Gold by Gemini (5 page)

‘If I find you haven’t, Lovejoy,’ she said sweetly, ‘I’ll murder you. I hope you understand that.’

‘Don’t start,’ I pleaded, but she put her lips thin the way they do and wouldn’t answer. Women never trust people. Ever noticed that? Sometimes I wish they would. It’d make my arrangements so much easier.

Janie ran me to the railway, periodically telling me to take my hand off her knee when she was driving, but it was honestly accidental. It’s a mile uphill from the station bridge. The golf club stands back from the narrow road among trees, quite a fetching low building. You never pass it without seeing a score of cars.

I asked for Peter Chape in the bar. He was out on the course. I waited, watching golfers from the bar window. I have no interest. To me golf’s a good walk spoiled. Behind me people entered the bar, had a drink, smoked. I listened to the talk of birdies, eagles, five irons and rough chipping. It was another language to me, like Swahili. The great thing, it seems, is to ask everybody else what their handicap is. Mine’s women.

I was being pointed out to a tall newcomer by the barman. He started across the room. Peter, Mary’s husband.

Peter Chape was a thin, rather casual man, disappointed that I wasn’t a golfer. I explained I was
a dealer searching for Bexon’s paintings and told innocently how I had been directed to his house earlier in the week by some anonymous wellwisher. He confirmed what Mary had said about old Mr Bexon. They worked as engineers together only for a short period before the old chap retired.

‘He lived with his two girls,’ he said. ‘Nieces by adoption, really. Kept house and so on. A quiet, clever old chap.’

‘I believe they’re easy to get along with,’ I fished cleverly. ‘Maybe I should call around.’

‘Well . . . Nichole, yes. Katie . . . maybe not so easy.’ Clearly the gentlemanly sort. I thanked him and went.

It’s a long walk out to the village. Not one antique shop for ten miles in any direction. A short cut runs across fields into our village but I never take it. There’s too much countryside about already without going looking for the rotten stuff. As I walked I kept wondering if mashie niblick was in the dictionary.

It was coming on to rain as I trudged eventually Into my lane, A familiar motorcycle was propped against the cottage. I groaned. I’d forgotten Algernon, a trainee would-be dealer lumbered on me by a kindly crucifixioneer. I was struggling to educate him in antiques. Talk about a sow’s ear.

It was becoming one of those days again.

‘Lovejoy!’ He was beaming at me through his goggles coming round the garden. Toothy, specs, motor-cycle leathers. He’s mad on bikes.

‘Hiyer, Algernon. You’ll frighten the budgies In that gear.’

‘I’ve read it.’ He dragged from among his leathers a book and held it up, proud as a peacock. ‘Like you said.’

‘Not in the rain, Algernon.’ I took the precious volume and put it inside my jacket.

‘Fascinating! Such an amazing group of people!’

I squinted at him. The burke was serious. If I ever strangled him I’d have to get Janie for an alibi. He was wagging like a gleeful dog fetching its stick.

‘An absolutely marvellous read,’ he was saying when his voice cut out. That was on account of my hand scrunging’ his windpipe. I pinned him against the wall.

‘
Goon!
’

He was puce. I took my hand away and watched the cyanosis go.

‘But, Lovejoy!’ he gasped. ‘What’s wrong?’

Algernon is a typical member of the public. That is to say, piteously ignorant of practically everything, but mainly and most painful of all entirely ignorant of antiques. Trying to teach a twenty-two-year-old Neanderthal the trade was the result of my habit of going broke. Algernon was steadily breaking my heart.

‘What book,’ I asked gently, ‘did I give you?’

Algernon backed away. He was beginning to realize all was not well.

‘
Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters.
’

‘By?’

‘William Beckford. 1780.’

‘And you took it seriously?’ I yelled.

‘B . . . b . . . but you said study it.’ He fell over his bike, backing off.

I leaned over him. They say Beckett put his face to the wall when asked about his plays. Sometimes I know exactly how he felt.

‘Algernon,’ I said. ‘Beckford’s showing us the stupidity of the fashionable artistic judgement of
his times.’ I watched light dawn in his thin, spotty countenance. ‘Are you receiving me, Algernon?’

‘I
see
! A literary joke!’ He scrambled to his feet, all excited. ‘How clever!’ I just don’t believe in people like Algernon. I’ve stood him next to a Turner oil and he’s not even trembled in ecstasy. ‘I’ll read it again!’ he exclaimed. ‘I will keep that new satirical aspect uppermost in mind!’ He really talks like this, the Piltdowner. No wonder he’s thick.

