Ten Word Game

by Jonathan Gash

  “I do apologise.”

  “Eh?” This was new.

  Her friend retreated to the exit, smiling. “You were trying to escape,” the remaining lady said. “I didn’t realise. In the shop.”

  When I’m not in the wrong my mind thromboses and I can’t find anything to say, used to being useless I suppose. Speech is overrated, but sometimes it’s worth giving it a go. This was the first time for weeks I’d not been savaged. Did she mean real escape? Then the penny dropped. She meant I looked furtive by the flowers and those tee-shirts. I groaned inside.

  “I could have been kinder, and made it easier for you to avoid your friends.”

  “Yes, sir?” a stewardess said. The lady declined with a headshake, but sat in the next armchair.

  “I’m Lovejoy. How do.”

  “Delia Oakley.” She smiled, at ease. “Are you on a terrible table? You can always ask to be changed. Speak to the head waiter.”

  “No, they’re fine. Friendly.”

  “Is that so,” she said evenly. “We think you’re a happy bunch. We’re the next table, the one with only four on. Rather dull, I’m afraid.”

  “You can always ask to be changed. Speak to the head waiter.”

  She gave it a laugh, though it wasn’t much of a quip. “Was that true about the silverware? Fern and I were really interested. No shame in eavesdropping.”

  “Sorry.” I went red.

  “How marvellous to be an expert on silver!”

  “Wish I was. Dates are hard to remember.”

  “I wondered what you were doing, deliberately dropping your serviette then stooping to pick it up. Fern thought you were being amorous.” And explained, “Lauren’s legs.”

  “Dates should be stamped about the base, or lined up near the handle. It’s illegal to fake up a silver tankard as a coffee pot then sell it as a true antique without marking the changes you’ve made.” I shrugged. “So I wrote zero on her card.”

  “I’m one of Henry Semper’s antiques group.” She grimaced. “Groupies, you might call us.”

  “You run an antiques shop?”

  “Not yet. I’m hoping to start a small antiques business now my husband’s gone. Fern does antiques in Salford. People joke about cruise ships, don’t they? Full of widows and all that. Fern is the real expert. We were friends at school. It was her idea to come. I’m new to cruising. It’s lovely, isn’t it, everything you could possibly want?” She waited for my story, but I said nothing. She told me about her husband’s fatal car crash. I never know what to say. “Fern was wondering how you knew it was a chocolate pot, not for coffee. Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “No.” I spoke with relief, on safer ground. “The finial on the silver cover – the projecting knob – comes off, leaving a hole into which the lady of the house would insert a swizzle, to stir the chocolate lees. You didn’t need do that for coffee. Making a new screw finial is always difficult. I’ve made similar mistakes. Mine wobble, like hers did.” I coloured up, cursing myself for clumsiness. “Er, I mean I suppose that’s what forgers do.”

  She did her woman’s amused non-smile. “Why did you come, if you hate cruising?”

  “I’m just desperate to get off.”

  “We saw you slip away from our Rijksmuseum group. You looked so desolate returning in that lady’s motor. Quite like a prisoner.”

  “I hoped to make it back…” Back where, though? “Home,” I completed lamely.

  “You can leave any time, Lovejoy. Just tell the purser’s office. The shipping lines have port agents at every landfall. It’s a legal requirement.”

  “Sounds easy.” She looked kind and ready to talk, even though it was getting on for midnight. Could she be trusted? Better not; I’d already opted for Margaret in East Anglia. “I’m sorry, er, Delia. I have things to do.”

  “Not at all. Perhaps I’ll see you in Mr Semper’s antiques lecture tomorrow? Or in Oslo.”

  “Oslo? Isn’t that in the other direction?”

  She laughed, shaking her head. We parted at the lifts. I avoid unneeded conversation by using stairs instead of elevators. A lift is hell on the nerves, especially if other people are full of boisterous snippets. Still, Delia Oakley might turn out to be someone neutral, if not exactly an ally. So far I’d unerringly picked out enemies, so maybe my luck was changing. I went to ring Margaret and beg for help. Oslo, though? There were ferries from our east coast – Newcastle, was it? – to Norway.

