The Sleepers of Erin (3 page)

Antique dealers have barkers like armies have skirmishers – to nip around and suss out the scene. Boozy and shabby Tinker may be, but I wouldn’t swap him for a gold clock. He sat beside my bed, ponging to high heaven and toothily agog at the ward bustle and the nurses, but mostly at the spectacle of me with my limb trussed up.

‘Gawd, Lovejoy,’ he croaked out. ‘What the bleedin’ hell you done? I thought we were doin’ a deal.’

‘Wotcher, Tinker. Sam and Clarkie.’

‘Eh? Oh, aye. Gone to King’s Lynn.’

‘Wise lads,’ I said. ‘You tell me the minute they’re back, right?’

‘What if they don’t come?’

I grinned. ‘Then I’ll go and get them.’

‘Like that, is it?’ He lowered his head confidentially for his favourite phrase. ‘Here, Lovejoy. We in trouble?’

I told him the glad tidings step by step, him groaning and muttering every inch of the tale. When I came to the bit about Sam slinging the knife at me he stared.

‘Sam? Him? Gawd, I thought he knew better than try you, Lovejoy.’

‘You’ve spotted it, Tinker.’ I listed the mysteries one after the other. ‘Neither Sam Veston nor Clarkie would push their luck that far. Then there’s the question who actually
did
do the cloth job. And why they bubbled me for it.’

Tinker ahemed at that and glanced about. We were speaking softly because we always do in the antiques game. Old Smith in the next bed was apparently dozing and the bloke to my left had been gruesomely cocooned in a crinkly transparent tent full of tubes ever since I’d arrived, but Tinker was right to be careful.

‘Here, Lovejoy,’ Tinker muttered. ‘You didn’t do it, right?’

‘Right.’

He thought a minute. ‘Then who did?’

‘Whoever’s got the rest of the church silver, you thick berk,’ I explained wearily, getting out the notes Sal had left. ‘Look. Here’s some gelt. You’ll have to manage till I’m out. See Helen, and Margaret Dainty. And Jason in the arcade. You’re looking for
any
church silver, okay?’

‘Somebody new, or somebody old?’

That was a point. ‘I reckon it’s a newcomer. A clever antique collector.’

‘How do you work that out?’

I asked, ‘What’s the least expensive church silver, Tinker? Chalice, ciborium, monstrance, paten?’

‘Paten,’ he said straight away. ‘Only weighs a twentieth of a chalice at most.’

‘So he drops the cheapest on me, and keeps the rest, Tinker. See? Couldn’t bear to part with it.’

I sent him off after telling him to check my cottage now and again till they let me go. Not that there’s anything valuable in it. Things had been bad lately in the antiques game. It was one of those times when everything seems to be owned by everyone else.

One funny thing happened as he rose to say so long. Sister Morrison came up and said there was a cup of tea and some cake in the ward office for Tinker if he wanted. Now, this really was odd because women usually want to get rid of him as fast as possible. He went all queer at the invitation because non-alcoholic fluids send him giddy but I gave him the bent eye and he accepted.

‘See you, Lovejoy, mate,’ he croaked and shuffled off after her.

‘Cheers, Tinker.’

Sister Morrison kept Tinker in the office, pouring for him and talking. I could see them through the ward glass. She didn’t even make him take his mittens off when passing him the biscuits, an all-time first. I saw him wipe his mitts on his cuffs the way he always does and she didn’t even wince. They took a hell of a time over one measly cup of tea, so long in fact that I began to get edgy. I’ve never known Tinker miss the pubs opening and time was getting on. Maybe she was giving him a talk on hygiene or something. Irritated, I buzzed my buzzer but only got the staff nurse who came and gave me an injection with a syringe like a howitzer. When my bum had been rubbed sore and I was allowed to sit up Tinker was not there any more and Sister Morrison had gone off duty.

Next morning the newspapers were full of it. I was a celebrity.

Not a hero, but definitely a celebrity.

Being stuck in hospital is grim enough. Being the baddie in the black hat as well is terrible. For some days they gave me the full treatment. Even Gastric Ulcer opposite sent me to Coventry, while old Smith read out loud everworsening reports about me in the local rag.

It was a real gas. Nurses belligerent, physiotherapists sadistic. The X-ray people who did my arteriogram were obviously disgruntled at having to handle so repellent a specimen of degraded humanity. The surgeons were unchanged, though, merely concentrating when they came round on my repaired artery and telling me to shut up. It was a hell of a life, relieved only by Tinker’s somewhat erratic appearances when he called to report the problems in the normal antiques world outside. Curiously, in all this only Sister Morrison showed any sort of balance about me. Her attitude came to light in a way I found embarrassing but it brought her into the problem on my side so I’d better tell it as it happened.

