Every Last Cent

29

THE WRESTLING MATCH, like them all, was innocuous. For me it's not the atmosphere

– smoke, sweat, ring riots. It's the women, as ever. I like to see them chat while bruisers are knocking six bells out of each other. Then if some specially grievous tangle appeals, they instantly shriek like banshees, clawing at some fighter's body should he tumble close. Weird.

Love it? Well, love comes pretty close. The women arrive dolled up to the nines. They take extra pains to glorify themselves, quite as if they're trotting out on some memorable date instead of a gory brawl in a toxic sweat. The ambience – I wish I knew what that means – is irrelevant. It's the violence that takes their fancy. Where I was born there used to be illegal cockfights. The saying was, 'Take your bird to see the birds, you'll have the bird by weekend.' I didn't understand it, being little. Now I do.

Fight scenes stir passions.

I ditched Alicia, and went to see Tex fight.

Tex was already in the ring by the time I'd got to my seat. His speciality is the Triple Ripple, a move he concocted.

He clasps his opponent – the referee will do if the script proves uncooperative – and climbs to the top rope, wriggles to and fro while the crowd yells, 'Ripple, ripple, ripple!'

On the last syllable he flails over backwards, somehow firing the other bloke over his head to smash into the opposite post. Tex then strolls across to pin him to the canvas.

Sometimes, though, Tex dawdles to take applause. The opponent then rises stealthily and smashes Tex down. The crowd bawls warnings, but Tex is so cocky that he's oblivious.

It sez here, as disbelieving folk cynically comment.

Wrestling is a con, one great scripted performance. I'm virtually alone in thinking this.

Alicia was bitterly disappointed that I wouldn't take her, but she would have stopped the show in mid-grapple had she walked down the grubby aisle. She loves making an entrance.

Tex is on an antiques panel, has been for years, which is why I wanted to fix something with him. He owes me from having got him off the hook once. His missus died. He started what polite magazines like Time call 'substance abuse', meaning drugs. Easy to become addicted in the fight game, I'm told.

We met in a posh Oxford gallery. I'd come in out of the rain. The walkers – snobs who judge if a visitor is rich, or a duckegg like me without two coppers to rub together –

were weighing me up. I heard a massive bloke, quite well dressed, protest as he was being taken in charge by two uniformed security officers. I thought the sight comical, because he could have minced both with one hand. I recognized him, Tex the Mighty Hex, wrestling champ.

'I only said it was crap,' he was grumbling.

'We were broadcasting,' the gallery supersnob complained, wafting this hoi polloi away like a bad smell. I then noticed the array of microphones, technicians swigging the cheap white wine and noshing the free grub.

'Excuse me, Sir Rollaston,' I said, going up to Tex. 'For being late.'

'Eh?' he asked. The action froze.

'I'm sorry, sir. The traffic here has worsened considerably since you were a Fellow at Corpus Christi. Is it the Klein?'

There was a Klein painting on the far-wall. Kleins always do cause argument. It was simply a large canvas with huge swishes of blue across it.

'Er, yes.' Tex shook himself free. The gallery owner went into fawning mode and waved the security police off. 'The, er, Clean.'

'Klein,' I amended and led the way to stand in front of it. 'Yves Klein, Sir Rollaston, had a peculiar affinity for blue. He patented his own shade, called International Klein Blue.'

Tex gazed at the picture. It looked like nothing on earth. 'He dipped women in it, then used them to smudge the canvases.'

Tex gaped. The gallery owner started a sales pitch of the 'Klein's imagery challenges modernity...' balderdash that shouldn't fool a whelk. I interrupted.

'I can see why you think it's not a patch on the two you already possess, Sir Rollaston.

You're not seriously thinking of buying another? I wouldn't advise it, sir. Think of your Picasso ...'

We escaped, the gallery boss trying desperately to woo Tex back to see the rest of his gunge. We had a drink round the corner. I told Tex I'd seen him fight once. Tex had to sniff some white crud using a straw while I had tea. He then had a gin and tonic. He was amazed that the gallery folk had taken my made-up prattle seriously.

