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

  'No, we can't sell them. They belong to a friend's son. Arthur's died, but gave them to us in trust for the boy. Only—' Here Robert paused, looked anxiously at his wife.

  'Only what?' I was starting to piece things together. Mortimer, Arthur Goldhorn. But how come Arthur knew he was at risk? And why hadn't Colette taken any such steps? It was almost as if… I caught Gloria weighing me up, and stopped thinking. Women see through me.

  'Only, lately we've had two people call.' He made a determined face when Gloria exclaimed. 'No, dearest. We must tell him. Arthur mentioned Lovejoy. I distinctly remember the awful name. He said that Lovejoy would call sooner or later and help us.

  Now,' he intoned nobly, 'is the time.'

  My head was splitting. 'Any chance of some more tea, love?' I asked the housekeeper.

  'And an aspirin?'

  She scurried. I dithered upright. They walked me about a bit until I got breathing organized, then we sat like decent folk while I told them what they'd got. If the antiques were Arthur's - read Mortimer's - I had to answer Gloria's question by my actions, and prove whose side I was on.

  My own question came on its own. 'Look. If money could make Mortimer safe, would you borrow on those antiques?' And the most marvellous thing happened. Gloria smiled.

  25

  THINKING OF OLD Masters and skullduggery, as I was, you can't help thinking of one of the kindest, brightest blokes who ever was. Odd, but true.

  Once upon a time it was 1819. A baby was born, eleventh of March, near where I was sprung. Slogging in Liverpool from his thirteenth year, little Henry Tate soared to financial fame through honest endeavour, in spite of being Unitarian Chapel. Soon he had several retail shops, and settled down to procreating babs with his missus Jane.

  Deep inside Henry a dream lurked. It was nothing less than sugar. It became Henry's battle cry. Feed workers clean wholesome sugar!

  Victorians like Henry Tate thought on a scale nobody's ever quite matched since. The Cecil Rhodes of saccharides, he invented the sugar cube, no stopping him. Sprinkling his sons around his factories -Jane doing her stuff- Henry Tate pondered Life. Reading, he finally decided, was another of Life's essentials, and Art was another. He developed another slogan. Give folk free access to Books and show them Art!

  He started giving public libraries. Then he got some land on Millbank, by the Thames.

  There, he stashed his art collection for people to visit and lift their spirits. So passed the wise Sir Henry Tate, leaving us the happiest, pleasantest of art galleries. Be careful, though. London never calls its bits by the correct name. Ask a taxi driver to take you to the 'National Gallery of British Art' he'll say, 'Eh?' You've to say, 'Tate, please.' Beats me.

  Terms for con tricks, though, are etched in granite.

  It was at the Tate that the peculiar con trick known as the Nicholson arose. It's very cunning. It's out to get you.

  Great art galleries have archives. These are references, notes kept by old curators, artists' comments, auction receipts, letters. You want to authenticate an O'Conor painting of 1902? You delve in the archives, make a firm attribution the rest of us can trust. Eventual purchasers of O'Conor's paintings will then know when they're being offered a pig in a poke. Okay?

  Well, nearly okay. As long as visiting scholars and art experts behave themselves, all alone down in your gallery's dungeons. By custom, from courtesy, you send copies of your own researches, catalogues, theses, publications, because fair's fair. The next generation of researchers will want accurate references. Decent people, art experts.

  Yet - didn't I say? - fraud, like murder, will out. And crooks will in.

  Enter the Nicholson, the 'Nick Trick' in dealer parlance.

  It's called after Ben Nicholson, an honest modern painter.There's a vogue for his art.

  See one, buy it. Before you fumble in your pockets for pennies, though, think a mo.

  Why not authenticate this delectable painting? Go and search the archives, where, lo and behold, you find details of the colours he liked and letters telling how he painted it!

  Maybe even notes about it from some lady friend! You're convinced. The painting the dealer offered you is genuine!

  But what if those references, old auction records, detailed notes in the archives themselves are fake? Then you've been had. You'll go smiling brightly, and buy a forgery. It's terrible. Why? Because you have no come-back. Your savings are down the chute. You'll have bought a daub not worth the price of the canvas. In short, you're broke.

