Faces in the Pool Read online

  ‘Oh, Lovejoy, you’re so sweet.’

  Well, I am. I made the story up. One of those old slipware pieces (about 1780, give or take) would keep anybody in luxury. If it wasn’t a pack of lies I would really have been kind. As it was, I’ve no great-aunt.

  ‘I’ll bring something, then we can do the contract.’

  ‘Er, contract?’

  ‘Our partnership, silly!’ She trilled a laugh. ‘Have you forgotten?’

  As she faffed about, I read Donna’s card:

  Dear Lovejoy,

  Good morning. Please join me for our tête-à-tête at ten o’clock to start our journey. This invitation does not include your strumpet. D da S.

  Her description of Veronica seemed a bit strong, but I had enough wars without fighting Veronica’s as well. I called out to ask what the time was, as I had to go to the tax-gatherers. Twenty minutes later, I made heartfelt vows of unfailing loyalty and unswerving devotion, and felt quite moved. Jacko in his coal lorry delivered me into the hands of strangers.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  gloak: to wait in hopes of charity (Eng. dialect)

  Donna da Silfa’s motor was better appointed than most hotels. The driver was a dark hulk whose eyes hid behind thick lenses. We set off on the Great Trek that would solve Laura’s problems.

  ‘Fleggburgh, Norfolk, wack,’ I told the driver’s neck.

  Windows slid up, isolating me and Donna da Silfa. She observed the townscape as we trogged northwards, past dwellings, churches, students drifting to the Art College.

  ‘To think your Queen Boadicea crucified 70,000 of you here.’

  ‘She was a bad girl. Terrible temper.’

  She smiled. ‘You and women, Lovejoy! Not an unswerving patriot?’

  ‘Them old historians,’ I said.

  She quoted glibly, ‘Very flat, Norfolk.’

  Her Noël Coward quip worried me. She meant to lighten the proceedings while I worried about Paltry’s murder and Smethie’s unexplained death.

  She explained, ‘Noël Coward. I thought you’d know it.’

  ‘Captain Bracegirdle.’ I thought that would shut her up, but she only laughed and clapped like a little girl.

  ‘I told them you are worth hiring!’ She settled back. ‘Could we not just stay at some lovely riverside hotel? The scenery is awfully drab.’

  Countryside is horrible. Squirrels kill birds. Foxes slaughter hens. Owls eat shrews. Hedgehogs chew slugs. Charming lambs frolic on the way to the butcher. I don’t get the hang of rural enthusiasts. Have they never heard of concrete, for God’s sake?

  So Donna da Silfa chose me, and not Laura. Did she secretly know why Paltry was murdered?

  ‘You’re so serious, Lovejoy. Are you abducting me to some sordid tryst?’ She laughed, a pretty picture. Sunshine showed off her fantastic colouring.

  ‘A fairground. Some bloke I have to see before Laura’s quest.’

  ‘Ugh! Candyfloss, children being sick on the Big Dipper? Ugh!’

  Donna da Silfa was difficult to tolerate. ‘My gran told me about women.’

  We passed a canal-lock gate where once I’d nearly got shot, blubbering surrender. Mortimer saved my life, guessing cowardice was my normal.

  ‘And what did your gran say?’

  ‘Women live by the clock.’

  She dwelt on it, allowing Gran a moment. ‘Did she explain men too?’

  ‘Yes. Men have heads full of jolly robins.’

  Another delightful laugh accompanied by pretty gestures of applause. I wondered how much of Donna da Silfa was herself, and how much was performance.

  ‘Lovely! And how true!’

  The two men who killed Paltry, though. Accents always intrigue me. It may be only an inflection overheard on a bus. Then, quite unbidden, I think, Yeah, that lady was probably Canadian, because she spoke the word ‘about’ as if reining a pony in. My mind’s jolly robins cheeped pointlessly on. Except sometimes one robin sits still and thinks, What’s wrong? and then, Why did nobody tell me? I was to hunt down this Ted Moon, trap him with antiques I had to take on trust, while wedded to the hate-filled Laura. And what had it to do with forgotten white tribes?

  ‘My maid is following with whatever clothes I might need.’

  A motor had caught us up, a dark-haired lass driving.

  ‘Your grandmama was right, Lovejoy! Living by the clock! No time to rush and buy new outfits.’ She sighed. ‘It must be so easy being a man.’

