Faces of Fear (22 page)

“Yes, Mr Rider, I lost the bloody chairs. They went for eight thousand and I just couldn't match it.”

“That's a terrible pity. They're fine chairs, the both of them.”

“God knows how Ian's going to get his money back. They're scarcely worth six.”

“Maybe he wasn't looking to get his money back. Maybe he just didn't want you to have them. You know what some of these dealers are like: dogs in the manger. Especially when it comes to women. They're very sensitive about women, and a whole lot of old queens, most of them.”

“I'd pack and go home except I haven't bought anything yet.”

He smiled at her and shook his head. “You mustn't start thinking like that. No good ever came of giving in.”

She didn't reply. She didn't really know what to say. After a while she left him standing by the rail and went back into the hotel. In the lobby she met Ian Caldecott, looking bright-eyed and pleased with himself. “You gave me quite a run for my money, there, Sarah,” he effused.
“You must let me buy you a glass of champagne to commiserate.”

“You really are a stupid old bastard, aren't you?” Sarah retorted. “You could have agreed not to bid against me and we could have shared the profit. You knew how badly I wanted those chairs. Now neither of us have ended up with anything.”

“Just remember who taught you everything you know,” said Ian.

“I haven't, and I never will. Because one thing I know now is that a pupil should never trust her teacher. Especially when her teacher grows jealous.”

She went upstairs to her room, and threw her prospectus onto the table. Outside her window, the gardens were dappled with sunlight, and even the mountains were clear, for a while. Seáth Rider was still leaning against the rail, but he wasn't watching the water. He was watching her; although he was too far away to see if he was serious or smiling. She stood close to the curtains, so that he wouldn't be able to see her, and she wondered who he really was, and why he took such an interest in her. Perhaps he behaved in the same way with every woman he met. But she had never seen him talking to any other woman the way he talked to her; and she had never seen him staring at any other woman's window.

She began to feel that he was intimately connected with her, in an inexplicable way – that their futures were somehow intertwined. A nemesis, a shadow, a promise of unknown days to come. The kind of man you meet in dreams.

She came back to the window almost an hour later and he was still watching.

The next day was fresher and cooler and so she dressed
in jeans and a white cable-knit sweater. After breakfast, she drove first to the little village of Sneem where she sat in O'Sullivan's Pub with a half of Guinness and wrote postcards to all of her friends. Then she went on to the west, through the fields and the mountains, with bright sandy glimpses of the Kenmare estuary off to her left, and then the Atlantic Ocean, pale and green, listlessly heaping its seaweed onto the beaches.

She drove as far as the little town of Carhicvean and then she parked by the side of the main street and went looking for antique shops. She found a good prie-dieu with a Berlin tapestry seat; and a china display cabinet, a vitrine, which she bought for less than £400; a Sutherland fall-leaf table; and a beautiful papier mâché chair, an original Jennens & Bettridge, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gilded with flowers.

She was leaving the last antique shop when she thought she saw her ex-husband Ken turning into a pub along the street. He couldn't have been Ken; but he was wearing the same blue linen jacket that Ken always wore when he painted, and he had the same shock of brown hair, and even the same shoes, those awful tan-coloured Hush Puppies that he wore every day of the week.

Sarah turned back to the woman in the antique shop, and said, “Have you ever seen anybody dead?”

“Well, there's a question,” said the woman, all pink-cheeked and flustered. “I saw my ma and my da in their caskets, of course; and my Uncle Joe.”

“But you've never seen anybody dead walking around the streets? Or anybody who couldn't conceivably be there, dead or alive?”

The woman was wiping her hands on a tea-towel. She gave Sarah a peculiar, bulgy-eyed look. “I can't say that I have. And I think if I did I'd run a mile.”

“I'm sorry,” said Sarah. “I'll arrange for the shipping and let you know.”

She walked cautiously along the street. The afternoon was windy now, and the moving clouds were reflected in every window, like televisions in a television store, with all the same programme playing. The pub was painted liver-red outside, with decorative shamrocks. O'Hagans Pub & Restaurant, Guinness, Murphys and Caffreys, and those were just to quench you thirst before you started on the Bush.

