'You've cost me eighty quid opening at this hour, Lovejoy. Pay up, or it's the pavement with this caper.'
'Gimme a receipt.' I counted out the residue of what Mahleen had paid - I mean lent - me. 'Fifteen, sixteen. That's it. Any chance of you doing the costume bit, Harlequin? That's why I told Tinker here instead of the Lamb and Flag.'
'Me? Now?'
'Course.' I went all soulful. 'I really didn't want this charity to get off to a bad start. I'm really sorry.'
'Charity?' Columbine - she's plain old Andromeda Haythorn-thwaite really - emerged in her sexy dressing gown, really unfair. She changes her hair colour every week. Today, blonde with a jet streak.
'It's okay, love,' I said, broken but noble. 'I understand. Your lie-in today, an hour's peace. I've been up all night, slogging for this New Baby Unit.' I turned my pockets out, stony broke. 'Harlequin's taken my very last copper.' I showed a glimpse of hope, dare I believe in people, will Tinkerbell live? 'Can I owe Harlequin the rest of the eighty quid, Columbine? The little babies I'm slaving for would be grateful.'
My eyes brimmed with real tears, I was so moved. Well, to labour, endlessly unfed and penniless, for cots filled with neglected infants, was true charity. Nobody could deny that. George spoilt it by blowing his nose in a handkerchief the size of a parachute.
'I've not had coffee yet,' he reminded the world.
'You just keep quiet, George!' Columbine reprimanded.
Outside the mob were hammering on doors, tapping windows. Voices were raised. This, note, to bring forgeries for sale, which says something about the antiques markets. Can't think what. 'You demanded money, for a baby charity?' Her voice has a commendable vibrato when she's being mad or sexy. Her husband shook.
‘I’ll try to pay the rest, Columbine,' I said, St Alban in chains.
'It's only right!' Harlequin said defensively, but I'd won. 'Lovejoy's dealers - look at them! They're animals!'
'Give it back!' Quaver, vibrato, tremble, fury, were all in there. I wish I could do it. I tried, when we made smiles once in the pub yard but I can't do it. Infants can. You'd get away with murder with a voice like that.
Harlequin repaid me. I handed a note to Columbine. 'Love. Could I have a glass of water? I haven't had a thing since yesterday. I don't want to keel over during my charity.'
She blazed, 'I'll make you a decent breakfast!'
She drove Harlequin out. He beamed hate, but what had I done except given him the chance of doing a little good in the world? I honestly can't understand some people.
'Which New Baby Unit, Lovejoy?' George asked. 'My daughter's due in seven weeks.'
Some people really do irritate. 'The one in, er, Moon Morrow, George,' I invented, narked at the silly old goon. 'It needs cots and, er, spoons. Let them in.'
He shuffled towards the door. I'm thankful I don't have his bad feet. 'We'll have a whip round at the station, Lovejoy. The lads raised a fortune for the surgery unit.'
'Ta, George.' Already I was worn out and I'd not even started. Kindness is tiring. All administrations are set up to exploit, by the pretence of giving service. Harlequin ushered in Juliana Wither-spoon, her face white.
'Lovejoy!' she said. 'Where is he?'
'He?' I asked, blank.
'My brother. Doctor Dill said he's here, needs me urgently.'
'Oh. It was a mistake.' Tinker's surname is Dill. 'Got a notebook?'
'Notebook?' She looked like she had a terrible headache.
'Aye. We're listing people to, er help Father Jay. George, let them in. Single file.'
George opened the door, was trampled by the inrush of antique dealers with forgeries to sell. Hear them talk, you'd think they'd never seen a fake in their entire lives. Put out the whisper that you'll buy any dud from their stock, and you get flattened by the stampede.
The Plod poured in with the yelling crowd, struggling. They managed to resuscitate a huffed George, and the auditions were on.
'Gold ecus, Lovejoy.' Tapper's named for his skill in forging tap-and-die strikers for making medals, coins. Actually a presentable young banker, but I don't ask.
'Gold content, Tapper?'
'Nought point one above genuine.' He spoke with justifiable pride. Italians set this precedent, forging King George V gold sovereigns with fractionally higher gold content than the real thing. Very hard to prosecute people who manufacture fakes worth more than your original.
'You're in, Tapper. Your own security display case, proper labelling. Take his name, Juliana, put ECU.’
