Moonspender (14 page)

"You, Lovejoy! I might have known."

She made them carry him through, flailing like a ribbon in a gale,
and lay him on a phony chaise longue. I took my bottle in while Mel screeched,
"Give him air!" When the band had resumed playing and the chaos had
dwindled, I went over and said, "Right, Sandy. On your feet."

"What are you saying?" Suzanne asked, bewildered.

I said acidly, "He's overcome by your restaurant's beauty,
love."

Sandy instantaneously opted for life. "Lovejoy! Don't
you 
dare
 that 
mess
 I mean poor people are
expected to 
eat
 oh my God . . ."He saw the velvet lounge,
screamed, and bonk, down he went comatose with Mel screeching was I trying to
murder his poor cherub. I sighed and had another swig.

"Takes a few minutes," I told Suzanne consolingly.
"Rubbish always affects him like this."

"
Rubbish!
 It cost a mint," Suzanne
whispered. "The very best designers ..."

"Got a minute, love?" I took her hand and walked with
her to the restaurant. The Gardner porcelain was still on its stand. "What
actually happened last night?"

"Oh, Lovejoy. It was dreadful." Her eyes filled with
tears. I thought, she's lovely. She wore a smart midday suit, pastel green,
double string of pearls, and silver earrings. "We had a good crowd. Then
suddenly people seemed to . . . well, drift. It was dreadful. And then they
began phoning in, canceling. Cancel, cancel. Thirty-nine staff, two customers.
Everything was all right until you came."

"Dry your eyes, love." I led her to a table. "Got a
candle?" She snapped her fingers and black-tied serfs sprang forward.
"Shut your band up, love. And pull the curtains."

She gave a puzzled nod and the waiters moved to obey. I had them
draw all the tasseled drapes, extinguish the chandeliers. I crossed to the
porcelain, smiling.

"All lamps out, folks. Just this one candle."

Everybody was becoming intrigued. The kitchen staff were crowding
out. The band were looking.

"Off. Everybody quiet."

The switches clicked. I let my eyes accommodate to the candle's
glimmer, then sat beside Suzanne.

"What's it for, Lovejoy?"

"
Shhhh
. Watch."

Shuffles, then stillness. A clink sounded from the band's dais, a
gurgle. Seconds passed. A whole minute. Two. The quiet extended. Candlelight
permeated the whole area. Shadows hitherto unborn slowly crept into being,
cautiously at first, then with increasing confidence.

Another minute and the room had shrunk further. And the magic
happened. The lovely suffusing glow of the flames danced out, moving around the
exquisite porcelain in a golden penumbra. Mrs. York murmured, "Oh,
God." It nearly broke my heart. No faith is
bom
into this life but what some other belief dies the death. It's always piteous.
I've seen it happen time and again; never any different. The tragic part is the
pain of delivery, bidding farewell to all our pathetically modem assumptions.
She sniffed, fumbled for a tissue.

Before us in the room the magic opalescence glowed. The porcelain
was only a milkmaid, partly glazed, her head slightly downcast under the strain
of carrying her yoke. Her arms were angelic along the yoke's bow, her pails
slightly unleveled.

Yet her body was not
sylphic
; it was
firm and curved, a realistic Russian peasant, a lovely woman accepting the duty
of existence, hinting at sacrifice by the cruciform shadow she cast. I always
get a lump in my throat, even me. Francis Gardner trudged penniless into Russia
in 1767 and sprang beauty from between his hands like a magician does a dove.
His color palette was simple Slav, but you'll never see—

"Lights, Pierre," Suzanne York said brokenly.

Click, and the room howled into consciousness with a
crash-bang-wallop. She hurried out, a tissue to her face. The two diners, a
young bloke and his bird, came over to stare at the delectable porcelain. Sandy
and Mel were standing watching from the lounge entrance. For a minute I didn't
recognize them because Sandy was silent. Then he started.

