Moonspender Read online

"James? He's back at the council chamber."

  "Pleased to hear it." Three's a crowd. James Ryan had started life as Jimmy O'Ryan. His name had escalated since he'd got pomp, posh, and plenty.

  Mrs. Ryan said quite casually, "I'll use the Harwich road, Lovejoy." That would take us past very few houses, clever lady. Women are a shrewd lot. She spoke on even more casually. "Lovejoy. Are you still interested in my pendant?"

  "Er, yes." Cunning Lovejoy, not too eager. The pendant was an exquisite Roman brooch, its mount a refashioned foliate gold luna. I'd noticed her wearing it at the village flower show. I cleared my throat, oh-so-casual. There were serious implications here. We hit the bypass and ran out of street lights. The Bentley hummed. Toffee snored between my feet. Nobody spoke. It seemed my cue. "Any chance of another look, Mrs. Ryan?"

  "Possibly," she said instantly, but still offhand. "James will be late home. I'll drop you at the chapel, then return later."

  "Sure that'll be all right?"

  "Perfectly," she said. "Incidentally, did I see you fighting? I happened to be passing a cafe—"

  "Me, fight?" I gave a convincing chuckle. "No, love. I leave that to the professionals."

  "It was somebody with a common-looking, ah . . ."

  Women always run out of definitive terms, don't they? It happens a lot when their personal values are at stake. I have this theory that women's talk is a dot picture; join the blobs and complete the geranium.

  ". . . common-looking lady?" I said, linking the dots.

  "Mmmmh." She glanced down. "I've told you before, Lovejoy; never while I'm driving."

  My hand had accidentally alighted on her knee. "Know what I learned today? You stroke cats but pat dogs, not the other way round."

  She laughed. Her face is lightweight, medieval tempera paint on parchment. She's the sort who can don ultramarine earrings and turn smiling from the dressing table mirror to show them transmuted into a blanched eau-de-nile. Honest. I've seen her do it.

  "You're off your head," she told me, still laughing. "Before you go, Lovejoy, did you think about it?"

  "Eh?" Then, oh dear, I remembered she'd offered me her estate manager's job, would you believe, all guns and yokels. "Can we talk about it later?" is useful; postponement is my big skill.

  She dropped me off, saying to expect her. I walked the lane from the chapel, thinking about Mrs. Ryan's persistence. She narked me, keeping on about her rotten job. If only women would stop being so demanding, they could achieve great things. Sometimes a woman is a character in search of an analogy. I stopped thinking complicated thoughts then because I could see my porch bulb shining. Odd, that. Sure enough there were two great dark cars blocking the drive.

  Indoors, Sykie was swigging tea. "Wotcher, Lovejoy. You've been quick."

  Four goons lolled around, one of them with my mug. He was spooning the last of my sugar, the robber. I shut the door and sat down. "Wotcher, Sykie. Your lads'll be a little while."

  He closed his eyes wearily. "Slipped them, did yer? Gawd, them pair." He looked about, indicating the cottage. "Here, Lovejoy. This the best you can do? It's a right bleedin' mess."

  That narked me. Admittedly the cottage was a little untidy, but I hadn't been expecting visitors. "Well, things have gone a bit off lately, Sykie."

  "They've improved. You've got a job, Lovejoy. On telly."

  "Eh?" Television?

  He's a heavy man, forever starting up in mid-sentence as if hearing an unexpected visitor outside. "Know that antiques game, where they guess things?"

  "That's impossible, Sykie." I cast about anxiously. "I can't look natty even if I try. For television you need glamour."

  He was grinning. Sykie does a lot of grinning. "Next show, one of the panel will unexpectedly drop out. They'll pick a member of the audience." He grinned wider, winked. "Guess who."

  My voice was a croak. "But what if the expert shows up, Sykie?"

  "He won't, Lovejoy. Will he, Dave?"

  The sugar stealer gave a cadaverous smile. "No, Sykie. He gets flu tomorrer."

  "Sykie, please." I felt like a kid in school.

  "You join the panel, Lovejoy. And guess all the antiques right." Sykie looked at his cup and rose. "And for Gawd's sake get a few tins of beer in." He moved out, oafs holding the door. His shoulders heaved, him laughing. Serfs laughed along, always a wise policy. "Just do it, Lovejoy. And you'll preserve all this." He indicated my cottage with a nod. Here it came. "Lovejoy Towers."

