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Authors: Jonathan Gash

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BOOK: The Judas Pair
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‘Same all round.’

‘Interested in anything – besides Jane Felsham?’ She sat opposite and brushed crumbs away for her elbows. I raised eyebrows.

‘What’s she done wrong?’

‘One of your late-night visitors, I hear.’

‘Word gets round wrong as usual. Daytime. Accompanied.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, Lovejoy,’ she said, smiling.

We had been good friends, once and briefly. I’d assumed that was to be it and that she’d developed other interests.

‘Now, now, young Dainty,’ I chided. ‘You don’t want an ageing, dishevelled, poverty-stricken bum like me cramping your style.’

‘You
are
hard work,’ she agreed coolly. ‘But never dull.’

‘Poor’s dull,’ I corrected her. ‘Failure’s dull. That’s me.’

‘You’re determined not to risk another Cissie.’ Cissie, my erstwhile lady wife.

‘There couldn’t be another. It’s one per galaxy.’

‘You’re safe, then.’ She eyed me as I finished that terrible tea. ‘Coming to see my stock?’

I rose, bringing my unfinished Chorley cake with me. Frankly, I could have gone for Margaret badly, too deeply for my own good. But women are funny, you know. They keep changing, ever so slightly, from the time you first meet them. There’s a gradual hardening and tightening, until finally they’re behaving all about you, unmasked and vigilant, not a little fierce. It’s all made worse by the crippling need for them that one has. There’s an absolute demand, and women have the only supply. I prefer them before their shutters and masks come down. Not, you understand, at a distance.

She had a
bonheur de jour
– lady’s writing desk – eighteenth-century.

‘Sheraton?’ Margaret asked.

‘No. His style, though.’

‘Why not?’

I shrugged in answer. I couldn’t tell her about my bell’s condemnatory silence. ‘Doesn’t seem quite right.’

Tip: look for neat firegilt handles, that lovely satinwood, tulipwood and ebony, and never buy until you’ve had out the wooden runners which support the hinged writing surface. You’ll be lucky if the baize is original – look at it edge on to see if it’s standing high or not. High = modern replacement. Low = possibly original. Forget whether it’s faded or not because we can do that on a clothesline, washing and sun-drying repeatedly, day in, day out for a week. It’s only stuck on.

‘Good or not?’she pressed.

‘Pretty good,’ which satisfied her.

She showed me two pottery birds, all bright colours and asked if I liked them.

‘Horrible.’

‘Genuine?’ They looked like Chelsea. I touched one. Ding-dong.

‘As ever was.’

‘You haven’t looked for the gold anchor mark underneath yet,’ she said, vexed. ‘It’ll be there,’ I said.

‘Seeing you’re on form,’ she asked, ‘what are these?’

There were four of them, shell-cases of various sizes, cut and decorated. A small cross, also brass, had been drilled into each. I picked one up. The crosspiece of each was loose and came free.

‘Table bells,’ I told her. ‘Prisoners of war, probably Boer War. You signalled for the next course by combinations of these four bells. Not valuable.’

‘Thanks.’

I cast my eye for flinters, but they weren’t in Margaret’s line.

In he tore, alcoholic and worried, eagerly trying to judge if we were just browsing or up to something, stained of teeth, unshaven of chin, bleary of eye, shoddy of gear, Dandy Jack.

‘Come and see my jades, Lovejoy,’ he said.

I tried to grin while backing from his evil breath. A customer was showing interest so Margaret stayed put, making a smiling gesture for me to look in before I left.

I let Dandy tell me how clever he’d been to do the deal. A retired colonel’s widow, Far East wars and all that. I would have to be careful asking about flinters, but so tar my approach had been casual in the extreme. Out came the jade collection. I sat on his visiting-stool while he showed me. By hook or by crook I would have to do him a good turn.

Jades are odd things. There are all sorts of daft ideas in people’s minds about antiques of all kinds-that
all
antiques if genuine are priceless, for example, a clear piece of lunacy. Nothing is truly beyond price if you think about it. All you can say is that prices vary. Everything’s always for sale. Another daftness is that anything is an antique, even if it’s as little as five years old. Remember the golden date, 1836. This side equals modern. That side equals antique. The most extreme of all daftnesses, though, is the idea that if something looks mint and beautifully preserved, it shouldn’t, and therefore needs false woodworm holes bored into it, scratches and dents made in unscathed surfaces, and splinters worked from corners. Wrong. Moral: the better preserved, the costlier.
Keep things mint.

