Tinplate Read online

  ‘You going to speak?’ Gus whispered to me, in a loud voice.

  ‘Don’t know. See how it’s going.’ I replied, holding my finger up to my lips.

  The first two speakers were inevitably the head of the Historical Aviation Society, another earnest beard, and the self-appointed leader of the ‘leave well alone brigade’, a rotund bank manager from Wareham with an embarrassing stutter. I decided I was glad I banked what little I have miles from his clutches. I tried to judge the mood of the meeting by the length and decibels of the applause for each speaker, but on my clapometer they measured about the same. Not a great sign for our side.

  I had better tell you what side we’re on. We want the dig to go ahead and religion, one way or the other, doesn’t come into our thinking. Warmwell aerodrome was right in the front line during the Battle of Britain and that aircraft is a bit of local history. Gus and I, and quite a few others, would like to set up a small local museum commemorating Warmwell’s part in defeating the Luftwaffe. England has got precious little now to be proud of so let’s at least be proud of our past. Over the years, lots of crash sites have been excavated in other parts of the country and local museums have benefited from the parts that were recovered. And when mortal remains were found, they were decently reburied in hallowed ground by their families with a proud stone to mark their passing. So you see, it isn’t just old toys that obsess me; it’s all of it, really — all those whispers from long ago. I sometimes feel I was born in the wrong age. Gus’s motives are different. His father was killed in a raid on Weymouth, and he identifies with every Spitfire and Hurricane that ever performed a victory roll. That’s why he wants it recovered.

  The debate droned on, and was not really as heated as I was expecting. I looked across at Gus. He was asleep, but I could tell his sixth sense was still tracking. It comes from his forty-odd years being a fisherman, when it’s more than your life, or catch, is worth to be a hundred per cent gone.

  After a while I, too, began feeling my eyelids take on considerable extra ballast when I suddenly heard a familiar voice. I looked up sharply, and peered through the sea of heads to pick out the speaker. He was a large man around fifty-five or so, with one of those hairy suits with a big brown check pattern, often worn by preparatory school headmasters in rural districts to pretend they’re more important than they are. He had a rather puffy face and those purple cheeks that, as a child, I used to think came about if you ate too much school beetroot. I didn’t know him from Adam, and I had missed his introduction. But that voice was unmistakable, and I could not for the life of me remember where I had heard it. It was like an English public school version of Orson Welles, with more timbre in it than the whole of the New Forest. He wasn’t half a speaker, and to my horror, he was vehemently in the ‘No’ brigade.

  His objections were paraded with clear precision, and conveyed with oratorical flair. ‘We, as a nation,’ he declared, ‘should not always find refuge in the past, but plan for the future. The money and energy expended on the dig would be better spent in draining more of Dorset’s heathland.’ For this he was interrupted by a round of applause. I didn’t like the sound of it. He went on to detail the scars that would be left in this ‘beautiful pasture’ by the movement of heavy diggers, and the hordes of spectators any such excavation was bound to attract. Another round of applause. He exploded with indignation and horror at the thought of disturbing the grave of this intrepid pilot just to satisfy the obsession of a few to get their hands on a twisted wing spar or a bent joy stick, to which ‘a fragment of thumb might still be adhering’. He continued like an old time actor-manager, to play on our emotions by reading an extract from a letter PO Redfern wrote to his mother, just before his death, in which he said, ‘I love my aircraft, Mother, as I love flying. I feel whole when I’m in its cockpit, as if we had always been destined for each other. I know it will protect me …’

  The speaker had now reached a tremendous climax. ‘Should we now act God, and separate this magnificent hero of the past from the chariot of fire he so adored? Whether we believe in God or no, surely this man has been at peace now for forty-five years and more — still, no doubt, flying his beloved Spitfire in a sky that knows no horizons. We must not, shall not, pick at his bones like hyenas now …’

  A surge of applause drowned his last words, and I now knew nothing anybody could say would make any difference to the outcome. And I was made the more depressed by my not being able to place his unique voice. I looked across at Gus. His eyes were still firmly shut, but he felt my movement.

