Framed

  ‘Yes. Thanks for getting it.’

  ‘And the petrol? The petrol was good, I hope.’

  ‘The petrol,’ said Lester, looking a bit bewildered, ‘was fine. The petrol was fine. I have something I think might interest you.’ Then he noticed that I had the football. ‘You can leave that out here on the grass,’ he said.

  So that was it. I didn’t even get a kick. We followed Lester towards the old quarry. Dad kept nudging me and hissing at me to look interested and be polite. ‘We’re going to go inside the mountain. I haven’t been inside since I was your age. We used to come up here and play games and smoke ciggies. Then they put these cages over the entrance. This is going to be good.’ It would have been a lot better if we’d had a kick-around.

  Walking into the mountain, I couldn’t help thinking about Baxter Stockman and his cavernous lair full of Mouser Robots. I grabbed hold of Dad’s hand. But as it turned out, there were no robots and it wasn’t cavernous. It was quite cosy really, like a tunnel, with soft yellow lights on the walls and a nice warm breeze blowing from somewhere. Randomly, there were narrow railway tracks on the floor.

  All around were piles of big wooden boxes. Two men in fluorescent orange jackets picked one of the boxes up and set it on top of a set of wheels. Then one stood at the front and one at the back, and they trundled the box along the track, down into the mountain. Lester watched them until they were just two bobbing orange dots, then he smiled at us and said, ‘Over here.’

  One wooden box was leaning against the wall with a big light shining on it. He made us stand right in front of the box. You couldn’t see the orange dots now, but you could still hear the wheels grumbling off down the track. Lester lifted the lid off the crate and then stood back.

  The inside of the wooden box was even more unexpected than the inside of the mountain. It wasn’t dry goods and it wasn’t toxic waste.

  It was a picture, a picture of a woman trying to read a book. The woman’s face was in colour, but her clothes were in black and white and the top of her head was missing. The most random thing though was that one of her boobies was sticking out of her dress, like you sometimes see on the front of the papers. I looked at Dad. Lester looked at both of us, then he said, ‘The Manchester Madonna.’

  ‘Right,’ I said and looked at Dad again. It didn’t look like Madonna to me.

  ‘By Michelangelo,’ said Lester.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You’ve perhaps not seen it before. It’s not as well known as some of the others. An interesting connection with your own little feathered Michelangelo, of course – this is in tempera.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So it was made of eggs.’

  ‘This was made of eggs?’ said Dad.

  This had to be the most random thing ever. I was beginning to think that Lester was mad like mad Baxter Stockman. I decided to avoid eye contact and look at the woman in the picture instead. Far away I could just about hear shouting. The men outside must have started playing footy again.

  Lester was still talking. ‘Yes, yes. The rest of us make omelettes. Michelangelo makes a masterpiece. I think this justifies your affection for him.’

  Dad said, ‘When you say, made of eggs . . . ?’

  ‘I’m sure Dylan will explain in more detail,’ said Lester, ‘but basically, whereas modern painters use paints in which the pigment is dissolved in oil, Michelangelo and his contemporaries dissolved the pigment in egg white. It’s called tempera.’

  ‘Right.’

  I know it sounds daft now, but it was only when he said that that I realized it was a painting. It looked so real, even though it didn’t look like a photograph. I didn’t know what it was.

  ‘As you can see, the painting is unfinished. The Madonna’s clothes . . .’ Madonna again. ‘. . . are blocked out in black, but one assumes they were going to be painted blue. Somehow it adds to the drama. As if the master was in such a hurry to capture the perfection of this girl’s face, he couldn’t wait for the paint to arrive. He knew that if he waited one morning, her beauty might have begun to fade. Isn’t that what Art is about? Rescuing Beauty from the ravages of Time. To save one moment from eternal silence.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘According to Pliny, of course, that’s how art began. A girl called Dibutade was saying goodbye to her lover. He was going to war. She put a candle beside him and traced his outline from the shadow cast against the wall. She wanted him to stay, you see. I imagine the Maestro looking at this girl with the same feeling. He didn’t have the right paints, but he felt he had to capture that moment. I imagine him waiting for a consignment of lapis lazuli which never arrived. Lapis is a precious stone. They would have crushed it into powder, dissolved it in the egg and then applied it here as a wash. You see. It’s amazing that the drapery has real gravity even though all we have is the shading.’

