The Yellow Glass (15 page)

I wondered how she knew that I’d spent the entirety of
my six months wages - the money from the secretarial agency
and
the pittance I’d got from HQ - and
then
some.
 
Perhaps the green shoes had given me away.
 
My mother had grown up dirt poor and worked
like a Trojan all her life (as she constantly reminded me), and knew the cost
of everything.

“Now, what are your plans for the future, Rosa
dear?”
 
Asked Mrs Dyminge.
 
“Is Cambridge quite passé?”

“Cambridge just wasn’t me, Mrs Dyminge.
 
It’s not that I’m not intellectual, of
course, but it was just so
passive
;
listening to other people tell me things . .”
 
I helped myself to some delectable-looking caramelised parsnips.

“No, that’s never been your strong point,” my mother
agreed.

“ . . I think I’m a more
active
type of person, actually.
 
I’m hoping to prove to my uncle Tristram that I’m a safe pair of hands,
because I’ve got
so
much more to
offer in his area of expertise.”

“And what area would that be, exactly?”
 
Asked Mrs Dyminge.

There was a sudden hush around the table and a number
of forks paused a fraction away from a number of mouths.

“Import/Exports,” I said, rather fast.
 
“It’s frightfully interesting.
 
Honestly.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Mrs Dyminge, “but . . uranium,
dear?
 
I do hope Tristram’s not an arms
dealer of any description.”
 

It was impossible to miss how, well,
stunned
, everybody around the table
looked (except my little brother, who was busy trying to toast a chunk of
challah in the flame of a candle).

“Oh.”
 
She was
flustered.
 
“Have I spoken out of
turn?
 
You mustn’t mind me; I’m the
world’s nosiest parker.”

“Yes you are, Frances,” Major Dyminge spoke up for the
first time.
 
“It’s quite obvious what Tristram
is; what he’s been for years.
 
Tristram
Upshott is a spy.”

Sam dropped his bread on the table and a brief flame
flared.

“A spy!”
 
His
mouth fell open.
 
“Gawrsh!”
 
He gave it his best Goofy voice.

“Samuel!”
 
My
mother grabbed her glass of water and chucked it at the tablecloth.

And I suppose that was when I should have been quoting
the Official Secrets Act of 1939 to them and swearing them all to silence.
 
But I didn’t.
 
Because my eye had chanced to fall on Mrs Dyminge’s platter of
vegetables, where it sat beside the hole that my brother had burned in the
tablecloth.
 
Mrs Dyminge’s white platter
decorated with a stick lady wearing a big hat and picking flowers, in an
unmistakeably Finnish design, was not Mrs Dyminge’s at all.
 
It was Arko’s.

 
My first thought was that it might be
contaminated.
 
I closed my eyes and
played over the conversation I’d had with Uncle Tristram in that coffee bar in
Putney, from:

“
They’re
smuggling uranium, and huge quantities of it at that . .”
to
“Arko Arkonnen is the devil incarnate
”.

I had every word off pat, of course, but nowhere in
our conversation had my uncle specified whether it was only the yellow glass
that was contaminated with uranium, or whether all of the deliveries from
Finland were carrying the stuff.
 
Whatever the case, it simply wasn’t worth hanging about.
 
I grabbed the platter and streaked out of the
room.

“Goodness, she
does
like her vegetables, doesn’t she?”
 
Mrs
Dyminge’s voice followed me all the way into the drawing-room.

I stood there for a bit, holding the platter at arm’s
length, humming and hawing over what on earth to do with it.
 
Initially, I scooped a rug up from the
polished floorboards and bundled the thing up and then I tried to stuff it
behind a cushion on the sofa, but that didn’t feel like an adequate enough
precaution.
 
In the end, I opened a
window and leant through to drop the bundle onto the stones outside, shutting
the window firmly after it.
 
Then I did
what I should have done the minute I’d got off the train and come home.
 
I rummaged through the address book for Uncle
Tristram’s phone number and dialled it.

“FLAxman 4390,” he answered, promptly.

“Uncle Tristram, it’s me, Rosa.”

“Hullo, Gypsy.
 
I was wondering when I might hear from you.
 
How
are
you?
 
Alright?”

“Oh, yes, yes, fine and all that.
 
At home in Kent, actually . .”

“Nice weather?”

“Good grief, yes . .”

“You sound a little het up, Gypsy.
 
Are
you het up?”

“Well I am.
 
