Eva Ibbotson - A Glove Shop In Vienna

I was liking this less and less. ‘And the little old man?’

‘Uncle Laszlo, do you mean? Well, I found him in the back one day, sort of rootling among the ichthyosaurus bones; he’d got lost, I think. It’s sad because he’s retired and lives in this awful hotel with no one to care for him — all his people stayed behind in Hungary in 1956. He must have been some sort of professor, I reckon. His hands are a bit shaky now, but he’s absolutely brilliant with bones.’

‘Oh, my God!’ I could see it all: medical disasters, insurance scandals, enquiries… ‘And that guy in jeans doing the carpentry?’ Obscurely, he had annoyed me most. ‘Your boy friend?’

She flushed. ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘Matt’s American. He went through the drug scene when he was still in nappies and he’s been through some bad times. As a matter of fact, I found him kind of passed-out behind the stuffed bison in that alcove where Brian sleeps.’

‘Brian?’

‘Only in the winter.’ She was on the defensive at last. ‘He’s a pavement artist and in the summer he likes to sleep in the park. He’s very careful — it was because of him that we found the leak in the dark-room roof.’

I picked up one of Mr Henry’s treasures — a specimen tube simply and coyly labelled ‘cyst’ and turned it over in my hands.

They’ll have to go, Miss French. Every one of them.’

She stood there, knock-kneed as ever, taking it.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if Mr Henry told you, but this museum is financially on the rocks. Our endowment’s been reduced to nothing by the inflation and unless we can get a grant from the Natural History Commission we’re finished.’

‘We’ll have to close , do you mean?’

I nodded. ‘Just so. And the first thing Sir Godfrey Peters and his Commission are going to ask me is why this museum is full of geriatrics and pregnant women and tramps.’

A pause. Then she said gently, ‘Could… they just finish what they’re doing? They’ve all worked so hard.’

I frowned, calculating. ‘The Commission’s due in mid-February. That’s three months from now. All right, they can finish the jobs in hand but that’s all . Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mr Bellingham. I understand.’

There followed some of the most exhausting weeks of my life. Three months was not nearly long enough for what needed to be done. Havelock had had connections all over the world and hardly a week passed but some ancient general or intrepid lady entomologist died and left us their collection of Peruvian rhinoceros beetles or a tin trunk of mysterious shards. It seemed to me that unless we could make some kind of order out of the muddle and get some of the stuff on display, the Commission would make short work of us.

So we set to work. And I have to say here and now that rancour was not one of the football supporter’s vices. She kept her lame dogs out of my way in her room and turned herself into a kind of sloe-eyed helpmeet out of the Old Testament, constantly at my side. We staggered about with drawers and specimen boxes, we sorted, we classified. We turned out rusty tins labelled ‘Henderson’s Breast Developer’ or ‘Colman’s Original Mustard’ and found now a valuable effigy, now a collection of mouldering pupae which crumbled at our touch. And always, even at the end of the most gruelling day, covered in dust and tottering with exhaustion, her demented enthusiasm remained undimmed.

Three weeks after my arrival she knocked at the door of my office as I sat in solitary state, drinking my coffee with the cyst.

‘Uncle Laszlo’s finished the ichthyosaurus. He was wondering if you’d like to see it?’

I followed her into her room. The old man had on his hat and coat; scrupulously he was getting ready to leave now that his task was done. I thought how tired he looked, how old.

The ichthyosaurus took up two trestle tables and so far as I could see he had made a flawless job of it.

‘Thank you. That will make a most valuable exhibit.’

Uncle Laszlo took up his briefcase. ‘There are some pterosaur bones in the cupboard in Mr Bigger’s room,’ he said. ‘I think they are complete. If they could be assembled, they would make an interesting comparison.’

‘Are you sure?’ I asked sharply.

‘That it is a pterosaur, I am sure. That it is complete, I cannot say.’

‘Well, you’d better find out,’ I said.

Uncle Laszlo looked at me and then quietly he took off his hat and coat. After all, he did not look so very old. It was only when a sort of sigh spread around the room and Flossie lurched radiantly towards me with the second cup of coffee that I realised what I had done.

After that things went downhill rapidly. Flossie appeared next day carrying a swathe of wild silk, priceless stuff the colour of the sea. ‘Mrs Rahman’s father-in-law sent it from Quittah. Would you mind terribly if we used it to display the Abyssinian pottery on?’

I said no, I didn’t mind. Gradually it turned out that I didn’t mind Brian, on leave from his pavement, wiring the display cases for concealed lighting, or Matt repainting the frieze in the main hall. Mrs Rahman moving on from the Hartington Egg Collection to the Kashmiri dried ferns was another thing I

didn’t apparently mind too much. As for Flossie putting in a fourteen-hour day, that had always been all right with me.

Soon I abandoned not only my principles but the cyst, taking coffee with the rest of them in Flossie’s room and giving them the benefit of my views on Leboyer, the political situation in Afghanistan and the efficiency of Yoga in licking drugs. It got so that when Flossie vanished one morning, obeying her sixth sense, and came back with a tragically widowed Brigadier, it was I who gave him the Madagascan ivories to sort.

I began to be hopeful. The Havelock, like a woman who is loved, began to glow, to shine.

‘They can’t close us, Paul, we’re so beautiful,’’ said Flossie, gazing entranced at her newly mounted shrunken head. And removing a mother-of-pearl coconut scraper from her tangled hair, I was inclined to agree.

My happiness was the greater because Vivian, for the first time since our marriage, was taking an interest in my work. ‘I was thinking, Paul, if the Havelock is in trouble financially we ought to get going on the social side a bit. Have some fund-raising parties and things? I’d need some new clothes, of course…’

Gratefully I made over my salary cheque and Vivian, looking unbelievably stunning, sallied forth in search of American philanthropists, captains of industry and eminent scientists who might interest themselves in the Havelock and its fate.

I had it all sorted out in my mind, of course. Sir Godfrey and his Commission were due on February the twelfth. A week before that I was going to clear out the volunteers, give Flossie a holiday (I saw no way of making that girl into anything that remotely resembled the curator of a natural history museum) and only Mr Biggers, myself and the staid secretary would be there to present accounts and conduct them on a formal tour.

But there I had reckoned without my wife. She had managed — heaven knows how — to get hold of Sir Godfrey socially and to interest him in the Havelock and me.

We were having our coffee break when we heard the sound of purposeful footsteps approaching the director’s office, halting and then returning. Then came a knock on the door and a jovial, booming voice — ‘Ah, Bellingham, there you are! We’ve come to look in a bit early, as you see. Thought we might get your case through quicker that way.’

I don’t know what I had expected from the chairman of the Natural History Commission. Hardly the Flash Gordon profile, the craggy jaw, the Bermuda tan. Flanked by three steely-eyed, grey-suited experts, Sir Godfrey advanced into the room. As he did so his jovial expression became more fixed, his craggy jaw tightened a little.