The Possessions of a Lady Read online

  'Of course!' she'd squeaked, dazzled.

  I should have said nothing more. Except, bigmouth, I'd gone on.

  'Beats me,' I'd said, 'why somebody doesn't set up a list of people. Sort of a chain, go down a partner each time so you'd never get anyone twice. You'd think,' I'd continued, gormless, 'it'd be dead obvious.'

  'Wouldn't you!' she'd breathed. 'But how, Lovejoy''

  'You'd need a phone, detailed computer records, and you'd have the world's most regular clientele. Safe as houses. Folk would fill over themselves to join.'

  Her gaze triggered hope in my mind. I remember saying, 'You've not got an antique Ince cupboard?'

  'No, Lovejoy,' she'd said. 'Just something on my mind.'

  That week she founded the Aureole Halcyonic C-2-I) Agency. It's the town's honey money infamy. I've even met folk overseas who say, 'Hey, isn't that where chain-dating . . . ?'

  Back to cadging grub.

  'Stop nagging.' I eyed the counter, but Aureole doesn't take hints.

  'Some women keep asking if you're a link.' She smiled, strolled. 'Any time, Lovejoy. No fee to you.'

  'It's supposed to be random,' I shot back, 'and a fixed fee.’

  'You mean that tourist girl?' Aureole asked, stung. 'She was trying to get away. Anyway, it was only once.'

  With no idea who she meant, I let it go. Alf returned with enough to pay.

  'Here, Lovejoy,' he said, indignant. 'That's a frigging banquet.'

  'You offered.' I can be as indignant as Alf any day. 'Anyway, you'll win from Gumbo any minute.'

  We watched as Gumbo mournfully trailed the customer to the exit, reducing his price every yard. The door closed. Alf yelped gleefully and went to collect his winnings. Aureole rolled her eyes heavenward, buttering the toast.

  'What girl, love?' I asked suddenly.

  'What what girl?'

  'The one you mentioned. Getting away?'

  'Oh, some overseas lass. I'm not good on accents. South African sounds New Zealand, Aussie sounds Zimbabwe, y'know?'

  'Tell me, Aureole.'

  'No.' She moved, no destination. 'Marmalade?'

  'Yes, please.' A calorie is a calorie, not to be sneezed at. 'Who was she, love?'

  She halted, eyed me. 'Deal, Lovejoy? No fee, and you can have the pick of my antiques?'

  'Any seven items?' I bargained. Outside, thunder rolled.

  'Any three, Lovejoy. And six chain dates.'

  'Three. Lend me the fare home, to shell this tat.'

  'Done, Lovejoy. First time you've ever looked smart.' She slipped me a note as Alf returned gloating. Her features were impassive, but inside she was laughing. 'Come round tonight and I'll tell all.'

  'Eightish okay?'

  'Right.' She went to lay up the tea tray.

  The girl could be Tinker's lost relative Vyna. I didn't want to knuckle under to Aureole's blandishments, but what can you do?

  Alf plonked himself down opposite, all jubilation.

  'Right, Lovejoy! About this Bowie knife.'

  Oh, God. I'd forgotten. Quickly I invented, 'It's highly engraved, Alf. . .'

  Easy to fib, but all I could see was the precious, genuine antique on Aureole's stall. I'd just made the antiques deal of a lifetime. My heart sang.

  4

  As Alf and me fenced lies, I vanished back in time. Outside the Antiques Centre, thunder rumbled closer.

  People nowadays think that we invented sexual oddity. Wrong. Establishments near Bury Street in Regency London's St James's were busily proving that two centuries back. The women's flagellation club met in fashionable Jermyn Street, Piccadilly, Thursday nights. It allowed in only a dozen women. They drew lots to decide batting order. Six would strip. The chairwoman dished out rods, and they would flagellate the passives. Magazine accounts of the time say 1792 was a hit year (sorry about the pun). Lectures on eroticism preceded every club (sorry) session. The aim (I'm getting embarrassed about these puns, but can't keep them out) was to gratify, expiate, and turn milk-white skin to red.

  The culmination, that century's diligent observers reported, came in Theresa Berkley's flagellation house in Portland Place. Theresa was a game girl. She had ambition. True blue capitalist, she reasoned that it was wrong to restrict this thrill to women. Also, why use only stiff Jermyn Street rods? Serious thinking was required here. Madam Berkley therefore set up her own code. Green birch wands, kept whippy in warm water, were always available. Leather cat-o'-nine tails, adorned with needles and fine wire nails, also proved popular. Slender canes from Long Acre's furniture makers, green nettles, coach-harness thongs, broom faggots, God knows what else, were ready for males and females alike. Remember, it was the age when sin was front-page stuff, notions of guilt and torment were the rage, life one enormous religious porridge.

