Onward and Upward

Chapter 28

  As autumn gently arrived Breena settled in perfectly, no tantrums, she just blended in. Even Mrs Blake’s nose wasn’t knocked out of joint, and fortunately Sam was ambidextrous, she was quite happy being a valet and a Lady’s Maid.

  We spent a considerable amount of time with Mark as his eye healed, he would always be blind in one eye, but with glasses he should have reasonable sight in the other, and he was a visible reminder to the press to keep their distance, no matter where we went we saw neither hide non hair of them, but they were replaced by yet more builders at El Campo, they were storming ahead with the railway track - every time I blinked another kilometre of track had been laid. The engine shed (AKA ‘C’ hangar) had finally been discounted (it was far to near my bedroom window for comfort), so a purpose built one was being constructed close to the picnic area. It was not really sour grapes on my part; apparently there are people out there that are actually prepared to pay good money just to wander around such places, although ‘C’ hangar had been turned into a temporary holding shed. Rail track had been laid on the concrete, and each new locomotive that arrived was given ‘a good seeing to’, by yet more new employees (that were being temporarily housed by the staff of my new ‘Director of Human Resources’), as they were all second hand, some had even been built in the 1920’s.

  With all this activity going on around the place I was starting to feel slightly redundant, but Breena came to my rescue yet again – ‘pictures’, not the action pact movies in my very own climate controlled cinema, but ‘pictures – that you hang on the walls’. She had noticed that most of mine looked as though they had been given away free with two settees from the local furniture shop, and I must admit that pictures had not been one of my highest priorities when fitting out Mi Casa, so we did an audit (that’s like a list – but posher) and toured every nook and cranny of the hallways, ballrooms, family and guest rooms, and found that for a man of my standing (no comments please) I was woefully under displayed, but what about the staff quarters I hear you ask – OK, they can have the redundant freebee’s from the furniture shops, and on completion of the ‘audit/list’ we retired to my office, fired up the computer and Breena said ‘right, what artists do you like?’

  ‘Don’t know’ I replied.

  ‘Right then, what pictures do you like?’

  ‘Don’t know’ I replied.

  ‘Well – do you want abstract, contemporary, classical, impressionist, art deco, fantasy, minimalist, surrealist. Landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, still-life, floral, rural or mythological?’

  ‘Yes please’ I said.

  Breena then thought it was going to be a long day, so out came a blank piece of paper and it quickly turned into another list,

  Painters :-

  Da Vinci – ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘the Last supper’ – quite liked them - 3 stars

  Michelangelo – interior decorator that specialised in ceilings – just had mine done - 1 cross

  Monet – haystack, poppy field, woman with brolly – really liked them - 4 stars

  Van Gogh – pass

  Rembrandt – double pass

  Picasso – I couldn’t work out which way up some went – but still 2 stars

  Jackson Pollock – apparently he painted ‘No.5’ – done the paint by numbers thing – 1 cross

  Sargent – really did like the ‘morning walk’ and ‘nude Egyptian girl’ (and not just because of her bum) - 5 stars

  Lowry – yes and no – liked the matchstick men, but some ‘paintings’ looked as though he had found them on the floor after a kindergarten art class, and signed them – 3 stars and a cross

  As one can see I have the making of a top flight art critic, then it was onto the next list,

  Style :-

  ‘What styles do you like, cubism, abstract, con…..’ but I stopped her mid flow. I quite liked the Egyptian bum. Deep sigh and change of subject.

  ‘Do you like oils? (messy), watercolours? (runny), etching? (later dear), reproductions? (what!!! forgeries), prints ….. enough, enough, I think that this project is going to be far bigger than either of us imagined, so onto the final list’

  Prices :-

  Ok – you now have an idea of my taste, what do you think they will cost?

  ‘Seeing your taste, about a million.

  ‘That’s not too bad’ I said.

  ‘Each’ – she finished ‘and that’s only the ones for the loo’s, add a few noughts for the rest.

  ‘It’s only money’ I squeaked, so over the next few weeks we took to the skies and visited all the art museums, galleries and collectors that we could cajole into opening their portals to us, and slowly a ‘style’ of my own formed in my mind – recognisable-ism’. If it had ever graced the top of a chocolate box, or been inside a calendar – I wanted it. Not for me the obscure or ugly, I wanted what I, and my family and friends would recognise, and the more people that I talked too (in swore secrecy) about it, the more I realised that this project was going to have world-wide implications, and if I got it wrong I could be fleeced something rotten, but, as the saying goes, even the longest journey starts with a single step, so after a few words with Hyacinth, we took that step (metaphorically speaking), into the very exclusive Cul-de-Sac Art Gallery, Knightsbridge, London SW3. Hyacinth, who is arguably the most terrifying person that I know (although she can also be a pussy cat – but that’s for another time) positively quaked in her Prada’s at the mere mention of ‘Miss Antoinette’s’ name, apparently Miss A was quite young for her age (?), but knew the business inside out and back to front, aparantly ‘there were no flies on her’, perhaps the lady prefered zips!, and if there was one single person that could keep all the wolves, jackals and opportunists at bay for me, it was her, and her sense of humour was legendary – she thought not. The only slight problem was that apparently Miss Antoinette was not for hire, so I thought a spot of the Michaels charm might do the trick.