Jades attract more daftness than any other antiques. And Dandy Jack had every possible misconception, displaying them all to anyone who called.

‘It’s a pity some aren’t proper green,’ he was saying, fetching the small carved pieces out. ‘They must be some sort of stone. But here are some deep green ones . . .’ and so on. I tell you, it’s bloody painful. You’d think these people can’t read a reference book between them. ‘I played it cool,’ he kept on. ‘Maybe I’ll let them go for auction. Do you think Christie’s would –’

I picked one up – a black-and-white dragonfly, beautifully carved. Not painted, but pure jade through and through. To tell real jade – though not its age, however – from anything else, feel it.
Never leave jade untouched.
Hold it, stroke it, touch it – that’s what it’s for, and what it loves. But never touch it with freshly-washed hands. If you’ve just washed your hands clean, come back in an hour when your natural oils have returned to your fingers. Then pick up and feel the jade’s surface. You know how oil gets when it’s been rubbed partly dry, like, say, linseed oil on a wooden surround? Faintly tacky and slightly stiff? If the object you hold gives drat
immediate
impression, it’s jade all right. To confirm it, look at the object in direct light,
not
hooded like posh lamps. The surface mustn’t gleam with a brilliant reflection. It must appear slightly matt. Remember what the early experts used to say of jade: ‘Soapy to look at, soapy to feel.’ It’s not too far out.

Now, there are many sorts of jade. Green jades are fairly common, but less so than you might think. ‘Orange-peel’ is one of my favourites, a brilliant orange with white, not a fleck of green. Then there’s ‘black-ink’ jade, in fact perhaps nearer blue-black, usually mixed with white streaks, as in the dragonfly I was holding. One of the most valuable is ‘mutton-fat’ jade, a fat-white jade of virtually no trans-lucency despite its nickname.

Of course, nowadays the common green jade comes from damn near anywhere except China – Burma, New Zealand, you name it. And it’s blasted out of hills, in a new and unweathered state, which gives a massive yield but of a weak, scratchable quality. Most of these wretched carvings of fishes or horses you see now are done in China, of jade imported there. Green, fresh, soapy, mechanical travesties they are too. Get one (they should be
very
cheap) to teach yourself the feel, texture and appearance of the stuff, but if your favourite little nephew shatters it to pieces one day, don’t lose any sleep. China’s exporting them by the shipload. ‘New-Mountain Jade’ they call it in Canton, Kwantung, China.

But.
That only goes for the new, modern, mine-blasted green jade. The ancients were much more discriminating. To satisfy them, a piece of jade had to be weathered. The new pieces were found exposed on hillsides, and were taken to a craftsman carver, an artist who loved such a rare material. With adulation he would observe where the flaws ran, what colours were hidden beneath the surface. And then, after maybe a whole year of feeling, stroking the magic stone and imagining the core of beauty within, he would begin to carve. New-Mountain Jade (i.e. modern) is soft. The antique stuff is hard,
hard
, and to carve it took time. This means that a dragonfly such as I was holding took about six months. The craftsman had left the dragonfly’s wings, head and body in black, and the underbelly had been skilfully carved through so it was mutton-fat jade, white like the spindly legs. The dragonfly was on a white mutton-fat jade lotus leaf – all less than two inches long, the detail exquisite, all from one piece of antique hard jade. And not a trace of green. Lovely. An artistic miracle.

I did my own private test – put it down a minute, my hands stretched out to cool, then picked it up again. Yes, cold as ice, even after being held in a hot, greedy hand. That’s jade for you. The miracle stone. The ancient Chinese mandarins had one for each hand, a ‘finger-jade’ just for fiddling with, to comfort themselves. It was regarded as a very human need and not at all unmanly to want dispassionate solace as well as human comfort in that civilization, and what’s wrong with either?

Dandy Jack had fetched out about thirty pieces. About half were agate, and of the rest some six were modern ugly deep leaf-green new jade pieces, carved with one eye on the clock and some productivity man whining about output. I found nine, including an orange-peel piece, of old jade, exquisitely carved foxes, hearts, lotus plants, bats, the dragonfly, fungi. It really was a desirable cluster.

‘You’ve got good stuff here, Dandy,’ I said. It hurt to tell the truth.

‘You having me on, Lovejoy?’ He had the sense to be suspicious.

