The Lies of Fair Ladies (3 page)

"Er, yes." You can go off people pretty quick.
"I'll send one of my deputies along."

"Splendid!" He drove off beaming.

A carter's wagon gave me a lift at two miles per hour down towards
Prammie's marshy abode. It was getting on for four o'clock when I plodded
through the hedgerows. Prammie was at the water's edge with his pram. Not pram
as in perambulator, that vehicle you shove babies about in. Pram as in short,
blunt-pro wed dinghy, propelled by a single stern oar. Shallow of draught, it
floats joyously on any piddling stream, unseen and silent. Hence my reason for
thinking of him and Cornish Place.

"Wotcher, Prammie. I covered my tracks at the hedge."

He crouches like an Aussie, one leg thrust out before. You wonder
how his arms reach. He was mending his lever. Lying supine, he can scull the
pram forward. He sighed. I was narked. I'd suffered a lot of sighs.

"Thought you'd be along, Lovejoy."

"Don't you sigh at me, Prammie. I could've shopped you."

"Drinkwater have you, did he?'' He has one of those mustaches
that fluff in and out with each snuffle. It looks borrowed off a dog. What with
him and Drinkwater, I'd had enough chuckles, too. "Burke, he is."

Confidence makes me uneasy. It never lasts. Like good health, it's
on a loser.

"Take care, Prammie. He's a nutter." A nutter is a bobby
of singularly malevolent disposition. No rarity, but functions unimpeded by
law, justice, similar myths.

"Bad as those security blokes." He almost tumbled into
the river with merriment. "Know what? They wired that cornfield!"

Well, some things do make you laugh. I'm no countryman, but you've
only to glance at a field of standing grain to see the tracks of every newt
that wended through.

"Searchlights for hang gliders, eh?" We fell about.
Sobering, I reverently asked how long the robbery had taken. You have to admire
class.

"Every night bar Sundays, eleven weeks, Lovejoy." He
doesn't work on the Sabbath. He's churchwarden at St. Michael's. His old eyes
misted over. "Know what, son? I'm really proud. My swan song." He
rolled and lit a cigarette. Strikes the match on his thumbnail. I wish I could
do that. I once tried but burnt my thumb.

"Anybody would be, Prammie." Praise where it's due.

"Had two rafts. Towed them. There are spin-offs. I saved a
little lad in the—" He paused, chuckled, having nearly given a location
away. He pointed down to the shallow creek. "Lucky I went at Cornish Place
from downstream, eh?"

Well, that really set us rolling. We finished up in his hut with a
drink, wiping our eyes. You need only watch a great mansion in a river moat in
the middle of a plain from upstream. One watcher there, the place is
impregnable.

"Marry that lassie yet, Lovejoy?"

That set me thinking. I remembered. "Well, no, Prammie. I
would have, but . . ."I couldn't even recall her name. Blonde? Or not?
Harriet Something was it, strong opinions on celery juice and pollution?
"Er, Harriet moved away."

"Pity." He sobered, eyeing me. "A nice girl,
Lovejoy. I don't think you played fair."

The reason I'm the only dealer in the Eastern Hundreds who'd know
that Prammie Joe did Cornish Place was that I'm the only one ever seen him in
action. And that was pure accident.

Harriet—if I've got her name right—was a carnivore from Wapping.
On a sweep for some Antiques Road Show. (A sweep is scavenging ahead of the
main shoal of predatory televisioneers.) She fell on me, lit. and met. Knew
nothing about antiques. I had to stop the lads selling her collections of
pre-1842 trademarks and French Revolution photographs. She and I were making
heavy-duty smiles on the banks of the Deben when a gentle rhythmic shushing
disturbed the rural peace. I thought it was Harriet, until somebody ahemed in my
earhole. And there was Prammie Joe in his modified boat. His bare foot worked
steadily at his stern-mounted oar. He lay on his back, holding the gunnels.

That would have been a quick embarrassed adjustment of clothing,
and the usual sheepish conversation until he'd gone by. But in the prow of his
pram stood a Martinware jug. I’d seen the same one sold seven days before at
Southwold. Martinware is grotesque—salt-glazed stoneware, mottled as hell, so
gray and muted you wonder why the Martin brothers bothered. Anyway, they're no
earlier than 1873. The Martins packed up in 1914. The jugs often feature
hideously contorted faces, or supposedly comical fishes and ducks. Horrible.

