A Pack of Lies (2 page)

He answered without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Berkshire.’

‘You’re a liar, sir,’ thought Ailsa. But nice, polite girls never say that kind of thing aloud. It is not in their upbringing.

‘Oh Ailsa! You and your lame dogs!’ was Mrs Povey’s reaction to the news of a young man awaiting a job in the shop. She ran her fingers through her grey, permed hair, and her weary face forgot to repel all those lines of irritation and sadness that had settled there since Mr Povey’s death. It had been a day spent worrying about money problems, with not enough trade in the shop to distract her attention from them. Now she stood dithering in the small, dark living room behind the shop, wondering whether she could send this young
man away with a few sharp words, or whether she ought to be polite. She really did not have time to spare on being polite. But then this was the selfsame woman who had made Ailsa the girl she was. A woman brings up her children the way she was brought up herself, and politeness had run in the family for generations. It was like some dreadful hereditary defect. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better have a word with this young man. Where did you leave him? What’s his name?’

In the shop, Ailsa hesitated. She could not somehow bring herself to introduce the young man they found crouching behind a sideboard, rifling the second-hand bookshelves. But he grinned and reached up a large, dark-haired hand and shook Mrs Povey’s vigorously. ‘Berkshire’s the name. MCC Berkshire. You didn’t tell me there were
books
, Ailsa! Books!’

‘Only second hand,’ she murmured.

‘Only? That’s the best kind! My waking hours are entirely at your service, Mrs Povey!’

‘Ah, well, I’m afraid . . . I think Ailsa doesn’t quite understand the economics of running a little business like this. I’d certainly like someone to help . . .’

‘And here I am! Fateful, isn’t it?’

‘. . . but I just don’t see how I can afford to employ anyone, what with national insurance stamps and pension schemes and all the statutory things there are these days . . .’

‘Oh, I’ll work for nothing! Don’t you worry about the money side. I haven’t got any, either. Don’t think another thing about it. A bite of lunch and free run of the books you’ve got in stock. Have you thought of opening up that side of the business? I’m good with books.’

‘It’s the furniture they come in for,’ murmured Mrs Povey, looking sidelong at her daughter. ‘Oh but this is nonsense. You can’t work for nothing, Mr Berkshire. Nobody works for nothing.’

‘It’s better than walking the streets in this kind of
weather, but if you like, you can let me sleep on this. It’ll save me paying rent somewhere.’ He had run down the length of the shop and thrown himself on to a great creaking brass bed which rolled on its castors up against a chest of drawers. Whatnots and hat-stands were set rocking, and a stuffed parakeet swung on its perch, and an unwound clock chimed one. ‘Think of the added security! Better than a burglar alarm any day.’

‘Yes, yes, this is all very kind of you, Mr Berkshire,’ said Mrs Povey, shaking her head, ‘but are you really interested in selling furniture to people? Wouldn’t you find it awfully
dull
, a person of your . . . your . . .’ She was left struggling for an appropriate word.

‘You mean, am I any good at selling things?’ he said, making her blush with embarrassment. He got up off the bed and took both her hands in his and kissed them fervently. ‘Put me on trial, madam! Don’t make up your mind now. Try me for a week or two. I can sell things, don’t you worry. After all . . . I sold myself to your daughter, and now even you are wavering on the brink . . .’

‘Mother! I never really thought you’d take him on,’ said Ailsa in disbelief, as they sat down to dinner that night. ‘I thought you’d know how to tell him “no” in a nice way.’

Her mother sighed and signalled that Ailsa should speak more quietly, in case MCC Berkshire heard them in the shop below. ‘I’m afraid young people get awfully desperate for a job these days. It didn’t seem right just to send him away. He was so very
willing
 . . . Such a good-looking boy, too,’ she added vaguely.

‘What’s that got to do with it? He’s weird.’

‘Shsh, dear. Well, yes, he does seem a bit eccentric . . . or is he just
lively
? We’re not very lively you know, we two.’

‘We might be murdered in our beds, Mother!’

‘Might we?’

‘Oh Mother!’ snapped Ailsa in exasperation.

Mrs Povey stirred her tea till it slopped over the rim of the cup. Her face crumpled into as many seams as a treasureless map. ‘It’s all very well for you, Ailsa. You start these things and you expect me to finish them. Eat your supper and don’t nag, there’s a good girl.’

