The Possessions of a Lady Read online

  Easy to tow a longboat to block a river. A policeman cycling on the bank called, 'What's the matter?' I pointed to Tee, ask him. The bobby tore his eyes from Tee's bird, and asked. Tee began some tale. Uncle Bat played us out as Tee cast off. He handed over a load of zlotniks. I examined them closely, did a count, waved to the Plod.

  'For helping,' I called over.

  'Isn't that Donard John's boat?' the constable shouted back, suspicious.

  'Kind old Don,' I answered airily.

  'He's a stingy old sod. And why's he still in his jamas?'

  'Dunno, constable. Better ask the lady.'

  Snapping into gear, I zoomed off leaving Tee wailing. His engine's been dud these three years. I paid no heed. Honest, people'll have me carrying the pots and pans. Is it my fault? I rounded the curve, moored the boat, and started my search for Vyna.

  Mistake. I should have stayed aboard, cleared the bar at Great Yarmouth, and sailed into the sunrise.

  13

  Taxi numbers chalked up in rural phone boxes mislead. Jokes, malice, company rivalry, take your pick. The first I tried was a frosty lady. Second, a temptress wanting to massage my exhausted frame. I was narked, not having exhausted my frame yet. The third taxi number was a taxi number, a first for Norfolk. It took me to a supermarket.

  They detect dud money by clever pens—stroke the watermark, it goes black and you're under arrest. I went in synthetically angry.

  'Look,' I told the manageress when they dragged her down from her office slumber. 'I paid good money for, er, goods. You forge-changed me.'

  'Allow me, sir.' She wearily subjected my note to a trillion tests. 'It's perfectly good. What goods did you buy, sir?'

  Suspicion is unfair. 'You sure? Okay, then.' I marched out. Tee Vee's payment was genuine. Norfolk was on the mend.

  The antiques game has gossip like others have weather. You know what's happening, like you know if it's raining. I phoned Chessmate, an intinerant gossip-monger in bric-a-brac who works the 'attic' circuits. He told me there was a beaut, this very day. So it came to pass that I taxied to the august Thornelthwaite family mansion. Attic debris, please note, is where human hate and love combine. (Skip this next bit if you're sensitive, because it's exactly what will happen to all you own, right down to your pot teeth.)

  Many folk resent fame, fortune, and nobility. I rage against nobody, except people who kill antiques. What law says the rich, the ex-rich, or the would-be rich, must be saints? Add those up, we're all in there. The viewers ogling the Thornelthwaites' possessions were of two sorts, antique dealers and sour locals in various stages of glee. I was the only one a-sorrowing, because house sales break my heart.

  An auction viewing day is a psychodrome waiting to happen. When the auction starts, it's 'Game On!' for psycho-drama. The entire psychotic arena fills. Carnage begins, and with it triumph for the lucky few touched by the stars. For the rest, dismay.

  As usual, the auctioneers had rigged up a marquee. Somebody was unfolding chairs, setting a dais and podium, microphones, phone sites, the paraphernalia of a flog-off auction. When a family is submerged in double-entry accounting and sells up, the attic dealers—a right circus—home in on human misery. They're not so bad—walnut brains, looters' morals, but dealers are dealers. The ones I can't abide are the gloaters, the ghoulish grinners who only come to jeer. They don't buy, only finger and sneer at crumbling aristos. Who the crumbling family is, was, doesn't matter. The ghoulists park their motors and saunter in, copycat conquerors. They snigger. We all do it, you, me, emit that serves-them-right cackle of the jackal and the carrion bird. I'm ashamed of us. Then I think what saints people are. It's a paradox. Same with religion, really. I believe in God, but His earthly sales force is crap. I believe in antiques, but people. . . ? Sensible answers, please.

  For an hour I wandered, feeling the ancient house's pulse. It was a lovely if faded Queen Anne mansion, but essentially undamaged. They had loved it, those old folk whose portraits hung on the stairs. Dealers were pricing furniture, carpets, Sheffield plate, cruets—don't know why, but to me cruets are saddest, truest symbols of a death-sale sell-up.

  As I ambled, a middle-aged lady without a coat was near more often than chance allowed. So? On I went, sensing the loveliness of age. I recognised the odd dealer. Chessmate soon arrived, a short ambitious Geordie 'of climbing habit' as gardeners say of plants too aggressive for their own good. I gave him the bent eye and he cleared off. The last thing I wanted, him seeing what I divvied as genuine. I felt on holiday, scouting on my own with gelt in hand. Yet it also felt odd, a betrayal. Tinker was ultra-loyal, right? But every time I sent him for an antique he returned empty-handed. This was new. I put it firmly from my mind.

