The Fraud Read Free Page A

Perhaps sometimes there was something endearing about a shadow, whose dark eyes were so large and bright, and some days Philip would point out the new houses on the Clifton hills, or the ships from far-off lands.
    ‘Look, Grace, look!’ he would say. ‘Listen, Grace, listen to me! These ships,’ and they would gaze at all the graceful, shabby vessels that came and went from another world, the tall masts like thin bare trees in lines along the quay-side, ‘these ships travel the World, they carry Diamonds and Rubies and Rum - and real Gold,’ and unexpectedly he smashed his swordstick violently against a wall in that raging way he sometimes had, ‘Where is my Gold!’ and Grace knew well to lag behind now, so that he would not take out his anger upon her. But she knew what gold was: she could picture the colour of gold in her head, her father’s old crystal decanters contained liquid made of dark gold, the colour caught the candlelight in the dark family house, where nothing much else shone. While Philip brooded Grace stared, wrapt, fascinated, at the ships with their furled white sails, all the bustle and calling and unloading and loading; she smelled the tar and the filthy river port and, somewhere there - beside them, behind them - exotic spices on the air. She saw how the light changed as it fell across the water: observed an old sailor and a young one, their heads together as they talked. The grey Bristol light caught the bones of the old sailor so that his shadowed face looked to her like a skull, a skull that was smoking a pipe.
    ‘Look, Philip, look!’ she called, and she caught up with him again. ‘Look at the sailors!’ There was no breeze, the smoke from the pipe rose straight up, a cloud of blue mist rising above the heads of the two men, there beside the coils of rope and the big heavy boxes and a seagull, black and white, crying at the lowering sky, and Grace wondered if her father could paint such a picture instead of horses: the blue smoke and the grey sky and the bird and the eerie weather-beaten old face. The old sailor spat and somehow the seagull was looking the other way and the gob fell upon its folded wings, it squawked in outrage and shook its feathers and flew away screeching. And young Grace Marshall could be seen in her hooped skirt and her tight bodice and her shawl laughing uncontrollably at the bird’s indignation along the wharfside in the city of Bristol; her dark eyes sparkled up at her beautiful brother who could not help laughing either, as much at his sister ’s merriment as at the affront of the bird from the sea.
    Philip Marshall was so bored with life in general that once he even took his sister to the Bristol Library in King Street. There, up an old oak staircase, they found the librarian in a room full of books with a startling, wonderful picture on the wall: a picture of a fine, elegant gentleman in a beautiful coloured robe. The librarian however was neither elegant nor fine; he was a vicar in a somewhat shabby waistcoat: Grace and Philip observed he had red veins on his cheeks which gave him the look rather of a cross person but he was not cross at all, simply bored and rum-soaked. They understood at once that the rum was hidden behind the books - well, they were used to all that. Philip charmed the vicar as he charmed all others, and the vicar showed them, as requested, the library’s copy of Wm Shakespeare’s Collected Works .
    ‘Not at all to today’s Taste,’ said the vicar, ‘nobody has asked for this Volume for many a moon. You will see that a large number of the pages are stained, for our previous premises leaked badly. We thought not to keep this, as it is so damaged and hardly anybody ever asks for it, but my Father was fond of Mr Shakespeare.’
    Philip leafed through the delicate pages, found part of Henry the Fifth , unstained, and suddenly cried out heroically, holding the volume aloft:
     
    Cry ‘God for Harry! England and St George!’
     
    But