'What?' she asked, bewildered. I sighed. This was going to be one of those days.
'For God's sake, Jul, set up a frigging desk. You're mucking about doing sweet Fanny Adams.'
'I have no notebook, Lovejoy,' Juliana wailed, distracted.
'Next, George.' I ignored her. Women haven't got enough to do. Ask them to do a hand's turn, they crack.
'Morning. I'm Jackery.' Stout, balding, tired shoes, daubed corduroys. 'I've one forgery, Lovejoy, but they're lovely.'
Jackery. Closing my mind to Juliana's whingeing I rummaged in my ragbag memory. Lavenham, three years ago. An obsessed lunatic, one painting that he does over and over.
'Seurat's nudes?' The plural for singular gave him away.
'It's not fair, Lovejoy.' He spoke earnestly. 'They always call them names. They're beautiful.'
'Isn't it in the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia?' Barnes was an eccentric American doctor who amassed an art collection, 1900s. Major stuff, over 2,000 works. In 1915 he wrote his notorious book, How to Judge a Painting. Critics howled with laughter. He got his revenge, though, by guarding his possessions with paranoia. 'How did you see it? Dr. Barnes's will stated his collections should never be reproduced, lent, even colour photographed.' Jackery's famous for this, his one forgery. The original, Seurat's three nudes, Les Poseuses, is nearly as famous (joke).
'They came to Paris.' His eyes went dreamy. 'I went. Lost my job over it.' He spoke without rancour. 'And my wife. She didn't understand.'
'Thank you, Jackery,' I said. We shook hands. 'You've done a great thing for mankind. I'm honoured to have your forgery in the exhibition. Your label must say it's for sale.' He started to protest. I waved him away. 'You don't have to sell. Name an impossible price, see?'
His lip trembled. 'What if somebody agrees to pay it, though?'
'No, Jackery. A stated price is legally only "an invitation to treat". Say you've changed your mind. Give your name.' I indicated Juliana, who was finally getting round to scribbling, distraught. 'Tell her to get a move on. Next.'
We got going, faster after Columbine brought a fry-up in for me. I had to send her back for more, but eating was a refreshing novelty. I took some really risky decisions as the offers came in.
A trio from Cambridge said they'd faked some silverware and two gold emblems from King Croesus's famed Lydian Hoard. Turkey recently sued for the original treasure, got it back from the USA. Quite right too, I say, because somebody stole it back in the 1960s, and smuggled it to unscrupulous buyers via international fences. I'm not making allegations here, because New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art will want to remain anonymous and I respect their privacy most sincerely. I believed this trio of walking derelictions, because one had a goldsmith's segs - small hard nodes of skin on his right index finger.
Sadly, I rejected some copperplate letters 'by Sir Walter Scott', done by an old lady. Scott wrote Guy Mannering in under six weeks, had a voluminous output, especially after Byron grabbed the poetry market from him. Forged letters from writers are useless, unless you've some originals to compare. She tried showing me parchment fragments of Cardenio, Shakespeare's lost play, but everybody has cupboards full ever since that American chap found it - he says - in the British Museum Library. I felt sorry for her, but what can I do?
'That was despicable, Lovejoy!' Juliana stood over me.
‘I’m trying to help you snaffle your bloke. This isn't a charity. This is fakery!'
'What
was that, Lovejoy?' from Columbine inside the kitchen. ‘I mean I want donations, Biney,' I amended quickly. 'Everything must make a profit. Those barns need blankets and bottles.'
Juliana lowered her voice. 'Lovejoy. I mistrust this whole enterprise. I shall watch you every inch.'
'One thing,' I said, just as softly. 'How would your Whistlejack forgery do if I subject it to electrochemical abrasive stripping voltammetry?'
'My what?' She recoiled. I only know the words, not how to do it.
'It uses graphite electrodes, Jul. Measures pigments almost without failure.' I smiled. The dealers outside were yelling, George in distress. 'Don't blame me, and I won't blame you. Deal?'
'You declared it genuine, Lovejoy! Ashley told me so.'
'I lied.'
She was pale. 'What else have you lied about?'
'Next, George.' Practically everything, except antiques.
