The Grace in Older Women

  For Sarah Kate, Jack and Nooni, and for Matthew John, with love from Volzania

  Thanks Susan

  To Kuan Ti, ancient Chinese god of war, pawnshops, and antique dealers,

  this book is humbly dedicated

  Lovejoy

  1

  'Will they see us?' she whispered.

  My blood went cold in panic. 'Who? Who?'

  'Anybody.'

  Who else? She gripped my hand. The forest was silent. Not a bird cheeped, not a leaf crackled. 'We're alone, for God's sake!' I tried to make it sound romantic. 'Er, dwoorlink.' I'd nearly called her Mary. She was Beth.

  We slithered down the slope, leaves skittering.

  'I haven't got long,' she whispered.

  Women always worry about what comes next. It would have narked me, but I was desperate for her. We sat, lay, then sprawled. Her husband was due back at twenty past.

  Her breasts were cool. Odd, that. On the hottest days, women's breasts are cool. The sun just made it through the trees, dappling the undergrowth. The moans started so loud that I tried to cover her mouth with my hand, but she shook her face free and whispered that it was me, not her, making all the noise. It was beautiful as ever, the most wonderous ecstasy mankind can imagine. I loved her from the bottom of my heart, in the most perfect of all unions.

  Afterwards we dozed in that post-lust slumber. I was awakened by her licking my mouth and eyes, asking if she'd been good. That's another puzzle. They always worry, as if there are grades of bliss. I told her she was superb. 'You were paradise.'

  'Honestly, Lovejoy?' she said.

  She was thrilled. I was thrilled she was thrilled, because it was touch and go whether she'd sell me her Bilston enamels that I craved. I know love, if nothing else.

  'Darling,' she said mistily, then gathered her clothes to her exquisite breasts in alarm. 'Shhh! Lovejoy! What's that?'

  'Squirrel?' Did squirrels make a noise, growl or something?

  ‘It was a click.' She started flinging on her clothes.

  Admiringly, I watched. Women's clothes are complicated, and they manage them with grace.

  'A twig,' I explained. I’m good at nature. It's a beaver.'

  She darted frantic looks for marauding husbands or, even worse, neighbours.

  'Stupid!' she hissed. 'You don't get beavers here! Get dressed! Someone's coming!'

  So? If people had any decency at all they'd politely ignore us. There wasn't anybody, of course. Women are scared witless of gossip. In three seconds flat I was my usual scruffy self: crumpled trousers, holed socks, shoes soled courtesy of Kellogg's cardboard, shirt with one perilous button, jacket frayed at cuff and hem.

  'I mustn't be late, Lovejoy.'

  'Right, right.' Women are always late, even if the clock says they're not. Dreading being late's their thing.

  We tiptoed from the scene, gradually walking further and further apart as we approached the path from Fordingham. By the time we reached the old church we were clearly strangers, coincidentally strolling through the woods on a bright warm day. The only giveaway was Beth brushing imaginary leaves from her skirt every two yards. She reached the ancient churchyard where she'd parked her motor, drove off without a word. It's no good being indignant, but you can see what I mean. They always worry about what comes next, when the present moment is the danger. I should have remembered that.

  At the old pond I paused. The path across Lofthouse's fields was clear of cattle. Nobody, except a girl coming from round the side of our disused church. Smart, colourful in a bright peach frock. I was tempted to try to walk with her, but she angled away towards the distant manor house. Oh, well. But the footpath wasn't littered with outraged bulls, and the chance was too good to miss.

  In my ignorance I took it as a good omen, and plodded on towards the village at peace with the world, thinking of Bilston enamels. I'd only met Beth a week since, when she'd talked to the Village Society on 'Small Antiques for the Home'. I'd gone along for a laugh, and been stunned when she'd shown, voice wobbling nervously, a genuine Bilston. My chest had thrummed and gonged so hard I'd almost collapsed in my chair. She'd left before I could shove through during the wine-and-wad session afterwards.

  The day after, I'd caught her at the supermarket, having followed her. I made stilted conversation, I'd enjoyed her talk, antiques being me and all that.

  'Oh, you're Lovejoy!' she'd said, colouring. 'I've heard about you from - ah. I didn't realize I was speaking to the learned.'

  'Me?' I laughed a gay throwaway laugh. 'No, just interested.'