"Mr. Martin, I presume,'' I managed, as Harriet squealed and
we rolled apart. I thought that pretty witty in the circumstances, on the
Deben, in flagrante delicto.

Prammie had paused, peering sideways at us. He nodded, sussed fair
and square. Simply mentioned a tavern near Wood-bridge, saying he'd be there
about eight. We all three then resumed our activities, some more carefree than
others. I christened him my secret nickname Prammie that very evening.

"You could have been anybody, Lovejoy," he told me
inside his hut. "A godsend it was only you."

That "only you" stung. He could have met a blackmailer,
is what he meant. He's got a sense of fair play—which should tell you straight
off he's no antique dealer.

"I feel it too, Prammie," I said most sincerely. Harriet
had mauled me bog-eyed. I was almost at death's dark door when she had to move on.
She wrote to me hourly for five months, made sudden unnerving visits. My
guardian angel made sure I saw her Ferrari coming. "I was heartbroken,
Prammie. Truly. Her mother's an M.P. . . . Well, my face didn't fit." I
sniffed, quite overcome by cruel fate and Harriet's snooty bitch of a mother
who came between us. In the nick of time I remembered I was making this up for
Prammie's benefit.

Prammie murmured, "Never mind, son. Time the great
healer."

Sometimes you have to stare. I mean, this old goat'd just pulled off
a robbery anybody would be proud of, and deep down he's a sentimental softie.

"Er, ta, Prammie.” Kind, though. ''Got any torn handy?"
I was dying to see the stolen stuff.

"Nar, Lovejoy." His rheumy eyes were shining. He's
teetotaler, non-wencher. "Know why I risked it, son? My plan. You know I
breed?"

Breed? I didn't even know he had children. I was just about to
say, when I looked out through the window.

His cabin is an old reed cutter's hut. Low down, among reeds and
bullrushes. You haven't a hope of seeing it unless you know it's there. He has
a way through the hedgerows. He uses the waterways for getting anywhere. For
proper journeys, he uses a proper dinghy. His night-stealing's all done on his
pram. He keeps it buried in the reeds. Even anglers don't come down this marshy
stretch, and they're daft enough to go anywhere there's a tiddler. Breed. He
had mentioned waterbirds a few times with passion.

"Ducks and them?"

He smiled. "That's Lovejoy," he said. "Yes, ducks
and them. Migratories, transients, indigens. I foster and propagate them
all."

"Well, Prammie," I said, rising quickly. "Nice
seeing you—" Passion for antiques and women, inevitable. But passion for
pigeons? "Time I was off."

"Stay, son. Tea's ready." He poured out of an old tin
teapot. He explained, "Notice how I brewed up?"

Almost worth another sigh. "Kettle," I observed
shrewdly. Living on your own sends you bats.

"How?" He was amused. "Coal fire? Logs? Primus
stove? Paraffin? Gas?"

"You plugged it in, Prammie." Humor a loony, I always
say.

"Electricity, Lovejoy. Pinched from the mains." He
chuckled with flaps of his doggie mustache. "No smoke, see? No National
Insurance card. No tax. No post. No family, save my birds. I'm not even
here!"

"I know you're here, Prammie."

"Ah, but you're as barmy as me, Lovejoy. If you hadn't been .
. . admiring Harriet that day, you'd not know either."

"You got jailed, Prammie."

"Bad luck, Lovejoy." He was tranquil. He makes good tea,
for all his rustic isolation. "Taken for wrongful possession, a Daniel
Quare clock. Caught in football traffic. Two bobbies helped me across the road.
Saw the label, next day's auction at Gimbert's. I’d no fixed abode . . .”

"Rotten luck.” My heart bled for him. Remove the label, you
lower an item's value to any decent fair-minded receiver of stolen goods.
"Still, if it was Daniel Quare, it might well have been a fake, eh? Look
on the bright side." The other favorite clockmaker for fakers is Breguet
of Paris. It's joked that clockies—fakers of anything that tells time—can sign
Quare's and Breguet's names better than they can their own.

