Ten Word Game Read online

  Hubert Predgel was there. I could see him moving. The window was painted up to head height, so no contents were visible. I went in and introduced myself. Hubert was delighted. He’d have come round the counter in greeting but there wasn’t room. Like I say, thin shops.

  “Lovejoy! Welcome to Amsterdam!”

  He shook my hand. Tall, stooping, older and greyer than I’d expected, but his shop had a few decent antiques. They were in cabinets, with expanding grilles of meshed iron on runners to lock after hours.

  We spoke of the things I’d sent him.

  “It is not often I receive three genuine antiques in one delivery, Lovejoy. You have more?”

  “I’m travelling light,” was as near truth as I could offer just then. “I might have some things for you before long.”

  “The quintal is beautiful.”

  He nodded to the wall. I recognised my 1850s Copeland wall bracket in bone china. It looked smashing, and I was really proud. “Copeland means Spode” is the antique dealer’s joke, because Copeland took over the sales of the Spode output when Josiah Spode (“the Second”) died in 1797, but the firm ploughs on to this very day. Leaving aside their troubles, and Josiah (“the First”) Spode’s failed experiments, they went on and on. I admire those old blokes, faithful potters all. And why? Because Spode marks, right from the first day Josiah walked into a little-known pottery firm in Stoke-on-Trent, were plain and straightforward. Spode and Copeland and their descendants stayed honest! I pause for breath when I think of it, because potters of the world play a neff little game. Some rotten swine had (and have) this terrible habit of making their marks resemble Meissen, or Chelsea, or Wedgwood, etc, etc, in the hope that buyers will be conned and snap their goods up for an inflated price. So let’s hear it for the Spodes and Copelands of this world – they’re few and far betwist. Great experimenters, and makers of style.

  “Did you like the quintal?”

  “Beautiful. Sold in a trice!”

  Two wall brackets – cornucopias, really, for flowers on the wall of a lady’s with-drawing room – and a quintal had been my shipment. It doesn’t sound much, but I was pleased. A quintal is a five-stemmed pot for standing on a table, a little flower in each. Five of anything was an auspicious number for a lady, signifying the opened hand offering feminine attributes of charity, honesty and loyalty, all things handsome visitors might admire. I got it from a car-boot sale in Coggeshall one Sunday in torrential rain for a groat, and offered it to Jacintha, a toothy lady who competes at point-to-point races and frightens you to death by insisting you pat her gigantic horses. She didn’t turn up one afternoon, and a bloke has to eat so I put the quintal in Predgel’s parcel. By seven o’clock two days later the money came through and I was able to eat. I tried explaining this to Jacintha. She walked out and started up with Conti on East Hill, who has a penny-farthing bike. I saw them out together, him pedalling like a dolt and Jacintha on a giant mare. A mad artist in Horkesley gave them free meals for a week just so he could paint the two of them together. Is life fair?

  “I have never met a divvy before. Did you know the Frenchman, Lovejoy?”

  “No. I heard he was a nice chap.”

  “Ya. Such a pity.”

  We talked prices. Antique dealers the world over speak in a lower register when mentioning money, never higher than baritone. We go all sepulchral, like talking of the dead. I think it’s grief, because a dealer thinks of money out, never money in.

  “There’s an English ship in port, ya? To St Petersburg, ya?”

  “Is there?” I said, offhand. “You’ve got a bonny warming pan there, Hubert.”

  It was rightly an ember pan, with the usual three-legged joints for the lid. No design on the lid, in lovely reddish brass, so Dutch. Later versions were copper. I don’t know why everybody nowadays thinks warming pans – they came in during Elizabeth the First’s time – are always copper, but originally they were brass. Heavy English brass preceded the lighter Dutch metal, then copper. The ember pan’s copper is simple plate one-sixteenth of an inch thick. I think they’re unattractive things, always reminding me of the time my gran set her bed on fire trying to get it warm. (You shovelled red coals from the dying fire with a small fire-dog, and put the covered pan between the sheets.) Oddly, you still find a zillion warming pans in every boot sale, but never, never ever, the knitted woollen pan-cosy into which it slotted when actually in use. Funny, that.