  They were still booming with laughter as the big saloons crunched down my gravel off into the night. I went back in, narked, Toffee the bloody nuisance between my feet. If Sykie had been a fat geezer trapped at table on his own I'd have sloshed him one. Or not. Lovejoy the hard man, I thought bitterly, black belt in origame.

  Ten minutes later the Sykes lads tore up in a Jaguar, asking had I seen their dad. I said he'd dropped in for tea.

  One o'clock in the morning and all hell seemed let loose. Blearily I went to the door with a towel modestly round my middle. The eldest Sykes son was there, tough and nasty. He gave me a bundle of money.

  "Me dad sez get some decent shmutter, Lovejoy. A proper suit." He paused. "Here, Lovejoy, that your horse?"

  "Horse?" I was only half awake.

  "There's a nag out here." He was thinking how to pull a racing scam. I can read these nerks like a book.

  "Not mine," I said. "Night." And shut the door.

  I've no carpet, only a couple of tatty rugs that I leap to like stepping-stones because the stone flags are perishing. I dived in to her warmth with a glad cry.

  "Lovejoy." Mrs. Ryan was aghast and whispering. "Who was it?"

  "A message." Cunningly I wriggled for more of her warmth while she was distracted. "I've to go on television."

  Mrs. Ryan relaxed in relief "You live the oddest life, Lovejoy." My hand found her breast. I can't go back to sleep properly without one, some infancy hangover, I expect. "You're freezing. Did you say on television?"

  "Shut up," I mumbled. Women never stop rabbiting. Then I thought a bit. "Here, Mrs. Ryan. Did you leave a horse in my hedge?"

  "Of course. I couldn't come in a car at this hour. People would hear." Women are sly. I've often noticed that.

  2

  Mrs. Ryan left while it was still pitch black outside. The wind had fallen, the rain ceased. She blamed me in a steady whimper of recrimination for (a) the cold weather, (b) having the best of this arrangement, and (c) not even getting up to make her some tea. She looked lovely. I watched her dress. I like morning women. They're all floury and plump. It's only later that they collect those toxins of antagonism that make danger. She wears a proper woman's riding habit. (I think I mean a woman's proper riding habit, but you know, not those jodhpurs that spread.)

  "I've no tea left." I spoke from her warm patch with bitterness. "Some gangsters nicked it last night."

  She came back and sat on the bed. It's really only a foldaway divan, and tilts you riskily toward whoever sits on its edge. It has mixed benefits. I rolled against her.

  "Lovejoy."

  "Shouldn't you be going? Councillor Ryan will be—"

  "This can't go on, can it?" I gave a theatrical snore. "Don't hide." She pulled the sheets off my face.

  "Look, Mrs. Ryan. I've a big day on . . ." But it was no use. Women always have everything their own way.

  Before she took off on her animal she said to kit myself out at Kirkham's tailor's in town, on her personal account. I said ta, and promised most sincerely to remember whatever it was she'd been on about.

  The day of my television debut dawned into one of those mornings where you have plenty of time but suddenly it evaporates. I don't suppose it happens to other people much, everybody else being so organized. But it gets on my nerves when unexpectedly I'm having to hurtle everywhere out of breath. Worse, the train for London was punctual, an all-time first. Big Frank from Suffolk was alighting. He visits our antiques Arcade on the rare days he isn't being sued for alimony. I like him. He's a
real dedicated silver dealer, anything before 1900. He's also a megamarrier, bigamist, and multiple divorce.

  "Hello, Lovejoy. Jeez, you're done up like a dog's dinner."

  "Wotcher." I felt embarrassed in my new suit. "Here, Frank. Tell Tinker I've left him an envelope at the Three Cups." Tinker's my scruffy old barker—that's antiquese for a bent Machiavellian scrounger. I pay him in booze. "Help us up."

  He bumped the basket into the compartment for me, gaping. "It's a frigging call" I'd bought the big shopping basket this morning with my newfound wealth. Toffee watched dispassionately while she was hauled aboard, monarch of all she surveyed. I wasn't sure what cats lie on, so I'd bought her a blanket thing. The pet shop girl had tried telling me that cats traveled in a lidded basket. I'd told her to stuff" her portable dungeon. "What's the game, Lovejoy?"

  "Going on telly." The whistle blew.

  "Straight up?" He slammed the door. I put the window down. "Here, Lovejoy. Got anything like a silver fertility pendant?"

