The Possessions of a Lady

by Jonathan Gash

  Within ten minutes I found one scrap, then two more. Another half hour, six, one thumb-nail size. Two hours I went at it. A dilute sun started washing St Osyth's tower, which ancient smugglers' swift cutters used for guidance to the despair of the Excise. I made fresh salt solutions as I went.

  Finally I had twenty pieces. The largest chunk was cindery brown, nearly an inch across. Several bits were the size of my little fingernail, the smallest a spicule. I'd got enough to survive.

  Even a remote windswept shore is wondrous. I found several blobs of copperas, but left them. In years gone by, these heavy masses were excitedly sought on the Eastern Hundreds sealands by village boys. They'd teem down at low tide to Walton and suchlike places, gathering sacks of the stuff. In one year, 150 tons.

  People'd buy the copperas, which country folk still call 'vitriol', and put it into open-air tanks. Rainwater would wash its goodness into lead buckets. This horrible liquid (it stinks to high heaven, really ruffs) was then reduced in a heated lead-lined boiler, into crystals of iron sulphates, your original vitriol. Once, highly saleable, but not now. It's still used by the older antique forgers, but younger fakers have no patience, too hooked on mass markets to do a proper job.

  There were other things. Wood, jetsam from ships. Here, I'd once found a Roman coin, a denarius sadly honed by the sand. You occasionally find fossils, ammonites. As I hunted, I saw Wonker beachcombing three miles to the north—he's a flotsam sculptor, holds shows in London galleries. He didn't wave. Odd. I'm sure he saw me.

  Elevenish, I hailed a man fishing in a rowing pram out of Pyefleet Channel.

  'Caught any yet?' I hullooed.

  'Not a thing.'

  'Ferry me, please? Not near the oyster beds.'

  He laughed. 'Squeamish, eh, booy? Brad told me.

  All in all, a good start. Ominous.

  8

  To snare somebody l didn't even know existed, I'd need gelt and help. I headed back to Lydia's mother's place. A vintage Bentley stood outside.

  'Lovejoy.' Mavis welcomed me glaring, a tribute to finishing schools, polo, and vitamin supplements, she made my name a denunciation.

  'Hello, Mavis.' I gave her time to invite me in for breakfast, Nothing. 'Er, is Lydia in, please?'

  'No.' Her lip curled in scorn. I like to see that, even if it's me that's being bollocked. Mavis's lips are magic. 'Look you, Lovejoy! Filthy, muddy. I've forbidden Lydia to have anything more to do with you.'

  I didn't understand. 'I want help, please.'

  'You mean you want some woman to scrounge off, to . . . to use, Lovejoy! Don't come here again!'

  'But . . .'

  'Lydia is joining Lissom and Prenthwaite real professionals! I have just arranged Lydia's salary. Mr. Prenthwaite has signed forms.'

  'She can't.' I was aghast. 'She's my apprentice.'

  'Apprentice? For how many more years, Lovejoy? And you stole my commemoration mug! A wedding memento! I shall report you to the police!'

  Oh, hell. I'd left it on the beach. 'Look, love . . .'

  'Don't you dare "love" me!'

  The door slammed. I turned, nowhere to go, with mv little sack of raw amber. I felt sorry for it. Umpteen millions of years in forming, the most beautiful bio gem in Creation, reduced to being hawked about. Rain came. I thought of Roger's posh scheme, of the aromatic Jessica, Carmel, and her superstitious Tubb. I was hungry.

  Hunger means food. The card was in my pocket. I found a phone kiosk, told a sulky operator I'd been instructed to reverse the charges, and got through to the Mayfair number. She'd promised me grub, after all.

  'Hello? Lovejoy, for Orla Maltravers Featherstonehaugh.'

  'This is she.' Brisk, curt.

  'Er, sorry about last night. I tried . . .'

  'Don't lie, Lovejoy. Be here, five-thirty, today.'

  'I can't. I've no money, and I'm . . .' Mavis had spotted it, so all women would. 'I'm filthy.'

  No question, just an amused assertion. 'Then clean yourself up.'

  'I can't. My home's gone.' Even to me I sounded pathetic.

  Orla purred, 'Stand or deliver, our Thekla. You weren't destitute at the fashion show. What happened?' She was falling about laughing, but hard in the voice.

  'Are you a dealer?' Into the unexpected silence I said eagerly, 'I've harvested some sea amber. I'll fake you a Georgian pendant. Just give me place to work.'

  'You'll what?’

