Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

‘No, but I collect them.’ And I told her how as a kid I had used any money that came my way to buy pictorials. ‘They were quite cheap then, and it was a sort of displacement activity, I suppose, a world in which I could forget that my parents were at each other’s throats and only staying together on account of me. Lately I’ve been taking advantage of the rise in market values to switch into line-engraved issues, concentrating on Great Britain and the Caribbean, islands like Antigua, St Kitts, St Vincent, Turks and Caicos.’

‘So you know some of the dealers?’

‘Two or three, yes. When I get the chance, I buy at auctions. It’s usually cheaper at auction.’ I hesitated, not sure what she wanted. ‘Would you like me to get a valuation for you?’ And as I said it, I knew it had been prompted by a desire to see her again.

‘Could you?’ She was silent a moment, thinking about it. ‘Thank you, yes. I’d be very glad if you would.’

It was as easy as that, and feeling slightly pleased with myself, I finished my tea and picked up the clipboard. Knowing something of her circumstances now, I said, ‘Is there anything else — anything I’ve missed — that you want either included in the sale or else for me to value for you while I’m here?’

‘No, I don’t think there’s anything else. Just about everything that’s left belongs to Tim, I suppose. I don’t own very much now except my clothes.’ And she added, ‘There was a time when we were quite well off, but when my father finally died-’ She hesitated. ‘I knew he’d been financing Jona, but not the extent of it. There wasn’t much left for Tim except the house, and these last two years I’ve sold off what I could. There’s nothing of any real value here now. Can I give you some more tea?’

I thanked her, studying the inventory as she refilled my cup. The contents I had listed wouldn’t fetch enough to keep him very long, even if the nursing home was charity-run, and to get her mind off the subject of finance, I asked her about the carvings. ‘Was it your grandfather who collected them?’

‘My great-uncle.’

‘He was a missionary, was he?’ I was thinking of the label on the base of that wooden figure downstairs.

She seemed amused. ‘No, he was the black sheep of the family. An inveterate liar, that’s how my grandfather described him. But he wouldn’t talk about him, except once long ago I remember he said his brother had got into some sort of trouble. He shipped out on a wool ship to Australia and wasn’t heard of again for several years. Then he suddenly turned up in England boasting he owned an island and some schooners and had become king of a lot of cannibals in a world where they believed their ancestors were butterflies.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘My grandfather was always reminiscing about people with strange backgrounds, so I didn’t take much notice. I was a child at the time, but I liked the bit about the butterflies.’

‘It was his brother, then, who gave him the carvings?’

‘Yes, his younger brother Carlos.’

‘And he gave him the carvings to convince him of his improbable story, I suppose.’

She laughed. ‘No, I think he just left them with Grandpa so they’d be safe. I’ve often wondered about that, whether he had some sort of premonition. He was drowned, you see, on his way back to the Pacific. He had come to England to raise money for the purchase of a steamship and was drowned when it sank.’ And when I asked her where it had sunk, she said, ‘In the Pacific, somewhere east of Papua. But God knows where. There weren’t any survivors. He had named her the Holland Trader. ’ And she added, ‘It happened a long time ago, in 1911. Sad, isn’t it?’

She turned her head from the window and smiled at me. ‘That’s all I ever got out of my grandfather. He wouldn’t talk about him. The subject was taboo. So maybe you’re right. Maybe Carlos Holland did bring those carvings home to prove he was telling the truth for once.’ And she added in that husky whisper, ‘I think of him sometimes. An odd name, Carlos — for an Englishman. And the man himself a complete mystery. If only he had kept a diary.’

‘Is that why you’ve hung on to the carvings?’

She nodded. ‘It’s teasing to know so little — no letters, nothing; just those carvings, and the stamps. You’ll find his name inside the albums.’ I thought her interest in the man was the natural reaction of somebody whose life had been very restricted, but then she said, ‘Strange I should still have relics of his world, and nothing left of my grandfather’s. He had marvellous things — native head-dresses and spears. But they were all left behind when my father sold Kuamegu. I can only dimly remember them now, and the brilliance of the poinsettias, the women with their bare pointed breasts and the men wearing nothing but a few broad grass fronds — arse grass, we called it — hanging from a waist cord.’ She gave that little shrug and got to her feet. ‘It was all very primitive, wonderfully colourful.’ She began gathering up the tea things. ‘You have finished, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’ I was thinking how wrong I had been, her background so very different from my own. ‘You were born out there?’

‘At Kuamegu, yes. It was a coffee plantation in the Highlands about five thousand feet up in the Chimbu country.’ She stood there for a moment, very still. ‘Buka wasn’t the same, hot and humid, always raining. And living at Madehas …’ She turned away. ‘After Mother was killed, we came here. That was something different again, and when you’ve no money-’ She stopped abruptly, gave a little self-derisory laugh and picked up the albums. ‘I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this. Stupid of me. I’ll get these wrapped up.’

She left me then, and I sat there for a moment, the clipboard on my knee, wondering where Buka was, what part of the Pacific she had been talking about. Doing my National Service in Singapore as a junior officer on landing craft, I had had just a glimpse of the Pacific, the only exciting bit of travel I had ever managed to achieve, and here was this strange young woman talking about it as though the Pacific islands were more home to her than England. What would she do now? If I ever catch up with the man … Those shocking words came suddenly back to me. But with her brother to support, the sale of the contents wouldn’t get her out to the Pacific, and from what she had said I guessed the house itself was mortgaged. I wasn’t certain what age she was — late twenties, early thirties, it was difficult to tell. And the way she had looked, sitting there, staring out at the sea. If she intended going back, then the stamps were her only hope, and as I got to my feet, I was wondering whether I could find the money to buy them from her. Stuck down like that, they couldn’t be worth more than £200 or £300.

I put the clipboard in my briefcase and stood staring out of the window at the sea. It was milky calm, the horizon lost in haze. I thought of all the times she must have stood here in her bedroom looking out at it, and at night in moonlight, longing to be away. If it had been anybody else, if she hadn’t talked like that, then I could have made her an offer for those stamps and she would probably have taken it. I don’t know why I wanted them so badly. It wasn’t the stamps themselves. I had some of them already, and the others I could have bought from Josh Keegan or one of the other dealers in the Strand. No, it was something in the careful way they had been stuck into those albums, the planned choice of subjects, almost as though there had been some purpose in collecting just those items and presenting them in that particular way.

I knew it was foolish of me. Even that second album didn’t contain a single stamp of the islands on which I was now concentrating. But collecting is like that. You see something, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, you want it. Would she take £400 for them? I could probably raise that much on a quick sale of some Penny Blacks. But as I started down the stairs, I knew I couldn’t do it. Without a valuation it would be taking advantage of her, and I had promised to get them valued.