The Rich And The Profane Read online

  ‘Here he comes, lads,’ Barko said. ‘Watch your women and your wallets.’

  ‘Which from you, Barko . . .’

  Barko had been in the Plod. He’d arrested me back in the days when I’d been a pickpocket. I wasn’t very good, not like Dosker in Southminster or that sickly specky-eyes they call Deli (short for Delivery) from Romford, who can filch your fillings while you yawn.

  His face darkened. ‘Watch it, Lovejoy,’ he growled. ‘I’ll send my pals to visit your patch.’

  ‘Don’t, Barko. They’d get lost.’

  My cottage was only three miles off as the drunkard limps. Some of the blokes standing about gulping Arold’s enteric gave outright guffaws, for Barko once became famous. He’d mistaken Southwold for Southminster in a police night raid, thereby earning the undying gratitude of antique smugglers from King’s Lynn to Kirby Le Soken. Hence Barko’s resignation. Now, he tries to be a freelance antiques barker. He pretends to be good at it, which is like pretending to be fluent in Swahili - it cons everybody except the Swahili. Here in East Anglia, Barko is utterly useless, for we have the world’s best barkers. Like, Tinker can be drunk in a police cell for days, then emerge saying, ‘Here, Lovejoy. That Harrison fake clock just sold for nigh on eight thousand an hour ago. Good, eh?’, making you wonder if he’s got a carrier pigeon secretly kipping in some voluminous pocket.

  No, Barko’s a nasty piece of work. He scares me. I spoke to Arold.

  ‘Any sign of Rupert, Arold?’ That’s my code, Rupert being fictional. Normally Tinker changes my code names every day, but in view of his absence I was stuck in a Rupert groove.

  ‘Nar, Lovejoy.’ Arold spat expertly out from his serving hatch, spittle frosting his rock cakes. ‘But I’d visit the far end if I wus you.’

  ‘Ta.’

  This astonished me, though I just grinned and went on. The opposite side of the field, rapidly filling with cars and bargain hunters, was usually reserved for amateur flower growers, vendors of pot plants. I only rarely meander among foliage because flowers are pretty famous for not being antiques, though geriatric aspidistras have notched up handy prices lately, the same as ancient bonsai trees - their poor feet, though, cramped in those bowls.

  ‘How it comes, Lovejoy?’ somebody said close to me.

  Like a fool I turned and said hello. I should have taken to the hills.

  ‘Wotcher, Prince.’ I did my heartiest beam, ready to flee.

  Prince cracks on he’s from Eastern Europe, and that he’s ultra noble. But Pollack, who really is from there, says that anybody with a hundred goats was titled Prince This, Duke That, when they were really only smallholders. The Swahili syndrome again. Don’t misunderstand me. Prince dresses the part, even down - up? - to the monocle and deerstalker, but the whole effect is of something got up to seem. In a word, fraudulent. The feeling would persist even if you discovered he honestly was the Czar of All the Russias, God of Danzig, whoever.

  ‘It’s coming along fine, Prince, ta for asking.’ I drew apart from the bell-like shell-likes of the craning listeners, all dealers or barkers. I didn’t want them overhearing my latest fraud.

  ‘Really?’ His thin features glowed with the antique dealer’s fervour that only greed can bring. ‘How soon, Lovejoy?’

  ‘The porcelain,’ I intoned loudly for everyone else’s benefit, ‘will be ready in two weeks, Prince.’ I stepped into another puddle inches further away. It was still raining.

  ‘Ha! I see, Lovejoy!’ Prince boomed. ‘You seem secret, yes?’

  People snickered. He has gelt, but lacks brains.

  ‘It’d help, Prince,’ I whispered. ‘Those blokes by Arold’s van are rivals. They might steal your porcelain.’

  He glared at them. ‘We deceive them, yes?’

  Not any more we don’t. Blokes like Prince wear you out before coffee.

  ‘That’s it, Prince. We—’

  He winked through his monocle. ‘We not reveal it is furniture, yes?’

  ‘No, yes. Er, aye, we don’t.’ My mind was going ????? I clung to my point of lying reference. ‘Fortnight, Prince. I promise. I’ll bring it round in a bag.’

  ‘Bag! Ha ha ha!’ thundered Prince, yet more secrecy. ‘That is good yoke, hey? I send lorry, Lovejoy!’