  Well, she'd been too good to be true. When all else fails, try truth.

  'I rang hoping you'd stand me a meal, love.'

  'Is it really that bad?'

  She was probably a fashioneer friend of Thekla's anyway. 'Cheers, love. Ta for the offer of yesterday.'

  She started to say something, but I rang off. I walked into rain. Well, rain washes mud off.

  Behind the town library's a derelict area. Rag-and-bone men, shoddy-and-tat dealers, assemble there. When I was little, they'd go round our streets crying 'Rag bo-o-o-o-one! Donkey sto-o-o-o-one!' For old rags or bones you got a block of white, grey, sandy rubbing stone, to do your front steps with. Donkey carts have gone now. It's all dodgy pickup trucks with peeling number plates. The space is about an acre, weeds, bare soil, rusting cars, and a shed where Kent the Rammer sells tea and fruit cake. When all else fails, this is the place. A few people were mulling over loads of clag in the damp. I drifted to the tea shed.

  'Lovejoy?' Tinker, begrimed mittens full of cake, was slurping his breakfast in his natural habitat. Sometimes he sleeps in abandoned vans, to save having to cross into St Peter's churchyard, his permanent abode.

  'Wotcher, Tinker. I'm looking for somewhere to work.' I felt slightly odd, my insides palpitating. I looked about; not an antique in sight.

  'Been amber fishing? Kent's got better.'

  Kent the Rammer's a ram raider. He raced motors at Silverstone, Brands Hatch, the famous places. Retired for taking bribes, he's in demand for driving rammers—nicked cars fitted with battering rams, for crashing into shops or warehouses. It's the modern way. Birmingham rammers are best, present company excepted. I'd seen Kent actually do it, and he's dynamite. He's slight, placid-looking, butter wouldn't melt and all that.

  'Wotcher, Lovejoy.' Kent leant over his counter. 'Fire tigers, three sets. Poncey, but maybe old.'

  Now, you used to see fire irons at house clearance sales when auntie's imbecile cousins sold her house off. Poker, fire tongs, and a little shovel is one set. Remember when everybody had coal fires?

  Guess what common antiques have soared most in price over the past thirty years. Have a stab. Impressionist paintings? Tompion clocks? Georgian silver, used by the Prince Regent? None of the above.

  The answer is fire irons. Once, you couldn't give them away. They were scrap, for pennies. Astonishingly, you can make your fortune from them.

  Unless you're like me, able to detect the melodious chimes of an antique's secret beauty, you have to know what people want. That means learning. And anybody can learn fire irons.

  Think only of the shovels. Fancy shovels are carved. Shell shapes, bell shapes, hearts, flowers, rounded shovels with twist-stem handles. Iron, of course, the first ones were. But came the age of brass. The Victorians, my heroes, put brass handles on the steel shafts. The brass handles almost always unscrew and make a perfect fit. Valuable tip, that.

  'Got a few,' Kent staggered me by saying.

  'Don't!' I yelped. As scavengers looked up at the fuss, I ahemed and strolled to Rammer's side door.

  He got the point. Tinker came to shield me from sight. Rammer handed me a pierced bell-shaped fire shovel, steel. I started to sweat. This explained my odd feeling, for it was genuine. Twisted steel handle, matching rivets symmetrically placed to hold the undamaged, exquisitely pierced, thistle pattern blade.

  'Want to see the others?' Rammer asked casually, turning to serve a vagrant motor dealer tea and a wad.

  Weak at the knees, I waited until the customer had gone. 'The rest, Rammer?'

  'I think there's thre
e sets. Not much use, though.'

  'The ponceys, please?' Rammer'd meant fancy. 'Any with . . . ?'

  With leaves twining along the handle, different colours of copper, vine tendrils perfectly preserved. And fire tongs still with their dual central tips, quite like axle caps, covering the ends of the pivot rivet. Nowadays, this Art Nouveau work may not look much, but it means wealth. Victorian craftsmen were so keen on Nature's emblems that they threw caution to the winds. Hang durability, they cried, show off your skill. So they swapped brass and steel for the milder copper. Hence, copper fire irons are rarest. Like these.

  Tears filled my eyes. Perfection, a dream. And I'd begun to doubt myself. I was off my rocker.

  'Here, Lovejoy.' Tinker stuffed my bag of amber into my pocket. I must have let it drop. Rammer went to serve somebody at the front of his little shed. Tinker hid the fire irons under his coat flap.

  'How come, Tinker?'

  He grinned with triumph. Bristly stubble improved him somehow.

