A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair

2

SOMETIMES, EVERYTHING SEEMS the opposite of what we're told. That Benedictine monk Dom Perignon, experimenting with double fermentation, is supposed to have sipped his prototype champagne and yelled out, 'Come here! I'm tasting the stars!' Did he really? What are the odds he actually called out, 'This batch is no good, lads!

Another failure!' then sat there alone in his cellar cackling his head off and wickedly swilling it all back himself? You can't help thinking.

Free of Shar, I inhaled the London antique market's perfumed air. Pure nectar, aroma of the gods. Paradise, but where you can lose your shirt. You might be in raptures thinking you've finally collared that missing Da Vinci and made zillions, when in fact you've just mortgaged your whole future and put your children into penury.

It's still life's most glorious arena.

Across the Bermondsey greensward, by St Mary Magdalene church, with twittering birds pecking among the tombstones, you see warehouses, antique shops. But the main feature delighting your eye is shoals - no other word - of stalls, stalls as far as vision allows. Among them drift two or three thousand hopefuls. You hear every language under the sun - Greek, Italian, French, Chinese. The globe flocks.

To find it, go to lower Bridge. Walk south down Tower Bridge Road. Takes you fifteen minutes. I'd advise you to take sandwiches, because you may never leave. There's tales of folk who've turned up with an hour to kill before zooming home to Rotterdam, wherever, and simply stayed. Everyone's dazzled by the antiques, forgeries, collectibles, the sheer exhilaration of hundreds of stalls bulging with antiques. It is concentrated wonderment.

The good cheer is ineffable, if that's the right word. Euphoria rules. Stallholders joke, laugh, arguing good-naturedly about everything on earth from corruption to cricket.

Here, an old lady wears a tall Ascot topper with serene aplomb. Over there's a delectable lady in enticing attire, and everywhere's noise and pandemonium with - I assure you - some utterly genuine antiques among the dross.

Lesson for today: Go to Bermondsey at six a.m. Fridays. It dwindles about noon. Other days, you've to roam in warrens of converted warehouses and godowns near the green.

Oddly, the indoor stallholders are less jovial than the open-air barrow folk. Is it the gypsy element, some thrill of travelling as opposed to the lurk? Dunno. But go there, best entertainment on this planet. Not only that, but you might finish up with a priceless silver salver or that porcelain Worcester jug you just know is waiting. (Sorry.

I've just realized this reads like an advertisement. Won't let it happen again.) I made for a bloke who might help me. Crooks first, saints second. A warning, though: never in the field of human nonsense is so much gunge being sold as antique. Even in a posh listed auction, only 3 per cent will be genuine. The rest will be bodge-ups, twinners, or downright fakes. Never, never ever, is more than one in ten genuine.

Sir Ponsonby P. Ponsonby, Bart. - no prize for guessing that middle initial - was there, bold as brass. He's a florid bloke of forty, has a stall on the Corner Green, a little triangular plot beyond the main market. You go up three steps to it. Make sure you don't fall off the raised little plateau, where eager tourists sometimes come a cropper.

Kindly souls rush to help you up, meanwhile nicking your purse, wallet, and every credit card and groat you possess. Subtlemongers, our ubiquitous pickpockets, are about, so beware.

'Wotcher, Sir Ponsonby.'

'Lovejoy, old sport! What brings you to this urban decay?'

He seemed delighted to see me. Sir Ponsonby was once headmaster of an imposing public school - which every other country calls private - and was deposed for embezzling funds. He's never looked back. He dresses flamboyantly - deerstalker hat, Sherlock Holmes cape of expensive Harris tweed, plus-fours and spats. He sports a monocle, muttonchop whiskers, knows Ancient Greek, Latin. He's one of the few stallholders in this most fabled antiques market to sport his own sign above his barrow.

The rest go anonymous into the good fight, or have discreet cards.

One reservation: Sir P wears wren's feathers in his hat. It's a hideous country custom.

St Stephen's Day, village lads beat the hedgerows, chanting a gleeful ancient rhyme -

I'll not give it, not wanting to encourage grue. They kill wrens. The tiny corpses are plucked, and the feathers worn as adornments until next year, when they do it again.

Wren feathers in your titfer, bad mark from me.

