The Sin Within Her Smile

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘As usual. They got anything left?’

  ‘He’s sworn a few pieces out from Suffolk.’

  Europe’s common market’s really great. Its creation absolved governments of troublesome responsibilities, like protecting cultural heritage. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m against nationalisms. I am, however, for a little fairness. I detected Tinker’s reticence and shelled out for three pints and four pasties. He’d eat, with ale to irrigate solid calories.

  Gee Omen’s not his real name. I’d sussed it out as ‘nemo’ yonks before - no-one in Latin.

  ‘Eh?’ I asked Tinker between coughs and spits.

  ‘That tart as bought you, Lovejoy.’ He cackled, opening his mouth to reveal a cavern churning pieces of meat, potato, immersed in a slop of ale. I looked away, nick of time. ‘She’s his pal.’ He plucked my sleeve, came closer for a secret confidence. In a voice like a factory hooter he whispered to East Anglia, ‘She’s hump-and- dump, Lovejoy.’ And in case the coast had missed the point, he explained, ‘Fucks, then fucks orff, understand?’

  ‘Aye, Tinker,’ I sighed. I’m burdened by friends.

  ‘Screws,’ this paragon of eloquence emphasized, ‘then blues.’ ‘The Postern auction, Tinker,’ I said, to shut him up, though he’d actually given me an important warning. ‘What’s in?’

  ‘Nothing, Lovejoy, except a bloody glass thing. From the vicarage, Mersea Island. Never seed such. Like a huge chess piece, letter in the middle, ends sticking out - ’

  He stopped because I’d grabbed his windpipe. ‘Tinker,’ I told him quietly, ‘just nod or shake your head, okay?’ I slowly relaxed my grip and let his colour back. He wheezed, came to with a thunderous cough, spat across the taproom into the fireplace. ‘Glass crown on top?’ He nodded, swigged a pint in one go. ‘Goblet at the top, glass lettering in the middle like Cs and Vs, their feet projecting?’ His nod raised my hopes even higher. Excitement took hold.

  Formerly East Anglia’s trade - like that of Yorkshire and Leith - was muchly with the Baltics. Look at Culross, in Fife. Once a great walled burgh, palaceiand all, rich on salt and coal, then virtually a ghost town, it is now a respectable village. Like East Anglia, it has mirrored the Baltic trade. On the whole, Scandanavian glass was pretty mundane, except for Sweden, which filched Italians for Stockholm. It was the gifted Scapitta who got things moving about 1676 in Kungsholm. He chucked it up after a couple of years, but left a factory that flourished until Waterloo. Now, his ornate goblets sometimes emerge from attics hereabouts, a countryside memory. ‘Who was there, Tinker?’

  ‘Postern’s? Florence, Liz Sandwell, that poof singer from Eltenham and his butler, ought not to be allowed, Big Frank’s Tania, that forger with three wives. And a couple of barkers, stewed,’ he added with prim disapproval, ‘on flash.’

  Flash being home-distilled liquor, I could imagine. But Tinker’s news was interesting. A definite Scapitta piece is priceless. If it was a Kungsholm piece after Scapitta scarpered, it was still worth a fortune. And it takes a really skilled glassworker to make a replica ... ‘Tinker. I’ll go to Postern’s. If Imogen comes, tell - ’

  ‘No need, Lovejoy.’ He quaffed my unfinished drink. ‘She’s just arrived, talking to Gee. He stays in her house near the Priory.’

  I glared. ‘You stupid old sod. Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘You never asked.’ I ordered him another three pints. He could drink a brewery dry. ‘Know what I think, Lovejoy?’

  ‘No?’ I bent close, uneasy, for ghastly new revelations.

  ‘It’s not decent,’ he megaphoned. ‘Unmarried woman, taking a man in. It’s a carry-on - Lovejoy?’

  But I was gone, signalling apologies to Imogen who looked up smiling. She was with Gee Omen.

  You can always tell when a woman sits by a man what they are to each other. At least, sometimes always. Imogen and Omen were sharing more than cornflakes. I wanted Imogen’s gossip, but not at such cost. I rushed into the shopping precinct, but was waylaid by the singer from Eltenham, and his butler.

  There are friends, and friends you steer clear of. Sometimes I find myself nipping from alcove to gateway, nook to cranny, desperate to avoid this last category. Het up, I became careless.

  ‘Coo-ee! Lovejoy!’ a voice trilled.

  I continued on, looking at shops and smiling at prams.

  ‘Chuckie! Fetch Lovejoy!’

  Grainers Walk, an alleyway leading to the market, could swallow, but too late. A hand clasped my shoulder.