  No reason for optimism. Optimism never did me any favours. I’ve found that.

  Chapter Ten

  Ringing home’s easy. Press the ship-to-shore button, and a mechanical voice says the call will cost you an arm and a leg. Dial, and presto!

  “Hello?” I almost screamed. “Margaret?”

  “Lovejoy?”

  “It’s me! It’s me!”

  “Where are you? The police are looking for you, and Hackney louts are asking at every auction. Tinker’s been arrested, and Belle’s disappeared.”

  “Listen, love. I’m on a ship, and – ”

  “The line’s funny, Lovejoy. Did you say ship?”

  “Course I did, you stupid … er, sorry. Called Melissa, going to Russia. I want to get off.” I halted. What did I want her to do?

  “Doesn’t it stop?”

  I felt this was all her fault. “They’re keeping me on it.”

  “Lovejoy.” I heard doubt. Women are all suspicion. “Who is she? You’ve gone walkabout with some tart, want me to lie you out of it.”

  “Eh?”

  She sounded bitter. “Like that American bitch from Wichita. Look, Lovejoy. I’ll help you when you come home, but not when you’re playing the fool. Incidentally, that David Buddy has hired Smarmy on North Hill as a scout. And my Norman’s home.”

  “Don’t ring off!” I could tell she was going to. Norman is her husband. Smarmy’s an antiques dealer in a ruin he calls a shop. He’ll do anything for a groat. “Please, Margaret. It’s not a woman. They’re going to top me.”

  The line burred in my ear. Gone. I looked at the receiver – how daft is that? – then tried to redial. The line was engaged. A third time, engaged. Ten minutes later, engaged. She’d blanked me off, the cruel bitch. See how women leave you in the lurch? I beg for help, and she reminds me of some bird I’d forgotten?

  The affair honestly had been really innocent. An American dealer’s wife came a-calling at my cottage and stayed until next morning, honestly only to see some antiques. They didn’t arrive – honestly not my fault – so she stayed another night. The antiques never did turn up. Her husband cancelled a huge buy of seven eighteenth-century gaming tables. Two of the seven tables were genuine, the other five being forgeries made by me and Balk Haythorn from Weeley. I had sweated blood getting the ends of the folding-leaf tables exactly right (the rounded corner projections are for candlesticks, so card players would have enough light). They were beautiful. We would have made a king’s ransom. Margaret forked out money for the heart-wood, varnishes, certificates of provenance and similar grey areas, so she lost heavily when the Yank dealer had to be fobbed off with fables of where his wife had stayed. Margaret placated him with white lies – I begged, I begged – but the deal didn’t go through. Margaret and the others still blame me, which isn’t fair. I was honestly innocent.

  The ship’s calendar on my cabin TV said people would still be wassailing on the Lido Deck at the swimming pools, but I went to bed and thought.

  My mind’s a ragbag at the best of times. Like, Finland leads Europe in drinking coffee, the Greeks lead in bread consumption, and Russian women knot their headscarves to state their observance of marriage laws. India has 59% of the world’s remaining tigers. One in three of the world’s leaders – from Napoleon to the dimmest prime minister – lost a parent before they reached the age of 15. Wellington was known as the Iron Duke, not from military resolve, but because his house had iron-framed windows. King Francis the First of France bought the Mona Lisa to hang in his bathroom, and o
ur Henry the Eighth was a tallish slim bloke, not the gross nerk of the movies.

  Concentrating, I rummaged for facts about ships, and realised I knew nothing. Except 171 ships had been attacked by pirates in the past six months; the place for it is the Malacca Straits and, just like ram-raiders who drive a lorry through an antique shop window and nick specific antiques, so modern sea-borne pirates capture ships to order. Of course, it’s mostly massive cargoes – new cars, helicopter parts, aero engines, missiles and munitions, tankers carrying crude oil. No help there. Another datum: anybody aboard pegging out from natural causes is discreetly whisked off, or zoomed to hospital ashore by helicopter.

  I’d already heard Millicent telling Ivy, “That’s why they stopped posting passenger lists. So embarrassing having to cross people off.”