  Breena and I, with James, Kurt and Pierre in the background, presented ourselves outside the window of the emporium at the appointed hour, and we were just in time to see the rear elevation of a very sleek figure setting an abstract watercolour, by someone who was having a mental breakdown at the time, on a display easel. It looked hideous (the painting, not the figure) so obviously it would cost a small fortune. Once the figure was fully satisfied that the painting was just so, she stepped back to admire it, and sensing that we were on the other side of the armoured glass, turned, and instantly converted it into frosted glass, what a stare. Not a muscle on her square chiselled face so much as flinched, but her half closed beady eyes bore straight through the inch thick glass, through my eyes, and straight into my soul. Normally I would have cowered away in fear, but what the hell I thought; this must be Miss A, time for the charm offensive. I looked at the painting, then back at her and signalled for her to rotate the painting 45 degrees. Not a flicker of emotion showed on the creaseless face, completely devoid of any ‘laughter’, or other ‘lines’, but still she rotated it. I shook my head and signalled her to rotate it a further 45 degree. Ordered compliance, and again my head shook. Without further bidding, and still without a glimmer of emotion, she rotated it the final 45 degrees, and I raised my hand to my chin, and started to rub it thoughtfully, then eureka, it hit me. I put a startled look on my face, a finger in the air like a marionette, and signalled her to reverse the painting, front to back. After complying with my request I clapped in glee, gave her the thumbs up, and mouthed ‘Perfect -I want it’, and was about to make my way towards the door when she suddenly erupted into fits of uncontrolled hysterical laughter, fell against the window and slid unceremoniously down it.

  Leaving Kurt outside to guard the Cul-de-Sac we were eventually invited inside the gallery by a very upset assistant, she had never heard those strange sounds emerging from her boss before. Finally an ‘almost back to normal’ Miss Antoinette emerged empty handed from the window display, and I asked her where my painting was.

  ‘You were serio
us?’ she spluttered, between giggles, ‘it’s horrendous’.

  ‘I know’ I replied, ‘but I have the perfect place to hang it, where I can study it in quiet contemplation every day, and perhaps even growing to love it’.

  ‘In a conservatory?’ she queried.

  ‘No, on the back of my toilet door’.

  That was it, she was off again, but finally we started to communicate in more than just sign language, and I decided to have a look around before I mentioned the ‘C’ word (Consultancy).

  Half an hour later we were ‘out back’ rubbernecking through some lesser pieces when the buzzer rang, her ‘twelve o’clock’ seemed to be fifteen minutes late. She had assumed that the miscreant appointee was a ‘no show’, and had just dispatched her assistant for an early lunch, so Miss A went and answered the now urgent summons herself. It was indeed the twelve o’clock, returning for a second view of a particularly nice piece (that was now on a display easel, centre stage, in anticipation of the sale), and after half-heartedly apologising for his tardiness he gave a perfunctory glance at the painting and asked to use the ‘facilities’, and disappeared inside.

