The Tartan Ringers Read online

  ‘Yes, Sid,’ Francie said. ‘Lovejoy’ll be right.’

  Joan spoke. ‘Profit or not, it’s my stake, Sid,’ she announced quietly. ‘I have the say. Give him a week.’

  Sidoli was staring into the box with awe. ‘One of these is worth . . . ? Which?’

  Big Chas came and shouted, ‘Hey. Nobody striking the show or are you going to stand gossiping all night?’ And he sang, ‘Through the night of doubt and sorrow, Onward goes the pilgrim band . . .’

  ‘Coming,’ I said, peering out at the rain past him. I felt all in, drew breath and stepped out to join the gang, leaving Sidoli to stew in his own explanations.

  We finished bottling up, as they call it, about five in the morning. I spelled Dan and Francie alternately, one hour in three off for a juddery slumber in Francie’s wagon. Ern normally spelled Dan but this stop he and Big Chas were among the rear gang who would clear the generators and heavy machinery and haul on after us by eleven.

  Our next pitch was near one of the Lancashire mill towns. I was relieved as we bowled in, because it meant grub and a kip before the rearguard arrived and we’d have to start erecting the fair all over again. After Francie’s fry-up I went straight out and did my poster stint.

  When I returned, the cauliflower sky mercifully clearing into a geographical blue, the camp was still. Everybody was kipping. I made my way over the heath to the wagon hoping my blanket hadn’t got damp during the journey, when somebody called my name quietly. Joan was sitting on her caravan steps.

  ‘Coffee, Lovejoy?’

  I hesitated. ‘Well, ta, but I was hoping to sleep my head.’

  Joan’s grey stare did not waver. ‘There’s room for that.’ She rose and opened her door.

  ‘Well, actually, Joan,’ I began, but she’d already gone inside, so there was nothing else for it. It’s churlish to refuse an offer that’s kindly meant, isn’t it? My old gran used to say that. ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ No answer again, so I stepped inside saying, ‘Just a cup, then.’

  All that month we zigzagged up the country, moving from industrial towns to moorland markets. It was a slog. One heaven-sent pitch was six whole days long, the rest only three or four. The distances were less tiring than striking and pitching, because once you’re on the road that’s it.

  As fairs go, I learned, we were quite a respectable size. Some deal which Sidoli had pulled off meant we stuck to the eastern slice of the country except for parts of Lancashire and bits of the north. I did well and started sending stuff down to auction houses in the south. Of course I used the long-distance night hauliers in the road calls, mentioning Antioch’s name. Some items I sold locally practically the next day, sometimes in the same town. One I sold to a town museum. It was only a dented lid off an enamel needle case, but the curators went mad when they saw it: a Louis XVI piece showing a sacrificing nymph. They immediately identified it as DeGault from its en grisaille appearance (just think grey). It had chimed at me from inside a leather-covered snuffbox – some Victorian goon had ruined a valuable antique needle case to make a dud. I ask you. God knows what they’d done with the case’s body, but there’s a fortune going begging near Preston if anybody’s interested.

  By the third stop, tenth day or so, the profit was trickling in. Antique dealers live in a kind of monetary para-world, always owing or being owed by others. It became nothing unusual for a dealer to wander in, ask around for me, and then shell out a bundle of notes in payment for some item a colleague had received in the south a couple of nights earlier. Often they’d take away one of my items just purchased from the never-ending queue of punters. I always took a quick sale, following the old maxim. First profit’s best, so go for it.

  Halfway through the month the income became a stream, and Sidoli offered me a regular pitch. And more. His percentage was the standard fee from stallholders plus a tenth of the take. For this he did bookings, the pitches, argued shut-out arrangements with other fairmasters, dealt with the local councils and hotly denied liability when people blamed us for anything. Or, indeed, everything. He brought three old silent geezers in dark crumpled suits who only tippled the wine and listened, and his two menacing nephews.

  We talked all one long cold night in Joan’s caravan, them smoking cigars in my face and poisoning me with cheap red wine. His two nephews bent metal pipes in the background, nodding encouragingly. But I declined. I had a job on, I explained. This made everybody frown, which terrified me into useful lies.

  ‘It’s a matter of honour, you see.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sidoli, interested. ‘You kill someone, no?’

  ‘No,’ I explained. ‘I’ve certain obligations . . .’