It was on a Tuesday morning when the library lady came round. By then I was desperate for anything on antiques. Tinker had failed at the town library because they’d slung him out for being filthy and having no fixed abode, and I was rereading a bundle of old issues of the
Antique Collector
. These glossy magazines give me heartburn at some of the careless things people say about antiques. They speak of them almost as if antiques have no soul, which only goes to show.

The promised visit of the library trolley finally came, to my delight, with a splendidly plump matronly bird, all tweeds and blue rinse, parading grandly down the ward dispensing books right and left. I was in ecstasy, because I’d asked for a text on Ming underglaze blue of the Wan-Li period and the new monograph on the London Clockmakers’ Company in Queen Anne’s reign. You can guess the state I was in, excitedly watching the elegant lady trundle nearer and nearer between the rows of beds. She came, smiling and chatting, handing out the books and writing her little green cards which said who wanted what for next time. A real Lady Bountiful. She gave Gastric Ulcer his, a thing on greyhounds, and left old Smith his book about pigeon breeding. Then she turned away and went on.

I’d been left.

Apprehensive, I called, ‘Erm, excuse me, please.’

‘Yes?’ she managed, preoccupied with the books and her list. She didn’t look up.

‘Erm, have you any for me?’

‘Subject?’ she said absently, still not a glance.

I felt my face redden but got out, ‘Antiques, please.’

‘I’ll check,’ she said smoothly, still so very busy. Then she went on to the next bed. Not a word.

Great. Umpteen days trapped in a rotten bed, no antiques anywhere and me suffering withdrawal symptoms worse than any addict. I turned my face away. Bloody hospitals. The difference was that heroin addicts and alcoholics would be knee-deep in intense young sociologists, empathizing like mad, but I was a pariah.

Then a gentle Irish voice uttered my name. ‘Have you Lovejoy’s books, Mrs Williams?’

‘I must have forgotten them, Sister.’ Determinedly casual.

‘Really, Mrs Williams?’ The voice was still soft and enquiring. ‘And will you have time to bring them?’

The ward’s customary din went quiet. The nurses froze. A couple of old blokes woke up in alarm at the unexpected silence.

‘I’ll have to see, Sister.’ The reply was offhand, but with that familiar flint-hard core of self-righteous sadism only the pure at heart can manage.

The gentle voice became a bandsaw. ‘
Nurse!
’

Feet pattered. ‘Yes, Sister?’ dimply little Nurse Swainson bleated.

‘Collect
all
the patients’ books this
instant
, and escort that person from the ward –
now
!’

‘Yes, Sister!’

Nervously I sat up again. Already the centre of World War Three, the last thing I wanted was the fourth to happen along so quickly. Sister Morrison was calmly dialling at the central phone.

‘Excuse me, Sister,’ I called nervously. ‘Can’t we leave it, erm—?’

‘Shut up, Lovejoy.’

Her pleasant voice returned. ‘Hello? Sister Morrison here, Charrington Ward. Why have my patients been ignored by the library services, please?’

‘
Sister!
’ Mrs Williams exclaimed, scandalized.

‘Erm, Sister,’ I pleaded in a quaver, thinking, Oh Christ. Little Swainson and another junior nurse were scampering about the ward snatching everybody’s books and flinging them back on the trolley. It was pandemonium. The two old geezers, relieved the ward’s usual cacophony was back, nodded off happily again.

‘My charges,’ Sister Morrison continued, ‘are no better and no worse than any others in this hospital. If you are not able to provide . . .’ It went savagely on for a full minute, about ten lifetimes. Finally she slammed the receiver down and turned.

‘Nurse Swainson, Nurse Barton, Nurse French,’ that alarming voice rasped. ‘I thought I told you to escort that
person
out forthwith!’

‘Yes, Sister!’ voices chorused. A trolley rumbled. Books flew and thumped. We cowered in abject terror. Old Smith grumbled to a fraught Nurse Swainson and practically got castrated for his pains as his pigeon book was ripped out of his hands.

Mrs Williams, as she was being bundled unceremoniously out of the place by a gaggle of nurses, tried a last desperate rearguard action. ‘I’ll complain to the highest authorities about your conduct, Sister!’ But she lost that one as well.

‘The best possible thing you can do, Mrs Williams! Lies are not the sole prerogative of the hospital library! Kindly
go
!’

