Lovejoy. They’re two lovely old men who need care.’ I gave up arguing. She raved at me then, as I drove out on the Wormham road north out of our village. She kept it up for bloody miles, going on about cynicism and selfishness. I even learned a new word, gravamen. She said the gravamen of our differences were so enormous as to make us irreconcilable. I didn’t like the sound of gravamen, whatever it was.

I just shut up and held the wheel. Anyway, I had plenty to think of. While Moll was out I’d gone over the Ordnance Survey map of the Mount St Mary and Scratton areas, inch by painstaking inch. In fact, that’s partly why I’d got her out of the way. There was no tunnel, not even a viaduct, in or on or even near the Mount St Mary hillside. And the river bridges are so narrow, being medieval, that even I wasn’t scared of them.

But all morning I’d fretted uneasily. Maybe that’s why I had shelved the idea of seeing Bern or some other local historian for so long, subconsciously knowing there was something unpleasant and even frightening at the end of it. And, as it turned out, there was.

We came to Wormham’s erratic main street. Moll was still going on. ‘How could you be so –’

‘Shut it, Moll.’

‘– positively callous and unfeeling –’

‘
Shut it.
’ She took a sidelong look at my face and shut up. I pulled into this small estate of uniform semidetached houses and stopped us opposite the eighth house. A garden sign read
THE JUNCTION
. Good old Bern. ‘We’re here,’ I told her.

My palms were damp. If Bern told me there really was a frigging tunnel under that frigging hill then I for one wasn’t going down into its horrible deep slimy cobwebby blackness for all the tea in China. And, I thought with feeling, there’s a hell of a lot of tea in China.

‘Lovejoy,’ Moll said as I started to get out. ‘I think you should rest for a few days –’

I reached back in and got a handful of her blouse at the neck. ‘One more word from you,’ I said. ‘Just one more word.’

‘Yes, Lovejoy,’ she said after a pause.

Bern was at the door, smiling. ‘Thought you were never coming, Lovejoy. We’ve finished nosh.’

‘Sorry, Bern.’ I walked up the little garden path, Moll trailing. ‘I have help these days. Always makes me late.’

I heard Moll snort and draw breath to make some retort, then wisely say nothing.

Train enthusiasts go in gaggles, like geese. If you find one wandering lone he’s lost. There’s another characteristic: no matter how amateur they are, they are very, very expert. It’s true of the entire breed. I know one chap who can tell you the whole yearly timetable of the Maltese railways, and there hasn’t
been a railway there for decades. See what I mean? So I wasn’t surprised to find Bern had another historian with him.

‘I got Gordon along,’ Bern told me as the young blond lad rose and said hello. ‘He’s our local branch-line expert.’ That’s another thing. You learn to expect all ages of expert. This lad was about fifteen, thin and tall as a house, as they all seem to be these days. I think it’s school dinners.

‘How do.’ I explained Moll to them both, and we settled round the table. Rosie cleared the meal away with the practised alacrity of a wife escaping from a hobby.

Gordon and Bern began fetching maps and books. I watched uneasily. It seemed a big pile of fact for what I was hoping would be a legend. I contributed my disc, to Bert’s excitement.

They did their mysterious bit with magnifying glasses and catalogues. Rosie hurried a table lamp in, pretending to share in the thrills. I waited for the verdict.

‘I never believed they’d struck one,’ Bern concluded, marvelling.

‘Me, neither,’ from Gordon.

‘Who’s they?’ I asked nervously.

‘The railway company.’

‘Which
railway company?’ I persisted. I wanted negatives, not vague replies that suggested there were horrible positives just around the corner.

Bern deferred to Gordon with a nod. ‘This railway company tried to build a branch line through here,’ the lad said earnestly. ‘From town, on up the valley. One arm out through Scratton going inland. The other through Wormham to Mount St Mary.’

‘They wanted to run it coastwards,’ Bern put in, still goggling at the disc with a glass at his eye.

I said, ‘But the old railway station here in Wormham’s –’

‘– the end of the line,’ Gordon finished for me, reaching to show me its course on a 1930 Ordnance Survey map. ‘Of course it was.’

‘So it never actually ran to Mount St Mary?’ There was no dotted line going north from Wormham station, thank God.

‘No.’

I sighed with relief and rose smiling but trying to look disappointed. ‘Well, that’s that,’ I said cheerfully.

‘Is that all you want to know, Lovejoy?’ The lad was obviously downcast.

‘I’ve taken an extra hour off,’ Bern complained.

‘Good of you, Bern,’ I countered happily. ‘But another time. Come on, love.’

