The Rich And The Profane (4 page)

Not me. I’m a genius at forgery, when I’ve the time. OK, I’m always broke, but that’s because women have barmy schemes I can’t get shut of. I make gorgeous fakes. Only the best is good enough to be bad enough. When Prince called on me to make a ‘jig’, I thought long and hard, then decided on the ultimate, the world’s most pricey piece of antiquery. It’s in America. It’s also American.

‘Jig’ is any replica of an antique that really existed but which is now missing. To clarify: if you sculpted the Colossus from Rhodes, of the same original stone, using the same tools, the same size, and make it look, test as, the original, then as far as most people were concerned it would actually
be
the Colossus of the Ancient World. Right? That’s a ‘jig’. I’ve done several jigs. The immortal Turner’s missing painting of the Grand Canal in Venice, the missing Monet scene of the side canal, the Italian waterfall by Richard Wilson, others. Jigs are always worth doing, very satisfying to the dedicated forger. They aren’t easy, but perfection never is.

Furniture, in particular, is hard to fake well. There comes a time when the faker - the buyer too, come to that -simply has to place all his trust, not in money or analytical spectroscopes, or in complicated electron spin resistance tests, but in something called love. And who has enough of that? Not your investor, not your greedy bankers.

The answer is me.

I chose to do the Brown desk.

This glorious bookcase-desk wasn’t made by anybody called Brown. It’s actually the handiwork of one John Goddard, who in the 1760s slogged with his gnarled hands in Newport, in Rhode Island, in the American colonies.

Every so often, there arises some bloke who is sheer dynamite. King or clerk, sooner or later his fame spreads. People start flocking to see him. If he’s a poet, folk suddenly take interest, and before long your quiet scribbler is having tea with the Queen Empress and everybody’s calling him Lord Tennyson.

Cut to the neophyte colonies of the Americas. One day, this John Goddard got an order for four - repeat
four
-bookcase-desks. (Mr Brown, merchant of Rhode Island, had four sons, so it was logical,) They were to be the very best. Old John Goddard was equal to the task. He produced four staggering wonders, all similar. The eldest son, Nicholas Brown, passed away in 1791. Luckily, his bookcase-desk was detailed in his will. Down the decades, its course was charted by meticulous Browns into modern times. Arriving as pristine now as when the immortal John made it, it was auctioned by Christie’s for a cool umpteen million zlotniks, setting a craze for Goddard furniture. Fakers everywhere gasped. We all set to. The reason wasn’t so much the sale at Christie’s, but a linked tragedy. Remember that I said a jig was a faithful repro of a named
missing
antique? Well, then.

On a truly terrible day in the nineteenth century, one of the four miracle bookcase-desks burnt to cinders in a fire at Moses Brown’s place. Forgers rejoiced, for who’s to say that a lovely Goddard desk of Brown pattern isn’t the one so tragically lost to history? In other words, enter the jig.

They’re all there in history, the great makers. Here, we are within each of their wonders: Sheraton, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, John Goddard, Vile of Yorkshire, Ince, Mayhew, the rest of the immortals. Their furniture is in museums and the great collections.

And also in smaller country auctions, if you’re lucky. But beware. Unscrupulous forgers will, I’ve heard, actually make superb fakes. Luckily, too, auctioneers and museums and galleries are so keen to show their wares that they will provide catalogues, plus photographs, measurements, and even identify the original wood used.

Prince got me all the details of the Brown bookcase-desk. I started two months ago.

‘Good day,’ a man said, smiling. ‘Might I enquire if you are Lovejoy?’

‘No,’ I said airily. ‘He’s at the nosh van. You want him?’

He was sparse, with a grey intense smile. Wan, I think the word is. My height, but older. He wore a homburg, rare at boot fairs, and spectacles made for peering over instead of through. Neat, he wore button boots. I hadn’t seen those since I was a little lad. A beautiful woman stood by him, hating me. I’d never even seen her before, but I recognize hatred.

‘If you would, please.’ He twinkled over his glasses. ‘I’m on the pot stall.’

‘Who shall I say wants him?’

‘Prior George Metivier.’ He was really friendly. ‘Please do impress on him that I aim to make his trouble worthwhile.’

‘Worthwhile?’ My tongue licked my lips. ‘You mean ... ?’

‘Money.’ He sounded so sad. ‘Please give him my apologies, introducing the subject of filthy lucre before I’ve a proper introduction. I’m afraid I’m compelled to move rather quickly into disposing of certain antiques.’

The beautiful woman upped her hate quotient. I looked round. It really
was
me she hated.