  You drift anywhere in a house sale, as the marquee's trestle tables stack with household items. The house is always open to viewers, in hopes that they'll come with wallets and purses a-bulging. The nervous coatless lady stalked me ineptly. Security agent? Paintings—ancestors, Italian scenes from the Grand Tour, nothing special but old. I smiled with pleasure, the antiques warming my soul and them smiling back. A brass-banded walnut case, size of an elongated fag packet, beamed at me. The wood had 'C.C marked on it. Nobody was about. I found it in my pocket, a lovely feeling, beautiful. I felt seventeen again, brilliant, in love.

  From the withdrawing-room I entered the long hall.

  'Wotcher, Lovejoy.' Tubb pulled me forward. 'Never stop in a doorway. It causes earthquakes.'

  'How. . . ?' I didn't complete the question. He'd bribed the old wrinkle-faced information man at the station, then simply phoned round the Norfolk dealers promising a few quid to reveal what sales I asked about. No wonder Chessmate had dropped by—he was just collecting his thirty pieces of silver.

  'Tubb,' I said wearily. 'Leave me be. D'you hear?'

  He beamed, not taking a blind bit of notice. 'What d'you reckon of this? Seventeenth century?' He poked a pipe, carved as a naked woman in an erotic posture. 'You stuff tobacco into her head—it's the bowl, see? And you suck . . .'

  'Ta, Tubb, but it's not that old.'

  Meerschaum, 'sea foam,' is a clayey silicate of magnesium, supposedly minuscule marine creatures plonked down by a retreating Ice Age. Turkey was the main supplier. But until Count Andrassey took a chunk to Karl Kowates a mere 200 years back to make the first meerschaum pipe, there was really no such item. By a historical fluke, Mr. Kowates was a Budapest cobbler, his hands leathered from years of shoe polish. That prototype meerschaum pipe became a mustardy-gold. The meerschaum pipe was born.

  'What d'you reckon it's worth?' Tubb trumpetted.

  Deafening secrecy. I turned quickly, to see at least seven dealers suddenly spin away and pretend frozen interest in furniture, mirrors, rugs. They were following me. I'd been sussed as a divvy. Or had Chessmate sold the news?

  The edgy middle-aged woman wasn't making it easier. She was homely tweedy with round features. Heaven knows why she was traipsing after me. I stabbed a warning finger at Tubb, and drifted on.

  I started taking notice, blood boiling.

  There are ways of 'breading' the stock, as dealers say. Just as anglers throw bread bait into pools, antique dealers go about making disparaging remarks to improve their buying chances. Like, 'Here, Fred. Look at this!' Snide laughter. 'Think they'll get a fortune for it? Never seen worse!' Chuckle, chuckle.

  This, note, for a beautifully chased American silver table-water jug. It stood tall on a table, waiting to go to the marquee. From a distance it looked warty, with such high relief engraving it hardly seemed shiny at all. Experts, that talkative lot, say always trust that 1850s-1860s Yank silver with such prominent chasing. Well, time races on, so look at the engraved picture. Flowers, country churches, churchyards, with the church looking as if it's trying to appear English and not quite making it is the best tip. The marks, of course, you can look up. Americans think little of their own antiques, yet pay fortunes for our dross. Beats me.

  Ignoring the dealers with difficulty, I dr
ifted on, followed by a straggle of seemingly indifferent dealers. They even took notes, lot numbers that I couldn't help smiling at. Despite my growing anger, I found myself talking to one or two antiques. You have to be polite. Some furnishings were beautiful.

  There was a lovely mantel clock. It didn't look like one at first sight, being marble and porcelain. It was a mourning figure leaning over an urn on a plinth. She was draped, Greekish, exquisite. No more Ancient Greece than you or I, but some skilled artisan had copied from the London maker Benjamin Vulliamy's pattern. The two rims, where the urn and lid meet, rotate. They're numbered—usually Roman numerals below, ordinary above. A snake, twining horribly up the urn, leans over to point the time with its tongue. Grimly funereal, but see a genuine one like Lady Lever's at Port Sunlight and you'd sell your granny for it.

