Paid and Loving Eyes l-16

by Jonathan Gash

He took instant offence. “I wasn’t shunning the challenge, Lovejoy. It’s a question of what’s artistically right.”

  “No talking!” Corse snarled.

  I leapt away and shut up. Jan was chattering, displaying his awesome vocabulary, making an impression on everyone listening, chiefly himself.

  “There’s a positive vibrancy of intellectualization, risk for risk’s sake, atavistically speaking…”

  And all that jazz. Phoebe was smiling, pointing out features of her superb vase. Lights were being trained while the gelt men peered and squinted at the two Portland Vases. Talk about a bloody pantomime. They got fed up after a few moments and strolled back to their chairs. Josh fetched me, plucking at my elbow as if trying to unravel my shabby jacket.

  “Well? Which, Lovejoy?” Time for me to point the finger, and get either Steve or Phoebe a fortune or penury.

  The floodlamps were extinguished. The shade cast its golden cone over me. I stood there like on trial. For an ugly second I thought how frigging unfair this all was. I mean, just because I’m me, they shovel this responsibility—

  “Yelbard.” I ahemed to clear the squeak, tried again.

  Jan swivelled, looked at Sheehan, Corse, then me.

  “That’s preposterous!” he exclaimed. “The American piece is fabulous! It’s perfection! Why, the Yelbard replica is…”

  Silence is refuge when tyrants differ. I stayed silent.

  “Lovejoy?” Big John interrupted.

  Corse was darting suspicious glances. His goons came off the wall. So did Big John’s. Jan pranced to the table desperate to prove me wrong.

  “What’s the point of asking Lovejoy?” He indicated Phoebe’s piece. “I’ve made a lifetime study of ancient glass. I tell you this divine piece could be the original Philip Pargeter replica! It’s totality is perfection —”

  “What’s this pansy mean?” Corse grated. “I came here for a ’ckin’ definite. No maybes! You can’t put money on a frigging maybe!”

  “I think you’ll find, gentlemen,” Phoebe interposed smoothly, “that Mr Fotheringay is correct. I based my work on the famous reproductions of the original Portland Vase made by Pargeter and John Northwood, dated 1876. You will find —”

  “Lovejoy,” Big John said quietly. “The arts man says you’re wrong. Why?”

  I’d rather have stayed in the rain to catch my death of cold among the trees. I swallowed to get my voice going.

  “Because he’s right, John. Because the American girl’s right, too.” I nodded at her Portland. “It’s beautiful. But she didn’t make it, did you, Phoebe?”

  “What’s this beautiful shit?” Corse spat a stream of saliva in disgust. I moved my foot in time. “We’re here to back the best fake.”

  “There’s only one fake here.” I glanced at Steve, who was starting a slow smile. “Steve’s.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, Lovejoy—”

  Phoebe’s face suddenly went ugly with fear. Her voice pitched higher. Odd that terror uglifies a bird, when passion beautifies them so. But it was either her or me, with Corse signalling his suits into their ominous lean. I cut in.

  “There are several copies of the Portland in glass, Mr Corse. Not counting Josiah Wedgwood’s famous pottery jasperware efforts. It started with Edward Thomason at Birmingham Heath, 1818 —unfinished. Then Pargeter and Northwood had a few goes. Some bloke called Locke in mid-Victorian times…”

  I petered to silence, not because I’d run out of things to say, but because Big John had frowned slighdy. Slightly’s enough, to cowards.

  “How come the lassie knew his name?” he asked.

  “Whose name?” Jan said, face draining. Big John meant him.

  Nobody answered, far worse than uproar.

  “Look,” Jan said, trying a laugh that convinced nobody. “I’m well known. I write for a dozen periodicals. I—”

  “As Tiffy Tiffany,” Sheehan said. “Your newspaper name.” His voice goes softer, the more threat within. “You’re anonymous.” Hurt showed in his brogue. “I paid for that information.”

  All the suits were edging closer now, glaring. I looked about but there was nowhere to go.

  “Please,” Jan was saying, tone ascending like a prayer. “Please. I had to make sure. Don’t you see, Mr Sheehan? I couldn’t leave an investment this big to mere chance!”

  He was squeaking in fright. The girl was trying to get out but the circle of hoods closed. She struggled genteely a second, then tried indignation.

