Tinplate Page 8

  During the hours there, I tried to concentrate my mind on all my dizzy problems, Stone and Rankin, Treasure and Monsieur Vincent, and last but not least, what was worrying me about PO Redfern, but I quickly found it impossible. And it wasn’t the noise or the bustle that stopped me. Nor my rate of sales (I only ended up £185 better off, representing a real profit of under £70. And it’s a long way there and back for only £70) but the ever present problem of pilferage. So I was truly thankful when four o’clock chimed, and I could pack up and get out to the Beetle in the car-park opposite.

  The journey back was very easy and uneventful, and with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on the tape deck, I began to unwind enough to think. Gradually, I came to realize that the problem of the stolen toys was virtually impossible for me to solve. Even Interpol, I reckoned, would find it daunting. I could tell from my conversations with Detective Inspector Trevor Blake that even he thought so too. He certainly didn’t offer up much hope. Still, he was after Stone, and he had tracked him to Geneva, so I decided I had to leave Stone to him. I certainly did not have the time or the resources to hang about in Switzerland myself. Nor, really, could I go down and see Monsieur Vincent again, and a telephone call would be worse than useless, as, were he the guilty party, it would put him on his guard instantly.

  So that left me with Rankin and Treasure, and I would have to get to know the Detective Inspector a good deal better before I raised suspicions about the latter. It was clear Treasure wielded quite a bit of power round about in Dorset, and as I still intended living there long after this ugly affair was over, I didn’t dare go much further than I had done already. What I could do further about Rankin, I had no idea. He had an alibi for himself and his wife, and his interest in battleships could be quite innocent and coincidental. It was very much how the collecting mania worked; you started with one main interest, say cars, and then began embracing almost every other kind of toy over the years. And he didn’t seem to be a baddy, like Treasure did.

  Thinking about Treasure brought me back, of course, to the intrepid pilot and his curious end. Gus was right. We should have found some item of clothing or parachute or something. It was almost as if his bones had been picked clean. And there was something else that bugged me. Even though the digger had disturbed the skeleton before we had taken to our spades, it still looked too neat and tidy somehow. I felt the impact would have collapsed the body more, even though, it was true, the skull was crushed and part of it missing.

  On that sombre thought I decided I needed a beer, something to eat and a little of somebody else’s company before I turned in for the evening, no doubt to watch some old film on TV that I would never have gone to see in the cinema. But after my previous experience of losing toys from a parked Beetle I went home first, unpacked the unsold die-casts, stroked and fed Bing, and explained to him why I had to go out again, then left for my usual local just up the road.

  I was disappointed not to find Gus there, then remembered he had said he had ‘a little business in Weymouth to do’. And I knew her name, so he wouldn’t be in tonight. I found somebody had left a Sunday Times on the seat by the window, so I buried myself behind it, with my Heineken and, a little later on, some sausages and chips. I had read all the news section, and was two thirds the way through the Review bit (absorbing all the details of a new German film that seemed to be about a one-legged dwarf, suffering from Aids, who fell in love with a plumber’s mate, who was a girl, and a lesbian to boot, whose activities made the Bader-Meinhof gang seem like a Christian Aid Society), when I heard a slightly familiar voice addressing me. I was quite relieved to look up.

  ‘Can I come and sit next to you?’

  I made room for her on the rather stained window seat.

  ‘What are you reading?’ She picked up the paper.

  ‘Oh, nothing much. Just about a new film that’s bound to close yet another cinema. I’m beginning to think that’s why they make them. It’s all a great conspiracy by the international television moguls to get rid of every cinema in the world.’

  She smiled. ‘I’ve forgotten your Christian name. What is it?’

  I felt her warmth next to my thigh. Made the other one seem very cold and lonely. I looked at her, and after the kind of day I’d had, she looked the perfect afters to sausages and chips. ‘It’s Peter. Peter Marklin.’

  ‘Mine’s …’ she began, but I laughingly interrupted. ‘I know. Arabella Donna Trench. Your enemies call you Belladonna. Your friends call you often.’

