Ten Word Game

by Jonathan Gash

  “I’m a paying passenger,” I lied. “I’m only filling in here because somebody’s sick. Do your own lawsuit.”

  “Can I ask, please,” Delia interrupted smoothly, saving me more lies, “about amber? It’s the only one you’ve missed out. I’ve been wondering whether to buy some from the Mayfair shop upstairs.”

  “Ta.” And I meant it. The bloke, silly sod, sat whispering angrily to his missus. “Actually, jet is an organic stuff too. No longer fashionable because it was used once for mourning brooches and pendants. I love amber.”

  Donna nervously passed me the tray. I picked up some earrings.

  “Genuine amber. I’ve yet to find anybody who hates amber. The least dense of all organic gems. The loveliest-ever line of poetry in the world was inspired by amber. In Milton’s Comus. Only a few words, but it’s inspired a succession of Hollywood films about the lass called Sabrina.”

  “Say it!” some lady called.

  I went red and said I’d a poor memory. I saw June Milestone smile, now standing at the back among more passengers. The meagre crowd had grown, probably thanks to the seething bloke and his frigging cultured pearls.

  “Floats in ordinary salt water, which is why it’s found on the seashore. Splinters when you slice it. Amber workers get spicules in their skin, causing what they call amber rash. The insects and spiders entombed in it are highly prized, but make me feel ill.”

  “They’re proof it’s genuine,” Donna put in, proud of her displays.

  “In a way, but remember that copal – that varnishy stuff portrait painters use – looks just like amber, and is also a natural resin. It’s cheap, and you can immerse an insect in it as it hardens. Make a strong salt solution – ordinary kitchen salt – and your amber floats, but so does copal. Plastics sink, unless they’re hollow – hold them up to the light and you see the space.”

  “Look,” the man said, still wanting a war because he’d been stupid.

  “Doesn’t amber attract shreds of paper?”

  Thanks, Delia. “So do many things, if you rub them. Proper alcohol – not methylated spirits – in a minute or two will soften copal, so you can rub a mark onto a white hankie. It’s a good test. Amber’s resistant.”

  “So this amber is genuine?” Donna, still batting for her shop.

  “These earrings are, love, yes. The risk is buying amber fragments heated and pressed together. A terrible fraud. Amber carvers use this trick to save wasting amber bits. Always test amber in alcohol. In two minutes, you see the crazy-paving look on the surface if it’s amberoid, meaning fragments pressed together.”

  I passed Donna the earrings. “No offence, but myself, I’d wait to buy in St Petersburg or elsewhere in the Baltic. They say people practically give it away, it’s a quarter of what you’ll pay back home. That’s it, folks. Ta for listening.”

  A few gathered round to ask questions. This always happens, people too shy to blurt out their queries but wanting answers about this pendant or that antique.

  Prompted by the kindly Delia, they pressed me how to buy amber. I was gasping for a cuppa.

  “Pliny in the Ancient World knew about it. The Romans loved white amber, which they thought was a kind of sea wax. Red, transparent amber was thought to protect against evil, so was a special present for babies.”

  “Isn’t there gold amber?” from Delia, kindly obstructing the irate bloke who wanted to force his way through.

  “The Teutonic Knights were busy all along the Baltic,” I said with gratitude. “They wanted the white amber, for making rosary beads, symbolising purity, see? Most of the Baltic amber’s pale gold. I like the red Chinese amber most. Clear amber sells higher in Britain. An ancient amber cup workmen found under Hove railway station near Brighton is in the British Museum. I’d give anything to… er, hold it just once.”

  She smiled knowingly. “Have you ever worked amber, Lovejoy?” She segued sideways, still blocking the narked goon and his blinking pearls.

  “I’ve had a few goes, with the small pieces I’ve gleaned from the East Anglian seaside. It’s easily done. Any morning at low tide you’ll find a couple of pieces an hour, average, with a bucket of salt water.

  “You see all sorts of amber antiques. Candlesticks, bowls, meerschaum pipes, carved plaques, devotional religious carvings, snuffboxes, chess boards, chess pieces, amazing things.”

