The Sin Within Her Smile

by Jonathan Gash

  I said to the police, ‘Look. No magistrate’ll sentence a young mother with mental...’ You can fill in the rest. I waxed sad, lyrical. I invented case histories. I told how some shop had started criminal proceedings and been firebombed, petrol through the letterbox . . . We left twenty minutes later. I was furious with Luke.

  It is on record that Christie’s ‘Special Clients’ section features an exquisite bird on the desk who, as auction day approaches, dons ever-lower necklines and ever-shorter miniskirts. It’s also a matter of record that the best predictors of Hong Kong’s stock market are the feng shui mystic diviners. They use sticks, sand trays, birds in cages. Not a computer in sight, yet they out-perform all known stock exchange analysts. In other words, life is a series of illusions. To prove it: which bank, established 1692, recently employed an exorcist to rid its London offices of ghosts? Answer: the Queen’s bank, Coutts, that’s which. Therefore nothing is quite what it seems. I went for Luke because he was phoney.

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me about Phillida?’ I’d dragged him from the caravan - first time I’d seen inside. ‘How many more surprises?’ I bawled like a stranded seal.

  ‘Keep calm, Lovejoy.’ He was untroubled, just stood there. ‘It’s all the same if you’re going to push off.’

  ‘It bloody well is!’ I paced like a wrestler about to go for it. ‘I’m bloody sick of you and your loonies!’

  ‘Then go, Lovejoy.’ He didn’t even shrug. Now, very few blokes behave like this. I stifled my anger, glanced inside the caravan.

  Humphrey, tall and languid, was reading a book by a dim electric light. Beyond him, Boris sat tapping his knees with his hands, over and over, staring.

  ‘Will you let me?’ I asked. ‘Or will I be brought back?’

  ‘That’s for your absence to decide.’

  See what I mean, appearances? Luke, garbed like a yokel, talked like some maverick politico. I knew instantly that if I took a swing at him he’d flip me casually into the village pond. I finally managed a nod.

  ‘Where do we sleep?’ It was too late to go anyway.

  ‘Bunks. We’re not too crowded.’

  ‘And grub? I’m famished.’ Now he really did shrug. I supposed they’d eaten while I’d been at Tippett’s antique shop. There was a pub still open thank God. Phillida was already in her caravan, probably pilfering Rita’s things. I headed disgustedly for the Rose and Crown, Polkahorn, and slipped round past it in the dark.

  Tippett’s antique shop was shuttered. A red box on the wall signalled electronic alarms. It would be phoney. No antique dealer wants electricians knowing his layout in detail.

  There’s always a cran - nooky lodgement for leaving antiques after hours. I found it round the back. A light was on at the second floor. There was a vague sky glim from the riverside lights. I shifted my head, side-side and back, for night vision, and saw the slit in Tippett’s wall. Antique dealers would wrap up small handies - antiques dinky enough for your pocket - and post them through the slit. So Tippett must have a cran with larger entry.

  Cursing Dolly for not arming me with flashlights, I stumbled about the yard. Tippett’s cran turned out to be a wash house now converted into Fort William. I listened inside my chest for a chime but felt nothing. No antiques in store today, then. Rule One is that a home cran is always linked with the dealer’s house. It was locked but the back door astonishingly wasn’t.

  This meant visitors. There’s nobody more paranoid than an antique dealer. I slipped in, listened.

  Hardly anything, just a murmur. Stairs are a nuisance, but I had to go up.

  An aroma caught my nose, made me smile. Somebody was being naughty, using phenolformaldehyde. It’s a common trick: paintings in oils take up to thirty long years to solidify. Add phenolformaldehyde, they harden a year every single day But the pungency is a giveaway for a couple of weeks. So Tippett was a forger, hey?

  The stairs didn’t creak by some miracle. The door was shut. It was odd to hear Meg’s angry voice. Eavesdropping’s horrid, but I defy anybody not to do it. Test it. Next time you’re on a train, take out some photographs and see what happens. Everybody cranes to see, ticket inspectors, nuns in the next seat, the world starts rubbernecking. They’ll do anything to glimpse your damned pictures. Pass a couple snogging in some alleyway, your head swivels like a turret gun, right?

  ‘I can’t stand the cow, Dad.’ Meg was blazing.

  ‘Don’t say that, love.’ Tippett sounded cowed. A man trying to argue with his daughter. ‘She’s been good.’

