Moonspender Read online

  This story is humbly dedicated to the memory of the ancient Chinese patron saints Liu Chin-tin and Tsui Tsung-yuan, who protect from poverty any scribbler who dedicates a tale in their memory.

  Lovejoy

  A story for Ian McShane, Richard and Yvonne, Susan. And the Coven for kindness and help.

  MOONSPENDER

  1

  This story begins where I'm making love to an ancient Chinese vase, on gangster's orders, watched by eleven point two million viewers. But first, how to sell stolen hankies, from poverty, in the rain.

  By evening the crowds of shoppers had thinned. The wet snuffed daylight off the Lion Walk spire, leaving me on the glistening square while women battled pushchairs into the rain. Those old Victorian lamps would have imbued the scene with a romantic opalescence. As it was, our town council now brittle us to death with a neon glare that hurts your eyes. Daft, like everything modem. I'm an antique dealer so should know.

  "Genuine Irish linen hankies," I warbled. People hurtled past. "Hankies. Genuine Lancashire," I tried. Prams zoomed. Where has compassion gone? I honestly wish people would reform. I'll even reform myself when I can get a minute.

  "What's this tramp cost, Mel, dear?"

  Just my luck. I groaned aloud. Sandy was there, smiling wickedly with Mel, his morose friend. Sandy carried a rotating silver umbrella. Bells and minilanterns dangled from each spoke, the interior shedding a roseate glow on his magenta eyelashes. He suddenly screamed.

  "Ooooh! It's not a tramp! It's Lovejoy!"

  "Push off, Sandy," I said. It's only friends who embarrass, never enemies. Ever noticed that?

  "How much are your rags, Lovejoy?" Sandy prodded them with a finger. Cerise and ivory gloves, I observed, each digit with an external opal ring.

  "Six for a quid, Sandy." I hated the hope in my voice.

  "Don't, Sandy," Mel said. "They'll be stolen."

  "Seven." I wouldn't grovel, but my voice went, "Eight?"

  They moved away, Sandy's high heels clacking. Today's motif was a miniver fur soprano cape. He looked ridiculous. I thought, cop this, and called, "Sandy. Your handbag's horrible." It was a fluorescent yellow diamante.

  He halted, stricken, then burst into tears and ran. Mel yelled, "There. Lovejoy! See what you've done!"

  "Sorry," I shouted after the weird pair. "Only joking."

  Jo was by the bread shop. She looked as jubilant as I felt, but drier. "How's it g-g-g-going, Lovejoy?" she said, shivering as a gust caught her legs.

  "Great, Jo. They're genuine silk, see?"

  She crossed over. "You've only s-s-sold four. I saw."

  "Five," I said indignantly. "Well, nearly five." Milking the public's finer feelings is bottling fog.

  "Nearly five's f-f-f-four, Lovejoy. Cuppa char?"

  Jo's a good lass. Her stutter's a pity. Probably our town's best prostitute, though opinions vary. No statistician's yet applied himself to the problem. Should be a good Ph.D. in that for some willing student. Jo's been very good to me off and on. And I've nearly been good to her.

  "Here, Jo," I said. "How much is cat food?"

  She came over, hopefully doing her walk, but our football team had lost three-nil and the passing lads were all unmerry.

  "Is that y-y-y-yours, Lovejoy? F-f-f-feed it scraps."

  Toffee had adopted me two days ago. I'd kept it between my ankles for shelter since the drizzle started. It's black, with a caramel chin. I'd had hell of a row with the driver on the village bus, who wanted me to pay. For a cat. The fascist swine. I ask you.

  "Scraps have run out." I felt myself go red.

  "C-c-c-come on. I can't s-s-s-stand all this pathos." She led the way. I said a come on to Toffee, and we made Woody's caff without loss of life, though the traffic tried.

  Woody's is a nosh bar in our town's Arcade. The grub is famed among East Anglia's few survivors for running contrary to all known dietary wisdoms. Woody's Dining Emporium is the home of cholesterol, the oppidum of saturated fats. The dense fog starts corrosion where acid rain leaves off. Even the furniture looks riddled with additives. Among it all was Woody, coughing fag ash indiscriminately into custard, chips, sizzling bacon.

  A cheer of derision rose as we entered. Antique dealers, using the term loosely, gather here.

  "Wotcher, Lovejoy. How's business?"

