Chapter 1
When I was young, I was the butt of jokes in the family. My parents often threw up their hands and declared. “Marcie, you really have no idea!” My name is Marcello Gambino, son of Italian immigrants who had come to England to get away from the stifling weight of family history in the old country.
I had been born in England, in the Royal Berkshire Maternity Unit in Reading. My parents had done well for themselves, and we lived in a very nice house on All Hallows Road, Caversham. I went to the primary at Micklands and secondary at Highdown. The first was all right, the second was a terrible time for me.
My family wasn’t different from the other Italian families in the area, just the latest of a long line of immigrants. My great-grandparents had come to the area in the late forties, to get away from post-war Campodorato. Now a good olive oil area, then it was blasted and bare. They had brought their youngest children with them, leaving my grand-parents behind, having already started their own family. My father was the youngest of six and got out of there as soon as he could afford it. My parents and my oldest sister, Angelica, arrived in Reading in the late nineties. The next daughter, Sophia, came along in twenty-o-five, with me arriving in twenty-o-nine.
What this meant was that I had family still in Italy, and an established family of aunts, uncles, and cousins here in England. Nearly every generation of boys had a Marcello in it, so, by the time I came along, every variation of the name was in use, so that when the family talked about the offspring, there was Mart, Marty, March, Cello, Chill, and me – Marcie. I don’t think anyone considered the peril that put me in at a school with a lot of Anglos, to whom Marcie was a girl’s name.
The earliest time I can remember being told that I had no idea was when I was about four. My sister, being in primary not long after I was born, used the baby me as a live doll. When I was old enough, my mother would take me to a local playground, where I played with boys my age. One day, my sister was in her room with some of her friends from the primary school, and they decided that the pictures of me as a doll were so wonderful, they would recreate the look. I had forgotten the earlier times, and they had a rude awakening when they tried to strip me and put me into a dress. I did not co-operate as expected and got a “You have no idea of how to play, Marcie,” when I pushed my sister over. Of course, that got a slap on the leg from my mother.
The next time that looms large in my memory was in my second year at primary school. We had done all the messy things in the first year and was expected to do normal things as we aged. We were given some paper and crayons and told to draw and colour a nice picture. I had seen a TV program about Picasso that my parents had watched before I went to bed, and it struck me as a great way to see the world. My abstract did not do down well alongside the houses, fields, trees, and cute animals that the others had tried to draw. The fact that my picture was good, in my eyes, held no water. It was “Marcie, you have no idea about art!”
As I got older, the list of things that I had no idea about grew longer. I had no idea about mathematics, sneaking a calculator into class before I got caught. I had no idea about spelling; that was one I did agree with. I had no idea about playing soccer, hitting back when I was tackled and putting the ball into our own goal because I could. I had no idea about table manners, dealing with relatives, looking out for my sister, holding my baby niece for a photo. (She was heavy! No wonder I dropped her.)
It was when I got into secondary school that my life became almost too much to bear. The school did not have a reputation as one full of bullies for fun. My name, as such, wasn’t unusual, as about five other Marcello Gambino’s had attended. I was the first one with the nickname of Marcie, and that sealed my fate for five long years, only tapering off as I got older than the rest of the school. The best thing was that my sister and her friends were at Queen Anne’s School, so I didn’t have to put up with them at all.
The worst thing was that I was a short, weedy, kid called Marcie. I was always picking up my schoolbooks that had been ‘dropped’; going to the lost and found to retrieve my clothes after soccer, and seeing the nurse about various cuts and bruises I had received from running into a whole list of things.
I truly had no idea about a lot of things. Many of which got me detention. I caused a small fire in the chemistry laboratory, destroyed the geography teacher’s globe when I pointed out a location with my dividers. How did I not realise that it was an inflatable one? I got lost on a cross-country run and it took the police several hours to find me, about five miles off-course.
My parents, bless them, took me to the doctor to see what was wrong with me. He heard what they told him and sent me to a clinic for testing and evaluation. The result was that a highly paid specialist with a bow tie and a stethoscope around his neck told them that I was suffering from neurodiversity. They didn’t know what he meant, so took it seriously. At that time, I was about fifteen, and I looked it up on my computer. I decided that it was the latest catch-all phrase that doctors used when they didn’t know what was wrong with you and were too lazy to try and find out.
As far as I was concerned, I was quite normal, but he had decided I wasn’t. I wasn’t autistic, I didn’t have ADHD, I didn’t have PTSD (difficult to have when you’re fifteen and have never been in a war zone – other than school, that is.) I could be classed as having difficulties in maths, reading, writing and co-ordination, but none of that had stopped me getting good marks, as well as that fitting about half of the other kids in the school. In the end, it was money well spent, as I now had a label.
At the end of school, I had no idea about what I wanted to do with my life. I had a laptop computer full of my drawings, all abstracts of differing garishness. I had never thought that I could use them as a stepping-stone to any future job. Not in Reading.
I ended up helping my father in his pizza shop. If there’s one thing that we Italians can do, is make pizza. Naturally, I was considered to have no idea when I started making square ones. I thought that they fitted the oven and the boxes better. What I did have, though, was a sense of design and the ability to paint, if only walls. I helped my father redesign the pizza shop to cater more for the various courier gigs, renamed the shop as Game On Pizza, catering for the thousands of kids now stuck in their bedrooms playing online games.
After that, my father got me another job as a general hand, helping a friend of his with a removal business. At least, I didn’t have to think too hard with that one. When I got the job, I left home and found a flat. Then, with my savings, I bought the motorcycle that my parents would never allow me to have. I had joined a large club, online, and had gone to a couple of their social events, all without my mother finding out. When it came to getting a bike, I asked those who lived near me and one of them took me to a shop where I ended up with a rough Yamaha 650, with a home-made sidecar attached.
The other guy had ridden sidecars and taught me how to make it do what you wanted it to do, by steering it with the throttle. I was able to go along to my job now, without worrying about the bus. They had been told about my apparent clumsiness, and never let me lift anything breakable. Usually, they sent me into cluttered rooms to move the bits and pieces out into the corridor so that they could be moved or thrown out. It was steady work, and I was starting to be considered as actually having an idea, after all. We did removals but were also the go-to crew when it came to filling containers.
It was a house near Twyford that changed my future. The family had only started renting the house around ten years before and were now emigrating to Australia. We had put all the main things into a container and had filled the empty spaces with all their cutlery and crockery, wrapped in blankets. There were cases of clothing, boxes of personal items, and everything that you can’t carry on an aeroplane.
There were a lot of things that they were leaving. All the beds and wardrobes, for a start, as well as the refrigerator. They had taken their near-new lounge suite and dining suite, along with a lot of chairs and tables from around the house. The house was quite large, but very run down. I had gone to the top of the house and was in a small boxroom when I heard a shout for me to come down. The previous renter of the house paid the boss and was getting into the taxi when he turned to me.
“We have everything that we want to take, the rest is rubbish. If there’s anything you want, it’s yours.”
I was told that the job was over and to drop the house keys with the real estate agents on my way home. I had my motorcycle and sidecar and had done the same tidying up before. I realised that there was a lot of bits and bobs still to be looked at in the boxroom. I took my time to sort through, finding some nice ceramics that I would get a few pounds for at a dealer that I knew in London. I wrapped them in remnants of linens that I had discovered in a forgotten linen cupboard and put them in the sidecar.
I double-checked the boxroom, but the remaining stuff needed a tip run. Except for a step ladder leaning against the wall. It wouldn’t fit on the sidecar, but I had a look to see how good it was. It was covered in dust, obviously not used in many years. It was good enough to come back with a van. The more I looked at it, the more a voice in my head told me that it was out of place, here at the top of the house.
I went out of the room and walked the upper corridor while looking at the ceiling. Near the top of the stairs, I saw the outline of a trapdoor. Nobody had said anything about this house having an attic. By the dirt on the rungs, it had been many years since someone had been up there. Intrigued, I went all the way downstairs to where we had left some rags for me to put in the bin. Taking a handful, I went back up and carefully wiped the rungs of the ladder and then carried it out to position it under the trapdoor.
When I got up, I pushed it up and it swung open on hinges. The edge of the hole had been reinforced and I was able to go up a few more steps and pull myself into the attic. The first thing I noticed was the dirt, the webs, and the dark. This meant a climb back down and a trip to my bike to get the LED light that I had in case of breakdowns at night. Back up in the attic I set the light so I could inspect the space.
It was quite large, and there were boxes, some suitcases, and old dressmakers dummy next to an ancient sewing machine, and what looked like two bedside chest of drawers. The space had a proper floor, so there was no chance of me finding myself in the room below, so I started to look more closely to the contents. The dummy had rotted, and the sewing machine was not old enough to be worth anything. The drawers in the two chests contained women’s underwear and stuff. Two boxes has shoes, one had hats. The suitcases had a lot of women’s clothes. Behind the boxes, there was an old chest, with the hasp held secure with what looked like a very old combination lock.
I had a similar one on my pushbike when I was younger and had been told how easy it was to break the code. All you had to do was exert a little pressure on the shaft and work the dial that was the hardest to turn, until there is a slight movement of the shaft. Then you repeat with however many sets of numbers there are until it opens. I carefully applied my learning, and it took just five minutes before I could open the chest.
When I shone my light into it, I could see crockery with tissue between the plates. When I lifted the tissue off the top plate I almost fainted. There, in all its glory, was one of the Picasso plates. It was one with a simple sketch of a man playing a horn to a goat. After my primary school attempt at copying the master, I had read a lot about him and his history, knowing that he had started making ceramics around the same time that my great-grandparents had arrived in England, and worked with ceramics for a good twenty years.
I took it out and turned it over. There, as it should be, was the stamp of Madoura and the mark that it was original Picasso. The true collectors’ items, the limited editions, were signed on the front. Even the one I was holding was worth some thousands of pounds. The plate underneath was a face. Alongside that pile was a pile of oblong plates, with the top one showing the unmistakable talent of the master. I sat back, wondering what I was going to do now.
I put both plates back where I found them and ran my fingers down the piles, counting. I was sitting there with fifteen round, and fifteen rectangular plates. If all of them were Picasso, then I was looking at close to fifty thousand pounds worth. And the man had told me it was all mine as he left. There were other items in the chest, looking like vases. I was too amazed to look at them here. I closed the chest and had another look at the drawers. This time, I lifted the various items to look underneath. In one, I found certificates, one was a birth, in the name of Geraldine Angelica Ramie, the other was for the death in the name of Geraldine Angelica Hubert. She was born in nineteen thirty-five, and died in nineteen eighty-four, of a heart attack. Under fifty is way too early to die. My own family all lived into their nineties, despite the harsh conditions in Italy.
I made up my mind. Leaving it all in place, I went back down the stepladder, closing the hatch as I went. I carried the ladder into the box room and locked the house as I went. I rode to where the boss kept his trucks and asked if I could borrow a van in the morning. I told him that there was a good stepladder in an upper room and that I would bring it back for him.
At home, I unloaded what I had saved and put it in a pile in the front room. I didn’t have that much in there as I mainly lived in the kitchen. I had a laptop and looked up Geraldine Hubert on the web. I verified the death in England. I did find a marriage to Francois Hubert, in London, in nineteen sixty-five. Her maiden name was Ramie, and her birthplace matched the certificate I had seen as Vallauris. She must have been a cousin to Jacqueline Roque, born in nineteen twenty-seven, so had known Pablo Picasso between nineteen fifty-two and her coming to England, some time before nineteen sixty-five. The Ramie’s had the Madoura Pottery.
This meant that the contents of the chest has an impeccable provenance. Jacqueline had worked for the pottery in sales. What I wanted to do, the next day, was to remove all the ceramics from the attic to a safe place in the house, where I could lay them out and catalogue them, before packing them to bring home with me. I would have to have a very good look to find any paperwork that established the ownership and to find if there was any mention of them in any wills. It would take a while, and I needed to be very quiet about what I was doing.
Tonight, though, I was going out for a meal at a pub near the house, to see if I could talk to anyone who had known the Huberts. The house was south of the railway station and only a walk from it, so good for commuters. The closest pub was the Golden Cross, just north of the station. I had a shower and dressed neatly, then rode the Yamaha there.
When I got there, I was disappointed, as it was not one where you could dine. I had a half of Timothy Taylor, looked at the young clientele and left. I got back on the bike and went a little further away from the house, finding the Duke Of Wellington, an old-fashioned pub in a timbered building and with a large number of older drinkers. I looked around and saw the oldest looking man with a large Guinness in front of him. I went over to him.
“Excuse me, sir, but I’m writing a story on the Huberts, who lived near here, for my literature course. Did you know them?”
“It’s Huberre, lad. They was both French. Get me another of these and I’ll tell you about them.”
“I was thinking of getting a meal, is there anything you’d like?”
“Couldn’t go past a plate of bangers and chips, lad.”
I went and ordered two serves of the sausages and chips, a Guinness for him to come out with the meal and a pint of IPA for me to take with me. When the barmaid gave me change, she gave me a wink.
“Old Albert’s the man if you’re looking for gossip. Mind you, his memory for facts can be hazy.”
I thanked her and went back to sit opposite Albert.
“My name is Marcello Gambino, and I am looking into the local history of Geraldine Hubert”, now pronouncing it in the proper way.
“Lovely lady, she was. I did their garden for a few years. Always brought out some tea and told me to rest. She did a bit with the church. Don’t know what her background was, except that she would tell me stories about life in the French Embassy after the war. Him! He was a jumped-up little bastard. Always strutting about like he owned the place. He was at the bank, and in the local lodge, along with his good friend, the Doctor. They used to play golf together.”
He paused to take a swig of his drink, while I took a sip of mine. A lass came to the table with cutlery and, when she left, I took the plunge.
“The writings, from the day, said that she had a massive heart attack?”
“That lady was as strong as an ox, until the cancer got to her. It started simple, but they didn’t get it all when the operated. They say that there are some cancers that don’t show until they’ve been opened to the air. Two years after the operation she was bed bound. I think that he did her in, with the Doctor signing off on it. It would have been a release for her, but not really legal. I kept my thoughts to myself, but I’ve always wondered.”
Our meals came out, along with his drink, and we busied ourselves with the food. Except for some more anecdotes about the family, he didn’t add much to his story. That, though, was a lot more than I had known. When I rode home, I had a full stomach and the background that helped. Her things may have been put into the attic to get them away from her husbands’ sight. Nothing up there was too big to go through the opening. My worry, now, was how to get it all down. In order to be able to discuss the provenance, I needed to know as much as I could.
The next morning, before I went to collect the van, I went to the estate agent. Going in, I saw the manager.
“Excuse me, sir. I was at the house at Twyford yesterday, helping pack a container. Do you have someone waiting to go in?”
“Not at the moment. When I did the final inspection, I realised that it needed a lot of work to be able to be rented out. Why do you ask?”
“I thought the same thing. I wondered if you would allow me to live there while I did the repairs and redecoration, with you supplying the paints, of course.”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“I live in a small flat in Reading, and I want to start painting pictures. I have done a lot on my computer, but don’t have the room to keep an easel set up. I expect that it could take three to four months to work through the house. I was in a box room yesterday that looked like no-one had been there in over ten years. I do have some experience with redecoration as I redesigned the family pizza shop and painted it.”
“I know that shop, you did a grand job there. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll come to the house tomorrow and well inspect it together. If we agree on the decoration, I’m prepared to let you stay there for up to six months. If it works out, that house will sell at a premium in the first couple of weeks.”
I kept the keys and rode the bike to pick up the van. On the way to the house, I picked up an extending ladder and a number of plastic crates that I would be able to lower down by the rope I also bought. I added a pair of rechargeable floodlights on tripods that would light up the attic and allowed me to see easily.
At the house, I opened up and opened some windows. I took all my goodies up to the top landing and set them near the trapdoor. Then I got the stepladder and went up to open the trapdoor, before taking the stepladder away and putting the extending one up so that it protruded into the upper space. I could now climb right into the attic. I took the stepladder down and put it in the van, locked up and took the van back.
When I got back with the sidecar, I had some biscuits and a box of teabags. I had seen a kettle in the kitchen and the gas worked. I found the main power and switched it all on. In the kitchen, the fridge started to work. Upstairs, I took the lights, one by one, and set them up in the attic, with the space now as light as day. Then I took the plastic boxes up along with the rope. When I was ready, I went towards the chest and opened it again. As I gazed on the contents, a female voice spoke to me.
“You’re back!”
Marianne Gregory © 2024
Chapter 2
As I gazed on the contents, a female voice spoke to me.
“You’re back!”
I laughed, nervously.
“What’s wrong with my back?”
There was a sound like tinkling bells.
“Most would have screamed or fainted. You did neither. You’re not normal.”
“You’re absolutely right. I’m not normal and I have a doctors’ certificate to prove it!”
