Tinplate Read online

  TINPLATE

  NEVILLE STEED

  © Neville Steed 1986

  Neville Steed has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1986 by Weidenfeld & Nicholson Ltd.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  One

  I shouted ‘Stop’ at the top of my voice time and again, but the car seemed not to heed me at all, and careered on towards an unthinking group of soldiers who stood directly in its path. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my cat jump out of the way in a characteristically elegant leap. And the next second, the unyielding metal of the bumper and sloping grill of the car struck the first soldier. He fell helplessly forward against his colleagues, who in turn tumbled like ninepins under the relentless forward thrust of the gleaming maroon projectile. I got to my feet to see the car at long last come to a stop with its front wheels jammed against the legs of a drummer of the Coldstream Guards. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why any of this should have happened. After all, I had had the car in pieces on the carpet only ten minutes before.

  I went across to Bing, who had retreated to the settee and was washing himself in a very serious and adult manner to show his disdain for my childlike cavorting.

  ‘You don’t reckon me as a mechanic, do you Bing?’

  His eyes didn’t move from his fur grooming. And that was enough of an answer for me. But when I stretched out my hand, Bing rolled over onto his back and played easy to get. Yet I knew he hadn’t really changed his inscrutable Siamese mind.

  It took me another hour to get the shutter on that little pre-war Schuco toy car working properly so that it would depress when you said ‘Stop’ breathily enough at it through the grille on the roof. Then the shutter dutifully tripped and stopped the clockwork motor. Breathe ‘Start’ heavily enough, and the shutter depressed again and restarted the car. Devilish in their cunning were those twenties and thirties German toymakers, the most inventive the child’s world had ever seen — and never equalled since, except in a few products of the post-war Japanese toy manufacturers, who had kept the tinplate tradition going longer than most.

  I picked up the soldiers and put them back in their original Britains Ltd box. ‘No. 37 Coldstream Guards, Full Band of …’ as the makers’ catalogue had described them in 1940. I was lucky to get them. You don’t get full mint condition sets offered to you every day of the week. And they would be a definite attraction in the window of my little shop. I just hoped the old man who had brought them in would never discover what I would be asking for them. He’d die of shock — after he’d killed me first, that is. The Schuco car, Kommando Anno 2000, I decided to keep myself as the maroon paintwork was very nearly mint and none of the tyres was cracked or perished. All in all, it was a fraction better than the otherwise identical one I had owned for some years, which could now join the soldiers in the window and bring me in a much needed fifty or sixty pounds.

  Just as I was about to work out whether I had enough energy to begin thinking about lunch, the phone rang. It had to be either Deborah with another of her tales of woe or Gregory Chalmers, confirming the money for my trip abroad. I very much doubted it was a man from Littlewoods with the answer to all — well, almost all — my needs. I breathed a sigh of relief: it wasn’t Deborah.

  Chalmers was charming, as usual. Unlike most ardent collectors of anything, his fanaticism did not infect every word and sentence — quite the opposite, in fact. He was so laid back it was hard to realize he was phoning to inform me he had arranged for £22,000 in French francs to be deposited in a bank in Nice to await my arrival; 22,000 smackeroos for just eleven pieces of folded and printed tin that had been intended for an eight-or nine-year-old’s amusement in the early decades of this century, but had now become a rich man’s nostalgic indulgence, a delicate and haunting reminder of an innocence that had gone forever.

  ‘Don’t hand any money over unless they’re as good as he claims, will you?’ was Chalmers’ only note of anxiety in the whole conversation.

  ‘No, of course not. You say he states they are all mint, so mint they must be,’ I replied, knowing, as he did, that ‘mint condition’ is a slightly elastic term when applied to a plaything of that venerable age. I just prayed my piece of elastic had the same rebound as his. ‘But they all looked pretty good from those Polaroids he sent you,’ I added, trying to shift some of the onus of responsibility back onto his wealthy shoulders.

