The Rich And The Profane

by Jonathan Gash

  The final laugh at all this ineptitude? It’s the Scotland Yard Art and Antiques Squad’s very special, very secret and wondrously superb ACIS. It’s a brilliant data base, been designed by deep-thinking computer criminological taxonomists for national use! Really super-great. ACIS stands for Article Classification and Identification System, would you believe?

  It gives everything about stolen antiques - any fingerprints, shreds of wool from burglars’ jackets, records of suspects, photographs from security cameras, all that jazz. Essential, vital, eh?

  Well, not so’s you’d notice. Because ACIS isn’t on-line for the whole country. Police forces all over the kingdom may - if they’ve a mind - send information to it. Most, though, can’t be bothered, being far too busy, you see. So there’s this great computer weapon, built, installed, created, to be ignored by the majority of those who could, if moved to consult and use this engine, actually do something effective. Thank goodness, says I, because the Scotland Yard A & A Squad - as people still call it - isn’t mainly there to investigate particular thefts.

  ‘That’s about it,’ I concluded. I’d had a date pudding by then, keeping the wolf from the door. ‘Except for attitude.’ ‘Whose?’ She was in a drifty languid mood, almost as if we’d made something more passionate than talk. ‘Yours?’ ‘No. The police’s. The one thing they hate, all of them, is being made agents for the insurance companies. Documenting road accidents, making detailed records of stolen antiques, they see as being unpaid insurance clerks.’ I smiled. ‘They skimp it every chance they get.’

  ‘Lovejoy,’ Florida said huskily, ‘you’re a vicious beast of prey.’

  ‘Eh?’ I said. Some new tack?

  She ground out her cigarette and rose. ‘Come, darling. Home time.’

  ‘Oh.’ Not a new tack at all. A very old one.

  She left without signing anything, without paying. I thought only queens did that. In her Rolls, she told me that she’d joined Lovejoy Antiques, Inc.

  ‘What for?’ Maybe we should have gone to Woody’s nosh bar? She likes to go sordid.

  She laughed, carolling, before she sobered. ‘Lovejoy. You really understand nothing. To rob, of course. What else?’

  In the night, Florida kipping beside me with that fragile snore all women develop about two hours after midnight, I suddenly remembered the word I’d heard one of Charley’s men say as I’d said my so-long. It was Pral, my fellow exprisoner. They’d all said their ‘Rak tute', take care, after me. But Pral shook his head and said, ‘Dinnelo.’ It means somebody touched in the head, even sinister. It’s also their word for a fool.

  He meant me.

  Florida left about four o’clock. As I put the robin’s cheese and the hedgehog’s saucer out I tried to remember exactly what I’d agreed. She’d insisted it was really important. Connie, from down the lane, drops in and leaves some unspeakable meat for Crispin. I don’t look at it, just leave out a clean saucer every day. Where was I? Florida, leaving.

  She’d pressed her face down on mine, me hoping she’d get gone so I could kip. I felt worn out.

  ‘It’s agreed, then, darling? I’ll be late tonight. Be ready.’

  I hate women telling me what I’ve agreed. It’s a kind of polarized untruth.

  Alone, I bathed. Florida wrinkles her nose up at everything in the cottage. She won’t eat here, won’t have a bath, only goes to the loo on sufferance, then complains about draughts, how I should mend the broken window - I’d once had to climb in because of bailiffs. She has no idea. At the start of our ‘relationship’ - God, how I hate that word; we use it only when we’ve really got none - Florida upbraided me because I didn’t have a single antique in the place.

  She’d stunned me by saying, ‘I’d have thought you’d have a Sheraton bureau, Lovejoy.’ See what I mean? Florida, like all the rich, thinks profanity.

  What had I agreed?

  There were windfalls in the garden. I washed and sliced some apples, and fried them with bread. I’d washed my only other shirt. It was still damp and I’d no way to iron it, but put it on, shivering. If ever I get rich, I’ll have dry clean clothes every morning and somebody to rub my nape when I’m tired. Is there that sort of heaven out there? I combed my hair with a fragment of green plastic comb, then set out into a bright new day. I shouldn’t have. The robin ballocks me for not digging. I’ve got nothing against worms and told the cheeky little sod that, but he only chirped, angrier still. Omens were everywhere.

