The Possessions of a Lady

by Jonathan Gash

  'You Maurice?' I asked. He nodded.

  'Just give her her head, Lovejoy. She'll find dry rot the size of a penny in a palace.'

  'Ta, Maurice. She's already done her trick. Pay you tonight, at Brannan Hey.'

  Maurice took some snuff, waggling his pinched thumb and forefinger up his conk. God, but we're a rum species. 'Already?' He looked at Jodie. 'She's pissed owff, Lovejoy.' He shook his head. 'Dogs are workers. Give them a job, they're happy as pigs in muck. You didn't work her.'

  'She performed brilliantly, Maurice. Honest.'

  'Sure?' He looked as sorry as Jodie. 'If you say.'

  Jodie went with him, giving me a glance of utter disdain. I didn't know dogs could sneer. Her lope after Maurice was an indignant lope. I was narked, bollocked by a frigging mongrel. I'd patted her, hadn't I?

  'Ta, Jodie,' I called weakly. 'You were superb.'

  And she was, finding the rot-laden antique of Mayor Tom. I couldn't shout that, though.

  35

  The auction,' wailed the tannoy, 'begins with the grand quiz. Get those answers in, everone!'

  Tinker had placed Florsston's blue lac fake on a makeshift stand. You paid a zlotnik, guessed its value. I never understand why this is such a stunning attraction. The money was in brimming buckets, which only goes to show. (I'm not sure what, but it does.) Nicola was being enthusiastic, applauding the bands, helping children to get ready. She even danced a reel with the uillean pipers. Pretty lass, Nicola, going to waste.

  Wanda was there, smiling hard. And Bertie, calculators poised. I couldn't walk far from Amy's purple caravan. By now it was a centre of activity. The canvas-cloistered catwalk leading to the chapel was a busy thoroughfare. Each model who did her test trot was greeted with ecstatic oohs and aahs. I leaned toward the purple trailer as if sucked.

  'Fair old mob, eh, Lovejoy?' Roger said.

  'Roger?' Roger Boxgrove, as ever suave, debonair. 'This far north?' Nothing here for him. I could only think of Pete Marsh, the Bog Man sacrificed thousands of years ago in a Cheshire peat marsh, but now reposing in a glass Roger-proof exhibition case in the British Museum.

  'Just seeing a friend.' When I looked disbelieving, he leant conspiratorially close. 'Still hoping for Faye.'

  That was a relief. What with Rodney, Vyna, Roadie's sudden vanishment, the distraught Aureole—still being deflected by Wanda's Praetorian Guard—I was too worn out to take on more suspects. Carmel I could trust, Tinker said. Faye? She was there, avoiding me, talking fashion into a dictaphone for her newspaper.

  'I sold Thekla's fashion friends some palaeolithic artefacts once, to dress up a display. Costly, but brilliant!'

  'I can imagine.'

  'How much, Lovejoy?' Roger nodded at the blue lac. In the cold light of day it looked lack-lustre.

  This is people for you. I sighed. A new millionaire, yet still corrupting away for pennies. 'That's it, Roger. You have to guess.'

  'You here, Roger?' Wanda, steaming up. She demanded, 'What's he been saying, Lovejoy?'

  'Nothing. Just do one thing, Wanda, eh?'

  'What?'

  'Buy a guess for the cabinet.' She made to snap, but I gave her my foulest eye.

  She glanced doubtfully at Roger, and did as she was told. I headed for the beer tent where the whifflers were having a final pint before the auction. On the way, I got accosted by Nicola.

  'Lovejoy,' Nicola said. 'Florsston isn't coming, is he?'

  'Eh? Course he is, love!' I did my best optimism. 'I've had a message! He's on the M6.'

  Tears streamed down her face. 'No, Lovejoy.' That loon was still announcing the quiz, rasping it out. 'Florsston's in Italy, isn't he? You knew he was lying.'

  Typical. Florsston lies, so I get the blame.

  'Listen, love.' I get desperate. ‘I only wanted . . .'

  ‘I suppose I knew, Lovejoy, deep down. He wouldn't even sit beside me, let alone

  So why become obsessed by a misogynist in the first place? Things were getting too much.

  'Excuse me, love. The charity.' I hurried to the beer tent where I assembled some whifflers by the simple act of rubbing my thumb and forefinger together. If I'd actually had any money, I could have started a new religion. Free range whifflers go in sixes. I stood apart.

