The Grace in Older Women Page 4

  It looked glorious, felt cold as charity.

  Mr. Battishall skidded to a halt, showering gravel. A wrinkled bloke, small and dapper, came forward smiling.

  'Bags, sir?' he asked, chirpy, then his smile faded.

  That look I'd seen a million times. It announced: I recognize you. Without a groat, no tips, no luggage - get lost, mate.

  'Lovejoy will not be staying, Nick,' Mr. Battishall said, striding to the grand balustrade, leaving the motor running.

  ‘I’ll not be staying, Nick,' I said, following at an unmilitary step.

  We entered what could have been a beautiful home. A discreet notice said it was the Dragonsdale Guest and Residential Hotel. I apologized to the old place. It felt ashamed. It was cardboarded off into flatlets, a sort of pigeon coop for, well, those who want to be pigeons cooped.

  The carpet was a modern Chinese mass product, not bad but still only that. The woodwork - panels, skirting boards, pelmets even, staircase, bannisters - was replaced by imported softwood and chipboard. It felt an utter disgrace.

  'Hard luck, love,' I said, then realized I'd spoken aloud.

  'What?' Battishall rounded, bristling.

  'Your house. Poor thing's been ruined. Gutted,' I explained, 'and falsified.' I swear the old manor straightened up. I felt it go: Tell 'em, friend.

  'This mansion is restructured on the best architectural precepts, designwise, from reconstructional necessity.'

  'So's the bloody council's car park.' They'd recently demolished a wondrous ancient building - this place's contemporary - on Balkerne Hill, to make a flat spread of concrete for council workers to park their limos. 'You desecrated her. She was exquisite, once, I'll bet. I'd give almost anything to've known her then.'

  'You are stupid, Lovejoy,' he said. A maid came forward to take his bowler, brolly, leather gloves. is Mrs. Battishall in, Lily?'

  'Yes, sir.' She avoided my smile. Like Nick, in the guest drawing room, sir.'

  He strode across the imitation parquet flooring and knocked on an imported kiln-dried pine double door. God, I was already sick of the place. He listened. After five minutes, a faint voice said, 'Enter.'

  A lady reclined on a phoney (meaning made yesterday) chaise longue. She was straight out of a domestic Ealing comedy of years ago, desperately trying to be young with wispy attire and makeup that had probably taken hours. Dyed blonde hair. Enough jewellery to float a Zurich loan - were it genuine. I wish I'd had some quality sunglasses, to check the polarization of her false diamonds. She didn't wear a tiara, but it had been a close call. Oddly, a curtained painting -I could just see the frame - hung above a cornish. A votive candle burned there, quite like an altar.

  'This is the person, Roberta. Lovejoy.'

  She extended a languid hand. I didn't know what to do. Genuflect? Stoop to kiss her digits, or just say wotcher? Clearly she expected some sort of grovel.

  'Er, how do, missus.' I wished I'd had a hat. I could have rotated it in my hands, peasant before gentry.

  'Put him where I can see him, Ashley.'

  He almost tiptoed, beckoned me to cross a synthetic rug and sit opposite the lady. I couldn't help gaping. Battishall's manner was transformed. From barking military country gentleman, to an instant serf. She lay back exhausted on the cushions he leapt to arrange, and indicated a glass of milky fluid. He sprang to lift it to her lips so she could drink without expending too many ergs.

  Was she dying, then? Or simply crashed out from night-long wassailing in this genteel guesthouse? These things worry me because I never know where I am with women at the best of times. Now here was Madam Frailty making her servile hubby bring me here, when I could be elsewhere being ravished by Adelaide or protecting my assignations with Beth by chatting up old Juliana Witherspoon. Both would have been useful pursuits. And I had fake mediaeval pieces of jewellery to make by noon tomorrow, for Slicer. He's called that because he likes to cut people - cut as in slice, not as in ignore.

  The firedogs were fake, epoxy resin monstrosities done down Aldgate. God, but the manor had been diced up. I wonder they hadn't taken the brickwork. Then I noticed the faint indentations by the window, a giveaway, and knew they had taken the frigging brickwork. There's a terrific market for it. You can always tell, however good the plasterers are. Something to do with oblique light.

  'How?' the lady managed to whisper.

  ‘?’ I went, not even knowing what I was here for.

  'How do you do it?' La Battishall was prompting an awestruck courtier before her august majesty.