They really started then. I clocked them about sixty an hour, one after the other. I became dizzy. There were the usual things -furniture promised by the truckload, paintings galore, enough silverware to plate East Anglia, fake bicycles - more of these than you'd think; they bring high gelt these days. Where there's wheels, dealers say these days, you get nutters. In that first hour I had a lad who'd faked Daimler's prototype 1885 motorbike, Otto four-stroke engine and all. I asked him if he'd a pal who could forge S. H. Cooper's original steam-driven bicycle, pre-1870, but he hadn't. I accepted the lazy devil. I'm not really into engines.
Some were fascinating. A school teacher from Northampton produced photographs of a cupboard house.
'This is a Dutch fake, or ours?'
He went shy with pride. 'Mine, Lovejoy. I made every item. It's in a genuine old cupboard, too.'
It stopped my breath. An Ince corner cupboard, lovely, untouched.
'You didn't damage it?' I asked.
'In my family generations, Lovejoy. Pristine. I lined it with clean cardboard, then made the doll's house Regency furniture. My wife makes tapestries and candles.' He pointed, pleased.
In Holland, these 'baby houses' were fashionable a couple of centuries ago. Brides got married about fourteen or fifteen years of age. They liked these things. Many were made by skilled craftsmen, some for advertising purposes, others for selling to newly wedded girls. See an original, it blows your mind. They are made in exquisite detail.
'. . . six hundred items, Lovejoy. Regency chandeliers . . .'
'Accepted,' I said, wondering how I could get his Ince cupboard from him without disturbing the doll's house furniture.
Some things just had to be rejected, even though a commensurate amount of effort had been expended on them. I refused a Stortford bloke who'd faked a fragment of the 7000 BC linen found lately in Asia Minor. He left in tears.
'That was wretched!' Juliana, storming the Bastille again.
'Hold it, George.' Wearily, I drew her behind the counter and shoved my fist in her face. 'Listen to me, you stuck up bitch. I know what I'm doing. You don't. Understand?'
'You are a disgusting, retarded beast, Lovejoy. I've heard about your scrounging off women, your cheating -'
'That does it. George? Evict this bird. She's useless.'
But she stayed, only so she could sulk. We resumed, Juliana sitting in mute reproach while I worked. I was furious, because everything on earth is possibly fake, isn't it? I remember hereabouts a nerk called Coacher selling plants by post, until he was arrested by Maud for mail-order fraud. He advertised the Military Orchid, thought to be extinct until some Sherlock found one in 1947. Notoriously fickle, there are now two hundred plants growing in secret, watched by vigilantes. See? Everything's fake until proved otherwise. And people are desperate to join in a fake. Somebody calculated that if you send a pyramid letter to five other people, in four months everybody in the world would have received 13 million letters. Mind you, statistics aren't. I mean, the average peal of twelve church bells, ringing one peal every few seconds, would take 38 years of ding-donging to complete all possible changes. So?
But some things are less fake than fake. In 1863, the famous antiques expert William Chaffers decided that Chinese porcelain was actually all made here, in Lowestoft to be precise. In tribute, I accepted the works of a potter from Harwich. He'd forged Chinese porcelains, complete with bizarre inscriptions.
'See the inscriptions?' he enthused over his photos.
When Western traders placed orders for special pieces, Chinese potters made blunders, not knowing our language. Families wanting particular decorations simply wrote out inscriptions on paper, which were then taken to Canton for the designs to be copied on the porcelain dinner services. One Swedish chap drew his design he wanted on a page from his son's exercise book, on which his little lad had scrawled, 'Mother is today in an even worse temper.' The Chinese service was brilliantly manufactured with his son's acid comment in the design.
'Are they this good?'
'Honest,' he said. I'd seen some of this bloke's early Nantgarw ware, good in spite of the duff glazing.
'Accept. Ten pieces, separate labels. Name to the lady.'
Accepting forgeries can go in bursts. In one heady spell I nodded a score of clever items, all manufactured by enthusiastic amateurs. I took a forgery of Michelangelo's sketch The Holy Family with the Infant John the Baptist - it was sold for millions not long since at Christie's. Nobody even knows where it was discovered, because Major Robb of Great Tew, Oxfordshire, isn't telling. I grinned at Juliana, who looked away, though I could tell she was dying to see the drawings the girl showed me. I accepted a bloke's copies - poor things, really - of Picasso paintings, for notoriety value, because he was well faked during his lifetime. And Salvador Dali, who was forged seemingly with his own connivance.
