The Sin Within Her Smile

by Jonathan Gash

  In case Ianto thought I was getting carried away, I told him how it’s done. You first go to Huanglongshan, in China, for the necessary red, yellow, or purple clays.

  You leave your hotel, and dig down 330 feet for the rock-hard clay. You cut and haul chunks of it. You stack it in blocks, to be weathered for a year. At time of monsoons, floods, you dash out and protect it.

  After a year, you slice wedges off the main weathered mass, and grind it to powder. Mix it with water. You compress it small into bars. These, you guard with your life until the powder solidifies. It feels plasticky. It’s well over a year since you started, but you don’t care. You want that priceless teapot. You squeeze out every molecule of air.

  You shape your pot. You can’t do it with computered precision tools, only the traditional wood, the clay exact, accurate as a laser.

  Then you can laugh, if you’re not too knackered, because you’ve got your original teapot, like the immortal Sha Dabin did it.

  'There were others who followed the master,’ I told Ianto. ‘Chen Mingyuan’s trick was to imitate bronze. You can’t believe the little spouted thing isn’t metal.’

  ‘A teapot?’ He still hadn’t got it. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Good lad.’ I liked his instinct. ‘You can tell by spectrographic analysis, chemical fractionations for trace elements, everything from electron spin resistances to aesthetic judgement.’

  He looked from the case to me. ‘And you?’

  After a pause I said, ‘I’m a good guesser, Ianto.’

  He thought. The tavern fire had died. Tudor was snoring. Ianto cleared his throat. ‘Are you wrong sometimes?’

  ‘Words in songs, aye. The smiles of women every time.’ ‘Antiques?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, rising, toeing Tudor awake. He came, wagging, shaking his coat. Why do they do that? ‘I just came to say thanks, no hard feelings, eh?’

  ‘No indeed,’ he said. ‘As we’ve drunk, have you a name?’ ‘Lovejoy. I’m accompanying a crowd of . . . convalescents.’

  He nodded. ‘I heard. Mynydd Mai? I hope the bother near Sunderhill wasn’t too much for the sick ones?’

  ‘No ta. Folk were kind. One thing. Tudor. Whose is he?’ I didn’t want to get done for nicking a wolfhound.

  He looked at the creature. ‘It lived in a cottage beyond the hill that accidentally burnt down. He lives wild. Until now. Good guess about his name, Tudor. Made quite an impression.’ He smiled. I’d thought it was my superstitious junk that had prompted his generosity, when it was a stray cur’s name. ‘You’ve won a dog,’

  ‘Just my luck.’ I knew these ‘accidental’ fires started in holiday homes, to deter profiteers.

  ‘Lovejoy?’ He opened the door. ‘That teapot you haven’t looked at. How much would it go for?’

  I got him off the hook. ‘At the right auction, with its provenance, in the original untouched case, a historical relic, oh, about worth your pub, Ianto. Good night, nos da.’

  ‘Nos da, Lovejoy. And thank you.’

  ‘I’ve done nowt. Tudor.’

  With the Tudor Arms helping, we made a reasonable start next day, meaning the grub was hot and plentiful, though it rained like I’d never seen it. Our departure was bedraggled. Ianto stood in his porch with a couple of women to wave as we passed. I drove last. I called out, ‘Hey, Ianto! Wales holds the kingdom’s rainfall record, nigh three inches in thirty minutes! But why all the bloody time?’ He laughed. ‘No criticism from you thieving English, Lovejoy!’ ‘Which from a Welshman,’ I cracked back.

  He fell about, shouting abuse in Welsh. I heard a man’s laugh from the caravan ahead. Boris? Luke?

  We rolled out of the valley and clip-clopped slowly up the hillside, avoiding the village ahead by a detour. I saw Boris slip over a dry- stone wall and start along on shanks’s pony.

  That set me wondering, as little Arthur crooned inside my waggon, about the people on this journey. Humphrey was a doctor who’d beaten a patient up? Then Boris, vaguely familiar from my dream, skulking along like a ghost dogging our wheeltracks. Preacher, already into his second sermon, drove the second caravan. Mr. Lloyd was talking to himself, or not. I’d helped the tight-lipped Meg to wash him.

  Rita was garish today in a frothy print, the tablecloth sort, with Phillida and Arthur, in my caravan. Corinda had been caught in a strip ballet, and now slept. Meg had dosed her. Duchess today was trembling. I’d borrowed Arthur and played his finger game to make him laugh. She’d calmed a bit.

