The Rich And The Profane

by Jonathan Gash

  He beckoned. A woman came for his glass and strolled off for a refill. Why didn’t she just bring the ale bucket? It was by the caravan door.

  Charley had bruises across his forehead, like they’d been laid in place. His knuckles were raw, bleeding away, his cheeks savagely cut.

  ‘Our Dicker tellt me of some jinney-mengro he once sellt to.’

  Jinney-mengro-. their talk for a wise man. It can also mean know-all.

  His brother Dicker had robbed a St Edmundsbury bloke I didn’t like - still don’t, come to that. Dicker had no idea. He’d nicked nine fairings, those cheap garish pottery figures they give you on fairgrounds. He’d also thieved a candlestick. God knows why, but there’s not a travelling man born who can resist a candlestick. This had been a creamy earthenware, shaped like it wished it was Georgian silver -these clues scream early Wedgwood. I loved it, hadn’t the heart to do Dicker down because he’d once given me a bicycle tyre for nothing. I’d bought the fairings for a few quid (those were the days; I was loaded) but tipped him off where to sell the Wedgwood candlestick for a mint.

  I was pleased at Charley’s compliment. Being called a wise man was better than a clip round the ear, especially when he’d kindly used his own speech.

  ‘Nice bloke, him,’ I said, ‘that Dicker.’

  ‘The gorgio gave him back a genuine old thing. He could have kept it, but was honest.’ He took the replenished mug from the woman without saying ta. Well, if I was his size and king rabbit, maybe I’d be offhand. ‘I forget his name.’ ‘I’m Lovejoy.’ Was more proof needed? ‘Your brother plays what he calls a bashadi. Looked like an ordinary fiddle to me. He ever get the tune right?’ We’d argued about how to sing ‘She Walks Through the Fair’. I’d been right, of course, but gypsies are stubborn.

  Charley grinned, jerked his battered head to the grass. I sat, relieved.

  ‘Are you really a chobawno, a wizard?’

  ‘Me? Nar, Charley. I just listen. Antiques shout the truth.’

  He nodded. One of the men started to cut in, but Charley gave him a stare and the bloke subsided. I recognized him. I’d been on remand, in clink, for ringing auctions. He’d been in the same cell.

  ‘We thought you were a moskey,' Charley said. I looked askance. My gypsy lingo had run out. ‘A spy, Lovejoy, skulking around the churchman.’

  They’d seen more than I’d wanted. Me and my clever skullduggery.

  ‘He’s taking money from church charities to gamble with,’ I said, shrugging to say it didn’t matter to me either way.

  ‘Not the first rashengro to steal.’

  ‘Some priests do thieve,’ I agreed. ‘Have you seen him at other meets?’

  ‘Grass races. Local matches. Football. Wherever there’s a bookie or a bet.’ He spat again. ‘Brings a grand gorgie. Some churchman, eh?’

  ‘A posh lady?’ Now, I wonder who?

  ‘GrasniP his woman said under her breath. I knew that word: bitch.

  Charley beckoned her closer and cuffed her. She went back, satisfied about something, God knows what.

  ‘The woman’s maybe the prior’s mort, his shag on the side,’ he said. He then described Mrs Crucifex to a T.

  ‘He’s a man without luck,’ he concluded. Gypsies are big on luck. ‘Gets a rich woman, is an important rashengro, yet still he loses.’ He asked his people, doing no more than cock his head, ‘What was his last plan?’

  My ex-cellmate answered, still looking hard at me, ‘Walnuts, Charley.’

  ‘Eh?’ I asked. Had he said walnuts?

  Charley chuckled without moving his swollen lips, in case they haemorrhaged some more into his drink.

  ‘Albansham Priory’s got a bonny walnut orchard, Lovejoy. Not a selling orchard, like at Boxford, just been there from olden times. The rashengro decided to install a walnut press to make pure walnut oil. Walnut oil’s expensive, see?’

  He rolled in the aisles. His men made huff-huff noises like kiddies playing trains. After a brief ponder I recognized it. They were laughing. The women, more obvious, screamed with hilarity.

  ‘What’s wrong with walnuts, Charley?’ I asked, blank. It seemed quite a good idea to me. This, note, is my native land. I hadn’t a notion. They fell about at my stupidity.

  ‘See, Lovejoy,’ Charley resumed, wiping his eyes, ‘my tribe’ve stolen from that orchard for four hundred years. Walnuts that grow here don’t make oil. The weather, see? English walnuts peel like a dream. But no oil. He hocked the priory’s silver for it. A fool. Everything he touches turns to dross.’

