The Lies of Fair Ladies Page 8

  They like me. All pets do. If I nod off in the garden hedgehogs come and kip nearby. Cats doze on my belly. Birds poof on my shoulder while I kip. I'm like Francis of Assisi. Leone's nag is Harry, a giant beast that slobbers like a baker's drain. I quite like animals. I'd like them better if they'd keep their distance. Leone's a blonde thirty. She rides up our lane from Seven Arches where her beasts fool about on the grass. She rides without a crash helmet the better to be seen. She's gorgeous.

  "Hello, Lovejoy."

  "Wotcher, Leone. What's he running round in a ring for?"

  "Exercise. He loves it, don't you, Harry?"

  Harry looked fed up. Three littles came to hang on the fencing. Candice is their leader, aged six. I baby-sit for these three when their mums are desperate.

  "Ooooh. Look, Lovejoy! Harry's got new feet on!"

  "And skin," added Jondie, a tiny four-year-old who steals my flowers for his rapacious guinea pigs.

  "Can't have," I informed them loftily.

  "Lovejoy's wrong," Violet announced. She's three, can whistle through her fingers.

  Then I noticed Leone had gone pink. I looked at Candice. "New feet? What color are his others?"

  "Fluffy white. Or brown."

  "Gray sometimes," said Jondie. "My dad does it."

  "Boils grass in a pan. It stinks. My dad only plays cards."

  "Tough luck, Violet," I commiserated. "Hear that, Leone? Your horse Harry is fashion mad. He'll miss the point-to-point at Webberswick now, eh?"

  She slowed her nag, let him crop the grass. I watched her stroll over.

  "It's the usual thing, Lovejoy. That's all." Harry was a big animal. Reputedly fast. I worked it out. Here a stain, there a stain, might help in shifting the odds. "Does no harm, Lovejoy." She pressed my arm, the way wheedling begins. "It's only foreigners get bled. Not locals."

  She waxed about her fraudulent arrangements while I listened. Every so often, little Candice and her pair weighed in with small technical details. Violet's card-playing dad did a good line in false tails, it seemed. Not all poker, then.

  Leone wheedled, "Who minds if a few rich strangers lose a penny here, a penny there, Lovejoy?"

  "What if I turned up and bet?"

  "You never do, Lovejoy. Anyway, we'd put you right."

  Local approval justifies bleeding dry the nerks from elsewhere. Antiques in a nutshell. I'd forgotten the obvious.

  Candice said disarmingly, "Daddy gets lots of pennies."

  Leone pinked nearer red. "Time you three got home," she said quickly.

  They left, calling so-long. Candice told the others, with the gravity of her six summers, "Leone wants to suck mouths with Lovejoy, like she does with the vicar."

  And . . . silence. Leone blood-scarlet now. The whole village was in on it. Except me. Mind you, I’m the last person to watch nags trot, phony feet or no phony feet.

  ''It's not fraud, Lovejoy. If s usual. Good heavens, it's a saying: horse of a different color.''

  "Come here, you," I said roughly. She came closer. I leant over and we sucked mouths. She broke away breathless.

  "You won't let on, Lovejoy?"

  By then I was walking quickly away, calling over my shoulder, "Why should I? It's usual."

  And it is, truly. I'd missed it. Candice made me carry Violet piggyback the half mile uphill into the village. She promised not to tell the vicar that me and Leone sucked mouths. I didn't believe her. She'd blab. Females start fibs early. They made me sing "Curly-locks," my one pathetic tactic for getting infants to kip. They listened gravely, little Vi silently mouthing the words. I felt a prat. My showstopper done, I waved the trio of wide-awakes off at my gate.

  Which left me sitting on my wall. It isn't every day you discover a new universal law. But how important it was. Small local deceits have their own inbuilt honor. Everybody local has a right to know about them. On demand, you might say. But major ones are different. They're alien. They are the biggies, the grandies.

  How many massive antique scams could I think of? A score, offhand. Leaving aside the atrocious Hammer monolith of Los Angeles, grand scams come clamoring for attention. But beware. The legitimate collection of Mona Lisa fakes covering Cartier's wall, for example, doesn't count.

