The Stone Wife

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‘Will somebody start me at five hundred?’

A card with a number was raised near the front.

‘Thank you. Five-fifty. Six hundred. Six-fifty. Seven. Seven-fifty at the back. Eight.’

The bidding was keen by West Country standards. Morton’s auction house in Bath was used to lots being knocked down almost at once. This had a sense of energy, even though the faces were giving nothing away.

‘A thousand.’

Four or five local antique dealers were still interested and Denis Doggart, the auctioneer, needed the help of his assistants to keep track of the small movements that signified bids.

‘Two thousand. Two thousand two. Four on my left. Six. Eight. I have three thousand on the phone.’

Heads turned. Not everyone in the room had realised bids were being phoned in. This wasn’t a sale of impressionist paintings at Sotheby’s. It was only the regular quarterly disposal of bits brought in to the Bath office for valuation, many of them bric-a-brac or tat.

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