  "Fine, Podge." We found a table, Jo settling with a sigh. Podge Howarth is a tiny ginger-haired bloke into Georgian furniture. I like him, though he's barmy. He actually built his own motor car, one of these tiny hatchbacks that expands into a hostelry by judicious tinkering.

  Two other blokes were with Podge, just leaving. I said hello with a nod. Ollie Hennessey's a neat compact individual who runs a supermarket; collects Civil War weaponry. He gives me day jobs at peak times like Christmas and August holidays. Me and schoolchildren restock his supermarket's shelves, all illegal labor, of course. Clipper, who was with him, was a surprise because I didn't know they were friends. Clipper's a big beefy man, as thick as he is tall. He's a phony gypsy, lives in caravans with a team of roughs. They work housing estates doing resprays of dubious motor cars. As always, Clipper carried a bag that clinked. We all smiled knowingly. Tell you more about this trio later.

  A large woolly man whaling into a Woody's fry-up gave a laugh at my name, mouth open so we could all admire his masticated calories.

  "Lovejoy!" he roared, face going puce. "What a name!"

  My weak grin encouraged him, because he made another couple of remarks as Jo ordered for us. She told Woody she wanted some milk in a saucer and some fish for Toffee. She's really nice. Embarrassed, I muttered that I'd owe her.

  "Don't be silly, Lovejoy," she scolded. "What's the sense of getting soaked when you could be having a warm drink?"

  I put my tray of sodden handkerchiefs under my chair. Toffee sat between my feet. I'd never had a cat before and wondered, was this a unique moggie, or your run-of-the-mill standard model?

  "Here, Jo," I said, my voice low so Toffee wouldn't hear. "In confidence. This cat. What, er. . . ?"

  "F-f-female," she said. "S-s-s-stray, I should think."

  "Stray?" I said indignantly. "It's a thoroughbred."

  "It's coming to something!" The woolly geezer was enraged because nobody had laughed with him. They knew better. Lily, a rather sad antique dealer on East Hill given to disastrous love affairs, even tried to shush him with warning glances. She was sitting opposite—with?—him. "A street beggar, a whore, and an animal." He glared at us, a professional glarer if ever there was one.

  "Horses are thoroughbreds, Lovejoy. Cats are pedigree."

  "It came in when I put the bird grub out," I told Jo. "It won't eat fried bread."

  "Is this allowed?" the bloke was going on. "What sort of establishment are you running here. . . ?" Etcetera, etcetera.

  Jo had gone pale. We tried to keep up our conversation but the odds proved superwhelming. It finally happened when Erica fetched over our grub. She always ruffles my hair to annoy, but she didn't this time. She put down a plate of chips, egg, and beans for me, and Jo's cake.

  "Woody's boned a bit of haddock, Lovejoy."

  The bloke spluttered. "That whore's cat gets better treatment—"

  Life is odd, sometimes. Even the same bit of life's different when looked at from behind different people's eyes. In theory, you'd think it to be all the same quality of material. Like, I can take abuse months at a time. In fact I do. I've been scathed by experts, so abuse is snow off a duck to me. I'd hardly noticed what he was on about until I saw Jo fumble trying to slip me a note underneath the table.

  "Eh?" I said. My mouth was already full. I'd waded into the grub. "What's up, love?"

  "I've j-j-j-just r-r-r-remembered s-s-s-something, Lovejoy." She was making to leave. A
nd to give me the money so I could pay for the nosh. Her face was death, suddenly much younger in its despair.

  The woolly man was beside himself. "Hey! A stuttery tart! What a find! I'll bet when she"

  Heat filled my face, and I thought, Oh Christ, here we go. Embarrassment's always been a prime mover with me. I sometimes wish I could ascend the evolutionary scale, from glands to cerebral cortex so to speak, but it's happenings like this that keep you down. I reached, tugged Jo to stay her.

  "No, love. Wait here."

  "Please, L-L-Lovejoy." She meant don't make a scene. Woody's is the one place she's allowed in the shopping precinct.

  Toffee rose and walked with me, probably thinking, oh well, easy come. I almost fell over her and said sorry. Woody called a weary, "Now, Lovejoy," but I said without rancor, "Quiet, Woody," and gazed down at the bloke.

  Some things in life aren't in doubt. Like, the most beautiful bottom ever painted is Louise O'Murphy's Boucher picture, owned by the undeserving of Cologne; it's magic even for eighteenth-century Frame. And it simply doesn't matter that Louise, daughter of a poor Irish immigrant, used up lovers and husbands faster than church and Parisian society could count. The point is that her bottom wins by a mile. No doubts, see? But other things in life are never anything but doubt. Like, why should a peaceful caff become Armageddon.