  So now the world knew it was a monster piece of furniture requiring a pantechnicon. I tried to escape. ‘Sorry, Prince. I’m meeting somebody at the daffodils.’

  ‘Daffodils!’ the nerk announced to the world, nudging me. ‘You give red herrings, yes? Oh, Lovejoy. You get varnish I send?’

  ‘Er, yes. All in hand.’

  I escaped down a row of sodden trestle tables where people milled and rain did its little thunders on plastic awnings erected over heaps of saleable rubbishy crud. It was quite an interesting walk.

  Don’t be deterred. There’s always something worth finding at a boot fair. There were the inevitable record and CD stalls, collectors’ tables of toys and comics, the inevitable car maniacs’ arrays of bits from obsolesent motors, boxes of books, clothes in stacks, racks, packs, and umpteen stalls of pottery, brasses, ornaments and plastic everythings. Cover the field in volcanic lava, and just think what a tourist exhibit it would make in two or three millennia. For now, though, an expanse of garbage.

  A few folk called hello. I waved, trudged on through the damp dross, thinking of the world’s costliest piece of furniture that I was faking. It was the reason I’d installed locks and bolts. It was also partly paid for by Prince. I’d taken only a small advance - he’s not as dumb as all that - to buy materials, but I’d had a bit of a mishap. Broke, creativity had to halt. I was too scared to tell Prince because he’s volatile and has vile connections in Austria. Until I scraped some groats together, I was stymied.

  Fakers of antiques these days don’t do right. Their shoddy workmanship’s enough to drive you to drink. Typical instance? There’s a young bloke called Toggle near Long Melford. He’s a near genius with inlays, veneers and the like. You’d think he’d do fakes of, say, Boule the Frenchman’s beautiful cabinet fronts, which are sheer furniture magic. Toggle could make an absolute fortune. (Toggle badly needs fortunes, because he has this lust for a parson’s wife, lavishes his all on her to impress. She accepts everything with disdain. Dealers swear blind that the nearest Toggle’s got to her is in the third pew of a Sunday evensong.) Question: so does Toggle make worthwhile fakes, which he’s good at, and earn a life of luxury? Not on your nelly. He wastes his time rattling off bits of decorations on modem sideboards for a few zlotniks, to please a tease.

  Not me. I’m a genius at forgery, when I’ve the time. OK, I’m always broke, but that’s because women have barmy schemes I can’t get shut of. I make gorgeous fakes. Only the best is good enough to be bad enough. When Prince called on me to make a ‘jig’, I thought long and hard, then decided on the ultimate, the world’s most pricey piece of antiquery. It’s in America. It’s also American.

  ‘Jig’ is any replica of an antique that really existed but which is now missing. To clarify: if you sculpted the Colossus from Rhodes, of the same original stone, using the same tools, the same size, and make it look, test as, the original, then as far as most people were concerned it would actually be the Colossus of the Ancient World. Right? That’s a ‘jig’. I’ve done several jigs. The immortal Turner’s missing painting of the Grand Canal in Venice, the missing Monet scene of the side canal, the Italian waterfall by Richard Wilson, others. Jigs are always worth doing, very satisfying to the dedicated forger. They aren’t easy, but perfection never is.

  Furniture, in particular, is hard to fake well. There comes a time when the faker - the buyer too, come to that -simply has to place all his trust, not in money or analytical spectroscopes, or in complicated electron spin resistance tests, but in something called love. And who has enough of that? Not your investor, not your greedy bankers.

  The answer is me.

  I chose to do the Brown desk.

  This glorious bookcase-desk wasn’t made by a
nybody called Brown. It’s actually the handiwork of one John Goddard, who in the 1760s slogged with his gnarled hands in Newport, in Rhode Island, in the American colonies.

  Every so often, there arises some bloke who is sheer dynamite. King or clerk, sooner or later his fame spreads. People start flocking to see him. If he’s a poet, folk suddenly take interest, and before long your quiet scribbler is having tea with the Queen Empress and everybody’s calling him Lord Tennyson.

  Cut to the neophyte colonies of the Americas. One day, this John Goddard got an order for four - repeat four -bookcase-desks. (Mr Brown, merchant of Rhode Island, had four sons, so it was logical,) They were to be the very best. Old John Goddard was equal to the task. He produced four staggering wonders, all similar. The eldest son, Nicholas Brown, passed away in 1791. Luckily, his bookcase-desk was detailed in his will. Down the decades, its course was charted by meticulous Browns into modern times. Arriving as pristine now as when the immortal John made it, it was auctioned by Christie’s for a cool umpteen million zlotniks, setting a craze for Goddard furniture. Fakers everywhere gasped. We all set to. The reason wasn’t so much the sale at Christie’s, but a linked tragedy. Remember that I said a jig was a faithful repro of a named missing antique? Well, then.