'Sent,' I said. 'Somebody duffed a spark.' Translation: faked a gem. Heaven knows why we don't just use English, a language for which there's been a transient vogue, but antiques has its own lingo. What with that and Cockney rhyming slang, it's a wonder London is able to communicate at all.

'Oh, dear!' he boomed. Sir Ponsonby's notion of subtlety is to bellow as if addressing an Eton prize day. 'Allow me to present my new apprentice, Miss Moiya December.'

'Er, wotcher, miss.'

A beautiful lass was coiled on a stool beside Ponsonby's barrow. She was gloriously blonde. Everything about her shone, teeth, lips, eyes, tan leather coat. In bed you could have used her as a nightlight. I'm ever in hope. Religion did wrong, making sex a sin.

We'd all be holy, if Moiya took the evensong collection of a Sunday.

'Is this he?' she asked Sir Ponsonby, as if I'd been expected.

'Yeah verily, I be he,' I said. Which raised the question, who she?

Ponsonby leant to confide some secret, and thundered, 'Moiya's learning the trade, Lovejoy!' He swelled like Mister Toad. I recognized a gay quip on its way, and stepped back a yard. 'Isn't the trade lucky?' And he guffawed.

This is not your average splutter. Harness its latent energy, we'd not need fossil fuel.

Nearby stallholders laughed along with him.

'Hey, Sir Pons!' a silver vendor called when the decibels finally lessened. 'My trouble in Aldgate says keep the racket down!' Trouble and strife, wife, the Cockney rhyming slang I was just moaning about. 'Is that you, Lovejoy? Where y'been, mate?'

'Wotcher, Sturffie. I'll look over your clag in a sec.'

That set nearby traders roaring, giving me chance to tell Sir Ponsonby I was anxious to find the source of padpa fakes. I phrased it with care, not wanting my investigation broadcast by Radio Ponsonby.

'See you when you get a minute, Sir Ponsonby?'

'Oh, secrecy, is it, Lovejoy?' he roared. 'Right! By the tuck shop, ten minutes, hey?'

He meant the nosh vans, of which Bermondsey antiques market has half a dozen. I made a cursory inspection of Sir P's stall - one enormous chipped Satsuma vase among old cameras, militaria, bayonets, photos of pale youths in uniform staring beyond life, and some decent Victorian watercolours of cottages with village women in aprons, with a few fruitwood boxes and other treen. Politely I lied how marvellous his antiques were, then went to Sturffie.

'How'd yer know Lord Haw-Haw, Lovejoy?'

The best about London marketeers is you can take up where you left off. Even after a lapse of years, bump into them and they'll say, 'Wotcher, mate. Come and look at this.

Picked it up on Portobello Road. And how yer keeping?' No hard feelings because you didn't keep in touch.

'Eh? Oh, met him years since. You've a good piece there, Sturffie.'

'Me?' He was amazed, stared at his goods as if they'd just swanned in from outer space. 'You having a pig, Lovejoy?' Pig in a poke, joke.

'Straight up, Sturffie.'

The market was now crowded. I was being jostled by dealers and tourists shoving down the narrow barrow lanes. Itinerant dealers carry carpet bags, or canvas-lined holdalls. One per dealer, never two. Some of the lads claim to be able to recognize nationalities. I don't think it's true. I suspect it's just clothes, maybe having glimpsed individual dealers the week before, that sort of thing. However, stall and barrow traders are a canny lot. Some work a sort of illegal ring deal if opportunity strikes and other hawkers don't notice. And even if they do.

'Which is it, mate?' Sturffie grinned through clenched teeth.

He was once a lowlife, got done for knifing somebody outside an East End pub. I like Sturffie, though. A hard nut, he once did me a favour. It was inexplicable, really, because before the incident he hadn't known I was a divvy or that I was anything to do with antiques at all. I must be the only bloke on earth saved by genuine charity.

It had been near the famous Prospect of Whitby tavern in the East End. In the gloaming I'd accidentally stumbled on cobbles, and bumped against a motor. A long natty bloke had angrily uncoiled from within, and belted me so I fell against the kerb.

He'd been just about to punt me into the Thames when this little whippet of a man said, 'Here, knock it orff. He did nuffink,' meaning me.

