Paid and Loving Eyes

CHAPTER FIVE

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There’s a main trouble with anything good. Like with women my question is, why can’t they see how much we crave them, for heaven’s sake? (The answer’s that maybe they do…)

The trouble with antiques is fakes. The trouble with fakes is antiques. Just as in any war, greed is the instigator, and dithering uncertainty the determinant, of success. Thus antique dealers become a happy band of mourners at the funeral feast for casualties in an unending conflict.

Our local merry mob of antique dealers occupies a few crevices of dereliction. They’ve installed a small bar since the boozing law changed, to sell liver-corroding liquids at extortionate prices. The whole Arcade is nothing more than an alcove of many alcoves. You’d walk past it with hardly a glance. Wise folk do just that.

The usual chorus of jeers and imprecations rose to greet me. They were all in, bemoaning (a) the cheapskate public, (b) being broke, and (c) having this priceless Rembrandt/Wedgwood/Michaelangelo genuine antique that they’re willing to let go for a few quid as a special personal favour to you/him/her/anybody… The siren song of the dealer.

Frederico grabbed me first, looking more like Valentino than Valentino. He’s from Wigan, but cracks on he’s never been to gaol. He wore a green suit by mistake, because he’s only Irish on Fridays. Mondays he’s from Tuscany.

“I’ve got a couple of things, Lovejoy!” He hisses this terse sentence, looking furtively round shoulders, trying for Fagin in the next amateur Oliver.

“Over here when you’ve a minute, Lovejoy,” Liz Sandwell called. I waved, brightening. Her tough boyfriend wasn’t with her. “Got what, Fred?”

Fool for asking. You need never ask, not with Frederico. His act’s something to do with the ferries from the Hook of Holland. They dock at Harwich bringing loads of tourists. He gets caught out sometimes, finds he’s claimed to speak a tourist’s own lingo. Also, he only talks gibberish, a handicap for so determined a communicator. It’s not my fault if I get confused. He dragged me to his alcove—a plank, a chair, a battery light, two boxes.

“Lovejoy,” Donk interposed, breathing fury. “You owe me. That message—”

“Sod off, Donk. I’m busy —”

But he wouldn’t be put off with IOUs, promises, tales of misery. Only when Frederico shelled out the dosh did Donk leave. I think civilization’s got a lot to answer for, now trust’s gone. Which raised the interesting question why Frederico paid up for me. He’s never done that in his life.

“It’s genuine old glass, Lovejoy. Honest. Every sign!”

“Oh, aye.”

One of his two boxes yielded a lovely little sweetmeat glass, its stem faceted and its foot scalloped. The dealers all around went quiet and started drifting over. Frederico made insulting gestures to repel them. It worked. They retreated muttering, narked and envious. Old glass is valuable beyond common sense these days. If you find one, order your blonde and two-litre Morgan and spit in your general manager’s eye.

“See? Genuine 1780.” He sounded as if he was offering me surface-to-air missiles, peering about.

“Sorry, Frederico.” His paddy green kept getting me on the wrong track. “It’s duff.”

“No!” A cry from the heart. The other dealers chuckled, resumed chatter, pleased their friend would lose a fortune.

This is always the hard part. The glass simply didn’t reverberate in me. Therefore it was dud. How to find explanations other people would understand…?

“Look, Frederico.” I held it up against the bulb, though daylight facing north’s best. “Glass isn’t a solid. It’s a supercooled liquid. Think that, and you’re halfway there.” Pointing, I showed him. “Old glass—anything before 1800—must have tiny air bubbles. Modern glass has virtually none.”

“But the iridescence, Lovejoy!” He was almost in tears.

You feel like knocking their heads together sometimes. Can’t the blighters read? Being basically fluid, glass interacts with air and whatever crud’s around. So over the years, wetness—in air, ground—causes its surface to iridesce, due to laminations. Think of microscopic scaling, and you’ve almost got it. Light gets bounced about wrongly in the glass, causing the effect. Sadly, dealers and the thieving old public jump to conclusions, the daftest but most constant folly.

“Somebody’s dunked this in a cesspool.” It can take two cesspool years to get the right quality of iridescence. I’ve had three good fakes—Laurela at Dovercourt makes them for, er, friendship’s sake—steeping in a marsh near here since last Kissing Friday. I sluch them out to check, every fortnight. It’s grim, because one of those yellow-beaked black ducks has nested on the very spot, interfering little blighter.

“I’ve a certificate, Lovejoy! The industrial chemists—”

Now he was really agitated. I looked at him with real surprise. He’s a con artist, so should know that every antique fake doing the rounds has more certificates than an Oxford don. The trick is to slice a piece of genuine ancient iridescent glass surface from some antique, and have it analysed—then sell the certificate to a dealer, who’ll pass the testimonial off as belonging to some fake drinking goblet he happens to have.

