Kathleen Tessaro - The Debutante

They began their work at the front of the house, with the entrance hall, working fastidiously at what seemed like a painfully slow speed. Little stickers went on each item with a number. Each number corresponded to a description dictated to Cate by Jack and then they took a photograph, sometimes several from different angles. Every figurine, every painting, every detail of the lives that were once lived here were recorded and priced for quick sale.

Each piece had an estimated value. Cate filled in the figures next to the descriptions in uncharacteristically careful, neat handwriting, the total mounting by the minute. It was mind-numbing. How sad that all these objects, acquired and beloved through generations, were to be reduced to nothing but a few lines in a catalogue. Endsleigh had been a home once – a refuge against life and the world. Some of these things had been favourites; treasured. Now she and Jack were the last people ever to stay there in its incarnation as a private home. A couple of strangers; strangers to the house and its history, strangers even to each other. Soon bulldozers would be knocking down Mrs Williams’s low-ceilinged cottage to make way for a luxury spa; the front hallway transformed into a reception area and bar. Already she could imagine the delight of tourists as they arrived for their country-house weekend.

Jack was good at his job, clever and concise, reeling off complicated accounts of styles and conditions of objects without pausing for breath. And Cate was grateful for the lack of demanding interaction between them. He dictated; she recorded. She was invisible and it soothed her to forget for a while who she was and how she’d ended up here. By the time they stopped at seven, her fingers ached from the effort of trying to write clearly and yet at speed.

‘Shall we leave it here for tonight?’ he suggested.

She nodded gratefully, filing away the forms in a folder.

‘I think I can smell something cooking,’ he added, yawning and stretching his arms above his head.

They wandered into the kitchen. Mrs Williams had been hard at work – the shepherd’s pie was browning nicely in the oven and two place settings were laid out on the long pine table along with a green salad, a bowl of fruit and some cheese.

‘Thank God for that!’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘I’m famished!’

‘And yet where is the invisible Mrs Williams?’ Cate wondered, leaning up against the worktop. ‘This is like something out of a fairy tale; Beauty and the Beast.’

‘Don’t we all wish we had staff like that?’

‘Hmm.’

‘Oh, and here’s just the thing!’ Jack picked up a bottle of red wine airing on the worktop next to two glasses. ‘Can I pour you one?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Really? Are you sure?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

Then he remembered his conversation with Rachel, some mention of her father being an alcoholic. Of course, he wasn’t meant to know anything about her. He poured out a glass. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Why would I mind?’

He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. ‘No reason.’

Feeling self-conscious, he smiled and sipped, as if to prove that he was completely ignorant of her family history.

Cate frowned, unable to disguise her irritation. Rachel had obviously been talking. ‘It’s so hot in here!’ She turned away, looking out of the window.

‘You’re right. Let’s eat outside instead.’

‘Fine.’

Once out in the garden, the tension relaxed. It was good to get away from the heat of the kitchen with its ancient Aga. They sat under the chestnut tree again at the same low table where they’d had their tea, carrying the food out on trays.

A cool breeze rustled through the foliage. And suddenly, after the pleasant anonymity of working together for hours, the strangeness of being alone was palpable again.

‘So,’ Cate pushed her food around on her plate, ‘have you always been a valuer?’

It sounded dry and stupid.

Jack looked across at her. ‘No. You’re an artist, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ She hadn’t expected him to bat the conversation back at her quite so quickly.

‘What kind of work do you do?’

‘I paint. Reproductions.’

Up shot an eyebrow. ‘Really? You mean Whistler’s Mother and that sort of thing?’

She tore at a piece of bread. ‘I specialise in French and Russian eighteenth-century Romantic painting.’

‘The Enlightenment?’

‘Yes.’

He chuckled.

‘What?’

‘Rachel didn’t tell me you were a faker.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘Ever try to pass anything off?’

‘It’s all real,’ she said, jabbing the bread into a pocket of gravy. ‘It’s just not original. And yes, pieces get “passed off” all the time. Most of the work I do is for insurance purposes. Very few people can afford to lose a masterpiece, even a minor one, to theft or fire.’

‘I’ve offended you. I’m sorry. My mother always told me I had the social skills of a cabbage.’

‘I’m sure she was just being kind.’

He laughed. ‘Mothers are bound to be indulgent. So,’ he tried again, ‘why that period?’

‘I sort of fell into it.’

‘Into the Age of Reason?’

‘Someone asked me to do some work for them. A trompe l’oeil in a quite amazing flat overlooking the park. I found I had a certain aptitude for it. Also, there’s considerably more scope for economic success. After all,’ she took a bite, ‘if you hang a copy of Sunflowers on your wall, everyone knows you’ve got a fake. But if you choose something more elusive, unknown…’

‘Very clever. Was that Constantine’s idea?’

His astuteness caught her off guard. She shifted. ‘Well, the commission did come through a client of his.’

‘He’s always been, shall we say…enterprising.’ He took another sip. ‘And what about your own work?’

‘This is my work.’

‘Of course. I just meant your own subject matter.’

Again, she felt wrong-footed. ‘I get paid very well. And there’s nothing particularly worthy about starving to death in a garret.’

He said nothing. But his expression was amused.

‘This is more sustainable.’

‘Well, yes. We must do what’s sustainable.’

‘Have you always been a valuer?’ she asked again, crisply.

He looked up, grinning. ‘No. My father had an antiques business in Islington. I trained as an auctioneer at Sotheby’s one wayward year after university before I came up with the brilliant idea of becoming an architect. Then, unfortunately, my father became ill. Parkinson’s. And I took over the business.’ He paused. ‘I should’ve sold it and moved on; just been brutal and done it that same year. Instead, I got stuck.’

‘In what way?’

‘Pretending to be my dad, I suppose.’

‘You don’t like it?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A job’s a job, right? And –’ he flashed her a smile – ‘at least it was sustainable. For a while, anyway. I was forced to sell a couple of years later.’

‘How is your father now?’

‘The truth is, it’s hard to tell. One day he’s quite bad and the next he seems like his old self. My mother is thinking of moving him to a nursing home. They live in Leicestershire now and I don’t see them as often as I’d like.’

‘And you never finished your training?’

He stabbed at a bit of salad. ‘I was married by then. To a girl who came into the shop to buy a mirror.’

‘I see. Did you sell her one?’

‘No, she couldn’t afford any. But I made her cups of tea and she used to stop in quite often on the pretext of finding one. In the end I gave her a really quite beautiful Edwardian overmantel.’ He smiled to himself, remembering. ‘I searched high and low for something decent I could afford to part with. I tried to act like I was going to give it away anyway. I don’t think she was fooled.’