  'Any of you locals?' I asked. Heads shook, no. 'Or work for Wanda? Amy? Stella Entwistle? The mayor?' No, no. 'Then you're hired. I'm Lovejoy. Who's boss?'

  'You are, wack. You're paymaster,' a beery bearded sloven said. The whifflers made a faint huffing. They never laugh outright. 'They call me Total.'

  'Right, Total. You get the ganger's bonus, depending.' He nodded, knowing what the money depended on. The ganger's bonus is a third. I walked off. They followed, gelt apostles. I didn't point. 'Total? See that old burnt manor? Top floor—Christ's sake be careful; it's nigh gutted—you'll find a few antiques. Mirrors, paintings, not much. Bring them all down. Load them into a lorry my mate Tinker'll have by the carousel. Covered, please. I don't want anybody to see them. Okay?' For me to drive away, as personal fee for my trouble. I didn't say this.

  'Right, mate.'

  'One thing, Total,' I added. 'You might bump into Mad Terence. Ignore him. He's crazy. Your pay's double standard rates, plus half, if you don't damage any. One mirror's badly dry-rotted.'

  'Sooner we get started . . .' They made noises of approval, walked off with the whiffler's hunched amble. Solemn, grasping, do the job, amble to the next. They're a rough lot. Not one asked whose antiques they actually were. A whiffler's job is to shift antiques from A to B, then preferably to C at a higher hourly rate. I watched fondly. Isn't dedication grand? I got an ice cream, sat to watch the morrismen dance, tapping my foot to the ancient music, and thought of what was in the purple caravan.

  A diamond is a diamond is a diamond. Ice-colourless, harder than granite, rare. 'Pinko' diamonds are something else. They are rarer even than 'pure'—meaning colourless 'white' diamonds. Years ago you could hardly give them away. The only reason people ever bought a pink diamond was that it might be mistaken, in bad light, for a ruby. Rarest of the rare, the pink diamond was the poor relation nobody wanted to know about.

  Recently, there came a revolution, the quiet kind. An important statistic happened in good old Oz, Australia the Beautiful. In 1985, Oz overtook the then USSR in diamond production. Why didn't this news send the world shrieking into the streets? Because Oz was a relative newcomer, its diamonds being mostly titchy small, industrial grades, peanut diamonds. The gem world sniggered behind its hand. If you want to make grinding wheels, go ahead, use diamonds from Kimberley in Western Australia, see if we care. These workaday fragments are mundane. What did it matter if Kimberley grubbed up another seven or eight tons of them a year? Plenty to go round. Dirt-cheap dirt is cheap, the great diamond centres quipped, chuckling at that 1985 statistic. Since time immemorial—well, 300 bc —everybody's been daft over the 'white' bobby-dazzler. Coloured diamonds were third-class gems. Then the penny dropped. Oz realised that it was virtually the world's only source of pinkos.

  Quick as a flash, Oz went public with every erg it possessed. In 1990—1991, it won the silent war. Its yellow diamonds and even its tea-coloured browns—'Champagne Diamonds' to the newly admiring public—leapt into the magazines. De Beers had always bought and sold coloured diamonds, of course, but returned the boring old pinkos to Oz for disposal.

  Think rarity to stay on beam. In, say, the prodigious Argyle mine of Kimberley, you'll weigh some 42 million carats of diamonds a year. Question: how much tonnage is the elusive pink? Answer: a mere 42 carats. Dozily putting my head straight, I worked it out. You slog for a year, dig up millions of carats of diamonds, mostly industrial granules. Painstakingly sieving through umpteen tons, you find less than one-third of an ounce of pink diamonds. Always assuming you've kept awake and not missed any.

  They are clandestinely marketed by the diamond world (in Geneva, that secret upper suite in the Beau Rivage Hotel, but keep it under your hat). The world's merc
hants, under armed guard, humbly pay through the nose for the privilege of buying. Never mind that they get only a few minutes to decide, that they're not even allowed to haggle for what's in those little Perspex containers. And never mind that the cost will be in heartbreaking millions of dollars. The pink gems will change eager hands. Everybody will rejoice.

  See the difference? Aeons ago, pink diamonds were not worth bothering with, mere diamond trade 'glassies.' Now? The world's most valuable gem known to Man. The difference, Back Then, and Now. And Back Then's where antiques come from.

  The tannoy startled me with a shrill whistle.

  'Lovejoy, please! To the Grand Mega-Prize Antiques Auction Quiz Competition immediately!' I dropped my ice cream, got up to do my duty.

