The Grace in Older Women (15 page)

My signal. I walked unhurriedly along the hedgerow, not wanting to
be seen lurking. I had my story ready, in case: I came back to see if they'd
really meant I was to move in, in two days. Across the lawn, up to the house.
Lights were coming on. I could see figures moving, shadows on curtains, an
orchestral concert on some radio, the ghost flicker of a TV set. The side
entrance was locked, but the back door was ajar. Somebody aged was on the
nearby lawn collecting croquet things, probably loading the dice for tomorrow's
game. I slipped in.

Blundering about a house gives you the frights. I went up a few
blind alleys, answered in a muffled monotone when some lady called, 'Is that
you, Winifred?' Up some stairs, down others, hearing loos flush and televisions
on the go. Some inane quiz show, audiences roaring on cue and voices quavering
answers to some quizmaster know-all.

Then surprisingly I was in the great hall, one central light on in
its chandelier. I crossed to the with-drawing room door and knocked gently. No
answer. But I could now say I'd knocked. I opened one leaf of the double doors
and went in.

A coal fire made me remember home. The room seemed even vaster by
subdued light. I shut the door and stood a second. No, nobody lounging on the
couch or slumbering in the armchairs. A votive light, blue like for Marian
worship, made little leaps of flame from the mantelpiece. The picture was still
covered. I crossed to stand before it, listening. No stealthy steps, nothing to
indicate I'd been sussed.

Gingerly, I took hold of the little curtain, scared suddenly in
case it was the Elephant Man or worse. Moved it and stared, puzzled. Shifted
the votive light for safety, and stared some more.

My mind went, Who,
him
?

Prissy, with red lips, blue sash, tartan jacket, neck cravat high,
blue bonnet with a grey-white wig, a four-star ribbon of silk shaped like a
cross on his bonnet, ornate brown gauntlets. A good fake, really, but wasn't
this merely an inclusive copy of the Edinburgh portrait? I peered,
disappointed. No wonder it hadn't exuded a single vibe. Modern. I sniffed, but
maybe the painter had used one of those fast-drying chemical salts, or oils
like hempseed. The Pretender. I'd have to look the picture up. I drew the
curtain and replaced the votive light. Some romantic hankering for olden days,
perhaps.

Then the light came on.

'Stay where you are, Lovejoy.' My name, meaning they didn't need
to gun me down.

Ashley Battishall, no less. My hands raised themselves. 'I wasn't
doing anything,' I said in a pathetic whimper.

'I saw him, guv,' Nick's voice said, all self-righteousness.

'You did splendidly, Nick. Wait outside.'

He let me turn, and stood glowering at me while Nick went to
apprise the boss lady. I felt a bit peeved that he hadn't even got a shotgun. I
mean, I'd done my bit, trembling in my boots, and all for nothing. We stood,
each of us out-peeving the other, until Roberta entered, vapid and swooning
still, in a different silk house dress and frothy slippers. She was helped to
the couch by the lovely Lily, waved her away.

Ashley told her, 'Caught red-handed, stealing the portrait

'Steal?' I almost laughed aloud. 'Steal? That thing? It's not even
a good fake, for Christ's sake! Who on earth'd want to? I could do better with
one hand tied behind my back.'

Ashley didn't glance at Roberta. She glanced for us all. We paused
a moment, while Lily rolled in a collection of edibles. For somebody in
permanent decline, Roberta noshed well.

'I think I could take a little blancmange, Lily,' Roberta
whispered feebly. 'And Black Forest gateau. Yes, a little cream.' Her tone had
a rather wailing high cadence before plunging to the punch line. Lily dished up
and glided out. Roberta started on the grub, sighing at the effort.

'Listen, love,' I wanted to get this over, I had visions of Nick
secretly phoning the Old Bill and me having to explain to the Misses Dewhurst
why their little motor was suddenly all over tomorrow's tabloids. 'I'm sorry,
but I had to see this. I want to know what the heck we're going to do with
Whistlejack,
for best price.'

'May I tell him, dearest?' Ashley asked humbly.

Roberta sighed a negative sigh. 'No, Ashley. We cannot be sure of
his sympathies. He is a beast, an animal.'

'Here, missus,' I said, narked. 'It's you that needs me, remember.
You've only to say, I'll be off like a cork from a bottle.'

'We are so
near
success,
Lovejoy,' she whispered through a mouthful of cream and cake. 'We simply cannot
let you spread malicious lies. Our crusade will save the whole earth.'

'And who are you against that?' Ashley ground out.

'Nobody,' I admitted. 'But you insisted I join in. Is the deal on
or off?'

'Yes, Lovejoy.' Ashley hesitated. And Roberta smiled.

Her eyes were somewhat ovoid, I noticed, but electric and malicious.
She was thrilled. I was a mouse caught in the cheesebox. No guesses who was the
cat.

'You may tell him, Ashley,' she said, radiant.

The spoon rose, pierced her delicious mouth, was closed upon by
those lips, withdrawn slowly from that heaven within - the tongue with a
parting lick.

