Every Last Cent

16

THE COUNTESS is the antique dealer to top all dealers.

Life must be so easy for women. I mean, if they've to meet some bloke, they simply get glitzed up knowing they'll be in supercontrol. Whatever happens. Whoever the bloke might be. Women rule.

But for the man it's so-o-o-o different. If he's to meet some woman he's on edge, worried sick. What'll she think? Will she cost more than the few pence he possesses?

What'll he talk about, for God's sake? Will she see that he's a wimp who doesn't pump iron? That he hasn't a degree in astrophysics? That he once had trouble with his credit card, hasn't got a Rolls Royce? What has he got to offer?

There's a reason for this.

It's beauty.

Beauty is power, total and immutable power. And every woman has her own beauty.

Old, young, fat, thin, lame or wick as a flea, spectacled or with the limpid eyes of Cleopatra, she's on the box seat and the man is a mere supplicant down there in the splashy mud begging a lift.

That's my Law of Gender in a nutshell. It's the reason that a woman – any woman –

can have any man any time, any place. She wants some rich, handsome polyglot devil?

He's hers for the taking.

Not so the other way round. No man can get a woman without inordinate luck, astronomical wealth, stunning teeth, immense physique, the patience of a saint, the morals of a crook, the charm of the devil, the brains of Newton, total fame, global influence, and perennial youth. And if he does succeed? It's temporary. She'll depart on a whim –and women have whims like grass grows worms.

(Sorry if this seems cynical, but I've studied these conclusions a lifetime. And I've tried, I've tried.)

It follows that a man can never escape a woman who sets her cap. He's trapped.

Permanent. A man can't leave until she gets rid. Until that day – and it will come, whatever poets and drink and optimism might say – you're in thrall to her for life. No good moaning, because it's natural. A bloke has to make the best of it.

The only thing we've got going for us is that women don't believe this.

For some reason, they think beauty is in expensive lotions, the designer label, costly garments and the breathtaking charges of fashionable hairdressers. Why they're hooked on trendy colours, silly styles or daft shoes I honestly don't know. They believe the myth that these cunning devices are necessary. Wrong, wrong. If they went out uncombed and shoddy, women would have exactly the same success rate, and that is total, hundred per cent. Failure rate: nil, zero. If they once tried it, they'd end the entire fashion industry in an afternoon.

To summarize: any woman can get any man. A man can't leave a woman unless she says get lost.

On the hour-long bus journey out of town, I reconsidered these inflexible laws. And alighted, ready for the Countess.

Some folk have the knack of resuming conversations exactly where they left off months, maybe years, before. I'd last seen her on Braggot Sunday, the old mid-Lent day when you give ladies a present of honey-brewed spiced ale. We were pretty close, until a horrid moment when she'd had two of her whifflers drive me from her door by the simple technique of pointing a digit. No reason, no logic. And God knows I'd slogged to gain her a fortune in antiques. Okay, so I'd reportedly been seen in the motor car belonging to Hepsibah Smith, our church's choir mistress, on the Coggeshall bypass, but was that my fault? Women aren't fair. When I please one woman, the rest get narked. What is it with them?

When the fatal sly note-of-hand was dropped in front of the Countess by some kind friend she'd opened it, read slowly, then raised her eyes. With a snap of her imperial fingers she'd had me bundled out into the path of a farm tractor. At the time the Countess had been reminiscing about Russian nobility over Lipton's tea. She had been one of them in a former incarnation. Now, she was phoney like the rest of us, becoming somewhat bloated (like the rest of us) and indolent and guessy (LTROU).

You'll have got my drift. In life, female stands for everything that matters, whereas in antiques wealth means everything. Now think of a dealer who is a titled lady and has untold wealth: that's the Countess. We'd been close once, or have I already said that? I think I've gone on about her a shade too long to convince me that I didn't care any longer.

Countesses don't have simple antique shops. They own Antiques Emporianas and Antiqueries A La Modes. This joint had a workshop making Special Customizations (read fakes) at the rear, and others on her two balconies that did varnishing and assembly work. Porcelains were being fired outside. Metalwork was done in a forge with two small foundries tacked on to the side of her building. It was more a small industrial town.

