The Lies of Fair Ladies (26 page)

"Sandy. You didn't say you'd sold up to Big Frank."

"Don't spoil my moment, Lovejoy. There's a dear. Sell to Big
Frank? Have you seen his nails?"

Connie came in, with Rye Benedict. I waved, but she moved on Mel
with smiley determination. Big Frank shrugged the shrug of the loser. Mel
allowed Connie to buy him a drink without quite looking at her. She began
talking animatedly. He sniffed and kept his distance, but they were dealing.

"Reckon Connie bought Sandy-Mel out?" I asked Flavor.

"It's some bird right enough." He didn't look round.
"Frothy Lane was saying that yob who runs that poxy old mill's sending the
vans. Word is the dollop broker's flitting around. Who knows?"

Some days everything goes wrong. I realized now why Sandy and Mel
had insisted on giving me a lift. Sandy knew I was worried about the big
antiques shifts round the area. He wanted to tell me he and Mel were
contributing to it. Maybe he lost courage on the way over. Or maybe he didn't want
anything to spoil his Entrance, the night of the big reunion between him and
Mel. Whatever. I'd come for solutions, and everything was more tangled than
ever. The dollop broker was coming nearer. I said so-long to Flavor John and
left.

Some days everything only
seems
to go wrong because deep down something is chancing its arm and going right for
once.

As I walked down the lane to my cottage between the hedgerows I
saw a light in my window. I thought. Oh, hellfire. Another duffing up from Del
Vervain's mob? Or Drinkwater brewing up looking for the sugar, waiting to
arrest me?

"Hello, Lovejoy."

It was only Luna. Supper was ready, a delectably sinful meal of
all the things you've got to leave alone or Doc Lancaster'll get you. The place
was depressingly tidy, honed to brilliance.

"Don't worry," she said, a little breathlessly. "I
had Elsie and Madge here. They do for me at home."

"Er, look, Lune." I didn't go in. Just stood there
looking round. "I'm in enough trouble without Oliver—"

"He's had to go to Manchester. Finance meeting."

Manchester? Quite a way. It was late. No means of getting home for
some time, I should suppose. I didn't say this.

"Manchester's quite a way," Luna said, checking the
stove was still doing its stuff, the quick suspicious way they do. "He
probably won't be home tonight, I shouldn't suppose."

"Really?" I cleared my throat. She looked up, tutting.

"Well? Are you going to stand at the door all night?"

Obeying women is in a man's nature, really, in spite of the party
line preaching the opposite. I thought of Oliver's powerful position as mayor.
But a man never really leaves a woman. We can't. We haven't the power. We can
only go if we're shoved. A woman can leave a bloke, though, and often does. I
decided I’d better find out which version was in operation, and stepped inside.

By the time I’d reached this conclusion, Luna had shelled me from
my jacket, close and warm. She wore a lovely woolen dress, pale green. I like
those. They fall round shapes.

''Coming,'' I said. There isn't much you can do when a woman
extends an invitation. Choice is a luxury for others. Not me.

Twenty-two

“I didn't intend this, Lovejoy.”

“I’m glad, love.” We spoke along the pillow.

"I want you to know I don't
... I
don't
." She
looked away. "This is the first time I've ever . . . apart from
Oliver."

"Shhh." I think God got emotions wrong. We've too many.
Remorse heads my list of redundancies.

"What do I do about Oliver?"

Why ask me? I sighed inwardly. These questions are irrelevant.
Who's got answers? We'd had a short session during the night, after we made our
first smile. I'd been desperate to fast fade, but she'd clung on, interrogating
until I thought I'd never slide out of the minor death. It makes me wonder
sometimes if women ever understand. I mean, all they need do is stay quiet a
minute, give your soul time to climb back in. But no. Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.
One day, maybe some bird'll have the sense. She'll be my goddess. I'll follow
her for nowt.