'Mr. Sheehan has kindly allowed us to overbid you on Whistlejack,
Lovejoy,' Ashley said. God, he was pompous. He swelled a few times, deflated,
rising and falling on his heels, hands behind his back.

'We have the rights on a possible . . .' he baulked on the word
robbery ‘. . . transfer of ownership.'

'Not you, Lovejoy,' gloated Roberta.

The spoon did its fascinating dip, scoop, penetration, tilt,
withdrawal. It's staggering what a woman can do even though she's unaware of the
effect she has on a man.

‘We paid Mr. Sheehan a large sum an hour ago.'

'Ashley.' Roberta whispered to him. I couldn't catch it. She was
watching me, eyes glittering with eagerness. Maybe she was feeling poorly now
the fuss was over.

'Yes, dearest.' He faced me. 'Lovejoy. This is your last warning.
Stay in line. You may go. Report here no later than nine o'clock Tuesday
evening.'

'Very well.'

He saw me out of the side door. I went without a backward glance,
my mistake, because I'd gone a few yards in the gathering darkness when I
paused. I listened, but no sound.

Then I was felled by a blow, something hard. Feet scuffed. I tried
to run but blundered into somebody, got cuffed down. Fists belted me. Something
hard whacked me across the shoulders and back. My leg got bludgeoned. I held my
arms over my head, staggering. I couldn't see, but somehow I was on gravel.

'Get the bugger a few more,' somebody grunted. Nick's voice.

I kicked out, but the blows only rained harder and voices cursed
me. I eeled away, running, them running beside me clobbering and thumping as I
ran. I hit a tree, bush, something anyway. I started shouting, yelling for
help.

'Quieten the bastard,' somebody bawled, louder than me.

The battering continued in a way I won't describe, if that's all
right. God knows how far I got, tottering about that bloody spread of dark
lawns while the blokes - there must have been four -cudgelled me. Then I was on
the road, astonishingly solid underfoot, jarring my teeth. A car's headlights
showed, and the beating lessened. I ran, still yelling, but the car cruised by
and I was running away, the blokes with Nick yelling imprecations and laughing
their heads off.

Wheezing and aching, I found a thicket and crawled in for a
minute. One of my teeth was loose. My lip was bleeding, and my scalp cut. I
thought my ribs were broken. I'd be lucky to last the night. I felt coma
supervene.

When I woke it was daylight. I was stiff as hell. A fallow deer
was looking at me. A tractor clattered by, its engine roaring, digging tool
raised like a praying mantis. If this was having Obverse Zodiac, give me my old
birthday every time.

Time to go home. I'd been warned. They were in with Big John
Sheehan more than I was. And I was still to do their bidding. Hey-ho. BJS,
letting some stranger overbid me, when he'd given his word? It wasn't like
Sheehan, but I daren't question it.

Except, I thought, the stakes were suddenly much higher. Assault
and battery now, even though it was only me they'd battered. I'd been silly.
High time I worked a few things out.

Events proved I was as daft as ever, though, because I killed
somebody towards nightfall. And me being me, it had to be a friend.

13

The water was down to a trickle when I made the cottage and tried
to have a wash. The Water Board restless at non-payment. The garden barrel was
overflowing, so I made do with that and my fabled desert trick - paraffin in a
tin can sunk into the grass, a pan of water balanced above. The tea tastes of
paraffin, but you can't have everything. I cleaned myself up. No clean shirts,
but I found a new singlet somebody'd given me last Christmas, still in its
plastic wrapper and 'Love, Always, My Darling!!!' from somebody or other. I
wondered who she was, but Christmas was some time back. Soap's a nuisance. It's
either worn down to the size of a toffee so you can't raise a lather, or solid
and hard so you can't raise a lather. You'd think they'd get organized. I had a
wash in a lukewarm splash, bum, balls, armpits, cleaned my face carefully so's
not to set my lips off on another bleed, and I was good as new.

Breakfast was difficult. All I found was a piece of cheese going
deeper yellow at the edges. The electricity was off, my minuscule fridge
trickling water across my flagged floor. Still, tea was something. No eggs, no
bacon, no bread, no butter. I gave up searching. Why do I bother being hopeful?

Moving the divan, I lifted the trapdoor and got a candle. Down into
my pit of wonders. It's a gungy cellar, no vintage wines or anything, just
shelves and boxes of cuttings from newspapers with a file or two. It holds my
gleanings: records of antiques auctions, notes I made on the hoof, suppositions
when heavy rollers like Big John Sheehan are hard at it. And historical bits,
slices of antique lore. I sat and sipped my mug of non-tea tea and perused what
little I'd got on Charles Edward Stuart.