  “It’s London, after 1660 – heavier English brass was a pig to work. Rotten stuff for a metalworker. Brass and iron handle, with ebony. Too heavy for the lighter brass things. They’re 1720 or so. Okay?”

  I went round his shop, into the sanctum of his back room, sussing his antiques. Lots of fakes and later things, but enjoyable. Like good old times, before I ran for my life.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” he asked a few times.

  Telling him no, I went on picking things up, putting things down, smiling and frowning. He made tea – Dutch aren’t any good at tea. I drank it from politeness.

  An hour later I put the question, heart in my mouth.

  “I’ve a few things from local excavations. Metal-detector finds, that sort of thing, Hubert. Interested?”

  I detailed seven finds, including an Ancient British torc – that’s a twisted gold neck adornment made for a tribal king. I added a couple of Saxon gold-and-garnet rings, a brooch and a cape clasp, and two or three pilgrim tokens from devout wanderers of the AD 700 period, give or take a yard. I had to be vague about their number and dates, because I hadn’t any antiques at all.

  “Ah,” he said, thoughtful. “You haven’t got them here?”

  “Not yet. I’m going home by train this evening,” I said, wilder still. Truth has to suffer, so why not extinguish it completely? “I’ll send them to you when I get back. Only, I can’t bring them myself because…”

  Why couldn’t I? I halted, flummoxed.

  “Because you might be recognised?” he completed for me. Kind bloke, Hubert Predgel.

  “That’s it!” I said, pleased. “Customs and Excise, see? Only, I’d need a deposit if I was going to consign them to you.”

  “How much deposit?” he asked gravely. “I don’t keep much money around – thieves are everywhere, ya?”

  We settled on a wodge of Euros. I thanked him, signed a receipt, then noticed the time with theatrical surprise.

  “Leave the back way, Lovejoy,” he said politely. “It will save you walking all the way round to the railway.”

  “Ah.” I didn’t know what to say after that.

  “Pleased doing business with you, Lovejoy.” He opened the door and looked out before stepping aside. “Just checking for traffic. Youngsters come down here at such speed.”

  I dithered on the step. “Er, ta, Hubert.” I wanted to say much more, but couldn’t find words. “You’re… Thanks.”

  “Not at all, Lovejoy. Come again to Amsterdam…” He paused, thinking. “When time is less pressing, shall we say.”

  “I shall.”

  He told me a long telephone number and shrugged. “It’s my cell phone, constantly switched on. For night calls from overseas.” I had more sense than write it down.

  No more to say. He let me out, smiling, and I walked away. It was only then that I realised we hadn’t agreed a price for my imagined antiques, and he hadn’t demanded details of them.

  Nice folks, some antique dealers. I added Mr Predgel to my list of three decent ones, out of the 583 I know well, and went furtively into the city.

  * * *

  About three o’clock I entered a nosh bar called the Cassa Rosso, a pub of sorts along a place unbelievably named Oudezijds Achterburgwal. I got a tonic water and watched the world with suspicion. I admit I was scared, feeling that David Buddy or one of his hunters, or anyone of my country’s forty-three separate police forces, might tap me on the shoulder. I’d no illusions. A trio of youngsters nearby were arguing heatedly about petitioning the Dutch parliament to abolish the Dutch
language. They asked my opinion. I said dunno, always safest with politics.

  “We are students!” the girl said angrily. I already knew that because they were furious about irrelevances. Never having been an official student of anything, I don’t even know how it must feel to wake up each day in a permanent apoplexy against this or that, and set to sawing placards.

  “The world speaks English!” said her mate, a male hunched under a mass of dreadlocks. “You must agree!”

  “Don’t answer!” the other girl told me angrily. “There is no must, or where is democracy?” I nodded sagely while they went at it. Others joined them to differ violently, democracy being one of their prompt words. I edged away and bought a London-edition newspaper I could read by a nearby canal.

  “This,” said Mr Moses Duploy, sitting himself down beside me, “is Amsterdam red-light district. You like it, sir? I providing tour of every kinds for lost tourist.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Amsterdam is world’s first red-light district!”

