Every Last Cent

9

IT ISN'T ONLY love that fails to recognize its own significance. It's everything. For instance, a theatre in the USA introduced the talkies twenty years before they actually caught on. Cameraphone opened one Monday in 1907. Despite the appeal of Victrola records scratching out audible sounds to match the film's action, the show closed on the Tuesday. It happens in antiques, too. The immortal Turner – greatest artist ever –

had to argue with his housekeeper every morning when she brought out his palette because she was eternally stingy with his blue. Lapis lazuli cost the earth, so she eked it out in miserable amounts, driving the maestro to distraction.

Sorry for the digression. I'm making excuses, on account of the terrible thing that happened. Not realizing love is a flaw in a person.

St Peter's church hall stands at the top of North Hill. Tinker, my barker, sleeps in the churchyard on good nights. He tries to break in if it's raining, but Christian charity excludes vagrants and other poor. When he's sloshed, he kips in some antique shop and tells the police, should they bother to leave their snooker game and respond to the security alarm, that he's fallen asleep in situ after making a delivery. He was nowhere, which worried me. He's got a cough like thunder so I couldn't miss him. A group of folk huddled in the doorway as I entered the churchyard. The actors I'd phoned Tina for.

Dunno what it is about burgeoning youth, but they all look so blinking tired. In their teens they somehow become exhausted, bags under their eyes, drained of energy.

Those that aren't skeletal are bulbously heavy, all floppy thighs. A bloke I know reckons he can date old films by merely looking at the body fat on the extras. Some smoked thin hand-rolled scraggly fags.

'Wotcher. Are you the actors, please?'

'That's us,' a bloke said, ready for a fight. 'I live in the park.' He was the scrawniest of the bunch, his clothes fraying, as if he'd left home and never washed since. 'I'm Larch.

Classical and Stanislavski acting.'

'Larch.' Evidently a tree guardian from remote forests. 'Come in, please.'

'Tina told us wait outside.'

'Did she, now.'

Drill halls and church halls are the same the world over, musty, dusty, rusty, with the dank aroma of unswept floors. Tina was lazing on the stage while some bloke desperately urged everybody once more into the breach dear friends. She was reading a catalogue, casually shouted, 'Next, please.' The man, thirties and nervy, retired in shame. I felt sorry for him.

'Give me your modern piece,' Tina told a woman who stepped forward.

'It's an Oscar Wilde, Lady Bracknell—'

'Get on with it.'

The woman was weak, but gamely tried to be the frosty dowager. I kept quiet. Tina chatted to me, spoke ill of performers in general and ignored the auditioner.

'What's your name, love?' I asked as the actress finished.

'Wilhelmina. I trained at—'

'You're hired,' I told her. 'Where'd you get your shawl?'

'Shawl? My grandmother.' She picked it up from where she'd cast it before her audition.

I lusted force nine at her garment, my breathing quickening. I felt hot and giddy. Her old shawl was worth a mint.

For in the Himalayas there lives the chiru, a long-horned antelope that's fast petering out. An ancient breed, it has made a few ghastly mistakes. One was to flourish in Tibet, a place desperate for hard currency. Another clanger was to be covered by the finest grade of wool on earth. The importance? Tibetan shawls made of the chiru's neck wool are the most desirable known to mankind. A wrap-around shahtoosh, a kind of shawl, costs a new motor. But a genuine antique Tibetan shawl (meaning over fifty years old, since Customs and Excise cynically decided that that duration defined antiques for all eternity) will cost you an average house plus a round-the-world cruise.

Wilhelmina's garment was a truly ancient shawl made of chiru neck wool. As she shelled it to start her piece, it had folded like silk. No other wool does that. I've only ever seen two genuine shahtooshes, both in a boot fair. Caution: don't import any, no matter how cheaply you can get them while trekking through Asia. The whole world has banned the sale of this poor antelope's wool, so it's clink for you as you reach Customs.

