The Lies of Fair Ladies (11 page)

"There's the schoolteacher's coffeepot," she said,
stung. "I've made the men some coffee in it."

My headache started skull-splitting. "You did what?"

"I had to pay a fortune, unfortunately, but you said—"

She was insane. I gave up. "Ipswich, Luna. East Anglian Daily
Times. You're a reporter from London asking about a schoolboy rescued from the
river Stour last week. Okay? You're thinking of a national feature, local
bravery, hazards of the eastern rivers. Tell them anything. But find out."

"Won't they be busy with their next issue? Only, reporters
are always in such a rush.”

“They won't be today, love," I said bitterly. "They will
be tomorrow."

Fraud rules. It rules because everybody loves deception. Who has
never felt that sneaky twinge of admiration, hearing of some nerk who tricked a
gullible bank out of millions? Don't let's fool ourselves. We love it. The most
secret twinge of all we reserve for ourselves—regret that we didn't dare do it.
Imagine the ecstasy when, shacked up with the birds in Bahia's sunlight, you
dream of old Fanshawe opening the vaults on Monday morning to find your cocky
little note saying ta-ta. It's your dream, my dream, everybody's dream. No good
being offended by my accusation. We all admire Robin Hood. In moral terms, he's
a common thief. Legally, a rascally felon. But to us? He's superb, a riot,
applauded down the centuries. Because he got away with it!

Come what may, fraud rules. Who leads in the Great Fraud Handicap
Stakes? Well, bankers are front-runners (sorry about the pun). Lawyers are
contenders. Clerics closing on the bend, charity workers. Civil servants are
also-rans, left standing by local government councilors. The fraud field is a
cavalry charge. Politicians as fraudsters are the rule rather than the exception.
Antique dealers are total. Consider them auctioneers minus respectability. For
me, auctioneers are the pits. They defraud under false colors, priests who
poison the chalice.

I went for a walk round the village, not to think so much as to
not think. That's the way. Let learning in by osmosis. Suddenly you'll realize
that you knew all the time, but didn't want to let on to yourself. Perhaps the
truth reveals the treachery of a friend. Perhaps that flash of understanding
proves that the ultimate nerk is none other than your very own self. I found
myself watching Leone's nags.

They like me. All pets do. If I nod off in the garden hedgehogs
come and kip nearby. Cats doze on my belly. Birds poof on my shoulder while I
kip. I'm like Francis of Assisi. Leone's nag is Harry, a giant beast that
slobbers like a baker's drain. I quite like animals. I'd like them better if
they'd keep their distance. Leone's a blonde thirty. She rides up our lane from
Seven Arches where her beasts fool about on the grass. She rides without a
crash helmet the better to be seen. She's gorgeous.

"Hello, Lovejoy."

"Wotcher, Leone. What's he running round in a ring for?"

"Exercise. He loves it, don't you, Harry?"

Harry looked fed up. Three littles came to hang on the fencing.
Candice is their leader, aged six. I baby-sit for these three when their mums
are desperate.

"Ooooh. Look, Lovejoy! Harry's got new feet on!"

"And skin," added Jondie, a tiny four-year-old who
steals my flowers for his rapacious guinea pigs.

"Can't have," I informed them loftily.

"Lovejoy's wrong," Violet announced. She's three, can
whistle through her fingers.

Then I noticed Leone had gone pink. I looked at Candice. "New
feet? What color are his others?"

"Fluffy white. Or brown."

"Gray sometimes," said Jondie. "My dad does
it."

"Boils grass in a pan. It stinks. My dad only plays
cards."

"Tough luck, Violet," I commiserated. "Hear that,
Leone? Your horse Harry is fashion mad. He'll miss the point-to-point at
Webberswick now, eh?"

She slowed her nag, let him crop the grass. I watched her stroll
over.

"It's the usual thing, Lovejoy. That's all." Harry was a
big animal. Reputedly fast. I worked it out. Here a stain, there a stain, might
help in shifting the odds. "Does no harm, Lovejoy." She pressed my
arm, the way wheedling begins. "It's only foreigners get bled. Not
locals."

She waxed about her fraudulent arrangements while I listened.
Every so often, little Candice and her pair weighed in with small technical
details. Violet's card-playing dad did a good line in false tails, it seemed.
Not all poker, then.