  'Divvying?' I might have known. Everybody wants me to do it, scenting money. 'Near an antique, I feel queasy, malaise, like flu's on its way. Duds don't do it, unless they're particularly repellent like your house.'

  'What did he say, Ashley?' She moved an inch.

  Ashley hurtled to hold her. Even the bloody cushions were replicas, supposedly Victorian but unhumanly machined.

  'He said our lovely mansion was . . . not nice, dearest.'

  Tears filled her eyes, pools of reproach. She wept at the horrors out there and the pain within.

  'Lovejoy!' Still quiet, trying for sibilance, he glared, at attention but quivering. A horse whipping was the way for daring the truth here. 'You will speak with greatest possible respect to Mrs. Battishall at all times. Am I understood?'

  'Aye. But look at it, for Christ's sake.' I rose and crossed to the window. 'Can you imagine what this building was like? Lovely proportions, gables, brickwork perfect, everything in delicate balance. Instead, you've raped the poor thing, reamed it out like a petrol motor's cylinder, and sold its very arteries, veins, lifeblood.' I drifted back, feeling really down. 'You've not even done a post mortem. You've vivisected, and left a bonny husk, you rotten sods.'

  For a second the image of a sea turtle rose but I wiped it out. I'd had enough giddy spells for one day, and I still hadn't recovered from

  Beth in the woods yet. I was hungry as hell. Battishall talked of manners, but he hadn't even offered me a cup of char.

  'Is he being horrid to me, Ashley?' she whimpered.

  'For the last time, I assure you.'

  His glares were getting me narked.

  'Look. Your husband's a legal eagle, so can put the screws on me. That doesn't mean I have to admire the crime you've committed gutting this lovely old house. Because, in fact, it makes me puke.'

  'Ashley!' she screamed faintly, swooning.

  'Is that it?' I didn't sit down, moved towards the door.

  'Stay!' Battishall thundered, repeated it in a whisper.

  'What for?' I watched them both. It was an act, her snowflake fragility, and him the great panjandrum becoming the bootboy in her parlour. Pathetic. Like me, I suppose.

  Her tears flowed. She held out a hand. He sprang, gave her a lace wisp - manmade fibre, meaning of course anything but manmade in today's sham world. 'Tell him, Ashley.'

  'Very well.' He rose, jerked his head at the armchair I'd vacated. I stayed still, noticing now that he wasn't immense as he'd seemed before. In fact, he'd definitely shrunk.

  'Do listen, Lovejoy.' Her lips fluttered. 'It is vital. The hope for the world.'

  My mind went, Eh?, but my heart had done its plunge. Antiques is a loony game, with blood in it. I've had anything and everything brought to me. Everything from the Holy Grail to the Crown Jewels, every barmy scheme you could imagine. Some scoops aren't quite so daft - I mean, Roosevelt and Churchill both wrote scripts for the movies, Hitler painted (if that's the word for those things a mighty London auction house auctioned off lately). Celebrity sells. They'd sold everything they could remove, cut, tease, yank out, of this mansion house, replacing it with modern gunge. And even the space too, if they had paying guests lodging among the rafters. I didn't mind them claiming that civilization hung in the balance if they'd got some precious antique. I've seen blokes weep at missing a cigarette card or a Huguenot twine button for a set. I've done it myself, twice hourly if it gets results. I remember making love to this woman wh
o had a Regency commode, with only an hour to go before a buyer came from Sotheby's. You should have heard the promises I made to her. I moved me to tears. I wish I'd been on tape, maybe learn a few things. You forget what you say in the heat of the moment. . . Where was I? Fate of the world, these loony Battishalls.

  'We have a responsibility, Lovejoy,' Battishall began, glancing at his recumbent lady. ‘We have invested heavily, in . . .'

  'Preservation,' she sighed.

  Preservation!' he agreed with pride. 'We have run short of capital, Lovejoy,' he went on portentously. 'This is the most significant project on earth. Once known, the world will be agog!'

  Oh, aye, I thought. The lady drifted out of her decline to join the general hilarity, exclaiming feebly, 'The world will be a place of peace and love. True civilization restored, the glory of yesteryear! '

  Straight out of Mrs. Gaskell, whose writing I like, but you can't really say her stuff aloud and expect to be taken seriously. Except Roberta Battishall was gorgeous. If she had access to some antique valuable enough to gut her home and hearth for, then I could at least listen.