This time it sounded more like a giggle.
“Have you come to take away my precious things, the only things that make my time here bearable?”
“In truth, that’s what I’ve planned. However, while I do so, I may be living here to redecorate. The house really needs it. My name is Marcello, but most call me Marcie. Am I speaking to the ghost of Geraldine?”
“Yes, young man. You have no idea how boring it’s been, stuck up here for eternity.”
I laughed.
“Five minutes talking to a ghost, and it tells me I’ve no idea. That’s the story of my life. Since I was tiny, I’ve been told that I have no idea. They can’t understand that I just think differently!”
“You remind me of Pablo when you talk like that. He thought in different ways. Tell me that you’re a starving artist and that will really make my century.”
“I’m an artist, but not starving.”
“You’ll have to show me some of your paintings then. You’ll have to bring them up, I can’t leave here while all my belongings are with me.”
“I’ll do that. I’ll be right back.”
I climbed down and went to the kitchen where I had put my backpack. I pulled out the laptop and took it back to the attic. I put it on one of the small chests and opened it up, finding my picture file and bringing up the pictures as a slide show. I stood back and waited as the pictures appeared, one by one. Finally, they reached the end. I stood, wondering what she would say, this woman who knew Picasso.
“They are very good. What is this wonderful machine?”
“It’s a computer. When you were alive, they were still large and almost stupid, but in the years since, they have got smaller and a lot brainier. We even have the web now.”
“I see no spiders, young Marcello. You’re pulling my leg.”
I took my telco USB out of my pocket and plugged it in, finding the Wikipedia site for Jacqueline and standing back again, then scrolling down when she asked for more.
“Oh! Poor Jacquie. She was depressed after Pablo died. She wrote me very sad letters. Shooting herself is very drastic. I wonder if she is also condemned to haunt their house. Your pictures, you have not painted them? I am reminded of my own. They should still be in the house if my husband didn’t burn them.”
“I spoke to Albert last night. He said he used to do your garden. He spoke kindly of you but wasn’t so kind about your husband. He wondered if your husband had murdered you, with his friend, the doctor covering it up.”
“He’s right. He smothered me as I was in bed. I haunted him for a while, talking to him in his dreams. He ended up getting the doctor to help him put my things up here. After that, I was trapped. Albert was a nice man. If he’s still alive, it can’t be that long since I died.”
“It’s just over forty years. He must be close to eighty. If your things keep you here, would me taking them downstairs allow you to leave the attic?”
“That’s possible.”
“The agent is coming around tomorrow. I won’t move anything until he’s been. I asked him if I could live here and redecorate the house for him. I expect that it could take up to six months if I have work to go to as well. When he’s gone, I’ll take your things down and we’ll see if you can be released.”
“That would be wonderful! I could tell you what the house used to look like if others have made alterations.”
“There is one which must be recent; there’s a conservatory off the kitchen. It looks like there had been a small casual dining room there.”
“That’s where I used to paint. The window had the best light. A conservatory would make a wonderful place for you to recreate those pictures on canvas.”
I thanked her for being such a nice ghost, and she thanked me for speaking to her so normally. We decided that it was because I knew her name allowed me to hear her, as she had spoken to me the last time I was there, but I hadn’t heard her. Before I went back down, she told me that there were photos under the hats. I had a look and saw what she looked like.
There was a picture of her in the garden, wearing a summer dress and looking lovely. The garden was much tidier than it was now. The tenants had done some work to keep it tidy, but it must have been glorious fifty years ago. I took the picture with me as I put the lights out, hearing her tell me that she was looking forward to my next visit.
I lowered the ladder a bit and went back up, closing the trapdoor onto the upright, then easing the ladder away and shortening it so I could store it in the box room, behind the rubbish. I took my computer back down to the conservatory and sat in one of the tattered wicker chairs that were there. I made myself a cup of tea and thought long and hard.
Then I got my sketchbook out of my backpack and went around every room in the house with a tape measure. Getting the sizes and calculating the amount of paint needed came easily to me. Making notes on the repairs needed, as well as the changes I would make if the house was mine, I spent the rest of the day there, only leaving to go and get a take-away on the way back to my flat.
While I ate, I thought about what I felt, talking to a woman who had been dead more than forty years. I agreed with Albert; she was very nice, a gentle soul who needed company. I hoped that I would be able to give her the company she craved. I put my laptop on charge and sat looking at the pictures I had shown her, thinking about any changes I would make if I painted them on canvas.
The next morning, I had my sketchbook handy for when the agent came around, and spent some time in the front garden, pulling weeds and pruning. When I had looked at the back, it resembled a jungle that could wait a while longer. The agent parked outside and came in. We shook hands and I gave him the tour of the house, with my suggestions for colours and estimates of the paint needed. Some walls had old wallpaper, which we both agreed had to go.
He had a pocket recorder which he spoke into with each room as we agreed on a plan. I told him that I would transfer my things from the flat if he was happy with what we had talked about.
“Marcie, I’m very happy with what you are planning to do. If you vacate your flat and live here, I’ll refund you the bond and relet it, but promise that I’ll have another for you when you have finished here. I don’t know if I’ll relet this place or just sell it.”
“What do you think it’ll be worth?”
“At the moment, about six-fifty as a doer-upper. If you do a good job, I think I could ask eight, and settle for seven-fifty for a cash or bank cheque sale. I’ve estimated that what you’ll need to do the work will come to about twenty thousand. I’ll organise a bin with a lid and the first lot of paints. Have you decided which rooms you’ll do first?”
“I would like to do the kitchen and the main bedroom first. That will give me a place to sleep as I do the rest.”
“All right, I’ll order those colours to be delivered, along with brushes and rollers. I suppose that you’ll be spending some time with your paying job.”
“If I can, I’ll ask to be only called on container filling. If I’m not paying rent, I’ll be able to live on a bit less income. That conservatory looks good to paint in. You never know, I might sell a painting or two.”
“That would be brilliant, Marcie. You seem a lot more confident in yourself these days. Maybe this project will help. The only thing I ask is that you take pictures of each room as you work, before and after shots, so I can keep track of your progress.”
We shook hands and he left. I was now living in a haunted house and looking forward to it. I knew that Geraldine couldn’t haunt me until we had her things downstairs, so that would be the first thing to do. After I had moved in, that is.
I rode the bike to the flat and started shifting things. The first load was the things I had taken there only a couple of days ago. After that was my clothes and the bed linen, followed by the contents of my fridge and all the kitchen things, including my microwave and toaster. There was a bed in one of the rooms that was the same size as the one in the flat, so I would be able to spend the night in the house.
That evening, I went back to the Duke of Wellington for my meal. When I had the chance, I would start cooking proper meals for myself. It was strange, I was feeling as if I was more settled in the house. Albert wasn’t there and the barmaid told me that he had to go into hospital for minor surgery. It was if I was a local, already, and she called me love and smiled a lot. Back a year or two, I had gone out with a few girls, getting quite serious with one until she told me that I had no idea how to treat a lady. I found that very funny, as she certainly wasn’t a lady, just another girl who thought that I might be the heir to the family business.
Back at the house, I made up my bed, used the bathroom, now with all my things in it. I had a very restful sleep, with no dreams, and only an insistent bladder about three. I made sure that I turned on the bedside light so I wouldn’t walk into a wall.
In the morning, I made breakfast and then went to see my employer, to tell him about the arrangements and ask if I could have use of the van again, with one of the guys to help me move. He was amazed at what I had organised, telling me that it could be a good earner if I got this one right. We took the van to my flat and moved the only things I had bought since I had been there, a comfy recliner and a big TV screen. I used that screen as a monitor when I worked on the laptop.
We stopped at the Duke when we had unloaded and I bought us lunch and a pint, then we went back to the yard, and I retrieved the bike. The boss had my number if he needed me, and promised to give me a day or two notice when I was needed. I took the flat keys to the agent and told them it was clear, then went back to the house. Now, the serious time had arrived.
I went upstairs and pushed the trapdoor open with the ladder, then climbed up and swung it fully open. I turned on the lights.
“Are you there, Geraldine?”
“Where do you think I would be, Marcie, lounging by a pool in the south of France?”
“That would be nice.”
“Actually, it was Cannes.”
I heard the giggle again. She was playing with me.
“What are you doing, today?”
“I’ve made the arrangements to stay here, so I’ll be taking your things down to the bedroom. I’m in one, and I think I know which was yours, by the amount of wardrobe space. I’ll be redecorating the main bedroom first.”
“I hope that we’re right. It would be good to be able to look outside again.”
The easiest things to lower were the suitcases. One by one, I used the rope to put them on the landing and took them into the second bedroom. Then I carried the boxes to the edge of the trapdoor. They were lighter, allowing me to stand on the ladder and take each one down. The individual drawers of the bedside chests went down the same way, followed by the much lighter chests with the aid of the rope again.
I vacuumed the bedroom and made up the bed with linen from the linen cupboard, adding a couple of pillows with frilly pillowslips. Then the bedside cupboards went in place with the drawers back where they should be. Finally, I opened the suitcases and hung all her clothes in the two big wardrobes, putting the shoes where they should be and the hats on the upper shelf. The pictures were set out on the window ledge, as there wasn’t anywhere else for them. I remembered the one I had taken the previous time and went to get it and put it on a bedside chest. That’s when a very happy voice spoke.
“Thank you, Marcie. I’m free again to look out the window. The garden needs work, I see.”
“I started on the front and will work through to the back as I can. Can you go into any of the other rooms?”
“No. Perhaps I can if there is something of mine in there. If you look in one of the upper drawers, there’s a box with my rings and things. Maybe we can experiment by putting one somewhere else.”
I went to the drawers, finding the box. Inside were several rings, one which stood out. It was gold, with a stone that was a miniature Picasso face.
“That one was given to me by Pablo, just before I left France to come to England. I had a job at the Embassy to come to. It was an exciting day for me, but I was sad to be leaving home. Why don’t you try it on?”
I picked up the ring, an item made by the master, and slipped it on my ring finger of my right hand. It wasn’t a good fit, so I transferred it to my left hand. That’s when I saw her appear in front of me.
“I can see you!”
“Can you? That’s wonderful. Go to another room and we can see if I can follow you.”
I picked out another ring and carried it down to the kitchen, where I put it on the top of the fridge. I turned around and saw her looking at the conservatory.
“This is wonderful. I can spend hours looking at the outside. That big dresser on the wall; that was never there before. That’s where the door to the cellar is.”
The dresser that she spoke about looked about six feet wide, so wasn’t too hard to move as it was mainly ply and empty. Behind it was the door. I made enough space to open the door and felt around for a switch. When I flicked it on, I looked down a set of stairs to see a large room. I went down the stairs and looked at the easel and the paintings leaning against the wall, with a cover over them. There was a large painting bag and three big cylinders.
“So, this was where he hid them! I hope they haven’t rotted down here. It does feel warm enough, though. The central heating unit is in the corner, by the coal shute. This was where the coal would be delivered before the heating was changed. The biggest worry is if they’ve dried out.”
“What are we looking at, Geraldine?”
“The ones leaning against the wall will be my offerings. The big bag should be an original that Pablo gave me after my twenty-first birthday, and the cylinders are drawings that he had done of all sorts of things. When I admired something, he would give it to me.”
I went and looked at her paintings. I was amazed. They looked a lot like something I would paint. When I looked, she had signed them ‘Rogue’.
“I didn’t want to use the family name; in case they weren’t accepted, so I used ‘Rogue’ as I admired Jacquie and her devotion to Pablo. Now I look at them again, you could sign yours with ‘Rogue’ and add them to the collection. I don’t know if abstracts are popular right now, they were a bit off the wall in the seventies, with all those pop pictures using similar effects.”
“I know a gallery in London that sells abstracts. They seem to turn over well. I could take a few there and see what they think.”
I carried the easel up first, then went back and brought up the tubes. I took several trips to bring up the Rogue paintings. The last was the original, that I was looking forward to seeing. We looked at her works, seeing a couple of places that needed repair. It put the worst one on the easel in the conservatory and put a cloth over it. All the rest went into her room, out of the way. I held my desires in check, promising that I wouldn’t look at it until we had dealt with the repairs. That way, it wouldn’t make me think that I had no idea.
The last thing in the cellar was a painting box, which I took up to the kitchen. When I turned the light off and closed the door, I managed to work the dresser out into the conservatory, along one outside wall. It would make a good place to put my laptop when I started transferring my own work to canvas. It would also be somewhere for my pictures of my works so I can remember any that I sell. I was starting to believe that I could actually be somebody. That was strange and a little bit frightening. I often looked around and saw Geraldine moving around. It was almost like having a companion.
We looked in the painting box and I squeezed every tube to find that they were all solid. I got my sketchbook and wrote a list of every colour and made a note of the brushes she had used. I would buy new when I could. My phone rang and I pulled it out of my pocket to answer it, putting it on speaker. My employer told me that I would be needed the next day and would send me a text with the address. I told him that I would be there and pressed the end call button.
“The world has moved on a lot since I was around!”
“It has, Geraldine. Phones had been getting smaller until you could carry them in your top pocket. Now they’ve grown again but have as much in them as that computer. This phone has ten times the power of the computers that went to the moon. When did you come to England?”
“In nineteen sixty-one. I had a knack of languages and spoke Spanish as well as English. The Spanish was what made me a favourite with Pablo, and the English got me the job. I was doing part-time secretarial work for an ex-pat diplomat. He recommended me for the job at the Embassy. I worked there until I fell sick.”
“I couldn’t find any links to your husband.”
“That’s because it wasn’t his name. If you look up Jules Roquefort, you’ll find him. He was in Vallauris when I was small. He was a collaborator during the war and went off to work with the Vichy. He came into the Embassy in sixty-four, with the false papers. I pretended I didn’t know him. He was very handsome, and we did have a good life until I was sick, and his nasty side came to the fore. What he didn’t know was that I had made a note in his file with his real name and history. When I died, they would have reviewed all of my files. I expect that he was invited to some reunion from his false life and was eliminated quietly.”
So, she wasn’t as fragile as she appeared. Talking about appearances, in all the time I had seen her, she was wearing a long nightdress.
“Geraldine, were you wearing that nightdress when he killed you?”
She looked down.
“Yes. I suppose that my ghost looks like I did at the moment of my death.”
“I thought that ghosts could alter their looks. There’s a wardrobe full of your things upstairs. Don’t you have something that made you feel happy?”
She looked down at herself and closed her eyes. Suddenly, she was in the summer dress of the picture, and looking some years younger.
“That’s wonderful, Geraldine. Now I won’t feel like a voyeur when I see you.”
“You silly but lovely boy. This makes me feel healthy again. They say that inside, you are every age you’ve ever been. As a ghost I could experiment in private; I was a real babe in my teens.”
I went up to her room and picked up another ring, taking it down and putting it in the lounge, so she could go in. She commented on the big TV, so I told her that as computers got small televisions grew to huge proportions, and that the one I had was now considered small. We had put it on an old buffet, but not set it up. I plugged it into the power and found an outlet. When I turned it on, I found that the house had a satellite dish, so I could scroll through dozens of stations, even European ones. I found a popular French station and left her sitting in my recliner as I went into the kitchen to nuke an easy meal for a late lunch. After that, I told her that I was going out to an artist supply shop to replenish the paints.
When I got back, there was a lidded bin at the end of the driveway, and a load of paint tins at the front door, with a box of brushes and rollers, along with a pack of sandpaper. When I opened up, I carried the kitchen paint and the brushes into the kitchen, and the bedroom paint upstairs. The new artists’ supplies went into the conservatory. She was nowhere to be seen but the TV was still on, with the sound low as I had left it. I turned it off. She would appear when she was ready.
For the rest of the afternoon, I emptied the box room, putting all the rubbish in the bin. All that was left was the ladder. I wasn’t ready to bring down the contents of the chest, they’d been there for a long time and weren’t going anywhere. I went down to the kitchen to find her in the conservatory, now looking like a teenager in a short skirt and low-cut top.
“I’ve been in my room, experimenting. What do you think?”
“If you were real, I’d want to kiss you. In fact, I want to kiss you despite you being a ghost.”
“Marcie, you really are a true gentleman. Every woman likes to be appreciated. Keep this up and you’ll find a lovely girl who will be happy to be your wife.”
“Actually, there’s a lovely girl at the pub. How about we experiment some more and see if you can leave this house. Have you ever ridden in a sidecar?”
Marianne Gregory © 2024
Chapter 3
The first time I went outside, she couldn’t get past the door. I went up to her room and put a couple of her rings in my pocket and tried again. This time, she was able to leave the house. I rode to the Duke, with her sitting in the sidecar. When we arrived, she disappeared after telling me that it would be best that I didn’t see her. It might be odd if I kept looking at an empty space.