  “Well! If you can’t listen to reason…” All that. Useless.

  “We been done, John?” Corse scraped a cough, cast his fag end in rage. “The Yank bitch and this poofter?”

  “It isn’t like what it seems!” Jan was shrilling, frantic, appealing desperately to Big John. “This is serious money! A fortune —”

  “Ronnie,” Big John said.

  Three cube-shaped hoods came and hauled Jan away. When I looked, Phoebe was already being bundled out of the rear door. It slammed with echoing finality. I tried drying my clammy hands on my trousers. Steve seemed frightened. It’s the safest way to be. I know.

  “Lovejoy?” My cue from Big John.

  “Phoebe was showing you a genuine old Pargeter copy. She’d not made it herself. That way, she’d win this contest and get the job.”

  “And our money…” Corse choked, his face a vast sweaty plum.

  “Josh,” Big John intoned.

  Josh Sparrow came at a low creep, quivering and bleating. “John, I swear to God. On my mother’s life. My baby’s head. I never had any notion there was a scam. I honestly don’t know what’s happened —”

  “What did?” Corse grunted.

  Happen? My turn. In a wobbly yodel I managed to start. “Your competition was to fake the Portland Vase. Phoebe submitted a repro made in the 1870s, by famous old glass-makers. Steve here submitted his own work.”

  “You sure?” Corse loomed over me like solid cumulus.

  “Positive. Hers felt antique. Steve’s doesn’t.”

  Corse’s great puce visage cleared. He rotated, looked at Big John. “Here, Sheehan. Is Lovejoy a divvy?” And got a nod, thank God.

  “I am, yes, I am!” I said, desperate to show I was agreeing with everybody, especially BJS. I’m pathetic. I was still cold.

  “That’s okay, then,” Corse said, to my vast relief.

  “Josh,” Big John said, as everybody relaxed and started shaking hands on unknowable deals. “Six and eightpence in the pound. For four months.”

  “Right, John!” Josh croaked brightly, grinning as if he’d just been awarded a knighthood instead of having to cough up thirty-three per cent of his income for the next twelve weeks for letting mistakes happen on his territory. Still cheaper than death, though.

  They paid me a groat and let me go, into that slippery old rain. That was the start of it.

  Sometimes a vehicle can seem a real pal. A goon gave me the keys as rain chilled my face and motor-car doors slammed and serfs lurked about the loading bay. I stood watching them go, weakly raising a hand—ignored—in salutation to Corse, then Big John. The vehicles splashed past. Other saloons started up, roared after. No sign of Phoebe Colonna, or Jan Fotheringay of great renown. Gulp.

  Alone and safely out of it.

  I got in the cabin and sat there in the darkness to let my sweat dry. Escape comes in many guises. Across the estuary, lights winked. The harbour’s opalescent sheen toned the night sky. Peace. I started the engine, drove out, heading along the wharf towards our town’s orange sky glow.

  Then the customer’s buzzer sounded loudly in my ear, frightening me to death.

  “Lovejoy?” a woman’s voice said on the intercom.

  Diana? Still here? I thought the goons had run her and her tame shag back to the limousine-riddled lay-by whence they’d come.

  “What the hell are you doing still in there, silly cow?” I swerved nastily, yelled into the squawk-box. “You made me jump out of my frigging
skin.”

  “Thank goodness,” the intercom said with relief. “For one moment I thought you were one of those hulks, Lovejoy. Find a quiet place where we can talk.”

  “Get knotted, missus,” I said. I was blazing, really narked. “You’re going back to Gazza Gaunt’s garage—”

  “Or I’ll complain that your incompetence exposed the Tryste Service to the police, my influential husband, the Vice Squad…” Women’s voices go sweet when they threaten.

  “The Drum and Fife’s got quite a nice secluded lounge,” I said politely, swallowing a bolus of pride.

  “Good, Lovejoy. You learn quickly.” It was a purr. She’d never swallowed pride in her life. I could tell, she’d defend her pride with blood. I wish now I’d remembered that, but once pathetic, always.

  CHAPTER THREE

  « ^ »

  The Drum and Fife is a posh roadhouse, a cut above spit-and-saw-dust. To my dismay the place was heaving when I parked in its ancient flagged courtyard. I was too fed up to try anywhere else, and went to undo the passion wagon’s rear door.

