Firefly Gadroon

by Jonathan Gash

  She snapped her fingers at me impatiently. ‘I said cigarette.’

  If I was putting up with her for the price of a pasty I sure as hell had no fags. ‘I’ll tell your mother you smoke.’

  ‘Sod it.’ She rose and paced among the clutter. ‘This place is bleeding perishing, Lovejoy. Light the fire.’

  I ignored her and attended to the cage. The coal version had something the bamboo antique had not. If you ran your fingers down its length there was a faint step just palpable halfway. Squinting sideways you couldn’t see it. Another use for the coat of lacquer, to conceal a carved line round the cage? I took a pin from a drawer and slit the lacquer along the line, feeling my way in fractions. So the carver had copied the bamboo cage exactly the same but different, so to speak. It could easily be lacquered again.

  ‘Is there likely to be anything inside?’ I asked.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ She was sulking furiously now. Our relationship was going downhill. I wouldn’t have minded except she was the one with the money.

  It seemed worth looking at the cage from all angles. The box was slightly smaller at the top than the bottom, like two bits of a telescope. I pressed the top down gently. After a faint pause it slid easily into the bottom half a little way and the door swung open. The whole thing was its own key. Clever.

  That stopped the sulks. Her lust came back, force nine. ‘Give it here, Lovejoy!’

  ‘Hang on.’ I deflected her hand and peered in at the little space. Empty. I’d guessed that.

  Now, I thought. If a box was meticulously designed to conceal its own hollow emptiness, whatever needed hiding had to be in the walls, right? And since there was no other key . . . I held the little door ajar and pressed the box’s top half down again. I was wrong. Not the walls. It was in the legs. One was hollow.

  The corner of the box floor tilted, leaving a triangular hole. Keeping the cage firm I switched the lights off and got my pencil torch to peer down inside the hollow stumpy leg. Nothing except faint spiralling down the wall of the hollow. For a moment I caught a brief flash of mauve, or thought I did. I looked again but only saw the black interior of the hollow cut deep into the leg. I showed Maud.

  Just my luck. ‘Whatever was in there’s gone.’

  ‘Shit.’ She snatched the cage before I could move. She peered into the minuscule hollow leg of the coal cage and glared at me in disgust. ‘Useless.’ She put the lights on and halted, staring at me. ‘What’s up, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Nowt.’ But I was clammy and cold for no reason. You feel stupid when that happens.

  ‘You’re white.’ Maud pulled her coat round her. ‘No wonder, living in this gunge. It’s freezing in here.’

  It had been the shadow. Maud’s firefly cage had cast a shadow in the dark room. The pencil torch had thrown a curious blunt dark patch on my wall, very fleeting. I’d only caught it with the corner of my eye for an instant before it vanished as Maud bent to look in the cage. I was shaking like a frightened colt.

  I’m honestly not the imaginative sort. No, honestly. After all what’s more stupid than letting yourself get scared of nothing? And a shadow’s nothing. I mean to say, a grown man, for God’s sake. I mopped my face with my sleeve, cold and hot all at once.

  A motor-horn sounded twice outside. I started towards the window but Maud snorted.

  ‘Keep calm. It’s only my gig.’ She was still mad at not finding anything, but what had she expected? She’d still got two glorious works of art, one a genuine antique, the other a brilliant modern copy in a unique material.

  ‘Gig?’ I nodded wisely, thinking, what’s a gig? Must be some sort of motor-car.

  She rammed both firefly cages into her handbag and snapped it shut. My stomach turned at the risk the two beautiful little objects were running, living with good old Maud. I suppose my face changed because she was suddenly amused.

  ‘These things really turn you on, don’t they?’ She paused suddenly in the hall on the way to the door. ‘Do you want them?’

  ‘Eh?’ There must be a catch in it. Birds like Maud don’t become instant Sweet Charity for nothing. ‘Well, yes. But I’m a bit short . . .’

  ‘Your pay for opening the cage,’ she said. There was a pause full of significance. The hall’s only narrow. She came even closer and slowly put her hand round me under my shirt and squeezed with steady insistence.

