Gold by Gemini

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘I knew you were one of us deep down, comrade,’ he said, smug with pride. ‘It always shows through the capitalist-imperialist veneer. Comrade Marx’s definition of class illustrates –’

  ‘He never defined class,’ I said. ‘He promised to in that footnote to his first German edition, now very valuable, but never got round to it. Big Izzie, comrade. We’ve a, er, political meeting near there.’

  ‘Laxey,’ he said. ‘We ought to get together, comrade, to discuss class fundamentalism –’

  ‘It’s a date,’ I said. ‘Laxey, you said?’

  ‘Long live the revolution!’ he called after us.

  ‘Er, sure, sure.’

  I rushed them to the Lagonda and had Janie hurtling us towards the road to cheers and waves of the surrounding multitudes of the bike people. She was screaming for instructions at the fork but I didn’t know where Laxey was. We scrambled for maps, then two cars came by and we had to wait till they passed.

  ‘Laxey?’ Algernon said at this point. ‘Go left.’

  ‘Sound your horn!’ I cried in anguish, but anyone who beeps a horn In Britain is either on fire or psychotic. Janie’s upbringing held firm. We moved sedately out on to the Laxey road.

  ‘Who’ll be there?’ Algernon asked pleasantly.

  ‘How the hell should I know who lives in Laxey?’ I said, baffled.

  ‘He means the meeting,’ Janie began to explain. ‘There isn’t really any meeting, Algernon, you see. It was a . . . a ruse.’

  ‘There’s an enormous waterwheel at Laxey,’ Algernon said brightly as Janie gave the car its head.

  ‘Then why didn’t you say so?’ I hissed. If I’d not been in the front I’d have thrown him out.

  ‘Is it what we’ve been looking for all this time? Its picture’s on the coins.’

  I fumbled in my pocket. It bloody well was, the imprint of a great waterwheel. One day I’ll do for Algernon.

  ‘It’s even got a name,’ he continued cheerfully. ‘Lady Isabella. They say that when it was first made –’

  ‘Algernon!’ from Janie, tight-lipped. Algernon had known all along, the stupid sod.

  I closed my eyes. Sometimes things just get too much.

  The wheel’s beautiful. You know, the Victorians really had it. If a thing is worth doing at all, they obviously thought, then it’s worth doing well. On the side of the supporting structure was a plaque: LADY ISABELLA. There she was, gigantic and colourful, pivoted with such exquisite balance that a narrow run of water aqueducted downhill was sufficient to power her round at some speed. She was breathtaking.

  She was set in the hillside valley near a stone bridge. A deep crevasse sliced into the hill, exposing a ruined mineshaft. Old discoloured mine buildings eroded slowly block by block higher up.’ An enormous massive beam projected skywards from the ruins, probably one arm of a pump of some sort for the underground workings.

  ‘How colossal!’ Janie said it. Colossal was the word.

  There were steps up from the path to its main axle. Algernon rushed up to see the giant waterwheel swinging its immense height skywards.

  ‘Imagine the size of the bike engine you’d need to –’

  ‘Algernon,’ I interrupted. ‘Don’t. No more.’

  Janie was watching me. Just then she tapped me firmly on the shoulder.

  ‘Well, everybody!’ she cut in brightly. ‘Home time.’

  ‘What?’ I rounded on her.

  ‘Home time, I said.’ Janie put her hand on my arm like a constable.

  ‘We’ve only just got here!’

  ‘And now we’re going. You owe me a day, Lovejoy.’

  ‘But you said it wasn’t today,’ I yelped. ‘And we’ve found her! My main clue!’

  ‘No,’ Janie said. ‘It wasn’t today, Lovejoy. But today’s over. Look.’

  I came to. The day had faded. Our car was the only one left in the car park beside the river down below. The little toffee shops had closed. In the distance lights showed where the seaside promenade of Laxey lay. Lights were coming on in the cottage windows. An old woollen mill blotted out the foreground. Mill owners of years ago had laid out the valley like a stone pleasure garden, now somewhat sunken and ill-kept. It was swiftly quietening into dusk.

