Gold by Gemini

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Compare this lovely silver shellfish,’ I ended brokenly, ‘with the three in the museum tomorrow. His best work’s 1808 to 1820. Look up the history of tea drinking. I’ll ask you tomorrow why they never drank tea with milk or even sugar in the seventeenth century, and suchlike background gems.’

  ‘Yes, Lovejoy,’ he said dejectedly.

  ‘And go round the shops that sell modern spoons. Right?’ He opened his mouth. ‘Never mind why,’ I said irritably. ‘Just do it.’ I keep telling him there’s no other way to learn how to spot crap, gunge and dross. I saw his blank face and wearily began to explain for the hundredth time.

  You teach a beginner about antiques by seeing if he has any feeling for craftsmanship. It’s everything. Antiques aren’t alien, you see. They’re extensions of mankind through time. It may seem odd that love instilled into solid materials by loving craftsmanship is the only creation of Mankind to defeat Time, but it’s true. In holding antiques you reach across centuries and touch the very hands of genius. I don’t count plastic cups or ballpoint pens stamped out by a machine. Fair’s fair. Man is needed.

  First, you look round the local furniture stores to see new furniture. Then lampshades. Then shoes. Then modern mail-order catalogues. Then mass-produced prints and paintings. Then books. Then tools. Then carpets. Then . . . It’s a terrible, frightening experience. Why do you think most modern furniture’s so ghastly? And why’s so much art mere dross? And fashions abysmal? And sculpture grotty? Because of Lovejoy’s Law of Loving – a tin can is a tin can is a tin can, but a tin can made with loving hands glows like the Holy Grail. It deserves to be adored because the love shines through. QED, fans. Most of today’s stuff could last a thousand years and never become antique simply because love’s missing. They’ve not got it. The poor things were made without delight, human delight.

  Therefore, folks, into your modern shopping precincts for a three-day penance of observation. And at every single item stop and ask yourself the only question which ever mattered: ‘Does that look as though it was made with love, from love, to express love?’ Your first day will be bad. Day two’ll be ruinous. Your third day will be the worst day of your life because you will have probably seen nothing which gets a ‘Yes’. Score zero. Nothing you see will have been made with love. It is grim – unbelievably, horrendously and frighteningly grim.

  Now comes day four. Go, downhearted and dismal by now, into your local museum. Stand still quite a while. Then drift about and ask yourself the same question as you wander. Now what’s the score? You already know the answer.

  It’s the only way to learn the antique trade. Look at rubbish, any cheap modern crud on sale now. You’ll finish up hooked for life on what other people call antiques, but what I call love. Laugh if you like, but antiques are just things made full of love. The hands that produced them, in factories like flues from Hell, by some stupendous miracle of human response and feeling managed to instil in every antique a deep hallmark of love and pride in that very act of loving.

  That’s why I’m an antiques dealer. What I can’t understand is why everybody else isn’t.

  I ended my explanation. Algernon was goggling. He’s heard it umpteen times.

  Algernon failed that whole evening miserably. He failed on the precious early Antoine Gaudin photograph I’d borrowed. He failed on a rare and valuable ‘Peacock’s New Double Dissection and History of England and Wales’, 1850, by Gall and Inglis of Paternoster Square (‘What a tatty old jigsaw, Lovejoy!’), and a child’s George IV complete teaser, almost microscopically small – the teapot’s a quarter of an inch long – brilliantly carved from hardwood and very, very costly. Of this last Algernon soared to his giddiest height yet, asking brightly, ‘What kind of plastic is it, Lovejoy?’

  I slung him out after that, unable to go on. I’d not laid a finger on him. Willpower.

  The world would have to wait with bated breath for Algernon’s judgement of paired water ewers, Wedgwood and Bentley polished black basalt, which I’d borrowed to include in his test. But I was especially keen not to hear him on the film transparency of a tortuously elaborate weapon by that genius Minamoto Tauguhiro. I couldn’t bear hearing him say it was a fancy dagger for slicing bread.

  He donned his motorbike leathers. I pushed him forcibly into the dark garden.

  ‘I expect you’re letting me off early because I was doing so well,’ he said merrily. He believes every word.

