The Vatican Rip l-5

by Jonathan Gash

  'Silver,' she was saying about a lovely tray. 'Even after the Bunker Hunt fiasco, genuine hallmarked silver is the greatest investment you could hope for.'

  Well, yes, I thought, but be careful, folks.

  'It's really beautiful,' an attractive blue-rinsed woman exclaimed.

  'What period?' her husband asked. He was a benign portly gent in executive rimless specs and looked worth a groat or two.

  'George the Third. A London maker called Edward Jay.' The woman noticed me. She obviously hated me on sight. Well, I'm no sartorial model. I never look well dressed, and what with the recent carry-ons I suppose she thought me a right scruff. As long as the other customers were there she could hardly sling me out.

  'It weighs heavy, George,' the tourist said. 'And so old.'

  'Over two hundred and twenty six ounces, madam.'

  'Is that right!'

  'And absolutely original, I assure you. Worth—'

  Calmly I said, 'Half.'

  The proprietress maintained her pleasant smile at my casual interruption. Two goons instantly appeared, one definitely limp of wrist and highly perfumed, the other a handsome gorilla. They came smiling hard and stood to either side of me. I felt like a nut in a cracker. The Americans turned on me, still benign but with financial antennae quivering.

  'You say half, sir?'

  'Half. Look.' I took the tray—a genuine, lovely job with applied reeded borders, handles and four panel supports—and tilted it at the strip-light. 'See the centre? The reflection's fine until you get to the middle.'

  'A forgery?' the American woman said breathlessly.

  'Not really. It's original all right. But the one thing which cuts the value of a beautiful tray like this is central engraving—coats of arms, monograms—done later.'

  'There is none,' the proprietress snapped. Her smile wasn't slipping, but it had definitely tightened.

  'Not now.' I squinted along the tray. A definite margin showed around the centre.

  'Somebody's machined it off. It's visible from an angle, like oil on water.'

  'Wouldn't it be thinner there, sir?' asked the elderly American.

  I was impressed. Politeness and common sense come rare.

  'Not if you electroplate it time after time in the centre with silver. Still genuine, you see.

  Still legal. But devalued.'

  'Ahem, this early saxophone,' the dainty assistant crooned, sharp as floss, trying to distract attention.

  'Basset horn,' I put in. It's a weird looker, detachable spout and all.

  Her mouth was a pale slit of fury. 'I know it's a horn, stupid!'

  'Wrong.' I was enjoying myself. 'It's not a horn at all. It's a woodwind. Basset as in hound, but horn after a bloke. Mister Horn made them in the Strand.'

  The dealer was a woman after my own heart. To my astonishment she suddenly smiled and took the tray from me. 'Well done,' she pronounced smoothly, turning casually to her tourists. 'Signor Giuseppe is a member of my staff, ladies and gentlemen. Our little ruse worked, as usual.'

  'Erm—' I said uneasily, wondering what the hell. I hadn't liked being Enrico for old Anna. I definitely hated the idea of being Giuseppe for this luscious bird.

  She coursed over my hesitation. 'Ladies and gentlemen, we arrange this demonstration to show our customers that antiques are fraught with risks. Now, with our warning in your mind, please allow me to give you a conducted tour of our excellent stock of antiques…'

  The two blokes closed on me. I really wanted to cut out and try somewhere else, late as it was, but oozed along with the Americans for protection.

  Once or twice I was drawing breath to point out the odd fact—that the cristallo ceramico she mentioned as being by the great Apsley Pellat was probably by a contemporary copier (his favourite best-selling trick was a porcelain medallion of some grand personage, set in glass), and that the pair of peasant love-spoons she claimed were Welsh had probably never been further north than Basle. It was no use. Her two goons were breathing hard in what can only be called a threatening manner. Anyhow, the bird was in full flight, posing thoughtfully at every painting, casually arresting everybody's eye. And I'll be frank about it. She had me as mesmerized as the Yanks, though I suppose after smelly old Anna any bird would have looked like Miss World.

  She sold a cut-card silver sauceboat (the silver decoration is fretted on a silver slice which is then applied to the silverware. It's not been done well for a good century).

