Gold by Gemini (2 page)

She trotted dolefully after me towards the door. ‘Do you have to go? Will you come again, Lovejoy?’ she said.

‘Yes, yes! Thursday. Is a town bus due?’ I babbled.

‘Not for two hours. Better Monday,’ she cried. ‘Safer on Monday. Peter’s golfing then. Like today.’

‘Right, Brenda. See you Monday.’

‘I’m Mary,’ she said, all hurt.

‘Mary, then.’ I could have sworn she’d said Brenda.

I was out of the street and running in a sweat through the village towards the main road. Women are born quibblers. Ever noticed that?

N
OTHING ON THE
main road. Never a bus when you want one. We used to have Nathan’s Fliers, three crackpot single deckers which ran fast and on time between the villages, operated by a corrupt old lecher called Nathan. Then we were amalgamated with the nearbv big towns, since which all buses have become either late or extinct. I stood there, cursing.

I tried thumbing a couple of cars but no luck. That’s the trouble with East Anglia, too much countryside. Nothing but undulating countryside, mile after mile of rivers, lush fields and woods dotted with small villages. Merrie England. I sometimes feel as if Lovejoy Antiques, Inc.’s the only outfit keeping this particular bit Merrie, especially after a week on the knocker. When I’m reduced to going on the sound (that’s banging at doors and asking if people have anything old for sale, the surest sign of impending failure in the antique business), I stick to towns if I can. Countryside gives me the willies. Everything in it seems to eat everything else, preferably alive. It can get you down.

You’ll have guessed I’m a real townie. As things get worse, though, you have to go further afield. Villages are best for antiques. They’re antique themselves. So
there I was in Great Hawkham, two villages from home. Stuck. Bexon’s forgery the only good link I’d had for months and no chance of a lift. The situation called for desperate remedies. The pub called.

I knew it a little, the Goat and Compasses, built in King Stephen’s reign while his mob were scrapping with the volatile and exotic Empress Matilda. Paid for, I shouldn’t wonder, in those ugly hammered silver coins of his – now so rare and prized it’s no good even dreaming about them. I sprinted over. Maybe I’d get one in my change.

I entered briskly, hoping to create an impression of a dealer who had just come from doing a deal for everything the National Gallery wanted this year. A dozen or so people were de-stressing from the village’s hectic social whirl, including Lennie. He’s Victoriana, bygones, glass, crystalware and clueless. I swiftly borrowed a coin off him, partly because I had no change and partly because it’s cheaper. I rushed through to the phone and dialled like a maniac.

‘Hello?’ I put my voice on. ‘Is that Mrs Markham’s residence?’

‘Yes. Who is it, please?’

‘This is Doctor Chenies of the hospital,’ I said, sounding really good. ‘Could I speak to Mrs Markham? It’s urgent. About her friend, Mrs Witherspoon.’

‘Oh, right.’ He sounded suspicious. People who don’t trust people get me really mad. Why is there no trust these days? Where has it all gone?

‘Hello, Doctor?’ Janie’s voice, thank God. ‘I’m afraid you must have the wrong –’

‘It’s me. Lovejoy.’ I heard her stifle a laugh. ‘Come and get me.’

‘Is it really urgent, Doctor?’ she said, doing her
hesitant-friend act. ‘My husband has guests –’

‘Stuff his guests,’ I snarled. ‘I’m stuck out in the bloody wilds here. The pub at Great Hawkham crossroads. I’m in a hurry.’

‘Very well, Doctor. I’ll try to come –’

‘Be sharp.’ I slammed the blower down. I honestly don’t know what women think they’re playing at sometimes. Full of wrong priorities.

I readjusted my face to a casual smile and strolled back to the saloon bar where Lennie waited. I told him about a wonderful deal I’d just made, buying a Georgian embroidery frame and an early Sheffie. He was all ears and plunged further into his natural gloom. Not that there’s such a thing as really very early Sheffield plate. The term’s relative. It was only invented in the 1740s by Thomas Bolsover (please don’t spell his name with a ‘u’ stuck in there – he hated it). Elkington finished off the boom in fused sheets of copper and silver by inventing electroplating in 1840.

My eyes wandered while Lennie grumbled on about some Caffieri cast bronzes he’d missed. Dottie Quant was on a barstool, straining half a mile of stylish leg to reach the ground and making sure we all noticed. She’s ceramics and silver, in the local antiques arcade. Her legs bring in a lot of deals, they say. I believe it. I waved over, nodding affably, and got a sneer in return. That’s better than my average. Distaste from Dottie’s like a knighthood. She was talking to a fair-haired thickset man, maybe a stray golfer or a buyer? Her balding husband grovelled about trying to coax his noonday sneer from his alluring wife. A domestic rural scene.