The other box made me hesitate. He was so miserable. I waited. He waited. Liz Sandwell called. I looked expectantly at Frederico. He said nothing, forlorn with his dud glass.

“Look, mate,” I said, with sympathy. The poor bloke had pinned his faith—his greed, really—on scooping the pool. “Get a few fakes from some old genuine piece, and cement them to your fake. The old trick. Then it’ll sell at any provincial auction. And you can use your certificate to authenticate it.”

Hope filled his eyes. Avarice works wonders. “Cement how?”

Narked, I walked off. Dealers are useless. I mean, Theophilus wrote how in his De Diversis Artibus in the eleventh century. The world hasn’t read it yet.

Liz Sandwell was better value. I kept looking back at Frederico’s other box. It pealed chimes in me, reverberating.

“Eh?”

“I said go halves, Lovejoy.” She smiled, a lovely offer. But you have to be sure what a woman’s offer actually is. I keep making this mistake.

My throat cleared. “Halves of what?”

“Not me, Lovejoy. This illuminated panel.”

“It’s rubbish.” I turned on my heel.

She caught me. “Why, Lovejoy?”

Because it didn’t utter a single boing. Except Liz wanted a reason reason. So I looked at her neffie panel. A parchment egg tempera painting, St Sebastian dying heroically for something or other. Lovely, the right style and everything. If I’d been a buyer I’d have said Early English, worth a small house. Then I looked across at the dejected Frederico.

“I’ll tell you why, Liz, if you persuade Vasco Da Gama there to show me the antique in his other box.”

She went and wheedled, returning in a trice with the box. The closer it came the more certain the chime. I swallowed to wet my throat for speech. Talk is problems.

“Can I look?”

Frederico, offhand, nodded. I reached inside the humble cardboard and felt a warm loving living thing slip smiling into my palm. I lifted it out, my soul singing.

It was beautiful. Besides glass, the one class of antiques that has stormed ahead of the world price spirals is that of scientific instruments. This was superb. For sheer price it could have bought the whole Arcade, and the street too I shouldn’t wonder.

A travelling sundial. Octagonal base, incised with lines and numbers, with a recessed compass. Its gnomon —the little raised bit that casts the shadow—was shaped like a bird. Four hour scales, and latitude marks for 43 and 52 degrees North. You would adjust the bird gnomon for whatever latitude you were sailing in.

“Michael?” I heard my voice ask. “Is it really you?” I rubbed the grime, licked a thumb, tried again. And it was.

Michael Butterfield—spelt right, thank God; contemporary fakers got his name wrong, like Smith the great porcelain faker did with Wedgwood—was an Englishman in Paris. For over fifty years he turned out superb works of genius. Naturally, from 1670 on his brilliant creations have been forged, stolen, faked, copied, like all things bright and beautiful. A true hero of talent. Can you imagine him, striving for perfection by candlelight when all around was filth and degradation, with—?

“Sit down, Lovejoy.” Liz was holding me.

“No.” I pulled away from the silly cow. They treat you like a cripple, women. “How much, Frederico?”

He looked amazed, me to the sundial. “It’s only brass, Lovejoy,”

“Butterfield made in silver and brass, nerk. How much?”

A distant cough sounded, coming nearer with a pronounced Doppler. The vibration shuddered through the Arcade. A flake of paint gave up clinging to the wall under the force. Tinker was approaching along the High Street.

“You sure, Lovejoy?”

He was asking me? Gawd above. “How much?”

He licked his lips, tried to take his dial back. I kept it. Just because an instrument’s made of brass doesn’t mean lunatics can’t damage it.

He glanced at his duff glass. “I thought it was the other…”

The other way round? I might have known. A put-up job. Who’d given him the two boxes? No wonder he’d got the wrong suit on today. With tears in my eyes I replaced the Butterfield dial in its box and handed it over. Neither the fake glass nor genuine instrument was his to sell. Life is a pig.

“Sod off, Fred.” Where was I? “Your parchment, Liz.”

“Ere, Lovejoy.” Tinker came in, shuffling behind his thundering cough like infantry following a creeping barrage. “There’s a tart wants you over at—”

“A sec, Tinker.” I gave the filthy old devil the bent eye, to restrict my trade secrets to a few square miles. His idea of tact is to pluck my sleeve in a theatrical mimicry of stealth, while booming out anything confidential as if yelling from a distant shore. I’d promised Liz a reason reason. I scanned her illuminated parchment.

