Paid and Loving Eyes l-16

by Jonathan Gash

  We walked the prom, short-cutting the headland, coming on the marina itself with unexpected suddenness.

  The place had been all fields, until excavators dug out a series of shallow bays and opened seacocks to let the tides in. Then it became a mesh of inlets, jetties on a mathematical grid design. Seagulls love it. Posh folk sail yachts down the coast to throw parties for other nauticals who throw parties back. There’s a lock gate, but only to charge boats entering and leaving. These seaside places are catchpenny.

  “See the building? Only finished three weeks ago.”

  A feast of modern architecture, the squat ugliness was breathtaking. Wrap-around windows gave a monster view of artificial bays. Its artificial lighthouse blinked red and green port and starboard lanterns from artificial masts. Artificial sails stuck up from the deck-hatch roof, across which artificial spray whisked every few seconds. Artificial rigging displayed signal flags depicting some non-message. Only the seagulls weren’t artificial, and I wasn’t sure about some of those.

  “I love it,” I told Jodie. She looked at me with a question in her eyes. “Only practising.”

  We were expected. Jodie was given a polite thank you by Troude in a blazer-and-Henley rig. Neckerchief with gold anchors, and a flying pennant blazer badge. The lounge was extravagant with ships’ wheels and marlinspikes and capstans and two of the most grotesque figureheads you could ever imagine. No place to get drunk. You’d wonder what you were looking at.

  “See you, Jode,” I said, smiling to show I wasn’t daunted by the lady sitting with Troude. He even had a captain’s cap nonchalantly on the couch beside him.

  “Thank you for coming so promptly, Lovejoy.” He smiled differently in daylight, but still the ruler of all he surveyed. Or, in present company, possibly not?

  “How do you do, missus?” I said politely. “Lovejoy.”

  She gazed with utter indifference. Not at me, note, but vaguely in my direction. But there were a few boats gliding the briny behind me, so I couldn’t be certain.

  “This him?” she asked Troude. She didn’t care one way or the other if I was me or not. I could tell.

  “If it’s me you want, missus.”

  She looked at me, not quite hailstones but getting that way. “I won’t tolerate idiocy, Philippe,” she said.

  “He’s nervous, Monique.” He introduced her. “M’selle Delebarre, Lovejoy.” I sat at Troude’s gesture of invitation, thinking, she’s the boss and he’s only her nerk, captain’s cap or no captain’s cap.

  Surprisingly, I didn’t think I was. Nervous, I mean. In the lounge, staff were preparing for an influx, but keeping quiet and respectful. No customers, which was odd. I’ve never known a sailors’ bar that wasn’t heaving with maids and matelots.

  “I won’t wait all day,” Monique said. A cryptic lady, of very little patience.

  Blankly I smiled at Troude. He looked at me. She drummed her fingers prettily. I yawned a bit, started watching the boats. One was fluttering its sails, having difficulty braking or something coming into its moorings. Monique was slim, but she’d had to work at it. A calorie job, no mistake. Her figure gave her away, in spite of the minions who’d slogged to make her appear less voluptuous than she was. She belonged among those fashionables who think a woman’s got to look cachectic to be attractive. She’d not quite made it. Her hair was dark, lank but with sheen. Her face hadn’t enough make-up on for me, but then I’m a magpie, want them to wear tons of it. They rarely do.

  “Make him, Philippe.” She’d lost patience.

  “Pick it out, Lovejoy,” Philippe Troude said.

  They meant the miniature model lifeboats on the glass-fronted mahogany cabinet against the wall by the door. Two of them, each made by a man who hated the other in the frightening days before there were any such things as modern lifeboats. Historical models are all the rage these days.

  “What silly sod spoiled the oars?” I asked. Troude gave a swift give-away glance of triumph at the woman, almost wagging for praise. He was crazy about her, and she didn’t give a damn.

  “The oars are exactly level,” La Monique said, coming to.

  “They shouldn’t be. Willie Wouldhave made that model. He cut them different lengths in 1789.”

  It was a scandal that led to the most terrible row, back when those events could ruin a man for ever. As always, the wrong man got fame and fortune. The honest man starved to death.

