Every Last Cent

28

WE HAD A good day in Bristol –meaning that Peshy nicked a jeautiful series of emeralds from a collector's job lot. I really wanted to see how the little dog did it. A Bichon Frise's ruff looks quite artificial though it's natural froth, and has nowhere else to hide anything. It can't bite its own collar off, for instance. So how did it manage to conceal whatever it picked up? See the problem? And how on earth could it lift things from a tray of gem-stones it couldn't even see? BF is a midget, can't reach a table. And how, once the stuff was in its jaws, did the damned wolfhound . . .?

Anyhow, good day for us in Bristol, but a loser for Merrimale Effend & Co, Ltd (Est.

1631 AD), Antique Auctioneers of that fair city. We won several watches, two small paintings, a set of earrings, and three pieces of Royal Doulton. I was disappointed she'd not stolen a collection of stickpins, Edwardian and late Victorian, that would have sold for a fortune, but you can't steal everything. (Well, actually you can, as I'll explain later.)

Job done, I left Alicia and Peshy resting and drove to East Anglia. I found Mel by three o'clock.

He was at the Fair Hair and Frolic in St Edmundsbury, Market Street. Or, rather, he was sitting beneath the market cross in a sulk while amused shoppers listened to the wails coming from inside.

'Listen, Mel,' I said, sitting beside him. 'Give me my ghost painting, and we'll do a deal, okay?'

What deal, I'd no idea. Worse, I realized uneasily that I'd called it my ghost painting. I'd no notion of what ghost. This is how you get talked into things.

'Just listen to that riot, Lovejoy.'

'Sandy having his hair done?'

Perm time was always Waterloo, girls resigning in tears and things thrown. I'd even seen the plod called to the Hair Poo in Short Wyre Street, with sirens wahwahing and uniformed officers piling out like Fred Karno's army. Once Sandy got going over his forelocks it was war. I can't understand this hair business with women. I suppose I include Sandy.

Mel wept. I looked away. They always nark me, him sobbing white-faced while Sandy hollers 'For ever, you hear me, world?' I think they're not grown up. Yet Mel and Sandy drive the cruellest antiques bargains. Twice I've seen this unlikely pair drive friendly dealers to destitution, Sandy cooing, 'Oh, the joys of usury in springtime!' and so on.

Even Mel's teary episode here on the steps couldn't be taken at face value.

From inside the hairdresser's I heard a shrill howling. Something sploshed white gunge all over the window. I looked at the market clock. Soon he'd go nuclear. This is Phase Three. At least two assistants would be sacked, Sandy hurling coiffure implements after them. The growing pavement audience chatted contentedly, waiting for Sandy's big finish. Ten minutes at a guess.

'I'm seriously thinking of leaving him, Lovejoy. Wouldn't you?'

'Like a shot,' I said mechanically, quickly amending as his eyes went cold, 'Er, I mean I can't really understand your torment.'

'You people can't, Lovejoy,' he said with bitterness. 'Unless you're deeply sensitive like us, aware of the soul's funda ...' et claptrap cetera.

Bored stiff, I saw Shell across the road looking in the window of that oh-so-posh antique silverware place that charges twenty per cent on credit card. Watch out for this, incidentally. It's called the mitt trick and is the worst kind of fraud, meaning a legal one.

You don't find out you've been ripped off until you check your credit card. If you complain, you get reproach but no refund. They just give you the old patter, 'But, modom, you never asked about extra charges! So you agreed!'

I left Mel skryking and hurried across. 'What's good, Shell?'

She didn't turn, smiled at my reflection.

'Hello, Lovejoy. I heard you were on your way to see Sandy about your portrait thing.

Is it really that good? Everybody's after it.'

Shell's nice. She isn't what you'd call pretty, lives in a houseboat with a bloke who composes chants for you to chant for ever more to other chanters. He even operates after-sales, new chants for old, should your first prove a disappointment. Believe it or not, he's cut a disc of chants, mostly the word 'Aw' in C natural. I like Shell. Maybe I'd like her bloke too if I knew what the hell he chanted.

'How's Chanter?' I asked politely.

'He's great,' she said happily. 'Oh, I know you think he's a waste, Lovejoy. But if chanting was the worst the world got up to—'

'It wouldn't be in such a bloody mess,' I capped for her, smiling. 'What's all this about my painting, Shell?'

