The Lies of Fair Ladies

by Jonathan Gash

''Good?'' He said it so loud people turned round. "Good, Lovejoy? Nantgarw porcelain, four plates. No, straight up. So translucent you could almost read through it. That's flavor.”

  This sounded the real business. When Bill Billingsley set up the Nantgarw (rhymes with shoe, sort of) porcelain factory in 1813, his factory crashed—his plates were warped, full of firing cracks. So clever old Bill and his son-in-law Sam Walker worked in Swansea for three years. And learned superior technology. Their new super porcelain became craved by wallet-wielding tycoons everywhere, because Bill Billingsley in his second go managed to make porcelain whiter than white, yet somehow so translucent that we say, "Is it Nantgarw clear?" Meaning so translucent when you hold it up to the light that you can imagine it's oil-soaked paper. The trade nickname is sodden-snow translucency, believe it or not. I moaned inwardly. My life was becoming a saga of antiques missed. The stuff was everywhere, but just gone.

  Then I remembered that Nicole Freres musical box. I mentioned it. Flavor snorted a sardonic snort.

  "That should have been mine too, Lovejoy. And them old cameras—you know Acker Kirwin's a photography nut. Very flavor, them. They've gone too." He'd have won my sympathy vote, except he was an antique dealer. "I’m leaving the Eastern Hundreds, Lovejoy, going up Smoke. No flavor left here."

  "London? Where, though?"

  "The Belly. You know Wheatstone? Invented the concertina, made thirty-five thousand of them. They're always around, right? Not now, Lovejoy. I saw six last month. None, this." He was a broken man. "Even Salvation Army are scarce."

  "The old black bellows issue?" I was frightened.

  "Can you credit it, Lovejoy? No, it's the Smoke for me."

  Well, rather him. Portobello Road has broken stauncher hearts than mine. "Well, Sandy'll be giving up his shop now him and Mel are back."

  "Haven't you heard, Lovejoy?" Flavor tried to beckon for another pint. "He's already sold up. This is the celebration."

  "I don't believe it. Flavor." And I didn't, yet I did.

  "True. Don't know who to. Mel's sold up too."

  What the frig was going on? It was getting beyond me. Just when I thought I’d sussed out the main buyer of Prammie Joe's turkey stripping of Cornish Place—Acker—and so learned who'd done for him—ditto—the pattern crumpled again. I was sick of the whole thing. Vd never known antiques to move about like this before. Antiques go in dribs and drabs. I mean, when the Countess in Long Melford does a tin can for the States, it's cork-popping time in the local taverns. Yet now we were drained of antiques. And in dollop numbers. Beyond belief.

  As Sandy did his parade—Mel goes before, strewing rose petals while people clap and have a laugh, Sandy waving with queenly magnanimity—and Flavor John groused in my ear, I started to watch faces. I've told you how much they matter. And there was something not quite right. People were laughing, oh, sure. As usual, blokes were mock-whistling and the women admiring. But there was the occasional glimpse of tautness. Nobody, but nobody, was doing a deal. Margaret Dainty was talking to the exotic Jessica, who lives down the estuaries in sordid circumstances. They should have been talking antiques, but instead seemed to be commiserating. Margaret raised her glass, inviting me to come and join them. I smilingly declined. She's an older woman, friend for years, with class in spite of her limp.

  There was Dyllis Washburne, sitting alone. She has a friend who isn't in the trade but helps her out. They go on holidays together, but he's loyal to his wife, who's got hard religion and wants to bomb Non-Conformists. Now, Dyllis is very gregarious, mostly dressing furniture and penwork japanned furniture. Dyllis alone and palely loitering? Impossible.

  And Big Frank, talking to Mel, saying right, right, with many nods. He caught my eye, waved, mouthed "Ta," presumably for my having visited his red-hot mini-mamma Jenny Calamy. I must do something about that promise, if I could remember what the hell I'd worked out to do about whatever promise it was.

  "Cooo-eeee!" Sandy, pausing to do his Queen Empress wave. Fie wore elbow-length white lace gloves with jeweled glove-bands, very seventeenth century. One thing, Sandy gets it right. "Admiration?"

  "Sandy. You didn't say you'd sold up to Big Frank."

  "Don't spoil my moment, Lovejoy. There's a dear. Sell to Big Frank? Have you seen his nails?"