  That year, a fearsome gale ripped across the River Tyne driving the brig Adventure onto Herd Sands. Ashore, Tynesiders watched appalled as the crew drowned. A prominent local tycoon called Nicholas Fairies offered a money prize to anyone who could create a rescue boat able to withstand the ferocious local seas.

  Enter the goodie, one William Wouldhave, honest genius of that parish. He was a dour, morose, barbary bloke who didn’t make friends and influence people. In a dazzling fit of intuition, he abandoned design, and opted for buoyancy. Against all contemporary notions, he built a strange-looking boat with a cork layer actually sheathing the boat’s sides. Greenland style, in shape. The ten oars were strangely of different lengths, but did the job. It seemed ingenious, clever, even brilliant. Willie cooled his famous temper, and basked in the glow of being, for once in his heated life, odds-on favourite in the great rescue-boat competition.

  Enter the baddie, one Henry Greathead, who made a duff, mundane boat—sail, mast, no special buoyancy to speak of. A really average plain boat without much to commend it. Very long odds, Henry Greathead’s nowt-new rescue boat.

  Except his best friend was none other than Nicolas Fairies, head of the South Shields committee. Who naturally awarded Henry the award, prize money, the accolade that would guarantee him fame, fortune and honour.

  And poor hot-tempered honest Willie Wouldhave? The committee invited him in, and gave him a guinea as consolation, “second prize” they called it. Angrily he flung the guinea back in their faces and stormed out, to die in the poverty that bitterness always seems to bring.

  And the rescue-boat committee? They let Henry Greathead pinch Willie’s superb design. He received a fortune from Parliament. The first modern “lifeboat” was made, and did its first famous rescue the following year. And Henry Greathead was given medals, prominence, did lauded lecture tours, got gold medals from Royal Societies… I won’t go on, if you don’t mind. It makes my blood boil. Lifeboat men still call the brilliant design “Willie’s Corkie”. The inevitable monument is to both men, the extolled gainer and the sore but honest loser.

  “I don’t know,” Troude was apologizing to the gorgeous lady.

  “The other one, then.” She spoke dismissively. No tea and crumpet for poor old Philippe tonight.

  “It’s dud, lady.” I was narked. I wanted to go and see where Baff got topped, not play her silly game. “Move your pins.”

  “Pins?” For the first time she lost composure. Her accent intensified slightly.

  “Legs. The chair you’re on’s supposed to be provincial Continental, with a French mortice-and-tenon joint. The pin’s like a dowel, to hold the joint. The French”, I added to nark her, “say goujon. Sorry I can’t say it proper. It stands proud from the wood, in time. Fakers construct it the same, but have to dye the protruding end to get the shade right. It’s darker.”

  She moved as if to inspect the chair beneath her, pinked slightly and didn’t. “We paid…”

  “Aye, well you’ve been done.” I rose, said thanks and started to go. She’d thought I’d been lusting after her legs all the interview. I had, of course, but only after I’d seen the too-revealing darkened shiny goujon head on the joined chair she adorned.

  “Wait, Lovejoy, if you please.” Troude came hurrying after, now more of a go-between. He’d been a god at the Nouvello. “Please inspect the Sheraton table —”

  “Fake, Mr Troude.” I’d given the small table a glance on the way in. No gongs sounded in my chest. It was a fake no older than last Easter. But the surface worried me. Beautiful, made with endless unrel
enting slog. I didn’t know any faker still did wood finishes that perfect, not since old Trinkaloo died last Candlemas. But still a fake, if an excellent one. How odd to see one this excellent at Sir Edward’s Event, and now another so soon. Dunno why, but I felt sickened. Something I’d eaten? “Inspect? No, I won’t,” I told him, still going. I could see a couple of boats dipping into the wind as they tacked to make the harbour. “You’ve mucked me about once too often. I’m sick of you planting stuff in the Arcade, switching stuff with Frederico in case he was more of a crook than you suspected. It was pathetic. I resign.”

  “That is impossible, Lovejoy.” He tried to get ominous. “You are an integral part of the grand design.”

  Even I had to grin at that. Grand design? Was he about to march on Moscow, for God’s sake? I sighed, and pushed through the doors shaking my head. The most depressing thing about people these days is that they all talk as if they’re deciding on global nukes when instead they’re merely wondering if they should go down the pub or watch the match instead.