She tore her eyes away from the turmoil's reflection and turned to look. She was astonished.

'Are you telling me you really don't know?'

'Honest.'

'Sure you want to know, Lovejoy? Come dine with me, and I'll tell all.'

We settled into a nosh bar facing the market cross. She sips Earl Grey tea, and insists everybody else drinks the same because she hates calories. Joules might as well not have bothered in his Salford cellar, so we must all whoop it up on stained water. I always associate Shell with me trying to stop my belly rumbling. She even moves the tomato sauce out of your reach.

'No, Lovejoy,' she said severely, ballocking a waitress for depositing a welcoming bap.

'Calories define disease.'

'Food isn't all bad, Shell,' I pleaded, mouth watering, as some swine near by loudly ordered the entire menu fried to a sludge in delectable grease. 'Doctors say grub improves physique. Please?'

She lasered away the hovering girl, and quietly got down to business.

'I've got one of your ghost paintings, Lovejoy. The one that cow bought off you for a session in Manchester. Remember her?'

'Flintshire? That publicist?'

'That's her. You carried the can for her divorce.' Shell's voice became a hoar frost. I swear her breath thickened the air. 'I found it in a job lot three months back.'

What happened to Morwen wasn't my fault. On a holiday romp this Flintshire lady hired me to divvy a collection of jewellery, supposedly in antique settings. They were expensive gems set in real gold and platinum, but only modern rehashes. I told her.

She went ballistic. In an agony of embarrassment, the jeweller sold her all sixteen at knockdown prices. She was thrilled because her manfriend was an avid gemstone collector. He was ecstatic because there were two morganites, one in an AMORE ring (the initial letters of the precious stones spell out that word, amethyst, morganite, opal, ruby, emerald). The language of gems was once as recognizable as a salvo to Edwardians, but is now mostly forgotten except by collectors. Look out for morganite, incidentally. Rare, named after some American banker, it's a faintly pinkish stone that sometimes looks almost colourless. It's a close cousin of emerald and aquamarine. Pink jewels are hell to distinguish, so if you don't know how to measure a stone's density (a good, near-certain marker) take along somebody who does. Morganites are lovely, always seem to be step-cut, and are often quite a size. Buy them, even if the setting's rubbish. You'll never regret it.

The trouble was that Morwen's husband (and I don't mean her manfriend) found them in her suitcase. Dearest Morwen claimed that a sex-mad antique dealer had given them to her, lusting after her flesh. Her dotingly thick hubby charged across the kingdom to brain me in a fit of Flintshire spleen. Luckily Big Frank from Suffolk, our champion serial spouse, was on hand – we were arranging his umpteenth wedding. He held the irate Taff at arm's length while explaining that every hotelier knew Morwen very, very well.

Hubby collapsed into self-pitying woe and was never seen again.

Months later I was cited in Morwen's divorce. She got handsome alimony, alleging cruel marital inattention, and visited me on her next honeymoon. She still hadn't paid me. I'm always too embarrassed to remind defaulters who welsh – sorry – but Tinker bawled across Head Street to her that she was a chiselling bleeder. Quickly she bought a forgery I'd just finished. Her manfriend paid me on the spot. She went on to become publicity chief at some Camden Town publishers and has got fat as a blimp.

Contentment of a more moral life, I shouldn't wonder. She separated after some cruise romance with a steward.

'Her taste in furnishings was dire,' Shell told me with satisfaction. 'Her stuff went unsold. I bought your painting.'

'Ta.'

'You know what I mean, Lovejoy.' She ordered another cup of tepid fluid. I watched it come, Shell's world of plenty. 'The woman's face is really lovely. You should be proud.

I'd do a million if I could paint like that.'

'Then get on with it, love. Everybody's got imagination.'

She shivered. 'No, Lovejoy. Her eyes give me the creeps.'

'Eh?' I'd not looked at any of my Lady Hypatia portraits for yonks, not even in my mind's eye. I'd sold them, right? To eat, thereby supplementing these non-existent kilojoules the pretty Shell wasn't cramming into me. 'Why?'

From what little I remembered Lady Hypatia was a bit of all right. I was narked, but glossed over her features so I could concentrate on Shell. Well, Ginny had one portrait, and with luck Tinker had salted it away by now. Shell had another. Two out of four.

