Gold by Gemini

by Jonathan Gash

  Smiling with anticipation, I drifted in.

  Gimbert’s is two enormous galleries half-roofed in glass so the shadows confuse the innocent. Light’s the auctioneer’s worst enemy. It isn’t bad as auction halls go but you have to watch it. Ringers turn up once a month. They’re easy to spot, shuffling about looking at customers and nowhere else the way they do. They have to, in case a serious collector turns up. If one does he spells trouble – the collector may be willing to pay an antique’s true worth and ringers aren’t. They pretend to ignore the desired object, except for one ringer who bids. After the auction they’ll meet in some bar and auction the antique among themselves, sharing the net gain.

  It’s illegal.

  ‘Morning, Lovejoy.’ Dear old Beck! Fancy that.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘On the borrow?’ he asked, grinning. ‘Or selling that Isen?’

  He’d fished me more than once, knowing I can’t help going after antiques. You fish friends – or, indeed, enemies – by telling them, say, a genuine painting by Isen (Kano Eishin) is somewhere or other, making it up. Well, who in their right mind can resist Isen’s luscious white highlighted robes and his gusting winds driving those painted ships? Naturally one hares off after it. For somebody like Beck it’s a joke. For somebody like me, going without grub to raise the fare on a wild goose chase, it’s no giggle.

  ‘Sold it,’ I said back coolly. He stared. ‘Thanks for the tip, Beckie.’ That shut him up.

  I drifted on, nodding and passing the occasional word. A mote spoon donged for attention from among a mass of crud in a crammed cutlery drawer. I’m always astonished people’s heads don’t swivel at the sudden clanging. The trouble is that genuine antiques make your breathing funny, I went over casually and pretended to examine the kitchen cabinet. Mote spoons are often forged, but this was true 1752 or so. No maker’s mark. Odd long pointed handle and a fenestrated bowl.

  Lily and Patrick arrived to look at the phoney tapestries and Big Frank lumbered in to maul the silver. Delmer came flashily in, staggering under the weight of his gold rings. Even before he was through the door those of us who knew him glanced about to see where the books were heaped and stepped out of the way because he’s a fast mover. I like dealers like Delmer. Only books. He’d walk past a Rubens crucifixion painting to bid for a paperback. Sure enough he streaked for the corner, slamming a nice pair of Suffolk chairs aside on the way. I sighed. It takes all sorts, but God alone knows why.

  ‘Anything, Lovejoy?’ Tinker Dill, an unnerving sight this early, obediently emerging from the mob on time. This was toy cue. I hoped Tinker could remember his lines.

  ‘Not really, Tinker.’ I made sure I said it wrong enough for alert friends to notice.

  ‘I’ll slide off, then.’

  ‘Er, no, Tinker.’ A lot of ears pricked. ‘Hang about.’

  ‘Lovejoy wants you to bid for that drawerful of old knives and forks, Tinker.’ Beck again.

  ‘Right,’ I said angrily. I didn’t have to act. Beck really does rile me. ‘Get it, Tinker.’

  ‘It looks a right load of rubbish, Lovejoy –’ Tinker, badly overacting.

  ‘Get it, Tinker.’

  ‘Lost your wool?’ Beck said innocently. ‘Just because I got that Burne-Jones sketch? Sold it yesterday, incidentally. To your friend, businessman with the blonde.’ So Rink had traced it successfully after all. I hadn’t time to worry about the implications for the minute.

  ‘Look, Lovejoy –’

  ‘Do as you’re bloody well told, Tinker.’

  I pushed off through the crowd, pretending to be blazing.

  ‘Easy, Lovejoy.’ Lennie offering me a fag. I shook my head irritably. I deserved an Oscar.

  ‘Those bloody trawlies get to me, Lennie.’

  ‘Jill said she’d be in with that opal photo.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I’d dated it for her, about 1800. Photographs were once done on opal glass and coloured by watercolours. She was asking the earth, naturally.

  I drifted. Delmer had found a copy of The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes and looked as pleased as Punch. Don’t laugh. The public’s soaked up over two hundred editions since 1765.

