A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair l-21

by Jonathan Gash

  'The name, Lovejoy?' she asked. 'You haven't told me who.'

  'Dieter Gluck.' I gave her the address. And just for an instant she paused, but took it down calmly enough. I didn't know how to spell Dieter, but she did. We parted amicably.

  I didn't hang around, zoomed into Piccadilly's crowds as I headed towards Shaftesbury Avenue and the office where Caprice Rhodes would be slogging producing stage shows.

  Can you believe that people do it for a living?

  'Caprice told me to stop by,' I told the girl on the desk. 'The show, see?'

  'Right, Lovejoy.' I'd given her my name. She nodded as if she really knew me. It always works. Everybody in theatre is scared stiff of everybody finding out that they don't know everybody else. 'Caprice is on the phone. Take a seat.'

  They're always on the phone. I sat and read the posters of past shows. Amazing what some folk do. Phones rang. People with torticollis rushed about the warren of rooms, talking into phones on their shoulders. I can't understand why they do it.

  'Lovejoy?' Caprice stood there, smiling.

  'Sorry about the time, love.' I followed. She started on the phone while I waited some more.

  Caprice is married to a bloke she possibly never sees. Thirtyish, bonny, always looking sort of smooth and dolled up. She has - honest, I'm not making it up - a woman who comes into the office every single day to do her toe nails. I thought queasily of Trout's pal Failsafe's feet, 'two plates of warts'. Maybe Caprice could slip Failsafe in for a free go?

  'Look, daaaaahling,' Caprice was ending into the receiver. 'Your poor cow might have got a fortune in Plymouth's pantomime, but that doesn't mean we all must join her parade.' She listened, sighed. 'You piss me off. So your poor cow dated His Royal Highness once, Mori, then got the shunt. Am I expected to pay her a fortune to forget her fucking lines? She's dead in the water.'

  She clicked the phone, came and sat on my lap. A secretary dashed in with faxes.

  Caprice riffled through them, discarded all but one. The lass dashed out.

  'Can't you give the actress a job, love?' I asked. 'She might be great.'

  'She can't walk, talk, sing, dance, move, or open her mouth except for two functions, Lovejoy.' She ruffled my thatch. 'Even for an actress this is somewhat limited. What're you after, scrounger?'

  I was chastened. 'Sorry. Remember when we met?'

  She carolled a pretty laugh. Their faces. Better than a play!'

  It had been in the most august London auction. A mad variety of Russian art was being sold. They'd imported a galaxy - their description - of paintings, sculptures. In true auctioneering style, meaning cavalier but mentally dim, they'd forgotten one small fact.

  Russian art ranged across a century, but hereabouts feminism had raised its head.

  Quick as a flash pickets gathered in Bond Street chanting slogans about sisterhood subjection and degradation of women. Some artists had painted nudes, you see, and such images were imperialist, whatever.

  'You stopped me, you bastard!' She laughed, remembering. 'Trying to stab the painting!'

  'Maybe I shouldn't have,' I mused. 'Serov's underpainting is duff. Green's essential—'

  Caprice shouted for coffee, still falling about on my lap, not without hazards of various kinds. 'You knocked me senseless, you bastard.'

  'Well, I couldn't see the point.' I still couldn't. Stabbing a painting is like burning books, always criminal. I hadn't liked the Vladimir Serov painting, a crowned nude, but who am I?

  'Thank Christ for that, Lovejoy. It proves you're sane.' She lit a fag. I stared. She didn't use to smoke. Smoking had been a wicked male stratagem promoting women's serfdom. The coffee came. I got a theatrical special, so thick it wouldn't swallow.

  Caprice drank hers with a flourish, still on my lap. We talked of changing times.

  Fashion alters art. It also does something scary - it changes prices. This is good news and bad news. Before the millennium, 'political correctness' became a stigmatizing accusation shrieked by anyone who wanted media time to air their prejudices, whether barmy or not. The world became miserable. Doomsters were everywhere on radio, telly, the good old tabloids. And the value - the money you actually hand over - of antiques changed. It took a year to happen. (I'm telling you this because it can happen again any time, but the mechanism's the same.)