In the bar, I saw the barmaid and she saw me.
“Hello, again. You are starting to be a regular.”
“I’m living in a house on the other side of the train line, redecorating it for the estate agent. I’ll be there for up to six months.”
“That’s good. I’ll see more of you, then. My name is Maisie, by the way.”
“I’m Marcello, but most call me Marcie.”
“That’s funny, Marcie and Maisie, almost like a comedy duo.”
“I hope we have some laughs, as well as good food and beer. Do you know how Albert is?”
“I’m told that he’s taking a while to recover. What are you eating tonight?”
“What’s your pick?”
“A fine young man like yourself – I’d try the mixed grill.”
“All right, I’ll go with one of those and a half of IPA, please.”
She passed me some cutlery and my half and told me that she would bring my meal to me.
I went and sat in the corner, so I could look at the other drinkers, as well as look at Maisie behind the bar. She looked my way a few times and smiled. I heard a low voice.
“You’ve made a conquest there, Marcello. She seems nice.”
I didn’t say anything as Maisie brought my meal over. It was a good choice and I really enjoyed it. When I went to leave, I told her my phone number and she gave me hers. She had to work weekends but had Mondays off, so I told her that I would give her a call to work something out. Sitting on the bike, Geraldine materialised in the sidecar and told me that I had done well.
Tonight was going to be interesting. It would be the first night with Geraldine free to roam. I wondered if I would meet her in my dreams. I made sure that I was well relieved before getting into bed. When I dozed off, I was standing outside a group of buildings. As I looked, Geraldine appeared beside me.
“Welcome to my memories, Marcie. That building is the pottery. Pablo will be along in a minute.”
I stood as Pablo came along and entered the pottery building. My viewpoint changed to inside as I watched him working on a pot. He looked at me.
“There you are, Gerrie. This is the third time I’ve worked on this design. Look in the corner, you’ll see that the other two have strange colours.”
I knew he was speaking Spanish, but Geraldine interpreted it for me in my mind.
I went to the corner and saw two fantastic pots. I said that they were beautiful, and he said that they were mine. I asked him if he would write a note so that my parents wouldn’t think that I’d stolen them. He smiled and nodded. The picture changed to watching her father loading the kiln. It must have been later as Pablo had installed an electric one after getting poor results from the wood-fired one. There were a lot of Picasso plates, all similar. I knew that there were a lot of plates sold that were replicas of the original. These looked like a batch of those.
The vision blurred and then I was sitting at a meal table with my parents, the Ramies, and Pablo was on the other side next to Jacqueline. His last years of his life was almost dedicated to painting her, and you could tell why. She was not a great beauty but had a regal face on a long neck and the most amazing eyes I’d ever seen.
I sat for a while and gazed at them until the scene faded and I woke up. I put the light on and went to the toilet. I found my sketchbook and drew her head and shoulders as I had seen her in my dream. Then I sketched Pablo as he worked on the pot.
When I went back to sleep, it held no dreams until the morning. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom, doing my business and having a shower. Today was a working day, so I dressed in old jeans and a tatty sweater over a tee-shirt. When I had my working boots on, I went to have a cup of tea. Geraldine was in the kitchen.
“Thank you for letting me see your memories.”
“You’re welcome, Marcie. They were wonderful times. What I didn’t appreciate, at the time, was how important they were.”
“The two pots are in the trunk in the attic?”
“Yes, they really didn’t mean anything to Pablo. Any other potter would have just smashed them, but once he saw them as failures, he just forgot about them and moved on.”
“Jacqueline was striking, wasn’t she?”
“She was truly wonderful. I heard that he did over four hundred pictures of her. It was lovely to see them together. She would look at him with such devotion. He had been jumping from woman to woman, procreating, and then moving on. He stayed true to her until his death. Now, young man, why aren’t you eating anything?”
“The boss usually brings egg and bacon sandwiches for us to eat while we work out what bit get loaded first. I don’t know what time I’ll be back, but I’ll have to start preparing the kitchen so it may be a week or so before I can sit down for a meal.”
I rinsed the cup, put my coat and helmet on and left the house, starting the bike. I looked at the directions he had texted, then rolled out onto the road. The day was pretty usual. It was a bungalow with the attic converted to a bedroom. The container was slowly filled with furniture and electricals, mostly less than five years old. The people were moving to a newbuild in Wales, and the container would be the storage until the house was finished. It was a straight-forward job with no surprises, and we finished just after one. The boss gave me cash, to cover this job and what I had done with the Twyford house, and I took the bike to a fast-food chicken place for lunch, before going home. Home! That’s what it felt like.
That afternoon, after taking some pictures, I rubbed down walls, removed cupboard doors and took out drawers. I was going to strip the kitchen built-ins and give them a high gloss finish. I rubbed down the cellar door, in and out, taking the knob off. That would match the cupboards. I vacuumed the place and pulled the fridge away from the wall, which didn’t need much preparation. Lastly, I laid down some plastic drop sheets that had come with the paints.
Geraldine allowed me a dreamless night after I had nuked my dinner. She had been entranced by the microwave and the speed that it heated something from the frozen state. The next day I painted the first coats all over, the next I did the topcoat, the day after I worked on the doors and drawers with the smaller brushes. The kitchen was a pumpkin colour with the cupboards white. I allowed it all time to dry while I moved the contents of the main bedroom to the middle of the room and took more pictures.
The next morning, I stood on a chair and painted the ceiling, and as it was the Sunday, I rang Maisie in the afternoon and arranged to pick her up at ten on Monday. I warned her that I had a motorbike and that I would bring a spare helmet. I had been here a week, had discovered a lot of important ceramics, made friends with a ghost, and was now taking a girl out for the day.
I did more preliminary work on the main bedroom before bed. Tomorrow I was going to pick up Maisie and I hadn’t decided where we would go. I would do the honourable thing and see if she had a place in mind.
In the morning, I showered, shaved, and dressed as neatly as you can when riding a motorbike. I had some breakfast, with Geraldine telling me to take care, brushed my teeth, checked that the painting was all drying well, and put my jacket on to leave. As the bike warmed up, I looked at the outside of the house with a critical eye. The windows would need work.
When I stopped at the address that Maisie had given me, she was waiting by the door. It didn’t take long to say hello and hand her the spare helmet. I asked her if she wanted to go anywhere special.
“Actually, my sister called me and told me that she was taking her toddlers to Wellington Country Park. I told her that I would meet her there. I haven’t been there since I was a little one.”
I knew where the park was. I had been there a few times as a toddler. It was a place where I went down a slide before my sister had stood up, knocking her into the sandpit. I was told that I had no idea about playground manners. I got her settled in the sidecar and we went to the Park. When I parked, I helped her out of the sidecar, holding her hand as she stepped onto terra firma. I locked both helmets wire a strong wire attached to the bike, looping it through the ‘D’ rings and locking the padlock. We walked to the entrance, and I paid. It was expensive, but they were season tickets, and it was still only early summer. On the other side, I held out a hand and she took it.
“Hasn’t changed a lot since I was last here.”
“My sister says that they’ve taken away all the fun things as unsafe and replaced them all with lower slides. The old sandpits are now soft mix.”
“It looks like they’ve built a new eating area, all there was when I last came was a couple of guys selling ice cream and fairy floss.”
“I loved that fairy floss, but it tended to end up as a sticky mess on your face. There’s my sister, by the swings.”
We strolled over to the girl who looked like an older version of Maisie, trying to control a couple of two-year-olds.
“Hi, Babs, this is Marcello Gambino, otherwise known as Marcie. Marcie, this is my older sister, Barbara, and her twins, Terry, and Tracey.”
The two of them hugged, and I got a hug from Barbara, and then felt a toddler hugging my leg. Both girls giggled.
“Looks like you’ve got an admirer there.”
We spent a good hour in the park, with Maisie and Babs telling me a little about their lives, when I wasn’t helping Terry onto a slide or on the swings. At one point he dragged me off so he could climb on the ‘Gawwion’. Tracey was much more ladylike, only squealing when she was on the merry-go-round. When the nippers were tired, we went into the eating area, and they were sat in their double stroller for a nap. I had wondered where I would take her for lunch but had never expected to be eating pie and chips in a playground, with ice cream to follow.
We walked out with Babs and helped her load the children into her car. They asked me to watch the car while they went back in to use the toilets. I stood there, thinking about the strangeness of the morning.
“It’s a test, young Marcie. You just passed with flying colours.”
“Geraldine, what on earth are you doing here?”
“You still have those rings in your pocket. I was with you when you cleared that house. How anyone can live with that terrible stuff they call furniture, I don’t know. Those two girls are probably discussing your suitability as a father. You didn’t have younger siblings, so how come you’re a natural?”
“I don’t know, it’s a knack I’ve picked up since talking to you. Here they come.”
“Ask her if she wants to ride on the pillion, that way I can sit in comfort, so to speak. Why don’t you show her the house?”
The girls came back, and Babs gave me another hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“You’ll have to help me with the twins again, Marcie. You were brilliant with Terry.”
“That would be a pleasure, Babs.”
“That would be good, I might get to see more of my sister then. She works too hard.”
The sisters hugged and Babs got into the car and drove off. I looked at Maisie.
“Is there anywhere else you want to go to?”
“Not really. Why don’t you show me this house you’re doing up? What did Albert have to do with it?”
“He was the gardener there, for some years, when the Huberts lived there.”
“I sometimes help out at the St. Marys, clearing weeds, and there’s a Hubert there. It’s only a couple of minutes from the Duke.”
“Why don’t you show me, then we’ll go to the house. Do you want to go in the sidecar again, or ride on the back?”
“I’ll ride on the back if you don’t mind. That seat is a bit hard when you go over bumps.”
I got on the bike, and she got on behind me. We tightened the helmets and she put her arms around me as I started the motor. As we rode back towards Twyford, I could feel her breasts pressing on my back and it was very nice.
At the church we walked into the churchyard, hand in hand, and she showed me the burial plot. There was a simple stone, with just the name, date of birth, date of death, and that Geraldine was the much-loved wife of Francois Hubert. I could sense Geraldine beside us as we looked on, and Maisie looked worried as well.
“What’s wrong, Maisie? You’re tense.”
“It’s a feeling I got when I tried out for nursing. They put me in the Morgue for a while to see if I was spooked by bodies. It wasn’t the bodies, so much, but the feeling that the spirits were hanging around. Usually from accident victims or suicides. I only lasted it about six weeks before I decided that I needed to do something else.”
“This grave is the lady that owned the house. As you can see, she’s been dead over forty years. She still haunts the house I’m working on and is a lovely person who knew Picasso when she was much younger. Her husband assisted in her death when she was terminally ill with cancer.”
“How do you know all this?”
“We talk. When I first met her, she was trapped in the attic, where her husband had stored all of her things. I’ve moved a lot down into her old bedroom and released her to wander the house.”
“Could I see her?”
“Give her a ring, Marcie. If she can stay upright seeing me standing next to my grave, she’ll stand up for anything in later life.”
“Maisie, I have two of her rings in my pocket. If I give you one and you put it on your finger, you’ll be able to see Geraldine, as well as talk to her. I’m coming to consider her as one of my grandmothers.”
She nodded, and I took a ring out of the jacket pocket. She held it for a few seconds and slipped it on her finger, her eyes going wide as Geraldine appeared, in the summer dress.
“Hello, my dear Maisie. You have no reason to fear me. I can’t harm you in any way. I’m in limbo, until we work out a way to allow me to pass on. In the meantime, I’m having the time of my life with young Marcie. I’d been in the attic since before my body was put here.”
“I’m not dreaming this, am I? You really are the ghost of Geraldine Hubert?”
“The name on the stone is wrong, Maisie. My husband was a collaborator in the war and fled to England with a false identity paper. My birth name was Ramie, and I worked in the French Embassy in London until I got sick. Come, let us show you the house. Marcie has just started renovating it and it’s going to look good when he’s finished. Good enough for a young couple and their family.”
She led us back to the bike. It was odd, with the two of us walking through the long grass, while she seemed to glide. It reminded me of the nun scene in ‘Blues Brothers’. When we were helmeted and back on the bike, Maisie was behind me again and gripping me like I was her lifeline. At the house, I parked and watched as Geraldine glided through the front door. I think that she was having a bit of fun with us. It worked, as I snorted, and Maisie had a little giggle.
“She really is a ghost, if she can do that!”
I opened the front door and welcomed Maisie to the house of chaos. It looked like it, with just the few things in the lounge, nothing in the dining room except for a couple of crockery cabinets on one wall. The kitchen still smelled of paint but looked a lot better, while the conservatory held her attention.
“This is gorgeous! It’s a beautiful house, and big enough for a family. It’s a pity you don’t own it.”
“I may be able to if I can start selling some things. I have some Moorcroft vases that I found, and there are my paintings.”
She went and looked at the one on the easel.
“Is this one of yours?”
“That’s one of Geraldines’. It’s been in the cellar for forty years, along with some others. Mine are very similar and we’re thinking that I can use the same signature. If I transfer mine onto canvas from my laptop, I’ll have enough to put on a showing. Geraldines’ all need some repair.”
“Cellar?”
“That’s the door in the kitchen. It’s quite big and there’s central heating down there. There’s a scullery, pantry, and downstairs toilet to the back.”
“Upstairs?”
“Come and have a look.”
I showed her the three bedrooms, telling her that I’ll be starting on the main one this week. When I showed her Geraldines room, her ghost appeared and told Maisie to have a look at her things. I stood while Maisie looked at her outfits, being told where they had been bought, and what gala events they had been worn at. Maisie was entranced.
“They’re all beautiful. Did Marcie bring these all down from the attic and hang them away?”
“He did, and even brought down all my lingerie in those drawers.”
“You must have been one gracious lady. These are all top of the range and labels that sell well in the market today. What’s that stained one doing there?”
“That’s my old painting smock. I’m going to get Marcie wearing it when he works on his paintings.”
She had a look at the other paintings and then I showed her where I was sleeping, the bathroom and the box room, which reminded me that it needed cleaning out before I could work on it. Downstairs, we sat in the wicker chairs, and I showed her my own pictures on the laptop.
“These are wonderful, Marcie. When you’re selling loads, I will be able to tell people that I knew you before you were famous.”
“I had planned to stay in the background, and it would be nice for you to still know me when I am famous.”
“All right, mister famous. Are you taking me somewhere nice for dinner?”
“I thought that we could follow the pie and chips in a playground with a pizza from the best place in town, and you’ll be able to meet a couple of my family.”
I locked up and we took the bike into Reading, stopping at the industrial park first and choosing a kitchen suite to be delivered in the morning. First date and she was helping me choose furniture. When I stopped outside Game On Pizza, we left the helmets in the sidecar and went in, to see my father at the counter.
“Hi, Dad. This is Maisie and she wants to taste one of your pizzas. I see that you still have a couple odd tables. We’ll eat in. What’s the special?”
He came around the counter and pulled me into a big hug, then did the same for Maisie.
“Do you know those square pizzas that I got so angry about? Well, the few that bought them came back for more and told their friends. I now make more of them for gamers than the round ones, and they are made to fit the different boxes. I didn’t go mad with the game ones you suggested, you can’t get pheasant or venison around here. I did start a smoked salmon pizza, which is proving popular.”
“We’ll try one of those, Dad. What about the Hare of the Dog that I suggested for gamers who are up all night, I was sure that you could get rabbit.”
“We do a lot of those in the early mornings. We’re now open from Friday morning to Monday nights, with your sister helping out in the early hours. Sit yourselves down and I get you a small one of each to try.”
We sat at a table, and he brought us out a soft drink, each. I held her hand on the table, and she looked around the shop in amazement.
“Will this be yours?”
“Don’t want it. My sisters have children who will be old enough to take over when Dad retires. The way he looks now, that will be a long way into the future. Me? I’m a budding artist and a free spirit. I was held back in the family, every idea I had was squashed. I’m so surprised that my square pizzas and game flavours were even tried.”
We sat and I gazed into her eyes until my mother came out of the kitchen with our pizzas. She gave me a spine-breaking hug and a kiss, before doing the same to Maisie. She told me not to be a stranger anymore and that our meals were a thank you for the change of direction that I had brought to the business – any time we dropped in.
We each had half of the two pizzas. I found the Hare of the Dog a different taste, with the toppings more than enough to make you think that the meat might be chicken. Come to think about it, it also tasted a bit like chicken. The smoked salmon one was to die for, though. I would eat one of those any time. When we had finished, we said thank you to my parents and had more hugs, before going out to the bike. I was sad, as now I had to take Maisie back to where I picked her up, this morning.
When we were going along between Reading and Twyford, she directed me to a small park by shouting in my ear. There, we sat on a bench in the evening light, and we kissed for the first time. I was certain that it wasn’t for the last time.
