The Judas Pair Read online

  I got another smile for that. ‘I’m glad we’re not flintlock rivals.’

  ‘I only wish I had the money to compete,’ I confessed. ‘What I came about –’

  ‘The flask?’

  ‘If you still have it,’ I said, carefully measuring my words in case this all turned into a real sale, ‘I’d like to make you an offer.’

  To my surprise he hesitated.

  ‘They’re fairly expensive,’ he said, working out private sums.

  I groaned and nodded. ‘Don’t I know it?’

  ‘And you’ll require a flask more appropriate to a percussion –’

  ‘Oh, that’s detail,’ I interrupted casually. ‘It doesn’t matter too much. Anything goes these days.’

  I sank out of sight in his estimation. As far as he was concerned, I would forever be a tenth-rate dealer of the cheapest, nastiest and most destructive kind. Even so, he still hung on, hesitating about selling me his flask. It was only after a visible effort he steeled himself to go on further, and courteously refused. I tried pushing him, offering a good market price, though it hurt. By then he was resolved.

  We said nothing more. I didn’t enlighten him about my visit to Muriel Field’s. He’d be on to her soon enough. But, I wondered, had Eric told him about the Judas pair? Very unlikely. Collectors collect to keep, not to brag.

  I went down the new road. This little estate miles from anywhere probably hadn’t an antique from one end to the other. On the other hand, there were a few shapely birds here and there, but the sense of desolation was very real. I would phone Sheila and ask her to come back to Lovejoy’s waiting arms in time for me to meet her off the London train in the romantic dusk. As I trotted round the comer I planned a superb meal for the luscious lady who would bring a little – maybe much – happiness into my humdrum existence. I would get three of those pork pies in transparent wrapping, a packet of frozen peas-and-carrots mixed, one of those gravy sachets, and two custard pies for afters. Lovely. How could any woman resist that? I leapt into my chronic old speedster and started it by releasing the handbrake to set it rolling on the slope, wondering as I did so if I had any candles to make my supper party a really romantic seduction scene. I didn’t give the sad new dwellings another glance. Give me bird sanctuaries any time.

  Chapter 7

  I SHOULD OWN up about women.

  It’s a rough old world despite its odd flashes of sophistication. Women make it acceptable the same way antiques do. They bring pleasure and an element of wonderment, when oftener than not you’d only be thinking of the next struggle. There’s nothing wrong in it all. It’s just the way things are. Morality’s no help. Keep cool, hang on to your common sense and accept whatever’s offered. Take what you can get from any woman that is willing to give it.

  And before you even start to argue – no! I won’t listen to all that junk about waiting for spontaneous out-of-the-blue ‘true-love’. Love is made. It is the product of many makings. A man and woman just don’t fall in love at a glance, sighing and longing and whatever. They have to make love, build it up month after month; having sex and becoming loving towards each other. When they’ve made enough love and built it around themselves brick on brick, then they can be said to be in a state of love. Read those old religious characters. They knew all about love as a spiritual event. It didn’t come to them by a casual notion as a sudden idea that sounds not too bad or from a weekly magazine. Love, that mystical magic stuff of a lifetime, came from working at the very idea of it, grieving and straining and suffering the making of it. Then, in possession of it, comes the joy and the ecstasy of knowledge in the substance of love.

  Well, sorry about that.

  I make it when and where I can. Any honest man will tell you that the main problem is where the next woman’s coming from. Women often decry this truth. Cissie used to. For some reason women find it necessary to deny the obvious. Never noticed how many phrases they have for that very purpose? ‘That’s all you think about.’ ‘Men are like children.’ And so on, all wrong. I can’t understand why women aren’t more understanding.

  Sheila was coming close to it. I’d known her a year, meeting her at one of those traction-engine rallies. She was there with her chap, a dedicated man who was so busy oiling things he didn’t even notice when she left with me.

