The Lies of Fair Ladies (4 page)

The Great Stamp Catastrophe of 1980 was odd. All portents were
favorable. Times were mindbendingly boomy. Wasn't the sixth of May the one
hundred fortieth anniversary of the first Penny Black? Wasn't the Cold War
dissolving? Everybody was over the moon, joyous with profits.

You see, nobody
bought.

Dealers wept, gnashed, pleaded. But the only sound was the popping
of speculators' bubbles, the splashing of tears.

Since that date, there are two markets in old stamps. One's the
top market, where unique stamps still bring buyers for the yawn-some little
things. Here sells the 1849 vermilion tete beche for a fortune, and the
American 1918 twenty-four-cent airmail with an upside down middle. The other
market is down here, you and me. Forget dealers, portfolio managers, that lot.
Think only of Joe Soap next door. How often does he come home rich and
rejoicing? He's your market.

See? Not boring at all. I wish it were. It's something far worse.
It's really rather scary. Because there's a terrible hidden question here: What
exactly turned the floor into Scotch mist in sunny old 1980? Answer: Nobody
knows. Which is when fright creeps night-stealing into the soul. It crouches,
chewing its nails and blubbering every time the door goes. Antique dealers want
straight upward graphs, not ones that nuzzle the lino.

If I knew all this, what was my problem as I fumed down East Hill?
The sudden influx of old stamps. Like swallows at midwinter, they just don't,
aren't, can't. But they'd come to town, via Sandy. And he truly is your rare
bird.

Sandy was alone. This was the other mega news of the century. He
was determinedly showing he Didn't Care by setting up shop near the Ship
tavern. He'd rowed with Mel—cerulean taffeta for a wall hanging—and ended the
only permanent partnership our local antiques scene has. Had.

The door blared "Y.M.C.A." I blocked my ears.

"Wait, too lay mond!" a voice trilled.
"Coming!"

East Hill's a trailing string of small dumps. Never been any
different since the Emperor Claudius slithered cursing down it on his decorated
war elephant, the Roman legions grinning him a safe journey home. For a king's
ransom in rent you get a square room and a curtained back the size of a confessional.

The curtain slowly opened. A recording blared "The Entrance
of the Queen of Sheba." Sandy emerged. I watched, irritated. It's
gormless. He wore a sequined bolero, a caftan, scarlet Cossack trousers. His
T-strap ribbon-trimmed high heels were French, 1920s. His turban was beige
velvet decorated with mameluke points and pearls. He spun, eyelids fluttering.
His cosmetics could have filled a pint pot. Ridiculous.

"The music, Sandy," I bellowed, suddenly embarrassed
because it silenced in the middle of my yell.

"You adore, Lovejoy? Worship, positively drool?"

My tongue almost spoke the truth. Then I remembered. I wanted his
help. I managed a feeble smile.

"Magenta?" I said. Doubting colors works with women. By
extension . . .

He leapt to the half-cheval mirror, advertised as a genuine
Sheraton and priced for any passing tycoons.

"Scarlet! You dare doubt, Lovejoy?"

"No. Honest. Maybe it's the light."

These vague things are what you've to say when you've not a clue.
It saves you knowing what they're on about. Sandy's inspection satisfied him.
He perched on a high stool, eyes twinkling maliciously.

"Face it, Lovejoy. You're not Beau Brummel, are you,
dear?"

You have to hand it to Sandy. His sense of decor is superb. The
grottie shop was tasteful. Style comes with wit and elegance. Him and Mel could
make an alcove in a garret into a cathedral, just by panels, mirrors, lights,
textures. Sandy had a small bar counter, spirits, wines.

"In spite of all, you may deliver your message,
Lovejoy." He gushed coyly, fingers glittering striped plum and madder nail
varnish.

"Don't
tease
,
Lovejoy!" He actually blushed. I thought. Oh, Christ. "Mel's sent
you, hasn't he? To apologize?"

He lit a cigarette in a rotating ivory fag holder. It chimed
"What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?"

