The Lies of Fair Ladies (21 page)

"Jenny had them made, Luna," I labored. Luna was proving
heavy load. "She wasn't tricked into buying them. And they aren't sugar
tongs. That's a tongue scraper."

"For . . . ?" Luna felt at the sprung silver's spatulate
ends.

"A tongue scraper. For—forget it." I flapped my hands. I
was talking a private language, no means of contact.

"It's no good getting ratty, Lovejoy." Luna was now
unthrilled.
Deo gratias
. "I'm
doing my best. You never tell me what we're
doing
.
You were cross yesterday because I couldn't remember how to tell a real
chastity belt from a modern—"

Et reproachful cetera. I'd told the silly cow ten times. Let her
get on with it. I ignored her. "They Indian, Jenny?"

"The silvers?'' She reached into a small decorative inglenook
taken from an old cast-iron industrial fireplace range. "These were done
in the Isle of Man. What d'you think?"

The punches weren't too bad, but soft metal again. Possession is
illegal. I interrupted Luna's deplorings to tell her this small fact. She
silenced, stared in amaze at Jenny.

"The silver-mounted meerschaum pipe bowls are Cairo,"
Jenny said proudly.

She had a collection of pipes, all eroticas—mouths doing wonderful
things, frank anatomical organs, and figures of couples busy, er, coupling.
Very valuable now, if genuine mid-Victorian.

Luna said, "I thought these looked almost ..." She
paled. They looked almost because they were.

"Erotica's in, love. Especially tobacciana, which is a dying
thing. Forgive the pun."

Luna gave up, settled for wonder. As soon as we were driving away
she'd tell me sternly that Jenny wanted a good smacking for being so, well,
absolutely bold. . . .

"Meerschaum means sea foam, Lune," I relented.
"It's a sort of natural porous mineral, silicate of magnesium. You can
carve it, work it even with a small file. Chosen because it keeps the tobacco
smoke cool, see? Unsmoked and new, it isn't that meerschaum amber color. That's
only the nicotine. But fakes—" I smiled fondly at Jenny. "Fakes come
ready stained."

"They're horrible, Lovejoy. They're people doing, well,
things," Luna was so distressed, poor lass.

"Any one'd buy a car, love. If really Viennese." Austria
made them a national art in the nineteenth century.

Yes, silver was one of Jenny's things. Her collection was
incoherent, in spite of this. She must have vacuumed all that Big Frank had
missed. And she'd imported fakes enough to sink a ship. Ship? Time I looked at
the photographs and papers Delia had burgled for me. He'd mentioned some sunken
vessel. But erotica was distracting, making me think of Jenny. Big Frank's
Jenny. Not mine.

"Jenny. Big Frank wanted me to call."

"Yes, Lovejoy." She glanced at Luna, still being
mesmerized by the meerschaums, and raised her eyebrows faintly. She was making
the oldest offer. I brightened, then sombered. Big Frank was going to wed this
lissome lass. Minimally I shook my head. Jenny gave a rueful smile, shrugged.

"I want some things divvied. Imported. High-class.
Soon."

"Where?"

"Hawkshead."

"Okay.” I smiled, but with an effort. "Fix time with
Luna." I bussed her. She moved her mouth more than is customary. I was
still gulping when I waved at her shop window. Big Frank was in for multo
hallelujah choruses, once he'd got rid of his wife and got wed.

And in the motor it happened. Luna suddenly proved her worth. We
were hardly onto the Lavenham road.

"That young lady's up to no good," she said reprovingly.
"She should still be at school. I mean, all those holidays to Cyprus! If
she were my daughter I'd censure her."

We'd gone miles before the penny dropped.
What
was that?

"Pull in, love."

"I can't just yet. That little tractor has right of
way—"

I yelled, "Pull in for Christ's sake can't you do a frigging
single thing I tell you just for once instead of giving me frigging lip back
everything I say?" Hardly the English of Milton. She pulled in, to a merry
cacophony of motor horns and one bawled obscenity. Ignition off, and furious
reproach.

"Lovejoy! I will not be spoken to—"

"Cyprus? What about Cyprus?"

