The Very Last Gambado

by Jonathan Gash

  Beautiful all right. It was the girl who’d been having psychoanalysis. She sat at a dressing table, surrounded by lasses doing ministering touches. God, what a life. Folk forever poking your face, hair, peering in your earhole. In contrast, she seemed nervous, edgy. She snapped at a peasant wielding a hairbrush. I caught the look of exasperation that passed among the suffering villeins. The new star was trouble. Same as Stef Honor, but different—his six aides were simply resigned but had to keep serving the mighty, for bread. Lorane caught my look, shrugged, moved us for a camera’s priority.

  "Stars are stars, Lovejoy. The bastard public’s so frigging fickle. They want a particular dumb blonde—and I mean boneheaded—you’ve got to give them her. And pay her a fortune for the privilege. Flavor of the month, everybody wants a lick.” “How do you know the film’ll be a success?”

  “You don’t Lovejoy.” She sounded angry. Nowt new, of course, but I was starting to wonder more than somewhat about Lorane. “You get the right ingredients, hire the best, lay retainers on half the industry. Then you pray the public doesn’t walk away.” “Why don’t you work it out first?”

  She uttered a sardonic laugh. “Lovejoy, don’t go into movies. Promise?”

  The stars entered the lit area. Folk were beginning to shout urgently. I worried about being blamed for getting in some megaassistant’s way, but Lorane said we were fine. Stef Honor was moved about by Vance. Saffron was in a chair by the cardboard fireside. Ray Meese appeared, hasty and wheezing, his horn-rims glinting, pointing and talking to a soberly casual bloke among the cameras.

  A run-through’s a kind of ignored rehearsal. The actors ignore each other most of the time, until their lines come up. Then it’s the teeth, the beamy smile, all attention, words. A sort of synthetic life. Instant coffee, with self-love and animation stirred in as an extra- offer ingredient. Wonderful asset for some con merchant. Why don’t actors turn to crime more often? They’d make a killing.

  “Are these lights all right?” Stef Honor called at one point. “Only my best side’s ..He was instantly reassured with a chorus of, “Marvelous, Steffie darling!” and, “Superbo, great one!” and suchlike. Really nauseating. Eventually the galaxy was ready for creativity to strike. Things stilled.

  “We’re going for a take, world!” Vance yelled, his first-ever intelligible words. So he did know the language after all.

  “What’s he—?”

  “Shhh!” a million assistants hissed at me.

  Instant silence. You’ve never heard such. Even at our distance—twenty yards or so—I heard Stef Honor’s shoes on the carpet, the glug of the drink he poured while he said hello to Saffron. She was being all lovely and flouncy in her chair. Max nudged me, swelling with pride. His immortal words, his screenplay recorded for all time on film.

  “What can they be up to, Stanislav?” Saffron fluttered.

  Stef paused. Deep-in-thought acting vibed out to the universe. “I don’t know, honey,” he intoned, being strong, determined. “Yet!” He crossed, gave her a glass, stared soulfully from the window.

  “Stanislav. Promise me you won’t... do anything risky?” This girl had a way with emphasis.

  “Risky?” He gave a hollow laugh, turned full face. “Bernice, risks are made to be taken—”

  "Cut,” somebody yelled so suddenly I jumped. Turmoil began. The sober bloke was looking at an instrument in his hand, pointing to a far corner of the vast hangar. Meese was infarcting, sweating, furiously ballocking people.

  "Somebody moved over far right,” the sober bloke called.

  Puzzled, I stood on tiptoe to see over the scrum. Nobody there, except a few screens placed haphazardly. A couple of birds poked their heads out.

  “Sorry. We were just arranging—”

  "Cut it out, you stupid cunts,” various people screamed. In the hullabaloo while the miscreants were shot or fired or something, I looked admiringly at the quiet middle-aged bloke who’d spotted the movements through solid screens.

  "How’d he do that, Max? Magic?”

  “The light,” Max said. "Jim Boyce, lighting cameraman. If somebody behind him moves about silently he’ll know. The light’s quality changes. It shows on camera. Imperceptible to the rest of us, even to the light meters. To him it’s like a cloud covering the sun.”

  “Honestly that good?”

  “Try it,” he said. Then joked, “No, don’t!”

