The Crow's Nest 7

7

            The daughter, Margaret, came into the room during our business all the time.  She always came in after we’d “been at it” for awhile.  Hers were the words “been at it”.  She always came to “check on mother”.  It was also to inspect our commercial progress.  Margaret cared nothing for antiques, her mother’s antiques, the home’s antiques or about what was currently being negotiated.  I never saw her ever pay any attention or even acknowledge any object in any way.  That was fine by me for it was bad enough wrestling the mother.  To have the second in command default …was actually a help.  Periodically the mother, once Margaret was in the room would seek her input.  “What do you think?” ALWAYS brought only “Whatever you do is fine Mother”.  The mother would then return full bore upon me and …Margaret would leave.  Toward the end… and beginning the day of the Indian blood, Margaret slowly became the principal distributor of the household.  I became her principal agent.  This relationship was not by my choice and took me a while to detect.

            Margaret’s reasons for coming in usually included the notice that “Mother and I are going to be going to (variable blank filled in with a destination including “garden, cemetery, Parson Hill, East Parson, the church” or “Blood’s Farm”.  This last was the only possible favorable-to-me for I had determined that this was a house size place where the mother stored and hid …more of her accumulations.  In my mind it soon became the actual top of her old fence post.  Margaret rarely mentioned it and I sensed, correctly, she …hated “Bloods Farm”.

            I, of course, delighted in words “Blood’s Farm”.  Early in our business I had purchased a brace of old Belgian flintlock pistols, rusted and neglected, that after a little query push, I had been told she “found at Blood’s Farm”.  Decades later I knew that this meant she had actually purloined them from some old minister’s reserves, had stored them at the farm (hidden them there until enough time passed to assure safe sale) and finally… after determining that they were not as valuable as she thought them to be, “I pass them on to you” for a “too much” (from my perspective) cash payment.  EVEN after decades of enlightenment, I still was utterly desirous of “Blood Farm”.

            After Margaret made her statement of Mother’s future for the day, we were expected to tidy up our dealings and I leave, after payment, PROMPTLY, which I did.  Beginning shortly after the Indian blood, Margaret began to take on a more purposeful role.  She came to the room earlier, apparently by direction.  Therein, the mother would instruct her to take me to somewhere in the home to look at something specifically… that was for sale and did have a purchase price.  This was an unprecedented change in our dealings and from the first I was awe struck.  We began with a simple “Show him the table in the four poster and see if he’ll buy it.”  Off we went out of the parlor up the front hall and then …UP the front stairs to the second floor, a landing beside the giant staircase that had an equal twelve foot ceiling …and little else.  There we walked by the Mother’s sewing machine at the stair head,  by one large closed door, then by another matching closed door to come to a third matching closed door before a… FOURTH matching closed door.  This forth one was at a right angle to the others and at the end of the landing.  Before this last door was a refinished trunk and a smaller old trunk.  Otherwise and again noting the old sewing machine, the whole expanse of the landing was empty.

            At the third door Margaret turned a key in the door lock, opened the large door inward and …I followed her in.  The curtains were drawn but enough light snuck past them from the three giant windows that I “Yes I can see”.  The “table” was quickly pointed out.  It was a late, circa 1840’s, candle stand.  These are common old Maine homestead tables.  Carrying the traditions of their earlier 18^th century mentors, they are made the same but have the awkward and heavy lines of the Empire and Transitional Victorian styles.  They are usually a dark, dark brown old finish.  Together these mean “they suck” in antique picker jargon and this means they are “hard sell” because the professional antiquarian seeks the much earlier and finer candle stand.  These “clunkers” in their “brown slime” finish fuss along in the trade.  They stand guard, always for sale, in the antiques show booths of lesser dealers who “think” such a stand “is good”.  The are purchased for a modest sum by homeowners filling a space with “antique furniture” that THEY think “is good”.  Usually they pay just slightly too much for them and keep them in their home “forever”.

            I needed only a second to appraise this stand but did actually step to it, pick it up and look at it’s underside.  Then I said “One twenty-five OK I’ll buy it” sort of automatically while AUTOMATICALLY starting to turn to take in the whole contents of the room by picker practice AND… attempt the hope that there would be “something” (good) that I could “get” to ….MAKE UP FOR THIS PIECE OF CRAP I JUST PAID TOO MUCH FOR.  There was no such luck.

            Margaret simply turned around, said “Very good” and walked out the door.  I barely finished my turn before SHE had turned, outside the door, with a glower that stated I was lingering behind and to …come out now.  I did.  She closed the door.  She locked the door.  She left the key in the lock.  I stood there holding the stand by it’s neck and… then followed her all the way back down the stairs and into the front parlor.  I set the stand down between the business chairs.  Margaret nodded.  The mother said “Good” and recorded this purchase on her paper slip.  She then added that slip up, turned it toward me.  I stood up, looked at the total and brought forth my cash payment.  Within minutes I was outside the front door listening to the mother turn the key to lock it.  I stood at the door facing the street and holding the stand by it’s neck.  I paused to survey the street then stepped over to my truck with my freshly purchased …items of plunder.  The whole process, from the bedroom to the street was executed by the two women with the same dexterity and adroit procedure that one associates with a matron sweeping crumbs off the crisp linen tablecloth during a tea.