‘You are?’ Metivier? I’d heard the name. Wasn’t a prior some sort of priest? ‘Money
and
antiques?’ My feet wouldn’t budge.

‘Yes.’ He was anxious to get back to his hyacinths or whatever.

Finally I managed, ‘Got any nice hydrangeas?’

Lucre’s not as filthy as all that.

The man’s stall was a trestle table creaking under the weight of greenery. He smiled apologetically.

‘My idea of the hard sell, I’m afraid.’

Go for honesty, if all else fails.
ⁱ
Fm
actually Lovejoy. I thought you, er ...’

Honesty tends to run out. I was stuck. Truth does that. ‘I quite understand, Lovejoy.’ He was anxious to put me at ease. ‘Not another word. I might,’ he added magnanimously, ‘have been anyone, mightn’t I?’

True. I decided to forgive. Meanwhile, his bonny lady hated me with a fulsome loathing even I don’t often come across. She wore a shaped fawn coat with a wide collar. I suppose it’s imperialist, chauvinist or some other -ist to say she was attractive. Her high heels were incongruous. She stood sheltering under a gaudy table umbrella, the sort you see on sunny seaside posters. Women detest rain.

He said with mock grandeur, ‘My first excursion into the market economy.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, a toad to the last. This geezer was up to something. Dunno what, but I’d go along for a while and find out. I didn’t come up the river on a bicycle, as people say. Not sure what it means, but it seemed right for this occasion.

‘My sister, Marie. May I introduce Lovejoy, Marie?’ ‘Good morning.’ She said it in hangman’s tones, ten minutes before the eight o’clock walk. If she’d been a bloke I would have wondered what I’d done wrong, but females don’t need reasons like the rest of us.

‘Wotcher, miss,’ I said politely. ‘Nice, er, plants you’ve got here.’ I looked at their soggy verdure with what I hoped was admiration. I can’t understand people buying these things. I mean, I’ve never planted a single seed in my garden and you have to fight your way through the undergrowth. It’s a jungle, which only goes to show plants know what to do if you just leave them alone.

‘You’re very kind, Lovejoy,’ Metivier said. ‘Isn’t Lovejoy kind, Marie?’

‘Isn’t he kind,’ she intoned funereally.

He winced. ‘My sister doesn’t like mainland weather, Lovejoy. I’ve been telling her that sometimes we have beautiful days, sometimes long hot summers.’

‘Look, mister.’ Mainland? This was getting beyond me. ‘There’s no point in talking about weather. The sky drops rain or snow, or shines hot, or it goes black and we go to bed. It carries on doing it whether we like it or not.’ We waited. Nobody explained anything. I asked weakly, ‘Why aren’t you selling your, er, ferns?’

‘Ferns,’ Marie said, like I’d uttered an obscenity.

George looked about. Rain speckled his glasses. ‘People don’t seem to like my wares, Lovejoy. I had hoped—’

The field was now crowded. Twenty or so lines of motor cars and assorted vans, trestle tables set up beside each, stretched from hedge to hedge. Among them wandered upwards of five or six hundred people, more arriving.

‘You’ve no antiques here, then?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Not here, no.’ He shot his sister an apprehensive glance. Well, I’d shoot her a few worried looks if she were mine. ‘Elsewhere.’

‘What are they?’ I surveyed his offerings. There were twiggy things in plastic pots. Some glass domes housed gnarly shrubs. It was a boring soggy mess. The quicker he got shut of this load and back to antiques the better.

He began, ‘These are miniature variants of
Cydonia japonica,
very colourful. The trays are early...’

Gardeners are dull. I switched off. They’re all desperate to preach their particular gospel - plums more succulent, flowers more dazzling, roses more floribunding, whatever. They’re like anglers, yawnsome fibbers. I mean, even if their tall tales were all true, so what? My gardening philosophy is that everything that grows is fundamentally grass, and that’s that. It varies a bit - here, it swells into a big woody thing we call a bush; there, it lurks and goes blue and folk call it a harebell, but basically it’s all grass. Anybody who says different doesn’t know Mother Nature like I do.

I wandered over to the flower stall opposite while Meti-vier prattled on about
Armeniaca vulgaris.
‘Here, Christine,’ I said. ‘Is that bloke’s stuff any good?’