  Kurt, who hailed from Blackpool, had been taken on by Mr ‘A’ to strengthen his close protection squad. He had done some time in the Military Police, and then underwent ‘retraining’ by civilian ‘para-military’ Contractors, to protect hi-value ‘advisers’ in various war torn countries. Whilst he was in the body guard division he was happy to take their silly money, but then they ‘asked’ him to transfer to a black-ops team (as usual there is no such thing as a free lunch) and sensibly he quickly relocated to Spain, that was the destination of the first vacant seat out of the airport, not even pausing to pack a bag, and after a surreptitious phone call to the Colonel he was now innocently propping up the wall beneath the street sign ‘Downton Walk - Cul-de-Sac’, blissfully unaware that the said walk, with the appropriately named art gallery in it, was now Downton Walk ‘period’. Following bomb damage during the blitz, the building at the end of the Cul-de-Sac was obliterated, and over the ensuing years a very popular short-cut developed. Many years late the local council recognised this, and when granting permission for a new block of flats they made it a stipulation that the short-cut should remain, but forgot to change the existing sign at the other end, and so as he rested against the wall, Sydney slipped un-noticed behind him into the gallery. After a short while of trying to blend in with the brickwork Kurt noticed a car pull up on the double yellow lines at the end of the walk, so it took a few moments for the two men in the front of the car to realise that he was there, and a few more to realise what he most like was (the ‘filth’), so they did what came naturally to them in these sorts of circumstances, and panicked. First the driver gave four long blasts on the cars horn, which certainly got Kurt’s attention, and he hoisted himself from the wall and ‘eyeballed’ the occupants, and it was stalemate until three muffled shots and an explosion emanated from within the gallery. On hearing the shots Kurt put two and two together – and went for his gun, but the passenger pushed the snout of a sawn-off shotgun (that he had prepared earlier) through the open window and pulled both triggers. If he had been more experienced in the ways of gun lore, and realised that he had the slight advantage here, he would have taken a moment to aim the weapon more accurately, but no, and Kurt received the contents of both barrels between his ankles and knees, and he slid down the wall, but his training (and buckets of adrenalin) kicked in, and as he sat against the wall he continued drawing his weapon and pointed it in the direction of the passenger, but he was groping around in his pockets trying to find replacement cartridges (it always pays to come well prepared!!!), the more pressing danger was coming from the driver, who, unfortunately for him was left handed. He had pulled a huge Browning automatic from his trousers belt, and turned to join in the fun, but found his accomplice’s bulk was in the way, so he leaned forward against the steering-wheel and hoisted the weapon in front of him and started to point it in the general direction of the ‘fuzz’. Kurt, seeing him perfectly silhouetted against the ‘Specsavers’ window opposite, corrected his aim (he certainly didn’t need to go to Specsavers) and although he had always been taught to aim for the central body mass first, as he couldn’t see it through the passengers’ bulk, he instead put two well-aimed rounds half an inch in front of his left ear. By this time the passenger had recovered a handful of cartridges from the bottom of his trouser pocket, and was trying to stuff them into the shotgun, so erring on the side of caution he adjusted his aim slightly and repeated the process, it would have been just his luck for the car door to have blocked his bullets. He then leaned back against the wall, looked down at his legs, and was sick over what remained of his Giorgio Armani trousers.

  …….…….

  When the urgent sound of the car horn reached the twelve o’clocker’s ears he was three-quarters of the way through snorting a line of coke (for Dutch courage), off of the marble worktop, so his brain was not in the perfect shape to interpret what it fully meant. He knew that things had turned pear shaped, and should get the hell out of there, but he had watched too many ‘cops and robbers’ on the television and reached for the revolver in his open brief case. Sydney was from a fairly well-to-do family that had fallen on hard times, and he started to seek solace first in expensive malts, then lager, and finally as he approached rock bottom, ‘illegal substances’, and when his habit finally outstripped his wallet, his dealer of choice ‘just knew someone who needed a hand with a job’. No he wasn’t a plumber; he was tea-leaf (thief), with a taste for Art. What he needed was a posh geezer with a bit of class, and some fancy threads, to get into an art gallery and case the joint, which initially was all that was required of him to clear his debt, but when it became clear that security was such that your normal run of the mill villain would not get through the front door, his job description changed. At first he refused flatly, and then as more and more ‘freebie’ cocaine disappeared up his nose it didn’t seem such a problem, and finally, when it was agreed that his cut would come in the form of white power, and lots of it, he was in, but when Sydney burst out of the toilet, gun in hand, he found that whilst within, the situation without, had changed drastically.

  ……………

  When we heard the new visitor request to use the loo Breena and I wandered through to have a look at the painting that he was so interested in, and James and Pierre instinctively moved to the door. Breena quickly lost interest in the painting and started to return to the rear of the gallery, just as the horn sounded, and Sydney burst forth.

  Pierre, my First Sergent, wanted something a bit more challenging than being in my ‘uniformed section’ so he brow beat his friend David into training him up for ‘plain cloths’, but this was his first ‘probationary’ outing into the real world, and he forgot two very basic points, one – never go to a gunfight with only a knife (he had not yet received permission to carry a concealed weapon), and two – let the dog see the bone, ie James see Sydney, and he instictively lunged towards the gunman – completely blocking James’s view of him.

  Sydney, in his drug induced haze saw James and Pierre blocking his escape route, but to him that was a minor point as he was now in his element, so he stopped, calmly stood sideways, as he had seen a hundred times on telly and in his video games, and using a single handed grip, lifted the revolver up, thumbing the hammer back as he did so, pointed it at the charging Pierre, and pulled the trigger, and Pierre’s throat disappeared in a fountain of froth.

