The Grace in Older Women

by Jonathan Gash

  'Your friend, Lovejoy?' Vernon indicated a girl pressing her face at the window.

  'Oh, that's Holly,' I said airily. 'Runs errands for me.’

  Miss Philadora rushed to shoo Holly away.

  'Natal chart readings prove Roberta right,’ they were saying when I came to, Nadette leading. 'Until the Misses Dewhurst discovered the O.Z. there was no explaining deviances.'

  The twins demurred with simpering modesty. 'Yes,' Priscilla said. 'That's why Mrs. Roberta must -

  'Miss Priscilla!' three of them interrupted together. 'How about more coffee here?'

  'Must what?' I asked.

  'Nothing.' Vernon did the denial, laughing. 'Hey, Wilmore. That new golf course by that river

  We joked into a sideslip then, so Vernon's deflection had worked. I wondered exactly what we were raising money for. The Old Pretender Society, or something else? I noshed at increasing speed, Mahleen admiring my talent. I was suddenly in a hurry. Things were linking. Ashley did Tryer, sure. But who were these tourists? Nice people all, but too many coincidences carouselling round them.

  'Look,' I said, managing to lever my foot from under some lady's sole beneath the table. 'Sorry, but I've to leave. Don't leave town until you've seen the exhibition, okay? You might find a bargain!'

  Ha-ha cheeriness to that. They promised to catch me up.

  'You never breakfast, Lovejoy!' Hilda complained. 'Supper tonight?'

  'A deal. I'll be at my cottage. Give me a ring if you're at a loose end.' The phone was cut off months back. I didn't tell them I was going to see the bishop. 'Philadora, can I use the back door?'

  Holly might be lurking.

  Usually I'm relaxed when I've to see one dealer, forger, collector. It's because I like them. Look at Noah, an old furniture faker of renown. He is the most patient bloke on earth. Looks a gorilla, soul of an angel. Never cheats anybody, just turns out three pieces of furniture a year. Sixty-five if he's a day, selects the right wood, glues, makes his own hand-filed screws. He's the only bloke in East Anglia who can make a genuine forgery of a tripod tea table, except me. His workshop is a thing of beauty, set behind a flower garden on

  the bypass. It's so small you have to open the door and stand outside talking in. He's called Noah because he makes little wooden animals for a children's hospital.

  'Wotch, Noah.Going okay?'

  'Nearly done, Lovejoy.' He looks like Pinocchio's dad, bushy eyebrows, specs, leather apron. I wonder sometimes if he's caricaturing himself as somebody else. Like, say, Juliana's Reverend Father Jay?

  'Lovely, Noah! You've dished the top!'

  He smiled shyly. The mahogany tripod table was beautiful. 'I hate forgers who dish on a lathe, Lovejoy.' He sighed. 'No patience these days, fakers. God knows how they'd manage without an electric drill!'

  We tut-tutted along. I looked at his table. 'Sell anywhere, this, Noah.' He was still caressing the surface eccentrically so it wouldn't show the dishing absolutely central, only lopsided. 'Can I measure?' Nearly three-quarters of an inch difference. 'Lovely, Noah.'

  'It's only common sense, Lovejoy. Wood shrinks over two centuries. It does it across its graining. You'd think they'd learn.'

  'Isn't that a bit much? Nearer a half-inch, eh?'

  We discussed degrees of shrinkage. I'd have made it a smaller difference, something less obvious, but Noah is a craftsman so I gave in. All his wood was evenly darkened - old wood has shadows in exposed areas - except for the bit where the table top exactly covered the underneath block. The four little supporting columns, forming the 'birdcage' on which the table turned, stuck out proud from the upper block. Really authentic, for wood shrinks in its diameter, not its height. There were small bruises matching these protrusions underneath.

  'Want it sold, in an exhibition of forgeries?'

  He pursed his lips. No forger likes to be called a forger in public, only on the quiet. 'From me, Lovejoy?'

  The old man's pride. 'Invent a name. Anybody worth a light will know it's your work.' Class tells.

  We agreed, Tinker to collect. I was lucky. His piece would lend the exhibition style. I didn't want my fakes to be polythene and acrylic garbage, home-cast resins from kits. There are tons on every street barrow. I wanted style.

