Paid and Loving Eyes

CHAPTER SIX

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Women talk in the pluperfect vindictive, as the old crack has it. All the same, there’s not much wrong with malice—as long as the arrow falls short if it’s aimed at me. Why it’s such a constant for birds, heaven alone knows. They relish the stuff.

“Who gave you that car, Lovejoy?” Women never let go, but I’ve already told you that.

“Eh? Oh, had it years, love.”

She padded about the room shivering, moaning about draughts. Finally zoomed back, freezing, complained I’d pinched her warm bit and trying to manoeuvre me out of it.

“Whose bed is it?” I demanded. Frigging nerve.

“I’ve never seen your motor before.” All suspicion.

“The Ruby? It got cindered. Thought I’d seen the last of it.”

“Restored by loving hands, I see.” Rich women see a lot. “Who paid? Another woman? Seeing your electricity’s off, and the phone.” She lifted her head from the pillow. “And seeing you were going to take me on holiday, Lovejoy.”

See what I mean, about women never trusting people? She’d be on about this for months. Luckily we’d not last that long.

“Some bloke forked out. Part of an antiques deal.”

Shrewd Lovejoy’s quicksilver brain was equal to the task. I took her delectable body in my loving embrace, and raised her head so our eyes locked. I said, most sincerely, “There is no other woman, dwoorlink.”

“You’re sure?”

“How could there be? To prove it, we’re going to a superb new place for supper tonight. The Nouvello Troude at Ladyham!”

Her relaxed body went a fraction unrelaxed. “Ladyham?”

“You know it?” I smiled, still most sincerely. “I expect you wealthy landowners dine there all the time.”

“Nouvello? No, darling. I’ve never been. But Ladyham’s rather a way, isn’t it? When there are so many places nearer.” She burrowed beneath the sheet, ready for a new smile. I felt myself weaken. “Let’s go to Barlfen. It’s on the waterside.”

“I’d like to try the Nouvello. I’ve heard it’s really posh.”

“Can I persuade you, Lovejoy?”

I was determined to get her to Ladyham, the lying cow. She co-owned the massive new leisure centre, whose boss, Troude, had just hired me. She and Sandy had partly financed it. Yet she’s never been?

“Can I, darling?” Her mouth was everywhere, her hands crawling up my belly.

“Right,” I said weakly. Being ridiculous is my lifestyle. “Barlfen. Sevenish okay?” Pathetic.

The Ruby was lively as a cricket. They’d done a good job at Sugden’s garage. I called on Suggie. He came grinning to meet me. His two apprentices were overjoyed to see my Ruby, God knows why. They always say they’re sick of it.

“Nice old crate, Lovejoy.” Suggie’s always wiping his oily mitts on his overalls.

“Ta for doing it, Suggie.” I tapped its bonnet. “What’s the fastest I can do?”

The apprentices laughed out loud. They were itching to undo it again, start afresh on the damned thing. Barmy. Imagine mending engines all day long.

“Eject if you hit fifteen mph, Lovejoy. Downhill.”

“Ha, ha,” I said gravely. “The bill get settled, Suggie?”

“All done.” He was over the moon. “Thankful to get cash in hand these days, with that bloody tax.”

“Great, great.” No receipt, no trace of payment. “Who collected it?” I asked casually. “Only, the bloke left a letter on the driving seat.”

Suggie’s grin faded into wariness. “Best post it to him, Lovejoy.”

Kicking myself, I beamed, nodded. “Why didn’t I think of that? Cheers, lads.” I should have thought up a better story.

Just to show them, I notched a good twenty mph leaving their lane, but cut down to my usual sixteen when the Ruby started wheezing. The clatter still came from under the rear wheels, but elegance has to be paid for. I drove with pride into Sandy and Mel’s gravelly forecourt. The Ruby trundled to a halt, silenced thankfully.

Mel was packing a big estate car. Cases on the roof, the interior stuffed with gear. Pot plants too, I saw with dismay. Oh dear.