  ‘But, Janie, for God’s sake –’

  ‘It’s dangerous, Lovejoy,’ she said in that voice. ‘Derelict mines, ruined mine buildings, horrid great pumps underground and a wheel this size. If you weren’t so deranged by being near whatever the poor old man left, you’d realize how exhausted and frightened you really are.’ She took my arm. ‘Home.’

  I tried appealing to Algernon but he backed down. Friends.

  ‘I claim my day, starting from this instant,’ Janie said. ‘Twenty-four hours.’

  Women make me mad. They’re like the soap in your bath. You know it’d be good value if only you could find out what it’s up to and where it is.

  Algernon was nodding. ‘True, Lovejoy. You’re bushed.’

  ‘There, then!’ cheerfully from Janie. ‘We’re all agreed.’

  1 was defeated. I looked up at the Lady Isabella.

  ‘Check the time, Algernon,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Twenty past eight.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours, then.’ I waited for orders. ‘Well?’

  ‘Home, chaps.’ She fluttered her eyelashes and waggled seductively down the steps ahead of me. ‘You’ll thank me later, b’wana, when we’re all cosy.’

  Algernon joined in.

  ‘Never mind, Lovejoy,’ he said brightly. ‘There’s always another day.’

  I didn’t speak to either of them on the way home. People who know what’s best for you give me a real pain.

  Chapter 19

  ‘WHAT IF EDWARD Rink’s come over after us?’ I said. I’d got fed up sulking.

  ‘Don’t argue. You need the rest. You’re a wreck.’

  ‘And what if –’

  ‘Rest.’ Janie was painting her toenails reddish. ‘A normal day’s what you heed, Lovejoy.’ I was reading. ‘Look how much good it’ll do us. You get too involved in antiques.’

  ‘I could have it by now.’ I nearly dropped my drink just thinking of it.

  ‘Rink’s man’s stupid. You said he couldn’t follow a brass band. No sugar for me, please.’

  I brewed up and carried her cup over. She was on the couch by the window. We could see Algernon stalking some innocent sparrow across the field. I sat watching her doing her nails. They blow on their fingers but not their toes. I suppose toes are too far down even with knees bent. She has a little enamelled case full of small tools for things like this. French women used to have small cased sets of hooks and needles for unpicking gold-fringed decorations and embroidery. It’s called drizzling, or parfilage. Women to the last, they’d collect the gold thread in a bag and sell it back to the goldsmith-embroiderer, who’d then make a lovely gold-fringed item, such as a bookcover, with an appropriate expression of devotion woven in. Then he’d sell it to a suitor, who’d give it to his ladylove, who’d take it to the theatre and unpick the gold thread and put it in a bag and sell it back . . . Women may be very funny creatures but I never said they were daft. The unpicking sets are now valuable antiques and not uncommon. Gold-fringe embroidery of the eighteenth century is, as you’ve guessed, very rarely found. Incidentally, this pernicious fashion was ended at a stroke and we actually know who stopped it. The writer Madame de Genlis condemned the habit in her novel Adèle et Théodore in 1782 and it vanished like snow off a duck. That saved a few rare pieces, now naturally worth a fortune. Light a candle for her, like I do occasionally.

  ‘We go shopping,’ Janie spoke emphatically.

  ‘Er, great.’ I tried to sound straining at the leash. ‘Me too?’

  ‘You especially.’

  ‘Well, great.’

  ‘Then we have a lovely quiet meal together.’ She fanned her toes with her hand. ‘Algernon can eat alone. Elsewhere.’

  ‘Where do you cut your toenails?’
r />   ‘In the bath.’

  Funny that. We know the most intimate secrets about everyone throughout history except for toenail cutting. There’s no really accepted etiquette. So you do it in the bath. Well, well.

  ‘Couldn’t we go past Isabella?’

  ‘No.’

  I gave in, but there’d be no half measures. I decided I’d make the meal, a really posh one complete with garnish. I stood watching Algernon in the distance, thinking, what’s garnish? It sounds some sort of mushroom.

  In the town we had a great time shopping. I mean, really breathtaking.

  It’s great. You trudge along a row of shops, then trudge back. Then you trudge between two or three shops which all have the same stuff. Then you trudge about searching for a fourth, also identical. Then you trudge back and forth among all four. Then you find a fifth. You keep it up for hours. As I say, it’s really trudging great. We got Janie some shoes. It only took a couple of months or so.