“Blue, love. They should have used lapis lazuli instead of Prussian blue. Diesbach discovered Prussian blue in 1704, centuries too late for your mythical mediaeval monk.”

Actually, I’d have given modern French ultramarine a go, made up in egg yolk. Better still, I’d have re-re-remortgaged my cottage, and bought quarter of an ounce of genuine lapis lazuli. I hate fakers who’re too flaming idle. So what that genuine lapis lazuli’s the costliest pigment on earth? Ha’p’orth of tar and all that. Tip: get round the experts on this vital point by mixing a proportion of Guimet’s synthetic ultramarine, available since 1824 for heaven’s sake, with twenty per cent ground-up lapis. You finish up with an almost perfect faker’s blue

“That posh tart with the big knockers, Lovejoy,” Tinker interrupted. “Her’s a frigging pest. Wants you outside.”

“Thank you, Lovejoy,” Liz Sandwell said sweetly, retrieving her parchment. “You may go, seeing duty calls.”

I leaned away from Tinker. His breath emerges very, very used. Must have been drinking solidly since dawn. His old army greatcoat was stained, his mittens filthy, rheumy eyes bloodshot, his stubble encrusted with food residues. I was pleased to see him in such good shape.

“Same one looking for me round the village early on?”

“Nar. That was just some whore, Lovejoy.”

“Can I listen?” Liz was enthralled. “Or are you inaudible?”

Tinker got annoyed. “Ere, miss. You keep yourself to yourself. We’ve work to do, if you haven’t!” His attention returned to me. “Young folk. They’re all on tablets. I blames this free education.” He has theories like hedgehogs have fleas.

“Come on.” I got him out of the rear entrance, and we made the Three Tuns by diving among the alleys.

“That posh tart, with them frigging nags.” He inhaled half a pint at one go, settled back with a sigh. “The one you’ve been shagging since Wittwoode’s auctioned them funny frocks.”

Which being translated meant Almira. Tinker was reminding me that she and I met at a local auction of funny frocks—Tinker’s phrase for the most beautiful collection of Continental eighteenth-century dresses ever seen in the Eastern Hundreds. Tip: embroidery’s still the cheapest way to buy into the antiques game, but not for long, not for long. I thought deeply.

“Who was the woman asking at the post office?”

“Told you, Lovejoy. That whore.”

It wasn’t right. Tinker’s very strait-laced. He didn’t call people whores, unless… What was it Jodie’d said? About Diana being not quite the sort of woman a gentleman like Troude would allow in the Nouvello? To me, Diana’d come over as a bonny bird simply having sly sex with some magnate who couldn’t risk scandal. What more natural than to use Gazza’s lovemobile, driven by that pillar of virtue Lovejoy? Surveys say seventy-two per cent of us are hard at illicit love affairs, surveys say. I wonder how they missed the remaining twenty-eight per cent. To work.

“Something’s niggling, Tinker.” I fetched him another three pints, lined them up on the table. “Sandy showed up yesterday in Ladyham—”

“He would, bleeding queer,” Tinker snorted. “Never out of that frigging Frog centre since it opened. Put up a tithe of the gelt, he did. Like your tart.”

My headaches usually come on pretty gradually, unless they get help. I pressed my temple to slow things down. Tinker was rabbiting on.

“Wait, Tinker.” Tart and bint are simply females in his vocabulary, but a whore was a whore was a… “You mean Almira?”

“Aye. Know how they got the land? Did the old dole shuffle from that poxy club, Mentle Marina.” He growled. I raised a finger just in time. He spat phlegm noisily into a drained glass, gave a pub-shaking cough, and recovered, wiping his eyes on his shredding sleeve. “It only worked because that poofter’s pal’s some rich Continental git.”

Too much. Both temples were pulsing now. I was a nerk between two throbs… My mind finally clicked into gear. Sandy’s earrings. Princess, between two frogs. I tried to recall Troude’s comment. He was observing that I hadn’t got Sandy’s joke. One, Troude. Number Two… Who was Number Two?

“Almira? She financed the place?”

“Her and that frigging pansy. They got a kitty up for some Frog. Has his bleedin’ nails done at the barber’s, just like a poxy tart. Don’t know what the frigging world’s coming to, Lovejoy.” He spat expertly on to the carpet before I could restrain him. “Her lawjaw’s got four houses. Did you know?”

“Who?” Now quite lost.

“Always at frigging Ladyham, him. Says he once rode for England.” He snorted in derision, which from Tinker is a pubclearing operation that nearly blew me off my stool.

“Rowed, like boat?”

