Ten Word Game

by Jonathan Gash

  “Lovejoy.” Blind Elsie took my hand. “Watch Drogue. He’s dicey. It’s one of your own forgeries, isn’t it?”

  See? Gossip weather. “Aye. I’ve to nick it.”

  Vincent Van Gogh’s L’Hiver is simply a bloke shovelling snow in a rural garden. You honestly wouldn’t look at it twice. It’s one of his dour pictures – worth a king’s ransom, of course. I can see why nobody wanted it when he was alive. Poor bloke only sold one painting in his lifetime, and that was to his brother Theo. Now, the real L’Hiver is in the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Inc. because Americans are all millionaires and buy everything.

  Some clever girl took an X-ray of it, and found underneath an obscured painting of a woman spinning thread. (This was common, to paint over old canvases. Impoverished artists used one canvas over and over, and nobody was poorer than Van Gogh.) The lady in the picture has bobbed hair, is concentrating on her spinning, treadling away.

  This is where I came in, because once I’d seen that mysterious lady in the X-ray I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I like women, so I painted her in Van Gogh style. When forging, I always use the same materials and canvas as the original artist. We have a strange woman who weaves superb canvas in the old style, lives with a cobbler in Southwold.

  By the time I finished Van Gogh’s Spinning Woman I was strapped for food, rent, money. A dealer gave me a meal and some paints for it: Rose Madder, Yellow Ochre, Burnt and Raw Umbers, and (apologies to any honest forgers reading this) an ounce of Rowney’s Flesh Tint that real artists hate. I love portraits, and those are the basic colours. I’d just parted from a weird lass who had moved in to my thatched cottage. She was crazy about a racing-car driver, and listened all night to recordings, literally, of his Formula One engine revving up, daft loon. I didn’t get a wink of sleep, what with making smiles with Clara while listening to those bloody pistons.

  She also ran the Mighty Shrew Rescue Service, which rescued shrews from death and destruction. My cottage was full of the damned things in cages. She finally left, when a lady from the local farm complained that Clara’s shrews were nothing less than rodents and should be shot. Clara went berserk and stormed out saying my friends were fascist oppressors of Mother Nature. I slept for three days. The trouble was, Clara was very wealthy – benefactors funded her shrew hospital – and kept me in grub and passion. Shrew-less, I didn’t eat the following week, so I painted Spinning Woman in a hurry. The dealer took it.

  Later, Skeggie reported it was in the Marquis of Gotham’s mansion, listed as a genuine Van Gogh. I was proud but, famished and threadbare, I moaned about it at the Treble Tile. Drogue overheard. He insisted I steal it back. Drogue would then sell it as a genuine Van Gogh. This happens more often than you dare think. I’d eeled in (easy, after Skeggie’s research), sliced the canvas from the frame (ten seconds with every art thief’s favourite tool, the black-handled Swiss serrated-bladed chef’s knife) and dangled away. Three minutes flat. The lads in the Marquis of Granby on North Hill would have a laugh, me taking so long. Dusty Malton robbed Oxford University on millennium New Year’s Eve and took only forty-one seconds. I knew he’d never let me forget it.

  For clarity, here’s a vital question: What percentage of “genuine antiques” are truly genuine? Answer: three – that’s 3 – per cent. It means that 97% of “genuine antiques” are forgeries, fakes, duff, dud, Sexton Blakes, sham, lookalikes, replicates, all meaning worthless. And that’s on a good day.

  Where was I? Hanging on this mansion wall in the lantern hours, hoping I wouldn’t be seen, while Belle whispered into her cell phone from the box-hedged garden maze below. I heard some oldie come creaking along a passage. I wanted to shut Belle’s tinny voice up but she kept on hissing “Lovejoy? You okay?” like a gnat in my ear. I didn’t want a chat. My gran used to say, “Lord, save me from mine helpers!” Mostly she meant me. I knew how she’d felt.

  The steps came closer. I tried to flatten myself against the ivy-covered wall. A crone’s voice warbled, “Is anybody there?” A leaded window opened and an old dear’s head poked out into the gloom. She wore a mob cap and held out a Norfolk lantern. It’s really only a candle in a perforated cup. For a second I thought she looked directly at me, but her eyes must have been bad. She withdrew. My hands had gone dead. Slowly I started down.

