Firefly Gadroon (3 page)

‘The Soup’s down Headgate, Lovejoy.’

‘Here.’ I slipped Tinker three quid. That left me just enough for two pasties, my nosh for the day. ‘Tell Helen I’ll see her in the White Hart, tennish tonight.’

‘Good luck, Lovejoy.’ Tinker made his filthy mittens into suggestive bulbs. This witticism set the two old scroungers falling about some more. I slammed angrily out into the wet.

The rain had stopped but town had filled up with people. I cut past the ruined abbey and across the Hole-in-the-Wall pub yard. Our town has a gruesome history which practically every street name reminds you of. Like I mean Head Gate isn’t so called because it was our chief gateway in ancient days. I’d better not explain further because the spikes are still there, embedded in the ancient cement. The heads are missing nowadays. You get the message.

I hurried through St Peter’s graveyard, envying the exquisite clock as it chimed the hour. These big church clocks you see on towers are almost invariably ‘London-made’ early nineteenth century, which actually means Lancashire made and London assembled. You can’t help thinking what valuable antiques these venerable church timepieces are, so casually unprotected on our old buildings. The thought honestly never crossed my mind, but don’t blame me if one dark night some hungry antique dealer comes stealing through the graveyard with climbing boots and a crowbar . . . I trotted guiltily on, out into the main street among the shoppers, towards the social security dump.

You may think I was going to a lot of trouble over a modern bamboo box, and you’d be right. I wouldn’t cross
the road for a hundred as a gift. But for a genuine eighteenth-century Japanese bamboo firefly cage I’ll go to a great deal of bother indeed.

A question burned in my brain: if scores of grasping citizens and greedy antique dealers can’t recognize an
oiran
’s – star courtesan – firefly cage, then how come this bird can? And she had bid for it with a single-minded determination a dealer like me loves and admires – except when I want the item too. Of course I was mad as hell with the sexy woman, but puzzled as much as anything. I don’t like odd things happening in the world of antiques. You can’t blame me. It’s the only world I have, and I’m entitled to stability.

You can’t miss the Soup. Our civil servants have naturally commandeered the finest old house in Cross Wyre Street, a beautiful fifteenth-century shouldered house where real people should be living. I eyed it with displeasure as I crossed the road. The maniacs had probably knocked out a trillion walls inside there, true to the destructive instincts of their kind. The smoke-filled waiting room held a dozen dishevelled occupants. I went to the desk that somebody had tried to label ‘Enquiries’ but spelled it wrong. This plump blonde was doing her nails.

‘Yes?’ She deigned to look up – not to say down – at me. I peered through a footage of sequinned spectacle trying to spot her eyes. I’m a great believer in contact.

‘A young lady, one of your soupers – er, dole workers—’

She swelled angrily. ‘Not
dole
! Elitist terminologies are utterly defunct. Sociology
does
advance, you know.’

First I’d heard of it. Elitist only means greedy and everybody’s that. I’d more sense than to argue, and beamed, ‘You’re so right. I actually called because one of your, er . . .’

‘Workers for the socially disadvantaged,’ she prompted.
One of the layabouts on the benches snickered, turned it into a cough.

I went all earnest. ‘Er, quite. She dropped her purse at the auction an hour ago.’

‘How kind.’ The blonde smiled. ‘Shall I take it?’

‘Well, I feel responsible,’ I said soulfully.

‘I quite understand.’ She went all misty at this proof that humanity was good deep down. ‘I think I know who you mean. Maud Endacott.’

The bird hadn’t looked at all like a Maud. The receptionist started phoning so I went to wait with the rest. George Clegg had just got in from the auction, and offered me a socially disadvantaged cigar. I accepted because I can’t afford to smoke them often and tucked it away for after. He’s a vannie, mover of furniture for us dealers. He labours – not too strong a term – for Jill who has a place in the antiques arcade in town. Jill too is a great believer in contact. She’s mainly early mechanical toys, manuscripts, dress-items and men. Any order. George leant confidentially towards me, chuckling.

‘That tart frogged you, eh, Lovejoy?’

I shrugged. He meant that she’d got what I wanted, which is one way of putting it. ‘Don’t know who you mean.’ George was shrewder than I’d always supposed.

The phone dinged. ‘Maud will see you now,’ the receptionist announced, still Lady Bountiful. First names to prove nobody was patronizing anyone.

