The Grace in Older Women

by Jonathan Gash

  They held the wary silence, a Byzantine court wondering who had the sword.

  'And 4.48 grammes of coca leaf, same as they used to. I showed Packo how to do it. Have you ever tried measuring out 77.4 grammes of glycerine? Phew! Can't see why 44.8 grammes of phosphoric acid doesn't rot your guts.'

  ‘Isn't this unknown?' the old man squeaked.

  'Yes, Your Honour. But everybody knows it. Like the pope’s secret telephone beside the high altar, St Peter's in Rome.' The old bloke shook his head. it's Vatican extension 3712.’

  'Mr.. Moore? Relevance?'

  ‘It's just me, m'lord,' I said kindly. 'My mind's a ragbag. Things stick. Like, Italians are supposed to rank the world's most scoundrelly blokes. And, a male contestant was barred from the N Australia guest contest, even though he'd won a local pageant hands down.' No response. I went on, 'The US shows eight times more violent acts per hour on children's TV programmes than in prime time . . .' I petered out.

  'Return to the sympathy," the barrister bawled.

  'Look!’ I was narked. He was making a mint, standing there showing off. It was me sinking into destitution. 'Any nerk knows that some chemicals change colour when heated. They knew it back in 1829, when that sympathy was first painted.'

  'Lovejoy,' the magistrate queried. 'A blank painting?'

  'Yes, guv'nor.' I didn't mind him. I was getting fond of the silly old sod. 'Dissolve zaffer ore in aqua regia acid. Dilute it four times, and paint on a blank surface. You see nothing, right? But heat it, and you see a luscious sea-green colour. Let the paper cool down, it vanishes again.' One of the lawyers was scribbling, taking it all down. I smiled, knowing an embryonic crook when I see one. 'Warm it again, the green painting reappears. Use zaffer in spirits of nitre, though, it'll do the same in red. Combine the two, you get other colours.'

  ‘A sympathy is a painting that emerges only when heated?' he summarized. 'Thank you, Lovejoy.’

  'Not at all. The ones ladies of olden times loved were landscapes, bare of trees or flowers. A lady feeling particularly low would bring out her plain landscape painting, place it by the fire, and watch the spring grass and trees cover the scene in foliage and flowers. Her own springtime!'

  'So you persuaded my client to a criminal act,' the barrister denounced in phoney rage, 'to acquire this sympathy!'

  'Yes.'

  That stopped him. 'You admit it?'

  'Yes. I wanted to make several forgeries of it.'

  'Forgeries?' three of them said together.

  ‘Courts make me fed up. I did eleven.' I shrugged. 'Make one sympathy, you might as well do several. The price of frames is frigging criminal, though. You lawyers should check the framers on East Hill.'

  They shut me up, dunno why, demanded times, dates, where I'd seen Packo Orange selling his own forgeries - he did a nice one of a John Constable, Landscape Noon, but from the opposite view. I waxed eloquent, telling them Packo was straight as a die, but the Law had it in for him whatever anybody said.

  Out, after four wasted hours. I left the back way, so avoiding Den and so, I believed, keeping out of the way of that magistrate, him and his frigging furled brolly. I'd had enough law to last me for one day, if not two.

  Addie caught me up as I reached the Arcade, and told me in breathless excitement that she'd almost practically virtually nearly managed to buy the colander but been outbid by some idiot in a bowler hat.

  'Did you get the name, Addie?' I knew she took everything down at auctions, who bid for what, prices.

  'Yes.' She eyed me with smiling calculation. 'Lovejoy! You want something I have!'

  'I can always ask one of the whifflers,' I told her airily.

  'What will you do for me, darling?' she said, coming all little-girl winsome.

  'Forget it,' I said, narked. Then realized my voice hadn't managed to say anything at all. 'Forget it.'

  She ran the tips of her fingers along my shredding lapel, looking up. 'You don't really mean that, do you, darling?'

  A motor horn sounded three peremptory blasts. Hubby, revving angrily across by the other kerb. God, he'd a glare that would melt glaciers.

  'Give it me, Addie.' Any woman can pull any bloke, whatever they pretend. And a woman with valuable information about antiques could pull me any time she wanted.

  'The priory, Lovejoy. Eight, tomorrow,' she said softly, then sprang back. Wearily I waited while she did the purity scenario. 'Certainly not, Lovejoy!' she cried, stamping for her hubby's benefit. 'A partnership? Out of the question, and that is final!'