  She grinned a very nice grin. Bit lipsticky, but nice.

  ‘You’ve a good memory.’

  ‘For things I want to remember.’

  ‘And you wanted to remember me?’

  What a silly question.

  ‘Miss Trench, once seen, never forgotten. You’re not exactly the kind of girl I see every day of the week.’

  She took a sip of her drink, which appeared to be a dry Martini. We both suddenly looked up at each other.

  ‘Here alone?’ we said in unison.

  ‘Yes,’ we said likewise. And had a little chuckle which, accidentally, was accompanied by a brief touching of hands. Not bad going for the first five minutes.

  ‘What brings you here?’ I thought I’d ask.

  ‘A Golf convertible,’ she replied in all seriousness. I realized I had met my match.

  ‘I’ve never seen you here before,’ I pressed on regardless.

  ‘I’ve seen you.’

  ‘That why you came again?’

  She nodded and took another dry sip.

  ‘That’s nice,’ I smiled, ‘if it’s true.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked rather coldly.

  ‘Oh, I just wondered if Mr Treasure had sent you along.’

  ‘Why should he do that?’

  ‘Find out what I’m doing — what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Mr Treasure’s far too busy with the rest of his life to bother about you — or me, for that matter.’

  I looked at her, straight in those dark, mysterious wells, out lined with mascara.

  ‘You left him then?’ I asked in a more affectionate voice, hoping our hands might meet again.

  ‘I’ve never really lived with him, so I can’t really leave him, can I?’

  Put that way, I couldn’t really argue.

  ‘Like another drink?’ I asked, as my Heineken was now but froth in the bottom of my glass.

  ‘Yes.’ I was about to get up when her hand returned, and she added, ‘But not here.’

  ‘Where then? There’s a very good place over towards Corfe, Gus and I sometimes use …’

  ‘Isn’t there an even better one you use all the time?’ she tossed in to throw me.

  ‘Can’t think of one,’ I replied. ‘Unless it’s my place.’

  She got up abruptly, and pulled me to a standing position (so to speak). ‘Your place, you must be joking,’ she smiled. ‘And anyway where is it?’

  ‘Just around the corner. But I haven’t got the Sunday Times.’

  ‘It wasn’t newspapers I was thinking of.’

  I smiled. I had to agree with her.

  *

  In the somewhat dubious privacy of my own modest home (dubious only because Bing always seemed to watch my every move with any unattached female), Arabella came over as even more striking. She was a healthy five foot eight, and the proportions that go with it, only more so. Her hair I have described before as ‘violent’. Tonight, maybe, it was slightly less so in style, but you still couldn’t get away from the colour, or more accurately, colours. They seemed to be alternate streaks of Porsche silver and Ford Sunburst Red, with a little Havana Brown having a breather now and again. With her bodywork, it all seemed pretty natural somehow, and I got used to it in no time.

  Luckily I had some dry Martini left over from another encounter, and I moved over to something shorter than beer — Scotch. And, of course, just as I was about to ask her the story of her life, in the hope she wouldn’t ask about mine, Bing j
umped on her lap and jogged her glass. I got a cloth from the kitchen, and wiped her lap, which proved to be not a huge chore.

  ‘Bing, you really are the end, you know,’ I said to the cat, with mock severity.

  She looked at me. ‘Why do you call him Bing — after that ancient singer my grandmother loves?’

  So that was the generation she ranked me with. If I hadn’t got other plans for the evening, I could have gone off her right then on a technicality.

  ‘No, thank you very much. It’s the other Bing you won’t have heard of: a famous German toy company of the twenties and thirties. I’ve got a Bing Table-Top Railway set of theirs upstairs with some of my own toy collection.’

  She looked across at me with an ‘I’ve hardly come here to play trains’ look. I agreed with her sentiments. ‘Oh,’ is all she actually said.

  We sat silently for a bit, on the small settee. Bing was watching every move from the floor. I avoided his eye-to-eye contact.

