Ten Word Game Read online

“Eh?” No wonder I couldn’t reach her. “What for? Where to?”

  “Nobody knows. I spoke to her, her, ah, gentleman friend.”

  The man she was crackpot about. Margaret shrugged. “He was worried. He went to the police. They passed it off, said she was a grown woman and told him not to worry, seeing he isn’t her husband.”

  “That’ll be old George.”

  He’s our village policeman, a real dead-leg. He couldn’t catch a cold. He’s got bad feet. The village lads painted his police car pink one night for a laugh. His list of suspects named forty-nine people, all wrong.

  “Is she okay?” I meant safe. Margaret said she wasn’t sure, somebody said they’d seen her in Sheffield. With every question, each reply, she judged me for honesty. I could tell.

  “Which raises the question what are you doing here, Lovejoy?”

  I told her almost virtually nearly practically everything, sincerely and in truth. Almost. I tried hard to reveal all, but it goes against the grain. We made smiles that evening instead of going to the show. I was glad. I didn’t phone apologies to Lady Vee. I ought to have reported and shoved her about, so presume the mighty Inga did it, with her usual grace.

  Lady Vee said nothing about my absence when I turned up and took her to the antiques talk next morning.

  Margaret also attended, in a wheelchair pushed by a stewardess. She didn’t even glance my way. Women can be really cunning. I was a bit put out, and thought she might have just given me a faint nod or some token of recognition. Instead she talked to some nerk next to her. I heard her laugh. I sometimes think women don’t have feelings like us. They can be hard as nails. June Milestone gave the lecture, on how to select household antique silver for investment. It should have been Henry Semper, who was down to do the talk on “Porcelain Collectibles”.

  June knows I hate people who buy antiques “for investment”. You don’t court a lovely woman “for investment”. Or go to see a wonderful film “for investment”. So why must you buy beauteous antiques for the sake of loot? People who do that deserve to make mistakes. I wished, though, that she’d mentioned how to spot altered silver. She showed a photo of a lovely Hester Bateman silver tray with a gadrooned edge. It should cost the price of a new car, but wouldn’t ever reach that price because it had been altered.

  Good silver – and it’s a rare piece that’s better than Hester Bateman’s stuff – shouldn’t be altered. Like, a tray will usually have an armorial, meaning some sort of crest or coat-of-arms engraved in its centre. Because retainers sometimes were given items as farewell presents – or, worse, because they often nicked them – they tend to come to auction with the central area slightly ground down lower than the rest of the tray’s surface. Dealers call it “dishing”. You’ll often see antique dealers examine silver by holding it up to the light, to see if the sheen reflected from the middle is different from its periphery. You can also tell by breathing on it and looking at the mist on the surface. It shows up rougher. You can even feel the slight depression where the armorial has been ground away by a wheel polisher. June didn’t even mention these things.

  Otherwise, I enjoyed the talk.

  With Margaret aboard I felt I could face anything. I decided I liked cruising, and told Lady Vee I was glad to be aboard. She celebrated our new companionship by losing a fortune at poker, and at the one-arm bandits and blackjack.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Delia Oakley met me by the Playhouse Theatre for the lesson I’d promised her, I was surprised she was alone. No ubiquitous Fern? Delia looked bright.

  “Fern’s having a heart-to-heart with a gentleman friend. Will I do?”

  I shrugged. “Please yourself. This display’s as good a start as any.”

  The ship’s antiques experts had arranged exhibitions in glass cases about the ship. The wide corridor led past the theatre, the photograph gallery, then on past the Cafe Bordeaux. This one was of ladies’ Edwardian and Victorian dresses in tableaux, and the next of miniature furniture.

  “The dresses are genuine,” I told her. “The furniture’s reproduction.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Er, I think I saw them earlier.” I moved on quickly. “The little furniture’s wrongly called apprentice pieces. They were made by real craftsmen for salesmen to take to grand households and retailers. A mere catalogue didn’t do. Nowadays, antique dealers label them Doll Furnishings. It’s a neglected field. Collectors have only lately woken up, and new forgers are moving in. Soon we’ll be flooded with the damned things.”

