The Judas Pair Read online

  ‘Good or not?’she pressed.

  ‘Pretty good,’ which satisfied her.

  She showed me two pottery birds, all bright colours and asked if I liked them.

  ‘Horrible.’

  ‘Genuine?’ They looked like Chelsea. I touched one. Ding-dong.

  ‘As ever was.’

  ‘You haven’t looked for the gold anchor mark underneath yet,’ she said, vexed. ‘It’ll be there,’ I said.

  ‘Seeing you’re on form,’ she asked, ‘what are these?’

  There were four of them, shell-cases of various sizes, cut and decorated. A small cross, also brass, had been drilled into each. I picked one up. The crosspiece of each was loose and came free.

  ‘Table bells,’ I told her. ‘Prisoners of war, probably Boer War. You signalled for the next course by combinations of these four bells. Not valuable.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I cast my eye for flinters, but they weren’t in Margaret’s line.

  In he tore, alcoholic and worried, eagerly trying to judge if we were just browsing or up to something, stained of teeth, unshaven of chin, bleary of eye, shoddy of gear, Dandy Jack.

  ‘Come and see my jades, Lovejoy,’ he said.

  I tried to grin while backing from his evil breath. A customer was showing interest so Margaret stayed put, making a smiling gesture for me to look in before I left.

  I let Dandy tell me how clever he’d been to do the deal. A retired colonel’s widow, Far East wars and all that. I would have to be careful asking about flinters, but so tar my approach had been casual in the extreme. Out came the jade collection. I sat on his visiting-stool while he showed me. By hook or by crook I would have to do him a good turn.

  Jades are odd things. There are all sorts of daft ideas in people’s minds about antiques of all kinds-that all antiques if genuine are priceless, for example, a clear piece of lunacy. Nothing is truly beyond price if you think about it. All you can say is that prices vary. Everything’s always for sale. Another daftness is that anything is an antique, even if it’s as little as five years old. Remember the golden date, 1836. This side equals modern. That side equals antique. The most extreme of all daftnesses, though, is the idea that if something looks mint and beautifully preserved, it shouldn’t, and therefore needs false woodworm holes bored into it, scratches and dents made in unscathed surfaces, and splinters worked from corners. Wrong. Moral: the better preserved, the costlier. Keep things mint.

  Jades attract more daftness than any other antiques. And Dandy Jack had every possible misconception, displaying them all to anyone who called.

  ‘It’s a pity some aren’t proper green,’ he was saying, fetching the small carved pieces out. ‘They must be some sort of stone. But here are some deep green ones . . .’ and so on. I tell you, it’s bloody painful. You’d think these people can’t read a reference book between them. ‘I played it cool,’ he kept on. ‘Maybe I’ll let them go for auction. Do you think Christie’s would –’

  I picked one up – a black-and-white dragonfly, beautifully carved. Not painted, but pure jade through and through. To tell real jade – though not its age, however – from anything else, feel it. Never leave jade untouched. Hold it, stroke it, touch it – that’s what it’s for, and what it loves. But never touch it with freshly-washed hands. If you’ve just washed your hands clean, come back in an hour when your natural oils have returned to your fingers. Then pick up and feel the jade’s surface. You know how oil gets when it’s been rubbed partly dry, like, say, linseed oil on a wooden surround? Faintly tacky and slightly stiff? If the object you hold gives drat immediate impression, it’s jade all right. To confirm it, look at the object in direct light, not hooded like posh lamps. The surface mustn’t gleam with a brilliant reflection. It must appear slightly matt. Remember what the early experts used to say of jade: ‘Soapy to look at, soapy to feel.’ It’s not too far out.

  Now, there are many sorts of jade. Green jades are fairly common, but less so than you might think. ‘Orange-peel’ is one of my favourites, a brilliant orange with white, not a fleck of green. Then there’s ‘black-ink’ jade, in fact perhaps nearer blue-black, usually mixed with white streaks, as in the dragonfly I was holding. One of the most valuable is ‘mutton-fat’ jade, a fat-white jade of virtually no trans-lucency despite its nickname.

