The Rich And The Profane

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘What on earth, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Paula. Didn’t you used to go out with a stonemason?’

  ‘From birth, Lovejoy.’ She checked that I’d not nicked anything. Such trust. ‘He’s my elder brother, Horace.’

  ‘Ah. I knew.’ I put my wheedle on. ‘Would he do me a job?’

  ‘Look about, Lovejoy, while you’re here. Earn your keep.’

  Sighing, I started towards the only piece of furniture in the place that looked anything like. I was actually glad to help, because I badly needed to nick some small antique to sell. I urgently needed the fare to the bonny isle of Guernsey.

  We made our way among her antiques in the cramped shop, me helpfully moving chairs, display cabinets and trinkets out of her way.

  A genuine sideboard, the piece had been heavily punished in its time. There’s more daftness told about inspecting drawers than anything, but I showed Paula the motions. We took out a drawer. Drawers were - should still be - made short of the full run, otherwise they bang on the inside back panel. That last bit of the supporting bar -the ‘runner’ - and the dividing panel have to be darkened (by grime, air) for the thickness of your thumb nail, while the adjacent area stays pale. Also, the last bit of the runner’s length should stand proud, because it never becomes worn, the drawer not sliding that far in.

  ‘Always look at the dovetails, love. Machine dovetailing was really motoring by 1890. It tends to be even - the “female” and “male” wedges are all of a size. Look at the drawer from the side. See? These are narrower against the drawer’s facing. So it’s before that date.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Paula looked amazed.

  ‘Not all, but it’ll do. This piece is old.’ I felt the old piece’s heart warm.

  ‘But it’s got turned legs, Lovejoy.’

  ‘So? Treasure it, love. It saw Trafalgar out. And it’s not been ...’ I hesitated, sickened by the word ‘... improved.’ ‘Cheek, Lovejoy.’ Her eyes were shining. ‘I’ll sell it to a Continental buyer!’

  My spirits sank. That meant she’d have it glammed up by some faker like Glosser Ackroyd, whose sole job in life is to ‘restore’ antique furniture so it looks glamorously new. It’s all the fashion in Germany, France, Switzerland and elsewhere. Glosser laughs about my distress. He calls Europe ‘Pure rope’, thinks it’s a hilarious pun.

  ‘Don’t, love. It’s been made by a craftsman.’

  ‘Who?’ she breathed, wanting me to say Hepplewhite. ‘Dunno, love. Keep it, to lend lustre to your junk.’ Money, as profit, excites. She asked, ‘Lovejoy, is my mother still in?’

  ‘No, I sent her packing.’

  ‘While you did that pongo on the phone?’ Pongo is a fraudulent chat intended to deceive and elicit information, antiques or both. ‘Silly cow, that Marie, paying off her brother’s debts.’

  ‘Did you see the painting?’

  ‘O’Conor, I heard. Ten ton of paint daubed on canvas!’ Paula hooted with laughter. ‘Cheaper to buy the farm, don’t you think?’ This was proof beyond doubt. No way I could evade the responsibility now.

  ‘O’Conor, who was influenced by Van Gogh?’

  ‘Want to stay, Lovejoy?’ She fluttered her eyes roguishly. ‘I owe you.’

  ‘Get your brother to carve me a headstone.’ I came to earth. I hadn’t got long. ‘Carve it “Gesso, RIP”. Put the date of a couple of days back. Tell him to stand it above the hot pool at Albansham Priory.’

  She drew back to inspect me, sober. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Never more, love.’ I bussed her and left - no mean feat, those two together.

  She stood in the doorway looking after me as I crossed the road.

  The small silvers I’d nicked as we’d talked were a George V enamelled silver mounted cut-glass scent bottle with its matching box. Five inches. I couldn’t check, but I was sure the river landscape engraving was by the brilliant Daniels of Birmingham. No older than 1934 or so, but collectable and easily sold. Harry Bateman for once had some ready gelt, and I kindly lowered the price for a quick sale. I’m a fool to myself sometimes. I could have got twice the price if I’d hung on.

  Then I went to the travel agents in Red Lion Walk. By seven I was on the train to the airport. Hand on my heart, I’d no intention of killing Prior George Metivier for killing Gesso, honest. Vengeance just isn’t my thing, and I mean that most sincerely.