  James, who was frantically trying to get a ‘line of sight’ on the gunman, dispassionately noted Pierre’s problem, and in a macabre way he was relieved as Pierre dropped to the floor, trying to staunch the flow of blood, and he got his first clear view of the gunman and his weapon. He quickly noted that the gunman was obviously high, which, in his mind made him even more dangerous, and that his weapon was an antique looking, very heavy .45 calibre revolver. It would have a huge recoil, and once it had been pulled back down
into line again, the gunman would then have to re-cock it, probably using two hands, before it could be discharged again, but as he started to bring his own weapon up, the .455 Webley-Fosbery Automatic revolver rocked slightly, and was quickly back in line with James’s head. ‘Perhaps he might still have trouble re-cocking the vintage weapon’ James desperately thought, as Sydney pulled the trigger, and in the time it took for the slug to travel up the barrel, and cover the distance between it and James’s right eye, a part of his soon to be decimated brain noted the zigzag groves on the side of its cylinder, and thought ‘oh dear, it’s an automatic revolver, I’ve heard of them, but never actually seen one before’, or words to that effect.

  ……………

  Col. VG Fosbery conceived this unusual weapon in the late 19th century, and by 1901 Webley & Scott were producing them in limited numbers, and whilst they had a few of the advantages of a conventional automatic (reduced re-coil & higher rate of fire) they were complicated, and so didn’t stand up well to the rigors of war. Although never accepted into the military, several young cavalry officers purchased them as their personal weapon, and this particular one was brought back from the Great War (WW1) by a very grey haired ‘young’ Officer. It was then passed on through the generations, with virtually no maintenance, until it was stolen by an opportunist burglar, along with a beautifully crafted 12 bore double barrelled shotgun. They were then sold on for fifty quid, and the Fosbery was then liberally coated in penetrating and car engine oil, until it seemed to work OK, and the barrel of the shotgun was sawn off and its hand carved stock decimated, and was now residing in the car outside. The expected return on the painting that they were trying to steal was about £5.000, split three ways – if they were lucky; the two guns would probably have fetched twice that much from an unscrupulous collector.

  ……………

  At the sound of the first shot I turned, just in time to see blood erupting from the remains of Pierre’s throat, and then James’s brain blast over the glass door behind him as the second shot rang out. The gunman was actually smiling as he turned and pointed the revolver at Breena, her only crime – standing between him and the painting, so he shot her, and arterial blood gushed from her chest. The three shots came so fast that people outside thought it was a machine-gun that was being used, but he had not finished yet, he saw Miss Antoinette and I stood to the side of the painting, and slowly turned and levelled the revolver again. Instinctively I moved to cover her as he calmly closed one eye and sighted along the barrel at a point between my eyes, and I knew that he couldn’t miss, and he gently, almost lovingly, squeezed the trigger, and then several unexpected thing happened almost simultaneously.

  First, due to the lack of proper maintenance the by now heavily carbon’d up barrel and workings of this museum piece malfunctioned, caused in no small part by the use of winter grade motor oil instead of gun oil, and I saw, as I gazed back over the fore and rear sights, and into his pin prick of an iris, the barrel explode, and part of his hand, complete with two fingers, fly off in one direction. The chamber, with the jammed round forcing it on, shot back, and either due to metal fatigue or by the damage caused by the explosion, there was nothing to stop it, and it careered into his face, decimating the bridge of his nose and embedding itself in his brain, and then, just for good measure one or both of the remaining rounds sympathetically exploded. As his head literally erupted in front of me, my brain, or whatever part of my being that controlled such things said – ‘that’s it -enough is enough’ and switched me off. I didn’t just faint, my whole ‘being’, ‘spirit’, ‘mind’, ‘essence’ or whatever it was called – shut down. I was now just a collection of bones and organs held together by an outer wrapper – called skin. Fortunately an insignificant little box situated somewhere deep within, kept me breathing, but everything else just shut down, and a little while later a Police Sergeant succinctly described my condition to a detective as ‘originally I thought that his lights were off, but somebody was at home – then realised that the fuse had blown’.

  Following the demise of Sydney, Miss Antoinette’s austere upbringing (laughter had been a punishable offence) came to Pierre’s rescue, she may not have known how to dress a dolly – but she did know how to perform a traciotomy using Pierre’s ‘super tool 300’ clipped to his belt, and a ball point pen from his jackets inside pocket. First she quickly checked in passing that I was ok, no serious injuries, so she rolled me quickly into the recovery position, and then it was up skirt and she was straddling Pierre, and stabbing what was left of his throat with a razor sharp blade from his ‘must have’ fashion accessory. Even the pliers came in handy to pull the jammed innards out of the barrel of the pen (after first breaking a nail on it at the first attempt) and pushing the said barrel into the hole. It was crude, but it kept him alive until the paramedics arrived.

  ~~~~