  ‘People the same,’ my old cellmate said. I remembered his name: Pral. ‘Prior George’s a bad-luck man.’

  He was trying to warn me. Waiting for our respective cases to be called, Pral’d shown me card tricks using an unmarked deck. When I’d got sprung - I was going out with a woman solicitor that week - I’d begged her to take his case, and she’d somehow got him off after a bit of remand. Well, it’s an ill wind.

  ‘A bad-lucking man,’ Pral said direct to me. I nodded, ta.

  Saying this kind of thing is all very well, but who believes in luck? Luck’s got an abysmal record, like God, like purity. Even the idea of luck worries me. I’d rather just trust people’s faces, and do the best I can.

  That was all the information I got. I had to drink four pints of his women’s beer as the talk became general. The ale was unbelievably rough. No wonder Charley was moving up the bare-fisters’ stakes if this was his staple.

  When his women brought out a tin bath and started filling it with hot water to bath him, I rose, politely shook hands and left beerlogged, all his mob calling ‘Rak tute' after me, take care. The sky was nigh on dusk.

  So Prior George nicked the priory’s funds, gambling his way into debt. But hadn’t Jutta told me he’d just got an antiques windfall and would soon be in clover? Yet so desperate was the prior’s plight that his fund-raising team of Summer and the Crucifex pair wanted to include me on their side, for a sale of antiques.

  Where was Gesso?

  13

  I paid prince off, Lovejoy.’

  Florida insisted on meeting me at the grandest restaurant in town. She likes to show off. It’s called Franco’s, being Spanish you see. It doesn’t look much, being opposite the sleaziest auction rooms our town - indeed, the world - has got. Inside it’s unprepossessing, but the grub’s the best. Every dish they bring is magic. Makes you wonder who’d go to all the bother, working everything out for each recipe and cooking just so. A triumph of mankind over misery.

  The truly amazing thing is that the waiters love Florida. They are crazy about her. I can’t see why, because in a restaurant she’s nothing but trouble. For one thing, she insists on going backstage to inspect the raw food. Is anything more gruesome? For another, she argues the hind leg off a donkey. They offer single cream, she insists on double. They’ve got fresh tomatoes, she’ll want sun-dried. Yet they love it, dash about obeying. Once, she sent some lettuce leaves back, played merry hell. So we both had to starve to death, everybody in the restaurant pretending we didn’t hear the screams coming from the kitchen while they swapped frigging lettuces. I mean, who’d know? More to the point, who’d care? A lettuce isn’t a space shuttle or neurosurgery. It’s a frigging leaf.

  Once, I asked Franco why he admired Florida so. He said, eyes dreamy, ‘Ah, she beautiful! She know cuisine!’, proving that he’s as barmy as she is. Her beauty matters less to him than her expertise on aubergines.

  You have to be careful, though. Florida can go berserk over even less. She asked me to marry her once. I smiled politely, thinking it some joke. She got really furious, stormed out. See what I mean? Even a simple misunderstanding can send her mental. Women are odd. Where was I?

  ‘Ta, love.’ About Prince.

  ‘Hence, Lovejoy, you and I are now inextricably linked.’

  ‘Hence, eh?’ I was well into the grub. Franco’s the only bloke in captivity who gives you enough mushrooms. Nobody else does. Ever notice that? ‘What do
you mean?’ That’s my commonest question with Florida, ever since That Time I Misunderstood Her Proposal.

  She smiled, acknowledging that I was now properly trained. I wasn’t happy. Subservience is nothing new to me, but what with Mr Summer, Irma, Mrs Crucifex, Prior Metivier, Prince, Gesso’s disturbing absence and my own chronic penury, I’d had enough serfdom lately to be going on with.

  ‘This forgery in which you engage, Lovejoy.’

  She smokes between courses. This doesn’t mean her ladyship actually had to slog it out alone, find her own handbag, rummage for a fag, struggle for a match, all the exhausting business that can wear a lady out, oh no. Florida calmly poses, forearm upright, fingers gently parted, and waits. Waiters instantly sprint up with fags of every hue and carcinogenicity. She deigns to select one. They hurtle for a match. Sometimes she wants her fag lit from a candle, a lighter, a taper. They dash to comply, and Creation is saved for the next millennium. It’s a hard life.