  ‘Would you marry a girl from a Polaroid photograph?’ Chalmers enquired nonchalantly.

  ‘I think I once did,’ I replied, but neither of us laughed.

  ‘And if some are mint and some are not, he won’t split them, you say?’

  ‘No, he insists on selling them as a collection. So you hand over the £22,000 or nothing. If it’s the latter, don’t feel too badly, I don’t get the toys but you still had a free trip to St Paul de Vence, and the sun, and £500 for a rainy day back here.’

  Put that way the deal did not sound too bad. But real life rarely works out so simply; real life has hiccups in it. In this case, if I didn’t bring back the toys, the giant reverberating hiccup would be of the frustration of a fanatical collector, a frustration that would probably vent itself in front of other important collectors, no doubt — and to my cost. My living depended on my reputation with these strangely varied individuals. I was beginning to regret that I had agreed to act for him.

  ‘Look, if you’re worried that I’ll make the wrong decision …’ I offered, but he cut me short instantly.

  ‘My dear fellow, I chose you because I know you won’t make the wrong decision. And anyway, you know why I can’t go personally. I don’t want any publicity surrounding the purchase, and right now I’m in the throes of fighting off that Consolidated take-over bid. I couldn’t go even if I wanted to, you know that.’

  ‘I know that,’ I repeated dutifully.

  So that was that. He wished me bon voyage and said how he envied me. I laughed. I had to, it was so absurd: A multimillionaire businessman envying a divorced ex-advertising man whose only means of support nowadays was his hobby. I promised to ring him from the south of France when I had some news.

  ‘I’ll be waiting all day with my fingers crossed,’ he said with all seriousness. And he probably would be, and the sight of those fingers would puzzle Consolidated out of their minds, and maybe out of their bid. I chuckled at the thought as I put the phone down.

  But a second later I wasn’t chuckling at all as the realization that the trip was now definitely on hit me. It had all been a pleasant fantasy up to now — a springtime run down to the Mediterranean at someone else’s expense: two nights at a small hotel that Chalmers had praised to the skies; an hour or two looking at fabulous old toys I couldn’t possibly afford in a month of Sundays, and all the other days to kingdom come; then a few hours off, perhaps at Cannes, assessing the topless on the Croisette in between brushing sand from my face. Then cruising back up the autoroute with not a care in the world and the toys parked on the back seat of my Beetle. And suddenly, I didn’t like old toys any more, for it all rested on what I thought of that collection. If the decision was marginal one way or the other, then Chalmers might raise the roof — either because I had bought them, or because I hadn’t bought them. Only if they turned out to be absolutely mint was I sunny side up. I prayed M
onsieur Vincent was not a joker, or a dab Gallic hand at retouching Polaroids.

  I suddenly felt like a beer. So I locked up shop and strolled across the road and down the lane towards the sea. I hoped the balmy spring day had not enticed Gus Tribble out in his leaky boat.

  *

  ‘Shouldn’t make promises. Never. You can always get by with a “maybe”.’

  Gus poured me another half from a fresh six-pack of beer. ‘Always get off the hook, you can, with a “maybe”, because you’re never on the hook to start with.’ He grinned at me and pulled the tab on a Heineken, his huge work-hewn hands dwarfing the can, their network of veins like blue worms burrowing under the skin.

  ‘But I didn’t say “maybe”, and I am on the hook,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Then see you don’t get eaten, that’s all.’ Gus unfolded his giant frame, weathered by some sixty-five summers and an untold number of winters, rose from his chair and bent his head to go into the kitchen. ‘And if you do get eaten, see it happens back here and not in France. They’ll put garlic on you.’ His laughter seemed to make the beams sing.

  I had lunch at Gus’s and before long, I began to feel a good deal better. And it wasn’t because we had punished the second six-pack, but it helped.

  ‘Do you trust him?’ Gus asked out of the blue.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fellow who’s sending you. What’s his name?’