Marianne Gregory © 2024
Chapter 4
When I got her home, we kissed some more, and I told her that I would be in the Duke for my dinner on Tuesday. What I had planned with the decorating for the day was out of the window. I was going to put some things in the sidecar and take it to London to sell. That way, I might be able to live a lot better.
I had a dreamless sleep, but the saltiness of the pizza worked on my bladder, so making it a busy night. In the morning, I got myself ready and loaded the sidecar with the pieces that had been in the box room, as well as a few items I had saved from other jobs. I rode into the city and parked outside a gallery that I had sold to before. I had used one of the plastic crates I had bought and carried it inside.
“Good morning, Marcello. What have you bought us today?”
I put the box on the counter and pulled out each piece, unwrapping them as I went. He stayed quiet until the box now only contained the linen that I had used for wrapping.
“I know that you’re lucky, Marcello, but you’ve done yourself proud this visit. What we have is a Martin Brothers vase which I will give you two thousand five hundred for. Then there are the two Moorcroft vases, both early ones, which I’ll give you a thousand each. The rest are nice pieces of Poole, which are worth about six hundred the lot. I guess you can take away a bit over five thousand. A cheque all right?”
I agreed and he wrote the cheque. Before I left, I asked him if he knew anyone who sold abstracts.
“You have a few Picassos?”
“I will have enough of my own work to have a showing.”
“What are they like?”
I pulled my laptop out of my backpack and ran through the slide show.
“These are my pictures that are years of doodling on the computer. I need to paint them. What medium and size would you suggest?”
“Those designs need something with zing. Make them shiny and about twenty by forty or smaller. That’s a nice size for modern houses. Bring them in when you’re ready and I’ll put on the show for you. Let me know a couple of weeks before, and I’ll put up a poster and do a Facebook advert. I expect that they would sell for about fifteen hundred each, with my keeping two hundred and fifty. If they’re popular, we’ll add another thousand for the next batch.”
I packed the laptop away, shook hands with him and went to the nearest branch of my bank to deposit my cheque. I was outside, and about to put my helmet on again, when my phone rang.
“Hello, Marcello here.”
“Marcie, it’s your mum. I forgot to tell you when you we in the shop last night. The specialist sent a letter asking for you to make a follow-up appointment to see him. He wants to know if your disease is any worse.”
“It’s not a disease, Mum. It’s him using mumbo-jumbo to pull the wool over your eyes and charge the NHS a fortune for telling me nothing that makes sense.”
“Don’t be like that! Anyway, I posted it on to your flat.”
“I’m not there any longer. I’ve moved to a house in Twyford, I’m renovating it for the estate agent. It might still be in the box or at the nearest post office. I’ll give you the new address. Do you have a pencil?”
When she was back with pencil and paper and wrote the address as I gave it to her. I bought myself a lunch in the city and on my way back to Twyford I stopped at the old flats and checked the post box, where there were a couple of envelopes. I went to the Post Office to register a change of address. I usually only got begging letters so any I had missed wouldn’t be a worry.
Back in the house I put the letters on the kitchen sink and started to bring that room back to life. I took up the drop sheets and carried them up to the main bedroom, then carefully rehung the cupboard doors and inserted the drawers. It took a bit of muscle to get the fridge back in place. I had just finished running the vacuum around the room when the doorbell chimed. With remarkable timing, it was the kitchen suite we had bought. I unpacked it and put it together. It looked as if a designer had been in.
I took several pictures of the room and sent the agent the before and after set, with the message of “One down”. That’s when I picked up the letters to sit at the new table and read them. The one from the specialist was patronising medico-speak. There was an email address on the bottom, so I got my laptop open and sent him a reply. It was, I thought, too true for him to understand. I just said, “Condition improving, I now see dead people. Marcello.”
The other letter was from a commercial real estate firm in Reading. They had noted the changes to the pizza shop and the new direction of the sales. It seems that they had spoken to my father, and he had told them that the refit design was mine, as well as the idea of the square pizza. They wanted to know if I would go and see them with the hope that I could help them with some old shops that they were about to redevelop.
I rang them and arranged to see them on Friday afternoon. I then rang my father and thanked him for speaking to the agent with such a glowing recommendation. He said that it had been vindicated by my attitude when I came into the shop with Maisie. He wanted to know if I had got the letter from the specialist. I laughed.
“I emailed him that I was much better and I’m now seeing dead people.”
“Surely you joke, son.”
“Dad, you know I have no idea about what a joke is.”
He chuckled and said that he would tell my mother that the letter had been read. He wanted to know how long I had known Maisie and what she did for work. He had a laugh when I told him that she was my local barmaid.
After that, I put all the furniture packaging in the bin and made ready for my evening meal at the Duke. I came down from my second shower of the day to find Geraldine sitting at the table, looking at the agents’ letter that I had left out.
“Marcello, you look like you’re ready to turn a corner if you get to work with these people. No more humping furniture around.”
“That would be good. Where were you all day?”
“I’ve been with you, dear, every moment. You still have one ring in your coat pocket. If you don’t want me around, just leave it here. It was lovely to see the gallery. I used to go into galleries a lot when I was in London. It has changed a lot since I worked there, all those tall, misshapen buildings. That would not have been allowed when I was alive.”
“What did you think about his suggestion for the paintings?”
“He is just dividing his wall space and getting a number. The ones I did are all on twenty-four by thirty-six. If you do everything the same size, it will look like you’ve mass produced them. Jumble it up, do a bunch of nine by fives to sell to those on a budget. Do something large if the mood takes you. I did like his idea of making them shiny, though. You can use varnish as a topcoat. There may be a glossy clear on the market now, seeing that so many other things have changed.”
When I left, I didn’t know if she was with me, but it didn’t matter. She was supportive and had a world of knowledge that I had yet to learn. At the Duke, Maisie greeted me with a smile and a touch on my hand as I paid for my drink. Albert was sitting in his usual spot, so I went over and offered to buy him a meal. I went and ordered his sausages and chips, and I had the mixed grill again. I sat down with my drink.
“So, Albert. They tell me that you’ve been sick.”
“Weren’t much, youngster. They wanted to take a bit of a bump I have on my neck. I’ve got the scarf on to hide the dressings, don’t want to frighten the natives. You look more alive than when I last spoke to you.”
“That’s because I am more alive, Albert. I’m doing up the house that Geraldine lived in and it’s an uplifting experience. It’s a really nice place and I wish I had the money to live in it after I’ve finished the redecorating.”
I pulled out my phone and showed him the before picture of the kitchen, somewhere that he may have seen.
“That’s how it used to be. It’s a nice size but dowdy in that picture.”
“That was how it looked then; this is how it is today.”
“Jeepers, youngster. That’s a good change. Do you do this professionally?”
“That is the very first room in a house that I’ve done. As I do the other rooms, I’ll show you the pictures as I finish them.”
“You have a future if your work stays that good.”
Maisie brought our meals over and gave me a peck on the cheek when she set them down.
“You look after my Marcello, Albert. He’s going to be a regular. Who knows, you may start eating properly if he’s buying.”
“If he’s buying, Maisie, I’ll start ordering the truffles.”
“No truffles here, just trifle if you’re up for dessert.”
We ate our meals, and I prodded Albert to tell me more about his life. We both had the trifle, and he bade me farewell as he left. I stayed until closing time and had a kissing session with Maisie as I walked her home. I told her about my day and showed her the picture of the finished kitchen. When I left her at her door, I walked back to the car park to get the bike and go home. Geraldine stayed quiet until we were back inside the house.
“You really are a good man, Marcie. You go out of your way to be nice. Albert said more to you, tonight, than he did in months while he did the garden.”
“That’s probably because he had a crush on you, Geraldine, and couldn’t show it as you were a married woman.”
She faded from view, and I didn’t hear any more out of her that day. Perhaps I had struck a nerve. The next day, I started on the main bedroom. This was easier because it was just plain walls. I covered the furnishings in the middle of the room, and just had enough space to get everywhere. I had found a small stepladder in the garden shed, so used that rather than a chair to do the ceiling and the upper walls. I did the first coat Wednesday, Taking the door off and putting it in the conservatory. The second coat went on Thursday, even on the ceiling, as someone must have smoked in bed. It was quicker to do, so I worked on the door, and then the door surrounds in gloss white.
On Friday morning, I removed the drop sheets and shifted the furniture back in place. I found enough double bed linen in the linen cupboard and made up the bed. Then I put the door back and vacuumed the room. I took the after pictures to send to the agent. I sent the before and afters and he rang me back a few minutes later.
“Marcello, you are doing a great job, the kitchen is great. What do you want to do next?”
“I thought I might work on the conservatory. That will need a decent stepladder to get up to the framework. It will be a finnicky job but worth it. I might work on the lounge area as well.”
“White gloss on those window frames.”
“That would be perfect. Get a big can because the outside of the windows will need doing after I’ve finished inside.”
“I’ll order the paint and the ladder today. They should be delivered on Monday.”
“Just get them to leave it outside if I’m out.”
“Will do. Have a good weekend, you deserve it.”
I showered and dressed for an interview. Somehow, it seemed more important than it first appeared. It turned out to be very important, as we had a discussion which had me showing them my before and after pictures from the house. They drove me to the site of the redevelopment. I knew the row of shops from my younger days. They already had a supermarket who would be taking half of the site, merging three shops into one and doing their own interior work. What I was brought here for was to look at the other three shops and offer my thoughts on the work.
I had the idea that they were talking to me because they wanted something different. I told them that I needed to know what businesses they were aiming at, seeing that the supermarket would cover most food items. That ruled out a successful butcher, baker, vegetable shop or liquor outlet. They told me to think fast food. Each shop would be on the same footprint, and they gave me a sketch of the footprint and two hundred in cash for just looking at it.
I told them that I would have something for them the following Friday, took a few pictures, and they took me back to my Yamaha. I told Maisie about it on Friday night, and she said that she would help out if she could. Albert wasn’t there so I sat and had fish and chips by myself, with a glass of white wine that Maisie told me went well with fish. She was right.
Saturday, I did something completely different. I uncovered the first picture and worked on the repairs with a very small brush, mixing the paints to get an exact match. It was slow and tedious, but I was happy when I had made all the repairs. When I stood back, the new paint stood out, but not by much. I went to the artist suppliers and asked about shiny clear finishes. There were a number of ways I could go but was recommended to use a modern version of the old-fashioned varnish. I bought a can and some throw-away brushes.
When I got back, I tried a small bit on an area I had not repaired, to see if there was any problems. I went off to the Duke for my usual evening meal, followed by walking Maisie home. I had never been so involved with a girl before. Seven days a week was almost like living together. When I mentioned that to her, she told me that it was a wonderful idea and that it would be nice when I’d finished enough rooms. I laughed and said that I needed to have enough money to either rent it or buy it.
“I’m sure that you’ll be all right by the time the six months are up. You’re only two weeks in and you’ve already got the two most important rooms completed. I have faith in you, darling Marcie. Just wait and see, I’ve got a good feeling about things.”
I went home with my mind in a whirl. Was I ready to settle down?
Sunday, I looked closely at where I had put the clear coat and it looked good enough, so I took the plunge and covered the whole painting. I took it off the easel and leaned it against the dresser, then went up to the bedroom and got another one. I worked on that one with the repairs and left it to dry. Leaning it somewhere else, I did the same with the third. I then sat with my sketchbook and worked on designs for the shops, before deciding that this was enough for the day.
“They look good, Marcie.”
“There you are, Geraldine. I was starting to think you’d gone off me.”
She giggled.
“I’ve just been giving you space. If I was at your side all the time you would think that what you were doing was because of me, and not because of your own actions. When is Maisie moving in?”
“You heard that, did you? I’ll have to finish the lounge and the scullery would need work so that we could do the laundry. There’s a near new washer and drier in there but it looks like the last paint job was in your lifetime.”
“The master bedroom looks nice. If you empty a couple of wardrobes, you could put them in there and the two of you could sleep there while you work on the other two bedrooms.”
“What about your things?”
“Let Maisie look through them to see if there’s anything she wants. I’m freed of the restraints and only need bits of jewellery around the house to go everywhere. Save the painting smock for yourself when you start doing your own things. Oh! Put a drop sheet under the easel before you do bigger works, I know, from experience, there will be spills.”
“I’ll do the inside of the conservatory before I do originals, that way the easel can stay in place. There’s a stepladder coming tomorrow.”
That evening, I had my meal, and, as it was a quiet night, the boss allowed Maisie to sit with me but was needed to stay in case a crowd came in. We talked about a timetable for her moving in. I made sure that we would look for a flat together if we had to move out. When I asked her if she didn’t have any qualms about living with me, she smiled and held up her hand.
“No qualms, Marcie. You already gave me a magic ring.”
“Geraldine told me that she doesn’t need the clothes anymore, so you can look through them. Then we can shift the wardrobes into the master. I’ve made up the double in there, but we’ll need more bed linen, what’s in the house is pretty old.”
“That’s all right. I’ll come over in the morning and we can go and pick some up. My little car needs a run to shake out the cobwebs.”
That night, as I tried to get to sleep, I thought about sleeping next to Maisie in the bigger bed. I must have been smiling all night, because, when I woke up, my face was stiff, along with another part of my anatomy.
I was up early and had varnished the two paintings before she arrived. I had taken the others down to the conservatory and moved the big bag and tubes to the now empty box room. I still wasn’t game to look at them.
I continued with my repair work and could hear Maisie talking to Geraldine in the bedroom as she sorted out the outfits. When she came down, she was wearing the summer dress in the picture. She looked beautiful, so I told her so and kissed her.
“There’s only a few things that are so dated I don’t look good in them. I’ll take them with me today and drop by a shop I know that does retro fashion. I’ve also kept some of the lingerie and put the rest in a case to take as well. It all has a market value, these days. Geraldine had a good eye, as well as a good bank balance, to have the things she had. She wants to know what you are doing about the pots and plates.”
“I’ve made room in the box room.”
“You mean the nursery.”
“Whatever. If we go back upstairs, I’ll lower them down, a few at a time, if you steady the crate from below. Then the can be stored until we decide what we’ll do later. Just give me a few minutes to finish these repairs. Why don’t you go and have a look in the back rooms. There may be things we need that we’ll have to buy.”
She went off and I heard her talking to Geraldine in the scullery as I finished the repairs. These would need the topcoat in the morning. I gave her a call and we went upstairs. I pulled the ladder out of the nursery, pushing the trap door open and extending the ladder into the attic. I climbed up and turned on the lamps. Her head popped up over the sill and she looked around. I opened the trunk and carefully put five plates in a crate, tying the rope so I had a central lift. She stood on the landing as I lowered the first batch.
One by one, I lowered five plates at a time, and she carried them into the nursery. Then I had my first look at the pots. They were magnificent. There was a note with them, in Pablos’ scrawl, telling the world that the pots were seconds due to the wrong colour and that they were a gift to Geraldine Ramie. It was in Spanish, but Geraldine was beside me and translated it. When I had lowered both pots, I looked in the trunk and pulled out some more notes. The only things left in the attic, other than the trunk, was the dummy and the sewing machine.
I tied the rope around the dummy and lowered it, telling Maisie that it would go into the bin. I followed that with the sewing machine. The sewing cabinet and trunk would have to stay. I asked Maisie if she could put the vacuum in the crate and I pulled it up. I dropped the cord down and she plugged it into the nearby outlet. When I had sucked up all the webs and dirt, the attic looked like something that was useable. I lowered the vacuum and then the two lamps on their tripods. With the handheld light, I made sure I hadn’t missed anything.
I heard Geraldine whisper goodbye to her cell, and we went down. I pulled the trapdoor, so it rested against the ladder, and it closed when I took the ladder away. Maisie gave me a kiss and told me I needed a shower before I did anything else. Before that, I took the dummy down and binned it, then did the same to the sewing machine, which Maisie had told me was a cheap one and worthless now. The ladder went down to the garden shed, and the contents of the vacuum went into the bin, which was getting full.
When I had showered and redressed, Maisie rounded up all my dirty clothes and took them to the scullery. Before long, I could hear the washing machine happily working. We nuked a meal each and sat in the kitchen to eat it. Maisie wanted to know about the tubes, so I went upstairs and brought them down. When we opened one, there were several pictures rolled up in it. I shook the contents out of one and opened them up on the table, which Maisie had wiped over. All of them were preliminary drawings for some of his early works, and a couple were sketches of Jacqueline, unmistakeable. All just had PP in one corner, but no full signature.
The next one was similar, but the third was drawings for Guernica, with most of the elements. I asked, out loud.
“What the hell do we do with these?”
“Whatever you want, Marcie. You freed me and these are your bounty. I suggest that you take them into London to a big gallery to get them authenticated, then you can auction them. If the prices have gone up, I’d say that there would be enough for a good part of this house. Those other notes are the provenance for the drawings.”
