The Possessions of a Lady Page 19

'He's forgotten to leave the key. Climb up the drainpipe.'

  I obeyed. It's no mystery why the truly imperious monarchs in history have all been female. Good Queen Bess, Catherine the Great, Victoria, Cleopatra, Amy.

  'You took your time!' She came in, shut the door behind her. 'It's somewhere downstairs.'

  'Don't you know?'

  'Stop picking!'

  The painting was on a wall. I managed to get it down. In an unlit house you can see more by shafts of moonlight than you can outside in open moonshine. Artists took 300 years to learn this trick of contrasts. I learned it in seconds. The painting was of a small boy standing watching his mother play a foreign-shaped piano in a tiled room. I felt suddenly ill. I tottered into the hall carrying the picture. It felt hot, burning my chest.

  'What's the matter?' Amy whispered. 'You're shivering.'

  This was her uncle's. Why was she whispering?

  'Nowt.'

  I stepped away, went to the door. And recovered, quick as that. I looked back at Amy.

  'Come on!’ She was narked, but I was wary.

  'That painting made me poorly.'

  'How can it?' she whisper-cried, stamping. The hall echoed. 'Carry it!'

  'All the way to Great Lever?'

  She finally admitted, 'To the open market.'

  I went to the picture, instantly felt sick and dizzy. I stepped away. Ten paces, right as rain. It was the old painting. I was feeling something special, new.

  'I can't. It sends me funny.' Tongue suck or no tongue suck, I could never carry it. 'I'll leave it outside. You can find it tomorrow.'

  She argued, but cowardice ruled. I carried the painting out, reeling with instantaneous sickness, and erected a lean-to of fallen stones against the jungled garden's drystone walling to hide the painting. It took a hell of time. My hands and knees were raw.

  We walked off the moorland in silence, Amy furious with me. I was ashamed. I didn't know what had happened, told myself the painting must have had some chemical on it. In my heart I knew it wasn't any such thing.

  About three days later, I was playing street football when Amy came running.

  'You're wanted!' she commanded. 'At the station.'

  'What for?'

  'Somebody wants to give you something.'

  A man was waiting for us. The way things have altered, a man nowadays chatting to teenagers in a station concourse would be arrested. Back then trust hadn't yet died.

  'Lo, Amy,' he said. 'This him?'

  He was the first man I'd ever seen with a beard. He looked unkempt, bedraggled. He wouldn't get admitted if he knocked at my Auntie Agnes's. She would call him Feckless And Footloose, to her a hanging offence.

  'This is Lovejoy,' Amy said.

  The man seemed good humoured. He inspected me. 'A titch,' he remarked affably. 'Thought you'd be older.'

  'I'm nearly fifteen,' I lied.

  'Ta for helping with the picture. You still poorly.'

  'Never been poorly.'

  'Course not,' he said quickly. 'Just want to pay you.'

  He gave me a grubby brown envelope. I said ta. He said ta.

  'You ever sick in the art gallery, son?' he asked.

  'Never been in.'

  'Things in the museum make you feel queer?'

  I shuffled on the spot. 'Aye. Some.'

  'Like what?'

  'Roman things,' I admitted, watching him truculendy for the first insulting sign of laughter. 'Two pictures. That funny desk.'

  A few lads passing saw me and shouted me to play footer. I started off.

  'Listen, son,' he said quickly. 'Ever you're stuck for a job, ask after me with Amy's auntie. Awreet? Not posh, but honest.' The antique dealer's slogan.

  He called after me. 'Just ask for Tinker, son. Tinker Dill.'

  He tried to explain what being a divvy was, failed miserably. I often wonder what would have happened if he had been less perceptive.

  That night I gave Gran my envelope. She drew out a five-pound note, awed. Then she was furious.

  'Tinker's feckless and footloose,' she sniffed, proving where Auntie Agnes had got it from. 'A rag-and-bone man.'

  Later, there was trouble over some furniture that went missing from some mill-owner's mansion. I left town. Later, I returned to find my world gone. I followed a girl I liked to East Anglia, where I got a job in an auctioneer's. Within a week I was dealing for myself.

  There Tinker bumped into me, taking a load of antiques to the Continent through Harwich. He became my barker. From that nothing beginning I rose to extreme penury. It was called the antiques game. I've often thought of Amy.

  The hotel room was lovely and ancient, beams, bed, whatever. But an empty bed's for getting out of.

