The Grace in Older Women (32 page)

But I jumped at the chance of a dozen forgeries of St John
Lateran's famed possessions. The Mafia, or somebody neff, bombed this 'Mother
of Churches' in Rome, ruining precious frescoes and God knows what. Hearing
this, a scammer called Doper Tone had gone, passed himself off as a visiting
curator from Bermondsey, getting details of which antiques had gone the way of
all flesh. He then came home and worked solidly for a year to replicate them. I
shook his hand, delighted at such loving care. He'd even got a photo of himself
near the pope, looking aghast at the explosion site. I really admire
dedication.

We had a break. I went to visit Columbine in her kitchen. Juliana
would have come too, but I stopped her.

'Get those lists into columns, Jul,' I advised. 'You spend too
much time grumbling.'

'
Lovejoy
,' she ground
out, white again but this time with fury. Tell me one thing men can do better
than women.' Tension was tearing her apart. Why? 'Well? Thinking up an idiot
answer?'

'No. Still thinking about the question.'

Honestly, you can't help some people. I was pleased with
Columbine, though. Harlequin was in the yard barreling up from the brewer's
dray, so I was some time resuming. And you know what? Juliana still wasn't
straight. I honestly don't know. Women lack organization.

By mid-morning I was flying, the queue dwindling. The police were
at ease. New forgers trickled up asking was this where Love joy's auditions
were.

There's only four sorts of antique dealers: tiddlers, fiddlers,
diddlers, and middlers.

Ignore tiddlers - they see the Mona Lisa as a couple of pints or a
new handbag, forever think small. Ignore fiddlers - they'd improve that
enigmatic smile by a wash of acrylic emulsion from the hardware shop, forever
wanting DIY action. Ignore diddlers - they try to sell La Giaconda to nine
different buyers at once, always tricking themselves into trouble and out of a
fortune. But those middlers, as I call straight batters, are rare and, dare I
say, honest, giving you the right change, willing to take back something if
it's proved rubbish. Such a gent was Brig. He brought photos of his collection
of First-Day Commemorative mugs, from when Buckingham Palace was opened to the
public. I looked. Not antiques, but well done.

'Sorry, Lovejoy,' he said, ashamed. 'I know. There were no
First-Day special mugs, and they're not antiques anyway, seeing the Palace was
only opened in 1993, but they'll go like trifle. And I can bring some antique
forgeries along.'

'Sure, Brig.' Normally I'd have rejected them, but his wife has
some disease that stops her walking. 'And?'

'I've been asked to kiln some . . . sorry, Lovejoy, droppings.'

'Eh? As in . . .?'

'Fake dinosaur droppings. There's a market now.'

Food for thought. I've heard of every scam on earth. There's a
bloke in Sweden sells earrings made, I assure you, of varnished moose poop
scooped from the wilds. The other side of the coin, as it were, is the London
auction sale of 'dinobilia' when Bonhams culled a fortune for ten sauropod eggs
from China said to be seventy million years old. Dinosaur droppings from Utah
yielded less than a tenth of that sum. This proves two things. Collectors never
change - if they want it, they'll sell their grannie's teeth for it. And
second, everybody, but everybody, has an opinion. Like those Australian kiddies
who found a monster egg, two thousand years old, of the extinct Madagascan
Elephant Bird. (That's the scientists' description. Can we trust them?) When a
minister declared it government property, the kiddies reburied it in secret-and
the whole nation took sides. See? Everybody has hard line opinions, for or
against. I love it, a sign of life.

'Brig, tell the lady to list them in a foyer display, Cabinet of
the Weird and Wonderful.'

It got stranger still, as the auditions went on. I know a bloke
who swears he's never seen a true Byzantine fresco, in a lifetime's work on
Byzantine wall paintings. He says they began them on fresh plaster, building up
layers of thick opaque paint in glues or lime over the fresco ground colours. I
had a nasty argument over this. Tesco brought in drawings of some Cypriot
church wall paintings he'd forged. The originals are in Houston, Texas - after
being excitingly smuggled out of Turkish-occupied Cyprus to Munich, thence to
London. It was Juliana who interrupted our chat, saying we'd wasted ten whole
minutes.