Gordon was puzzled, as well as sad he was going to lose his audience. As I started for the door he turned to Bern and said accusingly, ‘You told me he’d want to know all about the Mount’s railway disaster.’

I stopped. Moll bumped into me. ‘Disaster?’ My voice seemed miles away. Bern had mentioned a disaster when we’d met at Elspeth’s medical centre.

‘Why, yes. At Mount St Mary.’

I felt my hands chill with sudden cold. Surely you can’t have a railway disaster without a railway, can you? ‘You said it never reached there.’

‘It didn’t.’ He held up a book which seemed familiar.
‘Because
of the disaster.’ It was a copy of Chase’s book with the town library’s gilded stamp on its spine.

I cleared my throat. ‘Er, what happened?’

‘The tunnel,’ he said.

‘Tunnel,’ I repeated faintly. ‘In Mount St Mary?’

Bern chuckled, the lunatic. ‘Well, it couldn’t be on
top
, could it?’

I didn’t smile. My eyes were riveted on Gordon.

‘It was awful,’ Gordon said. ‘The tunnel caved in.’

Tunnel, I thought, keeping tight control. The deep dark tunnel. It caved in. Dark and deep and it caved in.

I felt Moll’s hand clamp hard on my arm. She propelled me to a chair. Gordon’s enthusiastic voice and Bern’s cosy little front room receded into a mist as all cares vanished.

‘There now.’ Rosie was bullying us all, but mostly me. ‘That’s what comes of going back to work too soon after an accident.’

‘He insisted.’ Moll was defending herself, not me.

‘You don’t need to tell me, my dear.’ Rosie had the table cleared of Bern and Gordon’s clobber, which showed how narked she was. ‘Men are born stupid and stay so.’

She had a bowl of water and some towels.

Bern’s concerned face came close. ‘Are you all right, Lovejoy?’ I wish people would stop saying that.

‘You almost keeled right over.’ Gordon sounded quite pleased.

Moll was holding me, her hands cool on my forehead. ‘I’d better get him home.’

Rosie wasn’t going to be thwarted. ‘Drink this herb tea, Lovejoy.’

I drank a ghoulish mess of unspeakable green liquid. It stripped my mucosa down to my boots. I thought I’d finished with all this when my granny went.

‘He needs some thick gruel,’ Rosie pronounced.

‘Jesus, Rosie!’ from me in a whine.

‘Don’t argue, Lovejoy. He does.’

I hate the way women talk all around you, as if you either aren’t there or are imbecilic.

‘And,’ Rosie battled on, glaring at Bern and Gordon, ‘if you ask me, he needs less of your ridiculous stories about people being buried alive and screaming for help –’

‘You’re perfectly correct,’ Moll cut in swiftly, yanking me to my feet. She practically hauled me to the door.

Gordon and Bern, both now properly in Rosie’s bad books for reasons beyond me, followed us meekly to the car. Gordon reached in and put a brown folder on the back seat.

‘That’s my stuff on it,’ he said, worried. ‘You can give it to Bern when you’ve done.’

‘Thanks, Gordon. Sorry about that, folks.’

‘Get better soon, Lovejoy,’ Bern said, giving a thumbs-up. ‘Pop over when you want –’

‘Not for at least a week, Bern,’ Moll said firmly. ‘He’s to rest.’

‘But look, Moll . . .’ I started. She gunned the engine.

‘People who are too stubborn,’ Rosie said with satisfaction, ‘have to be
told.
’ She was still rabbiting on at them when we drove off. And one look at Moll’s face told me I was in trouble with her as well. That’s women. Just when they should be sympathetic they get mad as hell.

I decided to break the ice with some merry chatter. ‘Sorry, Moll,’ I said brightly. ‘I –’

‘Shut it.’ She snapped it out just like me, so I did.

It was probably just as well we didn’t speak on the way home. I never know what women mean half the bloody time anyhow.

In my garden a vannie called Doug was sitting on the grass. Tinker was there. They were part-way through a crate of brown ale, bottles everywhere. Two other vannies were smoking and swilling. A right party. They’d parked two vans on my gravel.

‘What’s going on?’ I was all ready for a dust-up.

‘Wotcher, Lovejoy.’ Tinker gave me a wave.

‘It’s my treens,’ Moll exclaimed, pleased.

‘Treen,’ I corrected mechanically. ‘Collective noun.’

‘You’ll be so thrilled, darling.’

I hesitated at that ‘darling’, but as long as our tiff was forgotten I’d bear it.

‘It’s all here, Moll.’ Tinker handed me a brown ale. He took Doug’s bottle off him, wiped it on his filthy sleeve and gave it to Moll. His idea of gallantry.