Yes.
 
If you’ll just let me
finish, Uncle, I’ve got some tremendously vital stuff to say.”

“Vital?
 
I’m all
ears.”

“Rosa?”
 
My
mother stuck her head around the sitting-room door.
 
“Your dad says we’ve got plenty more
vegetables in the kitchen and he’s putting some more out on the table for you
as we speak, only it’s a bit rude to our guests, wouldn’t you say, dashing off
like that and . . .
 
Who are you talking
to in the middle of dinner, Rosa?”

“Uncle Tristram.”

“Tristram?”
 
She
scowled.
 
“Well you can just tell
Tristram Upshott from me that . .”

“What’s that?”
 
My uncle went, down the line.

“It’s Mummy.
 
She sends her love and . .”

“I most certainly do
not
send my love!”

“I heard that,” he said.

“And
he
sends his love, Mummy.”

“Well, he can keep it and I don’t care if he hears
that, too!”

Her head disappeared from the side of the door.
 

“Three way conversations are not ideal for vital
information,” Uncle Tristram observed.
 
And then, in a louder voice, “Two lumps, please and plenty of gin in
it.
 
Now
,
where were we?”

I cut to the chase and whispered down the receiver, in
case anybody else was lurking nearby.
 

“The contaminated glass, Uncle, was it just the yellow
glass, or all of it?
 
I mean all of the
deliveries: the mustard-coloured pottery and the white platters with stick
ladies wearing hats and picking flowers, were
they
carrying tremendous amounts of uranium, too?”

“I can’t say I know anything about stick ladies
wearing hats, Rosa, but, as far as I’m aware, the uranium gives the glass - and
probably the pottery, too - it’s concentrated, yellow colour.
 
So I think we can rule out the white
platters.
 
Why?”

“Oh, phew!”
 
The
relief was overwhelming.
 
“Only we’ve got
a stick lady here, if you know what I mean, and we’ve all eaten heaps of
vegetables out of her.”

“
Plenty
of
gin,” he said, loudly, “because I think I’m going to need it.”

“Mrs Dyminge brought her and I’ve wrapped her up in a
carpet and put her outside.”

There was a distinct pause, while he thought through
my new information.

“Let me get this straight.
 
Your neighbour owns a similar white platter to
those found among the deliveries from Arko.
 
Which you’ve spotted because you deliberately chose to ignore my orders
not to unpack those boxes.”

Crumbs, he wasn’t going to go harking on about all
that, was he?
 
This was precisely why I’d
been giving him a wide berth.
 

“Marvellous!”
 
He exclaimed, rather unexpectedly.
 
“This is the first damn break-through we’ve had in weeks.
 
Bring the stick lady in, would you,
Rosa?
 
And take a good look at her
bottom.”

“Righto!
 
I’m
just putting the receiver down.
 
Don’t go
anywhere.”

I ran to the window, my heart beating like crazy in my
breast.
 
I mean to say;
this
was more like it!
 
The break-through had come from
me
, Rosa Stone (spy in Her Majesty’s
Secret Service).

I unwrapped the platter by the window and couldn’t
help noticing that a number of greasy patches had appeared on my mother’s
Chinese rug.
 
However, there was work to
do.
 
I took a swift look at the bottom of
the dish on my way back to the telephone.

“It says
‘R’co
& Son Glassware, Dover
and there’s a little blue cross underneath that,
which is lying on its side.”

“Ah, the Siniristilippu,” he said.
 
“It’s the flag of Finland, so we’re on the
right lines.
 
And the company is simply
called ‘Arko’, you say?”

“Yes, but it’s a capital ‘R’ for Uncle Reg and then co
for company.”

“What do you mean,
‘R’
for Uncle Reg’
?
 
Who’s Uncle Reg when
he’s at home?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked that, Uncle, because that
was the next part of my vital information.”
 

I sat down on the sofa and told him exactly what had
happened after I ran into Magnus at HQ, missing nothing out because who could
tell what was important and what wasn’t?
 

“Richard Burton?”
 
Came his voice down the line and then, louder in my ear, “Just a splash
more gin this time, darling.”

“ ‘. .
Into the
car, or I shoot you!’
 
And then
Magnus jumped right into the black sedan with him and I was so galvanized with
horror that I just took my life in my hands and I broke free, not looking back,
but running and running and running some more, all the way to Charing Cross
station.”

It had gone very quiet at his end.

“Are you still there, Uncle?”

