“Here we will say what you’re up to?” I put in. Troude did an appealing look, the sort he was now starting to nark me with.
“Silence!” Monique said. It cracked like a whip, shutting me up. What fascinated me was it also clammed Marimee.
She walked to face us. I noticed Marimee made way for her, and it wasn’t politeness. She boss, him corporal.
“The brigandage is already decided,” she said. Bland’s the nearest I can come to, for her attitude. Nobody could possibly dispute the number of the Number 7 bus, her tone informed us. “The projet is fixed. There will be two rehearsals only.”
“Here?” I asked again, thinking of those statues and the rotating gardens. “Only, isn’t it a simple export job?”
“That silver story was a lie to get you here, Lovejoy.”
Cool. It had worked. I was undeniably here.
“You have objections?” Like asking if I had a coat somewhere.
“Yes. Ignorance, mainly. What do we nick, and where from?” Note that I didn’t ask why. “And who’s in the way?”
“Details,” Monique said, with a smile like an ice floe. “Others see to details, Lovejoy.”
And she walked off. Veronique stepped aside, proving to be in the way, taut, her hatred glinting like distant spears. Not all friends, then, amid this much laughter.
Leaving us. “There will be three stages,” Marimee clipped out. “Stage Three the robbery. Stage Two rehearsal. That is all.”
“Eh?” I was blank. “Two from three leaves one. You missed out Stage One.”
Marimee’s moustache lifted in what might have been incipient mirth. “That is you, Lovejoy. You buy.”
“Buy what?”
“Antiques.” He made me sound thick.
The others were looking. Troude was trying to elbow me gently from the conservatory.
“What with? From where? What sort?” I got mad, yelled, “I’ve no frigging money!”
Marimee paused, eyed me with utter disgust. “Imbecilic peasant,” he said scathingly, and strutted grandly on his way.
“Come, Lovejoy,” Troude said gently. “Let’s go.”
“Where to, for Christ’s sake?” I was so dispirited. I wanted to go home.
He patted my shoulder. “You’re the antiques divvy, Lovejoy. Wherever you say, but mostly Paris. Guy, Veronique.”
On the way out I saw Katta, demurely waiting on in black waitress garb beneath an awning. I looked her way, waved once. She smiled. I swallowed, thinking of her luscious wet mouth in action, managed to smile back. Paulie and Almira were talking near the orchestra. Pity Cissie wasn’t here too, I thought without a single pang. This was the sort of do she always enjoyed, as long as she had somebody to ballock for doing the wrong thing In Company, a terrible crime in her book. Maybe she was here? In spirit, some people might say. Not me.
Jervis looked away when I passed quite near him. As we left the eating-drinking-laughing cheeriness, I glanced back to see if Katta was just watching Paul or actually doing something. And saw the house from a new angle. It stayed in my mind. I’ve a good memory for pictures. I’d seen it before, or some place very like it. And it wasn’t any country mansion, not then. It was heap big business, the sort a low-grader like me would never even get within a mile of. In some advert? Yes, sort of definitely.
Until then, I’d not known what to believe. I mean, soon I’ve got to tell you about international antiques robbers, and I will. But so far I’d been thinking along the lines of, well, those dozens of St Augustine’s sermons, AD 400 or thereabouts, discovered in the Mainz public library. Priceless, easy to nick, pass them off at any customs border post as boring old committee minutes, and make a mint. Especially apt, since that French historian uncovered them on that dusty German shelving in 1991. Something like that. Now, though? Now I knew it was no bundle of ancient “crackle”, as parchments are known in the trade.
“Shall I drive, Guy?” I said. “Race you to the scam, eh?”
“Merde!” he said rudely. “I cross the border in one hour! You’d take a week!”
“Only joking.” Which meant Switzerland, of course. I’d been too dim to work it out. We were going to do the Freeport International Repository.
Inside I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Some jokes are too good to ignore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
« ^ »
Paris is beautiful. I mean it. Oh, the traffic’s noisy—everybody’s water-cooled motor horns on max for no reason—and a city’s but a city. Yet it surprised me. Small. I’d expected something massive like, say, New York or London. Paris gets to you by cleverly putting all its bits within reach. Unbelievably, it’s a walker’s city. And its charm isn’t synthetic polyurethane gloss; it’s natural. Sweet yet protein, so to speak.
