The Lies of Fair Ladies (6 page)

I shot out with her gelt. This was lucky. If she hadn't been
starving ... I ran across the rain-glistening black road, and wolfed two lots
of chips, brown sauce, before returning sedately with a scalding hot newspaper
parcel for us both. Geronimo watched as I dined regally from the fat-soaked
paper. Veil luckily had lost her appetite, so I had hers as well. Anyway, women
never eat much.

Veil watched me nosh with that patient detachment women bring to
observe appetites. She was kneeling revealingly.

"Geronimo has to go away, Lovejoy. For a day or two."

I paused. This was worth thought. "Got relatives?"

"His medical's due." She was smiling. God, but women are
cruel. I mean, it's basically unfair for a gorgeous bird undressed only in a
jacket to sit near when you're full.

"I thought he looked peaky."

"Nerve," Geronimo said, through Veil's tight lips.

Even tight lips aren't fair in these circumstances. I mean, tight
lips make you think of loosening them, and what with.

“That rich bitch Mrs. Vervain left your scene, Lovejoy?''

''Who?'' I never blab. It's the road to dusty death.

Veil nodded slowly, her smile returning. I screwed up the empty
newspapers. Actually, this was another fluke. Because if Veil wouldn't disclose
what Acker Kirwin was up to, maybe she would if I stayed a while? But I could
only come, so to speak, when Geronimo wasn't here.

"When do you go?" Like a fool, I asked the snake.

It flicked its reptilian tongue, dead eyes swiveling my way. Said,
"Soon. What's on your mind?"

"Nothing," I told it quickly, and smiled weakly at Veil,
who smiled back and handed me the wine, which I took.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. I got nothing out of Veil
about Acker or Connie, though I tried. I left, backing round the wall as if
pinned in a searchlight, to keep clear of Geronimo. Veil waved bye-bye, her
breasts making me groan with lust as I hopped it. I'd promised to come next
evening for supper. We'd be alone.

Outside in the cool drizzle, the shoe-black night sheened on the
town like polish. I drew breath. A motor swished past, spraying my legs.
Fantle's was shut. The florist's was lit by a single fluorescent strip. Farther
down, the night was lit by an orange sky glow from the town's ring road.

The bus station's a couple of hundred yards, through a narrow
gateway in the Roman wall. I went along the alley that passes the priory ruins.

"Is that you, Lovejoy?"

"Martha?" I couldn't see a damned thing. They've cut
streetlights for efficiency, so we can all break our legs after dusk.
"How's the show?"

She's a pleasant lass. Acts with the St. Hilda Players. A pleasant
lot on the whole, though each'd kill to get the lead part. Summer performances
in the ruins with floodlights. She has a boutique out in the villages, and a
husband.

"Fine, thanks. We're doing
Titus Andronicus
."

"Comedy? I'll come."

She put her arm through mine. We walked along. "Why do you, Lovejoy?
Pretend you're thick. I've seen you, creeping in."

"I can't afford a ticket. Who can?"

"Our prices are cheap!" The actress's dictum: It's
proper, charging people to admire me.

"You're rolling, love. I’ve heard about your new
benefactress. Cassandra Clark, isn't it? You should make the plays free.''

And suddenly it fell into place. Acker hadn't been coming out of
The Great Marvella's doorway. He'd been ducking in, hoping not to be seen, when
Jeff's car had dropped me off. He hadn't come from the shuttered pawnshop,
Fantle's chippie, the florist's. The only other place was the priory ruins. And
the rehearsal.

"Just because we've found somebody public-spirited in this
God-forsaken town, Lovejoy! People are unwilling to pay to see a wonderful
show. Yet they watch endless grot on telly—" Et yawnsome cetera.

“I agree, love," I said.

Astonishment stopped her tirade. "You do? I knew you approved
of us, really."

"Cassandra Clark there tonight, was she? Only, I saw Acker
Kirwin take an antique ..."

"Came briefly." Martha's tones had the reverence
actresses reserve for people who put up money. "Cassandra's wonderful. She
never interferes with the artistic side. A
true
philanthropist."

