‘His face gets some too,’ I told Janie.
‘So I noticed.’ She looked stunned.
‘It’s all right. There’s no waste. I scrape it off and put it in afterwards. It’s his big finish.’
‘My God. I feel ill.’
I was rather put out by Janie’s reaction. Secretly, I’d expected her to be full of admiration at my domestic skills. Admittedly, he was beginning to get a bit smudged but that always happens. ‘Try it. You can tell when he’s finished,’ I added. ‘He starts spitting out.’
‘What a mess. How does the poor little mite survive, Lovejoy?’
I ignored this. No meal’s ever pretty, is it?
‘Mind your manners.’ Women are great critics, mainly when they see other people doing all right. It’s mostly jealousy. ‘I think he’s full.’ He was bulging but still moving impatiently. ‘Time for pudding.’
‘There’s more?’
I’d got Henry two pieces of nougat, which would have to do for today’s afters. I was embarrassed, Janie being there to see it wasn’t done as properly as it should be. Puddings should be on a plate and everything with custard.
‘Here. Unwrap it.’ She took the nougat carefully. ‘Hold it by one end and push a corner in his mouth,’ I told her. ‘Blot the dribbles as you go.’
Once she got going, I took Bexon’s pathetic belongings and began to rummage.
‘Dandy said he’d give you the sketch if you’d scan for him,’ Janie said, intent on Henry.
We were all sprawled on the divan.
‘Dandy would,’ I said bitterly. Scanning means examining supposed antiques to separate genius items from the junk. I hate doing it for others. It’s something I never do normally, only when I’m broke. Dealers are always on at me to scan for them because I’m a divvie.
‘Where does this infant put it all, for heaven’s sake?’ Janie exclaimed. She glanced across and saw I was flicking through one of the exercise books. ‘You’re wasting your time with that rubbish. I’ve looked.’
‘Keep your mind on your job,’ I said. I hate being interrupted.
It was rubbish. The old exercise books were just scribbled boredom, perhaps some fragments of a diary of the sort one always means to start but never quite gets round to. Dejected, I decided on the spur of the moment to teach Henry to read, which of course made Janie split her sides. I’ve tried before but Henry ate the highly educational alphabetic book I got him. I showed him a line and said to concentrate. He seemed to be amused, but obligingly gaped at the pages while he noshed the nougat.
‘I then caught the train back to Groundle Glen,’ I intoned, pointing to the words as I read.
‘They start learning on single letters, Lovejoy,’ Janie criticized.
I reached obligingly for the other booklet. Maybe there was a set of capitals.
‘I then caught the train back . . .’ caught my eye. ‘Hello. What have we here?’ It was the ninth page about halfway down. ‘That’s the same sentence.’
I flipped the pages over. The sentence was identical, ninth page about halfway down.
‘What is it, Lovejoy?’
‘They say the same things.’ And they did, both dog-eared exercise books. ‘One’s a copy of the other.’
The pages were ruled, obviously for school use. About twelve pages were filled with meticulous writing, ballpoint I examined both books swiftly. The words were identical, word for word. Even the blot on page ten was carefully copied into the other book’s tenth page. Each written sheet was signed ‘James R. Bexon’. I picked a page at random. Page six. The other book’s page six was identical, sentence for sentence, down to the last comma. Crazy.
‘If you ask me he’s a madman,’ Janie said. ‘Who writes a diary, then copies it out all over again?’
Maybe the old mart was a maniac. The Restoration forgery and its clever give-away leapt into my mind. Then again, I thought carefully, maybe he wasn’t.
‘Bexon was no nutter. I’ve seen a painting he did.’ I checked Henry over. ‘He’ll need changing in a few minutes.’
While Henry whittled his way through the rest of his nougat, I read one of Bexon’s exercise books. Absent replies from me kept Janie going while she prattled away, how she’d buy a town house for us and I could keep the cottage on if I really wished. I was absorbed.
The diary was twelve pages, each page one day. A simple sentimental old chap’s account of how he had a holiday on the Isle of Man. The dates were those of a couple of years previously. It was all pretty dreary stuff. Well, almost all.
