Every last cent l 22, p.1
Every Last Cent l-22, page 1
part #22 of Lovejoy Series
Every Last Cent
( Lovejoy - 22 )
Jonathan Gash
What is man,
If his chief good, and market for his time,
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more
Hamlet, Shakespeare
1
AN ANTIQUE is an antique is an antique, but only sometimes. A woman is a woman for ever. When the two come together life is dangerous. Always remember my law of antiques: it's not the money, it's the price.
Have you ever been so cold that your feet simply aren't there, and the warm light in your middle threatens to go out? Standing in the undergrowth, two o'clock on a frosty morning, listening to a gorgeous woman making love to some other undeserving slob in my – my – thatched cottage, I felt even colder.
The frost worsened towards midnight. It crunched underfoot as I tried to get warm. I could see the log fire – my fireplace, my logs, their warmth – reflecting a reddish sheen along the windowsill. A couple of times I tried to peer in but the woman had pinned my threadbare curtains over the grotty panes. That's trust for you, I thought bitterly. One good thing: in the morning she'd pay. I'd be able to eat.
Her mewling and gasping got me down. When they reached ecstasy I got truly fed up and walked out of my moonlit garden and down the lane. Nowhere to go. Eleanor's husband was back from the oil rig this week. There was a new raving maniac of a guard dog at the White Hart pub so I couldn't doss there. Another hour to last out.
When you hire out your cottage to Borace those are the terms. Ten o'clock in the evening to three next morning. Life is unfair.
A while since, I used to drive one of Horace's love wagons. These were great pantechnicons, changed from their mundane furniture-removal functions into mobile bedrooms. This was the arrangement: suppose you're a bored housewife fed up with the usual grind (no pun intended). Let's say you meet Handsome Jack in a bus queue.
But what then? You can't take him home on account of nosy neighbours. You can't snog in the park because of strolling families. The cinema's out these days. What do you do? Answer: you phone Borace. One of his mobile passion wagons trundles you to some quiet venue. As unsuspecting traffic roars past, you frolic and wassail with Handsome Jack in secrecy.
Borace supplies a luxury hamper, champagne, lobsters, and those little eats that never fill a tooth. Every mod con is provided, from televisions to smutty films and, rumour has it, a third person if required.
The vans had silly logos on their sides – WE MOVE YOU TO HEAVEN and suchlike – to protect the innocents (well, the illicit fornicators) within. Trouble was, a scandal rose.
Some jealous geezer reported a pantechnicon one dark night. The plod arrived at the moment of the lovers' fulfilment. They broke into the wagon and caught our town mayor with the deputy mayor's missus in what newspapers used to call Certain Circumstances. I got blamed, arrested, fined, and beaten up, because I was the unlucky driver that night.
Passion wagons have vanished since then. Borace has been reduced to what he calls Home For Abroad (for a broad, get it?), and now hires houses from anybody who can let their drum for surreptitious lust. In case this sounds like easy gelt, be careful. The rules are ominously strict. Stick to them or else. And that doesn't only mean you don't get paid. It means your legs get broken, and your house inexplicably catches fire at three-thirty the following afternoon.
Lust doesn't come cheap in East Anglia. In fact, it can make a cottage's legitimate resident wander the icy lanes and hedgerows all night instead of getting a decent kip.
Like me.
As I plodded down the lane – it goes nowhere except to a river and a farm – I almost bumped into a huge motor parked in the moonshadows. A bloke's gruff voice exclaimed. The car's courtesy light came on. I saw a man's face. He'd been dozing in warmth and comfort, the swine.
The window whirred down. 'What you doing?'
'Nothing, wack. Just, er, walking.'
I scarpered. He was probably in the service of the two who'd come to my cottage.
Borace's rule is that you don't see them, not even if you do. Keep out of their way.
The motor was one of these squarish-looking giants, all 1940s, like the car makers forgot to round their vehicles off. Rolls and Bentleys, I mean, with little mascots that collectors pay me for nicking. It made me hopeful, though the thought didn't even cross my mind.
One thing: if their driver was lurking in my lane, then they'd be off the nest fairly soon.