  These are mostly oriental, or Regency, except for those of the ancient world, which are semiprecious stone or bronze. "Gawd, Frank. You're not asking much."

  He looked so crestfallen—a massive slump for such a big bloke that I felt sorry. "Okay, Frank. I'll have a try. Still on that collection, eh?" He'd been trying to compile erotic antiques for some local lady.

  "Mmmmh. Oh, Lovejoy." The train began to move. "Will you be best man?"

  "Me?" I don't usually get asked this, being a scruff". Must be this frigging suit, which served me right. "If you want. How many's this?"

  "Eighth. That's why it'll have to be at that redundant church."

  Well, I could see why a going parish couldn't risk doing weddings as job lots. Religion's never any help to the living, is it.

  Big Frank ran out of platform. We ended up bawling at each other over the wheel clatter, him yelling eleven o'clock at St. Mary the Virgin's church on Saturday week, me bawling a polite ta-for-asking. I sagged in my seat, nearly crushing Toffee in her basket. What with Mrs. Ryan, the tailor's, Toffee, and Big Frank I was knackered before the journey'd even started. So this new wife would be the eighth. Did bigamies count two?

  "Morning, Lovejoy." Dorothy was smiling at me from the opposite seat. I hadn't noticed her. "My, aren't we smart!"

  "Traveling by train?" I gave back, though I like her because she's bonny and plays the harpsichord for Les Moran's music shop in the High Street. "The broomstick in for service?" Her husband Les is a jealous burke.

  She smiled, letting Toffee sniff her fingers. "Now stop that, Lovejoy."

  Three months previously she'd been interviewed on local television talking about witchcraft, midsummer frolics, and all that. "Seriously, Dot. Still a fully paid-up witch, are we?"

  "I still . . . commune with nature, if that's what you mean."

  "I'm going on telly, too," I said proudly. We chatted of that until she got off at Kelvedon. After that some old dear with cherries on her hat started telling me what she fed her own rotten moggie.

  "Cats are superior," she explained, in a terrible sentence I later wished I'd listened to more carefully. "Lone walkers, they. Dogs want friends, especially in the night hours. Old softies."

  Daft owd bat, I thought, and nodded off.

  The TV building amazed me. If you've never seen these places, don't. They're grottie, a real letdown. I emerged from the station to find this hunchback, gaunt-windowed brick building looking like a Salvosh soup kitchen between a post office and a derelict cinema. I even walked round the place to make sure, until Sykie's lads came out and wearily hauled me in past the unshaven doorman.

  "I could do wiv yer, Lovejoy," Sykie's eldest told me, "but you're frigging weird. Bleedin' nag one minute, moggie the next."

  The audience numbered about a hundred, mostly the blue-rinse brigade. We sat obediently in rows facing an alcoholic comedian who tried to make his transparent anxiety less contagious by telling a succession of corny Christmas cracker jokes. Finally he surrendered from exhaustion, and left us with a blunt instruction to applaud when he wagged a rolled newspaper.

  This particular telly game's moronic, like all the others. God knows why people watch. I used to, before sadists among the authorities played hell about license money and nicked my black-and-whiter. The idea is that somebody comes onto the stage with some alleged antique. "Is it real or fake?" the compere bleats through her lacquered grin. Bloody stupid, because everything's one thing or the other, including people. She continues, "Is it . . . old or gold?" The studio audience jubilantly chants this catchphrase, applauding themselves and laughing. (Thrilling stuff, no?) A panel of three tries to guess each antique's value while an antiques "expert" sits there, sneering. His job's to reveal the truth. He says. Former civilizations created brilliant musical liturgies and literature reaching the highest spheres of art. We add stupendous technology to this particular cake mix—and produce gunge.

  There's only one dicey bit: You've got to believe the expert. The reason the whole absurd carry-on's so fascinating is of course antiques themselves. They're exactly what life is: exalting, beautiful, and an exhilarating risk. Or fake.

  Toffee's feline brain sussed out the scene's potential and wisely switched off. I was just settling next to a nice Birmingham bird who insisted on telling me all about other telly shows she'd been to, when Sykie's action started. A thin terrified woman carrying a clipboard tore on, twisting with anguish.

