Ten Word Game

by Jonathan Gash

  “If you don’t, Lovejoy, you shall have to take the consequences when we reach St Petersburg.”

  He spoke briefly into a phone, just numbers, replaced the receiver. I knew I was to stay until dismissed. I tried to uncrouch but my belly doubled me up. Sweat started at last. I was soon drenched. Ta, God. Late but eventually good value. God must be a Yank. The pain faded.

  “Hello, James.”

  “June.”

  She entered, taking in the scene. She’d once seen me battered by the Brummy circus – you’ll have seen these, a team of antique dealers who go about the country mob-handed, taking over auctions by bullying. Auctioneers help them, of course, because otherwise the honest old public might have to be fairly treated. She knew the signs, and gave Mangot a quick glance. It lacked sympathy. Smart lass, June Milestone. They say there’s no more desperate competitors than TV presenters on walk-talk shows. They’ve got to be fast on their feet to survive the cut-throat rivalry. Like, between June and Henry Semper?

  “Lovejoy, sod off, you corrupt little pissant.”

  Holding my stomach, I left. Luckily, there wasn’t a soul in the corridor. Out there I leant against the photo display of the ship’s staff. The door didn’t quite close. I stayed silent, and heard Mangot speak to June as if she were a minion.

  “Time you earned your keep,” he said. I heard his heels thump to the floor. Changing positions while giving orders seemed to be his thing.

  “What do you mean?” Defensive. “James, I’ve done everything – ”

  “That pillock’s causing ripples. We brought him aboard on your say-so. It’s up to you to keep him quiet.”

  “Not just me, James! It was all agreed.” No indignation there. Mere submission from the great June Milestone the TV darling?

  “Do as you’re told and we’ll all get on. Do what you have to to keep him in order. Understood?”

  “Yes, James.”

  “Okay. Find Amy and her tame pillock, tell them I want them.”

  “Yes, James.”

  I just made it to the Atrium, where luckily only a few passengers frolicked, all too busy to notice me. I sat, feeling ashen. I badly wanted fluid, but didn’t dare ask for a drink in case it made me worse. I tried to doze, hunched in the armchair, a picture of yet another idling passenger slumbering to music. One or two stewardesses paused to ask if I wanted some tipple or other, then smiled and went on, leaving me to recover.

  Grudges, I find, are hard to keep up. However, Mangot would have to go. I can forgive anyone who acts on principle. Like, women scrap with supermarket managers, on a matter of principle. And, a bloke has to defend his righteousness, whatever it is based on. Mangot had to defend his ship’s reputation. Just as I could forgive Lauren’s ignorance – she was standing by her dishonest boss, duped by his dazzling popularity.

  Another point of principle: if everybody else is allowed to have principles, then me too. Mangot had ordered me to betray my divvy gift. I simply don’t do it. The pig had stepped over the line separating right from wrong. I’m no saint. But think of those wondrous inventors and artists like Josiah Wedgwood, who studied all their lives to get the right glaze on a humble pot, exactly the right look to a painting, the perfect setting for some gemstone, the most dazzling colours in an embroidery. How many hundreds of thousands across the centuries gave their lives for perfection? Now Mangot was making me betray every single one.

  When I’ve had to, I’ve betrayed people. Everybody’s done it. You, me, him, her, we deceive lovers, husbands, wives. Some are trained – I’ve already said how I appreciate lawyers in my own special way, and politicians never give a straight answer on anything. Other folk are forced into betrayal. Most of us assume we’ve a right to do a bit of treachery when we think it’s fair. Like when somebody dies, and friends and families gather to pretend grief and eye up the spoils after the “ham butties and slow walk,” as Lancashire folk call a funeral. Ever seen a contented heir? There’s no such thing. Everybody thinks that Auntie Elsie snaffled those valuable Welsh dressers and Uncle Ernie’s priceless collection of glass paperweights. It’s just families doing their thing, and I can understand it and forgive.

  Betray all the lovely people in history who ever stitched, drew, built, fashioned, shaped, carved, worked? I came to. My stomach felt sore. I kept burping, and there was June, smiling in the next armchair.

  “Come on, Lovejoy,” she said, raising me. “Time to go gambling. Nothing takes your mind off a silly argument like a really good gamble.”