Tip: the occasional shahtoosh is still around. You can still find a stray shawl. If you're in doubt, there's an important test. Take off your wedding ring and try to pass the long shawl through the ring. If it goes through without a single crease, buy it. Remember history? Back in the halcyon days, the Victorians did what they jolly well liked, for wasn't Mother Nature infinitely generous? And, the Edwardians reasoned, the Almighty surely must intend to provide Planet Earth's largesse for ever, in His perfect world. Like ivory, and like those stuffed animals that we admired so much that we made them extinct. Poor chiru. Poachers nowadays hunt the chiru with jeeps, gun them down in the headlights, then shear the corpses. They make aphrodisiac powder from the horns.

The sale route is Hong Kong to London's Mayfair. (Incidentally, what exactly did Scotland Yard do with those twelve dozen priceless shahtooshes they collared so triumphantly not long ago ...?)

We're a rotten species.

'Am I?' Wilhelmina asked, stunned.

'Lovejoy!' Tina fumed, flinging her catalogue down. 'She's not!'

I don't know why, but I felt rotten. Maybe the thought of all those dead antelopes. I mean, for Christ's sake, pashmina wool from Tibetan goats is nearly as fine, so why don't we use that instead and leave the poor sodding chiru alone? Whatever it was, Tina took one look at me and shut up.

'I'm in a hurry, Tina. Do it fast, you're in. I'll need you and three others. Bring that Larch bloke, Wilhelmina, and one other bloke.'

'Right, Lovejoy. What's wrong?'

Maybe I should have tried to buy Wilhelmina's shawl for a groat, but something was needling me, dunno what. I spoke quietly to Wilhelmina in a corner of the faded old assembly room, and told her about her granny's garb, chiru, the wool, the lot.

'You can't exactly buy your own theatre, love, but it'll keep you in clover until you storm the Old Vic. At least a year or two in a comfy bedsit. Go into any pub. Ask for Tinker.

Tell him Lovejoy sent you. Take your shawl, if you want to sell it, to Blossom Arrance in Williams Walk in the Dutch Quarter. Don't sign anything, okay? Real antique deals are all done on the nod.'

She stared at the shawl in awe. 'Tinker?'

'You'll know him by his cough. It's like a foghorn.'

'The old man in the churchyard?' Her nose wrinkled. 'Who smells and spits?'

'That's him. Don't be snooty, love. He might not look much, but he's the world champ barker.'

'What's a ...?'

Listening to the others is painful. I couldn't stay to see the rejects banished, so lurked in St Peter's until Tina came for me, scoffing.

'You're too soft, Lovejoy. Know that?'

'My granny always said.'

We assembled in the Castle Bookshop's upper room, where Heidi Pansock shut us away from pryers. I looked at them. Not much of an army.

'You'll be well paid. It's one hour's acting.' I extinguished the hope in their eyes by adding, 'Not a TV, er, movie.' I always try to sound American, and fail. I lied in a flare of genius, 'There might be one if this goes well.'

'Okay!' they exclaimed eagerly. Even Larch looked stirred.

'I'm Lovejoy. I'm the paymaster.' I chuckled. They didn't. Maybe they'd spotted that I hadn't a bean. I kept up my lazaroid grin. 'Names, please?'

'Larch,' said Larch. 'I kip in the park,' et angry cetera.

'Wilhelmina,' said the shahtoosh lady. 'I'm thirty-five, two children. A widow. My interests are the Romance poets, Tennyson and Ben Jonson with reference to ...' and so on.

The nervy bloke who'd wanted us to go once more into the breach dear friends, was the third. I glanced at Tina. She avoided my eye.

'I'm Jules. I've been ... away.' He coloured slightly, forged gamely on. 'I'm in the Refuge, no other fixed abode.' He waited anxiously, but nobody threw him out. The Refuge is a doss-house where violence holds sway, so I'd guessed right. He was newly out of prison.

'What've you done on the stage?'

'I did a series of leads,' he said, eyes shining. 'Ayckbourns, Shakespeare, two Cowards.'

'You're all hired,' I said. I'd placed him. I only knew of one Refuge inmate. He'd starred in prison shows, had a past nearly as interesting as mine. He wasn't called Jules, though. Fine by me.