Thomasina Quayle's was number three.

Shell toyed with her spoon, perhaps wistfully wishing, as I, that it could be used for rice pudding, blancmange, porridge or soup, and so sustain life.

I heard a sudden commotion, guessed the reason. Which was as far as I got because Sandy burst into the caff wailing and throwing things and rushing towards me kicking chairs out of the way.

'That's him!' he howled, swooning yet managing to hurl a chair and break a wall mirror.

Mel followed, pleading and weeping. 'Arrest that man!' Sandy shrieked. 'And that misshapen crone with him!' Which was a bit unfair. Shell's bonny.

'Sandy! Calm yourself!' was Mel's contribution.

Guessing what was coming, I left Shell to her repast. I got halfway out of the door before I was caught by two uniformed plod and dragged back to watch Sandy's storming conclusion. Mel was begging Sandy to remain cool, like he himself was a model of urbanity. I watched dispassionately, a little surprised that Sandy hadn't made more of an effort. Usually when he goes into a spectacular fit he hurls lotions across the thoroughfare. He acted his phoney epilepsy, though, always a winner. He got as far as dementia, but lost heart when he realized less than a dozen people were watching.

Tired out, I asked what I was collared for. The plod gave that mirthless smirk.

'You stole his antique portrait.'

'Me? But it's ...'

'What you saying?' asked this uniformed grammarian.

'Nothing, constable.' Well, what could I say? That Sandy's genuine antique portrait was a forgery, and I was the perpetrator? That I'd sold several?

They hauled me outside. As usual, bystanders lost interest. I was marched to Alicia's motor. They got my keys and lifted the lid. In it were two portraits of Lady Hypatia Parlayne, all my own work. For an instant I felt giddy, probably subnutrition.

'See?' Sandy shrieked, flinging himself to the cobblestones and writhing. He'd forgotten to foam at the mouth, I observed. 'It's there!'

'Thief!' Mel accused. 'Arrest him this instant!'

Now, if Mel had somehow slipped it into Alicia's motor after I'd gone in to see Shell, then whose was the other? Shell had one. Maybe, I hoped cautiously, one and one still equalled two? Except with my luck—

The ploddite intoned in sepulchral tones, 'Come along, lad.' I felt ailing. Things had gone wrong right from the day Mortimer had got me to Saffron Fields to meet that Susanne Eggers. A headache started.

'Wait.' The voice sounded so quiet and reasonable I couldn't see any reason to obey, but the plod stilled. I looked round.

Mrs Thomasina Quayle was standing on the pavement. Feet together, matching jacket and skirt, hat modest and lace gloves in a lovely pastel, she looked fresh from finishing school. I noticed two women giving her that cruel up-and-downer with which females hate somebody that little bit classier.

'Neither of those portraits is the one in question,' she said. The plod hesitated. Asking them to consider art was like making a marquee out of a thong.

Sandy, deprived of attention, made an instantaneous recovery and beckoned testily for minions to haul him upright. Mel obliged. Sandy strutted to face her, trailing his sheet.

His head was a frothy brush, his mascara spread by false tears. He was of course attired in Lurex pantaloons and a silver bolero. One of his magenta high heels had broken off. He stood facing Mrs Quayle, spitting venom. He had to look up, being small.

'What do we have here?' he cooed, smiling sleet. 'Who're you, bitch?'

'I am Lovejoy's legal representative.' She displayed a card to the plod, slipped it back into a handbag made from the skin of the last dying reptilian representative of its conserved species. Sandy might not have been there. 'Are you arresting my client? If so, state your legal grounds forthwith.'

'An accusation has been made, miss,' one tried, losing heart.

'Supported by anything other than hysteria? Yes, no?' She was an impatient schoolmarm. The plod's grip weakened.

'This gentleman has accused—'

'Am I correct in assuming you mean a negative? If legal action is being taken against my client, please make it through proper channels. And,' she said in a voice that out-wintered anyone else's, 'please control this individual and keep the Sovereign's peace.'

She took my arm and led me away to where Shell was watching in awe.

'Mel!' Sandy screamed, falling into another fit. 'That mare called me an individual. Arrest her! Constable! Mel, baby!'

'Good day,' this formidable lady said to Shell. 'I am Mrs Thomasina Quayle. Please inform me whether or not you are Lovejoy's friend, and if so in what capacity. If you are animose, please say.'