  That night me and Belle delivered the painting – my stolen Spinning Woman forgery – to Drogue. He sold it for a fortune to some Dutch geezer. The Marquis claimed on the insurance, saying he’d had a genuine Vincent V. G. stolen, and received another fortune. The underwriters paid up, barely enough to buy two holiday villas in the south of France and another yacht. Everybody rejoiced except me, because Drogue welshed, didn’t pay me a farthing. See what I mean? Where is justice when you need her? A forger does a brilliant job, sells his superb work for a meal and a few tubes of paint, and everybody else gets everything. I don’t think it’s fair. Quite honestly, it’s dishonest.

  Belle’s a kindly soul and I like her. She lives in a trailer home, what used to be called a caravan, out on the Peldon Marshes. Ghosts of Roman soldiers rise out of the sea mists there every high tide, so I don’t visit unless it’s a bright sunny day and the tide’s out. Not that I’m scared, really not, because ghosts are only primitive superstition. It’s just that I don’t like taking chances.

  She loves our town’s mayor, a happily married father of two. She lives with an accountant called Vernon who keeps proposing marriage. She turns Vernon down because she’s in love with … Join the dots and make sense of women. She has this dream of discovering some enormous scam – robbery, smuggling racket, bomb threat, whatever. She’ll unmask them with one bound, and the mayor will sweep her up and they’ll ride into the sunset. It will never happen.

  Vernon is decent, plays bowls for the county, writes for church magazines and helps in the Hospice. He cares for old folks, and every weekend visits Belle. Don’t get me wrong. They aren’t saintly and celibate, just oddly matched. Between times I fill in Belle’s aching void of loneliness, so to speak, and educate her in the world’s wicked ways. She feeds me pasta and goat’s cheese she creates from two nanny-goats on Peldon’s shore line. I don’t complain. I’ve lived among forty caged shrews, and count my blessings. She lends me a groat now and then, in payment for teaching her about antique jewellery.

  After my theft, three nobs got together. The Marquis of Wells, his pal Lord Featherstonehaugh (pronounce it Fanshaw to be classy) and the Marquis of Gotham were sick of their Old Masters being stolen. One had had his prize Titian nicked. Another lost an Oudry painting, about 1753 give or take a yard, of a duck – no kidding; it doesn’t sound much, but it’s worth enough to stand for parliament, and maybe get elected. The last was the Marquis of Gotham, who waxed eloquent about his stolen Van Gogh. He actually sobbed on TV, the lying swine. He knew it was a fake, and where the original was in the USA. I watched him on the six o’clock news, the night before I went on the run.

  “I know there are allegations about its attribution,” he blubbed before the nation’s cameras. “But experts say it is genuine Vincent. I’ll pay seven million to get it back…” et lying cetera. I swear my paint was hardly dry. The pig had used phenolformaldehyde to harden it up, plus French craquelure varnishes. See how corrupt folk are?

  Then came the fatal words. The TV presenter smiled into the camera and said, “And here’s the man who will lead the noble lord’s bounty hunters. You’re just out of gaol, David, aren’t you?”

  This heavily built geezer sat there with a face devoid of expression. I’d never seen him before, but I knew instantly he was the David Buddy who’d got nine years in Durham for nicking Rembrandts.

  “Yes,” David said evenly. “The police don’t like it, but is it my fault if they can’t hack it? I’ll catch him.”

  And he looked at the camera. I actually shivered. He meant me. They say in the antiques trade that every dealer knows everything and newspapers know nothing. A uniformed Northumbrian plod came on and said it was mor
ally wrong for criminals to make money out of crime – like the police don’t? What really frightened me was the bounty hunter’s final remark.

  He said, “Fine. Then let’s see who catches the bloke who stole Spinning Woman. Want a bet?”

  The lads in the antiques trade were already be laying odds on how soon David would collar me. He was a class act. I’m not.

  That night I had one last maul with Belle in my cold damp cottage, and lit out. She dropped me on the A12. I got a lift from an all-night wagon heading for the Channel Ports. I was in Southampton by midnight, complete with passport. With the police and a bounty hunter after me, I’d no choice. I had to keep going.

  * * *

  I dreamt on, reliving the terrible fright of the footsteps, me clinging to the ivy, the crone shuffling closer with her lantern. A bell began to ring. It bonged closer. I woke in a sweat, pleading for everybody not to catch me.

  “Dinner is served, ladies and gentlemen,” a loudspeaker voice said. Somebody knocked and called, “Dinner.”

