A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair l-21 Page 14

  This morning he treated the world to Deserto in terra. Everybody thinks they've got the best voice in the world. They're wrong. It's really me.

  East Anglia's supposed to be lovely in the dawn. I think it's eerie. Ghostly trees assume scary shapes. The occasional shire horse stands there watching. Dense mists slide along rivers. Unexpected bridges lurk near deserted railway cuttings. You need nerve. Jacko was born here, and thinks this is normal. I wasn't, so know there's an alternative to countryside known as civilization. It lives in towns.

  Jacko slammed us to a halt so sudden I nearly shot over the bonnet. I couldn't see a damned thing. He ended his aria with a flourish, flat.

  'We're here, Lovejoy. Dykers Heath.'

  The mist closed in. I thought I saw a vague thicking that might have been a gateway.

  Darker blotches could have been an ornamental hedge, or not. Dykers Heath's the name of Caprice and Clovis's estate. I'd been there once, on a balmy summery day.

  'You sure, Jacko?' Suddenly I didn't like this. Why was I here? To suss out the county set's gossip about Arthur's death. 'Look. Maybe I'd better—' I screeched as a hand reached in and clutched my arm.

  Jacko fell about, rolled in the aisles. 'That'll be a tenner, Lovejoy.'

  'I'll owe you, Jacko. Ta-ra.'

  There stood this lad, maybe fourteen, thin, fairish hair turning teenage mousey. His blue-eyed features looked familiar. He wore a thick jacket, the sort you see horsey folk don for the dank outdoors. He had the nerve to help me down. Angrily I shook him off.

  He'd look a grown man in some wood. I ignored Jacko's imprecations for money.

  We started between the gates. He wore cut-down Wellingtons, moved with that countryfied sloth that shifts ground quickly underfoot.

  'It's this way.'

  When you're lost, miles into the lalang like now, you have to believe these rural clowns.

  Except he was no clown. He imparted instant confidence. Immediately the mist's sinister shadows became simple trees and without menace. The earth beneath turned into honest gravel, no grim ditches. Hooded deformed ghouls turned into bushes, quite pleasant really if you like that sort of thing. I couldn't help glancing at the lad. He hadn't said his name.

  I'm Lovejoy, er…?'

  'I know. Mr Rhodes said to kit you up.'

  'You're one of the beaters, then?'

  He nodded, or maybe he didn't. These folk who live beyond village boundaries are strange. They assume you'll know the answer, so say nothing. If you guess wrong, the more fool you. And they talk in dialect, hard to follow.

  A car's headlights showed off to the right, its engine purring to silence. Doors slammed.

  Women's voices raised in that posh country-house scream. I heard a man call welcome.

  The clans were gathering.

  Not long since, some sociologists - nothing better to do - dug into the nation's pastimes. They 'discovered' the most amazing fact. It's this: folk sometimes go fishing, bird watching, studying nature. This 'research survey' - their term - cost thousands, every groat of which could have been spent on antiques or leprosy. I suppose we were even now being studied by sociologists concealed in the foliage as I glimpsed Clevis's imposing dwelling.

  'No. This way.'

  Round the back? The Queen Anne frontage emerged from the mists. A butler, no less, and two maids scurried as guests arrived. Shooting brakes, estate cars, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, one sulking Jaguar, showed the visitors' worth. Me and the lad went round the side of the house, in at a small door and up stairs to a gun room. Arrays of double-barrelled shotguns, with several rifles, were chained in racks behind reinforced glass. No antique flintlocks, worse luck, love of my life. A whiskery old countryman was checking the guns.

  'Lovejoy, Mr Hartson.'

  'Right, Mort. Morning, sir.'

  Mort for Mortimer, my brilliant mind snapped up. I saw him in the light. Familiar, indeed. Probably Arthur I was seeing, or hints of Colette.

  'Morning,' I said. 'Look. I don't know what—'

  'In the ante-room, sir, please.'

  Next door was a changing place. I got thick brogues, tartanish stockings, plus fours, a deerstalker hat, shooting jacket, cape. I looked like a duckegg trying to be Sherlock Holmes. Mr Hartson promised me a Westley Richards double-barrelled shotgun. I could war against innocent birds.

  'Mort's your bearer, sir. Mr Rhodes is expecting you at breakfast.'

  'Ta.'

  A right prune in this clobber, I entered the long hall. Twenty guests were already noshing. A chorus of names rose in introduction. I grinned with embarrassment.