  Theresa's establishment flourished.

  One problem, though. La Berkley saw that a support was necessary. Thrashing clients to ecstasy had a certain transcendental quality, but proved messy. Bed laundry cost, as the clients became bloodily replete. Her business expenses ate profit. Luckily, Georgian London was inventive, and proved equal to the task. Why not, some unknown artisan suggested, create a flagellation frame? Custom-built, faced with kid leather, covered with a single replaceable sheet. Adjustable, on a rachet with mahogany stretchers, you could thrash from any angle. Make sure there was space for the weapon, for different types of stroke, and Bob's your uncle. No beds needed! Cheap quick turnover, strong, eminently re-usable, desirable . . .

  The famed Berkley Horse was born.

  Theresa ordered a set, and life's rich pageant rolled on just that little bit richer for the Berkley Flogging Establishment of Portland Place.

  See one, you can't mistake it, unless you're as daft as the average dealer. It reminds you of an easel, a leather-covered wooden support about sixty-five inches tall. Later models extend or shrink with wooden holding pegs that screw in. There's an arched space for your head, and two rectangular openings for your belly and knees, slots for your feet. Three pairs of ornate brass rings for binding your head, chest, calves. That's it.

  And Aureole had one on her stall, pristine, so genuine it chimed in my chest. God knows who'd made it. The great furniture makers of that golden age had lived only a stone's throw beyond Piccadilly. Tom Chippendale, eldest son of his immortal dad, was beavering away nearby at 60 St Martin's Lane, though plummeting downhill to bankruptcy ... I felt my divvy's malaise as Aureole's Berkley Horse clanged in me. Chippendale? I moaned inwardly.

  The recent boom in erotica has taken antiques by storm. Dealers are crazy for sexy implements, paintings, working models, sexy tobacciana. It's a queer world, but you just can't ignore a 'push,' as the trade calls inexplicable surges, because it's where money suddenly goes. A few years ago it was Georgian silver. Then the Impressionists. Then the Moderns, until those international sales when modern paintings didn't hook in the floating money. Antiques is an exciting landscape dotted with smoking ruins showing where dealers came to grief.

  My mouth watered. Aureole was using the Berkley Horse as a stand. She'd pinned some repro brooches to the leather, silly cow. Damaging a genuine antique ought to be punishable by poverty, and serve her right.

  It isn't just antiques, though. City of London companies were floated for dafter things than colours daubed on canvas, or for clay shaped by a potter's hands. It's an odd fact that if a stock exchange demands money for some loony enterprise it's taken seriously. Old does not mean honest. It can also mean tricky. 'A Wheel of Perpetual Motion' had ancient investors flocking, as did that well-known, 'Undertaking Which Shall In Due Time Be Revealed . . .'—and you had to pay up beforehand. Don't laugh; 1,000 investors raced to buy on the same morning, the old report laconically states, that the perpetrator 'disappeared in the afternoon'. Imagine stockjobbers—the word came in about 1688—actually having the nerve to trade in a company that merely promised, for heaven's sake, to teach gentlemen Latin, conic sections, and 'the art of playing the theorbo'. But trade they
did, folk fighting in the streets for a chance to lose their gelt. Even the patented steam-operated gentleman's boot remover seems somehow sane.

  'Lovejoy.' He was suddenly there, six minions in support. Not so mini, these minions. Pale, I quickly went into a fawning stoop.

  This bloke—I mean esteemed gentleman—is a life-threatening enterprise called Big John Sheehan. He's one of these quiet Ulstermen who put the fear of God in you just saying hello. Our ancient saying, 'Ulster for soldiers,' is true, true.

  Big John's always impeccably dressed, shoes glittering, gaberdine overcoat, black bowler. He once made a henchman walk home, just for having dirty shoes. From Shrewsbury, over a hundred miles.

  'How do, John. Congratulations.' I did my cower.

  To my astonishment, his eyes filled. He removed his bowler, cleared his throat to disguise emotion. He glared, checking that nobody was jeering. Luckily, we weren't.

  'Thank you, Lovejoy. It's a stout heart that remembers loyal anniversaries.'