‘Oh,’ she said faintly, taking it like something ticking. ‘How kind.’

‘Cheers.’

We all said cheers and drank, some more enthusiastically than others. My eyes were on the two covered vans.

‘Right, lads.’ I questioned Tinker with a nod. ‘What’s the game?’

He looked at me, puzzled. ‘Should I have taken it to Val’s?’

‘I told you, Lovejoy,’ Moll said. ‘My treen.’

I stepped across and flicked the canvas aside. It was crammed with antiques from floor to ceiling. I’d never seen so many antiques on the road all at once. I thought, Moll hasn’t bought two lorryloads in one
morning, that’s for sure. She came beside me, smiling eagerly and pointing.

‘That was from Corporal. And that from Big Frank. And Jenny Bateman on North Hill sold us that table –’

‘Wait,’ I told her. I went to the other van. It was packed, too.

It was definitely one of those days. I took her to one side while the blokes loafed and swilled on the grass.

‘You
bought
all this, Moll?’

‘Yes.’ She searched my face. ‘You said.’

‘
All
of it?’

‘You told me, Lovejoy. Until I ran out of cheques.’

I closed my eyes and leaned on the van’s nearside.

‘You know how much this lot’ll cost?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She rummaged in her handbag and brought out the stubby remains of a chequebook. I nearly fainted again. ‘I’ve kept a list.’

‘You’ll be paying till you’re ninety, love.’

She laughed at that. ‘Oh, Lovejoy. Don’t worry. I’m really quite wealthy. Now. What are we going to do with it?’

An ache was splitting my forehead. ‘It’s yours, Moll.’

I explained I’d wanted her to make a profit. ‘The expenses money you gave me, well, I spent on a porcelain. The accident smashed it. So I really owed it you back.’

She stared at me, her eyes filling.

‘Oh, Lovejoy. How absolutely sweet. I thought it was for your ordinary business.’

As if my ordinary business came in lorryloads, I thought sardonically. There was nothing for it. Taking it all to Val’s cran would set tongues – and
worse – wagging. So it had to be here. I unlocked the door and waved to Tinker. He came up, sensing some uncertainty.

‘It’s all right, isn’t it, Lovejoy?’

‘Sure, Tinker.’

He shrugged. ‘She said you’d given her two hours to buy all the wooden antiques in town. Here.’ He plucked at my sleeve and whispered. ‘Where the hell did we get the gelt?’

‘That’s taken care of,’ I said.

‘Thank gawd for that.’ He took my bottle absently and emptied it down his throat. ‘Did we get everything on your list?’

‘Oh.’ I made my reply in a studied voice. ‘I think so. I’ll have to check.’

‘Great.’ He whistled to the vannies. ‘Shell it inside, lads.’

The vannies rose and did their stuff, all three eyeing Moll with unconcealed lust as they carried the things in. Tinker supervised, sitting contentedly on the beer crate. I got hold of Moll.

‘What list?’ I demanded softly.

She giggled. I’d never seen anybody so pleased with herself. ‘I got confused about the codes and forgot the passwords. I pretended I was your partner. So they would bring the prices down.’

I wouldn’t let go. ‘
What
list?’

‘I had an old shopping list. I made them think you’d given me a list. We went into twelve shops. I knew they might cheat me, but all the dealers seemed very careful when I mentioned you.’

I’d never heard of anything like this in my life. And a bloody novice at that.

‘Why the furniture? Treen’s small kitchen stuff.’

She said brightly, ‘But it’s
wood
, Lovejoy. You said wood.’

And then I forgave her everything. Because a vannie carried past into the cottage a brilliant scintillating pre-Empire carver chair of genuine Sheraton design. I gasped. It was from Jason’s place in the Arcade.

‘That was very expensive,’ Moll chatted happily. ‘The stupid man took
such
a long time making up his mind to sell. I really had to act quite cross . . .’

The vannies unloaded piece after piece. She must have gone through town like a vacuum cleaner. There were walking sticks, minute stamp boxes, carved Bible rests, tobacco jars, pipes and racks galore, letter cases, drinking-glass cups, Pembroke tables, Sven’s crummy fake stool, Chinese screens and lacquered trays, a serpentine silver-table with a pierced gallery (a sort of raised rim) unbelievably intact and at least eighteenth-century mahogany, wall plaques, polescreens, a sixteenth-century egg-tempera religious painting on a wood panel, a Canterbury . . . They were finished in an hour. Moll asked me how much to give them. Tinker told her that traditionally it’s two pints each. She said how much is that, please? We waved them off a few minutes later.