T he shop was called Back to Life and it was not initially clear to Candelina what its purpose was. The Facebook page might have mentioned upcycling, antiques and rarities but it seemed to be mostly stocked with rubbish. She walked along from the door, past the glass-topped counter with trinkets on display beneath and down one of the aisles that led deeper into this grotty cave of cast-offs.
Somewhere, she could hear a woman talking as if on a phone. Candelina would come to her soon enough. Along one wall was a display of battered tin advertising signs: Texaco Motor Oil, Golden Shred Marmalade, Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence. She saw a collection of dolls, but these were mostly old things with cracked china faces or newer, mass-produced toys made from slowly perishing rubber and plastic. No Mr Punch here.
Candelina wandered down the next aisle and came to a doorway through to a back room space. This area was partly a stock room, partly some sort of repair shop. Mismatched pieces of junk were scattered across deeply scored work benches. She noticed a large whiteboard on the wall above the benches.
Superficially, it looked as if someone had drawn an amateurish rendition of the crucified Christ on the board. The man figure had his arms stretched wide. His misshapen head was angled upwards, as if in pain. It took Candelina a moment to realise it was a diagram of a deconstructed Punch puppet, laid out as if at an autopsy. Ideas for fabrics and construction materials had been scribbled on the board around it. Some fabric swatches were pinned to the board with magnets. Inexplicably, next to the hands, the words ‘Capitalist Whores?’ had been written. In all, it was a frenetic, hurried and utterly chaotic plan for constructing puppets.
“Customers aren’t allowed back here.”
Candelina had not heard the woman finish her phone call, had not heard her come in. She looked exactly like the kind of woman who would run a shop such as this, Candelina decided. She was as much an eclectic mess as her shop was. Her hair hung about in disarray. Her tatty dungarees were festooned with old badges and random sewing patches. She looked like a woman constantly confounded by life.
Candelina pointed at the whiteboard. “Mr Punch.”
“It is,” said the woman.
“Everyone in England likes Mr Punch?”
The shopkeeper grunted. “Up until a few hours ago I would have said ‘no’. Most people think Punch and Judy is sinister and unfunny and belongs to a by-gone age.” She held up the phone in her hand. “And then, suddenly, I’m inundated with interested calls.”
“Have you sold it yet?”
The woman clicked to why Candelina was there. “Ah. Another interested party?”
Candelina inclined her head slightly.
“Happy to talk.” The woman gestured to the door back to the shop. “As I say, though, no customers allowed back here. Dangerous equipment and all that.”
Candelina looked at the workbench and saw a retractable craft knife on a cutting board. She didn’t pick it up, but felt she might do soon.
“You still have the Punch doll you put on sale on Facebook?”
“I’m just trying to ascertain its value for now.”
Candelina put her hand on her satchel. “I could buy it from you now.”
The shopkeeper’s eyes narrowed slightly. “It’s valuable, isn’t it? I mean, I was getting so many messages I started thinking about how to make some of my own but this one, it’s valuable, isn’t it? I mean, really valuable.”
“Puppets don’t sell for a lot. Even the really valuable ones.”
“That’s what the internet tells me too. And yet I’ve had a bloke phone me, Professor Blake, who despite me telling him not to, is driving up from Norwich right now.”
“Whatever he’s offering you, I will pay more.”
The woman looked at Candelina’s face and at her hand hovering over her purse. Did her eyes also move towards the craft knife on the bench? There were no other sounds in the shop. Even the sounds of the traffic on the main promenade outside were distant and muffled. Candelina felt a tingle of excitement run through her.
“I don’t have it,” said the woman.
“What?”
“I don’t have the Punch doll.”
“You sold it?”
“I don’t have it at all. Not yet.”
Candelina tilted her head, questioning.
“It’s being delivered. I can talk about prices and take your details…”
“Delivered from where?”
The woman’s face hardened and Candelina re-evaluated her. The woman might be a bewildered mess, but she was no timid herd animal. There was some spark within her.
“That’s none of your business, is it?” she said and spun the words in that peculiarly sly British way, like it was a half-joke, like she wasn’t being rude.
“No, I suppose it isn’t,” said Candelina.
Reluctantly, she stepped through to the front of the shop.
“I would like to have the opportunity to purchase it before anyone else does,” she said. “Are you expecting it to be delivered today?”
“No, I don’t know when it’s arriving at all,” replied the woman, with such casualness that Candelina’s instinctive reaction was to believe her. But one couldn’t trust British words.
Candelina saw a pad on the till counter. “May I leave you my number?” she said and then, without waiting, wrote Weenie’s phone number on it and added, ‘Call as soon as Punch puppet arrives ’ underneath.
