HAPPENINGS
IN A MUSEUM

Roma Tearne,
Artist-in-Residence.

A Report on Conditions in Antiquities

     December, and once more the Randolph Gallery was aglow with its giant Christmas tree. Positioned accidentally against the backdrop of fish knives, its lights sparkled and shone on them. The photographs of Ashmole House continued to be displayed along the Cypriot corridor where visitors who wandered there by chance observed them with interest. Meanwhile, the festive season, having begun, now spread like quicksilver through Antiquities. The staff's normally well-controlled sense of irony escaped and ran amok amongst the paper hats, while the Conservators received a Christmas present of a collection of dead moths with the cryptic message: 'A peace offering.'

However, these and other amusing eccentricities, faded into oblivion when a story broke just before Christmas Eve - a story of such unexpected interest, with passions running so high, that the Board of Trustees for the A.I.R. Fund were moved to intervene. On the 20th of December a certain Charlotte Charpentier, daughter of Jean-Marie Charpentier wrote to the A.I.R Trustees. In a long but very clear letter she stated that around 1940 somewhere in the Normandy region of France she met and helped an injured British serviceman. His name, he told her, was John Ash. There was the proverbial brief encounter during an early summer of spectacular beauty. Mme Charpentier was never to forget it.