  The fake blue lac was only wood and a daub of colour, not like a genuine antique. But I went, pushed through the crowds thronging the entrance.

  Inside, the babble almost deafened me. Where the altar had been was now an improvised stage with a podium. Stella's tables of crud were relegated to the sides, thank heavens. But crammed on the stage and in a thick crescent before it were arranged Briony's possessions from Thornelthwaite Manor. Wanda's lasses and her men were acting as clerks and guards, occasionally warning off dealers who wanted too close a look because sudden last-minute inspections from dealers are the bane of auctioneers and suggest neffie goings-on.

  Briony was on the stage, sniffing with pride. No chairs. The dense crowd had to stand. There must have been seven hundred, the balconies rimmed with enthralled faces. I was moved. Everywhere, as I started edging towards the stage, folk were smiling, saying ta for coming, good luck, thanks Lovejoy. Old Alice started excited applause as I reached the front. Folk even patted my back, like you do heroes.

  'Ta, loves,' I found myself saying, feeling daft as a brush. 'Ta.' I made the stage, got hauled up, and faced the sea of expectant faces.

  Scorn's easy to bear. Threats are my norm. But being clapped onto a stage is hard to take. I felt a stupid cold coming on, coughed a few times. All I was going to do was say who'd made the best guess for the fake, then clear off with the antiques Mayor Tom had donated. Betrayal's only fair. I deserved something for my trouble.

  The precious 'dress and features furniture'—as fashion calls jewellery—was none of my business. If Manchester's pundit curators couldn't be bothered to keep pace with the times, when cheap old antiques soared from farthings to fortunes, that was their lookout. I didn't want any more wars. I'd accidentally got Spoolie topped. But do accidents really exist? Maybe the ancient Greeks were right. Everything is fate, so put up with it. Vyna, touring the textile museums of the North, had spotted the pinkos, wondered if they might be real. She'd seen my response to the one brooch I'd seen on the crated dress at the textile museum. That had been good enough. Wasn't that it?

  A jolly bloke, charity badges all over him showing that he was holy compared to us, boomed, 'Ladies and gen'men! Here's Lovejoy! Thank you, please!'

  I feel a duckegg at the best of times, let alone doing a Sermon on the Mount. A microphone was thrust into my hand. I looked at everybody. They were so pleased. Why? The town had had its day, was left behind in the tide race of modernity, a historical footnote. Even our speech was the failed comedian's joke, to get a bored audience going.

  The little lass, my second cousin who'd made me tie her shoes earlier, was there, waving, shy. I tried to give her a wink. I saw Tinker signalling among the crowds squashing in. Cradhead was ahead of him, smiling a surprised smile at the scene.

  My feet were treading water. I wanted a lass, a quiet drink, maybe make love watching a sunset, not tell a crowd how well I'd done on their behalf.

  A small eddy among the spectators between two laden trestle tables. Total, giving me the job-done sign. It's a nape scratch, while looking at the hirer. Tinker's lorry now contained Mayor Tom's antiques. All I had to do was scarper.

  The crowd quietened, stilled. I looked along the faces on the balconies, the ocean of smiles below.

  'It's smashing to be home,' I said. Riotous applause. 'Home,' I said, sick within, 'is where the heart is.'

  The crowd actually cheered. I stood like a lemon, a fraudulent one, as the racket subsided.

  'Listen, pals.' I didn't know how to say it. 'Times are new. It's not like yesteryear. Morality's new. You have to be aware who the frauds are.'

  'Hear! Hear!' cried the announcer. 'This is the very reason we have the prestigious firm of Lissom, Prenthwaite and Co's lovely Miss Lydia . . .'

  Lydia's letter. She came onto the stage.

  'This is the very reason,' I cut in, and I had the microphone, not him, 'that I've decided to agree to Lissom Prenthwaite's request.' I overrode, seeing Lydia's sudden dither. I thundered, 'I'll do the auction myself. Miss Lydia has generously agreed to step down.' Into the applause, I called out the result of the Great Quiz. 'The winner is Mrs. Wanda, of Sutton Coldfield, who priced the blue lac cabinet at sixty-eight thousand. Congratulations, lady!'

  Before questions could get going, I yanked the auction list from the announcer's hand.

  'Miss Lydia, auctioneer of the famed Lissom Prenthwaite, will be our official observer!' I chuckled, gunfire sounds.

  Before anybody could draw breath I raced on. 'The possessions of a lady! Removed from the ancient Thornelthwaite Manor! Item One, a display of Ely's sporting ammunition, arranged as a tableau of central fire gastight cartridge cases.'

