'All happening, Lovejoy!' Mahleen called loudly. Roberta winced, raised a hand to her temple, reclining on her chaise. Ashley leapt with a shawl. Teacups tinkled. Idyllic.
'What's the agenda?' I asked.
'Money,' Wilmore said, all happy. 'My home ground!'
Whoops, laughter. I found an iron garden chair, joined the circle. Nadette darted a sharp smile from me to Mahleen, more gold than ever. Vernon and Jerry tapped calculators.
'Anything you fancy, Lovejoy?' Nadette cooed sweetly. 'You've not sampled all the antiques, have you, dear?'
'Whose money?' I'm always worried by women's wars. Women's logic is for losing track of.
'The Cause's, Lovejoy.' Vernon the Sincere. 'How much d'you reckon the exhibition will make?'
Hilda cried, 'Thousands! Look at all those fakes."
it's too much,' Roberta said faintly. 'That Miss Witherspoon must go instantly.'
‘I’ll do it, my dear.' Ashley rose to hurtle off.
'No. Roberta. I need Juliana.' I wasn't having it.
'Ashley!' Roberta whimpered.
'Roberta knows nothing, Ashley.' I didn't let him stare me down, not with what I now knew. 'Your place, your exhibition. But if I leave, your enterprise vanishes. I set it up. Juliana stays. No argument.'
The Yanks went quiet. The Dewhursts coloured. Miss Priscilla, peacemaker, put in gently, 'Lovejoy does know forgeries, Roberta. And his obverse - '
'That's right, Priscilla. I'm the obverse, okay? My guess is, it'll all go. Fakes,' I added drily, 'often go faster than genuine antiques. Honest folk know why.'
'But the expense, Lovejoy?' from good old Wilmore.
'Antique dealers operate on thirties. Thirty per cent's the least possible profit. One third's the most they'll pay. Three times the buying price is what they ask.'
'But that's terrible!' If Priscilla had been wearing her apron she'd have thrown it over her head in horror. She does it at calamity.
'Sounds right.' Vernon and Jerry were nodding.
'How much, then, Lovejoy?' Wilmore asked.
'I'll estimate the total once the exhibition's set up. We'll take sixes - that's two-thirds. The rest goes to the owners.'
'My hotel's expenses!' Ashley threatened, but he didn't worry me now. All I saw was him blubbering beside his car begging young Holly for a shag, offering fistfuls of notes.
'Any more questions?' I looked round.
'That ugly girl ruins the ambience,' Roberta said.
'More than ambience'll be ruined.' I'd had enough malingering. 'Chemise is worth any ten. She stays.'
Wilmore spoke up. 'Lovejoy. I want to ask you a serious personal question.' For a second my heart stopped, thinking of his golden missus. 'Can we make this exhibition an elastic commodity? Keep the income flowing after?'
'Yes.' I cleared my throat. 'I've to find a safe centre to operate from. I've found one.'
'How do we finance it?' Vernon, from the heart. 'Loans?'
'No banks, for Christ's sake.' The Misses Dewhurst cried out at my language. I said sorry, forgot myself. 'We make the dealers raise the bread. We provide the market.'
They were doubtful.' What safe centre? Will it cost?'
'Not much more than your holiday, Jerry.'
They spoke a little while I collared some cakes, minuscule one-calorie toothfillers. Wilmore was elected spokesman.
'Can't be done, Lovejoy, on no overheads.'
'Really?' I rose, scooping the last plateful into my pocket for the journey. 'Wilmore, don't ever go into antiques. Borrow your motor, Priscilla? I'll be ten minutes.’
Chemise followed my beckoning. 'Know what?' she said. 'Juliana's resigned. Couldn't face it.'
Couldn't face seeing her painting forgery auctioned off as the real thing, more like. We got in the motor. Chemise asked to go back for her coat, the weather was turning chilly.
'What made her chuck it?' I asked. 'She was okay when I arrived.'
'That old man with the walking stick interrupted her. She burst into tears and left.' She shivered. 'I'm freezing.'
Women always are. Never known one with warm feet, and I've searched, I've searched.
'We're going the wrong way, Lovejoy,' she said after a bit. 'This is to Fenstone.' She was looking at me in a way she never had. 'Left, Lovejoy.'
I yelled, 'Don't you ever frigging well shut up?’
‘I'm sorry, darling.’
You can't tell them. They never listen. Darling?