  On a truly terrible day in the nineteenth century, one of the four miracle bookcase-desks burnt to cinders in a fire at Moses Brown’s place. Forgers rejoiced, for who’s to say that a lovely Goddard desk of Brown pattern isn’t the one so tragically lost to history? In other words, enter the jig.

  They’re all there in history, the great makers. Here, we are within each of their wonders: Sheraton, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, John Goddard, Vile of Yorkshire, Ince, Mayhew, the rest of the immortals. Their furniture is in museums and the great collections.

  And also in smaller country auctions, if you’re lucky. But beware. Unscrupulous forgers will, I’ve heard, actually make superb fakes. Luckily, too, auctioneers and museums and galleries are so keen to show their wares that they will provide catalogues, plus photographs, measurements, and even identify the original wood used.

  Prince got me all the details of the Brown bookcase-desk. I started two months ago.

  ‘Good day,’ a man said, smiling. ‘Might I enquire if you are Lovejoy?’

  ‘No,’ I said airily. ‘He’s at the nosh van. You want him?’

  He was sparse, with a grey intense smile. Wan, I think the word is. My height, but older. He wore a homburg, rare at boot fairs, and spectacles made for peering over instead of through. Neat, he wore button boots. I hadn’t seen those since I was a little lad. A beautiful woman stood by him, hating me. I’d never even seen her before, but I recognize hatred.

  ‘If you would, please.’ He twinkled over his glasses. ‘I’m on the pot stall.’

  ‘Who shall I say wants him?’

  ‘Prior George Metivier.’ He was really friendly. ‘Please do impress on him that I aim to make his trouble worthwhile.’

  ‘Worthwhile?’ My tongue licked my lips. ‘You mean ... ?’

  ‘Money.’ He sounded so sad. ‘Please give him my apologies, introducing the subject of filthy lucre before I’ve a proper introduction. I’m afraid I’m compelled to move rather quickly into disposing of certain antiques.’

  The beautiful woman upped her hate quotient. I looked round. It really was me she hated.

  ‘You are?’ Metivier? I’d heard the name. Wasn’t a prior some sort of priest? ‘Money and antiques?’ My feet wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Yes.’ He was anxious to get back to his hyacinths or whatever.

  Finally I managed, ‘Got any nice hydrangeas?’

  Lucre’s not as filthy as all that.

  The man’s stall was a trestle table creaking under the weight of greenery. He smiled apologetically.

  5

  ‘My idea of the hard sell, I’m afraid.’

  Go for honesty, if all else fails. iFm actually Lovejoy. I thought you, er ...’

  Honesty tends to run out. I was stuck. Truth does that. ‘I quite understand, Lovejoy.’ He was anxious to put me at ease. ‘Not another word. I might,’ he added magnanimously, ‘have been anyone, mightn’t I?’

  True. I decided to forgive. Meanwhile, his bonny lady hated me with a fulsome loathing even I don’t often come across. She wore a shaped fawn coat with a wide collar. I suppose it’s imperialist, chauvinist or some other -ist to say she was attractive. Her high heels were incongruous. She stood sheltering under a gaudy table umbrella, the sort you see on sunny seaside posters. Women detest rain.

  He said with mock grandeur, ‘My first excursion into the market economy.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said, a toad to the last. This geezer was up to something. Dunno what, but I’d go along for a while and find out. I didn’t come up the river on a bicycle, as people say. Not sure what it means, but it seemed right for this occasion.

  ‘My sister, Marie. May I introduce Lovejoy, Marie?’ ‘Good morning.’ She said it in hangman’s tones, ten minutes before the eight o’clock walk. If she’d been a bloke I would have wondered what I’d done wrong, but females don’t need reasons like the rest of us.

  ‘Wotcher, miss,’ I said politely. ‘Nice, er, plants you’ve got here.’ I looked at their soggy verdure with what I hoped was admiration. I can’t understand people buying these things. I mean, I’ve never planted a single seed in my garden and you have to fight your way through the undergrowth. It’s a jungle, which only goes to show plants know what to do if you just leave them alone.

