Pearlhanger

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Because I . . .’ She paused, made to reach for her coffee, changed her mind when seeing her fag bobbing in the caffeine.

  ‘See?’ I said gently. ‘Your hiring me, all that rigmarole about mediums, stars, crystal balls, Owd Maggie’s dream time. It was nonsense.’

  ‘Tell me why,’ she said, looking. Her eyes were blue, fetchingly done with eyebrows all her own and eyelashes a foot long. If only she had Edwardian stud-and-drop earrings or something, or even those modern multicoloured titanium surfacers, and a ton more make-up, she’d look . . . no, she wouldn’t. It wasn’t just that she was everything Lydia wasn’t. There was something else. A shut-out, a mental armour. It was in her. Thank God most women are her opposite.

  ‘Give my acquaintance a fresh cup, wench,’ I said to the lady who was busy shovelling eggs, bacon, beans and sausages in front of me. ‘She’s been a dirty girl with that one. But don’t put it on my bill or I’ll never get rid of her. And why?’ I continued to Mrs Vernon. ‘Because you could have simply phoned around and asked how far your husband had got. Or come after him on your tod.’

  ‘Tod?’

  ‘Tod Malone, own. You could have done this without me. You’re a resourceful lass.’ An overcoated bloke came in, chatted to the cleaners and glanced over to me. He seemed quite at home. Us antique dealers are like those countries which once belonged to the same empire – competitors, but united for eternity from a shared belief in the same myth. It’s not just the lingo. You can tell an antique dealer a mile off.

  ‘I’ve explained all that.’ She was quite cool. ‘I need a divvie. My husband has our entire savings. We’re at a critical time in our relationship. He’s . . . not a very practical man. And a belief in the occult is not a crime. The only warning against you is that you are not to be trusted. But who is?’

  Indeed. Good old Cardew wasn’t so dumb.

  ‘Whose side am I on? Hubby’s or yours?’ I was beginning to sound like a hireling.

  She drank her scalding coffee. How women can do that beats me. My tea passes the elbow test before I can even sip on the rim. I noshed gamely on, waiting for more orders, like I’d done once for shellfire.

  She rose. ‘How soon can you be ready, Lovejoy?’ She almost choked on the mildness of it. The over-coated bloke had strolled into the kitchen, a publican’s antique-dealing brother if ever I saw one.

  ‘Half an hour to finish. I’ve someone to see first.’ Going red, I added, ‘Please,’ and watched her recede across the carpeted lounge. The attractive serf bringing the toast – proper slices, not like the colonel’s thin triangles with no edges – watched her too. And the cleaners, and the colonel and his missus. Mrs Vernon was watchable and obeyable, but probably not much else.

  ‘What do you reckon, love?’ I asked, lashing out with the marmalade.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of her,’ the lady confided frankly, busily rearranging the pots.

  ‘It is hell,’ I agreed. ‘Incidentally, tell that bloke you’ve dragged into your lair that the greatest antique dealer in the known world is now prepared to receive him.’

  ‘You saucy devil. And I can’t say I took to her friend, either.’

  My marmalade hand froze. ‘Friend?’

  ‘Looked a right misery.’ The description she gave – pale, thirtyish, wary – matched up to the bloke from the seance. The one I’d felt watching me sideways. He’d apparently arrived with Donna Vernon, carefully leaving before I’d come down.

  Well, I told myself nervously after a think, there’s no law against it, is there?

  Josh Thompson turned out to be one of those friendly utility models, no time-waster. A brisk slogger without flair, but a stayer who’d be making a good living from this delirious antiques game when much cleverer blokes have died the Icarus death of over-ambition. I liked him. We did a good deal for the bulk of the cards, me chopping the mark-up for cash (translation: taking only half profit, for filthy lucre on the spot). I paid for his coffee, big spender me, and the greedy sod nicked four slices of my toast. I felt I could trust him, so didn’t and asked him about three of the nearest people listed on Mrs Vernon’s paper. He knew two, and spoke of them with Nottinghamshire bluntness and at great length. I was delighted at the progress I was making.

  Like I say, a born duck-egg.

  I’ve met some vengeful women in my time, but this one wasn’t so direct as the others. There was a reserve, something held back. She felt emotionally wrong. I tried warning myself off because I’d got enough trouble to be going on with, and anyway antiques are a full-time love. It’s well known that love affairs should come one at a time.