"Cyprus?" Her brow unwrinkled. "Miss Calamy goes a
lot to Cyprus. I told you, Lovejoy."

I leaned away to look at her. "What did you tell me?"

"Of all the ..." She saw my raised finger, drew a
calming breath. "If you
must
,
Lovejoy. She said she only went once, to Paphos. But she was fibbing. She goes
to the eastern side. And far too often. She's a child. My daughter Lola's
age!"

"More than once?"

Jenny saying she holidayed once when she went plenty was a very,
very significant lie. Not without serious implications for life and death.

"Several times. I only discovered it accidentally." Her
mouth set sternly. "This is confidential, Lovejoy. You promise?"

"Hand on my heart." Some folk never leave Planet Mongo.

"I was in her shop, first visit. She was on the phone. Some
stupid airline clerk. Though I know how she felt, Lovejoy. Sometimes they are
hopeless. Once, Oliver took me to—"

"Cyprus?" I cued desperately.

"Yes." Luna was Mrs. Surprise. "You don't even have
to go via Geneva at all. Jenny said she
always
went that way. There's an excellent direct service from Heathrow, though the
arrival time—"

I swear I'm the most patient bloke on earth. I can prove it. I didn't
even thump her. She tutted at being restrained from criticizing a pretty
younger bird, but clinched it.

"Jenny told the stupid booking agent she'd been seven times
lately and always caught the same flight. To meet her friend.'' Luna shook her
lovely hair in admonition. I suddenly saw how very gorgeous she looked. “I
should have gone straight to the managing director—"

My mind pretended to hear her out. "Turkish Cyprus,
then?"

"Yes. I'm not exactly sure where she goes, but—"

But I was. Clear as day, sure as taxes.

"Come here, Lune." I dragged her head close, sucked her
luscious mouth longer than mere approval allowed. She came up gasping,
pink-faced, looking round in embarrassment in case gawpers lurked nearby. A
passing lorry driver hipped in cheery salutation, earning a serious tut.

"No more of
that
,
Lovejoy! What on earth would Oliver think? No wonder he—"

"You're beautiful, Lune," I said. She was radiant. All
women have allure. But some really reach in. "I could eat you."

She was doing her stare.

"Drive us home, love. Sharp." I honestly don't know how
I managed to keep my hands off her.

She drove, looking at me from time to time.

In the end, she compromised. Which to a bird is doing exactly what
she wants. She dropped me at the cottage and drove away in a racing start.

A pity. In the end it didn't matter much. Using my new
water-cooled phone I got Hilda—receptionist in Knowles Travel—to come by on her
way home.

Hilda's a constant and smiley long-time-no-see but
what're-we-doing sort. A friend, I suppose I'm saying. I chucked her brochures
away as soon as she'd gone. Then I caught the bus into town, hired a car from
Ogden's on Luna's credit. Then lit out north. I reached Hawkshead at eleven
o'clock.

Hawkshead. Roar up the motorway through Lincolnshire, after a
couple of hundred miles you come to a service station. Loos, nosh bar,
restaurant, slot machines, and inevitably one of those widespread yellow-lit
shops filled with things you'll never need in a million years—London policeman
dolls, toffee molded into gruesome creatures, plastic bugles. Outside, roaring
traffic, and acres of vehicles pausing to buy chocolate dwarfs.

Until night, when suddenly you notice how lonely the place
actually is. An oasis of light in a dark and louring hilly landscape. It's then
that it happens.

The place becomes an antiques market. Vans arrive and park far
from the lights. While the motorway below roars with night traffic, dealing
begins. A score of pantechnicons drop their tailboards and reveal interiors
crammed with antique furniture, porcelain, flintlocks, paintings. It's joked
that you can buy back your precious bow-front corner cupboard, stolen in the
morning, at ten o'clock the same night in Hawkshead.

Some very heavy goons lurk there. Like a nerk I’d left my pencil
torch behind. I depended on the dealers' rigged battery lights. I wandered, had
sweet tea and a pasty—good pasties at Hawkshead—and sussed out the place. It
felt like home.