  “Ha ha,” I laughed politely. But what a nasty unpleasant skill to have, I couldn’t help thinking. Especially troublesome when robbing the British Museum is uppermost in a person’s mind, no? Solely for fictional purposes, of course. “Here, Max. Your story. Have to be daytime, does it?”

  “Anytime.” He showed anguish. “Problem, Lovejoy?” “Problem? How do you spell it?”

  He laughed with relief. “Shhh!” a million assistants went. Another take. And another. And, yawn, another.

  That’s filming. A kind of hectic boredom with squabbles, hatreds interspersed with groveling admiration, and insecurities toppling egos in the ferment.

  Which meant I had to talk to Ray Meese about make-believe. Worse, it also meant I had to go through with concocting a believable robbery of the only impregnable museum on earth, with security people opposing my particular fairy tale every inch of the way.

  It came to me then that the only thing to do was to do it properly. Go for gold. Fiction can be anything. But if you concoct a real scheme it’s got to be believable, Max said. Even under the eyes of countless cameras and filmed from every angle for posterity, it must be true. I could see that, and why Max and Meese were panicky. The trouble was I now had a zillion jobs for Lydia, who wasn’t speaking to me. And I needed help from sundry hard men, all criminals of sour intent.

  Just as I was starting to feel really down, something odd happened, which delighted me at first but returned to worry me later. A tall bruiser beckoned me toward a line of vans, asked me if I was Lovejoy the antique dealer. He said he was Bri, a gofer.

  “Only, I've just picked up a winner here.” He was over the moon, said he’d paid a hundred quid for a genuine antique table. “What d’you reckon?”

  Behind one van stood a long table. Thick solid oak, a surface patina honestly 150 years old, dark with age. Sadly I ran my hand over the top.

  “Sorry, Bri. Fake.”

  “You what?” Frantically he yanked a book from the van’s cabin, Gloag’s Short Dictionary of Furniture, began flipping the pages. This bit always breaks my heart.

  “No good, Bri. See this plug?” I showed him where a plug of wood, three-quarters of an inch thick, interrupted the lovely even graining.

  “But that’s to hold the table top firm . .

  “Three massive planks, each one foot wide and eight long. Looks fine, Bri, but notice the three-inch extra piece, as margin all around? And that plug, really ugly showing in the middle of the top? Victorian furniture makers were better than that.”

  “But those oak legs, Lovejoy . .

  “They’re always modern, when the table’s made from old chapel pews.” For a while it was our commonest fake furniture, especially in London and provincial showrooms. So many chapels and churches were sold, demolished, or made derelict in our great postwar retreat from religion that anybody could buy a dozen splendid solid oak pews—wearing the luscious dark patina acquired from a century’s devoted polishing—for tenpence each in the early 1960s. A few wise guessers stored some, making a killing when the antiques boom began. Years ago I was practically moved to tears, seeing builders in Colchester burn Wesley’s original chapel wood furniture to ash, all for the want of a few shillings ... I told Bri this. He was outraged.

  "I’ve heard of you antique dealers. Bastards.” He flung his book away. “You’d say that, just to make me think it’s worthless.

  Then you’d get it for a song.” Like I say, disillusioning an antique hunter breaks your heart. I retreated, sighing, and went to watch them do more filming.

  Did I say odd? Yes, odd. Beca
use ten minutes later I saw Bri having a cigarette with Lorane. And they were chuckling, Bri’s sorrow instantly forgotten in the luster of Lorane’s company. Or had it been real? I put the incident from my mind. I’d enough oddities to be going on with, without worrying about somebody who couldn’t care less about having bought a pig in a poke.

  =0

  T

  HE day’s best bit was they fed us from portable wagons in the yard. Good hot grub, as many pasties as you liked.

  Later that night I was frying bread and marge over an oil lamp when the door received a discreet knock, rap rap. Lydia, must be. With the lane in darkness—no street lights in our village—latecomers tend to be aggressive doorbenders.

  “Come in, love,” I bawled.

  “Light please, Lovejoy." Lydia’s faint voice.

  Sigh. I hunted for another oil lamp, lit it from my candle, carried it to the door to illuminate the outer darkness. She waited while I hung it on a nail in the porch. “Why don’t you just come in when I shout?” She narks me more than any bird I’ve ever known, which is megatudinous.

