The Grace in Older Women

by Jonathan Gash

  'Sorry, Tesco,' I apologized. 'She's new. I have to nurse her along.'

  'It's okay, Lovejoy.' He's a craftsman. 'I've nine free-standing panels, the history of the Mediterranean region.'

  'No. You get two framed cards, eighteen inches by twenty-four . . .' Nuclear war ensued, and I had to get George to drag him out, yelling abuse, oppression, et jingoistic cetera. I warned Juliana's thin lips, 'Not a word, Jul.' She kept silent, maybe learning.

  Some indefatigable old dear had painstakingly reproduced the diaries of Tom Lewin in his own handwriting. Even I'd heard of the fabled 'Thangliena', who ruled India's North-East Frontier in the Raj. Fluent linguist, brave to the point of madness, this humble ensign fought through Bengal until he became King of the Lushai Hill Tribes. He assimilated languages somehow by breathing the local air.

  'You a relative?' I asked her.

  'Bless you, no. But we mustn't forget our brave Victorian lads. Mr. Lewin became a friend of Meredith and Burne-Jones, don't y'know. An artist and musician, too.' She spoke with personal pride.

  'Was he crazy?' I asked, curious for her opinion.

  'Certainly not!' She bridled. 'He was eccentric. What if he did ship oysters from Fortnum's in Piccadilly? He was entitled! Ruskin admired him!'

  'How long did this take you, Mrs. Boyson?'

  'Only five years. I invented letters from him to his beloved Lushai concubine Dari, during his retirement in England.' She coloured. I looked at the manuscript. It was several hundred pages. Thangliena was, how can one say, a man of certain strong desires. Understandable, a gentleman far from home.'

  'Thank you, love. Accepted.' She looked shabby. 'Name to the lady, please. Tell her to get Tinker to arrange a display case, copperplate label.'

  'Oh,' she exclaimed, flustered, 'I can't do copperplate, Lovejoy! Though I received a Sunday School prize when I was eight for spelling -'

  'Get on with it, for Christ's sake!' I yelled, practically hurling her across the tap room. 'George! Next!'

  On and on. My pal Chess the printer from Tooting Bee arrived, with examples of Hoyle's works on games, including his rare London first edition of 1751 about the game of brag. An ancient British gold tore - simple, but resplendent - of the kind dug up hereabouts, very easy to fake but from genuine solid gold with the right trace elements. I took it sight unseen because, although I didn't know the girl who brought the photograph, a child of six can fake one in an afternoon, given the right tools and the gold. She also showed me a photo of a Moche warrior-priest. I inspected it, puzzled.

  'You do this, too?' It looked like gold. The pre-Inca Moche civilization's not much understood, but what we do know is dazzling. Just right for forgery to blossom. Date, about 1700 years ago. The antiques world is clamouring for Moche gold and silver ornaments from these Peruvian burials, first to eighth centuries. Forgery follows newly discovered antiques like seagulls follow the plough.

  'No. Daddy. He's redundant. He started this hobby a fortnight since.'

  She was no more than thirteen, specky, braces on her teeth. I questioned her a bit. No, her dad, a lowly clerk, had never done this before.

  'What metal, chuckie?' I asked. Thirteen, you don't know whether to offer them a lollipop or a fag these days. She wondered should she take umbrage, opted for peace.

  'Daddy melted down a garden pot to make them. Mum got mad.'

  'Did he indeed.' Daddy had class. 'He make his own moulds?' He was highly talented. The international black market in Moche antiques only began about 1987, though long ago Mrs. Hearst -fawning mamma of little Randolph - paid for excavations in Peru's coastal regions in the 1890s. The sale of forged die-casts had not yet reached East Anglia. Until now. Handled right, this neophyte forger might be the find of the year. I watched her for evasion, but the child came straight out.

  'He used up all our Ted's plasticines. Ted got mad.'

  So Daddy had improvised, against family opposition, and come up with a convincing pair of fakes that, given the right gold alloys, guaranteed a new career in forgery. Daddy had potential. I glanced at Juliana, cleared my throat. Tell your clever Daddy that Lovejoy says to see Tinker immediately. His, er, models are accepted. I've got a new job for Daddy.'

  The morning surged on. Faked ivory was much in evidence, though the real thing's still not hard to come by in spite of pious droning by sundry governments. Fake bronzes are always about, the staple fare of fakedom, and paintings, paintings galore.

