Firefly Gadroon

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘. . . you’ll have these.’

  That sounded a bit high-handed for Tinker. Lily was risking a bowl of Woody’s opaque gelatinous soup. She used to be with Patrick until the Widow Deirdre homed in on him. Now she miserably endures her pleasant husband and all the comforts of home and affluence. Looking across at her I despaired of women. Some just seem to need to carry a heavy crucifix, and I’ll bet crucifixes don’t come any heavier than Patrick. Yet since losing him she’d been at a low ebb. The trouble is I’m too soft.

  ‘Right, love.’ I slipped them into my pocket, nodding. Pilsen and Maud would be in the High Street by now. ‘Settle up later tonight?’

  Lily was relieved. ‘Thanks, Lovejoy. They’re not perfect.’

  ‘Who is, love?’ I cracked, bussed her and shot out into the arcade, managing to ignore Woody’s howl for his tea money, impudent berk. Gelt, for that swill. I ask you.

  And Pilsen and Maud had gone. Great. I darted frantically among the shoppers for a few minutes hoping to see them but kept falling over pushchairs and dogs. Margaret was at the door of her shop. She’d seen me streak past.

  She curtsied. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  I went in resignedly. ‘Wotcher, Margaret. Still got the Norfolk lanterns?’

  ‘Special price for you, Lovejoy.’

  Gazing about the interior of her enclosure depressed me more. Practically all of her stuff was priced and labelled by me because we’re, er, close. Margaret’s one of those older women who are clever dressers, interesting and bonny; she has a slight limp from some marriage campaign. Nobody asks about her bloke, whoever he was. His dressing-gown fits me, though.

  ‘Put them to one side for me, love.’

  You’ll see a thousand reproduction Norfolk lamps for every genuine antique one, and a real antique pair is so rare that . . . well, it’s no good going on. Imagine you took an ordinary earthenware drinking mug, complete with handle, then bored assorted holes in the side. You’d have made a Norfolk lantern. They were used with oil and a perforating wick or, more usually, a candle stump. The holes are often arranged in cruciform patterns. Margaret got them from an old farmhouse. Well, I thought, I owe everybody else. Why not admit Margaret to my famous payment-by-deficit scheme?

  ‘Did Lily catch you with her coal carvings?’

  Coal carvings? ‘Eh?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  I sat on a reed-bottomed Suffolk chair and fumbled the tissue paper bundles out. There were three. It’s difficult not having a lap so I unwrapped them one by one. A little cart, crudely done, an even more imperfect donkey, and a little hut of some sort. All very poor quality, each chipped and frayed. But definitely coal. Miners everywhere have tried a hand at carving the ‘black diamond’, but there was a world of difference between the lovely firefly cage and these. These were crude rubbish, the most inept carvings I’d ever seen. Modern crap. I wrapped them, thinking hard.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  I had to catch Lily and find where she’d got them, though this isn’t the sort of thing one antique dealer ever dares ask another. Oddly, they reminded me of something or somebody . . . I looked up. The alcove had suddenly darkened and there was this chauffeur, resplendent in uniform. I stared. He looked as though he’d left a thoroughbred nag tethered to the traffic lights.

  ‘You Lovejoy?’ he snapped, all crisp.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come on.’ Clearly not a man to be trifled with.

  ‘Clear off.’ I stayed on the Suffolk chair.

  ‘You’ve to come with me,’ he said, amazed. ‘Mrs Hepplestone instructs.’

  Oho. So my newspaper advert had gone full circle. I’d throttle Elsie for turning me in, especially to a serf like this.

  ‘Sorry, mate.’

  He reached over and hauled me to my feet. ‘Don’t muck me about,’ he was saying threateningly when his voice cut off owing to me taking reprisals. I had to be careful because Margaret always has a lovely display of porcelain in, and never enough reliable shelves to show the pieces off properly. He gasped for air while I leant him against the door jamb.

  Margaret hastily put the ‘Closed’ notice up. ‘Lovejoy! Stop it this instant!’

  ‘He started it!’ Honestly, I thought, narked. It’s no good. Even trying to stay innocent I get the blame. There’s no justice.

  ‘I saw you!’ she accused. ‘You fisted him in the abdomen.’

  A couple of potential browsers peered in, smiling, then reeled hurriedly away at the scene in the shop. Time I went. No way of winning here for the moment.