  ‘Lovejoy.’ A bass voice vibrated the cobblestones. ‘Come along, like a good gentleman.’

  ‘Chuck,’ I pleaded skywards where Chuck’s face hovered. ‘I’m pushed. And my leg - ’

  ‘Raddie is waiting, Lovejoy.’

  ‘I’m coming!’ I swear blokes his size don’t think the same as us. He can’t understand that we are at risk in a pub brawl. He’s serene. Mayhem never touches him. Nor, I might add, does it touch Raddie.

  The crowd parted as I was hauled along the pavement. Raddie was arranging himself in the lights of Sommon’s jeweller’s. The lights are those focused things that make the gems glitter. And no gem more glittery than Raddie. Raddie for radiant, he says.

  He purred. ‘Ever seen me so glamorous, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Er, aye, Raddie,’ I said. ‘Great.’

  ‘That all?’ He rotated, admiring himself. Chuck stood.

  ‘It’s the most superb ... ’ Christ, was the word ensemble, that women use? ‘. . . ensemble, Raddie.’

  I had to go canny because I killed his cousin once. You don’t reopen old wounds. If admiration was called for, admiration I’d give till the cows came home. The pedestrians passed by. Local yokels smile with a strange fond knowingness, spotting Raddie. I’m always

  pleasantly surprised: women think him a mischievous child playing naughty dressing-up tricks (no pun intended). Chuck stands checking attitudes.

  ‘You really think so, Lovejoy?’ Raddie murmured, dragging the corners of his mouth down. ‘I’ve gone maddissimo, haven’t I, Chuckie?’ He darted me a malicious glance and tittered. ‘Dress is beyond scruffs. But we butterflies have to, well, fly.'

  He looked a right nerk. Mascara’d eyes, false eyelashes, I suppose a wig (his hair hadn’t been long or magenta), an orange cloak in sequins, thigh boots like a pantomime principal boy’s, he’d have been laughable but for Chuck. Raddie’s diminutive, Chuck’s enormous, bull-necked, head shaved to a polish. He’s your impeccable London butler in tails, black tie, patent leather shoes. Chuck drives Raddie in a Rolls big as Guildhall. Raddie deals in Roman to Early English jewellery. He appeared about twelve months ago from the Continent. They live near the lighthouse, in a converted Martello tower.

  ‘Who did your colours?’ I smarmed, not wanting talk to turn towards missing relatives. ‘Magnificent!’

  He fluttered his eyelashes, swirling the air. He pointed irascibly at some innocent shopper who Chuck removed by simply lifting the astonished bloke out on to the pavement, leaving Raddie all the mirrors. ‘I had a wretched time with some mauve seersucker.’

  ‘Er, anything you want, Raddie?’ I was impatient. A fortune waited at Postern’s.

  ‘Yes, dear heart!’ He dragged his loving gaze from his reflection. ‘Sunday. Caravans, the raggle-taggle gypsies O.’

  I laughed, but my mirth dwindled. This was now weird, when somebody as unlikely as Raddie beamed in.

  Raddie batted me playfully with his luminous fan. ‘You are going, Lovejoy?’

  Best to be honest. I shrugged. ‘I’d like to oblige, but - ’ ‘Chuckie, dear.’ Raddie returned to his reflection. ‘Advise.’ Chuck placed a hand on my head, a sort of advisory hand, if you follow. ‘Lovejoy?’ His bass voice woke the pigeons up in Holy Trinity’s squat Saxon tower. I felt narked. Those feathered sods could go wherever they wanted without bonecrushers like Chuck coming the heavy. It’s not fair.

  I grinned affably. ‘I’m going for sure. I meant I wasn’t sure of the starting time - ’

  ‘Yo
u know,’ Chuck boomed. ‘The Moot Hall.’

  Raddie smiled in a way I didn’t like. Clearing my throat for air, I gently withdrew my head and backed away. ‘Right, then, Raddie. Hope it goes well, eh?’ I hesitated while Raddie twirled, eyeing his cloak’s hem.

  ‘Bye-hee, Lovejoy.’ He minced off towards the fountain, Chuck behind. I watched with great wariness until they were out of sight, then tiredly made my way to Postern’s corruption-riddled auction rooms that smelled of stale sweat and woodworm. I reached it like a drowning sailor reaches land, in sore need of normality. For normality read antiques.

  Raddie’s a singer at the Marquis of Granby. No mention of relatives, thank God, whether alive or the other thing.

