Ten Word Game (9 page)

They’re warm, genuinely responsive, like meeting someone you just know you’re going to get along with. I really do believe that buildings, even houses, have feelings. They look at us as we look at them. This church felt welcoming. I stayed in the gloaming while shoals of tourists trooped in and out. I almost laughed aloud, though, when a courier guide came through saying, “Count Floris the Fifth stormed Amsterdam in 1274, so repairs on this Oude Kerk were
temporarily
discontinued!” A lull happened about noon. I went to stand a moment by the grave of Saskia, Rembrandt’s beloved missus, just to say hello and tell her I admired her old chap. A brownish skinned miniature bloke came to stand beside me.

“This Mr Rembrandt’s wife?” he asked in stilted words.

“Aye.” He was dapper, busy, eyes everywhere.

“She nice woman?”

“Everybody should be so lucky.”

“I am Mr Moses Duploy.”

“Er, wotcher.” I left him to it. A tourist hustler, offering to show stray visitors the sights, the best night-clubs, the red light districts, for a fee and
percentage
of the drinks.

Twice I had to duck from sight when a tour mob from our ship passed to photograph and sight-see, but they didn’t stay. They trailed after a guide carrying a pole surmounted by the
Melissa
’s rainbow logo went into the sunlight. I felt safe again. The ship, I knew, sailed today. I only had to bat out the afternoon. Easy.
Except, I knew Amsterdam was famous for its flea market in Waterloo Square. The temptation was too much, and anyway, what were the chances of being seen in a major capital city like this? I strolled out, walked the red lines of my Amsterdam map, and entered Waterlooplein’s open-air market with a sense of relief. I decided I’d do a quick once-round then wave the
Melissa
off from the harbour wall. As ever, my
legend
didn’t fit my reality.

Flea markets are never up to much. Old clothes, a scatter of books, old pots and new pots, plastic
every-things
, imitation Delft ceramics, religious emblems, rusting bits from motor bikes, toys, and one barrow would you believe selling worn shoes. I always look at trinket stalls. The offerings mostly consist of trinkets masquerading as jewellery, and priced as such. I look for jewels masquerading as trinkets, and priced as such. Find one, and you’ve got your next holiday, plus that excellent fitted kitchen you’ve always wanted. The Waterlooplein flea market disappointed me, though folk were buying stuff in cart-loads.

Mr Moses Duploy bumped into me while I examined some wood carvings (modern fake Indonesian). He tried to get into conversation with dreadful pedantic slang straight out of a 1930s
Boys Own
Annual, “Ho, there, sir! We meetings anew, no?” I smiled distantly and wandered on. No harm trying, and I don’t suppose I could speak a single word of his language, but I was at risk here and couldn’t risk chatting to a Cling-On, as I call chisellers like him.

Yet in any auction, boot sale, village market, junk fair, there’s always pure gold somewhere. I almost wept when the familiar distressing clanging started up in my chest, and edged my way through the press. A couple were running a stall. They looked off the road, and had an eleven-month bab strapped to an improvised
cot. They smoked a strangely scented cigarette, which they shared turn and turn about. I stood looking. So far in the flea market I’d seen nothing, except a collection of brass oil lamps about ninety years old. For once common sense prevailed. I’d not the money to buy them, and I’d need a van to ship them to a
dealer
who’d buy them as a job lot. I’d make a week’s
survival
money on it, and still owe for the truck. Nope.

“Want anything?” the girl said in English.

“That cot. How much?”

“The cot?” She looked at her infant. It was warbling some invented ditty and grappling its foot towards its mouth. “You want the cot?”

The singing babe was lying on a cane recliner, the cause of my chest ache. About the middle of Victoria’s century, fashions changed. We think we’ve invented fashion, but we’re mere beginners. The Victorians, those superb go-getters, have us beaten to a frazzle for inventiveness. They poured into the world new
materials
, new textiles, paints, machines, styles. Okay, enormous damage was done, and some say the world was utterly ruined back then, but you have to hand it to them. They really did give life a go. One brilliant style was simple bentwood furniture, like the reclining cane chair the baby thought was its cot.