  ‘Is it one of Newberry’s?’ I couldn’t help muttering the vital question as I drifted past. He dropped it casually back into the job lot and sauntered off, shaking his head absently. A good dealer’s a careful one. I touched it for the clang and drifted in the opposite direction. The unique copy’s in the British Museum, but Newberry turned them out for donkey’s years in St Paul’s Churchyard during Georgian times so they’re still knocking about. I had a brief look at the rest. Delmer would have spotted the first edition of Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, which lay among a pile of gramophone records, so no chance there.

  I drifted some more. The crowd collected. Ringers were there, trimmers, hailers, tackers, lifters, nobbers, screwers, backers and sharpers, a real tribe of hunters if ever there was one. I can’t help smiling. I actually honestly like us all. At least we’re predictable and, therefore, reliable, which makes us a great deal more preferable than the good old innocent public. Some people were gazing in the window at us. Well, if you stay out of the water at least the sharks can’t get you.

  The jade coin was in the corner case, numbered seventy. By the time the auctioneer banged us to the starting gate practically everybody in the room was pretending to ignore it.

  ‘Lot One,’ he piped, a callow youth on his tenth auction. ‘A very desirable clean modern birdcage complete with stand. Who’ll bid?’

  ‘Dad send you to feed the crocodiles, sonny?’ one of the Aldgate circus called. Laughter.

  A woman near me tutted. ‘How rude!’ she exclaimed.

  I nodded sadly. ‘Modern manners,’ I said. She approved of my sentiments and I was glad. I’d seen her inspecting the kitchen cabinet, and Tinker Dill was on to it, with my money.

  Sharks and cut-throats, we all settled and paid rapt attention to the sale of a birdcage.

  I watched it come. Ten, twenty. At thirty-two, Margaret bid for and got a pair of small Lowestoft soft-paste porcelain animal figures, a swan and a dog. I don’t like them much because of the enamelling but I was glad for Margaret. Delmer got his Goody Two-Shoes and a pile of others for a few pence at thirty-eight. At forty, Tinker Dill got the cabinet, though Beck had a few laughs at my expense and. threatened loudly to compete in the bidding. One of the Birmingham lads wandered over curiously during the bidding to look at the cabinet, but by then Tinker had guessed right and was standing idly by, leaning against the drawer where the mote spoon was. My mote spoon now. The Brummie stared across at me carefully. I smiled benevolently back. I saw him start edging across to the others of the Brummie circus. Well, they’re not all daft.

  Harry Bateman tried a few bids for a Victorian copy of an anonymous Flemish school oil and failed. Why first-class nineteenth-century artists wasted their talents making copies of tenth-rate seventeenth-century paintings I’ll never know, but you couldn’t say this to, Harry.

  ‘Lot Seventy,’ the auctioneer intoned.

  This was it. My jade piece, a dark lustrous green with brown flacks and one oblique growth fault, was carved in the form of an ancient Chinese cash coin. Jade is the wonder stone, matt and oily and soft to look at yet incredibly hard. It can resist shock blows time after time. (Remember that those large but thin uninteresting jade rectangles you see are most probably nothing less than temple bells, to be struck when tuning string instruments. Very desirable. A complete set is worth . . . well, a year’s holiday. Give me first offer.) I saw Beck glance around. The bidding started. I went in quick, too quick for some. Jimmo was prominent in the early stages. Then Jonas came in, raising in double steps to the auctioneer’s ecstasy. Jonas is a youngish retired officer with money, no knowledge and determination. This combination’s usually at least fatal, but Jonas has survived in the business simply by refusing to give up. From an initial dislike his fellow, dealers, me included, switched to neutrality and final
ly with reluctance to a sort of grudging acceptance. He’s silver and pre-Victorian book bindings with occasional manuscripts thrown in for luck. Lily was there but left the bidding when I started up. Patrick looked peevish when she stalled – there’d be trouble over her tea and crumpets when he got her home. Four others showed early and chucked up. That left me, Jonas, a Brummie and Beck. I bid by nodding. Some people bid by waving programmes or raising eyebrows. Remember there’s no need to wave and tell everybody who’s bidding. Don’t be afraid your bid will be missed. A creased forehead is like a flag day to an auctioneer. He gets a percentage.