  Some forgeries were so excellent they hardly qualified as fakes at all. One bloke I'd never met called Oomoo showed me pictures of a svelte lady in a royal blue sheath dress, a similar emerald dress, a tight calf-length scarlet dress with dated mandarin sleeves. I looked up at his worried face, baffled. 'What's the catch, Oom?'

  'They're glass, Lovejoy. The dresses. Big in 1911, 1912. Spun whipped glass. My woman does the embroidery. She says point lance's the only stitch that works.'

  I'd heard of these, seen a lovely chequered spun-glass headband once, for all the world like silk. 'Accepted. How many can you bring?' See? Hardly fake at all.

  Then there was the opportunist faker, Washer. He came with five Pablo Picassos and two Georges Braques. The La Femme aux Yeux Noir Picasso wasn't too bad, but the rest were awful.

  'You didn't finish the Picasso sculpture, then?'

  He grinned sheepishly. 'No, Lovejoy. The newspapers only showed pictures of the paintings after the robbery.' Washer meant the Murph-the-Surf-style break-in at Stockholm's Museum of Modern Art. Once a painting's reported stolen, it's the signal for

  forgers to get to work - for who knows whether the 'right' one's eventually recovered or not? We call it the Mona Lisa effect. I gave Washer the nod.

  Inevitably, when the last had gone, she started up.

  ‘This is wrong, Lovejoy! I suppose you know that?'

  I was drained. 'Robin Hood is famous for pulling this caper.'

  'It's dishonest! You are encouraging forgeries. All those people.' She was almost in tears. 'The whole world seems to want to take advantage of poor honest buyers.'

  'Poor honest buyers?' I felt my temper give. 'Do you know anybody who'd walk past a priceless antique Gainsborough on offer for a quid? Would you, love?' I could have clocked her one.

  'What's going on there?' called Columbine, but pleased I was ballocking off some other female.

  'That's always you, Lovejoy.' Juliana came close to a sneer. 'Criticizing a person's plight, never your own greed!'

  'My own greed?' I'm honestly baffled. 'Who's greedy? Who do you think paid for the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper? An industrial combine called Olivetti, that's who. And that shy retiring USA firm Coca-Cola forked out for restoration work at Russia's Hermitage. And who funded the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling but Japanese TV moguls? And don't tell me that restoration is right and proper. It's mostly ruination. Once restorers started using synthetic materials to restore old masterpieces, they were simply awarding themselves jobs for life. Don't get on to me.'

  This whole enterprise is a sin, Lovejoy!' Red dots of fury appeared on her cheeks. 'I'm aware of your philandering with the landlord's wife this morning. I heard you tell Constable George to keep a look out in case! Your conduct is disgusting! I want nothing more to do with you!'

  Too narked to continue, I shouted thanks to Columbine and Harlequin, gabbed Juliana's lists, and stalked out. A few latecomers scurried after me along the pavement, offering me pictures, scraps of paper and exotic descriptions.

  Things irritate you when you want to calm down. Where the hell was Tinker? And Chemise, now I needed her? Idling about doing sweet sod all, that's what. I saw her waving from across the road from the George.

  'Where have you been?' I demanded in a yell, my half-dozen followers clubbing up against me like dominoes.

  'I found it, Lovejoy,' Chemise called, embarrassed. Everybody in the High Street was looking.

  She made it safely through the traffic while I audited the remaining fakers. The engraving
s of the National Gallery - the grand building that replaced the squalor and filth of the St Martin-in-the-Fields Workhouse - seemed okay, I told Jemima's cousin Gabbie, new and not much idea. 'But why not add the washhouse chimneys that stood there? Engravers missed those out to make it look grand, but sociologists and other dumbos'll buy them. They love slums.'

  'My auntie's a social worker, Lovejoy.' She too was angry.

  'Er, dumbo's a term of endearment, love,' I invented. 'Means, er, all-hearing, big ears, see?'