  ‘Why is it recently I’ve tended to gravitate to men who, in a way, haven’t quite grown up?’ she asked, quite ravishingly.

  ‘You mean, they like toys?’

  ‘Like them? Dear old Randolph is nutty about them. You ought to read his diary. Well a diary?’ she laughed. He’s got thousands of diaries. He’s obsessive about them as well,’ she added.

  ‘How long has he been keeping a diary?’ I asked, becoming rather interested.

  ‘Yonks,’ she replied. ‘Ever since he was given his first Lett’s School-boy’s Diary when he was a kid — so he tells me, anyway. He says life is far too precious not to be able to recall every day of your life on demand. I know what he means. I think he regrets computers weren’t invented in time for his first forty-five years or so.’

  ‘And what diary did he allow you to read?’

  ‘The current one, that’s all. And then only bits of that.’

  I poured her another Martini. ‘You didn’t happen to read, by any chance, if he went across to France sometime around 9 May, did you?’

  She thought for a second, and I could see I was trying to push too hard too soon — an old trait of mine.

  ‘No, I didn’t need to. I was with him. He hasn’t been out of Dorset since Christmas, as far as I know. I tell a lie, he went to London once, for the day, to see his broker.’

  So I was back to square one. I changed the subject.

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Up in Shropshire, where my parents still farm. Place called All Stretton. We live on the high hill above it — on the Mynd, as it’s called.’ She smiled at me. ‘Very blowy on the Mynd. Sometimes can bowl you right over.’

  I was beginning to sense what the Mynd felt like.

  ‘I’m too much of a hedonist for such heights, I’m afraid,’ she continued. ‘Learnt all that in the lowlands of Bristol University. Didn’t do a stroke of work, except to get through tutorials. Left without a degree, but with a lot of … friends.’ She hesitated, and her expression changed completely from beautiful confidence to a look of almost desperation.

  She suddenly leant across and kissed me. I let it go on for more than its usual life-span, which irritated Bing no end. After a while, she whispered in my nibbled ear, ‘I want to count you amongst my friends, Peter. Can I?’

  ‘Depends,’ I replied.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how it goes.’ After all, how did I know how it would go — wasn’t she Treasure’s lady friend?

  She got un and took me by the hand.

  ‘Oh, it will go all right, don’t you worry.’

  And do you know something? Right then, I just couldn’t go on worrying any more.

  ‘Do you want something to eat?’ I looked down at her snuggled into my side, her left and wondrous breast nudging my ribcage. Bing was downstairs, thank the Lord.

  Arabella opened the only eye I could see, and asked breathily, ‘Is that a naughty invitation again?’

  I tickled her waist. ‘Nope. Not this time. It’s a reminder that God has given us stomachs as well as the rest of the equipment, and we might want to fill those now. After all, other people were no doubt eating supper or dinner or whatever while we were writhing about.’

  ‘Poor people,’ she muttered. And I tended to agree with her.

  She sat up, and did not bother with the sheet. She really did not need the spray-booth hair. She was altogether stunning from the tip of the Sunburst Red to the tiniest little toe, which could not help wriggling every time we made love. And her skin had that elusive hint of olive that made it infinitely more attractive than the bald pinkness most English girls kid themselves is part of the beauty of an English rose. I moved across and nuzzled the down between her breasts and, lower, towards her belly. But this time it was affection, not lust on my lips. She lay back and made a little whimpering noise. I rested my head against her stomach, and looked back up at her, past the firm mounds of her breasts.

  ‘Did it go all right?’ I heard her ask, her ribcage moving slightly, in tune with her voice-box.

  ‘I’ll let you know the fourth time,’ I rejoined, and her knee came up and hit the back of my head. We rolled over together like two kids in the snow, and then both lay staring at the damp stain on my ceiling, which I had been meaning to fix for months. After a while, I asked her, ‘What do you see in Treasure?’

  She looked at me. ‘Probably not what you think.’ She rested on her elbow. ‘You think it’s all the money, don’t you?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Well it isn’t, Mr Peter Marklin.’

