Faces in the Pool

by Jonathan Gash

  Shaking, I made it to the door. I didn’t ask for a lift back to town. Closing her office door behind me, I saw a crowd of little tap-dancers clattering down the stairs, the children laughing amid wrong arpeggios. The world was still normal. As I left, three miniature ballerinas passed wearing those frothy non-skirts that always remind me of Degas and biscuit-tin paper. One was saying, ‘Let’s ask Miss Farnacott if we can watch the principal dancers tomorrow.’ They all cried, ‘Yes! Lovely!’ And they piled into Miss F’s office. I drew breath to shout a dire warning – I mean, dragon’s cave and maidens, right? We heroes know our duty. Then I glimpsed her looking up with the sweetest smile as the titches piled in. And the dragon said, ‘Good heavens! My very best dancers! The answer is yes, darlings, whatever you want…’

  The door closed. I reeled out through the press of jugglers and wandering brass trios. A dragon with a heart? The Winter Queen a secret angel? Not to me.

  Plodding back to civilisation, I reflected on how the antiques trade is everybody’s whipping-boy. It’s wrong. Antiques are only as good or bad as people. Don’t blame a penny for being in the wrong slot when you put it there.

  People are people, the old saying goes. La Farnacott mentioned evil as if she knew it well.

  Evil? You can only start with the beautiful Lady Alice.

  This bad lass began as humble Alice Kyteler, the world’s historical front-runner for true evil. Born in Kilkenny in the late 1300s, she had a succession of wealthy husbands. None lived long. In fact, they died with speed. Her last husband was Sir John le Poer, who one day noticed his hair and nails were tumbling out. His anxious children came. Neighbours realised they’d seen it all before. Lady Alice’s rooms were searched. Poisons were found. The minute her cell door clanged in the pokey, Sir John recovered, and Holy Ireland confidently awaited a good, sensible outcome, like burning Lady Alice at the stake after a quick Ave Maria.

  No way. The prosecutor was the Bishop of Ossory. Rich Lady Alice had lawyers, a tangled lot even in those far-off centuries. She appealed to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. And, lucky, lucky, he was her kinsman, Roger Outlawe (real name; I’m not making this up). He got her off. She skipped the country.

  The story’s grand finale? Her loyal maid Petronilla was burnt instead. The moral? Evil is a survivor, and innocence is not.

  Not so antiques. They are so-o-o-o different. Remember that.

  Maybe Miss Farnacott just hated men, I thought, trudging to town, hoping to cadge a free nosh. To gloak, incidentally, is to watch somebody else eat, in hopes. I classified Miss Farnacott: bonny, good with infants and dated slang, but murderous. Apart from that, she could be forgotten.

  Couldn’t be more wrong again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  divvy (n & v): one who detects antiques without evidence

  Starvation has one good feature – it’s cheaper. From town, my cottage is five miles as the crow flies. ‘Except,’ like in the Humphrey Bogart film, ‘they ain’t crows.’

  Nobody in my cottage when I reached Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. The For Sale sign was cancelled by a red Sold stripe. I said a nervous hello to the empty garden, and no silent son appeared from the mists. Safe, I slipped inside. The gibbous moon’s light was that slanting hopeless stuff, so I did a lot of blundering for a candle. The candle was put into my hand. Like a fool, I said, ‘Ta,’ then screeched in fright. A match struck, showing Mortimer. I blistered him while my heart resumed its normal service, what the hell, etc.

  ‘I came because of that lady, Lovejoy.’

  He gave me fish and chips with mushy peas, a loaf, and a flask of tea. I fell on them, my eyes on him in case he wisped into the ether. His stealth comes from living in a wattle-and-daub hut among reed warblers. For God’s sake, he owned the whole frigging manor.

  The kilojoules kicked in. ‘What lady?’

  ‘The headmistress, Miss Farnacott. She’s hired Terminal.’

  Gulp. I’m scared of so many. ‘Terminal? Jesus. What for?’

  ‘To track you. She is cousin to Judge Jeffries.’

  Double gulp. Judge Jeffries is famed. Innocent or guilty, nobody gets off when he’s on the bench. He once reported himself for a minor traffic violation and demanded the police take action. They lacked evidence, so he actually fined himself and docked his own driving licence. Miss Farnacott proved Charles Darwin was right. Genetics will out.

  ‘Maybe it’s time to emigrate.’

  ‘Terminal’s at the Queen’s Head. I’ll tell you when he leaves.’