  Of course, nowadays the common green jade comes from damn near anywhere except China – Burma, New Zealand, you name it. And it’s blasted out of hills, in a new and unweathered state, which gives a massive yield but of a weak, scratchable quality. Most of these wretched carvings of fishes or horses you see now are done in China, of jade imported there. Green, fresh, soapy, mechanical travesties they are too. Get one (they should be very cheap) to teach yourself the feel, texture and appearance of the stuff, but if your favourite little nephew shatters it to pieces one day, don’t lose any sleep. China’s exporting them by the shipload. ‘New-Mountain Jade’ they call it in Canton, Kwantung, China.

  But. That only goes for the new, modern, mine-blasted green jade. The ancients were much more discriminating. To satisfy them, a piece of jade had to be weathered. The new pieces were found exposed on hillsides, and were taken to a craftsman carver, an artist who loved such a rare material. With adulation he would observe where the flaws ran, what colours were hidden beneath the surface. And then, after maybe a whole year of feeling, stroking the magic stone and imagining the core of beauty within, he would begin to carve. New-Mountain Jade (i.e. modern) is soft. The antique stuff is hard, hard, and to carve it took time. This means that a dragonfly such as I was holding took about six months. The craftsman had left the dragonfly’s wings, head and body in black, and the underbelly had been skilfully carved through so it was mutton-fat jade, white like the spindly legs. The dragonfly was on a white mutton-fat jade lotus leaf – all less than two inches long, the detail exquisite, all from one piece of antique hard jade. And not a trace of green. Lovely. An artistic miracle.

  I did my own private test – put it down a minute, my hands stretched out to cool, then picked it up again. Yes, cold as ice, even after being held in a hot, greedy hand. That’s jade for you. The miracle stone. The ancient Chinese mandarins had one for each hand, a ‘finger-jade’ just for fiddling with, to comfort themselves. It was regarded as a very human need and not at all unmanly to want dispassionate solace as well as human comfort in that civilization, and what’s wrong with either?

  Dandy Jack had fetched out about thirty pieces. About half were agate, and of the rest some six were modern ugly deep leaf-green new jade pieces, carved with one eye on the clock and some productivity man whining about output. I found nine, including an orange-peel piece, of old jade, exquisitely carved foxes, hearts, lotus plants, bats, the dragonfly, fungi. It really was a desirable cluster.

  ‘You’ve got good stuff here, Dandy,’ I said. It hurt to tell the truth.

  ‘You having me on, Lovejoy?’ He had the sense to be suspicious.

  ‘Those over there aren’t jade at all. Agate.’

  ‘The bastard!’ he exclaimed. ‘You mean I’ve been done?’

  ‘No. You’ve got some stuff here worth half your business, Dandy.’

  ‘Straight up?’

  ‘Yes. Those dark things are modern – for heaven’s sake don’t scratch them. It’s a dead giveaway and you’ll never sell them. These though are rare. Price them high.’

  I gave him the inky dragonfly, though my hand tried to cling hold and lies sprang to my lips screaming to be let out so as to make Dandy give it me back for nothing. I hate truth. Honest. I’m partial to a good old lie now and again, especially if it’s well done and serves a good honest purpose. Being in antiques, I can’t go about telling unsophisticated, inexpert lies. They have to be nudges, hints, clever oblique untruths that sow the seed of deception, rather than naive blunt efforts. Done well, a lie can be an attractive, even beautiful, thing. A good clever lie doesn’t go against truth – it just bends it a little round awkward corners.

>   ‘You having me on?’

  ‘Price them high, Dandy. My life.’ The enormity hit him.

  ‘Do you think they’re worth what I paid?’

  ‘Whatever it was, it was too little.’ I rose to go. He caught my arm.

  ‘Will you date and price them for me, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Look,’ I told him, ‘if I do, promise me one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You won’t sell me that bloody inky dragonfly. It’s worth its weight in gold four times over. If I put a price of two hundred quid on it then offer to buy it from you, don’t sell.’

  ‘You’re a pal, Lovejoy,’ he said, grinning all over his bleary face.