  “And the dresses? Just look at the work!”

  Genuine old things are honest company. I felt myself relax. Women also do this.

  “You’re looking at the most profitable area of collecting,” I told her, feeling a smile come. “But troublesome. Storing dresses and uniforms is a problem – space, moths, mould, ventilation, decay, sunlight causing fading. They’re a real slog.”

  “Profitable how?”

  “You can get them virtually for nothing. A few pence would buy all of these. Every village amateur drama society has scores of them, donated over the years. Every junk shop has stocks of handbags, purses, brooches, hatpins, jewellery.”

  “I’m going to become the greatest antiques dealer ever, Lovejoy! What else do I look for?”

  “English watercolours after 1851, up to the 1920s. The date alone is a good enough criterion. You can honestly forget names and quality. Some dealers vacuum them up sight unseen.”

  She rummaged for a pencil. “Can I take notes?”

  “And treen. That’s wooden household implements, farmhouse devices, kitchen measures, anything wood. Look out for any locally carved.”

  Women write slower than men, but with a more rounded hand.

  “Always feel in the pockets of old clothes for Edwardian jewellery, especially loopy designs that look too slender for the gems they carry. They might even include some of the early Australian coloured diamonds that are now so costly. In Victorian times the Aussies thought them a waste of time. Now, yellows and blues and even browns bring a fortune. They saw them as simply discoloured diamonds. As recently as 1950 they could hardly give them away.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Modern small potteries,” I said, grimacing, “if you accept modern. And ephemera. Those things I call mere trinketry, not antiques.”

  “You’re going too fast.”

  “And kiddyana. That’s dealers’ slang for toys, mechanised or otherwise, dolls – I always think them gruesome – tin ships, early cars, miniature fairground carousels, lead soldiers. And automatons.”

  Her pen was flying. “Promise you won’t tell Fern this, Lovejoy.”

  Now I really did smile. “You’re starting to talk like a real antiques dealer. Don’t go bad, though, Mrs Oakley.”

  “Bad?” She paused, head tilted, her gaze quizzical.

  “Who can’t recognise dealer fraud.”

  She led the way to seats placed at intervals for corridor chatting. I thought, here comes the cheap psychiatry.

  “Fraud? Is it so big in antiques?”

  “It’s like barometric pressure, everywhere, unavoidable, and invisible.”

  “That’s too cynical.”

  Who else had just said that? “Call it what you like.”

  We sat. I can’t help wondering why women always seem distracted. I suppose it’s me. I was lucky to be with her, because she was really smart and I’m a scruff.

  “What is fraud, though?” She bristled, combative.

  “What is truth? Answer: Whatever you can make the buyer believe. That’s antiques in a nutshell, love. Magazine adverts brag about watches that are correct to within one second every million years – so ask the salesman why is there only a one-year guarantee? Is that fraud?”

  “Don’t get upset.”

  “I’m worried, not upset. Nobody knows any longer where honesty ends and fraud begins. None of us knows what to believe about anything or anybody, not even nice folk we
meet on the Melissa.”

  “You are a cynic.”

  “Judge three things, then. I think all three are unbelievable. Last Michaelmas in Dublin, the home of an Irish collector was robbed of four paintings, including two by Rubens – the fourth time his house was hit. Okay?”

  “Then he was careless,” she said, spirited. “He should have – ”

  “Hang on. That’s only the first. In the same week, a bank robber in Spain grabs a bag of money. He dashes out, stuffs his gun into his belt – and it goes off, wounds him. He drops the gun, runs into the road, and gets run over by a van. Bystanders drag him out, help him to a nearby car. It’s actually his getaway vehicle, which then zooms off. He gets away, loot and all. Okay?”

  “Why on earth did the people – ?”