  And went on from there: the glimpse of my deep inner yearning, honest admiration for her showing through, letting myself be drawn in despite my determined resistance to her allure. She'd invited me to her bungalow, shown me the Bilstons, fascinated when I all but keeled over at being so near genuine antiques. She'd got a mind-boggling eleven.

  Don't laugh, because enamelling is one of the most difficult arts in history. Think a minute, and it's obvious why it must be so hard to do. Painting some metal with an opaque glass colour and heating it sounds easy, but you just try it. Never mind that the ancient Etruscans, the Chinese, even the early Britons all had a go. Alfred the Great's lovely Somersetshire jewel - he ordered it in AD 887 -looks a cinch, but the fake copy I once did drove me insane, took five months, and cost burnt fingers, eight metal splinters, and a fortune in materials. Adding insult, a charity woman talked me out of it for the Alder Hey Children's Hospital, which only goes to show how cruel they can be. And if you're going to try it, remember what the old enamellers used to preach before the spray method came in: you can't do it on big flat areas, only on curved - hence their liking for enamel miniatures - and the classic maxim that every speck of dust leaves a hole in the colour.

  Bilston was the enamel Mecca. Once, collectors only thought Battersea. Now, the world is obsessed with Bilston and greedy for its enamelled plaques on silver and gold. If you too are crazy you should learn the Bilston colours, like they used a near peagreen from 1759 on. But the one colour that sends collectors demented is the famous 'English pink', as Continentals named the elusive, gentle, semi-rose hue that first saw light about 1785 and blows your mind.

  Beth's small gold-mounted pendant of flowers and leaves had it, the chrome-tin complex, brilliant as the day it was made. Lovely, lovely. It brought tears to my eyes, just thinking of how unfair life was, giving pristine jewels to an undeserving lass like Beth when they should have been mine.

  Almost overcome, I reached my cottage in its overgrown garden. An envelope was on the bare flagstone in the porch. I brewed up, threw the letter aside. I recognized the handwriting. It would be the same old dear from Fenstone Old Rectory saying the same old thing:

  Dear Sir,

  Would you be able, for a small consideration, to speak with our parson concerning a fund-raising matter? I have been recommended to you by a person of your acquaintanceship, namely Mr. Saughton Joyceson of Peckfold, Hertfordshire, who testifies to your honesty and integrity, and to your concern for worthwhile Causes.

  Thanking you in anticipation,

  Yours faithfully,

  Juliana Witherspoon (Miss)

  It was the tenth begging letter I'd received from her in a fortnight. Church fund-raising, when I was broke? One odd thing, though. I retrieved the envelope. No postage stamp, no frank, so delivered in person. I'd have to watch out. If the geriatric herself had come to haunt the village's leafy lanes I'd better treat her as yet another predator, among bailiffs and servers of summonses.

  Tea up. I took it out and sat on my low wall, which I'd finish one day, and swigged it with some jam and bread, but the robin and those little dipping brown birds came cadging so I only got half. I'd no more nuts
for the bluetits. Let them go without for once, serve the thieving little swine right. They'd had my milk twice this week. They rip the foil cap so the bottles fill with rain. I get diluted rainwater while they get the cream. Life's just one damned thing after another.

  2

  Things are never what they seem. And I include every single thing. I could give you a million proofs, but Jox proves it best.

  For a while I hung about the cottage. Its peace and tranquillity got me down so I hitch-hiked to town. There's a tradition in the village that anybody waiting by the chapel bus stop deserves a lift, but I don't trust to fortune. Women give me a lift if nobody's watching. Blokes only want to bully me into some parish council or club or sell me a secondhand motor as dud as my own. I always start walking.

  Imagine my astonishment when a motor stopped. For a second I rejoiced, but it was only Jox. I got in with misgivings.

  'It didn't come off, Lovejoy.' Not even a good day, hello.

  'How do, Jox. It didn't, eh?'

  He groaned, slipped his motor into first and pulled away. 'I had to hock my Jaguar.'

  He pawns one of his three grand vehicles, so I must sympathize? 'Hard luck, Jox.' I'm pathetic.

  'This is my brother's.' He nodded soberly. 'Charges me hiring fees. Tax, y'see.'

  'Good heavens,' I said gravely, baffled.