  'And now we need funds to continue our onward march!' Good old Ashley, recovering rank. 'Our righteous duty, Lovejoy!'

  Righteous duty snuffs out more lives than somewhat, so I'm not strong on those. But an antique is an antique is an antique -sometimes.

  'Funds from where?' As if I didn't know.

  'From a particular antique, Lovejoy. Our last one, which we need to sell for the highest possible sum.'

  'You have it?' I stooped to grovel, eager as a hound. Yet I hadn't felt a single chime since entering the place, so there wasn't one within a crook's reach. 'Here?'

  'Not yet, Lovejoy. But we shall. It's a horse, Whistlejack.'

  Who now cared? Not me. His horse could have sired a million Derby winners and I still wouldn't give it time of day. Horse racing's the dullest sport known to man. I once was invited to Epsom for the Derby, when involved for a short time with a wealthy lady who had a string of thoroughbreds. It was yawnsome. I'd sooner watch a hen sit . . . Hang on, Whistlejack?

  'Stubbs painted a lifesizer called Whistlejack.'

  'Correct. It will be ours. You will sell it.'

  'How do you want it sold?' As if I didn't know.

  'What sort of help?' A.I.I.D.K.

  'Well, ah . . .' For the first time a little uncertainty crept in. 'Not what you might call direct help, Lovejoy. Kind of. . .'

  'Bent help?' I said kindly. Criminals hate words like crime, fraud, deception. They prefer slang, especially upright bastions of the law like Ashley Battishall and their lovely if ageing ladies that are keen to restore civilization to its former grandeur.

  He brightened. 'Exactly, Lovejoy! Capital description! But stay mum. Right, dearest?'

  'Yes, Ashley.' She was almost inaudible.

  'Can't you give me a clue, just so's I could get things, er, bending?'

  'Afraid not, old chap.' Old chap now I was on his side. 'You'll be informed the instant it arrives.'

  Arrives? On its way, then? He wrung my hand to seal the bargain.

  'One thing. What precisely do I get out of this?'

  Roberta hid her face in her frail hands, sobbed at the outrageous mention of such base stuff as monetary profit.

  'You, Lovejoy, stay out of gaol.' He stooped to apologize to Roberta, the sordid world entering her drawing room.

  'Gaol? What have I done?'

  'Your central magistry file is a foot thick, Lovejoy.' He didn't need to bawl this bit. 'I have compiled a summary on your criminal past. You will not survive a week if I choose to act. One word, and the police will be investigating you for the next seventy years.'

  Roberta was peeping from her phoney lace handkerchief. I swear she was gloating, thrilled at threats, at her Ashley crushing my opposition.

  I nodded, know defeat.

  'That's my man!'

  Was it? Was I? J looked at them both. Triumphant, sure, but a serf is a serf. Only very rarely does servitude become loyalty. They'd made a mistake, and mistakes have to be paid for sooner or later. You'd think people in their position would know that. People in my position do.

  'We welcome you to our cause, Lovejoy,' Roberta said. She extended her hand. This time I went to take it, for the sake of appearances. I felt a distinct pressure of her fingers on mine. In fact, if she hadn't looked so delicate I'd have said it was just this side of a clutch. 'You will move in, two days from now,' she added.

  'Move in where?'

  'Here. On my husband's orders.'

  He managed to look unsurprised, but it was close. First he'd heard of it.

  'Sorry, love,' I said quickly. 'I've antiques to suss - '

  'Mrs.. Beth Pardoe can wait, Lovejoy,' Battishall said.

  Which made me gulp. 'Right. Two days, then.'

  They let me go. I was told to wait at the servants' entrance, for a radio taxi to come and take me to Sudbury railway station. As I left the room, a maid arrived pushing a tea trolley. It was laden with enough grub to feed a regiment. Sandwiches, a huge trifle, cakes, tarts. I drew breath to beg, but the maid frowned me on my way. However close to death's dark door, the lovely Roberta was quelling any lingering anorexia. I went to stand outside and wait, thinking about Whistlejack.