“Wotcher, Mel. Going on a sweep?”

A sweep is a swift scouring of the countryside for antiques. Whether you use fifty technicians like the BBC in its Antiques Roadshow, or a series of village halls like Sotheby’s, or even if it’s just yourself, it’s basically foraging and returning loaded with antiques, the joy of mankind. But this was no quick trip. My heart sank. Had Sandy and Mel fought again?

He paused, strapping the cover over the heaped roof rack.

“No, Lovejoy. Leaving.”

Sandy and Mel are constants in the antiques game. I mean, they’re forever quarrelling, parting in tears and temper. Then it’s the big reconciliation and they resume dealing—shrewd, money-mad, but knowledgeable. They have a knack. Their latest success was finding a collection of wrought-iron German snuffboxes. Don’t laugh. These were only half an inch tall, but were gold-inlaid, damascened, and genuine eighteenth century—if they’re genuine eighteenth century. You know what I mean. Sandy and Mel’s nine boxes were brilliant, original, and authentic. Their like in one handful will probably never be seen again. I nearly cried when some undeserving Yank bought them for a fortune. I eyed Mel. The less exotic of the pair, unsmiling, always cross. I was unhappy, seriously.

“Leaving leaving, Mel? Or just leaving?”

“Leaving squared, Lovejoy.” He tested the strap, stepped back. “That’s everything.”

He looked at me. Sorrow began to creep about. This looked truly grim. I’d seen the scene a hundred times, but never quite like this. The long silence made it worse.

“Mel?” I said, nervous.

He gazed about. “Just look at it, Lovejoy. Converted school-house, a barn. Not bad, decoratively first rate. Three hundred years old, sound as a bell. Stock at valuation.”

A notice board announced it was for sale. My spirits hit my boots. This was real. Mel and Sandy, splitting? Like Tom and Jerry going separate ways. Unthinkable.

“Why, Mel?”

He knew I wasn’t asking the price, and smiled deep woe. “Sandy’s gone in over his head, Lovejoy. You know how he is. Anything different.”

“I saw him at the Nouvello.”

“Mmmh.” The non-word spoke volumes of mistrust, almost fear. He tossed me a bunch of keys. “He doesn’t know I’ve gone, Lovejoy. Give him those.”

His anguish was all the worse for being quietly veiled. I mean, I don’t understand how two blokes and all that. But love’s a pretty rare plant. In this life there’s nowt else—except antiques and they’re the same thing anyway. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, except I was upset. You can’t really believe the Sandys and Mels of this world, not really. Like, they’ve parted every four or five days, tantrums and sulks, as long as I’ve known them. But when any partners finally separate, there’s a terrible dearth. Almost as if two such transparent phoneys were really among the few genuines in the whole Eastern Hundreds.

“Mel, look,” I hated this. “How about you phone Sandy and maybe meet him in the Marquis of Granby?” It always worked before.

He was already firing the engine. I felt cold. “No, Lovejoy. It’s over.”

He had sunglasses on. We’d not had any sun all week. For a minute he said nothing, while I tried to think of some magic phrase to cure all this. I get desperate when things suffer.

He said, “You were kind, Lovejoy. So many aren’t, you know. True kindness leaves no place for gratitude.” He glanced around the barnyard. “It’s only a small token. You’ll do their gambado anyway. It’s your nature. But advice from a friend, if I may?”

“What?”

“For once, just this once, don’t help, Lovejoy. Not anyone. Friend or foe. Or you too’ll finish up baffled.” He meant don’t do what Troude wanted, now Sandy was his backer. “I’m at my auntie’s in Carlisle.” He hesitated, then smiled that terrible smile. “Can you take another word of advice?”

“Yes?”

He indicated the steps up to the small office he and Sandy shared. “Steal the Kirkpatrick. It’s the best piece left.”

