MONDAY, AND GRACE awoke to gentle rain. Her little house was a cave whenever the sky closed in and the trees huddled and dripped. She opened her bedroom curtains, checked the yard, padded through to the kitchen.
Later, propped up in bed against cushions and her pillow, she logged on to the Mandel’s Collectibles website and listed for sale everything she’d obtained from the Runacre Hall weekend. She left the guitar and the Blamire Young watercolour unpriced, tagging them Expressions of interest invited and Available soon.
She was showered and dressed by 8.30, which gave her time to deliver the watercolour to the conservator before opening the shop at 10. She peered out at the yard again: the rain had stopped but her veranda was dripping, so she folded the watercolour in bubble wrap and grabbed the umbrella from the chipped vase beside her front door. She locked up, splashed across the yard to the Forester, stowed the painting and the umbrella, checked that her haul from Schiller Lane was still securely in the lockbox, then ran back for her bike. She’d wheeled it to the car and was lifting the hatch when Erin appeared, wearing a dressing gown and rubber boots, shoulders hunched under a huge tartan golfing umbrella. Her face was deathly pale and her eyes unreadable, but possibly panicked.
‘You gave me a fright!’ Grace said. ‘Is everything all right?’
Erin worked at clearing her expression. ‘What if it’s raining when you drop the car off?’ She looked pointedly at the bike. ‘You’ll get all wet.’ Looked at Grace again and said, ‘I won’t be able to come and collect you.’
This is significant, Grace thought. Erin prepared to leave the house; prepared to leave the house for me. ‘I’ll see how I go. If it is raining at the end of the day, I’ll get an Uber.’
Erin tried to hide her relief. ‘If you’re sure? I’ll pay for it.’
‘I’m sure,’ Grace said. ‘And I’ll start looking at used cars this week.’
‘Ask the garage, they might have something.’
‘They might,’ agreed Grace, thinking that she should wait a bit before spending any of Jason Britton’s cash.
A few minutes later she was winding the Forester through the leafy towns. Reaching the parking bay at the base of Gaynor Bernard’s steep driveway, she locked the car and laboured uphill with the Blamire Young watercolour tucked under her arm.
A dripping old world, she thought, knocking on Bernard’s front door and turning to gaze awhile at the trees and shrubs as she waited. An unpainted concrete garden gnome sat darkened by the rain. A wheelbarrow had gathered rainwater overnight and a lone tea towel sagged on a clothesline. But bellbirds beeped and, on the other side of the misty valley, sunshine struggled through a hole in the low, fat clouds. Whether that meant good or bad luck, she didn’t know.
Grace knocked again. No answer, so she crossed the yard to the studio and this time her knock was answered. ‘Oh. Hello.’
Gaynor Bernard wore stained overalls, spotted Crocs, a hairnet and smeared glasses. Her hands were flecked with old paint, and again her eyes blinked with vague irresolution, as if Grace hadn’t been expected.
Grace glanced past her at a small painting on the workbench. Two images, the head and shoulders of a man wearing a shirt and neckerchief, and, seeping into one side of his head, a team of straining draughthorses pulling a wagon. Bernard was removing the top layer, Grace realised.
‘Self-portrait, 1889,’ the conservator said, noticing the direction of Grace’s gaze, ‘and it’s the better picture, so why he painted over it, I don’t know. Perhaps he thought there was room in the nineties for one more bit of arcadian crap.’
Grace shifted her attention. The conservator was twinkling at her. She’d used the mild expletive almost daringly.
Grace grinned in return. ‘Oh, I don’t know, you can never have too many horse-drawn wagons,’ she said, unwrapping the Blamire Young and handing it to Bernard, who barely glanced at it.
‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘That’s kind of you but I need to get going. As I explained on the phone, if you could—’
‘Oh, just a quick one. If you’re going to be bringing me such interesting challenges’—Bernard gave the Blamire Young a little shake—‘we should break the ice.’
Grace tensed. The strain didn’t ease, even as she gave a tight smile, said, ‘Just a quick one,’ and sat through a polite, low-key grilling. Where do you live? Where did you grow up? Do you know so-and-so? Grace fielded the questions deftly but almost trotted back down the hill afterwards, half-expecting hands to clutch her shoulder and spin her around. She sped away with a little spurt of the tyres on the sodden road.
When she reached Battendorf, Grace stowed Britton’s cash, Chagall painting and iPhone collection in her safe-deposit box before crossing the street to open the shop. The day passed and her heart beat heavily. Long, quiet hours: perhaps people feared more rain. The shop bell rang only once, for a tourist from Dresden, who looked at but didn’t buy a set of Meissen Blue Onion porcelain knife rests.
Seeking a distraction, Grace dusted and tidied, pondering Gaynor Bernard’s behaviour. Lonely? Not in the way Erin was lonely. Curious—a nosy, intrusive kind of curiosity.
I’m not that fascinating, she thought, moving on to remove the antique knitting-basket display from the shop window. She replaced it with colonial-era chisels, hammers, pliers, wood planes and handsaws arranged on, and in, a few side-on wooden crates, and at 5 p.m. checked the emails. Two people had put in offers for the Gibson guitar: $8,750 and $8,500. Grace googled their names. One taught at the Conservatory of Music, the other was lead guitarist for a country-rock band called Whole Spectrum. She didn’t know who’d be more deserving. Let Erin decide. Or wait for further offers to come in.
At 5.05 she locked the front and rear doors and walked out to Erin’s car. The sky was clear again, and everything looked cleansed by the rain—the air, the streets, even the light.
By 5.10 she was unloading her bike and handing the Subaru’s ignition key to Mark Dinakis, Battendorf Motors’ proprietor and head mechanic. About fifty, dark and burly, with bushy eyebrows, he said, ‘Regular service, got it.’
‘Call me tomorrow when it’s ready?’
He nodded. ‘Should be done by late morning, early afternoon.’
Grace smiled, strapped on her helmet and pedalled away, taking the short cuts through to Landau Street.