'Sorry, Tesco,' I apologized. 'She's new. I have to nurse her
along.'

'It's okay, Lovejoy.' He's a craftsman. 'I've nine free-standing
panels, the history of the Mediterranean region.'

'No. You get two framed cards, eighteen inches by twenty-four . .
.' Nuclear war ensued, and I had to get George to drag him out, yelling abuse,
oppression, et jingoistic cetera. I warned Juliana's thin lips, 'Not a word,
Jul.' She kept silent, maybe learning.

Some indefatigable old dear had painstakingly reproduced the
diaries of Tom Lewin in his own handwriting. Even I'd heard of the fabled 'Thangliena',
who ruled India's North-East Frontier in the Raj. Fluent linguist, brave to the
point of madness, this humble ensign fought through Bengal until he became King
of the Lushai Hill Tribes. He assimilated languages somehow by breathing the
local air.

'You a relative?' I asked her.

'Bless you, no. But we mustn't forget our brave Victorian lads. Mr.
Lewin became a friend of Meredith and Burne-Jones, don't y'know. An artist and
musician, too.' She spoke with personal pride.

'Was he crazy?' I asked, curious for her opinion.

'Certainly not!' She bridled. 'He was eccentric. What if he did
ship oysters from Fortnum's in Piccadilly? He was entitled! Ruskin admired
him!'

'How long did this take you, Mrs. Boyson?'

'Only five years. I invented letters from him to his beloved
Lushai concubine Dari, during his retirement in England.' She coloured. I
looked at the manuscript. It was several hundred pages. Thangliena was, how can
one say, a man of certain strong desires. Understandable, a gentleman far from
home.'

'Thank you, love. Accepted.' She looked shabby. 'Name to the lady,
please. Tell her to get Tinker to arrange a display case, copperplate label.'

'Oh,' she exclaimed, flustered, 'I can't do copperplate, Lovejoy!
Though I received a Sunday School prize when I was eight for spelling -'

'Get on with it, for Christ's sake!' I yelled, practically hurling
her across the tap room. 'George! Next!'

On and on. My pal Chess the printer from Tooting Bee arrived, with
examples of Hoyle's works on games, including his rare London first edition of
1751 about the game of brag. An ancient British gold tore - simple, but
resplendent - of the kind dug up hereabouts, very easy to fake but from genuine
solid gold with the right trace elements. I took it sight unseen because, although
I didn't know the girl who brought the photograph, a child of six can fake one
in an afternoon, given the right tools and the gold. She also showed me a photo
of a Moche warrior-priest. I inspected it, puzzled.

'You do this, too?' It looked like gold. The pre-Inca Moche
civilization's not much understood, but what we do know is dazzling. Just right
for forgery to blossom. Date, about 1700 years ago. The antiques world is
clamouring for Moche gold and silver ornaments from these Peruvian burials,
first to eighth centuries. Forgery follows newly discovered antiques like
seagulls follow the plough.

'No. Daddy. He's redundant. He started this hobby a fortnight
since.'

She was no more than thirteen, specky, braces on her teeth. I
questioned her a bit. No, her dad, a lowly clerk, had never done this before.

'What metal, chuckie?' I asked. Thirteen, you don't know whether
to offer them a lollipop or a fag these days. She wondered should she take
umbrage, opted for peace.

'Daddy melted down a garden pot to make them. Mum got mad.'

'Did he indeed.' Daddy had class. 'He make his own moulds?' He was
highly talented. The international black market in Moche antiques only began
about 1987, though long ago Mrs. Hearst -fawning mamma of little Randolph -
paid for excavations in Peru's coastal regions in the 1890s. The sale of forged
die-casts had not yet reached East Anglia. Until now. Handled right, this
neophyte forger might be the find of the year. I watched her for evasion, but
the child came straight out.

'He used up all our Ted's plasticines. Ted got mad.'

So Daddy had improvised, against family opposition, and come up
with a convincing pair of fakes that, given the right gold alloys, guaranteed a
new career in forgery. Daddy had potential. I glanced at Juliana, cleared my
throat. Tell your clever Daddy that Lovejoy says to see Tinker immediately.
His, er, models are accepted. I've got a new job for Daddy.'

