Gold by Gemini (20 page)

What can you say to stupid bums like this, that shut the Sèvres porcelain factory so we could all have none?

‘Clever dick,’ he sneered. ‘Piss off. Go and piss Izzie round.’

A few of the bike fiends who overheard laughed at this crack from beneath their tangles. Probably that local joke. I began to move towards him happily, then stopped. Izzie? Anybody’ll direct you to her, they’d told Algernon as I’d passed him. To her. Female. Izzie. Isabel? Isabella? Piss Izzie round – like a wheel? It reminded me of something. Janie came hurrying over. She’d collected Algernon. ‘We really ought to be going,’ she was saying as they arrived. I was watching them approach. ‘We’re all too tired to think. I can cook us a hot meal. It’s been such a tiring day. We need a rest.’ She looked at me, worried. ‘Lovejoy?’

‘Is anything the matter, Lovejoy?’ Algernon asked.

‘You’re so pale,’ I heard Janie say. ‘Has he said something to offend you?’ She spun angrily on the startled orator and snapped, ‘You keep your stupid opinions to yourself, you silly old buffoon!’

‘No, Janie. Please.’ My mouth was dry. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I explained gently to the speaker. ‘It’s my first visit here. Where is Big Izzie, please, comrade?’

‘I knew you were one of us deep down, comrade,’ he said, smug with pride. ‘It always shows through the capitalist-imperialist veneer. Comrade Marx’s definition of class illustrates –’

‘He never defined class,’ I said. ‘He promised to in that footnote to his first German edition, now very valuable, but never got round to it. Big Izzie, comrade. We’ve a, er, political meeting near there.’

‘Laxey,’ he said. ‘We ought to get together, comrade, to discuss class fundamentalism –’

‘It’s a date,’ I said. ‘Laxey, you said?’

‘Long live the revolution!’ he called after us.

‘Er, sure, sure.’

I rushed them to the Lagonda and had Janie hurtling us towards the road to cheers and waves of the surrounding multitudes of the bike people. She was screaming for instructions at the fork but I didn’t know where Laxey was. We scrambled for maps, then two cars came by and we had to wait till they passed.

‘Laxey?’ Algernon said at this point. ‘Go left.’

‘Sound your horn!’ I cried in anguish, but anyone who beeps a horn In Britain is either on fire or psychotic. Janie’s upbringing held firm. We moved sedately out on to the Laxey road.

‘Who’ll be there?’ Algernon asked pleasantly.

‘How the hell should I know who lives in Laxey?’ I said, baffled.

‘He means the meeting,’ Janie began to explain. ‘There isn’t really any meeting, Algernon, you see. It was a . . . a ruse.’

‘There’s an enormous waterwheel at Laxey,’ Algernon said brightly as Janie gave the car its head.

‘Then why didn’t you say so?’ I hissed. If I’d not been in the front I’d have thrown him out.

‘Is it what we’ve been looking for all this time? Its picture’s on the coins.’

I fumbled in my pocket. It bloody well was, the
imprint of a great waterwheel. One day I’ll do for Algernon.

‘It’s even got a name,’ he continued cheerfully. ‘Lady Isabella. They say that when it was first made –’

‘Algernon!’ from Janie, tight-lipped. Algernon had known all along, the stupid sod.

I closed my eyes. Sometimes things just get too much.

The wheel’s beautiful. You know, the Victorians really had it. If a thing is worth doing at all, they obviously thought, then it’s worth doing well. On the side of the supporting structure was a plaque:
LADY ISABELLA.
There she was, gigantic and colourful, pivoted with such exquisite balance that a narrow run of water aqueducted downhill was sufficient to power her round at some speed. She was breathtaking.

She was set in the hillside valley near a stone bridge. A deep crevasse sliced into the hill, exposing a ruined mineshaft. Old discoloured mine buildings eroded slowly block by block higher up.’ An enormous massive beam projected skywards from the ruins, probably one arm of a pump of some sort for the underground workings.

‘How colossal!’ Janie said it. Colossal was the word.

There were steps up from the path to its main axle. Algernon rushed up to see the giant waterwheel swinging its immense height skywards.

‘Imagine the size of the bike engine you’d need to –’

‘Algernon,’ I interrupted. ‘Don’t. No more.’

Janie was watching me. Just then she tapped me firmly on the shoulder.

‘Well, everybody!’ she cut in brightly. ‘Home time.’

‘
What?
’ I rounded on her.

‘Home time, I said.’ Janie put her hand on my arm like a constable.

