A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair

9

WALKING IN THE country quickens you, but towns are more pleasant. I got a lift from a commuter who wanted to tell me about falling - rising? - bank rates. I made the right noises. He asked after my job. I told him. He was eager about that, too, and said he'd bring an antique for me to see, left him by some uncle. I said fine, and alighted at a housing estate, all the roads named for roses. Pretentious, though Daniel Defoe did say that the town was famed for 'beautiful roses, ugly women'. He'd got it wrong. All roses are beautiful, aye, but so are all women. Nil points, Dan, good luck with Robinson Crusoe.

When I knocked, she thought I was the blinking milkman, called out of the bedroom window, 'Two pints of skimmed, please.'

'Can I interest you in some solid protein, missus?'

'Who…?' She peered, withdrew.

Chains eventually rattled. The door opened. (Sorry about all this pedantry, but Lydia enforces it on everyone with whom she comes into contact. See? Even that little sentence.) Lydia looked through a crack. I could see that she wore a nightdress, a thick woollen dressing gown, tufted pink slippers.

'Good morning, Lovejoy. It's only fourteen minutes to six.'

And nine seconds, I daresay. 'Could I enlist your assistance, please, dwoorlink?' I always feel in school with Lydia. She's my apprentice. Don't laugh. 'Will you travel with me to Saffron Fields?'

The door didn't waver. Lydia affects a stern, unrelentingly prim mode dinned into her by convent school. I'd finally discerned the passion beneath, but have to pay by watching everything I do and say. Morality rules, except when she permits otherwise in seclusion, meaning my cottage when I get round to mending the locks. Lydia's morality is hard-as-nails puritan.

'Hadn't you better ask Rosanne for assistance?'

This is women all over, the innocence of a toxin.

'Look, love,' I said indignantly. 'I had to butter Rosanne up. She had a collection of Victorian witches' balls I wanted.'

A witch's ball is a glass sphere, sometimes with a slender glass rope (sic) attached.

Witches tether one to their belts and peer into it for arcane assistance. The glass is too densely coloured to see through, or even into, unless you're a witch I suppose. They date from about 1865, are usually ultramarine or that disturbing dark green. I've even seen a red one, which put the fear of God in me. They sell for about three hundred quid, going to press. Rosanne runs an infant creche in Nine Ash Green. Hate to think what she teaches the babbies.

The door didn't move. 'You failed. Rosanne declined to sell.'

'I wasn't trying to buy them for profit. It was for,' I invented in a burst of genius, 'her babies' school. They need, er, bottles and things.'

The door instantly swung open and there stood Lydia. 'And the horrid woman wouldn't sell her antiques to help the babies?' she cried, furious. 'There! I warned you she was positively wretched!'

'You were right, dwoorlink.' I allowed myself to be coaxed inside, very contrite. 'I should have listened.'

She slammed the door seething with outrage. She's good at seething. 'Indeed you should, Lovejoy!'

'This journey to Saffron Fields is for the same reason,' I extemporized. Never change a winning team. 'The babies need desks.'

One thing about Lydia is that she's always voluptuous. Dishevelled from sleep, tousled from dusty auctions, glammed up for glitzy occasions, Lydia dims all other women.

She'd look good in rags or nothing. I tried not to reach for her.

'Desks?' She paused, suddenly cold. 'Another of your tales, Lovejoy?'

Didn't infants need desks, for Christ's sake, lazy little sods? I'd had a desk at school. 'Er, she's planning. But,' I added solemnly, 'is she the right sort of person, I ask myself.'

She quivered with vehemence. 'I also have doubts!' she cried.

'We must help, Lydia.' I went all noble. 'If we don't, who will?'

'Lovejoy.' She misted up. 'Sometimes, you have a heart of gold. Up so early, just thinking of those little ones…'

I felt myself fill up too, because it truly was a beautiful effort on my part. I reached to embrace her. She stepped back.

'Have you had breakfast, Lovejoy? I'll have a bath and dress, then make you something before we leave.'

'Maybe I could wait upstairs with you, talk over plans?'

'Certainly not! Please wait downstairs.' Deprived, I foraged, made a ton of toast and marmalade, brewed up, tried to boil three eggs but they always come out runny and I can't stand that gooey white so I fried some cheese and tomatoes and had that with a mound of bread. Lydia never has sliced bread. She makes her own loaves that you've to cut yourself, though my slices always go thick at one edge and dwindle to infinity on the other. She writes angrily to Ministers of the Crown about the quality of shop bread.

In the living room - the house is semi-detached - I found a small mystery. On the mantelpiece was a nickel-plated gadget I'd seen before. There's a well known device for automatically making tea by your bedside when you wake, called a 'Teasmade'. Rotten name, still on sale. This was the earliest version, patented by the gunsmith Frank Clarke of Snow Hill in Birmingham in 1903.I could actually remember telling Lydia, on her second day as my apprentice, to bid for this very instrument at Gimbert's auction. I even recognized the faint scratches on the spirit burner. She'd gone into the auction trembling, white as death, though I'd told her not to worry. Lydia had come in a fraction too soon, and stimulated the bidding beyond her 'add one' limit.

