Paid and Loving Eyes

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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Good heavens! At last!” Almira cried from the terrace after breakfast.

I too expressed pleased surprise, the sort you see in those terrible old 1950s B films where rep-theatre acting glossed all emotions into mannerism. Being a genuine phoney’s easy.

Marc drove Almira’s motor up to the house and alighted with a flourish. He prattled something about having fought the garage to a standstill, demanding Madame’s voiture back immediatement. She was thrilled. I pretended I genuinely thought it had been driven from a nearby town instead of from Marc’s cottage two hundred yards off. Marc retired, proud with achievement.

We beamed assurance across the coffee cups. I played along. I mean we said practically everything. Almira had already wondered sadly how dear Cissie was this morning, and how Paulie was bearing up. What a pity there was no telephone! This odd nagging feeling returned, that I was being led towards a distant but quite safe destination. Everything above board, nothing hidden. Great, eh? Lucrative, with Troude’s assurances that money would flow in.

“Cissie told me about Paulie’s investments in an antiques project, darling,” she finally said, doing her bit. “You promised to help.”

“Mmmmh,” I concurred, doing mine.

She was ravishing, today in lemon yellow. “It’s Philippe Troude’s project, isn’t it?” She gave a half-laugh. “Well, with Monsieur Troude arranging everything, nothing can possibly go wrong. He’s a billionaire, Lovejoy!”

Over those curly bread things Madame Raybaud seemed to think were breakfast Almira seemed excited, under her thin disguise of transitory grief for Cissie. It’d be today. No woman can hide the delight of anticipation. It was there in her eyes, her moist lips, her showy manner. I’ve already told you about fraud. Remember the crop markings? And how that little fraud had become legitimate, even founded a whole new science? The only hassle came when it intruded into Poncho’s fraud, which had itself spawned other new frauds…

And guess what! A message came! A messenger on a Donk-type bike rode up, solemnly handed Almira an envelope, got his chit signed and offed.

“Not bad news I hope, dwoorlink?” I said anxiously as I could on half a grotty bun and a swig.

Almira read the note. “It’s from Paulie, darling. Philippe Troude is here. Can we meet them today, talk over the arrangements. Thank goodness it’s not bad news about Cissie!”

“Thank goodness!” I agreed. How lucky Almira’s motor was back in time, I thought but did not say. But as long as antiques loomed I’d be happy. You can trust antiques, the crossroads of loving, murder, deceit, forgery and corruption.

“Now that we have the motor, dwoorlink,” I suggested, knowing the answer, “have we time to look for an antique shop?”

“What a good idea!” she said brightly, telling herself she thought I’d never ask.

We hit the road. The keys were in the ignition. No concealment of direction, no angst over questions. Lovely chatter, pleasant talk about how she really admired the views, how much land France seemed to have, how much prettier France was than the Low Countries, don’t you think, darling? Which told me I wasn’t ever coming back to Madame Raybaud’s domain, or the shack by the waterside with the hunter in the woods.

Through quite mountainous countryside—though goose-pimples look hilly if you live in East Anglia—Almira drove with ease and accomplishment. Driving on the Continent you have to think hard every inch because they drive there on the wrong side of the road. Nothing wrong in that; it’s just their way. But Almira’s expertise showed she wasn’t new to these cack-handed roads. Nor did she need to inspect the signs, just casually notched them off.

Almira was quite at home here, thank you.

We avoided the big national highways. It seemed to me there’d only to come some sign promising a D, A or N road for Almira to cruise off down some rural snaker. I didn’t mind. Nice to see open air, towns and that. I felt the odd familiarity of a newcomer to France. Maybe it’s the names. Villiers I remember, because there was once a Villiers engine, now highly collectible on old motorbikes. And a river called Anglin, very appropriate unless I’ve got it wrong. We drove forty miles, then stopped for coffee at a tavern. Hills rose in the distance. No, Almira couldn’t tell me which they were, but there was a map somewhere in the glove compartment, darling…

See? No secrecy, no possible subterfuge. Mrs. Almira Galloway was clearly nothing to do with the Troude scheme financed by Paulie et al. She was just along for the ride, so to speak.

