The Possessions of a Lady

by Jonathan Gash

  Dedications

  To Ts'ai Chen, the Chinese God of lucky guesses made when buying, this story is humbly dedicated.

  Lovejoy

  For Old neighbours of York St, Bolton, Lancashire.

  Thanks

  Susan

  1

  Life is women and antiques, nothing else. Antiques are found everywhere, but women are the only supply of women. It's where problems begin. One problem is fashion.

  Fashion is embarrassing. I'd never been to a fashion show before. Women find them thrilling. When you're a duckegg like me, you have to laugh at yourself to stay sane. You occasionally have the luxury of having a laugh at others. A dangerous game, though it seems worth it at first. Later, horror comes a-hunting, and all smiles vanish.

  Getting things wrong's my way of life, me being the best antique dealer in the known world. I'm also the only honest one. Women'll tell you different. See who you believe, them or me.

  I didn't know I would face ruin at such a glitzy gathering. Thekla was all excited, said it would be the most wonderful afternoon on earth. It was nearly that all right, no thanks to a load of undernourished birds parading in daft rags. That's what a fashion show is. End of message, start of trouble.

  'Stay still, Lovejoy. For heaven's sake!’ She was tying her husband's bow-tie on me.

  'I feel a right prat.'

  'You're making a silly fuss about nothing, Lovejoy,' Thekla kept saying, dolling me up.

  'Thekla, love.' I wobbled giddily. 'I'm ill . . .'

  'Stop making it up,' she scolded, enjoying herself. She looked superb, having started getting ready at dawn, though her clothes today were really strange. 'You've had a dozen illnesses since we got out of bed. Worse than a child.'

  'There's an antiques auction, Thekla.' That brainwave also bit the dust.

  'No, Lovejoy. And just stop that.' She shoved my hands off her and stepped away to admire her handiwork.

  'I've buyers coming,' I invented, desperate. If the other dealers saw me at a mannequin parade I'd be finished.

  She went all sarcastic. 'From Christies? Sotheby's, hmmm?' She combed, my hair, tutting when it didn't stay down. 'Millionaires beating a path to penniless Lovejoy's cold cottage in East Anglia?'

  A motor honked in the lane. It was now or never. I collapsed, groaning. She stood there in glacial rage.

  'My old wound, love,' I gasped. 'My malaria.'

  'Lovejoy. I phone Ricard if you're not in that car in two minutes.'

  Which made me surrender. Her husband's an innocent killer—innocent according to law, but a murderer to the truthful. Being a pushover's hard enough without collecting more trouble.

  'Coming, love.' I forced a smile. 'I'm quite looking forward to it, actually. Will they have those new velveteen Florentine panel-striped gaberdines?'

  'I haven't heard of those, Lovejoy!'

  We left arm in arm, Thekla really interested. I hadn't either, having made it up.

  'No, dwoorlink? That designer, Galberti Rappada of Manchester. I was at school with him.'

  'I'd no idea, Lovejoy!' she cried, the cottage door banging on loose hinges. 'See? You love it!'

  We drove in her long saloon. Thekla's from Aldeburgh, so can mill around our old town almost with impunity. Thekla Paumann's wealth is independent of her husband's criminally weighty wallet.

  She insisted on arriving at the Moot Hall's front entrance, all lights and commissionaires, crowds ogling as though we were up for Oscars. Thekla stood smiling in queenly condescension while I tried to eel in without being noticed. Done up as I was like a tuppenny rabbit it was impossible. Oddly leapt out of the throng, grabbed my arm.

  'Lovejoy? That you?' He stared in disbelief.

  'Hello, Oddly.' I was shamefaced.

  'Never seen you spruced, Lovejoy. You nicking antiques inside?'

  'No.' I coughed, red. 'With, er, a lady.'

  His brow cleared. 'Oh, you're after grumble. Thought you'd gone strange. Here, that mazarine's gone.'

  'Gone? It can't have.' I was aghast. It was happening again.

  All around people were surging, arriving motors revving. Thekla was furious at the world's attention being deflected away from her gorgeous apparel. She eyed Oddly. He eyed her. He looked off-the-road, blue ex-R.A.F. greatcoat heavily patched, Wellingtons from some mucky farmyard, about as elegant as—usually, but not today—me.

  'Lovejoy!' she spat, smiling ice. 'Inside!'