  14

  IN airports you either spot your destination everywhere on those consoles, so it seems unlikely that anyone is going anywhere else, or you can’t find it. I imagined a Biggies goggles-and-helmet job, with some Tiger Moth to cough and blip her way over the English Channel. Not a bit of it. The world and his wife were heading to Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, wherever, and all on my plane. Hopefully I tried to see if anyone wanted Paris, Madrid, Moscow perhaps, but no. Stanstead Airport was thronged by wicked hordes aiming for my seat.

  A lady sat near me in the airport lounge, talking about routes. I listened desperately, because I’m scared of flying. I said I was Jonno Rant, impressario. She, Enid, said not to worry, air was the safest.

  ‘Of course, I could have flown from London City Airport - do you think they’re as good? - though BA Newcastle’s excellent, don’t you find, Mr Rant?’

  I drew breath to answer. Some hopes. She rattled on. ‘Do you usually come this way? A lady I bumped into last week - the De Garis family? She has such a clever girl, but troublesome - said flying from Birmingham is simply a must, though I positively swear by those Condor multi-hulls from Weymouth—’

  You get the idea. Planet Earth’s population was emptying into Guernsey. One airline advertised ten flights a day. Nervously I watched the clock, thinking of us crowds shoaling from the skies to perch on a gaunt rock that surely couldn’t have enough flat bits to land a kite, let alone a zillion squadrons. The flight was called.

  On board, everybody except me seemed to know everybody else, except me. The air lady greeted passengers by name. (‘Did Jess get his music examination? Marvellous! Tell Olive that Harry’ll be delighted ...’ all that.) She assured me that the aircraft was wonderfully safe, that it wasn’t all that small, that, yes, there was a life jacket under my seat. The possibility of our crashing into the cold waters of the Channel was remote. She said.

  The man next to me was going to do some Roman and pre-Roman archeology on Guernsey. He had cameras, and wanted to talk zoom lenses and f-stops. Enid waved, announced loudly that I was the famous impressario Jonno Rant, bringing in a big Guernsey summer show. I smiled weakly. Two aircrew checked that I’d not fainted when the engines started up. This was a bloody nerve, because the one thing I never am is scared. Six passengers passed me tablets, drinks, pillows, an inhalant, meanwhile loudly recollecting their worst-ever flights, a particularly bad form of psychotherapy. A lady advised me on how to breathe, another said thinking of rhododendrons in sunshine cured flight fright. One thing was sure, Radio Guernsey must be superfluous. Already my fame had soared through the stratosphere.

  My first inkling of real problems, however, came after we’d taken off. I was trying to waft air at my damp forehead. The lady on my left, hitherto broodingly silent, suddenly exploded to me, ‘Mr Rant? Don't take your show to Jersey, whatever they say. You mustn’t believe their travel brochures. Our mean summer highs are less than two degrees below theirs, so there!’

  ‘Eh? Oh, good,’ I said weakly.

  Which prompted the photographer and a cluster of others to lecture me about how much better Guernsey was than Jersey.

  ‘Jersey’s slightly increased warmth is caused by their north-to-south incline. Guernsey slopes up southwards.’ He drew me a helpful map of the island’s geography. I said ta, pretended to fall asleep, didn’t make it.

  By the time we landed I was worn out. Friendship’s all right, but it’s not the sort of thing you should get too fond of. We disembarked into fresh air. Guernsey’s done what every place in the kingdom’s done, planted its airport a million leagues from its capital.

 
‘Excuse me,’ a lady said. By then I could hardly focus. ‘The capital isn’t St Peter’s Port. It drops the possessive. St Peter Port, please. I hope you don’t mind my drawing your attention...’

  By skilled feints I narrowly avoided a lift, and got a taxi. The driver knew of a decent place to stay. I’d thought I’d escaped Guernsey’s instant palliness until he said a merry ‘Have a good stay, Mr Rant’ as he dropped me off. I sighed, hefted up my shoulder bag and knocked. Well, I would have, only the door opened before my knuckles made it.

  ‘Mr Rant!’ the lady exclaimed. ‘Wasn’t it a nice flight!’

  ‘Er, aye,’ I said, wondering vaguely what was wrong with that sentence, but she’d got some grub on the go so I surrendered while she told me what I wanted to see during my stay and how eager I’d be to see this and that. Drawing breath, she added, ‘You won’t want to go to Jersey, thank goodness!’ I began to wonder if the two islands were at war. She said she was especially sorry I’d been so airsick, especially ‘as Bill himself was at the controls!’