  That isn’t to say Sheila should go down as a cheap tart. These terms are as irrelevant as differences of racial colour, engine pattern, weight, any nonessential of human behaviour. Women like men, and men like women. It’s only natural they tend to bump into each other now and again, sometimes accidentally, sometimes not. And if both parties wish to pretend it’s more socially acceptable meeting properly introduced at the vicar’s tea party drinking tea with little finger poised crookedly in the air, big deal. What difference does it make as long as the chance of making love emerges from the great masquerade?

  I take love seriously. It’s a serious business and doesn’t deserve to be left to the tender mercies of penny-paper romances and demented Russian novelists griping at one set of commissars after another.

  Her family keep a shop in Islington, clothes and that. She has a younger sister at school. She opted out of typing suddenly. ‘I read,’ she explained once, ‘they’d done experiments on a chimpanzee. It had learned to type. I ask you.’ That did it. She hitched up with this traction-engine chap, helping in his garage and generally doing paperwork while he played with plugs and valves.

  I collected her at the station.

  ‘Hello, Lovejoy,’ she said evenly.

  ‘Hello, Sheila.’ I was standing there like a spare tool, holding these flowers.

  ‘Pig.’

  She stood unmoving in the station foyer. It was the scene from ‘When did you last see your father?’ all over again. I felt like the kid on the cushion.

  ‘You know, love,’ I said lamely. ‘I was busy.’

  There were few people around. This was the last train in or out. She’d have to stay the night with me. Alf the porter used to stand and grin at these scenes years ago. Now all he wants to do is to clear up, lock up and push off before the White Hart shuts. We stood under the solitary lamp.

  ‘You’re not as thick as you pretend, you know that?’

  I nodded. In this sort of mood you have to go along with them. She was wearing one of those fawn swingback coats that seem slightly unfashionable even when they’re in, but never seem less than elegant. I’d never noticed before. Her clothes never quite matched the latest trends. She stood in a pool of light, smooth and blonde. My heart melted.

  ‘I’m not very nice, love,’ I admitted before I caught myself for a fool.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I rang because . . .’

  ‘I know why.’

  ‘It was just that . . .’ I petered out, holding the flowers towards her instead of explanation. She gazed at me, making no move to take them.

  ‘It’s just that you were taken short again.’

  ‘Beautifully expressed,’ I tried my clumsy jocularity act, which sometimes worked on the low graders. She evaded my attempt to thrust the bunch into her arms. I’d never seen her in this particular mood before.

  ‘Lovejoy.’ Her voice was quite dispassionate.

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘Stop that. I want to ask you something.’

  ‘Go on.’ The passengers were all gone. Two cars started up outside and purred away. I could hear Alf clattering buckets encouraging us to leave.

  ‘If I don’t stay with you tonight,’ she said in that calm voice, ‘what will you do?’

  ‘Have two suppers, hot bath and bed,’ I lied.

  She gave me that new calm look she’d learned during the last two days. I didn’t care for it.

  ‘Liar.’

  I almost staggered. ‘Eh?’

  ‘I said, liar.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you said.’ Stalemate.

  The platform lights suddenly plunged out behind her. The single overhead bulb gave her an
uncanny radiance I’d never seen. Maybe it was just that I was wanting her so badly.

  ‘You’ll be out picking up some middle-aged tart,’ she said serenely.

  ‘What, me?’ I never can sound stern, though I tried. It came out weak as a bluster.

  ‘You, Lovejoy.’ She reached out and took the flowers. ‘And you’ll lay her after three pink gins.’

  ‘Look, Sheila,’ I said, worried sick by all this.

  ‘You’ll give her the eye and come the “Hi, baby” act. I know you.’

  ‘Nothing’s further –’

  ‘From your mind? Perhaps not, because I’m dope enough to come.’ She sighed and scrutinized my shabby frame. ‘You’ll get any flabby amateur tart from the nearest taproom and make love to her wherever she says, in the car, your cottage, her place if her husband’s but.’

  ‘What’s it all about?’ I pleaded. ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You can’t help it, Lovejoy, can you?’ she said.