  In an hour I'd seen Spoons, he of the silver forgeries. I'd discovered him via his fake silver spoons, hallmarked 1630-ish, but with the bowls too wide, too regular at the margin, and the finial's saint always too ornate. He works in a garage mending motors, all axles and revving engines. He has a little furnace at the rear, to work silver in his break. He offered two fine silver candlesticks, but was narked when I rejected his Spanish mariner's silver astrolabe. He was astonished that navigational instruments had to be robust, and silver isn't.

  'But I've wasted months on the frigging thing, Lovejoy!'

  'Melt it down, Spoons.' They go on making the same mistake. Like Noah says, no patience. 'And no more mug-to-tankard switches, Spoons,' I added, heartless. 'The country's awash with the damned things.' I left the garage to Spoons's cries and his workmates jeers.

  Why silver forgers can't leave good antiques alone is beyond me. Every bloke with a gas burner thinks it clever to buy a genuine antique silver mug and convert ('switch up', in the trade) it into a jug, imposing fake hallmarks. Can't understand them.

  From there I 'teamed in', as dealers call assembling a mob for an up-coming scam, a good mob of forgers. For quickness, I restricted the journey to a seven-mile radius. But even so I got Speckie to promise me three long caser ('grandfather') clocks. He still had girlfriend problems, but I trust his work because he's red hot, making the seat boards as authentic as possible. The seat board's often the giveaway in long case clocks, because it's inside the clock anyway, and who bothers to remove the hood and examine where the clock movement sits? Speckie always uses age-compatible wood, and he's never yet turned out a clock with a seat board having two sets of aligning holes instead of one, the correct number. You can't trust forgers these days. It's come to something when you have to confess that.

  Linnetta teamed in. I like her even if we've never yet made smiles because she never shouts at me. She specializes in porcelain, does lovely marks that she practices weeks on end before ever firing a piece. She reads a lot. She's the only ceramics forger we've got careful enough to exclude chrome when faking tin-glaze wares of the eighteenth century - chromes tint the ceramics a faint pink, and chrome wasn't around until the nineteenth century.

  Jewellery is always a riot. Amberoid pressed from spare bits to copy genuine whole-piece amber is easy, but has interfaces that you can see miles away. (Tip: just shine a reflected light through). Phoney diamonds are commonest - though with conductivity meters it costs only fifty pence to test one diamond, however big. Pearls are good, but their availability nowadays is such that you might as well not fake them with fishscales at all, just buy the real thing if you can. (But don't, please, dip the silken thread into nail varnish to make them easier to string; solvents dissolve them.) Brown diamonds are in vogue, so I wanted to keep off them. Solid carbon dioxide turns diamonds brown, having got trapped in the crystal in the earth's mantle some 245 miles deep down.

  To be careful, I teamed in four jewel forgers, plus Phoebe the Slave (her choice of nickname, not mine). She works in the Arcade, midweek. Her husband's a politician in London and she wants to experience lowlifes. I approve. What she gets up to behind the tarpaulin at the far end near Woody's caff with Mincer - beer bellied, tattoos enough to print him as a comic - is her own business.

  Paintings were more difficult. I'd need Juliana (Miss) and maybe find time to look out some more of those I'd got in my workshop. For watercolours I got Doothie, making him promise to buy the right paper off Cloana in Aldeburgh. She makes the stuff, deckles it in her little cottage, any age of watermarks you want. The trouble is, she has a waiting list as long as your arm for her authentic replica genuine fake papers. I was in too much of a hurry to argue, simply told Doothie (he's in his eighties, but the
patience bit, remember?) to make sure he included a couple of Buckingham Palace watercolours, with Marble Arch in the entrance to its forecourt like it used to be. 'Copy the view from the park, Doothie,' I said, 'like Joseph Nash's paintings of 1846 that the Queen has, okay? Sell like hot cakes.'

  'Anything else, Lovejoy?' he asked, all eager.

  'Far East scenics, early Indian Empire. Days of the Raj stuff. But none of Chinnery's Hong Kong or Chinese drawings from Sotheby's bloody catalogue. Everybody's doing them. I'll take two dozen watercolours. You can buy in, but subbing's your own deal.'

  I like the old geezer.

  'Can I take orders if they sell, Lovejoy?' he asked.

  Honest to God. Do you believe some people? He gets on my wick.

  He honestly said that, like he was making Bakewell puddings at a fete. I didn't answer, just left, shaking my head. Eighty-four, still daft as a brush. In that happy state of endogenous depression, I drove home. Help everybody, what do you get?