  The grub filled me. I was invited to watch the telly, stay up at least until X, Y and Z ‘get here because it’s not often we have an impressario come to cast his new summer show...’ I began to hate Jonno Rant, wished I’d never thought to nick his identity. If I’d guessed right and Prior George had arrived back here, I’d never dare make surreptitious inquiries about him. With Guernsey’s gossip velocity it’d be like giving him a ring. I tottered upstairs to bed.

  They had hold of me and dragged me along the grass. It was dark as pitch. I tried screaming but it was like one of those dreams where you’re trying to shout, Help please, Grandad, and you can’t utter a sound.

  Somebody had filled a great net with flintstone cobbles. It trailed along roped to my ankles. They were bleeding. The nylon cut my skin. I struggled, tore at the gag round my face, couldn’t free it.

  Then I got hold of some small cylindrical object, slender and thin like ... like a torch, a pencil flashlight. I yanked it from my pocket even as I heard the muted splutter of the hot pool, and I dug the slim metal into the soil and for a second felt them halt as it bit.

  They cursed. Someone’s familiar voice said, ‘What the fuck’, usually so friendly but now utterly venomous, and I was dragged and gripped by three of them and the metal thing scraped on some flint cobble and then bent and was gone—

  ‘Chuck the bastard in,’ the voice said, breathless. ‘Not that way, stupid. Feet first. Why the fuck d’you think the stones are there?’

  ‘Bet it takes longer than twenty seconds,’ somebody said.

  ‘You’re on,’ said the educated, venomous voice.

  Somebody chuckled. I screamed without managing to, now so near the hot pool’s quiet but totally evil sounds, and then I was hurtling through the air a short distance and I screamed and was dragged down into the heat.

  ‘Mr Rant?’ some woman was saying cheerily.

  ‘Help!’ I bleated, battling to get the gag out of my mouth, flailing.

  ‘My goodness!’ the lady said, coming into the room. ‘It’s that flight that did it. Will I give Bill a piece of my mind! I had a visitor last year came to visit the North Beach Marina who was positively terrified of flying, well luckily my sister’s husband - he taxied you from the airport - has a connection with the Condor boats from Weymouth, isn’t that a lovely place ...’

  I was drenched with sweat, the bedclothes tangled. I emerged, eyes screwed against the light, and found safety.

  Guernsey. A boarding house, locally a ‘guesthouse’.

  This lady with the tray of tea and whatnot was the one I’d come to stay with. I remembered the taxi driver. I was not sinking weighted down with flint cobbles. Life was great.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘You’re beautiful.’

  ‘I hope you mean that!’ she trilled, laughing. ‘Shall I open the curtains?’

  She did, and it was truly beautiful. I could almost see down into the harbour. She put the tray on my knees and poured the tea, started to butter the toast. I watched weakly.

  ‘Mrs, er ... ?’

  ‘Mrs Vidamour, Mr Rant.’ She judged me, decided, ‘Rosa to you. I’m a Guemesiaise born and bred, widow, and very proper. I have four guests presently. They’re tourist workers, so are almost never in!’ She served me the toast and tea. ‘You’re the sort who wants sugar I can tell so drink up because breakfast will be in thirty minutes and I expect you to eat it and not leave it like folk tend to nowadays but you’ll want to know about Guernsey before you start out—’ ‘Ta, Rosa,’ I said, recoiling, still overcome with relief at not being Gesso sinking into some place I didn’t want to think of. ‘Er, two things. Where’s Bailiwick?’

  She drew back, the better to inspect me. ‘Bailiwick? The Bailiwick is Guernsey, and four small islands. Jersey is its own Bailiwick. The second?’

  ‘Have you any museums, art galleries?’

  She smiled. ‘Oh, dear, Mr Rant. It truly was a ghastly flight, wasn’t it? I can see we’ve quite a way to go. Guernsey has everything the mainland has. Let me tell you about them.’

  ‘Please, Rosa,’ I said, loving Guernsey. ‘Call me Jonno.’

  Rosa Vidamour’s house was about a mile from the harbour. Nice, but I wasn’t here to stare at water, with or without distant ships. Prior Merivier and his clique had used the O’Conor masterpiece to clear his gambling debts, sure. But he’d got another windfall, courtesy of me. That Chinese Warring States handle that I’d divvied was about as valuable as the O’Conor, so Metivier probably had a bit of money spare. And word was, he’d scarpered home to Guernsey. Fine by me. I wasn’t here to suss his reasons. I was here to express my sense of reproach. And I honestly wasn’t thinking of vengeance, retribution, reparation, all those ugly tit-for-tats that keep politics and wars going.