  'In a sec, love. Oddly's got vital

  She whisked me up the steps and into the perfumed parlour with a grip like a haulier's clamp. I tried to scramble back for Oddly's news but she held me until we were circulating and smiling and being given that acidy wine that gives you indigestion.

  People called Thekla 'dahling' and me 'daaahhhling'. They were mostly women, cooing with more eyebrow play than a Victorian melodrama. They had a way of looking meaningfully over the rim of a glass that made my spine funny. The blokes were very, very quaint. I prefered Oddly's brand of oddity. He earned his nickname by blowing bubbles in soapy water dripped into his ear. I really envy him. I tried it, but it hurts. He does it for charity, quid a time, in the Donkey and Buskin pub.

  'Who's this feral theriac, Thekkie?' warbled a bird in a tuxedo and no skirt that I could see.

  'He found me, lovvie!' Thekla trilled, causing laughter from trendy folk of uncertain gender.

  It was all strange. I heard shy whispers. 'Have you seen those crashy stilletos, lovvie? In ultraish garishimmo fustian? I would kill for one!' Flapping hands, exotic wrists.

  Two women, shackled together at the ankles, paused. One asked me, 'Am I being unreasonable? Syndronised hair slides should be shot. Yes?'

  'Er,' I said brightly.

  'He loves syndronised,' her chainee pouted.

  'You fascist pig.' They hobbled off.

  A bloke in three cloaks swept up. He wore Turkish chain-mail, posed dramatically.

  'Tell me, liebkin,' he snarled. 'Tetrafluoro-ethylene-coated cotton's utterly pass-say, non e vero? Yea or absolo nein?’ He waited, mailed foot tapping.

  A passing mauve geranium in mountaineering gear with taup bells on his yard-long fingernails paused to help out.

  'What if Teflon makes material waterproof and wear-lasty? Who does crave twice-wearability?' They tripped away together.

  A lady almost poked my eye out with a mile-long fag holder, genuine ivory to show she wasn't hoodwinked.

  'Daaaahhhling,' she cooed. 'Penny for 'em?'

  Where I come from you have to be truthful when asked that. 'Somebody nicked my mazarine.'

  'Nicked . . . ?' She rotated slightly, stared. Her voice sank to a whisper. 'You look positively murderous, daaaahhhling.' And there in the press of a perfumed throng she moaned, kneading my arm. 'Sweetheart! What's a mazarine?'

  You've to pity ignorance. 'Think of a beautiful silver dish, fenestrated like a flat sieve, inside a silver fish container. Made by the greatest silversmiths the world's ever known. A mazarine.'

  'What's so special, Lovejoy?' She was honestly asking. I didn't throttle her, a miracle of restraint.

  'I divvied it—felt its vibrations—as a genuine antique,' I said, rage thickening my throat. 'I pretended it was a cheap fake, yet still some dealer bought it.'

  My mind flickered, went blank.

  The best I can hope for in life is to get only one thing wrong at a time, but I usually do it in clusters. It all comes down to understanding. The more you think you understand, the less you actually do. I suppose the end comes when you've lived through umpteen monarchs and know ten gross of nowt. It's scary.

  My other flaw is to be terrified of authorities, of violence, wrongful arrest—or rightful, come to that—accidents, or getting
caught with a sumo wrestler's missus. Oh, and mystery. Umberto Eco claims that all stories are detective stories, so we ought to like mystery. But when it barges in and upsets my world then I truly hate it. Mystery ought to keep out and let me get on.

  Here in this fashion turmoil I was doubly baffled, trebly worried, fourbly alarmed. The silver mazarine was my best attempt to collar the enemy, and I'd failed. The fashioners brought me back.

  'Naheen, dear. Where ever did old Thekla buy him?' This from the arm-kneading fagholder, gazing into me. She wore a dress made solely of, I swear, green and purple planks. They clattered as she moved.

  'More to the point, Dovie, how much?’ said a blonde in a chequered kaftan, a steel helmet.

  They trilled laughs. Three were gathered about me, with smiles that didn't mean it.

  'He's bursting with questions,' Dovie said, clacking her planks. 'Ask away, Lovejoy daaahhhhling.'

  'Ta.' I asked the third lady, a petite dark-haired lass, 'Why are you the only one with proper clothes on?' I'd wondered if she was rich and the others'd had to raid their attic rag bags. She wore a smart violet suit, blouse frothy at her throat.