  She marched to the car and embarked. It pulled away, him smirking as they glided past the war memorial.

  Eight, the priory. I joined Tinker at the tavern ten minutes later. He handed me a letter. Familiar handwriting, Juliana Witherspoon (Miss) had struck again. I was about to chuck it away when Tinker restrained me.

  'Best look, son,' he croaked. 'It's threats.'

  He'd read it without opening the envelope. I wish I knew how he does it.

  Dear Lovejoy,

  Kindly respond, or I shall take grievous action. Your assignations with a lady are known to me. I shall expose your perfidious nature to her relatives. Six o'clock, please, at the town library, tomorrow.

  I remain,

  Yours faithfully,

  Juliana Witherspoon (Miss)

  Threats and please? So courtesy was hanging on by a thread even yet. Well, Beth's Bilston enamels still beckoned, and she'd kill me if I let J. W. (Miss) run amok with her glad tidings.

  4

  Tonietta, when I finally found her, was pushing her cart through the shopping precinct and ready for a fight. Mind you, I've never seen Tonietta tranquil. She's always girding for Armageddon. This time she was readying to scream the town down over somebody pinching her pitch.

  ‘You fucking frigging shitting bastards I'll marmalize the lot of you. . . !' et Tonietta cetera. From there, her invective goes downhill. Take it on trust: Tonietta is dynamite, abusive, and usually wrong about everything except tortoise-shell. She hates her two sisters, both carnivores, and I have teethmarks to prove it. She doesn't speak to her mother. On rare occasions, she'll communicate with the world through her dad, a pleasant patient man who tries to cobble his family together using birthdays as excuses, but failing often. He's a museum archivist.

  Patiently I waited her rage out. Long wait. Nobody had pinched her pitch, of course; there were only three other barrows in the square. One I knew vaguely, Connor, a seller of hot potatoes with cheese fillings. Another was Lucille, the fish lass from Lowestoft, looking the part under red-and-white striped awnings and straw boater, neat pinny. And Gravity Woodward, a morose globe-hater who takes racing bets on commission while disguised as a tree that speaks morose hatred in a little square of greenery encouraging you to throw coppers in the charity fountain. The flyers - sudden sellers who whirlwind through markets offering discount fruit on its last legs and who hadn't a legit hawker's licence between them - weren't in today.

  Tonietta fired off one last salvo at Lucille and set up her cart by simply halting and opening the top. It lets down into a small counter. She smiled beatifically.

  ‘Hello, Lovejoy. You know Jox is looking for you?'

  'Aye.' I eyed her wares. Trinkets, some tortoise-shell.

  You go a long way to get more lovely material to work with than tortoise-shell. Some major antiques were made of it. Like, Henry IV of France was nursed in a cradle made of a tortoise's inverted shell, one complete thing. Some writers claim that the ancient Greeks and Romans manufactured musical instruments from sea turtle carapaces. I've even done a fake one myself, a lyre from dried cracked old shell, copying the musical shape from a vase in the British Museum and selling the final instrument for Jellbone's missus after he got done for robbing two Bavarian antique dealers of a valuable Cozens watercolour in Coggeshall.

  ‘I’ve some pale shell, Lovejoy.'

  Dealers call pale tortoise-shell antiques 'blondies'. It is highly prized. The shell itself is sold by
the pound, best from the Caribbean but sometimes the Far East. White shell - I think it a sort of dusky amber colour - costs ten times as much as the so-called 'black', which is grubby brown to near black. The horrible thing is the way it's collected. The islanders catch a turtle while it's laying its eggs, turn it on its back, then do one of two ghastly things. They light a fire on its living belly, or they lever it into a cauldron of boiling water so it can thrash and bleat and flail . . .

  'Sit down for fuck's sake, Lovejoy.' Tonietta abused me roundly, giving me her folded stool. She rammed my head between my knees so I could recover. 'You're always like this dying on me you squeamish bastard I'm sick of the frigging sight of you you pillock that's three pounds twelve shillings and elevenpence,' she continued brightly to a lady with a little girl. Tonietta talks in old coinage, before the Great Decimal Deception conned us and made the Treasury rich. She meant three sixty-five, give or take. 'Original genuine tortoise-shell pendant, in silver plate. I've some beautiful combs . . .'