‘Tomorrow, Algernon,’ I said slowly, carefully not battering his brain to pulp, ‘you come here –’

‘Thank you, Lovejoy! I accept your kind invitation –’

I struggled to keep control, my voice level gravel. ‘By tomorrow make sure you’ve read Wills on Victorian glass and Baines on brass instruments.’

‘But tomorrow’s only a day away,’ he said brightly.

‘It always is, Algernon,’ I cut in. ‘But it’s still the deadline. And you’ll get your next test on miscellaneous antiques.’

‘Yes, Lovejoy.’ His face fell. He hates tests. I gave him the Beckford again and stood in the porch to wave him off. He fired his bike and boomed away, waving and grinning through the hedge’s thin bits.

‘You’re too hard on Algernon,’ Janie’s always saying, but she’s wrong. I just worry about him. As a dealer Algernon wouldn’t last a month. Where I come from he’d starve. I switched the alarm key and went in.

I made some soup from one of those crinkly packets, three sandwiches – fish-paste and tomato – and brewed up. No sugar in case it made me feel guilty. I had one egg left, which I was saving because Henry was due at teatime. He’s ten months old and my second visible means of support. Henry’s the special job I mentioned earlier. Well, it’s not my fault.

*

When you’re broke a number of quite interesting things happen. You see at first a whole new set of people you otherwise would have missed, milkmen, children, housewives, shopkeepers. You get to recognize bus conductors because you’ve no car. Cyclists come and ride talkatively alongside as you bike into town. The second thing’s that old demon gelt – one clink and you prick up your ears like a warhorse at a bugle. The money problem intrudes. It gets everywhere, like soot. Everything reminds you of it – women, the garden, posting a letter, wondering if you can afford a newspaper. You become a sort of accountant. It’s really rather unpleasing. The third thing is that people start agreeing with what you say and even with what you think. It’s very odd. Like if you buy a lettuce and you’re thinking, that’s a hell of a lot of money just for one measly lettuce, ten to one a horde of other shoppers will be at your elbow in a flash, all saying, ‘It
is
a lot, love. For one lettuce! Isn’t it terrible?’ and things like that. The point is, nobody would have said a thing before you got broke. See what I mean?

I’d been destitute some three weeks before the local village housewives understood. Gradually, they began pausing at the gate if they were down my lane. We started exchanging the odd word in our one street. It was pretty pleasant. There are even hidden fringe benefits but I’d better not go into that because people gossip so. I kept up a front for a week or two (‘Well, I’ve a lot of work to do at home, so I’ve not gone in today . . .’) but it was only politeness. They realized. After that I found myself winkled into their problems, women being born winklers. Before long I was going errands into town for medicines and then doing the
shopping for them. From there I was walking dogs and holding keys to let the oil people deliver. They paid me in change, odd tips. My final graduation in social acceptance was Henry.

I asked Eleanor – his mother, twenty-five, wife of a publisher – what to do with him but got no straight answers. She said Henry eats most things, by which she meant everything, including light furniture and curtains. He never seems to do much, just lies about and mutters. Once you actually get to know him, he’s a ball of fire. At first, I was worried when it was his hometime because Eleanor never used to check him over. I wanted to show her he wasn’t at death’s dark door on return of goods, even thinking of making her sign a receipt in case he was sick in the night and I got blamed. He lasted out the first week though and after that I stopped bothering. I was daft to worry because Henry’s as hard as nails. Eleanor gives me tips for helping her, a quid here and there. I know it’s not very dignified, in case that’s what you’re thinking, but it keeps me in the antiques game during these bad patches. That’s what matters.

I finished my grub, chucked the remains to the robin and thought about the old genius with his two ratty nieces! I was getting a permanent feeling about it, but maybe it was the fish-paste.

I’ve got to tell you about Henry’s revolting habits here, because without them I’d never have got any further with the Bexon problem. In fact, in a way Henry lit on my first clue.

Eleanor came racing up the lane five minutes early, out of breath as usual. Henry was strapped in his push-chair, jerking as she ran.

‘I’m late, Lovejoy!’ she gasped. She always says this. ‘Hurry!’

‘I don’t have to,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m staying here. It’s you that’s going somewhere.’

‘And I’m late! Goodbye, Henry, darling. Be good!’ We go through this rigmarole every time, saying the same things. I don’t mind, though it’s unproductive.