"The trouble with 
you
, Lovejoy, is you do
everything the 
hard
 way." He did his cosmetics thing,
handbag mirror, lipstick. "Couldn't you simply 
explain
 to
the poor bitch that your I mean
tremenduloso
porcelain would 
expose
 this oh my God costly the 
earth
 restaurant
for the shithouse it is?"

"Sandy," I placated.

Mel interposed viciously, "How long will the silly cow have
the vapors?"

"What I want is my
drinkie-poos
."
Sandy tapped the impassive

Pierre and rolled his eyes roguishly. "Cream sherry and
Avondale water. Mel isn't allowed any for bad behavior."

"Very good, sir." Pierre sent a waiter hurtling.
"Would you like a table?"

"I wouldn't be seen 
moribund
 at your table,
darling, while these 
horrid
 colors positively 
blitz
 this
woebegone carpet."

He swept grandly into the lounge, Mel trailing sulkily. I kept out
of the way. This all meant he and Mel had accepted the job of redecorating the
place. Time to leave.

Pierre's grave countenance smiled me out of the door.

"Your advice fell upon stony ground, eh?" I said.

"Mrs. York has had a great deal on her mind lately,
sir." The soul of discretion. "May I, sir?" A waiter moved
forward with a small box, two bottles of wine. "Barolo. A respectable
vintage."

"Ta. You won't get into trouble?" I said.

"Not in the least, sir."

"Lovejoy." Mrs. York caught me outside and came with me.
The strolling woman's side-to-side grace is so alluring. But no, she was
determined to castigate herself. "Everybody else realized, didn't they,
Lovejoy?"

"Not consciously, love. But once the milkmaid showed them
loveliness, your posh restaurant was, well, tasteless. People sense more than
they let themselves believe."

"But I'm good on design, fashion, style!" A wail.

"And beauty?" A decade-long pause while it sank in.
"Modem's great if you like noise, loudness, slick formats, packaged
ware." I felt sad myself having to say it. "Put all of it next a work
of art . . ."

"And everybody simply walks away?"

"I'm sorry, love."

She stopped, facing me. "You feel it all the time, don't you?
You don't need candles, the mystique, the silence."

"Never mind. Sandy and
Mel'll
scrap
your furniture, color scheme, that god-awful cutlery, everything. They'll
refurbish the rotten dump." I gazed at the restaurant's exterior.
"But I warn you. Sandy will chuck tantrums on the hour. Mel will resign
once a day. Yet a few days and you'll be back in business." I coughed,
went red. "Sandy will, er, call you names, love. He doesn't mean it."

She was smiling. "Much. And how will I pay for all this,
Lovejoy?"

"On tick. Profit share. Give Sandy exclusive rights to have a
permanent antiques gallery in the lounge. Get in a dealer each night to give a
twenty-minute show of genuine paintings, jewelry, antique dresses. Make it your
theme. It'll go—if the restaurant's decor doesn't come off worst every
time."

She was eyeing me, that searching look I never like from women.
"And you, Lovejoy?"

"I'm busy," I said, "seeing my lawyer. Putting on
the
writs
."

Underhand, that. She colored, her eyes bluer in swift contrast.
"I apologize, Lovejoy. I'll withdraw it, of course."

"Don't help me, chuckle. I'm in enough trouble." I
bussed her and left. At the curve of the drive I looked back. She was standing
there, waving.

As I turned along the road to town I passed that gray-eyed
homespun girl looking about to fray. She was examining a hedge in the lane.

"Flowers all present and correct, eh, Enid?" I joked,
but only got a malign stare out of those remarkable eyes. I sighed and plodded
on. I'd been a hero to her. Once.

A pleasant dark-suited bloke driving past in a gray saloon offered
me a lift to town. It transpired he too was interested in antiques, and we
talked all the way. He handed me a manila envelope as I stepped down. My heart
sank.

"A writ?"

"Of course not." He chuckled. My heart soared.
"It's three."

My heart sank. "From somebody insignificant, I hope?"

"You could say that," he said. My heart soared.
"The Central Television Authority." My heart sank. "The Central
Agency of TV Presenters." A further sink. "And from Veronica
Gold." And again.

