THE FIFTH WOMAN
It was a dark ultramarine night, and wet, not stormy but merely damp, a level of moisture lingering in the outside air that would have perfectly prepared paper for flat plate printing by intaglio, resulting in stamps narrower or shorter than by dry printing. The moon was not white but oddly yellow like a misprinted Swedish Treskilling, as Gibbons gazed briefly at it and returned to his desk. Gibbons' work room, in the tall basement of his grand East Twickenham villa, was bathed in light from twin tall electric lamps he had placed in the corners, the better to detect watermarks by. They gave the bluish draperies, still pushed aside from the small windows that looked up to the pavement, a bright cast that nearly popped out against the pale orange walls, which Gibbons had carefully picked to complement the drapes, which consisted of approximately 35% rag content by weight. The whole effect was luxurious; Gibbons, sixty-eight and wealthy, enjoyed a comfortable space and the airy expanse of his Cambridge Villa was due reward for his decades of work.
Yet he treasured his roots. Above his work desk rested row upon row of glass jars, neatly labeled with vellum labels, and which held his "children"—the metals, powders, chemicals and solutions with which he pursued amateur experiments in the few hours that he could steal away from his travels, his purchases, his meetings with customers. Some still bore markings from his father's compounding pharmacy in Plymouth, which he had run in the years when Victoria was on the throne.
They were bookended by twin, unlabeled, metal cans of lighter fluid. Each can sat snugly in a matching black glass dish.
"Stanley?" came a call from upstairs. "Come up at once. I've been alone for hours!"
Her clipped syllables perforated and reperforated the dry warm air in the house. She was his fourth wife, and they had been married just less than two years. His first three wives each had been a delight for a time, yet each had turned ill and gradually died. Mathilda had wasted in Devon in 1877 while Stanley was abroad. Cirrhosis claimed Margaret in 1899, and Georgina had passed on just last year. And so now with Bertha, who had started complaining of abdominal pain. It was confounding. She was just thirty-three years old. His wives were like new domestic definitive issues who came to him mint, unmounted and ready for licking, yet were destined to be rapidly postally used and discarded.
He sniffed and shifted in his chair. He wasn't done yet. There were stamps to be sorted and mounted, or prepared to despatch by post to customers. He and Bertha had been in Ceylon for months and business had thrived in London in his absence, and while his juniors kept urging him to retire, he wanted to go on and continue as direct editor of the company's main catalog, as well as managing director. He had bought pounds of Ceylon, India and Maldives issues, both on paper and off, periodically forwarding them in trunks to home or the shop for resale. On every surface in the work room stood cartons, opened albums, envelopes, loose stamps and covers, the precious hoard of a worldwide collector, some dusty in the absence of the attention of their master for so long. Among them sat a crisp envelope of a fresh prize, a complete sheet of the 1905 Edward VII 2s/6d purple of last year, stamps ostensibly for overseas letters and parcels, but which he would resell at a mighty profit to overseas buyers. He was even set to send a plate block to a prominent Californian who was seeking to rebuild a collection lost in the earthquake and fire of six months ago.
The album binders were beautiful in their jewel colors—some bound in carmine morocco, others lake, still others olive bistre or Tyrian plum. So were the numerous general and specialized catalogs; he had started them as a price list for customers, but their sale had evolved into the core of his business. First a merchant of stamps, now a publisher, riding a growing wave of collecting mania both in Britain and overseas. The cash rolled in, the presses rolled on. Sometimes using soft, porous paper.
He didn't want to be disturbed, having spent the last three hours preparing updated definitive listings of the 1859 first issue of the Two Sicilies for the next catalog print. Though issued less than fifty years ago, they were already rare, especially those on cover with the King's head obliterated by the cancel. Multiple colors, beautiful things. He wrote down the last draft catalog price.
Then footsteps coming down, and Bertha was at the top of the stairs. "There you go," she said, tossing down a crumpled wet wad. "I'll be grateful for you to clean up after yourself the next time you're soaking Cape of Good Hope triangles in the bath. Others have to use it, you know!"
She didn't wait for a reply or a look but retreated upstairs. She was swift, but had a twitch in the waist and held a palm against her lower left side, where she said she had developed the ache. He retrieved the wad of wet triangles and spread some out in a drying book. They were hopelessly creased, now essentially valueless although he could certainly spike them into the fat worldwide packets that he sold for a shilling.
"Those were expensive!" he bellowed. "Especially given the buyer's premium!"
He had told Bertha so many times to be careful and she was not so young and naïve not to know; her father worked in the railway so she had grown up knowing about the mails. It was time for a cocktail down at the Savoy across from the shop.
Or another trip to Bordeaux. He had made the journey three times now, on each visit increasing his entreaties to Mademoiselle Borchard and looking more deeply into her eyes, as well as her family's endless files of Victorian cards and covers, many with uncommon paquebot markings. He could not forget or even forgive how, four decades earlier when he was twenty-four, her mother had discovered and informed him, by registered letter for which he had to call at the London Northern Office, about the pair of primitive yet rich blue and orange Mauritius stamps she had found paired on an old letter to her late husband, a merchant with extensive dealings on the island. That cover had escaped Gibbons' bid at auction and gone to Ferrary.
The wound deepened just four years later when his rival Ridpath in Liverpool managed to secure the McKinnon collection and profit from transferring the unique 1c British Guiana magenta to Ferrary, which was now hidden somewhere in Berlin. He could not expect to live to repeat that transaction; Ferrary was too quirky. But now he would have a different chance. He had an important customer, someone prominent yet really a damned fool who just last year had bought the 2d deep blue 'Post Office' at the price of nearly £1,500 that was both shocking and induced drooling over the anticipated commission, and who wanted another Bordeaux cover, or an equivalent rarity, if it could be found.
But Gibbons also wanted Mlle. Borchard. The visits to her were businesslike, true, but their dinners held out a mysterious air of affection as well, as if each was sizing up the other, for the suitability for something.
He fingered and chose a small jar from the end of the shelf. It held a colorless liquid, and was unlabeled. He closed the top of his work desk, which was hinged. Roll-tops had become fashionable, but his had to be hinged. He pocketed a pair of tweezers, rose and moved to the stairs.
"Bertha, are you there?" He would spend some time in conversation with his wife.
And make her some tea.
TO BE CONTINUED
This is a work of fiction in which the events and dialog are fabricated. Copyright © 2015 by cjpalermo1964.
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Posted 01/05/2016 09:33 am
I'm looking forward to the continuation.