  There was more of this, all the way past St Peter's on North Hill. I won't go on, because Jox is the loser. Note that definite article: the, not just any old loser. Champion loser, is Jox. To realize the extent of his gift for catastrophe you have to know his background. It is formidable, for Jox was born rich, handsome, gifted, brilliant. He's only twenty-eight. He looks about ninety, on a good - meaning not specially disastrous - day.

  Born into a titled family that owned (past tense, for Jox's calamitous skill is congenital) half of Lincolnshire, he went to famed schools, was tutored by genuises, was an international athelete at swimming, hurdling and other sports of mind-bending dullness, gained a double first (whatever that is) at Cambridge University, married spectacularly some glamorous titled lass, got a spectacular divorce . . . Couldn't fail, right?

  Wrong. Jox became an antique dealer.

  With a residue of gelt, Jox got a small antique shop not far from Dragonsdale, between here and Fenstone. Rural to the point of somnolence. He could have done well - tourists on the way to John Constable's village, Gainsborough's house, pilgrims to Walsingham, all that. But Jox is jinxed. His fortunes plummeted, everything he touched turning to gunge. Like everybody who wants to 'settle down and run a small antique shop', he bought wrong, bid for fakes at every auction in the Eastern Hundreds, accumulated more dross than a town dump. And spent, and spent.

  Until he was broke.

  Then he borrowed, and spent. Finally getting the hint that the antiques trade was grimsville, Jox opened a small restaurant. It failed, gastroenteritis being what it is. His wildlife scheme ended when the local fox hunt found some ancient parchment that barred him. Those mediaeval monks had simply guessed Jox was on his way.

  His real estate firm died when property developments crashed on account of a series of ancient footpaths somebody discovered. See what I mean? Folk who have everything just don't have it. The latest thing was this orchestra.

  'Nobody wanted to play, eh, Jox?' I guessed shrewdly.

  He almost wept, cursed at a little lad on a bicycle and honked his horn. Not a lot of patience, Jox.

  ‘Play?' he cried, utter grief. 'It would have been superb! Like they did at Stoke-by-Nayland, that occasional choir and orchestra! Imagine playing in Fenstone's old St Edmund's Church. Like the Makings at Snape - a musical Mecca!'

  'Ta for the lift, Jox.' I tried to get out. We'd reached Benbow's auction room. I was fed up with Jox.

  'That bastard of a parson scuppered me, Lovejoy.' I swear tears filled his eyes. Well, money does that.’

  'Wouldn't lend his church?'

  'Fenstone parish council refused.'

  Tough, Jox.' I shook his hand off, made the pavement.

  'It's that bloody village, Lovejoy. Ever since I set foot . . .' He shouted for me to hold on. 'Oh, Love joy. A ceremony tomorrow night, okay? Seven o'clock, the castle.'

  'Can't, Jox.' I hate his catchpenny scams. Tourists and other maniacs adore them.

  'Money, Lovejoy? And a meal?'

  Grub? I'm pathetic, but hunger rules when your belly's empty. Mine gets emptier than anybody's. 'Castle, seven.'

  He was still bleating as he pulled away. See what I mean, appearances? In Jox, you see a rich, educated, clever, sophisticated, talented geezer who couldn't help but succeed. The truth? Gloom and despond.

  There was an element of truth in what he said, though. Before Fenstone, Jox was on top of the world. After, crump. It was decidedly odd. Maybe the place didn't suit him. I'm one of those who really does believe that some houses, streets, hamlets, countries even, are simply wrong for you. Like people, in a way. The place knows you're not right for it, and tries to tell you so. If you've any sense you listen, make a polite apology to the house or village concerned, and exit smiling. Otherwise . . . Well, I'm not one to get spooked by haunting thoughts. The least said the better. Moral: if a place doesn't like you, zoom.

  Jox was daft to keep up appearances. A stiff upper lip is fine when you're building empires, but in personal life it only makes you look daft and talk funny.

  Aye, Jox is definite proof that appearances lie. Things aren't ever what they seem.

