The Crow's Nest Part 3 #1

3-1

            “To wait”.  No professional action do I take more often as an antiques dealer.  I never thought it would be a “this way”.  But it is.

            “To wait” and do… AND THINK… absolutely nothing about …any and all… antiquarian ventures has been a standard default for me professionally and continually for nearly five decades.

            “To wait” is not fun, not pleasant and very… very tedious to accomplish …well …in a professional manor.  In the case of Blood Farm… and Margaret… nothing happened except “To wait”.

            A few days past.  A few weeks past.  A FEW MONTHS PAST.  A year past.  NOTHING HAPPENED.  I did NOTHING and …waited.

            Actually I did do SOMETHING one is NOT suppose to do.  I THOUGHT “about the stuff”.  Do not think about the stuff is the rule.  Do not think about the stuff no matter what even if six years have gone by, two key players have died and a major international museum has sent a helicopter to hover over the estate.  NO:  Never think about the stuff.

            First I thought about the tea table.  I thought about how the real Blood Farm tea table COULD POSSIBLY be in the mother’s house but always returned to the “she sold it” and… chastised myself for breaking the rule of… do not think about the stuff.

            This tea table thought and the rule breaking lead slowly to… the best banister back arm chair I ever owned that I purchased from the mother …decades ago thoughtS.  Starting with a mental “huh” the mind trail of thought lead DIRECTLY to the Blood Farm attic, the old captain clomping about that attic and:  Therefore that the chair was… PROBABLY a “THE OLD SEA CAPTAIN’S CHAIR NOT FOR SALE” hidden in that attic.  That lead to… skullduggery… and the mother.  A quarter of a century ago.

            I thought about that chair. 

            I had bought and sold that chair a quarter of a century ago …after the mother had purloined it using skullduggery a quarter of a century ago… from the attic of Blood Farm.  Actually she probably didn’t… actually… use skullduggery but used, I would guess …that old antiques-dealer-in-the-attic TRICK of “musical chairs” (here LITERALLY a chair) whereby …things of the “old stuff” in an “old attic” are moved around and… moved & moved around… in a slight of hand musical circle… in the attic’s dusty darkness… over time to become, when the music stops… no only where they weren’t before… but sometimes …NOT THERE AT ALL.  IF the tea table could be switched it was highly probable… I thought… that ONE DAY when the music in the attic stopped, that banister back chair sat down in the BACK SEAT of the …Mother’s car.

            After those thoughts and the subsequent chastisement for …breaking the rule… I stopped thinking about ANY OF THIS except:

            “To wait”.

            After well over a year had past, in the late spring, Margaret telephoned me:  “I HAVE SOME MORE OF MOTHER’S RUBBISH I WANT TO SELL TO YOU SO COME UP HERE TOMORROW AND WE WILL DO OUR BUSINESS FIRST THING IN THE MORNING YOU KNOW IT IS GETTING NICE AGAIN I WILL LOOK TO SEE YOU FIRST THING” she said without breathing, obviously using the mother’s telephone and… hung up that telephone right away.

            I went to see Margaret at her mother’s house the next morning.  I arrived promptly and punctually.  I no longer had “to wait”.