  I pulled off my coat and set to work. I saw Margaret make a thumbs-up sign across the arcade to Dandy, who had to rush across and give her the news. Morosely, I blamed Field’s mad search. If I hadn’t needed Dandy’s gossip, I could have tricked most of the old jades out of him for less than twenty quid and scored maybe a thousand. Bloody charity, that’s me, I thought. I slapped a higher price on the dragonfly than even I’d intended. Give it another month, I said sardonically to myself, the way dungs are going and it would be cheap at the price.

  I eventually had three leads from Dandy Jack, casual as you like. I think I was reasonably casual, and he was keen to tell me anything he knew. Lead one was a sale in Yorkshire. Jack told me a small group – about seven items is a small group-of weapons was going there. The next was a sale the previous week I’d missed hearing of, in Suffolk.

  I loaded up with petrol at Henry’s garage.

  ‘Still running, is it?’ he said, grinning. ‘I’ll trade you.’

  ‘For one that’ll last till Thursday?’ I snarled, thinking of the cost of petrol. ‘You can’t afford it.’

  ‘Beats me how it runs,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Never seen a crate like it.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, paying enough to cancel the national debt. ‘It does six – gallons to the mile, that is.’

  I drove over to the estuary, maybe ten miles. Less than a hundred houses sloped down to the mud flats where those snooty birds rummage at low water and get all mucky. A colony of artists making pots live in converted boathouses along the quayside and hang about the three pubs their groaning about lack of government money. Money for what, I’m unsure.

  Brad was cleaning an Adams, a dragoon revolver of style and grace.

  ‘Not buying, Brad,’ I announced. He laughed, knowing I was joking.

  ‘Thank heaven for that,’ he came back. ‘I’m not selling.’

  We chatted over the latest turns. He knew all about Dandy’s jades and guessed I’d been there.

  ‘He has the devil’s luck,’ he said. I don’t like to give too much away, but I wanted Dandy to learn from Brad how impressed I’d been, just in case he’d missed the message and felt less indebted. So I dwelled lovingly on some of the jades until Brad changed the subject.

  ‘Who’s this geezer on about Durs guns?’

  You must realize that antique collecting is a lifetime religion. And dealing is that, plus a love affair plus a job. Dealers know who is buying what at any time of day or night, even though we may seem to live a relatively sheltered and innocent life. And where, and when, and how.

  This makes us sound a nasty, crummy, suspicious lot. Nothing of the kind. We are dedicated, and don’t’ snigger at that either. Who else can be trusted, but those with absolute convictions? We want antiques, genuine lustrous perfection as objects of worship, and nothing else. All other events come second. In my book, that makes us trustworthy, with everything on earth – except antiques. So Brad had heard.

  ‘Oh, some bloke starting up,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’

  I thought a second, then accepted. ‘An innocent. No idea. I took him on.’

  ‘They’re saying flinters.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Difficult.’

  I told him part of the tale I’d selected for public consumption.

  ‘I thought maybe duellers, a flash cased set.’

  ‘I’ll let you have a few pair he can choose from.’

  I grinned at the joke. ‘I’m hardly flush,’ I said. ‘That’s why I was round Dandy’s, on the prod. He said you might have word of a pair. Have to be mint.’

  He looked up from replacing the Adams in its case.

  ‘I’m in the Midlands next Monday. I’m on to five pieces, but they might turn out relics.’

  I whistled. Five possible miracles. A relic is any antique defaced and worn beyond virtual recognition, but you never think of that. The desire for the wonderment of a sensational discovery is always your first hope. Some people say it’s ridiculous to hope that way, but doesn’t everyone in one way or another? A man always hopes to meet a luscious, seductive woman; a woman always hopes to meet a handsome, passionate man. They don’t go round hoping for less, do they? We dealers are just more specialized.

  ‘Keep me in mind,’ I said, swallowing. ‘The cash is there.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’ he rejoined smoothly, and we laughed.

  We chatted a bit more, then I throbbed away in my fiery racer. I made a holiday-maker curse by swinging out into the main’ road without stopping, but my asthmatic old scrap-heap just can’t start on a hill whereas his brand-new Austin can start any time, even after an emergency stop. People ought to learn they have obligations.