  'Showing here, sir!' a whiffler cried.

  'Who'll start me off?' I called, beckoning for a gavel and something to whack it on. Lydia came forward smiling kilowatts of anger, handed me her gavel, and I was away.

  Tinker was thunderstruck, because I should be sloping off in his wagon. And two bulky hulks from some black lagoon were darkening the crowded double doors where daylight should have entered. My spirit stalled. One was Deny, Big John Sheehan's ultimate correctional argument. The nickname's not Londonderry, merely short for deranged. I've seen Derry walk up to eight grinning blokes, each armed with crowbars and such, and blam the lot while they flailed away. He hadn't even breathed heavy, just grumbled at the mess the destroyed octet made, bleeding on the warehouse floor, as if they were to blame. As, I'd hastened to agree at the time, they were.

  'Come on, friends,' I bleated when the bidding faltered. 'Are you all done?'

  'Get on with it, Lovejoy,' some dealer called.

  'This is for charity.' What more could I lose? I'd lost everything, even me. Tinker was shaking his head. 'Don't let the ten per cent premium daunt you.'

  A growl rose from the dealers, but what the hell. Auctioneers' premiums are nothing but sheer extortion, a robber baron's private tax. If Christies and Sotheby's do it, why shouldn't I?

  The dealers lowered their heads like charging bison. The innocent populace looked on, feeling the thrill.

  'Nothing in the catalogue about a premium, Lovejoy,' some knowall called.

  'Blinking printers,' I said. 'Any more on this item, then?'

  Well, I went barmier still. Having got the extra, I did the 'frog', bringing forward a later item, a trick to raise bidding levels.

  'I'll advance Item Nineteen,' I chirruped. 'I've been especially asked, by bidders who have to leave early. It was a joint prize with the blue lac cabinet, but time was short.'

  'Showing here, sir!'

  'This Chippendale style cabinet is a beautiful reproduction—Tom Chippendale loved fretted rails, yes, but he always used triple plywood. His fret was never solid heartwood, as on this cabinet. Chippendale's was crisscross ply—the grain goes different ways. And our cabinet here has one pane of glass a side, whereas Chippendale's glass doors had several small panes. Notice the drawers, the quarter mouldings so prominent inside? They only became common long after Tom C passed away. Who'll start me off for this repro Chippendale display cabinet? Can I say a thousand?' The dealers' signals started, for the glass panes were multiple, and the fretted rail was old-style ply. Most dealers thought I'd got it wrong, that the fake was ge
nuine.

  A Glasgow dealer bought it for a high figure. Within a week he'd have sold it for four times that—to some innocent who'd believe he'd scooped a real Chippendale. Guesswork is the modern fashion.

  I surged on, knocking down item after item, while Lydia smiled fury and Tinker all but died from dismay and Deny stood impassive with Bonch his oppo, and Cradhead smiled urbanely, and Mayor Tom beamed at Stella and she smiled back at him.

  Best part of three hours, and I was done. There was riotous applause as I handed over the gavel to the announcer man. I grinned and ta'd my way outside, took a mighty swig of the cold moorland air.

  Vans were already being loaded up. Successful bidders were paying in to Wanda's team. The town hall's accountants were along, bricks for paperweights on their tables. Wanda'd been right to put it in Bertie's hands. But I was unnerved by the score of policemen who were marshalling motors, checking departing dealers' chits before letting them out. Clever Wanda, using the Plod.

  'Lovejoy?' Tinker, stinking of ale, swaying abjectly. 'We in trouble?'

  'Not you, Tinker. Me.'

  Derry was louring the skies near the chapel. Aureole was beckoning, peering round some van like she was on the run. Nicola headed my way, weeping. Faye, static in the milling crowd, stared at me hard. I honestly didn't need any more vengeance. And Thekla, for heaven's sake, emerged with Rodney in tow, Amy trying to attract her attention, while Roger strolled effetely among the plebeians. He blew Carmel a kiss, cool as you please, as he passed by Amy's massive purple caravan.

  'What do I do, Lovejoy? The lorry's ready.'

  'Let me think.' I had ten seconds before the sky fell in. 'Did Total do it right?'

  'Total did well. Got the antiques—crappy mirrors, them, eh?—loaded in my three-tonner.'

  'Any sign of Terence Entwistle?' We were being buffeted by the crowd on its way to the stalls, sideshows, entertainments. Intermission time. Bands were striking up. It was a fairground again.