  I gave in, shrugging.

  ‘Sometimes it’s not easy,’ I said.

  She smiled and took my arm.

  ‘Come on, you poor fool,’ she said. ‘I’m famished.’ She climbed into the car and started to push the fingerpump. As I said, she’d known me for a year. The motor responded. I saw Alf the porter thankfully closing up as we left the darkened station forecourt. We clanked through the silent village, my spirits on the mend.

  ‘Not to worry, angel,’ I reassured her. ‘I’ve a repast fit for the Queen. One of my specials.’

  ‘I suppose that means your sawdust pies.’

  ‘Pork,’ I replied, narked.

  ‘Custard tart for afters?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Beautiful.’

  I turned to say something and noticed she was laughing.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ I snapped.

  ‘Nothing.’ She was helpless with laughter.

  ‘Look,’ I said roughly. ‘Don’t you like my grub? Because if so you can bloody well –’

  ‘N – no, Lovejoy,’ she gasped, still laughing.

  ‘I’ve gone to a lot of trouble,’ I informed her with dignity. ‘I always do.’

  ‘I know, love,’ she managed to say, and held my arm as I drove. ‘It was just me. Don’t take offence.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  She gave me a peck on the cheek.

  ‘Friends again?’ she asked.

  ‘Pals,’ I promised fervently, relieved her odd mood was over.

  We held hands all the way home.

  Next morning.

  I was itching to have my priest-hole open to enter up a few oddments of information I’d gathered on my journey ‘the previous day, but with Sheila there I contented myself with cataloguing my tokens. One or two were quite good. I’d advertise those, priced high. The rest I’d sell through local dealers when the big tourist rush began.

  She was watching me, turned on her side on the fold-out bed.

  ‘You love them,’ she said.

  I sighed theatrically. ‘Don’t come that soul stuff.’

  ‘It’s obvious you do.’

  ‘It’s also obvious that going all misty-eyed because we had it off is pretty corny.’

  She laughed again when she ought to have been put out.

  ‘Have you had breakfast, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘What time were you up?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Did you notice the bruise?’

  ‘What bruise?’ I felt guilty.

  ‘When you belted me in the bathroom the other day.’

  ‘Oh. About that, love.’ I didn’t look at her. ‘I’ve been meaning to say sorry. It was important, you see.’

  ‘A phone call?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ I forced justification into my voice. ‘It turned out to be vital. I admit I was a wee bit on the hasty side –’

  ‘Come here, Lovejoy,’ she said. I could tell she was smiling.

  ‘No,’ I said, concentrating.

  ‘Come here,’ she said again, so I did.

  See what I mean about women, never giving up?

  Muriel answered the door, still jumpy and drawn but as stylish as before.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you again so soon,’ I apologized.

  ‘Why, Mr Lovejoy.’

  ‘I just called –’

  ‘Come in, please.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ There was no sound of cutlery in the background this time. A gardener was shifting little plants from pots into a flowerbed. ‘I thought they only did that on Easter Monday,’ I said. She looked and I saw her smile for the first time. It was enough to unsettle an honest dealer.

  ‘Wait. I’ll get my coat.5

  She emerged, putting a headscarf on over her coat collar.

  ‘You’ll remember me for ruining your day if nothing else.’ I shut the door behind her and we strolled to watch the gardener at work.

  ‘These days I welcome an interruption,’ she said.

  ‘Mrs Field –’

  ‘Muriel.’ She put her arm through mine. ‘Come this way and I’ll show you the pond.’ We left the house path and went between a setting of shrubberies.

  ‘I wish I could return the compliment.’ A woman’s arm linked with yours does wonders for your ego. I felt like the local squire.

  ‘Compliment?’

  ‘Nobody calls me anything but Lovejoy.’

  She smiled and seemed glad to do it. ‘Me too?’

  ‘You too. Oh, one thing more.’

  She looked at me, worried. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Cheer up, love. Nothing’s the end of the world.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ She was about to say more, but we came upon another elderly gardener tying those mysterious strings around plant stems. I must have looked exasperated because she asked me what was wrong.