  Nothing for it. I couldn't go on like this. I'd not last another day. So long, Lydia. Hello Amy. It was barely eleven o'clock at night. Middle of the afternoon, with my sidereal clock. I was out of the tavern like a ferret.

  25

  For a second I stood in the drizzle of Churchgate, wondering whether to get a taxi, the Braithwaite, a lift. Then I walked it in minutes. Home towns shrink. Returning once before, I remember staring round at our two-up two-down loo-in-the-yard terraced, and thinking, Is this it?

  Right onto Chorley Old Road, I could virtually see Sally Up Steps in the street lamps. Facing the ancient hostelry was Amy's Excellency Antiques among terraced houses, shops trying to look special, factories masquerading now as supermarts.

  Except the Braithwaite was parked outside Amy's.

  My pace slowed. The Braithwaite was unique. Nobody could possibly know where I'd only just shelved it. And who'd nick a valuable old tourer, just to abandon it? Amy didn't even know I was here. Lydia didn't know about Amy. Tinker, though, knew me, my old haunts, and Amy. So Tinker was in town. And Roadie?

  A metal grille thing barred Amy's glass-fronted shop porch. I rang her bell. I looked at the huge old motor. It looked at me. I still had its keys in my pocket. I banged on the door. It opened.

  'Amy? Hello.' I stood and shuffled, embarrassed.

  She stared, stared more. Then, 'You're gone years, and I get hello?'

  'Just passing,' I said, red.

  'You'd best come in.' I entered the warmth, expecting some huge bloke to rise and thump me. 'Sit you down.'

  Minuscule room, coal fire in a grate, hob, oven, tiles by Mason's showing horses on the chimney breast under the cornish, a one-piece iron Lancashire fireplace, six feet by six, gleaming copper and black-grey iron. Say, 1840. Any dealer would give . . .

  'Stop valuing my grate, Lovejoy.'

  'I was doing nothing of the kind!' I said, narked. 'Just having a warm.'

  'You're never cold. And you like the wet.'

  'You always pick me up wrong.' No sign of Tinker. Did she know the Braithwaite was outside?

  She laughed then. 'You don't change, Lovejoy. More theories about women than the parson preached about.'

  'You have. Changed.' We sat, Darby and Joan by the hob. 'You're bonnier.'

  No longer the scrawny Olive Oyl stick-legged lass. Rounder, waisted, smart. Old friends, new enemies. I ought to've asked Gran what it meant. My remark coloured her face.

  'What do you want, Lovejoy?' she asked.

  'Nothing,' I said indignantly. 'Just thought I'd call . . .' I petered out. She clasped her knees the way she used to.

  'I've two children now. Chet's a good man,' she put in quickly. 'Works on the motorways.'

  My remaining muscles relaxed. She carefully didn't smile. A small stack of little leather boxes was on the TV. Cufflinks? Medals?

  'You're still dealing, then?' I asked outright.

  She too relaxed. 'After you, how could I not?'

  'What in?'

  Amy examined me candidly. I don't like women doing that. It makes me think they're not going to believe me.

  'Don't, Lovejoy.' Barely in the door, and twice she'd told me stop it, don't. 'You've looked me up. You know I'm a syndicator. And in what.'

  'Look, A
my.' I went into frowning aggression. 'I'm making a respectable visit. If you can't take me at face value, I'm very sad.'

  She leaned forward and poured tea. (Incidental note: these old hobs, the kettle is always hot.) I finished my rant.

  'You're at Man and Scythe, Lovejoy,' she said, like I'd not spoken. This town. 'And her?'

  'Dealer. It's her motor. She's staying,' I added pointedly, 'at the Swan.'

  'Tinker's at the Pack Horse.'

  She sounded indifferent, but Amy can be sly. Secrecy was unknown. Like, everybody born here knew that it was one of my ancestors who opened the town gates to Prince Rupert's army in our Great Civil War allowing the Royalists to massacre us wholesale. Gran always pretended it was long forgot.

  'The town's full of collectors,' I said. I'd passed several shops, each devoted to a collecting theme.

  'It's the North, Lovejoy.' She sounded defiant. 'Fashion's moving in our direction. We're people with good guesses.'