“What makes this puppet so popular?” said the woman.
Candelina was considering whether to tell her something of the Bartholomew Punch’s long history, to endear the woman to her a little, and had even formed her lips to begin when, looking up, something else arrested her attention.
A Rudi Haugen picture hung in a frame on the wall. She saw another beside it. And another. There was a series of five in all, beautiful art prints, and each of them had been vandalised with the addition of cartoon characters, stupid Disney animals.
Numbly, Candelina walked over and took hold of one of them.
“Foldsjoen Lake in Autumn ,” she said.
“Ah, you like?” said the woman, cheerfully. “Part of our thrift store painting collection.”
“You did this?” whispered Candelina.
“Lively little pieces, aren’t they? Brighten up any room.”
“You’ve covered the cosy little bush with… Winnie the Pooh?”
“Not a fan?”
The obtuse woman would not understand. Could she not hear the rumbling anger that brewed inside Candelina? Could she not see what she had done? She had taken powerful, raw artwork and desecrated it with phony corporate American jollity. You could bulldoze the most important civic buildings in Oslo and replace them with a McDonalds or a baseball stadium and still not achieve this level of sacrilege.
“What gave you the right?” Candelina breathed.
“It’s just a print from a calendar. It’s not exactly high art.”
Candelina whirled and hurled the picture. It spun off true and the woman ducked. It struck a shelf of pottery piggy banks and there were bangs and cracks as shards came tumbling down.
“Hey!” the woman shouted but Candelina wasn’t finished.
She ripped down the next picture and threw that too. And the third. The fourth she held onto and before the woman knew what was happening, Candelina had cracked it down two-handed across her head.
The woman folded and stumbled, a hand sliding across the counter, attempting to keep herself upright. Candelina swept a hand across a shelf, grabbing the nearest weapon, a painted wooden ornament of Charlie Chaplin, and smashed it down on the woman’s hand. She yelped in pain.
Candelina knelt down, pinning the woman’s legs to the floor with her own knees.
“How dare you touch her work?”
The woman was mouthing something, too shocked to properly speak. There was blood in the mass of hair over her forehead.
“Where is it?” Candelina demanded.
The woman’s eyes wheeled in confusion as she attempted to sit up. Candelina grabbed her shoulders and half-shook her, half-forced her to the floor.
“Where is the Bartholomew Punch?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Where?”
“He just showed me the picture. The man. I… I don’t know his name.”
“What man?” said Candelina and lifted the woman before pushing her down again, her head rebounding off the wooden floor.
“I don’t know. I sold him a fancy dress costume. He wanted to look like a plumber or something. He left in it. He’s bringing it back tomorrow.”
Bradley Gordon, thought Candelina. It was the obvious answer.
“Did he have a kangaroo with him?”
The shopkeeper blinked. “What?”
“A kangaroo! Joey Pockets! Did he have one on him?”
The woman was punch-drunk and didn’t seem to understand. Bradley Gordon wanted to look like a repairman. Was there a reason behind this, or was he just fearful of being spotted and recognised?
The woman’s hand came up and Candelina felt the cloth rip in the upper arm of her T-shirt. She looked. The woman pulled out the craft knife she had jabbed into the flesh of Candelina’s shoulder and a spurt of blood sprayed against the glass side of the counter cabinet.
Candelina exhaled an involuntary sigh of annoyance. She couldn’t feel any pain yet. The woman held the bloody blade between them. Candelina pushed back and away. The woman didn’t come at her but rolled to the side and propelled herself through the door to the back room.
The pain rose quickly, a sharp and precise sensation. Candelina rose to chase the woman and the door was slammed in her face. She went for the door handle and there was the sound of a bolt being shut up high and then another below.
Candelina automatically barged the door and then yowled with pain because she’d hit it with her injured shoulder. There was now a red butterfly explosion on the cracked white paintwork.
“You will pay for what you have done,” Candelina shouted through the door. It was trite, but she would make sure it was true.
“I’m calling the police, you mad bitch!” the woman shouted back.
Candelina felt rationality soak through her like a bucket of icy water. This was not a good situation. She had assaulted a woman who might have been a valuable lead. The woman might be phoning the police even now. This could all end badly.
Candelina grabbed a cloth from the counter and tried to wipe the worst of her blood from the door and the counter. Her efforts were less than effective. She was bleeding and dripping everywhere, anyway. She gave up, pressed the cloth to her shoulder and left.
Five seconds later, she came back in, crossed to the counter, ripped off the pad sheet with her phone number on it and hurried out once more.