The Lies of Fair Ladies

by Jonathan Gash

  Gunge Herod, like me, suffers from his name. His first means unmentionable, his second slaughter. His nickname comes from his usual response: "No; it's gunge." He's disliked because his barrow blocks the Arcade entrance. A barrow exempts him weekly dues, so you can imagine. He does jewelry and household antiques.

  "Jeff's got a weird one here. Gunge."

  Usually papal rings aren't valuable. But unless I was mistaken this monster was solid gold, and the stone was brown topaz. Don't knock topaz; its pink, honey yellows and blue varieties are some of the loveliest of gems. I saw most of the other dealers were carefully not watching, and took out my Polaroid sunglasses. Every jeweler carries them. Mine are simply lenses from an old pair somebody chucked away. The trick is, put the gem on one Polaroid lens and look at it through the other. Rotate the top one. If the stone stays dark for a complete rotation, then it's one lot of stones, including diamond and simple glass; if it alternates light and dark, then it's a group including topazes, sapphires, rubies and a million others. Mind you, the Polaroid trick only tells you what a gem is not. Like, if a gemstone shows dark-light every quarter turn, and a jeweler is trying to sell you this amazingly cheap genuine diamond, you know he's lying. And if an auctioneer invites bids for a spectacular "antique sapphire pendant," and the gem stayed dark to your sunglasses ploy, then that auctioneer—perish the thought!—is a crook, and the "precious sapphire" is probably just a chunk of polished bottle.

  The stone changed, light to dark, light to dark. I was honestly surprised.

  "May be honey topaz. Done the gold test?"

  "No." He shuffled in embarrassment. I moved aside so he could shuffle without crushing me. He's a huge bearded bloke, six feet eight, wide with it. Has to go in pubs sideways. Size always amazes me. I mean. Gunge comes from my county, and we're average everything.

  This annoyed me—not Gunge's hugeness, but that the miserable sods in the Arcade wouldn't do him a gold test. It only takes a second. There wasn't one who didn't have a gold-testing kit. I looked along. Connie was in.

  "Connie? A favor, love."

  "No, Lovejoy. You owe me for those boots."

  "Boots?" I did a theatrical start. "Ah, yes. I remember. I got a fair price. Settle up in the Bricklayers Arms tonight?" She'd got me a pair of Victorian ladies' boots. A Dulwich collector pays me on the nail. I'd forgotten to pay Connie. Well, who can remember every damned thing?

  She dithered, a delightful sight. She's about twenty-two, comely, dresses classy instead of this current shop-soiled fashion. High heels, swinging skirt, spends two hours every morning in front of her bedroom mirror ... I mean, I'll bet she possibly does. Has rich parents who fondly think their daughter's beavering at Manchester University doing astrophysics. To me, women and lies are unknowable. I mean, why didn't she pretend she was doing sociology, a phony subject nobody cares about? Then she could carry the lie with total conviction. Real sociologists do it all the time.

  ''Gunge's shy his dues, Lovejoy,” she lectured severely, drumming her fingers prettily. "It's cheating.”

  Which was rich, from an astrophysicist running a crummy antiques stall among a load of deadlegs. But pointing out a lie to a female's considered impolite.

  "Just a bad patch, doowerlink. One dropper. Please."

  "You'll divvy some stuff for me?"

  Sigh. I took the papal ring to her stall—three feet of plank, a homemade glass case, a strip of black velvet. "Deal. Where is it?"

  "They're not here, Lovejoy." I brightened. "They" is plural.

  "Bring them along to the Bricklayers."

  She shook her head, a lovely sheen. "They're not bandies."

  A quick look. The dealers had lost interest. "A lot?"

  "Several. I'll take you. It has to be tomorrow."

  No longer mere plural, but multo. I swallowed. I wasn't sure if my throat was dry from her astrophysical nearness or the thought of a dream warehouse crammed with antiques.

  "Here." I passed her the papal ring. She didn't examine it immediately, another surprise. I go by feel, some inner bong that homes me onto genuine antiques. But other dealers have to look, scrutinize, weigh. And she wasn't doing any of that. Preoccupied with her cache of antiques. Must be worth a mint. I warmed to her. No, honestly. I quite like astrophysics. For all I knew, so did she.

  "Deal, Lovejoy?" She gazed straight at me. Not exactly Drink-water's look, but with a hint of the same quality. Judging, goading even. For the first time I felt something wasn't right. As if Connie'd only come to the Arcade that day waiting for me. But Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. was a supersurvivor.