  “No.” I was fed up with him. What was Dutch for no? “Dodge City in 1870 had a lady called Big-Nose Kate, I think. She ran a red-light house – painted her windows red. Chinese wine-houses in the Sung Dynasty covered their lanterns with red silk from AD 980 on. Folk still argue.”

  I was narked with myself for getting drawn in. I read my paper, a load of claptrap. I never buy newspapers because I finished with comics when I was nine. Every news item is made up. I don’t even believe the date.

  “You see antique chair under babba! You magic eye! With Mr Moses Duploy we make money-money, yes!”

  “No, ta. I got lucky.” I thought bitterly, this is lucky?

  “I providings excellent service, sir! Cheapo!”

  “I have no money.”

  “Ah, but you owings, no? Givings I.O.U. to Mr Predgel! Englishman’s word is moneys in banks, no?”

  I eyed the fidgety little git. “Well, no.”

  Think of the world’s greatest crooks, and a fair sprinkling were Englishmen, all of whom gave their word to go straight. From the romantic backwoodsman Grey Owl – actually plain old Archibald Belaney from Hastings – to the many breathtaking modern fraudsters of international money markets, a fair old chunk have been true-blue Englishmen with tongues of silver and a dishonest eye for the main chance.

  “I personal service, sir! You for ever gratitude!”

  I rose, leaving my newspaper. Nothing in it about me. He stayed there, feet dangling over the canal.

  “I stop followings person, sir!”

  “Eh?” That halted me. I looked about, saw only tourists on a nearby bridge, and the arguing students now surrounded by a mob of others all smoking, gesticulating, proving points. “Following who?”

  “Small-small fee is deal, no?”

  “No.” The little bloke was making me nervous.

  He rose and came with me. “Follow-person near Rijksmuseum. I see you try …”

  Short of words, he hunched, peered right and left, a graphic picture of a hunted man in a crowd. Was I that obvious?

  “Who is he? Where?”

  “Small-small fee deal?” He indicated the bridge full of tourists. “That bridge Deutsche Brucke, German Bridge. Prostitutes sell heroin in night-time. This red light district! No cameras, sir!” He became a melodrama expressing ineffable horror. “Cameras, no! Redlight girls stab camera tourist!” He tittered, hand in front of his mouth, eyes crinkling in humour at the thought of people getting stabbed for taking snapshots. “Blood on straat! Blood in canal, yes yes!”

  My throat wouldn’t let me respond. I looked back, forward, around. A guide came onto the German Bridge carrying a furled umbrella topped by silvery strands and the P&O logo. A crocodile of passengers followed. Quickly I turned down a small lane.

  “Cassa Rosso best Amsterdam pub, sir! You buy Mr Moses Duploy fine beer, I stop follow-person, sir!”

  “Is he still there?” I asked, breathless.

  He trotted alongside. “Small-small fee deal?”

  I wished he’d stop saying that. I’d only Hubert’s escape money. If I hadn’t the gelt to buy a genuine antique, how the hell could I afford to hire somebody? I reached the junction of three lanes and a canal bridge. Across the other side was a broad square full of people, lined by elegant shops, caffs everywhere. Trams pinged and whirred. A grand theatre advertised the latest musical. I felt really down.

  “Is he still behind?” I asked Mr Moses humbly, lost.

  “No, sir!” he exclaimed jovially. “Follow-person now ahead waitings.”

  I gazed at the mob, the crowded cafes, the shops, the leafy canal walk, and miserably asked him how much. He mentioned three times what I’d got. I promised him that much for every half-day he kept me safe from follow-person. Small-small fee deal, as we Europeans say. I didn’t shake hands. He was over-joyed, and we walked towards the Spiegel Quarter where antiques abound. I still smarted over the Thonet antique recliner. I could have bought it on a promise, and made enough profit to clear out of Amsterdam. I’m too soft, but what can you do?

  “We partners!” Mr Moses explained in his foghorn voice. “I safings you from follow-person, yes! Where hiding tree? In forest yes yes!”