  Admittedly a Regency fake, but that only made it genuine to me, if you follow. Some poor, yet immeasurably skilled, craftsmen in Georgian London must have seen Vulliamy's original, and copied every brilliant detail in their workshop dungeons. Find me the bloke who can do that today—please. I blinked my admiring eyes.

  And heard a clink.

  In a mirror—modern wall glass, so ignorable—I saw an overcoated bloke, moustache, homburg hat, pocket a small something, the pig. I heard a snigger.

  The sorrowing maid's heel was missing.

  For about a second, or hours, I stood trying to shake my fury. He'd deliberately chipped the heel. Soon he would loudly point out that the clock was damaged, virtually worthless. Then at the auction he'd buy it for a song, restore it using the heel he'd nicked, and sell it for a fortune as complete. Some dealers carry brass tools to inflict this destruction. I swallowed my rage. They don't think of the antique, just greed. Tonight this elegant lout in his bloody homburg would brag how he'd fooled everybody, looted himself a mint.

  'Sorry, love,' I said mentally to the now-damaged leaning marble figure. She'd been perfect for a couple of centuries.

  'Beg pardon?' somebody said.

  'Nothing.' I must have spoken aloud. I'd have to watch that.

  Poor Benjamin Vulliamy. He passed on his love of clocks to his son Benjamin Louis who in 1820 invented a clever dead beat escapement—the clamped pallets can be adjusted. It caught on among Continental makers, not much here. But, honest to God, what must Ben be thinking, watching our rotten antics from his cloud?

  From then on, I got angrier.

  The auctioneers' whifflers—think bribable scene-shifters— were in on the scams, as usual. You could see the money passing as the dealers filched openly and laughed about it. I saw a shabby bloke nick a nail file from an etui and blatantly do his nails with it as he strolled. Dealers don't steal like this simply to sell. They steal so they can go to the eventual successful bidder and offer to make up the etui's complete set of manicure implements. The bidder's glad to buy, because he'll have paid much less in the auction for the incomplete George the Second lady's gold-mounted manicure case. The whiffler who doesn't work this scam has yet to be born. Such thieves are called 'toppers' in the trade, and form an elite clan where sleight-of-hand rules. (Don't laugh—these sly tricks will be played out on every single one of your own possessions sooner or later.)

  Stifling rage, I went upstairs. By now I was judging faces, appearances, remembering the rogues. I listened for names. There was Pill, Duddo, a pretty woman in green called Gelina, a sour-faced hulk they all seemed to know called Calleon, and Mr. Skanner, who was Homburg himself.

  Skanner was particularly busy. I went by as he inspected a three-foot bronze. Even though it was a fake, I felt instant fondness for this Nubian bust. Cordier's original was nineteenth-century. There ought to be two, African 'noble savage' images of the Victorians, man and woman. A genuine pair would buy a Kensington house. The female is striking, imperious with her downward glance. Once seen, never forgotten. They're forged the world over now, best from Turkey, Taiwan, Italy. This was an early fake.

  'Is it marked?' I asked innocently.

  'Yes. The famous Cordier.' Skanner chuckled loudly. 'A gooseberry trying to be a grape!'

  And the bastard actually scraped the figurine's shoulder with a file. He wore gloves, a common trick, his file hidden in the middle finger. He'd have a second one along the ring finger, always on the preferred hand. He then had the gall to inspect the scratch he'd made, using a loupe, ten times magnification. I wagged my head to show how I admired the rotten pig, and oafed about, bedroom to landing, staircase to kitchen, raising my eyebrows, sharing in the general ribaldry.

  Sometimes, human beings make me wonder what we think we are actually doing. If you stand before anyone on earth— the most powerful dictator, the seductive woman—and laugh at their wisecracks, you're a friend for life. The thickest nerk to the proudest emperor wants to be liked. Some comedian once said there were only six jokes; the rest is winning approval. Yet we all crave admiration, somebody to laugh when we trot our tired old six. We know that the person who laughs truly admires us, thinks we're great.

  Which itself is a laugh. I mean, Skanner in his posh handmades does the old scag trick on a bronze bust and positively swells with pride when I, a passing tramp, grin at his cleverness. I almost puked. Hate edges you close to murder, a frightening thought.

