The Rich And The Profane Read online

  ‘Irma?’ Alisa purred, eyes dancing. ‘You know her name!’ ‘Ellie said it. No, never met her in my life.’

  ‘It’s still here. The police are sending a photographer.’ ‘They usually leave some cretin on guard.’ I said it outright before realizing there was somebody behind me.

  ‘Hello, Lovejoy. Inspector Cretin, at your service.’ There he stood, thin and intense, hating my every breath. Malice personified. ‘On guard,’ he added pointedly, ‘against criminals.’

  ‘Wotcher, Mr Summer.’ I smiled ingratiatingly. ‘I was just passing.’

  ‘The perpetrator called out your name, Lovejoy. Why?’ ‘Maybe she was hoping to sell me the ... item.’ I always find it hard to keep a lie simple, one of my faults. ‘Not that I’d ever buy anything stolen.’

  ‘Of course not, Lovejoy. Yet she’s asked for you to come to the police station and make a statement.’

  ‘Me? About a cheap necklace?’

  ‘No. About this.’

  It wasn’t a necklace at all. It was a small jug. My knees went funny. I had to steady myself on the edge of the table. Inside me a deep chime resonated. Alisa looked hard at me, took my arm.

  ‘Are you going giddy, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Moi?’ I laughed a swaggering denial. It came out falsetto.

  ‘Why did you think it was a necklace, Lovejoy?’ Summer wouldn’t give up.

  I looked away to get my breath. ‘How should I know?’ I felt rotten, moved away. The rare antique beamed after me. I wanted to have a word with it, see how it felt, being so valuable among this load of crud.

  ‘Soon as the photographer comes, Lovejoy, I’m taking you in.’

  Alisa leant me against a tatty wardrobe and wafted me with her auction catalogue. I stared over her at the beautiful, exquisite, lovely Rockingham jug. You can’t help it. It stood there proudly radiating perfection.

  Some two and a half centuries ago, a bloke called Edward Butler was wandering Yorkshire. A vigilant lad, he came across a bed of high-quality clay of a rather odd yellow hue. Instantly he set up a pottery at Swinton, up Rotherham way. His pots weren’t remarkable, merely ‘household browns’, as trade slang has it. When he popped his clogs in 1765, a friend called Malpass carried on. Here’s an interesting thing, though: no original Swinton pieces have yet been confirmed. So somewhere Out There, in some junk shop, in some boot fair or street market, a common-as-muck piece of brown Butler or Malpass domestic pottery is waiting, screaming, to make you a fortune. Find one, you’ll never see so many noughts this side of the National Lottery.

  Well, time passed at the little factory. Then, enter the great Thomas Bingley, bringing the Brameld brothers. It was evolution time in the old Swinton pottery. Fashions, and partnership, changed over the years, but those ancient old craftsmen were equal to it all, being nothing less than slogging geniuses. You’ve only to see the Rockingham glaze’s purplish-russet colour to fall in love with it.

  Except this little thing wasn’t it at all.

  For the descendants of the Bramelds went from strength to strength, and from strength to bankruptcy, since those youths were great experimenters. While great savants were discussing the number of angels dancing on pin heads, or the ability of the stars to think, the young Bramelds did solid experiments, testing the effects of kiln heat on metals and clays. In early 1826 they went for it, and started producing bone china so superb that it melts your heart. The Bramelds’ bone china was so light and delectable, and their brilliant high-quality standards were so impeccable, that they went bust. The Swinton pottery was done for. Gloom abounded.

  At the last minute, an astonishing white knight arrived, none other than creaking old Earl Fitzwilliam. He put up a fortune and fired the kilns, on condition that the Swinton factory was called the Rockingham Works. The old gent also wanted his own crest on the china. It’s not much to look at, actually, a somewhat cocksure griffin, with Rockingham Works and the name Brameld underneath.

  There are forgeries, of course, but one tip I’ve found reliable when trying to find a path through the minefield of Rockingham-type antiques is this: as rival potteries flourished, the Bramelds developed superb enamels of unequalled colour from the 1830s on. To me, the giveaway isn’t their dazzling ground colours or their famous ‘Rockingham blue’. It’s that they went ape on gilding, lashings of it. But sometimes, just sometimes, one or two items crept out with a curious delicate, lacey gilding. One glance takes your breath away. With the passage of time, the Brameld gilding in surviving pieces has gone dark, maybe even golderer, if there is such a word. It’s like the gold is trying to become copper, exactly like new pennies used to be before the Great Decimal Trick made us paupers.

