Paid and Loving Eyes l-16

by Jonathan Gash

  It’s my own fault. I’m a mine of pointless fact. Like, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s wedding cake was nine feet four and a half inches tall (can’t help you into centimetres if you’re a decimal nut). Also, Equatorial Guinea hasn’t a single cinema, tough on local film buffs. Furthermore, Engels, Marx friend-of-all-mankind’s sidekick, wanted “ethnic trash” exterminated—he included Basques, Scots Highlanders, South Slavs, anybody he called “backward”. Aristotle was first translated into English in 1620… See? Mind like a ragbag, all contents useless—except, when some bit’s oddly not.

  There’s one old dear in our village says we all know what’s coming, that we prepare for it the whole of our lives. I tell her she’s a daft old coot. She says I’m unwilling to believe the obvious, which is ridiculous because my mind’s always crystal clear. It’s just that occasional flukes sometimes make you think, good gracious, how lucky I knew that odd scrap about Mrs Hannah Glasse’s cookery book being worth well over a hundred times more than its look-alike contemporary pirated edition! Or when you’ve just looked up the measurements of a loo table—nothing to do with lavatories; for the Georgian game of lanterloo—only to land on one the very next day. The trouble is, sometimes you discover which bit’s the important one in the most unpleasant way, or when it’s too late.

  Sandy was all over the front page, I saw from the evening edition. I was in Gazza Gaunt’s yard, having some grotty machine coffee, when I caught sight of the headline in Mercy Mallock’s paper. I asked for a look.

  “Sandy’s invented a new political party, Lovejoy,” she said. I read, gave it back. “Europe Time, it’s called.”

  “What’s up?” she wasn’t smiling.

  “My bloke’s left me, Lovejoy.”

  “Barmy sod.”

  Mercy Mallock’s the only woman driver Gazza employs, presumably on the grounds that blokes are macho tough and can defend his clients should the need arise. It’s a laugh. I’m off like a hare at the first hint of trouble—to call on somebody like Mercy, truth to tell. She used to be some notable’s bodyguard, believe it or not. Her hobbies are kendo, karate, all those martial arts that sound like food additives and consist of kicking people in white pyjamas. She is of surprising daintiness for all that, graceful and always groomed, looks a stunner dolled up. Now, she was in some sort of boiler suit.

  “He was never satisfied, Lovejoy.” She was sitting on the running board of her van. “Not that,” she added quickly at my look. “I was area champion two years running, trained with him every night. He left me for a woman shot-putter from Stourbridge, built like a sumo. How can I compete?”

  Impossible. “He’s a nerk, love. Any bloke’d give his eye-teeth.” I didn’t run him down too much, because women are odd. I didn’t want her rounding on me in his defence. “Want the night off?” Mercy’s passion wagon was the last in the yard, waiting to go. I was the only driver without a van.

  “No, Lovejoy. I’d better keep going.” She gave a wan smile in the yard’s lights, fluorescents of ghastly pallor. “Is it this hard for a man who gets rejected?”

  “Dunno yet,” I said, to give her a smile. Didn’t work.

  Ten months since, I hired her—nothing illicit; Mercy’s honest—to eavesdrop on some antiquarians at the London Antiques Fair. It was really disappointing. They were meeting to decide what antique books they’d bid a million dollars for (surprisingly only six: Shakespeare’s First Folio, 1623; the American Declaration of Independence, 1776; Audubon’s Birds of America, 1827-38; Don Quixote’s First, 1605; the Gutenberg Bible, 1455 or so; the Bay Psalm Book, 1640). They commissioned a counterfeiter, Litho from Saxmundham, to forge the twenty-pound notes to buy the books with. Litho forges by lithography, a printing process using stone developed two centuries ago by Aloys Senefelder, a mediocre playwright wanting to facsimile his plays on the cheap. I made nothing of it, but it drew me and an excited Mercy together for the one time we ever made smiles.

  Gazza came over, the big business. “Nothing for you, Lovejoy. Mercy, here’s your ticket. Pick up at the moorings by the Black Boy, code word Heaven. Forty minutes.”

  “Thanks, Gazza.” She gave me an apologetic look. Her van was the newest and most luxuriously appointed of the lot.