  Nobody joked about my attire, thank God. I shuffled down the hall.

  Most were young middle-agers. Several women were clobbered up for the day's cruelty, but two or three others were fashionably attired, obviously ready for a sloggingly hard gossip over coffee and cream cakes. I don't know about you, but these Sloanies always seem to have bandsaw voices. They look dazzling, clothes that- cost a fortune an inch, yet their endless 'Okayee, yah?' is really dispiriting. Like their protruberant teeth. They don't pronounce the letter M because their lips never meet.

  'Hellayo,' said one gorgeous Sloane Ranger in a black sheath dress. She was whaling into hot kidneys, bacon, liver, fried black pudding, eggs, and a stack of fried bread.

  Despite this nosh, she looked on a hunger strike. Some females can do it. Most groan at the sight of an irresistible chip, and biscuits are death. "Orning. Fleury La Ney.'

  'Morning,' I greeted everybody, Ms to the fore, teeth defiantly behind my lips. 'Lovejoy.'

  'Oy saaah!' she exclaimed. 'Quayte a nane, hot?'

  She hooted with laughter. I smiled weakly and got grub from the sideboard. When Clovis Rhodes and Caprice bought Dykers Heath mansion they scoured everywhere for reproduction furniture. Crazy. For the same money they could have furnished the place with Victorian, maybe late Georgian, furniture. Our plates for instance were a massively complete set of modern antiquey Japanese porcelain. I'd warned Caprice off this, because for less than the cost of this new junk they could have bought genuine secondhand Royal Doulton, maybe even Derby, in mint condition. I honestly don't understand. Caprice hadn't long been married when I met her. I can hear her yet. 'No!'

  She'd put her hands over her ears when I'd tried to tell her. 'I don't want other women's cast-offs!' She'll change when she learns sense, but by then it'll be too late.

  The price of fine old porcelain will have gone through the roof and she'll complain about the scandalous prices. Might as well talk to the wall.

  'Morning, Lovejoy.' Astonishingly it was Doc Lancaster, our village doc. He was having dry toast, a scrape of marmalade, and weak tea with skimmed milk. He's a maniac, wants to set me jogging on some punishment machine in his surgery, the loon. 'You, in killing mode!'

  Chuckle chuckle round the repro table. I tried to hide my loaded plate from Doc Lancaster's accusing gaze. Was I expected to starve? Just because I'd got a bit of decent grub the lunatic gives me his stare of pure wheat germ. Truculently I fed myself, told him I was here to make up numbers.

  'Trouble is, Lovejoy,' Doc said affably, 'there's not a single flintlock!'

  Then the wash of expIanations, Lovejoy's an antique dealer, etc. I let them talk.

  Inevitably the divvy question came up.

  'Lovejoy can tell antiques a mile off,' Doc told everybody. 'I've seen him do it. I had an early set of surgical instruments…'

  Doc started demonstrating the antique Chamberlen obstetric forceps. A set now costs a king's ransom. Heaven knows why, when the hated Chamberlen family of doctors -

  Huguenot refugee doctors, lived in Essex, avarice personified - were reviled for keeping their precious forceps secret. I switched off as Doc explained the gruesome details. His audience was fascinated. The wicked ancient rhyme went through my head about Dr Hugh Chamberlen:

  To give you his character truly complete He's doctor, projector, man-midwife, and cheat.

  'What a strange little rh
yme!' a lady said. Fortyish, bonny, tweed suit, managing to look normal. She spoke without the Sloanie's shout, and there was an M in there. Her lips met!

  'Eh? Sorry. Didn't realize I'd spoken aloud.'

  'Was he really a cheat?' she asked, interested.

  'Folk thought he should have remembered his oath, instead of cashing in.'

  'Is it true, this divvy thing? Gloria Dee, Ashwood Pentney.'

  'Hello. Aye. It gives me a headache.'

  'How fascinating. Do you accept orders?' She saw my anxious frown, and smiled. 'I mean do you do it professionally? Could you test some antiques of mine, for instance?'

  She meant for hire. Posh society avoids mentioning lucre, it being filthy rotten stuff and beneath one.

  'Afraid so.'

  'Watch him, Gloria,' Doc Lancaster called amiably. 'If he doesn't like you he'll let you down. He's known for it.'

  Mrs Dee smiled. 'Like so many!'