  Anyhow, right or wrong, I was becoming quite interested in Mrs Vernon. I couldn’t help watching her as we drove away: confident, sharp, aggressive. The weather promised warm and the dress she wore had a pale green self-stripe, some silk material that caught the light. She drove intently, slightly hunched, casting frequent glances at the rear-view mirror and rolling the steering wheel like rally drivers do.

  But even she, expert driver as she was, had a hell of a time getting us out of Nottingham. Like most ancient places its traffic now follows guess-where merry-go-rounds until good luck reprieves it and you blunder out down some side street. I was sorry to be leaving, though. I would miss the smiles and the antiques, but not Tinker. Unless the booze had hit hard he would soon be shuffling into the pub where I’d stayed. There he would find my letter and the gelt to follow at his speediest, which is small in velocity but certain. He never questions orders wrapped in money.

  ‘Is this the time to ask about you?’ I tried.

  ‘No,’ I got back.

  ‘Hubby, then?’

  Her pause wasn’t indecision. More for effect, to show she was still calling the tune. Then she began to explain as we made it from the inner maze and bowled towards our next joint triumph.

  She had met Sid Vernon while she was a secretary for a London auction firm near Hanover Square when he had called to arrange the sale of a painting, a lovely Northcote oil of a lady.

  ‘Not Sir Joshua Reynold’s missus?’ I cracked, smiling.

  She did not respond, which puzzled me, and sailed on: ‘Sid and I married. He set up business near Hampstead. I did the documentation, he the antiques. We recently moved out of London, sold the house, cheaper district, that sort of thing. Lately Sid planned to do a sweep through East Anglia because paintings are our thing, and there’s nowhere like it for finding genuine Old Masters, is there? He drew our capital and left about three weeks ago. His sweep was going to take a fortnight.’

  ‘You’ve not heard since?’

  ‘Not directly. It was drawn out as a money order.’

  Movable anywhere in the Kingdom, and untraceable. Clever old Sid.

  ‘And the seance bit?’

  ‘It’s a sensible precaution to take the best advice, Lovejoy. You’re just stupid.’

  Well, yes, but not so stupid as a bird who calls assorted English paintings ‘Old Masters’, and who doesn’t know that the great Reynolds had as weird a bunch of pupils and followers as you could ever imagine. The point is that James Northcote studied under Sir Joshua, and wrote the great man’s biography. Ostensibly full of praise, it has become the all-time classic backhander, packed with the cleverest malice you’ll ever come across. Read it and see for yourself. The book’s a collector’s item. A couple of fascinating but odious blokes. I remember one unsigned Reynolds School portrait which me and Rex from Polstead faked and sold in Suffolk—

  ‘Lovejoy?’

  ‘Er, yes, I quite agree,’ I replied hurriedly. We were bowling along and signs saying Lincoln were starting to appear. Hers was a good story, for a pack of lies. Other people’s falsehoods always make me switch off.

  She took us to a roadhouse where we freshened up and had a snack. Then we hurried into Lincoln while our state of truce lasted.

  Exactly then I realized that the last person she wanted back in bed was good old Sid, because I was almost sure there w
as a thin, pale, wary faced bloke in a Mini waiting at the traffic lights as Donna thrust a map at me and demanded directions. Different story now, I observed, and a different type of pursuit. Circumstances alter chases. I avoided staring in the bloke’s direction and concentrated on the chart. Odd coincidence that we see him here. Maybe he was on the way to another seance?

  Chapter 7

  ‘THIS IT?’

  Following the map we found a street of small terraced houses. A pushchair leaned folded against the wall. A plastic toy was up-ended nearby, and a child’s tricycle lay in the gutter. The rest of Lincoln is beautiful. I’d drawn the short straw.

  ‘It must be, Lovejoy. Stay here.’

  ‘Like hell.’ I was out and knocking before she could reply.

  The woman who came to the door carried a bulbous infant and had the hunted look that comes from struggle. A tatty little girl sucked two thumbs behind her mother’s skirt.

  ‘Hello, love. Mrs E. Smith? I’m trying to catch Mr Vernon. He called a while since.’