  "Deal, love." I was starving hungry. I'd have touched her for a pasty or two, except I owed. Mistrust is catching.

  I left the Arcade, blithely irritating the dealers by yelling for them to stick at it customers. They bawled outrage back. Lovejoy's Rule Two: Always look on your way to a terrific bargain. It depresses rivals no end.

  Prammie Joe isn't on the phone. Some say he isn't even on Planet Earth. He's a true loner, living on this promontory on the banks of the Orwell. Waterman born and bred, he makes a meager living among the waterways. Canals, rivers, estuaries are his world. He isn't quite the scruff I suppose I'm making him sound. He's impeccably clean, always shaved. He was a sailor once, and they're precise of habit. He's a worry to any antique dealer, is Prammie Joe.

  Has a disturbing habit of coming up trumps from nowhere. Bound to dismay the Arcaders, when you think.

  Like, once, Prammie showed up with two serpents—musical, not fire-breathers. The serpent is six feet of carved walnut, or even sycamore, with a brass mouthpiece shaped like a, well, guess. You hold it crossways, a phenomenal boa constrictor on your lap, and play it with breath and finger holes. First showed up in France about 1590. A lovely sound. They are unbelievably rare. Prammie Joe's two antique serpents—just one would have left the Arcade thunderstruck—were both true as a bell, about 1635. I actually played one, to round off my feeling. Everybody was asking where the hell an old swamp tromper like Joe found them, for heaven's sake. None of us found out. You never do, with blokes like Prammie. One-offs.

  No hope of the taxi fare from the railway station, so I set off along the bypass thumbing a lift. I got one after trudging three miles, a schoolteacher rabbiting about educational precepts. I went "Mmmmh'' and similar until we reached the river. He was pleased to meet an antique dealer, and gave me his address to call and see a genuine ancient coffeepot with a perforated spout. "Maybe it's an early teapot," he said brightly. "Know what I mean?" I did, and thanked him most sincerely.

  "Look," I told him as I alighted, "I’m on reconnaissance. Christie's of London. Keep it under your hat."

  "Right!" he exclaimed. "That why you're dressed shoddy?"

  "Er, yes." You can go off people pretty quick. "I'll send one of my deputies along."

  "Splendid!" He drove off beaming.

  A carter's wagon gave me a lift at two miles per hour down towards Prammie's marshy abode. It was getting on for four o'clock when I plodded through the hedgerows. Prammie was at the water's edge with his pram. Not pram as in perambulator, that vehicle you shove babies about in. Pram as in short, blunt-pro wed dinghy, propelled by a single stern oar. Shallow of draught, it floats joyously on any piddling stream, unseen and silent. Hence my reason for thinking of him and Cornish Place.

  "Wotcher, Prammie. I covered my tracks at the hedge."

  He crouches like an Aussie, one leg thrust out before. You wonder how his arms reach. He was mending his lever. Lying supine, he can scull the pram forward. He sighed. I was narked. I'd suffered a lot of sighs.

  "Thought you'd be along, Lovejoy."

  "Don't you sigh at me, Prammie. I could've shopped you."

  "Drinkwater have you, did he?'' He has one of those mustaches that fluff in and out with each snuffle. It looks borrowed off a dog. What with him and Drinkwater, I'd had enough chuckles, too. "Burke, he is."

  Confidence makes me uneasy. It never lasts. Like good health, it's on a loser.


  "Take care, Prammie. He's a nutter." A nutter is a bobby of singularly malevolent disposition. No rarity, but functions unimpeded by law, justice, similar myths.

  "Bad as those security blokes." He almost tumbled into the river with merriment. "Know what? They wired that cornfield!"

  Well, some things do make you laugh. I'm no countryman, but you've only to glance at a field of standing grain to see the tracks of every newt that wended through.

  "Searchlights for hang gliders, eh?" We fell about. Sobering, I reverently asked how long the robbery had taken. You have to admire class.

  "Every night bar Sundays, eleven weeks, Lovejoy." He doesn't work on the Sabbath. He's churchwarden at St. Michael's. His old eyes misted over. "Know what, son? I'm really proud. My swan song." He rolled and lit a cigarette. Strikes the match on his thumbnail. I wish I could do that. I once tried but burnt my thumb.

  "Anybody would be, Prammie." Praise where it's due.

  "Had two rafts. Towed them. There are spin-offs. I saved a little lad in the—" He paused, chuckled, having nearly given a location away. He pointed down to the shallow creek. "Lucky I went at Cornish Place from downstream, eh?"

