Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

‘You’re probably right,’ he admitted. ‘She’s got too much sense to get involved in anything too crazy anyway. Mind you,’ he added after a moment’s thought, ‘she hangs out with us two idiots and how sensible is that?’

* * *

Later that same morning I was back on Grand Parade across from the entrance to Victoria Gallery in search of a way inside that wouldn’t end in one of the many disasters Tim had lugubriously predicted. Mindful of the CCTV cameras at every street corner I had left the Norton out of sight in Caxton Court under the bridge and had picked up a different hat in a charity shop on Argyll Street. Looking up at the façade should have been enough to convince me to just keep on walking until I found a friendly policeman to unburden myself to. Yet there was something else apart from my feelings of obligation and guilt that made me amble along in the weak October sunshine and squint up at the rooflines of the adjoining buildings. If I was honest the answer probably lay in a surfeit of Cary Grant movies in my youth. Somewhere the task of getting in and out of a museum at night — and it would have to be night — struck a hopelessly romantic chord inside me. Thoughtfully puffing on a cigarette I ambled along and mingled with the few tourists who had braved this year’s wash-out autumn to admire Pulteney Bridge, Grand Parade with its colonnaded walkway underneath and the river Avon roaring over the horseshoe weir below. For the first time in years the river was in such spate that all boat tours had to be cancelled as simply too dangerous.

I took the cameras more seriously now and tried to behave like everyone around me. On a security tape I would look just like any other visitor, taking only a passing interest in the architecture of the museum and walking in that curiously uncoordinated, aimless way we all acquire as soon as we turn tourist. After ten minutes of hanging around the balustrade on the parade I was none the wiser. I crossed to the other side and walked past the pizza joint, the ladies’ fashion shop, the entrance to the market and the Turkish restaurant. At the corner of Boat Stall Lane was a pub called the Rummer. I was going to stroll past slowly and take only a casual interest in the lane which leads to the car park at the back, but the view that presented itself was so arresting that I stood stock still and stared, possibly with my mouth open. There were no cars in the car park. Instead, a sweating and shouting tribe of workmen were erecting an enormous scaffold covering the entire width of the Guildhall building. Another set of men were just manoeuvring a couple of blue and white portable toilets against the back of the covered market. Three huge lorries seemed to fill the entire place.

I forced myself to walk on, past the Empire Hotel. My first feeling had been one of panic but gradually I realized that scaffolding on the building next door might turn out to be nearly as good as a ladder on the museum wall itself. I walked around the hotel until I came to the porte cochère between Browns and the Empire Hotel. And strolled in. For a while nobody took much notice, they were simply too busy to care. There was a definite hierarchy and pecking order among them. Being actually on the scaffold, even ten feet off the ground, which was how high it reached at the moment, obviously allowed you to shout instruction and insult at the mortals on the ground, whose names appeared to be either Moron or Fuckwit. I circled round between lorries to the right, trying to look like I had some business there. I read the writing on the side of the nearest cab with joy. These were proper roofers, not just a scaffolding firm. The scaffolding would go all the way to the top to allow access to the roof and cupola, where the storm probably did some damage. Another hour or so, I noted with satisfaction, and the only two security cameras would disappear behind the scaffold. It was practically a foregone conclusion that the people responsible for security here would be too lethargic to do anything about it (‘Hey, it’s only for a few days’).

I stood near the back door of Garfunkel’s kitchen and let my eyes run along the roofline of the covered market. I imagined myself scaling the scaffold, then following the skyline to the roof of the museum, where sooner or later I’d be confronted with the large skylights of the upstairs gallery. . My stomach contracted at the thought. I grabbed the cast-iron railings harder and looked down into what at first sight seemed to be just the basement courtyard of the hotel. Then my eyes travelled further along and down, past silver beer kegs, empty gas cylinders and stacks of plastic crates towards a small cast-iron gate. All I could see beyond it was the swollen turmoil of the river Avon. As I walked back a few paces towards the porte cochère it became clear that this courtyard was in fact an ancient slipway leading in a steady slope from the yard towards the water. At this end it was barred by a larger gate. I tested it casually. It was locked and looked ancient but was obviously in use, so how difficult could it be?

One of the scaffolders shouted and pointed. ‘S’cuse me, mate, but you can’t hang round here, this lorry’s about to move back, all right?’ I just nodded and walked off as the lorry started bleeping his reverse warning, not wanting to give anyone cause to remember me. I left through Boat Stall Lane and without a look back crossed the river via Pulteney Bridge, then clattered down the steps which led to the walkway and the imaginatively named Riverside Café overlooking the weir. I stuck my head through the door and ordered Earl Grey from an aproned waitress, then sat outside in the thin sunlight and peered across at the colonnaded walkway underneath Grand Parade. Even from here I could clearly see the wrought-iron door of the slipway leading on to it. There wasn’t a camera in sight. Access to this colonnaded walkway used to be from Parade Gardens, the little park bordered by the river. Now the walkway was closed to the public, probably to stop kids jumping into the river there or because of ageing masonry. Between the columns ran wrought-iron railings, easily surmounted, and below them an overgrown drop of twelve or fifteen feet down to the water, which would seem like nothing to a man who had just come down from the roof of the museum carrying a Rodin bronze on his back.

It was obvious. I didn’t need a getaway car at all. What I needed was a boat.

The Earl Grey arrived. I slipped a slice of lemon into my tea and raised my cup in salute to the river. There was only a small problem: the Avon was in such spate that all river traffic had been banned until further notice, so it would be complete madness trying to get the sculpture out that way.

Perfect.

Jake’s place had to be one of the few locations where the exhaust note of the Norton remained unremarked upon. At the moment it even remained unnoticed. Somewhere deep inside the workshop an engine was revving freely, unencumbered by any kind of exhaust system at all, judging by the deep shockwaves of sound, and somewhere else the high-pitched scream of an angle-grinder getting purchase on something big and hollow added the top notes to this rhapsody of toil. I left the bike at the entrance and picked my way through the broken landscape of automotive history in the yard.

Originally Jake had bought the farm to breed ponies, but the venture had failed. After that he had changed direction and turned his first love, classic cars, into a thriving business. Restoring and maintaining vintage machinery — as long as it was British and had an internal combustion engine — had made him a modest fortune. You wouldn’t know it though, because the place looked like a scrapyard, with bits of pre-1970s cars and vans lying everywhere, some under tarpaulins, some protected by makeshift roofs, some taking a well-earned rest in the weeds. Despite his financial success Jake was still doing most of the work himself, with only one or two assistants, because that was what he enjoyed. At this very moment he was listening with rapt attention, oily bald head cocked to one side, to the unimaginable racket coming from a huge lump of an engine sitting on a workbench in the main workshop, worrying the accelerator with his thumb. He nodded at me and continued his revving, so I sat on an oil drum outside until he had heard enough of the testosterone symphony and joined me, carrying two tin mugs of tea made with a blow torch.