  ‘Ah.’ He beamed at this and to my alarm signalled for another bottle. He was desperately inquisitive but I tried to seem noble and uptight and he went all understanding. ‘But after you have shot this pig and all his brothers, and his father – assuming he had one . . . ?’ The nephews chuckled, light-heartedly bent more pipes.

  ‘After,’ I promised, ‘it’ll be different.’

  ‘Excellent!’ He poured more wine. ‘Lovejoy, I have heard of your police record. Very formidable.’

  ‘Er, that’s all lies.’

  ‘Certo,’ Sidoli agreed politely. ‘Police. The law. Judges. All are complete liars. Now.’ He leaned forward. It was the Joseph Wright lamplit scene straight out of the Tate Gallery. ‘My fair will pitch the Edinburgh Festival.’

  I looked at him blankly. ‘Are we allowed?’ Francie’d told me the arrangement: our fair stopped short and our rival Bissolotti did the festival.

  ‘Ah,’ Sidoli said, doing that slow shrugging chair-bound wriggle Mediterranean folk manage to perfection. ‘Well, yes. I did promise. But, Lovejoy, it’s a question of money.’

  This sounded like more bad news. ‘Er, Mr Sidoli. Won’t the other mob be, er, furious?’

  He spread his hands in pious expiation. ‘Is it my fault if Bissolotti lacks Christian charity?’

  ‘No,’ his nephews said. In the pause the three mute mourners shook their heads. We were absolved.

  ‘Er, well, no,’ I concurred obediently. ‘But—’

  ‘No buts, Lovejoy.’ He patted my hand. ‘I misjudged you. I thought you a man of no honesty, a man only interested in those pots. Woman’s things. Now,’ he smiled proudly, ‘I hear you are a multiple killer, who fooled even Scotland Yard. You slew a lorry driver. With your own hands in an ocean you drown an enemy. It is an honour to have so great a murderer, when we fight Bissolotti. His people are animals.’

  Some lunatic scientist once proved that headaches are actually useful. He should share mine.

  ‘Eliminate Bissolotti,’ a nephew prophesied.

  ‘More wine, Lovejoy?’ Sidoli invited. ‘I say nothing about you in Joan’s caravan.’ He smiled fondly. ‘And call me Sid.’ Cow-all meey Seed.

  ‘Thanks, Seed,’ I said. Out of the frigging frying pan into Armageddon. Headache time.

  Chapter 9

  BETTER EXPLAIN SIDOLI’S crack about Joan before going on.

  Joan was the most reserved bird I’ve ever met. Even for a sensitive bloke like me she was a puzzle: thirty-two or so, smallish, hair permanently fading from mousey, face unremarkable in daylight and eyes that lovely grey. She’d be what other women call plain, except the first night I saw her by candlelight, and then I knew. Her beauty hit me like a physical blow.

  We’d pitched that night after Joan gave me tea and a lie-down, me working with Big Chas and Ern. Joan had asked if I wanted to use one of the spare bunks in her caravan. I checked with Francie, who said it’d be fine. Betty asked if Joan would be my mummy now. Dan fell about and slapped his thighs. After the midnight dowsing I went over to Joan’s caravan and knocked. She called me to come in.

  For her devil-riding on the Ghost Train she wears a crash helmet with horns and a bone-and-spangle costume, bat wings and a forked tail. Sparks shoot from her head and her suit belches coloured smoke and radiates a green fluorescence. Because of this
she always has her hair in a tight bun and flattened on her head. It was the only way I’d seen her.

  The caravan was in darkness, except for slits of wavering yellow light showing from behind a cross curtain. Hesitantly I called, ‘Joan?’ and she said to come through. Making plenty of noise in case – she might after all be shacking up with Big Chas or somebody – I coughed and pulled the curtain slowly aside. The sight caught at my breath. Her face was looking obliquely back at me from the dressing mirror. A single white candle in an old pewter candlestick, the only illumination, stood to one side. Her hair, enormously long, hung down her back to her narrow waist. It was now a lustrous brown, even russet. Her skin was smooth, her lashes long and dark. She wore an old lace nightdress – some would have said wrong by reason of its age, but not me. In the mirror’s frame she was a living Gainsborough.

  ‘Sorry about the light,’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’ I thought: it spoke.