I promised to sell Lennie my mythical embroidery frame. I offered to buy Lennie a drink, and escaped before he could draw breath and say yes please. I blew
Dottie a noisy kiss to get her mad and left, my mind dazzled by old Bexon’s wonderful faked painting which might mean so much.

What messes people get themselves in, I was thinking as I crossed the road. I stood waiting for Janie under the trees for coolth. There’s Lennie, in his wealthy mother-in-law’s clutches more ways than somewhat. And there’s Dottie having to rub at least shoulders with the riffraff, and her with carriage trade aspirations and a whining hubby.

Still, I’d my own problems. Where the hell could I find a late Georgian embroidery frame by Saturday? The problem was worsened by not having any money to buy, even if I found one.

A week ago I’d missed a rosewood table – you won’t believe this – actually signed by Timothy Walford, about 1810, complete with fringed base-edge carving on triple scrolls. If this page is wet it’s because I’m sobbing. Good-class furniture with a provincial maker’s name is so rare. It was sold an hour before I reached the Arcade. What with taxes and an unbelievably greedy public, life’s hard.

You may be developing a low opinion of my most endearing qualities. Don’t. My qualities are yours, folks, same as everyone else’s, I would have been as fascinated and excited by old Bexon’s lovely forgery if I’d just made a million in gold minutes before, instead of being broke and getting desperate. I tell you all this now because the behaviour you actually see around antiques is only the tip of the dealer’s iceberg. From there it sinks on and on, down and down to include the thousands of fearsome emotions sociologists do not know. And if at the end of this you think I’m lascivious, crude, sexist
and selfish, do you know anybody who isn’t?

Janie drew up, calling gaily, ‘Hello, sailor!’ Her joke.

‘Where’ve you been?’ I said coldly. ‘I’ve been here an hour.’

‘I’ve been exactly ten minutes,’ she said, calmly eyeing me. I climbed into her Lagonda. ‘Where’ve
you
been?’

‘Working.’ And how hard, I thought.

‘You look exhausted, Lovejoy.’

‘I am.’

‘Was she worth it?’ she asked sweetly, pulling out.

‘If you’re going to nag –’

‘And where were you last night?’

‘Ah,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘I got stuck.’

‘In . . .?’ she prompted, all bright innocence.

‘Cut it out, Janie,’ I tried to seem annoyed, ‘With a deal.’

‘Anything really good?’

‘No.’ True, true.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Woody’s.’

‘That filthy place gives me fleas, Lovejoy.’

‘It gives me a living. Or rather,’ I added bitterly, ‘it should do.’

‘Let me, Lovejoy.’ A pause while hedges and fields swished by. ‘Give you a living,’ she added.

I turned to watch her drive. The Lagonda didn’t even purr. Janie’s beautiful, twenty-six, wealthy in her own right. Her husband’s wealthy too. He often goes abroad to mend companies sick of the palsy. Crackpot. They have a mansion in Little Hawkham, the next village to the one I’d just been working. Great Hawkham has two houses more, hence the adjective.

‘I’m good value,’ she said, smiling. ‘Worth a quid
or two. Good legs. Teeth my own. Socially trained, convent-educated. I could buy an antiques auction firm for you to play with. Think, Lovejoy. And take your hand off my knee when I’m driving.’

‘And your husband?’

‘Who?’ She gave me a 1920 stare, trying to make me laugh. They only do that when they’re serious. ‘Spell it.’

‘Look, love,’ I said wearily. ‘Am I loyal?’ You can’t muck about. You have to tell them outright.

‘No.’

‘Kind?’

‘Never.’

‘Considerate?’

‘Hopeless.’

I went down the list of virtues getting a denial every time.

‘Then what’s the use?’

‘You’re worth it, Lovejoy,’ she said after a think. ‘You understand what love is. If only you weren’t an escapist.’

‘Flight has a long tradition of success,’ I got back.

She wouldn’t let go, though. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘something’s always happening around you.’

‘I wish it bloody well was,’ I groused.

Now I wish I hadn’t said that. Not that I’m superstitious, but you can’t be sure, can you?