  The trouble was, Gran never did say which clock, and every woman’s clock is wound different. Yet it was us men who fixed the world on Greenwich Mean Time.

  ‘Tell me about being a divvy, Lovejoy. Is that the word?’

  Now, she’d just admitted she’d hired me because I was the only divvy they’d heard of.

  ‘You already know. Doing it makes me feel ill. That’s all.’

  ‘I am starting to understand you, Lovejoy. You deliberately miss the point of what a woman says. Is it skill or innocence?’

  On the defensive again. ‘I’m a bad thinker.’

  ‘You’re the divvy, though, our private detective.’

  ‘No, Donna.’ I hadn’t been paid yet, but did not remind her. ‘A detective must be suspicious. A divvy must be right.’

  ‘Was I wrong to hire you, then?’

  ‘An infallible detective is a fake. A bad antiques dealer is a fake. Opposites, see?’ God, she had lovely eyes. ‘See you later.’ I made to kip.

  ‘Please don’t leave me alone.’ She took my hand. For the rest of the journey I stayed awake. During the hour-long drive I kept singing to myself songs from when I was little, like, ‘Clap hands, Daddy come, bring his baby a cake and a bun…’

  People do daft things.

  On time, we glided smoothly into Fleggburgh. It’s the smallest of villages, but spread about. We arrived at the fairground. I was thrilled.

  ‘Hey ho, come to the fair,’ I rejoiced.

  ‘Lovejoy! This is a penance!’

  Women see climate as somebody’s fault. Lydia is the worst, assuming I make the elements unseasonal when she’s dolled up.

  ‘Stay in your motor, then.’ I went, smiling, into the silent fair.

  The site covered an acre. It might have seemed eerie to some, but only because people associate a fairground with marquees full of people and all the fun of. Lights should be on, I thought with nostalgia. The carousel was there, its hobby horses frozen on their gilded poles, red nostrils flared, ready to gallop as polyphones piped reedy melodies.

  Donna slithered after. ‘Lovejoy, you left me alone!’

  ‘Wotcher,’ a bloke said. ‘You Lovejoy? They passed word you’d come.’

  ‘Wotcher. Pete?’

  Every fairground owner is called Pete. Who knows why?

  He was momentarily taken aback by Donna. She looked ready for a typhoon, Paddington Bear in wellington boots and a yellow sou’wester.

  ‘Got a sec, Pete? Gossip, please.’

  ‘Sure, booy.’ He was middle-aged, heavy with the responsibility of being East Anglia’s fairground master. ‘Three streets, see? Ovens in the marquees.’

  We entered through canvas flaps. Benches were placed round the cold boiler and iron ovens. I smiled.

  ‘We had as many as two hundred in here on a rainy day, Lovejoy. Know what sold best?’

  ‘Black peas.’

  ‘Right! Nice to meet a customer!’

  My mouth watered. ‘Nothing like tarry black-pea soup for a cold winter.’

  ‘We tried hot dogs, burgers, them Indian triangles. My fairground women lost heart.’

  We emerged into slanting rain, to whimpers from Donna, and walked the rows of stalls: Roll-a-Penny, Hoop-La, the Magic Man who told fortunes for a penny. There was even a cylinder piano by Hicks of Bristol from 1860, with its original veneering. Pete gave me an old penny. I chose the Victorian, ‘Why Do We Have To Part, Jim?’ The machine whirred.

  Pete could not hide his delight.

  ‘I keep it in good nick, hop
ing buyers will back us.’

  ‘No luck?’

  He shrugged. ‘They want computer games, ethnic dancing, God knows what. Can you imagine?’

  ‘No.’ I truly couldn’t.

  The Big Wheel was still there. He went sad when I asked if it could still go. ‘Health and safety laws did for it. They said people might not enjoy it in snow.’

  ‘Then they wouldn’t come. Didn’t you say that?’

  Pete perched on the steps of the Caterpillar. This showpiece is simply a snaky circular train. A crinkled green canvas covers the seats, so you’re completely enclosed as it rolls to wind-bag music. You could snatch a kiss – more if you were fast – before the hood flopped back exposing you to the speculating eyes of waiting crowds. It was real culture.

  ‘Times have changed, Lovejoy.’ Pete went into the old fairground barker’s lament. ‘Youngsters can’t enjoy themselves. Oh, they whoop it up, get sloshed and sick up all through the night. I know,’ he added with feeling, ‘with two of my own. But they don’t enjoy themselves.’