  The world collapsed in a rollicking heap, shrieking. Folk rolled in the aisles, splitting their sides. It was all guffaws, uncontrolled laughter, everybody falling about and dropping drinks. I was mystified. What had I said? I'd only tried to make conversation.

  Except three weren't laughing. Me, nonplussed. Thekla, white with anger, inevitably at me. And the quiet lass, also white with anger, i.a.m.

  'Faye's the reporter, Lovejoy!' Thekla's voice was almost too tight to make it. 'We're the fashioneers!'

  She was beside herself with fury. Wouldn't speak to me again for a week, with luck.

  The pandemonium slowly abated, people telling each other of my gaffe, loudly reminding red-faced me that I was an idiot and they weren't. But why were they dressed in junky tatters and this bird not? It seemed worth asking.

  'Why're they all dressed in junky tatters?'

  'Lovejoy!' Thekla spat. 'I'll talk to you later!'

  Dovie clattered off sounding like a two-stroke outboard, with Naheen, recounting the story to gusts of hilarity. I was being punished, left alone and palely loitering. I stood like a lemon. Thekla and her fashion-daft mates had wafted, sanity taken wing.

  Faye hadn't. She wasn't mad at me any longer. Why not? My mind gave up.

  'Proper clothes!’ she said. 'Proper clothes?'

  Best stay mum, my brain warned. I blurted, 'Well, you're the only one doesn't look a pillock.'

  'Wrong, Lovejoy.' She had a dry voice, now quite smiley. 'I'm off-the-peg. They are the height of fashion.'

  Well, if she said so. Doubtfully I gazed about. There were now some two hundred, hallooing extravagantly, all admiring all. I'd not a hope in hell of reaching the buffet. I was starving.

  'Then why do you look bonny and them duckeggs?' I was puzzled. 'If that's their best, I'd give up.'

  'Forgive me, Lovejoy, but what are you doing here?'

  'God knows. I should be hunting.'

  'Hunting?' Startled.

  'Not foxes and that. Just some dealer.'

  Her hand crept to her throat. 'Not hunt, though? You sounded, well, menacing.' She laughed nervously.

  'Course not, love,' I said, all innocent. T only meant look for, see how they were doing it.' And why, I added silently.

  'What've they done?'

  'Brought me to ruin.'

  'You sound melodramatic, Lovejoy.' She looked at the throng, came back. 'These folk use those expressions and sound harmless. You . . . don't.'

  'Thekla's funding me. Hence . . .' Hence I'm looking stupid among tinsel mongers.

  'What will you do when you catch them?'

  A hesitation I hoped she didn't catch. 'I'll ask them how they outguess me in antiques. Nobody does that.'

  A gong went, almost jarring the teeth from my head. Everybody squealed and rushed.

  'Look, Lovejoy,' Faye said quickly. 'Can I see you after the fashion parade? Please? Phone.'

  She gave me a business card. Fashioneers hurtled past. Some saw Faye's card and called suggestive comments. I went red.

  Thekla caught me near the exit, angrily swept me to where total glamour ruled. That's what it said on the posters.

  2

  Fashion's not only embarrassing. It's a joke, very expensive. It's the physical equivalent of party politics, simple to the point of imbecility but barmy. It works like this. You take any material—plastic, metal, wood, glass even, silk, cotton— colour it, dress some skeletal subnourished bird in it, then make her prance/strut/gallop along a ramp, to inappropriate music.

  Purpose? None. Embarrassment factor? Up through the stratosphere. I know. I've been and seen. Worst truth: fashion is hype, no more, no less. You want proof? Joseph Briggs.

  Cut to smoky old Accrington's industrial heyday. Stouthearted Joe noticed some brightly coloured glass things, chucked out, rejected, sheer dross. Not even worth harrowing to the junk shop, those hacky lampshades, vases, floral glassware. That vibrancy, those brilliant Art Nouveau colours of the 1890s and after, were frankly out of fashion. Who wanted such 'ugly' objects? Nobody.

  But Joseph was resolute. Against all opinion he thought, 'But it's beautiful!' So Joe salvaged every single piece he could lay hands on. The moral? Decades later, half of Joseph Briggs' rescued glass pieces are now in the museum at Accrington. He donated them. People come from the world over to admire the amazing collection of Tiffany glass, for that's what the pieces were. Every so often, one of Louis Comfort Tiffany's specials—like the thick, bulbous, almost shapeless vases of so-called 'lava' glass—turns up on some road show, amid delirious excitement. Without Old Joe, we'd never have known. So light a candle for him, who stood firm against the tide of fashion, and virtually saved an art form.