  To stay calm I started looking for honest collectors among the growing crowd. I found one or two examining a box of old toys. Nowadays, they're all after an uninteresting tiny aluminium triangular R.A.F. V-Bomber that Dinky made in 1955-6, in its dull little box. It will virtually buy you the town hall. (The No. 992 AvroVulcan, just in case you do come across it, wears the number 749. God knows why.) Not even an antique, mind-bendingly dull, yet you can retire on it. That's collecting, money mad. It's not reasonable, like antiques. Those Chelsea porcelain 'masqueraders', two little 1760s figures holding masks, bring the same price as any small Art Deco by a named maker. And that endlessly copied Art Deco lady, so shapely between two borzoi dogs on her onyx base, made by D. H. Chiparus in bronze and ivory, will fetch seven or eight times as much. There's no accounting for money, and that's the truth. The Chiparus craze took off like a rocket when, inexplicably, pop stars started buying them sight unseen. Collecting's like shooting an arrow into a rotting orchard and hoping you'll hit the one good apple. Madness, because . . .

  'Excuse me, please. Can I have a word?'

  The flustered lady, never far from sight.

  'Are you security, missus?'

  'No. Yes. I mean, not really.'

  Was that a negative? 'What about?'

  'Please.' She wrung her hands. I realised that she'd chosen her moment. There was nobody else near, by some miracle, though I could hear them all breading away, such merriment. 'Could we come to some arrangement? I'd make it worth your while.'

  Me? I looked. Did she mean me? 'Are you a punter?'

  'A . . . ?' Her brow cleared, we had contact. 'No. I'm . . .' She took a run at it, launched. 'The vendor.' Like she'd just learned the word.

  'The vendor?' I said, amazed, then went red. 'Sorry. Rude of me.'

  She spoke bitterly. 'You mean why is a worn-out frump selling off a mansion?'

  'Sorry, missus. I've had a long day.' It was not noon. The auction was two o'clock. 'What can I do?'

  'Please. This way.'

  Leading off the spacious landing was an oak door. Only Japanese or American heartwood, as most of the nineteenth century, but honest wood's a rarity. These modern kiln-dried days leave a nasty tenth of moisture in wood, to warp and crack as soon as you turn your back.

  'There's a place here. Do sit.'

  An alcove, such as servants used attending on the mistress's summons. Two small cushioned stools, modern junk. I sat obediently.

  'Arrangement, missus?' Was she her ladyship?

  She disposed herself, knees together, blue eyes apprehensive. Less frantic, she'd be more attractive.

  'Would you take your gang away, please?'

  Gang? I stared. I'm only me. In a flash, my brain screamed Quick! E
xploit!

  'Gang?' I'm pathetic. 'There's only me. Lovejoy.'

  'Please don't. I'm not altogether stupid. They hang on your every look.'

  To somebody innocent, it might actually look as if I was leader of a wolfpack.

  'Er, seeing you've realised, missus, what arrangement were you thinking of?'

  'I'll give you a fifth of the profits,' I heard her say. 'But you must leave the auction in peace.'

  'Fifth?' I said, stunned.

  'Quarter, then.' Her bottom lip trembled, driving a really tough bargain with a master criminal. 'It's my last offer.' Straight out of the poorer grade of 1950s black-and-white rep-actor films. 'As soon as I get the auctioneers' accounts.'

  She had as much chance of seeing honest accounts from this shambles as I had of making cardinal. I know auctioneers who compete, see who can falsify most each week. They actually bet on the result. I've been going to auctions since I was born, and I've never seen an honest one yet.

  This malarkey was getting out of hand. 'You don't live here?'

  She relaxed and actually said thank you. 'This house is my sister's. A widow, passed away recently. No children. I'm to dispose of everything.' She peered about our alcove. Answers were everywhere, could she but see.

  'I might, love,' I lied, but I'd have to leave her to her fate. I had my job to do, Tinker's missing relative, get my life back on the rails. After all, I told myself righteously, this was a diversion. I'd only come to celebrate recovering my non-counterfeit owings from Tee Vee.

  'It's kind of you.' She smiled, minuscule. It took twenty years off her. 'I ran a fish-and-chip shop.'

  'A chippy?'

  'In London. This country area is so . . . remote.'

  My feelings warmed. Anyone who mistrusts countryside deserves help. And chip shops sometimes keep me alive.

  'I'm like that, love. I love a town.' I smiled back. One born every minute, usually me.

  'You know how I feel, Lovejoy.' She sighed. 'Kate's death duties are huge.' She looked wistful. 'Do you know what I want?'