“Steal?” I yelled indignantly after him as he drove out. “Steal? I’ve never stolen a single thing in my life! I’d not stoop so low…”

Gone. I heard the motor slow by the dairy, turn near the Congregational chapel. Its sound dwindled. Nothing. I looked at the forecourt. The jardinieres were gone. The lovely Roman terracotta in the window was gone. I was furious about what Mel’d said. For Christ’s sake! Cracking a malicious joke like that. Surely it was a joke? A sad attempt at humour as he’d driven out for the last time, to conceal his heartache? As long as he didn’t really mean it. I mean, what sort of a rat would rob his friends?

The forecourt was empty, except for me. Nobody about. I looked at the bunch of keys he’d given me. At the steps. At the For Sale notice. And thought. Kirkpatrick?

Cornwall Kirkpatrick was a stoneware potter. American, Illinois. He decorated his jugs and whatnot with cutting satire—snakes as politicians, with biting inscriptions saying how horrible they were. His fantasy urns and geographical pigs (I kid you not) make you sleepless, give you bad dreams. Skilful, but alarming. And very, very pricey. So rare, they’d buy a good month’s holiday any day of the week. I always sell them—give some other poor blighter the nightmares instead.

But to steal? From friends? That’s the action of a real gargoyle, a despicable cad.

Only to test the door handle, I went up the steps. That meant I had to try the keys, open the door. And have a quick look round, see the Kirkpatrick was still there. Only for security and all that, because you can’t be too careful. I found it in my hand, Mel’s Kirkpatrick jug. Criminal to leave it. I mean, clearly it needed looking after, right? I decided I’d better take it home. Not stealing. No, honest. Not genuinely stealing. Only, somebody had to care for it, right? So I wrapped it up and hid it in the Ruby’s boot, just so it wouldn’t get stolen. There are thieves everywhere these days.

Baff’s house was on the way, so I drove there, more by instinct than anything else, wondering how much I’d get for the Kirkpatrick jug. Only 1870s, but packed with potential. I felt truly heartbroken over Sandy and Mel, but notched an exhilarating twenty-two on the bypass, in a lucky wind. Omen?

Baff Bavington’s a breakdown man. He’s a lazy devil, is Baff. My brother used to say that lazy people aren’t lazy—they’re merely clever. Breakdowning is a way of nicking antiques from unsuspecting ladies who live alone. You can do it to elderly couples, too, but Baff never did—after one incident when some old geezer turned out to be a dead-shot colonel with a twelve-bore.

Sherry’s his missus. She used to help him out, for authenticity’s sake. Baffs standard trick was this: break down, engine boiling over or something, in the very gateway of some old dear’s house. Baff knocks—can he please have some water for his radiator? (Sherry smiling anxiously from the motor.) Baff takes the pan of water, while Sherry nips round the back and susses out the house. She slips a window catch, or inserts a sliver of comb into a lock to make it easier to pick. There’s even a spray you can get that makes a window impossible to close properly—I’d better not tell you its name, or you’ll all be at it.

That night, back comes Baff, cleans out your antiques and other valuables while you kip. Easy.

The boyos—real hard-liner antique robbers—despise breakdown merchants because police always have their number. Within an hour of waking up, the robbed old lady’s on the blower to the Plod. Who of course have a score of other reported breakdown-style thefts in the vicinity. Somebody always has the car’s description. And Baff’s. And Sherry’s. Who suddenly need alibis… et relentless cetera. No, the boyos want scams you can do unscathed and often. Breakdowners are the lazy antique thief’s theft. It’s also risky. Which is why Baff’s done time.

Sherry was grieving in her mother’s cottage, which is where she and Baff live. Mum’s their chief alibi, forever in court testifying to the innocence of her daughter and Baff. I knocked, went through the sordid courtesies folk use to ward off grief.

“You were a real friend to Baff, Lovejoy,” Sherry told me, sniffing. My friends were having a hell of a day. Was it just me?

“That’s true, right enough,” her mum said, dabbing her eyes fetchingly at the mirror. “You’ll miss Baff’s trade, Lovejoy.”