  Jodie Danglass fell in with me as I reached the north shore after twenty minutes’ fast walking. I was at the ice-creamio.

  “Can I have a lick, Lovejoy?” She wasn’t smiling, but women laughing at you never are. I know.

  “No,” I told her, narked. “Get your own.”

  She bought one, raising her lovely eyebrows as the ice-cream man laughed out loud. She put her arm through mine. We went to watch the sea, leaning on the railings. I like seaside, as long as it’s like this, with boats and plenty of folk on the sands and all the dross of the fair. The trouble is there’s too much of our coastline left undeveloped: secretive, dark, silent, tree-lined, remote, where hardly anybody goes and nothing happens except uncontrollables like Nature’s cannibal act.

  “How come you’re their dogsbody, Jodie?”

  “Happened by, Lovejoy.” She spoke too casually.

  “Pay good, is it?” A little lad on a donkey was frightened. His dad pelted up, did a rescue. The little lad fell about with hilarity. It had been an act. The dad scolded, started laughing. The mum was furious. Even the donkeyman laughed, shaking his head. Lots of acting today at Mentle Sands.

  “Not bad.”

  I watched her tongue on the cornet. The white ice-cream seemed to like going in, sweep by sweep. I found my throat had gone dry. She was amused.

  “When do we move on, Lovejoy? As soon as you are sure I’m getting less money than you? Or when you’ve decided you might stand a chance with Monique Delebarre?”

  Move to where? She hadn’t guessed yet that I’d resigned from Troude’s brood. She detested Monique. I went along with her misunderstanding. Maybe she couldn’t believe that somebody would actually refuse Troude and the lovely Monique. “Dunno. I expect we’ll know soon enough. That the stall?”

  “As Baff was on? No. The police took it away as evidence. It was hard luck. Poor Baff. He just drew the wrong lot. Accidents happen, Lovejoy.”

  Yes, well. Except a yobbo mob picking on a seaside vendor can sometimes be directed. Then it’s no accident.

  “Ta for the company, Jodie. And the intro. I appreciate it.”

  “No time for solace, Lovejoy?”

  She’d finished her ice-cream. I watched her lovely mouth assimilate the tip of the cornet, and listened to the faint crunch as it achieved total bliss on entry. My ice-cream was running in a hot melt down my wrist. I had to chuck it in a waste-bin. Seagulls swooped, shrieking deprivation.

  “If you like. La Delebarre’s antique chair was a fake, Jodie. And somebody’d ‘improved’ the oars on Willie Wouldhave’s model. Thought that was still in South Shields. How did they get it? Must have money to throw away.”

  We walked to the Ruby, me dawdling to see her legs.

  “They wanted some you couldn’t have seen, of course, Lovejoy. Taking no chances. One thing.”

  “Mmmh? Get in.” I got the crank handle.

  “Since we left the marina all of a sudden I’m Jodie. Until then you drove me mad calling me Jode. Why?”

  She didn’t like it. I could have kicked myself. I give me away to women all the bloody time. I’m pathetic.

  “Shut your teeth.” I swung the handle. The Ruby groaned awake, started a reluctant muttering, rocking side to side. “You women are obsessed with your own image.”

  Lovely teeth, beautiful shape, and a complicitor in Baff’s murder. I watched her laugh at me. I had to explore further, with whatever means I had.

  “That’s more like the Lovejoy we all know and love.” She actually said that.

  One of Galileo’s girlfriends was a corker. A real stunner, Artemisia Gentileschi was. The reason we know so much about her is that she strolled about her dad Orazio’s studio naked, driving his apprentices crazy with lust. One apprentice, Tassi, couldn’t stand it. He raped the gorgeous Artemisia, and history—with the vicious impartiality history sometimes achieves—recorded the horrendous consequences.

  Poor Artemisia’s dad Orazio (pal of Caravaggio, his only other claim to fame) sued Tassi. The court scene was enough to scar you for life. It certainly scarred Orazio’s lovely daughter. The law saw to that. In a variation of today’s courtroom tortures, the Roman court insisted on thumbscrewing poor Artemisia—presumably on the logic that truth needs forcible encouragement from females. A doctor’s examination of her pudenda was conducted in front of the goggling courtroom rabble. The apprentice was found guilty. Artemisia was justified, her honour restored.