I turned down an electronic mugger, who looked decidedly shifty. This modern crime's very simple. You set up a machine outside a bank at weekend when it's closed. Your printed notice announces that this machine is a new ATM, automated teller machine. When people insert their cards, it flashes a signal saying sorry, folks, but it isn't properly installed yet. The ATM spits out your card, and you go on your way grumbling. But it has secretly copied your plastic, which the electronic mugger simply uses for his own high-spending purposes.
But I jumped at the chance of a dozen forgeries of St John Lateran's famed possessions. The Mafia, or somebody neff, bombed this 'Mother of Churches' in Rome, ruining precious frescoes and God knows what. Hearing this, a scammer called Doper Tone had gone, passed himself off as a visiting curator from Bermondsey, getting details of which antiques had gone the way of all flesh. He then came home and worked solidly for a year to replicate them. I shook his hand, delighted at such loving care. He'd even got a photo of himself near the pope, looking aghast at the explosion site. I really admire dedication.
We had a break. I went to visit Columbine in her kitchen. Juliana would have come too, but I stopped her.
'Get those lists into columns, Jul,' I advised. 'You spend too much time grumbling.'
'Lovejoy,' she ground out, white again but this time with fury. Tell me one thing men can do better than women.' Tension was tearing her apart. Why? 'Well? Thinking up an idiot answer?'
'No. Still thinking about the question.'
Honestly, you can't help some people. I was pleased with Columbine, though. Harlequin was in the yard barreling up from the brewer's dray, so I was some time resuming. And you know what? Juliana still wasn't straight. I honestly don't know. Women lack organization.
By mid-morning I was flying, the queue dwindling. The police were at ease. New forgers trickled up asking was this where Love joy's auditions were.
There's only four sorts of antique dealers: tiddlers, fiddlers, diddlers, and middlers.
Ignore tiddlers - they see the Mona Lisa as a couple of pints or a new handbag, forever think small. Ignore fiddlers - they'd improve that enigmatic smile by a wash of acrylic emulsion from the hardware shop, forever wanting DIY action. Ignore diddlers - they try to sell La Gi
aconda to nine different buyers at once, always tricking themselves into trouble and out of a fortune. But those middlers, as I call straight batters, are rare and, dare I say, honest, giving you the right change, willing to take back something if it's proved rubbish. Such a gent was Brig. He brought photos of his collection of First-Day Commemorative mugs, from when Buckingham Palace was opened to the public. I looked. Not antiques, but well done.
'Sorry, Lovejoy,' he said, ashamed. 'I know. There were no First-Day special mugs, and they're not antiques anyway, seeing the Palace was only opened in 1993, but they'll go like trifle. And I can bring some antique forgeries along.'
'Sure, Brig.' Normally I'd have rejected them, but his wife has some disease that stops her walking. 'And?'
'I've been asked to kiln some . . . sorry, Lovejoy, droppings.'
'Eh? As in . . .?'
'Fake dinosaur droppings. There's a market now.'
Food for thought. I've heard of every scam on earth. There's a bloke in Sweden sells earrings made, I assure you, of varnished moose poop scooped from the wilds. The other side of the coin, as it were, is the London auction sale of 'dinobilia' when Bonhams culled a fortune for ten sauropod eggs from China said to be seventy million years old. Dinosaur droppings from Utah yielded less than a tenth of that sum. This proves two things. Collectors never change - if they want it, they'll sell their grannie's teeth for it. And second, everybody, but everybody, has an opinion. Like those Australian kiddies who found a monster egg, two thousand years old, of the extinct Madagascan Elephant Bird. (That's the scientists' description. Can we trust them?) When a minister declared it government property, the kiddies reburied it in secret-and the whole nation took sides. See? Everybody has hard line opinions, for or against. I love it, a sign of life.
'Brig, tell the lady to list them in a foyer display, Cabinet of the Weird and Wonderful.'
It got stranger still, as the auditions went on. I know a bloke who swears he's never seen a true Byzantine fresco, in a lifetime's work on Byzantine wall paintings. He says they began them on fresh plaster, building up layers of thick opaque paint in glues or lime over the fresco ground colours. I had a nasty argument over this. Tesco brought in drawings of some Cypriot church wall paintings he'd forged. The originals are in Houston, Texas - after being excitingly smuggled out of Turkish-occupied Cyprus to Munich, thence to London. It was Juliana who interrupted our chat, saying we'd wasted ten whole minutes.
The Grace in Older Women Page 22