  “Silly argument? Is that all it was?”

  Slammed to my knees, threatened with… I hated to think that far. Experimenting, I slowly straightened. We started towards the casinos. They were two floors up. We went up in the lifts. Our progress was quite pleasant once I got moving. The sickly feeling began to fade. I was with a celebrity. Almost every passenger said hello to June. She moved among the people, saying hello and laughing at their quips. I felt a bit bad because I saw Ivy, wife of Billy the Kid ex-cop from my table, and had the distinct impression she wanted to speak. She withdrew and went quickly on when she saw I was with the great June Milestone, darting me a glance that shut me up. June was nodding affably to three blue-rinses, saying they could ask their questions at the tea-time lecture, because Henry Semper, poor darling, wasn’t really very well.

  “I shall have to do it instead,” she said. They trilled laughs and said things like, “Splendid, June!” Crawlers. Worse than me.

  We went to see people lose fortunes at roulette. I saw Holly playing blackjack with single-minded intensity. She won steadily. I saw no sign of Margaret Dainty. I wondered how not to snarl up Lauren’s antique scam at nosh time.

  “There!” June exclaimed when the roulette session had been won, lost, drawn, or all of the above. “Now a bite to eat!”

  She led the way. I pointed out she was going in the wrong direction.

  “I don’t think so, Lovejoy,” she said demurely. June can be demure, but surely this wasn’t the time. There was something wrong. “Your cabin, I think?”

  All cabins had electronic keys, plastic cards into a slot. Tea was laid on my small table. Who’d ordered that?

  “There!” She kicked off her shoes and sat on the bed, curling her legs beneath her. If I try to sit like that I topple over. Women are different shapes. “I do hope the salmon has fresh cress.” She looked, and purred with satisfaction. “Yes! It isn’t fair to the salmon otherwise, don’t you think?”

  Something was still not right. We sat and talked. I asked after Henry Semper, said sorry he was poorly. She said it was nothing to worry about.

  And, miracle of miracles, we made smiles. She was just the same as when we’d been friends – note the past tense – so I was in paradise. June was always good at staying silent afterwards, and gave me time to slowly come out of the faint death that invariably follows. I don’t know why women don’t keep quiet for a bit, but mostly they do what they’ve seen women, heroines to trollops, do in the movies, light a fag and predict the butler did it or solve the plot. I blame Hollywood. Producers think movies need perpetual motion and constant yak. They forget love needs silences. June pretended to wake only when I stirred, which only goes to show how good she’d have been if she’d turned to acting. I wish I’d remembered that.

  Thinking this, I realised what was wrong. This was a plot. She was simply doing as Mangot had ordered: Do what you have to do. For me, ecstasy is a complete entity and always perfect. Otherwise it wouldn’t be ecstasy, right? But I’d known June pretty well once. I roused, smiled, blessed her. We got ready.

  “Mind if I come to your lecture?” I asked. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d said no, leave it, some other time.

  She said fine. And I went. The theatre was crowded by people with notebooks. As they waited, they were all talking about passing through the Kiel Canal then Warnemunde, where we’d dock. A lady next to me asked if I was going ashore. “Lovely place,” she enthused, “but dreadfully expensive…” It
seemed to be the passenger litany, that and staggering from one gargantuan nosh to the next.

  I wondered if Margaret Dainty would be there. And if Mr Moses Duploy would make it. And if I might somehow get away.

  June came on to warm applause. The talk started. It wasn’t bad, but I noticed she slipped things in to nark me. Twice she called a single turkeywork chair of the seventeenth century (no arms, wide seat, low straight-line back) a farthingale chair. It was never called so, not at first. Me and June used to have words about this. The farthingale was a lady’s dress with hooped whalebone used to spread petticoats and dress widely at the hips, creating a splendid impression as an elegant lady seated herself in a fashionable gathering. It became especially admired about James the First’s time. By then, the chair had been a standard piece of furniture in affluent households for donkey’s years. The “farthingale” chair’s name only became an antiques dealer’s term almost a century after the farthingale’s appearance. I swear June hid a smile as she said it a second time, riling me. She loves Windsor chairs, and made a great thing of them, but in the nineteenth century they were regarded as humdrum and lacking in fashion, more a kitchen or coffee-house chair than anything.