  I sulked, to get Gazza’s mood right, then left dejectedly, but not as dejectedly as all that because it was all working out just as I wanted. I flagged Mercy down at the intersection to cadge a lift. It’s not allowed—Gazza sacks you for less—but I’d once been especially kind to Mercy and it worked.

  “Did Gazza say the Black Boy, love?”

  “Yes, Fremmersham.”

  “Give us a lift, love?” I climbed in quickly, not giving her a chance to refuse. “Console each other.”

  “You too?” She gave me a glance, pulled away. A cracking driver, million times better than me. I find almost all women are. London bus drivers rattle you round like peas in a drum, unless they’re women. Birds drive smoother, and just as fast.

  “Getting over it, Mercy,” I said, all brave. “Her family’s titled, rich, Oxford. You can imagine the reception I got.”

  She squeezed my arm. “Poor Lovejoy. That the blonde, Jocasta, who has the racing-driver brother?”

  I was startled. I’d been making up my heartfelt sadness, or so I’d thought. I couldn’t even remember a Jocasta. “Don’t, love,” I said, almost in tears. “It hurts too much. Let’s talk about something different. I might go on a Continental holiday soon. Play my cards right.”

  “Where?” She glided through the gears. I wish I could do that. “I love the Continent, Lovejoy. Beautiful weather, lovely scenery. They take an interest in their food, real life, art.”

  Honest surprise lit my countenance, I hoped. “Didn’t know you felt like that, love. France, I think.”

  “Lucky you, Lovejoy.” She sighed, patiently allowed a cyclist to pedal over the level crossing before the barrier descended. Most drivers I know would have shot the amber and terrified the cyclist out of his pants. “I lived there so long.”

  “You did?” More raised eyebrows. I should have gone on the stage. “Oh, aye. Weren’t you a courier or something…?”

  “Bodyguard, actually. Didn’t you know, Lovejoy?” She smiled, gave a rather shy titter. “I know I don’t look like one. That was the trouble with Gay.” The cloud settled again. Gay’s her karate feller, but nobody jokes about his name.

  “Fancy!” I said, yanking the subject back where I wanted. “I’ve never met a bodyguard before. What did you actually do?”

  “They hired me after I became pentathlon champion.”

  “Didn’t it feel… odd?”

  “Because I’m a woman, Lovejoy?” she demanded, stung.

  “Eh? No. I hardly noticed that. I mean, being responsible for some politicians you’d never heard of.”

  “Bankers, actually.” We reached the town bypass and pulled out coastwards. Fremmersham’s on an estuary some five miles out. I looked at her face in the dashboard glow. Pretty, composed. Barmy old Gay, that’s all. Swapping shapely Mercy, for a weightlifter. There’s nowt as daft as folk. “I spent my life at airports, shepherding stout men with briefcases.”

  “Can’t imagine you doing that, Mercy.”

  “They asked me to stay on. Mostly they’re Dutch girls, on account of their languages and because they look the part. I was lucky, on account of Dad.”

  “Got you the job, eh? Influence counts in banking.”

  She glared at me, touchy. “I got the job entirely on my own merits, Lovejoy! My languages. Just because my hobby’s sport doesn’t mean I have to be thick.”

  “Right, right.” I lapse into a modern vernacular when I want to placate folk, trying to sound like I’m just from a disco and full of fast junk food. The rest of the journey was uneventful, because I made it so. We chatted about her loss of confidence now her Gay had given her the sailor’s elbow, her hopes, her sports, her having to give up the flat. Routine incidentals, you might say, that make up life’s plenteo
us pageant.

  At the pick-up, I stayed well out of sight, just watched her lights dwindle from the taproom bar, then merrily tried to get a lift back to civilization, away from the lonely estuary and its one tavern and boats swinging in the night breeze. Mercy Mallock was in my mind. I felt more cheery than I’d done since hearing about Baff getting topped.

  Lucky enough to get a lift from Spange, a dealer without portfolio—meaning not an idea in his head—I made it to my Ruby and thence the White Hart, and organized a whip-round for Baff’s missus. A paltry sum, but plenty of IOUs made it seem more. Enough excuse to see Sherry, anyway. So I left smiling. Quite a good evening, really. I’d covered some ground. Oh, and I’d made arrangements to see Mercy again, the point of it all. If France loomed as ominously as it seemed, I wanted allies.

