Every Last Cent

8

SHE is PRETTIER than most, but gets me mad. She's always apologizing for being fifty-three, then fifty-four, and so on as the clock ticks. I shouted hello, looked round the door, and saw that she'd really got on. The horse was now head height, ugly as sin and all out of proportion. She sculpts it, dawn to dusk.

'You wish me happy birthday, Lovejoy,' she flared at me from behind the great statue's shoulder, 'and I'll strangle you.'

Bernicka (she made the name up; she was plain Glory once) is a sculptress, and loves Leonardo da Vinci.

'Never entered my mind, Bernicka.' I'd forgotten her birthday, was why. 'Looks good.'

It looked horrible. Who'd want that damned great thing? Terracotta clay, made of any old junk that solidifies, Bernicka slaps it on seemingly at random. I was amazed that it even looked vaguely equestrian. She does it in her husband's garage to rile him.

'You're gorgeous, Bernicka.' True, but women sense you're up to something.

She came round the statue, glaring. Coated in reddish dust, quite small, long hair, neat as a grape. She's solaced me several times, mainly to do her bloke down. She hates Jeb because he's not Leonardo da Vinci. He hates her for loving Leonardo.

'What d'you want, Lovejoy?'

'Nothing!' I beamed my sincerest. 'How did my portrait turn out?'

Last month I'd drawn her making her lover's horse statue. I drew her in sanguine – a kind of ancient reddish pastel I make myself with gum tragacanth. It was superb. I'd had to use skimmed milk because oxides are swine to shape into proper finger-long rods for sketching. Little Sarah and Charlotte from down the lane, eight and six respectively, shape them for me. They're so neat. I'm not. It's galling to see infants fashion Conté pastels ten times better than I can.

'It's there.'

Against the far wall, among Jeb's derelict motors and bits of engines, was my framed portrait of Bernicka. I'd got her lovely eyes exactly. I'd done her (I mean painted) in that earthy brown-red the Old Masters loved. Nothing wrong with monochrome, incidentally, though it's currently unfashionable. The real trouble is that you fall for a woman when you paint her portrait. It's impossible not to. You have to gaze at her features, drink her into your mind. Peer into a deep pool, you fall in. Above my sketch was a photocopied drawing of Leonardo da Vinci, Bernicka's adored lover. That's why she's always going to mediums, psychics, spiritualists. She sends Leonardo messages.

He fails to reply.

'Oooh.' She moaned with unrequited lust at Leonardo. She always does that.

'Still got the languishes for him?'

It's no wonder Jeb gave up. They sleep apart. She has a ton of love implements in her bedroom. All are devices with which a lovelorn lady might achieve solitary arousal. I once pointed out that Leonardo da Vinci has been dead for centuries, requiescat in pace. She says I'm too stupid to understand.

The horse is Leonardo's uncompleted, ill-fated monstrosity Il Cavallo. I hate the damned thing. He planned it in Milan after 1493, but only got to the model stage.

Everybody thought it okay, except the French armies strolled in to depose Leonardo's boss, Duke Ludovico. Shamefully, the French soldiery shot it full of arrows –short of target practice, you see. Milan's got a modern bronze replica of this giant horse, because making Leonardo's dreams come true is a money-making industry. Magazines these days are full of his never-were bridges, and buildings he built only in sketched fancy.

Next to my portrait hung several bowie knives. I eyed them uneasily.

'Knives,' she said. 'Some Yank bitch in Grand Rapids has made a crappy copy of Il Cavallo. I'll stab her when I get the chance.'

She means it.

'You do know that Leonardo's nag was going to be over three times taller than a man?'

Way over twenty feet, in fact.

Her eyes misted. 'Yes. But I am unworthy of my master.'

Bernicka always was off her trolley. 'Don't run yourself down. Love's strong stuff.'

'No, Lovejoy.' Genuine tears made clean wadis down her umber-dusted cheeks. 'If my love were perfect, it would bring my darling Leonardo back.'

'Well, there is that,' I said weakly. Agree with everything, I might get what I'd come for.

'Your nag is really, er, nice.'

It wasn't. It was a mound of clay in a rural garage. Trouble is, Bernicka has no idea of art. She's tried her hand at everything. Her enthusiasms go in rushes. Last June it was encaustic Roman painting. July she was a dancer, with the co-ordination of a yak.

September she took up the cello, tone deaf naturally.

Some women have this fatal attraction. Mary Queen of Scots had it, they say, so that even villeins kneeling in fear of their lives would lust after her. Lord Nelson's Emma Hamilton, despite her eternally filthy unwashed hair, had it. Nell Gwynne, King Charles's gorgeous Cockney orange seller of Covent Garden, had it. And Bernicka. Other women hate Bernicka. Can't for the life of me see why. Us blokes adore her. The thing is, even after you've made serious smiles with Bernicka you're just as susceptible as if you never had, if you follow. A man's vulnerable to all women, of course, which is the reason that any woman can have any man any time she chooses, though women don't realize this.