  The lady stepped out, tutting because I’d no umbrella for her. I’d have used it for me, if I’d had one.

  “Does it never stop raining?” She drew her collar round her.

  “God left the taps running when he built East Anglia.”

  “Well?” She gazed at the tavern. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Your, er, gentleman.” He hadn’t emerged. “Worn out, is he?”

  She smiled in the exotic coloured lights that taverns string about themselves these days. “Jervis left,” she said, and walked among the gleaming wet carapaces of the motors.

  I scrambled to lock up and ran after her, hunched, through the worsening downpour. Why is it that hotels and suchlike spend a king’s ransom on their fronts, yet their rear view is all drainpipes, steaming windows looking into horrible kitchens, rusty tubes?

  Naturally, my ‘nice secluded lounge’ was thronged. Upstairs rollicked to the thump of some band. People dressed to the nines stood about chatting. You’d never seen so many carnations. A couple snogged in the coffee alcove with the abandoned passion reserved for strangers at a chance meeting. This wore hallmarks of a wedding.

  “Sorry, missus,” I said, catching my streamliner up in the foyer as she stood looking about where to go. “We picked a bad night.”

  “No night’s bad, Lovejoy,” she said, smiling. “Days are hell.”

  Her eyebrows demanded action, so I found us a place in an inglenook, a phoney iron grate with a cold fire. I looked my disgust. Spinning tin reflectors and a threepenny red bulb in plastic, pubs think they’re Designer of the Year.

  “Get me a martini, Lovejoy. No lemon.”

  Bloody nerve. I nodded obediently, signalled with exotic mouthings to a puzzled wedding guest in the crowd. I’d complain about waiter service when it was time to go. She should get her own frigging drink. I was hired to drive the blinking love truck, not flunkey drinks for her.

  I gauged her as a crowd of youngsters tore whooping through the foyer. Balloons ballooned, streamers streamed, dresses flounced.

  Upstairs, cymbals crashed and an announcer bellowed something inane to prolonged applause. God, but weddings have a lot to answer for.

  She looked different in the tavern’s subdued lighting. Lovely, yes, but harder than her voice had suggested. I’d only seen her in rainy darkness before. Now, she was thirty, give or take a yard. Small but gorgeous. And so confident you could only admire her. Legs you could eat, figure you couldn’t leave alone no matter how you tried. Skin alabaster perfection. Hair a delight—

  “You approve, Lovejoy?” she asked.

  Sarcasm makes me go red. I must have been staring.

  “What d’you want, missus?” The description I’d been looking for: lush, but hard.

  “Get me a cushion,” she said, extracting a cigarette from a handbag worth the whole Drum and Fife and expecting somebody to leap forward and light it. A bloke did, smiling eagerly.

  She jerked a plume of smoke slowly, pursing her mouth in a way that almost stopped the show, and ignored him. He went his way, dazedly delighted to have been spurned by so gorgeous a creature. Aren’t we daft?

  “Get your own frigging cushion,” I heard myself say, and thought, oh, God. Now a bad report to Gazza.

  She looked at me—actually at, as opposed to including me in the scenery. She did the woman’s no-smile hilarity, the appraising gaze that makes you feel a prat.

  “I meant, er, what do you want, lady?”

  Driving Gazza’s Tryste vehicles can be a real pain. He has three of the damned things. They’re known among us by a crude double nickname—the first word rhymes with truck. You can land right in the mire. Reason: the course of true love does not run smooth. Whoever said that knew a thing or two. The last time I’d driven for Gazza was to a beach near Brancaster. The lovers inside had had a terrible fight—the woman a black eye, bleeding nose, the bloke scratched to blazes. Both had appealed to me in yells and screams to judge the rightness of their separate causes. The police wahwahs had come. A right shambles, me declining any knowledge of the battling lovers. Luckily, Gazza has an understanding with the chief constable, so all was smooth bribery and corruption. Gazza blamed me and didn’t pay me, the swine. Tonight’s success was my attempt to show new-found efficiency, and I needed the money.

  “What happened in the barn, Lovejoy. I’m intrigued.” A direct order. Tell, or else.

  “It’s like this,” I began.

  “Excuse me, sir. Madam.” A real professionoil suaved up, three trainee slickers in tow. “Mr Prendergast, manager. Do I have the honour of addressing one Lovejoy?”