  ‘See you, love.’

  ‘But this poor man . . .’

  ‘Chance of a quick sale.’ I grinned and left him wheezing.

  Lily had gone when I reached Woody’s again. I asked Lisa where to but nobody knew. It was one of those days. Thinking hard about the three crummy coal carvings, I wandered disconsolately along the arcade, exchanging the odd word here and there with the lads and lassies. A kid could have carved better. Yet they were a clue, if I could only think.

  Jane Felsham saw me shambling past and hauled me in – well, beckoned imperiously. I’ve a soft spot for Jane. She’s thirtyish and shapely, mainly English watercolours and Georgian silver. She sports a mile-long fag-holder to keep us riff-raff at bay.

  ‘Your big moment to help, Lovejoy,’ she told me airily. ‘To work.’

  Remembering Tinker’s admonition to fix a price for my services first, I drew breath. Then Jane showed me the plate. It was wriggle-work, genuine wriggle-work. My mind went blank and I was into her place like a flash. All was suddenly peace and light. Pewter’s the most notoriously difficult collecting field, but some pieces just leap at you. This was a William III plate, with a crowned portrait bust of the King centred in a rim decorated by engraved wriggles. It screamed originality. Many don’t care for pewter, but its value should ease any artistic qualms you have. Weight for weight it can be more precious than silver. It had the right pewter sheen, like reflection from a low sun on our sea marshes. Modern copies don’t have it, though heaven knows some are great. Jane was poking me.

  ‘Lovejoy. I asked is it original?’

  ‘Luscious,’ I confessed brokenly. ‘Just feel its beat.’

  She was delighted. While I priced and labelled it correctly my eyes lit upon a genuine old Sphairistike racquet. I couldn’t block my involuntary exclamation. Jane looked puzzled.

  ‘That? I thought it was just an old tennis racket—’

  I sighed. People really hurt my feelings sometimes. ‘Once upon a time, love, a retired major invented a game for playing on the croquet lawn. He invented a name, too. Sphairistike. It’s called tennis now.’

  That pewter sheen lured my eyes back but it would cost my cottage. I asked her if she had any coal carvings. She said no without emitting a single bleep.

  I left and did a bit more divvying for the goons in the arcade, seeing I was unemployed and had passed up the only chance I had of improving matters. Anyhow, I reasoned, Josiah Wedgwood’s famous ‘Fourteenth Commandment’ was ‘Thou shalt not be idle,’ so who am I to quibble? I asked everywhere about coal carvings. Harry Bateman caught my interest with an old countryman’s dove-feeder, genuine eighteenth-century. They make reproductions in country potteries now, but the shape’s the same – a big stoneware bottle siamesed to a smaller one, with half of the side scooped from the titch to let the bird drink. Jenny thought she had a priceless item – a King Alfred hammered silver penny.

  ‘It’s been mounted, love.’ I showed her the plug where somebody had sealed the pendant attachment. Mounts or holes in a coin don’t quite make it worthless but my advice is to simply move on.

  ‘Does it matter?’ she asked, poor soul. ‘That only proves it’s real, though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It would have been worth a year’s takings. Now . . .’ I saw her eyes fill at the disappointment and scarpered. I had enough problems without taking on psychotherapy. And neither Harry nor
Jenny had seen a coal carving in months.

  Dig Mason was waiting for me and dragged me across the arcade. He’s the wealthiest dealer in the arcade. I quite like Dig, though he has more money than sense. Like now.

  ‘You didn’t buy that, Dig?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Fairings are so-called ‘amusing’ pottery figures you used to win at fairs for roll-a-penny or chucking balls into buckets. They were made in Germany between 1860 and 1890, and were given away as worthless in junk shops when I was a kid. Now, things being the way they are, they cost the earth – well, at least a full week’s wages for one.

  ‘Hong Kong, Dig,’ I said sadly. ‘Made this month. That dirt’s soot from an open oil-wick.’

  ‘You’re kidding—’

  It was a ceramic of a man washing himself and stopping a lady from entering. This ‘Modesty’ figure is one of the rarest, but the commonest (a couple getting into bed, in the form of a candleholder) is also forged.

  ‘I’ve no time even for the originals either, Dig,’ I told him, but he was mortified.