  I cut loose and bought the stuff for our meal, following the advice of a booklet which told me about the teasing of my taste buds by tournedos bordelaise. It sounded really gruesome but I persevered. It seemed to be some sort of meat with gravy. I met Janie under my mound of vegetables. She fell about laughing, but I replied coldly that I was working to a plan. We went shopping for a few more years before returning to the bungalow where I crippled myself cooking for the rest of the day. I learned my least favourite occupation. It’s cooking. Janie sent Algernon out to eat.

  By evening the kitchen looked like Iwo Jima. We started our meal elegantly, holding hands now and again over the tablecloth. Well, so far so good. But it’d be touch and go making love later on.

  I was knackered.

  That evening Algernon came in and said he’d have used a little more thyme and possibly a shade less garlic. Janie pulled me off before I could reach the cleaver. Then he made me feel quite fond of him by eating everything left over.

  Chapter 20

  I GOT RID of Janie and Algernon among the cottages where people park their cars. It’s forbidden to drive right up to Lady Isabella. I was quivering with excitement.

  ‘You’ll miss me up there, Lovejoy.’ Janie sat watching me go.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ I called back. In an hour or so I’d own a wealth of genuine Roman golds. Mind you, I thought uneasily, I’d told myself that a couple of mornings ago and finished up bushed and poor as ever.

  ‘Good luck,’ from Algernon. He was geared for lunar orbit. A pal was lending him a motorbike.

  I climbed the steep road above the river. Where it turned right and humped upwards towards Lady Isabella I glanced down. Janie waved, small now on the flat stones by the water. I plodded on between the cottages. At the café I resisted the temptation to look. She ought to have gone by now because I’d said to, but I knew exactly what she was doing. She was noting the time. If I wasn’t down in a couple of hours she’d come after me with the Army. They never do what you say. I heard the crackle of Algernon’s bike maniacs arriving.

  The wheel seemed even more huge in early daylight than it had in the dusk. One could stand on the paving and look upwards. From there the paddles were hurled swiftly towards the sky, dripping water where they thinned abruptly, then vanished, replaced by other swift soaring slats. I made myself giddy watching. Curious how a simple motion can be exhilarating and even beautiful. The clack-clack sound so close became almost numbing after a few minutes. I shook the feeling away and cast around.

  The wheel was fed by a narrow stone aqueduct which ran from a hillside cleft to the left. One of the unpleasant facts was that the derelict mine shafts lay that way. The good bit was that the huge beam pump wasn’t working, thank God. It looked gruesome enough as it was, still and silent. Like I’d thought at Beckwith’s mines, a mine is a terrible intrusion into the earth, almost an offence against living rock. I could understand a mountain getting mad like when the volcano erupts in those old Maria Montez jungle adventure films. Anybody’d feel annoyed if a stranger suddenly barged in to root in the larder to see what was worth pinching.

  A few early visitors arrived while I was gaping at the wheel. Judging from their knowing reactions I must have been the last person on earth to hear about Lady Isabella’s existence. It was very annoying. They milled about exclaiming at the beautiful machine. Yet . . . no bell, no ding-dong.

  I walked round as far as I could go. Then back. A group of visitors climbed the steps down which Janie had wriggled so seductively to entice me home the evening before last. We saw the tremendous humming axle, the radiating struts seeming so gigantic they were like so many fairground complexes, stolen and cast into some skeletal giant. I touched and listened, touched and listened. Nothing. A rather matronly lady was giving me the eye, A month before I’d have had to, because I like older women, but being this close to my find gave me a greed-based willpower. There was no time to waste, I drifted away, leaving them gaping at the axle.

  The road became a mere track up the incline, very stony and almost precipitous in parts. To the right the cleft below became practically a ravine, littered with fallen masonry and chimneyed mine vents. A narrow goyt spun water put of the rock and let it fall abruptly. God knows what cold deep subterranean chasm it squeezed up from. About halfway up the hillside the crashing noise of the water ended. I noticed the sound of Lady Isabella had faded.

  I stopped to rest on the wall of a shallow stone cistern, wondering what Janie was doing. The great wheel turned silently down in the valley between me and the sea. Lovely.