  “That would be improper, Lovejoy. Darkness suggests surreptitious.”

  “Nobody’d see,” I said, reasonable. “And God did the darkening, not me.”

  “Don’t blaspheme.” She entered unsurreptitiously, high heels clicking on the bare flags.

  Can a fact be blasphemous? I followed, then leapt with a cry. "My frigging bread, you silly cow! It’s burning!”

  The swine of a frying pan does this, stays resolutely cold until the minute I’m distracted by somebody making her bloody illuminated arrival, then goes nuclear critical. Coughing from smoke I banged the charred mass into the sink and started scraping. Lydia opened the windows and admonished me. My two budgies, inside because of the outside cold, fell about laughing. I got wild and shoved a fist at their cage threatening fire and slaughter if they didn’t shut up.

  “Canaries die in this sort of smoke, you two little buggers. Thank your stars you aren't—”

  "Lovejoy!” Lydia gestured helplessly at the room as the fug lessened. “This . . . mess!”

  Luckily the subdued light, two candles, concealed most of the untidiness. I thought it wasn’t too bad, but Lydia always has to be furious at something. Or, indeed, anything. Spoils my nosh then plays hell because a sock’s out of place. She started tidying, ruining the place.

  “What is that, Lovejoy?” She paused, holding a cushion. God, but I could eat her. Now I wish I had.

  “Bread.” I demonstrated, stage magician’s gestures. “Margarine. Pan. Source of heat. Presto! Fried bread!”

  She moved closer, candles in her spectacles. “That isn’t enough for your supper, Lovejoy. Why don’t you cook something more wholesome?” She marched into my grub alcove, opened the fridge, the cupboard, drawers. And stood in silence. I kept going with my frying. A slice in the hand is worth any two of Lydia’s theories. She’s got more theories than an expectant dad.

  "Lovejoy. Don’t you ever go shopping? It’s poor housekeeping.”

  "No, love. It’s poverty.” I shoved the bread around the pan to sog up. "Caused by apprentices nicking checks and misapplying funds.”

  Long pause. Lydia’s a lovely lass, but filled with health and stiff moral motive. I’d have asked why she’d come, except why is the most useless, pointless, all-less question on earth. Motives simply aren’t. I mean, people drop in on me all the time giving out reasons, explanations. None withstands scrutiny. Motive? There’s no such thing. It’s words made up to eradicate doubt. Why Lydia dresses fifty years old when she’s less than half that beats me, and it’s no good asking. It all adds up to morality disguised. In practice, it compounds the eroticism of which she’s oblivious. I looked round, forking the bread over. She was doing the handbag rummage, frowning in concentration.

  “Lovejoy. Why did you not simply explain?”

  She’s been my apprentice fifteen months, and now she notices she’s never been paid and I’m starving. “You’d have said no, love.”

  “Most certainly. But I should have loaned you money.”

  “I already owe you, love.”

  “Necessity alters cases.” She checked the room with rapid glances, making sure we were still alone, then held out a folded note, palm pronated so nonexistent throngs wouldn’t see. “Please take this. A loan, you understand. I insist, Lovejoy.”

  “Very well, doowerlink. Thank you.” I gave her a buss, friendly.

  “That will do, Lovejoy.” I might have stripped us naked and grappled. “Now to business. Or shall I wait until you've had your supper?”

  "Go on, love. Want some?”

  “No, thank you.” She went and sat, watching me for a minute while I started on the one and got another going. “You know, Lovejoy, offering me your meal when it’s so paltry reveals a very generous spirit. It really goes some way toward ameliorating your unsavory aspects.”

  "Eh?” I halted, mouth full of fried bread. What the hell was she on about? I honestly have to function on guesswork these days. “Nark it. King George the Sixth loved fried bread. I do it dead right. And less of that frigging unsavory—”

  "I’ve been thinking there are problems. First, Mr. Ledger wants you to visit him at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Second . .

  She sat, intent on the notebook resting on her lap. Lydia’s a candle lady, though I challenge you to find a woman who isn’t beautiful by candlelight. She was waiting expectantly; must have finished yapping.

  “Er, well.” I thought, looking shrewd and planning. She’d go berserk if she realized I hadn’t been listening.

  “Is it,” she asked carefully, “that you are still unhappy associating with Lorane?”

