The cricket commentary suddenly went crazy. ‘—entire audience here at the Oval is on its feet, as Botham notches up another superb century! Geoffrey Boycott is running over to congratulate—’
‘Botham?’ The woman went to red alert. ‘That’s Ian Botham, right?’
I nodded.
‘Shaggy like Chewbacca? Broken Roman nose? Barbarian eyes? Masculinity wrapped in cricket whites?’
‘That’s probably him.’
‘Oh.’ She crossed her hands over her bosomless chest like the Virgin Mary. ‘I would walk on burning embers.’ We listened to more radio applause as we finished the mango. ‘So.’ She carefully wiped her fingers on a damp flannel and switched the radio off. ‘Can I sell you a Jacobean four-poster bed? Or do the tax inspectors keep getting younger?’
‘Uh…have you got an Omega Seamaster please?’
‘An “Ohmeega Seamaster”? That’s a boat?’
‘No, it’s a watch. They stopped making them in 1958. It has to be a model called a “de Ville”.’
‘Alas, Giles doesn’t do watches, honey. He doesn’t want people bringing them back if they don’t run.’
‘Oh.’ That was it. Nowhere else in Cheltenham.
The American woman studied me. ‘I may know a specialist dealer…’
‘A watch dealer? Here in Cheltenham?’
‘No, he operates out of South Kensington. Want me to call him?’
‘Would you? I’ve got £28.75.’
‘Keep your cards closer to your chest than that, honey. Let me see if I can find his number in this bordello Giles calls his office…’
‘Hi, Jock? Rosamund. Uh-huh. No…no, I’m playing shop. Giles is out vulturing somewhere. Some duchess with a big country house has died. Or a countess. Or a largesse. I don’t know, we don’t do queens where I come from, Jock, well, not queens who dress like they’re serving life in fashion prison…What’s that? Oh, Giles did tell me, it was someplace quaint, in the Cotswolds, English-sounding…Brideshead – no, that was the TV series, right? It’s on the tip of my tongue – Codpiece-under-Water…No, Jock, I’d tell you if…What’s that?…Uh-huh, I know there are no secrets between…Uh-huh, Giles loves you like a brother, too. But listen up, Jock. I have a young man here in the shop…Oh, hilarious, Jock, no wonder you’re such a pin-up with the London arthritic…This young man is after an Ohmeega Seamaster’ (she checked with me and I mouthed ‘de Ville’ at her) ‘“de Ville”…Uh-huh. You’re familiar with that model?’
The pause was somehow promising.
‘Oh, you are?’
The moment before you win you know you’ve won.
‘In front of you? Well, how fortunate I called! Uh-huh…Mint condition? Oh, Jock, this is getting better…so serendipitous…Listen, Jock, about the shekels…we have a budgetary situation here that…Uh-huh…Yes, Jock, if they stopped making them in the fifties they must be hard to come by, I see that…I know you’re not a registered charity…’ (She mimed me a yapping yapbird with her hand.) ‘If you didn’t breed like a buck-rabbit with every she-bunny who raises her fluffy tail your way, Jock, you wouldn’t have so many children on the brink of starvation. Just give me your best price?…Uh-huh…Well, I think it might…Uh-huh. If he does, I’ll call you back.’
The phone pinged in its cradle.
‘He had one? An Omega Seamaster?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Rosamund looked sorry. ‘If you can stretch to £850, he’ll courier it to your house once your cheque has cleared.’
Eight hundred and fifty pounds?
‘More mango, honey?’
‘So let me get this straight, Jason. You broke this freakin’ watch of your grandfather’s – quite by accident – in January?’ (I nodded.) ‘And you’ve spent the last eight months scurrying around for a replacement?’ (I nodded.) ‘On the resources of a thirteen-year-old?’ (I nodded.) ‘By bicycle?’ (I nodded.) ‘Wouldn’t it be a whole load easier just to confess? Take your punishment like a man, then get on with your life?’
‘My parents’d murder me. Literally.’
‘What’s that? They’d murder you? Literally?’ Rosamund sealed in a mock scream with her hands. ‘Kill their own offspring? For breaking a freakin’ watch?