  The Nicholson con trick, then, is simple. You fake a painting 'in the style of some artist.

  You gain access to a gallery's archives, pretending to research the artist's life and works. While you're down there, you slip into the archives details of some historical auction that never in fact took place, and include a description of your faked painting.

  Then only do you emerge, smiling brightly, and sell your fake. It's now archive-authentic. The archives which you've cunningly altered are there for all to see. Poor Ben Nicholson's name? Well, his were the paintings that brought the trick to fame. And the Tate's name is forever linked to this con. Scotland Yard's men are plodding about the vaults of our esteemed galleries even as you read. They'll get nowhere, take my word.

  It came into being a few years before the new millennium. Strangely, the works were all easily fakable, from du Buffet to Sutherland, Nicholson, Giacometti. And in the V. & A. as well as the Tate, I suppose on the principle that you never change a winning con.

  So the Nick Trick rides with us into the sunset, 'proving' forgeries and fakes to be infallibly genuine. It's a disgusting con, begun at the gallery established by the most decent bloke who ever trod land. Aren't we rotten? I decided that London's oldest gallery deserved a look. Where was the harm?

  I decided against taking 'Lydia to the Dulwich PictureGallery.

  There's no doubt, women hold life's core. Blokes don't. I don't mean understanding, so much as power. Give an example: Edna was bonny, with that magic colouring that holds your gaze even when you don't know why the heck you're staring. Shapely blondes with blue eyes have it. Middle-aged women with quiet faces and greying hair have it. And Edna - blue-rinsed, grey-eyed, bow-mouthed Edna - had it. She caused me problems, though, did Edna, because she was a chef who cooked by astrology. This astrologist moved in with me, installing ovens, fridges, shelves. She had the water and electricity turned back on.

  Blodge, our local greengrocer, was deliriously happy at the sudden rash of deliveries. I couldn't move for bags of spuds and cauliflowers. If I stood up my head vanished among a forest of dangling herbs and onions. It was okay, though, because she was a skilled cook and a rapacious lover. Paradise? For a short spell, yes. I'd nothing against a chef checking for planets and comets before basting her carrots. Edna though was ruled by heavenly bodies.

  For two days we ravished and dined, loved and noshed. The third evening I found no grub ready, so smilingly reached for her. Pale, she shoved me away. The cottage was still, kitchen cold. The planets had struck.

  'It's Raphael's astronomical ephemeris, Lovejoy,' she said. 'I've made a terrible mistake.

  Just look at the Complete Aspectarian.' Edna never went anywhere without a folder containing charts.

  'Eh? Does it matter?'

  'We mustn't eat until the Planet Saturn's off the cusp, Lovejoy.

  'I can't remember the details - it might have been Planet Cusp for all I knew. The gist, however, was that starvation was our menu all day.

  And the next day.

  By then, though, I'd fled, surviving by eating the Treble Tile down to its last butty. For three days I never went home. When finally I tiptoed into the garden, my cottage was bare. Edna had gone, taking her last twig of parsley.

  See my point? Women have this terrific omnipotence. Women rule. Edna said 'Starve,'

  so I did, at least for an hour, until I was at death's dark door. It's their reasons that puzzle me. Starving in a good cause is fine, but because st
ars move about more on some nights than on others? I ask you.

  The only original toll still going in London's tangled spread is in Dulwich's College Road.

  The guide books say that your motor is allowed past for five pence. Don't believe a word. By the time this gets printed it's like to cost you an arm. A lorry costs you a leg, which is important if you're casually dropping by to steal the Dulwich Picture Gallery's entire contents. It happens, incidentally, to be our kingdom's oldest picture gallery.

  History books tell you that it's all owned by 'Alleyn's College of God's Gift'. Means some school.

  Edward Alleyn was an actor who made a fortune from bear baiting, dog fights, 'sports'

  like bull baiting in James I's time. He made even more by owning Paris Garden in Southwark - the same noble mansion house where the fated Jane Seymour, of Henry VIII fame, lived before. In 1613 Alleyn started building a school, with chapel and lodgings. Poor lads were to be taught there. It worked. The Fellows nobly pawned the college silver for the (losing) royalist side in the Great Civil War. Cromwell's Roundheads later gave tit for tat, melted the college's organ pipes into bullets. I walked past the college, round the pond, and into College Road.