  East Anglian countrymen know the lore of leafy lanes. Mortimer goes one better. He knows things without knowing them, if you follow. Once, I had to meet him down Maldon way, loveliest of harbours. Mortimer was lying on the greensward, eyes closed, as I arrived and explained I was on trial again. Meanwhile, a yacht out on the North Sea started off in a new direction, sails flapping, and I wondered vaguely why boats did that. Mortimer – eyes still closed – said, ‘The wind’s veering, Lovejoy,’ quite like we were in mid-chat. I said, ‘How did you know what I was going to ask?’ He said, ‘The waves sound different. And your thoughts show.’ Sure enough, the breeze changed. He once saved my life by this rum business. I think he’s creepy.

  ‘Do I deserve Terminal? Little me?’

  ‘She thinks – excuse me – you are rubbish. It’s her father.’

  Shouldn’t sons protect their dads, even if illegitimate? Terminal is a killer – he’s said to have executed a paedo in Soho.

  ‘Look, Mortimer. Things are out of hand. I worry about Eunice Whorwood, and suddenly Tasker is in the arena. I help Veronica at the Antiques Arcade, and some fat lawyer berk threatens me. I speak to old Smethie, and Terminal, who can break my back with an eyelash, haunts my hedge? I want out, Mortimer.’ I spelt it for him, O-U-T.

  ‘Miss Farnacott has forbidden you to visit Mr Smethirst. She hired Terminal to ensure your compliance.’ Admin-speak. Mortimer would be great on some council.

  ‘That’s OK. I won’t even try.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but—’

  He maddens me. He folded the chip paper, wiping the table down with a serviette. I hoped for pudding. He just looked about for a waste bin. None. Mortimer was well brought up. Requiescat in pace, Arthur, you raised a tidy lad.

  ‘Why the fuss?’

  ‘Because Mr Smethirst has asked for you, Lovejoy. Side Ward 3A at the Beeches. He thinks he’ll die soon, though the doctor says he will recover. He keeps trying to smuggle messages to you. Two guards stop him,’ Mortimer added. ‘Terminal’s men.’

  This meant yet more people wanting my help. I said so.

  Mortimer leant forward. Here came something from the heart. ‘Lovejoy. You really must get a waste bin.’

  I blew up. ‘Almost as important as a frigging waste bin, is the problem of seeing Smethie without Terminal marmalising me.’

  He smiled. ‘Your solemn oath to Miss Farnacott did not last, Lovejoy.’

  ‘You sarcastic sod. OK, when?’

  ‘Terminal has started out for here. Come this way. No noise.’ He snuffed the candle. When I dowse wicks they stink the place out. Not for Mortimer.

  His hand grasped my forearm with surprising strength, and I was guided into the moonlight. Boards creaked over the door, presumably him replacing the slats. We went into the lane. I was tempted to sprint, but he stayed me. We moved through a marsh, then over somebody’s lawn where Mortimer whispered to quieten some fool of a dog. We emerged into the light of our village’s three street lamps. He hauled a bicycle from a ditch.

  Me straddling the seat, he rode with silent intensity past our old church. He didn’t even slow among the trees of Friday Wood, scaring me to death. We alighted at Fellham near the Fox & Stork.

  ‘Go that way.’ He pointed. ‘Three miles, five furlongs is Mrs Fenwright’s cottage. Knock. She will give you a truckle bed, and breakfast tomorrow.’

  ‘Ta, er…’ I once tried to call him son, but it came out wrong. Mrs Fenwright’s cottage had to be on Mortimer’
s manor of Saffron Fields. ‘How do I get in to see Smethie?’

  ‘Morning, at four o’clock. You will be Male Charge Nurse Hargreaves.’

  I said, stricken, ‘That’s bloody ridicu—’

  Moonlight. I was talking to moonlight. One day, I seethed, this worm will turn. The first people I’d clobber would be bossy sons, illegitimate or not. I took the best part of an hour to wobble to Mrs Fenwright’s.

  There, I can report that Male Charge Nurse Hargreaves passed a restless night in an outhouse.

  Dawn happens before it should. It had no right waking me at three o’clock on a cold frosty morning, urging me to a chill bath (‘You won’t melt, Lovejoy. Mortimer said you’d be full of silly complaints,’ etc) and giving me an enormous breakfast. The attractive Mrs Fenwright stood me by the gate at ten to four. Even the moon looked knackered.

  ‘Is Mortimer coming himself?’ she asked, all eager.