It was early morning. We'd made our morning smile. Luna was a
willing rider, too anxious to rush us to orgasm, thinking that right. It's
basically too much rote in lovemaking that creates this misunderstanding. It's
better slower. She found time to rejoice, to her utter astonishment. She questioned
her being flabbergasted, daring to rollick in lust. "Is he back
early?"

"About noon."

"We've time to go to Rye Benedict's. I must see him."

"The pictures you were looking at? Delia's?"

"Mmmh. The charts, but they're beyond me." A submerged
I. K. Brunei miniature paddle steamer would be priceless. If available. But I
didn't believe in its existence, let alone the other factors. I think Rye
Benedict was being had, his market garden's sale profits the reason. I mean, is
anything easier to fake than a photograph? Flavor'd said Acker Kirwin was a
photographer. Oho, I thought. But found I'd baffled myself again. Oho what?

Daybreak comes too early when a woman is around. I've found that.
Blue tits woke us about five-thirty, greedy little sods. Never leave you alone.

"Lovejoy?" Pause. "I had no intention of ... of
sleeping here. I just thought you deserved a good supper. Getting my things
back off Same-Same."

"Least I could do. Still mad about the Vervains?"

"No. Though you could have warned me."

"You might not have come, with a scruff like me."

She leant over me, propped on one elbow, smiling as her breast
touched my face and produced the inevitable.

"You're always wrong, Lovejoy." She frowned. "Was
there ever anything between Mrs. Vervain and you?"

I never betray confidences, so I hummed and ha'd, finally told her
to mind her own business when she pressed. That led to a struggle, then a
protracted smile that made us late, with a rushed breakfast and her nearly
burning the blinking tomatoes and too little margarine on the fry-up. I can't
drink hot tea, so I had to do that business of pouring it into a bowl and
blowing. We made the town road by about half ten. I grumbled as we left the
cottage. Rye's mill would be heaving with infants. I wanted a quiet conversation
with the bloke. Luna tried mentioning Oliver, but I wasn't having any. I'd just
escaped being married to Joan Vervain. I didn't want another divorce impending,
just yet. Though in fact Del and Joan now seemed accomplices. Maybe my
influence worked equally well both ways, for reconciliation as well as
division? I'd have been a great marriage counselor.

"What was that, Lovejoy?"

"Eh? Nothing." I'd been talking to myself.

"There's that Connie you wanted to speak to. Quick!"

I held on while the car slewed and juddered to a halt. Other
motors parped. She tutted at their impatience. Connie was coming from the
station forecourt. At this hour? I told Luna to wait and nipped through the
traffic, calling out. She paused, more of a hesitation, before hurrying on. I
raced, caught up.

"Hey, Connie! It's me, for heaven's sake."

"Hello, Lovejoy." She smiled, with effort, didn't stop
to chat. "I'm in rather a hurry. Sorry about last night."

I remembered. I'd beckoned, she'd declined. "Okay, love. You
did the deal everybody's talking about, eh?"

That stopped her. "Everybody's what? But it's ..."

So there was a deal. "Sandy and Mel. You bought them
out."

"Oh, Lovejoy. Yes!" It was wrung from her. She seemed
distraught, beside herself. Where the heck had she been so soon? And why hadn't
she gone in her car? Or was it somewhere overnight? "Yes! On commission.
You'd only find out."

That terrible word's enough to cause most dealers I know to keel
over into the custard. To sell on commission's only one step from going on the
knocker, which is virtually begging from door to door. Sell on commission means
you starve until you sell—then the dealer for whom you're selling takes the
whole price except a measly ten percent.

"What favors did you do Sandy and Mel, love? I thought I was
the one fuffing your stuff out."

She twisted, right there in the weak morning sunshine. As if I had
her entangled in a net.

"You are, Lovejoy! Don't think I don't still need your
load."

"Thank heavens for that."

"I must go, Lovejoy. I—"

"Where'll I leave it, Connie?" I had to ask the
question, exactly as if I believed her. And explained, when she looked blank,
"Your load I'm assembling."

"Oh." She thought quickly of this problem, possibly for
the very first time. "At Boxtenholt aerodrome. See Gunge. Okay?"