  The poor turtles are sometimes dissected free of their shell while still alive, then, bleeding and naked, are chucked back into the shark-infested waters where, in time, they grow another shell but of poor quality. It's an industry. On the lovely wave-washed moonlight shores of the tropical islands, you get served turtle steaks cooked in the poor thing's carapace. A turtle dies slow. It dies slowest, they say, in Madagascar, where they can keep a sea turtle alive during the very act of dissection so it can actually scent its own turtle soup cooking . . .

  'What's the matter with Lovejoy?' the little girl asked.

  'Drunk, love,' Tonietta said smoothly, crouching to be friendly while the tot's mother paid for the pendant.

  'Lovejoy? She's telling porkies, isn't she?’

  'He'll be better when he's sober.' Tonietta straightened, less friendly.

  'Lovejoy drinks when one of his aunties tells him off,' the mite foghorned. 'Your aunties don't stay long, do they, Lovejoy?'

  'Not usually, Brenda.' I babysit for Brenda and her cousin Henry. They're from the village.

  'I liked your last auntie. She has a dog,' Brenda said, loudly confiding to the world. 'She's married to the vicar but bounces in bed—‘

  'Thank you! 1 Brenda's scarlet-faced mother shrilled quickly, grabbing her change and dragging away Brenda Blabbermouth, who complained she wanted to stay and see me be sick.

  'You better?' Tonietta can be kind when things were going her way. 'I'll get you a coffee.'

  'No, ta. I'm okay.'

  For a while I pulled myself together, watching the passers-by shop. The precinct forms the centre of our town square. For a kingdom's most ancient recorded town, the square is brand new. Paved, a few covered ways, two arcades, a fountain, shops abutting, stalls and itinerant barrows, buskers here and there, it's pleasant. There's even a caff, trying to look continental with white plastic tables and chairs in clusters. Pigeons, of course, lending droppings, ectoparasites, and authenticity to the scene. A girl from the music school was playing a violin with intense preoccupation, some Purcell air I think, a cap on the flagging by her feet.

  'What pale shell, Tonietta?'

  'This.'

  And she pulled out a small fan, a tiny thing. It beat a chime in my middle that practically put me on my feet again better than any pick-me-up. It folded, had fewer than a dozen sticks to it, and was mounted with traces of gold. Definitely the real thing, but sadly broken, five of the blades badly fractured, almost as if somebody had trod on the lovely creation. Late seventeenth century, rare. No carefully sculpted holes in it that would have been the giveaway sign of the 'quizzer', the quizzing fan that allowed a lady to conceal her face with gracious modesty but peep at everybody. Of course, a turtle carapace has thirteen great scales, with littler scales towards the edge, so you are limited by size. This was genuine, not merely workbench sweepings held together by melted gelatine.

  'Who's the duckegg that danced on it?' I hadn't touched it.

  'I have this new feller, Lovejoy.' Unabashed, she did a brisk sale, a plastic comb. 'He's a driver, Hook of Holland ferries. He stood up, sudden.

  'This is English.’ I held my hand like a child does playing cowboys with imaginary pistols. Four inches, tip of the middle finger to where your thumb forms the pistol hammer at your index finger's palmar crease. 'The blades were only four inches long. Then they lengthened to nine, end of the first George's reign. They went giant in the 1740s, up to two feet, but then folk saw sense. Nine to eleven inches became a sort of norm.’

  'Real shell, then?’

  She was thrilled, but kept on serving. Connor brought her over a huge steaming spud. My belly rumbled a begging plaint but he shuffled away without offering me a mouthful.

  'Aye.' I touched it then, at least as thrilled as her. 'Sorry, pal, 1 1 told it in sincere apology, and looked at its venation against the daylight. You could hardly see the pallor of veins in it. 'You're beautiful, a darling. You deserve the very best.' A tortoise-shell fan this old was beyond belief.

  'Will you mend it, Lovejoy?'

  'Aye. It'll take awhile.

  ‘I’ll bring it. Got to have it photographed first.'

  She didn't trust me, after all I'd been to and done for her. Well, nearly been, and nearly done. (Tip: when entrusting some antique to an ‘expert', do two things. First, weigh it. Second, photograph it. Then when it's returned, so-say cleaned or whatever, you have a couple of measurements to check that it hasn't been swapped for a fake.)

  'I'm at the library meeting some old crone. Then the priory ruins. Six o'clock and eightish.'