With Bernicka, popes and saints would come a-flocking if she simply beckoned. Where was I? Lying that her pot nag was really nice.

'Will Leonardo approve, Lovejoy?' she asked wistfully, gazing up at her hideous blob.

'I'm sure he would, will, er...' I gave up on tense. 'Does,' I concluded firmly. 'Look, love.

Will you seduce a bloke for me?'

'How dare you!' etc, etc.

Twenty minutes later we finished a cup of tea on her couch and she was agreeing yes, certainly. By then she'd dusted herself off and was arguing her fee.

'Get me anything of Leonardo's,' she decided. 'From his very own fingers.' She moaned at the thought of his fingers.

'Impossible,' I said sadly. It was going as I'd planned. 'The few Leonardo items in our rusty old kingdom all belong to famous people.'

Daintily she blotted a tear. 'I know that, Lovejoy.'

'Bernicka!' I cried, doing my aggrieved horror act. 'You can't mean ...'

'That you rescue my darling's precious creation from some undeserving owner? Of course I do!'

That's women and morality. Love is the Open sesame! that rolls aside all ethics. To some birds, love is no more than a code word; say it and you're in, physically replete and thankful it worked. To other women, it's the solemn pronouncement of serious lifelong commitment. To Bernicka, it was run-leap-splash into the hot spring of life, as long as she could convince herself that da Vinci was in there somewhere. I don't understand it.

I asked, fingers crossed, 'You can't seriously mean Lord Orpen's parchment drawing of Leonardo's horse?'

'Does he have a Leonardo drawing? Yes, him then.'

'That's unfair, Bernicka!' I cried angrily. 'I might get caught!'

'Do it, darling, or I won't seduce anybody for you.' She caught my hand and pulled me down. 'Please.'

What can you say? Broad daylight, the parlour doors wide open, curtains not drawn, we made rapturous agreement. I awoke an hour later. She'd gone back to slapping clay onto her sculpture. I finished her biscuits and tottered off to catch the bus, shouting a so-long into the garage. I'd reached town before I realized she hadn't even asked the seducee's name. I phoned from the Zodiac Tea Rooms, trying to speak quietly so the elderly ladies sipping their Earl Grey wouldn't eavesdrop.

'Wotcher, Bernicka. I called to say ta for, er, tea and that.' Then I told her the Yank at Mortimer's manor. 'That's the, ah, beneficiary. Understand? You've been there to read tea leaves, I think. Taylor Eggers, your psychic's husband.'

She paused a bit too long. I felt a twinge of worry as she asked, 'Exactly why am I doing this, Lovejoy?'

'While you're, ah, resting, you can ask him what the hell he and his missus are up to.

Ta, love. You're great. Darling? I just want you to know that I've never felt such deep emotion ...' I listened. 'Hello? Hello?'

She'd gone. Leonardo's contemporary Vascari once said the maestro's every action 'was divine'. Evidently my passion hadn't matched up. Still, I should care. I felt marvellous.

I'd received the ultimate gift from the lovely Bernicka, and my plan was one step nearer completion. I smiled weakly at the eavesdropping tea drinkers and made my way out amid the murderous traffic, where a bloke could feel safe.

Pets are a puzzle. Cats cause me anxiety because they eat birds; statistics say thirty million a year. Dogs have fangs, and eat cats. Horses are a big worry to me because they weigh ten tons. I fight unendingly against my garden birds' habits, because they scoff worms. Every dawn I feed the robin cheese, if I've got some, to wean him off various fauna. No hopes. He noshes what I give him then goes digging worms in my compost, dirty little devil.

So I was especially guarded climbing up the rickety steps of Cedric's wooden two-storey shack in the darkness that night. A snuffle sounded, very like distant thunder.

'Wotcher, Elk,' I called nervously. 'Get Cedric, okay?' Waiting, I couldn't help remembering Divina. She was one of these horsey lasses, very splendid in her pink jacket and jodhpurs. The trouble was the horse she bestrode. It was the size of Lambeth Palace. She used to do its skin with some sort of wire, hours at a time. Once, she made me – threatening celibacy if I didn't – come and see her polish the damned beast. It leaned against me, asphyxiating me by compression. While I gasped my last she exclaimed, 'Oh, Lovejoy! Animals really like you!' I was supposed to admire this monster for giving me a prolonged slobbering crush. See? The problem with pets is people.

A footfall sounded. 'That you, Lovejoy?'

'Wotcher, Cedric,' I said, then screeched as I heard a bolt slide, 'Don't open the bloody door!'

A chain settled to silence. I mopped my brow. Elk is a dog the size of, well, an elk, but with fangs not horns. It likes me. Elk's idea of a greeting is to place both its front paws on my shoulders and gaze into my eyes, its mouth open, fangs a-drool. Saying hello is an orgy, but resembles the prelude to a snack.

'Go down, Lovejoy.'

Relieved, I descended the swaying steps and he let me in. The workshop is beautiful.

Most folk would hate it: cold, badly lit except for a bank of intense lights at the workbench. Untidy as hell, but definitely the place to be.