  Postern’s changes hands every Budget Day. Threadneedle Street investors, sloshed in wine cellars, decide to launch out on the stormy seas of antiques. They arrive mesmerized, craving the giddy gelt made from the world’s mania for antiques. Every newspaper, pension fund, union savings company, resounds with tales of megamillions made from a threepenny splash. Like that Florida geezer who laid out two hundred quid for Giorgione’s The Three Ages of Man, then coolly snaffled Leonardo Da Vinci’s Christ Amongst the Elders for one and a half grand. It happens to everybody else, never me. The old placies, though, stay the same, musty, dusty, and crusty.

  Postern is of the waistcoat-and-chain brigade, moustache, lazaroidal, scrawny faces, pinstripes. I think they buy blokes like Postern from a defunct batch made in 1911 and found in a cellar.

  His thin-lipped smile died. ‘Lovejoy. Wait.’

  ‘Eh?’ I’d not had this before. ‘For what, Pozzy?’

  ‘There are gentlemen in.’ His smirk mingled admiration with fealty.

  ‘My money’s as good as theirs.’

  ‘They pay, Lovejoy. You default.’

  Silent, I stalked off - then nipped past the ironmonger’s into the auction house yard. The whiffler - an eminently bribable shifter of assorted antiques employed by the auctioneers - was having a smoke, heels on a fake Sheraton pouch table.

  ‘Wotch, Bert. Why’s the place barred?’

  Whifflers come in two sizes, the rotund corpulence and the funereal cachectic. Bert’s the latter, chain-smokes - he’s caused two fires - and picks losers at York Races.

  ‘Posh dough. The Continong, Lovejoy. Not the likes of you.’ ‘Who are they?’

  He eyed me with sour hope. I put on a show of shrugging off the whole thing. His hope of bribery died.

  ‘Brussels. Pals of the guv’nor’s friend Doussy.’

  Were they indeed? ‘We locals are Pozzy’s stock in trade, Bert.’ ‘He let in Flo Hughes.’ He sniggered at my angry frown. ‘Bloody birds. It’s always me out in the rain.’

  He relented. I was postponing his destitution at the bookie’s. ‘Slide in, Lovejoy. Don’t say I let you.’

  ‘Ta, Bert. I owe you.’ I eeled into the office, shushing Maureen, a middle-aged cynic I’ve wanted for years. She rolled her eyes, ignored me. She’s always busy, proof there are female workaholics.

  The auction rooms (why plural when they’re one big space?) were filled with junk in varying states of disrepair. Immediately I saw two favourites of mine that kept recurring. I faked them two years back. One’s an ancient rocking chair in red and white hickory. This is American wood, genus Carya. I’m told it’s a pretty tree. Its wood is elastic, lovely to turn on a lathe or for doing bent work. (I don’t mean illegal, I mean physically curving.) But, excited at getting hold of some seasoned Carya, I’d also made a mediaeval half-tester, that is, a wooden bed canopy. At the time I didn’t realize the wood was hickory, so quick as a flash I aged it and sold it on. Every dealer in the Eastern Hundreds has had it at some time or another. Sooner or later they erupt at mediaeval furniture made of pre-Columbus wood, and round and round the poor things go.

  Two men strolled among the crud. They wore overcoats with furred collars, homburgs. I’d seen one before, ordering a shipping container load from Long Melford.

  Florence Hughes was looking at a pelerine in Ayrshire white- work - think muslin with varied needlepoint infilling and pretty designs. Scotch work, William IV to mid-Victorian days. I’m always narked at how cheap these worked pointy capes and children’s bonnets sell. Some day, antique collectors’ll see sense. I sssss’d quietly at Flo, who came across with the vigour of the fraudulent. I drew her behind a dud mid-Edwardian wardrobe.

  ‘You’re early, Lovejoy,’ she said approvingly.

  ‘Eh?’ Then I remembered I’d promised her. ‘Oh, just making sure ... Look, love. Them blokes.’

  ‘Mr. Twentyman and his diamond merchant friend?’

  ‘Er, aye, him.’ Twentyman, London rep for the auction house near Hanover Square. I recognized him now. One of Lloyd’s of London’s 12,630 ‘Names’ - insurance moneyers - who had lately gone on to the breadline or ducked out. Gone are the good old days when Lloyd’s Names cabled to the San Francisco earthquake claimants in 1906 ‘Pay our policyholders in full.’ But, diamond? ‘Suss them for me?’

  ‘You’ll be on time, Lovejoy?’

  Women never trust me. It’s a flaw in their characters. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘As far as I could lob you, Lovejoy.’ She pulled my cheeks and plonked her moist mouth on me.