  That was Amy's way, the oblique remark that stirs you to reach out and grab. Just for once, I'd like somebody to give me something. Take that lass Cecile. About 1926, she was playing, when her dad came home. 'Guess what I've got in my car!' he cried to the four kiddies. 'It starts with C. Whoever guesses right can keep it!' Cecile won. 'Cezanne!' she yelps. Which was how Les Baigneuses got Cecile de Rothschild hooked on collecting. Okay, she was mostly unhappy, got treated like dirt by her bossy pal Greta Garbo. But, she always had a few coppers to spend on her mania. I don't honestly believe she murdered Garbo's friend Georges. And I don't think Garbo did it either. No, honest, I really don't. (Though why did Cecile hide Garbo in her flat in rue Faubourg St Honore after the body was found?) The point is, collecting afflicts where it will, and is a disease for life.

  'The town's into medals?' The nearest I could get to fashion. Amy was as quick as ever. I passed two medal collectors' shops.'

  Amy sighed. 'God, is it! Most are phoney, but they're going like gongs. That Medal News started it. Homemades.'

  Well, fair enough. I watched her warily. No evidence of her trade here, though. Less than a dozen years back, Medal News innocently asked its readers what a Bomber Command medal should look like, were one ever made. So interested were people, that somebody actually struck one, unofficial. It sold like Friday duff, started a fashion. Homemade medals became epidemic. A National Service Medal got sponsored for charity. The Voluntary Service Medal, General Service Cross, Foreign Service Medal, others, came tumbling into collectors' cabinets and onto veterans' beribboned chests.

  'I like the Normandy Medal,' I told Amy, working onward. I'd given her enough chances. 'And the Bomber Command.'

  'Finding the dealer's the problem.' Amy was casual, but fencing away. 'Like that Machin business.'

  My mind was going. Why mention that?

  The Machin business was a shocker. It earthquaked the collecting world almost into oblivion. Arthur Machin had sculpted Queen Liz's noddle for postage stamps. Out of the woodwork came collectors, like train-spotters and bird twitchers suddenly there in obsessed thousands, cheeping for Machin stamps like hungry fledglings. Dealers flourished, supply the demand, as it were. One especially rose in swift splendour. Let's call him Al the Machin specialist. He supplied rare variants, every collector's dream. Each stamp was guaranteed, reliability his watchword. Philatelists beat a path to his door. Then it happened.

  Al went honest.

  The galaxy imploded.

  One ghastly day, Al walked into the cop shop, and confessed. Forgery, deception, special inks, adding dyes, swapping the gum like I used to, altering the surface—yes, constable, he'd done the lot. Worse follows. Not only did Al admit every fraud, he made restitution. A dealer? Giving his ill-gotten gains back? Nobody could take it without psychotherapy. But Al came clean, repaid every groat. The phosphor strips that sort your letters, can be changed—and Al explained how. The Plod of Luton, Bedfordshire, had never had it so good, for here was a true-blue criminal who not only listed his crimes but solved them, wrists out for handcuffs. It's a wonder Al didn't offer to wax the floors, nip out for a pizza.

  Al's sudden honesty ruined the collecting world. Second of June, it's 'Good day constable . . .' Third of June, all collecting's down the chute, dealers waking to the sound of popping ulcers. It was nightmarish. Why did Amy mention it?

  'Who's the chap. Amy?'

  There was a photograph on the side table of Amy smilingly receiving a trophy. I'd seen the celebrity before.

  ‘I won an award.' She sounded proud. 'Last year's competition.'

  'Eh?' I was all innocent. 'What's the banner say?' Lettering, NFD. 'You won? Congratulations. What for?'

  She put her cup down, rose in that smooth women's movement. I stood awkwardly, my man's legs and trunk going through angled sequences to reach the vertical. 'I'd better show you, Lovejoy. You'll never stop otherwise. Come through.'

  She went to the wall and slid a part of it aside. These terraced houses are basically two up, two down, that's it. She'd just done the impossible. Lo and behold, we were suddenly elsewhere.

  'You've knocked through into next door?'

  'The whole terrace.'

  She stepped aside. I gaped. Dresses, racks of shoes, coats, hats hats hats. I'd never seen anything like it. The vibes nearly knocked me flat. I calmed my clamouring chest.

  'Waistcoats upstairs. Gentlemen's militaria. Boots, riding garments, uniforms, downstairs back. Ladies' dresses—costume, dance, crinolines, gowns, accessories—upstairs front. I own all ten houses.'

  'That award, Amy.'

  'For fashion, Lovejoy.' She faced me, calm. 'Now can't you tell me why you've really come? And why you've checked up on me?'

