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AS she poured her morning tea and buttered her breakfast toast, Veda glanced round the kitchen's warm copper pans and warm walnut units and pizarro gris (or "blue-grey") floor tiles and felt reasonably cheerful. She had bought Jasmine Cottage, 'a charming riverside property', last July through the office of
JUKES AND SON,
_EST. AGENTS (1976).
She had assumed that _EST. meant "Estate" (as in "Agent") and not "Established" (as in "1976"), but, on closer dealing with Mr Jukes Senior, Mr Jukes Junior being too junior at nine years old to take a great share of the day to day operational management of anything other than a clockwork train, she had discovered that _EST. was a subtle reference to both Estates and Establishments. Although puzzled by the space prefixing the word, she had failed to ask either of the Messrs Jukeses and remained, for the moment, unenlightened.
2 BD. COTT. (the brochure had read),
sit. in lovely vill. at heart of rural comm.
Highly des. Fully mod kch, liv rm, din rm, b/rm,
2 bd. Landscaped gdn. Pict. wind. Fr drs. Views of
the river. GCH. Orig. oak bms. Must be seen.
Picking her way through this minefield of abbreviation, Veda had agreed and, despite the state of the décor, she had come to terms with the elder Jukes and shelled out the n.o. to the deposit. Her sister had, with latest lifestyle accessory (or "boyfriend"), visited shortly after the move, a holiday in the country being fair exchange for redecoration. As well as whitewash for the exterior walls and sealant for the bathroom floor's cork tiles, they had brought a copy of that splendid televisual treat: Tiling, Painting, Stippling and Plastering, a DIY Guide, received by Veda with a kind of hushed awe that any reasonably balanced person could want to
a) make such a video,
b) buy such a video and c) watch such a video.
It nestled comfortably under the television with a catalogue for Jorum's Architectural Gems for the Garden and Get Fit Quick, the latest guide to senseless sweating by a silicon-breasted Californian Supermodel. "Hi," she simpers, "I'm Plesantly, Plesantly Bulging."
The living room walls were Jaune, (or "yellow") and, just under the darkest, dustiest, webbiest beam, Veda had found, like some ancient tribal painting, a jumbo jet drawn in blue crayon, thusly-
The previous owners of Jasmine Cottage had had no children. It was also improbable that they, an accountant and a schoolteacher with no lives outside their professions, trips to supermarkets, Tuesday-night squash and Thursday-night bridge would have engaged in frivolity such as this. They were, in fact, the kind of people who would pursue the course of action recommended in that superb televisual experience Tiling, Painting, Stippling and Plastering, a DIY Guide to the absolute final brush stroke. In the end, Veda concluded that Mr Jukes Junior had gained access to a crayon as well as the cottage and made his own unique contribution to the decor. Choosing to avoid a confrontation with either Mr Jukes, she had not erased it. She had, in fact, become rather fond of it. The house had otherwise been entirely empty except for a torn photograph stuck in the Yellow Pages at the letter J -
which, for some reason, she had put away in a drawer.
The 'phone's shrill scream drilled into her ear like Angelo's dagger. "Veda. Darling." The Editor. "How was the play? I heard it was awful."
No. It was... fascinating. A (what was the phrase she'd constructed in the car as she'd manoeuvred her way round the new mini roundabout outside the office?) fascinating insight into the Jacobean Englishman's understanding of the socio-politics of Renaissance Italy (yes, but I can't give him that. He's a newspaper man.)
OR... a rare opportunity to receive a fresh view of the revenge tragedy genre with a timely revival of a neglected classic...
"It was lively," she said.
"Well, I've something less exhausting for you today," the Editor said. "There's an exhibition opening this afternoon at the Jorum Gallery. So dig out your posh frock and set your taste buds for lashings of Lanson."
"Paintings?" Her tone was peremptory. "Etchings? Sculpture?"
"Maps," said the Editor. "Antique maps. Some of them are sixteenth century." Veda could hear his grin. "Three o'clock," the Editor said. "Don't be late."
"I have things to do," she said. "Something's come up."
"Ho ho," chortled the Editor. "You can take him with you if you like, ho ho." He hung up.
So later that day Veda dented the door of a sleek black Jaguar with the flaking flank of her slightly battered, crimson Metro and cursed the mid-morning barney on breast milk v bottled milk which had soothed her to sleep and made her late. Still, she was a journalist and it paid to keep 'em waiting. She sauntered between the ten foot tall jet-stone statues of Jachin and Boaz which flanked the entrance to the Jorum Gallery and accosted the curator, a little man who smelled of onions and appeared to have been squeezed into a shiny brown suit which bulged alarmingly at every seam. He greeted Veda with obsequious fawning and a glass of champagne. The gallery had, he oiled, been given, by garden furniture designer and local newspaper magnate Mr Jumbuck Jorum, a Vintage Jeroboam to mark the event.