  Other facts? Oslo. I was stuck. And as if I hadn’t enough enemies, I’d alienated Margaret, the one person I trust. My loyal barker Tinker was arrested, God knows why. I’d added to my foes on board by earning the undying hatred of Lauren and her mentor the great antiques TV expert Henry Semper for exposing his rotten little scheme. Who on earth were the Hackney louts? I felt sick. The Marquis of Gotham must have hired some tankers, violent GBH blokes usually from Leeds. I gulped. North London hoods are as bad, and never give up. I thought, Goodnight diary, and slept.

  * * *

  The lecture theatre was really the cinema between movies. Henry Semper came limping out to loud applause. I sat at the end of a row. The place was crammed. I saw Fern and her friend Delia Oakley in the centre chatting amicably with a mob who all seemed to know each other. The antiques coterie? Fern turned round to scan the audience. Her eyes locked on mine. My fellow-diners came. They seized the front row and waved to pals.

  Semper began by accepting a card from Lauren, who had so far unbent as to wear a faint trace of lipstick. She peered around the audience as Semper read out the successful person’s name.

  “The value of the genuine silver Paul de Lamerie antique I showed round at dinner is …” He held the suspense, then stated a price that would buy a superb house in Dulwich, Hampstead Heath, or some other undesirable slum (joke). Amid scattered applause – nobody is pleased when somebody else wins – a gent went to get the prize, a Royal Copenhagen figure of lovers snogging on a rock above a faintly purple sea. Genuine, but less than twenty years old, so I scored it as pretty but yawnsome. Tip: Ignore anything antique dealers call “tomorrow’s antiques” – we’re all that, for heaven’s sake.

  He began his talk. Lauren operated slides. It was a mundane sequence of antiques sold at London and international auctions. Gracefully he skirted Sotheby’s scandals, the price-fixing deals and the ghastly Impressionist fiasco that ripped off trusting buyers from Tokyo to Los Angeles. I almost dozed off from excitement. It grew especially dull when he talked of opportunities for investing in antiques. I shook myself alert. Money was really Semper’s subject.

  “Tomorrow’s antiques are the thing to buy.”

  Hello, I thought, here we go. He had a knack of speaking to secret cravings, and judged his audience with cunning. It’s the trick used by all con artists. I’d got his number.

  “And why?” he intoned. “Because, dear friends, they are soaring in value! Inflation, deflation, the value of money, stocks and shares – all these things let you down. Antiques never will!”

  He nodded to Lauren. She clicked. The screen showed a lovely Imari vase. This is a bulbous porcelain piece with a cover, a lovely style. The colours (remember them) are dark blue, a faint red, and slender black for outlines. The base rim had a faint greenish hue. On the picture it looked authentic, so I was pleased. He mentioned a value that set everybody gasping. I felt sure I’d seen its lookalike in the University of London’s porcelain museum, near Betjeman’s favourite church of Christ the King. (Easiest place to rob, incidentally, if you like Eastern porcelains – I mean the museum; the church has zilch.)

  Then he uncovered a display stand, flinging the cloth aside with a magician’s theatrical gesture.

  “And now, the real thing! Isn’t it exquisite?”

  Heads bent as everybody talked animatedly of vases they had known, seen, just missed, turned down when they could have bought them for a penny. In the hubbub I saw Ivy, the quiet Wirral wife of Billy the showy ex-cop, her sad face illuminated in the glow. Her expression was woeful. You can always tell misery. She was three seats along my row. I shouldn’t watch other people. I’m always at it. It gets me into trouble. She caught my look and gave a feeble smile. I nodded, went back to watching the great TV impressario.

  “This is of a slightly different date, but is the genuine Imari…” and similar balderdash.

  Imari wasn’t a porcelain factory, though antique dealers pretend it was. It was simply the port through which Japanese porcelains were exported. The word porcelain’s supposed to come from a resemblance to a Cowrie shell, which is similar to cured pork skin, but wordsmiths never tell the same tale twice so we’ll never know. I listened to Semper wax eloquent.

