Moonspender

by Jonathan Gash

  "All lamps out, folks. Just this one candle."

  Everybody was becoming intrigued. The kitchen staff were crowding out. The band were looking.

  "Off. Everybody quiet."

  The switches clicked. I let my eyes accommodate to the candle's glimmer, then sat beside Suzanne.

  "What's it for, Lovejoy?"

  "Shhhh. Watch."

  Shuffles, then stillness. A clink sounded from the band's dais, a gurgle. Seconds passed. A whole minute. Two. The quiet extended. Candlelight permeated the whole area. Shadows hitherto unborn slowly crept into being, cautiously at first, then with increasing confidence.

  Another minute and the room had shrunk further. And the magic happened. The lovely suffusing glow of the flames danced out, moving around the exquisite porcelain in a golden penumbra. Mrs. York murmured, "Oh, God." It nearly broke my heart. No faith is bom into this life but what some other belief dies the death. It's always piteous. I've seen it happen time and again; never any different. The tragic part is the pain of delivery, bidding farewell to all our pathetically modem assumptions. She sniffed, fumbled for a tissue.

  Before us in the room the magic opalescence glowed. The porcelain was only a milkmaid, partly glazed, her head slightly downcast under the strain of carrying her yoke. Her arms were angelic along the yoke's bow, her pails slightly unleveled.

  Yet her body was not sylphic; it was firm and curved, a realistic Russian peasant, a lovely woman accepting the duty of existence, hinting at sacrifice by the cruciform shadow she cast. I always get a lump in my throat, even me. Francis Gardner trudged penniless into Russia in 1767 and sprang beauty from between his hands like a magician does a dove. His color palette was simple Slav, but you'll never see—

  "Lights, Pierre," Suzanne York said brokenly.

  Click, and the room howled into consciousness with a crash-bang-wallop. She hurried out, a tissue to her face. The two diners, a young bloke and his bird, came over to stare at the delectable porcelain. Sandy and Mel were standing watching from the lounge entrance. For a minute I didn't recognize them because Sandy was silent. Then he started.

  "The trouble with you, Lovejoy, is you do everything the hard way." He did his cosmetics thing, handbag mirror, lipstick. "Couldn't you simply explain to the poor bitch that your I mean tremenduloso porcelain would expose this oh my God costly the earth restaurant for the shithouse it is?"

  "Sandy," I placated.

  Mel interposed viciously, "How long will the silly cow have the vapors?"

  "What I want is my drinkie-poos." Sandy tapped the impassive

  Pierre and rolled his eyes roguishly. "Cream sherry and Avondale water. Mel isn't allowed any for bad behavior."

  "Very good, sir." Pierre sent a waiter hurtling. "Would you like a table?"

  "I wouldn't be seen moribund at your table, darling, while these horrid colors positively blitz this woebegone carpet."

  He swept grandly into the lounge, Mel trailing sulkily. I kept out of the way. This all meant he and Mel had accepted the job of redecorating the place. Time to leave.

  Pierre's grave countenance smiled me out of the door.

  "Your advice fell upon stony ground, eh?" I said.

  "Mrs. York has had a great deal on her mind lately, sir." The soul of discretion. "May I, sir?" A waiter moved forward with a small box, two bottles of wine. "Barolo. A respectable vintage."

  "Ta. You won't get into trouble?" I said.

  "Not in the least, sir."

  "Lovejoy." Mrs. York caught me outside and came with me. The strolling woman's side-to-side grace is so alluring. But no, she was determined to castigate herself. "Everybody else realized, didn't they, Lovejoy?"

  "Not consciously, love. But once the milkmaid showed them loveliness, your posh restaurant was, well, tasteless. People sense more than they let themselves believe."

  "But I'm good on design, fashion, style!" A wail.

  "And beauty?" A decade-long pause while it sank in. "Modem's great if you like noise, loudness, slick formats, packaged ware." I felt sad myself having to say it. "Put all of it next a work of art . . ."

  "And everybody simply walks away?"

  "I'm sorry, love."

  She stopped, facing me. "You feel it all the time, don't you? You don't need candles, the mystique, the silence."

  "Never mind. Sandy and Mel'll scrap your furniture, color scheme, that god-awful cutlery, everything. They'll refurbish the rotten dump." I gazed at the restaurant's exterior. "But I warn you. Sandy will chuck tantrums on the hour. Mel will resign once a day. Yet a few days and you'll be back in business." I coughed, went red. "Sandy will, er, call you names, love. He doesn't mean it."