  Connie came in, with Rye Benedict. I waved, but she moved on Mel with smiley determination. Big Frank shrugged the shrug of the loser. Mel allowed Connie to buy him a drink without quite looking at her. She began talking animatedly. He sniffed and kept his distance, but they were dealing.

  "Reckon Connie bought Sandy-Mel out?" I asked Flavor.

  "It's some bird right enough." He didn't look round. "Frothy Lane was saying that yob who runs that poxy old mill's sending the vans. Word is the dollop broker's flitting around. Who knows?"

  Some days everything goes wrong. I realized now why Sandy and Mel had insisted on giving me a lift. Sandy knew I was worried about the big antiques shifts round the area. He wanted to tell me he and Mel were contributing to it. Maybe he lost courage on the way over. Or maybe he didn't want anything to spoil his Entrance, the night of the big reunion between him and Mel. Whatever. I'd come for solutions, and everything was more tangled than ever. The dollop broker was coming nearer. I said so-long to Flavor John and left.

  Some days everything only seems to go wrong because deep down something is chancing its arm and going right for once.

  As I walked down the lane to my cottage between the hedgerows I saw a light in my window. I thought. Oh, hellfire. Another duffing up from Del Vervain's mob? Or Drinkwater brewing up looking for the sugar, waiting to arrest me?

  "Hello, Lovejoy."

  It was only Luna. Supper was ready, a delectably sinful meal of all the things you've got to leave alone or Doc Lancaster'll get you. The place was depressingly tidy, honed to brilliance.

  "Don't worry," she said, a little breathlessly. "I had Elsie and Madge here. They do for me at home."

  "Er, look, Lune." I didn't go in. Just stood there looking round. "I'm in enough trouble without Oliver—"

  "He's had to go to Manchester. Finance meeting."

  Manchester? Quite a way. It was late. No means of getting home for some time, I should suppose. I didn't say this.

  "Manchester's quite a way," Luna said, checking the stove was still doing its stuff, the quick suspicious way they do. "He probably won't be home tonight, I shouldn't suppose."

  "Really?" I cleared my throat. She looked up, tutting.

  "Well? Are you going to stand at the door all night?"

  Obeying women is in a man's nature, really, in spite of the party line preaching the opposite. I thought of Oliver's powerful position as mayor. But a man never really leaves a woman. We can't. We haven't the power. We can only go if we're shoved. A woman can leave a bloke, though, and often does. I decided I’d better find out which version was in operation, and stepped inside.

  By the time I’d reached this conclusion, Luna had shelled me from my jacket, close and warm. She wore a lovely woolen dress, pale green. I like those. They fall round shapes.

  ''Coming,'' I said. There isn't much you can do when a woman extends an invitation. Choice is a luxury for others. Not me.

  Twenty-two

  “I didn't intend this, Lovejoy.”

  “I’m glad, love.” We spoke along the pillow.

  "I want you to know I don't ... I don't." She looked away. "This is the first time I've ever . . . apart from Oliver."

  "Shhh." I think God got emotions wrong. We've too many. Remorse heads my list of redundancies.

  "What do I do about Oliver?"

  Why ask me? I sighed inwardly. These questions are irrelevant. Who's got answers? We'd had a short session during the night, after we made our first smile. I'd been desperate to fast fade, but she'd clung on, interrogating until I thought I'd never slide out of the minor death. It makes me wonder sometimes if women ever understand. I mean, all they need do is stay quiet a minute, give your soul time to climb b
ack in. But no. Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit. One day, maybe some bird'll have the sense. She'll be my goddess. I'll follow her for nowt.

  It was early morning. We'd made our morning smile. Luna was a willing rider, too anxious to rush us to orgasm, thinking that right. It's basically too much rote in lovemaking that creates this misunderstanding. It's better slower. She found time to rejoice, to her utter astonishment. She questioned her being flabbergasted, daring to rollick in lust. "Is he back early?"

  "About noon."

  "We've time to go to Rye Benedict's. I must see him."

  "The pictures you were looking at? Delia's?"

  "Mmmh. The charts, but they're beyond me." A submerged I. K. Brunei miniature paddle steamer would be priceless. If available. But I didn't believe in its existence, let alone the other factors. I think Rye Benedict was being had, his market garden's sale profits the reason. I mean, is anything easier to fake than a photograph? Flavor'd said Acker Kirwin was a photographer. Oho, I thought. But found I'd baffled myself again. Oho what?