  On we went, me sweating as always. I was beaten when Beck upped. Jonas must have sensed something wasn’t quite right because he hung on only briefly, then folded. I saw that the Brummie bidder was the one who’d crossed to look at the kitchen cabinet. He finally stopped when Beck showed the first sign of wavering, clever lad. The jade was knocked down to Beck.

  Beck glanced triumphantly in my direction through the throng. I glared back. He would brag all year how he picked up this rare ancient Chinese jade coin in the face of organized local opposition.

  ‘He had us, Lovejoy,’ Jonas said, pushing past at the break. I followed him muttering to the tea bar.

  ‘Hard luck, Lovejoy,’ from Jimmo. ‘Hell of a price.’

  ‘Outsider!’ I heard Patrick snapping at Beck.

  ‘Things are getting worse every day,’ I agreed.

  Janie had our teas waiting in the brawl. We had to fight our way into a corner to breathe. Tinker kept Janie a part of a bench. I kissed her.

  ‘Watch out, Lovejoy,’ she said, smiling brightly to show eagle-eyed watchers we were only good friends. ‘One of my neighbours is here.’ She flashed a brilliant grimace towards a vigilant fat lady steaming past. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ she added, moving primly away from my hand which had accidentally alighted on her knee.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The old jade.’ She reproved me under her breath, ‘I’d have given you some money. Nobody need have noticed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Then you could have got the jade instead.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks, love,’ I said bravely. ‘You get these disappointments.’

  She eyed me shrewdly. ‘Didn’t you want it, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ I lied evenly. ‘I always want ancient Chinese jade, don’t I?’

  She kept her eyes on me. ‘Then why are you so pleased, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Oh, just life in general.’

  ‘Was there something wrong with it?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ I said indignantly.

  I ought to know. It had taken me nine weeks to make, nine weeks of pure downright slavery over my old pedalled spindle. It was absolutely perfect. Authentic in every detail, except for the small point that it was a forgery.

  Now calm down, gentle reader. Can I be held responsible if some goon buys a piece of jade – it really was jade, which is mined nowadays in Burma, New Zealand and Guatemala without examining it? And if you’re still wondering why I bid for a forgery I’d made and put up for auction myself, take my tip: please feel free to read on, but don’t ever go into the antiques game. My name and address I’d scratched in minute letters around the margins of the inside hole, date included. If customers don’t look with a handlens, it’s just tough luck, and the more fools they. I couldn’t exactly put my name in neon lights on a thing the size of a dollar, could I? It would spoil the effect.

  ‘Lovejoy.’ She had that odd look.

  ‘I didn’t touch your knee,’ I said indignantly.

  ‘What are you up to?’

  I was narked with Janie. Right in the middle of a chattering mob of customers in an ordinary small-town auction she starts suspecting me of being up to some trickery. Women can be very suspicious of fundamentally good honest motives. It’s not very nice. I really do believe they have rather sinister minds. Where there’s no reason to be suspicious they suddenly assume you can’t be trusted. I find it very unsettling. They’re the ones who’re always on about trust, then they go and show they’ve got none themselves. It’s basically a sign of poor character.

  At Lot Two-Eighty, I crossed to Tinker. The crowd had thinned. In the smoke the substitute auctioneer, a hoary old veteran who wasn’t letting us get away with anything, droned cynically on. We had space to pretend interest. Tinker made a great show of pulling out the drawer and complaining about the uselessness of the buy I’d made. The auctioneer called for quiet, please, during the bidding. I slipped the mote spoon into my pocket and relaxed.

  ‘Put the rest back in next week’s auction, Lovejoy?’ Tinker asked. This is all quite legal.

  ‘Yes.’ I made sure we weren’t overheard. ‘Grumble a lot while you do.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  I had to stop myself from a wide grin at Tinker’s crack. Barkers can out-grumble the most miserable farmer.

  Janie went to have her hair done. We eventually met at a coffee garden near the river walk, a short distance away. I’d tried to get her to come to Woody’s but she wouldn’t. I said I could return her the money she’d lent me. She said don’t be silly.

  We talked on the way back to Gimbert’s, where the auction was practically over. I caught sight of Beck and said so-long to Janie. They were in the auction yard among starting cars and people hauling various lots out of the covered part. A woman was asking how to get an enormous cupboard home. Time to haul in the net.

  ‘Look, Beck,’ I said. He stopped bragging to his mates. ‘About that jade.’