  'I'm not that bad!' I exclaimed, heated. Conversation became humorous as Clovis entered, everybody getting excited at the coming shoot, saying how many they'd bagged the previous week, and was old Jarvis still gamekeeper at the Breakspeares'

  estate. I felt depressed. It was all so jolly hockeysticks. Clovis came over, said hello, good of me to come. Dunno what tale Caprice had fed him.

  'I shall invite you,' Gloria Dee said. 'Would you mind?'

  'No, fine.' I wondered if I could get away with wiping my plate with some bread. That's the only decent way to end a meal, but in East Anglia you're not supposed to. (Why not, when it's good manners in France?)

  'I suppose you must get fed up, people asking you to value things. Please don't mind saying no.'

  For the first time I really looked at her. Decent, I suppose the word is. Her gaze was level. I don't know exactly what a level gaze means, because a gaze that isn't level is in real trouble. 'Got them with you?'

  She shook her head. 'Far too big to carry, Lovejoy. You'll have to come. Expenses, of course,' she added quietly as people noisily moved off.

  'Very well.'

  'One thing,' she said, rising with me. 'Guests bet on the shoot. I'd be disinclined to give anyone the nod. It's rather taken as binding, you see. Bets start at a thousand guineas.'

  God Almighty. What was I doing here?

  Her eyes searched mine. 'I do hope you're not offended at my mentioning it, Lovejoy?

  Sometimes people feel obliged to pretend they're high fliers when…'

  'I'm not?' I got her off the hook.

  She smiled. 'I can't afford to gamble either, you see.'

  We trudged out in clusters. Sherry, madeira, and port were offered in beautiful but phonily new silver stirrup cups. Everybody started saying toodle-pip and suchlike. Odd, but here it sounded quite normal. Genuine, possibly? I'd have sounded ridiculous saying anything like that. A stompy old colonel kept on, 'What? What?' to me. I just grinned back, which pleased him. I quite liked the man, but didn't like the modern double-barrelled shotguns he handled like toothpicks.

  Gloria Dee came with us in the estate cars. I noticed she brought an artist's palette box.

  I tried to get into the same Range Rover but was shunted into the last. We drove off as the mist dwindled and the world appeared in all its murderous glory.

  There's a bloke and his missus I know who buy and sell antiques solely to save up money to kill ducks on the Norfolk Broads. He's Jepp and she's Zina. They have a house full of trophies, and talk endlessly about duckocide, this one shot at a seventy-three angle in a ninety-knot wind, all that. I don't visit, unless I'm delivering some antique.

  They're desperate to show me yet another photograph of themselves proudly holding up another dead creature. Deep down they suspect that I hate them, so taunt-torture me with their accounts. 'Our triumph wall, Lovejoy!' Zina says. I ask you. To kill an unarmed bird, for Christ's sake, a triumph? Zina's offered me more than a glimpse of her trophy wall, but I couldn't in a million years. I'd keep seeing those poor reproachful slaughtered birds just as we… No, no. I'd like to tell her straight out, but can't. I think I'm basically weak.

  Here, I was to admire the trophies in course of creation, so to speak. Mort, Mr Hartson and other countrymen were waiting along a small valley. Mort attached himself to me.

  He carried two double-barrelled shotguns, under-and-overs. I said nothing. He whistled a gentle trill. A black dog appeared from nowhere, wagging along its entire length, grinning up.

  'Jasper's your retriever for the day,' Mort said.

  'What do I have to do?'

  'I load. You fire when the birds come.'

  'Do we have to hide? Or be camouflaged?'

  He brightened at my ignorance. 'Not today. The beaters start soon. Please don't shoot low. Keep the gun high. Avoid the hunters.' A hint of dryness there? Cocky little sod.

  We stood in a line along the shoulder of the vale. Each shooter had a dog. They seemed to know far more than me what was happening. To my immediate left was a tallish man wearing more or less the same gear as me. Beyond him stood a loudmouth, telling how many he'd bagged at the Southworth's place in Dorset. I saw the look Mort gave him. Good. A few more glances like that, I'd be able to assess these people's usefulness for me.

  'Hey, Lovejoy,' the colonel called. 'Don't know how much of this you've done, but under-and-overs are more difficult. Don't mind my saying, hey?'

  'Not at all, sir,' I called as Mort avoided my eyes. 'The hard way!'

  'Harf harf,' the old gent laughed. 'You young uns, what?'