  Looking down at this goon's piggy face, I realized I'm a great believer in faces. Sit me in a market square and I'm content all livelong day just watching faces. Mirrors of the soul. Some soul. I took the cruet, unscrewed the salt cellar. Woody's salt is famed for its deliquescence, always clogs the nozzle.

  The nerk watched in outrage as I emptied the salt over his plate. The pepper ran easier, out in a cloud. I dropped the containers into the grub.

  "Here, you!" he bawled at Woody. "This hooligan—"

  "Eat, lad," I said, tilting his plate onto his lap. Then a runny sauce. A plate of pie off Woody's counter smeared on his front, and goulash from John Parkworth—he's Georgian furniture—one table along. Finally, with an excuse me to the appalled Lily, the table itself, and a kick to his right elbow as the goon lay in the mess, because some of these roving dealers carry paperknives. Police can't touch you for a paperknife. He was even louder now, yelping and trying to scrabble. This disturbance wasn't my fault. I mean, I'd honestly not started anything. I'd just been having my tea quietly, for God's sake, and now this mess.

  Toffee tripped me just about then. I went sprawling with my knee in Piggy's belly. A pair of brilliant tan toecaps an inch away caught my eye. Immaculate creases in the check trousers, cavalry twill. I sighed, lugged myself into the upper air.

  "Wotcher," I said resignedly. It had to be Sykie's elder son Eric. Only a nerk dresses that bad. He stood there, a yard ahead of his brother. Gold rings flashing, diamond facer watch dazzling, green leather shirt. Both Sykes lads hate me. Happily they're scared of their dad. This keeps them under control, but one day they'll go for me.

  "Lovejoy. Come on."

  "I'll finish my tea."

  Sykie's lad drew breath, stayed silent. I rejoined Jo, Toffee as usual giving me nowhere to put my feet. I was frightened. Jo must have seen my tremulous fingers having two goes to spread margarine. Erica came with one of those sponge mops that squeezes itself out when you lever the handle. They cost a fortune but one day I'll afford one.

  Jo whispered, "It's the Sykes b-b-b-brothers. Hadn't you better make a run for it?"

  Sykie's an honest-to-God cockney, big on the Belly—Portobello Road, London. In fact I've often heard him say he founded the vast antiques market there. He's got a soft spot for me because I rejected his sons as apprentices, told him the truth instead of what he wanted to hear. Yet this wouldn't exempt me from grievous bodily harm, on a whim.

  My neurons upped a gear into panic. What had I done lately? Nothing Sykie could be mad at, surely. I hadn't seen him since Christie's big September sale of Keating fakes. Out of my league. Jo gave a brave smile.

  "You d-d-d-don't pat a cat," she said, keeping the conversation going for appearance's sake. "That's dogs."

  The Sykes lads were lighting cheroots, would you believe, outside the glass porch. "Er, look, love," I said, mopping the last ergs off the plate. "Look after Toffee, eh?" And I was off, eeling hunchbacked past where the fat bloke sat, messy head in his hands and moaning. I signaled Woody I'd settle up with him later, got a sardonic glance. Why does he never trust me?

  The Minories is a museum near the castle. By some oversight our town councillors haven't flattened the lovely Queen Anne house into a car park. It's left as a lovely quaint place, to rot to dereliction. And it would have, except for Beryl the curator, a plumpish bird with dark eyes. Most days she sits alone, ever hopeful for hordes of visitors. The trouble is, nobody comes, only maybe some old soldier out of the rain or a couple of ancient crones seeking warmth while planning their next bingo campaign. I don't trust museums or curators, though I can forgive those like Beryl. She loves old dresses, embroidery, lace, and endlessly fights the council to keep her museum open. She's always just lost another round.

  Her face lit up when I creaked that lovely oaken door ajar. She was dusting the collection of dollhouses in the main parlor.

  "Hello, love. Room for one?"

  "Hello, Lovejoy." She resumed dusting listlessly. "Help me upstairs with the Hoover."