  ‘Er, well,’ I said hoarsely. ‘I, er, usually charge, er—’

  She lifted my hand on to her breast. Tinker had been right about her. She really was luscious. ‘Which is it, Lovejoy?’ Her voice went into a husky whisper. ‘You can have the cages. Or you can be tonight’s gig. Which?’

  Well, I’d already got a motor. A motionless one, but definitely a horseless carriage. ‘The cages.’

  She yelped and pushed me back. ‘You bastard!’ I fell over the carpet.

  By the time I’d got up she’d stormed off, taking the cages with her. I went to the door and saw Big Frank’s car. It was rolling backwards out of my garden, being followed by Maud’s bubble car, and the penny finally dropped. So that’s a gig, I thought. A gig’s a bloke or a bird, or any combination of the two. Well, well. That seemed the end of Maud and me, and the end of my – well, her – lovely firefly cages. A woman scorned and all that. I shut the door as the phone rang.

  ‘Lovejoy! Where have you been?’ Helen.

  ‘Hello, love. Look. Can you come round urgently, please?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’ My voice must have sounded odd because she said, ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Something for you. Be quick.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A gig,’ I said, casually as I could. ‘Oh, love. Can you bring a pasty?’

  Chapter 5

  You must admit, sometimes women deserve gratitude. Like I mean even with Helen staying I woke sweating and shivering now and then throughout the night.

  Next morning she brewed up in the alcove and fetched the cups across. I could feel her looking interrogatively at me, but pretended to be reading Kelly on restoring oil paintings.

  ‘Lovejoy.’

  ‘Mmmm?’ I turned a page carelessly but she took the book away to see my face.

  ‘You spent a terrible night.’ She said it like an accusation, but who the hell has nightmares deliberately? No wonder women peeve you.

  I said tut-tut. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Muttering and threshing all night long.’

  I lowered my eyes innocently. ‘I’m not used to having company in bed. Makes me restless.’

  She choked laughing and nearly drenched herself in instant coffee. ‘Lovejoy! You’re preposterous!’

  I watched her fall about. Women are lovely in the morning, faintly dishevelled but warm and soft. Morning women aren’t half so vicious as the night sort. I always find they’re more fond of me. You can get away with more after a night’s closeness. Odd, but true. Helen’s no exception. She always wears my threadbare dressing-gown to slop about in. It makes no difference to the allure you feel, just seeing her sit on the edge of the bed lost inside the tattered garment. After rolling in the aisles some more she sobered and asked me about shadows.

  ‘The one you got up to draw on the wall.’

  ‘Eh? I did no such thing.’

  She pointed to the wall near the mantelpiece. I’d thought she was asleep when I did it. And there was me tiptoeing about like a fool with my torch half the night, which shows how treacherous women are, deep down. She’d been watching all the time.

  ‘You should have been kipping,’ I said coldly.

  Helen was at the pencilled outline, head tilted. ‘What’s it a shadow of, Lovejoy? A leaning castle? A window? A book, end on?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  If she hadn’t been an antique dealer I might have told her what was on my mind. The lines showed the firefly cage’s silhouette almost exactly as I’d cast the shadow last night when Maud called. There’s this old iron grate in my living room with a cornice above and a bra
ss rail about head high. A painting I did years ago of the Roman road at Bradwell hangs nearby. Then there’s a space where I used to have my Wellington chest before I flogged it for bread six months back. Then there’s a tatty reddish curtain busily festering in whatever feeble sunlight totters through the window’s grime, and that’s about it. The shadow had stretched obliquely up from the black grate’s mantelpiece almost as far as the corner. Climbing up there to mark it in the darkness had been really difficult. I’d nearly broken my bloody neck. I had the odd feeling I wouldn’t have been so frightened of the odd lopsided shape if it had stayed exactly like the firefly cage. It was the skewed slanting weirdness of it on the wall that was so petrifying. But why? I closed my eyes. Maybe I was going off my nut. I’d gone clammy again.

  Helen came back and put her arms round me. ‘Don’t be scared, love.’

  That really got me. I broke away, annoyed. ‘Who’s scared?’ Some women really nark me, always jumping to stupid conclusions with no reason. ‘It’s a . . . a scientific problem, you daft berk.’

  ‘ ’Course it is, love,’ she said, not turning a hair. ‘You’re right. Sorry, sweetheart. I meant . . . preoccupied.’