She waited obligingly. Shell glanced from her to me, and then said weakly, 'I was just trying to do Lovejoy a favour.'

'That's right,' I said. 'Shell's nice. She was going to give me back my painting.'

Mrs Quayle shut me up with a glance. 'Mrs Shell. Would you kindly accept my invitation to tea?'

Sandy, Mel and the plod were in retreat. I saw Mel slip the senior ploddite a note or two with a sleight-of-hand an honest man wouldn't have even noticed. Therefore my arrest might have been sham. God knows whether the coppers were genuine or not. I began to feel safe, maybe.

'Come to mine,' Shell said, gauging the newcomer. 'But let me leave first.'

My new ally agreed, and explained, 'How very wise! Mrs Shell means that we will not appear to be in collusion.' She added, 'Perhaps we should leave the market square by different exits, as further subterfuge?'

'Okay, love,' Shell said, giving me a look that asked if this bird was real or if somebody round the corner was working her with levers. 'Lovejoy knows the way.'

The boot of Alicia's motor locked on the two portraits, I drove out of St Edmundsbury heading north. There was no sign of Shell's motor.

For a long time I didn't speak.

When I was a youth, my gran once told me the following adage. A girl wants a man to make her a woman. The woman wants a husband to make her a wife. A wife wants a youth to make her a girl again. So life goes round.

At the time I simply took the crack at face value. Only years later did I wonder why life never asks what the bloke himself is after. Maybe that's the point, that everyone pretends that a man's desires are common knowledge, 'men are only after one thing,'

etc.

Hell of an assumption –to make about nearly fifty per cent of the species.

Try to guess what the next ten geezers you meet really really crave. I'll bet you'd get every single one wrong. I know I would. In antiques, however, you have to guess right every time. Guess wrong, you starve.

At the big roundabout where the Norwich dual carriageway slinks onto the old Roman road, I finally drew breath. 'What are you really, Mrs Thomasina Quayle?'

Smiling, she took off her hat and lace gloves, shaking her hair out like they do. 'Call me Tally, Lovejoy, when we're not in company.'

'You didn't even check the portraits,' I remembered.

'They're rubbish,' she said carelessly, watching the countryside slide past. 'Wake me when we're there, please.'

And slept with that curled grace women can do at a millisec's notice. I realized suddenly that my headache wasn't quite as bad. A good sign? Except sometimes I find the headache's less trouble than its cure.

The day had begun to chill by the time we arrived. You can't park next to Shell's houseboat. You've to walk a furlong, hell in wet because of brambles on the footpath but nice in sunshine because of bees and flowers. The houseboat's a converted longboat, barge as folk say to annoy watermen. No sign of life, though, which on board meant a prolonged drone from Chanter, hard at it composing new monotones in C

natural.

Before we'd got there Shell was already hurrying, calling, 'Chanter? Darling? Are you all right?'

The place was locked. We wobbled up the gangplank. Shell let us in down a narrow gangway. Mrs Quayle was slick, looking everywhere. I noticed she felt the kettle, touched the half-drunk mug of tea. I went back up on deck to look back at our motors.

No sign of marauders, except for a lone angler in the distance. There was a watercolourist painting at a portable easel. She wore a floral hat and a long elegant floral dress, a left-over Victorian perhaps.

'He'll have left a note for me,' Shell said, and plucked a paper from under the keyboard.

It looked hell of a complicated gadget, for one note, but whatever turns folk on.

'People about,' Chanter had scrawled. 'Left to the nook.'

'Nook?' Mrs Quayle said sharply.

'It's our haven,' Shell said, her eyes shining. 'He's safe!'

She quickly checked that Chanter's drones were secure. This entailed waiting while she went through a stack of tapes and discs. I got fed up. If her bloke was hale and hearty what the hell were we doing here? I almost burst out that the important thing was my portrait, but Mrs Thomasina Quayle stilled me with one of her radar glances. For God's sake, I tried to beam back in silent indignation, one lost moan would hardly count as nicking the Crown jewels. He'd got millions of the frigging things, could always drone out a few more.

'All present!' she cried, exultant.

'I'm so glad, dear,' said Mrs Quayle, still busily sher-locking round the boat's interior.

'Has the portrait remained safe also, do you surmise?'