The people to avoid are the bloggers. Tonight they were here
a-plenty. These hoodlums follow you home and burgle/rob/mug, stealing the
antiques you've just bought. They're in collusion with the antique dealers
themselves, who get their—read your —lovely antique back an hour after they've
sold it. They sell it again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Recycling at
its best. I was tempted, but desisted. There were a couple of baluster pewters—
waists, a handle, a lid with a knob. Tip: Go for hammerhead knobs, ball knobs,
or bud-shaped ones. Of course, they'll be expensive. Pewter is definitely in.
Find a King James vessel taller than seventeen and three-quarter inches, you
can spit in your boss's eye and retire for life.

This far north I didn't know too many faces. I was glad. It gave
me the chance to talk to Nuala (you've to say Noola) from Belfast. She's a
pretty lass with Celtic coloring—blue eyes, hair jet. She runs a ferry line
with her dad. This doesn't mean they steer ships, only that they operate two
businesses—Belfast and Liverpool—as one, using the ferry. Nuala is heap big
business, and she's only twenty.

"Hello, love. How's Sean?"

"Lovejoy! Nice to see you. Dad's fine, thanks."

You don't buss Ulster folk as greeting, only in serious snogging.
Meekly I kept my distance. "He doing anything?"

"He'll be down East Anglia soon. He'll call."

"And be welcome." News indeed. Four blokes suddenly were
standing close. Nuala travels mob-handed. I prattled inanities until they
drifted off, disappointed at not having to club me insensible. "Here,
Nool. Sean interested in a Snettisham?"

Nuala raised a beckoning finger. A couple of wiry Liverpudlians
stepped from a pantechnicon and took over her pitch. We climbed into the
driver's cab. She lit up the longest cigarette I’d ever seen. "You
serious. Love joy?"

"Not for me, Nool." I shrugged, looking down. These
cabins are high off the blinking ground. Like flying. "Too rich. You'd
need a dollop broker in your pocket. And who's got one of those?"

"Dad, Lovejoy." She's a cool girl, is Nool. I wish I had
one like her. In fact, she herself'd do at a pinch. Except she's married to a
Manchester racecourse grifter. You leave those alone. Sean, her dad, had done
time for a series of church robberies. He'd made a fortune selling the antiques
when he got released. Which meant he'd used a dollop broker.

"That your stained glass on the blanket, love?"

Antiques placed casually on a blanket at these fly-by-night
gatherings claim to be genuine. Fakes stand on the tarmac.

"Interested? Genuine, Lovejoy. I had Donk lift a piece of
came to show the glass's edge—"

"Tch. Silly cow, Nool."

She laughed. "Sorry, Lovejoy. I forgot you'd know."
Medieval glaziers had no steel wheels or diamond knives, so they nibbled the
glass's edges with a notched thing called a grozing iron. Moth-eaten margins
under the lead cames mean genuine ancient stained glass. I've never known this
test lie.

"Scotch, is it?"

She laughed again, getting the joke. There is no surviving
medieval Scotch stained glass.

"A dollop broker's too big for me, Nool. You have to deposit,
what, ten percent? Jesus!"

"That'd be my problem, Lovejoy. Whose Snettisham?"

"Promise you'll use an East Anglian?" I glanced about,
all suspicion, worrying I was overdoing it. "Reason is, we've a local lady
dolloper. Once did me a favor. Okay?"

Nuala's frown vanished. She grinned. "Miss R. is the one Da
used! She's marvelous. Deal?"

"Deal, Nool." I chuckled. "Miss R.'s great."

"Da was annoyed she wasn't willing at first. He had to take
me along! I was only fourteen! The year she started broking." Oh, how we
laughed.

I chanced an arrow. "Same with me. My sister."

"Once a teacher, always."

My mind went: Miss R. Teacher. East Anglian antiques dollop broker
six years.
Deals only with females!
I
haven't got a sister.

I quickly invented, "The finder's one of three Beccles
treasure seekers. They've shown me a tore. Genuine. There's the usual gamekeeper
trouble. The gold is being sussed by a tame museum scientist. Okay?"