'Who sez?' asked the natty thug.

'Me.' Sturffie, only I didn't know him then, had walked over and helped me up. My head was ringing, me legs wobbling.

The tall yobbo looked the sort who'd normally tackle anything, on principle, but Sturffie's eyes never wavered. The motorist finally shrugged, abandoned his rage, and strolled into the tavern.

'You okay, mate?' my saviour had asked.

'Aye, ta. Good of you.' ,

'Think nuffin of it. Me old man wuz a bad drinker too. Looked arter him times out of number.'

He'd thought I'd been drinking. I hadn't. I'd just spent forty hours driving a massive pantechnicon of antiques from Carlisle to the loading bays for Poppy West and her cousin Walshie. I was naturally bogeyed. Sturffie and his mate strolled away.

I'd called after him for his name. 'Here, mate. Got a moniker?'

'Ferget it, mate.' He was already off down the alley, as if rescuing me was nothing.

'He's called Sturffie.' His pal gave a cackle. 'Nasty piece of work.'

'Ta, then.' I knew better than use his name without his sayso.

Later, I'd bumped into him, him surprised when he'd realized I too was in antiques.

Cockneys can be gents, despite rough edges, and he never asked. I was pleased to get a definite bonging vibration from his barrow.

'How much?' I picked up the tea caddy. It was solid fruitwood, shaped like a pear but the size of a large coconut.

'Forty quid,' he said, looking at me.

Its lid opened, genuine lovely interior, lovely handmade hinge as genuine as the day it was made two centuries before. The best tea caddies were made of fruitwood, shaping the final container to match the fruit. If you're lucky, you get apple-shaped tea caddies of applewood, pear-shaped ones of pearwood, and so on. Lovely big ones are rare, rare. The last one I'd seen was found in an old rector's study. He'd used it as a tobacco jar. It sold straight off for three thousand quid, no haggling. Tea was anciently regarded as a most important herb, full of magic potency for health, sexual power, heaven knows what and consequently went for unbelievable sums. I passed a surreptitious hand, palm down, over Sturffie's tea caddy. He saw my gesture, the dealer's universal sign to keep it back for a fortune.

If Sturffie hadn't been a pal, I would have bought. As it was, leaving it there broke my heart.

'Ta, Lovejoy. Can't afford it, eh?' he said, jocular, because the woman on the next barrow might have caught my sign. He put it in his capacious pocket, which was even more of a giveaway, but that was his business.

We talked of this and that, me telling him I was up in London to buy gems and I'd see him later. Then I went to the nosh van to meet Sir Ponsonby. I noticed the exquisite Moiya December (Miss) on guard at his barrow.

Going through the market is always hard. I took my time, not wanting folk jumping to the conclusion that I'd come specifically to see Sir P. Traders who knew I was a divvy were keen for me to prove their wares 100 per cent genuine and therefore highly valuable, while buyers wanted me to pretend that the antiques they wanted to buy were worthless, to lower the price. The best, and riskiest, game on earth.

Sir Ponsonby was sitting on a low wall eating bacon and eggs from a silver tray. He brings his own cutlery, cup and saucer, milk jug. Tourists photograph him in mid-nosh.

His white napkins are monogrammed with his crest, and he affects a George III table screen of walnut, date about 1815, a lovely piece worth more than the entire nosh van.

'Here, Sir Ponsonby,' I asked, wondering. 'Why is it, keen antiques trader that you are, you don't sell that table screen?'

Georgian ladies used them to protect their lovely pale complexions - sign of high breeding, before leathery tans became fashionable. They wrote letters in a sunlit arbour, by firelight or candlelight. There's a daft belief among antique dealers that protecting fair cheeks is the pole screen's only value. Wrong. Why, I can remember my old dad reading by firelight. He'd sit by the hob, one hand holding his book, the other shielding his eyes from the embers. I do it myself when Electricity Board fascists cut the power.

'Sprat to catch a mackerel, old boy,' he boomed. 'They trek me to my barrow, object of all their desires!'