  The bad news? Quite drossy paintings shot up in price. Okay, they weren't artistically up to much - say, some poor quality Ukrainian cottage - but they were the sort of oldie that dealers tend to buy to 'body out', as dealers call it, their shops or next phoney Antiquarian Road Show Travelling Auction. Paintings of some lovely nude plummeted. It became politically incorrect to like some portrait of a crusty old cleric or kindly father.

  Even yet these are badly undersold. Thousands of portraits - regimental officers, colonial stalwarts, doddering priests, millmasters - have been cleaned off so the canvas can be used by fakers. Forgers call it 'emptying' an ancient canvas. And the fakers use those genuinely old canvases to paint 'Victorian' scenes that are politically correct -

  ladies reading, children at the seashore, or boring old golf. Forgeries, in brief, where nobody has a job.

  I call it sinner's stiffness, this move to make everybody glare accusingly at history through modern eyes. It's evil because it kills antiques. Because it burns books. And because it's phoney. Sorry to go on. I once came across a forged painting on an old canvas. I recognized the canvas from the marks a dealer called Tollbooth had made on its reverse (dealers often do this in pencil, so a pal in their auction ring will know how much to bid). He uses the code CRAFTY, the letters' meaning being 1 to 6, because Tollbooth never bids over 666 for anything.

  The painting had come from Armenia, and was of an elderly woman coming from a tin bath. It was obvious the artist had seen Rembrandt's painting. It was condemned by political rectitude, and went for a song. Cleaned off, the canvas was used by some forger who daubed on it a golf house in mid-Edwardian style. It went for a relative fortune. See? Fashion slaughters art, and substitutes gunge. Collectors out there, please note: if you want regimental histories, religious allegories, nudes, anything condemned in the great hogwash period of the 1990s, get out there and buy, because they'll never be as cheap again once the world recovers its senses.

  'As long as there's a few like you left, Lovejoy, we can identify the norm,' Caprice was saying.

  Eh? Whatever it was, I agreed. 'Look, love, I wonder—'

  'Get on with it, Lovejoy,' she said. 'We've three shows, all doing bad business. The boss is near bankruptcy, driving us mad. He's got some new tart. I've to find a West End play she can star in. She has the thespian skills of Amoeba proteus and the dress sense of Mrs Gamp.' She sighed. 'God knows what she does in bed, but it must be brilliant.'

  She waited. She ahemed. 'Come in, Planet Lovejoy.'

  'Oh, sorry.' I'd got distracted by the thought. 'Er, a gun, love.'

  That shook her so much she ground out her fag. I watched it die. 'You what, Lovejoy? I never thought I'd hear—'

  Caprice Rhodes married this landowner near Grime's Graves. They own heathlands, fields, valleys, there to breed pheasants, quail, and other innocent birds, all the better to slaughter them by twelve-bore shotguns. Saves the old legs, don't ya ken, killing the birds all in one spot.

  'There's eleven thousand country guns available, Lovejoy. Why mine?'

  A 'gun', incidentally, isn't your actual tubes. The term actually means a place at a shoot.

  People pay - no joke -up to two and a half thousand zlotniks of the realm a day for the privilege of going out for a quick massacre. Huntin' and shootin' meets are where cabinet ministers of any political stripe are made, they say. Other, even more passionate, relationships are also fostered.

  'It's near somewhere I'm investigating.'

  She pondered, posing, chin on her finger. Pretty. I began to wish she'd get off my lap, or sit closer still.

  'The Goldhorns?' she guessed, quick. 'They were the only people of our
…' of our class who would bother with a lowlife like you, Lovejoy were the words she wanted. She finished, 'district who knew you. Is it them?'

  'Yes.'

  'Arthur died, didn't he? Broken heart, after some sod took your place when you left Colette.' She nodded. 'Well, since you ask, Lovejoy, I'll get you a gun.'

  'Now?'

  That gave her a laugh. She shook her hair like they do, as if trying to throw it away over her shoulder. 'Phone this number early tomorrow. Lovejoy?' She looked as I bussed her goodbye. 'You won't disgrace me, will you? I mean, Clovis is a stickler for behaviour.'

  Well, so am I. I was just scared I'd shoot so badly I might actually hit one of the creatures. I mean the pheasants.

  'I'll behave, love. And thanks.'

  'You'll enjoy the dinner, Lovejoy. Tit for tat.'

  'Eh?' She'd not said anything about a dinner. I saw her glint.

  'The awards night. You're taking me. It's soon. I'll send the invitation.'

