Burley Cross Postbox Theft Read online

  At this point I leap into the air again, horrified (I’ve only just sat down) because Glenys was their revolting, senile old neighbour who died earlier this year. The fat, angry one – incontinent. Pelted Simpson with rotten apples from her garden when he barked at her cat that time. (The cat! Oh, my God! The cat – Chester, her old cat which they’ve adopted – is still HUUUUGE! He’s on a diet, but he’s still massive. The sisters call him ‘Puffen-bomf’ [?!]. It’s like this little joke they have going on between them – most odd – and when I asked if either of them spoke German they just exchanged amused glances and shook their heads.

  He has this weird, fatty deposit near his back-end, to the right of his tail, but kind of tucked underneath it, so his bottom puffs out on one side. Apparently it’s perfectly harmless, but once you’ve noticed it, it’s impossible to stop staring at it. It’s hypnotic! You would be obsessed by it, I swear! It’s like this lopsided bustle. Most humiliating for a feline, I’d have thought. Although he doesn’t seem to realize. I mean he’s so fat it’d be a miracle if he could even see that far back.)

  Anyhow, it transpires I’ve been cheerfully sitting on the cushion they always used to put out for their incontinent neighbour! I’m appalled (I’m wearing my favourite pair of beige cargo pants from Joseph)! But then Tilly notices my expression (hard to miss it, quite frankly) and says, ‘Oh no! No! Please don’t be offended! It was covered in plastic! We’d covered all the cushions in plastic by the end, because you could never predict… I mean we were always very careful to protect her feelings – we just pretended it was one of my little idiosyncrasies, because I make all the cushions myself, by hand… And I’ve washed it since, anyway. About a dozen times…’

  So I sit back down again, nervously. Then she starts going on about the duck – Eliot. She loves that duck. It follows her around the place, wherever she goes, getting into all manner of mischief. Do you remember the duck? Did I tell you about it at the time? I must have! He was like my little in on the whole Threadbare situation…

  Well, I was cycling past the cottage – literally the first week after all the renovations on The Winter Barn had been completed – when Simpson suddenly disappeared from view and I realized – all too late – that the little shit had somehow managed to force his way into their garden (as it transpired, through a new badger hole running under their hedge. I must’ve told you?!).

  So I bang on my brakes – stop – listen – hear barking – leap off the bike (dry bum) and charge into the property through the gate.

  Simpson is nowhere to be seen (but is still producing an unholy racket). I run around the cottage into the back garden and there I see Rhona kicking Simpson away from her (booting him, savagely – not very Christian behaviour!) while holding a bloodied hen in the air above her head (a white hen. Drenched in blood. Like something from a voodoo ritual). Total, total nightmare!!

  I charge into the fray, grab Simpson’s collar and somehow manage to wrangle the little sod.

  ‘I hate Highland Terriers!’ Rhona announces (face like thunder, but still icy calm). ‘They’re such an awful, noisy, stupid, pointless, aggressive little breed.’ (Pointless?!)

  Meanwhile – as Simpson barks on – she’s trying to determine how a bad a state the poor hen is in (or was it a chicken? Are chickens and hens the same thing? I don’t know! I’m just a foolish city girl! she wails). At this point Tilly emerges from the cottage, unfastened housecoat flying out behind her (Yes! She wears a housecoat! Isn’t that adorable?!).

  ‘Is it Gretel?’ she pants. ‘Oh please, please don’t let it be…’ Rhona doesn’t respond, just yanks at the hen’s neck (cue: horrible clicking, cracking sound) and the poor creature is kaput. No discussion. No real ceremony, to speak of (and by the fierce look in her eyes I suspect she’s more than ready to perform exactly the same ‘mercy’ on Simpson and myself).

  Tilly bursts into tears. She loves Gretel (I’m glancing around, furtively, trying to locate a gingerbread henhouse. For the record: there isn’t one).

  Oh balls! I’m thinking. Another potential dinner invite goes up in smoke…

  And that was that, pretty much. I beat a hasty retreat.

  But I felt so bad about it, Ivo! I mean that look on poor Tilly’s face!

  Anyway, to cut a long story short, I bought them a replacement hen (another white one. I thought it was the least I could do). I picked it up at a local farm and took it over to the cottage, two days later, in a small cardboard box (sans Simpson, this time).