'It's true, Tex. It's what Klein did. Died in Paris a famous man. Are those drugs?'

'They help, mate. Lost me wife.' He eyed me. 'Why didn't they bounce you? You look a right tramp.'

I flushed. 'That's because I've no gelt. You're a junkie because you've chucked the sponge in.'

He grabbed me by the throat and I flew across the caff, blamming tables and chairs as I went, finishing up slumped against the window. I rose, tottered out into the rain. Try to help folk, that's what you get.

There's a massive antiques fair near Newark, happens every so often. It starts early mornings among the queueing motors, and continues in fields. Hundreds of antique dealers go. It's a celebration of greed. I love it. You meet the world and his wife.

Tex was there. He pretended not to be watching as I divvied a few antiques for a rich American – there's no other kind – who'd hired me for the day plus com. This meant I'd get a percentage of the commission. His purchases, bought on my recommendation, would be valued by the average of three certified London dealers. The American finished buying about noon. Tex was there as I waited with the bags of handles, small portable antiques, for the Yank to fetch his motor. He shuffled a bit.

'Sorry, Lovejoy,' he said gruffly.

'Okay.'

'Were you hurt?'

'Aye.'

I'd had a bad shoulder for weeks. Doc Lancaster said I was a danger to my own health.

I said not as much as he was. He got some physiotherapist, psychotically bent on breaking what Tex hadn't, to give me exercises. Doctors are sadistic swine. Their helpers are no better.

'I gave them up,' Tex said. 'I owe you. You done me a kindness in that gallery. You made me look at myself.' He glanced away. 'I'd lost my missus. Hard, when somebody dies.'

Well, it wasn't my fault, I thought, still narked.

'Want a job?' he asked as the American approached. 'I'm on an antiques club. We need somebody to divvy.'

'Maybe.' I was on my uppers, having just been given the sailor's elbow by Lydia, my ertswhile — and periodic –apprentice. She has the morals of a beatitude, can't accept that mankind is riddled with sinners. We'd parted over my forgeries of Colette the ghost lady. I wasn't sure if I loved Colette yet, still, now, or ever had, but it felt like flu whenever I thought of her. Is that the real thing? I've no way of knowing.

'I'll send word.'

And he did. I got invited to suss out the antiques they bought. Once a week I'd go to a publican's wife in East Bergholt, who was the panel's paymaster. She stored the antiques in a warehouse by the river.

Lots of people do combined investments nowadays. And some, like Tex's mob, chip in to buy antiques. Not all are honest. I've already mentioned that some people (think Horse and FeelFree) make a fine living from defrauding such societies.

The trick among some groups, though, is to add an extra thrill. They think, hey, isn't it dull just buying antiques? Why not add a little spice? Let's gamble! So they challenge other antiques panels to see whose profits are greatest by the end of the year.

Excitement! And then it's, 'Hey! Let's introduce a special prize – like, say, the panel that gains the most profit next year wins everybody else's antiques?

You see the risk? It's not only that you might buy, say, a Chippendale chair that turns out to be worthless. The real risk is that you might buy with consistent brilliance, store up a magnificent stock of lovely antiques, and then lose out on the New Year's Eve valuation. You can fiddle a bit, but that's difficult because usually these panels can inspect each other's purchases as they go through the year. Tex's panel won two years running, with my help. I resigned because I got fed up. He tried bribing me, but I wanted a change. I hadn't seen him for a full year.

By the time he'd finished his grunting and hurling in the ring, I was outside reading in the caff. He joined me.

'Still a creature of habit, eh?' I said. He always has a bite after a bout.

'Let me, Lovejoy.' He paid for my nosh. I nodded ta. Never refuse a free calorie. 'Glad you came, actually. We've had an offer from two experts.'

'To help your panel?'

'Yes. A couple, Horse and FeelFree. They brought us some convincing testimonials.'

'Don't, Tex.' I looked for the tomato sauce but two all-in wrestlers on a neighbouring table had snaffled it so I smiled weakly and did without. 'They'll default. I've just saved you a fortune. Stick with Albina.' The publican's wife I told you about.