I heard Mrs Williams being scandalized all the way to the lift which ran down through the hospital to the Voluntary Services division two floors below.

‘Lovejoy!’ I looked up as the bandsaw rasped out my name. ‘Lovejoy.’ The lilting voice was back again, gentle as ever. ‘Please accept our hospital’s apologies.’

I must have been a bit down, because I couldn’t raise much of an answer to that.

The book trolley came creeping back an hour later. An apprehensive young Red Cross volunteer shakily dished books out in total silence. From fright, we’d all forgotten what we’d asked for and took anything she gave us, but my books were among them. Through the whole episode Sister Morrison was calmly writing out the ward report in her office, ever so innocent. The volunteer finally wheeled her trolley past the ward office when leaving, hugging the corridor wall in a wide curve as if the office was radioactive.

She leapt a mile when Sister Morrison quietly called her name. ‘Yes, Sister?’ she yelped, white-faced.

Sister Morrison smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said sweetly, and let her go.

And hospitals are supposed to be there for your peace of mind. They’re not there for your health, that’s for sure.

You get ‘discharged’ from bankruptcies, armies and hospitals. It was two weeks to the day when I got clearance from the consultant surgeon. I’d displeased him by calling him ‘doctor’.

‘Surgeons are addressed as Mister,’ he told me testily, scribbling my clearance. ‘Physicians are addressed as Doctor.’

‘Sorry, er, sir.’

‘Never been the same since that Yank hospital series on telly in the sixties,’ he grumbled. He tore off a paper and handed it to Sister Morrison. ‘Surgical Outpatients next week, Sister.’

He left the office, leaving me to be documented out. I watched her as she slipped my instructions into an envelope and ticked items off on the file. She was an attractive bird, if only she didn’t hate me quite so much. This was the first time I had been in the office, though Tinker had been so favoured almost every visit. Galling. I suspected the old devil of trying to con her into lending him a few quid for beer, this being his great trick. When I asked him what the hell they talked about he only gave his horrible gappy grin and said to mind my own business, even though I threatened to thump him. Once he even joked about it, asked if I was jealous, the cheeky old sod.

As she wrote, a wisp of her pale hair curled round her nape on to her collar. She looked exquisite in spite of that crummy uniform, especially so preoccupied sitting that way with her legs twisted round each other like women can. Good enough to eat. And as for that delectable glass on her desk, it really put her in a breathtaking setting. The loveliest thing on earth, to me it was like an oasis.

There are millions of differently shaped glasses, but this was a marvel. ‘Plain Straight-stem’ drinking glasses are often anything but that. Antique dealers call them ‘Cylindrical’, which is a laugh, because they are nothing of the kind. This was Irish, too, a pedestal-type glass with a thick base, having collars top and bottom, but pristinely simple and unadorned. You usually find them – if at all – engraved with names, monograms, or personalized florets rather than plain.

I gazed at the rare little gem enraptured. Sister Morrison or somebody had stuck a single rose in it, a stark reminder of all the boring countryside we have hereabouts in East Anglia. It says a lot for its quality that the glass’s beauty was quite undimmed by a grotty rosebud.

She clipped the papers and passed them over.

‘Ta. That it, Sister?’

‘Outpatients at two o’clock. You’re not to be late, Lovejoy.’

I looked at the office floor. ‘What if I can’t make it? The police . . .’ Ledger had told the hospital to phone Culver Street police station about my progress. She coloured slightly, which showed me she had already done the deed. A man’s cough sounded from somewhere above my head.

‘They will see you make the clinic,’ she said, looking away.

‘Thank you.’ I meant it but she flared.

‘Lovejoy. Isn’t it time you mended your ways, went straight?’

‘I am straight.’

Her face was suddenly pink with vehemence. ‘You are hooked on vengeance. I know what you’ll do – go after Sam Veston and . . . and this Clarkie person. And I know why. You’ll get into still more trouble over this church silver. And all because of that horrid woman. There’s simply no
point
. It’s all so stupid. Can’t you see?’

I stared. How the hell did she know so much? Admittedly, she must have heard a little when I’d made that first phone call, but . . . I thought of Tinker’s cosy little teatimes with her in this very office and my good hand flexed in anticipation. I’d cripple the gabby old sod. Again that rasping cough from over my head. I glanced up. There was a small row of receivers on the wall. One was lit by a small red pilot bulb. Light dawned in my thick skull. I leaned forwards and peered through her window down the rows of beds. The bloke in that transparent tent moved slightly with a cough. It sounded over my head. My heart sank.