The Grace in Older Women

by Jonathan Gash

  Politely I laughed, remembering the scandal. It had wobbled a government donkey's years before. Somebody's suicide and a cluster of resignations had faded. It was resurrected by desperate newspapers every few years. Sir Ralph was an august MP of peculiar bent.

  'You like my antique pome?' she asked slyly. The metal ball. Hollow, plugged with a shapely stopper. The dog glanced at me.

  'Great,' I lied heartily. 'Er, a beautiful pome!'

  She grimaced. 'Well, it might deceive somebody, Lovejoy. I've been trying new polish, coats it silver.'

  'Aye. Sorry.' I honestly felt it for the old fraud.

  A pome is a metal ball, usually silver. You fill it with hot water in some vestry, and the priest carries it through his stone-cold church service. It's simply a handwarmer. So there are no embarrassing gasps as his frozen fingers drop the chalice. Exquisite ones were made by brilliant London silversmiths. Some are nothing more than silver cases holding a glass bottle. Few dealers recognize them, thinking them portable travelling flasks.

  'The blacksmith makes me things. This, those pilliwinks.'

  'Finger crushers?' It's a mediaeval instrument of torture for cramping digits, lever action. Very collectable. You can torture one finger at a time or several together, depending on your need for truth, as it were. I would have had a closer look but for the hound. 'He seems to've been pretty deft.' Maybe I should sell for her. Ironwork's easy to pass as genuine.

  'Yes. I was sad to lose him. He wanted to stay.'

  'But he was made to leave?' I asked, innocent.

  'His lady spurned him, Lovejoy. She loves . . . another.'

  Aha! Juliana Witherspoon, hopelessly smitten by the priest, ignores Jolly Joe the Blacksmith, who departs forlorn?

  'So Fenstone shrank further still, eh?'

  Her deflected fingers reminded me of old gardening implements. She gestured with them.

  ‘I’ve tried everything, Lovejoy, from farming imported exotic animals to tourism. I’ve even tried pretending there's ancient treasures in my fields.'

  'No!' I gasped. She got the joke and laughed herself into arthritic agony.

  'You bastard,' she wheezed, subsiding. 'Knew you'd be a crook, soon as you shouted that insult.'

  'Who puts the fruit and veg out?'

  'Me and Malapert.' She explained. 'I have a Dutch dogcart. He hauls it beautifully. I gather produce piecemeal.'

  She indicated the fire. I went and chucked another log on it. It spat at me, spent charcoal all over the hearth.

  'Willow wood never burns well,' she said. 'But it's the only material I can get. The orchards failed. Blight.'

  'Don't you spray?' Believe it or not, they use five different sprays in orchards.

  'I thought last autumn would save me. Took a loan to buy chemicals, hired machines. Vandals holed the drums, poisoned the vegetable garden.'

  Surprise surprise. 'Who's your neighbour? Huntsman.'

  'That's Geake, churchwarden. A would-be gentleman.' She stopped herself chuckling by holding her ribs.

  'Look, Dame Millicent. Your dying village has five activists.' I counted. 'You, Father Jay, Juliana, Jox, Geake.'

  'That's about it, Lovejoy. Jox is useless. Can you believe his grandfather was a Royal Navy captain, a hero?' She went nostalgic. 'Times change. When Sir Ralph was alive, he kept trouble at bay.' She smiled, wistful. 'He had a klendusic quality. You know those plants that, whatever the onslaught, have already prepared some protective mechanism? Dear man. Friends in high places!' She smiled at me with pride. 'My lover, of course. The parties we had, Lovejoy! Now, nobody comes near. I've not had a letter for over a year.'

  'Sorry, love.' This kind of thing makes me uncomfortable.

  'It is for me to apologize.' Dignity regained control.

  'We should all meet,' I told her. 'Throw a party, just the six of us. Hatch a Save Fenstone plan, eh?'

  'Would you come, Love joy?'

  'As long as Juliana did.'

  She smiled. 'So you've met Juliana. And liked her?' Her bright eyes fixed me. 'I suggested you to her, Lovejoy.' And explained before I could ask, 'I knew of you from Priscilla.'

  Of course. I was lost. The Dewhurst biddies were everywhere before me, with the American tourists, Jox's scam, this old lady. I limped gamely after. 'You know the Dewhursts?'