'It's here.' Shell sounded surprised that we hadn't noticed it, and lifted it down from a slot in the ceiling. Until she did that, I'd thought it was a hatchway. I noticed Mrs Quayle colour slightly. She'd been caught out. I smiled to myself. We had a professional investigator in our midst, that's what we had.

'Is this it, Lovejoy?' Shell asked.

'Yes.' Even in the poor light I could tell.

'You have the newest devices, Shell,' our intrepid huntress remarked, taking the portrait.

I looked at the two illuminated screens, their small green lights and red staring things casting phosphorescent glows on our faces. Those colours always remind me of those flare matches that you lit fireworks with.

'Aren't they nautical, er, things?' I asked, then went red at my stupidity. A houseboat doesn't sail anywhere, does it, just stays moored.

'Chanter's music must be protected,' Shell said, serious as a girl learning her first skipping. 'I pay a fortune for the best systems. It's how Chanter realized the place was being watched.'

'Are they still there?' I asked nervously. Mrs Quayle gave me a glance of withering scorn. 'We'd best be going,' I said, on edge. Mrs Quayle took the portrait. I followed her off the boat and looked back. 'You not coming, Shell?'

'No, Lovejoy. I'll make my own way.'

We left her there. I stopped to wave. She waved to me. I felt slightly nauseated at the risks I was taking. I was the only one without a safe haven. Mrs Quayle was part of some team, so she was okay. Shell had her nook with Chanter.

She placed the portrait on the back seat and took the ignition key from me. 'It's reckoning time. Tinker will be worrying. Shall we go?'

'Tinker?' How the hell did she know Tinker?

'Such a nice man,' she said, reversing quickly away and barrelling us towards the road.

'I do rather think you ought to pay him. He needs more food and less alcohol. Have you considered an employment medical scheme?'

'I'll see to it, Mrs Quayle,' I said gravely.

Aye, I'd see to it by ballocking Tinker first chance I got. He's the biggest lead-swinger in the Eastern Hundreds, him and his sob stories. I'll bet he conned her out of a fortune in his campaign to drink the breweries dry.

'You ought to see that he has one pint a day, Lovejoy,' she continued, confirming my suspicions. 'An occasional drink does help his chest so . . .' etc, etc.

The forged portraits behind me burned my shoulders as if they were red-hot. I tried not to see Lady Hypatia's eyes looking at me. I had to ask Mrs Quayle to stop a few miles north of Bures and was sick on the verge. She said nothing. Her silence made me feel worse.

That night I remembered Lady Hypatia.

I wasn't dreaming, yet I knew I was.

The Eastern Hundreds, like much of our tatty old kingdom, are addled with ancient titles. Arthur H. Goldhorn was Lord of the Manor of Saffron Fields, East Anglia. One day, Arthur's wife Colette decided to have her portrait painted.

Which is where I came in.

I painted her. I've already said paint the lady, love the lady. The inevitable happened. I went on my merry way, dealing, divvying. It was only years later that I heard Arthur had passed away. Little Mortimer must have been about twelve, something like that.

Colette disintegrated, fell for sundry oafs and sharks. With my help, the estate came back to her. Finally I realized who Mortimer really was, if you follow. It wasn't easy.

Fool that I was, I assumed I'd walk straight back into Colette's affections. Rich again, she went off with a bodybuilder called Dang. Mortimer knew. The estate workers and villagers rallied round him, naturally. They thought me a pillock, also naturally.

It was afterwards, when I realized I'd lost Colette, that I sank into near oblivion. To earn enough to make a new start in antiques, I painted a few Cromwellian portraits, of somebody I'd made up. I invented a name for her, Lady Hypatia Parlayne. Her face was youthful. I sold the best ones.

Lady Hypatia was, I realized in my dreamery, Colette, who'd had Mortimer. And who, I told my dreaming self heatedly, I was never going to remember, so there. I woke in a bitter sweat realizing that my Lady Hypatias were all portraits of Colette. Colette raves endlessly in night clubs. And I really honestly certainly definitely never hoped the untrustworthy bitch would ever come back. If there was one bird I'd completely forgotten, it's she.

She sometimes sends Mortimer a birthday card. She doesn't get the date right. Pressure of life, I suppose.

But why did Susanne Eggers want the portraits? I guessed she was the one, from circumstantial evidence.