  Well, I knock on the door and Rhona answers it. ‘Now what?’ she demands (Not ‘hello’ or ‘so how are you?’ She’s absolutely terrifying. About seven foot tall. Face like a bucket). ‘I’ve bought you a replacement hen,’ I say.

  She stares at the box, scowling. ‘That really wasn’t necessary,’ she says, and makes a tiny gesture with her hands as if to encourage me to take it away again.

  Thankfully, Tilly then appears at her shoulder, all smiles. ‘A new hen?’ she coos. ‘But that’s so incredibly kind of you! Come in! Come in!’

  This is the moment (or soon to be the moment) when I see Threadbare, inside, for the first time (and that, I know for sure, is something I have told you about. In excruciating detail).

  We go through to the kitchen and I place the box down on to the kitchen table, which is covered with the most amazing, lightly waxed 1940s-style tablecloth, decorated with all these tiny little ears of wheat (sample piece enclosed. I cut off a corner this afternoon when Tilly disappeared into the pantry to fetch me a dozen eggs).

  Tilly opens the box and peeks inside. A short pause follows, and then, ‘Oh my goodness!’

  Rhona promptly elbows Tilly out of the way and peers inside the box herself. There’s an audible intake of breath. She glares up at me as if I’ve committed the world’s most heinous, criminal act (I hadn’t even stolen one of their saucers yet! I can’t wait to show it to you when I come back into town. It’s darling! Pale yellow, decorated with jagged fronds of blossoming mimosa. I’m convinced we can manufacture something along similar lines, dead cheap, at that pottery in Croatia I told you about).

  ‘Who sold you this?’ she demands. I stutter the name of the farm.

  ‘He obviously saw you coming a mile off!’ she snaps. And then (just in case I was in any remaining doubt), ‘He keeps his livestock in the most appalling conditions. He’s worse than a criminal. You were a fool to go there, an absolute fool!’

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ Tilly repeats. ‘Is there something wrong with it?’ I ask (peering over at the inoffensive little ball of fluff myself).

  ‘No. I mean yes. I mean it’s actually… well… a duck,’ Tilly informs me, wincing, apologetically.

  ‘A duck?’ I echo, mystified. ‘Quack quack,’ Rhona smirks. ‘You’ll need to take it back, I’m afraid.’

  She begins to close the lid on the box.

  ‘But she can’t!’ Tilly squeaks, pulling the box towards her and opening it up again, ‘She can’t take it back! Look how bedraggled the poor thing is! He’s half-starved!’

  ‘A duck?’ I repeat, horrified. ‘Are you sure?’ (I mean how was I meant to know? I’m a designer, not a vet!)

  ‘It’s a Muscovy,’ Rhona hisses. ‘A Lavender Muscovy. The ugliest and most pugnacious of all the ducks…’ ‘This puts me in mind of “The Ugly Duckling”,’ Tilly interjects, trying to make light of it. ‘The children’s story,’ she elucidates (having garnered no immediate response).

  ‘Although, if I remember correctly,’ Rhona interrupts her, ‘that ugly duckling turned out to be a swan, whereas this “hen” is an ugly duckling. It’s a very ugly duckling. And when it grows up, it will be a very ugly duck.’

  Of course by this stage Tilly has the little scrap out of the box and is holding him in her hand and staring, devotedly, into his ducky face. She is in love.

  ‘We could get Edo to build him his own, special duck-house,’ she says, then, before Rhona can object, ‘and we could sink that old bath – the one in the front
garden I always plant up with hyacinths…’

  (I have shown you a photo of ‘that old bath’, Ivo, in full bloom. I actually took it when I was first up here, house hunting. Remember? You said it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen – four brass calf’s hooves supporting a crazily elongated chamber pot. China. Not enamel. Never seen another one like it… Well, they’ve sunk it in the ground now and turned it into a pond. Please, please stop crying. I’ve shed enough tears over it myself, already.)

  It’s at this point (I’ve been staring around the kitchen, my design-dar starting to sound loudly in my ear. I mean they have a treasure-trove of stuff in that room…) that my eye alights on a series of exquisite, antique medicine bottles on the dresser, each one delicately hand-painted with scenes from Greek mythology.

  ‘What are these?’ I say, nudging one, awed.