  Knowing I was there, she wisely glossed over a piece of so-called Rafaello ware (in fact Raphael did none of these; they're simply forged nineteenth-century tin-enamel porcelain maiolicas) and instead sold a little harlequin table of about 1790.

  The tourists made to leave after half an hour. Uneasily I realized her two blokes were between me and the exit.

  'I'll walk part of the way—' I was saying with a sickly smile, but the bird was too quick.

  'Signor Giuseppe,' she crooned. 'Would you mind waiting a moment, please? Good night, ladies and gentlemen! And thank you!'

  The door closed. I kept my smile up but my hands were wet and my heart was thumping. I couldn't help thinking what a bastard of a day it had been. I wanted a job, not a float in the Tiber.

  The proprietress stood, hands on her elbows. Her foot tapped. 'Well? What's the game?'

  She snapped her fingers and her bigger ape gave her a cigarette. She was bending forward to accept his light, her gaze on me, when I saw her eyes widen in astonishment. That was because I had taken her cigarette and crumbled it into an ashtray.

  'No smoking where you've pewter or paintings, love.'

  'Wait.'

  The ape was coming for me when her command froze him. It was just as well because the Stangenglâser 'pole' glass I was innocently holding was worth about ten times the lot of us. Their long cylindrical form isn't to my liking, but I'd have crowned him with it if I had to.

  'Look, folks,' I said as reasonably as I could. 'You've a choice. I'll bring you a fortune, or you can simply go on in your old ignorant way.'

  'Explain,' the bird commanded.

  I drew breath. This was my pitch. 'If I hadn't been here you'd maybe have sold that tray.'

  She smiled like a moving glacier. 'But thanks to you, I didn't.'

  'No,' I said affably. 'Thanks to me you sold a hell of a lot more. That tray dodge can be repeated ten times a day. You need somebody here who knows the difference between an antique and a telly.'

  'No, Piero!' Her voice was like a whiplash. The ape halted and smouldered silently. 'Go on.'

  'A third of your stock's labelled wrong.'

  'And you could do it right?'

  'Without a single reference book.'

  She was eyeing me up and down, I felt to let. 'It's not a bad idea…'

  'He's repellent!' the petulant nerk hissed, stamping his foot.

  I admit I wasn't looking very affluent, but I thought that was a bit much. She ignored the three of us, simply speculated away behind her hazel eyes.

  'Are you in trouble with the police?'

  'No, but you would have been if you'd sold that crappy piece of carpet as a genuine Khilim.' I nodded to indicate the labelled rug placed centrally on the floor. A real Khilim is too light to put on the floor. It's properly used for divans or as a wall decoration.

  'Khilims have no pile. That things a foot thick. Who made it for you?'

  There was a pause, also a foot thick. Finally she nodded as if reaching some inner agreement.

  'Come back tomorrow morning,' she said. 'I'll consider you. Nine o'clock. And be presentable.'

  I left, backing out nervously. Not much of a promise, but I was becoming used to very little. So long as I hung on in Rome some way, any way at all.

  CHAPTER 11

  I slept that night in the park near the great Castel Sant' Angelo. Edgy as hell, I kept imagining there was somebody standing watching me under the trees but when I crept over to see who it was I found nobody. I didn't sleep well. The castle's brooding
bulk added nothing to my slumber, but at least it didn't rain. Most of the night I thought about popes.

  Now, popes have a very chequered history. They haven't always been sweetness and light. If you crossed them— and sometimes even if you didn't—you finished up stabbed, poisoned, burned, garotted, buried, castrated, starved, or if you were lucky simply ignored to death. Even an innocent joke could earn a horrible joke in return.

  I couldn't get out of my mind that whizz-kid Sixtus V. His sister had once been a washerwoman, and he considered himself ridiculed when some wag pointedly stuck a dirty shirt on one of Rome's many battered statues. Cunning as a fox, Sixtus pretended great hilarity and offered a reward to the anonymous wag—and cut off the joker's hand when he came to claim it. 'I never said I wouldn't,' the Pope calmly pronounced afterwards, the ultimate infallible theological argument. Well, my worried mind went, if a laugh gets you maimed for life, ripping the Vatican off won't exactly go over as a comedy act. And don't try telling me we don't live in the Dark Ages any more—poor old mankind is always in the Dark Ages, and that includes today. No mistake about that. If you don't believe me, walk around any city at nightfall, or just read tomorrow's morning newspaper. And I had even better evidence than that. I'd met Arcellano.