  This little jug in Gimbert’s Auction was genuine lacey-gilded Rockingham. That alone would have made me faint, but it was also the most special colour of all, the ultra-rare light peach. OK, some would see only an ornate little milk jug, and dealers would only see a ton of money - if they spotted it. To me it was pure magic, shaped by wonderful people of the dim past who laboured in hell, and who created a radiant gift for all generations.

  Summer saw my gape. ‘That jug’s evidence, Lovejoy. Keep your thieving hands off.’

  See what I mean? Silently I apologized to the antique for the company it had to keep. Alisa took me to a chair, sat me down.

  ‘Are you all right, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Course.’ I felt clammy. The Rockingham jug was sad, hating all this. ‘Sorry, love,’ I called over to it.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Lovejoy,’ Alisa said, thinking I meant her.

  She went to the office. I heard Summer interrogating some whiffler. When I’d recovered enough to take notice, the lady who’d been talking to Daffo had gone. I beckoned him over.

  ‘That lady. She dash you?’ Dash is bribe. He glanced around, edgier still. ‘I’m serious, Daffo.’

  ‘She dropped me a tenner to blow the whistle if that Irma lifted anything.’

  ‘Okay, Daffo, no harm. What did Irma try nicking?’ ‘That Rockingham fake jug.’

  Fake? It was as genuine as breath. ‘Who put it in?’ ‘Entered it in the sale? That lady, Mrs Crucifex.’ Wobbly, I stood and beckoned him with a jerk of my chin to where the necklace lay on phoney velvet. I examined it in case I’d missed anything from its photograph. Still Edwardian, still mediocre, nothing more than dress jewellery, tourmaline, miniature malachite greens not even worth counting. Now, I really like semi-precious stones, as people cruelly call them, but this wouldn’t break anybody’s bank. What, eight quid in wet weather? Not a farthing more.

  ‘Who entered that necklace?’ It was what light-fingered Irma had really wanted to steal.

  Daffo riffled through his catalogue. ‘A Miss Dominick.’ ‘You sure, Daffo?’ Irma had entered it herself?

  He saw Gimbert peering from the auctioneer’s office and firmly folded his catalogue away.

  ‘That’s confidential, Lovejoy!’ he said in a voice like a thunderclap.

  Which ended my involvement, because the police photographer came just then, and two newspaper stringers bawling idiot questions. I slipped out.

  Why did Irma Dominick enter a cheap necklace in a country auction, come to me for lessons on how to steal it, then get herself arrested trying to steal something totally different, namely a Rockingham bone china jug of outstanding richness and quality, wrongly described as a fake and belonging to her aunt Mrs Crucifex? I went to stave off a migraine in the Welcome Sailor.

  There was one local Crucifex, the tavern’s phone book told me, a Mrs J. She didn’t answer when I rang. No Dominicks. I sat among antique dealers and heard the saga of Irma’s arrest a thousand times more I thought of Florida, queen of hearsay, tittle tattle and fable. As soon as her flower arranging class ended, I’d ask her what was going on. She’d know. Florida’s a gossip frenzy.

  3

  It’s a sad truth that housewives murder antique silver. They will pay a fortune for a lovely Regency silver salver or be delirious with delight that they’v
e inherited Auntie Elsie’s valuable Georgian mint Paul Storr silver candelabrum, then fall on it like vandals, polishing the poor antique as if desperate to wear it away. I can’t understand it.

  ‘Lovejoy,’ Arty greeted me. ‘This is genuine, right?’

  I looked at the poor thing, a sugar crusher. It doesn’t look much, nothing more than a silver rod with a rounded end. The capital Roman-style A silver mark came in during 1796, lasted until 1816. It is, believe me, a precious clue, but housemaids had all but worn away the sugar crusher maker’s mark and the date letter - they used rouge to scrub their mistress’s silverware. Life’s less risky for silver now, but try telling this lovely little damaged antique that.

  ‘Aye, Arty.’ It rang my chimes, but was having a hard time.

  Why don’t people simply wash silver in baby soap, followed by a hearty rinse? It’s the best way. Never use scrubbers, scourers, vicious detergents. Antique silver deserves care. Think of a three-month-old baby’s skin, and you have it.

  ‘Why aren’t you glad, Lovejoy?’

  Arty finances his gambling by dealing in antiques, if you can imagine anything more cock-eyed. One activity would ruin Midas, but Arty does the two together. I explained about not wearing away silver treasures.