  ‘We’ve lost,’ he muttered.

  ‘I know,’ I sighed.

  ‘You want to know who he is, don’t you?’ he went on, without stirring.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘One of the richest men around these parts. Surprised you haven’t heard of him. Lives over Lulworth way, in that huge Victorian thing …’

  Then suddenly it dawned on me. He was Treasure. Randolph Treasure. He had phoned me a couple of times enquiring about whether I ever had any Marklin toys and had joked about my name also being Marklin, but I’d never seen him — just heard about him, and nothing I’d heard had exactly endeared him to me.

  And now I could add an image to his voice, I could understand his reputation, for around these parts, he was known as a bit of a bully; the kind of rich landowner who, I guess, would have gone down a treat at the court of King John. And living in a Victorian folly, bristling with little steeples at each corner like a demon king’s Disneyish castle, didn’t exactly sweeten his image, either.

  I raised my bottom off my seat to get a further glimpse of him, but all I could see now was the back of his head. It was nodding with satisfaction at the next speaker’s every word, for the next speaker was yet another who wasn’t one of us and as you’ve probably already guessed, at nine-thirty-two, when the vote was taken, the ‘Nos’ had it by a mile. So much for our little dream for a Warmwell air museum to make up for the old aerodrome site now being totally disfigured by a gravel pit. Appropriately it was raining as we left. I wondered what Pilot Officer Redfern would have thought of it all, particularly of Treasure’s performance. He’d probably be reminded, like me, of another forceful orator who persuaded quite a bunch of people to make the wrong decisions, only he, at least, did the decent thing of shooting himself in his bunker.

  Two

  ‘Monsieur Vincent?’

  I spoke slowly so that I could practise my rusty French accent.

  He looked up from his Pernod.

  ‘Mr Peter Marklin?’ he replied, in almost impeccable English.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, with great relief that I would not have to beg, borrow and steal from my memory bank to speak French to him.

  ‘Come and sit down.’ He indicated the padded stone bench next to him. ‘You must be tired after your journey. Let me buy you a drink.’

  ‘Yes, thank you. I could do with one.’ I sat down in the tiny bar in the reception area.

  He turned to me. ‘What will you have?’

  ‘A Campari — Campari and soda.’

  He did not need to order it as the bar was so small, the barman was already pouring it.

  ‘Well, cheers, as you say.’ He held his glass to mine, and I looked at him properly for the first time. And I liked what I saw. He was in his late sixties, tall, thin and tanned. His hands had such little flesh on them, they almost looked like webbed bones. He smiled. ‘You could not have chosen a more pleasant place to stay than the Colombe D’Or.’

  I chuckled. ‘I didn’t really choose it. Mr Chalmers did. He often stays here, he tells me.’

  ‘A man of taste.’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’ Everything connected with Chalmers always oozed taste, and the Colombe D’Or was no exception. It had knocked me out when I had checked in, because it’s not really like a hotel at all. It’s a large old French farmhouse with lots of little extensions carried out over the years. Its small, terraced grounds are walled and paved, and ravishingly attracti
ve. White doves strut and coo in the main courtyard, where I could see people already sitting down for lunch under the big umbrellas. On the other side of the house is an intimate swimming pool surrounded by cypresses, its water looking like blue-black Quink, because its sides and bottom are painted that colour instead of the usual downtown Hollywood turquoise. But what really blows your mind is what you find on every wall in every room and corridor in the whole place: pictures. Not your Holiday Inn sunset prints from Plastic Arts, but altogether something else. Just the greatest, most nonchalantly arranged collection of genuine Modern Art I have ever seen — that is, under private ownership, and not in some gallery or other. I’ll name just a few artists, and leave your imagination to fill in the rest: Picasso; Dufy; Calder; Modigliani; Matisse … Getting the picture? But not just in ones: in twos and threes and fours. Not just pictures either: sculpture, busts, figures and mobiles. And nothing is wired or padlocked or nailed down. The Colombe D’Or presumably feels it does not attract that kind of acquisitive guest.