  24

  The cottage looked different. I realized I'd not been home for donkey's years. I stood at the gate - there's no gate; it rotted. The gravel drive was free of weeds. The grass had been cut, a swathe beside the path for neatness. Smoke ascended. And, miraculously, washing on a washing line. I didn't know I had one. A white thing blocked the window. I pondered for a while, then my megabrain went curtain! Hesitant, I made the porch.

  'Hello?' I thought, this has to be a bird. Tinker only clears me out of booze, leaves a sour smell.

  'Hello?' A bird, from indoors. 'Is that you, Lovejoy?'

  'It had better be.' I wondered if it was safe.

  She came to check. 'Wipe your feet.'

  'Sorry.' I wiped, entered, stood like a lemon. She was in my kitchen alcove. 'What's that funny smell?'

  'Bread.' She was up to her elbows in dough. Very satisfying, to watch a bird who knows what she's about, kneading dough. When you think of the technology in bread, you realize the bedrock of expertise that domesticity rests on. All woman-made, lovely to see, and Chemise so natural. How did they know? Are they secretly shown how by each other? The cottage hadn't ponged new bread for many a moon. I don't bake much.

  'Nice, love.'

  'Perhaps, when I find a single utensil, Lovejoy.'

  That earned a sigh. No sooner in the door than they start ballocking me. Utensils? Our grandmas slogged with hardly a thing, did wonders. I remembered about Tryer.

  'Mind your manners, or I'll evict you. The rent's dear.'

  'Where have you been, Lovejoy? I've been waiting weeks.'

  'You can't have,' I pointed out. 'Because . . .' Because Tryer was only recently murdered? 'I called, not long back.' Lame, lame.

  'Your shirt's aired, Lovejoy. Clean trousers, jacket. Secondhand, the charity shop, but . . .' She shrugged, didn't look. She meant my attire was shambolic.

  'Right.' I went brisk, this was all routine. Tea on?'

  'Will be soon. Get yourself washed and changed.'

  See what I mean? Even mild agreement is a declaration of war. But I forgave her. She was only keeping going. I went magnanimous, Big John Sheehan with cowardice.

  'Hot water, is there?' I asked to keep her on her toes.

  She swivelled. 'Lovejoy!’ exasperated.

  'And the bath?' I'd been using it for washing some old parchment, giving it a really good soak before illuminating a fourteenth-century devotional Book of Hours. A 'carpet' page, just like the gorgeous Lindisfarne Gospels, makes a fortune.

  'Cleaned, ready.' She added, needling, 'Soap waiting.'

  Stung, I went to the bathroom, giving her my silent reproach, and undressed. Then a cold draught struck.

  'Hey!' I said, grabbing a towel. 'Keep out, you cow!'

  'Found anything I haven't seen, Lovejoy?' She grabbed my discarded clothes, slammed the door to. 'If you have,' she called, irate, 'I'll call Doc Lancaster. He'll be fascinated.'

  'Ha - de - ha - ha.' The water was really hot. I like it tepid, so cooled it and climbed in.

  She came again, washing my back, shoving me to reach my nape.

  'Hope you've washed that frigging dough off your elbows?'

  'Keep still,' she said. 'Worse than a child. You stink like a chemist's. You been with some tart?'

  Roberta was no tart. I told Chemise to mind her own business. She lathered me like I was a Crufts dog, rinsed me until I gleamed. Then she hauled me out, dried me though I tried to grab the towel, her saying all the while not to be silly and stand still. Then I heard her laying the table by slamming plates down. I was out of breath. Being helped takes a compelling degree of fitness.

  She was at the table when I emerged. She wore a pinafore (where from?), chin on her interlaced fingers. Bread, marmalade, jam, tea, scones, clotted cream, a cake, fruit salad and runny cream. Roberta would love it. She had the stool, left me the chair. Well, my house, right? She poured, cut bread, sat watching. I'm used to this, because women don't eat much, would rather watch you nosh for some reason. You'd think they'd get narked, seeing their grub engulfed in a trice, but no. Like I've always said, women are hooked on appetites. God knows what they get out of it. Roberta Battishall was a mutant.

  'Strawberry.' Chemise pointed. Strawberry jam. Yesterday's date. She was telling me it was newly made.

  'Mmmh.'

  'Cherry.' In silence. Another index digit, read that label.

  'Mmmh.' Meaning I'd get round to it in a sec.