  ‘Oh, Chalmers.’ I thought for a minute. ‘You know it’s funny but I don’t really know.’

  He looked at me in surprise, but said nothing. I went on, ‘I suppose I haven’t thought about it, because it shouldn’t matter. The money is waiting in cash in a bank in Nice. I only pay it out if the collection is at least next door to being superb. He’s paid me in advance for my expenses, including the hotel, so all I’ve got to do is bring the toys back.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all I got from Gus. And I knew what he was thinking. Anyone who has clawed his way up to a mountain of money must have knocked out a few stones on the way and never looked down to see where they landed.

  ‘Anyway, it will charge the battery in the Beetle,’ I joked. Gus changed the subject.

  ‘Going to the meeting tonight, or too busy packing?’

  ‘Of course I’ll go. Packing for one isn’t exactly a drama.’

  ‘Good. Didn’t want to lose your vote all because of a load of old toys.’ He took a long draught from his glass, then went on. ‘I wonder what it will look like when they find it. Used to see them all the time over the bay during the early part of the war.’

  ‘It will be lots of sad little pieces, I expect. All the others they’ve excavated have been — all except for the engines, that is. They seem to survive anything.’

  ‘Wasn’t called a Merlin for nothing then,’ Gus smiled. ‘Magic, I mean,’ he added in case I hadn’t got his joke.

  ‘You’re right. Magic.’

  I looked at Gus, sitting back in his old leather chair, the horsehair stuffing coming up for air at the ends of each armrest. Despite his age, he looked solid as a rock. He knew who he was, and where he was heading — which was nowhere but where he was right now. And ‘maybes’ let him live his life the way he wanted every second of the day. Owed nothing to anybody, never asked for thanks. I envied him.

  ‘Do you think we’ll win the vote?’ I asked after a while.

  ‘Depends,’ he murmured.

  ‘You mean on how many of our side turn up?’

  ‘No,’ he smiled. ‘On how many of their side turn up.’ And he handed me another beer.

  *

  I always hated leaving Gus’s cottage. Its thick walls and sturdy mullioned windows were as reassuring as its owner, though some two centuries older. Not that my place was particularly flimsy or Johnny-come-lately. It was just different. And don’t get me wrong: I’m very fond of it. Always was when my great aunt lived in it. I used to visit her when I was a boy and it never ceased to amaze me that anyone could have such incredible good fortune as to live over a toy shop, let alone a toy and sweet shop all in one. And own the lot! It sort of amazes me still. And now it’s I who live in it and own it. My aunt left it to me in her will. It’s not a sweet shop any more, and it’s not really a toy shop either, not a regular one. It’s a toy collector’s corner. And it’s not open all that much because I’m often away chasing something to trade in or stock it with. So I open mainly by appointment. That usually frightens off time-wasters who otherwise would have me demonstrating every trick of every old toy without any intention of ever buying anything. There are millions of those in the old toy game.

  The house is Victorian; red brick, with a curious tiny tower and a little lead-covered steeple signifying nothing. It stands on a corner bang in the middle of what I call Studland High Street, but which isn’t a High Street at all: it’s just the road that leads through the village en route for the ferry to Bournemouth and Sandbanks to the east, and Swanage and Corfe to the west. A narrow road that’s wonderfully empty October to April, up to the brim May to September. But curiously, Studland, for me, survives on even the hottest of Bank Holidays; maybe because it was where I spent loads of my childhood vacations, and the place was always humming with people even then. And, anyway, nothing can change that breathtakingly English view of the sea that opens up as you descend the steep, tree-shadowed lane to the beach. It’s like a poem. Only better, because it doesn’t have to obey any rules. And it doesn’t have to come to an end; unless the off-shore oil prospectors eventually get their wishes, and we go the way of Aberdeen. I think Gus and I would personally rather murder every known oil executive in the world than let that happen. Or, at least, begin drilling for oil in their very sitting-rooms.