  ‘You’re very kind, Lovejoy,’ Metivier said. ‘Isn’t Lovejoy kind, Marie?’

  ‘Isn’t he kind,’ she intoned funereally.

  He winced. ‘My sister doesn’t like mainland weather, Lovejoy. I’ve been telling her that sometimes we have beautiful days, sometimes long hot summers.’

  ‘Look, mister.’ Mainland? This was getting beyond me. ‘There’s no point in talking about weather. The sky drops rain or snow, or shines hot, or it goes black and we go to bed. It carries on doing it whether we like it or not.’ We waited. Nobody explained anything. I asked weakly, ‘Why aren’t you selling your, er, ferns?’

  ‘Ferns,’ Marie said, like I’d uttered an obscenity.

  George looked about. Rain speckled his glasses. ‘People don’t seem to like my wares, Lovejoy. I had hoped—’

  The field was now crowded. Twenty or so lines of motor cars and assorted vans, trestle tables set up beside each, stretched from hedge to hedge. Among them wandered upwards of five or six hundred people, more arriving.

  ‘You’ve no antiques here, then?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Not here, no.’ He shot his sister an apprehensive glance. Well, I’d shoot her a few worried looks if she were mine. ‘Elsewhere.’

  ‘What are they?’ I surveyed his offerings. There were twiggy things in plastic pots. Some glass domes housed gnarly shrubs. It was a boring soggy mess. The quicker he got shut of this load and back to antiques the better.

  He began, ‘These are miniature variants of Cydonia japonica, very colourful. The trays are early...’

  Gardeners are dull. I switched off. They’re all desperate to preach their particular gospel - plums more succulent, flowers more dazzling, roses more floribunding, whatever. They’re like anglers, yawnsome fibbers. I mean, even if their tall tales were all true, so what? My gardening philosophy is that everything that grows is fundamentally grass, and that’s that. It varies a bit - here, it swells into a big woody thing we call a bush; there, it lurks and goes blue and folk call it a harebell, but basically it’s all grass. Anybody who says different doesn’t know Mother Nature like I do.

  I wandered over to the flower stall opposite while Meti-vier prattled on about Armeniaca vulgaris. ‘Here, Christine,’ I said. ‘Is that bloke’s stuff any good?’

  Christine’s a rawboned lass from Hertfordshire. I like her. I’m not really sure what rawboned means, because anybody whose bones are raw is in pretty serious trouble. I suppose I mean hefty. She did me
a favour once when I was escaping from three horrible people who said I’d forged a painting and sold it to a rival. I had, actually, but whose fault was that? She sells big spuds, big firuit, big vegetables, in boxes she hauls about as if they contained air. She owns two farms and brings two sulky cats. They miaowed and stalked towards me, but they only ever want to sit on my chest and nod off, lazy sods.

  ‘You two can get lost,’ I told them. They looked at each other, put out.

  ‘Him? Good, but weird.’

  She was wrapping fruit in a paper bag for an elderly couple. I watched admiringly. She spins the bag so it finishes up with two ears, the bag tight as a drum. I’ve tried to do it but it falls apart, then I look stupid.

  ‘Weird how?’

  She rested a fist on a hip. ‘Lovejoy. Do me a favour? As a friend?’

  ‘Yes, love. What?’ I went all anxious.

  ‘Don’t ever go into market gardening. You’d starve.’

  ‘I promise, love.’ A promise I’d keep. ‘Weird how?’

  ‘It’s ...’ Christine stared over, judging Metivier’s layout. ‘It’s like from some time warp. Nothing real, y’know? For Christ’s sake, look round.’ She hauled me round and round on the spot.

  ‘I’m looking, I’m looking,’ I bleated. ‘What at?’

  ‘At folk, Lovejoy,’ she said in exasperation. ‘See these bedraggled droves? We have a special word for them -customers. Yes, love?’

  A bonny woman with two children bought some tomatoes, lettuces, mushrooms. Christine did her spinning bag trick, chatting the whilst, gave the woman her change.

  ‘See, Lovejoy? It’s a new invention called a sale. I grow produce. I give it to customers. They give me money in payment. It’s catching on everywhere. That lady’s gone off happy. I’m happy. My vegetables are happy.’ She embraced me, laughing, wet through. It was teeming. ‘It’s called commerce, you ignorant nerk.’