I trudged round Spring Lane and quietly stole into the rear of my overgrown garden. I nearly stood on Crispin, my hedgehog. He grumbled. Hate to think what the little pest eats, rummaging about all night. I feed him cat food when I'm in funds, but because cats eat those unspeakable tins of meat I get little Abigail from down the lane to dish it out for him. It's a nasty business. She says I'm being silly, but she's seven and knows everything.
So it was that I was trying not to freeze by marching silently on the spot near my derelict workshop in the brambles when the beautiful woman and her feller finally emerged. I saw them clearly in the light of my porch. They must have had a mobile phone because the motor came gliding up. They got in. The motor drove off with hardly a sound except for the crackling of gravel under the tyres.
Which left me astounded, thinking well, well, well. Who'd have imagined it was him?
The American consul. I'd seen his photo at the Oyster Feast.
It's one thing to think that you've helped a stranger to an episode of transcendental bliss, but it's another to realize that you've just sanctioned a love tryst for the likes of him. The woman looked gorgeous.
Shivering, I went inside and sat on the edge of my crumpled divan bed. I've only this one room, with a curtained alcove as a kitchen, and a bathroom with a loo. They'd left the lantern burning, and the embers still glowed. I took off my shoes and extracted the soggy cardboard. The soles were both holed. My wet socks peeled off. I'd mend their toes when I could afford some wool. My feet looked like albino prunes, the toes wrinkled and wet.
Then I noticed my forgery had been moved.
Normally I keep my fakes in one place. You shouldn't move a painting to catch a good north light, especially a portrait of an exquisite woman who'd died centuries agone.
Artists call it 'chasing light'. I never do it, because it leads to terrible mistakes that show your forgery up for the miserable travesty that it is. Paint exactly as the Old Master did, and you might, just might, get away with it.
For a long time I stood staring at my forgery.
Definitely out of true. Somebody, and I knew exactly who, had moved it about the cottage to see it in different kinds of light. I could even see the scratch marks on the slab floor. They'd thought I wouldn't notice.
The bedclothes were tumbled. I was dropping from weariness, but stripped off the sheets. Eleanor would collect them in the morning. I'd borrowed them from her the previous afternoon, having to endure her suspicious questions and irritating jibes.
My belly rumbled as I scented food. I scavenged. The wine was all gone. I shoved the empty bottles into the hamper. I found a roll, some cheese, and some cakey stuff with virtually no substance. I can't see the point of baking cakes that vanish when you take a bite. I fell on the grub.
Some meat on a plate looked red raw, so I left that. I also ditched some smoked salmon strips because I never know if that means it's been cooked. They'd swigged all the coffee, but I put the dregs aside in my mug, hoping maybe they'd make a decent cuppa in the morning if I got some hot water. Six miniature spirit bottles rolled about the place, empty of course, testifying to the caring compassion with which my guests had frolicked with complete indifference to my welfare. I laid my wet socks and shoes on the flagstones near the warm grate.
My blanket was unsullied. I haven't got proper pillows, so I stripped, shoved my cushion into place, scenting the perfume of the woman whose body had voluptuously reclined there, promised myself a good long spell of hatred of the American consul in the morning, and slept.
2
ONCE, ANTIQUES AND women were the only two aspects of life.
Then one day I learned there was a third problem just as brilliant and difficult. And now, I wouldn't be without any of them for the world. I need all three.
I was under the overhang of that chemist's shop in Pelhams Lane next morning selling stolen Christmas trees.
'Come with me, Lovejoy,' Sandra said. 'I've found some old panels. Vice's wood yard.'
'No, ta,' I said. 'I'm doing fine.'
I knew straight away it was a trick. Her smile always tells you she's up to no good.
'They'll be worth a fortune to a forger like you, Lovejoy.'
They always say this, antique dealers. A bonny woman doubles the beauty and doubles the risk. It's one of my laws of antiques. Remember it.
'I'm making a fortune.' The shoppers surged past.
'Sold many, dear?' She looked me up and down. Frayed edges, shabby cuffs, patched jacket. I'd not eaten.
'Ninety,' I lied. 'Only three left.'