  “That’s it,” I cried. She must have been on about the mad movie lot. "You’ve spotted it, love. Maybe I’m old-fashioned?” Lydia nodded, ticking her notes. “Then I’ll accompany you instead.”

  "Oh, right.” Out of the frying pan into Lydia’s moral-fueled

  fire.

  “And Tinker’s found poor Mr. Shrouder’s last five local contacts.” She passed me a few pages. “Lastly, Tinker’s deals. He said he had spoken with you of a long thin wooden mallet, painted figures on the handle. He purchased it in Lavenham, apparently on your orders.” She folded her notebook, polished her glasses. Reproof was heading my way. “Lovejoy. I understand you hadn’t even seen a catalog description—”

  “You didn’t countermand it, then?”

  “Certainly not!” She was indignant. "But—’’

  "Thank God. It’s maybe more than a mallet, chuckie.” I got up to turn the next bread. “Back in 1869, some cavalry officers stationed at Aldershot read a magazine. The Field. It told how British planters in Northeast India had taken up a ball-and-stick game called pulu. The local Manipuris had been experts for centuries. The cavalry formed teams, and called the craze polo. Now and again you come across old pulu sticks, decorated with Indian scenes for presentation. Not many wooden mallets have long thin handles, love. But all polo sticks do. Worth a few bob to find.”

  A pause. "Very well, Lovejoy. Tinker’s also bought a weather vane.”

  "Good for him. Wish it was the one at Etchingham.” England’s oldest weather vane’s the copper one at Etchingham’s old church in East Sussex, A.D. 1387. Vane was once "fane,” the pennant on a knight’s lance, flag. You needed a royal license to set up a weather vane in the Middle Ages, because fanes depicted a family’s coat of arms. These were rallying insignia, and therefore politically dangerous. Hence a personalized weather vane indicated you enjoyed royal favor. Tinker had described a copper coat of arms vane, which might be a modern repro, but I wouldn’t know until I touched it and felt those lovely antique vibes.

  “Tinker gave your IOU for that also, Lovejoy.”

  "Right. Tea up in a minute.”

  "An eighteenth-century wooden tankard, standing eight inches on four squat feet, with inside levels marked—”

  "No, love. Not wooden. Birchwood. Tinker’s n
ever wrong on woods. That and beer’s all the old devil knows. And not any old levels. It’s an old Scandanavian tankard, for sharing. You swigged in turn, drank it down one level.”

  I balanced the kettle on the spirit stove and came back. "Did he get the fruitwood eggcup stand?”

  "No. He says Liz Sandwell bought that. Six cups, the stand thirteen inches tall, described as early nineteenth century.” Her lovely mouth set for bad news. “She also bought the lady’s toy shoe, three-and-a-half inches long.”

  Groan. Liz Sandwell’s my old—i.e. young—rival. “That’s the trouble. Those two items were slotted for the afternoon, and Tinker'd be sloshed by then. And it wasn’t a toy shoe. Snuffboxes were fashioned in so-called amusing shapes. The ankle would hinge. How much did she pay?”

  Lydia took out her calculator, dabbed expertly. “Two months, Lovejoy. Was that your estimate?”

  It takes me ages to educate people about prices. Saying 400 quid or 600 dollars means zilch, because inflation comes along and the bank rate plunges or soars and your figures are a hoot. Like those 1950s Italian novels where the baddie murders for a thousand lire. But take the national minimum wage, express the price as a fraction of that, and suddenly your comparisons are significant. So, if an antique costs one-sixth of a year’s average wage, even if you keep it for ten years, no matter what happens to money you’ve a firm guide on how much to pay.

  “That is all, Lovejoy.” She folded everything away and sat there. “Have you instructions?”

  "Aye. Find out why this film's story concerns a theft from the British Museum of tons of Russian antiques it hasn’t got.”

  She thought. I thought. We found ourselves for a while gazing at each other, doubdess thinking. She colored slowly, and maybe I did too.

  “May I telephone for a taxi?”

  “No telephone, doowerlink. You take the Ruby.”

  "Will you not require it?”

  “No. She only lives a couple of furlongs.”

  “She? Indeed.” She rose instantly at that, donned her coat, got her handbag, gloves, the Ruby’s key. "Very well. I obviously mustn’t delay your next assignation—”