Free The Takeover by Muriel Spark Page A

again.
    Pauline returned with the fake chair which they placed in the drawing-room and admired. ‘He wants you to call in and see him. Better go soon,’ Pauline said. ‘I hope it isn’t about the bill.’
    ‘I hope not,’ Hubert said. ‘Maggie gets the bills for this servicing of her stuff. However, if you’ll hold the fort I’ll go and see him very soon. Always hold the fort. Let no one into the house. I’m thinking of getting bars put in these lower back windows as it seems to me someone might easily get in that way. Once they’re in, they can take possession of the house and we’re done for.’
    It was in any case his intention to call on the furniture restorers and collect payment for the genuine parts of Louis XIV. It would be a considerable sum. Hubert looked at Pauline in a kind of dream, wondering how he could explain to her the good supply of drinks and food he intended to bring back from Rome with him. She had brought back a chicken and some meat and wine from Rome, the good girl; she had spent her own money and was about to prepare a special supper.
    After a glass of wine he was moved to tell her about the gold coins.
    ‘It’s my opinion,’ he said, ‘that the spirit of my ancestors Caligula and Diana are responsible for this.’ He gave Pauline two sovereigns.
    She accepted them after a little hesitation. ‘They could have been stolen,’ she had said.
    ‘Well, we didn’t steal them. They were in my teapot, so they’re plainly mine. My dear, they are our crock of gold and we have come to the end of the rainbow.’
    ‘Someone must have got into the house.’
    ‘Through the bathroom window,’ Hubert said. ‘So tomorrow we arrange to have the windows barred.’
    ‘Then your ancestors won’t be able to come again,’ Pauline said, looking at her sovereigns.
    ‘Those are not on account of wages,’ said Hubert. ‘Wages I’ll pay later and in good measure. I don’t like that touch of scepticism in your voice. Remember that my ancestor Diana is very much alive and she doesn’t like being mocked. But of course if you’re going to express doubts and behave like a French village atheist—’
    ‘It could have been one of those boys who worked for you last summer,’ Pauline said, looking at the pile of gold on the table and touching the coins tentatively from time to time.
    ‘Not on your life,’ said Hubert.
    ‘It’s someone who wants to help you,’ Pauline said. ‘A well-wisher. Why didn’t they send you a cheque?’
    Hubert found himself suddenly irritated by this speech. Her kindergarten teacher’s tone, he thought. All this being penniless, he thought, has lowered my standards. I should have better company, witty, good minds around me. I find a pile of sovereigns in the teapot and all the silly bitch can say is, ‘Someone wants to help you. Why didn’t they send a cheque?’
    He took up the newspapers and weeklies she had brought in with her, and, leaving the gold coins littering the kitchen table, went off to his study to take a couple of tranquillizers and further hypnotize himself with the current American government scandals of which everyone’s latent anarchism drank deep that summer.
    Lauro left for Rome very early next morning with his list of shopping at the supermarket. His first stop, however, was at one of the little cave-like shops in the village, filled, as they were, with the richest of fruits, plants and cut flowers. It was perhaps unusual, but not noticeably so, that he locked the car when he left it outside the door on the village street. Lauro went in and waited his turn.
    Figs, peaches, strawberries, all so local and proudly selected, there was not one inferior fruit to be seen. The flowers were mainly of the aster family, huge, medium-sized and smallish, in white, yellow, mauve and pink. Among them were some deeply coloured small roses and a variety of ferns and leafy plants. The woman who was serving and she who had just been served looked at Lauro with the