  Delia Oakley and her friend Fern chatted with me as we left afterwards. We went to see the ship enter through the Kiel Canal’s massive sliding gates. This was Germany, so much nearer to St Petersburg. Secretly I decided if I was going to get thumped, bullied and enslaved, I wanted more details. They might be my only lifeline. I looked about hoping to catch June, but she was surrounded by admirers. I must have seemed surly to Delia because I didn’t say much. The countryside looked beautiful. Astonishing to see the vast Melissa gliding through the terrain, people cycling alongside and waving from footpaths.

  Somebody said Warnemunde was just a quiet fishing village. It proved not quite so tranquil.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nervous at having to deputise for Henry Semper in his chat, I was relieved when only twenty or so passengers turned up. They’d never heard of me, and I wasn’t famous June Milestone or good old TV star Henry Semper. I decided to speak on jewellery. The shops had some on sale. I recognised a few faces. Delia Oakley and her friend Fern, of course, with Lauren along presumably to suss out the opposition (me). One old lady came wearing every bauble she had.

  The ship’s newspaper listed seventeen different entertainments in competition. I was glad. A salesgirl came with trays of trinkets. She put pendants and rings out on velvet. For a few minutes I spoke about the problems of wearing baubles.

  “Think what a jewel is,” I said, once I’d got going. “It’s only a bit of something we value. Like, when aluminium was purified by a Dane in 1825 it was the same price as gold, even though it’s Planet Earth’s commonest metal and the Ancient Babylonians used its compounds in medicines and dyes. See? Now, it’s stacked in every rubbish tip. We’d laugh to see an emerald set in aluminium, but the Victorians thought that beautiful.”

  I asked the salesgirl to uncover her trays of jewellery.

  “Hands up those who use spray perfumes, aftershaves and the like.” They all did. “Everybody? Well, you want locking up. And who keeps their rings on when washing up? Everybody? You’re under arrest. Even diamonds are affected by washing liquids supposedly gentle to your hands, as the advertising slogans say.”

  Somebody interrupted. “But a gemstone can’t be destroyed, can it?”

  “Untrue, missus. Want an example? Remember those bonny marcasite brooches? There have been instances when they’ve been left in an ordinary box. Years later, you find the box holds nothing but powder. It hasn’t been stolen – the marcasite has simply oxidised to powder. And marcasite is pure crystalline iron sulphide.”

  “Diamonds are indestructible, though, aren’t they? They’re the hardest substance known.”

  “Almost true. In Australia and South Africa, old miners believed in the sledgehammer test. If they whacked a gemstone with a sledgehammer and it didn’t break, they thought it proof the gem was a real diamond. Not necessarily true. They must have shattered hundreds of genuine diamonds, right from the moment little Erasmus Jacobs found his ‘sparkling stone’ in South Africa in 1866 and diamonds became everybody’s darling. A diamond is more vulnerable than you might think. It has planes of cleavage.”

  “Which gemstones are most easily damaged?” That was Delia.

  “Organic gemstones. Spray perfumes are a real risk, especially to pearls. The pearl’s nacre – the shiny outer coat you pay for – gets dissolved at the pearl’s equator. You can never get it back. It’s the same with mother-of-pearl. I once was in a lady’s … er, room. She had a beautiful mother-of-pearl inlaid box for her jewellery, eighteenth century, on her, er, coffee table. It was blotchy. She often used one of those spray perfumes, see?”

  “Why did she have it on her coffee table and not in her bedroom?” a lady demanded.

  I went on, red-faced, “It happens with all the natural gems. There are principally four: pearls, jet, amber, and ivory. Traditional jewellers add coral, making five.”

  “I have a coral necklace,” said a lady, proudly showing it off. “It’s a gemstone. They said so when I bought it.”

  “That’s true,” said the shopgirl, immediately defensive.

  “Lovely,” I said feebly.