We entered the bus station to the sound of heavenly violins,
Martha waxing eloquent about philanthropy and me thinking there's no such
thing. Waiting for the last bus out to our respective villages, I got a rundown
of those present at rehearsal, and the loan of the fare home. Martha didn't
explain why a lovely rich lady would pour money into shamateur drama in an
ancient ruined priory.

Bits were adding up. I wished Prammie Joe was on the phone, or
that message bottles flowed from my river directly into his. But it was late.
Countryside frightens me at the best of times, let alone when bats do fly and
trees start watching you. So I didn't go to Prammie's marsh. Wrong again.

Six

The day dawned with brilliance. One of those that makes you
understand why some folk actually like countryside. I've even heard some take
country holidays. A white frost, hard as iron, the grass stiff with the spittle
of a full moon, sky blue as childhood, air still. The birds were nodding the
ground as usual. A squirrel fooling about, dashing along branches. I yawned at
the window, perished with cold.

Telephones are counterproductive. Their absence is the same. I
considered this philosophy while cooking my breakfast. The swine had cut me
off, non-payment of debts to robbers. The gas and electricity were temporarily
off—a disagreement about fiscal policy with energy barons. I used my homemade
stove. A tin bowl half filled with sand. Put in a little oil or petrol, drop in
a match. It woomphs into flame. Perch on it your pan, containing margarine,
sliced tomatoes. Bread, and dine like a king.

The trick's dangerous, so I do it between two bricks in the
garden—a wilderness of fecund greenery engulfing my cottage. The birds stay
away.

I washed—standing at the sink on a towel to protect the valuable
Wilton carpet (joke), toweled myself dry, gasping at the cold. Cold permeates
like nothing else. Odd, that. Warmth doesn't, so why should cold? The bare
flags set me shivering. My underpants were dry, thank God. Socks were barely
damp, though frigid with that cunning old cold. I was down to my last tea bag.
An apple—plenty of those—and I was off to my daily slog singing that Tallis
Sanctus
everybody else gets wrong.

My garage is deep in the foliage near my back door. It functions
without any modern aid—the only way to fake antiques. The greatest workshop of
the Western world, sez I.

It was a relief, getting back to real life. Joan Vervain had taken
it out of me. Drinkwater was worrying, though the Cornish Place robbery was
more recycling than theft. I mean, our local councilors don't own the
buildings, do they? They only look after them for us people. If they can't be
bothered, they must take the consequences.

This train of thought narked me, as I set up the lathe. I’d make
an issue out of it next local election, and vote against everybody.

My lathe's a dentist's old treadle drill. I use a Singer strap,
gears from a machine spindle. I've given up sitting on a stool when turning
wood. You have to move about. I was repairing/restoring/ faking a small tripod
table. Not the most profitable antique, because small genuine antique tables
are still cheap. It's a question of the things that can be
done in the way they were done
that matters. A decent fake has
dignity. It's trying to be as superb as Hepplewhite.

This tripod table had been shattered during its theft from a
Lowestoft antique dealer's. Not by me, I hasten to add. There was only the top
and tripod feet left. The single pillar was broken to smithereens as the lads
hoofed it. A tripod table's so simple it sounds cheap, but don't be fooled. No
antique is easy.

A woman was watching me. I didn't look, kept going.

Tripod tables—actually split three ways between me, Desdemona
Sands from Rowhedge, and her cousin Luke Brennon the thief—are simple. Flat
circular top, stem, three small feet radiating out. It sounds as easy, doesn't it?
Dealers still speak of a "claw foot" table, as in the eighteenth
century. Nowadays you don't hear that term. The public gets confused. (The feet
are usually plain, turned in, smooth, or merely bulbous. They just resemble a
bird's claw.) Mahogany's the wood. My job was to make a new pillar, to be its
single leg. It would look 1780, give or take a yard. I'd got a piece of
mahogany, brand-new, uncured. Which needn't stop you nowadays. The woman still
didn't speak.