  ‘Amazing,’ said Dad. ‘But then eggs are amazing, aren’t they?’

  I didn’t look up from the painting. She was definitely nothing like Madonna, even when she was young. There were some boys in the picture, too – two little and two big. The little ones were messing about, trying to stop her reading. One of the bigger boys seemed to be holding an old sock and they were both staring at it really closely, like it was a clue or something. You could make out the outlines of two other people in the background, waiting to be coloured in like in a colouring book or like they were just materializing on a teleporter platform. The thing is, even though the rest of the picture was mad, even though the top of the woman’s head was missing, her face looked real. It looked warm.

  ‘A painting like this,’ said Dad, ‘obviously it puts omelette right in the shade, unless you were really hungry. But while we are talking about eggs, I just want to say that we can do you an egg sandwich, scrambled eggs, omelette, anything you like.’

  That’s how immense my dad is. Even when we were stuck in this weird Technodrome thing with a mad inventor and a picture made of eggs, he never lost focus. He was still thinking about the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel.

  Lester said, ‘Actually I never eat eggs.’

  ‘Right then. But what about all these men up here? Are they up here for long? Because we do outside catering. Or we could do. We’d like to.’

  ‘I don’t want to keep you,’ said Lester. ‘I’m sure Dylan has to get to school.’

  ‘Well, not really. I mean, this is educational, when you think about it, isn’t it? We could tell Ms Stannard that—’

  ‘No,’ said Lester, a bit too quick. ‘No. I’m afraid I have to ask you to be discreet about this. I’d rather you didn’t . . . talk . . . to anyone about this. To no one at all. I shouldn’t have mentioned it really.’

  Dad promised we’d keep it to ourselves. ‘Not that it’s easy to keep secrets in a town like this. But we’ll do our best.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So, what is the secret?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What is it you’re doing up here?’

  ‘Probably the less we say about that the better, really. Thank you for coming.’

  Dad didn’t say anything until we were back in Planet Dishcloth. But I could see he was thinking about it, trying to figure it all out. After a while he said, ‘That was completely –’ he looked out of the window into the cloud, trying to find the right word – ‘incomprehensible.’

  ‘Do you think we might be talking about different Michelangelos?’

  ‘I think we might.’

  At Manod Old Primary we have ‘Wet Play’, which means you’re allowed to stay in class at playtime if it’s raining, which, let’s face it, it is. There’s giant Connect Four, giant draughts, and an art table. The girls usually crowd around the art table and pretend to be making hand-print robins or something while they talk to each other. I usually put my coat on and go and play penalties, with the slate man as goalie. No one else ever goes into the playground at playtime. Until today. They were all sheltering by the old bike shed. Then as soo
n as I came through the gate, they rushed me. Hundreds of them. Like some big nightmare game of tig and everyone was on except me. I tried to run away but there was nowhere to run to. They all crowded round me going, ‘What’s up there? What did you see? What did he say to you? What’re they doing?’

  Ms Stannard saw what was going on and came trotting over, blowing her whistle.

  ‘Get back, you girls!’ she shouted, shooing them away. ‘Put the poor boy down.’ Then she pulled me out of the middle of the crowd and I think she said, ‘He’s mine!’ She took me into the foyer, shut the door and said, ‘Now. So what is it? What’s up there? What did you see? What did he say to you? What’re they doing?’

  ‘I can’t really tell you, miss.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘He asked me to be discreet, miss.’

  ‘Discreet about what?’

  ‘I’m not sure, miss.’

  ‘Were they wearing strange suits, like for chemicals?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘Were they building something? A mast perhaps or . . .’

  ‘No, miss. There’s no digging going on or anything.’

  ‘What did you do up there?’