  I didn’t say anything. Presently she went on, ‘It’s partly the power money provides, I suppose. I’ve always been fascinated with power. I think I understand why Unity Milford was so dotty over Hitler.’

  ‘Treasure’s a bit like Hitler, in a way, in my book too,’ I said, with more than a smile.

  ‘Yes, I know you hate his guts. It shows a mile off. And he certainly hates yours. Why, I don’t know. He normally ignores everybody but himself, so in consequence, rarely gets very annoyed. But you’re an exception with him, for some reason.’

  I turned over, and held her naked body very tightly to mine. We kissed and told each other we liked each other, without using words. Then I asked her, ‘Don’t you mind his being AC/DC? He is, isn’t he?’

  She sat up abruptly, and looked at me — a little bit daggers. ‘Hey, wait a minute. Why should I?’

  ‘Well …’ I hesitated, ‘you know, it’s … er …’

  ‘It’s because you think Randolph and I are lovers. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  I suddenly realized I had possibly made a ghastly error. ‘I’m sorry. I just thought …’ I stammered, but she cut me short.

  ‘You just didn’t think, did you?’

  She moved across the bed, and pulled the top sheet around and over her. Neither of us spoke for what seemed light years.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I bleated at last, and my voice seemed to have gone into the high octaves of a choirboy’s all of a sudden. The bed shook as she sniggered under the sheet. I could tell we were both waiting for the next move. It came from me. I told you I didn’t have any patience worth a damn. I held out a hand. A white sheet in the shape of five fingers extended towards it. In a moment, we confirmed docking.

  ‘Just because I use his Silver Cloud, and am seen a lot in his house doesn’t mean what you thought it meant. So, to get back to your question, I don’t care that he’s bisexual. And, yes, he is, by the way.’ Her voice had reverted to bedtime normal. I leant across and kissed the part of the sheet that looked like a nose. She threw the cover back and I saw that my aim had been accurate.

  ‘I’m glad,’ I said, then laughed and added, ‘That’s the understatement of anybody’s year.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re glad,’ she nuzzled my nose in return. ‘But I’m now hellish suspicious of your moral rectitude, Mr Marklin.’

  I smiled. ‘So am I, but what … ?’

  ‘What? Well, you were quite willing to bed a
girl whom, one, you thought belonged to someone else, and, two, whom you would obviously regard as a bit of a tramp for hitting the hay with you whilst still having a lover over at Doom Abbey.’

  ‘Doom Abbey?’ I asked stupidly, then supplied my own answer. ‘Oh, you mean Treasure’s Victorian folly?’ And I could feel myself blushing, not because of my inept question, but because the rest of what she had said had hit home and hard. As the lovely Eric Morecambe used to say, ‘There’s no answer to that.’ So I didn’t try to give one.

  She saw my embarrassment, and came and snuggled tight alongside me, like a companion piece in a jigsaw puzzle, only softer.

  ‘Oh, don’t feel all guilty now, Peter,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted to go to bed with you as much, I guess, as you did with me. It’s been quite a long stretch, you see, since the last time I felt that way. So feel complimented. I’m a million miles from being anybody’s, as you thought. Maybe my slightly crazy hair gives people the wrong impression …’

  I stroked the silken colours back from her forehead. ‘Sweeney Todd never had it so good,’ I whispered back. She smiled, which was more than my remark really merited, and rested her head on her hand.

  ‘You’re still wondering what the hell goes on between me and Randolph, aren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I’m his front. You know what I mean? He likes me because I help him portray the image he likes to present in public: a man who can still attract vaguely pretty girls, a normal, fun-loving host, with me as his bright and caring hostess or companion at dinner parties. The AC or is it the DC, part he likes to keep more or less in a closet. Not that he hasn’t tried to get me into bed, but I don’t like him that way so I never would, and never will. And he accepts that.’

  ‘What do you get out of it? Beyond the Unity Mitford bit, that is.’