They, my golden pair, booked us in at a small hotel by the simple process of screeching to a heart-in-the-gob stop at the front door and strolling in, ready to remonstrate with whoever came forward to remonstrate. The booking-in process wore me out. Guy remonstrated, Veronique remonstrated in a crosstalk act straight from music hall. I got an upstairs room. There were only about fifteen rooms in the whole place.
Nothing to unpack, I opened the window and was captivated. The famed Paris skyline really truly exists! Jumbled roofs, chimneys, windows with tiny balconies. Church spires here and there, television aerials, wires, a splash of washing, pots flowering on sills, now and again a flat roof, an old man having a sly kip, children skipping to some chant. Beautiful. I turned, smiling, and jumped. Veronique was standing silently behind me. I hoped she wasn’t one of those stealthies.
“What do you see, Lovejoy?”
“Eh?” She looked sullen, brittler than usual, narked as hell. “Never been before, love. Didn’t know what to expect —”
“Decadent enough for you, Paris?”
A glance out showed me the same charm. A woman across the way was seeing to her pretty window box. “Looks fine. I’d thought skyscrapers, black glass boxes filled with bankers—”
“Decadence!” She glared past me. “It needs thorough cleansing, Lovejoy! Of parasites that drag her down.”
Well, there’s not a lot you can say to this gunge. I’d been wondering how far it was to Monet’s garden, but didn’t risk asking while she was in this black mood. I couldn’t see many parasites, but no good arguing with a bird.
“You don’t see, do you?” Baffled, I started to edge past her into the room. “The tourist’s vision.” She spoke hate-filled.
“Look, Veronique. We’re tired. That hell of a drive—”
She grabbed me and with ominous strength dragged me to stand looking across the street. “Calm? Tranquil, Lovejoy? Pretty? Can you see Notre Dame from here?”
“Dunno.” I was only trying to be helpful, please the silly cow, but she started to shake.
“You know what I see, Lovejoy? I see unemployment—French jobs stolen by foreigners! They pour in to bleed our money, give nothing back! To France: The Last Land Before the Sea!”
“Really?” Polite, I managed not to yawn. These days it’s politically upright to grouse about this kind of thing.
“Unemployment! Misery, resentment! You think you have strikes across the Channel? Not like we have strikes! We have more grievances! Recently, every French port was closed. Nurses on strike this week, all public transport in France next. Farmers riot. Our…” She struggled over the word, spat as she said it: ”… autobahns are blocked by fighting lorry drivers. The airports are in uproar, barricades everywhere. Pretty, the view?”
“Yes,” I said simply, because it was.
“You are determined to be stupid.” She let go, stepped away. I’d been close enough to be intrigued by the faint division across her hairline, but looked away.
“I can’t understand,” I suggested lamely, but thinking, what does a girl this lovely want to wear a wig for? “I think France is bonny. Political things blow over. They always do.”
“We French sink under a morass of foreigne
rs! Frenchness is losing its identity. You know Romanian roulette, Lovejoy?”
“Russian?”
“Fool! Romanian immigrants here market imported Romanian women! Thousands are shipped in each year! It’s obscene!”
She sounded likely to kill anybody who disagreed. I hesitated. Change the nationality, you can collect a million such moans in any bar anywhere in the world. Every nation’s at it, same old grumbles against governments, changes, taxes. It signifies nothing. I can’t honestly see the point of shoving the clock back to some Good Old Days. We all know they never existed. What was wrong with France? I thought it superb, fetching, full of interest. They even have a Mushroom Museum in the Loire Valley. Ever since Louis the Fourteenth the Sun King ordered mushrooms, France has—
“It’s a pity,” I tried soothing. She was still trembling. Was it rage? “But there’s nothing you can do.”
She smiled a crooked smile, oblique with vile meaning. Her hand stroked my face. I didn’t like it—unusual, this—and drew away. “Oh, yes there is, babee,” she said.