  “Hold it. Third problem? Some African nations are too poor to buy AIDS drugs. So a vast American pharmaceutical firm sends the medication to Africa, cheap. Good news? Not quite, because the drugs are being sold in Holland and Germany at an enormous mark-up, so the dying Africans can rot. Is any fraud sicker than that?”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because of a Christmas card. It’s your fourth problem.” I gestured her to shut up, let me speak on. “Tell me what you’ll do. Your first customer in your brand new shop is an old lady. Her husband’s sick, and she’s brought in a few treasured belongings. They’re all rubbish, except for one perfectly preserved Christmas card, early Victorian. It’s marked Christmas, 1843. Do you buy it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “How much for?”

  “Well, an honest price, of course.”

  “Remember truth, that old thing? Do you give her enough for the fare home and a meal? Remember, her beloved husband of fifty years is sick at home, and it is midwinter, snow outside.”

  “Weather is hardly my fault, Lovejoy!”

  “Ah, but this Christmas card is signed by Sir Henry Cole in 1843. It measures a little over five inches by three. It shows a happy family wassailing it up at Christmas, with the words ‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You’. Nothing special, just a crude lithograph on stiffened cardboard. Incidentally, I think Victorian umber sepia looks ugly, don’t you?”

  “You’re tricking me.”

  “Honestly not. I want to see how deep your honesty goes. This card, you see, is hand-coloured – you can always tell from the margins. How much do you give the old lady?”

  “Well, I suppose a few – ”

  “No numbers, please. In terms of what she could buy with the money that an honest antique dealer like you would give for her old Christmas card.” Delia had gone silent. “Would you give her enough to buy her sick husband food and heating the long cold winter through?”

  “Hardly that,” she said, indignant. “Perhaps – ”

  “No perhaps, no buts. How much, for the first-ever Christmas card, that twenty-six year old John Callcott Horsley designed and lithographed for his august friend Sir Henry Cole in the winter of 1843?”

  She was close to a sulk and wanting to hit somebody. I got ready to sprint, being the only one within reach.

  “He wasn’t much of an artist, wasn’t young John Horsley Callcott.” I tried to ease her distress. “He hated having to paint nudes. His fellow students at the Royal Academy scoffed at his prudery and called him J. Clothes Horsley. He didn’t quite drop out, but the poor chap didn’t really become famous for anything except inventing the Christmas card.”

  Embarrassed at the silence, I said, “Sorry, love. My mind’s a ragbag. Like, the moonstone is Florida’s official state gem. What on earth’s the use of facts like that?” Even my laugh was unconvincing. “Antiques are never easy. One J.C. Horsley Christmas card would buy you a thoroughbred racehorse, plus a complete world cruise. There’s said to be only twelve Horsley cards still extant. The problem in antiques is always the same: what is a fair price? Like, if the card was brought in by a millionaire Sloane Ranger, would you offer her the same price as you would offer the sad old lady I described?”

  “You needn’t go on, Lovejoy.”

  “Truth can break your heart. It does mine.”

  I was full of pity, mainly for myself of course. I stood.

  “Can’t waste time chatting to bonny women,” I told her with false bonhomie. “I’ve got to shove Lady Vee to the Trivia Quiz in that lounge. Bye.”

  “Bye, Lovejoy.”

  Talking to people sometimes does damage. I’d probably ruined a promising career and an enterprising business there, with any luck.

  * * *

  Instead, I went through to the Conservatory. The familiar scatter of passengers was snacking away, a catering officer walking about supervising the buffet counters. I’d noticed the smart uniformed lass knocking about.

  “Excuse me, please.” I soothed her instant anxiety by, “No complaints, just a question.”

  She looked relieved, and was willing to explain the refrigeration facilities in the galleys – kitchens, for us landlubbers – deep down in the ship. She didn’t say, and I was reluctant to ask, if the freezers were on Deck Three, very low in a structure with fourteen decks to its massive hull. I said how enthralled I was, having been in catering myself, or so I lied with a glibness that surprised even me.

  When I casually mentioned the volumes needed for cold storage, she was delighted I was amazed by the ship’s capacity. I heard her out without interruption, told her ta and left the place really glad to have pleased her by giving her the chance to boast about Melissa, especially to a passenger with such an enquiring mind.

  You could store things that needed to be kept very, very cold down there.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Lose another hour?” I was indignant. Those rotten cards had come again. Every blinking time we had to put the clocks forward an hour during the night.