  Donna da Silfa exploded, ‘What rubbish!’ Pete looked up, his eyes wrinkling in his smoke. ‘Rubbish, Mr Pete. Like your fair.’

  ‘How so, lady?’

  ‘Look at it!’ She stood there dripping in her yellow slicker, comical, if she wasn’t jeering at Pete’s heartbreak. ‘It is cheap and nasty. Pennies, to throw balls in a bowl? Going round in circles to hurdy-gurdy music?’

  ‘It is beautiful, lady.’

  ‘Self-pity, Mr Pete! Sell this tat and get a job.’

  She gestured at the Win a Goldfish! stall. Racks of glass bowls, but no goldfish gaping out, thank God. There was even a What The Butler Saw, and automata that played Victorian national anthems to Flags-of-all-Nations. Glorious. Pete longed for vanished times. The only difference between us was he longed for one particular thing and I hungered for all antiques. This is the reason collecting is a disease. Never start, because you can’t recover. Someone who begins collecting matchboxes or Egyptian pendants is gripped by fever. It turns into a hatred of rivals. Collectors will kill for that last Britain’s Home Farm toy (‘Set of Nine, a Patriotic Wartime Toy’ of 1940) horse and roller, no joke. If a collector won’t go to extreme lengths to add to his store of tremblant brooches in emerald and diamonds, then he isn’t a collector. He’s merely greedy. Recently, a French philatelist murdered a competitor for a Hawaiian stamp, to make up the set.

  Donna da Silfa was concluding her tirade. ‘You’re a grown man! Pull yourself together!’

  She clearly thought the Palace of Delights, and the Rare Exhibition of the Truly Exotic, so much garbage. I thought it moving enough to touch a politician’s heart. For sheer discharity I’d never known anyone like Donna. I had thought her elegant and sophisticated. Now, I saw cankerous malice in a destroyer. She had designs on my world, and everyone else’s world as well. I honestly felt scared. Never mind what Mortimer and Lydia urged. I wanted out.

  ‘See you at the car,’ I told her. ‘I’m done.’

  She moved away, tutting and grumbling. I let her leave then asked Pete after Ted Moon. The reason I’d found Pete was simple: he was our Three Counties fairground master and would know more gossip than all the rag-and-bone men put together.

  Pete pondered a minute. ‘Aye. I knowed him. Nice geezer. He’d lately separated. He used a Brum street faker for handies.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘He mentioned Derby. Knowed a bonny Irish whore madam.’

  ‘Ta, Pete. Much obliged.’ I had my link.

  ‘Can you help me, Lovejoy?’ Pete was staring at the grass, ashamed. ‘I’m done for. My missus left.’

  These are fatal moments. I usually lie through my teeth and say OK pal. Among those century-old machines and dripping canvases, I felt their collective antique eyes on me.

  ‘Mebbe,’ I said. My mind screeched, What am I saying? I said, ‘How long we got?’ And what’s this we?

  ‘Month.’ He looked about. ‘I’ve only one caravan left, a nag, and two lads who mump here. They do odd jobs in case a buyer comes a-calling.’

  ‘How come the lads don’t get nabbed?’

  ‘They escaped from an Irish industrial school. What can you do?’

  The scandal was still boiling across The Water, where orphans were punished by devout religious orders just for being children.

  He knocked his pipe out, its dottle fizzing on the drizzled grass. ‘The bank closed me down. I lose the fair and Grampa’s mill.’ A ramshackle farmhouse stood nearby, crumbling. It had a decaying old waterwheel, its paddles and spars askew. Timbers projected like tired teeth in the wattle-and-daub. ‘I took out loans. All done.’

  Two youths were waiting nearby with the terrible reproach of the young. One lad held a dejected horse. We were all wet through. I thought of Laura’s promised gelt.

  ‘Maybe, Pete.’ Christ, had I just promised?

  ‘Ta, Lovejoy.’

  He touched his hat and walked away. The two lads fell in beside him. The horse gave me a sad look back, the parasitic bastard. Animals make me feel really narked. What else did a horse do except chew grass? It should get a decent frigging job. Everybody wanted me to save them, the idle sods. That nag lived in ladyland. The serfess took Donna to the car under an umbrella.