  Some things do. The uproar over the Dead Sea Scrolls—who should have access to study them—gave rise in 1989 to shoals of scholarly fraudsters who flitted through the groves of academe offering complete copies for 165,000 pounds sterling, in advance. Collectors fell for it. Strapped universities desperately struggled to fall for it, but couldn't raise the advance—and thereby saved their reputations. For the Scrolls are the most jealously guarded hoard in the world. Gelt in the vault. The paranoid secrecy of minders— greed—plays, as ever, into the hands of grand scammers.

  If obsessional neuroses can do it, so can fame. I've seen thirty, maybe forty, valuable pieces of the Marcos silver sold in auctions never noticed by the press, when everybody knows that Christie's in New York handled the real Old Masters and silver in 1991, of course, raising a cool 10.6 million pounds. A Paul Storr silver dinner service, George III, made a fortune. Bidders wept because fame forced prices over the top. Poor them. Still, if they will go for the genuine stuff . . .

  And everybody knows about war booty. If you don't, you ought. It's the commonest grand scam around. After the German government bought some war treasure in 1991—Quedlinburg, World War II—for, word is, a million, it became open season. You hire front men ("mouthies" in the trade) of the right educational background. You invent some treasure. Your mouthies tour museums, collectors. They whisper the terrible fact that, alas, the jewel-encrusted illuminated Gospel of 1558 is, with its ancient silver chalice, actually war loot. Good heavens! the eager buyers cry, sending the mouthies packing—only as far as the corner pub, where the secret deal is struck. Discount applies, for there's the risk that Gold Coast countries will play hell over the priceless Benin metalwork heads, or Italy over that Leonardo drawing. Inevitably, lawyers help, for where lawyers roam illegitimacy rules. Grand scammers recently offered that cache of Chesterton letters in at least three countries, though the real cache of two hundred poems, plays, prose works, now slumbers ignored in London's British Library. And law courts everywhere rejoice over the Sevso silver treasure that the whole world will be suing over until Doomsday. The repayments newly offered the Czarist bondholders (Czar Alexander III himself pulled this majestic scam in the 1880s) has started a giddy spiral of phony printed bonds. (Take care: The ones I've seen so far are simply Russian laundry lists, printed in Fulham.) See? Greed again.

  And the world spins in its happy course. China's gigantic Orange Ape-Man. Saints' replicas (the all-time favorite grand scam). Bronze Age ferryboats discovered in riverbeds, the whereabouts known only to my friend here who will offer to you alone! this priceless genuine ancient map revealing its location for the cheap sum of . . . And the gems smuggled out from Afghanistan during the Mujahedin war, which my friend has a sack of and will offer to you alone! for the cheap sum of . . . Et incredible cetera.

  They work. Every time. Always. Read here, they seem daft. But if somebody actually did come up to you—Oxford, titled family, dressed to the nines, a bishop in tow—and sadly told you he was having to broker the sale of a valuable church treasure, on account of fiscal difficulties the diocese didn't want revealed, and that His Lordship the bishop here would take you round St. Winston's to meet the church synod's secretary. And that the price to you alone! was the unbelievably low sum of . . .

  Temptation? A little, maybe. And a little temptation always wins hands down. There's no recorded instance of a big temptation. Superfluous.

  Now, I’m a titch in the antiques trade. We don't have grand scams hereabouts. They're for the Continent, London, Birmingham, the high levels.

  My thoughts ended there. Some foods are too rich.

  Ten

  The worst of other people's admiration is that it's deceit. I mean, even a statue of God wears a pigeon on its head, rig
ht? Feet of clay. I pulled myself together and got going.

  Luna was dispatched to Ipswich—maybe she'd get the right city, of East Anglia's two. She had to get something right, for God's sake or mine. I went to the Arcade. Sandy's Dutch Treaty shop on East Hill was shut ("Catch Me If You Can," the closed notice was subtitled). No answer either at Connie's small one-room shop which stood one door uphill. I wanted to know what Drinkwater had asked him about.

  Big Frank from Suffolk was in, buying silver like the maniac he is. He was especially mournful today.

  "Not another, Frank?" I asked. It was my way of checking if the news of Prammie Joe was out. Big Frank has no one place, just scoots round the small coastal villages after silver. "You wouldn't chuckle, Lovejoy."

  Indeed. Big Frank has marriage like the rest of us have blackheads. I forget how many wives he's had. He pays maintenance to a monstrous regiment. I've been to six of his weddings, plus four engagements.

  "What happened? Your latest wife was bonny." "She accused me of having it away with the woman in the farm opposite."