  ‘Dunno, missus.’

  ‘You take care of him, d’you hear?’ she said in the threatening way women have. Message: protect Mortimer at all costs. Lovejoy doesn’t matter. ‘Here he is!’ she squeaked. A car appeared.

  Mortimer alighted. No courtesy light, I noticed. We were secret. Mrs Fenwright beamed at Mortimer, then opened his jacket with a woman’s proprietorial vigilance and tutted. ‘You’re getting thin. Don’t people feed you?’ She glared at me like I’d stolen the lad’s grub. ‘Won’t you stay for breakfast, love?’ Him, not me.

  ‘Yes, please, Fenny. Have you any potato cakes?’

  ‘Yes!’ she shrieked, and rushed in. I hadn’t been offered any. There’s fascist discrimination about.

  Mortimer ordered, ‘Change into the male nurse’s uniform in the motor, Lovejoy. This car will collect you after fifty minutes. The senior sister will simulate booking you on duty.’

  Silently he shut the car door on me. How did he do that? We drove towards town, me donning a horrible blue-striped uniform complete with a name tag. I felt a right prawn.

  The Beeches is a smallish private hospital, new as a pin and shaped like a child’s drawing. The driver said nothing, except when he stopped near a hedge footpath.

  ‘Main door down there. Fifty minutes.’

  ‘What if I get held up?’

  ‘I’ll break your legs. Mortimer wants you at the casino by eight.’

  Casino? ‘Of course he does.’ I thought, Now what?

  Rudely, he snatched the ball I’d made of my own clothes and drove off. I reported for duty to a senior sister in the staff office, and she signed the staff register. She didn’t even look up, but asked if he was all right. Assuming she meant Mortimer, I said, ‘Yes, fine.’ She gestured me away. In the corridor I examined a wall chart. Side Ward 3A was two floors up. I didn’t use the lift in case I met doctors barking commands in Latin.

  Nobody was about except one nurse bent over her desk, screens flickering constant vigilance. Mr Smethirst was in a lone side ward. I slipped in and stood, feeling daft. He was like a pale, wizened fly in a web of polyester tubes. He had a medley of screens. I moved experimentally, saw myself appear on the nurse’s monitor, and slyly shuffled out of the camera’s view.

  ‘Wotcher, Lovejoy,’ Smethie startled me by saying.

  ‘Er, wotcher, Mr Smethirst.’ I tried for casual, but failed. Everybody spotted me before I knew where I was myself. ‘Just visiting. You OK?’ He looked terrible.

  ‘Thank heaven you came, Lovejoy. I’ve not got long.’

  ‘Got to keep out of the nurse’s screen, sir,’ I explained. Why had I called him sir? ‘Want anything?’

  ‘Get the recorder.’ He gestured feebly. I found a matchbox-sized device. ‘Press the red dot. Put it by my face.’

  I obeyed, and sat on the floor among dangling bottles. I never trust gadgets. Batteries go wrong when I’m around, and I’m death to digitals.

  ‘Lovejoy, I’m sorry about Laura.’

  ‘No harm done, sir.’

  ‘Stop that, son. Just listen. You mustn’t join their daft plan, d’you hear? Don’t be talked into it.’ He struggled for breath. I watched anxiously, but he got going again. ‘We’ve forgotten white tribes are doomed.’

  ‘White tribes?’ I thought I’d misheard.

  ‘That’s what history calls us. Why d’you think we came to England?’

  ‘Er…’ Did he want answers? I didn’t even know the frigging question.

  ‘Listen hard. The centuries have marooned us all. Like tide pools, full of strange creatures who should have left with the receding oceans. Instead, we live as anachronisms. Us tribes even taught our young to be full of hate. It’s not right. You follow?’

  ‘’Course,’ I said. ‘Tough luck.’

  ‘No, you don’t, son. Keep recording. We forgotten tribes are everywhere in the Third World, though you’d be hard put to find us. Can you believe, we’re even in America?’

  ‘Good heavens,’ I said politely, like you do when old people ramble.

  ‘You’re too thick to understand. No offence.’

  ‘None taken, Smethie,’ I said, well narked. I wasn’t going to call him ‘sir’ after that crack. I’m not thick, just forgetful. I settled down. It was starting to sound like a chemistry lecture.

  ‘Take the recording. Guard it with your life.’

  ‘Promise, Smethie.’