  'Don't tell me, Lovejoy,' she said, sure of herself now I was hooked on her priceless fan. 'The geriatric at six, the married bitch in the dusk at nightfall. Have I got it right?'

  'If it's Lovejoy, dear,' a voice tweeted, 'it's never what I’d call the right way round!'

  Cyril stood there, a riot of coloured sequins. He and Keyveen had lately become our town's most flamboyant flamers. God knows where they get their money - and their household furniture, paintings, jewellery.

  'How do, Cyril,' I said miserably. I never know what to say to this pair. They spend their time scrapping about intangibles. Keyveen is always bitter about something. Cyril is, according to him, the showpiece. Today's garb was a drum majorette's tall military hat, glittering cloak, and a Hussar's fitted riding trousers with a magenta stripe into circus boots. He looked a prat.

  'Three hundred,' Cyril cooed.

  Scanning the pedestrians, I saw Keyveen glowering and my heart sank. They'd have heard every word of my chat with Tonietta, seen my response to the antique fan. They already knew what to offer. Keyveen's Irish, sullen and always working something on a calculator.

  'Ignore Keyveen, Lovejoy,' Cyril said. 'He's in a most terrible sulk because I stopped him dancing, during breakfast. Can you imagine, the Moonlight Saunter with your crispies?'

  'Oh, good,' I said lamely, going red because everybody was looking and grinning, but everybody knows Cyril and his mate.

  'Wrong, Lovejoy. Indescribably bad.'

  'That what you're offering?' Tonietta asked.

  'Six, then, you slush-mouthed cow.' The cloying sweetness of Cyril's voice is often at odds with his words. 'And I mean that description most sincerely.'

  'What d'you think, Lovejoy?' she asked me.

  'Double.' The price was an insult to the lovely masterpiece. Think what had died, and how. Cyril and Tonietta were bargaining over the last mortal remains of a beautiful sea creature, one of the oldest species on Planet Earth.

  'Twelve hundred,' Tonietta said, breathless. 'And you pay Love joy's repairs.'

  People gathered. Keyveen was pacing, guessing things weren't going Cyril's way. I wondered if they had some sort of concealed mike.

  'All right, you thieving rotting corrupt evil bitch.' Cyril maintained his cherubic smile. He turned to me. 'Lovejoy? Remember this moment. I still haven't forgiven you for saying my last hairdo looked barmy. Now, it's war. Do you hear?'

 
He saw me try to duck beneath the stall, looked round, glimpsed the besuited magisterial figure stalking through the square, and smiled beatifically.

  'Yoo-hoo!' He waved, pointing at me, shooing people aside so I could be seen. 'Lovejoy's here, sailor!'

  My heart walloped as far as it could go. Cyril screamed with laughter as the gent marched towards us. Bowler on, moustache abristle, brolly stabbing the flagstones.

  'Cyril,' I said, but I don't know how to threaten like him. Tonietta,' I said, but I don't know how to beg like her.

  Both were smiling, counting gelt. I felt sold. Across the square I glimpsed Beth, gliding towards the car park. My hopes lifted. I stood up, smiled, got in a quick wave, but she instantly turned away. Ta, Beth, sweetheart who had begged me to use foul language while we shagged among the daisies, how long ago? Keyveen intercepted my desperate gesture and beamed.

  Time to grasp the nettle. I set my shoulders, smiling my best ingratiating smile.

  'Mr. Battishall!' I exclaimed. 'I tried to find you, but that Heanley's never there, is he? How can I help you?'

  'Job,' he barked. 'Car. Two minutes. Post office.'

  Not all bad news, then. I cheered up a bit. 'I wonder if it can wait, sir? It's getting on for four now and I have my sick uncle to see to in the village. Needs his tea about now.'

  'Nobody indispensible! Get organized! Two minutes!'

  Well, I'd tried. I'd made enemies, some old, some new, made not a penny, and failed to endear myself to practically everybody. Uselessly, I'd wriggled as best I could and still lost out to fate. I finished up getting driven out past the decaying village of Fenstone and to Dragonsdale by Mr. Ashley Battishall to his mansion house for tea and crumpets.

  5

  Except it wasn't a mansion house. Once, it had been grand, lovely, old, a place that might welcome you, say everything's all right now you're home. Queen Anne if it was a day, the great place was imposing, chimneys elegant, red brickwork warm, windows stylish without those windows phoney walled-in to avoid the iniquitous window tax of bygone times.