(Just a small point. Remember that, if you get somebody to bid for you at an auction, custom allows your bidder to go one bid higher if she thinks she can swing it. And you must pay up no matter how high that one extra bid takes you.) I smiled. I'd forgotten all about the incident until now. This was typical Lydia, to let that early mistake rankle. She must have hunted the item down, then saved up and bought it - four thousand zlotniks at current prices, note. Sentiment? Or her famous rage at not having done something exactly right? The nickel surface shone. This silly little instrument appeared cared for, loved even, on its wooden plinth with its spirit burner, spring-worked match striker, original matches, automatic tilting kettle, its alarm clock actually working. She'd had it lovingly restored.

'I see you had breakfast, Lovejoy,' Lydia said behind me. 'If we—'

She halted, noticing me and the tea maker. I looked. She was just as beautiful, but now dressed to kill. Matching accessories, gloves in the strap of her handbag, hair perfect in her inevitable bun. Good enough to eat.

'Well done,' I said. 'To find it, I mean.'

She blushed. 'I just came across it. It seemed so neglected. No particular reason, Lovejoy.'

'Of course not.' Awkward of a sudden, I waited. 'The Automatic Water Boiler Company of Birmingham made them, I think?'

'That is so,' she said primly.

We stood like lemons. She finally said she'd make some fresh tea and have a slice of toast, then we could be on our way. I said fine, fine. I honestly don't know what we're playing at half the time.

'Oh, Lovejoy,' she said in the kitchen, safe from past reminders, 'there is good news.

Tinker comes out of rehabilitation today. I have ordered a motor car to transport him.'

The Lydias of this world can't say words like gaol.

'Thanks, love.' Good fortune at last. I'd have the world back on its axis in a trice, the three of us together.

'One question puzzles me, Lovejoy,' she said, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. It had been ironed into folds. I remembered the old trick challenge: How many times can you fold a standard piece of foolscap writing paper of average thickness? Answer: Eight. No more, not even if you're Morgyn the Mighty. I'd bet Lydia could iron a napkin into a million folds without effort. I ate her toast because she was slow.

'Yes, dwoorlink?'

'Who injured you, and why?'

She'd spotted my wince and my limp. Sometimes she's a right pest. 'Oh,' I said heartily,

'good heavens! I stumbled off the kerb.'

She rose, cleared things away.

'Please do not dissemble,' she said. 'You may enlighten me should you feel so inclined.

Come now. We have a journey.'

Which is how, at a breathtaking nineteen miles an hour, bumping onto every gutter grid for mile after mile, we reached the ancient manor of Saffron Fields Hall.

Where at last we found Arthur Goldhorn, but not his missing lady.

We alighted at the ornate gate. I was all but asleep from Lydia's reckless driving. With her, you've time for a coffee at every crossroads. In Lavenham we'd been overtaken by an invalid chair.

'Why not drive up to the house?' I suggested. The drive is five furlongs long. 'Seeing it's our destination?'

'Certainly not, Lovejoy!' she said, scandalized. 'Didn't you tell me that Mr Goldhorn is possibly deceased? The present incumbent might not wish it.'

Give me strength. 'Good point,' I said.

Saffron Fields Hall is imposing. Queen Anne style, twelve windows across, four storeys high, red brick covered in that green creeper thing, set in immaculate grounds. Once, the lawns hadn't been quite so stencilled. Several gardeners slogged away. I called out to one I recognized but he ignored me. They had orders.

'How rude!' Lydia exclaimed, preparing for war. 'Not even to answer when…' et Lydia cetera.

'We'll visit a friendly neighbour instead, and find out.'

We stuttered along the rough track that led beside the Saffron Fields estate. It was three furlongs off, took us a couple of aeons.

'Where are we, Lovejoy?'

'This friend's nice. You'll like her. She grows grapes,' I quipped, now troubled by my investigation's tardiness. With Lydia's help I'd be even slower. Dosh Callaghan would come along any minute, wanting answers about his gems.

The vineyard is one of those places in East Anglia where the Romans supposedly grew their grapes. I actually believe it of Carting's Vineyard. It's set back from the main road, a mere twenty acres, with two large ponds trying to be lakes in truly rural surroundings, woods, a bridge over a freshet, thickets. Countryside gets me down.

Two wooden buildings stood adjacent to a reeling farmhouse. Nothing stirred. Lydia exclaimed at its prettiness.

'Oh, look!' she cried. 'A kingfisher!'

Something red and blue zoomed over the water, vanished among trees. I winced. Great to be reminded that Nature was carnage, just when I wanted to find out if my old pal Arthur really had died.