  That mollified me a bit. ‘Well, all right then.’ But my eyes kept getting dragged to the grotesque quadrilateral on the wall. I’d used crayon and charcoal to. thicken the outline here and there. I’ve been scared of some real things before, but never a bloody shadow.

  ‘What do you want for breakfast, love?’

  ‘Er, I’m not hungry . . .’

  Her eyes narrowed. She went searching.

  ‘Ferreting in people’s cupboards is very rude,’ I reprimanded.

  She started to slam about, flinging some clothes on. ‘There’s nothing here, Lovejoy! Not a single thing to eat.’

  ‘Isn’t there? Good heavens! I forgot to call in—’

  She had wet eyes when she finally stood over me, arms akimbo. ‘What am I to do with you, Lovejoy?’

  You feel such a twerp lying down starkers when everybody else is up. Socially disadvantaged. ‘Look, love,’ I said uncomfortably, but she swept her coat and handbag up and slammed into the hall. The outside door shook the cottage to its foundations. I sighed. Unless you count Tinker, that meant I’d alienated practically all mankind, and even Tinker was narked because I hadn’t charged Joe Lampton over divvying his book. Anyway, what is grub to do with Helen? She only eats yoghurt. I lay there listening and thinking, aren’t people a lot of trouble. Helen’s car started and scuffed away.

  The shape scared me. All right, I admit it. Somehow it made my scalp moisten and my palms run. Somewhere it had scared me even worse than now, not as a mere scraped outline done in a wobbly hand during the dark hours, but in a solid terrifying reality, with the great oblique rectangle . . . I’d seen it before.

  I was in the garden in my pyjamas when Helen returned. There’s this unfinished decorative wall I keep meaning to brick to an end when I get a minute. It’s a sitting and thinking wall. She drew the car up. You could tell she was still mad from the way it slithered.

  ‘What are you doing out here, Lovejoy? You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘Oh, just watching the birds.’ They walk about on my grass being boring. What a life. Nearly as successful as mine. Helen’s eyes left me and observed the open cottage door behind me. I was frigging freezing. It was an airy fresh morning and the grass wet through.

  ‘Come back in with me.’ She got out, her arms full of brown bags. ‘Let’s feed you up before we do anything else. I’ll go in first.’

  ‘Caviare and chips, please,’ I joked, following her. My bum was frozen from the wall. Helen didn’t smile. I always think that’s the trouble with women. No sense of humour.

  About Helen: she is reserved, in charge of herself and usually boss of everybody in arm’s reach. She isn’t like Angela, say, or Jill or Patrick, who couldn’t have made it as antique dealers without considerable fortunes from interested donors. She’s a careful blue-eyed cigarette-smoker you don’t take for granted. And there’s no doubt about her dealing skills, so precisely focused on oriental art, fairings and African ethnology. Helen’s not an instant warm like Dolly. More of a slow burn.

  While she made breakfast and I shaved I couldn’t help thinking about her. Antique oriental art. We’d been close when she first hove in from one of the coastal fishing villages. Eventually she bought a little terraced house in the ancient Dutch quarter near the antiques arcade, and she’d arrived. Now, I thought, politely passing the marmalade, why are we suddenly so friendly again? It haunted me all the way into town, because antique oriental art includes Japanese firefly cages of the Edo period, right?

  Sadly, I’m afraid this next chunk is about that terrible stuff called money and those precious delectables we call antiques. You’ve probably got cartloads of both. But if you are penniless please read on and save yourself a bob or two.

  Helen dropped me in the arcade. This is a long glass-covered pavement walk with minute alcoves leading off. Each is no more than a single room-sized shop with a recess at the back. It doesn’t sound a lot but costs the earth in rates. That’s why we dealers regard possession of a drum in the arcade as a sign that you’re one of the elite. Woody’s Bar perfumes the place with an aroma of charred grease. We all meet there for nosh because it’s the cheapest known source of cholesterol-riddled pasties and we can all watch Lisa undulate between tables. She’s a tall willowy PhD archaeologist temporarily forced into useful employment by the research cutbacks – the only known benefit of any postwar government. Woody keeps messages for barkers like Tinker while serving up grilled typhoid. I always pop in to Woody’s for a cup of outfall first, to suss out the day’s scene.