  I returned home and fed Bing, then put the Schuco car in the shop window. I decided I would get a much higher price for the Britains Coldstream Guards at a Christie’s auction in the summer and so I hid them under the fibreglass insulation in the attic, away from thieving eyes. I collected up my travellers’ cheques, Townsend Thorensen ferry tickets, passport and Green Card Insurance for the Beetle and shoved them in an old ‘Venice Advertising Film Festival’ document zip-case left over from my advertising days. I packed the bare essentials, plus a pair of trousers and a pair of trunks, in my only decent suitcase and then went out to what passed as my garage. It is actually more like a lean-to, only it’s not supposed to lean at all. It’s got nothing to lean on. To say the wooden frame has rotted is an understatement, and it’s really only held together by large unhealthy sheets of asbestos that are its only in-filling. However, it keeps seventy per cent of the rain off the top of my Beetle convertible, which keeps another twenty per cent out of its interior. I’ve got another car, but it’s not running at the moment — except with condensation. It’s the love of my life, and I’m restoring it gradually, but the trouble is, it’s rotting at a faster rate. It’s a 1966 Daimler v8 — the one with the Jaguar style but the sweet Daimler motor. I’ll finish it, one day, one way or another. I keep it at Gus Tribble’s.

  Apart from being a bit dirty (country roads have cow pats, and mud even when it hasn’t rained for ages), the Beetle was in great shape. I had had it serviced only the week before by the local Porsche agents. My Beetle is a wolf in sheep’s clothing: it’s got a Porsche engine and wider wheels, though not absurdly so, to absorb the power. Otherwise it looks absolutely bog standard. I sometimes like to surprise.

  I checked the tyre pressures, remembering the spare, and the oil level. Then I painted some yellow gunge on the headlights so that I wouldn’t get lynched in some back street in France for showing the whites of my lights, and put a spare set of sparking plugs in the glove locker and a footpump in the front boot. I locked the garage door again carefully, and only had to replace one of the door panels this time.

  By the time I had made some tea, taken Bing for a walk on his lead and watched the early evening television news, it was time to get into Swanage for the great meeting. Gus took me in his old, upright Ford Popular of 1950 vintage �
�� a taste for which I’ve never acquired, as Gus, to my knowledge, has turned it over three times, twice on one day. At least tonight he didn’t have a piano on the roof.

  The Church Hall was crowded. By the time we had parked, there was only room for us right at the back, which was not so bad for Gus as he was taller then most. I mainly saw heads, and only really knew when the platform speakers had arrived by the lessening of the cacophony. But at least we got seats.

  The Vicar of St Sebastian’s opened the meeting, as was his due, for the land under discussion was Church property. He is a bit younger than I am, around thirty-six or so (I’m just forty, but feel thirty-nine), with an untidy red beard that goes with his Lettish views. He received a slightly self-conscious ripple of applause when he announced he would be brief. And, good for him, brief he was. He raced through the facts of the local controversy, whether or not the Historical Aviation Society should be allowed to commence a dig to recover the wreckage of a Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire of 152 Squadron stationed at Warmwell, which had been shot down on 16 August 1940 by a flight of ME 109s. The pilot, PO Travers Redfern, was not seen to leave the aircraft, and, therefore, it must be assumed the proposed dig would disturb his mortal remains. The Vicar took pains to point out that because the field in which the Spitfire had crashed was owned by the Church, it did not make it hallowed ground. Gus and I nodded our agreement.

  The Vicar went on to say that from everything he had heard, or read in the local papers, the community seemed to be grievously split between those in favour of the recovery of the aircraft, and those who did not wish to disturb the last resting place of PO Redfern. He felt the controversy had gone on long enough. Therefore, tonight everyone was invited to air his or her views for or against for a period of two hours. Then, at nine-thirty precisely, there would be a vote taken through a show of hands. He wisely ignored a single shout of ‘Rubbish’ and the debate began.