  'That old fireback, Lovejoy. I asked, along the road they're building. Some old houses got spliced. Where there's Elizabethan firebacks, there might be more stuff. So I tipped Rammer off. He's done rams for the navvies' ganger. But they'll cost, Lovejoy.'

  'Price doesn't matter, Tinker. I'll pay.' I'd have to. I'd let myself get too dispirited. Tinker had done well, taken over, doing my job. I felt ashamed.

  'Three full sets, and one matching fender.'

  'No bucket?' I held my breath.

  'Aye, Lovejoy. Copper, flowers going daft on its outside.'

  An Art Nouveau coal scuttle, properly called a bucket, with a fire-kerb, would buy a house. Or my cottage back.

  'What do we do, Lovejoy?'

  'I'll have the gelt for Rammer by closing time. Cash. Tell him my price is . . .' Quickly I judged Rammer's old Escort corroding listlessly nearby, Rammer's affair with a barmaid that had cost him. His brother was in gaol. Rammer has a gambling streak. 'A new motor plus a thousand in his hand. Okay?'

  'Right, Lovejoy. Here,' Tinker asked as I turned to go, 'got enough for a pint?'

  'Sorry, mate.' Dealing in a fortune in one breath, not a bean the next.

  'Where'll you go now, son?' he asked.

  That made me pause. I ran through possibilities in my mind, then slumped at reality.

  'Aureole's,' I said sadly, and went, lamb to Aureole's dating chain. Even when I try to look posh I'm no Douglas Fairbanks, Sen. or Jun. But she had a vested interest in lending me her flat to do the amber.

  As I hurried off I was hailed by Vinegar. He always has money, just enough to cue scroungers.

  'Wotcher, Lovejoy. Do me a job?'

  'How do, Vinegar. No. Too pushed.'

  Folk like Vinegar are always in troubles of their own making. He's nicknamed Vinegar because he scooped a wondrous antique once for a song, clearing out an attic. A marble bust of Pope Sixtus IV, of unholy memory. It was mint, worth a fortune, and he'd paid cornflakes. Then he committed a cardinal sin—cleaned it with vinegar, a.k.a. acetic acid. Marble's very name is a byword for hardness ('Hard as marble,' et lying cetera), yet it's soft, as stone goes. Kitchen vinegar rots it like bad teeth. I slaved to rescue his precious bust for weeks, impregnating it with coloured waxes like the ancient Romans and Greeks did. No good. The bust was ruined.

  Watch how an antique dealer approaches any marble object. He'll run a hand over it, rubbing his fingers afterwards to see if they're waxy. You can tell that marble has been 'wax improved' by examining the surface in oblique sunlight, to see wax. That's why dealers always take time studying 'improvable' marble antiques. All the marble stones lend themselves to fakery. Thus, the pretty serpentine—soft enough to cut with a knife—is often dyed to imitate jade. Plain old calcite, stained by cobalt pigments, is a famous let's-pretend turquoise. Marble itself is sometimes stained coral to fake, well, coral. Cheap humdrum magnesite subs for precious lapis lazuli. The list is almost endless. My favourite dye is indigo, dissolved in urine.

  Gently heat the marble, dip it in, and presto!—a precious new gemstone instead of common marble. It's a rotten trick, though, and I would never do it. Hardly ever, honest.

  'I've a bit of dosh, Lovejoy.' Vinegar's droopy dogface was under an umbrella. I slowed for shelter.

  'What's it to do with, Vin?'

  'Sfrags, Lovejoy. A job lot. Divvy them, eh?' Sphragistics is the study of seals—the amulet and insignia kind, not those cruel nautical salmon slayers.

  'Are they any good?'

  'Brilliant. Romans, I reckon.'

  'No, Vinegar. Ta. I'm doing contract work.'

  He halted. 'You don't look in work, Lovejoy.'

  'Cheers, Vinegar.' I went, plunged in despond. If word had reached Vinegar that I was touting for work, I'd sunk really low. He was always last to get any news.

  Anyway, his Roman sfrags were probably a group of eight I'd made months back from shells I'd snaffled at Brightling-sea. Forged Roman seals are quick to make, five a day, and cheap. Last thing I wanted was to buy my own fake handiwork back.

  Twenty minutes later I was in Aureole's fiat. She gave me the key, delighted. It's down by St Leonard's. I had a bath, got my clothes drying on her radiator. I towelled dry, brewed up, foraged and scoffed, then lay on her bed, alone. You can't have everything.

