A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair l-21 Read online

  This is not your average splutter. Harness its latent energy, we'd not need fossil fuel.

  Nearby stallholders laughed along with him.

  'Hey, Sir Pons!' a silver vendor called when the decibels finally lessened. 'My trouble in Aldgate says keep the racket down!' Trouble and strife, wife, the Cockney rhyming slang I was just moaning about. 'Is that you, Lovejoy? Where y'been, mate?'

  'Wotcher, Sturffie. I'll look over your clag in a sec.'

  That set nearby traders roaring, giving me chance to tell Sir Ponsonby I was anxious to find the source of padpa fakes. I phrased it with care, not wanting my investigation broadcast by Radio Ponsonby.

  'See you when you get a minute, Sir Ponsonby?'

  'Oh, secrecy, is it, Lovejoy?' he roared. 'Right! By the tuck shop, ten minutes, hey?'

  He meant the nosh vans, of which Bermondsey antiques market has half a dozen. I made a cursory inspection of Sir P's stall - one enormous chipped Satsuma vase among old cameras, militaria, bayonets, photos of pale youths in uniform staring beyond life, and some decent Victorian watercolours of cottages with village women in aprons, with a few fruitwood boxes and other treen. Politely I lied how marvellous his antiques were, then went to Sturffie.

  'How'd yer know Lord Haw-Haw, Lovejoy?'

  The best about London marketeers is you can take up where you left off. Even after a lapse of years, bump into them and they'll say, 'Wotcher, mate. Come and look at this.

  Picked it up on Portobello Road. And how yer keeping?' No hard feelings because you didn't keep in touch.

  'Eh? Oh, met him years since. You've a good piece there, Sturffie.'

  'Me?' He was amazed, stared at his goods as if they'd just swanned in from outer space. 'You having a pig, Lovejoy?' Pig in a poke, joke.

  'Straight up, Sturffie.'

  The market was now crowded. I was being jostled by dealers and tourists shoving down the narrow barrow lanes. Itinerant dealers carry carpet bags, or canvas-lined holdalls. One per dealer, never two. Some of the lads claim to be able to recognize nationalities. I don't think it's true. I suspect it's just clothes, maybe having glimpsed individual dealers the week before, that sort of thing. However, stall and barrow traders are a canny lot. Some work a sort of illegal ring deal if opportunity strikes and other hawkers don't notice. And even if they do.

  'Which is it, mate?' Sturffie grinned through clenched teeth.

  He was once a lowlife, got done for knifing somebody outside an East End pub. I like Sturffie, though. A hard nut, he once did me a favour. It was inexplicable, really, because before the incident he hadn't known I was a divvy or that I was anything to do with antiques at all. I must be the only bloke on earth saved by genuine charity.

  It had been near the famous Prospect of Whitby tavern in the East End. In the gloaming I'd accidentally stumbled on cobbles, and bumped against a motor. A long natty bloke had angrily uncoiled from within, and belted me so I fell against the kerb.

  He'd been just about to punt me into the Thames when this little whippet of a man said, 'Here, knock it orff. He did nuffink,' meaning me.

  'Who sez?' asked the natty thug.

  'Me.' Sturffie, only I didn't know him then, had walked over and helped me up. My head was ringing, me legs wobbling.

  The tall yobbo looked the sort who'd normally tackle anything, on principle, but Sturffie's eyes never wavered. The motorist finally shrugged, abandoned his rage, and strolled into the tavern.

  'You okay, mate?' my saviour had asked.

  'Aye, ta. Good of you.' ,

  'Think nuffin of it. Me old man wuz a bad drinker too. Looked arter him times out of number.'

  He'd thought I'd been drinking. I hadn't. I'd just spent forty hours driving a massive pantechnicon of antiques from Carlisle to the loading bays for Poppy West and her cousin Walshie. I was naturally bogeyed. Sturffie and his mate strolled away.

  I'd called after him for his name. 'Here, mate. Got a moniker?'

  'Ferget it, mate.' He was already off down the alley, as if rescuing me was nothing.

  'He's called Sturffie.' His pal gave a cackle. 'Nasty piece of work.'

  'Ta, then.' I knew better than use his name without his sayso.

  Later, I'd bumped into him, him surprised when he'd realized I too was in antiques.

  Cockneys can be gents, despite rough edges, and he never asked. I was pleased to get a definite bonging vibration from his barrow.