Christine’s a rawboned lass from Hertfordshire. I like her. I’m not really sure what rawboned means, because anybody whose bones are raw is in pretty serious trouble. I suppose I mean hefty. She did me a favour once when I was escaping from three horrible people who said I’d forged a painting and sold it to a rival. I had, actually, but whose fault was that? She sells big spuds, big firuit, big vegetables, in boxes she hauls about as if they contained air. She owns two farms and brings two sulky cats. They miaowed and stalked towards me, but they only ever want to sit on my chest and nod off, lazy sods.

‘You two can get lost,’ I told them. They looked at each other, put out.

‘Him? Good, but weird.’

She was wrapping fruit in a paper bag for an elderly couple. I watched admiringly. She spins the bag so it finishes up with two ears, the bag tight as a drum. I’ve tried to do it but it falls apart, then I look stupid.

‘Weird how?’

She rested a fist on a hip. ‘Lovejoy. Do me a favour? As a friend?’

‘Yes, love. What?’ I went all anxious.

‘Don’t ever go into market gardening. You’d starve.’

‘I promise, love.’ A promise I’d keep. ‘Weird how?’

‘It’s ...’ Christine stared over, judging Metivier’s layout. ‘It’s like from some time warp. Nothing real, y’know? For Christ’s sake, look round.’ She hauled me round and round on the spot.

‘I’m looking, I’m looking,’ I bleated. ‘What at?’

‘At folk, Lovejoy,’ she said in exasperation. ‘See these bedraggled droves? We have a special word for them -customers. Yes, love?’

A bonny woman with two children bought some tomatoes, lettuces, mushrooms. Christine did her spinning bag trick, chatting the whilst, gave the woman her change.

‘See, Lovejoy? It’s a new invention called a
sale.
I grow produce. I give it to
customers.
They give me money in
payment.
It’s catching on everywhere. That lady’s gone off happy. I’m happy. My vegetables are happy.’ She embraced me, laughing, wet through. It was teeming. ‘It’s called commerce, you ignorant nerk.’

Like I say, we’ve been friends. I told her ta and sploshed through to the fifth line of stalls, where Marker - garden signs to the nobility - agreed to do me instant lettering on a giant piece of hardboard. I returned to Metivier and his merry sister. Latest bulletin on his stall: George had sold nothing.

‘As I was saying about
Clematis viticella,
Lovejoy,’ he resumed. ‘It was introduced by Mr Hugh Morgan in 1569 from Spain—’

‘Good old Hugh,’ I cut in. ‘Have you got a couple of poles?’

‘Poles?’ He inspected his area. ‘I’m so sorry, Lovejoy.’

‘Then we’ll use your awning. Take it down. And your garden umbrella.’ I hauled it from its concrete disc, giving Marie a bright smile. ‘Shift, love.’

She stood there exposed to the rain, speechless. It’s an ill wind does that, right?

Marker and his little lad brought the hardboard and rigged it up. It dwarfed the patch. I like Marker, a real artist. We stood admiring it.

‘Genuine Gerard’s Herbal Healing Herbal Power Plants!’ I read. Capital letters, no two the same colour, the hues so brilliant they looked lit up. ‘A masterpiece, Marker.’

‘Aphrodisiac alkaloid plants?'
Metivier read, aghast. ‘Rheumatic balm?’

‘Look around you, George.’ I tried to spin him, like Christine had done me, but failed ignominiously. ‘We’ve a word for all these folk. Customers.’ I feigned exasperation. ‘Do me a favour, George. Never go into business. You’d starve.’ Christine’s words sounded great.

Marker left. I promised him the money in an hour. He said he’d send his little lad for it, untrusting swine.

A woman approached, asked which of the plants was best for rheumatics. I frowned, all sagacity.

‘What sort, love? There’s ninety-two kinds of that illness. We have,’ I added airily, ‘all the right plants. The
Cydonia japonica
is probably the one you need—’

‘Excuse me,’ Metivier interrupted. ‘Feverfew might assist—’

People really get on your wick. The woman decided to ignore me and listened to him. I went to where Marie was sitting in their motor.

‘Are your antiques far, love?’

‘Further than you’ll ever know, Lovejoy.’

‘Many, are there?’

Her grey-blue eyes raked me. ‘More than you’ll ever see, Lovejoy.’

She sounded like pantomime, what big teeth you have, Grandma.

An hour later, me watching Metivier’s rotten weeds do a roaring trade, one of Christine’s rivals came across and bought the remainder of his stock outright. I helped to negotiate the price, one-off for the lot.

We packed up. George was delighted by his success. Marie was not mollified.

‘You want me to suss out your antiques now?’ I asked, stowing the awning.

‘Yes, please, Lovejoy.’ He gave me a smile. ‘Albansham Priory.’