  My heart was going like a hammer. I woke with a yelp and sank back in relief as I remembered. I’d got away, sort of, and couldn’t quite understand how. Memories crept in, the old lady I wheeled aboard, Benjo’s Emporium of rubbish, the supercool Miss Trimble who was stalking Benjo for tax revenue. Shakily, I showered and undid a suitcase, donned Cal’s new clothes and left the cabin. Emil directed me to the restaurant, cutting labels off me every step of the way.

  Chapter Five

  I’d assumed I was shanghaied in a derelict tub, doomed to sea-sickness until I could jump ship. I’d also thought I’d have to queue with a tray for grub that would cost the earth. I’m never right, and was wrong again.

  * * *

  The dining room was reached through a warren of plush staircases. The entire ship was unbelievably elegant. I hated the paintings along the corridor walls, except for some August Macke prints – in richer days, I’d travelled to Berlin to see the originals. Huge flower arrangements flanked the dining room entrance. Waiters in uniform, head geezers in dinner jackets, smiles everywhere like they were really, truly, glad to see shoals of hungry passengers arriving for nosh. The stylish restaurant was better than in any city.

  “Table One-Five-Four, sir!” cried some serf, really delighted I’d turned up. He ushered me through the mob and seated me at a table.

  “I am Jude, your waiter for the cruise, ladies and gentlemen!” said another, beaming. I’d never seen so many sincere smiles since my friend Jean, a rival antiques dealer, went down for embezzlement. Other stewards, mostly Indians from Goa, seemed equally thrilled, rushing about with serviettes, water carafes, menus.

  The other passengers at Table 154 did those wary introductions that might mean anything: “Hello, I’m Ivy, this is my husband Billy. We’re from the Wirral,” and all that. I said I was Lovejoy and yes, it was my only name, when some pleasant lady wearing genuine diamonds asked.

  “They still call me Billy the Kid down at the station house!”

  Billy guffawed, showing teeth like tombstones. His hair was all flowing silvery locks. He obviously groomed himself as a Western hero, lantern-jawed and tall, gold studs in his ears. Ivy, a mousy lady, watched her husband anxiously and shut up whenever he spoke. The prat wore a black string tie and had cheroots sticking from his pocket. She looked cowed.

  Down at the station house, though? Only cops and railway men used that term, station house. This extravert, with his diamond cufflinks and commanding pose, was no humble signalman. Copper.

  No prices on the menu. I gulped. In my circles that means a new mortgage, always assuming you’d paid off your old one. It promised umpteen courses I’d never heard of. I wondered if I could afford a decent meal before the money in my pocket ran out.

  “Er, look, mate,” I said to the next diner, “where do we pay?”

  “Pay?” The bloke who said he was Kevin laughed, telling everybody round the table, “Lovejoy wants to pay twice! He thinks meals are extra!”

  That broke the ice. They didn’t know if I was putting it on or not. I laughed along, feeling a duckegg. Conversation moved to prices they’d paid for the cruise. It seemed to be a challenge, who paid least. Like, book your cruise through those people in Cumbria and you get a third off, but in St Helens it’s even cheaper. Scared somebody would ask me how come I was on an expensive cruise, I put in that I’d paid the full price. They were instantly full of concern for my sanity, and gave me guidance on how to handle rascally travel agents.

  “You’d never survive in the antiques import business, Lovejoy,” Kevin said bluntly. “We can’t be timid about money.”

  “Use the Internet, old boy,” said a crusty bloke called Jim Akehurst. He was with Millicent, a shimmering lady with diamonds. “Book at the last minute. Prices go down.”

  “They do!” twittered Ivy, still anxious. I liked her. She wore black, trying to vanish I suppose in her loud-mouthed husband’s presence. “A girl in the Wirral books for us. She knows a hairdresser on board.”

  “Kevin always bests me,” said a woman in casual fawns. No jewellery, no rings, a hard glint in her eye. “Hello, Lovejoy. I’m Holly. Kevin here’s my partner. Hotel decoration and antiques import-export.” Kevin waggled his eyebrows roguishly. He had painted fingernails. “Watch out for Kevin. He’s nothing but trouble. I gamble, and Kevin practically lives in the ship’s casinos.”

  Kevin tittered shyly. “We cohabit in sin,” he announced loudly, causing heads to turn at nearby tables. “The hotels we decorate are sheer horror. Especially,” he added with a glance of pure malice at Holly, “if some cow gets colours disastrously wrong!”