The ugly old bat showed all the grief of a road sign. A pro. And Sherry, a lovely plump woman with a penchant for old-fashioned hairstyles, scrolls on her forehead, was only going through a let’s-pretend sorrow, half an eye on a telly quiz show. She knew I knew, only too well. She hostesses with excessive zeal on the town bypass, between helping Baff’s breakdowner jobs. I discovered Sherry’s exciting pastime accidentally, when doing a night valuation for Big John Sheehan. The Ulsterman had taken a liking to some display silver at The Postern, a crude hotel of creaking antiquity. He’d told me to drainpipe in and suss the silver, see if it was (a) genuine, and (b) worth stealing. Everybody knew it was in three cabinets, second floor. That night, I’d started out to obey—only to step on two heaving fleshly protuberances in the darkness. Both turned out to be Sherry, plying her hostessly trade in a manner unorthodox and a mite unexpected. Next morning she’d sought me out, frantic lest I divulge all to Baff. I’d gone along, because women have hidden persuaders. Anyway, silence spared Baff heartache, right? But why was an idle sod like Baff—sorry, requiescat in pace —why was he doing an extra night job?

“I’ll see the lads have a whip-round, Sherry,“ I said gently.

Her face lit up, instantly shedding sorrow at the sound of monetary music. “You will? Oh, Lovejoy! That would be marvellous! I don’t know how I’m going to manage, what with…”

She petered out, pinkly remembering our first nocturnal encounter and its mutually beneficial consequences.

“Never mind.” Embarrassed, I made my farewells, paused at the door. Mum absently borrowed her daughter’s eye-liner. “Here, Sherry. Baff actually working, was he?”

“Baff?” Her mind reluctandy left thoughts of how much money the more sentimental antique dealers would chip in for her newly found widowhood. “Yes. He was doing a sea-front stall. They’d phoned him. Good money, Lovejoy. Of course,” she added hastily, in case word got back and diminished Baff’s friends’ generosity, “I haven’t had it yet.”

“Look,” I said. “Let me collect it for you. Where’d you say it was?”

She got the point instantly. “Selveggio Sea Caravans. On the Mentle Marina waterfront near the funfair.”

“Er, did Baff leave any antiques around, Sherry? Only, he owed me a couple of items…” He didn’t, but it was worth a try.

“No, Lovejoy. We’d had a run of bad luck lately. So many people have dogs and burglar alarms these days.”

“Never mind, love,” I said nobly. “Forget Baff owed me a thing.” I felt really generous, pardoning Baff’s non-existent debts to me.

Sherry came to see me off. She closed the door and stood on the step in the darkness.

“Lovejoy. I’m quite free now.” She straightened my jacket lapel—no mean feat—and smiled beguilingly. “It’s hard for me to accept. But you’ve no regular woman, have you? Maybe you and I could get together. I could pop round, see if you needed anything.”

“I’ll bring your money round later.” I bussed her, cranked the Ruby out of its moribundity, and chugged out of the tiny garden heading for reality.

This is half my trouble. I can cope with more or less anything, except with events that change in mid-stream. Like, here I was expressing my genuine sorrow over Baff’s mugging/killing, only to find myself propositioned by his bird who was more interested in hitching up with a replacement bloke and getting a few quid. It felt weird. Sandy and Mel actually separating, Baff getting done.

When I’m bewildered, I head for antiques and sanity. The auction called. My best-ever fake was back in town. But first, a fake historical interlude, at a genuine knight’s gathering.

Because I’d promised, I went to Sir Edward’s Event. I didn’t want to go. It’s near Long Melford. Every year they select some historical date by chucking dice, then re-enact the trades and village life of that particular year. The whole village is at it. They wear period garb, serve period-style food and drink on trestle-tables. They dance to reproduction musical instruments. It’s a bit too hearty for me, especially if they get things wrong. It’s still quite pleasant to see the children done up in a make-believe old schoolhouse, farriers shoeing horses with a travelling forge, all that.

