The Quilt Inn Country Cookbook

Aliske Webb

When The Spirit Moves

I bought the chest at an auction, much to Michael’s surprise. When we attend

an auction, we normally tour the goods first and decide what we want to bid on, set a

price and (try to) stick to it.

So call it a whim or an insubordination, or whatever. Michael just shrugged as

I started to bid. (Yeah, like he’s never come home with something we didn’t agree on.

I have photos. One time he brought back and entire phonebooth! He swears it was a

car phone...but that’s another story.)

The chest was an eighteenth century European dowry chest. Probably French

by construction, with Spanish lock and oil portraits on guache, and leather hinges. OK,

so its provenance is questionable. But I’m convinced it was a steal. And if it’s a fake

I don’t want to know. I’ve been close to taking it to be appraised several times. I want

to find out that it’s worth thousands, just to rub it in. But I don’t dare. I call it “Lovejoy”,

(

named for the British television art seuth.) Michael calls it the “hope-less chest”.

It’s been living precariously in the second floor hallway opposite the stairs,

beneath an antique quilt. I say precariously because it seems to be trying to move

downstairs. I several times had to shift it back against the wall when I found it stuck out

a foot or so from the wall. At the time I thought nothing of it, assuming someone had

bumped it, or it had been moved in the cleaning. Until it kept happening and one day

I found it clear across the hall at the top of the stairs.

"I know you don’t like Lovejoy, but you don’t have to push it down the stairs," I

joked to Michael.

What?"" He looked askance and dubious when I explained.

The next time it moved, it was one quarter over the edge of the stair. "That’s it,"

I told Michael. "It’s going into one of the guest rooms." I rearranged furniture.

At dinner, Michael said, "I think I heard your ghost thumping around upstairs this

afternoon."

You could have helped," I pointed out archly.

A week later I was showing guests to their room. The door wouldn’t open at first.

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Country Cooking