  'How much?' I picked up the tea caddy. It was solid fruitwood, shaped like a pear but the size of a large coconut.

  'Forty quid,' he said, looking at me.

  Its lid opened, genuine lovely interior, lovely handmade hinge as genuine as the day it was made two centuries before. The best tea caddies were made of fruitwood, shaping the final container to match the fruit. If you're lucky, you get apple-shaped tea caddies of applewood, pear-shaped ones of pearwood, and so on. Lovely big ones are rare, rare. The last one I'd seen was found in an old rector's study. He'd used it as a tobacco jar. It sold straight off for three thousand quid, no haggling. Tea was anciently regarded as a most important herb, full of magic potency for health, sexual power, heaven knows what and consequently went for unbelievable sums. I passed a surreptitious hand, palm down, over Sturffie's tea caddy. He saw my gesture, the dealer's universal sign to keep it back for a fortune.

  If Sturffie hadn't been a pal, I would have bought. As it was, leaving it there broke my heart.

  'Ta, Lovejoy. Can't afford it, eh?' he said, jocular, because the woman on the next barrow might have caught my sign. He put it in his capacious pocket, which was even more of a giveaway, but that was his business.

  We talked of this and that, me telling him I was up in London to buy gems and I'd see him later. Then I went to the nosh van to meet Sir Ponsonby. I noticed the exquisite Moiya December (Miss) on guard at his barrow.

  Going through the market is always hard. I took my time, not wanting folk jumping to the conclusion that I'd come specifically to see Sir P. Traders who knew I was a divvy were keen for me to prove their wares 100 per cent genuine and therefore highly valuable, while buyers wanted me to pretend that the antiques they wanted to buy were worthless, to lower the price. The best, and riskiest, game on earth.

  Sir Ponsonby was sitting on a low wall eating bacon and eggs from a silver tray. He brings his own cutlery, cup and saucer, milk jug. Tourists photograph him in mid-nosh.

  His white napkins are monogrammed with his crest, and he affects a George III table screen of walnut, date about 1815, a lovely piece worth more than the entire nosh van.

  'Here, Sir Ponsonby,' I asked, wondering. 'Why is it, keen antiques trader that you are, you don't sell that table screen?'

  Georgian ladies used them to protect their lovely pale complexions - sign of high breeding, before leathery tans became fashionable. They wrote letters in a sunlit arbour, by firelight or candlelight. There's a daft belief among antique dealers that protecting fair cheeks is the pole screen's only value. Wrong. Why, I can remember my old dad reading by firelight. He'd sit by the hob, one hand holding his book, the other shielding his eyes from the embers. I do it myself when Electricity Board fascists cut the power.

  'Sprat to catch a mackerel, old boy,' he boomed. 'They trek me to my barrow, object of all their desires!'

  Sir Ponsonby embarrasses me. The lads say glitterati, slitterati. Me, I'm not even sure if he really is who he says, or if he's one gigantic fraud. A cynic would ring the public school, ask outright, but I haven't the heart. Whose business is it but his own? All about, the market milled as only Bermondsey Antiques Market can. I noticed an old lady, struggling to hump boxes of porcelain from a handcart. You see these desperate folk about - past it, hoping to keep Time at bay by reliving a successful youth. I looked away, ashamed for her, for all the greedy lot of us.

  Meanwhile, Sir Ponsonby noshed on. I stood awkwardly making conversation while he finished his repast. Seeing I wasn't gainfully employed for the moment here's details of the padparadsha: Deep
in Sri Lanka's fruitful mountains, gemstone orchard to the world, an occasional enticing precious stone is mined. The 'padpa', as dealers call them, is of all things a true sapphire. But no plain old sapphire, this miracle. It's a luscious transparent orangey-pink! These lovely wonders aren't common. So, naturally, greedsters thought of manufacturing synthetic padpas. Lo and behold, now they're everywhere. Fashions worry me. I keep warning myself of my homemade law: Fashion today, fool tomorrow. Like, an entrancing orange skirt of last year today looks ridiculous, but who resists fashion?

  Nobody, because fraud raises its ugly head. Synthetic padpas (they're actually corundum, if you're hooked on taxonomy) soon became cheap, while genuine gemstones stayed costly. Which is why, back in rural East Anglia, Dosh Callaghan decided to buy some genuine padpas, have them made into ornate 'early Victorian'

  jewellery. He'd mount a score of synthetics in similar settings - rings, necklaces, earrings, suites of ladies' jewellery. I guessed he'd got the whole scam planned, fake settings, forged certificates. He'd already had me paint an early portrait of Lady Howarth wearing the settings he was having made. The cost to Doshie would be about eight thousand. Profit? Half a million, played right.