  'Ta, love. Tarra.' I'd joined the county set.

  12

  EVENING IN LONDON, coming on to rain. Bee the lovely Aldwych flower seller was there as usual. India House looked glamorous floodlit. Theatres were agog, last minute ladies rushing in, skirts lifted, squealing. The butty bars were giving place to pubs.

  Covent Garden was thronged - when is it not? Crowds, traffic, the Thames doing its swarky stuff waiting for yet another poet to rubbish it from Westminster Bridge. I love the place. And I was determined to find out what the hell, wasn't I.

  So, the light of eagles in my eye, I slouched into the Nell of Old Drury tavern for some swill and a wad. It was crowded by theatricals and street lads off the barrows. Antique dealers were making last minute trade-offs - why do they always glance round furtively before showing their dud little silver salt cellar to a no-hope buyer? Is it to aggrandize a threepenny transaction, make it look like they're Springheel Jack? Thinking about it, I do the same. Pathetic. One was Flymo from Romford. He's expert at the old assume trick, always with a little lawn mower. He knocks on your door, puffs in carrying a mower saying, 'Where do you want it, missus?' while you express astonishment and deny all. During the baffling expIanations, Flymo susses your locks, whether you live alone or not, if you've got much worth nicking. Then he'll creep back at night and burgle your house.

  No good asking these dealers about Colette, though. A titled lady, wealthy, owner of vintage cars maintained by uniformed serfs, she was in another league. I sat and dreamed in the warm fug.

  You send somebody out on a quest for one reason only - to bring something back.

  Hence Sir Galahad, the Holy Grail, Go ye hence, brave knights. The point is, you're desperate for your hunter to find whatever it is, or you wouldn't bother sending out your expedition in the first place.

  Unless?

  This 'unless' was troubling me. Unless you deliberately want to send out a nerk. Like, I realized, spirits plunging, me. Dosh could have made a few calls and sorted it out from home. Instead he sends me, specifically to Bermondsey, precisely where the gem courier Chev wouldn't be back for some time.

  Why?

  Missing padpas, said Dosh. He'd paid for them, and instead received tsavorites. Simple.

  Find the genuine ones, hand them to Dosh, easy. Unless?

  I sipped my ale in the crowd.

  Once upon a time there'd been this bloke, Pope Sylvestrus II. He quested cleverly, and found his Grail. Except it turned out a poisoned chalice. It happened like this: Anciently, all Rome speculated about a statue in the Campus Martius. It stood there, its arm pointing. The words Percute Hic were on the base - means strike out, pierce, shoot, bore down. It also means dig. Over centuries, lots of Romans had a go, measuring the arm's trajectory, even burgling nearby buildings. No luck. Then Pope Sylvestrus II worked it out: the statue's finger's shadow alighted at one exact spot at noon. In the dark hours the pope and his chamberlain stole back and dug. They fell into an ancient vault, where an ancient king and queen, court and all, were mummified amid their treasures, brilliantly illumined by an eerie light from a giant ruby. The chamberlain joyously grabbed for the gold. A mummified cupid, bow and arrow ready, moved. His bow twanged, the arrow shattering the ruby into a ghastly darkness. The dead figures rose up, rustling in the subterranean blackness. Pope Sylvestrus legged it. He escaped yards ahead of his servant. Which is why some make pope and others stay mere chamberlains, I suppose.

  See? Give a quest a bit of think, you get it right, but watch out.

  Sometimes you can have the answer - treasure, wealth, antiques - in the palm of your hand, and still make a mess of things. I've done that. Like, our Ministry of Defense alone has thousands of antiques, and still creates a shambles. Last count, it had lost 205 valuable pictures. The entire Government does it too, managing to evaporate 427

  pictures, nearly 700 if you take into account other bureaus. These are our precious paintings. The Civil Service simply lends them to itself, and forgets where. But they don't lose them all in one fell swoop. They're vanished over a long time, loss not by gush but by drip. They all ought to have stayed, of course, in the terribly secret guarded place nobody knows about (it's in Wardour Street, Soho, London). Authority is good at making barmy laws for the rest of us, useless with responsibility.