'The pay is basic Equity rate. It's . . .' I paused. I didn't know exactly what Equity was.

And what style of acting, for heaven's sake? That Yank actor, who called his stage improvisations art. 'It's improvisation. Hidden cameras.'

'Where? On stage?'

'In a manor house hired for the purpose. You,' I said, pacing, well underway, 'must pretend. There's no script. It's, erm—'

'Off the top of your head,' Tina put in with a narked glance.

'That's it. Tina will lead. You're all supposed to be divvies in the antiques trade. The plot will evolve as we go, okay?'

'We're all interviewed together?'

'By an American lady with a massive track record in,' I coursed on in a blaze of inventiveness, 'Channel Eight-Seven-Zed in Hollywood. She's starred in thirty-one soaps and two major documentaries.'

They gasped. I smirked modestly, really making their day.

'What must we do?' asked anxious Wilhelmina.

'We go in together,' I explained. 'The lady will scrutinize us, and be especially rude to me. That,' I lied serenely on, 'is deliberate. You must pretend to be in the antiques trade. Wilhelmina, devise a background in an antiques shop down the coast. Larch, you're a hawker on the Saturday barrows. And, er, Jules, you're an auctioneer from the Midlands, okay?'

Jules looked at the floor. 'Thank you, Lovejoy.'

'Pretend that you're each a divvy. That's somebody who can detect genuine antiques by simply being near them. Right?'

'How on earth do we do that?'

'I'll have four test objects. You guess. I'll signal whether they're genuine or not. Tell you how on the way. Above all, keep in character. Any questions?'

'Will she be acting too?' Wilhelmina asked apprehensively.

'Superbly,' I answered. 'You won't be able to tell she's not genuine. There will be sixteen hidden cameras. If you start looking round, you're fired on the spot and don't get paid.'

'And what am I, Lovejoy?' Tina asked innocently.

'You're somebody who wants to be a divvy and hasn't got it,' I said cruelly, put her in her place. She was heading for a tanking. I wanted no loose ends. 'I don't know what script she'll choose. That's the scheme. I'll send to tell you when.'

'Like an audition?' Wilhelmina breathed, thrilled.

'No,' I said sadly. 'This is the real thing.'

Before I go any further, there's greed. Greed is a wish for success, ambition, secret romantic desires ... In other words, money. There's a way of making it, from nothing.

Some things I can explain. Like, when Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, hunted with the Wynnstay Hunt (think Chester / Flint / Denbeighshire) in the 1880s, she had herself stitched into chamois leather knickers. Reason: vicious brambles locally.

Some things, I can't explain. Like, why is Russia's Great October Revolution called that, when it occurred in November? Did the Gregorian Calendar have something to do with it? Dunno. Or, how come the vast Wedgwood porcelain conglomerate forgot to renew its own name / title recently, and redfacedly have to make a deal with some eleven-year-old to buy its own name back? Or why all women don't realize that they can possess any man on earth, whatever their own age, shape, status. There are other inexplicables: Scotland has banned mystic William Blake's exquisite poem 'Jerusalem'.

Sociologists, people who've never heard of a smile, have banned the children's game of Musical Chairs because it might be competitive (like life isn't). To most questions, I hold up my hand and say I don't know.

Antiques are different. And fakes are very very different. It's because of money. Don't read on unless you are prepared to consider a little bit of sin, okay?

Now, we're all greedy. I do mean all of us.

Let's say you happen to be a housewife – that honourable position now hated by every talk-show host in the known world. 'Housewife' was once a name for an eminently praiseworthy, all-knowing mainstay of society, pillar of common sense. Nowadays, though, girls spit the word with unequalled venom in bus queues. 'What, be a frigging housewife?' they snarl. Or they whine, 'Listen to my mum, you'd think everybody has to keep clean and do homework . . .' Parents please fill in the dots. You know the feeling.

Back to greed. Let's say you're a lady whose daily round is well established. You've done the housework, seen the infants to school, had your snack (tomato soup for the hips, one sinful slice of bread, and tea without sugar). What now? Time on your hands, because soon George will be home, et mundane cetera, okay?