  "Look, Frank." I was disappointed, because I’d been their best man. "These new wives. Once or twice, but isn't Dodie your eighth? Why don't I explain? After all, the woman in the farm opposite ..."

  "Her sister, mmmh. What about this, Lovejoy?"

  He showed me a lovely rectangular standish, silver, with its inkwell and pounce pot absolutely unblemished. Connie Hopkins was hovering nearby. It was her inordinately extortionate price ticket. Connie uses the SUTHERLAND code I told you about years since, reversing the letters every quarter day. S equals 1, U equals 2, and so on. Other dealers use their kiddies' names. Really truly mind-boggling clever, no? Stroll through any antique shop, you can crack their code in the time it takes to ask the price of two single antiques. Remember that they mark the price they paid, not the price they'll sell at. For that, nowadays, add 200 percent more. Modern retail jewelers mark up new bangles, rings, pendants, earrings, exactly that. Test it out. Buy a new gold-and-sapphire ring, take it to a different reputable jeweler, and try to sell it. If he offers half the price you've paid, you've done well.

  "Got the original gum?" I asked. The pounce pot was not filled with sand, as commonly believed, but with powered gum sandarac, to re-buff the paper if the old writers had to erase a mistake.

  It looked right. It felt right. But sadly it made me feel as if I was sort of leaning over. Right but wrong.

  "What metal?" It felt really queer, almost rippling in my hands. I stared hard at the hallmarks. "Better Nine?"

  A certain horribleness began in December 1478. Every St. Dunstan's Day, nineteenth May, a twenty-year cycle of letters was stamped on silver; A the first year, B the second, so on. Once King Charlie II came in 1660, the change-day became his birthday. Oak-Apple Day, twenty-ninth April. But still the letter cycle went relentlessly on. Except 1696 to 1697, when the Britannia standard upped to 11 ounces and 10 pennyweights (95.8 percent, if you're a decimal crank). This means 8 pennyweights more to the Troy pound than sterling! Astonishment! New silver was worth more! (This was necessary because the naughty old public were clipping coins.) And, gasp-shock-horror, the twenty-year letter cycle was interrupted! A seated woman, Britannia, showed up on the mark. There's been one other interruption to the letter cycle—in 1975, but that doesn't matter, being modern.

  "It's old standard, Lovejoy, looks like to me."

  "Mmmh." Meaning, oh, sure, but no thank you. Its matt quality disturbed me.

  Lately, we'd been seeing a lot of these pieces. All desirable, all beautifully made. And all having that lovely matt look to the truly ancient (genuine) silver. I’d bet all I had—well, all I owed—that, if this piece was tested in London's Queen Mary College by flame photometry or whatever, it would be pristine medieval silver. The hallmark was a letter T on a little barrel (T on tun, for Taunton, get it? They loved puns), and Britannia. And a maker's mark, initials, four times. The old silversmiths were past masters at dodging tax duty, and repeated their marks a few times—four's usual—hoping customers would assume that one mark was the official government-decreed one.

  Well. Beautiful. But that terrible matt look. I polished the edge of the box on my sleeve. It felt ancient, bonging gently, but it felt wriggly. "How many'd it take, Frank?" I had him.

  "What're you talking about, Lovejoy?"

  "Frank. Take a crucible filled with silver Saxon pennies. Clean them. Melt them down. Get Heppie to make you a lovely new standish like this. Stamp it with a few marks, and take it all unsuspecting to Lovejoy. He divvies it. After all, it's genuine ancient silver, right?"

  These tricks make people shrink in my eyes. Big Frank looked heartbroken, but that was only the specter of no bunce, no profit. He'd chosen the place, his audience. Now they all knew he was on the fiddle. Just to get more wealth for a new wife. Marriage has a lot to answer for. I'd thought better of him.

  "You that desperate, Frank? That you'd try to con me?" On the same level as that Vienna bloke who worked the Lucona sinking. He claimed 18.5 million dollars insurance, after having the 11,000-ton ship blown to blazes. Fine, eh? Except for the half dozen who went to watery graves. Horror makes you bitter, sad for us all. We only pretend civilization.

  "Sorry, Lovejoy." He sounded really down.