  She left, mollified, while I accepted some Regency silverware, a set of fake homemade keys made in a foundry down Canvey Island, ten Wedgwood tiles 'by Nunn', a great name, a mass of powder flasks for flintlock weapons - the easiest things to fake. Finally, best wine to the last, a trio of fake Regency 'pier glasses', mirrors in giltwood, leaf moulded frames, by a quiet drunkard called Haymake. I was pleased to see him alive, and gave him licence to bring along some Art-Deco figures he was making, lovely women in innocent erotic postures. The ones to look out for are fakes by the enigmatic Viennese craftsman F. Preiss in bronze and ivory, cast-and-carved, as dealers say. If Haymake claimed his were 'nice' I felt convinced they'd be superb. I accepted a cluster of Napoleonic memorabilia, all forgeries, because it included an ivory rotunda framing a statuette of Bonaparte. It was offered by a walrus-shaped bloke who startled me by also wanting to bring some Chippendale-style cherrywood candle stands that his long-dead uncle used to turn out for a hobby.

  Job done. And here came Chemise, women noticing her surpassing plainness with sly sideways looks.

  'About bloody time,' I groused. 'Found what?'

  'Reverend Father Jay, Lovejoy,' she said. 'He's not.'

  And the sun rose.

  28

  'Look,' I said to Valetta, who runs the George's booking desk. 'My American friends invited us for lunch, but we were feeding the old folks so I couldn't get here.' I smiled, martyred. 'Okay to go through?'

  'No, Lovejoy.' She was reading a paper, uncaring bitch. 'They're on a trip with Gwena.'

  'But we're starving. Look.' I leant forward. 'I'm doing a deal. That Wilmore, y'know, developer. He's buying the Red Lion.' It's the George's big rival. She turned a page. 'I could get you details, if . . . ' Chemise was embarrassed, but I stared her down.

  'Really? I've not heard about that.'

  'It's got to be kept quiet. Property deals, all that.'

  She relented, wrote out a chit for me to give to Aldo, when a familiar voice harrumphed. Misery enveloped the world.

  'Lovejoy! It's time to arrange the sale.'

  'Sale?' I groaned audibly, my hand outstretched for the chit. 'Can't it wait, Ashley?'

  'No. And,' he added, nasty, 'you haven't time for lunch.'

  The aroma of food wafted from the carvery. They'd all be on their starters, a thick creamy soup, or maybe those mushrooms fried in batter. I almost folded, belly cramp.

  'Can't it wait while I get some sandwiches?'

  'Probably a lie, Lovejoy,' the unfeeling swine said. 'Roberta insists you settle everything today. Seeing,' he added, 'you have filled my hotel with workmen under the control of a filthy tramp.'

  Tinker, getting on with it. Chemise spoke up.

  'Mr. Battishall? I have the information you're referring to. Lovejoy delegated responsibility to me. He decided that the only way was to organize the auction at your hotel during the exhibition. It will require a separate space, of course.'

  'Well, ye-e-e-es,' he said.

  'Accordingly, I have contacted sixty major buyers. One may assume with some confidence that potential bidders will be among those who attend the exhibition?'

  Gaping, I looked anew at Chemise. Still with those teeth, that hair, those spindly legs. But she smiled with a veteran scamster's certainty.

  ‘Be that as it may,' Ashley began. Well, he was used to the rapacious Roberta, so it was no contest.

  'Excuse me, sir.' She had a really lovely smile. 'If you could allow Love joy a few minutes in the restaurant to set the seal of approval. . .'

  Pedantry for pedantry. The seal of approval, for God's sake.

  'Very well. Ten minutes only, Lovejoy.'

  'Yes, Ashley.' I snatched the chit from Valetta and streaked into the carvery, seizing a plate and queue-hopping to where the chefs served the grub, apologizing as I went. 'Sorry, lady, but my auntie's ill and I'm due at the hospital . . .'

  Chemise collared a table. I fell on the grub as she went for a salad. Anything to get out before Ashley trapped me.

  'Maybe,' I spluttered eagerly, hacking and noshing, 'you could distract Ashley while I eel out through the kitchens. He'll go mental when he realizes you were lying about having it all organized.'

  'I wasn't, Lovejoy.' She waved a notebook. 'I have the lists. Have your dinner.'

  Women are truly beautiful. 'Where'd you get the names?' I flicked through her - no, my notebook. It had been in my hidden cellar.

  'I was tidying in your cellar.'

  Aldo came across. 'Who's paying, Lovejoy?' I gave him Valetta's chit. 'It's for one.'

  'Hellfire, Aldo!' I exploded, while he tried to quieten me. The diners were looking. 'Is it my fault that your staff can't write numbers down clearly? God Almighty . . .'He retreated, hands raised, such a quaint laugh. I continued conversationally, 'Good girl. What about Juliana's holy roller?'