  But just how far things had gone was brought home to me as I was leaving for home. Donk came hurtling in just as I made the outer door. He had an envelope. Reluctantly I paid him his message money out of Sherry’s whip-round. Only borrowing. I’d owe.

  “Urgent, Lovejoy. Meeting’s in an hour.”

  “Eh? It’s bedtime, for God’s sake.”

  “You heard.” And off he thundered. I glanced guiltily about, in case any of the antique-dealer mob had seen me misuse their donations, brightened at the good omen when I saw they hadn’t, and opened the envelope. In the solitary light of the forecourt I read Jodie’s rounded scrawl. The meeting with Troude and one other would be tonight, quarter before midnight, outside the George.

  Some hopes. I wasn’t their hireling. They could take a running jump. So I lammed it down the dark country road to my cottage, brewed up, sat and read a couple of antique auction catalogues that had come, generally faffed about doing nothing, and settled down by about one o’clock.

  Which was how I came to be heading for France. Not quite instantly, but in circumstances definitely beyond my control.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  « ^ »

  A book was published in 1869 entitled, Autograph of William Shakespeare… together with 4,000 ways of spelling his name. Which may sound loony, but represents some bloke’s unstinted endeavours. You have to respect it. Some other bloke wrote the longest poem in the language, five ponderous volumes on Alfred the Great—as unreadable as it sounds, as neglected as it ought to be. Pure endeavour. The Eastern Hundreds has more than a fair share of endeavouring eccentrics—this in a nation of eccentrics—so we’re belly-deep in weirdos. It was therefore no problem to find the world’s greatest sexponent, at one-thirty on a sleepless frosty morning. I wasn’t surprised to find Forna Lux wide awake and lusting. Everybody knows Forna Lux, but is especially wary of her because she knows everybody back, which isn’t good news if you pretend holiness.

  “Lovejoy, babbikins!” she screamed into the phone. I held it a mile from my ear, but was still deafened. “What’ve you got?”

  Forna is her own invention—I mean her name. She denies ever having received any cognomen. I don’t believe her. Obscure of background, indeterminate of accent, no known family, Forna has a serene individuality that defies pinning down. She lives alone, on information culled from anywhere. She says she’s written seventy-nine books under that name, all on sex and ways of doing it. I like her. She’s a slender yet blowsy middle-ager with glittering teeth, peroxide hair, and wears more gold than a jaunting gypsy.

  “I need your help, Forn,” I said into her screech. “Sorry about the late hour.”

  “It’s early, babbikins!” Her voice is that shrill noise chalk makes on a school blackboard, if you remember that far back. Sets your molars tingling. “You know me, always at it!”

  The laughter almost melted the receiver. I waited it out. Forna works harder at her records—perversions, lists of clients seeking ecstasies of a hitherto unpublished kind—than most antique dealers do theirs. I like a professional. No, honest. Standards mustn’t be allowed to fall.

  “A certain bloke, Forna.”

  “Can’t be done on the telephone, babbikins,” she cried. “Come round if you’re desperate. Same position, same old place!”

  She has a knack of making the most mundane phrase suggestive.

  I sighed, got dressed, found matches for the Ruby’s headlights. Twenty-past two I was chuntering into Forna’s Furnace.

  Lest I give the impression that all the Eastern Hundreds are mad on surreptitious goings-on, what with Gazza’s outfit and all, I ought to explain that Forna runs her own publishing house. It’s respectable, as such places go, with a logo, two secretaries and a small printing works near Aldeborough. She’s the dynamo and prime mover, though, and runs it from her cottage in Sumring, a hamlet trying hard to be noticed for something else besides Forna. She has automatic locks on the doors, successive stages of entry under banks of hidden cameras.

  “Enter my inner sanctum, babbikins,” she screamed.

  Several locks later, I passed through the last of the reinforced doors. A sitting room, with one Turner seascape, watercolour, testifying to her taste among a load of Art Deco nymphets and erotica statuettes you can’t keep your eyes off. Forna wore pink satins, impossible pink lace flounces, synthetic pink furs. She always wears a ton of make-up, which I admire. I chose a chair at a distance, got nowhere. She cuddled me on the sofa, poured me a drink I didn’t want.

