Firefly Gadroon

by Jonathan Gash

  I pumped the ancient handle while Drummer lit an oil lamp. There are scores of freshwater springs hereabouts, and some even emerge in the sea. Old sailors still fill up with fresh water miles off the North Sea coast where the freshwater ‘pipes’, as they’re called, ascend to the ocean’s surface. They say you can tell where a pipe is from the sort of fish that knock around. Drummer chucked some driftwood into his iron stove. There’s not a lot of space, just a camp bed, a table and a chair or two, shelves and a picture of Lord Kitchener and a blue glass vase with dried flowers. A few clothes hung behind the door with Germoline’s spare harness.

  ‘Coal carvings, Drummer.’ I’d checked Dolly couldn’t hear. ‘Know anything?’

  ‘Ar,’ he answered, nodding when I looked round enquiringly from the sink because locally the same word can mean no as well as yes. ‘It’s getting the right sort of tar coal nowadays.’

  ‘Much call for them?’

  ‘Ar,’ with a headshake. ‘I sold three this week.’ 65

  I sat at his rickety old table and pulled out the three carvings. ‘Drummer,’ I said sadly, ‘they’re horrible.’

  ‘What d’you expect, Lovejoy?’ he demanded indignantly. ‘Anyway, people needn’t buy them. And they aren’t bad as all that.’

  True. But if these three monstrosities were Drummer’s idea of art, then sure as God sends Sunday he’d never carved the lovely firefly cage.

  ‘Just suppose a bloke saw a coal carving,’ I got in when his teeth plummeted and shut him up, ‘so intricate and clever it blew his mind. Where would he look for whoever did it? Think, Drummer.’

  ‘I already know. My mate Bill.’ Drummer inhaled a ton of snuff from a tea-caddy and voomed like a landmine. The shed misted with his contaminating droplets. ‘That’s better—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bill Hepplestone. Me and him was mates – till he married up this rich young tart. Farm and all. Not far from here.’ He pointed to show me the kettle was boiling. ‘Stopped coming over at the finish. Too posh. Always trouble, posh women are. Never take up with posh, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Hepplestone?’ The name’s not all that common. I filled the kettle. ‘Any idea where he lives?’

  ‘Dead, son. Poor old Bill. Used to be inland, place called Lesser Cornard in a bleeding great manor house.’

  ‘Right, Drummer. Ta.’ I rose to open the door, finger to my lips. ‘Not a word. I owe you a quid, right?’

  Dolly fell in, blue from the wind. Germoline gave me the bent eye as I shut the door again. It didn’t look as if they’d exactly got on. I beamed at Dolly but all I could think was, great. That’s what I need, to go spitting in the face of fortune. Some uniformed berk of a chauffeur wants to take me right to the bloody place I’m searching for, and I thump him senseless. Really great. Sometimes I’m just thick. Mrs Hepplestone of Hall Lodge Manor. Widow of Bill the coal carver.

  Meanwhile Dolly was tottering towards the glowing stove, whining miserably.

  ‘Ah! You’re there, Dolly!’ I tried to beam but she stayed mad.

  ‘I’ll kill you, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Now, Dolly . . .’

  ‘We’re done, Lovejoy.’ She swung at me, blazing hatred. ‘Finished! Do you hear? I’ve taken my last insult from you. I’ve put up with you long enough—’

  I shrugged at Drummer, who was enjoying it all, chuckling as he poured the tea out. Women are an unreasonable lot. Now I’d have to find the bloody chauffeur and say I’d made a terrible mistake. What a life.

  The next half-hour was the longest I’d ever spent. Dolly sat there in front of the stove with her back speaking volumes of annoyance. She ignored the tea I took her even though I’d given her Drummer’s only saucer.

  We left when Dolly had warmed enough to move. Drummer came out with us to lead us over the salt marshes.

  ‘Tide’s turning,’ he remarked brightly, pointing. It looked the same to me, just a few scattered folk among the boats slanting on the mud, though I noticed one or two boats were floating now.

  Looking seaward, I saw two vaguely familiar figures. I paused to focus better with my streaming eyes peering into the cold north wind. A man and a girl. They were over among the oyster-beds and seemed to be buying some. A fisher lad was hauling on a rope while the man pointed and the girl crouched to peer down into the water. Neither turned to look our way, not even when Germoline brayed and tried to catch Dolly’s heel with her hoof. Odd, that, I thought. The fisher lad heard our donkey, though, and turned to wave, laughing. He takes care of them, the very same oyster beds that the Romans established twenty centuries ago. I waved and we moved on.