  ‘You rnust be wrong, Lovejoy—’

  He too hadn’t seen any coal carvings lately, so I pushed on. All fairings are ugly to me. Hong Kong will make you a gross of the wretched things, properly decorated and meticulously copied, for two quid or even less. A couple of dozen of these forgeries will keep you in idle affluence a year or so – if you’re unscrupulous, that is.

  As poor as I arrived, I borrowed a coin from Lisa and telephoned the White Hart. By a strange stroke of luck Tinker was in there getting kaylied. He didn’t know where Lily had got the three carvings from, either. I slammed the phone down in a temper. A harassed woman was waiting for the phone. She had this little girl with eyes like blue saucers.

  ‘I’m so sorry to ask you,’ she said to me. ‘But could you watch Bernice while I phone? I’ll only be a second—’

  Feeling a right nerk, I sat on the pedestrian railing holding this little girl’s hand outside the phone-box. Brad happened by on his way to viewing day at the auction. Seeing me there looking daft he drew breath to guffaw but I raised a warning finger and he soberly crossed over looking everywhere but at me. Bernice was about three, and obviously a real traffic lover. She kept trying to crawl under everybody’s feet into the motor-car maelstrom. She told me about her toy, a wooden donkey pulling a cart. And the cart was full of seashells. I thought about it a lot. Pewter sheen, like sun on an estuary. Donkey. Cart. Seashells. And a little hut. I showed her my coal carvings, trying to keep my legs out of everybody’s way.

  Bernice’s mother came out, breathlessly dropping parcels like they do. ‘Thank you so much. Was she good? It’s the traffic I’m worried about . . .’

  ‘My pleasure,’ I said. And I meant it.

  If I’d had time I might have chatted the bird up. As it was, the baby’s toy donkey-cart full of seashells had reminded me that down in the estuary Drummer and Germoline, pride of the seaside sands, made an honest if precarious living. I tore up the streets looking for a lift and saw Dolly’s car by the war memorial.

  Chapter 6

  Dolly ran me down to the estuary going on for three o’clock. Our whole coast hereabouts is indented by creeks, inlets, tidal mudflats and marshes. As you approach the sealands you notice that the trees become less enthusiastic, stunted and leaning away from gales on the low skyline. They have a buttoned-up look about them even on the mildest day. Then the sea marshes show between the long runs of banks and dykes. You see the masts foresting thinly among the dunes’ tufted undulations. Anglers abound, sitting gawping at their strings in all weathers. A few blokes can be seen digging in the marsh flats among the weeds. Well, whatever turns you on, but it’s a hell of a hobby in a rainstorm. A lot of visitors come to lurk among the reeds with binoculars when they could be holidaying in a lovely smokey town among the antique shops, which only goes to show what a rum lot people are.

  ‘Head for the staithe, Dolly.’

  ‘I must be mad in this weather, Lovejoy.’

  The birds are different, too, sort of runners and shovellers instead of the bouncy peckers that raise Cain in my patch if you’re slow with their morning cheese.

  There seemed a lot of fresh air about. The wind was whipping up as Dolly’s motor lurched us down the gravel path between the sea dykes, blowing in gusts and hurtling white clouds low over the water. A staithe is a wharf alongside a creek where boats can come and lie tilted on sands at low water. You tie them to buoys or these iron rings and leave them just to hang about. Tides come and go, and the boats float or sag as the case may be. The main river’s estuary’s littered with the wretched things.

  ‘There’s nobody here, Lovejoy.’ Accusations again.

  ‘Drummer’s bound to be.’

  ‘I should have brought an extra cardigan.’

  We got out. The wind whipped my hair across to blind me and roared in my ears. The force of it was literally staggering. For a moment I wondered what the terrible racket was. It sounded like a thousand crystal chandeliers tinkling in weird cacophony. Then I realized. The masts. They’re not wood any more. They’re some tin stuff, hollow all the way down. And the wind was jerking the ropes and wires, thrashing every one against its mast. There’s never less than a hundred boats at least, either drawn up or slumped on the flats at low water. Say three taps a second, that’s three hundred musical chimes every pulse beat, which in one hour makes—

  ‘Lovejoy. For heaven’s sake!’