  “Wants, babbikins?” she shrilled in my ear. “Every man’s got those. I want yours, that’s all!”

  “Ha ha, Forn,” I said gravely, hoping for fewer decibels so I could at least hear the answer. “Any news about a bloke called Jervis, or Jay, related to Mrs Almira Galloway?”

  “Cost you, Lovejoy.” A trace harder now, but still octaves above top C.

  “What?”

  She contemplated that for a full five minutes. When I first knew her she was quite soft-hearted and had a dog called Frobisher, but it got killed when somebody ran over it. She abandoned business for a six-month, then resumed with a heart of flint and a disguise to match.

  “There’s a young artist I know, Lovejoy,” she shrilled. I leaned away, hoping my auditory acuity would survive. “Has an old bike. My cousin, actually. He needs money for art school. Is there much of an antiques market in old bikes, Lovejoy?”

  This was the squeeze. Forna always wants to help her cousin’s lad who’s always manfully striving to better himself. Her bloody cousin must breed like a frog, the number of times I’ve helped him with antiques. Were there other clients, bankers helping this same unfortunate striver with fiscal problems, clerics helping him over theological humps, engineers giving useful tips about his gas turbines?

  “Bike? Tell me, and I’ll tell you, Forn.”

  “No, dear,” she screamed. “You run down the different sorts. I’ll stop you when you get to the one he wants to sell.”

  “A German baron produced the first bicycle, a walking machine with a steerable front wheel, back in 1817. Your, er, cousin can’t have one of those, just on probability,” I began. Give her her due, Forna listens intently, takes it all in.

  “Wood, were they?”

  “Mostly, but very popular. A Dumfrieshire bloke invented workable levers to drive these walking machines about 1840,” I said, watching for a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. Nothing. “You’ll know the velocipede, Forn. Pierre Michot made about two hundred a day in the 1860s, but sold out for filthy lucre. They’re not too rare, but cost.”

  Her eyes sparked. “Maybe it was one of those, babbikins?”

  “The penny-farthings are the best known,” I went on, heart sinking at the price I’d have to pay, but I desperately needed to know more, and I’d scraped the barrel for information. “James Stanley was the genius, a little Coventry chap who made fixed pedals for the front wheel.” I got carried away. “Posh bicycle clubs became all the rage, with bright uniforms and personalized bugle calls. Labourers were barred—muscular strength was unfair, you see, to effete aristocrats in the team.”

  “I think maybe it was one of those,” Forna said, eyes now brilliant with
pleasure. For pleasure read financial relish.

  “His brother’s son, John Stanley, made the one you’d recognize today, Forna. Equal wheels, chain drive, brake and bells. These Safety Bicycles were a terrific advance, highly sought among modern collectors. The Rover design was the pattern…”

  “That’s it!” Forna cried. I heard no more until I’d watched the midnight cops-and-robbers film while she searched her records in some secret cupboard with a whirring door. I kept wondering where I’d get the price of one of John Stanley’s original Rover bikes from. Of course, the bike itself wouldn’t show up. I’d pay for it, then she’d promise it, promise it, promise… Then, by mutual agreement, the antique bicycle and her artistic protégé would turn into slush and vanish down the gutters of time. For a bird who lived on hard news, Forna’s income fed on fiction.

  “Here, babbikins!” She emerged and sat, pouring a new drink.

  “Jay for Jervis Galloway, Lovejoy,” she shrilled. “A Parliamentarian, not going to stand at the next election—an expected large windfall from some unspecified new business. Politician of mediocrity. Turncoat. Conservative to Social Democrat to Labour. Wealthy by his missus, a dick-struck cow who fox-hunts.”

  “That it?” Almira would love her description.

  “No.” Her voice sank a little. “Heavy money into coastal development, Lovejoy. A syndicate of antique dealers funnels money through him into Mentle Marina. Philippe Troude I know.” She smiled. “He buys more love potions than a wizard. Stuck on some French woman with high connections.”

  It matched, but added a little. “He your client, Forna?”

  “Did I say one bike, Lovejoy?” she cried. “I meant one of those velocipede things as well!”

  “Good heavens,” I said evenly. “What a lucky lad your cousin is! Troude your client?”

  “Has been since he opened his marina complex, Lovejoy. No harm in the man, not really. Pays on the nail, pleasant with it.”