  ‘With you in a minute,’ I told her, and ploshed back as far as the Grand Emporium of Delights. I went in, and there it stood.

  This very fair used to come to our village. I loved the Faventia Street Piano, made in Spain a century since. It looked for all the world like a colourful handcart with projecting green-yellow handles. Twin barrelled, it could plonk out twelve tunes. Adapted to electric, its flex was easy to plug in. I got ‘The Blue Danube’. Spinning your lady partner in a reverse turn on wet grass is a pig. I waltzed slowly and alone to the pong-pong melody. I’d last danced with a lass who left to marry a pub landlord.

  Hard to concentrate, with that exquisite Spanish redgrained wood beckoning. This was how religion should be, really uplifting. The lady came into my arms, me humming the melody and… Lady?

  Donna danced well, turning with grace. The Faventia must have felt so happy.

  The old tune clonked to a close. I spun her, feeling a duckegg. She curtseyed. I told the street piano so-long. In the car, me dripping wet, Donna told the driver to go to some hotel. I asked if I could have something to eat there.

  It was all ready for us. Our old Queen Empress was the only person in history to sit down without looking to check there was a chair (note: there always was) but Donna da Silfa came close.

  At the Norwich hotel a change of clothes was laid out ready, a maid checking she’d guessed the sizes right. I had a bath. The housekeeper took out my clothes at arm’s length, which narked me. I’d just come from fascist dungeons, for God’s sake. I was still seething when I went down to nosh.

  Donna da Silfa had already chosen. I was starving. The soup was cold, and my grumbles made the waiter gape, but he didn’t have to eat it. He tried telling me the soup really should be freezing. Donna quickly apologised and made him bring some hot instead. Bloody cheek. If I’d been paying I’d have gone somewhere else.

  ‘I’m truly sorry, Lovejoy. I should have checked.’

  The grub was quite good, which made me think their Frog chef had picked up the knack of cooking. Donna tested much of it, and sent one dish back. I went red when she complained. Oddly, the waiters seemed to love her. When she approved, two waiters slapped palms like they’d won a medal. Waiters are truly strange. I could understand me being bowled over by the exquisite Donna da Silfa, because I’m a scrounger on the make, but a waiter is only somebody who fetches plates. I waded through the fancy dishes, each of which she inspected with her critical eye. I went round twice, in case I got hungry again later. Honestly, Woody could have learnt a thing or two, picked up some recipes for his Sloven Oven.

  Donna told me to rest, as she had to speak with somebody. We had six hours before ‘the others’ were due. I thought, Hello
, more strangers? No antiques shops in Fleggburgh, so I went upstairs and stretched out on the bed after removing my shoes because superstitious grandmas never really go away. I woke to find Donna murmuring reassurance and helping me off with my shirt.

  I’m not proud of everything that happens, because beggars can’t, can they? I just wish I had more chance to control things. She wasn’t in that much of a hurry after all. Derby, though?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  grockle: tourist (West Country dialect)

  She was short of breath because I lay on her. ‘Young women are too obvious. Mistake, no?’

  ‘How come?’ I rolled aside.

  ‘You want to doze, Lovejoy.’ She licked me, words taking turns with her tongue. ‘I love a man’s sweat. Now I tell you all.’

  Par for the course. Women inventing jobs.

  ‘First I shall explain why I hate the young. Then you shall understand about us forgotten white tribes. Learn while you doze.’

  I groaned. ‘Don’t tell me. You know an Inca jungle city full of tribal gold? I’m sick of con tricks.’

  ‘I and my friends are the lost city, darling. We are your treasure.’

  After some time I came from the post-love pit to find her smiling a welcome.

  She began speaking in that attractive accent. I thought, Here it comes. Bound to be Pythonesque. Donna da Silfa had been truly inventive making smiles.

  Her features showed a Bollywood elfishness, which makes a woman seem only toy bones beneath a beautiful skin. ‘I tell you this because you love women – old, young, all the same.’

  ‘Women are never the same.’

  ‘I stand corrected.’ She gestured at the sight, us barely covered by the sheet, mocking.

  ‘Women are the portal to bliss, love. Don’t let on.’

  ‘You men have no idea of reality. I had to force those men – at the casino by the train?’

  No smile now, so this was her most serious truth. I worry about this kind of thing, because women persuade me to become their disciple.