  She had been pretty once. Now dishevelled and harassed, she still had some of that allure simply because all women keep it no matter what. Her presentation was just a little awry.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Listen, lady,’ Mrs Vernon began, but I deliberately stepped in front of her.

  ‘My secretary will wait in the car,’ I said cheerfully. The bulbous cherub had gone red and was grunting. I took it and pushed gently inside the corridor. God, it was heavy.

  ‘He’s got George,’ the little girl pointed out.

  Vaguely I wondered if infants are made of denser stuff. Maybe they don’t use lead-free petrol in Lincoln and it gets in their little bones. Skilfully I hoofed the door shut in Donna’s apoplectic face and just made it to the shambolic living room before collapsing under George’s weight.

  The mother followed wearily, not a peep out of her. She looked all in. I might have been the gas man. Her house had everything: peeling paint, begrimed walls, shredding wallpaper child picked into lakes of bare plaster, and an antique hanging on the wall that made my chest go boing. With difficulty I ignored it, breathing hard. George gaped at me without affection, masticating a dummy tit and grunting pinkly. Down in the forest something stirred. I was being dumped on.

  ‘Sit down, chuck,’ I told the woman, undoing the babe and honestly gazing at the little girl instead of the Russian amber rosary beads hanging from a nail on the wall though my eyes wavered like a hunter’s. ‘My name’s Lovejoy. Where’s his nappy?’

  The little girl went to a cupboard for a folded nappy. She leant her elbows on my knee, watching. The mother couldn’t have been more than twenty-four. She observed listlessly, hands clasped between her knees dragging her frock tight. Talk about washed out.

  I explained to the little girl, ‘Men have no laps, see? We use chairs, but you can do it on the floor.’

  She nodded, swinging a foot, understanding life’s defects. Changing the cherub was like dressing a wriggling bolster. George was melodious, bawling a lusty barcarole while I got a bowl and washed his bum. Skilfully he peed a squirt into the clean nappy. ‘A born critic you’ve got here, chuck,’ I said to the woman. She nodded, not a smile. I salted him with talcum and propped him upright while he sang on. He nearly had half a tooth.

  ‘There!’ Difficult to keep calm with my chest chiming like a cathedral gone berserk. That luscious rosary was genuine and old.

  Gedanite’s a pine resin which ages into a false amber. It’s usually opaque yellow and so brittle it’s hell to work. But whoever had cut this rosary had been a master craftsman. Each bead was engraved with Christian symbols and the crucifix was ecstatic. ‘Clean as a new pin, Elsie, Elisabeth? Where’s your bloke?’

  ‘Ellen. Gone,’ she said, almost smiling at the monster. He was now standing doing the infant’s painful trick of marching on my thighs.

  ‘That his rosary?’

  ‘No. Mine,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I run a business, home hairdressing, in the next room. It’s not much. So I tried . . .’

  ‘Selling it?’ I prompted gently. My mini-Tarzan was yodelling, stamping, bellowing his tuneless song and dribbling a length of elasticated grot which pendulated from his half-tooth. They’re a puzzle. If I’d just dried him, why were we now both drenched?

  ‘He wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Where did you advertise?’

  ‘Advertiser. An advert’s free, you see.’

  ‘He didn’t sweep you off your feet?’ It was a joke. She shook her head in all seriousness.

  ‘He was in a hurry. Nobody else came.’ Her eyes focused on me for the first time. ‘My grandma said it was special, but I suppose fashions change, don’t they?’ She desperately wanted something constant in the oppressive poverty-stricken world she had somehow come to inhabit.

  ‘Too often,’ I lied. ‘Here, did you say you were a hairdresser?’

  ‘I can’t do perms . . .’

  ‘Good heavens,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘My secretary needs her hair doing.’

  ‘She does? But the shopping . . .’

  ‘Please. Her hair’s a mess.’ Be firm, Lovejoy. ‘I’ll shop for you. Has this thing been fed?’

  ‘He eats all the time,’ she explained listlessly. ‘Marilyn knows the way.’

  I raised my voice to carry over the syncopating songster now churning my thigh bones to powder. ‘Then shout her in and give me his campaign rations.’

  A minute later I explained my plan to Donna Vernon. ‘Mrs E. Smith will do your hair,’ I said calmly.

  ‘She’ll what?’

