“What the hell is he wearing?” James said.
“In Young Offenders Arty learned an array of handyman tasks before being accepted to an archaeology course,” Margery told us, and that remarkable change in circumstances got him a loud round of applause. “Now, as a thank-you for all Lennie’s support, he’s hereto offer a day’s work as an odd jobs man. Or he can give you an expert opinion on any skeletons you might have in your closet!”
James tutted as the other guests rolled in the aisle, but I didn’t care: Arty, my muse, my inspiration, was up there on the stage! His eyes wandered over the audience as the bidding started. He cast his gaze toward our part of the room and I smiled, anticipating his smile in return, but he missed me. As his gaze came back my way, I thrust my left arm in the air and waved to him.
“Two thousand pounds with the lady in the unique yellow dress,” the auctioneer said. James pulled my arm down. Arty smiled at me.
“Sit still!” James said, as someone else raised the bid to £2,500.
But no! If I couldn’t have theSewing Bee, Iwouldhave Arty. My limbs were turning to jelly as he danced around the stage.
“Three thousand pounds anywhere?” the auctioneer asked, and I put my right arm in the air. That one was harder for James to reach, but he got me in the end. The betting went up to £4,000, then five, then six. At £10,000 it started going up in two thousand increments and that was when I wriggled an arm free of James.
“Twelve thousand pounds to the lady in yellow.”
James yanked my arm down hard.
“Come on, Dixon, let her have a bit of fun. You can afford it,” said a voice behind us, and they were the magic words; James hated to be seen to be miserly. I won Arty for a trifling £18,000.
“Don’t leave him on his own in the house,” James said. “We don’t know what he was in prison for.”
James chose not to bid on the Ferrari after that; instead we left with a set of luxury bath products that could probably be bought for less than £100 on the high street, but in the hands of the auctioneer went for £2,000. As James lifted his arm to make the bid, his sleevedropped down and I noticed for the first time he was wearing a different watch. It looked a far cry from the luxury item that, he was fond of telling people, cost nearly two hundred grand. It looked more like something you could get for a tenner on Amazon with free delivery.
“What happened to your watch?” I asked him as we got into the car.
He glanced at his wrist and pulled the sleeve down as far as it would go. “The Rolex was a liability,” he said. “Makes me a sitting duck for muggers. It’s like the Wild West in Bristol these days.”
Having watched the regional news several times a day, every day, since the accident, there wasn’t much I didn’t know about local affairs and if Bristol had become a hotbed of violence, I think I would have heard. But I didn’t argue with him.
Chapter Twelve
We had run out of chips and the grocery order wasn’t due for two days. It was coming up to rush hour and I’d spend ages stuck in traffic if I went to the supermarket in town, so I decided to take one of my rare trips into the village to buy some at the SPAR.
On the way I had to drive past the village hall, and what a sight it was to see. An enormous cardboard thermometer stood beside the main door, showing the progress of the church bell fund. The cardboard mercury was well on its way up the scale, only £25,000 left to raise, which was quite a progression from the quarter mark it had hovered at for as long as I could remember.
Bunting was strung everywhere, there were a couple of stalls on the driveway, one selling homemade ice lollies, the other an opportunity to give to another good cause, beaver repopulation this time. By the main door was a cardboard sign with an arrow, pointing to theinterior, and the words “More Inside!” I remembered what Mrs. B had said about a raffle and a disco.
As I sat there, Mrs. Chambers from the small shop rode up on her bike, half a rib cage sticking out of the basket on the front. She gave me a cheerful wave when she saw me and rang her bell.
Being an outcast, I tended to stay away from social gatherings in the village, but this was too intriguing and Mrs. Chambers’s greeting was encouraging. As long as I spent plenty of money in there, I should be tolerated, so I parked up and nipped over to the ATM. Before I entered the building, I stopped to give twenty pounds each to the bell fund and the beavers—a beaver dam in the right place might have stopped the mausoleum collapsing.
Inside the village hall, the table where the bones were collected was center stage and was manned by one of the archaeologists. It should have been a simple trestle table with a large, plain cardboard box on it, but under the leadership of Mrs. Faulkner from the newsagent’s, the table had been adorned with bunting in pastel shades, and the box was covered with floral design paper. Alongside was an exhibition celebrating the skeletal invasion, including a display showing where some of the bones had been found. Most were in the flower beds and water features of the gardens nearest the river, those that had been flooded, although there was a skull and crossbones found on the roundabout in the playground, just a few hundred yards from where we stood. That may not have been how they had washed up.
Music played from a system on the stage, and around the rest of the room were the farm shop and tea stalls, the raffle, a separate raffle, a Guess the Weight of the Melon competition, various craftstalls from various villagers: crocheted doilies, macramé plant hangers, jewelry made from kits bought online, dried flowers glued onto bookmarks. Mrs. Dowden, whom I had once worked with at the SPAR, presided over a display of wooden plaques with names etched onto them. There was one for most residents of the village, forename and surname, making it hard to say no to making a purchase.
My name had been overlooked, but feeling the weight of their expectant stares, I bought a few with general platitudes on them: “There’s no place like home” and “Love conquers all,” along with a few more cautionary notes, “What goes around comes around,” “Familiarity breeds contempt,” and “As you sow, so shall you reap.” They could go in the drawer full of knickknacks I kept for Mrs. B; eventually, I might even take one out to see if she would steal it.
Although the jamboree had been going on for some time now, it seemed Upper Ifflians never tired of a fete and the room was busy with people browsing and trying their luck. I had a wobble when I saw Jo Newman, deep in tea and sympathy with the vicar. Meg was lying on the floor beside her, head on her front paws, eyes cast down. She looked like a dog without hope. I wanted to leave, to get far from the evidence of the devastation we had caused.
Then Mrs. Thorpe from the tea stall shouted: “Daisy!”
I turned, wondering what vitriol was heading my way. But no, I was quite the celebrity. I was greeted as the bringer of the bones and, subsequently, all the gaiety I saw before me. I was stood by the bone table to have my photo taken, by myself, with the archaeologist, with the stallholders, empty-handed, and holding a couple of bones.
“There was a minibus came from Great Beadington to have a look-see,” Mrs. Thorpe told me. “They’ve heard about the bones and they’re jealous.”
Mrs. Thrussell nodded. “They’ve never had anything like it. And they won’t do; they don’t have a stately home.”
Mrs. Faulkner joined in. “I had to chase one of them Great Beadingtonites out, she was trying to take a vertebra.” There were gasps, although no one could verify Mrs. Faulkner’s story and Mrs. Thorpe said she’d made it up.