"They call it a jeroboam because it requires a 'Mighty Man of Valour' to drink one." A smile split the oniony one's red face, reminding Veda of a bursting tomato. "As in King Jeroboam, 1 Kings 11: 28." The smell of onions intensified. His jacket was stretched tautly across his shoulders like cling-film round, well, round an onion.
"Who made men to sin," Veda countered drily, "1 Kings 14:16."
The first case showed
No. 1 Les Isles Britanniques
Alexis Hubert Jaillot's decorative version of Nicolas Sanson's map of the British Isles,
Amsterdam, c. 1710
89 x 57 cm, 35 x 22.5 in
Rightly regarded as one of the finest series of maps,
published in Paris by Pierre Mortier...
Fascinating, she yawned, as a more brightly coloured exhibit caught her eye.
No. 12 Java.
A coloured map, drawn by Jan Jansson of Amsterdam, c 1651.
55 x 44 cm, 21 x 15 in
A decorative map showing the islands in a chain across the Mar Del Zur,
published after Abel Tasman's voyage of 1644. The figures and oriental
objects around the titlepiece indicate Dutch interest in the Pacific basin.
Towering over a plump, pink, jug-bearing woman was a huge black giant with a green object grasped in his fist, a green object that was either a bean-stalk or an enormous in-your-dreams-sized penis. Peeping round the toe of the illustrated J was a dragony snout. Homo Erectus. The Java Man. The Missing Link, unearthed by Haeckel at Trinil in 1891. Which reminded her of her last boyfriend. Apart, sadly, from the erectus part.
Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (read the Guide) was compiled in 1570 with some fifty-three map sheets. It is unclear whether Ortelius himself initiated the project or whether it was suggested by his friends Gerard Mercator and William Camden, but the Theatrum, as the atlas was named, was so successful that by 1576 it had been expanded by a further sixteen maps. The 164 pages of the first English language edition, complete with 123 maps and 38 classical plates, was printed in 1606 by Jan Baptist Vrients.
There followed a lengthy piece about the rivalry between the Amsterdam publishing families of Janssonio and Janssonius which Veda realised later she should have read with greater attention but at the time ..... yawn.
The Janssonio family, headed by former herring fisherman Willem who had abandoned Piscean
pursuit to study cartography with Tycho Brahe between 1594 and 1596, issued globes as well as
atlases but found itself challenged in 1662 by Joannes Janssonius' eleven volume Novus Atlas
Absolutissimus. To avoid confusion in the map market, the family responded by changing its name
to Blaeu and Willem's son Joan brought out the Atlas Major based on extended versions of the
family's maps dating from 1617. This
Atlas Major, a kind of Collected Maps of the Janssonio
Blaeu publishing firm, contained around 600 maps and was a huge success. In 1672, most of the
Janssonio-Blaeu stock was destroyed in a mysterious fire at their warehouse. The following year,
Joan Blaeu died, and in 1676 the business was dissolved. Thus the rise and fall of the Mapping
Families of Amsterdam.
Number 40 was what Veda had always considered the rugged Snout of the Welsh Pig, i.e. St David's Peninsula in Dyfed (or "Pembrokeshire"). She peered at Fishguard, Ramsey Island and St Jestyn's Point near Llanstinan. Very rugged, she thought.
No. 41 Palestina Sive Terrae Sanctae
Jan Jansson of Amsterdam, 1630
55 x 44 cm, 22.5 x 17.5 cm
Eighteen scenes from the Bible were drawn round the border. All but three were from Exodus, the first was from "Gene" and two were from "Numero". There was also a colourwash perspective of ancient Jerusalem down in the corner. It was rather attractive Suddenly Number 42 caught her attention. Map Number 42, drawn by Gerard Janzoon, showed a ship on the dragon-bordered mare mediterranean and charted the journey of the Greek vessel Argo. On the flag which flapped from the mast of the ship was a jay bird volant in purpure on a cloth of or. It was a map of Jason's Quest for the Golden Fleece.
Jason's Quest. Again? Twice in two days? She glanced around the gallery. There was an enormous man in a wheelchair, tartan rug stretched over his knees, accompanied by a hatchet-faced middle-aged woman and a hulking brute in a sweater and, incongruously given the venue, sea-boots. The oniony curator was oiling his way round with the champagne and canapés. Coincidence. What else could it be? Nonetheless, she left the Jorum Gallery feeling a little uneasy and went for a proper drink.