Sir Ponsonby embarrasses me. The lads say glitterati, slitterati. Me, I'm not even sure if he really is who he says, or if he's one gigantic fraud. A cynic would ring the public school, ask outright, but I haven't the heart. Whose business is it but his own? All about, the market milled as only Bermondsey Antiques Market can. I noticed an old lady, struggling to hump boxes of porcelain from a handcart. You see these desperate folk about - past it, hoping to keep Time at bay by reliving a successful youth. I looked away, ashamed for her, for all the greedy lot of us.

Meanwhile, Sir Ponsonby noshed on. I stood awkwardly making conversation while he finished his repast. Seeing I wasn't gainfully employed for the moment here's details of the padparadsha: Deep in Sri Lanka's fruitful mountains, gemstone orchard to the world, an occasional enticing precious stone is mined. The 'padpa', as dealers call them, is of all things a true sapphire. But no plain old sapphire, this miracle. It's a luscious transparent orangey-pink! These lovely wonders aren't common. So, naturally, greedsters thought of manufacturing synthetic padpas. Lo and behold, now they're everywhere. Fashions worry me. I keep warning myself of my homemade law: Fashion today, fool tomorrow. Like, an entrancing orange skirt of last year today looks ridiculous, but who resists fashion?

Nobody, because fraud raises its ugly head. Synthetic padpas (they're actually corundum, if you're hooked on taxonomy) soon became cheap, while genuine gemstones stayed costly. Which is why, back in rural East Anglia, Dosh Callaghan decided to buy some genuine padpas, have them made into ornate 'early Victorian'

jewellery. He'd mount a score of synthetics in similar settings - rings, necklaces, earrings, suites of ladies' jewellery. I guessed he'd got the whole scam planned, fake settings, forged certificates. He'd already had me paint an early portrait of Lady Howarth wearing the settings he was having made. The cost to Doshie would be about eight thousand. Profit? Half a million, played right.

Except the original 'genuine padparadsha gems' he'd bought turned out to be cheapo tsavorites. I was here to suss out who'd done Dosh down. Once I'd fingered the miscreant, he would wreak vengeance. I was unhappy, but beggars can't, can we?

With a genteel dabbing of linen at his lips, Sir Ponsonby concluded his nosh, handed his tray to the noshbar proprietor, and strolled with me into the churchyard among the winos.

'You see the problem, Sir Ponsonby,' I said sadly. 'Dosh Callaghan is well narked. You met him when he collected a thick-skirted late card table, supposedly Hepplewhite only the drop wasn't shallow enough, remember? He's paid me to discover who swapped his genuine padpas for tsavorite.'

'Didn't you ask him?'

'Dosh said they were delivered by a wonker called Chev, who's somewhere in Edinburgh.' A wonker is a driver who ships small antiques, up to about chair size, anywhere in the kingdom, door to door. Very reliable, wonkers are, because they lose their livelihood - maybe their legs - if they default. 'Chev' after his huge American car.

Dosh had given me registration, phone numbers, address.

'Can't you contact him?'

'Tried that. Chev's due back Thursday. Something going down.' Meaning a clandestine robbery, when a trusty wonker is worth his weight in gold.

Sir Ponsonby gazed at me. My scalp prickled, because he wasn't your actual warm-hearted instant mourner. 'Sure you want to know, Lovejoy? Sturffie recently sold some genuine padparadsha gemstones.'

'Sturffie?' Sir Ponsonby grasped my arm in a grip of steel as I turned away towards the teeming market. 'Think, Lovejoy. Sturffie boxed them up last Friday.'

I said, 'Thanks, Sir Ponsonby.' My pal Sturffie? Who'd once saved me a clobbering, if not worse?

'Sorry, Lovejoy.' He knew the consequences for Sturffie. 'Look,' he said kindly. 'Come round for supper, what say? Moiya cooks fairly well for an idiot.'

'Thank you, Sir Ponsonby.' I'd intended to catch the train with my bad news, but suddenly wanted to remain safe in London's mayhem. 'You still live in Dulwich?'

'St James's now, Lovejoy. Give me a bell.'

He palmed me his card. I trudged off, feet heavy.

What the hell had Sturffie been thinking of? Surely to God he'd have known his trick would have been rumbled, and that retribution would follow? When in doubt, go for a nosh, listen to the gossip, feel for a way out. I followed the aroma.