  He fell about at his quip. I said ha-ha. Come five o’clock I’d ditch the blighter and cut out, leaving him with my I.O.U. What was one more debt? I judged the time. Four o’clock now. In one hour I’d be safe. Except I’d been telling myself that every ten minutes for days, and was still scared out of my wits.

  We headed for the Spiegel Quarter, where seventy antique shops of great reputation waited for me.

  Chapter Eight

  My gadfly was often nowhere to be seen. I simply got directions from him to the Spiegel Quarter, and walked. He occasionally reappeared and trotted beside me, once nodding at a narrow lane I should take as a short cut, then vanishing.

  The Spiegel Quarter is decidedly moneyed. You only shopped here if you needn’t worry how many noughts were on the price.

  “This it?” I asked Mr Moses.

  “Yes yes, Spiegel Quarter. You want diamond quarter?”

  “Here’s fine. Watch out for follow-person, okay?”

  “Indeed indeed.”

  “Here. Is it a woman or a man?”

  “Quick doorway!” he hissed, and thrust me into a furniture place. An elegant lady was just entering so I didn’t have to buzz. She held the door for me. Not having had much luck lately with such suave creatures, I went red and just muttered “Ta, lady.” She smiled at my embarrassment. The antiques places had control panels on their doors. I found myself in a tasteful antiques place where assistants mingled with customers.

  The place was double pricy, ethnic trappings and furniture, most of them Far Eastern. Actually, you aren’t allowed to say Far East nowadays because “equalists” say it’s imperialist or fascist or whatnot. I mean Indonesian, Indonesia being once a Dutch colony. Textiles abounded, though most were sorry substitutes and replicas – poor Indonesia’s original textiles and styles are vanishing because of Western commerce. A number of kris knives, some truly old but others dross, were decoratively arranged on the walls. I smiled to show innocence, and moved in. The elegant lady had evidently come to inspect three large bronze drums, magnificent musical pieces obviously set out for her inspection.

  “They are genuine original Indonesian bronzes, madam,” a splendid grey-haired gent was giving it. “Just like the great ‘Moon of Bali’, known to be the largest ceremonial bronze drum in the whole world. Such brilliant skill, and truly ancient! These are the only matched trio known. They came to us at enormous expense from Bali, where they were recorded almost two hundred years ago.”

  They lapsed into Dutch. I drifted, but lingered. I love listening to lies. Truth is the bricks in the wall of civilisation, but lies are the mortar holding society together. Nothing wrong with a good lie, of course, because some lies are worth having. A woman uses make-up so she looks dynamite, and might tint her hair to look ev
en more fetching. Cosmetics aren’t lies, just simple tricks, though some religious sombre-sides damned all cosmetics – St Jerome, for instance, though that didn’t stop him from leading his troop of virgins to Palestine in A.D. 389 in, of course, a thoroughly saintly manner. I like to see women making their lips redder, their hair shinier, their teeth more dazzling, their faces bonnier…

  “Yes, sir?” a smoothie enquired. I showed interest in a miniature temple carving with eleven floors and balconies. The more storeys, the greater the deity.

  “Very apotropaic, those representations, sir,” he gushed. I was too embarrassed to ask what the word meant. He was tall, toothy, in a suit that could have bought my cottage. “Typical Indonesian. Our speciality!”

  “I’ll come back to you in a minute,” I lied, moving on.

  The antiques were a mixture of antiques and gunge. Nothing wrong with copies, fakes, forgeries, like two of the massive bronze drums the pleasant lady was buying. But actually selling them as antiques when it’s only for money puts a bad taste in my mouth.

  “Excuse me.” I turned back. “Do you provide certificates of authenticity?”

  “Yes, sir!” He wrung his hands in ecstasy. “With every single purchase! Our entire stock is original and genuine. We are of course well known in England, and can provide references and provenance for everything in our emporium…”

  I only pretended to listen while I watched the pleasant lady open her handbag and take out a cascade of credit cards and a cheque book encased in gold. She was going to buy the three massive bronzes.

  “I was actually fascinated by your ceremonial religious bronzes,” I told my groveller. “Would they still be for sale?”