The grounds at Sir Edward’s are given over to the Event, two whole days. There must have been three hundred people there, counting us visitors. Admission costs the earth; this year it was to raise gelt for Doc Lancaster’s unspeakable electronics that he tortures us with. A good cause, our luscious choirmistress Hepsibah told me, laughing, as she took my money. I wandered in among the mob, hoping nobody would see me slope off after a token grimace at the jolly scene. Enthusiasm has a lot to answer for.

At Pal’s joiner’s bench, though, I really stopped to really look. He had a table.

“Wotcher, Pal.” He’s an old geezer, does the woodwork scene every Event. “Rain held off, then, eh?”

“Thank God, Lovejoy. Want a genuine antique table, Anno Domini 1770?”

The table was lovely. I stared at it, worrisome bongs not happening in my chest. It was labelled Sideboard Table, Chippendale Type, c. 1770, with all manner of fanciful descriptive balderdash; from the home of a Titled Norfolk Gentleman… The surface got me, though.

“Genuine is it, Lovejoy?” Jodie Danglass, no less. Sir Edward’s Event was a burden for me; it was extraordinary for Jodie.

“Course it’s genuine,” Pal groused. He’s pleasant, until you differ with him on some opinion. “Think I’d kill myself doing a surface like that, do you?” He went on lathing a piece of wood, using a rigged-up sapling drill. That’s only a rope stretched from a stooping sapling to your instep. Grudgingly I watched him. Better skilled than me. “Borrowed it from Sir Edward’s Hall.”

Well, the local bigwig might have had a fake made by the original methods. But nowadays? Except…

“Are you all right, Lovejoy?” Jodie asked.

“Stop nagging.”

We went to get served by a little girl. Dilute mead, quite good. “That surface, love.” Perfect, with the sheen only the hand of man can create. “I’d heard somebody say last week they’d seen a mint Sheraton side table in the Midlands, the surface unflawed, perfect, original. I didn’t believe him. But for some craftsman still to be faking so good these days—”

“Looked genuine to me.”

She sounded quite indifferent. I nearly choked. Antique dealers think nothing of the things they’re supposed to know, understand, admire. I saw red. “Listen to me, you silly cow. See over there?” The little girls serving the mead had a kitchen table, virtually a plank of chipboard with four machine-made legs. “That’d take any nerk less than an hour to make, household drill and buffing pad. But that…?” I looked across to where Pal was pausing to light a fag. Somebody shouted a criticism, were cigarettes in period? He waved back apologetically, took no notice, grinned with an addict’s afront. I was to remember that grin, in far, far different circumstances.

“That?” she prompted. She looked as disturbed as I was, probably thinking how near she’d come to making an offer for it.

“You buy a log of mahogany, love.” I described its huge shape with my hands. “Not the forced spongy wood they import nowadays, but the slow-growing natural unforced trees you have to pay the earth for—if you can still find one in the raped wild forests. Then you—top dog, as they used to say—straddle the log over a saw-pit. Some poor sod—bottom dog—climbs down into the saw-pit. You get an enormous woodman’s curved two-handled log saw—itself a valuable antique, because nobody makes them now. Hour after hour, you saw the log lengthways to make a plank…”

It takes me like this, the shame, the ecstasy of antiques. I’m the only man living to have done the whole thing, start to finish. I couldn’t move for a week afterwards. I paid a fortune for seven stalwart farm lads to partner me on the saw-pit I’d dug in my garden wilderness. They’d given up, one after the other, and left calling me barmy. I’d slogged on, hands like balloons, bleeding and blistered.

“Then you take your sawn plank of mahogany. You plane it flat. Takes three days.” Jodie was looking at me, mesmerized. I could have swiped her one. Antique dealers and fakers think of automatic electric planers, gouging drills you work with a button while having coffee and a fag. I heard somebody shouting for me from over where the horses were. I yelled back a sod off, pressed on. “Then comes the hard part.”

