Though she often passed Bernoff and Son, Annie had never been tempted to explore the junk shop; there was something uninviting about the dirty window piled high with other people’s flotsam and jetsam. The decision to go through its door that Saturday morning was made on a whim; she hoped to find a gift for the man she was sleeping with but hardly knew.
She had met Robert five weeks earlier at an “Art of Love” singles night at the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square. It was her first foray into dating since she was a teenager and she went with low expectations of meeting anyone but hoped at least to learn something about art. The flyer promised “ice-breaking lectures” and “world-class experts” on hand to discuss particular paintings. Robert caught her eye during a talk on “Passion in the Court of Louis XIV.” His glance was awkward and only half-hopeful—instinctively she recognised someone else with a pulverised heart. He was nice-looking but uncared for—his hair was too long, his shirt poorly ironed and his demeanour a little battered. He was attractive in an unthreatening way. A few hours later, they kissed in a passageway behind Marylebone High Street. He had taken her number (Annie assumed out of politeness only). The following day he texted: “Dear Annie, my grandmother used to say that after a bad fall, it’s important to get back into the saddle. Do you fancy a drink?” After that, Annie met Robert once or twice a week for energetic sex and desultory conversation. When Robert admitted that he was spending his birthday alone, Annie offered to cook him dinner. Against her better judgement, she struggled to keep hope at bay. Her longing to love and be loved was so strong that she overlooked her and Robert’s incompatibility. At least, she thought, good solid dependable Robert, the solicitor from Crouch End whose wife had done the unforgivable and run off with his best friend, would never behave unkindly or unchivalrously.
Annie pushed the door of the shop and it opened with a reluctant shudder. In the corner there was a man, though it was hard to distinguish between his body and the armchair he was slumped in. Both were baggy and encased in brown velour. He was watching television with the sound off and Annie saw the reflection of horses racing in his spectacles.
“Are you open?” she asked.
The man waved her in, never taking his eyes from the screen. “Hurry up, close the door.”
Annie shut the door gently behind her.
A telephone rang. The man snatched it up.
“Bernoff’s Antiques, Reclamation and Salvage,” he said in a flat south London accent. “Ralph Bernoff speaking.” His voice was surprisingly high-pitched and young. He looked fifty but was probably only thirty.
“Gaz, my old friend, you watching Channel 4? Have you seen The Ninnifer has gone out to thirty to one?” Ralph said. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
He paused to listen to the answer.
“Course I don’t fancy that other pile of shite. It ran backwards at Haydock last week. Lend us a few quid. I know that Ninnifer is going to storm it. Please, mate.”
Pause.
“What do you mean, I owe you?” Ralph said plaintively.
Pause.
“So put that on the tab. Those cunts said they’d break my legs if I didn’t pay them tonight. Please, Gaz. Help me out.”
Pause.
Annie edged along the back wall of the shop past the rows of oddly matched china, paperbacks with embossed covers, chipped teacups, cracked bowls, piles of plastic beads, a reproduction Victorian doll and a nest of Toby jugs. She looked nervously from the man to the door, wondering if his creditors were about to burst in.
“No one is going to buy anything,” he whined into the telephone. “No one ever does. Just a load of bored Saturday-morning time-wasters,” he lamented, casting a look in Annie’s direction.
Picking up a Victorian brass mould shaped like a comet, Annie wondered if she could use it. Robert had been born in 1972 and she was intending to cook him a seventies-inspired dinner. Perhaps an elaborate jelly would be better than the intended rum baba? She turned the mould over—it cost £3. Rather a lot for one dinner and, besides, there was not enough time for the jelly to set. She put it back next to a china doll.
“If you’re not going to lend us a monkey, make it a pony. I’ll give it back with interest when I win,” Ralph said.
Pause.
Gaz gave the wrong answer; Ralph slammed the phone down.
Annie walked to another table and thumbed a hardback edition of Stalingrad—would Robert like that? Brilliant but too depressing. She examined a box inlaid with mother of pearl. Pretty but too feminine. A few paces on she caught sight of a picture propped against the wall behind the rubber plant.
“Can I?” she mouthed to the man.
“Suit yourself.” He didn’t even glance up but sat slumped, staring at the television. Annie slid the picture off the filing cabinet; carrying it over to the window, she took a closer look.
“What do you know about this?” she asked.
“It’s a picture.”
She looked at him, trying to decide if he was stupid or rude, or both.
“Do you know the date, or who painted it?”
“No idea, it’s been here for years.”
“I’m looking for a present for a friend…” Annie hesitated. “This might amuse him.”
Ralph Bernoff didn’t do conversation; he was used to lonely old ladies rabbiting on about this or that. This one was a few years younger than most of his regular customers but he knew the signs; sad, single and the wrong side of twenty-five. He looked her up and down—quite nice legs but too flat on top. If she got some highlights and a short skirt, she might stand a chance.
“We share a certain interest in painting.” Annie flushed, feeling his eyes on her body. “My friend,” she said firmly, “might like this. It reminds me of something we saw at the Wallace Collection.”
“Right.” Ralph kept checking his watch and digging around in his pockets as if some change might miraculously appear.
“Do you know where it came from?”
“No idea—it came with the shop. Bought the whole place and most of this rubbish with it. Worst decision my dad ever made.” Ralph waved his hand around.
“How much is it?” Annie pulled the sleeve of her coat down and gently wiped away at the dust on the painting’s surface.
“No idea. Come back Monday and my dad will tell you.”
“That’s too late,” Annie said. “What a pity—I really like it.”
Ralph snorted rudely. “There’s a whole load of clobber here. Pick anything else. I’ll give you a discount, being a Saturday and all that.” Ralph put his little finger deep into one ear and wiggled it about with all the concentration of a violinist aiming for a high C. Annie looked away and carefully placed the painting back on the filing cabinet. Ralph looked up at the grandfather clock; it was nearly three.
“What! The Ninnifer’s gone out to fifty to one, bloody hell.” Ralph jumped up from his chair and stabbed a finger at the screen.
“There’s nothing else quite right,” Annie said. She had had enough of this rude man and his claustrophobic den.
“Bloody time-waster,” Ralph muttered under his breath.
Belting her coat tightly and pulling a woollen hat down over her ears, Annie opened the door. A cold gust of air blasted into the shop and dust swirled around her face in luminous eddies. Annie took one last look at the painting. It was, even through the dust and the gloom, rather pretty. She would tell Robert about it later; it would be something to talk about in their sparsely populated conversational world. She had stepped out on to the pavement and bent down to unlock the chain on her bicycle when Ralph came bursting out of the shop, waving the painting. “Hang on. How much money do you have?” Ralph asked.
“Fifty pounds,” Annie smiled apologetically.
“Five hundred quid and it’s yours,” Ralph said, holding out the painting.
“I haven’t got anything like that kind of money,” Annie said.
“What have you got?”
“I’ve got a hundred pounds out of the cashpoint but it has to cover dinner.” She blushed slightly and moved from foot to foot.
“Give us two fifty in cash.”
“I said I haven’t got that.” Annie was annoyed now. She put the chain in the bike’s basket and started to push it down the road.
“You’ve got four minutes to decide, love, or the deal’s off.”
“I’ll give you seventy-five—that’s my last offer,” Annie heard herself say.
Ralph hesitated and, holding out his hand, said, “Seventy-five. Give it over. Quick.”