During the journey, I reflected on how things had turned out. Maybe some dealer did for Tryer? Antiques is a game of snakes and ladders, millions of snakes and hardly any ladders. But something I'd said lately kept coming to mind: money's the only thing without value. Psychotics, politicians, and accountants don't know this. Somehow I'd entered a world where all money schemes were undermined, ruined. Jox, Tryer, Dame Millicent, the lot. Therefore the weirdo was as sane as you. So I'd to look among the normals for the nutter. Except, why did I?
Chemise was watching me. I thought she'd been asleep. 'You don't have to. Lovejoy.'
'Sorry. I talked my thoughts?'
'Some.’ She stared out. It was coming on to rain, i miss Tryer, Lovejoy. He didn't take me seriously, not like you. But he treated me grand.' She smiled the woman's non-smile. 'Me so ugly!' I had more sense than try to talk her out of her self-prejudice. ‘He already had a wife.'
That I knew. 'What do you think of this lot, love?'
The Americans?'
'And the Battishalls, the Cause.' I was surprised about the Dewhursts, but astrology makes people do daft things. I said as much.
'It's not so crazy, Lovejoy. A cause can turn massacres to musicals, Vietnam for The White Horse Inn.'
'If you say so,' but I was uncomfortable. We passed Fletchinghurst, where Easter festivals hark back to sacrificial days, even children's skipping rhymes sounding sinister. It got me thinking.
There was a report once, dated 23 February 1809. Manuscript only. You still find copies in bookshops: Napoleon in America. It stated that one French frigate with 150 men could 'capture Pensacola' from the mouth of the Mississippi, having taken Spanish Florida and Louisiana. I'd had to look up Pensacola. Once head of the USA, Bonaparte would be 'possessed' - the manuscripts always spell that wrong - of Canada, Mexico, all North America.
Royalty's funny stuff. You don't need voting in, for a start. And, if you're voted out or executed, you're the dragon's teeth - somebody else takes your place. Execute Charles I, there's always a Charles II et seq. For the Cause, the eighty-ninth cousin umpteen times removed will do. And you don't need a multi-megabuck Human Genome Diversity Project to prove it, like the Italians have in Turin to prove that the pre-Roman Etruscans are still around. You can mislay the heir to a throne, but you can't eradicate royalty.
As I write, the King of All the Gypsies is being crowned. Okay, it's Romania, there's a rival somewhere, but so? Par for royalty's course. A crown of jewels and over three dozen gold coins, bestowed outside - sic - the Orthodox cathedral in Sibiu is a powerful symbol, even if the King's a coppersmith. The point is it's now, not in the Dark Ages. It's the same in Buganda, which crowns its thirty-sixth King. Gremlins, however, might decide that by the time anybody reads this . . . Naturally, constitutions change. No country stays the same. Hence Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea change the face on their postage stamps. Fine by me. It's what countries do. Politics is mutation by decree. So kings may come and queens may go, but royalty lives, even if its earthly representatives don't linger.
Like take Russia's 'Nicholas the Simple', as acid-tongued writers call Nicholas II. Now, I simply don't know whether the last Czar of All the Russias was right to assume personal command of his entire army in 1915. Or why he believed his friendship with Rasputin, that Siberian holy nutter, would bring the House of Romanov closer to the Czar's beloved narod, his people. But read the Czar's love letters to his Czarina Alexandra - they wrote daily - your heart almost breaks. And she was only 12 when they fell in love, at her si
ster's wedding. Take away the conventional silliness of lovers ('My darling, Sunny . . .') and you well up. Leave aside Anastasia - was she, wasn't she - and you still question who the Pretender Czar actually is/was. Conventional history, that old fibber, depicts Czar Nicholas standing with his baby son Alexei in his arms to face the execution squad. Terrible, sure, and there are witnesses. But who exactly was that quiet laboratory technician who passed away only last year in St Petersburg, whose colleagues knew was little Alexei himself, the last Romanov Czar of All the Russians, whose tiny bones were never found in the excavations of the disused mineshaft at Ekaterinburg . . . ?
‘I’ll drive, Lovejoy.' Chemise switched off the ignition.
Struggling with the wheel, I exploded. 'You silly cow! You'll have us in the bloody hedge!'
She was maddeningly calm. 'You're muttering and demented. Get from behind that wheel, for Christ's sake. Twice you've nearly collided.'
My hands were damp and shaking, sweat running down my armpits. What on earth had I been thinking about? Worse, the arrogant bitch turned out to be a superb driver, double declutching and all.