  We splashed our way across the precarious muddy shore. It was riskier than before. Puddles were now ponds, and small rivulets had become streams flowing swiftly inland. Once-placid dinghies now tugged irritably at mooring ropes. The almost imperceptible path was untraceable. In several places Germoline’s hoofprints were immersed in the mud and Drummer led us in a detour. We were almost back on the foreshore before I realized. Maud. Only Maud, our beloved social worker, could be that scruffy, hair uncombed and patched jeans frayed, quite at home among a straggle of estuary people hooked on boating. And the neatly dressed bloke, yachting cap, blazer and white flannels, giving orders to an oyster lad as if to the manner born – who else but good old Devlin, doubtless calling for a few dozen oysters to have with his champers at the hunt ball. I could even spot his bandaged hand from here. I prayed he hadn’t seen us, and hurried on after Germoline and the others.

  Drummer fastened Germoline’s cart on and Dolly was given a free ride. By the time we reached the small crumbling wharf the estuary was filling with unnerving speed and the tangle of wrinkled sea marsh was ironed out into a single choppy flood. Joe waved from his coastguard balcony and mimed frantic applause at our feet reaching land, the berk. Drummer handed Dolly down to the firm ground.

  As we left the staithe I couldn’t help glancing down towards the oyster beds. The oyster lad was still working there but Maud and Devvo had disappeared, a hell of a trick on a series of exposed mudflats and marshes. You can see for miles, all the way out to the old World War gun platforms standing miles offshore. Unless they’d gone for a swim, and they hadn’t looked ready for that, especially in this cold.

  ‘Lovejoy. For heaven’s sake!’ Dolly was tugging me up the path.

  I winked at Germoline and said goodbye to Drummer. He clogged off chuckling with a clash of teeth. Three children were waiting by Drummer’s flag for a last ride in Germoline’s cart, so somebody was in luck even if I wasn’t.

  Dolly didn’t speak all the way back to my cottage. There she dumped me unceremoniously and did an angry Grand Prix start, though I asked if she’d see me tomorrow at the Castle pond. Half my gravel went whizzing across the grass from the spinning tyres, I saw with annoyance. It would take me hours shovelling that lot back, if I got round to it.

  I went in thinking of the estuary, and Devvo and Maud’s disappearing trick. She seemed to be going through us antique dealers at a rate of knots. One thing was sure, though. I’d not be included.

  Chapter 7

  Next morning was a red-letter morning, notable for the start of cerebral activity at Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. Not all that brilliant, but a few definite synapses. My threadbare carpet conceals a flagstone inset with an iron ring. Lift it, and you can descend the eight wooden steps into a flag-floor cellar by the light of a candle. It was constructed by loving hands four centuries before this age of jerry-built tat, doubtless serving as some sort of storage place for herbs and harvested stuff. Now it’s ideal for antiques – should any ever happen my way by some freak accident. Down there I have boxes of newspaper cuttings and notes to keep track of deals and auction sales.

  Hall Lodge Manor had had a rough time. From my cuttings our local papers seemed to give it reverential sympathy whenever antique thieves struck – which happened once every few months. Despite ‘elaborate safety precautions’ windows were forced, locks picked, alarm circuits were blistered
and guard dogs distracted with almost monotonous regularity. And every time a few choice items were nicked. Not a lot, just a few. A Norwich School harbour scene attributed to Cotman went missing in its frame the same night a nineteenth-century tribal figure of Guinea ivory vanished from among a display of similar carvings in a bureau. Nothing else seems to have gone on that occasion. Then a matching pair of Gouthiere fire-hearth bronzes went, and with them a diminutive wood-carving described as ‘Adoration of the Magi’. Four months later a gang struck again . . .