“No. Rode, Lovejoy. Frigging horse!” He cackled, wagging his head. A couple of brown pegs trying to pass as teeth littered his gummy grin. “How can you ride a horse for England? That’s not proper racing, like the Grand National. What a berk! Him in Parliament. He’s never there. What we pay him for, eh?”

It would take more than a casual chat to disentangle Tinker’s rumours. I gave up. Almira’s husband an MP, and a banking company lawyer to boot?

“Antiques, Tinker.” I tried to get back on the rails.

“Oh, aye.” He grimaced. “Sorry, Lovejoy. Baff’s dead.”

Silence for the departed, mostly to absorb shock. It was like a blow on the temple. I honestly couldn’t see for a second. My vision slowly cleared.

Baff’s a talkative, friendly sort of bloke. No more than twenty-‘ five. A refugee from the army—some regiment giving up its colours after half a millennium. Baff settled locally with a bird called Sherry down the estuaries. Nice bloke. I like, liked, him a lot. He hadn’t a clue about the porcelain and jewellery he tried to sell, of course. An average antique dealer, mostly by theft. Tell you how he stole in a minute.

“What happened?”

“Got done over last evening. Some yobbos. He was working a seaside ice-cream stall. They did him for the takings.”

Dully, the facts clunked in. Baff died on the way to hospital. The spoilers vanished in the crowds. The Plod were questioning some youths, but nobody was charged yet. Fat chance, in a thirty-acre seashore all caravans and holiday-makers.

“Watch it. Your tart, Lovejoy.”

Almira was alighting from her motor. She’s so splendid-looking that folk slow down to watch—blokes to lust, women to tot up the cost of her clothes.

Alacrity called. “Tinker. Find Steve Yelbard. You know, the glassie. And Phoebe. Donk should know, if anybody.”

“Dunno, Lovejoy.” I slipped him a couple of notes, so he could keep supping ale, his only source of calories. “The Portland Vase final? That Phoebe’s a snotty cow. That bugger Yelbard’s worse —he’s honest.” He spoke with the gloom of the antiques barker, to whom honesty’s the ultimate cheat.

“Get on with it.” I made for the door, preparing a smile of welcome for Almira.

“Ere, Lovejoy!” Tinker was rolling in the aisles. One of his jokes loomed. Wearily I waited in the doorway for the hilarity. “I’ll bet you give her a better ride than her nags!”

And he literally fell off his stool. I eyed him gravely as he recovered, cackling helplessly, blotting his eyes as he climbed back up. A couple of blokes down the bar looked at each other uncomprehendingly.

“Very droll, Tinker,” I said sombrely, and left to the tender mercy of Almira.

She was there, glowering on the pavement. I started with surprise and rushed to embrace her with thankful exclamations.

“Doowerlink!” I cried, giving her a buss. “You’re there! Where did you get to? I left the note saying definitely ten-fifteen at the war memorial! I was absolutely frantic —”

It’s the one way to cast doubt into a woman’s mind, hint that she’s mislaid some vital message.

“Ten-fifteen?” she asked, mistrustful.

“Yes, love!” I was so impatient. “We’ve missed our chance, doorlung! The holiday I was planning!” I sighed. “The last places on the flight went at twenty-to. Oh, hell!” I took her hands, gazed sorrowfully at her. She looked about guiltily, tried to recover her fingers from my vice-like grip.

“Not here, Lovejoy.” She was trying to look casual for appearance’s sake.

“They couldn’t hold the seats. It was a charter flight.”

She was looking hard, seeing pure truth shining nobly from my eyes.

“You’ve been planning a holiday, Lovejoy? For us?”

I went all soulful. “It’s little enough, Almira. I mean, you take me out to lovely meals. And that weekend on the coast.” I looked away, biting my lip. “This was all I could afford.”

“Oh, Lovejoy.” She started to look guilty. I was pleased, making headway. “I’m so sorry. Was it very dear? Only—”

“No, love.” I went proud. I wanted to treat you.”

“A lovely idea!” she said mistily. “Where did you leave it?”

“Eh?” People were pushing past on the pavement. I kept having to move aside for prams and pushchairs.

“The note.”

“Oh, by the window. Propped up, where…” Where it could easily blow away, so ending the lies necessary on the subject.

She drove me to my cottage. Where my ancient Austin Ruby waited, glamorously restored and out of hock. I was overjoyed. Suddenly frightened, too, for who could afford to settle an expert car restorer’s six-month bill? Overjoyed, yes, but aware of how deeply I now was in Troude’s scam. And its enormity.

“Is this old car yours, Lovejoy? I didn’t know you had one.”

“Neither did I, love.” I said weakly. We went inside and made smiles. I couldn’t help thinking of Baff Bavington.