They ate on in silence until the guilt felt equally shared again. Their eyes kept drifting towards the floor, as they both pictured the dark, cluttered shop below.

‘He won’t have eaten.’ said Mrs Povey at last.

‘No.’

‘We ought to offer him some supper, I suppose.’

‘It’s only polite.’

For one hopeful moment Ailsa thought that MCC Berkshire had changed his mind and gone. The shop was a silent, unlit labyrinth of piled-up shadowy furniture, buttressed with bow-fronted chests and treacherous with reaching chair-legs and trailing electric flexes. Something moved, between the wardrobes and the leaf-fold tables, but it was only Ailsa’s reflection moving in a big, old, gilt-framed mirror.

Then she caught sight of him perched at the top of a step-ladder by the bookshelves, the thin beam of a pencil-torch illuminating the cuffs of his white trousers. He did not seem to see her, for his face was sunk towards an open book on his lap and he was reading with all the still concentration of a mosquito sucking blood through a sleeping man’s skin.

‘You’ll ruin your eyes like that,’ said Ailsa, but he did not stir. ‘Mother says, do you want some supper? It’s only macaroni cheese.’

His eyes remained riveted to the page, but after half a minute or so he lifted one slow, absent-minded hand, to acknowledge that he had heard, and gave a kind of quiet moo.

‘What does he say?’ asked Mrs Povey, when Ailsa got back upstairs.

‘He says “Hmmm”. He’s reading.’

So they waited, and grumbled, and watched the macaroni cheese congeal between them on the table. But MCC Berkshire never came for his supper. Not that night or any night.

Chapter Two

The Clock:
A Story of Superstition

Next day, Ailsa was uneasy about leaving her mother alone in the shop with MCC Berkshire. But he seemed harmlessly engrossed in a book called
Furniture for the Amateur Collector
.

‘I’m sorry we don’t have anything more interesting,’ she heard her mother say apologetically, and she shook her head in despair: Mrs Povey was no commander of men. That evening Ailsa hurried home from school and questioned her: ‘Has he been a help? Is he good with the customers? Has he sold anything?’

Her mother smiled wanly. ‘He’s been no trouble at all. Really. He hasn’t been under my feet or anything.’

Ailsa’s suspicions were confirmed. ‘He’s read all day, hasn’t he? He hasn’t got up off that chair since I left this morning, has he? Be honest.’

‘Well, he did have a cheese sandwich with me at lunchtime.’

‘Oh Mother! He’s going to be nothing but a drain on the cheese supplies. I’ve a good mind to tell him . . . he’s got to go!’

‘Oh yes, dear? You do that, then.’ (She knew how to call Ailsa’s bluff every time.) ‘He says he’s researching the subject — so that he knows about the furniture in the shop.’

‘What’s to know about it? It’s junk furniture.’

‘Ah no, MCC says there are some nice pieces in
among it all. And isn’t it lucky that we had a book on the shelves about . . .’

‘At least he’ll go when he gets to the end of reading everything,’ said Ailsa sourly. ‘It’s a good job we haven’t got many books in stock.’

‘Ah yes, well, this woman came in this morning with a whole suitcaseful of books . . .’

‘And?’

‘I told her we didn’t deal much in books. And that I hadn’t got much cash to spare at the moment.’

‘And?’

‘MCC gave her a credit note for £10 and took the books.’

‘
Ten pounds?
Oh Mother!’

‘Don’t nag, Ailsa, there’s a good girl.’

The next day was Saturday, and Ailsa was able to see at first hand the buzz of trade in action. It did not help that the newsagent next door had set up his ladder against his shop front, and that in their efforts to avoid walking under it, most passers-by walked out into the street and skirted Povey’s Antiquary entirely. A couple came in at about 11 o’clock and said in loud voices how there was
not a thing
worth buying. A tramp came in to get warm for a while, because he knew Mrs Povey was always good for a cup of free tea. A schoolchild came in looking for a birthday present for its mother, and Mrs Povey pretended she had labelled a hand-mirror wrongly at a pound, and sold it to the child for ten pence. After the child was gone, certain nick-nacks were missing from the nick-nack table. An old man came in and knocked over a hat-stand so that it broke a china vase and chipped a wash-stand. And the milkman called, wanting to be paid.