  She was smiling. "Much. And how will I pay for all this, Lovejoy?"

  "On tick. Profit share. Give Sandy exclusive rights to have a permanent antiques gallery in the lounge. Get in a dealer each night to give a twenty-minute show of genuine paintings, jewelry, antique dresses. Make it your theme. It'll go—if the restaurant's decor doesn't come off worst every time."

  She was eyeing me, that searching look I never like from women. "And you, Lovejoy?"

  "I'm busy," I said, "seeing my lawyer. Putting on the writs."

  Underhand, that. She colored, her eyes bluer in swift contrast. "I apologize, Lovejoy. I'll withdraw it, of course."

  "Don't help me, chuckle. I'm in enough trouble." I bussed her and left. At the curve of the drive I looked back. She was standing there, waving.

  As I turned along the road to town I passed that gray-eyed homespun girl looking about to fray. She was examining a hedge in the lane.

  "Flowers all present and correct, eh, Enid?" I joked, but only got a malign stare out of those remarkable eyes. I sighed and plodded on. I'd been a hero to her. Once.

  A pleasant dark-suited bloke driving past in a gray saloon offered me a lift to town. It transpired he too was interested in antiques, and we talked all the way. He handed me a manila envelope as I stepped down. My heart sank.

  "A writ?"

  "Of course not." He chuckled. My heart soared. "It's three."

  My heart sank. "From somebody insignificant, I hope?"

  "You could say that," he said. My heart soared. "The Central Television Authority." My heart sank. "The Central Agency of TV Presenters." A further sink. "And from Veronica Gold." And again.

  The saloon purred away. One thing, I thought, heading toward the town library, with writs cascading this fast I'd not be short of fuel for the winter.

  11

  Everybody round here knows where the Eastern Hundreds spread to, but defining them is a rum job. Our town's gormless reference library lately sold most of its books off, "in the interests of efficiency," so you've to purchase all your own culture now. I rummaged in the remnants, confirming my worst fears. Some say a hundred's an area providing a hundred men, others a hundred hides of land. But an Old English hundred was 100, 112 or the "long" hundred of 120. A hide was 120 acres, or 80 or anything you liked. The more I searched the worse it got. An acre can be the modem measure, but different counties say it's anything up to 10,000 square yards. And a yard is only possibly a yard. Some say it's . . . Just short of delirium I gave up and caught the bus home.

  Usually I daydream on buses, to avoid conversation. My old gran used to say that talk is the sound of brains emptying. She was right; silence is golden. So in silence I inspected the passing world.

  Our land's undulant, flattish. On a good bright day the countryside appears friendly and pretty. It's not.

  Leaving town, the bus levels across the old river and chugs out past the station. Quite abruptly, as the bus coughs into its third emphysematous gear, the scenery alters. Houses end. You're between hedgerows, alone on a twirly country road warmed only by a few skyline houses clustered nervously round an old manor house. It's woods, valleys, fields, low rivers wearing long tree-lined hoods. Carry on and you run into a thin scattering of postcard villages, all older than time, all apparently friendly but underneath broodingly quiet. Le
gends abound. Past feuds aren't past at all. Incomers are tolerated, even liked, but somehow never see into local darknesses. Give me towns any day.

  The bus turned into our village. I said so long to the driver and saw the chapel's graveyard gate standing open. Old Kate was on her knees scrubbing the stone flags of the vestry. She's our village wise woman, whose herbs mend broken ankles and prevent pregnancy and all that. She has to like you or she tells you wrong. Mind you, that's women all over, not just Old Kate. She was using my kneeler, a thick fustian-filled Lancashire working pillow. I'd made it for her once because she's got arthritis. For a few minutes I sat on the chapel elder's chair and watched her go at it. God, these old birds really slog. If only the rest of our kingdom's women worked half as hard.

  "Cat got your tongue, Lovejoy?"

  You have to smile. She talks exactly like my old gran. Local people steer clear of Kate. I don't know why.

  "Lammas," I said.

  "The cricket club's only themselves to blame," she said, making singulars plural in the manner of long-lived folk.

  "They've done no harm, Kate."

  "Much you know about it, Lovejoy," she said with an upward glance. Her eyes were twinkling. There I go, faces again. But it's a fact of life, that these old dears have really beautiful eyes, as pert as any you'll ever get from a maid a quarter Kate's age. Baby girls can do it too, look from beyond eyelashes and set a man maudling.