‘We’ve only just got here!’

‘And now we’re going. You owe me a day, Lovejoy.’

‘But you said it wasn’t today,’ I yelped. ‘And we’ve found her! My main clue!’

‘No,’ Janie said. ‘It
wasn’t
today, Lovejoy. But today’s over. Look.’

I came to. The day had faded. Our car was the only one left in the car park beside the river down below. The little toffee shops had closed. In the distance lights showed where the seaside promenade of Laxey lay. Lights were coming on in the cottage windows. An old woollen mill blotted out the foreground. Mill owners of years ago had laid out the valley like a stone pleasure garden, now somewhat sunken and ill-kept. It was swiftly quietening into dusk.

‘But, Janie, for God’s sake –’

‘It’s dangerous, Lovejoy,’ she said in that voice. ‘Derelict mines, ruined mine buildings, horrid great pumps underground and a wheel this size. If you weren’t so deranged by being near whatever the poor old man left, you’d realize how exhausted and frightened you really are.’ She took my arm. ‘Home.’

I tried appealing to Algernon but he backed down. Friends.

‘I claim my day, starting from this instant,’ Janie said. ‘Twenty-four hours.’

Women make me mad. They’re like the soap in your bath. You know it’d be good value if only you could find out what it’s up to and where it is.

Algernon was nodding. ‘True, Lovejoy. You’re bushed.’

‘There, then!’ cheerfully from Janie. ‘We’re all agreed.’

1 was defeated. I looked up at the Lady Isabella.

‘Check the time, Algernon,’ I said coldly.

‘Twenty past eight.’

‘Twenty-four hours, then.’ I waited for orders. ‘Well?’

‘Home, chaps.’ She fluttered her eyelashes and waggled seductively down the steps ahead of me. ‘You’ll thank me later, b’wana, when we’re all cosy.’

Algernon joined in.

‘Never mind, Lovejoy,’ he said brightly. ‘There’s always another day.’

I didn’t speak to either of them on the way home. People who know what’s best for you give me a real pain.

‘W
HAT IF
E
DWARD
Rink’s come over after us?’ I said. I’d got fed up sulking.

‘Don’t argue. You need the rest. You’re a wreck.’

‘And what if –’

‘Rest.’ Janie was painting her toenails reddish. ‘A normal day’s what you heed, Lovejoy.’ I was reading. ‘Look how much good it’ll do us. You get too involved in antiques.’

‘I could have it by now.’ I nearly dropped my drink just thinking of it.

‘Rink’s man’s stupid. You said he couldn’t follow a brass band. No sugar for me, please.’

I brewed up and carried her cup over. She was on the couch by the window. We could see Algernon stalking some innocent sparrow across the field. I sat watching her doing her nails. They blow on their fingers but not their toes. I suppose toes are too far down even with knees bent. She has a little enamelled case full of small tools for things like this. French women used to have small cased sets of hooks and needles for unpicking gold-fringed decorations and embroidery. It’s called drizzling, or parfilage. Women to the last, they’d collect the gold thread in a bag and sell it back to the
goldsmith-embroiderer, who’d then make a lovely gold-fringed item, such as a bookcover, with an appropriate expression of devotion woven in. Then he’d sell it to a suitor, who’d give it to his ladylove, who’d take it to the theatre and unpick the gold thread and put it in a bag and sell it back . . . Women may be very funny creatures but I never said they were daft. The unpicking sets are now valuable antiques and not uncommon. Gold-fringe embroidery of the eighteenth century is, as you’ve guessed, very rarely found. Incidentally, this pernicious fashion was ended at a stroke and we actually know who stopped it. The writer Madame de Genlis condemned the habit in her novel
Adèle et Théodore
in 1782 and it vanished like snow off a duck. That saved a few rare pieces, now naturally worth a fortune. Light a candle for her, like I do occasionally.

‘We go shopping,’ Janie spoke emphatically.

‘Er, great.’ I tried to sound straining at the leash. ‘Me too?’

‘You especially.’

‘Well, great.’

‘Then we have a lovely quiet meal together.’ She fanned her toes with her hand. ‘Algernon can eat alone. Elsewhere.’

‘Where do you cut your toenails?’

‘In the bath.’

Funny that. We know the most intimate secrets about everyone throughout history except for toenail cutting. There’s no really accepted etiquette. So you do it in the bath. Well, well.

‘Couldn’t we go past Isabella?’

‘No.’