  See? Fashion's as near to zero performance as mankind gets. It's almost always wrong.

  The show began with spotlights, and the inevitable Thus Spake Zarathustra. strobes to set off your epilepsy. You're supposed to go all agog. Then some announcement about somebody who'd studied a million years to achieve What You Are About to See. and out come the models wearing grunge. They all had ironing-board figures, coathanger shoulders, spindle legs. I felt sympathy, recognising starvation when I see it.

  Thekla seemed some sort of supremo, giving out orders, beckoning Faye and saying to bring the photographers and quick about it. She pretended to be bored, disagreeing harshly and getting an astonishing amount of compliance. Astonishing because it's my experience that women don't agree much among themselves. I sat trying not to meet the models' eyes, but they swaggered ever nearer doing their insolent saunter. They'd evidently heard of my gaffe. I sat wondering what fashion's for. I mean, anyone ever see a woman on the bus dressed in a black net bolero, cavalier thigh boots and ostrich feathers? No. so why bother?

  There also were bloke models, admiring themselves in the wall mirrors, swinging their jackets. They didn't look thin, but I wondered how they felt. I mean, how did it compare to a real job?

  We had to clap every apparition. I dutifully applauded, but was shamed. I once knew this lass who cooked. Well, that's not quite true because she was a gourmet, a nosh supremo, the world authority (she said) on pickles. No, honest. She wrote about meat, fish, sauces—God, did she write about sauces—in even,' glossy on earth. I was supposed to admire her pickle knowledge. She won awards for the damned things. It got so I couldn't move in my cottage for jars of frigging pickles. She'd even tell me new pickle ideas in the middle of the night, instead of concentrating on other things. We parted after a flaming row. I'd accidentally told her the truth: Cooking is only how to fry tomatoes. She went critical, swept out with her pickles, thank God. I mean, Juney writing about pickles, while half the world starves to death. Is this reasonable? One more fashion.

  Somebody slipped a hand in my pocket. Above, a girl pirouetting in plastic book-wrappers and strings of gilded hazelnuts, and somebody picks
my pocket in the million-guinea seats?

  I know some pickpockets who can pass you on the opposite pavement, and nick your wallet. No kidding. One subtle-monger in Bolton market could strip you clean without putting his pint down. That's class. But a woman's long fingers, painstakingly lifting the pocket flap? I sighed, didn't move. My pockets were Thekla's husband's anyway, and empty.

  On the catwalk above, two sandal-shod girls in leather fronds hung with bones swished past. Thekla led a standing ovation. I stayed seated in case Fingers Malone wanted to explore further.

  'Read it, Lovejoy,' somebody whispered, a woman.

  Read what? Nobody'd given me a programme, and I'd no money to buy one. Thekla ran a tight ship.

  'Lovejoy!' Thekla snarled down at me.

  I rose to clap. The two girls above took their time clearing off, so we could admire their mauve painted legs. To me they looked covered in warts. The lights dimmed with cymbals and a thunderous paradiddle. Meekly I went deaf. The two mannequins were seen in glorious fluorescent colours against black curtains. The place erupted at such spectacular beauty. I looked behind to see who was pestering my pockets. The seat was vacant.

  Thekla faced me, eyes brimming. The hall was a-chatter, people swooning at the splendour we'd seen.

  'Wasn't that superb, Lovejoy?'

  'Er, mmmmh.' Frankly, no. It was crud.

  'Those cherubs! Carrying it off!'

  'The, er, creations,' I murmured.

  A creature, two rings adorning each digit, leaned across to Thekla.

  'Thekkie, you terrible angel! You stole the world!’

  'Thank you, Rodney,' Thekla said modestly. 'They were rather stupendous, weren't they?'

  'Stupendous?' This apparition really relished grovelling. 'Globally awesome! Truly, truly!'

  'The next are yours, Rodney, I think.'

  'My modest little effort? Nothing compares!'

  Then it came, my instant nightmare. I recoiled in horror. A stick insect paraded down the catwalk, jerking and twitching, supposedly playing a guitar she carried. Her left half wore a sheath dress made of carpet slices cobbled together with sailor's twine. Her right vertical half was bare, breast, bum and all.