  ‘Gerroff, silly cow.’ I yanked myself clear.

  ‘They’ve horrible taste, Lovejoy,’ she said, checking with the woman’s slick everywhere glances. ‘They picked up a horrible glass goblet. Postern let them wrap it. Twentyman said to the foreigner, “Mustn’t forget what we came for!” They had a laugh.’

  ‘Postern saw them lift it?’ I could hardly believe this, but Florence wouldn’t lie.

  ‘Great ugly glass thing. Useless in a normal household. He put it in their motor.’

  Which explained why Postern was stationed by the door. To keep an eye on a valuable piece of antique Swedish glassware. For an auctioneer to fiddle so, this is very, very naughty.

  Slipping out, I strolled by the picture-framer’s on Peter Street, then up past Postern’s windows. He was still there. I gurned at him. But I really wanted to feel emanations from the big Bentley parked illegally on the slope. I almost staggered under the impact of the unseen radiance beaming from the motor. I don’t know how, but I got

  myself past. I was getting hungry. Dolly might want to get me something to eat. I had some money, but food is a woman’s job. They do little enough as it is.

  Antiques is packed with mysteries. Some are ancient. Like, why is the Bayeux Tapestry called that? It’s an embroidery, not a tapestry. And was made in Kent, England, not Bayeux. Other mysteries are secret and recent. Like, why did the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Simpson (yes, her) in their secret tryst in Hungary, in 1935, secretly telephone an antique dealer, Mr. Pick, late at night from their secret room in Budapest’s Hotel Donapalota? My own problem was all these once-rich entrepreneurs. Stupidly I went to find Brad at the boat race.

  The town is set on a hill. Below flows a river. It winds a bit, floods now and then, has ducks and anglers, is mindbendingly dull. Constable painted it. Other than that, forget it. Not one antique shop on its bonny banks.

  Brad is a boat-and-ocean man. That means barmy. Talk about gaff-rigged sloops and he’s your man. He has a serious workshop. Buys jeweller’s powders, corundum and such, polishes precious stones, works a lapidary’s rotary polisher. We’d never had an epidemic of gemmologists in the Eastern Hundreds before. It niggled. So, find Brad, ask a couple of questions, and I’d know where I was. I could get on with my grot-riddled life of penury.

  When I arrived, the children’s boating-pond had been closed for the river races. These are crippling non-jollities to me. People’s daftness only needs some excuse to spread like the plague. Across the meadow marquees had been erected. Ice-creamios, roll-a-pennies, stoves selling mushy black peas, fortune-tellers, balloon vendors, the whole shoddy mess of folk pretending they’re having a great time. It beats me.

  ‘Quid, Lovejoy.’ The burly man
on the gate stopped me.

  ‘I’m only going into the park, Ratbag.’

  ‘Entrance fee.’ Ratbag because he shoots the rats along the river- banks with an airgun. He hates them, does it to preserve something or other, dunno what. ‘For charity.’

  See? Charity makes everybody else holy and you Scrooge. ‘What charity?’ I hung on in case it was the cats’ home.

  ‘Mental Health Unit.’ He stood, ticket poised.

  ‘The Royal Charter says the meadow’s free,’ I grumbled, paying up. ‘The bloody war was fought over it.’ Hereabouts ‘the war’ means King Charles I’s Great Civil War.

  Ratbag told me Brad was down at the river. I moved, mystified, among the children, morris dancers, white-hatted bowlers, the throngs milling about the flower show and home-made cake stalls. A riot. Had they no homes to go to?

  Somebody grabbed my arm. ‘The male swan’s creating hell! It’s swiped Old Jarge into the wet.’

  ‘Not me, mate,’ I told him, cheering up. ‘I’m the lead boatman.’ Nobody deserved a ducking more than Old Jarge. He’s not the rural rustic he sounds. He’s the town council’s organizer.

  ‘Sorry.’ He vanished, still calling for help.

  Five boats were already in. Victorians had dammed the river with a weir, to form a pool. No barges use it now. Once, it was where the Roman barges discharged their cargoes from Gaul. So far has our civilization advanced that it is now used solely for these boat races. Four furlongs upstream, to a ruined mill. The winners do it a second time, the losers being freed to drink themselves gormless in the beer tent. So the day goes riotously on, until in a grand final - by then everybody’s sloshed senseless - one boat splashes home. It gets a song sung to it and floral tributes. I saw Brad’s team among the willows. Old Jarge was wiping himself free of mud, surrounded by a twitter of benevolent ladies. A huge cob glided balefully in midstream, eyeing all with hatred.