  It got me thinking. We weren’t the menagerie people seemed to think. I felt guilty. I’d called them, I mean us, a cavalcade of dingbats. I’d cursed them as loonies, nutters, insane. I’d done nothing except grumble.

  Then yesterday Olwen and the odious Golden Boy, reporter to the world, had treated us like a zoo. It was new. Oh, the Old Bill calls me a thief, forger. And I keep getting arrested for fraud, and sometimes there are killings and I sometimes get unfairly blamed, but this was the first time I’d ever been regarded as mental. It was uncomfortable.

  Listening to Calvin Jones, I’d felt anger. Calvin Jones made rage feel really pleasant. That worried me more. It’s when trouble starts.

  I’d no mac, so was gratified when Phillida brought me out a thick waterproof and a floppy sou’wester. They had some stranger’s name inside, but so? We plodded on.

  The weather worsened, the rain torrential and the roads awash. We pulled in after two hours at a disused solitary chapel to shelter in its lee. The horses had been patient, just trudging and pulling. The windows were broken, the roof toothy where slates had slid away. Squalls obliterated the view, though I could tell we were on a scrubbily wooded hill with the ground falling steeply in undergrowth.

  Luke came in a yellow oilskin. ‘We’ll camp, Lovejoy.’

  He went to talk to the others. I went to the chapel doors. The front was impossibly barred. The side door was easier, an old padlock you open with a hook. I went in, crunching glass underfoot, calling ‘Hello, any-none!’ which mumpers and baggies say protects against the laws of trespass. There was a fireplace.

  ‘Hey, Luke!’ I showed him the piles of rotting wood.

  ‘I don’t think we can burn those pews, Lovejoy.’ He saw I was tapping the pulpit, the lectern.

  ‘No,’ I said, most sincerely. ‘Only the wood that’s rotten, eliminate woodworm and fungi. We’ll be protecting the place.’

  ‘You sound like a manual.’ He went to bring the others in. I continued tapping the pews, the wall panels, scanning the roof truss, the pelmets. I’d not done a fake seventeenth-century court cupboard since the chapel furniture had run out. But with this amount of solid heartwood, matured over 150 years, I might even try a couple of long press or parlour cupboards. Or I’d settle for a selection of tables, including a table dormant. Of course, there’s wood and wood. Two mere splinters sold for 18,300 dollars last year. What I call the ‘Grail Factor’ had upped the auction - the Vatican authenticated them as slivers of the True Cross. And a secret Swiss collector (it was Edward Mannheimer) collared at Christie’s a wooden mechanical calculator, same month, for a cool 7.7 million pounds. The tills overtaking holiness. Luke re-entered. I stopped thinking sin.

  The others entered, silently looking around at the chapel. I said sternly, ‘Listen everybody. This place is holy. We mustn’t scratch, mark, or deface the furnishings. The Almighty doesn’t want his stuff mauled, okay?’

  My voice echoed slightly. I caught Luke’s sardonic gaze. Why is there no trust? Preacher shot into the pulpit and began a quick sermon. Corinda entered at a drenched tango. Luke and I started the fire, got the paraffin stove. I thought longingly of the priceless Chinese teapot, and wondered guiltily if Phillida was any good at nicking wall-mounted cases. She went on a tour of inspection. I hoped everything was screwed down.

  ‘Just how good’s your mum?’ I whispered to Arthur.

  He eyed me with a gummy grin, dribbling spit. I knew what he was thinking, mistrustful little sod. During his wash he peed a
little spout on to my chest. I should have stayed in the storm. It would have been drier.

  We stayed there longer. Corinda did a dance, a lot of whistling through her fingers and shrieking. Meg tried to stop her, glared at me when I clapped. Mr. Lloyd sat and was fed. Duchess managed a mug of hot tea. Preacher thundered denunciations, pausing to drink.

  Luke showed me his map, traced the way we had come. Mynydd- Mal was in a brownish region, contours closer, habitations far apart. Meg joined us, sulky.

  ‘You know where we go once we’re there?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Meg snapped. ‘And while we’re speaking, don’t think I’ve forgotten my threat.’

  Luke started to say something but I interrupted. ‘We ought to rearrange the caravans,’ I said. ‘Luke first, me last. It’s barmy - sorry, unwise - having Preacher in the lead.’

  ‘If you’re insinuating, Lovejoy,’ Meg flared, ‘I’m a trained horsewomen for psychiatric institutes.’

  ‘Mmmh, mmmh,’ I kept saying, but she wouldn’t let up.