"Don't make excuses for him, Lovejoy. I know he's headstrong.
He begged you to make the peace. Poor lamb." His lip quivered as he
struggled not to cry. "Give him this letter. Tell him it wont be easy. Not
after what he said about my carpet." He glared, spitting spite. "I
mean, you've only to see what he
did!
Chandeliers like Woolworth earrings ..."

"Sandy." I felt stricken. This was serious stuff. I'd
never known them to part before, though they're always swearing lifelong
malice. "I've not seen Mel."

He paled. He gathered himself and swept grandly into the back
room. The curtain closed. Then he wept, sobs so total they almost shook the
walls.

"Sorry," I called after a bit. I honestly was sorry for
him. I mean, where love flourishes and all that. But I hadn't got time for all
this. Gunge Herod's speciality is household pre-Victoriana. Was he in with
Prammie Joe? Today wasn't one of Connie's usual days at the Arcade. That papal
ring business felt a put-up job. By Connie? She alone offered to do a dropper.
And she'd seemed unnaturally tense. Or was it my imagination?

"Er, I’ll come another time, Sandy.'' I was leaving gingerly,
when the curtain swished aside and Sandy stood there dramatically attired in a
black sheath dress, beret with a diamond clasp.

He swished out, sat smoldering on a cockfighting chair.

"Ay shell neffer foor geef 'eem, Loofjoy." He snapped
out of it instantly, doing his eye shadow with stuff from his handbag, and
said, "Right. Who was I?"

"Ginger Rogers? Betty Grable?"

"Marlene Dietrich, buffoon! Don't you know anything?"

"Mind your fag ash. That reading chair's Sheraton."

"It is?" He was suddenly all dealer. I never know when
he's being Sandy or not himself, if you follow.

"It's a reading chair, Sandy. See how narrow the back is? You
sit astride it, facing backwards." The rear ledge sticks out for a book.
"The mistaken name, cockfighting chair, comes from engravings of blokes
watching cockfight mains seated in them."

"Anything else, Lovejoy?"

"Your half-cheval's dud."

''Bitch!''
He examined it.
"It's eighteenth-century!"

"It's last month, Sandy." Giving bad news always wears
me out. "Free with some crummy magazine, I shouldn't wonder."

A cheval ("horse") glass is so called because of its
"horse" pulley for swiveling the mirror to different angles. The
plate glass revolution brought in the "full" cheval, instead of the
mirror in halves. This faker had used chunks of genuine old mirrors, a common
trick.

"Spiteful beast! You're saying that to buy it cheap!"

Enough. I opened the door. "See you, Sandy."

"Please, Lovejoy." He looked stricken. I didn't go back.
It might be another mercurial mood switch. "I'll behave. What?"

"Those stamps. You tried touting them ten days ago."

"Flat fee, Lovejoy." He simpered. "My friend had a
dreadful terrible time in jail, poor dear."

Flat fee? My slow neurones clunked into gear. Another ex-jailbird?
Nobody likes selling antiques for a flat fee. Like, fifty quid if you sell this
antique turk's head hourglass. You lose money if it goes for a thousand.

"Did they sell?" They couldn't have.

"No. Parceled them into job lots, Wittwoode's next auction.
Best I could do, dear." He tittered. "He'll be furioso!"

So would anybody. Sending antiques to auction is an admission of
failure. So why do it? Because somebody was desperate, that's why. Somebody
who'd come out of nick after a number of years.

"Didn't you warn him?"

"It was all he had." Sandy shrugged, admiring his
reflection. "Got this horrid dollop broker to store his stamp cache until
he was released. Lovejoy. Do you think I should go platinum blonde? Mel would
rage!

That adjective meant the dollop broker was a woman. Sandy's
vernacular. Also Sandy's ex-convict pal was desperate for money.

Time to scarper. I risked one last dig. "Wish Mel's friend
good luck with his Penny Blacks."

"Mel's friend?" Sandy cooed after me. "With his
coloring?"

So Mel also knew who it was. My mind was working out: This old lag
emerged from a stretch of long porridge. He wanted money. So he unearthed his
portfolio of stamps—they must have seemed a cast-iron investment, way back
when. He gives them to Sandy to sell. Sandy can't, because the floor's
vanished. Sandy sends them to Wittwoode's, for costly auction. Flat fee, too.
The cheap way. Any dealer on earth would hang on, for the market to recover.