I gave in, but there’d be no half measures. I decided I’d make the meal, a really posh one complete with garnish.
I stood watching Algernon in the distance, thinking, what’s garnish? It sounds some sort of mushroom.

In the town we had a great time shopping. I mean, really breathtaking.

It’s great. You trudge along a row of shops, then trudge back. Then you trudge between two or three shops which all have the same stuff. Then you trudge about searching for a fourth, also identical. Then you trudge back and forth among all four. Then you find a fifth. You keep it up for hours. As I say, it’s really trudging great. We got Janie some shoes. It only took a couple of months or so.

I cut loose and bought the stuff for our meal, following the advice of a booklet which told me about the teasing of my taste buds by
tournedos bordelaise.
It sounded really gruesome but I persevered. It seemed to be some sort of meat with gravy. I met Janie under my mound of vegetables. She fell about laughing, but I replied coldly that I was working to a plan. We went shopping for a few more years before returning to the bungalow where I crippled myself cooking for the rest of the day. I learned my least favourite occupation. It’s cooking. Janie sent Algernon out to eat.

By evening the kitchen looked like Iwo Jima. We started our meal elegantly, holding hands now and again over the tablecloth. Well, so far so good. But it’d be touch and go making love later on.

I was knackered.

That evening Algernon came in and said he’d have used a little more thyme and possibly a shade less garlic. Janie pulled me off before I could reach the cleaver. Then he made me feel quite fond of him by eating everything left over.

I
GOT RID
of Janie and Algernon among the cottages where people park their cars. It’s forbidden to drive right up to Lady Isabella. I was quivering with excitement.

‘You’ll miss me up there, Lovejoy.’ Janie sat watching me go.

‘No, I won’t,’ I called back. In an hour or so I’d own a wealth of genuine Roman golds. Mind you, I thought uneasily, I’d told myself that a couple of mornings ago and finished up bushed and poor as ever.

‘Good luck,’ from Algernon. He was geared for lunar orbit. A pal was lending him a motorbike.

I climbed the steep road above the river. Where it turned right and humped upwards towards Lady Isabella I glanced down. Janie waved, small now on the flat stones by the water. I plodded on between the cottages. At the café I resisted the temptation to look. She ought to have gone by now because I’d said to, but I knew exactly what she was doing. She was noting the time. If I wasn’t down in a couple of hours she’d come after me with the Army. They never do what you say. I heard the crackle of Algernon’s bike maniacs arriving.

The wheel seemed even more huge in early daylight than it had in the dusk. One could stand on the paving
and look upwards. From there the paddles were hurled swiftly towards the sky, dripping water where they thinned abruptly, then vanished, replaced by other swift soaring slats. I made myself giddy watching. Curious how a simple motion can be exhilarating and even beautiful. The clack-clack sound so close became almost numbing after a few minutes. I shook the feeling away and cast around.

The wheel was fed by a narrow stone aqueduct which ran from a hillside cleft to the left. One of the unpleasant facts was that the derelict mine shafts lay that way. The good bit was that the huge beam pump wasn’t working, thank God. It looked gruesome enough as it was, still and silent. Like I’d thought at Beckwith’s mines, a mine is a terrible intrusion into the earth, almost an offence against living rock. I could understand a mountain getting mad like when the volcano erupts in those old Maria Montez jungle adventure films. Anybody’d feel annoyed if a stranger suddenly barged in to root in the larder to see what was worth pinching.

A few early visitors arrived while I was gaping at the wheel. Judging from their knowing reactions I must have been the last person on earth to hear about Lady Isabella’s existence. It was very annoying. They milled about exclaiming at the beautiful machine. Yet . . . no bell, no ding-dong.

I walked round as far as I could go. Then back. A group of visitors climbed the steps down which Janie had wriggled so seductively to entice me home the evening before last. We saw the tremendous humming axle, the radiating struts seeming so gigantic they were like so many fairground complexes, stolen and cast into some skeletal giant. I touched and listened,
touched and listened. Nothing. A rather matronly lady was giving me the eye, A month before I’d have had to, because I like older women, but being this close to my find gave me a greed-based willpower. There was no time to waste, I drifted away, leaving them gaping at the axle.

The road became a mere track up the incline, very stony and almost precipitous in parts. To the right the cleft below became practically a ravine, littered with fallen masonry and chimneyed mine vents. A narrow goyt spun water put of the rock and let it fall abruptly. God knows what cold deep subterranean chasm it squeezed up from. About halfway up the hillside the crashing noise of the water ended. I noticed the sound of Lady Isabella had faded.