  With theft in mind.

  Of course, you can deceive without actually storming a single rampart. Like, a famous Aboriginal artist lately painted highly sought primitive masterpieces - until a white highborn Australian lady was shown to be the creator. Good for her, I say, and no harm done, for who's to say she wasn't somehow influenced - maybe even darkly taken over

  - by some Aboriginal spirit? Sorry if this seems blasphemous, but how can we know?

  Then again you can storm ramparts, like the man with the shotgun in the famous Lefevre Gallery theft in London's posh West End. He calmly walked in, took Picasso's portrait of the delectable Dora Maar, Picasso's mistress, and zoomed off, politely paying the taxi's fare in Battersea. Timing is everything in robbery.

  From across the road I stared at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. It's so beautiful that tears wet my eyes. That it is crammed with wondrous Old Masters makes it more evocative.

  The building is ground floor only, set back one hundred paces from leafy College Road, across the bonniest lawn in the land. A wooden fence becomes a brick wall by the gateway. It feels homely, the only art gallery on earth that makes you want to move next door and live there forever. Okay, its Old Masters aren't well lit. And arrangement?

  Well, a generous two out of ten. But the genuine quality slams you before you're even in the gate. They haven't yet got round to doing a full catalogue, incidentally. And you want crumpets for tea, you weary visitor? Then hie ye out, where a route march will take you to Dulwich Village's tea houses, and may you make it before hypoglycaemia lays you low.

  For me, Dulwich Picture Gallery - lovely, lovely - is forever the portrait of Rembrandt's son Titus. I drew breath and went in past the counter of slides, postcards, what not.

  Edward Alleyn bequeathed his collection when he popped his clogs in 1626. Since then, others have chipped in. Of course, there was some dicey goings-on about the time of Waterloo, when Sir Francis Bourgeois crated in nearly four hundred masterpieces. Some of them were assembled by a fabled art dealer called Desenfans, supposedly for Warsaw. Praise be, they ended up in Dulwich. To still greater rejoicing, Mrs Desenfans picked up the tab for the new gallery. What you now see is the restored restored gallery, seeing it got bombed in 1944. It's the best day's worth in London. Go there, and you'll see.

  So I went in. The joke among dealers is, its security hasn't been improved since they took down the barrage balloons and Ack-Ack gun emplacements, which means it shouldn't be too hard to burgle. There's the usual stories, endlessly told among antique dealers, about how best to lift the lovely Van Dyck, how the security near their Poussin compares with that of their Gainsborough. Myself, I'd say their Murillo and Rubens are most vulnerable - unless they shift them on reading this - but I'm not worth listening to.

  Disturbingly, the famous gallery only pretended to be English cosy, villagey dozy. There was nasty evidence of thirty-six security appliances, including the new UV sensitisors. It was unassailable, impregnable. But useful if I wanted it as a decoy.

  Ignoring the stout bowler-hatted gent, who was there before me, I spent a marvellous afternoon, feeling the great artists' vibes. I was almost sick twice but went out for a breath in the nick of time. I judged windows, asked the stewards about the lighting, studiously paced the floors when I was alone. Lovejoy's Law of Theft: Patience is the vice of the artist and the virtue of the thief. I was so patient that warm afternoon. By the time I caught the train I felt replete, like you do after making smiles with a lass you truly deeply love. That's antiques for you.

  To teach the trailing bloke a lesson I strolled through lovely Dulwich Village. Teatime, I caught the train at North Dulwich. I bought a ninepenny notebook and started sketching nonsensical doodles, busily counting on my fingers like planning some secret robbery. My follower hesitated. Finally, he sat in the same compartment in a sulk, probably having left his car in Dulwich. I wasn't sure who he worked for, but it hardly mattered now. Gluck? Maybe. Saintly? Possible. Whoever it was, he didn't stand an earthly. 26

  THE NEAREST I ever got to monogamy, I was nineteen, barely out of the egg. Joanne (M.A., Oxoniensis) proposed. In Latin, so I had to ask what she said. Laughingly, she told me she'd already fixed things with the vicar in Broxham. It was on a bridge over a lonely river, where a fisherman was angling and massacring. Joanne told me the scene was idyllic. I agreed, because I already knew it was a woman's world.