  ‘My mother’s a bitch! I wouldn’t have anything to do with the rotten mare if it wasn’t for you. That’s why I agreed to Florence coming in. If it wasn’t for Simon I - ’

  ‘Listen, Meg.’ Real anguish. ‘There’s still time. I’ll buy you a holiday. You could be in Toronto, your Uncle Jack’s, when the balloon goes up.’

  ‘And let that sow queen it?’ She said something Welsh and vicious. ‘Please, Meg. Imogen gets carried away - ’

  ‘Carried away?’ Meg slammed something down. ‘She’s shagging Omen. And sniffs around Simon like she’s on heat!’

  Well, I left then, too scared to stay. Florence? Meek old Florence Hughes was a tea-lady, a part-timer in antiques for pin money. What did she have to offer a scam this big? And Imogen Meg’s mother, Tippett her father? Gulp. I’d once come between a mother and daughter, and believe me shellfire’s kinder. It had been a nightmare of evasion, seduction, lies, a losing battle with the daughter bent on raping me at all costs. I still drive round Norwich, never through, in case.

  The caravans were somnolent. The horses were standing nearby, a blanket thing over each. I glanced at the church. An alabaster knight, feet crossed to show he’d made the Holy Land, lay near the lady chapel. But I was too tired, and anyhow the thought of stealing some of the precious stone honestly never crossed my mind.

  ‘Isn’t it time you went to bed?’ I asked the nags. They didn’t even look my way. I had a pee near the tree, and climbed the caravan steps. A torch light was on. One bunk lay empty. I stripped.

  The bunk was hard and inhospitable. A huge motor started very quietly as I dowsed the glim. I never notice vehicles much, but vaguely remembered a few cars parked by the riverside. Possibly courting couples, commercial travellers saving hotel expenses? I gave up, turned on to my side, wishing I had Dolly, or Elaine, Jessina or Tania, Cerise, Betty or even Janie -

  ‘Night, Lovejoy,’ Luke’s voice said from opposite.

  The sod had waited awake for me to return. I was narked. Maybe you’re vigilant, pal, I thought, but you just wait.

  That night I slept funny. I usually drop into sleep like a penny off the edge, but this time I kept dreaming. Have you ever dreamt in two sections, like watching two films, knowing that you were only dreaming so it was all right? Like that.

  Slipping in and out of one dream then the other, I slumbered fitfully. One dream had really happened a year since.

  There was this crowd. I was waiting to cross to the Antiques Arcade, Woody’s caff, somewhere. A monstrous press of people, flags, buskers, town councillors trying to look honest, the whole shebang, bunting across Head Street, a band. Somebody was coming to town. Now, there’s real royalty and lookalikes. I mean, there’s a bonny Queen Maggie - of Redonda, a minuscule guano-covered blob named by Columbus. She runs a furniture shop in Bolton, Lancs., bless her. Fine, okay, don’t knock it. On the other hand, there’s Royalty, cap R.

  She came in a great entourage, was welcomed at the town hall by robed grovellers. Young, gracious, right royal, the crowd exclaiming. I eeled through. Something primitive stirs at the sight of royalty. It’s as if Her Highness was somehow family. Maybe that’s what royalty is, mutual ownership? Families, my old Gran used to say, you can’t choose. Choose politicians any day of the week, and ditch them quick as wink if you’ve a mind.

  Looking bonny, she answered the mayor and his minions. That’s the trouble nowadays, politicians behave like royalty, and royalty tries to loo
k like politicians. All around me, people were talking - isn’t she nice, never mind That Scandal, how many years between her and her brother the Prince, isn’t she like her uncle. Suddenly the photographers thrust. I was sent flying, into one of the royal’s groupies. This aide was a slight tough chap, smart suit. It was he who hauled me upright.

  ‘Watch out,’ he said, smiling. ‘You’ll get arrested.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ I went red. Her Highness looked round.

  ‘No harm done,’ he said. ‘Don’t blame the photographers.’

  That was it. My dozy mind played the dream over and over. It wasn’t much of a cliffhanger. Anyway, dreams are stupid. The only thing was the face of the aide who raised me from the red carpet. It was Boris.

  Smiling, hauling me upright, joking, dusting me down, following HRH in. Over and over, between snippets from the second dream, the aide-de-camp Boris.

  My other picture, as I sweated and turned, concerned Humphrey. His face was pictured sideways on under some headline. I couldn’t read the terrible words. He was shamed, though people were pleased with him. How could this be? He was trying to avoid being photographed, tortured, while people applauded.