  Would you believe, she announced, but a panelist had—gasp!— flu and a volunteer was needed from the audience. She ran about, demented. People frantically rose to volunteer as one. I sat, bored out of my mind, until a Sykie-prompted knee nudged my seat's back and I obediently raised my hand. I can take a hint. The corkscrewing lady rotated down the aisle and picked me. I gave a glowering Sykes lad Toffee to hold, and followed the lady into a kind of barber's where a lank bird in jeans tried to put powder on my face. I wasn't having that, and saw her off. I made the panel unsullied. The show was Going Out Live, they told us breathlessly, as if we'd all be moribund otherwise.

  So we panelists sat there on these neffie tubular steel chairs that hurt your spine. I eyed the others mistrustfully. Two youngsters were penning our names on cards. "Lovejoy," I told my particular youth when he asked. For some reason the duckegg was crawling on the floor. I shrugged. Whatever turns you on.

  "And here's Veronica Gold!" a deity boomed. Applause and swivelling lights. This fetching bird marched on amid pandemonium. She's attractive, in a rather threatening manner. Worship me, her smile commands, or I'll liquidate you. We'd been instructed to call her Goldie. The suicidal comic flagged the applause to a mere tumult, and we were off.

  "Our panelists this week," Goldie trilled, "are Famous Television Personality . . ."I listened with half an ear.

  This FTP was quite a pleasant scholarly bloke who looked in from the country, Peter Something. I vaguely recalled him reading the news years ago. Then an intense lass of savage plainness called Beth, a Famous Feminist Author and Equal-Right Journalist, as if there is such a thing. And me.

  "And," Goldie beamed, "tonight's Volunteer Celebrity Panelist, selected for one hundred consecutive viewings of this program— Lovejoy."

  "Er, sorry, love," I interrupted. "Never watch it, I'm afraid."

  Her eyes glazed. "What?"

  "Bit of a run-in over the TV license."

  The comic wafted the feeble applause into a riot, and blew it out with a horizontal swipe of his newspaper.

  "No significance in Lovejoy's name, folks!" cried Goldie desperately.

  The comic leaps into action. A gale of laughter, then silence. It was getting on my nerves, but it was their business. If this ludicrous pantomime made me immune from Sykie's righteous anger, I'd play along. I'd been happier flogging hankies.

  "And now it's time to play . . ." Goldie chirped gaily.

  "Old or gold!" the audience thundered. And on came the first item.

  It was a small piece of niello jewelry on a
velvet card, brought in by a brown-coated serf. The ex-newsreader guessed it Russian, worth a fortune. Beth the journalist talked until she was signaled by yet another creeping kulak—God, they seemed everywhere, crawling about. Like being in a bloody dogs' home. One kept jabbing a finger at me and then at Goldie, telling me to keep staring at our elegant compere. Obligingly I tried, but kept getting distracted by somebody dangling past in the semigloom beyond the lights.

  Somebody had asked me something. "Eh?"

  Goldie looked narked. "Beth says stylized French, two centuries old, and five thousand pounds. Your guess, Lovejoy?"

  My turn. "Oh, thank you," I said politely. "Crappy modem junk, love. Not worth a light."

  A split second of silence, then Goldie smoothly moved on. "So three distinct views. But is it. . . ?"

  "Old or gold!" everybody yelled.

  Our expert, a museum curator, emerged to a drumroll and pulled a lever. A massive screen above us showed carousel numbers clicking past. They stopped at twenty-six. I fell about laughing. The clapping faltered, stopped.

  "Yes, three points to Lovejoy," Goldie announced brightly. "He is in good humor at his success!"

  "Not that, love," I said. "You'd never get twenty-six quid for that rubbish. It's penny a ton. Thailand stuff, mass-produced. There's no variation in the niello, see? Ancient niello makers stuck to the old Cellini one-two-three step formula, silver is to copper is to lead. So do the Thais, incidentally, but their absolute mix is—"

  "Thank you," screamed Goldie, smiling a terrible smile at a camera. There were lots of these. A red light kept shining, first on one, then another. Pretty clever, really. "And the next item is . . ."

  A lady walked on wearing an amber necklace. She was a good middle-aged handful for some fortunate yokel. Her beads were bonny, simply carved, a light orange.

  "Amberoid," I said in disgust without rising to examine the necklace and thinking, no wonder we're all morons these days if this is your average telly. Why show dross when you needn't? The lady exhibiting them looked lost. "Not your fault, love," I told her kindly. "Wiser heads than yours have fallen for it. Amber fragments heated together. You can tell by the longitudinal striations. Maybe a couple of quid on a bad day."