We arrived at Juliana's studio in Fenstone as dusk fell. No sign of life. I told Chemise to keep the engine running, and walked about a bit to recover. The wattle-and-daub wall would have been simple to cut through, but I picked the lock because I'm a conservationist at heart. Inside, just her plain studio, neat, clean, things put away. When I'm painting, tidiness goes. I found the painting she'd shown me that Sunday morning. It still felt unconvincing. Yet I felt queer.
At first I put it down to getting myself all unglued while driving Priscilla's old Morris banger, but kept finding myself walking along one wall. It was plenty tall enough. And there were marks on the floor. Not exactly grooves, but shiny scored marks - smooth wheels running in an arc?
The wall held a stack of shelves. I took down a dusty book on painting, Mayer on artist materials. Old edition, long superseded. I looked at a pot. The solvent had evaporated, leaving a crust. Dust, dust. In a studio so excrutiatingly tidy?
'In other words,' I said aloud, 'you are Juliana's place. The wall is someone else's.'
'Whose?' a voice said.
'Not yours, Reverend.' I was cool, safe. Chemise was out there still. He was tall, lean, looked fast on his pins. And hungrier than usual. Except I didn't know his usual.
He moved quietly in, closing the door. It didn't swing open. I must have picked it well, no damage.
'Then whose?' He shrugged, helpless, but I'm too canny to be taken in by tricks, and moved away. Casual, but casting about for a heavy object. 'You see, Lovejoy, I badly need to know precisely what you know.'
'Where is Juliana?' I asked, throat drying fast. He was athletic, strong. Every damned thing I'm not.
'She had a journey.' He seemed surprised I'd asked.
'I came to see when you'd meet with Mr. Geake, Juliana, Dame Millicent, get the village going again. I've a couple of new schemes.'
His was the sorrow of a grimly penitential monk. Except he didn't seem monkish, not celibate. I felt he was nearly as interested in women as me. I wondered if he knew about the painting Juliana had hidden behind the wall. Maybe he'd helped her set the hiding place up. But I'd better not ask outright, I warned myself, but with horror heard myself say, 'Did you make Juliana do the fake?'
He imitated even more surprise. 'Fake? You mean the little painting Miss Witherspoon discovered in church? No.' He smiled, and for a second I thought things were going to be all right, that my thumping chest was wasting its time. 'I heard about your coming forgeries exhibition, Lovejoy. And the wealth it will bring the great Cause.'
The Cause?' I grinned, a skull peeling layers. 'Barmy sods, begging pardon.'
He held an axe. He carried an axe. You don't get priests with axes. Him standing there, under the one electric globe, in this remote dying village in the marshes, that low mist stealing up. Dusk had turned solid, no street lights. I realized I couldn't hear Chemise's motor. He hefted the axe like he wanted to show it off.
'Chemise!' I croaked. No answer. 'Chemise!'
She didn't come.
The question is, Lovejoy, if you know, please tell me. I,' he said with his confessor's grin, 'shall judge if you speak truly. I have experience in these matters.'
He stepped closer. I grabbed a paintbrush, frantically wondering if I could chuck a bottle of turpentine in his face, make a dash to where Chemise had obviously nodded off, the disloyal mare.
Backing, I fell over an easel, scrambled upright, scared now. He stopped, judging me with dispassion. I knew how the victims of the Inquisition must have felt.
'Why are the Americans here, Lovejoy? What is their Cause? Truthfully, now. I know falsehood.'
I ahemed gravel from my throat, found I'd backed away against the wall. No door or windows, only two canvases, no guns, weapons of any description.
'They've joined the Battishalls, I think,' I cried in panic, not wanting to be misunderstood, to reveal all.
He stepped closer. If I moved a pace forward, he'd be within a swing of an axe. His axe, my head. He must have been a boxer at his non-existent seminary.
'The bishop said you'd made enquires, Lovejoy. As had your lady friend.' His grin faded away, his axe lifting an inch. I'd no chance to move. ‘I learned by telephone.’
'Look, Reverend,' I shrilled, sweat stinging my eyes. 'So what, you didn't take holy orders? Neither did I!' I laughed, a squeak. 'Plenty of people pretend.’
His eyes bored, murderous. 'Pretend what they're not?'
I drew ten lungfuls in one go, bawled, 'Chemise, love!'
Laconic now. It would take one smash. 'I'm afraid I had to ask her to leave urgently.'