'It's summer, silly. And I've got what you want.' Truth there. Sandra waited, her smile promising me untold wealth. What can you do? I left my bedraggled trees, ignoring the angry shouts of the other hawkers to clear up my rubbish.
Vice's wood yard stands back from the Ladies' Golf Course at Lettenham, a rural estuary six leagues away from my village. This is how local East Anglian folk still speak, 'Six leagues and a furlong, booy.' It took us thirty minutes in her enormous Jaguar. 'You're sure they're
'Two lovely old cupboards and a bench.'
'How old?'
She couldn't say, which should have alerted me. Everyone knew I'd been searching for old, aged wood to forge Old Master paintings. I'd combed the three counties and found nothing. I looked at Sandra. All antique dealers have a quirk.
Sandra Gainer is a compulsive gambler. Her marriage ended when she gambled her husband into bankruptcy. Frederick was a pillar of society, churchgoer, an eight-to-six commuter. She had him arrested for credit card fraud, on account of her (not his, note) gaming losses. The last honest bloke on earth, he's currently doing four years, out next autumn. Sandra looks well on Frederick's suffering. She'll sell anything – hers, yours, mine – to fund her gambling addiction. She once sold my cottage to a Bavarian tourist and lost the money before teatime on another infallible system. Three different banks each believed they were my sole mortgagers. I had a hell of a time evicting the Munich bloke. That's Sandra.
'Sand? Why can't people gamble on wrestling?'
'I tried. They won't take the bets.'
My trouble is an uncontrollable mind. It darts about, asking the unanswerable. Like, why do all the big peninsulas on earth point south, never north? Africa, India, South America, Malaysia, Baja California. And why did God, who loves us, invent malaria?
'You can keep your hand on my knee, Lovejoy, if you stump up for the three o'clock winner at Haydock.'
'Can I owe?' My hand was accidental.
'No kitty, no pity.'
Reluctantly I withdrew my hand to holiness. I'd made stupendous smiles with Sandra after her Frederick got collared, but grew alarmed when I found she backed losing nags all over the kingdom. Now I keep out of her way, except when I'm stupid.
We drove through depressing countryside, trees, fields, gentle rivers. Not an antique shop for miles. Is it any wonder that rural pastures get you down? The only interesting thing we passed was Farlow. He was sitting at Stratford St Mary busily painting John Constable's famed Loving Couple by the Stour. Please don't complain that Constable never did such a work. I know that. Farlow knows that. But put one of his Constable fakes next to mine, his looks obviously a sham, and mine looks brilliant. It's called the match trick among the corrupt, when you pair a bad thing with a good. Customers assume the better forgery possibly isn't fake at all. Two tourists out of five will pay on the nail. Unless it's a woman buying gems, in which case it's four out of five.
You think it's a wicked ploy only done by antique dealers and other criminals? Wrong.
Look in any boutique or jeweller's window. Everybody's at it.
'Here!' Sandra called brightly, pulling in to Vice's wood yard, tooting her horn. 'I got him!'
And handed me over to an aggressive horde waiting to do me grievous bodily harm. I alighted with a sigh to meet my doom.
'Lovejoy?' Dennis De Angelo piped. 'We're going to hang you.'
There were fifteen antique dealers, Dennis to the fore. Brains of a spud, and enough makeup trowelled onto his face to open a shop. He wants to start a fashion business without money. Antique dealers are a laugh a minute, but on the whole not frightening.
You don't hang people who owe you money. I owed ten of these riff-raff serious gelt, but so? Life's one disappointment after another. Everybody has to learn.
The wood yard was quiet. Two workers whistled and laboured unloading a barge.
Sandra eyeing their sweating forms. A dog dozed on the riverbank. No escape. It would have to be lies.
'Now, Dennis,' Margaret Dainty soothed. 'None of that.'
Margaret and me occasionally make smiles. A real lady, she's forever trying to hide her lameness. (Why? What difference does a limp make?) Her husband's always unseen.
Sometimes, if I'm forced into a posh occasion, she lends me one of his suits. I'm lost in it, pea in a drum. Which should worry me, except five years ago she taught me a new way of making smiles. Until then I'd thought it was only in books. She saw me remembering and coloured slightly.