  Muriel’s house turned out to be my sort of house. Set back from the road, not because it never quite made it like my cottage, but from an obvious snooty choice not to mob with the hoi polloi. I imagined banisters gleaming with dark satin-brown depths, candelabras glittering on mahogany tables long as football pitches and dusty paintings clamouring on the walls. My sort of house, with a frail old widow lady wanting a kindly generous soul like myself to bowl in and help her to sell up. My throat was dry. I eagerly coaxed the banger to a slow turn and it cranked to a standstill, coughing explosively. I knocked with the door’s early nineteenth-century insurance company knocker. (They come expensive now, as emblems of a defunct habit of marking houses with these insignia of private fire insurance companies.) It had shiny new screws holding it firmly on to the door, though the thought honestly never crossed my mind. The door opened. The frail old widow lady appeared.

  She was timid, hesitant, and not yet thirty.

  ‘Good day,’ I said, wishing I was less shabby.

  I’ve never quite made it, the way some men do. I always look shabby about the feet, my trousers seem less than sharp, my coats go bulbous as soon as they’re bought. I have a great shock of hair that won’t lie down. I’m really a mess.

  ‘Yes?’ She stared from round the door. I could hear somebody else clattering cooking things in the background.

  ‘Look, I’ll be frank,’ I said, feeling out of my depth. ‘My name is Lovejoy. I’ve called about . . . about your late husband, Mr Field.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Er, I’m sorry if it seems inopportune, Mrs Field . . .’ I paused for a denial, but no. ‘I’m an antique collector, and . . .’ Never say dealer except to another dealer.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Lovejoy,’ she said, getting a glow of animosity from somewhere. ‘I don’t discuss –’

  ‘No,’ I said, fishing for some good useful lie. ‘I’m not after buying anything, please.’ The door stayed where it was. I watched it for the first sign of closing. ‘It’s . . . it’s the matter of Mr Field’s purchases.’

  ‘Purchases?’ She went cautious, the way they do. ‘Did my husband buy things from you?’

  ‘Well, not exactly.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Well,’ I said desperately, ‘I don’t really know how to put it.’

  She eyed me doubtfully for a moment, then pulled back the door.

  ‘Perhaps you should come in.’

  In the large hall she stood tall, elegant, the sort of woman who always seems warm. Cissie spent her rime hunting draughts to extinction. This woman would be immune. She looked deeply at you,
not simply in your direction the way some of them will, and you could tell she was listening and sensing. In addition she had style.

  Now, every woman has some style, as far as I’m concerned. They are fetchingly shaped to start with, pleasant to look at and desirable to, er, encounter, so to speak. And all women have that attraction. Any man that says he can remain celibate for yonks on end is not quite telling the truth. It’s physically impossible. What astonishes me is that very few women seem to see this obvious terrifying fact, that we are completely dependent on their favours. Ah, well.

  I had no plan of action, trusting simply to my innate instinct for deception and falsehood. Mrs Field dithered a bit then asked me into a lounge, where we sank into nasty new leather armchairs. There was a rosewood desk, eastern, modern, and one tatty cavalry sabre on the wall. On the desk I could see a chatelaine which looked like Louis XIV from where I was sitting but I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘You mentioned you and my husband were fellow-collectors, Mr Lovejoy.’

  A chatelaine is a small (six to eight inches or so) case, often shaped in outline like a rounded crucifix. It opens to show scissors, tooth pick, manicure set and sometimes small pendants for powders and pills, that sort of thing, for people to carry about. Quite desirable, increasing in value –

  ‘Mr Lovejoy?’ she said.

  ‘Eh? Oh, yes. Mr Field.’ I dragged my mind back.

  ‘You mentioned . . .’

  In the better light she was quite striking. Pale hair, pale features, lovely mouth and stylish arms. She fidgeted with her hands. The whole impression was of somebody lost, certainly not in her own territory.

  ‘Poor Mr Field,’ I hedged. ‘I heard of the . . . accident, but didn’t like to call sooner.’

  ‘That was kind of you. It was really the most terrible thing.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’