In the Frame Read Free Page A

painters: a Hockney, a Bratby, two Lowrys, and a Spear for openers, all painted on what one might call the artists’ less exuberant days. Donald didn’t like paintings which he said ‘jumped off the wall and made a fuss’.
    ‘You probably remember them better than I do,’ he said. ‘You do it.’
    ‘I’d miss some.’
    ‘Is there anything to drink?’
    ‘Only the cooking brandy,’ I said.
    ‘We could have some of the wine.’
    ‘What wine?’
    ‘In the cellar.’ His eyes suddenly opened wide. ‘Good God, I’d forgotten about the cellar.’
    ‘I didn’t even know you had one.’
    He nodded. ‘Reason I bought the house. Perfect humidity and temperature for long-term storage. There’s a small fortune down there in claret and port.’
    There wasn’t, of course. There were three floor-to-ceiling rows of empty racks, and a single cardboard box on a plain wooden table.
    Donald merely shrugged. ‘Oh well… that’s that.’
    I opened the top of the cardboard box and saw the elegant corked shapes of the tops of wine bottles.
    ‘They’ve left these, anyway,’ I said. ‘In their rush.’
    ‘Probably on purpose,’ Don smiled twistedly. ‘That’s Australian wine. We brought it back with us.’
    ‘Better than nothing,’ I said disparagingly, pulling out a bottle and reading the label.
    ‘Better than most, you know. A lot of Australian wine is superb.’
    I carried the whole case up to the kitchen and dumped it on the table. The stairs from the cellar led up into the utility room among the washing machines and other domesticities, and I had always had an unclear impression that its door was just another cupboard. I looked at it thoughtfully, an unremarkable white painted panel merging inconspicuously into the general scenery.
    ‘Do you think the burglars
knew
the wine was there?’ I asked.
    ‘God knows.’
    ‘I would never have found it.’
    ‘You’re not a burglar, though.’
    He searched for a corkscrew, opened one of the bottles, and poured the deep red liquid into two kitchen tumblers. I tasted it and it was indeed a marvellous wine, even to my untrained palate.
Wynn’s Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon
. You could wrap the name round the tongue as lovingly as the product. Donald drank his share absentmindedlyas if it were water, the glass clattering once or twice against his teeth. There was still an uncertainty about many of his movements, as if he could not quite remember how to do things, and I knew it was because with half his mind he thought all the time of Regina, and the thoughts were literally paralysing.
    The old Donald had been a man of confidence, capably running a middle-sized inherited business and adding his share to the passed-on goodies. He had a blunt uncompromising face lightened by amber eyes which smiled easily, and he had considered his money well-spent on shapely hair-cuts.
    The new Donald was a tentative man shattered with shock, a man trying to behave decently but unsure where his feet were when he walked upstairs.
    We spent the evening in the kitchen, talking desultorily, eating a scratch meal, and tidying all the stores back on to the shelves. Donald made a good show of being busy but put half the tins back upside down.
    The front door bell rang three times during the evening but never in the code pre-arranged with the police. The telephone, with its receiver lying loose beside it, rang not at all. Donald had turned down several offers of refuge with local friends and visibly shook at the prospect of talking to anyone but Frost and me.
    ‘Why don’t they go away?’ he said despairingly, after the third attempt on the front door.
    ‘They will, once they’ve seen you,’ I said. And sucked you dry, and spat out the husk, I thought.
    He shook his head tiredly. ‘I simply can’t.’
    It felt like living through a siege.
    We went eventually again upstairs to bed, although it seemed likely that Donald would sleep no more than the night before, which had been hardly at