As we talked and saw people roll up, stop for a chat, smoke and coffee, then trundle off, I prepared my sentence. And asked the serving lass if there was a ville nearby avec un antiques magasin. I’d have been quarter of an hour disentangling her swift joyous reply but for Almira, who cooed why didn’t I ask, for heaven’s sake? And drove me six more miles. To heaven.

“There’s always one antique shop, Lovejoy,” Almira was pacifying me for the eleventh time, getting narked like they do when you ask quite a reasonable question. “Don’t keep on.”

“We should drive to the next town,” I grumbled. “Happen the bird got her wires crossed.”

“We’ve hardly looked!” she was saying, when I stopped and felt a bit odd.

The town was hardly that. Set among small fields, it was on a little plain, a river not far off. It seemed amateur, somehow, but didn’t care. Houses of that peculiar Frenchness, dry ground, trees indolent, unlike our busy East Anglian trees that are always hard at it—God knows what “it” is, but they always seem to be giving it a go, stirring the air to a brisk breeze. Maybe it’s our skies, never still. A few cars, a horse and trap, a lone flag proclaiming nationality. The windows of houses always look strangest to me in a new country. Flowers competing on opposite sides of the main street.

“This way, love.”

We crossed the main street. Three or four shops, a small restaurant, some men drinking outside at tables under an awning. A lane led up from the thoroughfare. I felt the oddness from that direction, towards the church. Less than a score yards along stood a yard, with a bow-fronted shop boasting antiques.

Remember this, for money’s sake.

French furniture either goes ape in fashions so distinct from ours that your mind boggles—rococo chairs so ornate you sometimes have to work out where your bum goes. Like the fashion to implant floral decorative Sèvres porcelain plaques in the surfaces of cabinets about 1774 on, glorious but overwhelming unless you care for those horrendously smiling masks of women and lions that ornament the corners and frieze. Or it does the other thing, goes individual with a strange elegance that I love more. Oddly, the great furniture-makers were often not French at all, though they sometimes learned their craft there. Like David Roentgen, who sold in Paris but worked in Neuwied.

I stared. In the yard was a small converted Citroen truck. I reached to uncover the bureau more, but the odd feeling died. I let go, and turned in disappointment to find a diminutive bloke standing next to me. Gave me a jolt.

“Er, bonjour, Monsieur,” I said, “Je desire pour regarder votre antiques.”

He sighed a long French sigh and shot a mouthful of exasperation at Almira, who explained while I wandered to where my sensation grew stronger. It’s exactly like that hot-cold game of children’s parties. You know when you’re standing next to the real thing, even if it’s only a mildewed crate.

“… need, Lovejoy,” Almira was saying.

“How much? Combien pour acheter?” I told him.

He gauged me. He was the slyest man I’d ever seen. Even his direct appraisal was an oblique squint-eyed effort that never quite made your face. Then, when you’d finally given up and turned aside, you’d find his quizzical shifty eyes trawling after you, taking you in. He’d have made a cracking spy.

“This is not for sale,” Almira said after a voluble interrogation. “The bureau on the car is.”

“Je desire acheter le contents à l’interieur.”

He asked Almira a question.

“Non,” I said. I knew that flic and agent were police-laden words, and he’d gone even shiftier. “Mais je… aime beaucoup what is inside, Monsieur.” I remembered I hadn’t a bean.

Almira told him I was an antiques collector. He brightened shiftily, and tried to pull me back to the piece on the truck.

“Pas the tromperie fake,” I said. “Mais le vrai un.” Just in case he managed to sly his way round this syntax, I added, “Le vrai un. Dans votre box.”

He tried telling me all sorts about the priceless magnificent late eighteenth-century bureau, just arrived on his truck, but I wouldn’t have it. At last, slyly he undid his crate—already the screws were out—and slyly exposed a fire screen laid in the bottom. I went weak with delight.