Leone wheedled, "Who minds if a few rich strangers lose a
penny here, a penny there, Lovejoy?"

"What if I turned up and bet?"

"You never do, Lovejoy. Anyway, we'd put you right."

Local approval justifies bleeding dry the nerks from elsewhere.
Antiques in a nutshell. I'd forgotten the obvious.

Candice said disarmingly, "Daddy gets lots of pennies."

Leone pinked nearer red. "Time you three got home," she
said quickly.

They left, calling so-long. Candice told the others, with the
gravity of her six summers, "Leone wants to suck mouths with Lovejoy, like
she does with the vicar."

And . . . silence. Leone blood-scarlet now. The whole village was
in on it. Except me. Mind you, I’m the last person to watch nags trot, phony
feet or no phony feet.

''It's not fraud, Lovejoy. If s usual. Good heavens, it's a
saying: horse of a different color.''

"Come here, you," I said roughly. She came closer. I
leant over and we sucked mouths. She broke away breathless.

"You won't let on, Lovejoy?"

By then I was walking quickly away, calling over my shoulder,
"Why should I? It's usual."

And it is, truly. I'd missed it. Candice made me carry Violet
piggyback the half mile uphill into the village. She promised not to tell the
vicar that me and Leone sucked mouths. I didn't believe her. She'd blab.
Females start fibs early. They made me sing "Curly-locks," my one
pathetic tactic for getting infants to kip. They listened gravely, little Vi
silently mouthing the words. I felt a prat. My showstopper done, I waved the
trio of wide-awakes off at my gate.

Which left me sitting on my wall. It isn't every day you discover
a new universal law. But how important it was. Small local deceits have their
own inbuilt honor. Everybody local has a right to know about them. On demand,
you might say. But major ones are different. They're alien. They are the
biggies, the grandies.

How many massive antique scams could I think of? A score, offhand.
Leaving aside the atrocious Hammer monolith of Los Angeles, grand scams come
clamoring for attention. But beware. The legitimate collection of Mona Lisa
fakes covering Cartier's wall, for example, doesn't count.

Some things do. The uproar over the Dead Sea Scrolls—who should
have access to study them—gave rise in 1989 to shoals of scholarly fraudsters
who flitted through the groves of academe offering complete copies for 165,000
pounds sterling, in advance. Collectors fell for it. Strapped universities
desperately struggled to fall for it, but couldn't raise the advance—and
thereby saved their reputations. For the Scrolls are the most jealously guarded
hoard in the world. Gelt in the vault. The paranoid secrecy of minders—
greed—plays, as ever, into the hands of grand scammers.

If obsessional neuroses can do it, so can fame. I've seen thirty,
maybe forty, valuable pieces of the Marcos silver sold in auctions never
noticed by the press, when everybody knows that Christie's in New York handled
the real Old Masters and silver in 1991, of course, raising a cool 10.6 million
pounds. A Paul Storr silver dinner service, George III, made a fortune. Bidders
wept because fame forced prices over the top. Poor them. Still, if they will go
for the genuine stuff . . .

And everybody knows about war booty. If you don't, you ought. It's
the commonest grand scam around. After the German government bought some war
treasure in 1991—Quedlinburg, World War II—for, word is, a million, it became
open season. You hire front men ("mouthies" in the trade) of the
right educational background. You invent some treasure. Your mouthies tour
museums, collectors. They whisper the terrible fact that, alas, the
jewel-encrusted illuminated Gospel of 1558 is, with its ancient silver chalice,
actually war loot. Good heavens! the eager buyers cry, sending the mouthies
packing—only as far as the corner pub, where the secret deal is struck.
Discount applies, for there's the risk that Gold Coast countries will play hell
over the priceless Benin metalwork heads, or Italy over that Leonardo drawing.
Inevitably, lawyers help, for where lawyers roam illegitimacy rules. Grand
scammers recently offered that cache of Chesterton letters in at least three
countries, though the real cache of two hundred poems, plays, prose works, now
slumbers ignored in London's British Library. And law courts everywhere rejoice
over the Sevso silver treasure that the whole world will be suing over until
Doomsday. The repayments newly offered the Czarist bondholders (Czar Alexander
III himself pulled this majestic scam in the 1880s) has started a giddy spiral
of phony printed bonds. (Take care: The ones I've seen so far are simply
Russian laundry lists, printed in Fulham.) See? Greed again.