He’d rented a bungalow, walked about, visited places he’d known once years before. He’d gone to the cinema and hadn’t thought much of it. Pub on a few occasions at night. He complained about prices. Chats with taxi drivers, boats arriving and the harbour scenes. He’d gone about, seen a few Viking tumuli and Celtic-British remains, watched the sea, ridden on an excursion. Television shows, weather. It was dead average and inordinately dull. Home on the Liverpool ferryboat. Argument with a man over a suitcase. Train to London, then bus out to Great Hawkham. That was it.
But there was this odd paragraph about the coffin. The same in both books, in Bexon’s careful handwriting:
I eventually decided to leave them all in the lead coffin, exactly where I would remember best. I can’t face the publicity at my age – TV interviewers are such barbarians. That is to say, some three hundred yards from where I first dug down on to the mosaic terracing. I may give a mixed few to the Castle. Let the blighters guess.
Both diaries continued with chitchat, how the streets of Douglas had altered after all these years and what changes Millicent would have noticed. That was his wife. Apparently they’d honeymooned on the Isle years before.
‘It sounds so normal there,’ Janie said into my ear. ‘Even sensible.’ She’d been reading over my shoulder. Careless old Lovejoy.
‘Very normal,’ I agreed. Then why did it feel so odd?
‘What do you think he gave to the Castle?’ she asked. Henry gave a flute-like belch about C-sharp.
‘Heaven knows,’ I said as casually as possible. Popplewell’s face floated back. The cracked glass, the cards in disarray under the cloth. ‘It could have been anything. Henry needs changing. The clean nappy’s in his sponge bag.’
I half filled a plastic bucket with water and undid him. It’s easy as long as you stick to the routine. Unpin him on a newspaper, wash off what you can in the lavatory, chuck the dirty nappy in the bucket and wash him in a bowl. Then dry and dust. Five minutes.
‘Eleanor takes the dirty one,’ I explained.
I set about making some coffee. I keep meaning to buy filter papers and a pot thing but so far I’ve never managed to get beyond that instant stuff.
‘Lovejoy. Mine’s different after all.’ She’d been showing Henry how the pages turned. ‘At the back.’
I came over.
‘There’s a drawing of a lady in mine. Yours hasn’t.’
On the inside cover, Bexon – or somebody – had painstakingly drawn a snotty crinolined lady riding in a crazy one-wheeled carriage, splashing mud and water as it went. A carriage with one wheel? It looked mad, quite crazy. The drawing was entitled ‘Lady Isabella’. Pencil, Bexon’s hand.
‘There’s no horse pulling it,’ Janie pointed out. ‘And only one wheel, silly old man.’
‘Unless . . . Janie.’ I fetched coffee over. Henry likes his strong. ‘You said Dandy Jack has a separate sketch?’’
‘Yes. He said he’ll see you tomorrow.’
We all thought hard.
‘So if there’s a message,’ I reasoned aloud, ‘it’s in the words, not the sketch. The drawing’s only a guide.’
‘Oh, Lovejoy!’ This made her collapse laughing. ‘You’re like a child! Are you sure it isn’t a coded message from the Black Hand Gang?’
‘Cut that out,’ I said coldly, but she was helpless laughing.
‘Anyway, who in their right minds would make a coffin out of lead?’ she gasped.
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br /> ‘You’re right.’ I gave in sheepishly and we were friends again.
But the Romans did.
You know, sometimes events gang up on you. Even if you decide against doing a thing, circumstances can force, you to do it in the end. Ever had that sensation? The last time I’d had the same feeling somebody’d got themselves killed and the blood had splashed on me. For the rest of Henry’s time we played on the divan. I’d invented this game where I make my hands into hollow shapes and Henry tries to find the way in.
I shivered. Janie looked at me a bit oddly. She switched the fire on, saying it was getting chilly. Henry began to snore, about an octave deeper than his belches.
‘He sleeps for an hour now, till Eleanor comes,’ I said. ‘You’d better go just before she calls.’ I didn’t want my women customers believing the cottage was a den of vice.
I lay back and watched the ceiling.
I’ve been assuming up to now you know the facts, but maybe I’d better slip them in here. If you’re a bag of nerves you should skip this bit. It gives me nightmares even yet, and I read it first as a lad at school.