  ‘You had a good journey, I trust?’ Monsieur Vincent sat back against the wall and looked at me. His eyes were very piercing.

  ‘Yes. I stopped at a little place I know, near Macon, for the night.’

  ‘Off the autoroute, of course?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Tell me, Mr Marklin, are you a toy collector yourself?’ His interest seemed genuine, so I opened up a little.

  ‘Yes. I began just over ten years ago. I should have started much earlier. There’s so much I can never get now.’

  He patted my hand on the table, but there was nothing nasty about the gesture.

  ‘That’s the cry of every avid toy collector. They wish they had never lost the toys of their childhoods.’ He thoughtfully sipped his Pernod. ‘Do you just collect or do you trade in them as well? So many do nowadays.’

  I could tell his disapproval, but it couldn’t be helped.

  ‘Both, I’m afraid. You see, I used to be in the rat-race, but I retired from it after I got divorced. And I need money to live, so …’

  ‘So you found refuge and reward in your hobby, so to speak?’ He smiled gently.

  I nodded.

  ‘Don’t worry. I only disapprove when grown men trade in playthings purely for greed.’

  I began to like him a lot.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Marklin, are you related at all to the founders of the great German Marklin toy company?’

  ‘Everyone asks me that. And I’m afraid I’m not — just an admirer of their wonderful products. I wish I could afford more.’

  He finished his Pernod and declined my invitation for another.

  ‘We must adjourn in a moment for you to see what you have come all this way for. It would not be wise to evaluate them through the veil of alcohol.’

  I could not disagree, although the drive, even with the soft top down, had dried me up considerably. He rose to leave.

  ‘Do we have to go far? We can take my car,’ I offered, but he laughed and took my arm.

  ‘The answer is no to the first question, and we don’t need to, thanks, to the second.’ He led me through the door, into the courtyard, and out through the main entrance.

  His bony fingers pointed up to the walled village that lay above, to the left.

  ‘I live up there. It will only take a minute to walk.’

  *

  His house, nestling in a curving stone terrace, was a jewel made even more exquisite by the jungle of geraniums that wallpapered the soft, weathered stone with green and flaming red. Indeed, the whole of St Paul de Vence was magical — a kind of medieval dream world of tumbling stone houses, crowding each other like lovers, with slanted alley ways dipping and climbing between them.

  Monsieur Vincent led me up the thousand creaks of a staircase, to an upper room that had a quite breathtaking view of the valley below the village.

  ‘I won’t be too long, Mr Marklin. I will fetch them down for you.’ And he glided silently back out of the room.

  I was still a bit dazed by it all; the journey down, by the Colombe D’Or, and Monsieur Vincent and his habitat. I needed to take breath, but in a moment the toys would be spread before me and Mr Chalmers’ shadow would be cast across my decision. I took stock. The room was like a piece of the twenties frozen in time. There was no hint that the last sixty-five years had ever happened. I looked around for my Tardis.

  Three giant hat boxes, with legs, suddenly came into sight.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Marklin, I will have to bring them in twos and threes,’ He put down the boxes, and went to get the rest. We ended up with eleven spread on the floor in front of us.

  I felt a strange, unnerving sense of excitement. And I wanted to prolong it a little before the revelation.

  ‘Tell me, Monsieur Vincent,’ I said, ‘why didn’t you arrange for me to meet you here? Why at the hotel?’

  He sat down in the chair opposite, and his eyes almost gave me the answer.

  ‘I wanted to see you first, Mr Marklin, to look at you — if you aren’t offended, get the feel of you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I replied weakly. ‘And I passed?’

  ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘But …’

  He held up his hand. ‘I know what you are going to say. I have toys for sale, so why does it matter to whom I sell them?’ He leaned forward. ‘I know Mr Chalmers vaguely. I’ve talked to him at the Colombe D’Or. Had he come to see the toys, I would have met him here, because I know his love for them is genuine, you see.’

  ‘So if you hadn’t liked me …’

  ‘I would have asked Mr Chalmers to come down himself, at a later date.’