  ‘I’ll be gone an hour. I’m furthering your interests.’ While Donna Vernon did her nut I swept out, humping George and dragging Marilyn. We slung the rickety pushchair into the car boot and took off for Lincoln’s busy centre.

  ‘You’re neck’s wet. It’s our George’s spit,’ Marilyn pointed out.

  ‘I noticed.’ I was knee-deep in it.

  ‘Why’ve we stolen grandma’s beads, Lovejoy?’

  There was a momentary silence while I reversed into the car park. The eagle-eyed little pest must have spotted me. While loading us up I’d torn a piece of my jacket lining away to wrap it in, with secret skill.

  ‘We haven’t exactly nicked them,’ I explained. ‘Mummy couldn’t sell them. So we’re going to, see?’

  ‘Mummy says nobody’ll buy them beads, Lovejoy.’

  See how even miniature women focus on gelt? ‘Mummys are usually wrong,’ I pronounced. The heresy worked. She gave an awed gasp. It was in a temporary lull that we disembarked.

  George’s pushchair was so warped it looked semi-melted, something painted by Dali. Marilyn did his straps while I transferred the ‘Disabled’ sticker from a nearby car to ours. Nothing wrong with this little deception. Other deceivers were thronging into the precinct: the saloon racers with phoney I’m-allowed-stickers, the council clerks’ Daimlers with exemption pennants, off-duty policemen whose blackmail is subtler than most. Law’s enough to make a cat laugh.

  We set off. The damned pushchair had a wonky wheel. What with that, my irritating wet collar, George’s incessant crooning and Marilyn telling other shoppers we’d stolen grandma’s beads, I was in a state by the time we’d done the shopping. When I finally crack it won’t be from Third World War. It’ll be queuing at the checkout where the till girl runs out of change and all your goods come funnelling at you too fast into your wheelie and the queue’s exasperated because you’re holding everybody up and you’ve paid nearly a quid for one measly ragged lettuce. I nearly went mental that morning, but little Marilyn was great. She caught our stuff like an Australian fielder and rebuilt the pyramidal display of dog-food tins which George had shambled by removing the keystone can as we hurtled past, so I was a knackered wreck when we finally hit the street and found a miraculously unvandalized telephone. Margaret Dainty was in and phoned me back within five minutes with the addresses I wanted.

  ‘What’s that noise, Lovejoy?’ Margaret want
ed to know as I scribbled them down.

  ‘Do me a favour and phone Michaela French. She seems nearest to where I am.’ We were by the lovely house locals call the Cardinal’s Hat – though Cardinal Wolsey didn’t need his hat for long – so it would mean a plod up Hungate, Michaelgate and beyond. ‘Tell her I’ll be round.’

  ‘Watch her, Lovejoy. I see her at the antique fairs. A cool customer. Hates paying a price. What is that wailing?’

  ‘A singing baby,’ I said irritably.

  ‘Did you say a singing . . . ?’

  Michaela French’s antique shop was disturbingly much posher than I’d hoped. It stood in a small tangle of medieval streets on a hell of a slope. I loved the vibes, even exhausted as I was from shoving George’s inert mass uphill. Lincoln’s somehow managed to defend itself against architects. Pleased at the sight of the castle and the rich feeling from the ancient stones, I resolved to be especially charming to Michaela French while I sold her my – well, grandma’s – genuine Russian rosary.

  ‘You’re in charge of George, Marilyn,’ I said, threatening fire and slaughter if she moved an inch and warning that I’d be watching through the shop window.

  ‘Are you going to leave us?’ Marilyn asked.

  Children are a right nuisance. I looked at her. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ Anyway I’d only have been on tenterhooks, wondering if I’d remembered to put the brake on the bloody pushchair. ‘Come on.’

  Michaela French was as trendy as her name. She was showing a wide-banded ring to a nice elderly couple. They were impressed. So was I, but in a different way. Nearly thirty, slender, dark, shapely, dressed with that costly beige sloppiness you only see where they own the next-door’s freehold and have coffee and cake brought in for elevenses. She was at the orgasm point of making a sale.

  ‘That reflection deep inside the gemstone,’ she was pontificating as we trundled in, ‘is proof of a true moonstone. It’s known as chatoyancy – yes?’ Her hand froze in mid-air, the ring shining in the anglepoise lamp she’d arranged to conceal the fraud. She eyed George and Marilyn and me, in that order.