Just then Guy called from the next room, and she left. I shivered as the door closed. I never have a watch, so I had to estimate a lapse of five minutes. I went and knocked.
“It’s only me,” I said to the handle.
Veronique opened, let the door swing while she returned to the bed. Guy was sprawled out of his skull, warbling incomprehensibly. She was already naked, reeling. On the bedside table, a couple of tinfoils, spilled white powder, a tiny mirror, a syringe. A smarting pong filled the air. She was giggling as she tumbled spread-eagle over Guy, whose hands moved over her. I swallowed, backed out.
“Sorry,” I stammered. “Excusez-moi,’s’il vous plait.”
“Come back, Lovejoy!” Veronique carolled. They erupted in laughter as I meekly crept away. “I can handle two!”
Aye, I thought, shaken. I’d only gone to see if they’d mind if I went for a stroll. Druggies. I had two crazed junkies on my hands. The charming skyline of roofs, all colours and textures, was still there. It was coming dusk. I stood at my window to watch it. The distant roar of traffic reassured me that this aerial stillness was founded on the brisk bustling life of a stunning city below. Just my frigging luck, I thought bitterly. My exquisite assistants were zooming deranged through some stratosphere powered by illegal chemical toxins. The gentle “antique silver” job had become a major scam, with loony political overtones, and I was no longer a mere courier. I was the main player. Which told me what Colonel Marimee’s logic would be if the enterprise plunged to failure—I’d cop it. Guy and Veronique would blame me, of course. The pattern was already established by the Sweet episode. Marimee had promised me sanctions and penalties, all because that golden pair had been late. Hindsight, blindsight.
This scam had a bad odour. I needed a friendly face, the sort I was used to. The kind, in fact, I could depend on for absolute unreliability. I went for a walk on my own authority, to clear the cobwebs and mentally pick my way through a selection of friends back in East Anglia.
Paris has it. Really, honestly has it. Oh, I’d slowly become aware that France looks with a vague—sometimes not so vague—mistrust at its capital, same as Italians regard Rome. But she has a quality to life, and quality’s rare. And never cheap.
Bravely risking all, I had a coffee in a small nosh bar. The people chatted, smoked. The traffic snarled away outside. Lights were showing. Rain was coming on. You get a kind of osmosis in such places. Even before you know the layout, nostalgia seeps in and you start remembering things you never even knew, about streets, names of squares, statues and buildings. That you’ve never seen them before hardly matters. They stroll alive out of your subconscious. God knows how they got there in the first place, but that’s unimportant. It’s the way civilization is. It pervades, doesn’t need highlighting.
With some surprise, I noticed how mixed a folk the Parisians were. And the accents! Becoming attuned to cadence, I was now able to pick out some differences. And the garb! There seemed a number of North Africans about—or was I wrong, and they were older inhabitants than most? I definitely heard a snatch of Arabic. The serving lad sounded Greek, and two artisans covered in a fine dust were Italians. A cosmopolitan city.
Grinning like an ape—smiles are never wasted, when you’re a stranger in a strange land—I left, walked down to the corner. Greatly daring, I returned and walked to the other corner. Quite a large square, two trees barely managing, some seats, a couple of cafes. Starry Starry Night, with some minuscule motors occasionally racing through and vehicles parked in improbable spots. I stood a minute, rehearsing school words, then went for it and triumphantly bought some notepaper and envelopes. I was really narked that the serving lady served me without noticing my huge cultural achievement. I sat and scribbled a letter home. A wave of homesickness swamped me, but I stayed firm and finished it.
Then I went out, found a pay phone, painstakingly followed the directory-enquiries saga. The phones are quite good in France, unlike everywhere else except Big Am. I got through the trunk dialling in one, to my utter astonishment. Even phoning the next village is enough to dine out on in East Anglia, and here I was
“Hello? Can I speak to Jan Fotheringay, please?”
“Who is it?” The same bird, Lysette.
“Lovejoy. It’s very urgent. Hurry, please.”
“He’s resting.” God, she was on the defensive. I might have been… well, whoever.
“Listen, Lysette. I’m on Jan’s side. He knows that.”