  ‘My father was strong on the right light for makeup,’ she said calmly, doing something to her face with folded tissues from a jar.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ I heard myself say, to my alarm.

  Her so-grey gaze returned to the mirror for a quizzical second, then she nodded slightly. ‘If the beholder says so, Lovejoy.’

  That was the start of what Sidoli meant. From then on I, well, lived in Joan’s caravan. Francie still scraped the queue from my Christys and Sothebies Great Official Genuine Antique Roadshow, and Joan still banked it. But henceforth Joan also banked me as well. I owned up to little Betty that, yes, Joan and me were family.

  * * *

  The night before we hit Edinburgh was the week working up to the festival. The city was already bubbling, teeming with actors spilling over into street theatre. We pitched a mile or so south of the centre. All the world and his wife had turned up. Bands, orchestras, dancers, artists, poets, jugglers, the lot. You had to have your wits about you or you found yourself frantically hip-hopping among bedecked Morris teams. Sidoli was beside himself with glee. ‘Bissolotti is late!’ he exulted, frantically exhorting us to greater speed as we threw the fair into one glittering noisy mass.

  By now Sidoli’s advance agent – a near-legendary figure called Romeo who got ballocked every time our cavalcade rested long enough for Sidoli to reach a telephone – had learned of my roadshow, and was papering the towns for me two days before we hove in. This made life much easier.

  Tinker did his part of the antiques scam, fixing sales, and organizing transport through Antioch. He was getting a regular screw through money drafts – essential, because he can’t even remember his name when he sobers up. Get him sloshed and instantly he’s the Memory Man. It was my plan to jump ship at Edinburgh, preferably before Bissolotti’s ‘animals’ cruised in and wanted their rightful share of the festival crowds. Also, Maslow would be very, very cross indeed if I blackened his district’s reputation up here among the dour Provosts of jolly old Edinburgh. Sidoli had as good as admitted that he himself would take any blame, but from vast experience I knew only too well who’d carry the can.

  So my plan was to do a moonlight as soon as I’d done one night’s pitch, then head off north to net Shona McGunn. In any case, this was as far north as the fair would travel. For me it had outlived its usefulness.

  I found a phone in a pub near the little green and reached Tinker contentedly imbibing his daily swill in the White Hart. He sounded mournful.

  ‘Lovejoy? Here, where the bleedin’ ’ell are you?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’ I was a bit sharp with him. The White Hart’s never without a mob of dealers. All along I’d been ultra careful, not wanting neffie people following me with unkindness in their hearts. I wanted no baddies lurking to catch me when I leapt from the fairground. ‘Ready? Here’s the list of stuff I’m sending during the night. Most to Brum and London; a few bits and pieces to you.’

  ‘Yeh, Lovejoy, but—’

  ‘Shut it and listen.’ Patiently I read him my list, adding which dealers to try and minimum prices to accept. ‘Right?’

  ‘No, Lovejoy.’ The old berk sounded really down. It’s Three-Wheel. Remember?’

  For a second I had to rack my brains. Of course. I’d told Tinker to phone me Archie’s message. It seemed so long ago. Days, weeks even. I felt a hand close on my chest.

  ‘They did his motor, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  ‘Smashed it to smithereens. Windows, bodywork, set fire to the inside. Some boat geezer down the estuary saw the smoke and wirelessed the fire brigade.’ Long pause, me mechanically feeding the slot coins. ‘Lovejoy?’

  ‘How’s Archie?’

  ‘Knocked down on his trike hurrying home. He wuz at the auction when they brung the news. But he’s only a little bleeder. He rolled clear, scooted through the hedge. Says he saw nothing. Not bad hurt.’

  ‘Did the Old Bill have any luck?’

  He snorted. ‘Them idle sods. Archie’s trike’s a writeoff, Lovejoy. Sorry, like. Archie says now he never had any message for you at all.’

  ‘Any chance of finding out what his news was?’

  ‘You think I’m not trying?’ He was very aggrieved. ‘You’re a grumpy swine, Lovejoy. I’m sweating my balls off while you’re . . .’

  We slang-matched abuse for another costly minute before going over the payment – part into Sidoli’s numbered account, part into Joan’s with my commission. I told him to pass the word to Jo somehow that I’d be trying to reach her during the early hours.

  ‘She won’t talk with you, Lovejoy,’ he was warning me as I rang off. I’d had enough of people explaining why everybody else was even more narked than me. I felt it was time I began to be justifiably narked instead, and decided to work out a scheme.