'Bonnie Prince Charlie' disappoints. Grandiose romantic ballads
and sentiments kindle loyalty to myth. Look underneath for the true story.
Sadly, the famed 'Highland Laddie', as the ladies of Edinburgh called him in
1745 when squealing for locks of his hair at his riotous parties at Holyrood,
dissolves into something unpleasing. The totally false fable is well known:
born a true-blue Scot, this handsome cultured lad struggled for justice against
those evil sordid swine the Hanovarian Georges who, by treachery and deceit,
duped everybody out of everything. Unfairly defeated, the lad born to be king
escaped with the help of various ladies and (cue songs and sobs) went over the
sea to Skye and exile. And what caused his lonesome romantic languishment
overseas, far from his native soil? Why, what else but the usual treachery,
betrayal, perfidy, plus anything else that sounds romantic.

It's codswallop. Sorry.

The truth is a real pig. I honestly find it sad, the ultimate
put-down. I've nothing against Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Silvester
Severino Maria Stuart - aka Bonnie Prince Charlie - being born an Italian in
Rome. Nor against his mum being a Pole. Far from it. But there's something
really naff about a bloke who simply got plastered day in day out, lived
stuporose, festering his life away. It's as if history tricks us into believing
its opposite. Sadly, 'Bonnie Charlie' was really a fat lazy wife-beating drunk,
with a . . . fistula, great sores on his legs, insupportable in stench . . .'
He rigged up a complicated series of bells, cords, balanced chairs and alarms
surrounding his wife Louise's bed, to sound off should any would-be lover come
night-stealing to her. (The paranoia wasn't new; he'd done the same to his
mistress, the delectable Clementina Walkinshaw, with whom he lived as Count and
Countess Johnson when he converted to Protestantism - though they fought like
cat and dog in the cafes of the Bois de Bologne.) Flying into uncontrollable
tempers at the least thing, this obese sot used to whale Louise something
rotten, screaming drunken abuse about betrayal and being unfaithful, trying to
strangle her while she screamed the place down and servants pulled him off. He
had sticky fingers, kept the 12,000 livres his sick dad sent him to visit him
in Rome; Charlie spent it, and didn't go. Bloated, sores, pimpled, vile in
rage, stinking, he was the slob of the century. You've got to feel sorry for
him. And his birds.

Actually, he didn't like women much. You get blokes like that. God
knows why, when women are pleasant, have a sense of humour, smile more, give
you paradise. Of course, they're often a pest, forever telling you off for not
tidying up, saying pull yourself together. But that's a small price to pay for
ecstasy. Charlie, though, reckoned them 'wicked and impenetrable'. His answer
was to clobber them senseless with a stick when he was blotto on hooch, which
was usually. But occasionally he did try - like, writing now and then to a
former mistress Madame de Talmond in her Paris pad (all 'cats and chamber pots’),
but such spells were rare. His brother, Henry the papist Cardinal in Rome
despaired of Charlie's use of 'the nasty bottle'. Charlie flitted about the
continent incognito as Smith, Douglas, Johnson, the Count of Albany, et cetera,
while marriage brokers tried hard to match him up with various unwilling minor
princesses. No success - Princess Marie-Louise Ferdinande had hysterics at the
idea - until the impetuous, but stony broke, Princess Louise Maximiliana (with
'excellent teeth', vigilant fixers urged) tied the knot in a proxy wedding in
Paris. The turquoise wedding ring had Charlie's cameo on it - what wouldn't I
give for it. She was pretty, with a good plump figure, and cheery. At first.
Except she didn't become pregnant. Charlie, on form, blamed her as month
followed month and still she didn't give him an heir. He became morose, got
endlessly sloshed in the theatre, and went back to the usual carousel of booze
and beatings. It's all chronicled by diplomats, casual observers, and London's
unceasing spies. I feel really sorry for Louise. She was an attractive lass, intelligent
and bright, interested in art and literature. Naturally, she didn't see why she
should play abigail to a snoring soak. She was at least as royal as him. So she
acquired admirers. While Charlie blundered about drunk, fixing up his elaborate
lover-traps of wobbly chairs and sliding bells, she made bizarre escape dashes
in coaches. It became a lunatic comic opera, one particularly rollicking night
gallop ending with Charlie kicking at a convent door bawling drunken threats
while Louise cowered inside. He even took out a contract on one of Louise's
lovers, murder for 1,000 gold sequins. Like all his plans, it didn't work.
(Typically, he welshed on the payment.) Henry the Cardinal York yanked Louise
to a Rome convent, under papal protection, as London's hawk-eyed agents
reported, 'out of reach of any dabbler'. But Louise was equal to this
confinement, and enjoyed security from the repellent Charlie while secretly
enjoying her lover Alfieri. It ended in tears. Charlie had a reconciliation
with Charlotte, his daughter by Clementina Walkinshaw, before he popped his
clogs. She died of cancer soon after her dad. Afterwards, the legend even fails
itself. Henry, Cardinal York, the last real Pretender, was dislodged by
Napoleon. This once-powerful Vatican Eminence became, at seventy-five, a
refugee scuttling frantically ahead of Bonaparte's armies after his cardinal's
palace was ransacked. King George III kindly gave him a pension for life.