  ‘Beats me why they do it,’ I said in an undertone.

  ‘Do you mean the gardener?’ she whispered back.

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered. ‘Why can’t they leave the blinking plants alone?’ I was glad I’d said it because it gave her a laugh.

  The pond was a small lake, complete with steps and a boat. A heron, grey and contemplative, stood in the distance. I shivered.

  ‘Cold?’she asked.

  ‘No. Those things.’ I nodded to where the heron waited. ‘It’s fishing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why, yes.’ She seemed surprised.

  ‘Can’t you give it some bread instead?’ I suggested, which made her laugh again and pull me round to see my face.

  ‘Aren’t you . . . soft!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I’d like the countryside, but it’s so bloody . . . vicious.’

  ‘Don’t you like my garden, Lovejoy?’

  I stared around accusingly. ‘It’s a county, not a garden.’ I flapped my hand but the heron wouldn’t go. ‘Does it all belong to the house?’

  ‘Of course. Eighty acres.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I agreed. ‘But everything in it’s hunting everything else. Either that or trying to escape.’

  She shivered this time and raised her headscarf. ‘You mustn’t talk like that.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  I watched her hands tidy her hair beneath the scarfs edge. They have a natural grace to set off their own gestures, doing hair, pulling on stockings or smoking a cigarette. She saw me gaping at her. I looked back at the water.

  ‘Lovejoy, what do you really do?’

  ‘Oh, very little. I’m an antiques dealer, really.’ I paused to let her load. Where the hell was all this kindness coming from? I wondered irritably. She said nothing. ‘I’m your actual scavenger. Nobody’s sacred. I even winkled out your priestly collector friend, and he lives miles away.’

  ‘Reverend Lagrange?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s been a good friend. He and Eric met years ago. I don’t think he collects the same things Eric did.’

  Nobody else does, either, I thought enviously. We moved along a flower
ed walk with those trellises against a wall.

  ‘I wasn’t telling the truth the other day.’ Own up, Lovejoy. Never be only half stupid. Go broke. ‘You probably guessed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I eyed her carefully. ‘Aren’t you mad at me?’

  ‘No.’ She pulled a leaf from some thorny plant that hadn’t done her any harm. ‘You’re not the first to have tried the same . . . thing.’

  ‘Trick,’ I said. ‘Be honest. We call it the box gambit in the trade.’

  ‘Box gambit?’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t started this,’ I said.

  She put the leaf idly between her teeth and saw me wince.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it if you were that leaf.’ She looked at it, and dropped it on the path. ‘It’s not dead.’

  ‘But how on earth do you eat, Lovejoy?’ she asked me.

  ‘Like us all, but that’s an essential.’

  ‘What’s the box gambit?’

  I told her, feeling rotten. Box as in coffin. Anybody dying leaves a house and antiques, if he’s wealthy enough to get his name reported in the papers. Those who are missed by our ever-vigilant press are listed in the deceased column by sorrowing relatives anxious to do the local antiques dealers a favour. We read up the facts of the case. Within seconds, usually, and before the poor deceased is cold in his grave, we kindly dealers are round visiting the bereaved, claiming whatever we think we can get away with. And you’d be surprised how much that is.

  ‘And do . . . widows fall for it?’ She stopped, fascinated.

  ‘More often than not’

  ‘Do you really mean that?’

  ‘Of course,’ I snapped harshly. ‘Over ninety per cent of the time you come away with a snip, nothing less than useful information.’

  She seemed intrigued by the idea, part-horrified and partly drawn to it.

  ‘But that’s like . . . being . . .’ she hesitated and looked back. The heron was still there. I said it for her.

  ‘Predators.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘You mean yes,’ I said. ‘Which is what we are.’

  ‘But why do the wives give you –’

  ‘Sell. Not give. Never leave a box gambit unpaid.’ I quoted the trade’s unwritten rule. ‘It’s what makes it legal.’