  Normally I wouldn’t have bothered much with Leach’s Auction Emporium at Little Henny, but it was the only normal one until weekend. I felt I’d been among troglodytes and asteroids for days. You can feel out of sorts for no reason. And I’d no barker, except the useless Freddy Foxheath. And where was he?

  The auction was due to begin when I stepped off the Mount Bures bus. It’s three miles. Everywhere’s uphill when you’re in a hurry, so I was puffed out when I tottered in, Florida still making her nocturnal presence felt.

  The lads were in. Big Frank from Suffolk - his home territory, this - was being modestly congratulated on his new wife. I waved, grinned, gave him the thumbs up. He changes wives every tide. I’m exaggerating, but it seems so, the rate he goes on. Big Frank has strong views on alimony. He’s currently suing his seventh ex-wife for maintenance. The week before, he’d tried to get me to sign a petition saying he was destitute - he was giving me a lift in his new Lagonda at the time. Margaret Dainty was also in, with Liz Sandwell. The former - and the latter too - is my favourite. She limps, has a husband vaguely around, but you don’t ask. She is an older, wiser woman, and my friend. I’m not sure if I’m hers. I try.

  And the blonde Paula, she of the glitzy earrings and miniskirts, high heels and skimpy bolero. Paula’s enormously fat, so somehow her clothes - what there is - look wrong. Women give each other meaningful looks about Paula, but I like her. She really packs on the cosmetics, rouge, mascara, lipstick, so you’re knee deep if you get within striking distance, and wears scent enough to make you gag. She’s an expert dealer in eighteenth-century English porcelain, so she tells customers.

  ‘Lovejoy?’ Desdemona was suddenly there.

  ‘That you, love? Where’s your bloke?’ I was narked at Gesso, but didn’t want to tell her off. She was Gesso’s ex-wife, water under the bridge now.

  ‘Not here.’

  She looked pale, led me out to the car park. It was coming bright, gusty. I like Desdemona, though her name embarrasses me. Just saying it makes me feel I’ve started a speech, then I feel daft because I’ve nothing else to say, and silence isn’t much where women are concerned. She stood there, pretty, quiet. It was only then - honest truth - that I felt the first twinge of anxiety.

  ‘Have you seen Gesso?’ I said nothing, looking at her eyes. ‘Only, he’s not been about since you took him to rob the priory.’

  So much for secrecy. ‘I’ve not seen him either. No,’ I went on as she drew breath, ‘I’ve not put word out. The Plod are asking.’

  Dangerous ground, this. I told her what happened that night. They divorced some two years since when Desdemona gave up over Gesso’s bad spell of remands and gaol sentences.

  She said bravely, ‘I’m frightened something went wrong.’ ‘It did. I told you. Gesso got—’

  ‘Normally he phones. He crows about robberies he’s just done. This is the only time he’s not called.’

  ‘The only time?’ I asked, even more uneasy.

  ‘Lovejoy.’ She held my hands tight. I tried to pull away. ‘You know how things are. In his way Gesso was all right. Weak, but what man isn’t?’

  This falsehood made me try to look strong, utterly reliable.

  ‘I never gave him away. His calls were like a bond, the only bit left between us. You’re not hiding him, are you?’ ‘Me?’ I heard them call for the start of the auction. ‘I’ll find him, love. Honest.’

  ‘You will, Lovejoy?’ She scanned my face, found enough near-truth in my lies to be going on with. ‘Just so he’s all rig
ht. Nothing more.’

  ‘Right, love.’ I watched her go. She has a little Continental motor. What on earth was Gesso thinking of, chucking her for an inept life of robbery? Mind you, I should talk.

  Back inside, Paula collared me. The crowd had swelled enormously, to at least a dozen, drifting among the trestle tables and home-made cabinets.

  ‘Lovejoy,’ she breathed. ‘Come and look!’

  ‘There’s not much here, love.’ No chimes in my chest. Everything was modern - for modern, read dross.

  ‘That dancing girl, Lovejoy!’ She pretended to be chatting, but deceived nobody. Her excited breathing alone gave the world clues enough.

  ‘Fake, Paula.’

  ‘It can’t be!’ she wailed. Dealers everywhere sprang out of the floorboards to hear. I was tired, wanted out. ‘I’ve put a dog in!’