By the time he came on I was frantic, seconds ticking away. “Jan? Lovejoy. Jan, if I ask for you to come to France, as translator, adviser, whatever, will you?”
“I’m still not mobile, Lovejoy.” He sounded worn out. Just when I needed the lazy self-pitying malingering sod. Aren’t folk selfish?
“Jan. It’s serious. You know it is, and getting worse by the hour. You won’t be allowed to survive. I won’t either. Mania stalks out here, mate.” I gave him a second, and yelled for a decision. The pillock, buggering about when I was… “Eh?”
“You’re right, Lovejoy. Where?”
The hotel, I told him, but he’d have to come immediately because I’d probably be there for only a day or two more. I’d leave some message if he didn’t quite make it in time. Like a fool, I babbled profuse thanks as the line cut. For God’s sake, I was trying to save him too, wasn’t I? I seethed indignation thinking about it.
My second call took longer, but fewer words. I said there was a letter in the post, containing my best guesses. “Positively no obligation,” I finished lamely, the salesman’s lying assurance. “Help me, pal.” I tried to limit the pause, but it went on and on until my voice got it together. “Please,” it managed. What a lousy rotten word that is.
Hoteltime. Maybe by now my golden pair would be unstoned. Did people say destoned, or is that what you do to plums? How long did junkies take to come down? I really needed Mercy Mallock, sort these sods out with her karate.
There are occasional non-French motors around in Paris. So I wasn’t at all concerned when a car bearing a striking resemblance to Gerald Sweet’s motor trundled out of the square as I moved away from the phone by the two trees. I mean, a car is a car, right? I was so definitely unconcerned that I made a long detour, just proving how casual I was.
Back in the hotel, I showed me and the world that Lovejoy was cool by peering down from the window at the passing cars for at least three hours before turning in. I didn’t switch the light off, because I’d not switched it on. Good heavens, can’t tourists tour? I’d known the Sweets were heading for Paris, hadn’t I? So they were here, exactly as expected. So what? God, but my mind’s ridiculous. Sometimes it gets on my nerves, bothering me hour after hour with inessentials. I didn’t sleep that night.
Seven o’clock, I was downstairs in a panic having that nonbreak-fast breakfast they give you, one measly crescentic pastry and a cup of coffee. It was urgent to do something in antiques that looked really legi
timate, even if it never is.
Which means auctions. It’s practically the definition.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
« ^ »
Roused, bathed, and having conquered the breakfast charade, I strolled the morning streets until Veronique and Guy came at a run and we embarked on our impending spree.
“Did the Colonel say how much money we had to blue?” I asked, but only got shrieks of laughter.
“We must avoid the Parisian winds,” Veronique said at my look. Her coat was heavy, its high collar surprising. “Paris has only wind tunnels. London’s chaotic streets give protection.”
If she said so. I thought it mild if fresh. Guy thought of nothing but his next tumbleweed and roaring his motor through impossible thoroughfares. I’d never met a bloke like him for getting off the starting grid. We’d no sooner walked round the corner than he was in his motor, revving like the maniac he was.
“Antique shops were sprinkled about the arrondissements, Lovejoy,” Veronique explained, her head wobbling and jerking as she tried to talk against the lunatic’s darting accelerations between delivery vans. “An arrondissement’s a Paris district, with a mayor, a town hall as you call it, everything. They’re numbered in a spiral on maps, from centre outwards.”
“Which one has the antiques?” There should be a special nook in heaven for the bloke who invented roofs for motor cars. And one in hell for the bloke who took them off.
“Sixth. I think,”, she added, managing to sound dry, “near the Luxembourg Gardens.” Women nark me. It was clearly my fault, I’m not French.
“There are true antique shops, Lovejoy, and brocanteurs.” Guy screeched a mad screech at the word.
“Brocanteurs are what you call junk shops, second-handers.”
“Have you a big flea market, love?” I tried to explain Petticoat Lane, Portobello Road, but she was there ahead of me.
“That’s where we’re going, not your posh shops. The Marche aux puces. On Saturdays to Mondays, bargains galore.” Her dryness reached sarcasm.
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