  Look at Queen Victoria. She was sober, frosty, sombre, right? Well, no. She was nothing of the kind. Victorian people wanted her to be like that, set her up in their minds just so. But it is on record that she shoved guards aside at a Mulready exhibition, the better to thrill over that artist's 'scandalously realistic' nudes, with their disproportionately tiny hands but luscious bodies. You don't hear much about William Mulready these days, but the Victorians knew lust better. Thackeray called him ‘His Majesty KING MULREADY', above all the rest. And I know I keep on about the merriest grin ever photographed - on the lovely wrinkled face of the old Queen Empress rolling in the aisles at some drollery.

  And look at Einstein. Everybody's perfect scientist, right? Not really. The reappraisal joke is that MC squared means M for Misogynist and C for Cheat. Or some other things beginning with C. A swine to his family - including his shunned mentally sick youngest son, Eduard, and his illegitimate daughter Lieserl who the saintly Einstein pretended never even existed - he groped and ravished his way through fawning physics groupies all his life.

  It isn't just people, meaning all of us, who prove my theory that everything's not what it seems. In the midsummer of 1993, the United Nations Human Rights Convention, presumably in the interests of human rights, barred. . . guess who? Only the most peaceable bloke on earth, the Dalai Lama. Wherever you look, preconceptions shatter. Stern old Isle of Man gave women the vote in 1881, long before even New Zealand got round to it. The Japanese Emperor Akihito, bastion of Japanese culture, prefers Chinese food. Constantine the Great, the first and holiest Christian emperor, wasn't. You wouldn't want to meet the likes of him in a dark alley, for the holy Constantine was lethal. He murdered Crispus, his own son, then his brother-in-law, little nephew, drowned his second wife in her bath . . . And the impression is that sharks in Australia's blue waters have killed millions. They haven't. Their total is 182, since records began when an Aborigine lady was eaten off New South Wales in 1791. And peaceful ancient East Anglia's villages aren't so peaceful or stable as they used to be. Why, look at that place Jox mentioned. Fenstone, hamlet of pestiferous Juliana Witherspoon (Miss), is in decline. Its population is dwindling fast, post office closed from atrophy, young people moving away, parishes merging, houses unbelievably standing empty. And Tinker, my oppo, whose antennae for antiques are worth any amount of electronics, and who does mundane (but not servile) jobs for me, passed through Fenstone itself last St Pumpkin's Day to pick up some antiques from a church robbery that I was brokering for some
lass. He told me it was like a ghost village. No wonder the survivors were holding out their begging bowls.

  Somebody was asking me something.

  ‘Eh? Oh, wotch, Addie.'

  She stood smiling, tried to take my arm and propel me somewhere. I shook her off gently, which takes some resolve, seeing I covet Adelaide Allardyce more than most. Her husband is a security man.

  A born misanthropist, even now he was waiting in his car. As if people like me can't be trusted, the swine.

  'Come and see this, Lovejoy. We're all agog about it.'

  'It?'

  ‘A colander. Two proddies came peering at it.'

  A proddie is somebody who goes ahead of an antiques road show, which is a group of 'antiques experts' that travels from town to village, city to hamlet, offering to value (free of charge!) any antiques you might bring from your attic. They are loosely described as honest, and claim to act in your very best interests. Ahead of them barnstorm their proddies, putting up posters, bleating enthusiasm on local radio, flagging newspapers, stirring up eagerness. If you think of it, the proddies have to get us all searching our cellars for antiques, otherwise they'd get the sack. Their nickname is synonymous with unscrupulous.

  'This way. Item 98, think it is.'

  There's no point in hurrying through an auction viewing day. I take my time, drift, feeling the love that emanates from the few antiques hiding among the crud. There's always one beautiful antique, take my word for it. For always read every single time. Don't say I didn't warn you. If you go to a viewing day and see only an appalling mess of junk, and depart seething at time wasted cursing me for a fibber, then you've missed it. Serves you right for being unable to hear love shrieking in your earhole.

  'Slowdown.'

  Addie tutted impatiently. 'You amble, Lovejoy.'

  Women are great at impatience. It's not their fault. They're simply born with it. For me, hurrying is a terrible waste of all the seconds in between. Amble if you've a mind to. Don't gawp, ogle, rubberneck your way among the mangles, cupboards, flower stands, bureaux, old desks and boxes of decrepit toys. Looking never does much for me. It's feel that detects love. Simple as that. Eagle eyesight can't do it. Nor can those cunning electronic devices that folk carry about these days to peer microscopically at veneer or vaporize old paint.