  It's enough to make anyone bitter. So what, if I look up an old flame? Somebody must have phoned her.

  She finished my thought. 'I heard the minute you copied my address down.'

  'Bloody charming,' I groused. 'Spying.'

  'Spying, Lovejoy? You were in the paper. The Journal and Guardian quoted your assistant Bran Mantle. You're going to do the bi-centenary charity auction at this year's fashion show.'

  'Bran Mantle?' I said weakly, cornered.

  'Yes! You'll divvy all the antiques that everybody's donated.' She added nastily, 'Free of charge, Lovejoy.'

  'Me? I think there's been a mistake, love.'

  'Day after tomorrow.' Her smile was sweet innocence. 'For certain.'

  'Look, Amy.' I got up to bluster better. 'If you think I've come all this way for a charity you're off your nut. I'm due in East Anglia . . .'

  She got madder than me. 'Default, Lovejoy, and our newspaper reporters will hound you to death. I'll make them! That's a promise.' Her last shot was. 'Think of the antiques, Lovejoy.'

  Carrot and stick. Together they make a chain. I could always run for it, if I got nowhere with Amy.

  'This bloke.' I stood in front of her picture. She looked so proud among the accoutred beautiful people, smiling and applauding. Rodney, who'd had me thrown out. Thekla next to him, smiling hard at the camera. My heart squeezed from memory. The bloke, though, presenting the trophy. The same trophy was here, in a cabinet, with a framed signed photo, 'To Amy the Champion with love', and an illegible signature. 'I've seen him before. Is he famous?'

  'Was,' she said sadly. 'Viktor Vasho's in hospital. Manchester's most famous fashion designer. He's not mending.'

  'Manchester? I thought he was that Mayfair bloke?'

  'Fashion is a Mayfair address, but a Manchester business. Poor Viktor Vasho. I studied under him before I went independent. Antiques and modern fashions.'

  'Are you famous too?'

  She shrugged. 'Hereabouts. But not like Viktor Vasho.'

  'You won the Northern Fashion Durbar.' I wanted no mistakes. 'And Viktor Vasho came to present it?'

  She sat before the fire. 'Three judges. Rodney's all right. Thekla's a bitch.' She raised her eyes. 'Isn't she, Lovejoy?'

  'Thekla?' I croaked. 'Er…’

  'She wants you to
phone her. If you happen by.'

  Small world, or has somebody already said that?

  'Let her mangle somebody else.'

  In vague hope I gazed at Amy. We'd been really good friends. I gave my most winning smile, and was asked to leave.

  26

  Amy didn't lay a finger on me. I was really narked. Close as any two human beings could be, and now she didn't even ravish me. So what's the use of an old flame? She could have had me on the spot. Not even a grope, when I'm as easy as a grape.

  Do women, I wondered, as the soft rain fell on me in the town's gloaming, long for a man as badly as we feel woman-hunger? Doubt it. A man deprived is blind to food, weather, work. But women can keep going, blithely indifferent. I was unbelievably sorry for myself Maybe there'll be sex in heaven.

  Here I was in night drizzle, lonely as a monk. But purity's stupid. At least, I was no longer baffled.

  Wondering, I stood staring at the old car.

  Who knew the mill garages, who knew Amy? It had to be Tinker. I stared across at Sally Up Steps where I used to meet mates, claiming legal drinking age. Except, if Tinker'd wanted to let me know he'd arrived, why not stroll over and say so? The town knew I was back—those bits interested, anyway. So why this trick? It reminded me of Spoolie, who'd watched one old film too many—actually one too few, but you follow. I didn't want to activate some bomb as I cranked its handle.

  There was a taxi, motor still going, a hundred yards off. A familiar figure by it. My spirit soared, and I gladly advanced.

  'Lydia, doowerlink!' Life was generous after all.

  'So it is true.' She was immobile. 'Roadie phoned me your old flame's address.'

  'It's not like that!' I blurted.

  'I'm leaving, Lovejoy. Do not communicate with me again.'

  'Please, love. I've forgotten how to start the car.'

  'Let me, wack!’ The taxi driver was out in a flash, fondling the crate and aaahing with wonder. He had it firing in a moment, as I stood well away waiting for the uuumph of the explosion. He said thanks to me. I said ta even more fervently, and watched Lydia's taxi's lights recede. I stood alone, replaced, rejected.

  But I had wheels. I drove to the Royal Infirmary. They couldn't refuse me entry, relative of a patient at death's door, could they?