Chapter Eleven #2
So, I went back upstairs—“Grab me a belt while you’re up there!”—and redonned the yellow dress I’d started out with. “We’d better get a move on” was all James said about it that time.
Feeling much happier in the cheerful yellow, I drove us, mishap-free, to Margery and Gordon’s, where we parked once again in the avenue outside their house.
This time James didn’t complain, so in that way this whole episode had made a better man of him.
We marched to the front door and, as before, it was opened for us by a gentleman in a suit.
Inside, all the usual suspects were lined up with all the usual refreshments and stilted small talk.
“Drink?” a voice behind me asked and I turned to see Margery, once again, with a bottle of wine tucked under one arm and a bottle of water under the other. And James said it wasn’t meant to be a reconstruction?
“Water, please,” I said. “Sparkling.” It was going to be easy to stick to this time.
“Help yourself to nibbles,” Margery said, nodding to a buffet set out on tables along the wall below the windows. That was different.
At the buffet, guests were milling around, talking about what they thought had happened to Lennie.
“I bet he fell in the river, drunk,” one man said. “I always knew it would end like that.”
A few people sighed and nodded, while others tutted and said, “Steffan!”
“You know, I’d been worried about his state of mind for a while,” a woman said, then she dropped her voice and I had to turn round to see her tapping her head and mouthing the words “losing it.”
“I think he was involved in something,” her friend replied. “He was always consorting with those criminals.”
“Reformed criminals,” another reminded her.
A hush fell upon the gossips as the door opened and a young man, followed by an older woman, appeared.
Anthony Green, son of Lennie Green, I remembered from the TV caption.
I hadn’t seen the woman, but I’d hazard a guess she was Lennie’s wife.
I looked at James, but he was choosing a whiskey with not a care in the world.
“James, look,” I said, nudging him in the ribs. “It’s Lennie’s family.”
“Yeah, I saw,” he said.
“Aren’t we going to say something to them?”
“Such as?”
I didn’t know, but it didn’t seem right to say nothing. I stepped forward and James pulled me back. “Don’t go anywhere near them,” he whispered.
“Shouldn’t we even say sorry for their loss?”
“And our part in it? Stay away. Here…” And in a break from tradition, he handed me a plate from the buffet table and started piling food onto it.
But I only had time to eat two mini steak pies before we were all being ushered to our seats. The chatter in the room quietened down as Margery made her wobbly way—heels and alcohol-intake both high—onto the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Thank you for coming on this most somber, but celebratory, night and thank you to Moira and Anthony for taking the time.” I looked to see where they were and found them in the front row. James squeezed my arm hard, which I think meant don’t look at them.
Margery continued. “If you haven’t had a chance to browse the catalog we sent out, there are copies on your seats, but before we get to that, let me draw your attention to the inserts, which weren’t in the original.
I’m proud to announce this evening that we will be auctioning off a number of services by young people who have benefited from Lennie’s charities. ”
And we were treated to a performance by insert number one, a band called The Rogues, made up of formerly unschoolable schoolboys Lennie had helped.
They were offering their services for events, and after a set that was notable mostly for its volume, they were auctioned off to play at someone’s thirtieth birthday party for ￡8,000.
That set the night up nicely as a money-for-old-rope occasion.
Someone paid ￡15,000 for the theater meet and greet; ￡25,000 bought someone a coaching session with a football player I’d never heard of; and a weekend at a vineyard in France went for ￡30,000.
The bidding was interspersed with friends of Lennie’s getting up on the stage to tell anecdotes about him, some short and sweet, some long and rambling. We all laughed politely, although for most of them you’d needed to be there.
Throughout it all, I kept trying to look at Anthony and Moira, and James kept squeezing my arm when he saw my head move, and it made for a very long evening, until my interest was piqued by the opportunity to go behind the scenes at The Great British Sewing Bee.
But James held my hands firmly on my lap while the bidding was taking place. It went for ￡35,000, which you’d think would be small change to a billionaire, and I would have been great for the show. Maybe I would apply to be a contestant.
With that thought, I cheered myself up as we waited for lot seventeen, the use of a Ferrari for a day, that James was planning to bid on. Then Margery got back up on the stage.
“Next up is item number two in your insert,” she said.
“I’d like to introduce you to a young man who made some mistakes in his early days.
Indeed, he came to Lennie’s notice when he was in a Young Offenders Institution, but there’s no need to hold on to your wallets, ladies and gentlemen, our next lot is a leopard who really did change his spots. I give you…”
Music played, the song was “Daddy Cool,” and onto the stage strode…
“Arty!” I squeaked. And lo and behold, there on stage was Arty, dressed in very tight-fitting jeans and one of the T-shirts I’d made him.
“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 here to 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 the Sewing Bee, I would have 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 sleeve dropped 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 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.