  I tried to drift away. They drifted with me. I tried to keep going on the subject, to prevent the man trapping me into conversation about his grievance.

  “You either get amber alone, or as encrustation. Not a pleasant word for such beautiful material. It means using amber to embellish other stuffs, as in amber plaques round a chalice. There was even the famous Amber Room – a whole room!”

  “Look. If I were to offer – ”

  “No, mate,” I told him. I was getting as narked as he was. “I won’t testify under any circumstances. Law never does anybody any good. Don’t throw good money after bad.”

  “The Amber Room,” Delia prompted quickly. I blessed her for sticking by me.

  “Aye. Frederick the First of Prussia started it. He got a bloke called Wolffram, a famous Danish amber turner, to build a whole room of the stuff in Charlottenburg, but fell out with designers in 1707. It’s a famous tale. Other craftsmen came and went. It got finished about 1711 in time for Peter the Great to see it when he visited Berlin.”

  “Did he steal it?”

  “Got it as a pressie, and took it to St Petersburg for his Winter Palace in St Petersburg. His daughter Elizabeth shifted it later. They called it the Wonder of the World.” I smiled. “Now, that’s an antique!”

  “Is it there now? Can we see it?”

  “It went missing in the war, love.” I tried to make a joke, to escape. “If anybody finds it, let me know and we’ll split the proceeds! Oh, Harry!” I pretended to see somebody beyond them and waved. “Just coming! Look, I’m sorry, but I’m late for an appointment. Ta for listening…”

  And ran, with a grateful smile to Delia Oakley. Nice lady. The bloke trotted after me with his pearls, but I kept going. Honest to God, I thought, does he want blood?

  And made it to the Raffles Lounge, where a concert pianist was playing, so nobody could talk to me for at least an hour. No wonder people go on voyages for their health. I wish I did.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The harbour was sunny with a river, tangles of shops, cafes, harbour steamers and yachts. A nautical fairground, all colours and on the go. In other circumstances I would have loved it. I was allowed ashore, which only meant Mangot could get me back on board any time.

  Trying to make up for my surliness the previous night, I smiled at Delia and Fern as we made our way off. I was pleased they didn’t seem offended. In a few paces we were among shops in a sunny seaside. Not many antiques places, and those pretty manky, but a holiday atmosphere lifts the spirit. I liked the place.

  “It’s the kind of port people call tacky,” Delia said, laughing. Fern agreed, and went off all eager to find clothes. “Fern hunts presents,” Delia explained. “So far she’s only bought two prezzies, and she has seventeen on her list. It’s all she comes for!”

  A bridge spanned a river where estuary ferries glided and disgorged revellers.

  “Don’t worry about last night,” Delia said. “I guess you don’t like Lauren. Mind you,” she added when I started a denial, “she frightens me too. Such intensity! She’s devoted to Henry Semper. Must be very upsetting for her.”

  “Upsetting?”

  “He’s terribly ill. Didn’t you hear?”

  I watched a small boat disembarking passengers, families out for a day’s revelling. Seaside holidays are among the best. Several arrivals set out with determination for the cafes. I saw a familiar figure, who looked up and made an economical gesture of recognition. I didn’t wave back. He carried a camera and went towards a row of gaudy shops along one arm of the estuary. I’d go that way and see what he had to say this time.

  Delia
was looking at me. “Someone you know?”

  “Eh? No. Coincidences don’t happen to me.”

  “Come on. You can pick me out some amber. They say this place is good for amber.”

  “Don’t you want to wait for Fern?”

  “No. She’s a shopaholic.”

  We started into the touristy shops. There was a range of amber, much of it moderate, with one or two good pieces. I had the feeling that most had been cleared out by wholesale merchants long before the holiday season.

  “That’s ambergris.” I stayed her hand when she picked up a piece of greyish material. “Sperm whales produce it, to protect their intestines from hard bits of squid. It floats in the sea. It’s a horrible black stuff and stinks. Then it mellows after a while, and looks ochre-grey, like that. It’s used in perfumes. Charles the Second liked his eggs cooked with ambergris.”