  My scheme was temporarily interrupted by World War Three. The Bissolotti convoys arrived that night.

  Joan’s Ghost Train wasn’t due to open until the following noon, as was usual with the bigger rides. They drank too much electricity, needed extravagant cabling up. And Joan, being nominally without a feller, so to speak, depended on the main fairground: she paid her percentage to the fairmaster and received help with striking and pitching from Sidoli’s mob, hefty blokes. All except Big Chas, and Ern, his toothy walnut-faced mate, seemed to be Sidoli’s nephews, and dined at Mrs Sidoli’s tent.

  After fixing the antiques shipments with Tinker I went to Joan’s caravan. She had some stew thing frying or whatever it does. She was a good cook. Once, some days previously, I’d asked her what was worrying her. She’d smiled beatifically and said seriously, ‘Would you hate lentil soup?’ which made me realize you can be somebody’s lover for a million years and never really know her.

  ‘Wotcher, love,’ I said, coming in. ‘Sid’s ordered no break tonight. We’re to open at eight in the morning.’

  ‘Big Chas and Ern will be on the Caterpillar in an hour, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Eh? That’s back to front.’ We normally got the Little Giant Wheel and the generators centred first after the sideshows.

  ‘Sid’s ordered.’ She placed an aromatic dish for me and sat watching as I made to dine. I waited a bit. She was alongside me, elbows on the table, grey eyes and soft skin shining in the candlelight, like the first time I’d . . .

  ‘Here, love. Are you not having any?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She sprinkled pepper on my grub, watching me nosh. This was typical Joan, guessing condiments for you.

  ‘And you’re not in your working clothes,’ I observed, mouth full. ‘You seem . . .’

  ‘Ready for bed,’ she completed. She was smiling but not in a way I liked.

  ‘What’s up, chuck?’ I said.

  She gave that curt nod at my hands. It was a gesture I recognized and had come to love. It meant: Carry on, my reply will be along in a minute. Obediently I did, but sussing out the caravan. Joan’s home. It was her place. Where the outside wheels had stopped for the night didn’t matter. Inside, the candlelight, the soft furnishings, the old photos of
her parents who’d started the Ghost Train, the romance books she read in quiet times . . . I stilled, waited. This feeling is one I mistrust. In antiques there are enough terrible risks without heartache.

  ‘You’re leaving tonight, Lovejoy, aren’t you?’

  How women do it beats me. I’d not said a word. ‘Maybe, love. I’ve a job on.’

  That abrupt nod. ‘On the door mantel,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve guessed how much you’re due. Not wanting to ask Francie direct.’

  There was an envelope on the shelf over the speer. ‘Look, Joan, love,’ I tried uncomfortably, but she shushed me with her other characteristic gesture, a tiny handshake with a blink.

  ‘Don’t, Lovejoy.’ Her eyes climbed from the table to mine. ‘I’ve no illusions. Life is a lone business, isn’t it. Nobody’s permanent. We’re like places.’

  Places? ‘Will you tell Sidoli?’ That’d stop my flight for certain.

  ‘There’s no way of keeping a . . . partner if he’s going anyway. Even the best affair is only half a film. You get the movie up to the interval.’

  I could have clouted her for making me feel bad. Women always blame me. Why should I be the one who ends up with this rotten bloody sense of being ashamed? She put her hand on mind gingerly.

  ‘Don’t feel like that, darling. It’s nobody’s fault.’

  I pulled my hand away. ‘I wasn’t feeling like anything,’ I said bluntly. ‘Silly cow.’

  She smiled properly then. Her eyes were wet. ‘No, Lovejoy. Of course not.’ She rose, took my hand, pulled me to the curtained alcove.

  ‘Look, love,’ I said weakly. ‘There won’t be time . . .’

  She slipped a breast into my hand, then slowly raised her arms to shed her gown. ‘Yes there is, Lovejoy,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s tomorrow there won’t be time.’

  Past one o’clock on a cold frosty morning, fed, loved, and enriched in material ways, I left Joan’s caravan and started work with Big Chas and Ern hauling the cables for the generators.

  ‘You’re late, Lovejoy,’ Ern said, grinning. We worked by paraffin lamps until the electric’s set. ‘I worried you’d miss the scrap.’