She stepped inside. A single doleful man with grey hedgehog hair and cavernous cheeks was wiping up glasses. He looked like Samuel Beckett's untalented brother.

“Are you open?” she asked. He turned and blinked at her as if he had never expected to have a customer, never, not of any early afternoon.

“Of course we're open. How would you have got in.”

Sarah turned back toward the door. “I would have – yes, I see. I see what you mean.”

“We're quiet of course. There's not much trade on a Tuesday. Would you care for a drink?”

“Yes, yes please. A Guinness will do.”

She turned and there he was, sitting just in front of a strong triangle of sunshine, his hand on the table with its silver ring, a glass of whiskey in front of him catching the light. She left her Guinness on the bar to settle and walked across to him and dragged out a chair.

“Something's going on,” she told him, before he could speak. “Something I don't understand. I thought I saw my ex-husband coming in here, but now it's turned out to be you.”

“You didn't have to come in here,” he said.

“No, I didn't. But I did. I don't know how you managed
to look like Ken. I can't begin to imagine how you know what Ken looks like. But it was you, wasn't it? And last night, out on the island, my father was you. You have a knack for it, don't you? Knowing what I want, knowing what I need. What is it, hypnotism, something like that? Or do I make myself so bloody obvious that you don't even need to hypnotise me? Is it a trick? What is it? And what do you want?”

Seáth Rider looked at her ruefully. “Why are you being so vexed with me, Mrs Bryce, when all I want to do is to please you?”

“What? By following me? By making me think that—”

“Please, Mrs Bryce. I'm not making you think anything. Whatever you think, whatever you want, that's up to you.”

She said, “Anyway, I'm leaving tomorrow morning, first thing. I didn't get the Daniel Marot chairs; but I think I've made enough to cover my expenses.”

Seáth Rider lifted his glass. “I'll drink to that, Mrs Bryce.”

And for all that she didn't understand him, and found him so strange and threatening, Sarah lifted her glass, too.

When she returned to her room at the Parknasilla, the chairs were there, waiting for her. She walked in and there they were, side by side, slightly angled, as if two people had been sitting in them, talking, only minutes before. She approached them in disbelief, and touched them, and they were real. Solid, carved, but brilliantly imagined, with tall backs and stretchers that curved as if they were alive. She was always amazed how few people realized that furniture – just as much as paintings, or sculptures, or music – didn't begin to exist until somebody had imagined it, and turned
that imagination into something that other people could see and touch. Yes, and even sit on.

She sat on her bed and stared at them. Surely Ian Caldecott couldn't have been so remorseful that he had let her have the chairs. Even if he had, he wouldn't have taken them up to her room, surely? Once they were sold, they were due to be crated and shipped directly back to London.

She had a strange feeling that Seáth Rider was involved in this. She had no proof, of course; but it seemed like his style. She just hoped that he hadn't bullied Ian Caldecott into letting her have them; or something worse. She picked up the phone and asked reception to put her through to Mr Caldecott's room.

“I'm sorry, Mrs Bryce, would you repeat the name?”

“Caldecott, Ian Caldecott. I don't know his room number, but he's one of the antique dealers.”

“Caldecott did you say? Well there's no one of that name registered here.”

“There must be. I saw him this morning.”

“Are you sure he was resident with us, Mrs Bryce, and didn't just come for the auction?”

“Of course I'm sure. He even told me how much he liked his room. Listen – why don't you put me through to the auctioneers? They may know where he is.”

She waited for nearly five minutes, listening to an electronic version of
Greensleeves
over and over again. Finally a cultured voice said, “O'Shaughnessy and Drum, Mr Drum speaking.”

“Oh hallo, Mr Drum. This is Mrs Bryce.”

“Well now, Mrs Bryce. What can I do for you. Congratulations on the chairs, by the way. You got yourself a bargain there, wouldn't you say?”

“But I didn't get the chairs, Ian Caldecott outbid me.”

“I'm sorry?”