“Damn,” he said, sounding rather subdued.
 
“Are you alright, Rosa?”

“Yes, yes, of course I am.
 
You asked me that before and I said I
was.”
 
We were going round in circles.

“I should have detained that Commie traitor while I
had the chance. Christ only knows why I let him stroll out of HQ like that.”

“Did you already have your eye on Magnus, then?”
 

I was highly surprised to learn this.

“Mmm.
 
He let
slip he was an Arkonnen . . . I have to say, I’m completely bemused about Arko
operating in Dover and being an Uncle Reg.
 
We’ve got a file a yard wide on Arko Arkonnen and none of this
begins
to tally.”

“Perhaps your file is wrong.
 
After all, not many people can achieve one
hundred per cent accuracy when relating information.”
 
He didn’t reply, so I hammered it home, “Like
I can.”

“Point taken, Gypsy.
 
You’ve done well.”

I was thrilled, I really was.
 
If the boss said you’d done well, then, by
anybody else’s estimation, you had in fact done a fabulous, if not
brilliant
, job.

“So I’m back on the payroll?”

“You most certainly are
not
!”

“What?!”

“You are not to involve yourself further in
any
aspect of this operation,
understand?”

“What?!”

My mother appeared at the door again.
 
“Why are you shouting, Rosa?
 
We can hear you all the way from the
dining-room.
 
Oh my goodness, you’re not
still talking to Tristram, are you?”
 
She
marched up to me and held her hand out.
 
“Give me the phone this instant, Rosa.
 
Go on; I won’t ask twice.”

I gave her the phone.

“Tristram Upshott, this is Millicent Stone here, and I
have one thing to say and one thing only. You are
not
to involve my daughter in your unsavoury business dealings, do
you hear me?
 
I don’t care if the whole
future of Great Britain is at stake.
 
I
won’t have it.
 
No I won’t.
 
You just keep your unsavoury dealings to
yourself . . talking of which, may I have a word with my sister, please.
 
Thank you.”

I kicked the Chinese rug under an occasional table while
she had her back turned and sidled out of the room with Mrs Dyminge’s
dish.
 
I carried it into the kitchen and
left it in the sink because they would surely be on lemon syllabub by that
time.

“There you are, Rosa,” said my father when I
re-appeared in the dining-room.
 
“I think
you owe our guests an apology, don’t you?

“I’m so sorry, Mrs Dyminge.
 
Major Dyminge.”
 
I sat back down behind my plate, which was
jam-packed with vegetables.
 
“I love your
dish so much Mrs Dyminge; I just wanted to get a better look at it.
 
The light’s better in the drawing-room.
 
Wherever
did you get it?”

“My Scandinavian platter?
 
It was a present, dear.
 
From one of my pupils.
 
Let me think which class,” she put down her
dessert spoon and crinkled her brow.
 
“I
think it might have been ‘
Mystery, Murder
and Mayhem: the alternative face of humdrum
’.

Mrs Dyminge wrote rather odd detective stories.
 
I’d never been able to finish one, but she
had her fans, who were also rather odd.
 
Every now and again one of them would make a pilgrimage to see her and
knock on the door of Shore House by mistake, so I had some experience of their
oddness: they tended to be dressed in brown, with hats straight out of the
1930s - sinister bits of bird wing and netting - and, often, galoshes on their
feet.
 
One - a woman, because they were
always
women - had even been wearing a
monocle.
 
Sam and I had spent a wonderful
afternoon spying on her and Mrs Dyminge through the Dyminge’s side window,
while they drank pots of tea and ate biscuits and chatted about murder.
 

Anyhow, Mrs Dyminge also taught evening classes at the
‘Stute in Dover, which is where she must have been given Arko’s dish.
 
I ate a parsnip while I considered what to
say next.

“Well, I must say, I
do
love it.
 
I don’t suppose
you could ask your pupil where they got it from, Mrs Dyminge?
 
I mean, I’d
love
to have one of my own.”

Mrs Dyminge looked delighted.

“For your flat in town, dear Rosa?
 
Gosh, please take mine.
 
No, I insist.
 
Call it a flat warming present.
 
I’d be
so
pleased if you
would.”

This wasn’t going to plan.

“Oh, no!
 
I
couldn’t possibly deprive you of yours,” I said, vehemently.
 
“Not in a million years!”

“Oh you must!”
 
She exclaimed.
 
“You simply must!”