  He sighed. ‘That’s a load off my mind. You’re hopeless, Lovejoy, but you’ll keep faith. My tale will take twenty minutes. I was born…’

  And off he strayed. It was a funny old drift, talk of Dutch folk (I think), Confederate battalions (I think), French-speaking Polish troops of centuries ago, whole countries betrayed by the League of Nations, diamond fields, South African politicos I’d never heard of, Namibia, and forgotten wars.

  Coming to, I realised the clock had moved on and old Smethie was still whispering. I must have dozed.

  ‘See, Lovejoy?’ he was going on. ‘Even the Great Silk Road left traces. We can’t abandon duty.’

  ‘’Course not.’ I tried to sound indignant. ‘I always think that.’

  ‘I’m done, son. Take the recorder. Transcribe it.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Sir was back again.

  ‘Good luck, Lovejoy. You’re not bad, son. Just a pillock.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Thank you, for that?

  ‘Their mad scheme, son. You can’t take on the world for the sake of a few tide-pool tribes who don’t even know they’re extinct, can you?’

  ‘How true, sir.’

  ‘I knew you’d see sense, you daft bugger. Goodbye, son.’

  Was that it? ‘Ta-ra, sir.’

  He did his long sigh, I took the recorder and I slid along the dim corridors to the outside world. I didn’t sign Charge Nurse Hargreaves (i.e. me) off duty, which caused me not a flicker of conscience.

  Four minutes from getting my legs broken, I boarded the car. I changed as Leg-Break drove me to a lay-by on the A12.

  ‘That footpath to the railway,’ Leg-Break said. ‘The casino’s there.’

  He drove off without another word, miserable sod. I walked to Belfast Jim’s tea-and-wad nosher, a transport container in which Jim feeds drivers hauling south from the Hook of Holland ferries. I had a stack of toast and marmalade. It felt like years since I’d had a bite in Mrs Fenwright’s. I got a lift to town. Casino, indeed.

  Odd things happen. I was crossing against traffic in a spectacular fashion – the town’s roads are helter-skelter – when a bloke stopped me. Tall, he was impressively wizened like he was used to the torrid heat of East Anglia’s baking sun (joke). I dragged him out of the maelstrom onto a traffic island.

  ‘You nearly got done there. Traffic here’s all one way.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He held a paper. ‘Can you guide me, please?’

  South African? He had that clipped, melodious intonation. Or Dutch? We get a lot on the coast. They drive on the right, whereas South Africans are lefties like sensible old us.

  ‘Where?’ The scribbled address was my lane, and Ly.
For Lovejoy? Too much coincidence for me. ‘Got a motor?’ I dithered. ‘A bus from the cinema goes every hour.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He had the clearest eyes you ever saw, long-range orbs of a hunter, and his skin looked pruned. Hot dry lands?

  ‘Not much there,’ I said helpfully. ‘No inns. Just an old church and a post office. Will nowhere else do?’

  ‘No, sir, and thank you.’ No sirrr end thenk yoo. Polite definitely meant Southern African. Old Smethirst had mentioned there. What had he said, though? I’d not really listened.

  Lurking by the Bull Tavern, I saw him catch the number 66 village bus. A stranger looking for me, with my address, asking me – nobody else, Doctor Watson – and speaking as if he knew Afrikaans? Had he come from where they had virtually no proper traffic at all?

  I vowed not to go home for a bit, let the blighter draw a blank. Ogling Truly Newly’s antiquarian window, I was found by Sandy and Mel. They told me I was to go with them. Mortimer said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  to bread: to spread bait (fr. angling slang)

  ‘I always say,’ Mel snapped as I boarded their monstrosity, ‘once a harlot always a harlot.’

  ‘Morning, lads.’

  ‘Mel’s livid, Lovejoy,’ Sandy trilled, using a hand mirror, risking lacerating his eyeballs with mascara. ‘Because I smiled at an Italian waiter.’ He blinked a million flutters a second.

  ‘Watch where you’re going, duckegg,’ I said.

  Mel ground out, ‘Do tarts ever change, Lovejoy?’

  Their motor is a battleship. Inside, it is a multicoloured cathedral with a bar and TV, shimmering cerise, silver, blues. The roof wears grass (literally, that garden stuff). The bonnet is gold leaf, the body changing colour to match Sandy’s mood. Today’s hue was an electric emerald, with orange, pink and magenta streaks. The tyres are scarlet, and the windows leaded glass, stolen, Sandy says, from the Church of St Hanky-Panky. You’re expected to roll in the aisles. He wants worship for this wit.