  ‘You make it sound grim, love. Can I have your soup?’ Carrot and something. She’d had half a spoonful. Makes me wonder why she orders it.

  ‘I gathered from Prince, when I was purchasing the commission he gave you, that you are an expert forger?’

  I eyed her warily. What was she up to? ‘Forgery’s legal, as long as you don’t sell it as a genuine antique.’

  ‘I visited Tony’s office.’ I stopped spooning her soup, in terror. Secret meetings with the Plod? ‘Oh, dear! Is there too much coriander?’

  I gaped. ‘You stupid—’ I lowered my voice to a loving whisper as heads turned across the restaurant. ‘You stupid cow. I thought you meant I was in trouble with the police.’ ‘Prince says you can fake anything.’

  ‘Anything can be faked,’ I said. ‘And I’m good.’

  ‘Why?’

  That stopped me in my tracks. I noshed on, trying to work it out. Yes why, exactly? I’m possibly the best there is. Is it because I’m the most careful? Or is it because I know how the original antiques feel, in this sordid world of money where beauty is judged only in gelt? Or because I feel how the old craftsmen felt at their wondrous labour?

  ‘Maybe all of those, Lovejoy,’ Florida said, which worried me even more. I hadn’t known I was speaking aloud. Thoughts are private.

  ‘I forge things to be the same as the original, love.’

  ‘You just said that.’ Had I? ‘This Nicholas Brown bookcase-desk, Lovejoy. Millions upon millions?’

  ‘The original went for a king’s ransom in the USA, yes.’

  She toyed with a spoon. Waiters sprang forth. She ignored them. They faded, in tears.

  She said softly. ‘Darling, I bought Prince out. You’re now my partner. If?’

  The main course came, some fish I’d never heard of. The spuds were really small, but there were tons, in butter. I like spinach, asparagus, and those eat-all peas - flat things; you eat them in their swads. I started, mutely apologizing. I can never quite work out what things need apologies. Burps, I can understand. But being hungry? Or wanting a woman? Or hoping she’ll leave her salmon if your own meal isn’t enough?

  She hardly ate, but that’s the way women tackle a meal, hoping it’ll evaporate first. I slowed. Something was lacking. Ah, the rest of her sentence.

  ‘If?’ I prompted.

  ‘Just “if”, Lovejoy.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe it’s an illegal if.’

  ‘You mean ...’ She did. She meant what if I made the desk for her and she sold it as genuine.

  ‘Could that be done, Lovejoy?’

  My meal just made it. I stared at her plate, a whale going to waste over there.

  ‘Don’t you want your salmon?’

  ‘Sewin, Lovejoy. Please help yourself.’ She made some signal. Waiters zoomed her meal to me. I could have done it in half the time, but didn’t want to spoil her fun, so sat with my hands politely folded. They brought more wine.

  ‘Selling fakes is done all the time, Florida. There are obstacles.’

  Her eyes closed in bliss. I’d only seen her do that in other circumstances. I watched, enthralled. Was it a hint?

  ‘I haven’t finished yet, love,’ I said. ‘I’ll be quick.’

  ‘Take your time, darling,’ she said dreamily. ‘Tell me those risks!’

  ‘They’re not pleasant,’ I warned her. ‘Scary, sometimes.’ ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Lovejoy,’ she said.

  Her hand reached under the table and stroked my thigh. I thought, What the hell am I to do now? I’d told the silly bitch I’d hurry up. Without pudding I’d not last the night. Starvation’s no fun.

  ‘Nark it, dwoorlink.’

  ‘Eat, Lovejoy. And tell me the risks. I love risks'

  Whatever Florida said, people who really do take risks don’t care for them. I mean, look at me. I used to be careless crossing the road. Now I gape, gander, dither before sprinting for the opposite pavement like a cartoon cat. No, risks are for TV tales. Risks, in short, are for those who never take them.

  I told her lovely eyes, ‘Each obstacle represents several risks.’

  ‘Oooh,’ she moaned softly. ‘Do go on, darling.’

  ‘In antiques, there are thieves. Criminals. Blaggers. Delf-fers. Every kind of killer you’ve never dreamt of. The thuggery and sheer lethality in the antiques trade make Hollywood smash-trash epics look like Keats poems.’

  She whispered, ‘I love it, darling. Love it!’

  See? They’re different.

  ‘In the forgery game,’ I went patiently on, ‘are hundreds of thousands of rivals. They’re a homicidal bunch who will stop at nothing.’