'We need expertise, Lovejoy.' He frowned. 'I think we're going to miss out this year.

I've heard our opposition are doing superb buying. Got massive funds from somewhere, more than we could ever match.'

Tex's panel is a miscellaneous lot. There's a teacher, a road builder, two botanists trying to reforest Wiltshire, a doctor, a lady who breeds cats and is in love with a zookeeper. Antiques makes friends of all.

'Maybe I could help, Tex.' I went for gold. 'How about robbery?'

He looked his astonishment. 'I've never done anything like that.'

'No, Tex.' Sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head on a brick wall. 'You needn't do it, see? I'll do it. You just add the antiques to your stash in the pub cellar, okay?'

'Will anybody know?'

'No,' I said brokenly to Dan Dare. 'That's the idea of robbery.'

'Are they all genuine?'

Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. I sighed. 'They're mixed. Like,' I said sharply, 'the assortment you usually buy.'

'Okay,' he said doubtfully, this great hulk of a bloke who routinely lobbed opponents hither and yon. 'If you're sure it'll be all right.'

'Just let Albina know they're coming.'

That was that. I left Reckless Ralph to his plate of egg and chips and drove to meet Alicia and Peshy. I'm sick of rescuing people. Except sometimes I don't manage to rescue some people at all.

The hospital told me Florence Giverill was up and able to walk haltingly with some sort of frame. I said fine.

Almost in a state of exaltation, we ran the sweep day after day. It became a marathon.

We switched from Ross-on-Wye (where Alicia did magnificently, stealing Victorian jewellery) to Stourbridge (cameos, Chelsea enamels), then Stratford-upon-Avon (miniature paintings, antique gloves) to Birmingham (gems, mother-of-pearl) and back across the country to Sheffield and up to Leeds. Me and Alicia became quite a staid couple. Even the wolfhound didn't seem to mind my calling him Wolfhound any more.

We started to run out of money because of the hotels, so I had to sell one or two antiques that Alicia and Peshy nicked (sorry, shouldered).

The trouble was, we were not alone. Every morning, under the door there was that cream envelope with the round sloping handwriting of Mrs Thomasina Quayle. And the tone of her brief messages became at first tart ('Lovejoy, this will have to stop ...'), then finally resigned ('Very well, Lovejoy. However, you must take the consequences

...').

The news from the hospital about Florence became even better, though more difficult to obtain. I ran out of relatives to pretend to be – quavery father, sad uncle, boozy brother – and finished up relying on Alicia to do the daily phone calls. Florence had made it to Rehabilitation by the time I reckoned we'd got enough antiques. I told Alicia we were done.

'Done?' She looked stricken, then composed herself. 'As in ended?'

'That's right, love. We send off the loot, then it's home time. We've made the Wanted pages, in the Antiques Trade Gazette!.

She looked truly downcast. Even Peshy seemed a mite saddened. I could see why, because after every theft I used to give him a special treat. They were little bone-shaped things that made him pong like a stoat. He loved them.

Actually, I got queasy when Alicia tried showing me in the pet shop where to buy them, so she had to bring the treats in for me. I always made a fuss of the little sod even, in fact, when he hadn't nicked anything special at all. Once, he only fetched a shoelace, a particularly lean day, but I called him a hero and gave him two of the little stinking bone-things. He went into raptures.

Next morning, after a particularly hectic night of farewells, I lifted the envelope from the mat and pocketed it as usual without letting Alicia see. After breakfast, I told her to meet Tex at his wrestling show in Lincoln.

'Introduce yourself, love,' I said. 'Stick with him all evening, even after he leaves the tournament. He'll need an alibi until midnight, okay?'

She was in tears. 'What about us, Lovejoy?'

'You and me, doowerlink, are just beginning,' I said mistily. 'And I do mean that most sincerely. Can I borrow your motor? I'll bring it back at two.'

Well, I needed it more. I think that deep down people like to share. She could always hire one. She had magic plastic, and I had none.