'We'll drown him instead,' Smarts said eagerly.
He's a Victorian jewellery freak. Wears all his stock on his person, earrings in great loops round his head. You can hear him coming if there's a wind. You never see him with fewer than two-score necklaces, bangles up his arms. He sounds like a small foundry. Smarts claims to be French but only comes from our village. Barmy.
'It's your by-blow, Lovejoy,' Jenny Blondel said. She really is French but says she comes from our village. Weird. She owns three falcons.
My mind went, who? I said, 'Who?'
Jenny's nice. I like her because she makes cider from my apples and has a secret lover called Aspirin who can do handstands when he's drunk. I admire him for that. I can't even do them when I'm sober. And I'm jealous because he's got Jenny. Aspirin is a defrocked vicar but nobody's supposed to know. He embezzled a church's antiques. He baptizes you when he's sloshed, whether you want to or not. Her husband Paul Blondel keeps hunting birds.
'Your son, Lovejoy. Mortimer.'
I gave them the bent eye. Dennis squealed, darted back. 'I haven't got a son.'
'That Mortimer,' Jenny persisted. 'He's ruining our trade.'
'You lot already do that.'
'Arf arf,' Willie Lott said. No humour there. No compassion either. 'Stop him, Lovejoy.
He's yours.'
Willie Lott really did worry me. Even a burp can sound threatening from Willie. He's been in one of those silent services, and says he hasn't. Pretends he's thick as a plank, but has several foreign languages. He looks like a street brawler, all crags and scars.
'Who, Willie?' I asked weakly.
Dennis got courage from Willie Lott and squeaked, 'Mortimer, your kid by that whore Colette Goldhorn.'
'What's he done?' I didn't admit a thing.
'He's divvying all our stock, free. Telling tourists which antiques are genuine and which aren't.' Smarts glared. 'He's frigging ruining us,' adding in his execrable French, for authenticity, 'Il est terrible, non?'
Except he says the words just as they're written, ill esst terry bull none. Why do we all pretend we're different from our real selves? Women do it with cosmetics and plastic surgery, men pull their beer bellies in. We're all at it.
'Hang him, Willie!' Dennis, from the rear.
Jessica tutted. 'Shut it, Dennis, or I'll smack your wrists.'
Jessica is holy, runs a prayer chapel to bring us all back to purity, and lives down the estuary with her son-in-law in a state of mortal (I sincerely hope) sin, wears enough perfume to stop a clock and slinks about the Eastern Hundreds in a full-length dress adorned with zodiacal symbols. I like her, too.
'Mortimer does no harm,' I said. Plant your flag and name the price, there's not much anybody can do.
Jessica took out a list. The waft of scent almost keeled me over. I leaned away for oxygen. 'He told the truth about these antiques in the Arcade.'
A groan arose, really heartfelt. I could have hired them out for a biblical epic. Antique dealers go weak when honesty sneaks in. Truth is death. Get any dealer tipsy, and he'll admit that only three per cent of all the antiques he's ever seen are genuine. Get him utterly kaylied, he'll finally admit that it's only one per cent. Which means, so you get the point, that ninety-nine per cent of all antiques currently on sale anywhere are forgeries.
'You want chapter and verse, Lovejoy?' Willie Lott said quietly. 'Marry-Me Burnside's fuddling cups, genuine slip-ware? Jessica's papper mash genuine Henry Clay table?'
For genuine read fake. Dealers speak in fable. 'Two hundred items last week, Lovejoy,'
Margaret said with sorrow. She loves me, a true friend. 'Speak to the boy. That's all we ask.'
'And Rose Madder's printed Hours of the Virgin on vellum—'
'He what?' I interrupted, because I'd done that fake medieval manuscript myself.
Sweated blood on it, only finished it a fortnight back.
Vellum's not parchment, incidentally. It's a pig to print on, slips and shuffles as the type comes down. It was a beautiful forgery, though I say it myself. I'd throttle Mortimer, the little sod.
'I never see him,' I said lamely. I'm really good at sincere indignation so I tried that.
'And who says he's my responsibility? How can I find somebody who lives wild?'