  ‘Modem polishes often incorporate tarnish-retarders, Arty.’

  ‘Must I clean it, then?’

  ‘No!’ I bawled, then muttered, shamefaced, as everybody looked, ‘It’s clean enough.’

  Sugar crushers, oddly, are rather rare, perhaps because they look ordinary. Loaf sugar, usual in Georgian times, was cut by the maid and served in a sugar basket. The pieces were gracefully broken by the hostess with a silver crusher at tea, her skill impressing gentlemen callers.

  Which genuine antique had now come down in the world, to end up being bartered in a low-life tavern. I almost had tears in my eyes. We discussed the price. I gave him an IOU.

  ‘I’ll redeem it tomorrow at noon, Arty,’ I lied.

  ‘Earlier, Lovejoy. There’s racing at York.’

  ‘Right, right.’ I was peeved. Now I’d have to evade the blighter all morning, in case he wanted me to pay my debts. Is life unfair, or what?

  The sugar crusher I wrapped in my grotty hanky. I only had a few quid, so I got hold of Liz Sandwell, a lovely dealer, but whose bloke is a rugby player of frightening size. She was talking to Maureen Jolly. This luscious lass doesn’t belie her name and is given to displaying her long legs to impress any passing impressario, she being a songstress/ actress of burning ambition. Her doting husband believes in her, which only goes to show.

  ‘Lovejoy!’ Liz purred. ‘That miniature. Better cough up.’

  ‘Honest, Liz, I’ll have the dosh any sec.’

  ‘Buyers are queuing up, Lovejoy. I’ll give you till tomorrow.’

  Some days are nothing but bother. A couple of days previously I’d IOU’d a miniature painting from Liz. It was quite good, done in pewter as a plain brooch. What interested me had been that the lady in the portrait had been wearing stomacher jewellery. This has nothing to do with the padding that ancient ladies used to bulge themselves out front as if they were pregnant. In jewellery a stomacher is a large - large - triangular setting of pearls and gems to adorn her bodice, often to hang as low as the waistline, or down from the decolletage. Sometimes, as in the miniature portrait I’d conned off Liz, the stomacher can even be in two separate pieces of similar design. They are rare. And I was almost sure I’d seen it before somewhere, hence my eagerness. Trouble was, Jessica from Norwich had conned it off me - women have ways - ‘to show a friend’. Once a duckegg, as they say. Now I was in a real mess.

  ‘Ta, love. Do us a favour, Liz? Please?’

  Her lovely eyes fixed on me. The non-laughing laugh is a woman’s trick men can’t do. She did it now. I shrank. ‘Your favours always cost me, Lovejoy.’

  ‘No, honest, love. Just go to Gimbert’s and write me a bid for a fake Rockingham jug. Number 152.’

  ‘Fake? You? Bidding for a fake?’ Now they both did laugh, Maureen so much she had to put her drink down in case it spilt. ‘I thought only genuine antiques clanged your bell!’

  ‘Among other things, Liz!’ Maureen fell about.

  ‘Very droll,’ I said gravely. ‘Will you?’

  Liz sobered, appraised me, slid from her stool and collected her handbag.

  ‘This once, Lovejoy, and that’s final. I can’t go on subbing you.’

  ‘Ta, Liz. I owe you.’

  She left, ignoring invitations, in various grades of eloquence, called after her by the mob of dealers lusting in the taproom. Which left Maureen.

  ‘Maur, love. Look. I’ve no barker - you know Tinker got gaoled?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maureen smokes long cigarettes that must be specially made. Sit near, you’ve to watch your eyes for burning fag ash. ‘What’s that to do with me?’

  ‘I need a barker.’

  Her eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Me? To be your—?’

  ‘Shhh!’ I said, showing my teeth in a jovial grin to prove we were only chatting. ‘On the sly. Nobody’d know. OK?’

  She looked about the tavern, checking the mirrors. ‘Why, Lovejoy?’

  ‘I couldn’t pay much, love.’ I lowered my eyes, inventing shyness. ‘And, well, Maur, you know how I feel about you.’

  ‘You, Lovejoy?’ She was surprised and wary. ‘Are you saying—?’

  ‘No,’ I denied nobly. ‘I’m honestly sincere.’

  ‘I thought you had that horrid Florida.’

  ‘She’s only learning the antiques trade, Maur. I can pay you in kind.’

  ‘In kind of what?’ she asked shrewdly, narrowing her pretty eyes.