‘Those over there aren’t jade at all. Agate.’

‘The bastard!’ he exclaimed. ‘You mean I’ve been done?’

‘No. You’ve got some stuff here worth half your business, Dandy.’

‘Straight up?’

‘Yes. Those dark things are modern – for heaven’s sake don’t scratch them. It’s a dead giveaway and you’ll never sell them. These though are rare. Price them high.’

I gave him the inky dragonfly, though my hand tried to cling hold and lies sprang to my lips screaming to be let out so as to make Dandy give it me back for nothing. I hate truth. Honest. I’m partial to a good old lie now and again, especially if it’s well done and serves a good honest purpose. Being in antiques, I can’t go about telling unsophisticated, inexpert lies. They have to be nudges, hints, clever oblique untruths that sow the seed of deception, rather than naive blunt efforts. Done well, a lie can be an attractive, even beautiful, thing. A good clever lie doesn’t go against truth – it just bends it a little round awkward corners.

‘You having me on?’

‘Price them high, Dandy. My life.’ The enormity hit him.

‘Do you think they’re worth what I paid?’

‘Whatever it was, it was too little.’ I rose to go. He caught my arm.

‘Will you date and price them for me, Lovejoy?’

‘Look,’ I told him, ‘if I do, promise me one thing.’

‘What?’

‘You won’t sell
me
that bloody inky dragonfly. It’s worth its weight in gold four times over. If I put a price of two hundred quid on it then offer to buy it from you, don’t sell.’

‘You’re a pal, Lovejoy,’ he said, grinning all over his bleary face.

I pulled off my coat and set to work. I saw Margaret make a thumbs-up sign across the arcade to Dandy, who had to rush across and give her the news. Morosely, I blamed Field’s mad search. If I hadn’t needed Dandy’s gossip, I could have tricked most of the old jades out of him for less than twenty quid and scored maybe a thousand. Bloody charity, that’s me, I thought. I slapped a higher price on the dragonfly than even I’d intended. Give it another month, I said sardonically to myself, the way dungs are going and it would be cheap at the price.

I eventually had three leads from Dandy Jack, casual as you like. I think I was reasonably casual, and he was keen to tell me anything he knew. Lead one was a sale in Yorkshire. Jack told me a small group – about seven items is a small group-of weapons was going there. The next was a sale the previous week I’d missed hearing of, in Suffolk.

I loaded up with petrol at Henry’s garage.

‘Still running, is it?’ he said, grinning. ‘I’ll trade you.’

‘For one that’ll last till Thursday?’ I snarled, thinking of the cost of petrol. ‘You can’t afford it.’

‘Beats me how it runs,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Never seen a crate like it.’

‘Don’t,’ I said, paying enough to cancel the national debt. ‘It does six – gallons to the mile, that is.’

I drove over to the estuary, maybe ten miles. Less than a hundred houses sloped down to the mud flats where those snooty birds rummage at low water and get all mucky. A colony of artists making pots live in converted boathouses along the quayside and hang about the three pubs their groaning about lack of government money. Money for what, I’m unsure.

Brad was cleaning an Adams, a dragoon revolver of style and grace.

‘Not buying, Brad,’ I announced. He laughed, knowing I was joking.

‘Thank heaven for that,’ he came back. ‘I’m not selling.’

We chatted over the latest turns. He knew all about Dandy’s jades and guessed I’d been there.

‘He has the devil’s luck,’ he said. I don’t like to give too much away, but I wanted Dandy to learn from Brad how impressed I’d been, just in case he’d missed the message and felt less indebted. So I dwelled lovingly on some of the jades until Brad changed the subject.

‘Who’s this geezer on about Durs guns?’

You must realize that antique collecting is a lifetime religion. And dealing is that, plus a love affair plus a job. Dealers know who is buying what at any time of day or night, even though we may seem to live a relatively sheltered and innocent life. And where, and when, and how.

This makes us sound a nasty, crummy, suspicious lot. Nothing of the kind. We are dedicated, and don’t’ snigger at that either. Who else can be trusted, but those with absolute convictions? We want antiques, genuine lustrous perfection as objects of worship, and nothing else. All other events come second. In my book, that makes us trustworthy, with everything on earth – except antiques. So Brad had heard.

‘Oh, some bloke starting up,’ I said.

‘Oh?’

I thought a second, then accepted. ‘An innocent. No idea. I took him on.’

BOOK: The Judas Pair
11.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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