And, surprise surprise! Monday the massive haul of household goods
from Prammie Joe's turkey job had to be handed over. Joe said so. And Connie
wanted me to divvy a load of heavy antiques without delay. A pattern? With the
conviction of the unlearned, I went to meet The Great Marvella and her talking
snake. I like her. Not sure about the snake.

Four

There's a joke: Antiques is the hobby God would have, if only He
had the money. Like all cracks, there's a grain of truth. Antiques is a
bottomless well. This parable proves it.

A bird bought a small hotel hereabouts. She made a go of it,
started discos, bingo, resident band. Then bought a garage, import concessions
for foreign motors, flashy dress shops. A ball of fire. The town hadn't seen
anything like Gervetta. Then she got antiques, like people get beriberi. A
deficiency disease.

In her case, she wanted paintings. I mean hungered, craved, would
do anything for. Now, paintings are the one antique everybody knows. We look
and go "Yuck!" or ''Yes!" We may not react the same, but we do
it. Gervetta looked, waved her bulging checkbook. Paintings flowed in. The
trouble is that liking is light-years away from being able to recognize that
Rembrandt, that priceless Turner or Monet. Paintings are the frightening game
of Spot the Dud.

Gervetta knew she knew she knew paintings. She didn't.

She started on scenic English watercolors, pre-1851. This
expensive market is one where, dealers sadly remark, a collector can't go
wrong. Oh, fakes abound: David Cox, Samuel Palmer, Turner, John Constable even,
the Rowbothams. But usually a competent friend can more or less guarantee good
odds of authenticity. So, dearly beloved, Gervetta drained the countryside.
Dealers scavenged for watercolors like maniacs. Then on a whim she changed—old
Irish and English drinking glasses. She'd have been wiser to choose American
blown-three-mold glassware, which is classy, identifiable, and plentiful. And
not much faked—yet.

Our fakers had a riot. They sold her recycled glasses barely cool from
the furnace. In sets of six, would you believe. They sold her Jacobite drinking
glasses so rare nobody had ever seen their like—meaning, the faker had got it
wrong but was reluctant to chuck the damned thing away. Then by mistake
Gervetta came to me. I’d heard of her. Who hadn't? She wanted to sell her
precious antiques.

''You understand, Lovejoy," she explained after introducing
herself in my workshop, a tumbledown ex-garage in the overgrown garden.
"It's tax write-offs." She smiled winningly. "The Inland
Revenue's caught up, and wants a cut."

"Why me, lady?"

"You're the only dealer in the Eastern Hundreds who hasn't
sold to me," she said frankly.

Aye, well. I'd been away overseas. Still had the scars. Anyhow,
crooks don't trespass. We—I mean,
they
—daren't.

She watched me work. I was repairing a worm-eaten Charles the
Second cane-bottomed daybed. For all the world a low chair with the seat
inordinately stretched. They're unbelievably rare. This lovely piece was
"relic," too far gone to be anything but firewood. All six wormholed
scroll legs were shredding sponge.

I use that thin plasticky stuff shops use for packing porcelain.
Here's how wormy furniture's restored: Make a cup of this, and fix it beneath
the moth-eaten wooden leg with elastic bands. Pour in a thick cream of
rabbit-skin size, chalk, and plasterer's whiting, with a drop of formaldehyde
to kill the woodworm. Let it set a couple of days. Harden it off three or four
days.

The leg I was working on was the fourth. I test the stuff with a
pin. Hard as stone. Then you can file it, like real wood. I include a few
artificial cracks, of course, filling them with stained beeswax. This trick is
unnecessary, but legally allows you to advertise the furniture as
"restored." The buyer then has no legal claim on you.

"You're good, Lovejoy."

"You're beautiful, love. But your antique glass isn't."

She stared. "How do you know it's glass?"

"You lifted the box out of your motor like, well, glass. And I’m
the only real antique dealer on earth."

It was all beyond her. "But you haven't seen it
unpacked."

"Don't bother. It's fake."