Once upon a time, our peaceful old land was still and quiet. All was tranquil. Farmers farmed. Cattle hung about the way they do. Folk didn’t fight much. Fields, little towns, neat forests and houses, Thursday markets. Your actual average peace. Then one day an anchor splashed in the Medway, to the surprise of all.
The Romans had landed.
The legions, with Claudius the God Emperor bored stiff on his best war elephant, paraded down our High Street after dusting over the Trinovantes, boss tribe in those days. Our town was called Colonia, capital of the new colony of Britain under Governor-General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.
It would have all gone smoothly, if only the Druids had not got up his Roman nose. They skulked over to Anglesey, off the coast of Wales, almost as if Rome could be ignored. Well, you can imagine. Suetonius was peeved and set off after them, leaving (here it comes) Britain in the hands of tax gatherers. Usual, but unwise, because Claudius was a real big spender and had left millions for the tribal kings as a gesture of goodwill. The politicians showed up and pinched the money. Sound familiar? They had a ball – especially the night they raped the daughters of a certain lady called Boadicea.
Now, Boadicea was no local barmaid. She happened to be the Queen of the Iceni, a tough mob. Breasts seethed in the Iceni kingdom. And, remember, Suetonius was away in Anglesey with his legions, a detail the arrogant conquerors forgot.
It was all suddenly too much for the bewildered British tribes. One dark day the terrible Iceni rose. The whole of eastern England smouldered as the Roman settlements were annihilated crunch by savage crunch. The famous Ninth Legion strolled out from Lincoln innocently intending to chastise the local rabble, a shovel to stop an avalanche. The thousands of legionaries died in a macabre lunatic battle in the dank forests. St Albans was obliterated in a single evening’s holocaust. The outposts and the river stations were snuffed as Boadicea’s grim blue-painted hordes churned southwards, until only the brand new Roman city of Colonia was left. Catus the Procurator skipped to Gaul in a flash, promising legions which never came. Politicians.
There was nothing left but the smouldering forests, the waiting city, and silence. Then the spooks began. The statue of Victory tumbling to the ground and swivelling its sightless stone eyes ominously away from Rome. Omens, multiplied. Rivers ran red. Air burned. Statues wailed in temples. I won’t go on if you don’t mind. You get the picture.
Finally, one gruesome dark wet dawn, Boadicea’s warmen erupted from the forests, coming at a low fast run in their tens of thousands. The Temple of Jupiter, with the Roman populace crammed inside, was burned. The rest were slaughtered in the streets. The city was razed. Boadicea jauntily crucified seventy thousand people, Roman and Briton alike, and nobody survived. It’s called patriotism.
In the nick of time, Suetonius miraculously returned to evacuate London, shoving everybody south of the Thames while Boadicea burned London and everywhere else she could think of. See what I mean, about women never giving up. Naturally, Rome being Rome, Suetonius made a comeback and the British Queen took poison after her great defeat, woman to the last.
I’d always accepted the story at its face value, but now I couldn’t help wondering about something which had never struck me before.
Hadn’t Suetonius been a long time coming back?
Nowadays our locals say to newcomers, ‘Don’t dig below the ash, will you? The ash is so good for the roses. And there’s bits of bone, too. Calcium and phosphorus. We’re quite famous for our roses hereabouts.’ It’s such good advice to gardeners.
I don’t do any gardening.
Janie went in the nick of time. Eleanor collected Henry, now awake and singing with his foot in his mouth. I’m really proud of that trick, but Janie said they all do it. I waved from the front door.
I cleared up and got the map. The Isle of Anglesey is about half a mile from the Welsh coast. Thomas Telford even flung a bridge over the narrow Menai Straits. (Incidentally, Telford’s engraved designs are worth far more nowadays than the paper they’re printed on. They’re hardly impressionistic but give me first choice of any you get.) One old historian, Polydore Vergil, always said Suetonius invaded the Isle of Man, but he was an erratic Italian everybody said was a nut anyway. There is ever, a belief that Suetonius had with him the famous Gemini Legion, but that must be wrong as well.