  I poison myself with one of those little Dutch cigars on occasions like this. I went back upstairs and sat in the open air for a think. How strange. Nothing has boomed in value like Norwich School paintings, those reflective dark lustrous oils that find a ready market anywhere – and which are very, very hard to identify with precision when you have only a description to go by. And the ivory piece was strange too, because the one type of ivory which all collectors love is the hard best-quality ivory from Guinea, whereas much Ivory Coast, Senegal and Sudanese ivory is semi-soft greyish rubbish. And Gouthiere’s bronzes may not look much, but they won their way into Marie-Antoinette’s boudoir. The woodcarving sounded suspiciously like a South German piece, from the novice reporter’s bumbling narrative. Pictorial woodwork has never surpassed the brilliant German Renaissance craftsmen like Tilman Riemenschneider. Round the stalls I’d heard rumours about such a piece for a year or more.

  It was the same throughout the whole list. Everything pinched fell into the same category – highly prized, collectable and valuable. And quite small. Still, an antiques thief naturally goes for what’s valuable and what he can carry, doesn’t he?

  Hall Lodge Manor had been burgled six times, the last a couple of months before Bill Hepplestone had died. Since then, nothing. I’m not a suspicious-minded bloke but you can’t help thinking.

  I became worried in case this old bird had me pinned for the robberies from her place. Maslow would believe the worst, suspicion being his thing. I’d have to go and calm her down, make her see reason.

  I caught Jacko’s van at the chapel and emerged in town two arias later with shellshock and a pong of decaying fish about my person from his latest cargo.

  On a hunch I walked down to the pond in Castle Park. Dolly was there, watching children boating, and feeding ducks.

  I came chattily up. ‘Hello, love. I’m glad you—’

  ‘Shut up, Lovejoy.’ She took a deep sobering breath and linked my arm. ‘I must be off my head. Come on.’

  She stood us both nosh at the bandstand cafe, asking questions which I did my best to evade. Her odd mood began to evaporate and at the finish she was prattling happily. Eventually I got her to agree to giving me a lift to Mrs Hepplestone’s at Lesser Cornard, lucky lass. Needless to say this got her mad again. She kept up a tirade of abuse and reproach all the blinking way.

  ‘And the risks I take for you, Lovejoy.’ This was because her husband had been in a few days before when I phoned in my posh voice pretending to explain she’d forgotten her library book at the hairdresser’s. She said I didn’t sound like a hairdresser’s assistant. I tried saying that’s not my fault but got nowhere.

  We took an hour driving the eleven miles, owing to pulling into a lay-by to – er – lay by for a minute or two. Maybe it was our dishevelled mental state which made us so unprepared for the splendour of Mrs Hepplestone’s cranny when we finally drove in to Lesser Cornard. It was palatial, straight Inigo Jones set in a Capability Brown landscape. Dolly was overawed at the trees, the curving rose-beds and the score of minions beavering among the yews.

  ‘I’d better not stay, Lovejoy,’ she said nervously as we came in sight of the mansion.

  ‘How will I get home?’

  ‘Er, a taxi, dear? They might let you phone.’

  I knew what it was – she was worried her skirt and twin set weren’t exactly right for meeting the landed gentry. I caught her patting her hair and fingering her artificial pearl necklace as she drove. She normally saves one hand for stopping me mauling her thighs while her eyes are on the traffic. Mind you, the scene which greeted us was daunting. The house was glorious, a long frontage and vintage doorways. All authentic, every brick. I gave Mrs Hepplestone top marks for defying the lemming rush of demented modern architects and leaving well alone.

  Dolly didn’t even cut the engine. With a quick wave of her hand she was gone, a flash of red lights showing as she turned past the rhododendrons. I was alone in an acre of gravel in front of Hall Lodge Manor. I looked quickly about for the chauffeur because I’ve read my Chandler, but no. None of the gardeners bothered even to look up.

  The hall door was open. I dithered like any respectful serf, trying to find nerve. You can feel antiques, actually sense the pulses beating out of a place so strongly it becomes hard to breathe. My chest was bonging like a firebell. And inside the hall there was this suit of armour. I swear it was original sixteenth-century. Never mind anything else – just look at the fall-away part of the ‘sparrow-beak’ visor from the side. If it’s concave and the whole suit feels genuine, rush out and sell your house, send your missus down the mines and get your idle infants out doing hard labour. Then buy it. Even if you finish up out in the streets and destitute you’ll be one of the few owners of a Greenwich suit of sixteenth-century armour.

  So there I was in the porchway being mesmerized and broken-hearted when I suddenly felt watched.