I fanned them out on the table, and she sorted them into three sets, one for each tube, which we put in. There was one left over which was for the picture in the bag. I took it up and slid it in, knowing that she was probably watching to see if I peeked. Back downstairs I asked.
“What about the finished painting?”
“You leave that until the day you get married. That will be my wedding gift. I can tell you that it has never been seen outside my family, and I expect that they’re all dead by now. You can hang it in the lounge when you’ve redecorated it.”
“Thank you, Geraldine, that’s most generous.”
“Deserved, Marcie and Maisie. You gave me second life and I have no need of any earthly goods. Just make sure the paperwork stays with the drawings. It will give you provenance for everything.”
Marianne Gregory © 2024
Chapter 5
I took my phone off the charger and turned on the laptop. I looked up the Tate Modern and rang the number on the screen. When it was answered, I told them my name and that I had found some interesting drawings in the attic of the house I was living in and asked to speak to someone about authenticating them. When the girl asked me who the artist was, I told her that they were abstracts and some of a really beautiful woman, and that they all had PP in the corner. I added that there were notes in Spanish which I couldn’t read.
She asked me to wait so we sat until a man came on the line, asking the same question. I gave him the same answer and he asked me where I was, and if I could bring them in so that he could look at them. When I asked when, he just said “Today, if you can.”
He gave me his name and how to find him. Before we left, I looked him up to verify that he was, indeed, an expert on Picasso. We tidied up, took the washing out of the machine, and hung it out on the line. Then I locked up and sat in the passenger seat of Maisie’s Fiat, as we went into London.
At the Tate, she parked, and we carried the tubes as we went in the door that he had told us, finding the right floor, and knocking on his door. He was a pleasant looking man, in his fifties, and welcomed us in. All he wanted to know was how I had found the items. I told him that I was clearing a house and the person leaving told me that whatever I found was mine. I also told him that I was redecorating the house for the estate agent. He wanted the phone number of my boss, rang him, and had the statement about my ownership verified.
Then, he led us down into a climate-controlled basement where we put the three tubes onto a very large table. He put protective gloves on and opened a tube, shaking the contents out on the table. I could see his hands shaking as he spread each drawing, holding them down on each corner with a glass weight. The Spanish paperwork were the last items. He picked one up, and looked at the reverse, which also had writing on it.
He said nothing as he pulled out a phone and called a friend, telling him to come down to this room as there were some items that might interest him. While we waited, he took the second tube to another big table and repeated the process, doing the same with the third, which made him stop halfway through spreading them out and going to a water cooler for a drink. As he finished weighing them down, he looked at me.
“Have you any idea what you have brought me?”
“If they’re authentic, I’d say that they are sketches for bigger works. That last one looks like a study for parts of Guernica.”
“Did you study Picasso?”
“I have done since I saw a TV show when I was six. Among the things I found were also thirty Madoura plates, but I need to find out which are originals, and which are genuine Picasso firings.”
“You are one very lucky young man.”
“It has been said, only the other day.”
Just then, another two people came into the room, and we were introduced.
“This couple have brought us some interesting pictures. I have verified the ownership and have just laid them out. Have a look and tell me what you think.”
The three of us stood, silent, as the other two looked at the pictures. One then went to the paperwork and read both sides. Then he looked at us.
“How much do we have in the acquisitions account, Doc?”
“Last time I looked, about two and a half.”
“Looks like we just spent it. These are all sketches for other works, most that I can name. These pictures of Jacqueline Roque are glorious, such care and attention, even love shines from her eyes. The Guernica sketches have never been seen before. This collection is worthy of its own gallery. What is amazing is these notes to Geraldine Ramie, giving them to her. The signature is authentic, and they’re written on the back of his poems. This, alone, is enough to make sure that we have them.”
He turned to us.
“Have you had them valued?”
“No. You’re the first to be seeing them. We wanted to make sure they were right before taking them to an auction house. Look, this is a windfall for us. I want them to be viewed by the public and scholars like yourselves. We can come to an arrangement.”
“If we can hold on to these, we’ll give you an itemised receipt. We need to check the paper and the paint for authenticity, but that won’t be a problem, that’s something I’m certain of, given how good these are. We’ll bring in someone from the best auction house to put a pre-sale estimate on each item. If it’s grossly over our budget, we will have to bid for individual items as they go under the hammer. I hope that we will have enough to buy them as a complete collection. The poems, while just one page of the opus, are rare in themselves.”
“How long do you need?”
“Give us a week, leave your details with Doc. He will be your link with us. Do you want publicity?”
“No, we want to remain anonymous in all this. We just want to buy the house and raise a family.”
Maisie squeezed my arm when I said that. They called a secretary in with a notepad, and we were sat on stools while they went through each item, giving measurements and a description of the drawing, along with the likely work that they were for, even estimating the date as before the known date of the finished picture. These guys really knew their stuff. Each item was given a number and a small piece of paper with that number was put under one weight.
When the girl went off to print up the receipt, we went back up to the office, where we were given tea and some cake, with Doc asking if I knew anything about Geraldine Ramie. I said that she had been living at the house until her death and told him where to find her grave. I had brought the birth, death, and marriage certificates with me and showed them to him. He went over to a scanner and scanned them to his computer, giving them back. I said that they had also been where I found the tubes. He then took us into the gallery and to the section devoted to Picasso, where we saw a couple that were obviously finished works from our drawings.
He got a beep on his pager, looked at the screen and took us back to the office where there was a pile of paperwork. It turned out to be three copies of the receipt, which the three of us signed and dated after writing our names on the correct line. We were given one each, and I gave him my address and phone number. Maisie gave him her address and number, and he gave each of us a card,
When we were back in the car, Geraldine spoke from the back seat.
“That went well. Those three are the top of their profession. What will happen now is that they will prove the drawings without a shadow of doubt, get them valued, and then ask you if you’ll accept payment over a number of years. They will have to have an appeal to their donor base. They won’t leave you hanging. I think the two of you will be able to buy the house by the time you’ve finished it, Marcie.”
“I’ve been thinking, Geraldine. If we have enough money, we can get a camper van and drive to your hometown. That way, you may be able to detect her spirit. If you say that she may be earthbound because she committed suicide, the two of you might be able to work together to pass to whatever other side there is.”
“I’ve told you before that you are a good man, Marcello. The two of you are going to have wonderful children if you bring them up with love. I’ll think about what you’ve said. It would be nice the see the old home.”
We stopped in Windsor along the way, having a good dinner in a good restaurant that catered for the more well-off tourist. With the prospect of money coming in, and my five thousand already in the bank, I had decided that tonight was not one for pizza. We spoke, quietly about our day. Maisie was amazed at being classed as a co-owner of the collection. I told her that it was deserved.
Back at the house, I kissed her goodnight and told her that I would see her tomorrow evening when I came in for my meal. She laughed.
“Make the most of it. I’ll be giving my notice in and coming to help you decorate our home. You have two weeks to put the lounge in order, so I can watch daytime TV while you work on the rest, then you can start painting your own masterpieces.”
She reversed out into the road, giving me a wave as she left. I went into the house, carrying in the paint and the stepladder that I found on the porch. I took a long while getting to sleep, thinking about how my life had been turned over like a piece of soil, exposing new roots to the sunlight. Things were going to be different when the Tate finished their deliberations. Things were different with my relationships already. I didn’t have to propose to Maisie, we both knew that we had found soulmates.
I thought about the money. It would be something that would give me a base to build on. I knew that I could paint in this house, even though I hadn’t started. It was just a core belief. Tomorrow, I would have to start on the lounge, taking out the furniture. It was the main room of the house with wallpaper. It would take a lot of stripping. It was with that thought that I finally drifted off to sleep.
When I woke, the sun was shining, and my phone told me that it was nearly nine. When I was showered and dressed, I went down to get my breakfast. Geraldine was sitting at the table.
“I hope you had a good sleep, Marcie. You did need it after that exciting day. Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”
“I need to start on the lounge. The walls will take a few days to prepare, and I’ll need help to clear all the furniture. To do it properly will need a clear room.”
“I love it when you’re practical. The Tate will do what they need to, but you still have the agreement with the agent to fulfil. Why don’t you put most of that old stuff in the bin or get a charity to pick it up. That way, you and Maisie can buy new. I’m sure she won’t want to sleep in that old double bed.”
“You’re right. I’ll ring the boss and get a loan of one of the guys. We can put everything we don’t need in the front garden with drop sheets over it. Anything else can go in the cellar now we’ve cleared it. I think I saw other old furniture down there.”
I rang the boss and told him about shifting furniture. He told me that he dealt with a charity where any major furnishings that he had taken out of houses went. He said that he would send a truck with a couple of the guys to help me clear the house. I asked Geraldine if she minded it if I dumped her bed. She laughed and told me that she doesn’t need it for sleeping.
So, I went upstairs and stripped her bed and the double in the main bedroom. I made note of what other furnishings were going to go. Maisie and I would have to go shopping next Monday, to make sure we had everything before she came to live here. I felt half afraid, and half excited by the prospect.
When the truck turned up, the boss had followed in his car. Between us, we moved my recliner to the conservatory, in the space where the tattered wicker chairs and tables had been. The old lounge suite and buffet had joined the wickerwork in the truck. The TV went down into the cellar, along with any small items I wanted to keep. While the double bed was being dismantled and taken away, I took all of the clothes and contents of the drawers and dumped them in the nursery, allowing the other bedroom to be cleared as well. We emptied both rooms and I gave the guys the two hundred that I had been given on Friday.
I now had three empty rooms to work with, only one of which had been decorated. I rang a carpet shop in Reading and asked them if they would come around and give me a quote. Then, I started work on stripping the lounge walls. By the end of the day, I had filled the bin with old wallpaper, so rang the agent to organise a pickup and replacement bin.
When I walked into the Duke that evening, Maisie was all smiles.
“Guess what? I told the publican that I was giving my two week notice and he told me that I could finish up this Friday if I wanted. He had been holding off telling me that his daughter had finished school, and he wants to give her a job. I don’t know how well she’ll do, though, too interested in boys and social media from what I’ve seen.”
“That’s good. I had the two bedrooms that I’m not using cleared today, along with the lounge. I’ve got a carpet guy coming around tomorrow to give me a quote. He can give me pricing on different materials, and we can go and choose the colours when you’re free. We can also choose bedroom suites for the two bigger rooms. I’ve put all the things from the middle room in the nursery.”
I had the mixed grill to build up my strength and we had a talk about the future as I walked her home. Wednesday morning, I worked on my ideas for the shops, assuming that one would be an Asian food outlet, and the other two would be fish and chips and a kebab shop. I drew the three different shop fronts and sketched ideas for the interiors.
The carpet man came and measured up all three bedrooms, the nursery, and the lounge. I told him to work up quotes based on good carpets, and to offer his ideas on patterns. I told him what colours the other rooms would be. Then I got the stepladder and cleaned the ceiling of the lounge before I stopped for a lunch. After I had tidied up, I finished painting the clear coat on the last of the paintings. Then I was back in the lounge, rubbing down.
Thursday was all about the lounge. I finished stripping and rubbing, then went in with the vacuum to make sure it was clear. I didn’t bother about drop sheets as I knew that the carpet was coming up, so just got up the stepladder and painted the ceiling. Even with the first coat, the room looked brighter. Friday morning, I did the second coat and then had lunch before showering and changing to see the commercial agents.
They looked at my designs and told me that they would be in touch when they had tenants interested in case the mix wasn’t what I had suggested. I signed an agreement to provide my services as and when required. There was a space for me to add my business name. I told them that it wasn’t registered yet and wrote ‘Maisie and Marcie Designs’. When I got back home, I went online to the corporations site and registered the name, paying the fee by credit card. I would be sent a notice when it had been approved, but we would need to sign papers.
That evening, the publican allowed Maisie to leave early, as his daughter was already behind the bar. He gave her an envelope with her wages, and a hug as we left. He told me to look after her. Instead of walking her home, I took her to the house and showed her the empty rooms, discussed the likely colours and the type of carpet she thought would work. She would go to the big shopping park on Saturday and look around for bedroom suites and likely lounge furnishings. I took her home and we kissed for a while.
On Saturday, I got really into the lounge, completing the first coats. It was split colours, with the side and doorway walls one colour with the fireplace wall another. I did the cornices in a gold, along with the picture rails that a lot of houses of this era had. The door was taken off and the surround painted white.
Because I had done well, I went upstairs to Geraldines room and started stripping the old wallpaper. I managed to get it into the bin, with difficulty. I took all the canvases up to the nursery, and leaned them against the wall, before tidying up the clothing. I had put all of Geraldines’ top drawer into one of the crates and took that down to the kitchen for an inspection.
The jewellery box was interesting, as it contained more rings, a lot of earrings and several necklaces. A few looked like diamonds, others were emeralds. There was one brooch, with a pottery design on it that was surely another Picasso piece. I checked everything and put it all back, then moved on to the other items. There was some paperwork from the original purchase of the house, in her name alone, prior to the marriage.
There was a small bible, and folded into it was a birth certificate in the name of Jacqueline Hubert, her daughter. There was also a death certificate, some six weeks later. So, the nursery had been a nursery before it had become a repository of unwanted items. Seeing that the stepladder had been in there, it may have become that while she was still living. I hadn’t picked up on the pinkish walls before.
I had put everything away and was thinking about my own paintings when Maisie came into the drive. I went out to greet her.
“Hello, darling. There’s some boxes in the back. Be a dear and take them into the kitchen.”
We had a kiss as she swept past me, leaving me to move what she had bought. When I had put everything on the floor, she came back from the toilet.
“Thank you for that. Let’s find homes for everything.”
“What have you bought?”
“It’s called kitchenalia, darling. We now have a proper set of crockery, a set of cutlery, some pots, pans and kitchen knives, spoons, and peelers. When I move in, I’ll be loading up the pantry with good things, as well as getting proper food for the fridge. When I’m cooking for us, there’ll be no more nuking easy meals. Thank goodness you only drink socially, so we don’t have to worry about beer in it.”
We unpacked and put it in its new homes. She had catalogues from the furniture stores with the pieces she liked marked. She had chosen modern but stylish, and I approved. I showed her the lounge, so far, and what she had picked would go there nicely. Of course, all this would have to wait until we had received some money and owned the house.
“It’s all good, Maisie, my love. I haven’t had a peep out of Geraldine all day.”
“That’s because I’ve been with Maisie since she left, last night. You have been busy, I see. When are you going to tell her?”
“About what?”
“About the company. Don’t you think she has a right to know?”
“Yes, you’re right, as usual. Maisie, when I was with the commercial people yesterday, I had a space to put for our company name. I wrote ‘Maisie and Marcie Design’ on that line and made a registration application for it online. We’ll have to go and sign the documents when it’s approved.”
Maisie gave me a huge hug and a long kiss.
“You wonderful man. So, we’ll be running our own business, then?”
“That’s right. I’ll do the basic designs and you can supply the detail input. Colours, materials, accessories. We will be partners in more than one way.”
“I love it! It gives us a reason to get up in the morning, an income stream that we can pay ourselves a wage from, and a way to get tax breaks. You’ll need to talk to an accountant before we go too far.”
“I’ll speak to Dad, see who he uses.”
“Before that, though, we need to go to the supermarket and buy some food. I’ll cook us our dinner, tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll do a roast lunch, if the wall oven works. That can be cooked when we get back from church.”
“Church?”
“If we’re going to get married, it will be in a church with our families and friends. I’ve got contacts with St. Marys, so we will meet at the church door at eight for the eight-thirty service. That way, we can become friendly with the congregation. Who knows, you might enjoy it!”
We locked the house and got in her car. We shopped for meals for the next few days, holding off on stocking up until I had finished the pantry. The artist supplies wasn’t far away, so I went in and bought a dozen canvases in fifteen by twenty, a dozen in twenty-four by thirty-six, and the same in twenty by forty. I asked the man about nine by fives, and he had a pack of twenty boards, all pre-strung, that I could play with. These all went into the back of her car. Back home, we unloaded the food first, and Maisie started getting our dinner ready. I unloaded the canvases and the boards, taking them to the conservatory.
We had a wonderful dinner, and Maisie went home, leaving me with the washing up. I didn’t mind, as she had proved to be a very good cook. We had plenty in the fridge. I hadn’t had a Sunday roast since I had left home. I was drying and wondered if we could invite my parents over for a meal, some day. That was a thought that would never have occurred to me a few weeks before. I went to sleep, wondering what the Tate would come back with next week.
I had set my alarm for early Sunday morning, and was up and dressed, breakfasted and out of the house about half past seven. Geraldine was in the sidecar as I went towards the church. I parked, secured my helmet, and put my riding jacket in a bundle at the foot of the sidecar. Outside the church gate there was a flower seller. I bought two bunches of flowers and walked towards the church door. Maisie was there and came over to me.