Augustus Caesar once received a delegation from a far country and is reputed to have whispered behind his hand to an aide: ‘Are they worth conquering?’ The country happened to be Ceylon – Sri Lanka – which for size could dwarf Rome any day of the week. The point is that the ancient Romans were distinctly cool. And one of the coolest was Suetonius, that dour, unsmiling, decisive and superb soldier whose tactical judgement, however grim, was unswervingly accurate.
As the evening drew on I tried to light a fire but the bloody wood was wet. I switched on the electric again instead. The birds outside had shut up. Only the robin was left on a low apple branch. My hedgehogs were milling about for nothing, rolling from side to side like fat brown shoppers.
Had the might of Rome been paralysed by a stretch of water you can spit over? Was Suetonius held up by a few Druids booing on the other side? History says yes. This old chap Bexon was telling me no.
I gazed at the garden till it was too dark to see.
Chapter 6
NEXT MORNING, I shaved before seven. I had some cereal in powdered milk and fed the robin my last bit of cheese. I went to have a word with Manton and Wilkinson, gave them their groundsel.
‘Now, Manton,’ I demanded as it noshed its greenery sitting on my arm, ‘what’s all this Roman jazz?’
It wisely said nothing, knowing there was more to come.
‘The old man leaves two diaries. But why two?’
Wilkinson flew on me for his share.
‘If he was crackers, let’s forget it, eh?’ They hesitated suspiciously. ‘On the other hand, curators may be duckeggs but Popplewell can tell genuine Roman antiques, coins or otherwise. Right?’ They closed up along my arm, interested now. ‘Bexon’s coins being genuine, pals, what can there possibly be, I wonder, stuck in an old lead coffin in some well-remembered spot in the Isle of Man?’
We thought hard.
‘And who should benefit better,’ I demanded, ‘than Lovejoy Antiques, Inc.?’
Wilkinson fluffed out, pleased. Manton looked sceptical.
‘Don’t be so bloody miserable,’ I told Manton angrily, ‘just because I haven’t the fare to get there. You’re always critical.’
I shoved them on to a branch and shut their flight door. Both were looking sceptical now.
‘I can get some money,’ I snapped. ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll have the sketch and the fare from Dandy. I’ll be back. You see.’
By my front door the robin was cackling with fury. He was quite full but battling to keep the sparrows from the cheese he didn’t want.
Very feminine, robins.
The bus was on time. In my innocence I thought it a good omen.
Dandy Jack’s is a typical lock-up, a shop front and two rooms. The clutter held miscellaneous modern tarted up as old, a brass 1890 bedstead (worth more than you’d think, incidentally), pottery, wooden furniture and some ornamentals plus a small gaggle of portabilia in a glass-fronted cabinet.
A few people milled about inside, mostly grockles (dealers’ slang: tourists, not necessarily foreign, derogatory) and the odd dealer. Big Frank Wilson from Suffolk was there. He gave me a nod which said, nothing worth a groat. I shrugged. He’s a Regency silver by desire, William IV furniture by obligation, and undetected bigamist by the skin of his teeth, as if scratching a quid in the antiques game isn’t enough nightmare to be going on with. Jenny from the coast (she’s tapestries and Georgian household items) was painstakingly examining a crate of porcelain. She and Harry Bateman were desperately trying to stock up their new shop on East Hill. They’d badly overspent lately to catch the tourist wave, but their stuff was too ‘thin’ (dealer’s slang again: much low quality spiced with only rare desirable items).
I pushed among the driftwood – not being unkind, but I really had seen better antiques on Mersea beach.
‘Hello, Lovejoy.’
‘What’s new, Dandy?’
‘Bloody near everything,’ he grinned. I had to laugh. ‘Message for you from Bill Fairdale. He says to call in.’
Bill was from my village, rare manuscripts and antique musical instruments. The only trouble was that his rare illuminated manuscripts are a bit too good to be true. The sheepskin parchments pegged out drying in his garden do very little to restore a buyer’s confidence. He’s even been known to ask a visitor’s help in mixing ‘mediaeval’ monks’ egg-tempera pigments with an unfinished carpet page of Lindisfarne design in clear view, only to offer the same visitor the completed ‘antique’ next day. He’s very forgetful.
Gold by Gemini Page 5