  Now, the horse called Whistlejack trod the springy turf about 1762, and pegged out soon after. Two legit honest genuine canvases of this nag exist by the great Stubbs, one a lifesize painting of epic proportions, the other a small rather mundane thing showing a groom with Whistlejack and two stallions. Neither oil belonged to Battishall. Or was somebody stealing the lifesizer for him this very minute? He'd said its arrival was imminent. But it couldn't be thieved, not the huge portrait. So somebody was going to work the shuff, were they? (Tell you about this marvellous trick when I get a minute.) Which raised the question of who was a faker good enough to duplicate Whistlejack's loving portrait. Two, in these parts, Packo Orange, in gaol. The other was me.

  The taxi took its time. I was late for Addie, and the determined Juliana Witherspoon. I wish now I had been too late.

  6

  There's a thing called morale. Elusive, but there when it is, if you follow. It's the stuff that makes banks obey you, and women place their implicit trust in your every word.

  But:

  Its absence is misery plus everything worse. Without morale, you might as well stay at home. My own tactic, seeing I lack morale most of the time, is to give in. If my opponent's a man, I might brave it out. If it's a woman, I chuck the towel in straight off. Instant surrender. The reason? It's a woman's world. They say it's not, just so they can get the upper hand quicker, but they know and we know. Life is their game. Women have the referee's whistle. You might say I'd given Juliana W. the sailor's elbow, but that wasn't true. I'd only rejected her scheme of funds for her parish church's wonky spire. I'd not really spurned her qua her. And believe me, a crone is never a crone. There's a grace in older women that is missing from younger ones. I'd even go so far as to say that older women are preferable. Comedians joke that they're more grateful, but it isn't that. It's the older woman's sense of looking, saying something worth listening to, their friendliness even. And their understanding, which goes a long way with rubbish blokes like me because it can lead to something so precious that it cools your soul like sweet rain. That something is called mercy. Show me a dolly bird who has any. But an older woman, just occasionally, has a depth of mercy to sanctify a saint . . .

  ‘Piss off aht of it, Lovejoy,' the girl said. 'You make me frigging sick, you gormless festering pillock.'

  It had come on to drizzle, the railway lights reflecting in the platform. I sighed. Back in the real world.

  'Well, I'm broke.' I tried cadging off her, but nobody cadged off Inge and lived unscathed. She's a real Valkyrie, Brunhilde, whatever the term is for a five-ten blonde that could make three of me sideways. 'I've got to get to the library for six.' Or was it the priory at seven? Or the castle?

&
nbsp; ‘Tough tit, prat.' She's from one of those ladies' colleges in Cambridge University, has to keep down with the Joneses. She spits, belches, drinks pints. Can't see the point of her behaviour myself. Going for the vulgarity stakes might be tolerable when you're gorgeous, but she has weirdness as Tinker has wrinkles.

  The train came in. I had a quick think. 'If you see Jox, tell him sorry but I tried.' And trudged off, or started to.

  Her telescopic arm yanked me into the compartment. 'Jox? The way you spoke I thought some whore -'

  'Elegantly guessed, Ing.'

  'Ing- errr, you poxy frigging moron. I'll pay your fare.'

  We conversed, each in our own way, all the way home. The point being that she's demented over Jox. He can't stand the sight of her. It's a shame. They'd make a smashing pair.

  'Look, Lovejoy,' she said, worried she'd only reached third gear in her invective and we were already pulling in. 'Can I come with you? Meet Jox?'

  'Look, Ing.' Women always worry you. Lovelorn women are the pits, worse even than weepers. 'It's only another of Jox's penny scams. You know what he's like.'

  'Please, Lovejoy.' Tears started her sniffing. 'If you'd only put a word in for me, I'm sure he'd see me as I am.'

  'Bus fare?' I bargained. I was already late for whoever it was.

  'Yes!' She rummaged eagerly in her shoulder bag, and we made the ten furlongs to the castle as the town lights came on.

  Jox was holding his awards ceremony on the ramparts. A small gathering of tourists stood observing Jox's lunatic goings-on, taking photographs. I was clemmed, so had to go through with Jox's craziness for grub money.

  'Lovejoy! Nick of time!' Jox advanced, grinning. He wore a velvet jerkin and leggings, tall thigh boots and a cavalier hat with plumes. Inge groaned with lust. He shoved her aside. She looked thrilled.

  'What're you doing tonight, Jox?' Me, asking for orders.

  'Knighthood, Lovejoy. Plus a deputy lordship. Garb up, over there.'

  Under the wooden drawbridge before the castle doorway lay a heap of mediaeval serfs clothing. Glumly I donned it, piled my own damp clothes, and stepped into the drizzle.