Sometimes, mixing styles can be so dazzling that even the simplest object becomes glorious. I mean, can anything be simpler than a fire screen? Anything rectangular that stands up will more or less do the job, right? But Georges Jacob in the last quarter of the eighteenth century made a meal of rectangles. He married the new classical style with the older natural period. Another foreigner — Burgundian—he was a riot with the Parisians, and even did a brisk export trade to posh gentry in England. It was good enough to eat. The screen itself was slightly arched gilded wood, carved with sphinxes, arrows, twists on the support columns, cornucopias on the feet. Little garlands and ribboned top, all carved with unbelievable skill, showed just what they could do in those hellish workshops.

“Est-ce-que à vous, Monsieur?” I asked as best I could when breath let me.

He was ruminating slyly at my response, said something shifty to Almira.

“He owns it, Lovejoy,” she said, staring. “But it’s not for sale.”

“Everything else on the planet is,” I countered. “Ask him.”

The piece smiled up at me from its bed of polystyrene grot in the crate. The screen’s panel was a wonder, embroidery pristine as the day it was finished, florets in plum on a beige ground. Lovely. Some people say antiques are just inert materials. They’re not. Antiques know what we think of them. Forgeries don’t have feelings, but sure as God the real things do.

“… Lovejoy.”

Almira interrupting. “Eh?”

“He says no deal. Buy the bureau on the truck, or nothing.”

“Tell him to stuff it.”

And I went outside to the car. She stayed behind to say no, ta, to Sly. We left, me burned up at having to part from that wonder. I could hardly speak until we’d driven out of the place.

“That fire screen was magic,” I told her, courageously not weeping. “The bureau on the truck was a copy, modern, of Roentgen’s work. He was famous for his stupendous gliding parts—drawers, doors, rests—and marquetry. He’s become more faked than most Old Masters, especially here on the Continent.”

“What is the attraction, Lovejoy?” She was driving, perplexed. I sighed. You can’t tell some folk, even if you’re crazy about them.

“Roentgen’s skill was so terrific that even the makers of automata—you know those little working models?—got him to make their models.”

“So? Couldn’t you buy that fake bureau, and make more money on it than the genuine fire screen?”

“Of course.” You have to be patient. “But the antique is alive and beautiful. The other’s a load of dead planks.”

She was exasperated. “But profit, Lovejoy!” Like I’d never heard of that old thing.

“Bugger profit,” I said crudely.

It was several miles before she spoke. We were pulling in to a town car park, quite a sizeable place with Paulie and Philippe Troude just arriving at a cafe and the lovely Monique preceding them in.

Almira said, “Lovejoy. Are antiques, well, real people?”

Women can surprise you, even when you think they’ve run out of ideas. “That’s right, dwoorlink. I only wish that real people were real people.”

I made it sound a joke. But I was only thinking how curious it was that a rare genuine antique like that Georges Jacob screen had turned up in a dump like that village shop, with a superb valuable fake like the Roentgen bureau in the same yard. So I smiled and said I loved her. She smiled back and said she loved me. We were sickeningly sweet.

“Paulie and Cissie will be so grateful, Lovejoy,” she told me. “I’ll go across with you.”

Carefully not holding hands, we crossed briskly. No antique shops in sight, so I didn’t care. I wish I’d been more discriminating. It’s foolish to obey women, because they’re usually wrong, but what can you do?

Paul emerged as we went in. He tried to reach for my hand to say so long. I passed him with an out-of-my-way look. A wimp’s a wimp because he’s determined to stay one. I’d no patience.

“Where to?” I asked Almira. Except that she was no longer with me. I looked round. She’d gone. And Paul.

“Monsieur.” A waiter ushered me through a scatter of diners, and from then on it was no game. Couldn’t expect it to be, because antiques never are. But I felt utterly at peace, so serene. Antiques, even if they aren’t mine, are the breath of life. I had to be near them at any price, and felt close.