  ‘I know this bloke.’ I made sure nobody was earwigging, this being one of my ultra-special fables. ‘He puts on shows and that.’ I petered out, not knowing anything about the stage.

  ‘You do?’ she breathed. Her eyes uncrinkled, revealing undiluted faith.

  ‘His agency’s big.’ I invented, rollercoasting recklessly on. ‘Jonno Rant and me played football together.’

  ‘Jonno Rant?’ she whispered in awe. ‘I’ve heard of him!’ ‘Shhh, love. I don’t want every tinpot actress in East Anglia asking me to put in a word.’

  ‘When do you see him next?’ she demanded. ‘He’s stupendous!’

  ‘Soon. Jonno always pops in from the Hook of Holland.’ ‘Oh, Lovejoy! You darling!’ She was almost beside herself. She bought me a white wine and told me of her outstanding performing abilities. I didn’t listen. Acting is endless infancy, just as politics is endless bullying. Crime is endless barbarity. The antiques game on the other hand is perpetual lust.

  Which was how Liz Sandwell found us, me trying not to nod off while Maureen bashed my earhole with how superbly she could play every female part in Shakespeare given half a chance, and sing better than anyone on earth. ‘Hello, Liz,’ I said, relieved at the rescue.

  ‘No go, Lovejoy.’ She drained my wine, settling on my stool. ‘The Rockingham fake’s gone. Withdrawn from sale by a Mrs Crucifex. And Gimbert’s withdrawn the charges against that Irma.’

  ‘Great,’ I cried gladly, because in the antiques game the last thing you must do is show dismay.

  ‘Shouldn’t you offer me a drink, Lovejoy?’ Liz asked petulantly.

  ‘Er, another time, love. A friend’s due off the ferry soon.’ ‘Yes, let him go, Liz!’ Maureen cried with a meaningful look.

  ‘Summer’s mad at you, Lovejoy! He wants to see you.’

  ‘Right, right. I’m going past the police station. I’ll call in.’

  I weaved into the High Street traffic, where it was safer. Tomorrow dawn, I’d do the boot fair on Roman Meadow by the river. I forgot the Irma problem for ever. I thought.

  4

  'ext morning was my kind of day: fresh wind, light rain, grey as a goose. I fried my last chunk of bread in my

  last scrap of margarine, brewed my last tea leaves. I had to do it on a paraffin lamp, because the electric
ity barons had gone fascist again and wanted money. All the while the hedgehog was trundling and snuffling underfoot for its grub, and bluetits were hammering on the windows. The robin even had the frigging nerve to come in and cheep his silly head off. Narked, I shooed them all out in a temper. I had to bring a bucket of rainwater in for a bath, because our water barons - who sell us our own God-given rainwater -had also gone ape. I had a soak, yelping at the cold. Yet another of life’s mysteries: why do we shout when dunked into a cold splodge? Shouting doesn’t warm the water, that’s for sure.

  Dressed, I shredded a ton of cheddar cheese for the birds, and filled their feeders with a bushel of peanuts.

  ‘Right,’ I called from the gate into the garden at Mother Nature. ‘Can I go now?’ Not so much as a ta. The ungrateful little swine live better than me, and that’s a fact. Another mystery: who fried hedgehogs their morning bread before I came along? Did bounteous Mother Nature? Did she hell as like. She just lets them all get on with it, the idle cow.

  To the boot fair.

  The boot fair is our creaking old kingdom’s best ever modem invention. Get all that old tat from your attic, the clag of years you keep meaning to chuck away. Heap it in the boot of your motor. Next morning before cockshout, drive to the boggy field that’s advertised on every telegraph pole. You’ll find hundreds of cars and vans, people everywhere. Rickety tables are set out. Yawning girls collect your gate penny in their buckets. It’s usually raining. And here’s the miracle: unbelievably, other people actually buy your gunge, and cart it off in triumph.

  It’s the boot fair, the ultimate in conservation. Nothing is ever destroyed. Buy something and find you hate it, why, just take it back next week and sell it, and life’s cruddy pageant rolls on. It’s every garage sale, jumble rumble, flea market gathered and dumped in a truly rural morass.

  I arrived without a motor or possessions, wheedled my way past Gloria and her voracious bucket by promising to take her to the pictures to see that new action-packer, then went to the nosh van. (This saves you hours of muddy blundering, but be careful. You’ll see why in a sec.) Arold - his spelling - serves gangrenous fry-ups on chipped plates and makes a killing, if not several. I cadged some swill in a cup big enough to fall in. It had a floating pubic hair.