“Good morning, darling. Good morning, Geraldine. Why two bunches of flowers?”
“I thought we could put one on Geraldines’ grave, and the other is for her daughter. She’s buried here, isn’t she, Geraldine?”
Marianne Gregory © 2024
Chapter 6
“You have been a busy boy. She is, follow me.”
We followed her to the far corner of the churchyard, where there was a long line of small plots. There, we stood in front of the grave of the six-week-old Jacqueline Hubert. I gave one bunch to Maisie, who knelt down and arranged it on the tiny plot. Geraldine had tears running down her ghostly face.
“If I was mortal, Marcie, I would hug the life out of you, right now. This is the best thing that has happened to me in over seventy years. My poor baby was struck down by what I learned was cot death syndrome, in that nursery. That’s why I started using it as a junk room after we gave away all her things. I couldn’t bear to go in there.”
I took Maisie’s hand, and we went to put the other flowers on Geraldines’ grave leaving Geraldine beside the other plot, talking to her daughter. In the church, we made sure that we sat so that there was an empty seat next to us. That wasn’t hard, as the congregation only took up about a quarter of the pews, with most of them in the silver-hair brigade.
When Geraldine appeared on the seat beside us, she was dressed in full Sunday best of the last century. We could hear her singing the hymns as the service progressed. I wasn’t as uncomfortable as I thought I’d be. My early years of attending the Catholic church had given me the background of what went on, although this service was much more modern and pared down. No incense, no bell tolling, no fire-and-brimstone lecturing. It was almost like being at a lecture on ethics and being nice to each other.
We put some coins on the plate as it came around and shook hands with the preacher on the way out. Maisie followed me back to the house to start the roast chicken. I helped by peeling the vegetables. I was glad that the oven did work as it should, and we sat with our Sunday roast and a glass of red wine each, from a bottle we had bought in the supermarket. Dessert was apple and ice cream, all finished with a cup of tea before we washed and wiped. Geraldine left us alone while we did all this. I hung the dish cloth, held Maisie to me, and we kissed.
“If this is what it’s going to be like when you’re my wife, I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’m looking forward to something else, which is more sausage-like, rather than chicken.”
“You’ll have to wait until we get a bed.”
“Isn’t there one which you sleep on?”
“That’s only a single.”
“Then we’ll have to overlap to stay in place, won’t we?”
We went upstairs to my room, where we undressed each other and did, in fact, overlap quite well. Afterwards, we showered together and then redressed. When we got back to the kitchen, Geraldine was sitting there with a smile on her face.
“You two look like cats who got the cream. About time too. You’ll have to get the master suite before anything else, so that you can spend the night in comfort. And no, I didn’t watch, although I could hear you from down here.”
In the afternoon, I put one of the smaller canvases on the easel, and set my laptop up on the dresser, so I could see what I wanted to paint. For the life of me, I looked from one to the other but couldn’t pluck up the nerve to even make a mark on the surface.
“Maisie, be a dear and bring down that smock for Marcie to wear. It always helped me to start a painting.”
When Maisie came back with it, I put it on, over my head. For a moment I felt silly in what amounted to a large dress. Maisie went and sat in my recliner, and I moved the easel so I could see her. All of a sudden, I knew what I wanted to do.
I used a soft pencil to draw her face, with a longer neck. Over the next three hours, I painted Maisie in a style that wasn’t so elongated as Picasso, or as romantic as some of the masters. I couldn’t stop until it was complete, and I put the brush I was using into the glass of water and stood back. I heard Geraldine in my ear.
“That’s what love can do, Marcello. Ask her what she thinks.”
I turned the easel so that she could see it and asked the question. She looked up from the book she was reading and burst into tears. She stood and slowly walked towards me.
“Take that painty smock off, Marcie. I want to hug you.”
I lifted the smock over my head, and she almost crushed me, and we kissed. We stood, holding each other, and looked at the picture. It wasn’t Picasso, it wasn’t Reubens, it wasn’t Monet, but it was the very first new version of a Rogue picture. It was definitely Maisie, looking like a model. I had even signed it without realising it.
“That’s never to be sold, Marcie. That will go on the wall in this house. All it needs is a frame.”
“It can go in the lounge when we’ve finished it. I want to get some china cabinets so we can keep the Picasso plates that are originals. The others can go to auction. The painting that Geraldine is going to give us can go over the fireplace so that it’s the first thing you see when you enter.”
We had chicken sandwiches for tea, and Maisie left to go home, I watched her drive away and it was like part of me was going with her. I went into the middle bedroom and worked for a couple of hours, now it had been cleared. When I got into my pre-rumpled bed, I was smiling. Maisie was coming back tomorrow, and we would continue to redecorate. I was to work on the lounge, while she was going to reline the shelves in the pantry, with me just needing to repaint the wood afterwards.
She arrived late in the morning, with rolls of shelving cover; that peel and stick stuff that I’ve always had trouble with, getting it stuck to everything but the surface that was intended. She had also been to the locksmiths and had two extra sets of keys made, so that she could have a set and it would leave a spare.
We worked through the day in separate rooms, with me finishing the walls of the lounge, and painting one side of the door as it laid in the floor. I had just finished detailing the picture rail when she announced that she had finished the shelves. As I was complementing her on her work, my phone rang.
“Mister Gambino, it’s Doc at the Tate. Is it possible for the two of you to come into town today. It doesn’t matter if it’s after closing time, us admin types work whatever hours are needed.”
“We just need to tidy up. We’ve been redecorating. We’ll be with you in about an hour and a half.”
When the conversation finished, we went upstairs to the bathroom. Maisie went first and I followed. It was tempting when we passed each other, naked, but what was looming kept us focussed. Maisie drove us in, and we entered the same door and found his office again. The door was open and there was a couple of men we hadn’t met before.
“Maisie and Marcie, come on in. These gentlemen are our esteemed chairman and our chief financial officer. We have authenticated the items that you brought in last week and the Tate wants to make you an offer. Here is a valuation; you will know the auction house.”
We looked at the numbers on the paper. They had valued the Guernica set as a whole at one and a half million alone, with the rest at a total just over two and a half.
“This is a bit of a shock, gentlemen. What are you proposing?”
“We are prepared to offer you the full amount, although we cannot pay it all at once. We could pay it at a rate of half a million each, per year, for four years.”
“Tell me, sir. What would the advantage to us be if we donated the Guernica set to the Gallery, and you paid us the rest now. I guess there would be a tax break if we did that.”
“There certainly would be, young man. You will need to talk to an accountant and set up a company or association that is the vehicle, which will allow you to make it work for you. It’s a very generous offer, I must say. Most would want money for the lot. You haven’t said anything, Maisie. Do you go along with this?”
“I certainly do. The original owner of these would be very happy that the complete works are the property of the Tate, and that the public would appreciate the works of Picasso. For us, the smaller amount will set us up for life. Marcie will be selling his own paintings, and we are registering a company to work on commercial retail shop designs. If it works, the whole thing can be done without our names being made public.”
“Very good. If you give us your banking details, we can sign the amended agreements another day, but we will deposit a hundred thousand, each, as our deposit to secure the collection, with the rest over a six-month period as we cash in our term deposits. Can we visit you, at home, to finalise the deal? It would be good to see where these works have been for so long.”
“When you visit, can you bring someone with knowledge of Picasso pottery?”
We gave them our details and there was a general handshake session and a lot of smiling. We went out to the car, hand in hand, with Geraldine beside us.
“I’m proud of you two, doing that. It has been a privilege to know you both.”
“It’s all down to you, Geraldine. You’re the one who collected it all in your youth. You’re the one who was a friend of Picasso. Why didn’t your husband cash it in?”
“He was a Neanderthal when it came to art. I expect that he would have sold it all once he realised how much they were worth. Lucky for us he’s not around.”
We stopped for a good dinner on the way home. That night we managed to stay in the single bed, but we had to be very friendly to do so. Tuesday morning, we both checked our accounts to find a hundred thousand in each, so it was a trip to Maisie’s flat for her to change, and then on to the carpet store where we looked at the quotes, picked the carpets and colours, and arranged for delivery and laying as soon as they could, with the lounge and master bedroom first. They promised to be with us by the end of the week.
Then it was on to the furniture store to pick the bed and other items for the master, with delivery promised in a week. The lounge furniture was from a different store that concentrated on good timber items. We chose a pair of leather chesterfields with another pair of recliners in the same style, and a buffet and china cabinet to suit. In all cases, we did a direct payment with each of us paying half.
I rang my father and asked him who his accountant was, then rang the accountant to make an appointment. When I told him who I was, he said that he could see me late in the afternoon. When we walked out of that meeting, he would be setting up the Maisie and Marcie Design company, along with PP Holdings, which we could use to run the donation through and to also be the vehicle for any property or equipment that we wanted to get, leasing it to the parent company. He suggested that if we were happy with some of the payment into our own accounts, the rest should go into PP to be separate from our personal dealings.
After all that, we stopped at the Duke to have dinner, and Maisie dropped me off before going to her home. When I arrived, I found a new bin in the front garden. It won’t be long before we’re comfortable in the house. We would have enough money for a deposit. Before that I’ll hold off on sending the before and after pictures until we were ready to buy. I put another couple of hours into the middle bedroom before bed.
Wednesday, I finished the lounge door and worked on the pantry. It wasn’t a big room and there wasn’t a lot of wood. I did it all in gloss white. I started on the scullery, rubbing down the walls. I didn’t call the agent but went to the hardware store to buy some wet room paint with anti-mould additives. Thursday, I finished the scullery, with a first coat in the morning and a topcoat late in the day. This left two bedrooms, the nursery, bathroom, dining room, conservatory, and downstairs toilet. I would work on the conservatory next.
The Tate called on Friday, telling me that they would like to visit us that afternoon. I started working in the conservatory, rubbing the odd bits off the framework. The easel was moved into the empty dining room, along with my recliner. That gave me room to put up the big stepladder so I could work across the whole frame. When I had done it all, I vacuumed the top of the dresser and the floor.
The carpet people arrived, and they set to on the master bedroom floor, as well as bringing in the roll for the lounge. Maisie arrived at lunch time, having been sorting out what she wanted to bring with her and talking to her landlord about moving out.
Doc and the other two that had looked at the drawings arrived later in the afternoon, with another man, this one an expert from the V and A. I apologised for the state of the place and explained that we were doing it up. They didn’t mind and were keen to see where the drawings had been kept. I had brought the extending ladder in from the shed and set it up with the trapdoor opened. I handed them the hand light and they went up to look at the attic. I called up that we had brought everything down that we could.
When they had seen what they wanted, I opened up the nursery, explaining that almost everything in there had been in the attic, with the clothes in cases. The man from the V and A looked at the two big vases.
“These look weird.”
“There’s a note in one, with the provenance.”
He looked at the note and gave it to the Spanish speaker, who read it out for us. It explained that the vases had been made in the early days when the pottery only had a wood fired kiln, which gave inconsistent results, and that they had been given to Geraldine Ramie. He said that the note was consistent with the other notes with the drawings.
After that, they took pictures of the pots. Then, they looked at the plates. There were pictures taken of both sides, with a ruler beside them. There wasn’t any doubt that they were all Madoura, just that it was needed to gauge which were mass produced, and that would take some investigation.
Before they left the room, Doc looked at the stacked paintings. He wanted to know who Rogue was. I said that it was me and these had to be repaired because they were early works that had been damaged in the move here. I mentioned that I might be having a showing soon. He wanted to see my latest work, so we left the nursery and went downstairs, where I saw the carpet was being laid in the lounge. In the dining room, I showed him the picture of Maisie.
“This is really beautiful. It reminds me of Pablo with Jacqueline.”
“That drawing of her was my inspiration but I wanted it to be more real, rather than abstract.”
“You have a good future if this is part of your earliest works. I can see you with pictures in the Tate in your lifetime.”
I thanked him for his kind words, then told him that we were setting up PP Holdings to handle the donation and the bulk of the payments, but that it would be a few weeks before we could open up a bank account. He told me that there would be another four hundred thousand each into our accounts next week and he would hold the rest until I gave him the new account details. This would mean that we could make an offer next week.
When they left, Maisie and I held each other close.
“Marcie, my love. We will be able to buy this house soon. It is so important in our life; I never want to leave it.”
“You’re right, my darling. It will be our forever home, no matter what. I’ve felt at home from the first day I spent here. Every room will be how we want it, and the only things that we’ll need professionals in for will be the bathroom and toilet. One thing I don’t think I can do properly is tiling. I might bring in someone to do the outside; it can be dangerous on a high ladder on your own.”
We went upstairs and looked at the master bedroom with the new carpet, imagining what it would look like with the suite we had chosen.
“Next week, my love, and this will be our room.”
We kissed and went down to where they were finishing off the lounge. They wanted to know if we wanted any of the old carpet, so I got them to cut a piece big enough to cover some of the conservatory floor. I would set the easel on it when I painted, so that I wouldn’t stain the tiled floor. They took the bedroom and lounge remnants away and we told them that we would get them back when we have the other rooms ready.
I took the picture of Maisie into the lounge and leaned it against the wall, I would have to get it framed. The easel and recliner went back into the conservatory. It had been a big day.
We went to the Duke for a drink and a meal, hearing the sad news that Albert was back in hospital, as the biopsy had been positive for a malignant cancer. Maisie dropped me at home, and I went inside. Geraldine spoke.
“Marcie, do you think that you can find out where Albert is? I would like to visit him and tell him that he isn’t alone, whatever happens.”
“We can do that Geraldine. Will you want to show yourself to him?”
“I will. We can look at the jewellery box and see if there’s something we can leave with him.”
I went up to the nursery and had a look in the box. I found a single ruby pendant earring.
“Take that with you. I lost the other one somewhere.”
I put it in my room and made ready for bed. This was galloping forward like a coach and horses out of control. Next week we will have the lounge furnished, and a big bed to sleep in. We would have to go and get new sheets, pillows, and blankets before it gets delivered, so we can make it up and christen it. I was thinking about what we would say to the estate agent when we went to make an offer to buy, as I dropped into slumberland.
Saturday morning, I asked Maisie if she knew anyone at the hospital and to find out how Albert was. She knew his surname, made the call and when she put the phone down, looked sad.
“My friend told me that Albert has been put into a single room. He has refused intensive care as he has decided that he’s lived a full life. They don’t expecting to last more than a couple of weeks. His daughter has been in to see him.”
We decided to go and see him in the afternoon visiting hours. I made very careful measurements of Maisie’s picture, and we went off to the artist supply to get a frame we both liked. I also bought a pack of hanging hooks, picture rail hooks, and a length of chain. Back at the house, I made the frame and added the hanging hook, got Maisie to hold the picture to the wall while I measured the drop. I cut the chain to length and attached it. I got up on the stepladder, where we thought it should be, and hung the picture in place.
I took the stepladder back to the conservatory and joined Maisie and Geraldine to look at the picture. Who knows what others would join it over the years.
We had lunch and I put the earring in my pocket. Maisie drove us to the hospital. We were allowed to see Albert, but he was heavily sedated, and we could only tell him that we were thinking of him. I went to put the earring in his drawer but saw a small jewellery box already in there. I pulled it out and opened it, seeing the companion to the one I had in my hand, minus the top loop. Geraldine did not make an appearance, but when he was able to see his visitors, she would be able to appear when she went in with us.
Maisie was going to cook us a Saturday dinner after we had shopped on the way home. We also bought a leg of lamb to do for Sunday. While she busied herself in the kitchen, I put another canvas on the easel, got the paints ready and put on the smock.
By the time she was ready I had started a version of one of my earlier works from memory. It was a lot more complicated than the one I had done on the computer. I set the brushes in water and took off the smock. After washing my hands, we sat at the kitchen table and tucked into the pork chops and mash. We had finished washing and drying when Geraldine appeared, sitting at the kitchen table. She looked serious.
“Hello, Geraldine, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. No pun intended.”
She smiled a little.
“Since we went to church, I’ve been seeing what I can do. It takes something of mine to allow me to focus. I’ve visited Maisie when you were all sleeping, and I’ve been to visit my daughter several times. Today, I went back to the hospital to see Albert. I heard the nurses talking about his future, and they were saying that he may not last much longer, as the cancer has got almost everywhere. That earring that he had; he must have found it in the garden and kept it. I had no idea that he had a thing for me. It’s a shame, because I would have let him into my bed while my husband was at work. There’s things in your life that you regret, and this is one of them.”
We sat down with her and told her that she was a wonderful person, and that one regret was not the end of the world. She laughed, and told us that she did have others, but this wasn’t the time or place to discuss them.