In the centre seated on a regal chaise-longue under a tester embroidered with gold reclined the Countess. She always feasts on grapes, fruits you never know the names of, and is wafted and cooled – if not warmed – by two youths dressed as blackamoors straight from some Manet painting.

The place was crammed with antique furniture. Most of it was fake, though I felt the vibrations of several authentic pieces. On the balconies I could see the silhouettes of her artisans labouring at lathes and workbenches, hear boots crunching wood shavings.

The scent of varnish was pure aroma, stirring my heart as much as the woman I had come to see.

'Lovejoy,' she said, bored. 'Out.'

'Out,' a nerk the size of Wolverhampton repeated, chucking me into the road. A motor screeched. The driver got out, badly disturbed, and asked if I was all right. I told him yes, ta. He drove off shaking his head.

This made me think. I rummaged in a nearby dustbin for a newspaper, and borrowed a passing postman's ballpoint. On the paper I wrote, 'BANKRUPT YET?' and propped it against the window.

The hulk let me in. I walked towards the Countess, not genuflecting in spite of the impulse. She was lovely. Okay, plump and florid, hair piled up into a Carolean landscape and features a thick mask of cosmetics. I could see where the layers began. I'd never seen so much blue caked round a woman's eyes since I'd met Dame Barbara Cartland, God rest her. Lipstick thickened her mouth to a tubular pout. Earrings spread over her shoulders like epaulettes. She wore a dozen necklaces of heavy gold links, each with assorted pendants. Her toes shone with scarlet varnish and diamond rings. Lovely to see a real woman making the best of herself. I'd never seen anything so beautiful. I felt a pang. I had lost all that pulchritude.

'Russia, in the days of the Soviets,' the Countess said, resuming where she'd left off yonks since, 'nationalized reindeer. Can you imagine the barbarity? And guess, Lovejoy.

Which country has the most American one-hundred dollar bills?'

'Russia?'

'Who else? More than America. When Russia needed a bank to launder several billions of dollars, how long did it take those Cossack ruffians to find crooks with sufficient expertise? Guess.' And when I shook my head, 'One hour! What a stupendous, horrifying country!'

'Indeed, Countess.' Me, dyed-in-the-wool humility.

'Come and sit down, dear boy.'

This is how teachers speak before they clobber you, hitting you hurts me more than it hurts you. I advanced gingerly and perched on a low stool waiting to be scurri-lously treated. The hulk stood by, a landslide in search of a victim. She made a sign. He receded, to be a thundercloud darkening the yard window.

'Countess. I accept that I was to blame, and acknowledge that your dismissal of me was perfectly just. I apologize.'

I'd worked out this tactic from TV. Half the soaps thrive on blokes apologizing to birds.

In fact there's no other plot on telly. What's the average number of 'Sorry-sorry' lines per thirty-minute soap? Four. Count them. TV scripters have one maxim: never mind logic, go for the grovel. The ratings will soar.

She smiled. 'You are correct. I do not accept, Lovejoy.'

I rose. 'Well, Countess. I'll leave. Thanks for the ... er.'

I'd already turned, when something really strange happened. She said, 'Stay. Sit.' I obeyed, which wasn't the oddity. It was that she'd changed her mind. Countesses don't.

'Do you see the painting?' she asked.

'Where?'

There in the corner was a portrait. It was at an angle in the top corner, exactly where people who can afford electricity and air conditioning site their gadgets. And like Russians anciently placed their icons of saints or the tsar. No vibes, so not a genuine antique. It was in shadow.

'Who is she?'

'Is not a woman a remarkable thing, Lovejoy?' the Countess mused. She sipped at a glass of white wine, offered me none. 'So exquisite, so fatal! She was Princess Zanaida.

Of course, her husband Prince Volkonsky was an animal. She only married him to hush up her affaire with Tsar Alexander, with Goethe, Pushkin, Rossini, Donizetti, others. Do I believe she took the pope as her lover? No!'