  As she was still rabbiting, I wandered the chapel. No stained glass in these spartan chapels. A plaque commemorated the ‘passing to America to found the Kingdom of Wales’ four names, the 1870s. Four intact windows, leaded. Several other plaques, roll calls.

  The far window looked over the valley. The map had showed a stream and a waterfall. I peered out. I saw somebody move among the undergrowth. Boris? Likely to get sodden in the teeming downpour. I looked round. Boris was giving Mr. Lloyd bread dipped in soup.

  That left Humphrey. Walking in the storm down a steep hillside? I moved. Meg angrily called, ‘Lovejoy. I want matters settled - ’

  Round the side of the chapel I trotted. No path. Vegetation hugged the slope. Rivulets skipped like running mice. There was a tarn below, I knew.

  ‘Humphrey?’ I called. No answer. I hurried to where I thought I’d seen him. ‘Doc?’ Then I shut up. He was incognito.

  There was a shiny line near a bramble. Somebody had slithered. I pushed down. I’d come out with no oilskin and sou’wester like a fool. I went on, saw somebody, and began to jump. It’s the safest way to go down a wet fellside, like you’re actually frolicking. You go in fits and starts, never at a speed you can’t control but still going headlong. Bushes whipped me. I held my arms in front of my face against the blackberry and whinny gorse.

  ‘Humphrey! It’s Lovejoy!’ I saw the greyish frothy gleam of water below. I rushed on. ‘I’m warning you,’ I bawled. ‘I can’t swim, you bastard.’ Falling now, tumbling over and struggling to my feet to charge on down.

  He was standing there, the frigging loon, on a crag projecting over the tarn. A waterfall rushed beside him. He had one foot in the runnel, one on the stone outcrop.

  ‘I’ll come in after you, Doc!’ I yelled. ‘And I can’t frigging swim, you swine!’

  I rushed him, caught him round the middle and we both went tumbling. He had to lodge his foot against the rockface to stop us. We scrabbled to the solid stone, me covered in mud and scratches, him serene.

  ‘Christ.’ I was panting. He was calm. ‘I thought I was going. Ta, Humph. I’d have gone in if it wasn’t for you.’

  He looked over. The tarn was about thirty feet below, but fangs of rock stuck out. He’d have been done for.

  ‘I was just looking at the path,’ I said. ‘Missed my footing. Did you hear me shout?’ I got my breath. ‘Yelling anything that came into my head. Lucky you were there.’

  ‘It’s coming down in sheets,’ he observed.

  ‘So it is.’ I snapped my fingers, remembering. ‘Oh, Humph. Do you know anything about babies, Arthur’s size? Only, the way he’s breathing. I’ve tried talking to Phillida, but I can’t get through. Meg’s too mad to listen. Would you mind giving him a shufti?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He started up the hillside. At the finish he had to haul me. I felt a right duckegg.

  He went into the chapel and took Arthur from Phillida with practised ease. I went for a towel and a change. Phillida had given me three new pairs of plus fours and golfing socks. Heaven knows where she got them. I rejoined everybody in time to get another bal- locking from Meg for something or other.

  Worn out. I wanted to go home.

  They were waiting for us in the market square at Newginfawr. My heart sank. Two police cars. Calvin Jones in his splendid red motor, and Olwen with tons of photographic gear. There was a superb oldish motor, rakishly blue, nearby. I’d made love once in one, to Jessina Mosston. She’d had one on loan from her husband’s showroom. She’d called the car an ‘Anglo-American marriage’.

  ‘Good afternoon!’ I heard Meg call. Luke’s horse took against the blue police motor lights. Preacher gave a burst of ‘To Be A Pilgrim’. An unfortunate omen. John Bunyan was forever in clink.

  Thuds of solid boots sounded. I studied the shops, people standing watching, the cars crawling past. We were the centre of attention.

  ‘You Lovejoy? Down.’

  Like you say to a dog. Tudor had been beside me, but he’d vanished. I got down. The two Plods were on a winner. One had a notebook.

  ‘That’s him!’ Calvin Jones shouted. I swear windows bent inwards. ‘He stole our films, two cameras, and - ’

  Two cameras?

  The lead Plod said, ‘Let’s have them.’

  ‘Me? You’ve got it wrong ...’ et piteous cetera. They wouldn’t listen, I wouldn’t concede. They searched anyway.

  They undid cupboards, bunks. They dug through Arthur’s nappy bags, the nags’ satchels. They prodded vegetables, started Phillida weeping. They made Rita unzip her twelve makeup purses. They set Duchess caterwauling. Red-faced, they started taking down Preacher’s sermon until they realized. They unhitched hammocks. I watched, calmly cooling Arthur’s bottle in the Nantgarw bowl. Then, with a cry, they found the box slung underneath my caravan, and unscrewed it.