I gave her one of my looks in passing. She gave me one of hers. I leant on her counter.

‘I wish I was socially disadvantaged,’ I told her softly. She did the woman’s trick of carefully not smiling. I waved to George and climbed the narrow stairs looking for the name on the door.

Sure enough the bird’s room was crammed with
radiators. I sat to wait, smouldering. The bloody fools had drilled the lovely ancient panelling full of holes for phone cables. Mind you, it was probably only oversight that had stopped our cack-handed town council flattening the lot into a carpark. I rose humbly as the bird entered. I noticed her stylish feminine clothes were now replaced by gungey tattered jeans and a dirty tee shirt. Back to the uniform, I supposed. She too was being humble – until she spotted who I was. Her concern dropped like a cloak.

‘Oh. It’s you.’ She turned and slammed the door. ‘I bought that box quite legally, so—’

‘I know.’ I thought, box? You don’t call a precious antique firefly cage a
box
. Unless, that is, you don’t know what the hell it is. Odderer and odderer.

‘Then what are you here for?’ She sat, legs and all. I watched her do her stuff with a gold lighter and cancer sticks. No offer of a cigarette, but she blew the carcinogens about for both of us to share.

Meekly I began, ‘Er, I wondered about the box . . . Her eyes were unrelenting stone, but it’s always worth a go. I smiled desperately like the creep I am. ‘I’m trying to make up a set,’ I lied bravely. ‘An auctioneer isn’t allowed to bid for himself, you see.’

‘And you want to buy it off me?’ She shook her head even as I nodded. ‘No, Lovejoy.’

‘Perhaps a small profit . . .’

She crossed to pose by the window, cool as ice. ‘I’ve heard about you, Lovejoy. The dealers were talking.’

‘They were?’ I said uneasily, feeling my brightness dwindle.

‘If
you
want something it must be valuable.’ She sounded surprised. ‘
Is
it?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Another lie. I gave as casual a shrug as I could manage, but my mind was demanding:
Then why
the hell has she paid so much?
You can’t do much with an antique firefly cage except keep fireflies in it.

‘They say you’re a . . . a divvie.’ Oho. My heart sank. Here we go, I sighed to myself. She inhaled a trickle of smoke from her lips. Everything this bird did began to look like a sexy trick.

No use pretending now. ‘That’s my business.’ I got up and headed for the door.

‘Is it true, that you can tell genuine antiques just by feeling, intuition?’

I paused. Failure made me irritable. ‘Why not? Women are supposed to do it all the time.’

She stared me up and down. I felt for sale.

‘Then why are you in such a state?’ she asked with calm insolence. ‘Just look at you, Lovejoy. A skill like that should make you a fortune. But you’re threadbare. You look as if you’ve not eaten for a week. You’re shabbier than the layabouts we get here.’

I swallowed hard but kept control. Never let the sociologists grind you down, I always say. ‘It’s taxes to pay your wage, Maudie,’ I cracked back and left, closing the door gently to prolong its life.

I was halfway down the stairs when this harridan slammed out and yelled angrily after me from the landing. ‘
Lovejoy!
’

‘What now?’

‘You’ve turned the central heating off, Lovejoy! It’s freezing.’

You have to be patient with these lunatics. ‘Your door’s the only one on the staircase that’s original eighteenth-century English oak,’ I said tiredly. ‘Heat’ll warp it. The others are Japanese or American oak copies and don’t matter. Think of it,’ I added nastily, ‘as socially disadvantaged.’

‘You’re insane,’ she fumed down at me.

For a moment I was tempted to explain about the rare and precious beauty in which she worked so blindly each day. About the brilliant madrigalist who once lived here, and of his passionate lifelong love-affair with the Lady of the Sealands. Of the delectable ancient Collyweston stone-slated roof, unique in these parts, which covered the place. Of the fact that the cellar was still floored by the genuine Roman mosaic and tiles of the oyster shop nearly twenty centuries old. Then I gave up. There’s no telling some folks.

‘Cheers, Maudie,’ I said, and left it at that.

Downstairs George Clegg was whining at the grille for his handout as I passed the main room. If he’d got a move on I could have cadged a lift home in his new Lotus.

Pausing only to see if the Regency wrought-iron door plates were still securely screwed in – regrettably they were – I stepped boldly out on to the crowded pavement and saw Devlin and his two berks getting into their Rolls outside the police station at the end of the street. Devvo’s hand was all strapped up. He saw me and paused, glaring. He ignored my wave.