  Well, that really set us rolling. We finished up in his hut with a drink, wiping our eyes. You need only watch a great mansion in a river moat in the middle of a plain from upstream. One watcher there, the place is impregnable.

  "Marry that lassie yet, Lovejoy?"

  That set me thinking. I remembered. "Well, no, Prammie. I would have, but . . ."I couldn't even recall her name. Blonde? Or not? Harriet Something was it, strong opinions on celery juice and pollution? "Er, Harriet moved away."

  "Pity." He sobered, eyeing me. "A nice girl, Lovejoy. I don't think you played fair."

  The reason I'm the only dealer in the Eastern Hundreds who'd know that Prammie Joe did Cornish Place was that I'm the only one ever seen him in action. And that was pure accident.

  Harriet—if I've got her name right—was a carnivore from Wapping. On a sweep for some Antiques Road Show. (A sweep is scavenging ahead of the main shoal of predatory televisioneers.) She fell on me, lit. and met. Knew nothing about antiques. I had to stop the lads selling her collections of pre-1842 trademarks and French Revolution photographs. She and I were making heavy-duty smiles on the banks of the Deben when a gentle rhythmic shushing disturbed the rural peace. I thought it was Harriet, until somebody ahemed in my earhole. And there was Prammie Joe in his modified boat. His bare foot worked steadily at his stern-mounted oar. He lay on his back, holding the gunnels.

  That would have been a quick embarrassed adjustment of clothing, and the usual sheepish conversation until he'd gone by. But in the prow of his pram stood a Martinware jug. I’d seen the same one sold seven days before at Southwold. Martinware is grotesque—salt-glazed stoneware, mottled as hell, so gray and muted you wonder why the Martin brothers bothered. Anyway, they're no earlier than 1873. The Martins packed up in 1914. The jugs often feature hideously contorted faces, or supposedly comical fishes and ducks. Horrible.

  "Mr. Martin, I presume,'' I managed, as Harriet squealed and we rolled apart. I thought that pretty witty in the circumstances, on the Deben, in flagrante delicto.

  Prammie had paused, peering sideways at us. He nodded, sussed fair and square. Simply mentioned a tavern near Wood-bridge, saying he'd be there about eight. We all three then resumed our activities, some more carefree than others. I christened him my secret nickname Prammie that very evening.

  "You could have been anybody, Lovejoy," he told me inside his hut. "A godsend it was only you."

  That "only you" stung. He could have met a blackmailer, is what he meant. He's got a sense of fair play—which should tell you straight off he's no antique dealer.

  "I feel it too, Prammie," I said most sincerely. Harriet had mauled me bog-eyed. I was almost at death's dark door when she had to move on. She wrote to me hourly for five months, made sudden unnerving visits. My guardian angel made sure I saw her Ferrari coming. "I was heartbroken, Prammie. Truly. Her mother's an M.P. . . . Well, my face didn't fit." I sniffed, quite overcome by cruel fate and Harriet's snooty bitch of a mother who came between us. In the nick of time I remembered I was making this up for Prammie's benefit.

  Prammie murmured, "Never mind, son. Time the great healer."

  Sometimes you have to stare. I mean, this old goat'd just pulled off a robbery anybody would be proud of, and deep down he's a sentimental softie.

  "Er, ta, Prammie.” Kind, though. ''Got any torn handy?" I was dying to see the stolen stuff.

  "Nar, Lovejoy." His rheumy eyes were shining. He's teetotaler, non-wencher. "Know why I risked it, son? My plan. You know I breed?"

  Breed? I didn't even know he had children. I was just about to say, when I looked out through the window.

  His cabin is an old reed cutter's hut. Low down, among reeds and bullrushes. You haven't a hope of seeing it unless you know it's there. He has a way through the hedgerows. He uses the waterways for getting anywhere. For proper journeys, he uses a proper dinghy. His night-stealing's all done on his pram. He keeps it buried in the reeds. Even anglers don't come down this marshy stretch, and they're daft enough to go anywhere there's a tiddler. Breed. He had mentioned waterbirds a few times with passion.

  "Ducks and them?"

  He smiled. "That's Lovejoy," he said. "Yes, ducks and them. Migratories, transients, indigens. I foster and propagate them all."

  "Well, Prammie," I said, rising quickly. "Nice seeing you—" Passion for antiques and women, inevitable. But passion for pigeons? "Time I was off."

  "Stay, son. Tea's ready." He poured out of an old tin teapot. He explained, "Notice how I brewed up?"