She screamed the denial so loudly I jumped.

'I don't either, Countess,' I said quickly. Princess who?

'Do you know why I know she was pure, Lovejoy?'

Pure? If she said so. 'Enlighten me, please, Countess.'

'Because she only fornicated with honest men! If that sordid pianist Liszt had wooed her, she would have had him beheaded. Why? Because he stole every composition he called his own.'

Well, everybody knows that Liszt was a thief. Hear a tune, he'd 'compose' it himself next day, like a certain modern English composer I could mention. She glared at me. I hurriedly smiled to prove I wasn't Liszt.

'Anyway,' she said with scorn, 'Franz Liszt was Hungarian. Can you get lower?'

She snapped her fingers and a youth appeared with a silver basket of sweets and chocolates. She selected one, inserted it into her mouth, and accepted a fresh glass.

The youth retired.

'You admired the silver basket,' she said with satisfaction.

'No, Countess.' To her withering glare I said candidly, 'Its handles had been clumsily removed. Your silversmith –is it still Yosh? He's losing his touch – hasn't concealed the marks very well. They catch the light.'

On safer ground, I added the really important detail that silver table baskets tended to get shallower as more and more people afforded them. They started about 1730.

Oddly, they were mainly a British thing. You find them made of clever silver wire, and in Sheffield plate, adorned with loaves and sheaves of corn. I suppose they were mainly decorative centrepieces. Fraudsters file the handles off to make fake silver trinkets for high prices, because then laboratory tests will reveal the trace elements of Georgian silver instead of crummy modern stuff. If you're ever offered an antique silver basket without handles, look at it in subdued light, to see if there are the marks left by missing original handles. It's sensible if you're a crook, because a handled basket will net you only a fraction more money than a handle-less one, whereas a few seemingly genuine artefacts made of ancient silver bring in a fortune.

'Have you got any old dies, Countess?' You need old silversmiths' dies for best forgeries, though possession of them in England is forbidden by law.

She suddenly laughed, white teeth on display, her cosmetic layers shivering into craquelure. I was stunned by her beauty. Women never lose it, do they? Her varicose veins were painted out. Real class.

'I really do miss you, Lovejoy! Antiques are the only things you remain honest about!'

She leaned forward confidingly. Her breasts moved. I was almost enveloped in her cleavage. Gold chains sagged against my forehead. Perfume almost asphyxiated me.

'Thank you, Countess.'

You even have to address her by her title in bed. (It got bizarre sometimes: 'Lie over me, doowerlink.') I suppose she insisted on it with all her blokes. There's grounds for a sociological survey on the subject, if any university out there is at a loose end. It would take time, though. There's plenty of us ex-Countess languishers about.

'You don't see the painting's resemblance, Lovejoy?'

'No, Countess.' I craned. Was it herself?

'You poor fool.' She didn't sound sympathetic, just a mite relieved.

'Have you got anything you want me to divvy?'

She seemed to wonder about laughing, decided I wasn't worth it.

'If I do another large shipment, Lovejoy, I'll send for you.'

'Thank you, Countess.'

I left then, no wiser. Odd, I thought, waiting for the bus home, that she'd commanded me to stay, when she'd only wanted to see if I could recognize a musty old portrait of a lady. I honestly couldn't. After confessing ignorance, I was banished among her cast-offs. Funny, that. I tried to forget her. If she summoned me to diwy one of her priceless frigging export shipments from Sotheby's or Christie's, I'd refuse, see how she liked it.

Actually, I'd come running. Like I say, pathetic. I waited by the bus stop, got hungry after a while, saw the village schoolchildren come out in droves. Saw the start of the village rush-hour, namely three motor cars, a farm cart and two bikes. No bus.

A car I'd seen before – but who remembers motor cars? – emerged from the Countess's antiques empire loading yard. A whiffler stood in the road to signal it out. An old Ford. I was too far off to see who was driving, but the driver had the look of Jules. Observation is overrated, I always think.

The bus was cancelled. I finally walked four miles to a neighbouring village to catch the shoppers' bus.

It rained.