She streaks off to collect her two children from our village school, which is why I lodge Henry.

I wheeled Henry in and unfixed him. He got ready to laugh. We have this joke. I opened his coat and peered.

‘Nope. Still no hairs on your chest yet, Henry,’ I said sadly. He roared at that, his favourite and most hilarious quip. He was still falling about when I carried him to the divan. They never look heavy, do they? Henry’s a crippling welterweight.

‘Let’s see what she’s put in for you today, sunbeam.’ I opened his bag. It comes fastened on his pram thing. We looked at his teatime offering distastefully. ‘Fancy it?’ A tin of baby food, a really neffie powdery stuff. We’d tried it a couple of times at first but I think I made it wrong He went off it after one spoonful. Two rusks and a little tin of some tarry stuff were the rest of his ration, which he eyed with hatred. You can’t blame him because his food looks so utterly boring. ‘Then there’s nothing for it, Cisco,’ I told him. ‘Chips, sardines and . . . an
egg
! I held it up to excited applause.

I carry Henry about while I make his tea. It’s not easy. Women have hips and can simply hold spherical offspring on their ledge. They’ve also got the fascinating knack of somehow walking slanted. Men, being basically cylindrical, have no ledge to speak of. It’s tough, needing continuous muscular effort. I natter about my day’s work while I get going.

‘Another list of dazzling failures, Henry,’ I told him. ‘No luck. But I saw a picture . . .’ I explained what a clever forgery Bexon had made. ‘Some old geezer from Great Hawkham.’ Henry watched me open the tin of sardines, a drool of saliva bouncing from his chin. ‘What do you reckon?’ He said nothing, just pistoned his legs and ogled the grub. ‘If I’d done a lovely forgery job like that I’d have found some swine like Beck and sold it to him.’

Henry chuckled, clearly pleased at the idea of doing a trawlie like Beck in the eye. Maybe he had an antiques dealer’s chromosomes surging about in his little marrow. I peeled two spuds and hotted the oil.

‘Instead,’ I went on, ‘he paints in a wrong colour. Giveaway. And don’t try telling me –’ I shook the peeler at Henry warningly – ‘that it was a simple mistake. It was deliberate.’ Saying it straight out made it seem even weirder. I gave him the whole tale. At least Henry listens. Algernon’s not got half his sense. ‘The more you think about it, Henry,’ I said seriously, ‘the odder it becomes. Odderer and odderer. Right?’

I put him down and gave him a ruler to chew while I fried up. I told him about the golds. He tends to follow you round the room with his eyes. I leave the kitchen alcove uncurtained while I cook so I can keep an eye on my one and only ruler. They’re expensive.

I was prattling on, saying how I was hoping to pick up the rest of Bexon’s stuff from Dandy Jack, when the bell rang. It’s, an old puller, 1814. (Incidentally, household wrought-ironwork of even late Victorian vintage is one of the few kinds of desirables you can still afford. It’s becoming a serious collectors’ field. Decorative industrial ironwork will be the next most sought-after. Don’t say I haven’t warned you.) I wiped
my hands and went into the hall. Janie’s silhouette at the frosted glass. Great. All I needed.

I rushed about hiding Henry’s stuff and cursing under my breath. The bloody pushchair wouldn’t fold so I dragged it into the main room and rammed it behind a curtain.

‘This is all your fault,’ I hissed at Henry. He was rolling in the aisles again, thinking it another game. ‘Look.’ I pushed my fist threateningly at his face. ‘One sound out of you, that’s all. Just one sound.’ It didn’t do much good. He was convulsed, cackling and kicking. I told him bitterly he was no help but anything I say only sends him off into belly laughs. He never believes I’m serious. Nothing else for it. I went to the door.

‘Hello, love.’ My casual Lovejoy-at-ease image. A mild but pleased surprise lit my countenance at seeing Janie again so soon.

‘You’ve been an age answering.’ Janie gave me a kiss and tried to push past. I stood my ground. She halted, her smile dying. ‘What’s the matter, Lovejoy?’ ‘Matter? Nothing,’ I said, debonair. I leaned casually on the doorjamb all ready for a friendly chat.

Her eyes hardened. ‘Have I called at the wrong time?’ There was that sugary voice again.

‘Er, no. Of course not.’

She stared stonily over my shoulder. ‘Who’ve you got in there, Lovejoy?’

‘In . . .?’ I managed a gay light-hearted chuckle. ‘Why, nobody. What on earth makes you think –’