  'Doesn't everyone? They've made a superb discovery. It's the Obverse Zodiac. Works every time! Priscilla should cast your natal chart, Lovejoy. Perhaps you and Juliana are ideally suited! You are just the man to wean her from that turbulent priest.' She became suddenly testy. 'What good is a woman who isn't used, Lovejoy? I hate silliness. Life's simple if people would only open their stupid eyes! A man must be loved. A woman must be used. I get mad. I'd make it a law.' Anger wore her out. She leant on a cushion, spent. Then resumed, conversational, 'Priscilla is the more prescient of the twins, don't you think, astrologically?'

  Which led to more pointless prattle of astral planes and things planetary. Which led to me sloping off as soon as I could. I found some change in the glove compartment, and bought two pounds of apples (money in the tin) for the Misses Dewhurst. The trouble was, I was now broke which meant defrauding somebody of an antique for money.

  See how I'm forced into crime? And people still go about saying things are my fault. I should talk to Chemise, if I could find her. Wondering who did for Tryer, I realized I had the very best evidence, in the form of bruises. Nick and his henchmen, courtesy of Roberta and Ashley Battishall! Motive? I didn't know. I didn't care. They would pay. Time was crowding me. I drove onto the A45, and got a ticket for speeding.

  18

  In the woods near where I live stands a small dwelling. It's part of a theme park now-lakes, meadows, forests, miles of yawnsville where folk feel Close To Nature. I'm not one for this, but I'd heard they were about to date it, so went to see.

  Half a dozen idlers were standing about outside. I'd had to park our car a furlong off. A bedraggled scientist was explaining. Like all scientists, he looked John the Baptist in trainer shoes.

  'This country has a great resource,' he was saying earnestly. The Nottingham Tree Ring Dating Laboratory. Our master sequence is around 1100 to about 1750 . . .'

  Around! About! A king of scientific precision. I wanted him to do the frigging thing, drill a core from the beams, then we could all go home.

  'We take cores,' this wretch intoned, 'pencil-thin, exterior to centre. We measure two hundred rings, compare their widths from trees felled on known dates.'

  'How accurate are you?' I asked. Spectators shuffled in embarrassment, such insolence to this fount of knowledge.

  'Within a year,' he said, smug. The oldest mediaeval peasant's cottage so far tested is AD 1335, Malpledurham in Oxfordshire, fifteen years before the Black Death pandemic.'

  Somebody whispered, 'Don't rub him up the wrong way.'

  'Wotcher, Wilmore.' I was surprised. He was wearing a dark golfing mac. I whispered back, 'Shouldn't you be with Gwena the Guide?'

  'Astrology session.' He grinned the enthusiastic grin of an escaping American. I couldn't help liking him. 'Recovered, hearing of this development potential.'

  '. . . was never intended as a manor house,' the cachectic saint of science was intoning. 'Its roofs two timbers are in a curved, upturned V configuration. Manor houses had those two main timbers held by a cross beam, a letter A . . .'

  'Will it be preserved?' I asked this scarecrow.

  He said, just as stern, 'We already have a preservation order. Our conservationist group has a plant watch.'

  He started to show his implements, a drill, tubes to hold the cores. Me and Wilmore drifted away. I'd seen it.

  'Ring dating's not bad,' I groused to Wilmore. 'Radioactive carbon dating isn't so good.' I was sad that Mahleen the Golden wasn't waiting by the motors.

  'I was hoping they might release this area, Lovejoy,' Wilmore shrugged. 'Maybe the cottage won't be old after all. You can't blame me. One in five of Britain's stately homes has been sold since
the 1970s, right?' His face showed a developer's rapture. 'The British Isles has one million registered golfers, Lovejoy, 52.76 per cent of Europe's registered 1.9 million! England, Scotland, Wales, total 32,286 golf holes, on 1,974 greens! Anti-golf maniacs say we're world wreckers, creating sterile environments. But golf is the greatest ever sport . . .'

  'Good heavens,' I murmured politely, switching off.

  Such numbers! Everybody uses statistics to bend arguments. It's all fraudulent. Stockbrokers spend billions - and a six-year old chimpanzee beat Sweden's top stockbrokers by chucking darts at the companies list pinned to a board. Okay, I know that figures frighten. I mean, the USA's eastern seaboard holds the record for lightning, when the great blizzard a few years ago produced 59,000 cloud-to-ground flashes, peaking at 5,100 flashes an hour overall. Strikes numbered 0.16 per square kilometre near Tampa, Florida. It doesn't reassure me that East Anglia's lightning isn't a contender. I distrust forests, because rogue elephants kill two Indians every three days - in India, of course, but so? It doesn't mean I'm less scared in East Anglia. When one single crazed beast kills forty-four poor villagers, charging trumpeting from the countryside -

  'Eh?' He'd said something important.