It was the particular style of a German called Michael Thonet. He used pale woods like birch, so
different
from the mahoganies then in favour. His
recliners
look all scroll, deceptively simple. Try to draw a seaside rocking chair without taking your pen off the paper, so it becomes all loops, and there you have the Thonet style. I’m not describing it very well, but to me it still seems terrifically modern. This one was about 150 years old. Canework seating is the best kind, since Thonet’s laminated seats don’t stand the test of time. You can sprawl on it and rock or doze. Thonet curved
the wood (hence “bentwood”) in his steam workshop, which paradoxically makes its points enormously strong. My tip to spot one of Thonet’s masterpieces: the recliner/rocker chair is curved in every plane. Look at it with a flat piece of wood in your hand as reminder, you can’t go wrong.

“You are smiling,” the girl said seriously.

“Why are you smiling?” her bloke asked, also
seriously
.

“It’s beautiful,” I told them.

“Thank you.” The girl smiled with pride at her
offspring
.

“I mean the chair.” No hopes of buying it, no
reason
to, seeing I was on the run. I lifted the infant out to see the recliner beneath. “Excuse me, master,” I told it. “I want a gander at your cot, okay? Won’t be a sec.”

“You are so serious,” the girl said, coming to see. She said to her bloke, “He smiles, but is so grave.”

I told her about Thonet. “Nothing like Sheraton or Hepplewhite, but it’s only half a century later. What stupid moron painted it green?”

“Ah,” the bloke said.

“Oh. Sorry, mate.” I went red. “Er, it’s better if
furniture
is left untouched.”

“Is it worth anything?”

They stood gazing down at the Thonet. I got an earful of dribble from his lordship, a real performer still entertaining the universe. I find babs really heavy after a minute or two. Women are creased in the
middle
, so they have a ledge on which to lodge a babe. We males have to exert a constant muscular effort. I was worn out just standing there.

“How much do you make in a week?” They told me, and I said, “Treble it. You’ll find details of Thonet in any decent library. For God’s sake don’t scrape that hideous green off. Get some paint man to do it, but
don’t let the recliner out of your sight until it’s
finished
because thieves,” I added piously, “are known to nick valuable antiques like this. Thonet’s chairs are highly sought by rich artists…” and so on. I returned their infant.

I was embarrassed when they said thanks. “I’d best get on. Good luck.”

They tried pressing some of their queer tobacco on me but I drifted off among the crowd.

Like a fool, I’d forgotten the address of Predgel. I knew his shop was near a bridge, but Amsterdam was a city of canals, and guess what canals have a-plenty. A phone operator said there was nobody of that name; several months before I’d posted off two antiques to him. He’d paid on the nail, a rarity. Something-Strasse, or was that German? I stood in the traffic.

Then I remembered he’d sent me a photo. His daughter had just graduated. He, his girl and his
missus
were standing proudly on a canal bridge. He’d inked an arrow on the picture to show a shop with steps and the thinnest shop window you would ever wish to see. He’d written, “Any time you’re in Amsterdam!” Behind, a little theatre advertising a
rerun
of
Cabaret.

In a market square I found a Tourist Information booth. Open! This is remarkable, because in East Anglia they’re built already permanently shut. In Holland they function. I hope this strange custom will spread. A lady, speaking better English than I ever would, knew exactly where
Cabaret
had been revived. It hadn’t been particularly well reviewed, she
mentioned
, like it was a hanging offence. I thanked her, and followed the lines she inked on a city map. Great
inkers, the Dutch.

Hubert Predgel was there. I could see him moving. The window was painted up to head height, so no
contents
were visible. I went in and introduced myself. Hubert was delighted. He’d have come round the counter in greeting but there wasn’t room. Like I say, thin shops.

“Lovejoy! Welcome to Amsterdam!”

He shook my hand. Tall, stooping, older and
greyer
than I’d expected, but his shop had a few decent antiques. They were in cabinets, with expanding grilles of meshed iron on runners to lock after hours.

We spoke of the things I’d sent him.

“It is not often I receive three genuine antiques in one delivery, Lovejoy. You have more?”

“I’m travelling light,” was as near truth as I could offer just then. “I might have some things for you before long.”

“The quintal is beautiful.”