Maisie went home and I spent a little while thinking about the painting. I started painting the middle bedroom before bed. On Sunday, she came early to pick me up for church. This time, when we arrived, we noticed Geraldine by her daughter’s grave, so we bought a bunch of flowers and took them over. We laid then at the marker, and she smiled her thanks. We didn’t see her during the service and spoke to the preacher afterwards about a wedding.
He told us that he didn’t do weekend weddings but could fit us in on a Wednesday. We asked him when the next Wednesday was free, and he took us to his office and looked in his diary. We were booked in for a Wednesday afternoon wedding, in just over four weeks from today. We were back home, and the roast was cooking, when Geraldine appeared. There were ghostly tears pouring down her cheeks.
Marianne Gregory © 2024
Chapter 7
We were back home, and the roast was cooking, when Geraldine appeared. There were ghostly tears pouring down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry to tell you that Albert passed away this morning. Before he went, he was aware for quite a few minutes. I spoke to him, and we talked about the old days. He was convinced that I was an angel, come to help him die. Whatever, I comforted him as he went, leaving as his daughter came in to weep over him. He told me that he had loved me, and I told him that I had loved him. We made an appointment to meet on the other side; that is if there is another side.”
We comforted her as much as you can with someone that has no substance. For once, we could tell her our news and it was a surprise to her. I started thinking about what we needed to do over the four weeks. Then I had a lightbulb moment.
“If we have the house ready for the two of us to live in next week, we can shift all of Maisie’s things in. The Tate have told us that we will have enough to buy the house soon. If I put a lock on the cellar door, we can put all the valuables down there for safe keeping, and then get a company in to replace the old bathroom and the downstairs toilet and organise a tiler to do both rooms. We can hire a camper van and take a pre-honeymoon holiday to the South of France, to see where you grew up, Geraldine.”
“I might be able to see Jacquie if she’s hanging around. What about the wedding?”
“We’ll be back in time for that, and we’ll have a modern bathroom and toilet to use. I can finish the other rooms after we get back.”
“If we do that, I want new appliances, Marcie. The washer and drier are all right, but we will need a new oven, range and rangehood. The sink in the scullery a bit ancient as well.”
We made a list of all the things that needed changing and that would mean us having to be out of the house. On Monday, we went to see a camper hire firm and booked one for two weeks from the following Monday, paying for it, and insurance, with my credit card. That would give us a full week at home to be ready for the wedding. We also rang the local plumbers to organise a visit to the house. I went down in the cellar and washed the walls, swept, and vacuumed the floor.
We transferred the contents of the nursery, except for the clothing, and, together, we moved the dresser back to hide the door. We ate at the Duke that night and contributed to a fund to give Albert a good funeral. We were in the car, ready for Maisie to take me home, when Geraldine asked us to sit for a while.
We sat and kissed until she got back. On the way home, she told us that she was becoming more aware of things that she had owned. We were parked near the bank, and she had picked up on something, tracing it to the bank deposit box room. Maisie came in with us as we went into the house, moving the dresser so that I could bring the jewellery box out. We went through her things and found a safe deposit key with a number on it. Geraldine told us the code number and Maisie wrote it down.
After Maisie had gone home, I asked Geraldine what was in the safety box.
“I had my better jewels in there, as well as the paperwork for the house. Maisie can look fabulous when you marry. I would really go to town for Embassy events. There should be a few things that Charles de Gaulle gave me when he was President. You had better give her enough time to get a good dress, and you, young Marcello, will need a good suit.”
Tuesday was busy. The furniture for the lounge came first, with the men bringing it in and taking off all the wrappings. When the buffet was set up, I got one of them to help me carry the TV and set it on top. I would connect it all when they had gone. Some asked who the beautiful woman was, and she arrived as they were tidying up.
The man from the plumbers arrived, and we showed him the scullery, the downstairs toilet, and the upstairs bathroom. We left him to take measurements while we had a sandwich. He said that he would be back the next day with his tiler and some catalogues for us. He wanted to know what we would be doing while they did the work, and we told him that we would be away for around ten days.
He hadn’t been gone long when the bedroom suite arrived. We stayed back as they took the two wardrobes, the vanity table, the bedhead, and the bed up the stairs. When they had put it all in the room, Maisie put the dresses that she was keeping from Geraldines collection into her wardrobe, while I transferred my things from the other room. She went down to her car to bring up a suitcase containing some of her own clothes, her cosmetics, her bathroom items and a pile of underwear, which went into the drawers in her wardrobe.
After that, there was only one thing we needed to do, so we went to the local bedding supplies and bought three sets of sheets and pillowcases, four new pillows, and a doona top. The house was generally warm with the central heating. Back home, we made up our bed and put the spares in the linen cupboard. Maisie then opened her suitcase again and pulled out a slinky nightie and gown, which she laid on the bed and smiled.
She took the suitcase back down to her car and we went off to the Duke for dinner, with her ordering us a dozen oysters as entrée. That evening, she drove us home and we went to bed.
We slept late in the morning, having been awake for some time in the night. I opened my eyes to look across at my wife to be who was gazing at me. We had a morning kiss and went off to the bathroom to relieve ourselves. This time, we didn’t have to go anywhere so went back to bed for another hour. We had showered and dressed when the doorbell rang. It was the plumber with the tiler. They had a look at the rooms together and then sat with us at the kitchen table while we looked at catalogues and chose what we wanted. It would be a total stripping of both wet rooms, and all new connections. We chose to do away with the bath we never would use, and to have a larger shower and a two-basin vanity instead. The toilets would be modern and dual flush, and the tiles we picked would be perfect.
We told them that we would be away from the next Monday, so they had plenty of time to do a good job. We paid a deposit with their hand-held unit, gave them the key, and showed them out. Next thing was to go and choose the new kitchen appliances, with them being able to be fitted on Friday. We were barely home when my mobile rang.
“Marcello, it’s James from the V and A. I’ve shown those photos of the vases to a colleague of mine. He’s an expert on pottery. He tells me that those two vases are typical for a kiln with heat problems. He has a picture of the one that was obviously what was aimed at, and he tells me that the colours on yours are consistent with the final colour, had they not been underfired. I have spoken to a friend who has a Picasso Museum in Barcelona, and he wants to buy yours, if they’re for sale. He will pay you five thousand Euro, each.”
“Give him my number. I agree on his price. We will be away for a couple of weeks. If he calls me, two weeks from today, we can arrange for them to be collected. I can’t guarantee safe delivery if I was to package them myself.”
“That’s understood. He’ll probably get me to collect them and give you the money, that way, we can ship them with all proper packaging. Have a good holiday.”
Maisie put her hand on my arm.
“That’s a good deal. They are far too big and rare for us to have them on display. They’ll be enough Picasso in the cabinet when the plates are displayed. I wonder why he didn’t mention them.”
“They will need a lot of looking at catalogues and auction sales to make sure what’s original. You’re right. I tried to think of those vases on the lounge mantle. I’d be afraid to dust. Now. We have another trip to make. We need to go to the bank and see what’s in that deposit box.”
We locked up and she drove us to the bank. My poor Yamaha wasn’t getting much use these days. In the bank, we showed the manager the key and he asked us who had been the original depositor. We gave him Geraldines name and the code number. That was good enough for him to get it brought up to his office. He left us alone to open it.
What Geraldine had told me was basically what was there. What I didn’t realise was the difference between what was in the box in the house and what we were looking at. When she said ‘good jewellery’ it hadn’t sunk in. As we looked at it, she appeared and told us when each piece was obtained, and who had given it to her. We took out the paperwork for the house, as well as a couple of photo albums, and called the manager back in as we closed the box.
“Can we keep the deposit box here, but change the depositor name to Marcello and Maisie Gambino?”
We filled in the paperwork and walked out with the key in Maisie’s bag. At home, I looked at the papers. It was deeds to the house, with all the previous owners from when it was built and up to Geraldine and her husband. We had a light tea and watched a bit of TV in our bright and cosy lounge until it was time for bed.
Thursday, we were both awake a little earlier. When we had showered and dressed, we had to strip the sheets as we had made quite a large damp spot. We remade the bed and put the sheets in the washing machine before we got breakfast. While we were eating, I had a call from Doc, at the Tate. He told us that the money had been deposited overnight and that the next amount would be a month away. I told him that I would give him the account details before that. We both checked our accounts online, and we had both received four hundred thousand. I called the estate agent and asked If I could come and see him, making an appointment for later in the morning. I took some pictures of the bedroom and lounge for him to look at, and then Maisie drove us to his office.
When we saw him, I introduced Maisie to him, and we told him that we were getting married in a month. I showed him my best pictures of the lounge and the bedroom.
“Are we sure that this is the same house?”
“It is. We have had a windfall and would like to buy the house. As you can see, we have been doing it up as if it were ours. When we spoke last, you said that you would take six-fifty as a doer-upper. Is that still the case?”
“Well, I have spent a bit on the decorations with you. I’ll take six-seventy. Do you have that kind of money?”
Maisie laughed.
“We do, sir. Marcie sold some paintings, and we can bring you bank cheques, two in the amount of three thirty-five each.”
“I’ll need time to find the deeds. The previous owner of the agency bought the house as a deceased estate over forty years ago.”
“We have them here, up to the previous owner of the house. I expect that it has been a rental since he bought it.”
He looked at the paperwork and smiled.
“All good. You must have done well with your paintings to have that kind of money, Marcie.”
I showed him the lounge picture again and enlarged it to show the picture of Marcie.
“That’s one of mine. I’ll be having a showing in London when I have more finished. Some are abstracts and geometrics, but there will be more normal pictures. The conservatory in the house makes a magnificent studio and I’m really energised when I paint in there.”
He said that he would draw up a sales contract and would let the utilities know to change the name of the end user when it all went through. We said that we would bring in the bank cheques in the morning.
In the car, I said that the dining room wouldn’t need a lot of work, as it had hardly been used. It was mahogany panelling, with a mahogany floor, and would only need some fresh stain to come up shiny and new. We went to the hardware, and I bought a big tin, and some more brushes. Then we went to the place where we had bought the lounge furniture and looked through their showroom. We saw a big table and eight chairs that we liked, marked down as old stock, and paid for it, with delivery, on the proviso that they would deliver it on Friday. Now a valued customer, it was all agreed.
Then we stopped for a light lunch and went to my bank to get a bank cheque, which took a lot of time. After that, we went to Maisie’s bank for her to do the same. They both wanted to know what we were buying, and when we said a house, they both wanted us to buy household insurance. We stopped off at the accountants’ and left a message about our purchase, asking if he could organise insurance on house and contents, with a million-pound total value. That evening, I finished the middle bedroom, now it could be carpeted.
On Friday, Maisie took the bank cheques to the agent, while I cleaned the dining room. The floor was only dirty and there were just a few scuffs to restain once the table had been delivered. I left the tin unopened with the brushes. That would be done when we got back.
I looked up a gardening firm and asked them if they could come and give me a quote to bring the garden back to life and maintain it on a regular basis. When the table arrived, it was not an easy job to get it in, but it, and the chairs, were eventually in place and they left, leaving any packaging in the bin.
I sat at the table and looked at the two photo albums for the first time. Geraldine appeared and told me what each picture was. One album was all taken in France, before she had come to England. There were a lot of Madoura Pottery, with Picasso and Jacqueline. There were family groups, school pictures, friends of hers, and general pictures of what I now was told was a commune, rather than a town. The other album was all in colour and in England, with her shown in magnificent gowns, bejewelled, and standing with a lot of eminent people. I could tell de Gaulle without needing to ask, as well as Churchill. Both albums were snapshots of her life, and the world in which she lived.
There were a lot of pictures of the house and garden in the second one. Some with a younger Albert smiling for the camera. These will be handy when the garden people want to know what we wanted. There were a few with her in the garden, but none with her husband. With his past, I expect that he didn’t want any pictures taken.
Maisie came home and I showed her the albums, asking if she agreed that the garden should be as close to the pictures as we could make it. She thought it would be wonderful. She also thought that the dining room just needed a couple of chests, and it would a great place to have our family over for dinner. That made me realise that I hadn’t met her family yet. She laughed and told me that they had taken themselves off to Spain five years before.
She went to the kitchen to make us dinner, while I opened up the stain and crawled around on my hands and knees to dab at the scuffs to hide them. When I was sure I had got them all, we sat at our dining table and had our dinner there for the first time. I felt quite the lord of the manor.
After we had cleaned up, we sat in the lounge and watched some TV before bed. Once the downstairs toilet had been finished, most of this floor would be done. When we went to bed, it was a feeling that it was where we belonged.
Saturday morning, the garden guy came around and we showed him around the garden, the album in hand, and discussed what was needed to reclaim the old ambiance.
“Look, you two. Most of what’s in that album is still here, just grown out of all proportion. The grass will need stripping and we can replace it with turf to give an instant look. We can bring in a small tipper with new gravel to bring the drive and walkways back to life. The shrubs will look a bit bare until they grow new shoots, you’ll need to give it a good year before it looks like the photos.”
We agreed on a price and told him that we would be away for the next two weeks, but that the plumbers would be working in the house. He would invoice us when we got home again. After that, Maisie went to pack her things for the trip, and I worked on the dining room wall. It went pretty quickly, as it just needed a single coat of stain to bring it to its shiny elegance. It would be dry and hard before we get back.
I packed my own case after dinner, mainly summer clothes for the south of France. That evening, we sat at the kitchen table with an atlas and worked out our drive in France. I was looking forward to it and Geraldine had started to tell us the places we should stop at for a look.
Sunday, we were back in the church and confirming our wedding plans. The preacher was very cheerful, and we spoke to several people who Maisie knew and who would be at the wedding. That made us realise that we needed to send out invitations. We stopped at an open shop and bought a big swag of invitations, with envelopes, and they also sold us some stamps as well. That evening we wrote out the invitations and addressed them. With the stamps, we would post them in the morning when we went to get the camper van.
On Monday, we went for the camper. I drove it and Maisie followed. We parked it in front of the house and put her car around the back, blocking the Yamaha. We spent some time loading the van with essentials, added our cases, made sure we had our passports, licences, cards and some cash. We would draw out some Euro on our way. Before we left, Geraldine told me to find the jewellery box and pointed out a brooch that I had noted before.
“This was given to me by Jacquie. It was given to her by Pablo. He had it made about the same time as that ring. If we do find her spirit, it may allow you to see her. I can’t promise anything.”
After I had closed the cellar door and shifted the dresser back to hide it, we went around the house, closing windows and locked up as we left on our road trip. We drove down towards Kent, stopping overnight outside of Dover. We had a booking on the cross-channel ferry on Wednesday. Our first night on the road was interesting, but we made the best of the cramped space.
When we were through the immigration in France, we headed south, via the places that Geraldine had noted. We went from Calais down to Boulogne for our first night in France, getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road. From there, we cut inland to Abbeville and then south to Rouen for our second night.
From there, it was down to Le Mans and on towards Tours for our third night, with the fourth at Lyons. The next day we would be near Vallauris. We made an early start as we would be in a lot of traffic, as Vallauris was between Cannes and Nice. All the way, Geraldine had been prompting us with our school French, so that we were able to get on with the locals.
She had told us that it would be easier for us to cross the hills, which I thought were more like mountains, through Digne. We were now close enough to book a site for two nights, going into Vallauris the next day. There was a car park near the Atelier Madoura, and we walked to visit the pottery. To me, it had been developed as a tourist attraction, with cheap copies of Picasso plates. We didn’t buy anything, and Geraldine declared that it wasn’t her home any longer.
When we left, Geraldine directed us to Mougins, where Picasso and Jaqueline had lived, and where she had committed suicide. It was getting towards evening when we parked close to the outer wall of the grounds.
“You two stay here, I know that there are things that I gave Jacquie in the house. I can go and have a look.”
We made a cup of French bought coffee each and sat by the roadside as the sun went down.
It was half an hour before Geraldine appeared in front of us, with a huge smile on her face.
“She was here, and we met. Sorry about taking so long but there was a lot to talk about. We think that there is a way how we can move on. Get that brooch that we picked out and take a hold of each end.”
I found the brooch and Maisie stood next to me, holding one end, while I held the other. Slowly, Jacqueline appeared in front of us and said Hello. The two were now dressed in fifties outfits. Geraldine had her left hand to her face, with the Picasso ring that I was now wearing on her ring finger, along with other rings that we had already seen. Her right hand was in Jacquie’s left, with her wearing the brooch that we were holding on to. Both were smiling. Geraldine spoke.
“We are going to leave you, tonight. I want to thank the two of you for allowing me to be freed and to let me free my cousin. Jacquie isn’t used to speaking to mortals, so I’ll say goodbye for the two of us. Thank you, again. Oh! Before we go, when you paint the nursery, make sure you use pink. And buy two of everything. Have a wonderful life.”