There's this stuff called P.E.G. Means polyethyleneglycol. Fakers
call it peg. You put granules into water. Drop in your new wood, and forget
about it—two days to six weeks; depends on thickness. Mop it with a dishcloth
and start work. Simple. The new wood becomes easy to work, hardly ever flakes,
and planes like a dream. Normally you need eight years of careful curing in the
open air. Monks used to pee on new timber in lined pits, but they didn't have
P.E.G. to speed things along. I'd pegged this mahogany piece, and it was ready.

Odd feeling, to be lathe-turning new wood when it feels old.
Slippery, too smooth, yet the chuck bites as if the wood . . .

"No tongue, missus?" I hate creeping people.

"Lovejoy, isn't it?"

Cassandra Clark, as ever was. I sighed to a stop, elbows on the
work. I approve of lovely women. They bring a glow to, well, a drossy workshop.
Hair lustrous, skin blooming, eyes to dazzle. Clothes that make other women
swivel with that up-down rake of instant envy. Which raised an all-important
question.

"To whom might I have the pleasure of addressing of?"

She smiled. "Where are they, Lovejoy?"

Stumped, first go. I thought hard. The place was bare except for
tools. Maybe she wanted a fake, I thought hopefully.

"They're here, love." It was true. Whatever I had was
here.

"Your antiques, Lovejoy. The ones you make. Fake?" She
smiled, not hard to watch. "Create?"

That was more like it. "It's this tripod table."

She inspected my crude lathe. "Ordinary mahogany,
Lovejoy?"

This ignorance is typical. Untrained, unlearned, unread. Hoodlums
have more sense.

"There's no such thing. Mahogany's more than sixty different
kinds. Matching them up is a pig. Three genera are mahogany proper. Others say
only
Swietenia
is the true
stuff—Cuba, Honduras, Guatemala. It's unbelievably rare."

"I know. Rose mahogany." She was narked, tapped her
foot. I really love ignorance. No, honestly. To be that thick needs genius.

"Rosewood's not mahogany, love. It pretends to be"—I
beamed, hoping to annoy her into some revelation—"something it
isn't."

That set her wondering whether to march out, forget this little
encounter ever took place. Or stay . . . and what?

Time to needle. "Duckeggs—meaning you—don't know a thing,
love." I got fed up, resumed my treadling. "Auctioneers at least dig
out a few glib phrases." I knew I was getting to her. Any woman who hangs
around the town's antique dealers and buys not a bauble is up to something. And
this one didn't hang around by accident. She'd had to clump through the
undergrowth in high heels, for a start.

"For somebody who's broke, Lovejoy, your arrogance is—"

"Don't buy this table, love. It'll look like a Chippendale.
Everything matching. Dealers call anything that vaguely looks right 'genuine
mahogany.' But you know what?" I lowered my voice, all furtive.

"What?" She was caught in the pull of a secret.

"They're lying."

She tutted, decided I wasn't worth a candle. "And to think
that I was actually con—"

"Good morning," Joan Vervain said sweetly.
"Considering what? I do hope I'm not interrupting?"

She was. The silly cow had cut through the only vital word.

"Not at all, Mrs. Vervain." Cassandra Clark glared at
me. "He has absolutely nothing to offer."

They passed like cruisers from different navies, at distance but
measuring threat. Dear Mrs. Vervain started on me, where was I, who the hell
did I think she is, et howling cetera.

"It's no good, darling." I looked brokenhearted. Which
wasn't difficult, seeing I was screaming to do the furniture. Desdemona would
be screaming for the same thing. Not to mention Luke the thief, only he doesn't
scream. He stabs people. "I can't go on." I rose, stared soulfully
into the garden. "We have to stop seeing each other."

"We . . . ?" She swung me round, blazing. "Is it
Del? The drunken bastard send his thugs round? I'll poison the pig—"

"Not that, dwoorlink. It's . . ."I scuffed the flag
floor. It's what, exactly? If you let it, your brain finds lies, any shape and
just right. Try to work one out, you come a cropper. "Look about, love.
Everything I own. Even that's mortgaged, borrowed, nicked."