  “One has.”

  Jodie Danglass smilingly raised her glass to me from a stool in the long bar. I pulled an ugly thank-you-for-nothing grimace at her, for bubbling me to this yak. She’s pretty, new to the antique trade, with thrilling legs. She talks crudities in her sleep. I mean, she looks as if she might sometimes possibly do that.

  Prendergast smiled, ’tache, dark pinstripes, teeth a-dazzle. I smiled back, scenting fraud. It’s the one thing I’m good at, being one myself.

  “The Drum and Fife welcomes you! Could I offer your lady and your good self a complementary drink, sir?”

  “No, ta. We’re just going.”

  Fraudsters have to do the driving. I was interested to see how he’d put screws on me.

  He twisted with a smirk. “Could you value the antique painting on display in the foyer? Naturally, the D and F would recompense you. Perhaps a complementary sojourn…”

  “There is no antique painting in the foyer.”

  He gyrated, darting his assistants a quirky tight-mouthed smile. I’d said something he hated. “Did one pause to look?”

  “One didn’t need to.” If there’d been an antique painting in the foyer, it would have pulled me like a magnet. It’s the way we divvies are. Folk only believe you if you put on an act. That’s why police look menacing, bank managers dress sterile, judges pretend deep thoughts. Everybody goes by appearances. I should have remembered that, too.

  I sighed, made my excuses to Diana. The foyer was only a step. The painting was beautiful, a Turner watercolour of Venice. Scratched, rubbed, the paper’s surface scarified just right. The colours were exactly his, the dark-tinted paper brilliant.

  “Lovely.” You can’t help admiring class. I felt smiling.

  Prendergast blossomed, beaming. “There, sir! Thank you! I knew that you would authenticate—”

  “No, Mr Prendergast. It’s nice but naughty. Fake. But done clever. She used the right watercolours, see? She had the paper made specially—”

  “Fake?” He reeled. Minions rushed to support him, but I was fed up and moved away. What do folk want, for Christ’s sake? He’d thought the painting miraculous—all in a second it’s ugly? Like everybody else these days, blinded by money. Disgusting. I felt sick.

  “Come on, love.” I grabbed Diana’s arm and hus
tled her through the departing bride and groom’s mob. Confetti snowed from balconies. People screeched and hollered. Delight was everywhere. It can really get you down.

  Somebody had glee-painted my van and tied balloons all over it. Didn’t Tarried—Just Got Married!!! in pink clung to grammar and my van’s sides. Joy abounding’s pretty depressing stuff. Sometimes I wish it would bound off somewhere else. I rammed Diana into the cabin, climbed after.

  “Budge up, love.” I fired the engine and we moved off to a clatter of tins tipsy nerks had tied to the rear bumper.

  “Who’s this she, Lovejoy?” And when I looked at her blankly in the dashboard glow, “You said she.”

  “The faker? Oh, aye. Looks like Fanny’s work. Runs a children’s society. Husband’s a parson. She’s a friend.”

  Her lips went thin. “Friend? And you betrayed her, for a night’s free stay in a tavern?”

  Women are born judges—of everyone else, never themselves. Ever noticed that?

  “It was either her, or Turner.”

  We drove in silence for a few miles, during which I got wetter still by pausing to remove the tins. I got us on to the trunk road. I was dying to get shut of Diana.

  “You didn’t look at the painting, Lovejoy.” Women never let things drop, do they? “When we arrived, you just pushed into the lounge.”

  “I never said I did look. In fact, I said the opposite.”

  She was getting me narked. I should have returned her and the van hours ago. The evening was becoming supportive psychotherapy.

  “You betray friends, yet you won’t betray Turner, who’s dead?”

  “Dead?” That did it. Deliberately I slowed the van. I always start going faster in a temper and police radars skulk everywhere after nine o’clock. “Ever seen a Turner painting, love?”

  “Several. A friend of mine has at least two —”

  “You’ve seen the greatest paintings in the history of the universe, and have the frigging nerve to say Turner’s dead?” I should have chucked her out there and then, fifty miles an hour. If I’d any sense, I would have. “You silly ignorant bitch.”

  “What did you —?”

  I closed my mind to her. I was too tired. “Tell Gazza, love. And your influential friends. And your famous Jervis bloke. But let me be.”