  'We'll live in that cottage,' she said mistily. She indicated remote fields.

  'Er, I hate countryside,' I said, uneasy.

  'I love it, Lovejoy. And,' she pointed out, 'I am wealthy. You are destitute.'

  'Er, what about my antiques?' I'd actually got none. You know what I mean.

  'Give them up, darling.' She was so rational. It was only my future after all. 'I'm the better judge.'

  And she did have an M.A. in fine art, while I was a serf. Fair's fair.

  The angler below the bridge had periodically been yanking out wriggling fish. Each time I turned away.

  Suddenly Joanne screeched with laughter, clapped her hands. I looked.

  The man was struggling, emitting a noise like 'Argh-argh-argh!' on and on, frantically capering about like someone demented. For a second I couldn't see why. Then I glimpsed something horrible, slimy, wrapped around his forearm. Desperately, he was endeavouring to unravel the evil beast. It seemed yards long. A snake! No, something else.

  Finally he cut savagely at it with a fletching knife. It fell off onto the river bank. He kicked it into the water and sheepishly grinned up at us.

  'Sorry.' He tried to pass his alarm off with aplomb. 'Bloody eels.'

  Joanne fell about. 'Wasn't that hilarious?' She dabbed her eyes. 'Honestly! Townies! An absolute hoot!'

  Guess how long we lasted. One thing I did learn from the encounter was that if you want to know anything about countryside, you've to safari out and ask some yokel.

  Waterways meant eels. And eels meant Clatter. You 'clatter' for eels in East Anglia, hence his nickname.

  He was on the river bank near the Saffron Fields lock gate.

  'Stop still, Lovejooy,' he shouted. It was odd. He was facing the other way so couldn't have seen me.

  Clatter's a rotund bloke in corduroys, bald as a badger, wheezes like a train, smokes a filthy pipe. He had six buckets on the bank. How he does it beats me, lying down in dank grass holding out that horrible twenty-foot long pole.

  'What's on the end, Clatter?' I asked despite myself. His pole dangled a curious rope thing.

  He laughed. 'What you arsk fower, booy, if ya don't wanter know?' He came to. 'It's a clat. You clat for eels with worms, Lovejooy. First, a teaspoon of mustard water down every earthworm cast in the moornin', yer gets up a load of earthworms. Thread a yard of worms on a four-foot length of wool with a needle
. That's yer clat, see?'

  God, lovely countryside. I almost retched.

  'Make a figure-of-eight of yer wool, hang it like I'm doing into the water on yer pole.

  The eels bite. Their teeth tangle in the wool, see?'

  Suddenly he yanked his pole up onto the bank. Three eels dropped there. I looked away while he collared them. I heard them splashing in his bucket.

  'You'll never make a country booy, Lovejooy.' He lit his pipe. I didn't look at his hands.

  'Must be mortal bad to bring you here while I'm clattin', son.'

  I gestured to the river, the country. 'Arthur Goldhorn's place.'

  You don't have to say much. He got the point. I moved upwind. His pipe stank. I hoped it was only tobacco in there.

  'Arthur were a fool, booy. Give that woif of his anything she wannied. Colette'd never no time for her lad Mortimer. Arthur had, even though Mortimer weren't his. Arthur tried to hang on to Saffron Fields fer the booy's sake.'

  'He lost everything to Dieter Gluck.'

  'That Colette and her French name. Anything in trousers - though you knew that, eh, booy?'

  No need for barbs. I gave him my bent eye. He shrugged and looked away.

  'This river, Clatter. Can it be linked to the old canal?'

  'Ar. That were the old plan, until the railways come. Only take one cut, mebbe couple or three locks through the closed field.'

  'Closed field?' I'd never heard the term. The landscape looked depressingly open to me.

  He smiled. 'A closed field's where you grow forbidden, Lovejooy. I only know this one in the whole kingdom. Behind you.'

  'One field's the same as any other, Clatter.'