  ‘Wait, boys!’ Calvin Jones posed by it. ‘Ready Olwen? I’ll show shock, horror. Get it right for once.’

  ‘Yes, Calvin.’ If I’d been her I’d have sloshed him.

  ‘Go!’ He registered shock, dismay, anger.

  The Old Bill lifted the lid. I didn’t need to look. It would be the Page’s water clock. I’d get chucked in clink. I’d almost started to walk to the police car, save us all time - Empty? I looked twice. Nothing. Silently I praised Sir Winston’s wisdom. A cased stolen clock is a theft. An empty box is innocent to the casual observer, while constituting a promise to him in the know. It also meant that I’d have to return via Sunderhill, which meant they wanted to do a deal with me. Which meant money. God, I liked that sports club.

  One of the peelers saw me mop my brow. I glared back. Out of the blue motor unfolded Sir Winston Delapole. He strolled over, the crowd parting. Authority’s great stuff to them that hath.

  ‘Good day,’ he said, calm. The peelers saluted. ‘Can I help?’ ‘Hello, Sir Winston,’ I greeted. The cunning sod had waited until the search was clean, I noted. ‘You’ve still got your Series Two Sunbeam Tiger! Do you approve of the Mustang 4.7-litre engine? Pity they couldn’t use British.’ That exhausted my entire knowledge of motor cars. Jessina had bored me to distraction telling me it.

  His eyes glinted humour. ‘Bags of thrust, Yank engines. A man’s drive.’ He stood, inspecting troops’ progress on some remote campaign. ‘Having the time of your life, what?’

  ‘Some misunderstanding. The police seem misled.’

  He stood aside while we straightened our things. The rain was merciful and stopped. The sun came out to steam the paving. I saw a sign to a library, cheered up immediately. There was a phone box by a baker’s. I liked Newginfawr. Boris was wearing my sou’wester, and sported glasses he didn’t need.

  The peelers came over. ‘In the absence of evidence, you may leave. We’ll be watching you. Understand?’

  ‘Why will you be watching us?’ I asked.

  ‘Lovejoy.’ Luke’s word was a warning, a plea, a threat. Boris had disappeared the instant Sir Winston arrived.


  ‘Because, boyo,’ the sergeant said, ‘we want no trouble.’

  We all parted company. The peelers went smarting, Sir Winston affable, Calvin fuming, and Olwen screeching out, ‘No, no! I’ll manage!’ when Phillida went to give her a hand.

  Meg relented in relief and let us order some bread and cakes from the bakery. I gobbled mine and hurried away.

  The library was small, neat, from another era. The lady was pleased to find somebody keen to learn about local history. I asked about the old ruined chapel. She told me addresses, of troubles between Unitarians and Methodists. I loved her, told her so. She got even more zealous to impart knowledge. I could tell she was disappointed when six o’clock came. I left celibate, but promising to return, and had a real meal in a chip shop to tide me over until supper time.

  Then I bumped into Humphrey, just when I didn’t want to, because in the market square was a great lovely vehicle I recognized. Relief almost bowled me over. A chance of a woman.

  ‘Lovejoy. Have you a second?’

  ‘Er.’ The traffic was sparse. Seeing Mrs. Arden had come for me, I didn’t want her to waste her journey. A fine old tavern stood opposite. Its rooms would be really comfortable, if she had the money. The place was possibly hers anyway. I could see her looking across at the caravans under the three trees. The horses had been unshipped, or whatever, and stood looking out of place. I drew Humphrey into the doorway of an outfitter’s. I didn’t want Mrs. Arden to see me not rushing to her instantly. Humphrey was beginning to be a pest.

  ‘Lovejoy.’ He harrumphed. Something momentous was coming.

  ‘Yes?’ I couldn’t concentrate. Mrs. Arden, coming to seduce me. Ecstasy’s ecstasy, and rare.

  He paused, letting some shoppers by. ‘It was five months ago. I was in practice.’

  ‘Well, never mind,’ I said heartily. ‘Things blow over.’ My mouth watered. Mrs. Arden ... ‘Eh? What baby?’

  ‘It was in the drawer.’ He was telling me something horrible. ‘Shut in. Cigarette burns on its skin. Both arms broken, its hip joint displaced. Fingernail marks on its abdomen.’

  ‘A what?’ I thought stupidly, what’s he saying?