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘Will you please inform Uncle how successful I was with those sugar ladles?’ he asked at the door. ‘He will be so hugely delighted.’ His uncle pays me for teaching the goon.

  I wonder where all my patience comes from, honestly. ‘I’ll tell him you’re making your usual progress, Algernon.’

  ‘Thank you, Lovejoy!’ he exclaimed joyously. ‘You know, eventually I anticipate to be almost as swift as your good self –’

  I shut the door. There’s a limit.

  Normally, I’d stroll up to the pub to wash all that Algernon-induced trauma out of my mind. This particular night I was too late to escape. There was a knock at my door.

  ‘Nichole. What –?’

  ‘Kate,’ she said. Her smile made it the coldest night of the year. ‘The wicked sister.’

  ‘Oh, come in.’ She was slightly taller than Nichole but the same colouring.

  ‘No, thank you. You’re Lovejoy?’ I nodded. You feel so daft just standing holding a door open, don’t you? You can’t shut it and you can’t go out or back in. ‘I want to ask you not to help my sister,’ she said carefully. ‘She . . . her judgement is sometimes, well, not too reliable, you understand.’

  ‘I haven’t helped her,’ I explained. ‘She wanted a sketch and some –’

  ‘Some rubbish,’ Kate cut in. ‘Uncle was a kindly man, but given to making up fanciful tales. I don’t want my sister influenced.’

  ‘About his other belongings,’ I began hopefully.

  ‘Very ordinary furniture, very cheap, very modem,’ she stated, cold as ever. ‘And now all sold. You do understand about Nichole?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. She said goodnight and drove into the darkness in an elderly Mini. I sighed and locked up. I seemed to be alienating the universe.

  I’ve told you all this the way I have because it was the last quiet time there was in the whole business, I realized during the rest of that evening that something was rapidly going wrong in my humdrum normal life. Looking back, I don’t see to this day what else I could have done.

  The murder honestly wasn’t my fault, and I don’t think the other deaths were, either. Honest.

  Chapter 7

  JANIE HURTLED IN early next morning. Her husband had been called away to the city for the day, the early train. It wasn’t any good, though. The feeling was still on me. I sent her packing. She was wild and refused to go but I picked her up and chucked her outside in the porch. She even tried scratching my eyes as I slammed the door. To be fair, I hinted I’d work to do, quite politely. She even rushed round to the back. I reached the bolt first, pulled the curtains and with Janie banging on the door hauled up my paving. She’d be mad for days. She’d brought a picnic basket, as if there’s time for that sort of thing.

  Down in the priest’s hole the cardboard box’s contents seemed even more pathetic. I unfolded the small ledged Regency table, a godsend in these days of wobbling warping junk, and poured the buttons out. I started on them with a lens and prism. It takes time. The photos were 1930s, old churches, a beach, a boarding-house. An hour later I reached the first medal, the old ‘ration gong’ of the War. Ordinary. There seemed not a single hint among the lot.

  I have twenty shoeboxes full of what history got tip to, but I couldn’t find a trace of any Lady Isabella. The books showed nothing special under the microscope, no microdots, no secret inks, no oiled-in watermarks. I cleared up and got ready to leave. The box was better left in the hidden cellar. When I came out into the garden I found Janie had driven off in a huff. Now I’d hav
e to walk up into the village and wait for our single market bus about noon. Why have women no patience? I had no more cheese for the robin. I borrowed some budgie seed and told them I owed it.

  ‘The message is in the words,’ I told the robin. ‘And they’re only a list of places, right? All you need to do is visit each place and you’d find where he’s put the Roman . stuff. It should be obvious. Easy.’

  Easy. Even if they were in the Isle of Man, and me only with the bus fare to town. I’d walk back. Still, things were definitely looking up for Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. At least I’d a ray of hope now.

  ‘I’ll go and do a bit to the painting,’ I told the robin.

  Inevitably the phone rang.

  ‘Lovejoy. I hope you don’t mind?’ Nichole.

  ‘No. Glad to hear you.’

  We held the pause. There’s a sudden affinity between two people sometimes when nothing really needs saying.

  ‘I. . . I was ringing to ask your help. The sketch and the rubbish from Uncle James.’

  ‘Dandy Jack has them,’ I told her carefully. ‘I did some work for him but he wouldn’t part with the sketch.’