  Dolly had gathered her camelhair coat tight about her, clutching the collar at her chin. Her hair was lashing about her face. I’d never consciously noticed before, but women in high heels bend one leg and lean the foot outwards when they’re standing still. In a rising wind they exaggerate the posture. Odd, that. She was on the seaward side of me, caught against the pale scudding sky. She looked perished and had to shout over the racket of the gale and the musical masts.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she shrieked. ‘Lovejoy. Stop daydreaming. We could be home, with a fire . . .’

  ‘You’re beautiful, Dolly.’

  Her face changed. She can’t have heard but saw my lips move. She stepped to me, letting go of her coat, which snapped open and almost tugged her off her feet. We reached for each other, all misty, and this bloody donkey came between us. Its wet nose ploshed horribly into my palm.

  ‘Christ!’ I leapt a mile. We’d found Germoline.

  ‘Morning, Lovejoy. Miss.’

  My heart was thumping while I wiped my hand on my sleeve. It had frightened me to death. Dolly was livid. Normally she’d have scurried about for some bread, or whatever you give donkeys, but just now I could tell she could have cheerfully crippled it. She muttered under her breath and concentrated on not getting blown out to sea.

  ‘Wotcher, Drummer.’ He had his estuary gear on, the tartan beret with its bedraggled tuft. Still the battered sand-stained clogs and the scarf trailing across the mud, the frayed cuffs and battledress khaki turn-ups. His donkey looked smaller if anything. I wondered vaguely if they shrank.

  ‘Say hello to Germoline, then.’ He grinned at Dolly. ‘She loves Lovejoy.’

  Dolly managed a distant pat. Germoline stepped closer and leant on me. This sounds graceful but isn’t. She wears a collar made from an old tyre with spherical jingle-bells, the sort that adorn reindeer so elegantly. Usually you can hear her for miles. The din of the boats had submerged her approach. Add to that the problem of her two-wheeled cart – it holds four children on little side benches – and even the friendliest lean becomes a threat. Anyhow I leant back, feeling a right pillock.

  ‘Want a ride?’ Every time Drummer grins his false teeth fall together with a clash. Whatever folk say about our estuary, I’ll bet it’s the noisiest estuary in the business.

  ‘A word,’ I bawled.

  ‘My house, then.’

  I scanned the estuary without ecstasy. Over the reed-banks stands Drummer’s shed, looking impossible to reach across dunes and snaking rivulets that join
the sea a couple of furlongs off. A row of proper houses stands back behind the wharf where the pathway joins the main road, aloof from the seaside rabble. The tallest of them is a coastguard station. It’s not much to look at but it has those masts and a proper flagpole and everything. Joe Poges was on his white-railed balcony with binoculars. He waved. Joe’s one of life’s merry jokers, but all the same I quite like him. His missus gives Drummer dinner now and then. Knowing how much I would be hating all this horrible fresh air, Joe did a quick knees-bend exercise and beat his chest like Tarzan. It was too far to see his grin but I knew he’d fall about for days at his witticism and tell everybody they should have seen my face. I waved and the distant figure saluted.

  ‘That’s Joe, Miss,’ Drummer explained, his teeth crashing punctuation. ‘Home, Germoline.’

  Dolly tried clinging to my arm on the way over but I shook her off. I was in enough trouble. There was no real path, just patches of vaguely darker weeds showing where the mud would hold. Twice I heard Dolly yelp and a quick splash. Life’s tough and I didn’t wait. I was too anxious to put my feet where Germoline put hers. Halfway across the sea marsh Germoline turned of her own accord facing me and waited while Drummer unhitched the cart. I swear she was grinning as we set off again. Her hooves were covered in the sticky mud. Drummer always ties blue and white ribbons to her tail, his football team’s colours.

  We made it. He’s laid a small tiled area near the shed door. Germoline jongled her way to a lean-to and started eating from a manger inside. Dolly arrived gasping and wind-tousled.

  ‘Lovejoy,’ she wheezed. ‘You horrid—’

  ‘Keep Germoline company a minute, please, love,’ I said. Drummer went in to brew up.

  It took a second for her to realize. Then she exploded. ‘Stay out here?’ She tried to push me aside. ‘In this? Of all the—’

  I shoved her out and slammed the door. It has to be first things first. She banged and squawked but I dropped the bolt. ‘Sorry, Drummer.’

  Drummer was grinning through crashes of pottery teeth. ‘Still the same old Lovejoy. Here, son. Wash them cups.’