  “Now, darling, don’t start.” Holly smiled, cool.

  Every relationship is like being in a row-boat full of cakes and ale, where each person claims to do all the oar work while the other only noshes and idles. Neither they, nor anybody watching, knows the truth, about who does what.

  “Millicent loves the swimming pool,” Jim Akehurst boomed. “Every morning and afternoon.”

  “I’m into shows,” Ivy remarked. “So is Billy. The glamour!”

  “And films,” her husband added. “I doze off in the cinema when I’m worn out from boozing. Ha-ha!” He laughed shotgun style, long pauses between. I could see he might unnerve me.

  Everybody paused expectantly. I went for it, risking derision. “Pool? Casino? Cinema? Are there…?”

  “The poor poppet!” Kevin exclaimed as Jude came to take our orders. Just in case, I felt my few notes in my pocket, and asked for one of everything. I was starving. “He really is new, isn’t he?” Kevin tapped Holly’s knuckles. “Holly, you must take Lovejoy in hand! Show him the ropes.”

  “Never seen the adverts on TV?” Billy demanded. “All holidays are cruises nowadays.”

  “They have everything,” his wife Ivy said quickly when he looked at her, as if prompted. “Library, a computer room. Didn’t you get a ship’s plan? Your steward should have given you one. Call at the purser’s office.”

  “I’ll manage, ta.”

  The reminder made me glance warily round the dining room looking for anybody I might know from a previous existence. Too many people to take in at one glance. Balloons bobbed at tables where waiters were singing somebody a happy birthday. This wasn’t merely a ship; it was sheer luxury in a floating town. You couldn’t tell we were moving.

  As the first course arrived – melon, somebody choosing poached eggs with a French name, others a prawn and apple cocktail – they started exploratory chat. It was friendly, nobody wanting to be left out, all telling of exhausting travels to join the ship at Southampton. It became competitive: my journey was more tiring than yours, et exhausting cetera. You had to get up at six this morning? Well, I got up at five, so there! It was all good-natured. I vaguely claimed I’d stayed in Southampton at a cousin’s, deliberately getting the streets wrong. Only Jim Akehurst was a problem. He and Millicent went into Southampton shopping every week.

  “Our troub
le is finding a time,” glitzy Millicent said. “Every morning it’s tons of legal paperwork.”

  Her husband agreed. “I keep trying to retire, but I’ve never worked as hard.”

  A lawyer? Which explained Millicent’s diamonds.

  “Conveyancing’s the problem,” she said. “Can you imagine, we own three antiques shops in that new shopping precinct?”

  Lots of antiques people about, I thought.

  “Sign of the times,” everybody said. I muttered edgy agreement.

  “I hope they’re good,” Kevin gushed. “The speakers, I mean. Nothing worse than bores talking about old pots, unless it’s big money.”

  “Old pots?” I said.

  “The cruise theme, dear. Antiques. Antiques talks, TV antiques personalities. Didn’t you know?”

  Antiques? I must have looked suddenly apprehensive. They reassured me: nothing was compulsory, you didn’t need to attend.

  Talks, antiques demonstrations, they were all entirely voluntary. They laughed about getting lost on board. The ship had no Deck Thirteen from superstition, but a fourteenth. Listening, my spirits gradually rose. I could tolerate this luxury, for the brief time it would take the Melissa to reach some landfall. They told me we would soon reach Holland.

  They waded into the first course, saying that my travel agents had given me atrocious service, not telling me about the entertainment, talks, celebrities travelling with us.

  “Don’t book through them again, Lovejoy!” Holly commanded, easily into anger. “Those young girls only sit there doing their nails. It isn’t good enough!”

  And so on, through steamed lemon sole with sauce vierge, whatever that is, roast loin of pork, stuffed breast of chicken on lentil mousse, stilton quiche and coriander something. The one job I’ll never try, I resolved during that first gargantuan meal of a zillion calories, is travel agent. They get the short end of the stick from everybody. They can’t win. I mean, here they all were on elegant Table 154, stuffing our faces in a floating Valhalla, slurping their way through mounds of superb grub to a final shoot-out with fresh strawberries steeped in drambuie and rum chocolate slices under orange sauce, and all they did was grumble about the travel agents who’d rescued them from humdrum lives and got them here? Give me a frigging break.