  It was about ten o’clock. The pale sun was catching the wheel’s colours and flicking them about the mountainside. The main beams started out a silvery gold. By the time they flashed on to the dark browns and greens all about me they were a brilliant tangerine, a Thai enamel silver box’s colour. They make these boxes now, real silver but cheap and modern. There are only about six modern designs knocking about so far, basically an opaque white or a translucent tangerine. Dishonest people are said to use deep-heat physiotherapy lamps and two hours’ cooking at the back end of a good quality vacuum cleaner without its filter bag, to mimic the appearance of antique enamel. It works, but only if you look from a mile off. Look with a microscope. Uneven crazed surface = modern, faked. Even surface, with the occasional large deep ‘bubbled’ area, may be the real thing. Give me the first offer.

  A motorcycle skittered into view, way down below on the Laxey road, the rider anonymous in his bulbous helmet. Funny old place to be riding, I thought. I rose and began the climb again. Maybe he was training for a scramble race cross-country. Whatever it was, he was booming up the track behind me like the clappers.

  I was only a hundred yards from the most ghoulish of the mine shafts when the bastard nearly ran me down. Now, it could have been an accident. I admit that. The track was only about four feet wide there. Like a fool, I had my eye on the mine ruins, not bothering to glance behind at the approaching rider. Maybe my apprehension was focused uneasily on the workings. Whatever distracted me, I was hellish slow, only managing to chuck myself to one side and not completely escaping. The maniac’s handlebar slammed into my hip, spinning me like a top. There I was, clinging dazed to the stony bank while the dust shower settled. He didn’t even stop.

  My shirt and trousers were both torn. You could see the bruise swelling before your very eyes and blueing. Ugly. I was shaking so much it took me three goes to lift a stone and put it on the lump. I wetted it from a hillside ooze and sat there trembling, trying to press the damp cold stone on to my side to stop the swelling. The trouble is, once a person’s inside motorbike gear he becomes unrecognizable. He hadn’t seemed heavily built. Quite slight, encased in leather crammed with insignia and no number plates that I could recall.

  Three or four times I fancied I could hear a distant crackle but wasn’t sure of the direction. My hip was murder when I pulled myself together and resumed walking. I carried the stone to chuck at the swine if he came back. It’s funny what goes through your mind after a
bit of a scare. Algernon’s thin. He’s also a bike fiend. The rider was too small for Beck. It was too crude a method for my friend Edward Rink, and anyway he’d only to knock me off after I’d found the stuff for him, not before. I wondered if the rider could have been a woman. Not Janie, surely. Kate? The question was, did he/she really attempt to do for me? Or was it just a stray stupid rider showing off?

  I was opposite the mine shaft. I stopped to listen. Nothing again. Water welled from the rock and ran along the aqueduct in a steady flow. I was out of sight of the wheel now. No houses, no people. Only derelict buildings, the ungainly beam engine projecting its huge arm, the trickling water and the stone track.

  From where I stood the cleft was only forty yards wide. What had they mined in those days? It looked grim on a pleasant sunny day like this, with holidaymakers trekking up to the café and then down to the sea for dinner. On a rainy winter’s day it must have seemed to the miners like a freezing hell.

  Old Bexon must have been tough if he’d come all this way. Could an elderly man, gradually sickening in his final illness, climb down from the track, across the cleft and into the mine? I limped back and forth for some time. There seemed no way across. Maybe it would be wise to follow the path to the crest. The miners had had to get over there somehow in the old days, and I could make a quick check to see if that bloody rider was lurking over the hill or not. I was starting to hurt and had to rest a minute. I threw the stone away. Seven long seconds to hit the bottom of the shaft with a faint splash. A hell of a fall, even for a stone.

  Bleak places have this effect on me. I get restless and start working out how far’s civilization. Not that countryside isn’t great on a postcard but it needs watching. I only want Wuthering Heights not to spread about too much. A hundred yards further on I found the causeway. A series of small arches had supported it, but now only their stubs stuck upwards from the little valley’s floor. Some wise man had dismantled it. I’d have danced from relief if I hadn’t just been injured. If there was no way across for me there’d been no way across for old Bexon. It couldn’t be done. And lugging a leaden coffin over there would need a helicopter. I was saved. No dark deep hidey-holes for jubilant Lovejoy. Home again, still empty-handed. I turned back, relieved but disappointed.