'It caught a little fish, Lovejoy!' she carolled. 'How sweet!'

'Not for the fish.'

'That you?' a voice exclaimed to my relief. 'Wotcher, Dottie.'

There she stood, pleasantly plump, garbed to battle agriculture in Wellingtons, a shift thing smocked at collar and hem, with frayed brown cuffs and an amorphous canvas hat garlanded with hedgerow flowers.

Dottie Kelvedon was born and raised on Carting's Farm, back when it had been a smallholding with cows and pigs and a dog called Goon. Dottie had evaded the various forms of penury planned by successive governments. She'd turned it into a vineyard, bottling her own red and white wines -Cymbeline Red and suchlike. I'd sold a stock of antique farm implements for her. She'd paid me in kindness.

'Who's the grumble?' Dottie speaks like a rough soldier sometimes. Comes from delivering calves, foals, and rearing chickens for unspeakable purposes. Grumble and grunt is Cockney slang for a female.

'Dottie Kelvedon,' I said with gallantry, 'may I introduce my apprentice Lydia?' I sounded like Beau Brummel.

They wittered a bit, those irrelevant non sequiturs with which women fence on meeting.

Lydia decided she liked Dottie. I was surprised. Dottie insisted on showing us round the barn where she organizes wine tastings and supper evenings. She has a lover called Tory, dunno why.

'We've done the fish pond since you were here last, Lovejoy.' Dottie walked us over the little bridge. 'Koi carp cost a fortune. Don't worry,' she said with a laugh I remembered,

'we only sell them for decoration, not eating. Lovejoy is squeamish,' she added for Lydia's benefit, leading the way to her bottling plant. It's in a shed. 'I once saw him rescue a fledgling in a thunderstorm. It had fallen from its nest. It died, of course, but only after Lovejoy'd tried to feed it with milk for two days. He's barmy.'

We stared at her bottling machines. 'Great, Dottie,' I said.

'You'll want to see this next bit, Lovejoy.'

We went along a narrow path, trekked down an overgrown path into thick trees. The ground sloped up. I realized we were on one of those ancient Celtic ramparts, probably no more than mere cattle compounds but which are now invested with folklore tales of primitive battlements. You get a lot hereabouts.

'Here,' Dottie said.

It was a glade some fifty feet across. Wild flowers were everywhere. An astonished fallow deer peered at us, sprang and vanished.

'What?' I said.

'Arthur Goldhorn.' Dottie looked sadly at me. 'I trust it wasn't for the pleasure of my company that you called, Lovejoy.'

'Arthur?' I said stupidly. There was nobody but us.

Lydia said quietly, 'The stone, Lovejoy.'

The headstone wasn't quite in the centre of the clearing. It was knee high, not as tall as they stand in our churchyard, faced with slate incised with bold letters done in brass. It announced that Arthur H. Goldhorn lay here. H for what? No epitaph, no sentimental Hoping On The Resurrection and all that. Nor was there any Beloved Husband Of and suchlike. Just Requiescat in pace, and that was that.

Dottie didn't speak. I read the inscription over and over.

Weeds had flourished since the burial. The earth mound was overgrown. Greenery stood taller even than the headstone itself. I stared, kept on staring, couldn't take my eyes away. The lettering was a professional job. I cleared my throat to say something, couldn't.

The women were talking quietly. I couldn't catch what they said, didn't try. A small bunch of wild flowers had been laid by the headstone. Who by? They were faded, petals fraying.

This was Arthur. It signified his arrival, birth, life, death. It was all he was or ever had been. No more.

'Look,' I said after a bit. 'See you back at the barn, okay?'

'Yes, Lovejoy.'

'One thing, Dottie.' It took me time to get the words out. 'Whose land is this?'

She didn't reply for a few pulses. 'It's mine, Lovejoy. Those two hornbeams. See them?

Six, seven perches off? That's my boundary.'

'Oh, aye.' I couldn't recognize a hornbeam tree if I fell over it. 'Whose land comes next, then?' I already knew.

A longer pause this time. 'Saffron Fields, Arthur's own land until lately.'

'Just making sure.'

'It belongs to Dieter Gluck now. Colette works for him in the London antiques markets.

A bag lady, people say.' I actually heard Dottie shrug, all that heavy rural garb susurrussing on her. 'She can't keep away. Like you, Lovejoy. A street lover, Arthur used to say.'

Nothing more. Arthur Goldhorn, ancient owner of an ancient manorial estate, had finished up a piece of discarded rubbish. Only the kindness of a neighbour had given him rest.

Eventually I heard them both go off down the footpath, weeds squelching underfoot.

Dottie does this to keep paths free, but it never works. Come back a day or two later, every track is almost completely overgrown like nobody had ever passed that way. Very like Arthur. Or you.

I sat on the ground by the grave, wondering who it was standing watching among the trees.