  Christ, I thought in panic, now what? I'd only meant his nephew getting a job in antiques at last, God preserve innocent antiques from duckeggs. Loyal anniversaries? I looked desperately at his blokes, all smiling granite, no help.

  'It's only right, John.' It had better be.

  'Lovejoy.' The world stilled even stiller. 'You did well getting Shaver in. You divvied some pots, did the man a favour so he would oblige?'

  'Pleased to help.' I sweated a terrified sweat. Big John's approval tends not to last. 'Hope he does well.'

  Shaver is John's nephew, dense as a moat. Sheehan had promulgated an edict that Shaver must become an antique dealer. Finally, I'd got him a position as trainee in Croydon. The dealer had only agreed because I'd divvied his silver collection. Ten cruets, four inkstands. Only two were genuine Georgian. He hadn't changed his labels, of course, but knowing what's fake helps.

  'He will.' The world nodded. 'Want anything?'

  I drew breath. The wise man asks little, accepts less. I could hardly say I'd just been flung out of a fashion show so would he please get even. But refusal offends, so accept, costlessly.

  'Would you ref, John?' Which would only take a single nod. No fee, and he'd leave satisfied.

  'Right, Lovejoy. Show me the reffo.'

  Everywhere now, law has become irrelevant. In the dim past, laws must have been useful and quite nice. Do this, do that. Fine, everybody living by a code, transgressors getting tidily done for, all that. But happy days are gone. Forget to pay a parking ticket, the law hounds you all the days of your life. Steal gillions in some international scam, massacre a township, you get instant immunity, and your biography's an alltime bestseller. Law is for the mighty, not us.

  In the antiques trade, the ref system has evolved. Ref for 'referee' in the old sense, not the football man with a whistle. Suppose I promise to deliver an antique by a certain date. We don't go to lawyers, draw up some contract that would take aeons to enforce. We ignore law, lawyers, written agreements. We go to a ref, somebody who has violence—and therefore justice—at his fingertips. It's called 'doing a reffo'. One thing first, though. You've got to have the thing there— Old Master painting, Hester Bateman silver jug, whatever. The ref has to see it. His word is law. (No, delete that. His word is better. It's fair.)

  'This, John, please.' I pointed.

  'This board?' He stared at the Berkley Horse.

  'Aureole's giving it me.' Sheehan, I remembered uneasily, is moral. Better leave him in a state of innocence.

  'That so, darlin'?'

  'Yes, John.' Aureole smiled openly, plus a secretive smile inwardly to herself. 'It's Lovejoy's.'

  'Fortnight. No charge.' And that, said John, was that.

  He left, his men tramping stolidly fore and aft, us all fawning and hoping he'd remember how glad we were he'd called, then shakily blotting our damp foreheads. Notice one thing? Doing a reffo takes no time at all. And Sheehan didn't need to know what the item actually was. No money changes hands. Normally, the ref is paid ten per cent of its value. Simple, eh? But if you default, the ref simply inflicts what punishment he thinks fit. He can declare you untouchable, a nothing' who is simply ignored by one and all and instantly goes bankrupt. He can confiscate whatever he wants to make restitution. The ref s word is, well, law. Sadly, refs don't do domestic cases, but let's hope the time will come. We need laws. The trouble is we've only got lawyers. Where was I? Calling, 'Ta, John. Appreciate it, ta.'

  An hour later, exhausted, I reached my cottage. Its aroma disturbed me, Thekla's perfume plus my grot. I sighed, got down to resuming life. Solitude can be relief.

  The sky was black, thunder on the go, lightning cracking the eerie pewter sky. No rain yet. The estuary must be catching it. The air felt too muggy to breathe.

  Quickly I shed Thekla's husband's posh outfit and had a coolish bath. I don't like heat. Summer's a pest, its sunshine making you sweat before you've gone a yard. Give me grey skies any day.

  Women undo seasons. Thekla had whinged about draughts, bare flagging underfoot, no electricity, no phone, water from my garden's ancient well, et endless cetera. She had everything reconnected in a trice, so she could remind me every two seconds how grim things had been before she'd arrived, that I'd cost her a fortune. I told her they would only cut it all off as soon as she left, but women won't be told. They assume that everything's permanent when not even life is that.

  So I made a zillion phone calls while the going was good, ransacked the place for stray money (found two ten-quid notes and a mound of coins; Thekla hates change, pollinates every shelf with deposits of the stuff). I hoped she'd leave her scented soaps, though they made me stink like a chemist's, because proper soap's expensive and I get sick of stand-up washes in well water using soap made of bacon fat and ashes. It's cheap, but wears you out.