  9

  Coming to, I washed the amber in cold salted water for a proper look.

  Folk wrongly call it 'sea crystal'. Amber contains no real crystals at all. I nicked a lens out of Aureole's specs. You sometimes see small insects, ants, and the like trapped within. Gruesome, but ladies, and antique dealers, love them. Proof of antiquity, they think. Not quite true—a bloke along the coast incorporates live ants into copal varnish and does a pretty good fake amber. You can be fooled. Copal resin, worthless, is the only amber fake you need worry about. It comes from all sorts of hot-climate trees, and you find bits dislodged from lumber jettisoned by shipping. The famous 'electric test' for amber—rubbing it on your blouse, then seeing if it will pick up paper by its negative electric charge, is useless; almost any plastic comb will do it. The Ancient Greeks called amber 'electrum', from the sun, hence our word electricity.

  Aureole has a gas cooker. Finding no paper clips, I borrowed one of her earrings, prised out the modern grotty stone and chucked it. I heated the wire to redness. With the blade from her manicure set I scraped a flake off each amber piece, touched it to the hot wire, and got a satisfying aromatic pong, a good positive sign. One or two little flies were inside. I avoided their reproachful gaze, transfixed since Eocene and Palaeocene times these sixty million years.

  One good-sized piece was cloudy, whitish. I searched Aureole's kitchen for some rapeseed oil, but she had none, really uncooperative. The trick is dunk the amber in hot oil. Cloudy amber clears quickly—the oil's supposed to soak into the minute bubbles. I hate it, because it's cheating. The oil causes minuscule circular cracks, which make the amber gleam more. Everybody does it, even to valuable cuts from block amber. Needless to say, if you're offered an amber pendant, examine it with a lens. Those little fissures produce an almost sequin-like glittery look and are a give-away that the amber's been abused.

  Like I was doing. Sorry.

  Then a slice of luck. Aureole had just ironed clean linen handkerchiefs. I borrowed two, tore them into strips, laid my ambers one to a strip. Her whisky I'd poured into her fridge's ice tray, so the alcohol separated. Soak linen in neat alcohol, you have the perfect instrument for amber. Not only does it clean it, but it gives further proof—copal smudges your white cloth after thirty seconds.

  Aureole also had a pressure cooker. I scraped the ambers clean, heated some water, bagged selected ambers in a strip torn from her skirt, and immersed the bag in the pan. While it warmed, I bent her eyelash-crimpers—horrible things, give me the willies—to make a pressing tool. She could always buy new. And why'd she muck about with her bonny eyes anyway?

  Amber warmed just short of boiling water goes pliable. You just push bit
s together. After, heat it to about 180 degrees, maybe less, and mould it firmly. I borrowed her garlic press, which compresses amber as well as a proper tool if you hammer a flat piece of metal into its perforated base— luckily, Aureole had a modern pewter pendant I used for that. Improvised gadgetry's never easy. I took five goes, and ruined her implements, but you can't make an omelette without et cetera. So I made a lovely 'ambroid' chunk, made of smaller pieces. We cheat like this because a large piece is more valuable than several bits, for antique amber pendants, earrings, necklaces.

  You can always tell ambroid, though. Look closely, you'll see interfaces—planes where the light changes, like that bobbled glass in porch windows. The only other reliable sign is that ambroid's bubbles become stretched instead of round.

  After all this, I owned one large piece of ambroid, and six smaller decent genuine ambers. In celebration I brewed up, fried some eggs and bacon, borrowed her cheese, and finished her bread. She hadn't any puddings, which I thought a bit stingy. Why invite a friend in, with nothing to eat? Aureole ought to get her act together.

  One niggle. Why did Wonker ignore me on the shore? We're pals. I'd done him favours. He was making an antique wall plaque for me. Odd.

  Worn out, I hid the ambers, lay starkers on the bed and slept the sleep of the just.

  There wasn't much grub left when I woke. I scavenged for calories. I put the telly on, and found a fashion show. I observed their antics, bemused.

  The narrator's words, for instance. Frantic-alloso? Petrificationally? When he asked his third desperate question, 'Is this black zooish frondelle actually happenish?’ I switched off. I was in enough trouble from Thekla's mob.

  Hanging about almost got me caught. I was barely out of the door before Aureole's small purple motor came whirring round the corner. I ducked out of sight through the little park that backs onto East Hill. It was coming on for dark. The Ship tavern was booming. Mercifully Tinker was in, with Roadie sulking beside him.

  'Wotch, Tinker. Got a sec?'