Cedric entered, wheezing and shuffling. He's eighty-four, and the classiest manuscript forger in the Eastern Hundreds. You'll have seen those certificates of provenance on those splendid antiques at London auctions. Well, Cedric turns them out. Five a week, when he's really motoring. I like Cedric. Think of some old cartoon alchemist, floor-length robes, slippers, skull cap, specs on droopy wire, straggly beard, and you have Cedric Cobbold, Esquire, master forger.

'Evening, Lovejoy.' He grinned, gappy teeth, whiskers fluttering. A joke was on its way.

'I see,' he said, snuffling, 'they haven't hanged you yet!' He creaked and swayed. I helped him to a stool by the workbench while he recovered. He laughs like a distant zephyr. Unless you know him you think nothing is happening. I waited the riot out.

'It was only their joke, Ced.'

He sobered. 'Not so, Lovejoy. That Dennis is pressing for it. He's got into money trouble. A frightened man. And three others. Your son—'

'Mortimer's okay, wack. I've cleared it all up.'

'They mean damage, Lovejoy. That lady Mrs Eggers called the raj.'

My belly griped.

'How can she, for God's sake?' It came out as a terrified squeak. 'She's a Yank. She's no right. She can't.'

'She's got some contact in there.' He sighed, adjusted his spectacles. Respectfully I kept quiet, hoping. Instead the silly old sod finally came out with, 'The last full meeting of the raj last year was on the feast day of St Sebbi, King of Essex. I distinctly recall—'

'You daft old burke!' I yelled. A thunderous growl shook the boards upstairs as Elk stirred. I silenced. 'I meant, er, good gracious! That long ago?'

'Almost certain of it, Lovejoy. Though we can't take St Sebbi's date of AD 697 as altogether proven, can we?'

'Certainly not,' I said, sweating, because my death sentence might well be hanging out there in the dark. 'Look, Ced. Sorry about this, but I need a drawing of Leonardo's Il Cavallo.'

'What in?' The old savant didn't turn a hair. 'Silver-point? The Three Crayons? How much licence will you allow?'

You have to admire class. Here was me, disturbing this elderly sage at midnight, and he goes straight to the heart of the problem. True professionalism.

Silverpoint is a sharpened piece of lead or lead-tin alloy. Ancient artists drew outlines, leaving scarcely any indentation. They'd then maybe fill the sketch out using white chalk, black argillite or red chalk – à trois crayons, as the French have it.

'I don't want sepia, Cedric.'

There's a pathetic tendency these days among stupid forgers of Old Master drawings.

They're all duckeggs, bone idle. They assume that if they make a dilute solution of some pigment – raw ochre down to burnt umber – then call it sepia and do a drawing on Woolworth paper, it will pass as something dashed off by Michelangelo and be worth a million. Laughable. You see scores of these freaks in any country auction (and in sales in capital cities, I might add). Sepia proper is ink of the cuttlefish, only fashionable in the late eighteenth century.

'Leonardo, to modern innocents, means oak-gall and copperas.'

Cedric smiled affectionately at the bottles ranked on his workbench. I knew he loved Francis Clement's old slow recipe of 1587. It's long out of fashion, because modern forgers haven't Cedric's patience. They heat the ink with French wine and ox blood.

Clement let it fester for days. See? Patience.

'You still use the old labels, Cedric.'

'I'm not stupid.'

We chuckled. Any intruder hoping to steal Cedric's precious forger's ingredients would be baffled by Green Vitriol and Aleppo Originate (only ancient names for ferrous sulphate and galls from oak trees). It's Cedric's game. For a few minutes we chatted about Hebborn, the modern English forger who used rotting acorns instead of galls and did pretty well. Then Cedric got down to it.

'Can I suggest bistre, Lovejoy? I have ancient paper. I could split a sheet, though that would cost dearly.'

Gulp. That warning was grave. Cedric was never cheap. Splitting a sheet of heavy ancient linen-rag paper is a fearsome risk, because you might ruin the priceless antique sheet altogether. If it's done just right, you finish up with two sheets instead of one.

You then earn a fortune from both. It's done with two pieces of heavy felt and starch paste. See a true forger like Cedric do it, you can keep your Beethoven symphonies.

They're not half so beautiful.

'Has to be, Ced. Aye, bistre's okay.'

This is nothing more than soot in solution, used as a kind of drawing ink by the Old Masters with their reed and quill pens. You can still buy bistre, but I like Cedric's. He burns willow, beech or pine branches out on the beach, and uses the charcoal and caught soot (on glass plates, incidentally, if you do it yourself). It sounds easy but it's not. He also makes his own quill and reed pens in the old way. God knows who'll have his skill when he finally pops his clogs.

'I'll use powdered pumice stone for lacing the paper, Lovejoy.'

This is an old way of dressing paper before doing a drawing. The ancients used it. I arranged a time to meet in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, where I would do the burglary for Bernicka, said ta and left before he could ask me for a deposit. He might have summoned Elk to enforce his request.

The rest of the night was spent peacefully, meaning lying awake, sweating at what I was drifting into.