Your eyes light on a TV film. An old black-and-whitey, maybe Brief Encounter or some flashy 1950s thing where everybody has spacious motor cars and smokes themselves to death, the actresses gorgeously dressed, diamonds sparkling in every scene.

You watch, smiling. And you think how marvellous it would be just to have one day of that kind of life. Romance? Maybe. Affluent wealth? Oh, yes, very desirable. And you scan your own lot. Not with any kind of animosity. Because George is reliable, does his stint at that hellish factory. And the family, thank God, is healthy. No, nothing sinister.

But something starts whispering. It's gremlin-shaped, green. It is Envy. It talks quietly, as you flip through pictures of models who've earned a king's ransom just for dressing to the nines and standing still while society photographers take snaps for the centrefold.

It whispers of jealousy.

It says things like, 'Just look at her! In her baronial hall, gem-studded elegance and Vervainoo clothes! Never done a day's work in her life! She was always the idlest at school...'

Your envy grows.

In fairness, you reply to your gremlin, 'I'll bet her life isn't all cakes and lovers! I'll bet there are snags!' And (desperately making it up) 'Isn't she the one who had that terrible divorce in Monte Carlo only last month?' etc, etc.

Whoever wins – the Envy gremlin, or you – the greed seed is sown. You start to wonder what it would be like to suddenly shazam into a lottery win. Or find a precious antique in the flea market! (See where we're heading?) All are genuine possibilities. But what exactly are the odds? Phone them, and ask.

They'll tell you that the big lottery is fourteen million to one, minimum. TV quizzes are a hundred thousand to one. Better, your little green Envy whispers, to make money from nothing, and keep that gelt coming! Impossible, eh?

No. Antiques can do it. How on earth?

Forgery is the answer.

Back to our housewife, now listening avidly to her gremlin. Get some regular money, to spend as she likes! That's all very well, but she has a problem: she has no expertise in jewellery, porcelain, silverware. She couldn't knock up a Sheraton tallboy if she tried a million years.

Here's how she (no, you!) can do it. Today, buy a cheap set of oil paints or watercolours, cost a few pence. Take out a library book on Lowry's paintings. Copy any single one of his small 'Little Girl' pictures. Do it in watercolours, oils, and do it quickly.

Never mind accuracy. Frame it. Pay a few quid to some printer to print a label of the Stone Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, stick the label on the back and date your painting (call it 'Little Girl in a Mini-Skirt') 1964 or so. I promise that you'll sell it, however badly you've copied the original, for a week's average wage. Trust me – or, rather, trust the greed that's making you do this.

Sign it Lowry, of course – many of his signatures are all but indecipherable. Don't worry. You're legally allowed. The Law, God bless it, says so.

One last thing. The dealer.

He'll be mistrustful. He'll say, 'This doesn't look genuine ...' You'll lie that it's been in your attic for quite a while, and you agree that it can't be genuine, because your brother swapped a pair of old boots for it years ago. And so on.

The dealer will sigh (they all do a great sigh) and say, 'Look, love. I can't buy it as genuine Lowry. Tell you what I'll do. I'll buy it as a replica, okay?'

What do you do? You take the money and scarper. You needn't ever go back. You've been honest (well, almost) and so has he (well, almost). All's well. You have money in your purse! You get home in time to start your next Lowry lookalike.

Of course, you've been practical. You made sure your watercolours were dry (use your electric hairdryer) before you took it to El Superbo Antiquery Inc. And you tested the oil paint, to make certain it doesn't smell of linseed. (You can buy quick dryers if you're obsessional about it, or use various chemicals.)

Money for jam.

The reason I tell you this is so that you'll remember how easy it is to fake, forge, copy anything at all. Because if you can make multo zlotniks with no expertise at all, imagine what a master forger can do with a lifetime's skill and devotion to technique. Or a master cabinetmaker. Or a brilliant trained potter with a laboratory bulging with specialist kilns.

Remember, and beware. Message ends.