They’d worked barefoot, mostly, those ancient cabinet-makers. All heroes to me. When the table’s surface was smooth as any hand-plane could make it, they’d got children—often their own —to beg or buy fragments of broken brick. The children ground the brick pieces to dust in a pestle and mortar. They’d then winnowed it, casting the dust up into the air.

“Coarser brick-dust particles fell first—resisting the air, see? The children, toddlers to seven-year-olds, caught it on bits of fustian, in a bowl, anything. The finer particles were caught separately.”

The bloke was still shouting. Torry from Beccles, pockets full of phoney silvers as usual. I rose to move away, sickened by my tale anyway. Jodie caught me. Her eyes were huge. “Wait, Lovejoy. The children?”

“No sandpaper in those days, Jodie. The maker smoothed it with brick-dust. I’ve done it. You rub the flat tabletop—coarse powder first. Your bare hands, to and fro along the wood’s grain, hour after hour.”

“But don’t your hands…?”

“Aye, love. They swell, blister. The skin shreds. They weep on to the dusty wood. The dust becomes a paste, of skin fragments, brick-dust, blister water, sweat, blood. Think how it must have been. Virtually naked at the finish, dripping pure sweat. But you kept going. You had to, or you and your children starved, literally.” My voice went bitter. “I had delusions at first. I would do it exactly as those ancients did. What a pillock! I lasted two hours. After a week’s rest, another two hours.”

My skin had peeled first, then blistered from my raw palms. I’d used my elbows. Then I’d stripped naked, and stood on the tabletop with bare feet, shuffling the brick-dust up and down the wood.

“See why it’s special, having a genuine Sheraton table? A modern Formica job’s machined in a trice, virtually untouched by human hand. But the heartwood of an antique table’s still got the craftsman in it. His blood, sweat, flesh, it’s there in the living wood. Is it any wonder a genuine antique feels different? Modern furniture is chemical-covered chipboard. The real antique is a person. It’s a friend living with you.”

“That’s… lovely.” But she’d started out to say something very different. Well, truth takes you different ways.

“Know how long it took me, Jodie? Sixteen weeks, to repeat three days’ work of a seventeenth-century man.” I tried to give her a grin, defuse the talk. Her face was all alarm. “I had to keep resting to battle on. Pathetic. You women have it easy, love. The work of your sisters three centuries ago is still within your reach. Look around.” Across a patch of grass two milkmaids were hand-milking some Jersey cows, admired by a small crowd. Other girls were washing clothes in the fountain, beating garments on stones. People wandering among the stalls were laughing, joking. Oh, so very merry. “You women can still give it a go any time, cook, wash, bake, skivvy for fifteen hours a day. You’d be tired, aye, but could still congratulate yourself on how marvellously you’d relived your grandma’s routine.”

“And you?”

Answering took a long time. “Ashamed, Jodie. I’d thought myself fit. I knew what to do, God knows. But the long-dead craftsmen defeated me.” I looked across at the village church. “Yon graveyard’s full of the old bastards. Any one sleeping there could wake today, step out, and produce brilliance like us modern clever clogs couldn’t do in a month of Sundays. Admitting that is the shame of my life. It does something to a man. See, love. A woman can always claim she’s prettier than the Queen of Sheba, that Lady Hamilton’s hair was a mess and her own isn’t. We blokes have more absolute comparisons. And we lose out every single time, to those that’ve gone before.”

“Can nobody do it nowadays?”

“That sideboard table Pal has on show there is a fake, Jodie. But it’s been done using the old methods. Must have killed somebody.” I snorted a half-laugh. “Until now I’d thought I was the only bloke alive who’d ever made a genuine fake. Get somebody able to repeat the old processes nowadays, you’d be a millionairess by teatime.”

“Then why don’t they, Lovejoy?”

“Because the old methods use up people, not gadgets.” Well, I should complain. I’m the one who always argues people first, things second.

That is all I want to say, for now. We saw Sir Edward tottering towards us. He’s a boring old devil, so I left Jodie and went to watch the morris dancers. That’s something else I’m no good at, either.