  The poor little fake pot stood there, its coloured slide projected up on the screen for all the world to sneer at. If it had feelings, as a genuine antique Imari has, it would have been ashamed. Semper was a demon for intangibles – the hallmark of a bamboozler getting into his stride. He kept saying things like, “The influence in a niello vanity case speaks of Russia’s nineteenth century…” and “The flavour of the design justifies the eloquence with which…” It’s all claptrap. It means you have to have seen a hundred genuine antiques before you can distinguish garbage from truth. Yet greedy people actually trust these charlatans, and spend their lives searching for china ware with a “hint of rococo” and pearls that feel “cooler than the average”. My tip: if you’re a beginner, learn to measure.

  The expert was preaching about his vase. It was a brightish green. Tip: These modern Korean replicas are ten a penny in the Far East. Quite attractive, but two things give them away. Simply stand back, screw your eyes up so you can hardly see the leafy, curling design, and the pattern blurs into insignificance. Now do the same with the real thing and the pattern stays. It’s never wrong.

  My second tip is measurement. The diameter of the cover’s outside rim is half of the width of the vase at its widest – so the cover’s width divided by the width of the bell is 0.5, a sum anybody can work out, because one over two is a half, right? The Korean fake’s ratio was 0.68, give or take a yard. There are other measures. I’m not knocking Korean replicas, note, because some from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries are crackers, really bonny. And of course the older ones count as antiques in themselves, so are worth finding. Koreans made them, as Chinese still tend to, in tributary devotion to ancient pottery masters. Fine. The only thing I don’t like is people being sold one as the other for a thousand times the price.

  I don’t know what antique hunters have against measurement.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said an American in the next seat. “Would you please stop muttering?”

  “Sorry, sorry.” I keep doing that. It gets me into trouble.

  “The expertise of a skilled antiques aficionado,” said Semper, aheming modestly so the audience knew he meant himself, “is beyond price. The risk is yours!”

  He repeated his catchphrase and went on to the next series of projector slides. I asked the Yank’s pardon and edged out. I was fool enough to glance at the stage, and caught Lauren’s venomous glare. From being a winsome mousey creature, so meek and prim, she was transformed into a death ray. Her face was contorted in a snarl of fury as her gaze followed me. I slid from the cinema. Semper tried to cover my departure by a glib wisecrack.

  “Somebody wants to get back to the bar!”

  I made my way down to a bar lounge and sat listening to the band and a gorgeous woman crooner while folk danced. Above, the shops were on the go, one of them announcing a sale. Across, on the balcony of the second floor, people were selecting hand-made chocolates and exclaiming at new flavours.

&nb
sp; “I thought you’d be at the art sale,” an American voice remarked. “It starts in thirty minutes.”

  He sat beside me, signalled for a stewardess and ordered a highball. I declined his offer of a drink. I was relieved he hadn’t followed me out of Semper’s talk to black my eye. He was a giant.

  “Sorry I spoiled your lecture.”

  “Your grumbling was more interesting than Semper.”

  He was one of these urbane, ultra-groomed transatlantics with perfect teeth and luxuriant silver hair. I didn’t doubt for one moment that he owned Nevada or somewhere and that he could buy the shipping line with pocket money. His patent leather shoes looked worth my cottage.

  “Measure vases, though?”

  That narked me. “I’ve already apologised. Sit somewhere else.”

  He laughed. Two women glanced across, captivated by his film-star looks. Women adore power, whereas men worship form. There’s this theory, isn’t there, that men are instinctively guided by clues to supposed fertility – shape, waist-to-hip ratio, smooth youthful skin and curvaceous breasts, undulating walk. It only goes to show what gunge medical research is, because there’s a grace in older women you don’t find anywhere else, and every woman has her own beauty. As for women going for the masterful millionaire, I’ll never know.

  “Pleased to meet you, sir.” He reached and shook my hand. “Victor Lustig, New York.”

  “Lovejoy.” Odd name, but I should talk. I’d heard it before somewhere. Maybe one of those folk on the front of Time?

  “I’d be obliged if you’d write me those criteria you were muttering about. Measurement proves authenticity?”

  “I don’t know what people have against measurement. They want mystique, the idea of a sixth sense.” I quite liked the bloke, so I kept going.