  ‘Urgh. Tilly does those,’ Rhona grunts.

  ‘It’s just a silly hobby,’ Tilly interjects. ‘I find them in the garden and then I…’

  ‘Could I buy one off you by any chance?’ I demand (heart a-pitter pat).

  ‘Absolutely not. Don’t be ridiculous! She couldn’t possibly sell them,’ Rhona exclaims, shocked. ‘They’re just therapy for her epilepsy. They’re not worth tuppence!’ ‘No. No. I couldn’t possibly,’ Tilly echoes, mortified, her cheeks pinkening.

  ‘Tilly’s always been the most terrible pest with a paintbrush,’ Rhona expands, taking the duck from Tilly’s hands now, and staring into its duck-face, herself. ‘If something stays still for long enough then she’s bound to start dabbing away at it – literally anything she can get her hands on – the curtains, the crockery, the table, the walls…’

  The wallpaper, Ivo! A perfect bunch of wilting bluebells tied together with a piece of string! Hand-printed and painted (I ripped off a piece from behind the door last week after ‘spilling’ my cup of tea on the floor so that Tilly would rush off to fetch a mop. Enclosed).

  ‘You painted everything in here by hand?’ I all but gurgle. ‘I’ve run out of space, so I’m concentrating on glass now,’ she sighs, ‘old marmalade jars, jam jars, little broken fragments which I unearth in the garden that I fancy the look of… Sometimes Rhona even lets me buy the odd piece from Oxfam or Save the Children if there’s a special occasion coming up.’

  ‘Her birthday or something,’ Rhona generously concedes. I don’t actually respond to this. I’m just devouring the room with my eyes. I’m just drinking it all in, almost nauseated, like a bee overdosing on nectar.

  Oh, Ivo, Ivo! All that unbridled creativity! It’s stupefying! It’s sickening! It’s deranged! She just exudes it, quite unconsciously. She perspires it. She exhales it. But not a shred of ambition! Not so much as an ounce of it! She just has this… this astonishing eye, this instinct. They both do! And it’s not just the stuff she creates herself – the stuff she makes – but the stuff she owns, the stuff she acquires. It’s whatever she thinks! It’s whatever she touches! It’s in each teaspoon, each tea-cloth, each pepper-pot, each ladle…

  It’s a gift! It’s a knack! It’s like every object, every artefact is just another small part of this infinitely complex and coherent Threadbare Cottage Design Universe – a wonderfully evocative stage setting for the gentle Theatre of Threadbare; a further sweet detail in ‘The Threadbare Diorama’.

  Yet every time I try and talk to her about it – talk business with her – she just closes down. She refuses to engage. She either goes completely blank, starts blushing, makes her excuses and flees the room, or abruptly changes the subject (‘It’s almost time to start chitting the potatoes!’, ‘I’m so looking forward to spring this year!’, ‘We really should replace that gate. Can you hear it creaking? Isn’t it maddening?’, ‘The parrot has learned a new word! Barnabas! Barnabas! Say “soup”!’).

  I’m at my wits’ end, Ivo! She’s driving me insane! I mean what am I to do? Where am I to turn? How can I possibly hope to help someone who refuses to help herself? More to the point, how long can I be expected to just stand quietly by and let all this astonishing talent go to waste? It would be wrong to do so, surely? Obscene! Little short of criminal!

  I walked into her kitchen the other week, and there she was (this quaintly eccentric English dear, this unquenchable font of British Design Talent) sitting at one end of the kitchen table, totally engrossed in decorating a broken ashtray she’s found (using this old brush with one – one – bristle stuck on the end of it), and at the other end sits Burley Cross’s token African inhabitant (Eddy – Eddo – Edo – Edouard – I’m not 100 per cent sure, but he’s Congolese – at least I think he is – he speaks with quite a pronounced French accent).

  You rarely see him around town (he has his own, quiet alcove at the pub where he likes to sit and get quietly inebriated). He’s in his fifties, but very well-preserved. Handsome. Beautifully dressed. Has quite an attitude – bordering on the arrogant. How he and the Threadbare sisters built up an acquaintance is a mystery in itself (they’re like chalk and cheese! And from what I can tell he – like them – keeps himself pretty much to himself).