  But here's a strange thing, I thought as I noshed. Look at Roberta and Chemise. I know it's wrong to make comparisons, because no two women are alike. But there was lovely Roberta, throttling anorexia by gulping calories by the truckload while making out she was your shy retiring wallflower, going beserk with rage when I nicked a crumb. And here was Chemise, plain as that, yet somehow relishing watching somebody clear her table.

  Not only that, Roberta was rich. Chemise was poor, had nothing, not even her crummy Sex Museum, and her bloke, Tryer . . . well, wasn't.

  Chemise waited until I slowed. She stoked the table, more provender. I resumed, slowed, eventually chugged to a stop. She'd given me the unchipped mug. Roberta would have had me hanged for selfishness.

  We sat. A dunnock entered, for crumbs. Another came.

  The place will be heaving with them,' I wanted to say, but couldn't, so just sat there until the birds were gone.

  A squirrel flirted with the door, skipped off. My hedgehog came, trundled slowly round, then left. It was all happening. We were an hour before somebody spoke.

  'Lovejoy,' she said, 'what are we going to do?'

  Ten minutes more for me to answer, and then it wasn't much of one. 'Werestforawhile,love.'Bedecisive-postpone. 'Move. I'll do the divan.'

  It unfolds. Usually it's left out for ease, because you've only to get it out again if you've been so careless as to fold it away. I was surprised how nice it looked, sheets all clean, pillowcases white. I drew her to it, pushed her on, and flopped down beside her just as we were. She fell asleep immediately. I'd known she would. I bet she hadn't slept for days, not since Tryer . . . well, whatever.

  Oddly, I too slept. She shoved into me so we lay like two commas, and that, said Alice, was that.

  ‘Christ, you're a randy bugger,' said a girl's voice. 'Why shag an ugly cow like her, Lovejoy?'

  A blurred Holly stood nearby, looking down at Chemise. I'd thought I was dreaming, but wasn't. Chemise was sitting up, staring.

  ‘I’m Holly, Lovejoy's new assistant. I'm in, you're out.'

  I 'No, love. You're not, you're not, and she's not. Hop it.' 'Who's the cow?' said this educational product. 'She is my helper, love. I can't manage two.' Holly tittered. 'My dad says you manage several.' Who? 'Who?' I said aloud, shrugged to show Chemise I disclaimed Holly, dad and all. 'Sod off.'

  'You need me, Lovejoy. I know the chief magistrate.'

  'I'm legal clean, love. Close the door as you leave.'

  She left, but I had the notion she'd not go far. Chemise was looking after her, craning, the d
ivan tilting.

  'Lovejoy. What are we going to do?'

  That's women. They've a problem, it's what are we going to do. It means you've to solve it while they criticize and tell you, down among the muck and bullets, where you're going wrong. But you have a problem, then it's tough luck.

  'We?' Time to marry some ends, make many problems become fewer. 'We, love, are going to the bishop.'

  'Bishop? As in church?'

  'No. As in cathedral.'

  The phone rang. I stared, amazed. It hadn't done that for yonks. I picked it up gingerly. 'Oh. Hello, Sabrina.'

  'Have you somebody else there?' she rasped out.

  'No, no. Just the, er, post girl delivering a parcel.'

  'Leslie suspects, darling. Forget this Sunday.'

  'Right.' I pulled a face at Chemise, apologies.

  'I'll come early tomorrow, bring the biggin.' Hell. I'd forgotten her manky auction. 'Maybe we'll have a little playtime before I have to run, mmmh?'

  'Mmmh,' I said, trying to be casual for Chemise's sake and rapacious for Sabrina's.

  'Eight o'clock, brute lover?'

  'Right. Eight.' I returned to Chemise. 'Look, love. How about you stay here, while we're rigging this exhibition?' I added sternly, 'I start early, okay?'

  'Very well, Lovejoy. Will the bishop solve anything?'

  'Who knows until we ask?' I hauled her up. 'Have you any dosh?'

  'A little, Lovejoy.'

  'Hang on.' I rang, got Doothie. He was narked, having his nap. 'Get faking, not kipping, you geriatric. What if you popped off? Where would that leave me? Is Juggernaut out?'

  'Yes. Left prison last week. But going straight, Lovejoy.'

  Juggernaut's Doothie's money-hugging engraver. 'I need a forged Bank of England One Pound banknote. Number Two was sold in Spinks of London, price of a freehold house. Description in their catalogue.'