  Not enough. She went ape. Can you blame her?

  An artist’s daughter to her very soul, she revenged herself with exquisite talent. Before, her paintings depicted nudes and more or less holy scenes, all grottoes and haloes. Now, they showed stark vengeance in the bluntest and most aggressive way possible. Her Joel and Sisara— that event which the Bible tries to persuade us was God-approved, where a bird drives a nail through the skull of her kipping cousin—isn’t quite as gruesome as her Judith Decapitating Holofernes, but neither’s a laugh a minute. The rest of her post-courtroom period’s the same. Message: some nerk ruined Artemisia’s self-image, so look out, world. The two dozen or so of her paintings on show in Florence were the only exhibition I’ve ever seen where the crowds stayed totally silent as they shuffled from one macabre painting to the next. Superb artistry, yes. One thing got to me. It was the serenity on the face of the decapitating, hacking, sawing, nail-toting, hammering, skull-piercing birds. And all of them were Artemisia. Revenge is sweeter for outlasting the revengee, eh?

  See what I mean? Muck about with a bird’s self-esteem at your peril, or wear a parachute. As I drove from Mentle Marina I realized I’d been careless. My galling diminutive for Jodie had vanished as soon as I’d realized she was one of Troude’s people, hook, line and sinker. Quick as women always are, she’d spotted something in my manner. Lucky she’d guessed wrong about my staying hired, or she’d have guessed I’d rumbled her.

  Nothing for it but to accept Jodie’s company. We drove to my cottage. I thought of ice-creamio stalls, and composed firm decisions about not going to France. I didn’t want to go. But why were so many people determined I should? Jodie made such life-or-death problems vanish into ecstasy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  « ^ »

  There is no battle of the sexes. No such thing.

  Never mind that everybody talks about it, says it rages all the time. It doesn’t exist. Reason? Everybody’s on sex’s side. And it wins hands down.

  Of course, we pretend like mad that there is. What utter hypocrisy. What a hoot. Women, like sex, won any conflict long before the starting whistle blew. They knew so. And why? Because they’re the only supply.

  Mind you, sometimes sex can resemble all-out ground war. It did that afternoon with me and Jodie. I actually found myself staring at the bruises on her, in horror that I must have done those. She laughed, called me stupid, asked if I offered the same service to all birds or was it just her, light chit-chat the way they do when they’ve proved you’re an a
nimal in infant’s clothing. Nothing we can do about that, either. I wondered why a woman like her would put up with an oaf like me.

  “You know something, Lovejoy?” She was almost purring, while I cursed and tried to find the kettle and swore blind somebody’d nicked my tea bags. “I could go for you.”

  “Like we’ve been holding a novena?”

  “Who’s the latest bitch?” She tutted when I glared round at her. “I don’t mean your popsies. Or that whore you drove for Gazza the other night. I mean the latest.”

  “What’ve you done with my sodding milk?”

  It was curdled in its bottle. Astonishing. The weather must have been thundery. Or was it simply old? I could remember buying it… whoops, a week ago? God, time flies. I looked hopefully at her, lying in that recumbent dreamy posture that brings back the ache.

  “Fancy nipping up to the bungalow shop for some milk, er, love?” I’d tried for Jode a few times during, but passion had interfered with reason and Jode hadn’t quite made it. I vaguely wondered if Jodie had.

  Well, that really set her laughing, shaking so her breasts came to be the only thing in the world. She was still laughing when I chucked in all thoughts of brewing up and waves on the seashore went dot dot dot. It was only afterwards, on the way to see Gobbie, who’d know about Leon the French divvy if anybody would, that I started wondering if she was so badly hooked on Troude that she would willingly go with a scruff like me on his orders. To keep me on the chain?

  I’ve no illusions about love. I believe, honestly do believe, that women do what they can get away with. I mean, take any staid reliable lady. Supposing she meets Handsome Jack; he says, Come, dwoorlink to some resort—safe from prying eyes, cast-iron excuses for her family and loved ones. He’s rich, romantically unattached, excellent company, amusing. What does she do? Spurn this upstart with a Victorian avast-ye-Satan? No. I honestly think ninety-nine point nine recurring per cent of respectable matrons would say yes, and go for that hidden lust, only they’d call it secret romance.