  So I walked down the slope into the bonny town of St Peter Port.

  The port itself had two marinas. One wasn’t enough to cope with the number of yachts. The main harbour had ferries. Esplanades ran along the sea front. From there the town rose quite steeply to a skyline where the port’s taller buildings showed - churches, a castellated turrety sort of tower. The cafes and shops were busy, people all about. Mrs Vidamour’d told me cars were forbidden on Sark, but you could hire one on Guernsey. ‘Cheaper,’ she interrupted herself sharply, ‘than on Jersey.’ Swift into local camouflage, I agreed that wicked old Jersey was extortionate about motor cars, the rotten lot.

  Antique shops weren’t plenteous, but there were some. In two hours I’d drifted past the main ones, and started hunting out others. By confessing myself the famous impressario, I received attention and advice from everybody. St Peter Port is lovely, the people a delight.

  At the gallery, visitors were being taught about paintings. I listened to the gent who was giving the talk. Very knowledgeable. I heard him out and went to him after the group moved on.

  ‘Morning,’ I said. ‘Liked your talk.’

  ‘Dealer?’ He was a rubicose man in a blazer, brass buttons with nautical emblems, club tie, moustache, innocent beery face except for the eyes.

  ‘Me? No. I’m in showbiz. Just came in out of the rain.’

  ‘Not across the harbour on a bicycle, presumably what?’ he twinkled. I still hadn’t got the hang of that saying. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Who’s the expert on paintings?’ I asked politely. ‘Is it yourself?’

  ‘Hardly. I’m a guide. Jimmy Ozanne. Old Guernsey name.’

  ‘Good, er, good.’ I tried to look pleased. ‘Only, has anywhere here got a massive collection of modernist paintings? Expressionist, that sort of period? I’m due to meet a pal, and I’ve forgotten the name of the place he told me.’ He said, endearing himself, ‘Your pal’s possibly going to tackle Victor Hugo’s house. Hugo wanted to be near Normandy, and lived here.’

  Airs Vidamour had already shown me how to look for the Normandy coast, ‘should you wish to, Jonno’. I hadn’t yet felt the need.

  ‘Thought Victor Hug
o was French?’

  ‘Rum cove, him,’Jimmy Ozanne said. ‘Settled here after being exiled, in 1855. Lived here fifteen years. Bought Hau-teville House the following year and packed the place with bits of everything. He sliced up old furniture, diced and restitched carpets. Wandered half the night. Amusing old codger, what what?’

  ‘Are his furnishings still there?’ I asked, ill at the notion of an antiques slicer.

  ‘Yes. You OK, Mr Rant?’

  So much for secrecy. ‘Bad crossing yesterday.’ The thought of some silly old goon wantonly murdering antiques made me feel worse.

  ‘There are tablets for airsickness. Ask Rosa Vidamour.’ ‘Ta,’ I said. ‘How do I find Hauteville House?’

  ‘It’s way out facing South Beach, Jonno. Quite a walk.’ He meant just over a mile. I made it at speed.

  Three hours later I was sitting in a nosh bar - they’re posh in Guernsey - almost sobbing into my coffee. Victor Hugo must have been a psychotic nut. The guide books seem so proud, of how he took pieces of craftsmen’s genius and dissected them, then assembled the chucks as he thought fit. He painted and wrote, but at what cost? I went all over Hauteville House and felt ravished, my brain clattering about untethered in my skull from the daft old buffoon’s massacres. OK, he did design tapestries and ‘created’. And he collected, so it was well worth a robbery or two. Or three. But honour for Victor Hugo? He gets none from me, the destructive swine.

  He built a glass-walled studio at the very top of the house. Sometimes he’d go and stare at France. Myself, I wish he’d done more gazing and less decorating. Everywhere, they give his quip, ‘J’ai manque ma vocation . . .’ Whatever it means, I hope it was a profound apology.

  No Expressionist-like paintings there, though.

  A shabby portly bloke with a garden gnome’s beard and bedraggled attire came and sat opposite. He wore a grubby knitted wool hat, but it couldn’t keep his locks in. I’d never seen so much hair on anybody. He watched me eat.