  ‘. . . the Battishalls' place. Excuse me?'

  'Dragonsdale? Your group is at Dragonsdale?' I wanted at least one strand tied up, at any price. So far only the slow obliteration of Fenstone linked with Tryer's death.

  'Sure is. I've asked Mahleen to examine its potential after that zodiac session. What's the matter, Love joy?'

  'Nothing,' I said heartily. The Battishalls are, er, friends of mine.’ I swallowed the lie, but I'm courageous at heart. 'Jaunting out there, Wilmore?'

  'Now why don't we do that, Lovejoy?'

  At last. Two birds with but a single stone. High time.

  As I drove the valley on the old Broad, I reflected on how we discover, uncover, reveal. There isn't a tabloid in the land that isn't packed with 'personality girls' exposing How He Performs In Bed, all that. And every morning brings news of the latest: 'Another Tyrannosaurus rex Found!!!' Except impressions mislead. So far they've only found fourteen T. rex skeletons in the entire world, South Dakota their planetary mecca. We mesmerize ourselves into whatever's fashion. And the latest is discovery at all costs.

  Discoveries are always seen as exciting things. I sympathized with Dame Millicent, whose instincts were sound: pretend that some ancient gold/tomb/battlefield/whatever lay on her derelict property, and cash in as the world beat a path to her door. Okay, so she was baulked, just like Jox. Just as Juliana and Father Jay in that echoing church.

  Yet Dame Millicent was right. It could be done. As I drove and Wilmore chuntered on about Japanese green fees, a gillion ideas for her crummy farm occurred. You didn't have to find a Grace Dieu or a German submarine - like the U-534 that sailed from Kiel in May 1945, to its watery end in the Kattegat, to resurface half a century later when Dutch salvagers hauled it from the ocean. Or, the Sutton Hoo Viking ship that yielded priceless treasure. Flukes - you know those - do happen. Like to those Jesuits of Dublin's Leeson Street, who hadn't thought much of their painting, The Taking Of Christ, that hung lopsided in their refectory. By some minor Flemish artist, worth only a few quid, right? Well, no. Works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the painter of this (fanfare, please) 'discovery' go at seventy million slotniks. The kindly priests gave it to a gallery. Is there a God?

  Tryer said he'd tried with a holy wishing well. Jox's latest go was Hugo the Thespian's UFO performance. I'm not knocking these notions., for all placed growth comes from fib or fame. The ultimate examples are Glastonbury, Tintagel, where folk market the mighty Arthur; Lourdes, Assisi, battlefields like Waterloo and Gettysburg. And the inn, in France's Auvers-sur-Oise.

  Which is where a thirty-seven-year old painter arrived from a year in a Provence lunatic asylum, for a short while before he shot himself. Everybody knows how Camille Pissarro suggested Auvers (peace, beauty, that precious northern light), how Vincent turned out seventy paintings in seventy days. And how Van Gogh borrowed his wine-merchant-cum-innkeeper landlord Arthur Ravoux's pistol to scare away crows, then shot himself. And returned at dusk, answered, ‘Oh, nothing. I've hurt myself,' and ascended the two flights to his bedroom. And how Vincent calmly smoked his pipe when two rude gendarmes came in, superbly answering their bullying abuse, 'I am free to do what I want with my body.' And how he died thirty hours later in his loyal brother Theo's arms, while Vincent's friend Dr. Paul Gachet mourned impotently. The Auberge Ravoux has a restaurant now, a bookshop, Vincent's sparse room as it was, and the attention of the world.

  Now, we can't have those treasures already discovered. So sinful humanity finds treasures where there are no treasures at all. I support Tryer's scams, stick up for Jox's daft exploits. But everybody does it, makes money from people's dreams. The Church's income's been boosted by prostitutes' rents for centuries. The United Nations - no mean exploiter of myth - bureaucrat who ran a call-girl scam at the High Commissioner for Refugees Geneva HQ is one example. UN vehicles 'donated' to pals, food aid in Uganda sold on the black market, UN stores whittled away to pals . . . It's routine. Against that lot, I'm a saint.