  Daybreak comes too early when a woman is around. I've found that. Blue tits woke us about five-thirty, greedy little sods. Never leave you alone.

  "Lovejoy?" Pause. "I had no intention of ... of sleeping here. I just thought you deserved a good supper. Getting my things back off Same-Same."

  "Least I could do. Still mad about the Vervains?"

  "No. Though you could have warned me."

  "You might not have come, with a scruff like me."

  She leant over me, propped on one elbow, smiling as her breast touched my face and produced the inevitable.

  "You're always wrong, Lovejoy." She frowned. "Was there ever anything between Mrs. Vervain and you?"

  I never betray confidences, so I hummed and ha'd, finally told her to mind her own business when she pressed. That led to a struggle, then a protracted smile that made us late, with a rushed breakfast and her nearly burning the blinking tomatoes and too little margarine on the fry-up. I can't drink hot tea, so I had to do that business of pouring it into a bowl and blowing. We made the town road by about half ten. I grumbled as we left the cottage. Rye's mill would be heaving with infants. I wanted a quiet conversation with the bloke. Luna tried mentioning Oliver, but I wasn't having any. I'd just escaped being married to Joan Vervain. I didn't want another divorce impending, just yet. Though in fact Del and Joan now seemed accomplices. Maybe my influence worked equally well both ways, for reconciliation as well as division? I'd have been a great marriage counselor.

  "What was that, Lovejoy?"

  "Eh? Nothing." I'd been talking to myself.

  "There's that Connie you wanted to speak to. Quick!"

  I held on while the car slewed and juddered to a halt. Other motors parped. She tutted at their impatience. Connie was coming from the station forecourt. At this hour? I told Luna to wait and nipped through the traffic, calling out. She paused, more of a hesitation, before hurrying on. I raced, caught up.

  "Hey, Connie! It's me, for heaven's sake."

  "Hello, Lovejoy." She smiled, with effort, didn't stop to chat. "I'm in rather a hurry. Sorry about last night."

  I remembered. I'd beckoned, she'd declined. "Okay, love. You did the deal everybody's talking about, eh?"

  That stopped her. "Everybody's what? But it's ..."

  So there was a deal. "Sandy and Mel. You bought them out."

  "Oh, Lovejoy. Yes!" It was wrung from her. She seemed distraught, beside herself. Where the heck had she been so soon? And why hadn't she gone in her car? Or was it somewhere overnight? "Yes! On commission. You'd only find out."

  That terrible word's enough to cause most dealers I know to keel over into the custard. To sell on commission's only one step from going on the knocker, which is virtually begging from door to door. Sell on commission means you starve until you sell—then the dealer for whom you're selling takes the whole price except a measly ten percent.

  "What favors did you do Sandy and Mel, love? I thought I was the one fuffing your stuff out."

  She twisted, right there in the weak morning sunshine. As if I had her entangled in a net.

  "You are, Lovejoy! Don't think I don't still need your load."

  "Thank heavens for that."

  "I must go, Lovejoy. I—"

  "Where'll I leave it, Connie?" I had to ask the question, exactly as if I believed her. And explained, when she looked blank, "Your load I'm assembling."

  "Oh." She thought quickly of this problem, possibly for the very first time. "At Boxtenholt aerodrome. See Gunge. Okay?"

  "Right, love."

  We bussed, she sprinted. No night ticket on her windscreen, so it had been this morning that she'd hurtled off down the bright silver road. She made a Le Mans start, her face tense and staring.

  I walked back to Luna's motor. Luna also did a racing start, but talking, asking, informing.

  "Shut up a sec, love." Thinking's bad for you, some say. Let her do some. "Luna. Who of all the people you've met is untrustworthy?"

  "Among the dealers?" She thought. "Calamity Jenny. I didn't like her one bit." Which wasn't quite my question. "She's too saucy for her own good, that one."

  "And who is trustworthy?''

  "Sandy,” she said immediately, I pressed her for more names. "Big Frank, though he's hopeless. Quite different from that Mr. Kirwin."

  Hang on. How come she knew Acker Kirwin? "You've met?"

  "Yes. He bought ever such a lot at Wittwoode's auction. You remember? You sent me."

  "So I did." I made her describe the scene in detail.