  ‘Stop at nothing!’ She crooned the words. ‘Savages!’ ‘Then there’s security folk, with their own private honchos. They’re supposed to stay within the law.’

  ‘Yet they don’t?’ Her eyes glittered adoration. I thought, The woman’s off her frigging trolley.

  ‘Course not. They just seem legal.’

  ‘Anybody else, darling?’ Her fingers dug into my thigh. ‘Tell me there are more brutes'.'

  ‘Yes,’ I said bitterly. ‘There’s a third rotten mob. The Plod.’

  She came to, affronted. ‘But Tony’s in my husband’s club. He goes to our church!’

  ‘He’s the Old Bill, love,’ I said bluntly. ‘So he’s enemy of all he surveys. He surveys me. And, if you come in on the forgery game, you.’

  She shivered deliciously. ‘I like the first two groups.’ ‘That’s the cast,’ I said rudely. ‘Now listen close, and I’ll tell you the scene.’

  In antiques, there are three options, and no more. It’s a three-by-three problem.

  There’s selling, honest or otherwise. There’s robbery, H or O. And there’s forgery, H or O. That’s it. The powers ranged across the board are the mobs, the guardians and the Plod.

  Nothing to it. Living in the antiques trade depends on how you permutate the options and the mobs. See? Basically a three-by-three problem - but so is the maddening child’s game of noughts and crosses. Which is why the antiques game has got the globe’s police forces, every known artist living or dead, and every villain, government or businessman on Planet Earth in a flat spin. Now read on.

  If you rob a bank, you get shot, arrested, hunted, and maybe end up penniless. But knock on any door, con some widow out of a wardrobe or a piece of jewellery, and maybe you’re an instant millionaire.

  Silly legends abound. Like the Raffles tale, which assumes that any art thief is learned, professorial, an expert in Titian, knows the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, has brilliant insight into the art market. It’s all balderdash. Your art thief is like Gesso: quick, slick, and doesn’t know one ‘smudge’, as they call paintings, from another. He’s just told where to go, which wall it’s on, what alarms are installed, and which roadside caff to drop the ‘dodge’, i.e. the stolen antiques. It could be a roll of wallpaper for all he cares. Like the Longleat robbery in Wiltshire, when they nicked the Titian - what was it, eighty-eight seconds for the entire crash-smash-dash?

 
There’s another daft assumption, that famous paintings can’t be sold because ‘everybody will know it’s the famous stolen Goya, Turner, Constable’. Wrong. It’s barmy to think that crooks won’t know what to do with a famous painting/ vase/Queen Anne desk/necklace just because it once was legitimately owned by somebody else. They’ll sell it. Or barter it. Or hock it to some fence. Or use it as security for a loan. Or swap it for a house, yacht, even a lifelong pension paid monthly on the nail. In other words, use it just as you would if you’d been (legitimately!) left it in your great-uncle’s will.

  ‘Then there’s the ALR,’ I continued to Florida.

  The Art Loss Register belongs to the insurance companies. Instead of working in modest sheds in poor disadvantaged Salford, the ALR has built itself expensive glamorous offices, centrally heated and air-conditioned, near Buckingham Palace - all at clients’ expense. There, some 100,000 stolen antiques are on computer file, with 20,000 more cascading on every year. The insurance companies say, eyes raised heavenwards in gratitude, that they finance the ALR themselves. They don’t, of course. They charge you for each antique you tell them has been stolen. Then they have the nerve to charge you a percentage if the antique is recovered with their help (so what the heck did you pay the ALR for in the first place?). They have offices in New York and Australia, for staff holidays.

  Antiques trade newspapers have ‘Stolen’ sections, more for general gloom than anything, and some run data bases, just to make antique dealers suicidal. They give gossipers something to gossip about, nothing more.

  That’s about it. Oh, almost forgot. The police.

  Scotland Yard’s mighty Art and Antiques Squad (all four police officers), now merged with the Flying Squads, has lately become part of the new Organized Crime Group, OCG. They’ve not yet spotted the embarrassing ambiguity in this title. The Specialist Operations - like art and antiques - are called Focus Units and are all in one pool. Good, eh? Not really, no. For when you have so many names for so many units/groups/echelons/whatevers the soap clogs the funnel, if you follow, and nothing flows the way it should. Nowt more to say about them, except that there are fifty-five whole police forces in this creaking old kingdom of ours, and only eight have as much as even one single art/antiques bobby on their staff.