  I carried the damned thing, pausing to look on the mezzanine floor. One side, a nursery complete with cots, baby gear, lovely clothes right back to the 1690s. On the other side was a long gallery, originally the maidservant's room. Beryl had some thirty or forty wax dummies in clever tableaux. Ladies out walking, fireside groups, a musical evening, marriages down the ages, even a witch coven, the lot. She'd got one thing wrong—a Wingfield tennis racket was in a sporty tableau dated 1865, but Major Walter Wingfield didn't patent his lawn tennis until February 1874; people nicknamed it "sticky" at first. I'd given her an early Victorian coromandel-wood games compendium, beautifully boxed, to start one display off. I must have been off my bloody head. I stared resolutely away from The Homecoming Sailor scenario—a matelot arriving to the big welcome. I'd faked his scrimshaw chest out of an old wardrobe, painted ship pictures and all. The brass handles I'd aged in a local farm's muck-spreading tank, the best way if you've time.

  "It's still here, Lovejoy," she smiled. "Think I'd sold it?"

  "Eh?" I said, all innocent.

  "The fan. The one you let me have."

  My fan— my fan—was also there, in a wedding group. Display Sixteen. A wax maid of honor was behind the wax bride, my 1880 original fan in her undeserving wax hand. It was watercolored, on gilt and mother-of-pearl sticks. I moaned.

  "Now, Lovejoy. You gave it, remember?"

  Smiling, she passed me. I followed, not quite gnashing my teeth but definitely not rolling in the aisles from merriment. Beryl and I had been, well, close once. What women call generosity I call exploitation. Afterward.

  "Here, Beryl!" I said brightly as she started vacuuming. "I've a couple of wedding knives for sale." Well, I'd come on the scrounge. First things first.

  "Wedding knives?"

  "They're always a pair, in one sheath. Brides got them, as a symbol of marital status. ..."

  Beryl stopped, shaking her head. "It's no good, Lovejoy. Just look at this place. Listen." We listened. "Empty. Not a soul. You know how many visitors I've had, for thirty-two lovely rooms crammed with antique householdery? Seven. All week." She looked so tearful I'd have given her the wretched wedding knives, if I'd had any. "And I've finished Queen Victoria's copy wedding dress." I'd noticed it, a lovely work with those double-puff sleeves, the famous eight-paneled bodice, the Honiton lace that sprang back into fame in 1840 and saved whole villages. Beautiful. Beryl's three sisters are seamstresses.

  "That bad?"

  She stood there, sniffing. "The council's given me a final warning: Improve attendances or we'll be closed." She blotted her face and switched the suction back on. "I've done everyt
hing. My cousin Teddie lent a van to tour the villages. Last week my dad dressed as the town crier and stood outside the pubs. Not a flicker of response." Tears started rolling quite unchecked. "What is it, Lovejoy?"

  "It's people." I held her. "They've forgotten how to recognize love. Don't worry. It'll change."

  Well, all in all a hopeless visit. No money. No advance on antiques I'd not quite got. And Beryl wouldn't let me borrow back my fan, even though I swore blind I honestly only wanted to show it to a friend. Typical. I left thinking nothing of it, a mere failed few minutes in a humdrum day.

  But it came of importance, in time. After a death. Or two. Or, some said, three.

  Hoping the Sykes lads had hoofed it by now, I collared up and left the Minories through the walled garden. The town was quieting in the evening rain, buses draining shoppers from the streets. Luckily it's only a hundred sprinted yards to the north car park. My luck was in, or so I thought. The Ryan household's Bentley was there. I'd only to wait a few minutes, crouching embarrassed among the cars, before the lady herself showed.

  The rain had slackened. The town hall lights gave her a sparkling halo as she approached. She looked—is—wondrous. I kept low down while she parted from the bloke she was with. A gay Gaelic laugh. The famous Councillor Ryan himself, dressed in that guineas-and-goblets casualness that costs the earth and silences opposition. He's our town's main building contractor. This means the brains of an amoeba and all its survival skills. You've really got to watch his sort. Certain she was finally alone, I rose.

  "Excuse me, Mrs. Ryan," I said humbly. "If I knuckle my forehead, ma'am, can your ladyship give me a lift? Only, the bailiffs be arter me—"

  She undid the door her side, carefully doing that nonsmile of the woman who knows everything before you do. "Don't be a fool, Lovejoy. Get in."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Ryan." Something black blurred in.

  "What's what?" Mrs. Ryan gave a little yelp. "You've got a cat, Lovejoy?"

  "Well, one of us owns the other. I'm not sure which way round." Politely I asked after Councillor Ryan's well-being and present location, in reverse order.