  I’m told he’s married to a Belgian heiress – she’s much older than he is and spends most of her time in Bruges. Although I think her oldest daughter – by a former marriage – has visited him recently, once or twice.

  So he lives alone, for the most part, in what’s reputedly the oldest house in town. It’s called The Bleachers (after a northern bleach magnate who lived there in the early 1800s) and is absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never been inside the place, but it’s lower storey falls under the level of the road – you walk down some little steps to get in through the front door, which is tiny, only four or five feet high.

  The house is in an awful state of disrepair, although (from what I can tell) he’s an amazingly talented carpenter. The town’s various big-wigs are always moaning on about it (I think it drives them all nuts that this odd, haughty African owns one of the village’s landmark properties but never so much as lifts a finger to maintain it). He seems to actively delight in antagonizing them all (very weird).

  Where was I? Oh yes. So they’re sitting at the table together, in this companionable silence. She’s painting her ashtray, at one end, he’s whittling away at the other, working on a sculpture – an African totem thingummy – female, about four inches high, astonishingly well-observed, with a tiny pair of withered breasts and a hugely protrusive vagina (I’ve seen other examples of his work. It’s really terrifying. Figures with amputated arms, blindfolded men with pliers hanging from their penises, African devils in Nazi uniforms. In fact one of his pieces – an African Christ writhing on the cross – has caused the most humungous stink in town after it was hung in the front portal of the church by the ‘old’ vicar without the permission of the ‘new’ one, who went completely nuts when he found out about it!).

  The point I’m struggling to make, here, Ivo, is that if a quaint village in the wilds of West Yorkshire can generate such stores of unbridled creativity, then why the heck aren’t people producing stuff of this quality in Hoxton and Camberwell and Shoreditch? And if they aren’t (which they aren’t), then surely it’s my job to share it with them?!

  The way I see it, the bottom line re Threadbare is that I can’t (I can’t) just sit here and let this amazing opportunity pass me by. I won’t. I must act! I must! And I don’t think what I’m doing is wrong! Not remotely! I’m a facilitator, Ivo. That’s my role! I’m a ‘cultural midwife’. I’m like one of the Medicis. It’s my moral duty to bring beauty to the world! How can I simply stand back and watch it bloom and die, unnoticed, unloved, unmourned?

  Ow. I’m starting to develop cramp. And there goes my phone! Perfect timing! Is it you? Oh, do let it be! I’m absolutely longing for a proper chin-wag.

  But hasn’t this been fun? We should write letters more often! It feels so healthy, so rustic, so wholesome!

  Simpson’s scratching at the door. My bottom’s quite dry again. I’m dashing straight over to pick up an
d answer just as soon as I can scribble – Toodle-pip!

  (And stuff this thing into an envelope…)

  XXX

  JJ

  [letter 6]

  17 THE BECK

  THURSDAY, 3.15PM

  RHONA BROOKS,

  I HAVE SPOKEN TO YOU TWICE NOW ON THE SUBJECT OF THAT DUCK OF YOURN AND I WILL NOT SPEAK AGAIN ON THE MATTER I CAN ASSURE YOU. NEXT TIME I WILL COMMUNICATE WITH YOU THROUGH THE PERSON OF THE LOCAL CONSTABULARY.

  THAT I SHOULD BE OBLIGED TO FORK OUT FOR A STAMP ON ACCOUNT OF NOT BEEN ABLE TO WALK TO YOUR DOOR AND KNOCK (OR POST THIS THROUGH YOUR LETTERBOX IF I DIDN’T FEEL AS I WANTED TO SPEAK IN PERSON) BECAUSE OF FEAR OF ATTACK, IS NOTHING SHORT OF CRIMINAL! I HAVE STROLLED ‘THE CALLS’ MAN AND BOY, LITTLE THINKING THAT ONE DAY I WOULD BE HALTED IN MY PERAMBULATIONS BY SOME PESKY BIRD THAT OUGHT TO BE IN A PEN OR ON A DINNER PLATE, NOT CAREENING UP AND DOWN THE WAY LIKE A JUMBO JET.

  SHAME ON YOU, RHONA BROOKS, AND SHAME ON THAT GIDDY SISTER OF YOURN. I THOUGHT BETTER OF YOU BOTH (ALTHOUGH WHY I DID SO I AM CURRENTLY AT ODDS TO REMEMBER).