  Our government could easily notify the Art Loss Register, but that would announce how cackhanded they actually were. Mind you, other folk lose things they shouldn't. In July, 1996, the famous missing pages of George Washington's inaugural address turned up -

  under a couch in somebody's parlour in Aldeburgh, here in Suffolk - and got auctioned off for a mint. Gormlessness rules.

  For me, I wonder at hunters. They often go on hopeless quests, when the whereabouts of giant wealth are known. Along the jungles of the Shangani River, in January, 1894, the great Matabele king Lobengula passed away. By tradition his grave was secret, same as his father's, M'Silikatze. Over the years, Lobengula had received an annual gift

  - a piece of gold, a diamond - from each of the thousands of his warriors who downed spears and went to work in the South African mines. King Lobengula's treasure was buried with him. I'm not advocating grave robbing, just wondering why robbers don't rob where common sense dictates.

  Other times, though, hunting is money for jam. Borrow a metal detector. Go to any village in East Anglia. Troll your detector along the soil near any old garden wall. You'll find old zinc alloy labels from espalier fruit trees, which came into fashion in pre-Victorian days. They're very collectible. Two dozen will net you a posh Continental holiday. Tip: Don't polish them. Just rinse them lightly in baby soap, then drip purest grade Italian olive oil over the surface, and the Indian Ink writing will come up beautifully, legible as the day some hoary old gardener wrote it. Course, there are fakes—

  'Lovejoy?'

  'Wotcher, Flymo.'

  'Seen you down Bermondsey. Business bad out in the Sticks, is it?' He chuckled harshly.

  'No. Here for the padpas.'

  'Dosh should never have bought them in the first place. We all knowed they was substituted.'

  Did you now, I thought. I chanced it. 'I've been looking for Colette Goldhorn, but can't see hide nor hair. Times change, eh, Flymo?'

  He sighed. I bought him a pint so he could sigh without spraying me with his spittle aerosol.

  'I'm thinking of giving up the con game, Lovejoy. I'm too frigging old. Know what happened?' He waxed indignant. 'Three days since, I do me knock, and this bird opens the door. I race my lawn mower in, saying my, "Here's your lawn mower, love, where should I put it?", all according to plan.'

  'So? Con as usual.'

  'Not frigging likely.' He tapped my chest in outrage. 'Know what? She simpers, "Just leave it there in the hall. Come through. We can have a nice cosy chat." She was after a bit of the other, Lovejoy! From me! When I'd got work to do!'

  I almost choked laughing. 'Behold your sins will find you out, Flymo.'

  He was narked. 'It's all very well for you, L
ovejoy. Shagging's your thing. But me? It takes me all my time to get round a single street these days. Mind you, Colette's been a godsend.'

  'Colette? You sell to Colette Goldhorn?'

  This is like hearing that a duchess does a bit of cleaning for pin money. Colette, buying nicked dross from the likes of Flymo?

  'One of my few outlets these days,' he said mournfully. 'You wouldn't be interested in a little Chinese bowl?'

  With Fagin-like glances about the crowded bar, he fetched out a small lavishly decorated K'ien Lung Cantonese bowl. It felt genuine enough to warm me, and looked absolutely perfect. I waited for a lull in the chatter, though, and held it to my ear just as a precaution. You must do this simple test on any porcelain, because light can trick your eyes. I tapped it with my knuckle and listened. Sure enough, the clear distant

  'pong' wasn't distinct. It went buzzzzzz. It's horrible. It means you mustn't buy, not even if the dealer offers you 90 per cent discount, because the bowl's side is fractured.

  Never mind that you can't see any crack, or that you can't feel one with your finger nail.

  If the faint 'pong' isn't clear as a bell, if it goes buzzzzzz, you're holding a poor wreck of a thing. And please ignore the dealer's prattle. He'll be frantic, saying how he's had the antique bowl authenticated by the British Museum, offering certificates from Sotheby's and all.

  'It's got a mended crack, Flymo.'

  'Thought you'd spot it,' he said gloomily. 'You wouldn't take it off me for a third third, would you, Lovejoy?'

  Antique dealers work in thirds, never wanting to buy any antique at more than a third of its value, and always wanting to sell at full price. Flymo was offering me this at a third of what he might have paid, if his purchase had been legit instead of stolen. A third of a third is one-ninth.

  'Thought you were going to sell to Colette?' Clever old me.

  'Not tonight, Lovejoy. She's in that Soho churchyard. Winos give me the frigging creeps.'