  The image was grainy, like some old daguerreotype. A newspaper picture? Except I don’t read the papers, like I no longer read Toy- town. Recently? Aye, recently, my dozing mind answered. Then Humphrey’s tormented countenance would metamorphose into Boris’s smiling face as I sprawled for the hundredth time under the royal feet...

  Demented, I wrestled the night into my first dawn on the hoof.

  There’s something about waking early in a camp. Even in a tiny market town. A horse-drawn cart had crossed the bridge about four o’clock. I lay awake thinking. The others were snoring - not Luke; he’d be like Hereward the Wake, kipping one eye open in case the Normans came clanking up. Boris snored, Humphrey seemed to sleep sad. No noise from the other caravans. Little Arthur was waiting to blow, like Krakatoa.

  Thinking of women, the lanx was the ultimate lure. It’s impossible to convey the exhilaration. Think of it. Centuries pass, then hey presto! There was the Derbyshire find nearly three hundred years ago, true. And since the fifties there’d been others. But a lanx isn’t just a tray, any more than a woman is just a woman. This one had shown visible clues - mixed pagan deities frolicking among early Christian emblems and saints. Which saints? Which emblems, and why? Further, whose inscriptions? Such scraps are the keys of history, of nations. As I say, like women. The lusts for antiques and women are one and the same. Remember that. Where I was born, they still come to blows over Mary Tudor.

  A car droned through. Somebody trudged along the river footpath, hawked up, spat into the water. I sneered. Not a patch on Tinker. His coughs would awaken the dead in Polkahorn’s churchyard. His phlegm would have blocked the weir.

  You’ve only to see something so glorious as a priceless - well, two-million-quid - silver artwork, and your mind demands, hang on, just a sec, what the hell? I’d heard of a monstrance being dug up last year - the huge display piece for the Host, in radiant gold. Then somebody’d told me about a patten, a small gold winged tray communicants put under their chin. Then Tinker heard of a lavabo bowl... But here comes the first concrete evidence, a fragment held by the perfumed, compelling Mrs. Farahar. Was she all posh-frock- and-no-knickers, as old ladies scathingly call a sham, or was she real?

  Then, land?

  There are mysteries in land. I believe a country imposes its stamp on its folk. It’s spooky. Go to Glastonbury, and your soul’s forever looking over its shoulder wondering. Stonehenge brings an odd peace. A hyperactive city bloke I know goes to Stonehenge at holidays, just stands there for four days, rain, snow, hail or blow, says it’s rest. See what I mean?

  There’s a place called Flag Fen in Cambridgeshire. Go there, you come away mystified, like when you’ve made love for the very first time. You wonder what life’s all about. You stand looking at the low wet ground in that mist. How come the Ancient People built huts, huts by the score on a vast wooden three-acre platform, in the middle of a huge marsh? The effort was prodigious, driving enormous oaken posts into the mud, then weaving spillikins between. The bafflement doesn’t end there. The Old Folk then lobbed all their precious possessions into the waters. It was no whim. They kept it up for 1,200 years, age after age. Sacred brooches, priceless (to them) millstones were smashed and splashed over. Dogs were sacrificed and plop went Fido - always on the seaward side- Gold rings, bangles, jewels, carvings, the lot. To the Ancients, the stuff was literally priceless. Why did they do it? To propitiate the water gods ‘because the Ice Age’ melted and the North Sea rose about 1300 bc and scared them? Dunno. But it’s scary. Sacred to them means sacred to us. It’s no good rabbiting on. See, and feel, for yourself.

  Sometimes, there’s too much, like in Japan. That kingdom has

  ancient ruins. The going rate of excavation runs at 8,170 a year. You’d think that’d be enough, right? Not so. Kyushu’s supposed to be where Japan started, so diggers there were overcome when they discovered an ancient burial jar, over three feet tall. Celebration time, fame for the archeologists, cameras, the lot — Then they excavated another! Jubilation! Then another. Then a hundred more. Then two thousand. Agony tinged ecstasy. One huge burial urn over twenty centuries old delights Curator Elsie, who’s responsible for storing it in the Saga prefecture there. But two thousand? What can Elsie do when yet another daily truckload deposits fifty more on her museum’s doorstep? Answer: break up restored burial jars into pieces again, for space.