The morning surged on. Faked ivory was much in evidence, though
the real thing's still not hard to come by in spite of pious droning by sundry
governments. Fake bronzes are always about, the staple fare of fakedom, and
paintings, paintings galore.

Some forgeries were so excellent they hardly qualified as fakes at
all. One bloke I'd never met called Oomoo showed me pictures of a svelte lady
in a royal blue sheath dress, a similar emerald dress, a tight calf-length
scarlet dress with dated mandarin sleeves. I looked up at his worried face,
baffled. 'What's the catch, Oom?'

'They're glass, Lovejoy. The dresses. Big in 1911, 1912. Spun
whipped glass. My woman does the embroidery. She says point lance's the only
stitch that works.'

I'd heard of these, seen a lovely chequered spun-glass headband
once, for all the world like silk. 'Accepted. How many can you bring?' See?
Hardly fake at all.

Then there was the opportunist faker, Washer. He came with five
Pablo Picassos and two Georges Braques. The
La
Femme aux Yeux Noir
Picasso wasn't too bad, but the rest were awful.

'You didn't finish the Picasso sculpture, then?'

He grinned sheepishly. 'No, Lovejoy. The newspapers only showed
pictures of the paintings after the robbery.' Washer meant the
Murph-the-Surf-style break-in at Stockholm's Museum of Modern Art. Once a
painting's reported stolen, it's the signal for

forgers to get to work - for who knows whether the 'right' one's
eventually recovered or not? We call it the Mona Lisa effect. I gave Washer the
nod.

Inevitably, when the last had gone, she started up.

‘This is
wrong
, Lovejoy!
I suppose you know that?'

I was drained. 'Robin Hood is famous for pulling this caper.'

'It's dishonest! You are encouraging forgeries. All those people.'
She was almost in tears. 'The whole world seems to want to take advantage of
poor honest buyers.'

'Poor honest buyers?' I felt my temper give. 'Do you know anybody
who'd walk past a priceless antique Gainsborough on offer for a quid? Would
you, love?' I could have clocked her one.

'What's going on there?' called Columbine, but pleased I was
ballocking off some other female.

'That's always you, Lovejoy.' Juliana came close to a sneer.
'Criticizing a person's plight, never your own greed!'

'My own greed?' I'm honestly baffled. 'Who's greedy? Who do you
think paid for the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper? An
industrial combine called Olivetti, that's who. And that shy retiring USA firm
Coca-Cola forked out for restoration work at Russia's Hermitage. And who funded
the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling but Japanese TV moguls? And don't
tell me that restoration is right and proper. It's mostly ruination. Once
restorers started using synthetic materials to restore old masterpieces, they
were simply awarding themselves jobs for life. Don't get on to me.'

This whole enterprise is a sin, Lovejoy!' Red dots of fury appeared
on her cheeks. 'I'm aware of your philandering with the landlord's wife this
morning. I heard you tell Constable George to keep a look out in case! Your
conduct is disgusting! I want nothing more to do with you!'

Too narked to continue, I shouted thanks to Columbine and
Harlequin, gabbed Juliana's lists, and stalked out. A few latecomers scurried
after me along the pavement, offering me pictures, scraps of paper and exotic
descriptions.

Things irritate you when you want to calm down. Where the hell was
Tinker? And Chemise, now I needed her? Idling about doing sweet sod all, that's
what. I saw her waving from across the road from the George.

'Where have you been?' I demanded in a yell, my half-dozen
followers clubbing up against me like dominoes.

'I found it, Lovejoy,' Chemise called, embarrassed. Everybody in
the High Street was looking.

She made it safely through the traffic while I audited the
remaining fakers. The engravings of the National Gallery - the grand building
that replaced the squalor and filth of the St Martin-in-the-Fields Workhouse -
seemed okay, I told Jemima's cousin Gabbie, new and not much idea. 'But why not
add the washhouse chimneys that stood there? Engravers missed those out to make
it look grand, but sociologists and other dumbos'll buy them. They love slums.'