  Twice during that long night I had to shuffle down into a small grove while police cars cruised past and their nasty beams probed the darkness searching for layabouts. I'm hardly ever cold but by dawn I felt perished and was certain I looked a wreck. Anybody that's ever been unwashed and unshaven and unfed knows the feeling, especially when the rest of the world looks poisonously bright and contented. Rome's favourite knack is appearing elegant. On this particular morning its elegance got right up my nose.

  I was supposed to be at the antiques place by nine so I scrambled about, had a prolonged breakfast, a barbershop shave and a wash and brush up. Naturally I walked everywhere to harbour my dwindling gelt. Even so, I was early and stood among passing pedestrians at the window of the Albanese Antiques Emporium.

  Piero the ape was first to arrive and unlocked the shop's glass door with a proprietary flourish. Adriana herself arrived a minute later, coolly stepping out of a mile-long purple Rolls-Royce and doubtless stopping a few pacemakers among the peasants as she did so. She was blindingly beautiful. The only person blissfully unaffected by her sleek attractiveness was her other assistant, outrageous in a silver chiffon scarf and earrings, who came rushing in after her, complaining about the traffic on the Corso.

  'Morning, tout le monde!' he crooned. 'Like my new hairdo?'

  He introduced himself as Fabio—'Fab as in fabulous, dearie!'—but I wasn't taken in. I'd once seen a really vicious knife artist with all Fabio's exotic mannerisms.

  'Good morning, Signora Albanese,' I said politely.

  'Come through.' She swept past into the rear office.

  Humbly I stood while she ripped through a couple of letters and checked the phone recorder. Seven messages out of hours, I noted with interest. A thriving business. As she settled herself I wondered about that chauffeur-driven Rolls. There had been a stoutish bloke with her, riffling paperwork in his briefcase. He had barely bothered to look up as she descended. I'd never seen such a distant goodbye. Presumably Signor Albanese.

  She looked up at last. 'Your story, please.'

  'Oh, er, I was on a tourist trip—'

  'Name and occupation?'

  She appraised me, her eyes level and cold. First fag of the day lit for effect and radiating aggro. She really was something, stylish to a fault and straight in the bella figura tradition. Her smart pastel suit was set off by matching gold bracelets and a sickeningly priceless platinum-mounted intaglio that had seen Alexander the Great embark to conquer the world. I wanted her and her belongings so badly I was one tortured mass of cramp.

  'Lovejoy. Antique dealer.'

  'And you are in a mess.'

  'Temporarily, signora.'

  She indulged in a bleak smile to show she thought my mess very permanent indeed.

  'Money problems?'

  'Yes, signora. I was dipped. I have to earn my fare home.'

  'So last night's performance was a tactic?'

  'I admitted that, signora.'

  She nodded and with balletic grace tapped ash into a rectangular porcelain ash trough.

  'What's your speciality?'

  'Speciality?' It was years since anybody had asked me this sort of stuff.

  'In antiques,' she said as if explaining to a cretin.

  'None.' And that was the truth.

  She purred, about to strike. 'Then let me put it another way, Lovejoy. Which of my antiques do you prefer? Even an imbecile like you must have some preference.'

  I could be as vindictive as her any day of the week. 'The genuine ones.'

  'All my antiques are genuine!' She even stood up in her fury.

  'Balls,' I said calmly into her face. 'Half your stuff is crap, love. I'm a divvie.“

  That shut her up. She made to speak a couple of times but only finished up standing and smoking. Behind me Piero cleared his throat. I heard Fabio whisper something.

  Both had evidently been attracted by Adriana's outburst and come in to see the blood.

  'Ask him!' I heard Fabio hiss.

  She judged me then in a different way, blinking away from me, then glancing back several times. I knew the syndrome. Before, it was merely a question of using a scruffy bloke who seemed to possess a limited skill. Now it was a different question entirely.