  ‘Lovejoy?’

  A lady was sitting under this tree about thirty yards away. Slightly greying but smiling and being amused at a shabby intruder. She was knitting, cleverly not checking what the needles were up to.

  I plodded over. ‘Mrs Hepplestone?’

  ‘You’re younger than I thought,’ she commented. ‘I expected an old reprobate.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘The advertisement?’ She laughed and made me a space on the tree seat. ‘I had a word with the proprietors.’

  Funny, but you don’t normally think of dailies having proprietors. I’d always thought of them like churches, vaguely existing without belonging. I’d have to watch out – and make my displeasure known to Elsie, gabby cow. She’d no business divulging truth just to save her own crummy neck.

  There seemed no way out of this. ‘Er, an unfortunate slip,’ I stammered uneasily. I suppose it would be fraud or something. Breach of the peace at the very least.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said firmly. Odd, but she was still smiling. My spirits bottomed out. ‘It was quite deliberate, Lovejoy. Admit it. Now, before we go any further, sherry?’

  Dolly had guessed right, with a woman’s sixth sense for social encounters. This was no Woody’s Bar. A man dressed like the Prime Minister came out with a lovely gadrooned tray, only Edwardian and therefore not properly antique but it brought tears to my eyes.

  ‘Is he a butler?’ I whispered as the bloke receded. He’d left the tray for us on a wrought-iron garden table.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, amused.

  I was impressed. I’d never seen one before. I’d felt like kneeling. The sherry was in a sherry decanter, too. I’d never seen that before, either. And a silver tray really used, not just salted away for investment. No wonder Dolly had scarpered. Maybe I should have stayed with her and had another snog in a lay-by.

  Forces seemed suddenly too large to handle. Out of control, I asked dejectedly, ‘Will you turn me in?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ She invited me to pour while I thought, thank God for that. The glasses were modern, but the silver-mounted decanter screamed London and genuine. Typical work of the Lias family, now prohibitively priced. They’re easy to spot because there seem so many letter ‘L’s in the hallmark. John and Henry Lias were right characters . . . Mrs Hepplestone caught me smiling and joined in.

  ‘Er, nice decanter,’ I said feebly.

  ‘Thank you.’ She was doing the woman’s trick of seeming cool while secretly screaming with laughter. I could tell.

  A gardener had lit a bon
fire nearby. You can smell wood smoke even upwind. Odd, that. I glanced covertly at the bird while the fire crackled. Stylish, forty-five give or take an hour. Still knitting. Maybe I was expected to make conversation.

  ‘Er, sorry about your, er, chauffeur, missus,’ I tried.

  ‘Think nothing of it, Lovejoy. I quite understand.’

  Then what was I here for? ‘You going to tell me off?’

  ‘No.’ Knitting down now, loins girded for the crunch. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Lovejoy. I’m unused to . . . your circle.’

  Well, I was unused to hers. I forgave.

  ‘The fact is that I was extremely discountenanced when I learned of your – deception – over the advertisement. As discountenanced as you probably felt on being exposed.’ She smiled to take the sting out of her remark. I’d felt discountenanced all right, whatever that meant. ‘But you are very clearly a professional at your trade.’

  ‘Well . . .’ I shrugged.

  ‘Everybody seems to know you, Lovejoy.’

  ‘They do?’ This conversation was getting out of hand, like the gardener’s fire over among the bushes. Too dry. Not enough rain.

  ‘I made enquiries, Lovejoy.’ She invited me to pour more sherry for myself. ‘So I shall forgive you the chauffeur and the advertisement, and you shall do a simple task for me.’

  Typical of a woman, that bit. I gazed about. Beyond the gardens a pair of huge lumbering horses were trotting, trailing an iron thing while two blokes marked the ground with white-painted pegs. Tractors clattered in the background. Maybe she wanted me to drive a tractor a day or two.

  She laughed and shook her head. ‘No. Nothing to do with my driving teams, Lovejoy.’ She made a face. Something rankled with her, and out it came. ‘Mind you, you couldn’t possibly do worse than my own men. We lose the competition every year to the Wainwrights – ever since that new blacksmith joined them, wretched man.’ Probably Claude, from our village.

  ‘Then how simple?’ I asked shrewdly, not wanting to get involved in the county set’s social wars.