  ‘I see,’ she said icily. ‘Are you sure your girlfriend hasn’t bought them for you?’

  ‘No, look, love,’ I was saying when she slammed the phone down.

  I went out to work on my painting, whistling. She’d come round.

  In the back garden near where Manton and Wilkinson fly I have this workshop. The big work of the moment was transferring a genuine 1774 Wilson painting to a new canvas. I goggled up, apron, mask and all. Janie laughs at my garb, but what’s wrong with being not stupid?

  When your superb antique painting’s rotting to hell you must act. If you’re a beginner, take it to an expert for advice. This painting’s Richard Wilson, possibly the most underrated grand master. I’d found it being used to pad the back seat of an old Austin Ruby. The bloke thought I was off my head. He was the sort who would chuck away a First Folio and keep the string.

  If a painting’s canvas is literally falling to bits you’ve a choice, of simply (figure of speech, that – it’s really very complicated) rebacking with a new canvas, or of lifting the old delicate work of art off the canvas and putting it on a new one. This isn’t fraud. It saves a precious thing for another three centuries; It’s therefore essential. My method is to stretch small-grain gauze until it’s even, then stick it carefully to the painting’s face. (My glue’s secret. Find your own.) Several layers of paper tissue stuck to the gauze, and you now remove the painting, still on its decrepit canvas, from the wood stretcher. After days of drying, tissue-gauze surface downwards, and, on an absolutely even bench, in the right wooden frame to hold it still, you gently caress the old canvas away. It takes maybe three months to a year’s sparetime caressing. It’s not much. For a beautiful luscious – or even an ugly – antique oil painting it’s worth every second. You need to remove the debris as you go. Some use pumice stone, others special flat-face drills. I use me and a special powder I make up myself. Then stick a new canvas on any way you like. Tip: if you ever do it, be careful to announce the painting’s been re-canvassed or you’ll not get a bean for it. You can’t blame the honest old public for being worried if they see yesterday’s date stamped on the canvas of a genuine Constable. They’re a very shrewd and suspicious mob.

  I was caressing away when somebody coughed at my elbow.

  ‘There’s a bell at the gate,’ I said angrily, not looking up.

  ‘So sorry.’ Great. Nichole’s bloke, your actual Edward Rink.

  Eventually, I rose, stepped carefully back from the bench and turned. He was there, hesitant but determined. He must have left his car in the lane.

  ‘I called in Dandy Jack’s early this morning.’

  ‘Survive, did he?’

  ‘He says he sold the sketch.’

  ‘That’s life,’ I said, wondering if Dandy actually had.

  He pulled out a gold case and did the fire ritual. No kind offer of a fag to one of the world’s workers.

  ‘To a young lady.’ His bottled eyes quivered indignantly. ‘I think it was your young lady, Lovejoy.’ Two little discs of red glowed on his cheeks.

  ‘Oh?’ Typical of Dandy. I bet he’d really sold it to Beck. Dealers are rarely truthful about these innocent details. I decided not to say this, and to mention nothing about Nichole’s phone call.

  ‘And the diaries Nichole’s uncle wrote. I understand from Dandy Jack you have them.’

  ‘You do?’ I was thinking, what the hell’s going on?

  ‘Now, Lovejoy.’ He was trying so hard. I watched curiously. ‘I’m willing to pay for them. You – you have no car, I believe.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Nichole treasures her uncle’s things.’ He swallowed shakily. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘I’m willing to buy you a popular car. In exchange.’

  ‘What’s so precious about them, Rink?’

  ‘Nichole’s sister. She . . .’ his voice hardened. ‘They don’t see quite eye to eye. Kate’s often . . . unpleasant to Nichole. It happens in some families. I heard she called on you last night, Lovejoy.’

  I eyed him. How did he know that?

  ‘Yes. And practically told me to get stuffed. Anyway, it’s a lot of money for two old scrapbooks, isn’t it?’

  ‘Lovejoy,’ he said, whitening round his lips. ‘You will let me have them. And obtain your girlfriend’s co-operation. Or else.’

  ‘Eh?’ I couldn’t believe my ears.

  ‘You heard, Lovejoy.’ The pillock mistook my amazement for awe.