  The problem was how much I'd want, because as far as her and her little antiques emporium were concerned I was the best windfall since penicillin. She drew a long breath and fumigated me with carcinogens.

  'You two get out,' she said at last. Then to me, 'Do sit down. Cigarette?'

  * * *

  Everybody's a born dazzler—at something. You, me, the tramps padding among the dustbins, and that funny woman down the street. We are all the world's greatest. The only question for each of us is the world's greatest what.

  I once knew a bloke who was the world's worst everything—well, almost everything. If he drove a car it crashed. If he wound his watch up its hands fell off. If he dialled a friend the phone electrocuted somebody at the other end. He was a menace at work.

  Finally, in despair, his boss wrote him off and begged him, tears in his eyes, to get the hell off and out into premature retirement. Honestly, they actually paid him to do nothing. He was a brand new kind of national debt.

  Then, doodling one day in the public library—which incidentally he'd accidentally set on fire the week before—he realized the singular pleasure he was deriving from simply copying the stylized scrawl of an early manuscript which was framed on the wall. I won't tell you his name, but he is now the greatest mediaevalist calligrapher in Northern Europe, and official master copyist of manuscripts for universities the world over. Get the message? Even the worst of us is the best mankind has got—for something.

  A 'divvie' is a nickname for somebody with the special knack of knowing an antique when he sees one. Some divvies are infallible only for genuine oil paintings, or sculpture, or first editions, or porcelain, or Han dynasty funereal pottery. Others like me—rarest of all—are divvies for practically any antiques going. Don't ask me how it's done, why a divvie's breathing goes funny when he confronts that da Vinci painting, or why his whole body quivers to the clang of an inner bell when near that ancient pewter dish or Chippendale table. Like the old water diviners—from whom we derive our nickname— who go all of a do when that hazel twig detects a subterranean river, there's very little accounting for these things.

  If people ask me to explain, I say it's just that the antiques' love comes through and reaches out to touch me. And, since everything modern is rubbish, that's QED as far as I'm concerned.

  She was staring. 'For everything antique?'

  'Yes. Except when it's mauled into a pathetic travesty, like your mahogany occasional table out there.'

  She flared briefly.
'That's genuine Georgian!'

  'It's wood is that old,' I conceded. 'But it's a hybrid made up of a pole screen's base and a remade top.'

  She was badly shaken. I wondered how much she'd been taken for. 'Is that true, Lovejoy? I bought it as Cuban mahogany.'

  'The bit you are looking at is veneer.' It's one of the oldest tricks in the book: get an original piece of the right date, and simply remould it. Most commonly done with tables, bureaux, cabinets and chairs. Some of these hybrids have to be seen—or bought—to be believed. I hate them, because some beautiful original has been devastated just for greed. Greed, that horrible emotion which makes hookers of us all.

  'And you'll divvie for me?'

  I prompted, 'For…?'

  'You mean payment.' Meeting an antiques man better than herself had rocked her, but money was home ground. She became brisk, her old poised and perfect self again.

  'How will I verify your accuracy? Of course, I can always give you a knowledge test.'

  'I might fail it.' They always ask the same things. “Then where would you be?'

  She blew a spume of smoke into the air, getting the point. Knowledge is only knowledge. I was on about the actual business of knowing, which is light years ahead.

  'Have you any suggestions?'

  'For proof? Yes. Stick your own price on any genuine antique, picked at random. I'll work for it.'

  She bowed like the Gainsborough lady but her eyes were focused on distant gold.

  'Instead of money? No other pay?'

  I smiled at the caution in her tone. People are always stunned by somebody who backs his judgement to the hilt. I said, 'There is no higher price than time, love. It's all a person has.'

  'You're hired.'

  'Lend me enough to see the week out, please.'

  Her eyes narrowed. 'I thought—'

  'There's no future in starving to death, love.'

  'That bad?' She drummed her fingers on her desk, shook her head. 'No. You might take off. If you are a genuine divvie, I need you here. Fabio!'

  Fabio was into the office instantly, waving a notebook and agog with inquisitiveness.