  Dog is the dealer’s word for a written bid delivered just before an auction. You scribble the amount you want to bid, give it to the whiffler and lurk about pretending you’ve not bid at all. Some dealers do it to increase the price of an antique - having themselves put the antique in for auction -but risk buying their own antique. This means that they lose serious money, commission, tax, premiums on the transaction.

  There are more fakers about now than ever, but they haven’t the skill, patience or the understanding. And they certainly don’t have the feel for the original antique. So they use wrong glazes, clay, paints, enamels, or fire things at the wrong temperature. Modern forgers get me down. They won’t experiment. Worst of all, fakers nowadays don’t bother to learn. Like trying to write yet another sequel to Pride and Prejudice without having bothered to read the original - though that’s done often enough, God knows.

  ‘Duff it, love. Be sharp. They’ve called starters.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’

  She hurtled, a formidable velocity. Margaret Dainty smiled, came near. I bussed her a hello.

  ‘We were all wondering about that piece, Lovejoy. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s a shame.’ I eyed the little figure. ‘She could have been lovely.’

  In London, about the 1750s, a small factory blossomed. It’s known by one of its principal figures. The Girl-In-The-Swing factory only became recognized as something really special in the world of genuinely old antiques about the mid-1930s, when collectors realized their quality. One of these rare figures was of a little dancing girl, with a yellow flower in her hair. So far so good, until the Torquay Couple started faking. The man-and-wife pair lived in Devon, and swiftly upset the porcelain collectors’ market by turning out fakes. Tips: the Torquay Fakers never got a girl’s shoulders and waist right. They seem thickish, clumsy. And the poses are strangely inelegant. The really best tip, though, is this: stare for a full minute at the colours on, say, the porcelain girl’s dress. They look as if they’ve been put on with a gluey paintbrush. If that’s the impression, don’t - repeat, do not -buy. It’s fake. Let somebody else snap the little figurine up. Never mind that your friends’ll boast afterwards, jeering that you’ve missed the bargain of the year. Let them. They’ll change their tune when they try to sell it.

  ‘How much, Lovejoy?’ Margaret asked.

  Sadly I looked at the pathetic little fake. ‘Nowt, love. Not a groat.’

  ‘Are you all right, Lovejoy?’

  The auction was starting up. I wandered with Margaret among the tables, listless. It was all gunge and semi-gunge, old bikes, record players, old throwout plastic toys, tatty furniture. I felt really down.

  ‘Heard anything of Gesso, Margaret?’

  ‘No. Only that you and he ...’ She grimaced. ‘They’re saying you did over the priory at Albansham, the night it closed.’

  ‘Closed?’ I thought a moment. ‘Went into retreat?’

  ‘No. Closed. It’s going to be amalgamated.’

  ‘For good?’

  Gesso hadn’t said. But the priory had been very, very quiet that night. And Marie hadn’t exactly been silent when she’d barged into the chapel. Nobody else had come running. No alarms had sounded. Because the abbey was empty, or because me and Gesso had been especially cunning?

  ‘Yes, Lovejoy. It was in the paper.’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Best of order, please, ladies and gentlemen!’ the auctioneer chanted, gavelling away. ‘Item one, a beautiful ormolu clock, probably made by Vincento Ostrakis and Sons of Norwich in 1720 ..

  This morning the whole world seemed dross. Dross attitudes, dross fakes, dross bargains, dross people. There never was any Vincento Ostrakis, 1720, clockmaker of Norwich. So even the blinking auctions begin with a non-existent non-craftsman. The fake clock was a feeble replica of a Harrison work of genius. It’s our civilization. Right there and then, I could have stopped the world and got off. In that single moment everything seemed betrayed and dirty.

  ‘Come home, Lovejoy?’ Margaret suggested. ‘Positively no obligation?’

  It’s what antique dealers say on the knocker. It was her attempt to make me smile. I tried, didn’t make it.

  ‘Not now, love, ta. Can I come later on?’

  She weighed me up, sighed. ‘You’d better, Lovejoy. I can’t leave you to the tender mercies of others, the state you’re in.’

  Two quips from Margaret in one morning? Paula had captured a hangdog whiffler who was feebly trying to escape. Much chance.

  ‘Anyway, enjoy the meet, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Meet?’ I paused. ‘What’s a meet? I thought that was horses.’

  ‘It is.’ Margaret gazed at me. ‘Noon start. Isn’t it Florida’s big show?’

  ‘Oh, aye. I was just on my way.’ That must be what I’d agreed.