  It was the collar job. He'd worked it on unsuspecting punters as the crowds had dwindled. It's not done much nowadays. It's quite simple, puts the average public bidder, the "women," off bidding. Thus:

  You wait to bid, at an auction, say, for a small carriage clock for your mantelpiece. Say Lot 200, about teatime. Happily you wait. You stand quite near it. You don't want to be startled into bidding for the wrong thing, so you've penciled a ring in your catalogue round the number. Lot 200. All clear. Then something very worrying happens.

  A suited gentleman, smart, dour, unsmiling, shoves his way towards you. He looks at the carriage clock. Lot 200, and compares it with a photograph he pulls from his pocket. He murmurs a curse, checks a list of items on a clipboard. It bears the police insignia. He quietly asks, "This item yours, madam?" in sepulchral tones. "No, no!" you gasp, by now convinced something sinister is going on. He peers at the marks in your catalogue. "It's just that I was thinking of bidding for it," you bleat in terror. "For my auntie. A present ..."

  He whispers gruffly that he's police. Would you please bid for it? And bring it to court, present it as evidence? It would only mean a few days at the Old Bailey, appearing as witness, you see, ma'am. The clock was stolen, you see. . . .

  "No, no!" you exclaim. And depart.

  Leaving Acker—for that's who the "inspector" will be, or some pal—to buy the carriage clock cheap, having got rid of the one serious bidder.

  "I knew he wasn't a police inspector," Luna told me.

  "How?" She was shrewder than I'd thought.

  "I know the inspectors," she said blithely. "We were guests of honor at their annual dinner." Silly me. "I told the gentlemen attendants. They only laughed." She bridled in annoyance. "No sense of vocation. It's not good enough."

  Whizzers, the scene shifters at auctioneers, are always on the take. Asking them for morality is whistling wind.

  "Terrible, isn't it," I sympathized. And it's then that I think I looked at Luna for the very first time.

  Oh, I’d had a gander, shufti'd her in passing, so to speak. But actually looking . . . ? No. I’d missed the sureness, her quiet cleverness. She couldn't exactly be the humdrum duckegg I’d assumed. Maybe because she'd gone along with most of what I'd decreed, I'd assumed she was a mundane housewife tremulously peering at the great world beyond her front door. And maybe I despised such, thinking why the hell hadn't they already got on with life instead of whinging about b
eing oppressed, that "jargoneering," as Florence Nightingale called it.

  There were other attributes. She drove sedately, but better than me. She was composed, attentive when I spoke about antiques. She didn't believe me on anything else. Rightly, I suppose. She did things off her own bat, sometimes got them right. She was smart enough to notice people, suss out their character. Gulp. Might she actually be more astute than I am? I'd already awarded her a secret medal, for she had made love hesitantly at first but eventually very, very well. Luna Car stairs had pleased me more than any woman I could remember. I looked away. She'd caught my glance, colored up.

  "What, Lovejoy? Did you say something?"

  "No." I was gruff, dismissive.

  "And Rye," she added. "We can trust him. Not like Mr. Vervain."

  "Not at all ... ? But you were all over Del."

  "I was nothing of the kind, Lovejoy! I was merely ... attentive. He's a famous broadcaster. But shifty. And so scared of the producer people—"

  "Wrong, Lune. They were scared of him. He's the star."

  "Lovejoy. You have it the wrong way about. He is frightened. He was frantic lest you didn't show."

  "Really?" I remembered that strange glint in their eyes, the hot expectation. And Joan's rather sinister glitter. What were they planning? I remembered the rumors, Del's links with the rough toughs of Whitechapel. I felt suddenly cold and told her to put the heating on. She did so, looked at me, said nothing.

  "Gawd Almighty, love." The mill grounds were heaving with schoolchildren. "You made us late—"

  "I?" she blazed, pulling in at the far end of the car park. "Lovejoy! Who positively clawed to ... ? Who really made us late, Lovejoy?"

  Therla Brewer was somewhere in the maelstrom. Josh Whatnot was trying to make four lads come off the waterwheel. It was locked static, thank goodness, but two of them were wet through. Why didn't they take this mob to the pictures instead? The thought of a hundred screaming ikes in the tumult of a dark cinema made me delete the question unanswered.

  "I want five minutes of Rye's time, that's all."

  "He's lecturing. Look."

  And there he was, the trustworthy Rye Benedict, leaning out of a hoist window, hanging on to the dangling rope of the hoist's pulley with one hand, speaking through a megaphone with the other. His feet were on the window ledge.