"No, Lovejoy." He was serious. "The Lord's work. He
moves in mysterious ways. It was in jail I met the scammer."

I saw light. He'd met a blackguard. "On commission?"

"Flat fee, son." He spoke with eyes glowing, doubtless
seeing a million migratories, or whatever, laying eggs and nuzzling mud. A
really great vision. "I'll have enough to buy this stretch. Can't you see
it? A sanctuary!"

"Lovely, Prammie." I ahemed. "Can I, er,
help?"

He shook his head, still friendly. "Lovejoy. I took every
fireplace, every speer and pelmet, with my own hands. I
know
every item is genuine. I hand the last over Monday."

"Sure? Be careful, eh?"

His smile was beatific. "
You
are telling
me
, Lovejoy? It was me
caught you in the very act of—"

"Yes, well." I stood with finality. "No harm
asking."

He saw me away from his hut. At the hedge I turned to look back.
Only eighty feet away, you couldn't see a damned thing. A few cows grazed,
providing yet more cover. It was true. He was the careful one all right.

And that, said Alice, was that. Good night, Prammie.

Three

That afternoon was murderous. Not death. Money. Some people spend,
spend, spend, and gain nowt. Like Big Frank's joke: "If I won a trillion
on the sweepstake, I’d just carry on being an antique dealer until it was all
gone.''

Think of the price of stamps and melons. I was having a blazing
row about a melon. Savvy Savvy's a supermarket. Their only superlatives are
their blinking prices.

I'd reached the till girl after only ten years of battling through
hordes. "Four quid? For one measly melon? You're off your frigging
nut!"

"That's the price, Lovejoy!" The girl was heated. People
behind were murmuring angry agreement. "It's marked!" "It's
still not fair, you silly cow!"

"Our melons are not measly!" The manageress, steaming up
with more falsehoods. "Lovejoy. You're barred from shopping here!"
this boss hood thundered. "Savvy Savvy's for respectable shoppers! Get
security, Nelly!"

"Barefaced robbery!" I'd only come in for some cheese
and tomatoes. They don't do pasties. I get those from Barm In The Barn near the
railway, Tuesdays. "Don't come to me when you go broke. Thieving
cow."

The town was crowded, mostly with people delightedly grinning
through Savvy Savvy's windows at the chiseling within. I dumped their grottie
cheese and tomatoes, yelled, “They used to be four shillings, proper
money." Pre-decimal prices always get to them.

"He's right!" an old crone cheeped. "I can remember
..."

The babble of reminiscence rose to a hubbub, which let me out
unscathed. No, though. It makes my blood boil. These posh shops'll have us in
our graves. Cost-efficiency tactics never work, do they? Prices'd go down if
they did. I headed down East Hill to Sandy's Dutch Treaty, fuming. Same with
antiques. Look at stamps. I pick stamps because they're utterly boring. Yet
they're the classic example of antiques holocaust. A lesson to all antique
grabbers, like you and me.

Lately, there'd come a mighty flood of philately. It was worrying
me sick. In fact, this was the reason I'd gone to the Arcade, to suss it out.
Somebody said Sandy—more about him in a minute—was offering a whole stamp
portfolio. In this day and age! Can you believe it? A caution: Avoid stamps.

Back in the fabled Good Old Days, when singers sang the words and
gold was simply color at Christmas, bureaux used to bring out catalogues
listing prices of British Colonials and Persian Commemoratives and whatnot.
That set the scene for ever and a day—or at least until the next catalogue.
Then things changed. Inflation (remember that old thing?) happened. Currencies
wobbled. Oil did, or didn't, do something vital. Stock markets seethed. One
fateful dark day in 1980, London awoke jubilantly to the Stamp World
Exhibition. To find the floor had vanished. Nobody wanted stamps.

Prices fell like a stone. Stamp empires were engulfed. Down
through the widening cracks plummeted dealers, traders, speculators'
portfolios. Amsterdam to Tel Aviv, Geneva to New York, the philately world went
crunch. This is my point: If you want to speculate, fine. Anything you
like—gold, stocks, shares, land—and good luck. But speculate in antiques?
Stick, please, to those
where collectors
provide a permanent floor to market prices.
Better still, don't speculate
at all. Be a pure collector; you can have the top brick off the chimney.