  Except the original 'genuine padparadsha gems' he'd bought turned out to be cheapo tsavorites. I was here to suss out who'd done Dosh down. Once I'd fingered the miscreant, he would wreak vengeance. I was unhappy, but beggars can't, can we?

  With a genteel dabbing of linen at his lips, Sir Ponsonby concluded his nosh, handed his tray to the noshbar proprietor, and strolled with me into the churchyard among the winos.

  'You see the problem, Sir Ponsonby,' I said sadly. 'Dosh Callaghan is well narked. You met him when he collected a thick-skirted late card table, supposedly Hepplewhite only the drop wasn't shallow enough, remember? He's paid me to discover who swapped his genuine padpas for tsavorite.'

  'Didn't you ask him?'

  'Dosh said they were delivered by a wonker called Chev, who's somewhere in Edinburgh.' A wonker is a driver who ships small antiques, up to about chair size, anywhere in the kingdom, door to door. Very reliable, wonkers are, because they lose their livelihood - maybe their legs - if they default. 'Chev' after his huge American car.

  Dosh had given me registration, phone numbers, address.

  'Can't you contact him?'

  'Tried that. Chev's due back Thursday. Something going down.' Meaning a clandestine robbery, when a trusty wonker is worth his weight in gold.

  Sir Ponsonby gazed at me. My scalp prickled, because he wasn't your actual warm-hearted instant mourner. 'Sure you want to know, Lovejoy? Sturffie recently sold some genuine padparadsha gemstones.'

  'Sturffie?' Sir Ponsonby grasped my arm in a grip of steel as I turned away towards the teeming market. 'Think, Lovejoy. Sturffie boxed them up last Friday.'

  I said, 'Thanks, Sir Ponsonby.' My pal Sturffie? Who'd once saved me a clobbering, if not worse?

  'Sorry, Lovejoy.' He knew the consequences for Sturffie. 'Look,' he said kindly. 'Come round for supper, what say? Moiya cooks fairly well for an idiot.'

  'Thank you, Sir Ponsonby.' I'd intended to catch the train with my bad news, but suddenly wanted to remain safe in London's mayhem. 'You still live in Dulwich?'

  'St James's now, Lovejoy. Give me a bell.'

  He palmed me his card. I trudged off, feet heavy.

  What the hell had Sturffie been thinking of? Surely to God he'd have known his trick would have been rumbled, and that retribution would follow? When in doubt, go for a nosh, listen to the gossip, feel for a way out. I followed the aroma.

  3

  MIMI WELKINSHAW WAS at her dad's van, thank goodness. I needed her help. She waved hello with a forged tribal mask, all ebony and exotic feathers, grinning. I signalled yes, I'd buy it. She rolled in the aisles at that, and chucked it into her van among the other dross. It gave me a wry smile.

  Antiques foster mysteries. We even encourage them. Look at the Great Dogon Mask mystery, for instance. A queer business, it still drives antique dealers daft.

  It began once upon a time when two French anthropologists went a-wandering in Africa. They took recorders, cameras, gadgetry to get the story right. They studied the Dogon, a tribe who did a complicated dance every sixty years. For this, tribal priests stole away to secret caves where they unearthed sacred masks. These masks are megagalactic rarities, and contained information about heavenly bodies - stars, not people - in the night skies. So far so good?

  It was interesting - tribal priests, a sacred cult, every sixty years a dancing jubilee. Our own folk do this sort of thing at Stonehenge. The Chinese climb mountains on special days. My own home town trudges up a hill called Sixty-three Steps on Good Friday, for no reason. It's simply what folk do, no harm done.

  But these French anthropologists learned that the dance concerned two stars. One was Sirius the Dog Star, famously the brightest. The other star, so necessary to the ancient cult dance of the Dogon tribe was nearby - well, near as stars go. It was called Sirius B.

  Bad news for logicians, for Sirius B is all but invisible.

  You can see it if you've a modern telescope. But this tribe's been dancing their ritual dance for century upon century upon… See the problem? Ancient African tribe, keeping records on cult masks in concealed caves about an unseen star. The Dogon priests admitted sure, they knew all about the good old invisible star, so what? They danced to a star they could never have seen.