  I was silent for a minute, then plucked up courage.

  ‘You love these particular toys more then just old toys in general, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, almost in a whisper.

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘Most of them belonged to my brother who died of meningitis in 1932. They thought it was flu. I loved him. Six of them have never been played with. You see, he died on Christmas Eve and they were never given to him. My mother, then I, have kept them ever since in these old hat boxes.’

  ‘Why are you selling them now, after all this time?’

  ‘I need the money, Mr Marklin. I have a wasting disease that prevents me from working and my savings are fast running out. I have no dependents now. My son was killed in the war; my wife died soon after.’

  His voice tailed away, and I knew it was time to look at the toys.

  With the opening of the first old hat box, I knew all my worries were over; and my sense of excitement fully justified. Inside was a Delage tinplate car, by CR, in amazingly perfect condition down to the working headlights, complete with chauffeur and passengers. It measured, I guessed, about forty centimetres. The next box contained a black and blue Citroen taxi with canework sides, also mint, made in the twenties by the Citroen factory itself. The next, a stunning P2 Alfa Romeo race car, made by CIJ of Paris. While I had seen a few of these before, I had never seen one in such pristine condition. There wasn’t even the hint of a crack in the tyres.

  Revelation followed revelation: a mint Rolls-Royce Phantom by JEP of Paris, circa 1928; a kind of curious, yet stunning Renault with a Berline or Sedanca de ville style body, and beautiful brass trimming, maker unknown to me; another mint JEP, this time an Hispano Suiza dual cowl touring car. A steam lorry by Tipp & Co of Germany, made specially to promote the British company Sentinel. And so it went on. It was like a kind of multiple orgasm for a connoisseur of vintage toys. Their frail beauty exhausted me. And true to Monsieur Vincent’s Polaroids, every one was mint, or as near mint as made very little difference.

  There was only one rub, really. I didn’t quite see how they all added up to £22,000-worth, sensational though they were, until I opened the last, much larger box. Now I’m not into boats the way I am into toy cars and aircraft, but even so what was inside blew my mind. It was a huge tinplate Marklin
battleship, over a hundred centimetres long, still with its original box, white and red, every flag, every item of the rigging preserved as new, yet it was at least eighty years old. And in a separate small box were twelve sailors in differing postures to man the great vessel. I now knew Mr Chalmers would be walking away with something of a bargain.

  ‘You are not disappointed, Mr Marklin?’ he asked anxiously.

  I laughed. ‘How could I be, Monsieur Vincent? They are quite wonderful — unbelievable, really. But tell me, whose was the battleship?’

  ‘It was given to my father as a boy, by a rich uncle. It was my grandmother who put it away for when he was older, and it got forgotten.’ He rose and went over to the window. ‘My mother insisted on keeping my brother’s toys as a memory. We kept almost everything here just as it was the night he died.’ He turned and looked directly at me. ‘So these are not just toys, you see; they are my brother, my family. Ask Mr Chalmers to remember, won’t you?’

  ‘I will,’ I replied quietly. It seemed indecent to raise the question of money now, but he sensed my unease and brought the subject up himself.

  ‘I gather Mr Chalmers has arranged for cash from a Nice bank?’

  ‘Yes. It’s waiting for us. £22,000 in francs.’

  ‘In the morning, Mr Marklin, in the morning. I’m tired now. I’ll drive down with you at ten o’clock from the Colombe D’Or. What is your car? I’ll park near it.’

  ‘A Beetle — I mean, the old model Volkswagen convertible.’

  ‘Ah, I know. It’s funny how old models are often more desirable, isn’t it? Except when they’re human beings, that is. Au revoir, Mr Marklin.’

  *

  The rest of my stay was plain sailing and hugely enjoyable. No doubt, you can detect a slight hesitation in that comment, and that hesitation was Monsieur Vincent. I hated to take his brother from him. And it wasn’t just his brother I was plundering — but his mother, his wife, his son, a load of his memories, a load of his past. As if his future was not bleak enough. And what was worse, I had grown to like him enormously.