Chemise, my lifeline. Gone? The faithless bitch. I'd kill the stupid mare, leaving me alone with a maniac who'd topped Tryer and was now going to top me.
'Gone?' I tried to say. My lips felt blue.
To Dame Millicent's. Not far, just far enough.'
‘For what? I've told you everything. They're into genealogy, lunatic stuff about the zodiac' A true friend of the Misses Dewhurst, I had to keep them out of it for their own safety. Except they'd want to be sacrificed, surely, to save me? The Dewhurst sisters put everybody up to it. Nothing to do with me.'
He turned, the prelude to assault with weapon. I'd seen the stance in pub fights. I drew breath to plead, beg, whine, but stayed transfixed, rabbit and stoat.
The law . . .' I got out.
'Law is a joke, the lawcourt its clown.'
‘Please. I'll not tell you killed anyone, honest.'
To this day I don't know if I got the words out or if I only thought them. He seemed to make a judgement, and lifted his hand.
And then something beautiful happened. Geake, ex-policeman, churchwarden, stepped through the door, foot slurring, and said evenly, 'Father Jay? An intruder, I think?'
'Yes!' I yelped, leapt forward, wrists out for manacles. 'I surrender!' I babbled this until William Geake, rescuer, told me in resurrected Plod tones to shut up.
'Done any damage, has he?' Geake said, looking.
'Nothing. I think, Mr. Geake. I heard noises. Lovejoy had this axe. I relieved him of it. I was about to call you.'
This wasn't true. I gaped. He'd brought the bloody axe.
'Very well, Father Jay. I'll see to him.' Geake tilted his head. I moved thankfully out of the door. No car, no Chemise. Geake followed, gestured to a motor across the road. 'Miss Witherspoon's, Lovejoy. She'll be along any second, give you a lift, unless you want to wait for that ugly lass.'
'No, ta, sir.' I fawned, grovelled, grinned, wrung his hand. Thank you, sir. Any time I can do anything, sir, Lovejoy's the name, antiques the game. Any auction, I'm your man. Okay?'
'Lovejoy,' he said wearily, 'you wear me out, y'hear? Now sod off out of Fenstone, and never ever return.'
'Sure, sure! Willco, Inspector!'
Sweating now with sheer relief, I went and sat in the motor. I was shaking at the escape, my
bloody teeth actually chattering. Lovejoy the Cool, trembling. The keys were in the ignition, but the thought honestly never crossed my mind. The mist had closed in, darkness impenetrable.
Across the road, I could barely see the studio glim, making true opaque fog. No wonder the young folk had decided to leg it out, civilization here we come, leave Fenstone to its sombre mists and loony priest. I thought, uneasy for reasons I couldn't fathom, what if there's a frigging bomb in this motor? Planted by Juliana, off her rocker from love of this priest . . .
A dark figure loomed. I screamed, scrabbled for the door, fell from the car, scraping my elbows - to be raised by this female, her high heels scraping.
'Lovejoy? Are you all right?'
Second time in an hour I'd been rescued, by somebody I'd suspected. I almost wept from relief. 'Oh, there you are, Jul!' I said gruffly. 'Mr. Geake said you'd give me a lift.'
'It's dreadfully inconvenient. I've things to do.'
'That fake, eh?' I sat while my heart slowed.
'Fake?' She didn't switch on.
'That thing you found in church, remember?' I wagged a finger as if I'd meant that one all the time. 'We've been using French vernis a vieiller, haven't we? And with the Daler Bristlewhite 8 round brush. Tut tut. Just because that stuff ages patina within twelve hours doesn't mean it's right, love. Impasto takes on an umber hue that's a dead giveaway, like a tart's face whose mascara's run - '
'Lovejoy.' She alighted angrily, taking her keys. 'Walk!'
'No, love. I've sussed the bloke you're crazy about.'
So we drove off. Ten minutes later, we encountered Chemise in the lanes, driving Dame Millicent. Even Juliana couldn't mistake an old Morris in the mists. I told her to beam them down, and explained to Chemise that there'd been a mistake. I left Juliana, having done all the asking I wanted to do. We took the old dame home. She gave us some of her home-brewed pear wine, and a merry evening was had by all.
On the way home I was too weary to upbraid Chemise as she deserved. I just told her how I'd nearly met my doom by the mad axeman of Fenstone, been saved by Geake, my hero. She said nothing.
The Grace in Older Women Page 25