  I dissuaded her from buying a small magnifying glass with an amber-coloured handle. It was only ambroid, those waste bits of amber pressed into shape. Block amber is real single pieces worth carving. I showed her how to look at amber in different lights, turning the piece as you go. You can see the planes where the fragments have been pressed together to make one large chunk. Dealers always pretend ambroid is genuine block amber because they can charge you five times more. Chemically it is genuine, but it’s really only the sweepings from the floor after the amber-carver’s gone home. Anybody can scoop up rubbish and press it. You only need a kettle.

  “Don’t be fooled. Daylight is your best friend when buying amber.”

  She squinted. “I can’t see the different areas, Lovejoy.”

  “Look at the bubbles. If they’re elongated, then most likely it has been made of spare bits. Old antique dealers say ambroid – the pressed amber – always looks ‘frozen’, but I never know what they mean.”

  “There are insects in this.”

  The thought of some poor insect struggling, looking at sixty million years of imprisonment until it gets a chance of hanging on some gentle lady’s breast in a pendant … I winced.

  “People fake amber. I mentioned copal varnish. They put pine pollen and insects in it. It’s very convincing. The test is to touch the surface of copal with a dot of ether, and it will cloud. If it does, don’t buy it. Glass lookalikes are heavier and sink in salt water. So does Bakelite.”

  Mr Moses Dulpoy was taking a photograph of the harbour up ahead. He wore a natty check suit with a straw boater, out for the day. He must have done another airport zoom to get here. An organised bloke.

  “Tell me, Lovejoy. If you know so much about antiques, why are you broke?”

  “I’m not!”

  “I’m on the next table, remember. I overheard them laughing at your mistake about the meals that first dinner night. You looked like you’d suddenly lost your wallet.” She was smiling. “I’m offering to help.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Of course not,” she said quickly. “What I mean is, you and I could come to an arrangement. You could teach me which antiques are genuine. Lauren and June Milestone are doing an antiques quiz after we sail tonight. There’s a prize.”

  It was tempting. Delia was the only trustworthy person I’d met so far, someone who was neither policeman, crook, or a bent antiques dealer on the make. We stopped to watch children feeding ducks by the jetties. Amy and Les Renown were just boarding a small hired motorboat. They saw us and waved. We waved back. Les took the controls and moved the craft with expertise, very nautical. I just wished they weren’t wherever I was.

  “I want to learn, Lovejoy. I’m new at antiques. I’d pay.”

  “There are talks by experts. Go to those.”

  “I do.” She glanced about. “You’re on edge. What is it?”

  “Nothing,” I said innocently. “Why?”

  She smiled. “You haven’t arranged to meet some lady here, perhaps?”

  “No. We’ve reached the end of the shops.”

  The last place was a small caff with wooden tables and benches set out on a verandah projecting above the edge of the riverbank. Hardly a soul, just a couple talking over some photographs and a babe in a pushchair slumbering with its feet in the air. Between the caff and the last shop was a narrow alley overgrown with weeds. It led down to the water where a small dinghy rocked. Beyond the balcony was a series of bushes. I could see a donkey staring at the water traffic on the river. Where had Mr Moses Duploy got to? The path petered out, from a firm metalled surface to a track, finally becoming a footpath onto a small peninsula. He’d vanished.

  “Look,” I said, suddenly nervous and wanting to find the little blighter. He’d made me an offer and I’d accepted. I could at least play along. “I think I’ll maybe have a drink here for a minute. I’ll see you back at the ship.”

  She looked blankly at me. “Shall I not come with you?”

  “There’s Fern,” I said. “Don’t miss her.”

  “Oh, right. See you later, perhaps.”

  We did that hesitation dance with which people hope to avoid misunderstandings, then parted. I went onto the caff’s verandah, certain that Moses would be lurking nearby, possibly down by the water. I ordered a coffee and paid as soon as it appeared so I could be off the moment he showed up. The couple were laughing at their holiday snaps. I saw two rowers heaving a skiff across the surface. A ferry glided beyond, raising a wake into a million glitters. Delia was walking back along the promenade. It was peace.