All this while, MCC Berkshire lay like a cat along a green velvet
chaise longue
and read a book. One customer might have been interested in the
chaise longue
if it were not for the strange young man sprawled along it reading
Superstition and the Unexplained
.

At last, in the middle of the afternoon, a very pleasant, smiling major of a gentleman with a copy of the
Racing Times
tucked under one arm strode to the shop doorway, passing directly under the ladder outside. He went straight to a grandfather clock standing against the shop wall. He was obviously interested, judging from the animated way in which he stroked his soft, white moustache. Ailsa’s heart rose. If only her mother would keep silent!

‘This is a handsome timepiece. Yes indeed,’ said the old gentleman.

‘I’m afraid it’s a bit big for most people’s houses,’ said Mrs Povey.

‘Oh, but I’ve got one of those draughty old places with high ceilings,’ said the old gentleman, fingering the shiny panels of polished wood.

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t keep time, though . . . in fact it doesn’t go at all,’ said Mrs Povey apologetically.

‘Oh dear.’ His face fell.

‘The chains and things inside are all knotted up and broken.’ She opened the front panel to show a heap of tangled, rusty hooks, chains and weights, and together they stood staring sadly at the disembowelled clock. ‘I think it must have fallen over at some stage,’ said Mrs Povey. ‘You see the clock face is cracked, too.’

‘Oh dear dear,’ said the old gentleman, and turned away. ‘What a pity.’ Ailsa scowled at her mother’s back.

‘
Well, and won’t you be telling him the story behind it, Mrs P?
’ said a lilting voice from the other end of the shop. MCC Berkshire jumped up off the
chaise longue
and came down the room like a Grand National winner, leaping the furniture in his path. ‘And won’t you tell the man the story of how that fall came about?’ he cried, rushing breathlessly to the clock and throwing one arm around its shoulders as if it were a cherished old friend.

‘But I don’t know . . .’ began Mrs Povey, alarmed.

‘Don’t know? Well I do, madam, and it’s a story that needs telling!’

‘Mr Berkshire, I never knew you were . . .’ But MCC had turned on the major.

‘Now I don’t suppose, sir, that you have the least interest in horses or the Sport of Kings, or you’d have heard of Lucky Finbar of Connemara.’ He ran and pushed a moth-eaten winged armchair close up behind the major so that the old gentleman’s knees were knocked from under him and he fell into it with a grunt. ‘Well and maybe you wouldn’t after all — him being born such a while ago and you such a young gentleman still in the eyes of history. Let me tell it to you the way it was, and you judge for yourself if there isn’t a meaning and charm in the decline and fall of this clock.’

‘Good God,’ said the major, but he tucked his fingers together on the crown of his waistcoated stomach, sat back, and listened to the story MCC had to tell.

* * *

Before it came here, this clock was owned by an Irishman who had risen from stable boy to wealth thanks to a great talent for buying and racing horses. He won his first horse in a game of horseshoe-throwing with a jockey. The jockey should never have challenged Finbar to the contest: he had been drinking home-made whiskey since morning and could see three pins instead of just the one. Onlookers said it was no surprise he lost: he was too drunk to have hit the sea with a brick from a low-flying hot-air balloon. But Finbar saw things differently. He knew that Luck had smiled on him. Only that morning he had shaken hands with the seventh son of a seventh son, and that was why he had won himself a horse made of the very best horseflesh. He made certain of keeping on the right side of Luck after that.

He never missed Sunday Mass — unless he got out of
bed the wrong side by mistake and dared not leave the house for fear of bad luck. He always carried silver in his pocket so as to turn it over if he saw a new moon, and when one was due, he left all the windows of his cottage wide open, even in winter, for fear of glimpsing the new moon through glass.

Luck did not fail him. He won a multitude of races and acquired a string of horses, and any one of them fit to win the Dublin Gold Stakes. Of course, his success might have stemmed from living in Connemara, among the best horses in the world and the shrewdest horsemen in all Ireland, but Finbar knew differently. Luck was smiling on him.

So he always left something on his plate for the fairies, and he always said ‘White Rabbits’ on the first day of the month. His carpet wore a dandruff of salt, for he was forever throwing it over his left shoulder to blind any passing witches. Seeing him do this, Father Mulcahy asked if this were not ‘a little on the pagan side’. But Finbar said there was no harm in being on the safe side. He wore more holy medals on his chest than a war veteran.