High Spirits

PROLOGUE Alec Edwards and Jean Francis were in love. An affair conducted over tea and cake in the local tea room on the corner of the High Street and Museum Street with the occasional night out at a dance hall, if Jean could persuade Alec to go! “Well, that depended upon whether or not I could get him to go!” “Oh, don’t start, old thing, she’s trying to tell our story!” “Then she’d better mention your two left feet.” Alec worked, man and boy, in the local museum and Jean worked as a secretary in the firm of Clipper, Clipper, and Broughton. Her office and his faced each other and that is how they ‘met’. Jean had been aware of Alec many months before he had become aware of her. She had seen him pacing the room that housed his own cramped office in the attic of the town museum. Back and forth he would go, his chin held in his hand as he pondered some great philosophy, but never once had he looked in her direction. It was as if he lived in his own bubble, oblivious to the outside world. And then one day she had looked up and out of her tiny four-paned window in the attic of the imposing premises, which had housed the prestigious local law firm since the middle of the nineteenth century, and straight into the eyes of Alec. “Actually, I needed to sneeze.” “What?” “Sneeze, you know, ahtisho and all that…my mother always said, if you can’t sneeze look at a bright light. As I recall it was rather sunny that day.” “Look at a bright light? Never heard such nonsense!” (Cough) “Sorry, old girl, do continue.” Alec had been pacing the room, musing on whether to move the collection of Roman amulets from the back room to the front and what that would entail when he had stopped, stared out of the window, and seen the vision of loveliness that was Jean Francis. Jean smiled at him. He paused, considered, and nodded back. It was a routine that would go on for many weeks. Each time Jean would smile, and Alec would nod, until one day he decided to smile back at her. Alec was tall and rather gangly, but he had an extraordinarily handsome, if grave-looking, face. He was prone to wearing a worried air, but when he relaxed, when he forgot those worries, he had a nice, kind countenance; a face a girl like Jean Francis could fall in love with. He had been born and bred in this small market town on the confluence of two rivers, which various invaders had considered important enough to build numerous military installations by way of forts and castles. These were now long gone, reduced over the centuries to rubble and grassy mounds, but the town boasted a wealth of artefacts worthy of a museum and so, in the mid-nineteenth century, about the same time as Messrs.’ Clipper, Clipper and Broughton were setting up in practice, the town had the good fortune to be given some rooms in Partridge Hall by its then owner Sir Wolseley Partridge. The local Civic Society wasted no time in appointing its own members to oversee the meagre collection and using it to further their own ambitions as members of the local establishment. As time went on, more artefacts came to the museum, amassed by gentlemen collectors who were aided in their searches by the rapid expansion of the town following the advent of the railway to Plimpton Market. Industrialisation grew fortunes, and fortunes allowed for more leisure time to pursue genteel projects. The big local families were soon on board; committees were set up that decided on charitable giving; the workhouse, the revamping of the town hall, parks, and all manner of acceptable developments to ensure their place in the annals of local history. A book was even published, listing all the committee members (titles, honours etc.) and detailed plans and drawings. Plimpton Market was having its heyday. Sir Wolseley passed on and bequeathed his entire fortune and the Hall to the town to be used as a museum. A Board of Trustees were duly appointed to manage the funding. A curatorship was established that carried certain weight but was designed to ensure that the Trustees, via the largess of the former owner, had the real prestige. And thus was born almost a century and a half of pure snobbery. Alec had been an enthusiastic collector since boyhood when he'd found his first clay pipe on an outing with his father. This insignificant, ubiquitous item had inspired him, and soon he was at the museum every Saturday until, in the end, the kindly curator offered him a ‘role’ of sorts as a school-boy assistant. It was the start of a passionate affair with the museum that would last a lifetime. Jean, too, had been born in the town to a family of independent, albeit, reduced means. She had attended the all-girls school, and from there, at her father behest, she secured a position at CCB, as it was known locally. Her father, who was in the local lodge with all three senior partners, had arranged it. All Jean had to do was answer a few questions about her ability, pass a typing test and start the following Monday. She had first noticed Alec and his pacing on the Tuesday of her first week. Twelve months later and they knew they would spend eternity together.