  And some priceless objects discovered years ago get rediscovered, to the joy of a select few. Like the Trojan Treasure excavated in Turkey by the scandalous Heinrich Schliemann in 1873. (Scandalous because fraudulent - his American citizenship was got by fraud; he ditched his Russian wife for a Greek lass he got by mail order. An accomplished smuggler, and a chiseller in more ways than one.) Its nine thousand gold artefacts were disputed in Turkey's courts -Schliemann got fined the odd groat; Berlin's museums paid a whack.

  He then gave the Troy treasure to Germany. The Soviets captured it in 1945 from its secret hidey-hole under a railway station beneath Berlin Zoo, and off it went to Moscow. Result of the new modern cooperation? Acrimony, shrieking headlines, wholesale hatred. And why? Because we're gold struck. Historically famous gold creates wails of avarice.

  We parked in the hotel drive and Nick was immediately there, watched us approach.

  'Wait, Lovejoy.' Nick glanced at Wilmore. ‘I’ll ask the mistress if you're allowed.'

  'Hadn't you heard, Nick? I'm a resident.'

  We made it past Nick without assault. He looked for my suitcases, but I pulled out my pockets to show impoverishment. Neither of us smiled. I thought, you wait, Nick, just wait. There'll be smiles a-plenty.

  19

  Not long since, I knew this woman. She had a shop near Bury St Edmunds, sold toys. Only secondhand, hardly mendable. She was nice, nothing between us, but sometimes I'd stop, pass the tea hour, admire her gunge. Occasionally she'd pick up some teddy bear, usually a fake Steiff - the most sought-after are German from 1903 on - with wrong stitching and a phoney stud. I'd explain to Mary that even if the Steiff stud was correctly clipped to the bear's left ear it still might be a fake. (Remember that Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a tethered bear cub in 1902, which started the teddy bear epidemic, so teddies dated 1889 must be fake. If you find a genuine one used at Roosevelt's daughter Alice's wedding as table ornaments, you've arrived.)

  Well, me and Mary went on for aeons, she finding toys, and me miserably telling her no, it's a repro Lancaster bomber toy; they are advertized in mail order. We'd have a laugh, and off I'd go, belly a-slosh with tea. Until the day she was diagnosed as dying.

  She'd felt off colour, and was told the very, very worst. She was in a state when I called. I stayed a couple of nights, ran her shop while she told her family. Tears all round, until double happiness! Because, that third afternoon, I was handed a genuine Ernst Plank toy locomotive engine, boxed, trademarked, 3-inch gauge, beautiful tinplate, tender and carnage complete. In a joke, I offered the bloke a quid. He took it, leaving me gaping. Mary's brother rang just then. Mary was staying over a few days, so I left the train set with a prominent note full of excited congrats about finally making the find of the century, pointing out the functiona
l spirit-heated boiler, pistons and all.

  Then, tragedy. Because Mary came home, still stunned from her calamitous news - and without reading my letter absently sold the train set to a collector for five quid. Which is like giving away a Richard Wilson oil colour for a loaf. The following day her doctor, puzzled, had the sense to check on the hospital laboratory's findings. And Mary was fit as a flea, didn't have the dreaded death sentence after all !!*!$!! Whereupon, Mary danced home, and delightedly welcomed me the following week with the good news. Life! Rejoicing!

  Eventually I asked about the Ernst Plank train set. Genuine Nuremberg, maybe as early as 1884, eh? Fortune! Whereupon the following:-

  Mary: What train set?

  Me: (smile fading) The one I left you on your counter.

  Mary, (aghast) Lovejoy. What train set?

  Me: (shrill, with panic) The frigging genuine Plank boxed set I frigging left with that letter, you stupid old bat.

  Mary: (screaming) What letter?

  You know what? Nobody's ever seen Mary smile since. She's the most bitter, morose bird you'd meet in a twelvemonth. I avoid her now. Her reprieve from death is forgotten. The agony of being, for a trice, at death's dark door has been eclipsed by her terrible grievance, as if she'd been cheated. See what happens in antiques? Each dealer knows his own personal El Dorado. Even being saved from death can't equal it.

  Mary's now a wino bagging round the sailing club dustbins down the estuaries. The threat of death couldn't ruin her. But losing out in the antiques trade finished her.

  If I had the sense I was born with, I would have remembered Mary's tale with its hint of death, and been a lot safer. But I haven't so I didn't and I wasn't.

  'Lovelock!'

  'Lovejoy. How do, Jim.'