  Margaret’s motor was outside. I got in, scraped the wires with my thumb, splitting two fingernails, cursed a few curses, and drove like a fiend.

  Sometimes a whole area can feel really strange even when you know it well. There’s a place near Wivenhoe village on the Colne estuary where the road narrows. It’s the least spooky place on earth. You can see the whole countryside, farms, distant houses, trees, cows doing their somnolent best to look thrilling for some passing watercolour artist.

  But I hate - bate - that bit of road. Won’t drive there at any price. I’ve looked it up. No savage Ancient Britons waylaid Romans there. No Viking marauders hacked peaceable wagons on the way to market. No Great Civil War skirmish, no highwayman got hanged there on the gallows tree. It’s the one furlong of the kingdom that is seriously boring.

  The moral? Don’t trust history - there’s no future in it. I simply don’t believe the facts. Once, it was an Ancient British trackway to the coast, then a rollicking road to the ancient Christian missionaries’ seashore chapels. Later, a horse road for mediaeval merchants, then simply a road to the seaside.

  It’s eerie. There’s something wrong with it. That road, I don’t go on.

  Even in Margaret’s nicked car, I belted along the coast to avoid it, came on Albansham before I could think. I stopped the car and stared towards the priory’s tower. I was worried, because I’d brought that Wivenhoe road’s weird feeling along with me.

  No mysteries, though, in antiques. You have to get on, get gone or get none. I drove in, whistling. Into a spooky silence.

  ‘Hello?’ I called out.

  No noise. Not a sausage. No merry monks pouring molten metal into sand moulds. No nuns bent over embroidery. Nobody carrying hoes to merry work in the fields. The place was quiet. I almost thought it a deathly quiet, but that would have been stupid. I mean broad daylight, a holy priory, deathly?

  Now, I’m big on quiet. I like it. I’m pleased if the town’s emptier than usual, as when a tourist ferry fails to come in because of storms at Harwich. But there’s quiet and quiet. By the latter, I mean an ominous protracted silence that itches.

  ‘Hello?’ I shouted, listening. My own voice, nobody else’s.

  Worrying, I walked along the walls to where I’d eeled out of the chapel. I tried the vestry. Locked. I tried jumping up
to look inside, but the curtains were drawn. No red votive light that I could see.

  The forge? You simply can’t close a forge in a few minutes, not like laying aside your embroidery. I tried the big door. It was firmly padlocked.

  ‘Hello?’ I shouted, rattling the handle. ‘Gesso? It’s me, Lovejoy.’

  Quiet.

  My fingers could reach the sill. I hauled myself up to chin the window, toes scrabbling, and saw inside.

  A glow from the furnace still, but dying. Bellows, sand moulds on the stone-flagged floor ready for the molten metal. Gantries above, haul-and-tip chains. I got out of breath, dropped down, did it again, had three or four looks until I was shaking from effort. I stood and thought.

  The wind was rising slightly, leaves blowing across the courtyard. Funny-sad how desolate a place becomes the instant folk leave, isn’t it? A house can have all the family warmth imaginable, but within minutes of the last child’s departure, mum getting on her coat and dad locking up, a house grows as sad as sorrow. Is it that it’s no longer lived in? Or that the house feels left behind? That’s exactly the difference between an antique and something modern. An antique’s been created, been lived with. People are in it, their feelings, hopes, dreams, their very selves.

  The priory felt dead.

  Drainpipes aren’t difficult to climb. To any burglar, even a hopeless one like me, they’re simply hollow ladders. I’ve heard real burglars say that. I shinned up, peered into the nuns’ embroidery room. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust, but it was sedate, vacant. No hurried cast-off stitchery here. I slid down, walked about some more.

  Margaret Dainty was right. This place was closed for the duration, not merely resting between shifts. I was worried sick. You don’t start the Bessemer process - that difficult, chest-corroding manufacture of molten metal - unless you intend to go through with it. Only days ago, the monks were hard at it. I mean, you need melted cast iron, through which you force air. Since its heyday - it was promulgated in 1856 - furnaces have come and gone. It killed most of its workers from silicosis and injury. What I’m saying is, the Bessemer process isn’t a whim. Valuable metal when you’ve finished, but there’s a price to pay for every solid pig. Yet the furnaces, still not cooled, had been shut down in mid-cycle. It’d be hell to start the foundry up again. So they were dud for good.