dead memory. Her house stands near a wood on the outskirts of Hawanthorpe, a titch of a village. Since falling hook line and sinker for L da V she'd had this studio built. It dwarfed the family home, and even had two outhouses, said to be for mixing gunge that sculptors like.
Coming on the place, I heard voices. Any visitor's motor would be parked at the front, so I wasn't forewarned. I stopped in case they'd heard my approach, but they kept talking. Your own name springs out of conversation.
'Lovejoy's in serious trouble,' Olive Makins was saying. 'Worse even than the rest of us.'
My mind went, the rest of who, exactly?
'I'm sorry.' Bernicka was in tears.
'You understand? There's no way out. We must do as we're told, Bernicka. It's civilization or the Dark Ages.'
'I understand.' Sniff, sniff.
'If you don't toe the line, Bernicka, all your precious works of art will go to collectors.
Oafs, dolts, vandals. Can you imagine, Leonardo's greatest creations in some barbarian's brothel?'
A strangled cry of, 'Don't, Olive!'
'Even Lovejoy has come into line. He's just phoned. He'll start divvying for them tomorrow.' There was silence, then the soft command, 'Do it, Bernicka.'
'Yes, honey. Think of it as a simple misfortune, like Hugo.'
Bloody Hugo was getting on my nerves.
The day was gloomy, a steady drizzle coming. I went slowly round the side of the house, saw Olive's motor. Nobody else about. I slid in the side entrance. Bernicka had a cat, one of those grey things that looks a bit bald. It kips in a giant furry shoe thing, didn't even stir as I went to the corridor. I heard Bernicka sobbing. Something smashed, thudded. There started a constant crackling and shuffling. I thought, what on earth?
'No, Bernicka. Harder. Get going. It's survival. Sandy will be furious if you default. What was that? Is somebody out there?'
Maybe I caused a draught, made some noise. Footsteps came smartly across the studio floor. I darted out across the grass to the outhouses, trying to cover distance before Olive reached the door and saw me. I dodged round the first outhouse. The second was a tumbledown, crumbling thing. Its rotting door was marked GONG, the letters crudely daubed in faded gothic script on the door. I had a hard time yanking the door ajar enough to eel inside. Gong is old English for loo, a privvy, of the ancient sort they used before Sir John Harington invented the flush lavatory – with moving working parts!
Short of racing to the shelter of the trees, it was the one refuge.
Breathing hard, I pulled the door to. It was an old earth closet, disused, weeds snaking in, rime on the brickwork, dank as a Candlemas cauldron. A slice of daylight cut across me. I prayed I hadn't been seen. Distantly I heard that thump, crash, thump resume, and Olive's reassuring voice insisting, commanding, accompanied by Bernicka's faint wailing. I thought, what the hell's going on? Me to do whose bidding, to the benefit of everybody, because Sandy says Hugo insists?
No place to sit. Don't laugh. Rickety old boards were placed over the loo. Sir John had written a whole treatise on his flush gadget in 1596, calling it The Metamorphosis of Ajax, bragging that it required merely 'a cisterne, not a whole Terns [Thames] full... to keep all sweete ...' It's a document that collectors go mad for nowadays. He made one of his loos for his godmother – she happened to be Queen Elizabeth I – and installed it in Richmond Palace, love his heart. Did more good for mankind than all the doctors and politicians before or since. He forgot to take out a patent, incidentally, but a clockmaker called Mr Cummings patented it nearly two centuries later and made a fortune out of that unique S-bend. A lesson for us all. The brilliant Joseph Bramah perfected it in 1797
– hence our slang word 'braumer' for anything superb.
Where was I? No place to sit in a gong.
No place to sit because of file boxes resting on a stack of papers. I looked. They weren't old at all. How very odd. A hiding place for modern documents? The last place anybody would think of looking, right enough. The instant I heard the activity resume convincingly in the studio I had a shufti. I mean, who wouldn't? I'm a great believer in privacy, but Bernicka had put me in this mess by heartlessly breaking her promises.
Okay, so I'd betrayed her trust, but whose fault was that? Well, mine actually... I paused and thought, hello, what's this? I caught sight of a name I loathed. Good old Hugo? I pulled it out. A summary of a creditors' meeting in London.
The boxes and the stacks of papers moved to the grassy floor, in grand style I sat to read.
Later, the daylight starting to fade, I slowly emerged from the outhouse. I'd heard a motor start up some time before, but thought it best to read on. I replaced the files and papers very much as I'd found them. You can't do much about a trodden grassy floor.
No sign of Bernicka. No light on upstairs, though it was fading day. I crossed to the house. If she caught me, I'd lie that I had shouted and knocked. The cat was gone. I did my burglar's tread and peered into the studio.
The horse statue was smashed to smithereens. Nothing left except a heap of plaster.
The structure was a mass of twisted wire. Tools lay all about. Wire cutters, hammers, mallets and a crowbar. My respect for Bernicka rose. Don't cross a sculptress. Bernicka could have fought a war with that tackle.
Then I remembered her weeping, that terrible wail and gulping sound she'd made as she'd destroyed her beloved Leonardo's sculpture while Olive had cajoled her. Uneasily I tried to shout upstairs but had no voice. The house was eerily quiet. I toured the ground floor, kitchen to front door, hall to living room. She wasn't there. Bernicka would never leave without locking up.
Finally I cleared my throat at the bottom of the stairs and called up, 'Bernicka? It's me, Lovejoy.' Then another effort, almost louder this time.
'Hello, love? You up there?' I tried humour. 'It's me. I thought I'd see how your, er, horse was getting on. You okay?'