  "Give us a kiss, Kate."

  She laughed, still scrubbing, shaking her head. "Mrs. Ryan not busy enough between your sheets, son?"

  How do they do it? I've come to believe these old folks have a kind of a mental osmosis by which they imbibe gossip. But my brain went: On the other hand, Lovejoy, this owd biddie lives across the footpath from your garden, and a hedge-eating horse is a dead giveaway.

  "I hardly know Mrs. Ryan," I said indignantly, and shrugged an apology at Kate's raised eyebrows. "Well, nearly hardly." I swung my feet. "Why don't the cricket club use one of the other fields, Kate?"

  "There isn't another field, Lovejoy."

  "Manor Farm has Long Tom by Pittsbury Wood. I saw it yesterday with Boothie. And I—"

  "There isn't, son."

  The barmy old coot wouldn't say more. She said to call in for a glass of her sloe gin. I gave her my most sincere Grade Four promise, and went down the lane thinking, no other field? How many had I counted? Eight? Nine? Still, a postponed cricket match isn't the end of civilization as we know it.

  A bloke was waiting patiently in his motor by the cottage, the car radio playing. Even though by now I knew the drill I was pleased to see him. At least somewhere the nation's normality continued.

  "Lovejoy isn't back yet," I said.

  He checked my face against a photograph. "Sorry, Lovejoy. Here." A manila envelope. Oh, joy. "Wednesday fortnight, Suffolk Quarter Sessions."

  "Who this time?"

  "Major Bentham. Assault and battery. Obstructing a foxhunt, inciting rabble. Grievous bodily harm." This was punishment for not teaming up with him and Candice.

  "It isn't all bad news these days, is it? Swing right at the chapel for the main road."

  Inside there was another summons from one Mrs. Candice Prentiss, widow; Chelmsford Court of Common Pleas or something, to answer charges of trespass and willful obstruction. It degenerated into incomprehensible heretofores and aforesaids after that, twenty wretched pages. Lawyers keep a robber's grip on law, the swine, so we can't use justice for its proper ends.

  One good bit. There was a package from the Advertiser with a scrawled message: "Lovejoy. Open this, and you owe me. Liza X." I put the kettle on, and settled down to read the sheaf of cuttings.

  Surprising how little we had figured in the world's consciousness. A whole year, and local newspapers had featured my village's segment less than fifty times. We might as well not have bothered to newsmake. Irritably I slung out an unfair report about an antique dealer who'd been in trouble with police, and an equally biased falsehood telling how the same dealer was mangled by the bankruptcy court. Swine. That Lize. One day I'U bite her ankles.

  The rest slowly became two piles. The greater was rubbish, clearly recognizable as Lize's demented space-filling—Women's Guild Protests on Roadworks Issue. It's the sort of thing she prints when nowt's happened, simply copies any extinct news and changes the first line: "Anger flared today when irate villagers ..." It's all based on a chance remark overheard at a bus stop anyway. The little pile, however, was more important.

  On the whole we're a rum lot. I mean people. Our rehabilitation center, where hospital patients convalesce, had had its telephone switchboard damaged by fire. A truffle hunter, would you believe, had been offered a fortune for his dog. A fence had been repeatedly damaged on Manor Farm. Some nut had seen a UFO among some trees—the Air Ministry glibly implied the report was from lunatics. Young trees, stolen from a wood, were found in a lorry abandoned at Coggeshall. Thieves had stolen a pedigree hen; whatever next? A nocturnal cyclist had had an accident crossing the river footbridge, been treated in hospital. A conservationist spokeswoman threatened legal action against anybody, maybe everyone, if People Didn't Behave. There'd been a malicious fire in ruins out beyond Chapel Lane End. One headline was a winner: Local Constabulary Useless as Guardians of Root Crop Produce, Accuses Farmer. I decided to wait for the film. The new restaurant, of course. The fox hunt demo. Two footballers arguing over a team's beer money. An angler's car had been stolen—good old Ollie Hennessey, no less, and him pally with Clipper, who's probably the fastest resprayer of nicked motors in the east. I marked all these with a red blob.

  A protracted think, then another shuffle-and-split sorting by dates. Four piles now. Significance? Well, we seemed to be in the news a little more often at certain times than others.

  But things stick in your mind, don't they? Things like UFOs, a pointless fire, a nicked car, a complaining naturalist, and a damaged fence. And maybe a job such as estate manager, offered by a bedmate.