  Almost worth another sigh. "Kettle," I observed shrewdly. Living on your own sends you bats.

  "How?" He was amused. "Coal fire? Logs? Primus stove? Paraffin? Gas?"

  "You plugged it in, Prammie." Humor a loony, I always say.

  "Electricity, Lovejoy. Pinched from the mains." He chuckled with flaps of his doggie mustache. "No smoke, see? No National Insurance card. No tax. No post. No family, save my birds. I'm not even here!"

  "I know you're here, Prammie."

  "Ah, but you're as barmy as me, Lovejoy. If you hadn't been . . . admiring Harriet that day, you'd not know either."

  "You got jailed, Prammie."

  "Bad luck, Lovejoy." He was tranquil. He makes good tea, for all his rustic isolation. "Taken for wrongful possession, a Daniel Quare clock. Caught in football traffic. Two bobbies helped me across the road. Saw the label, next day's auction at Gimbert's. I’d no fixed abode . . .”

  "Rotten luck.” My heart bled for him. Remove the label, you lower an item's value to any decent fair-minded receiver of stolen goods. "Still, if it was Daniel Quare, it might well have been a fake, eh? Look on the bright side." The other favorite clockmaker for fakers is Breguet of Paris. It's joked that clockies—fakers of anything that tells time—can sign Quare's and Breguet's names better than they can their own.

  "No, Lovejoy." He was serious. "The Lord's work. He moves in mysterious ways. It was in jail I met the scammer."

  I saw light. He'd met a blackguard. "On commission?"

  "Flat fee, son." He spoke with eyes glowing, doubtless seeing a million migratories, or whatever, laying eggs and nuzzling mud. A really great vision. "I'll have enough to buy this stretch. Can't you see it? A sanctuary!"

  "Lovely, Prammie." I ahemed. "Can I, er, help?"

  He shook his head, still friendly. "Lovejoy. I took every fireplace, every speer and pelmet, with my own hands. I know every item is genuine. I hand the last over Monday."

  "Sure? Be careful, eh?"

  His smile was beatific. "You are telling me, Lovejoy? It was me caught you in the very act of—"

  "Yes, well." I stood with finality. "No harm asking."

  He saw me away from his hut. At the hedge I turned to look back. Only eighty feet away, you couldn't see a damned thing. A few cows grazed, providing yet more
cover. It was true. He was the careful one all right.

  And that, said Alice, was that. Good night, Prammie.

  Three

  That afternoon was murderous. Not death. Money. Some people spend, spend, spend, and gain nowt. Like Big Frank's joke: "If I won a trillion on the sweepstake, I’d just carry on being an antique dealer until it was all gone.''

  Think of the price of stamps and melons. I was having a blazing row about a melon. Savvy Savvy's a supermarket. Their only superlatives are their blinking prices.

  I'd reached the till girl after only ten years of battling through hordes. "Four quid? For one measly melon? You're off your frigging nut!"

  "That's the price, Lovejoy!" The girl was heated. People behind were murmuring angry agreement. "It's marked!" "It's still not fair, you silly cow!"

  "Our melons are not measly!" The manageress, steaming up with more falsehoods. "Lovejoy. You're barred from shopping here!" this boss hood thundered. "Savvy Savvy's for respectable shoppers! Get security, Nelly!"

  "Barefaced robbery!" I'd only come in for some cheese and tomatoes. They don't do pasties. I get those from Barm In The Barn near the railway, Tuesdays. "Don't come to me when you go broke. Thieving cow."

  The town was crowded, mostly with people delightedly grinning through Savvy Savvy's windows at the chiseling within. I dumped their grottie cheese and tomatoes, yelled, “They used to be four shillings, proper money." Pre-decimal prices always get to them.

  "He's right!" an old crone cheeped. "I can remember ..."

  The babble of reminiscence rose to a hubbub, which let me out unscathed. No, though. It makes my blood boil. These posh shops'll have us in our graves. Cost-efficiency tactics never work, do they? Prices'd go down if they did. I headed down East Hill to Sandy's Dutch Treaty, fuming. Same with antiques. Look at stamps. I pick stamps because they're utterly boring. Yet they're the classic example of antiques holocaust. A lesson to all antique grabbers, like you and me.

  Lately, there'd come a mighty flood of philately. It was worrying me sick. In fact, this was the reason I'd gone to the Arcade, to suss it out. Somebody said Sandy—more about him in a minute—was offering a whole stamp portfolio. In this day and age! Can you believe it? A caution: Avoid stamps.