  While we were waiting I asked Mort, quiet, who everybody was. He started telling me. I listened to his inflexion, not the words. I wasn't so thick that I'd missed the coincidence

  - Mort, the one I wanted to talk to, appearing at the only shoot I'd ever joined, same day, time, place, and being made my bearer. It couldn't be coincidence. Trout's influence? Anyhow, I'd deliberately asked Caprice to slot me in because Clovis's land almost adjoins Saffron Fields, the old Carting's Vineyard just over the river.

  'That one over there's a big land buyer. Has boats, him and his cronies.'

  'Cronies? Who?'

  'Sir Jesson Tethroe.' The name was familiar. 'The MR'

  Dots joined swiftly in my head. The Hon. J. Tethroe, MP, whose seat was unsafe, next election. Who'd been partly disgraced, after that affair with some Spanish lass, lost Cabinet promotion on account of it. He definitely was one of the people I'd need. Tided snobbery counts double.

  'Lives in Westminster and Weymouth. Rich. Shrewd.'

  'Even better,' I'd said before I could stop myself. 'I mean, even better that he's, er, made a go of life.'

  Mort ran down the list. I noticed Gloria Dee setting up her easel and watercolours. A Midlands engineer contractor called Talleyton had fetched his own gunbearer. And a timber merchant from the coast. And a lady called Mrs Patterson they called Maeve, expert shooter.

  'They're coming,' Mort said, with anguish. He'd heard the signals.

  The first gunshot startled me. I felt grieved. The birds flew so heavily, having to work at it, monstrous energy for so little speed. God must have been all thumbs the day he made ducks. I shot last. The recoil almost knocked me over, slamming into my shoulder. I missed by a mile.

  The roar steadied, kept up as the birds came in rushes, darting to avoid the beaters thrashing the bracken. I thought, 'Keep hidden, you daft sods, and you'll be safe.'

  Terrified creatures never do the right thing. I'd learned that from me.

  Before long I realized I was following Mort's signals. He'd give a wave of his hand down by his side. 'Right, high,' I'd mutter, pulling the trigger. The birds coming at me would angle slightly, making it over the line of us shooters to safety beyond. Mort'd pat his leg rapidly, and I'd translate, 'Quick, left,' blasting merrily away into the void, and another bird would make it. I missed successfully, every time.

  They'd put muffs on me so I could only hear the distant thump of the gun as it cracked my shoulder. Once, taking the reloaded gun from Mort,
I saw the dog, Jasper. It was gaping at me with utter disbelief, obviously thinking, God, expert shooters everywhere and I draw this nerk. I gave it a wink. It turned aside in disgust, watching its mates jauntily bringing back dead birds, tails wagging. You can't win. Save a duck, you get ballocked by a hound.

  The slaughter ended. I was worn out, my shoulder creaking. I handed the gun to Mort.

  He took it without a word, started stowing things in satchels.

  'Good day's work, eh?' I tried not to sound appalled. Jasper sneered.

  'Thank you, Lovejoy,' Mort said quietly.

  'Sorry, old chap,' Colonel Humbert bawled in sympathy. 'Did warn you, what? Under-and-overs! Direction!'

  'Should have listened to you, sir.'

  He chuckled. I looked for the estate cars. None.

  'It's lunch, Lovejoy,' Mort said. 'You go again, across the heath.'

  'Right!' I said heartily, concealing my groan. 'Looking forward to it!'

  The nosh they provided was superb, hampers of exotic food. I spoke with Mrs Dee, having checked that Mr Dee wasn't here.

  'Don't worry. I shan't study your paintings.' Artists hate ramblers peering over their shoulder.

  She laughed. 'You paint too, Lovejoy.' And answered my unspoken question, 'Sir Jesson told me. He's a collector.'

  'You meant warned.' Was she a special friend of the scandal-riddled parliamentarian?

  'Yes, warned.' She was amused.

  'You're not using acrylics?' I asked in mock horror, looking at the peeling cerulean blue on her fingers.

  'As a matter of fact I am.'

  'Then the deal's off, love.' I returned to the trenches, her laughter following.

  I won't go into details about that day of carnage. I finally reeled away sickened. I didn't harm a single thing, thanks to Mort. He had a series of cunning hoots and shrill keenings that somehow diverted birds from their flight paths away from the shooters.

  Even so, our scattered lead shot will pollute the earth for the next frigging millennium.

  God help us, we're a rotten lot.