  Winstanley knocked at four-thirty, with Roger's lad from our village garage. He had the keys of my ancient Austin Ruby. My old crate's 7-h.p. engine was raring to go.

  As Roger's lad sauntered off", Winstanley said, "The bill will be charged against your fees, Lovejoy. There's also Sir John's message." He coughed apologetically. "He wants to know what you are doing."

  "I'm having a quiet read, Winnie. Ta for the motor."

  "But—"

  Solitude's marvelous, isn't it? When you're thinking against time it's crucial but unnerving. I fried some bread and diced a piece of cheese. Nothing in the fridge, of course. Typical.

  By six o'clock I'd sussed it out. Boothie, I thought, but first Vanessa. Toffee was kipping in her basket so I could leave her. A swift crank of the Ruby's handle stirred the innards into a noisy wheeze. I could now comet around the globe to my heart's content. Only one trouble: It was dusk, night fast falling. Speed was called for.

  With the Ruby's meager ccs beating maximum power, I notched a giddy 22 mph. One brief pause at the White Hart to light the crate's oil lamps, amid much ribaldry from boozers, and I puttered at a breakneck saunter into the Boxenford evening.

  Vanessa and me met up yonks ago, over some mayhem down Pearlhanger. We were close. I stayed with her, but her healthy outdoor life proved detrimental. She's everything you see in the Olympics— yachting, hang-gliding, waterski racing, a real glassbum. She had some idea of making me a permanent fixture. Never works, does it?

  The airfield has a shed and a windsock, plus enthusiasts. Colin's the boss mechanic, a hefty youth with spatuloidal finger.. He collects recordings of engine noises; honest, it's true. In other words, Vanessa's team are maniacs. As I arrived they were examining an engine by floodlight. A generator muttered nearby.

  "Swab, scalpel," I said. The lads laughed, knowing me.

  Vanessa was delighted to see me. "Where've you been, Lovejoy?" she said, pulling to greet me privately in the hut. "You wretch. You promised to ring."

 
"My side's been playing up, love." I said. I'd forgotten to limp on the way in.

  "It has?" She was all consternation. I gritted my teeth, smiled nobly.

  "I've missed you, sweetheart." I went all misty, wishing she wouldn't wear overalls with spanners in every pouch. They ram your belly.

  "Lovejoy." She cupped my face, searching. "You haven't come just because you want something?"

  "Oh, I see." I said quietly, stung to the quick. "That's how you think of me."

  "I'm sorry, darting." She embraced me. God, the spanners.

  "Soon as I learned I was being sued I stayed away. Didn't want you involved, sweetheart."

  "Oh, Lovejoy! How sweet!" Her eyes moistened.

  Bravely I smiled, McClintock of the Mounties, leg shattered by a giant bear. "But as I was this way on, Vanessa, I thought of your brother." He's an antique dealer, he says. "There's a find, in Maldon. An almost perfect Dongware pot, fluted, wonderful, ivory-colored."

  "Oh, darling." Tears filled her eyes. "You came to help my brother, and I suspected you of . . . I'm a beast."

  "Everybody makes mistakes." We nearly burst into "Maid of the Mountains." My own eyes were stinging. I really believed me myself.

  "Is there no way I could make it up to you, darling?"

  "Certainly not!" I cried indignantly.

  Later I prised Colin and his merry men from under my Ruby where they were wistfully contemplating incipient ruin, and rattled off toward civilization, with Vanessa's promise to cobble together all the aerial photographs of the Pittsbury area. Vanessa said would a couple of days be all right. I'd replied that it was surely too much trouble, and please could I pay her. She got mad at that, so I bowed to her will.

  Finding a priceless Dongware bowl for her layabout brother was tomorrow's tough luck.

  As dusk finally settled for darkness, I arrived at Boothie's.

  In East Anglia not every house is a house, and not every cottage is a cottage. My own cottage is thatch, olde worlde wood, and plaster. Brick two-uppers, which abound hereabouts, are also called cottages. Such a one was Boothie's. He lives near Pittsbury Wood, the tip of a long isthmus of trees almost forming a separate copse. I'm making it sound open and in plain view, but it isn't. His cottage stands in a small fold, a tree-filled recess. I left the Ruby at thankful rest and, calling nervously because of the dark, made my way over the stile and down the thicket path. I took one of the Ruby's oil lanterns, leaving the old crate one-eyed up on the brow.