  The water barrel I drained and filled with clean tap water. No way to store electricity or gas. I brewed up, noshed everything I could find in a great hot fry-up, ate a mystifying jar of small mushrooms (quite good really; the label said they were truffles; I was really pleased; George III was crazy for them). I slung ajar of Gentleman's Relish because you need a whole meal to go with it and my prospects weren't that promising.

  Thinking of the economic outlook at Lovejoy Antiques, Inc., I ordered a picnic hamper, instant delivery, from Griffin's Stores ('Emperor Size Hampers For Celebratory Occasions') on Thekla's credit card, couldn't think of anything else so told them to send me three pairs of socks. I'm not much of a thief. I wish I was. I ordered seven pizzas from the fast foodery but they wouldn't bike them out to the village, lazy swine. Then the credit cards were stopped. At this point I made the mistake of answering the telephone.

  'Who?' I said guardedly. 'No, Lovejoy isn't here.'

  It was a northern accent, restful the way your home town's broad speech always is.

  T have the right number, though?' She hesitated, laughed prettily. Did I know that voice?

  'What's it for?' My confidence returned. Bailiffs lack hesitancy, and don't have pretty laughs.

  'To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?'

  My heart warmed to her. Who'd she said, Stella Somebody? I'd not heard such eloquence since I'd left the north. Those Manchester-based TV sagas ignore the north's politenesses, so they get everything wrong—accents, speech rhythms, words. There was honest politeness in my native slum. Its speech just sounds rougher, if you've got the wrong ears.

  'Bran Mantle.' I shrugged a mental shrug. Make up names, you don't get caught. 'Can I take a message?'

  'It's the bi-centenary. Would Lovejoy come and give a talk?'

  'What sort of talk exactly?' I asked. If they were rich I would cull a deposit, then not turn up.

  'Why, antiques! It's his subject, isn't it?'

  'Er, would there be any antiques?'

  'Oh, yes!' She gave that disarming laugh. 'We've all got his little how-to book! It will be quite an antiques occasion!'

  The pretty voice instantly moved from a nuis
ance to adorable. I went giddy with greed. A whole antiques show? With me the sole arbiter? Christmas, come early.

  'Well,' I said airily, 'I might be able to persuade him. He's hoping to get to your bi-centenary.'

  'He is?’ She was delighted. 'Stupendous!'

  She gave me her name and address. I promised to corner that elusive Lovejoy.

  'Er, one thing, Stella.' Time to improvise. 'Lovejoy has special rules about antiques.'

  'I quite understand! We'll agree, of course!' Agree to anything I might say? I had to sit down. 'Thank you so much. The parish will really appreciate it. May I call you Bran?'

  'Who?' Oh, me. In mutual confusion we rang off.

  When you're thrown onto your own resources, you have to sink to a working system.

  We once had a peer of our realm who replied to an invitation from the (then) Prince of Wales, no less, by telegram: Regret must decline invitation. Lie follows by post. I can't remember if Lord Charles Beresford got away with it or ended up in a dank dark dungeon, but there's a lesson in there. It's this: honesty is so rare it's always a risk, the stuff of exclamation marks.

  With Thekla gone, removing my last financial prop, honesty had to go. In that next hour I rang several people, including Liza at the local newspaper, and announced that I was guest of honour at a great antiques festival to celebrate the bi-centenary of. . . of where? Anyway, I said it was a prestige slot, said royalty would be there, and rang off before I was forced to invent precise details. It wore me out, so I gorged a pound of Wensleydale cheese and two packets of chocolate biscuits I'd missed, brewed my last brew, and lay on my divan to reflect on the art of sexual flagellation and the very, very valuable Berkley Horse from the stall of the exotic Aureole. It was mine!

  It's easy saying I should've told Aureole the truth. But nobody ever does. Think of the mighty legend of Yamashita's Treasure in the Philippines. That World War II Japanese general hoarded a two-ton mega-ingot of platinum. Every so often this giant blob is discovered—and turns out to be an unexploded mine, ship's anchor, discarded oil drum, et phoney cetera. Cynics note that each trumpeted finding sends platinum's market price tumbling in America, Hong Kong, London. But the legend, and its excited re-re-discovery, surges on, powered by the 'three-quarters' tax Manila imposes on treasure.