  'That's just it, Lovejoy. He's no such thing. Last night I went to Birmingham.' She moved her salad about her plate. 'You didn't come home. That golden lady, I presume.'

  'No,' I said, innocent. 'I stayed with friends. Too late, no buses after ten.'

  She pretended to believe. 'I found the old bursar of Father Jay's seminary. It's closed now. He accepted Jay's education certificates. A seminary in South Carolina, USA.'

  'So?' I helped her to finish her salad. Waste is sin, my old Gran used to teach. 'Doesn't matter where, does it?'

  Ashley was back, peering, timing us by his quartz digital, his gnawing ulcer close to popping.

  'Yes it does, Lovejoy.' She was even calm contradicting me. 'If it's a diploma shop. Degrees by post.'

  That stopped me. 'He isn't even a padre?'

  'He did it in two months.' She was justifiably proud, pink with pleasure at the effect she was creating. 'Sent forms, paid the fee, got the diplomas. The lady on the phone told me that I could have three theology qualifications, and be ordained minister by the first of next month.' She smiled, radiant. 'They're equal opportunity, Lovejoy. Even you could become holy.'

  'With testimonials from churches where he'd served?'

  'Yes. They do an after-sales service, certificates from alleged churches. Though,' she added, going serious, 'we shouldn't condemn, Lovejoy. These institutions might do some good, seeing the moral gap undoubtedly existing -'

  Oh aye, my mind went. I said, to shut her up, 'I often think that, love. But you've missed one name out.'

  'Who, Lovejoy?' She riffled through the notebook anxiously.

  'He's not in there. But send him an invitation anyway.'

  Ashley came marching down the carvery. I rose to greet him as Chemise asked me to spell his name, pencil poised.

  'Sheehan, J.,' I said quietly, then loudly, 'Wotcher, Ashley. Time for a pudding?'

  This next bit's about money, so I'd miss it out if you can't take it.

  Quite a long time ago, some university don at the Brunei tried to work money out. Who hasn't? He depended on formulas connecting us with different ancestors across Time. It told you the value of a house, pig, day's wages, in modern dosh. He'd reckon the cost of a loaf on, say, 10 August 1989, apply algebraic mumbo-jumbo and hey presto! There it was! The price of your loaf in Year of Grace 1167, whenever, was X in modern money! Tables and charts followed.

  Even I scribed him a missive, Dear Sir, Please explain how . . . Reason? I wanted to use his system for pricing antiques today. And you know what?

  It didn't work.

  It didn't work for centuries. It didn't work across a few months, years. I tried
every period I could find records for. No avail.

  For some twenty years. Sotheby's coined an Art Index to show the changing values of master paintings. Investors clung to it like sailors reaching a life raft - but the violent swings of the 1990s sank every known formula. Newspapers denounced the Art Index as balderdash, claiming that even Sotheby's own experts shrugged it off, that a 'basket' of fewer than forty paintings, many of which were never even auctioned during any one calendar year, was unreliable. Prediction accuracy about auction prices scored little more than thirty per cent. (And anybody can score fifty per cent just by spinning a coin, heads or tails.)

  Supposition ruled, guesswork was king. And who did the guessing? Answer: auction houses who got the biggest cut when they sold Old Masters, that's who.

  So currently only two systems work: the 'DT Art 100', that prices the auction sales around 250 auction rooms, internationally, of 100 American/European artists' works, and records an Index in Nominal Prices - 1975 prices are the base level - of 1,000, in US dollars. Though I hate to boost a newspaper's sales, it's the best yet, if only for artists' products, and not for all antiques. Second system is my own: to measure time. Get this year's annual average wage, and represent what you can get for any antique as a fraction of that, in wages. If that wage is, say, 10,000 (pounds, dollars, slotniks), and the best offer you can get for your antique is exactly that, then it's earned you a year. If it will yield only 5,000 then it's worth six months, and so on. This way, you've a reliable comparison.

  I tried telling this to Ashley Battishall, no use. When we arrived, his place was in uproar. A few elderly residents were enjoying the hullabaloo, getting in everybody's way. Tinker was already three sheets, reeling and giving orders. He'd hired a team of vannies and auction whifflers to build display stands. He'd paid them all in my IOUs, the goon. I'd told him not to. Actually, I didn't mind, because my blokes outnumbered Nick's. Battishall finally went and bought the DT Art 100 booklet, and I let him play about with that. Secretly, we fixed on a reserve price for the Stubbs painting.