  ‘He showed me a picture, miss.’

  ‘A picture of what?’

  ‘A woman, miss.’

  She looked more serious now. ‘What sort of woman?’

  ‘I don’t know, miss. She seemed nice enough. He asked me not to say too much about it.’

  ‘He showed you a picture of a woman and told you not to tell anyone?’

  ‘He said to be discreet.’

  ‘You must have some idea what sort of woman she was. Was it Charlotte Church?’

  ‘No. She was wearing a kind of sheet, miss. It didn’t entirely cover her, to be honest, and there were some boys with her.’

  ‘So he showed you a picture of a woman in a state of undress and he said . . .’

  Suddenly I remembered something useful. I said, ‘Miss, do you know Michelangelo?’

  ‘Not the Turtles, Dylan, not now.’

  ‘But, miss . . .’

  ‘That’s enough. If you can’t tell us anything, then you have no excuse for being late. I’m going to deduct two merits from your score.’

  She’ll have a job. I haven’t got any merits.

  When it was home time, things were even worse. I was walking up the High Street with Minnie.

  ‘Minnie,’ I said, ‘is Madonna from Manchester?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is there another Madonna – not the famous one? Or maybe there’s another Michelangelo – not the party dude.’

  ‘Dylan, look behind you.’

  I did. The whole school was following us up the High Street. Kids. Their mothers. Ms Stannard. Even George the Lollipop Man. They were all walking behind us like a big human tailback.

  And when we got to the garage, it was gridlock. Every last car in Manod was on the forecourt or on the verge outside. Anyone passing would think there was a car-boot sale. Except there was no one around. Everyone was in the shop. When me and Minnie walked in, it went mental. Everyone was tugging at me and asking the same question. I couldn’t see where Minnie had gone. It was quite frightening until Mam shouted, ‘Excuse me! There is a baby here. Could we have a bit of calm, please.’

  They all went quiet. Dad took Max off Mam and then he said, ‘Dylan and I went up the mountain today and I have to say we were made to feel very welcome. But the man up there – Lester, his name is – he has asked us to be discreet about what we saw.’

  Now everyone started shouting again. Max started to cry. Everyone stopped shouting and apologized.

  ‘I’d like to be more forthcoming,’ said Dad, ‘but I’m not sure I can be.’

  ‘It all sounds very strange to me,’ said Ms Stannard. ‘He showed little Dylan pictures of a lightly clad lady and asked him not to tell anyone. Not even his teacher. It’s improper.’

  ‘Lightly clad lady?’ said Mr Morgan.

  ‘I heard it was Madonna.’

  ‘Pictures of Madonna?’ asked Marie, suddenly interested.

  Suddenly, from the corner where the computer was, Minnie said, ‘Is this it?’

  Everyone crowded round the monitor. And there she was again, the woman in Lester’s picture. She didn’t look as warm on the computer as she did in real life.

  ‘Oh!’ said Ms Stannard. ‘That Michelangelo!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Marie. ‘That Madonna.’

  It turns out that Madonna is another name for Jesus’s mother, and The Manchester Madonna is a famous painting of her by a famous old painter. The painting comes from the National Gallery. Minnie kept Googling around to try and find out more.

  ‘So what’s it doing up in the quarry?’ said Mrs Porty.

  ‘I said all along,’ said Minnie. ‘An international criminal organization.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Porty. ‘I knew there was something not right about that one. His shoes are too shiny.’

  17 April

  Cars today:

  WHITE MONTEGO – Big Evans (full tank of petrol, box of fudge)

  Weather – wet

  Note: HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS

  This is the day Big Evans left and Terrible Evans poked me in the eye.

  It turned out that the cars that went up the mountain were nothing to do with robberies and nothing to do with opening the quarry. Newspaper Arthur found out the whole story and put it in the Month:

  Home Is Where the Art Is!

  The town of Manod is playing host to some of the most distinguished visitors in its history. King Charles, John the Baptist and St George are all ‘hanging around’ nearby at the moment.