J
ANIE DROPPED ME
at the corner post office among prams and shoppers. I told her twenty minutes. Woody’s Bar tries to hide itself in an alley between a pub and a jeweller’s but gives itself away by gushing out steamy blue fumes swamping the pavement. Wise pedestrians cross over. The alley’s partly covered, and is known as the Arcade to locals. It looks like a beginner’s cardboard cut-out Camelot joined together wrong. Bloody town council planners. The beauty is that it’s crammed with antiques dealers’ shops.

I pushed into Woody’s Bar and peered through the opaque air. There he was. Tinker Dill, my barker, among the crammed tables. He was lashing into one of Woody’s specials and hastily trying to sober up before the pubs got under way again. It’s not a pretty sight. A dozen other dealers were about, wolfing mounds of chips, sausages and mashed triffid greasily concealed under slithering mounds of ketchup. I tell you this trade needs nerve.

‘Tea, Woody,’ I called into the blue haze towards the back. He’d be there, smoking ash into some poor soul’s charring haddock.

‘Hello, Lovejoy,’ a few voices called. I waved, a
picture of the successful antiques dealer. Cheerful adversity is vaguely entertaining, but even friends steer clear of doom.

I sat and watched Tinker Dill eat. All this yap about civilization really is utter cock. Civilization isn’t art, religion and all that. It’s two things: paving and cutlery. Without paving everything’s jungle. Without cutlery eating’s a clumsy dissection which ends by stuffing pieces of dead animals and plants between your jaws. Tinker does it without a net.

‘Tinker.’

No reply.

‘Tinker,’ I tried again, louder. Not a sign. ‘Money,’ I said softly. The place stilled with utter reverence. I watched Tinker begin to respond to therapy.

I’ve known him years but it’s still gruesome. Bloodshot eyes swivelled as if searching for the next planet. Stubble, corrugated black teeth, skeletal limbs shuffled into human shape. He’s thin as a lath. His lazaroid knuckles are always concealed under ketchup-stained woollen mittens, his frame lost somewhere in an overcoat straight from the Crimea. At the magic word even Woody’s clattering pans had silenced. Tinker’s brain fidgeted painfully into action. His eyes focused, two raw balls wobbling in gin-soaked aspic. He saw me.

‘Hello, Lovejoy.’

‘Did you pin the scrambler?’ I asked.

‘Yeh.’ He was coming round.

‘Settle later, okay?’

‘Yeh.’ (Translation: Tinker Dill reports he has successfully found a Georgian hurdy-gurdy for me, complete with animated French figurines. He would get it, and I’d pay him enough commission to get sloshed out of his mind again.) To continue:

‘Great,’ I praised.

Tinker crumpled a grin. The tension all about eased and noise began again. Woody’s giant waitress Lisa loomed in the fog with my tea like the
Bismark
through its last smokescreen.

‘How’s Lovejoy?’ She ruffled my thatch.

‘Poor. Lonely.’ Disbelieving snickers rose from nearby tables. ‘No money, but good company.’ She surged away, smiling.

‘You’re always after crumpet, Lovejoy,’ Tinker criticized piously. He goes to chapel, but I hear the wine’s free.

I waited while he shovelled his huge meal away like a smelter frantically raising steam. All around muttered deals were being made, messages muttered through mouthfuls of grease and tea just too weak to plough. The door tinkled. A tourist peered briefly in and reeled away at the sight of huddled, feeding, smoking, belching humanity still stinking of last night’s booze.

To me, Woody’s permanent fry-up is like a church – holy, something to venerate. Blasphemy? Come down one day and see for yourself. There’ll be a Woody’s in your town, full of antique collectors and dealers. If you stick it for more than two days you’ll be hooked for life on antiques because there’s no mistaking that sense of religious devotion. Antiques are everything, even the reason for living. Nothing else exists. It’s the feeling that makes crusades. I know because I have it, have for years. Dealers are dealers down to the marrow and out to the skin again, no variation or treachery. And more money passes across Woody’s unwashed grease-smeared tables in one week than our town councillors fiddle in a whole year, and that’s enough to refloat the franc Woody’s is beautiful.

‘Better, Tinker?’

‘Yeh.’ Tinker finished elegantly as ever, settling like a tattered combine harvester coming to rest. He wiped his mouth on a stained mitten and emitted three rhythmic belches. I got Lisa to bring him a pint of tea. He lit a cigarette, In paradise. Hangover gone, smoking, tea in hand, having survived Woody’s breakfast, the auction coming up tomorrow, pulling oft a find and almost sober enough to start getting stoned again. To business.

‘Bexon,’ I began. ‘Old bloke, died. Some stuff got into Gimbert’s auction last week,’

‘What was it?’

‘I don’t know,’

‘Hang on.’