  ‘Want it, Lovejoy? It’s for sale.’ There was a roar of laughter, my expense.

  ‘I’ve a couple of things you might swap.’

  ‘Good stuff?’

  ‘Two are.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘Good stuff,’ I said cagily.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘My place.’

  He thought a moment. Finally, he trod his cigarette.

  ‘I’ll come.’

  I got a taxi. In the ride out to the village he showed me the jade.

  ‘Lovely piece of work, eh?’

  I could hardly disagree. At the cottage he insisted the taxi waited.

  I had the pieces distributed around the living room. It wouldn’t do to show him the workshop.

  ‘This glass jug,’ I told him. He reached out for it. ‘I’ve this bowl as well.’

  ‘Both yours?’ he asked warily. I nodded. ‘Honestly? Roman or Egyptian?’

  His eyes were everywhere while I busied myself getting a glass of beer. I had to steady my hands, back turned towards him, while I poured in case the glass clinked and gave away my anxiety. It’s a right bloody game this. When I gave him the drink I could see he’d noticed my tiler, hung prettily on the wall. And my non-musical instrument casually placed over the fireplace.

  ‘You’ve one or two things here, Lovejoy,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want to sell.’

  ‘No?’ He looked shrewdly about. ‘This place looks pretty bare. And where’s your car? You used to have one.’

  ‘Well, I had to sell it.’

  ‘I see.’ He sat examining the glass bowl and jug I’d made. ‘Good Roman,’ he pronounced. I said nothing. ‘Cash adjustment, Lovejoy?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘One for one.’

  ‘No deal.’

  ‘Well, then,’ I hesitated. ‘I’m not really in the jade field any more, but . . .’

  ‘No?’ He actually laughed. ‘Then what are we arguing about?’

  We began dealing. It’s done by mental palpation, not actual utterances. You talk all round the subject, how difficult things are, what clients want nowadays, how troublesome barkers are. We ended with Beck accepting the glass bowl and the jug, plus the painting, in exchange for the jade coin. He took the instrument as well and paid a few notes to make up the difference.

  He carried his trophies into the waiting taxi.

  ‘Here, Lovejoy,’ he said from the window as the car turne
d in the lane.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t see why I should pay the driver.’

  I paid up with ill grace and watched the taxi dwindle uphill towards the chapel. He’d paid anyway. He’d be jubilant, until he found out.

  Still, I’d not been untruthful. ‘That Palmer looks wrong to me, somehow,’ I’d said. And I’d told him of the instrument, ‘I’m not sure what you’d call it.’

  I stood in the garden tying my jade on to a string to wear round my neck under my shirt. Contact with living human skin really does restore life and glow to jade. Never leave jade untouched if you can help it. It’s the only antique of which this can be said. Jade is the exception which proves my no-touch rule. Even the funeral pieces from ancient China recover their life and lustre by being fondled. Love, folks, as I said, is making it. Jade tells you that.

  I totted up. I’d sell the mote spoon to Helen. That would pay Janie back and, with what I’d got extra from Beck just now, give me the fare to the Isle of Man. As for the rest, I’d just swapped one set of forgeries for another. Right?

  Yes, right. But there was a balance, the money Beck had just given for the jade at Gimbert’s. He had successfully bid for it against fierce opposition. I was proud of him.

  I’d promised to ring Janie and say what I’d decided to do, but then I thought it over. It’d be better just me against Edward Rink. I went in to pack.

  Early morning and I was on the train to Liverpool.

  Chapter 16

  THE TRAIN’S THE easy bit.

  I like the sea. It’s natural, somehow never fraudulent. From the ferry wharf I gazed down the Mersey out to sea.

  If Bexon was right, Suetonius had probably sailed from Chester. The more I thought about it the more it fitted. The Roman Second Legion had been stationed in Chester when Boadicea vented her spleen. That’s known nearly for absolute certain. The wily Roman had left his harbour base firmly held in strength,’ the most orthodox of all military moves. He’d hardly have needed it protected this way if he’d sailed from Wales because the powerful Queen Cartimandua, as nasty a piece of work as ever trod land, was too busy ravishing successions of stalwart standard-bearers in Manchester to notice if the political weather outside changed much from day to day.