  “We’ll get it back when we sail home, Lovejoy. Don’t be such a child!”

  That stopped me. Outside, the wharf announced GDYNIA. Poland, I guessed.

  My throat went thick. Next stop after Poland would be Russia and the Hermitage Museum. That building loomed vast and brooding in my mind, and I’d never even seen it.

  “We can go ashore, Lovejoy!” Margaret had dressed. I emerged from the shower, monster from the Black Lagoon, towelling. I’m always embarrassed because a naked woman’s lovely but a bare bloke looks like a bushel of spuds. “I’ve heard it’s a charming city.”

  “Not together.” I still hoped my watchers thought Margaret and I were strangers. They mustn’t know she was my ally. I would soon need her even more.

  She was at the mirror doing her make-up. I love seeing women do it, but can’t help wondering why it doesn’t hurt. She did that gruesome thing with curved tongs to curl her eyelashes. It makes me cringe. My knees itch while I watch yet I can’t look away. She’d restored her hair from the night. It was five-thirty, the ship hardly awake. On the harbourside, stalls were being established, silver, amber, woollens, some textiles and trinkets and little dolls, put out by girls in Polish national costume getting ready to welcome visitors. I liked the lace many wore, so much bulkier than Coggeshall lace back in East Anglia. My heart cramped with homesickness.

  I’d told her how I came to be on board, Gloria, Benjo, wanting to escape. She said she’d seen me wheeling Lady Vee.

  “I think they’re setting up some robbery. It’ll be the famous exhibition, Impressionists and the Old Masters. It’s advertised everywhere.”

  “And you’ll divvy them?”

  “I suppose so. I’ll be a visitor.”

  “Then what?” She wouldn’t look away, pressing for an answer. “Stealing a whole exhibition, Lovejoy? Even you have never done that before.”

  I stood at her window watching the little market on the wharf. The vans and cars looked pretty grotty, like it was lucky they’d managed to start this morning, but how else can a vehicle look? It can’t put on airs.

  During the night, here in Margaret’s cabin, safe from being
bugged, my mind had gone into free fall. I’d thought all sorts of dross. Like, Romania – so said the International Cartoonists on the BBC – is the only country in the world ever to arrest a cartoon (not a cartoonist, note; they’d arrested the actual drawing). It had committed the offence of depicting some mayor as a swine. Another: a football team in Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania had been accused of witchcraft. They’d hired a Ju-Ju man to sprinkle magic powder in the goal-mouth, so rendering the team’s goal invisible. (The proof? Simla kept winning.) True crazy tales.

  Plain simple factual news, not fiction, is the real horror. Like, a 13-year-old kid kills a pizza delivery man stone dead – wasn’t it in staid New Zealand? – and all the kids in the neighbourhood queue admiringly for the killer’s autograph. And collectors of antique erotica bid dementedly whenever the most popular erotic antique turns up. It’s an oddly shaped carving that ladies in past ages called St Cosmo’s Toe. This phallic plaything was fashioned for maidens, who recited a special prayer as they dwelled, so to speak, on its possible uses.

  And a frightened dapper little man in a straw boater, dogging the progress of an enormous luxury cruise ship along the Baltic Sea, gets slain down by the water’s edge and floats among plastic bottles, orange peel and other flotsam, because he hoped to pick up crumbs from a scam he’d heard about.

  To focus, I did a pencil sketch of Margaret seated against her mirror. I’d painted her portrait a year since, Gainsborough style. I intended to keep the sketch, take it back to my cabin and maybe frame it.

  “They say Warsaw has a World Gang-Bang Championship.” I felt so grateful to Margaret, coming all this way to help save me. “In public on TV. Last year a Polish girl called Klaudia won it, made love to 646 men.”

  “Your mind’s like a ragbag, Lovejoy. Can’t you remember useful things?” She knew not to move when I sketched because it changes the light, which is death to a portrait.

  “Each man’s allowed one minute. It’s not much, is it? A Brazilian girl called Magda came second.”

  “Thinking of going?” she asked drily, still as a hunting heron.