  It gets worse. What if you discover the one true ancient Yamatai kingdom? Superb, right? But not if you want to build a new industrial enclave on that very spot. Then you’re into the endless battle of jobs versus culture and backwards reels the cortex. One lobby screams, ‘Think of the national heritage!’ Opponents yell back, ‘You want us to live in a frigging museum?’ It comes down to grave robbers versus international financiers. And, what about us, who just love seeing, touching, these wondrous sacred items? The answer’s a crude noise, a raspberry. That’s why I hate curators, archeologists, and self-seeking city councils. It’s not just Japan. Egypt’s in a worse mess. Go inside our own Victoria and Albert. Owners of antiques are excused Government death duties - if they hand their treasures over to the taxman. You can inspect the records of tons of such ‘gifts’. You can even see them - still unwrapped. Some system, eh? Sorry to go on. It’s the old problem of sham, writ large, writ sly.

  A huge motor whispered close, stopped. No door slammed. I stayed where I was, staring at the caravan ceiling. Pretence is the perennial problem. See a lovely bird, you’re captivated. Nothing you can do except hope she’ll make smiles with you. You receive her magnificent gift of love, but the question remains, who is she really? That’s why older women are best. They know who they are. There was once a great place built in 806 ad, in Italy. Chapel of San Vincenzo, the largest church on earth, supposedly ordered by Charlemagne. A chapel is holy, pious, place of prayer, okay? But this place was occupied by 1,000 monks, plus their servants, in terrific splendour. See? Pretence. Think pretence through, there’s no such thing as motive.

  Murder protects a pretence. It feeds it, enables it to survive. Otherwise the mask would fall, revealing .. . what?

  Sighing, I rose silently, decided to see what Mrs. Farahar wanted. It was a mistake, I knew. Women give you paradise, but some still leave you worse off. I don’t understand why it seems logical to court them, but off I went. Like I say, it’s not easy being a pushover.

  Out on the wet grass, I saw the huge Bentley in the faint dawn. I walked across, disappointed to see there was somebody with the superb Vana. Her husband was smoking an enormous cigar at this hour.

  Once, experimenters put several families into primitive surroundings. Dank fields, children and all. If they wanted a house, they had to make it. For food, they had a handful of barley. Couple of flint axes, some old leather to start off, and that was it. To live like the Ancient People. Th
ey stuck it for a whole year! Wet, shivering cold, hungry as hell, they rubbed fire, learnt flint-napping, caught beasts, cooked nuts and roots, grubbed in undergrowth. Know what they longed for? Not a lovely warm bath, not TV, radio, Saturday markets. Know what it was?

  Wellingtons. Those boots that collect half the footpath when you’re out for a stroll. Wellies. See how fragile civilization is? The Age of the Caveman’s nearer than we think. It’s a Wellington boot away.

  ‘Hoppy, Croppy!’ I got. The engine hummed gently.

  ‘What’s that?’ Farahar barked, cigar on the wobble.

  ‘I’m remembering a rhyme. It’s stuck in a groove.’

  ‘Want to talk, Lovejoy?’ It’s my least favourite phrase. Every soap contains the phrase: We’ve got to talk, as if you need a UN conference.

  ‘Which? Fair and foolish, little and loud?’ Vana suggested.

  That had me thinking. ‘Long and lazy, black and proud?’ ‘Excellent!’ She was really pleased, ‘The last two!’

  ‘There’s more,’ I said, leaning down at the window. ‘Women’s colours and shapes in eight pairs. My cousins skipped to them. Poems are easy, like “The Twelve Months”, one word each. You can just look those up.’

  ‘Why don’t you, instead of going round and round?’

  ‘That’s cheating,’ I said sternly. ‘Like, there’s three colours you can’t rhyme. I think they’re orange, purple, and maybe silver.’ Farahar gave a bellow. ‘What in hell’s this gibberish! Lovejoy, ETA at Sunderhill, evening.’

  ‘Sunderhill.’ I didn’t know that, so how come he did? ‘Encamped, 18:00. Victuals, toilet, night roll, 20:00 hours. I expect - ’

  ‘None of your Yankee crap, mate.’ I was fed up. Everybody knew everything but me. ‘And don’t give me any of this Yanks-invented- baseball either. It’s in Jane’s Northanger Abbey, begun in 1798.’ ‘No English literature on the moon, soldier.’

  That shut me up. Mrs. Farahar smiled, enjoying keeping score. Women are always counting. They live by it. ‘Until later, Lovejoy.’