  ‘Wotcher, Woody!’ I called breezily. ‘Tea and an archaeologist, please.’

  ‘It’s arrived, lads,’ Woody croaked. He’s a corpulent moustache in a greasy apron. ‘Chain it down.’

  ‘Here, Lovejoy.’ That was Brad beckoning through the acrid fumes. He’d only want to moan about the scandalous prices flintlocks were bringing. He couldn’t be more upset about it than me, so I pretended not to see him for the smoke.

  A few mutters of greeting and glances from bloodshot eyeballs acknowledged my arrival. My public. Pilsen was in, a half-crazy religious kite collector who lives down on the Lexton fields somewhere. Devlin was absent, which mercifully postponed the next war. Harry Bateman was in the far corner still trying to buy a complete early Worcester dining set for a dud shilling, and Jason our ex-army man was still shaking his head. What puzzles me is that Harry – a typical antique dealer, never paid a good price for anything in his life – thinks other people are unreasonable. Liz Sandwell waved, smiling. She’s high class, a youngish bird with her own shop in Dragonsdale village. Her own bloke’s a rugby player, but I’d never seen the geezer she had with her now. She had three pieces of Russian niello jewellery pendants on the table between them – think of silver delicately ingrained with black. One was the pendant Devlin had complained to me about. I crossed ever so casually near her but Liz stopped talking so I couldn’t hear the prices. Wise lass. That way I landed Pilsen.

  ‘Wotcher, Pilsen. Get rid of your scroll?’

  ‘A blessing from the Lord upon thy morning,’ Pilsen intoned, hand raised.

  ‘Er, ta, Pilsen.’ I sat gingerly opposite while his head bowed in prayer.

  ‘May heaven bring its grace upon Lovejoy and our holy meeting.’

  ‘Tea, Lovejoy.’ Lisa plonked a cup down. She always ruffles my thatch. ‘Money, please. Woody says no credit for the likes of you.’

  ‘Ruined any good antiques lately?’ We’re always arguing. I’ve not forgiven Lisa for what the professional archaeologists did to the Roman graves at Stanway, bloody grave-robbers.

  ‘Don’t start.’ She edged away. ‘And keep your hands off my leg.’

  ‘Oh God. Forgive thy erring servant Lovejoy his wickedness . . .’

  ‘Shut up praying, Pilsen.’ Religion’s bad for the soul. �
��That Ethiopian amulet scroll. What’s your price?’

  ‘A Cantonese ceremonial dragon kite,’ he said instantly. ‘Or no sale.’

  I sighed. I’d been trying to get that Ethiopian scroll for months. There are literally thousands knocking about, but Pilsen’s was special. They are passed down in families which festoon their donkeys, sometimes as many as three dozen dripping from a single beast’s neck to protect them on the road. Richer people had silver filigree containers as long as your finger to hold one. Others put them in horn cylinders or leather boxes. At the time of that appalling drought, dealers went over and shipped them on to the antiques markets of the world literally by the hundredweight. St Michael’s a popular figure, usually the main one of five pictures separated longitudinally by calligraphed passages from Gospels. The eyes will prove them genuine. Nobody can paint those eyes with only a stick like the old Copts. Those and the delectable glowing brick-orange of the dyes. Pilsen’s was the oldest and best-preserved scroll I’d ever seen, and he wanted the impossible.

  ‘A Bible box?’ I offered resignedly.

  ‘Get knotted,’ said this holy paragon. He gave me a quick blessing and shot out of the door, having been waved at through Woody’s window by Maud. Now there’s a thing, I thought. Pilsen and Maud. Well, well. Maud took his arm and they strolled off down the arcade. She was being her beautiful best, suited and high-heeled. The slop of her social worker set was gone. She looked straight off a fashion page. Odderer still. I decided to follow. Lily tried flagging me down from her table but I hurtled past.

  ‘See you in the White Hart, love.’

  ‘But Tinker said . . .’

  I dithered frantically, then resigned myself and screeched to a stop. Just as I’m Tinker’s only source of income, so Tinker’s messages are my only lifeline. Lily hopefully pushed the tissue paper bundles across the table as I plumped down.