  Everybody in the Arcade had stopped talking. Connie was studiously scanning some Christie's Impressionist catalogues. Even Acker Kirwin, apparently in to hump some old Sir Johns—chamber pots in wooden boxes, sometimes (but rarely) built up like square-topped stools—stood observing the drama.

  Unpleasantness makes you feel in the springtime of senility, the dawn of decay. And Prammie Joe was no nearer seeing tomorrow's sunshine.

  I drifted off. Connie didn't meet my eye. Big Frank came after me as I walked down to Woody's caff. He tried buttering me up—"It's these payments, Lovejoy. I'm going under." I walked on,

  head down, seeing only that terrible cloud buzzing in that low doorway among the reeds. Then I stopped all of sudden, by the Bugler pub near the war memorial.

  "What was that, Frank?"

  "Well, Lovejoy. There is." He shrugged. "It's a oncer, see? Things have been rough. I’ve tried a million other lines, but silver ..." His eyes glowed with the fervor of the lunatic. "She said I could come in, if I’d chip a tenth. Endless profits. I could buy into Continental silver, even English Huguenot ..."

  He rambled on in delirium. In the town center, traffic swishing past and people hurrying with prams. I hadn't a clue what he was on about. But I’d never seen him like this before. I eyed him. Another huge-scale scam, for Christ's sake?

  His eyes were afire. "I’d need a year's wage, Lovejoy."

  So the scam meant at least ten times that. Bridge loans in antiques cost a tenth.

  "Frank. I'll try to lend you, if I can. Can you trust her, though?" With Frank, it's always a bird, sometimes even one he's married to. I was fishing.

  He looked about, for ex-wives skulking among the shoppers. "Jenny's straight as a die." He smiled shyly. "We're engaged."

  Par for his course. "I’ll see. Chop straight, eh?"

  "Lovejoy, you're a pal. Yes, even share-out. I really appreciate you not being narked."

  "About the standish? Nar, Frank. Some punter'll happen by."

  We parted amicably. But I was now frantic, as well as baffled. Something was turning all the dealers into maniacs. I alone was sane and fair-minded, as usual.

  I called in six antique shops more, and emerged triumphant. Jenny Calamy lived out near Woodbridge, and had been in Big Frank's company closer than somewhat. Calamy sounds like "calamity," and Calamity Jenny's the name of her shop. J. Calamy had met Big Frank over antiques, yes, but they both attended The Great Marvella and her talking snake. For massage and conversation, the latter being three-way, four-tongued psychoanalysis. And I had an appointment with her. Had had? Some tense or other. I invented excuses as I hurried that way, in case I’d got the date wrong.

  The buzzer changed to the snake's f
luty voice instantly, clicked the door open. I went in slowly. One day, maybe there'd only be the snake there, fat about the middle, and no Marvella. There were two voices.

  "Watch this, Cassandra," Veil's voice said, choking laughing.

  "Come in, Lovejoy. He'll dither for hours. Geronimo's gone to bed.”

  Inchwise I peered round. There on the couch was Veil. And Cassandra Clark. Even lovelier. Never mind them, the snake was in its cage. It looked without hostility. I’d rather it hated me. Or loathed. That anonymity was the killer.

  "Cassandra's just finished, Lovejoy."

  They smiled at each other with merriment. I didn't get the joke. Finished?

  "Told a good fortune?" I said, trying jocularity. Geronimo watched. Its head moved slightly.

  "Quite fair," Cassandra said. More hidden smiles were exchanged, but women do that all the time around me. I didn't attach too much importance to it. "Geronimo was particularly optimistic."

  "Good old Geronimo." I didn't really want to be on speaking terms with him. I felt awkward with Cassandra here.

  She's a hard lass. Looks as if butter really truly wouldn't. Cassandra Clark had quality, but her handbag was sure to be loaded. I thought about her visit to my workshop. She had a Past, the Arcade hinted. Touched antiques, examined them. Never, ever bought. Word was she used a whole shoal of buncers—dealers who buy solely on commission—sworn to secrecy, exporting to the U.S.A. I could eat her with a spoon. Or without, though chance'd be a fine thing. She was dressed to kill, everything matching, with that casual oh-what-a-mess hairstyle that costs the earth. It needs lustrous youth, plus what Chinese dealers call Vitamin M. Money.

  A man between two women doesn't have much of a chance. And knowing what they say isn't exactly the same as knowing what they mean. A man between two birds feels about four years old, and that's a fact.