  Readers will recall that the extensive floods in London last year created chaos in the financial sector. The Royal Family had to move to Balmoral permanently as Buckingham Palace could no longer be insured. Arsenal Football Club moved to Milton Keynes for a similar reason. The House of Commons decamped to Birmingham. The entire collection of paintings in the National Gallery of Art were moved to ‘a secret and secure location’. It turns out that this is the town of Manod.

  Of course this information is supposed to be top secret. Publishing it in the Manod Month shouldn’t compromise that secrecy as no one reads it anyway.

  As Dad said, we should all be proud that Manod is a ‘secret and secure’ location. And it’s an honour to have all those works of art in the town.

  ‘It won’t put spuds in the oven,’ said Big Evans.

  ‘No,’ said Dad, ‘it’s not spuds. It’s art. It’s good. It’s different. We can’t put things back the way they were. We’ve got to go forward.’

  ‘I am going forward,’ said Big. ‘I’m going forward all the way to London.’

  ‘That’s a shame. Just when things are really looking up in this town.’

  ‘When I look up,’ said Big, ‘all I see is clouds.’

  He filled up with petrol and asked for a box of fudge. We have these boxes of fudge with ‘Souvenir of Manod’ on the lid in fancy writing and a picture of the mountain. We hadn’t sold one since . . . well, ever, really. They were all a bit dusty so I wiped one with a chamois leather before giving it to him. Dad said, ‘Since you’re in a spending mood, you wouldn’t want to buy a Mini Cooper S, would you?’

  ‘No. Thanks all the same. I’d best be off.’

  He stood there for a while looking at the picture. Then he looked at the mountain. Like he was playing ‘Spot the Difference’. Which wouldn’t have taken long, by the way, because the mountain in the picture is green and covered in sheep and daisies, whereas the actual mountain is just a big blank smudge of grey, as if someone has come along and rubbed it out with an immense eraser.

  Dad went off to get Big his change and Big said, very quietly, just to me, ‘Keep an eye on my little girl for me, will you?’

  ‘Who?’

  He looked at me funny, and then I realized he was talking about Terrible Evans. I’d never really thought of her as a
little girl before. I said, ‘Oh. Yeah. Sure.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How do you mean, though? Look after her?’

  ‘In school. Keep an eye on her. She’s going to miss her dad.’

  ‘Oh.’

  During Wet Play, I offered to have a game of Connect Four with Terrible. I said, ‘Are you OK?’

  She said, ‘I go first. I’m blue. You’re red.’

  ‘Yeah. But are you OK?’

  She stared at me.

  ‘Cos your dad’s gone off, hasn’t he?’

  She beckoned me closer to the Connect Four frame with her finger and, when I was right up to it, she poked me in the eye.

  21 April

  Cars today:

  BEIGE LUTON VAN – Brake Brothers

  LAND ROVER – Mr Morgan and Sian

  Weather – damp, then wet

  Note: – THAI FOOD COMES TO MANOD

  I don’t normally notice vans that much, but I remember this one. I remember everything about this day. Dad had been to the Cash and Carry early. He normally comes back with some bread, some milk, and maybe something for the sweet counter if we’re running out. Today he had fifty cup-a-soups and fifty Pot Noodles (twenty chicken and sweetcorn, twenty barbecue beef and ten chicken satay). The chicken satay was a completely new flavour. ‘I’ve never eaten Thai before,’ said Tom. ‘I bet no one in this valley has.’

  Mam was a bit nervous. She said, ‘If we haven’t got money for petrol, should we really be buying Pot Noodles?’

  ‘You were the one who said we had to have a vision,’ said Dad. ‘There’s at least a dozen men up there. That’s a dozen potential customers. Cup-a-soup, shoe polish, photocopying. They’ll be buying stuff quicker than we can ring it up.’

  ‘Yeah, but. . .’

  ‘Mr Morgan says he’s going to buy the Mini Cooper for his daughter. That’ll cover the petrol. And the Pot Noodles have got a longer shelf life than nuclear waste. Don’t worry about it. We are on our way!’