As she said the last words, they both smiled at us and faded from view. We both started crying, whether sadness at her leaving, or as happiness for the two of them. We didn’t move anywhere else that night. Sleeping in the van and peeing in the grass. The next morning, we didn’t need to discuss anything. I started to drive back to England and our home, now without the resident ghost.
Marianne Gregory © 2024
Chapter 8
We stopped at a hotel on the first night of our return, having a shower and a night in a good bed, with someone else cooking our dinner and our breakfast. We knew what each other was thinking. Our future now depended on us, and us alone.
We parked at a caravan park near Paris, and went into Paris on the train, walking around, hand in hand, like lovers through the ages. At a jeweller, I bought Maisie a proper engagement ring. Not overly flash, that wasn’t our way. When we were back in Twyford, we were staggered at the sight of the house when we pulled into the driveway. The garden looked wonderful, and the new gravel crunched under the wheels.
When we unlocked the door, we went through every room as if it was our first visit. The dining room looked crisp and elegant, the lounge was cosy, the kitchen and conservatory were unchanged. The scullery now had a butlers sink and modern taps, the toilet had a new toilet and tiles halfway up the walls. It would just need me to finish the upper walls in paint. We went upstairs to look at the bathroom. It was everything we could have hoped for. We stood there and kissed.
“This is wonderful, darling. There is just the easy rooms to go. They can wait until after the wedding.”
We went down and cleared the van of our clothes, and the left-over food. I pulled the dresser from the wall and checked that everything was still in place. There was a pile of post on the kitchen table for us to look at, along with the door key with an address tag on it. We sat at the table and started to look through the post. Most of them were invitation acceptances. There was an invoice from the plumber, one from the tiler, and another from the gardeners, with a form to fill in to authorise ongoing maintenance.
Maisie was just sitting there, in deep thought, as I called out each one. I looked at her.
“I’m not sure about what Geraldine said. It’s almost my time for a period, I’m going to wait until that happens and then we can try again.”
“What about the details?”
“I don’t want to think about that. Twins! That would be two too much!”
I went over to her and held her.
“Maisie, my darling. Whatever happens, I’ll be there for you. We can get you the best medical help we can. We will be able to afford it. If you are pregnant, we will wait until an ultrasound to find out the number, then we can wait until they can tell us the sex. There will be plenty of time to paint and equip the nursery. We’re a team, and we can move on. Thinking about twin daughters makes me feel squishy inside. We’ll love them and bring them up to be good. Are you with me?”
She nodded and we kissed. She went up to make ready for bed, and I went and made sure the camper was locked, then closed the front door and followed her to the bed. Back in our home, we made love with a fierce passion which would ensure that we would likely be successful, even if Geraldine was wrong.
We had got home a couple of days earlier than expected, but I took the camper back after filling the tank. They asked me if everything was all right, so I told them that it had been good, but that we wanted to come home to get ready for our wedding. I waited until Maisie pulled up and I got in. Our first stop was the accountant, where he gave us the paperwork for the business and the holding company, along with the banking details of both entities.
Next was the estate agent, who had the deeds, properly notarised, along with the welcome letters from the utilities. After that, we went to our furniture supplier and ordered two serving chests for the dining room, in mahogany to match the rest. They would deliver next Monday.
Back home, Maisie called one of her friends, who had put a note in her acceptance. The upshot of that was that they arranged for the friend to pick her up on Saturday and go looking for a wedding dress, and to make an appointment with a salon. I was told to head into London in her car and get myself a good suit in a charcoal colour, which wouldn’t clash with anything she was going to wear.
We had ten days before the wedding, but it looked as if there would be no rest during that time. On Saturday morning, I dressed casually for my drive to London, calling in at the Duke before I went, to organise a reception meal. They had a back room that would sit sixty, so I booked it, telling them that I would give them numbers the following Monday. Then I drove into the city to a wedding outfitters that I had found on the web.
It was strange, as almost everything I was doing had me wondering what Geraldine would think about it. All my early days I had been told that I had no idea, and now I was driving forward with a sense of purpose. Geraldine had told me that she believed in me, Maisie had said the same.
In London, I gave myself over to the salesman, just telling him that the only restriction was the charcoal colour. I walked out of there, two hours later, with an off the rack suit that had been altered to suit my leg and arm lengths. I had to say, that when I looked in the mirror, I thought that I could stand in parliament and not stand out.
When I got home, Maisie was bubbling over.
“You’ll never guess what happened today. We went into the swankiest dress shop in the area, and they asked me where we were getting married. When I told them St. Marys, the lady asked me our address. When I told her, she asked me if Geraldine was still living there. It appears that she knew Geraldine when she was a young girl working with her mother. When I told her that Geraldine had been dead forty years, she said that this was probably why she hadn’t been in to pick up her dresses. She went out the back and returned with two very dusty dress bags. Both dresses were in that album. When I said that one had been worn when she met de Gaule, she told me that if I pay for the storage, I could take them away. I tried both on and both were magnificent. I got both for only fifty pounds/”
She showed me the pictures in the album, and I commented that the jewellery that matched them were in the deposit box. She hugged me and then asked me what I had bought. She chose the dress that would go best with the suit. That’s when I told her I had booked the back room of the Duke for a reception. She hugged me again. We ate at the Duke that night and confirmed the numbers at sixty, having looked at the replies. They wanted a deposit and Maisie said that as it was her day, she would pay for it.
Sunday, we took her car to church and put flowers on the two graves. After the service, we went and cleared all the small items from Maisie’s flat, filling the car. She had rented it furnished, so the only things left had been there when she had taken it. Back home, we stored everything and made lunch. That afternoon, for something completely different, I worked on the painting I had started, while Maisie sat in the recliner and read more of her book. I didn’t know if the smock made a difference or not, but I wasn’t game to find out, so put it on.
I felt calmer as I worked, finishing the painting. Again, it wasn’t much like the one I had started to copy but had more complexity. Maybe it reflected the two me’s that had created the images.
“Darling. I was thinking. We should really have one of Geraldines pictures on the lounge wall.”
“I agree, my love. You go and get them, and we can decide which one. That one has to be there as well, as your first abstract original.”
I moved the dresser to get to the door and brought back the five pictures. We discussed them and picked one to go in the lounge. By the time we had leaned it against the wall of the lounge, the one on the easel was dry enough to move. I would have to get frames for both. I took the remaining four back to the cellar and closed the door, sliding the dresser back.
Back in the conservatory, I folded the easel, spread the drop sheets, and put up the stepladder. I painted the frame while she went to the kitchen to prepare our dinner. It was small brush work, and I was moving the stepladder every ten minutes, but had cleaned the insides of the windows, banished the webs, and painted it down to a level which I could reach from the floor. I went and washed my hands, happy that it was a lot better. I would finish it tomorrow, then most of the ground floor would be completed.
Monday, Maisie was vacuuming upstairs, and I was working in the conservatory when my phone rang. It was the man from the V and A, who wanted to know if he could come around on Wednesday to pick up the vases, as his friend would be flying in on Tuesday evening. I told him that I would rather be paid in pounds sterling, and he said that he would pass that on. When I finished painting the frames, I cleaned up the drop sheets and moved the dresser back to the outside wall. The two serving chests arrived and were put into the dining room. It really looked good now. I wondered about a few pictures for later; still life, maybe. I called the carpet store and told them I had the middle bedroom ready for carpet laying. They said that they had it ready and would be around in the morning.
I put the drop sheets in the cellar and carefully brought out the two vases, placing them on the dining room table. While I had been painting, I had been thinking. Over lunch I told Maisie about my thoughts.
“Maisie. I’ve been thinking about the Yamaha. I haven’t ridden it since you brought the car here. What do you think about me getting rid of it and getting another car? If we have the business take off, we’ll need something to move bits and pieces around. I’ll certainly need something to take my paintings to the gallery. I don’t want a van, but a decent SUV or people mover would work.”
“That would allow me to use mine for the shopping and not tie you down. How would you sell the bike?”
“I thought that I would go to the shop in Reading where I bought it. They may pay me for it, or they may put it in the shop on consignment. Either way, we can go and look afterwards at some dealers.”
So, that afternoon, I coaxed the Yamaha into life, put my riding coat and helmet on, and Maisie followed me into Reading and the bike shop. There, I told them that I wasn’t going to ride any longer and offered it to them. They paid me a bit over half of what I had paid for it, in cash, and I gave them the paperwork and walked away from it. Before taking off my riding coat, I felt in the pockets and pulled out the second ring, which I slid onto the ring finger of my right hand.
Maisie and I then looked in various car yards, not seeing anything that took my fancy, until I spotted a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid at the Toyota dealers. It was moderate milage, but had the rear seats removed at some time, so was perfect for what I wanted. I had a test drive and liked it. I got a very good deal when I told them I would pay with a bank cheque the next day. They said that it would be ready to drive away. I think it may have been there a while.
As we were in Reading, we stopped off at the Game On Pizza to see my parents. They wanted to talk about the quick wedding, and we had to tell them that, although we were now living together, Maisie wasn’t pregnant as far as we knew. We had a small pizza each, and Mum sat with us to find out what we were doing. I said that we had set up a company to design shop layouts and that we were waiting for the green light on a set of shops being developed.
Maisie invited them for dinner on Thursday evening, and Mum accepted the invitation, saying that my sister would be called in earlier. On the way home, we stopped at the supermarket to get extra supplies and some wine that I knew they both liked. We also had to find a shop where we could buy a dozen wine glasses, not having a need for any before.
Tuesday, the carpet people were early and had the room finished by ten. We went to my bank and got a bank cheque to pay for the car. When it was paid for and I had the paperwork, I phoned my insurer to cancel the insurance on the bike, and to start the cover on the car, giving them the details and paying for it over the phone. When they told me I was covered, I drove home, via the artist supplies where I bought the two frames.
That afternoon, I put the frames on the pictures, and we hung them in the lounge. Then I put drop sheets in the downstairs toilet and painted the ceiling and walls. There would be a lot of doors, corridor walls, skirting boards and surrounds to do when I had the time, but, for now, the main surfaces were better.
Wednesday morning, I finished the toilet and packed things away. The visitors came and collected the vases, the museum owner telling me that he had the one that followed them and that the display would show how Pablo persevered with his ideas until he got what he wanted. When they left, I drove to the bank to deposit the cheque. Back at home, I set up the easel with another canvas and lightly sketched an idea that was in my mind. It was a vision that I had seen when we were in Paris.
Thursday was all about having my parents to dinner. We made sure that the house was clean and that we had enough plates, cups and saucers, and cutlery to go round. Maisie had brought a selection of table napkins and rings, as some place mats that she had with pictures of Land’s End on. Because I knew that my mother would want to see everything, we made sure that the bedroom and bathroom were ready for inspection and hung a towel on a rail in the scullery so that you could wash your hands after using the toilet. There was so much detail that I had never been exposed to before. I suppose that I would have to get used to it.
The beef roll was starting to smell good when they arrived. I had peeled the vegetables, and they were ready to go on the cook top. I took their coats and hung them in the small closet next to the front door, discovering a couple of old jackets and some umbrellas that I never knew we had. Neither wanted to sit down before they had inspected the house, so I took them around while Maisie stayed with the cooking.
Nothing much was said, except some comments about how nice the bathroom was, until we got back to the lounge. Mum looked at the paintings and remarked that they were very good, and how lucky we were to know a good artist called Rogue. They were amazed when I told them that I was Rogue, and the semi-abstract next to the picture of Maisie was only finished a few days ago.
Maisie called for us to sit, so I took them to the dining room and poured some wine, then went back to the kitchen to help with the carving. I could hear them talking as I worked, with the phrase ‘how can they afford all this’ cropping up. We carried in the plates, and I went back to fetch the gravy. Dad asked, straight out, how it was that we were living here.
I explained that I had found some drawings in the attic, while I was redecorating for the estate agent. I told them about being told that whatever I found was mine, and that we had sold the drawings and received enough to get the house. I didn’t tell them that we owned it outright; if they thought that we had been able to pay a deposit was good enough. I told them about a future showing of my paintings in London, and that I had been told that they would sell for one and a half thousand each.
That seemed to satisfy them, and we enjoyed the meal. We had organised peaches and ice cream for dessert, a favourite of my father, and went into the lounge with coffee to talk some more. Mum wanted some ‘girl time’ with Maisie, so I took Dad to the Duke for a drink, with him being impressed with how I was greeted as a local. He did me a favour when he asked me how Maisie was going to be taken to the church; something we had not considered. He said that he had a friend who did that kind of work, and he would pay for a car to take her, and then take us to wherever we wanted to go after the reception.
When they had gone home, we stood by the door to wave them off. Then we cleaned up the dinner things while Maisie told me that she had shown Mum the garden while they talked. I washed, and she dried, and it wasn’t long before we were back to normal. There was some wine left in the bottle, so we shared that as we sat in the lounge watching TV.
All day Friday I worked on the new picture. It included Maisie surrounded by Parisian highlights. Pablo had often done something similar, although mine was more realistic. I had the idea that I would alternate my days until the house was done. One day picture, one day house.
After that, time seemed to race by. Saturday, we had an appointment with the preacher, to finalise the service that we wanted. Maisie and her friend went off to London to look for bridal underwear. I made sure that the Toyota was clean and tidy and topped up. We hadn’t organised a honeymoon, expecting to be able to stay at home with some peace and quiet. I expected that we would have some days out, seeing that we had earned them.
Sunday was church and a quiet afternoon. I had opened up the package of five by nines and started playing around with them. Monday I was told that I had to have a haircut, and that the salon was expecting me as they were going to tidy my nails and orifice hairs at the same time. It was strange to be sitting alongside the women as I was worked on, but the operation was declared successful when I got home. Tuesday was Maisie’s turn at the salon, with her bringing home the jewels from the bank.
Wednesday afternoon we got married. I was dressed and then picked up by my old boss, who was going to be my best man. When Maisie arrived in the wedding car, she looked magnificent in the dress and jewels. Her friend was her bridesmaid and looked good as well. The wedding was neatly timed to give everyone enough time to get to the Duke, while Maisie and I were driven away to go home and change.
The reception went well, with everyone eating well and a few drinking very well. There was a record player so they could play a waltz for us. We didn’t do speeches. A lot of the crowd were relatives of mine, who generally commented that they had never thought that they would see the day. A few were from my school days and the removal firm. Others were school and work friends of Maisie. The only one of her relatives was her sister and her family. We had gone to the reception in the Toyota, so drove away in it when we left, leaving the others to enjoy the evening.
In the weeks afterwards, we had some time to ourselves, worked on the house and started the shop projects. I had asked for photos of the new tenants and included a painting of them in the interior décor. Each shop was, as planned, fitted out to suit the purpose. We were paid ten thousand each shop, and we learned how to buy in bulk, the Toyota coming into its own. We were given the details of another project, in Slough, with another ten shops.
I did as I thought I would; one day house, one day artistic, and had enough for my first showing six months later. By that time, Maisie was in her fifth month, with twin girls. Geraldine was right in her predictions. The nursery was now pink, and we had bought two of everything.
The china display case in the lounge now had a selection of twelve original Picasso plates. There were another eight possible originals in the dining room, with the rest proved to be from Madoura but not directly by Picasso. These had gone to the gallery in London.
The house was now finished, inside and out. The outside was done by a professional with the proper equipment. The lounge now has another picture in it, hanging over the fireplace. When we had settled down a bit after the wedding, we finally pulled out the picture that Geraldine had given us. It turned out to be a lifelike picture of Geraldine and Jacqueline, smiling in the evening sunlight, with the countryside of Mougins behind them. Geraldine had the ring that Picasso had given her on her left ring finger, while Jacqueline was wearing the brooch that he had given her, and that she had given Geraldine. It was signed by Picasso and dated nineteen fifty-six. It would make Geraldine twenty-one and Jacqueline close to thirty. It was uncannily close to how we had seen them on the last time Geraldine had appeared to us.
The ring and brooch were now in a display case on the mantlepiece. It had been a highlight when Doc came to visit us, bearing personal invitations to the opening of the new display at the Tate. We wouldn’t be named as the donors, of course, but would be staying behind for a quiet drink with the Tate executive and the new King. That would be needing my wedding suit and Maisie would need something new. Doc took a hard look at the picture, declared that it was a picture that had never been seen, or catalogued. He thought that it was definitely a Picasso, given the provenance, and probably worth several million. We showed him the two photo albums, and he took the early one as a loan for display with the drawings, with all the pictures in it as unseen previously, and of great interest to the scholars.
I was working on my second showing when our twin girls were born. We named them Geraldine and Jacqueline. When my parents were leaving the church, after the christening, my mother turned to me.
“Marcie. You’ve married a wonderful wife and have now given us a pair of gorgeous granddaughters! You have no idea how proud we all are of you and your success!”
Marianne Gregory © 2024