“I was outbid by Mr Caldecott. But now the chairs have turned up here in my room.”

“Where you said you wanted them, Mrs Bryce, so that you could have a chance to admire them for a while before we packed them up for shipping.”

Sarah was so confused that she could hardly speak. “Mr Drum – there must be some mistake. I didn't – I didn't even—”

“I'm sorry, Mrs Bryce, did we misunderstand your instructions somehow? If you wish us to pack up the chairs directly, we will be only too happy to oblige.”

“But they're not my chairs, Mr Drum! Mr Caldecott bought them!”

There was an embarrassed silence. Then Mr Drum said, “The records show otherwise, Mrs Bryce. There were two principal bidders, yes; and one of them was you. But the other was Mr James McGuinness, and he stopped bidding at £5,500, which is when the chairs were knocked down to you.”

“I'm going mad,” said Sarah. “Either that, or you're going mad. What about Mr Caldecott?”

Another silence, even longer than the first. Then, “I'm sorry, Mrs Bryce. I hate to contradict a favoured client, such as yourself. But to my knowledge there was no Mr Caldecott present at the auction; and I have never heard of any antique dealer by that name. The only Caldecott I know of is the children's book illustrator, Randolph Caldecott. And of course he died more than a hundred years ago.”

“You've never heard of Ian Caldecott?”

“No, Mrs Bryce. Never.”

Sarah lowered the receiver. She could hear Mr Drum's tiny voice saying “
Hello
?
Hello
?” like an insect in a
matchbox. She had seen Mr Drum talking to Ian Caldecott; she had seen him shake his hand. How could he possibly say that he had never heard of him?

“
Hello
?
Hello
?” Mr Drum persisted; so Sarah hung up.

She went back to the chairs and stood between them, with a hand on each one. They were beautiful; they were almost magical; and in some extraordinary way they seemed to be hers. But how? And what had happened to Ian Caldecott? At a stretch, she could imagine that Ian had felt guilty after outbidding her, and had let her have the chairs as a gesture of goodwill. But that sort of spontaneous generosity wasn't really in his nature. She had seen him talk to another woman dealer for almost half an hour, dissuading her from buying a cane-seat Regency chair because it was ‘obviously fake', and then buying it himself for less than half what it was really worth.

She was still looking at the chairs when there was a quick, sharp knock at her door. She went to open it, expecting the maid. Instead, it was Seáth Rider, looking pale but excited. He stalked into the room before she could stop him, and walked straight up to the chairs, although he didn't touch them.

“There! They're very fine, aren't they! And are you pleased with them, now?”

“I think they're beautiful. But they still don't belong to me.”

Seáth Rider twisted around and stared at her, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean, they don't belong to you? You bid for them fair and square, didn't you? You paid for them?”

“Ian Caldecott outbid me.”

“Ian Caldecott? Now who would he be?”

“You know exactly who he is. God, you're beginning to sound like all the rest of them now.”

Seáth Rider approached her and his face was very serious; almost tragic. “There is no Ian Caldecott, Mrs Bryce. There never was. You bought those chairs. Look at your chequebook if you want the proof.”

Sarah went to her purse, opened it up, and took out the Gucci chequebook wallet that Ken had given her for her birthday, after selling two paintings to the Oswald Gallery in Bond Street. That was probably the only time that he had ever had any money of his own. She opened her chequebook, and there it was, the checkstub, in her own handwriting, in her own distinctive violet ink ‘
O
'
Shaughnessy & Drum, 4,500, DM Chairs'.

“I didn't write this,” she said, her voice wavering. She stepped up to Seáth Rider and shook the chequebook under his nose. “
I didn't write this
!”

Seáth Rider shrugged, and said. “Take it to a handwriting expert if you wish. You bid for the chairs; you topped the bidding; and you took out your chequebook. Confident as any woman I've ever seen; a queen amongst dealers, I'd say.”

“Something's happened, hasn't it?” said Sarah.

“Happened? What would you mean by that?”

“Something's happened to Ian Caldecott … you've bribed him, or you've threatened him, or something. He wouldn't have given me those chairs for anything!”