He nodded to the wall. I recognised my 1850s Copeland wall bracket in bone china. It looked
smashing
, and I was really proud. “Copeland means Spode” is the antique dealer’s joke, because Copeland took over the sales of the Spode output when Josiah Spode (“the Second”) died in 1797, but the firm ploughs on to this very day. Leaving aside their troubles, and Josiah (“the First”) Spode’s failed experiments, they went on and on. I admire those old blokes, faithful potters all. And why? Because Spode marks, right from the first day Josiah walked into a little-known pottery firm in Stoke-on-Trent, were plain and straightforward. Spode and Copeland and their descendants
stayed honest
! I pause for breath when I think of it, because potters of the world play a neff
little
game. Some rotten swine had (and have) this
terrible
habit of making their marks resemble Meissen, or
Chelsea, or Wedgwood, etc, etc, in the hope that
buyers
will be conned and snap their goods up for an inflated price. So let’s hear it for the Spodes and Copelands of this world – they’re few and far betwist. Great experimenters, and makers of style.

“Did you like the quintal?”

“Beautiful. Sold in a trice!”

Two wall brackets – cornucopias, really, for flowers on the wall of a lady’s with-drawing room – and a quintal had been my shipment. It doesn’t sound much, but I was pleased. A quintal is a five-stemmed pot for standing on a table, a little flower in each. Five of
anything
was an auspicious number for a lady, signifying the opened hand offering feminine attributes of
charity
, honesty and loyalty, all things handsome visitors might admire. I got it from a car-boot sale in Coggeshall one Sunday in torrential rain for a groat, and offered it to Jacintha, a toothy lady who competes at point-to-point races and frightens you to death by insisting you pat her gigantic horses. She didn’t turn up one afternoon, and a bloke has to eat so I put the quintal in Predgel’s parcel. By seven o’clock two days later the money came through and I was able to eat. I tried explaining this to Jacintha. She walked out and started up with Conti on East Hill, who has a
penny-farthing
bike. I saw them out together, him pedalling like a dolt and Jacintha on a giant mare. A mad artist in Horkesley gave them free meals for a week just so he could paint the two of them together. Is life fair?

“I have never met a divvy before. Did you know the Frenchman, Lovejoy?”

“No. I heard he was a nice chap.”

“Ya. Such a pity.”

We talked prices. Antique dealers the world over speak in a lower register when mentioning money, never higher than baritone. We go all sepulchral, like
talking of the dead. I think it’s grief, because a dealer thinks of money out, never money in.

“There’s an English ship in port, ya? To St Petersburg, ya?”

“Is there?” I said, offhand. “You’ve got a bonny warming pan there, Hubert.”

It was rightly an ember pan, with the usual
three-legged
joints for the lid. No design on the lid, in lovely reddish brass, so Dutch. Later versions were copper. I don’t know why everybody nowadays thinks warming pans – they came in during Elizabeth the First’s time – are always copper, but originally they were brass. Heavy English brass preceded the lighter Dutch metal, then copper. The ember pan’s copper is simple plate one-
sixteenth
of an inch thick. I think they’re unattractive things, always reminding me of the time my gran set her bed on fire trying to get it warm. (You shovelled red coals from the dying fire with a small fire-dog, and put the covered pan between the sheets.) Oddly, you still find a zillion warming pans in every boot sale, but never, never ever, the knitted woollen pan-cosy into which it slotted when actually in use. Funny, that.

“It’s London, after 1660 – heavier English brass was a pig to work. Rotten stuff for a metalworker. Brass and iron handle, with ebony. Too heavy for the lighter brass things. They’re 1720 or so. Okay?”

I went round his shop, into the sanctum of his back room, sussing his antiques. Lots of fakes and later things, but enjoyable. Like good old times, before I ran for my life.

“Are you expecting anyone?” he asked a few times.

Telling him no, I went on picking things up, putting things down, smiling and frowning. He made tea – Dutch aren’t any good at tea. I drank it from
politeness
.

An hour later I put the question, heart in my
mouth.

“I’ve a few things from local excavations.
Metal-detector
finds, that sort of thing, Hubert. Interested?”

I detailed seven finds, including an Ancient British torc – that’s a twisted gold neck adornment made for a tribal king. I added a couple of Saxon gold-and-
garnet
rings, a brooch and a cape clasp, and two or three pilgrim tokens from devout wanderers of the AD 700 period, give or take a yard. I had to be vague about their number and dates, because I hadn’t any antiques at all.