  ‘Are you trying to –’

  ‘Threaten?’ His little eyes flicked round the garden, the shed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You? Me?’ I asked fascinated. I’d seen some rum customers in my time, but this . . .

  ‘You.’ He flung his cigarette down and stood on it – note, not stamped or ground it in with his heel. Simply stood. I should have been thinking at the time. I’d have seen what sort of a swine he was. ‘You have a choice, Lovejoy. Money plus physical well-being. Or poverty and . . .’

  ‘And? I prompted hilariously.

  ‘And pain, Lovejoy,’ he said gravely.

  ‘Look,’ I tried to say, but this wart actually tapped my chest to shut me up.

  ‘You look, Lovejoy,’ Worse, his breath was unfortunate. ‘I’m a businessman. I can play rough. I have the money to get things done. By others. Tougher than you. And you are strapped, practically in the soup queue.’

  Well, I laughed. Honestly, I was helpless. Here was this nerk threatening a bloke like me. I’ve been in more dust-ups than dances, so maybe you can’t blame me for the hilarity. I had to sit down on the orange-box. He stood there, ashen.

  ‘Listen, mate,’ I managed to gasp at last. ‘Dandy Jack’s having you on. If it was a bird bought it, she wasn’t mine. And,’ I finished, sobering, ‘if you’d asked more politely I’d have sold you the diaries for a couple of quid. As it is, get lost.’

  ‘So Dandy Jack was lying?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’

  He looked me over, a really cold fish.

  ‘The next time we meet you’ll beg me to accept them as a gift, Lovejoy,’ he said portentously. ‘You’ve been adequately warned.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  He turned and stalked off.

  I was still laughing when I caught the noon bus.

  On the way to town I found myself thinking about an old chap possibly finding a coffin full of antiques.

  You may believe that expecting to find (as opposed to buying) is something of a pipedream. Long may you so believe, because that lessens the chances of you doing any finding. The odds for me then get better. From the bottom of my atherosclerotic heart take my tip: keep looking. And above all keep expecting. When all’s said and done, those London bankers who found that stache of Lord Byron’s poems in their cellars weren’t out for a casual stroll, were they? They were tidying up old deed boxes. Hence the now le
gendary discovery of documents and poems from 1820, the Scrope Davies find (of ‘inaccurate memory’, as Byron called this celebrated Dandy – note the capital letter; they were very particular). So when I hear of ‘lucky’ finds I always think to myself, what . were they doing looking in the first place? And I mean them all. The nine-year-old Yorkshire lad who found that priceless Saxon longsword in the silt of the stream at Gilling West, The two Colchester children who dug down on to the Romano-British temple in Lexden. The East Anglian farmer who noticed a large circle of wheat standing tall and perfect during a recent wilting drought and had the sense to measure the circle carefully with his hobnails for thinking about after the harvest was gathered in – and discovered the burial tomb circle of one of King Tasciovanus’s tributary kings. And me: I once bought an ‘old’ Victorian knitting needle found locally from Wilkie’s shop (he’s navigation and naval instruments of the eighteenth century) and ‘an iron Georgian drinking cup’ from Harry’s in our High Street on the selfsame day – because I can smell a Roman legion’s doctor’s instruments at a thousand leagues. So look with courageous expectation, folks. You may have a king buried in your own back yard.

  I wistfully remembered the story of the lovely, mystic Beaworth Box, holding a good ten thousand dazzling coins from AD 1087. It was a small lead box, very like a coffin. Like the Cuerdale Chest, complete with its precious silver ornaments. Like the Flaxton Box. I can’t go on. It’s too painful. And really delicious hoards have been found on the Isle of Man, like the two at Andreas.

  See how you can talk yourself round?

  ‘This is as far as we go, mate,’ the conductor was saying, giving me a nudge.

  ‘Then I’ll get off,’ I said, and I did.

  In town I phoned Janie. Luckily she herself answered. I asked her if she’d gone to Dandy’s and bought the Burne-Jones sketch. She said no, still mad at me. That made Nichole, Janie, Nichole’s private nutter Edward Rink, Mary the housewife, Kate, and eighteen debtors all blazing at me, just within two days. I honestly do try but sometimes nobody else bothers. There are times like that.