  The lady’s necklace was clumsily done, a sequence of coral pieces mismatched and made from waste fragments powdered and glued to simulate the real thing. The trade calls it resining, because you crush powdered coral (adding a pinkish dye to make your rubbishy fake even more gorgeous) and simply add resin adhesive. Let the thing set, in the shape you think will sell quick, and there you’ve made a perfectly good-looking piece of “original coral”, if you stretch the truth a bit. Her necklace was mostly resined coral powder. I sighed. I hate having to tell a lady she’s spent good money and bought only gunge.

  “Coral is getting rare now, luv, because of pollution. It’s actually the skeletons of small sea creatures in the Cnidaria phyllum. Its personal name is Corallium. It was highly prized even in the ancient world. When the creature dies, it leaves behind the red stone we call coral, sometimes white, pink. One species actually creates slatey-blue coral, but I don’t like it.”

  “Are all gems really stone, then?”

  “Come close and see.”

  The girl, Donna, had on display ivory and bone rings and bangles, amber earrings, one small jet piece, some coral, and various cultured pearls. The folk left their seats and crowded round.

  “No. Some purists say amber is the only true organic gem, because it is a fossilised tree resin. The Baltic, where this ship’s sailing, is sometimes called the Amber Sea, because of the amber they find along the littoral. It floats as far as England’s east coast.”

  “Is this ivory?”

  A lady passed me a brooch of pseudo-eastern design. I could tell from the way she glanced with hard eyes at Donna that she’d bought it from the jewellery shop on Deck Seven in the Atrium. I borrowed the salesgirl’s loupe and peered in the best light available. She carried a MacArthur microscope – basically a small illuminated tube. It focuses by a little ratchet wheel, and shows you the surface of any material in high magnification.

  “Ivory is a chemical they call oxyapatite – calcium phosphate to you and me – and a bit of chalk, with a little organic material.” I looked up. “This is nicely cut.” I was being kind. It was horrible. “Ivory’s elastic, in fact, and lovely to carve because it’s not very hard. People who work in ivory praise its tenacity – that means it won’t splinter easily.”

  “Isn’t it banned?” asked a young woman, ready to crusade.

  “Dunno. Some folk argue the African elephant is over-multiplying now it’s protected, others the opposite. Stored ivory abounds, but it dries out and tends to crack.”

  “What about the elephants?” the belligerent bird said.

  “They only live fifteen years in zoos, but live to over sixty in the wild. Why keep them in prison? I thin
k we should let them go. More years of life is generally a plus.”

  “Is it real, though?” the brooch’s owner asked.

  “It’s ivory.” I passed it back. “Bone has a heterogeneous network structure – you see it by one of these tube things Donna has. Remember the density test we all did in school and thought a stupid waste of time? Loss of weight in water? Transparent resins can be used to trick the buyer by adding white oxyapatite and chalk mixtures, but they’re more dense. Ordinary solid plastic is less dense. Do the simple test in your kitchen at home. It’s easy and interesting.”

  Donna looked relieved. Well she might, because many of her “ivory” items in her shop were actually plastics, but there you go.

  “One of the easiest tests – if the shopkeeper will allow you to try it – is to heat a paper clip. Press the tip into the ivory. It turns black and gives off a pungent burnt-meat smell. Plastic offers no resistance to the red-hot metal. Any questions?”

  “Would you look at these pearls?”

  A man passed me his wife’s string of pearls.

  “There’s always one give-away with every gem,” I told him, smiling. “These are synthetic. Look at them. Perfectly spherical, whatever their sizes. Natural pearls are eccentric, however slight the tendency. Jewellers pierce natural pearls so the axis along which he drills the string hole makes the thing like Planet Earth, which only seems a perfect sphere but really isn’t. It’s slightly flattened.”

  I looked through the loupe. “You can tell they’re not frauds because the surfaces look like they’re trying to appear ploughed, with miniature plecks. Beginners call it moon-surfaced.”

  “Write me a certificate saying all that,” the man said, highly narked. “I bought them from a jeweller as natural pearls, not cultured. I’m going to sue them.”

  “Not me, mate,” I said wearily. I always get this. I once got sued for not helping a couple to sue. Can you believe folk that daft? “You want to march on Rome, get on with it.”

  “You’ve got to!” The bloke got heated. His wife tried to pull him down. He stood glowering. “You’re an employee of this company! I’m going to – ”