Oh, well. Anyway, it was time for my lesson.

Buses to my village run about every hour, if there’s not much on telly in their drivers’ hut at the bus station. I waited uselessly by the post office over an hour, finally getting a lift in Jacko’s rackety old coal van. There’s no passenger seat. You just rattle about like a pea in a drum and slither nastily forwards every time he zooms to a stop. Jacko’s an ancient reformed alcoholic who fancies himself as a singer so you have to listen to gravelly renderings from light opera while he drives. He can’t drive too well, just swings the wheel in the vague hope of guessing the van’s direction. He dropped me off on the main road. The van stank to high heaven of bad cabbage.

There’s a narrow footpath down the brook. It cuts off a good half-mile because the road has to run round the valley’s north shoulder. I set off along the overgrown path, Lovejoy among the birds and flowers. Some people actually leave civilization to tramp our forests and fields, the poor loons. One couple I know do it every Saturday, when they could be among lovely smoky houses and deep in the beautiful grime of a town’s antiques. No accounting for taste.

As I trudged I remembered Maud Endacott’s face and got the oddest feeling. She’d been so determined, sure of
herself. She’d paid over the true market value for a little cage – yet she didn’t know what it was for, where it was from, its age or its value. And from the way she’d behaved she’d been prepared to pay every shekel she possessed to get her undeserving hands on it. None of it made sense.

For the last furlong I kept thinking about the exquisite Japanese masterpieces of the Utamaro school. His lovely woodblock prints don’t look much at first, but with familiarity their dazzling eroticism blinds you. The truth is, Utamaro loved women. Women are everywhere, even – or maybe especially – in his
The Fantastic Print-Shop
series. You can’t help chuckling to yourself. Of course he tried his hand at prostitutes, star courtesans and all, as well. The point is that the brilliant lecher made lovely erotic art out of everything he saw. There’s nobody else in the Ukiyoe School quite like him.

The reason the famous old Japanese prints kept haunting me as I walked was the fantastic lively detail they crammed in among all that sexy eroticism. One famous picture came into my mind’s eye as I entered my long weed-crammed garden. Eishosai Choki’s lovely silvered night painting, say 1785, give or take an hour. In it, a luscious courtesan holds a small cage on a cord. It’s a firefly cage. And, straight out of that desirable print two centuries old, had come the little bamboo cage I’d auctioned off to Maud Endacott this morning.

My thoughts had gone full circle. I fumbled for my key, and found I wasn’t smiling any more.

After swilling some coffee and chucking the birds a ton of diced cheese I felt a lot better. Rose the post-girl had called and pulled my leg about fancying Jeannie Henson who now runs old Mrs Weddell’s grocer’s shop, our village’s one emporium. ‘Make an honest woman of her,’ Rose cracked
merrily, shovelling a cascade of bills on to my porch. ‘I would,’ I gave back, sidefooting them aside for the dustbin, ‘but her husband’s a big bloke.’ She mounted her bike and bounced suggestively on the saddle. ‘That’s never put you off before,’ she said sweetly. ‘Get on with you or I’ll tan your bum,’ was the best I could manage to that. ‘Oooh, Lovejoy. When?’ She pushed off down my gravel path to the nonexistent gate. I waved as she pedalled up the lane, grinning. Funny how women have this knack of always getting the last word. Something they’re born with. Usually it’s irritating as hell. Today, though, it cheered me up and I went back in smiling.

I fried tomatoes for dinner, dipping them up with brown bread and margarine. They’re all right but the actual eating’s not a pretty sight. I had tried to make a jelly for pudding, only the bloody things never set for me. It’s supposed to be easy, just pour water on these cubes and hang about for a few hours, but I’ve never had one set yet. I always finish up drinking them and they’re not so good like that. By the time I’d washed up it was nearly time for Drummer. I’m always nervous at this stage, so I whiled away the time phoning a false advert to our local paper.

This is the commonest of all secondary tricks in the antiques game, and my favourite. I’m always at it. It creates a demand for something you want to sell, like this Bible box I had. I had to cash it in urgently, my one remaining asset.

I dialled, putting my poshest voice on because I knew Elsie was today’s newspaper adverts girl and she’d rumble my trick unless I was careful. I used to know her once.