The saloon purred away. One thing, I thought, heading toward the
town library, with writs cascading this fast I'd not be short of fuel for the
winter.

11

Everybody round here knows where the Eastern Hundreds spread to,
but defining them is a rum job. Our town's gormless reference library lately
sold most of its books off, "in the interests of efficiency," so
you've to purchase all your own culture now. I rummaged in the remnants,
confirming my worst fears. Some say a hundred's an area providing a hundred
men, others a hundred hides of land. But an Old English hundred was 100, 112 or
the "long"
hundred
of 120. A hide was 120
acres, or 80 or anything you liked. The more I searched the worse it got. An
acre can be the modem measure, but different counties say it's anything up to
10,000 square yards. And a yard is only possibly a yard. Some say it's . . .
Just short of delirium I gave up and caught the bus home.

Usually I daydream on buses, to avoid conversation. My old gran
used to say that talk is the sound of brains emptying. She was right; silence
is golden. So in silence I inspected the passing world.

Our land's undulant, flattish. On a good bright day the
countryside appears friendly and pretty. It's not.

Leaving town, the bus levels across the old river and chugs out
past the station. Quite abruptly, as the bus coughs into its third
emphysematous gear, the scenery alters. Houses end. You're between hedgerows,
alone on a
twirly
country road warmed only by a few
skyline houses clustered nervously round an old manor house. It's woods,
valleys, fields, low rivers wearing long tree-lined hoods. Carry on and you run
into a thin scattering of postcard villages, all older than time, all
apparently friendly but underneath broodingly quiet. Legends abound. Past feuds
aren't past at all. Incomers are tolerated, even liked, but somehow never see
into local
darknesses
. Give me towns any day.

The bus turned into our village. I said so long to the driver and
saw the chapel's graveyard gate standing open. Old Kate was on her knees
scrubbing the stone flags of the vestry. She's our village wise woman, whose
herbs mend broken ankles and prevent pregnancy and all that. She has to like
you or she tells you wrong. Mind you, that's women all over, not just Old Kate.
She was using my kneeler, a thick fustian-filled Lancashire working pillow. I'd
made it for her once because she's got arthritis. For a few minutes I sat on
the chapel elder's chair and watched her go at it. God, these old birds really
slog. If only the rest of our kingdom's women worked half as hard.

"Cat got your tongue, Lovejoy?"

You have to smile. She talks exactly like my old gran. Local
people steer clear of Kate. I don't know why.

"Lammas," I said.

"The cricket club's only themselves to blame," she said,
making singulars plural in the manner of long-lived folk.

"They've done no harm, Kate."

"Much you know about it, Lovejoy," she said with an
upward glance. Her eyes were twinkling. There I go, faces again. But it's a
fact of life, that these old dears have really beautiful eyes, as pert as any
you'll ever get from a maid a quarter Kate's age. Baby girls can do it too,
look from beyond eyelashes and set a man maudling.

"Give us a kiss, Kate."

She laughed, still scrubbing, shaking her head. "Mrs. Ryan
not busy enough between your sheets, son?"

How do they do it? I've come to believe these old folks have a
kind of a mental osmosis by which they imbibe gossip. But my brain went: On the
other hand, Lovejoy, this owd biddie lives across the footpath from your
garden, and a hedge-eating horse is a dead giveaway.

"I hardly know Mrs. Ryan," I said indignantly, and
shrugged an apology at Kate's raised eyebrows. "Well, nearly hardly."
I swung my feet. "Why don't the cricket club use one of the other fields,
Kate?"

"There isn't another field, Lovejoy."

"Manor Farm has Long Tom by Pittsbury Wood. I saw it
yesterday with Boothie. And I—"

"There isn't, son."

The barmy old coot wouldn't say more. She said to call in for a
glass of her sloe gin. I gave her my most sincere Grade Four promise, and went
down the lane thinking, no other field? How many had I counted? Eight? Nine?
Still, a postponed cricket match isn't the end of civilization as we know it.