  Astronomers take beautiful photos of this star, so we know it's really there. Mystique mongers had a field day, proving the Dogon came from Outer Space, all that. The real impact, though, was on antique dealers who sulked, because they wanted those sacred

  - priceless - masks. They couldn't get them by fair means. This meant forging them, making them up. Never mind that none of us has the slightest clue what a Dogon mask looks like. Antique dealers everywhere, especially in Belgium, bought common old (read new) masks from anywhere, decorated them with weird symbols, oven-dried them, then sold them - furtively and with grave warnings to keep them secret - to anybody daft enough to buy.

  See what I mean? The Great Mask Mystery is alive and flourishing. Where two or more antique dealers are gathered together in greed's name, there'll be a Dogon Mask among them. Where was I?

  In Bermondsey, alone and palely loitering, wondering how the heck I could warn Sturffie off and still keep my skin. Make no mistake. If it came to Sturffie or me, it'd be goodnight Sturffie, no question. Okay, so he'd saved me that time. But fair's fair. I'm a survivor.

  Thumping music started up. Dealers yelled. I couldn't help grinning as Mimi started her famous striptease. She plays a scratchy old gramophone, with her van doors wide open like a stage. (Dance in your vehicle, the law can't stop you. Obstruct London's streets by dancing, you're for it.) Dealers and tourists immediately gathered. Cameras clicked.

  Admiring laughter rose in the jostling crowd. There was a lot to admire because Mimi is bulbous and you get a lot for your money. Some dealers were narked, wishing that they too had some pulchritude to entice unwary spenders. Mimi has a sweet nature, is quiet and pure. Because of her show, though, ribald gossip stories abound. Vice escapes gossip, where virtue never does. I loved her dance and hummed along. You can't help worshipping women, big or small, whether full of youth's honey promises or faded crone's loving experience. I love them all, because they're the only source of delight. It gave me an idea. The most magic words ever spoken are the pure and simple 'Listen and save' of the immortal Milton. They were the only words the River Severn's exquisite goddess Sabrina heeded. She did listen, and did the job.

  All I needed was a goddess who would listen and save! I watched Mimi buh-buh-buh-booooom. The crowd thickened in more ways than two. She was down to knickers and bolero as the record gave its final ta-rrrrah! whereupon she slammed the van doors amid yells for an encore. I applauded. I love art.

  In nearby converted warehouses there's an occasional nosh bar. Some are elegant with flowers and trellises,
where you could safely take your grandma. Others are wobbly trestles and a steaming urn spewing tenpenny grot. I prefer the grime, because Billia is usually there.

  'Why Billia, Billia?' I asked, paying for a gill of outfall and a cheese wedge. I was relieved she hadn't gone walkabout with some rambo. She's prone to it.

  Actually she made her name up. Pretty slim and shapely with flowing blonde locks and the most amazing mouth. It's never still. She doesn't use much makeup, which is a shame, but always wears bright colours. Today's theme was every shade of reds, scarlets, rose. She was sitting smoking a fag. Fire is not her only hazard.

  'Thought you'd be along, Lovejoy, soon as I heard.'

  'I'm that famous, eh?'

  She glanced around. The nosh place was in an arched doorway leading to a hall crammed with antique stalls. By the wide wooden stairs a couple or three dealers had managed to slot in archaic church furnishings, glass trinket-filled cabinets, display boards festooned with jewellery. Throngs of tourists mingled. Like dining on a shrinking ice floe.

  'You, down-hearted?' I stared, partly because I can't help it, but mostly in disbelief.

  'You're beautiful, got your own shop. God's sake, your car goes!' I couldn't imagine greater wealth.

  She smiled a bitter smile, her mouth fluttering. It tortured me just looking. Yet anguish communicates, doesn't it? I felt the same shame as I had moments ago watching that struggling crone. Reminded me of someone, dunno who.

  'Typical, Lovejoy. But bless you for coming.' She stubbed out her fag end, the symbolism momentarily stopping my synapses. 'I began to wonder if you'd got my message.'

  Had I? I'm not good with messages. 'What's the problem, love?' A little hope crept into me, because a dazzling beauty's gratitude might mean that ecstasy followed close behind.

  'Dang took a drop last week. I wanted you to prevent it.' She touched my hand in tearful forgiveness. 'I'm not blaming you, Lovejoy. I know you'd have come earlier if you'd been able.'