  I saw figure moving by the dinghy. I could just make it out. A boatman maybe, or somebody trying to attract my attention? The couple were inside the cafe. I pretended I’d finished my scalding drink, and went down the alley among the weeds and tall grass, as if moving to the waterside to gape at the boats.

  Moses was lying half in the water, bleeding onto the surface in great bursts of red. It floating with a curious sheen. I’d seen blood before but never quite such a colour. Blood goes brown once it’s aged. They get it wrong in the movies, usually making it bright garish scarlet when that’s only the hue of new blood. They use eosin. My mind snapped and went into a silent scream, What the fuck am I saying? He was bleeding, so it was a new injury. The side of his chest was heaving as if it was being punched then pulled, punched in and pulled out, by some invisible powerful hand.

  And it stopped moving. Moses died. Just stopped everything and became still, except his lower half was in the water. Bloody froth gathered about his mouth. A trickle went down his chin, and he slipped further into the water. I backed away, turned and made my way back up the narrow alley.

  On the path I looked at myself. No blood. Blood would have been all over me had I tried to pull the little bloke up out of the water. I was clean. No trace of anything incriminating. No sign that I’d tried to help the poor sod, nothing so honest or noble.

  No, I’d simply turned and left him there dying, dead in the river. He might still be alive, waiting for me to lend him a hand, drag him up among the weeds and run for help.

  But I’ve seen death before. I know it. There’s no mistaking the moment when somebody’s alive and with the rest of us on earth going about our business, and the next when it’s all ended and there’s no more of anything. I’d seen him.

  I couldn’t feel the ground. I noticed that as I started along the track back towards the bustle and activity of the harbour, following where Delia must have gone only moments before. It came to me, as I plodded on in a state of utter disorientation, that whoever had stabbed – had he been stabbed, coshed, or smashed somehow? – whoever had killed him must have been within a hand’s reach. Perhaps the killer was there, hidden under the wooden pilings on which the projecting verandah stood? Or maybe he’d gone out on the dinghy. And now I couldn’t even remember if the dinghy had still been there when I reached the water. Had I seen it leave, the killer moving upstream?

  About then I began shaking, my knees and feet becoming uncontrollable. I found my teeth chattering – this on a warm sunny seaside day. I should have gone for help. They c
an do wonders these days, bring people back from… I mean restore people to life however dead they look, if you believe the newspapers. Except I’d come within a whisker of joining Moses Duploy. I’d no doubt. If I’d run screaming into the shops and raised the alarm, I’d have got one step and that would have been it.

  The trouble was, I’d not even bothered. I could have pretended to walk back to the path, then ran and told the caff proprietor about some poor chap who looked like he might have fallen into the water. I might have said I couldn’t quite see because I’d not got my glasses, could you please take a look. And then stood back while they called for the ambulance and police.

  I’d not done that. I found myself sitting on a chair outside a small bar with a waiter asking me if I wanted anything. People were milling about and another boat was just moving away from the nearby jetty carrying a load of holidaymakers, music playing, people in and out of small stores. It was as pleasant a scene as you could wish to see. Further along, there was the bridge. I glimpsed Fern showing Delia what she’d bought, something in a coloured bag. Delia glanced my way, and just as quickly turned away. I’d offended her. I should have told her about Moses Duploy. She might have been with me when I’d seen him, and could have been a witness, proved my innocence. And allowed me to be safe while I helped the poor little geezer.

  “A beer, please.”

  I sat and drank in the sunlight, safe and sound. Down the riverside path, I saw people start to gather when passengers on one of the yachts started to shout and point. Somebody a hundred yards back came running. A policeman on the bridge pedalled his bike, coming nearer, talking into a device on his shoulder, everybody getting out of his way.

  He pedalled towards the caff where I’d sat during the last moments of Mr Moses Duploy. His scams had ended. It wasn’t fair. I settled the bill, the waiter preoccupied by the disturbance. I heard a distant wah-wah, an ambulance coming. As casually as I could make myself move, my feet recovering their feeling, I walked slowly along the grass verge towards the bridge. I kept looking at my shoes, my trousers, and my cuffs for signs of blood. Not a one. Had I tried to help, I would have had at least a trace.