"Right, love."

We bussed, she sprinted. No night ticket on her windscreen, so it
had been this morning that she'd hurtled off down the bright silver road. She
made a Le Mans start, her face tense and staring.

I walked back to Luna's motor. Luna also did a racing start, but
talking, asking, informing.

"Shut up a sec, love." Thinking's bad for you, some say.
Let her do some. "Luna. Who of all the people you've met is
untrustworthy?"

"Among the dealers?" She thought. "Calamity Jenny.
I didn't like her one bit." Which wasn't quite my question. "She's
too saucy for her own good, that one."

"And who is trustworthy?''

"Sandy,” she said immediately, I pressed her for more names.
"Big Frank, though he's hopeless. Quite different from that Mr.
Kirwin."

Hang on. How come she knew Acker Kirwin? "You've met?"

"Yes. He bought ever such a lot at Wittwoode's auction. You
remember? You sent me."

"So I did." I made her describe the scene in detail.

It was the collar job. He'd worked it on unsuspecting punters as
the crowds had dwindled. It's not done much nowadays. It's quite simple, puts
the average public bidder, the "women," off bidding. Thus:

You wait to bid, at an auction, say, for a small carriage clock
for your mantelpiece. Say Lot 200, about teatime. Happily you wait. You stand
quite near it. You don't want to be startled into bidding for the wrong thing,
so you've penciled a ring in your catalogue round the number. Lot 200. All
clear. Then something very worrying happens.

A suited gentleman, smart, dour, unsmiling, shoves his way towards
you. He looks at the carriage clock. Lot 200, and compares it with a photograph
he pulls from his pocket. He murmurs a curse, checks a list of items on a
clipboard. It bears the police insignia. He quietly asks, "This item
yours, madam?" in sepulchral tones. "No, no!" you gasp, by now
convinced something sinister is going on. He peers at the marks in your catalogue.
"It's just that I was thinking of bidding for it," you bleat in
terror. "For my auntie. A present ..."

He whispers gruffly that he's police. Would you please bid for it?
And bring it to court, present it as evidence? It would only mean a few days at
the Old Bailey, appearing as witness, you see, ma'am. The clock was stolen, you
see. . . .

"No, no!" you exclaim. And depart.

Leaving Acker—for that's who the "inspector" will be, or
some pal—to buy the carriage clock cheap, having got rid of the one serious
bidder.

"I knew he wasn't a police inspector," Luna told me.

"How?" She was shrewder than I'd thought.

"I know the inspectors," she said blithely. "We
were guests of honor at their annual dinner." Silly me. "I told the
gentlemen attendants. They only laughed." She bridled in annoyance.
"No sense of vocation. It's not good enough."

Whizzers, the scene shifters at auctioneers, are always on the
take. Asking them for morality is whistling wind.

"Terrible, isn't it," I sympathized. And it's then that
I think I looked at Luna for the very first time.

Oh, I’d had a gander, shufti'd her in passing, so to speak. But
actually looking . . . ? No. I’d missed the sureness, her quiet cleverness. She
couldn't exactly be the humdrum duckegg I’d assumed. Maybe because she'd gone
along with most of what I'd decreed, I'd assumed she was a mundane housewife
tremulously peering at the great world beyond her front door. And maybe I
despised such, thinking why the hell hadn't they already got on with life
instead of whinging about being oppressed, that "jargoneering," as
Florence Nightingale called it.

There were other attributes. She drove sedately, but better than
me. She was composed, attentive when I spoke about antiques. She didn't believe
me on anything else. Rightly, I suppose. She did things off her own bat,
sometimes got them right. She was smart enough to notice people, suss out their
character. Gulp. Might she actually be more astute than I am? I'd already
awarded her a secret medal, for she had made love hesitantly at first but
eventually very, very well. Luna Car stairs had pleased me more than any woman
I could remember. I looked away. She'd caught my glance, colored up.

"What, Lovejoy? Did you say something?"