Paid and Loving Eyes l-16

by Jonathan Gash

  “Turn back,” I said after a momentary think, which at Guy’s speed meant a least a million miles out of our way. “The sixth arrondissement, please. No dross today.”

  “No, Lovejoy,” Veronique said. “We’ve got a planned sequence.”

  “Do as you’re frigging well told,” I said, all quiet and quite calm. “And tell your frigging loon to do the same.”

  You can’t muck about when it’s antiques-time, and I’d had enough of her dryth and his mania. I wasn’t here by choice. I wanted out of their daft unknowable scam. The only exit was by doing my job, then lam off leaving them to it.

  She stared at me over her shoulder. “ What?” Guy actually shouted in astonishment, so loud that pedestrians turned to look.

  “You heard.” We screeched to a stop at some traffic lights. Guy revved his engine, Fangio on song.

  “Lovejoy,” Veronique said, tight-lipped in the erotic way women show fury in public. “You will obey orders.”

  “Ta-ra, love.” That’s the advantage of a bucket seat. You can spring lightly—or even clumsily —into the churning snarling honking Paris traffic, at risk of life and limb, if you’re feeling specially suicidal, or even fed up.

  Guy swore incomprehensibly, Veronique shrieked warnings, threats too I daresay. The traffic crescendoed to deafen the city. But I was free, and off down a side street like a ferret. It seemed to have no motors in it, by some extraordinary Parisian oversight. I walked a bit, looked back. No sign of Veronique, nor Guy. Nor his motor, thank God. A bloke passed me trundling a handbarrow, which cheered me. Reality was about.

  Without any idea of where exactly I was, I found a nosh bar and tried to negotiate something to eat. The stout man seemed surprised to be asked for a lash-up so early in the morning, but responded well. It’s really being served with eagerness. Back home you get a surly uncooperative grunt like in Woody’s cafe, but this man seemed really pleased. He did me some scrambled eggs—he’d no real notion about kippers on account of my language barrier —and some hot sliced meat I didn’t recognize, some eccentric jam, an astonishing variant of tea, toast by the ton, and some hot cylindrical bread things. After, I asked for some vegetable soup with more of his scalding bread sticks, then some cake (cold; I insisted on froid, non chaud). He turned out to be good on cakes. I had four small ones, then slices of a big dark monster with embedded fruit. He brought his missus out to see. She tried giving me some red wine, really weird this hour in the morning. She understood with regret that wine, to me, came aprés tea o’clock. She pondered—which you do gesticulating volubly in Paris—then brightened, and brought out some liqueur. I had to accept it, but slung it into my tea to dilute the stuff. I took a few cakes for the road, and paid. We all rejoiced.

  We even shook hands, more oddity. In East Anglia you shake hands with your new brother-in-law and that’s it for life. Still, when in Rome. I felt fit at last. No sign of my helpers, all to the good.

  Taxi at the main road, and I was on my way to Antiquaires, wherever that was.

  “Louvre des Antiquaires, Monsieur,” the driver explained.

  “C’est it,” I agreed. “Merci, Monsieur.”

  He told me more, but I wasn’t exactly sure what. If I’d had enough words, I’d have asked him to hang about, take me to the sixth arrondissement later on, but decided to quit while I was winning. I’d escaped from my assistants and had breakfast. No good pushing my luck. It was about eleven o’clock when he dropped me off on the Rue St-Honore, with warnings about the prices antique dealers charge. I said ta, unworried. I knew all about those.

  The building wasn’t old as such, and looked restored. Quite a crowd was streaming in. I joined them, milling with increasing optimism. It seemed nothing less than a huge antiques emporium, with some two hundred-plus antique dealers stacked three levels high. I was astonished to see notices advertising afternoon lectures on antiques, illustrated no less. There was an exhibition of French end-of-century dress and jewellery. I’d never seen the like in my life. Did French antique dealers actually want their customers to learn, appreciate, the antiques that they had to pay through the nose for? They’d go berserk at this sacrilegious idea back home. What a place!

  A beautiful feeling enveloped me. I stood against a wall, eyes closed, savouring the loveliness of antiques to come. How much did Colonel Marimee say I could spend? The thrilling answer: he hadn’t! So I could go on until Guy and Veronique caught up and stopped me. That meant as much as I liked! I went giddy. If it wasn’t for antiques, God would have a hard time, same as me. Luckily, faith scrapes it together and forms a quorum, but only just.

  “Monsieur?” Some gallant moustachioed custodian touched my arm, asked if I was well.

  “Trés bon, Monsieur, merci,” I said. I was too overcome to explain about Paradise. A doorway instruction sheet promised that all the antique dealers were professionals keen to settle the hash of Customs, give certificates where appropriate, and could arrange shipment to anywhere against a fee.

  Hang the cost, I thought, somebody else is paying! And sailed into bliss.

  Money has a lot to answer for, but is never really to blame. We’re the villain of the piece. Money’s merit is its divine right to seduce. Never is it more seductive than when you’ve got plenty, plus a command to spend, spend, spend. Like being in a harem, with permission to have any bird as takes your fancy. But there’s one hitch. All antiques are beautiful, alluring, but only some are honest. The rest are forgeries. See the problem? With a spend-and-be-damned bottomless purse, the urge is to simply buy everything, on the grounds that you’re bound to net the genuine pieces. Yet to a purist like me that’s the ultimate treachery. Why? Because you’re encouraging dross.

  Not only that, I thought as I stood inhaling the beeswax and varnish nectar of the first furniture dealer’s showroom. Money seduces by its power, fine, but its power is almost irresistible.

  Look at Italy, for instance. More funding scandals than the parson preached about, and more famous art than any nation on earth. No scandal so great as the Signorelli shambles, which is a warning about money power. Luca Signorelli was an artist who in 1499 was commissioned for 180 ducats to finish the paintings begun fifty years previously by the immortal Angelico, in the wondrous cathedral at Orvieto. Signorelli was ecstatic—he wanted to stun the authorities into awarding him their next contract, which was frescoing the lower part of the chapel. With exalted vision he stormed on, executing brilliant, dazzling work. He even invented new techniques—like his gold-covered wax-point underlaying to cause the reflected candle glow to shimmer when the congregation looked upwards. In other words, a masterpiece, to be preserved at all costs.

  Enter weather, permeating rain, humidity, working over the centuries to despoil and erode. (Also, in 1845, a touring load of Russian nobles, who unbelievably washed away Signorelli’s dry overdrawing on the frescos, cheerfully convinced they were improving matters.) Then—as if time, decay, and predators were not enough—enter politics.

  It’s not for me to complain. I’m no better than I ought to be. But honestly, when the Italian Parliament votes a special law, the “545”, enabling some 300,000,000,000 lire for the care of Orvieto and Todi, arts lovers everywhere have a right to ask where it all went to, right? Not for me to ring Signora Parrino, Minister of Arts, and ask what the hell possessed her. Why did she lend 100 billion to a certain corporation the day after she’d left the post? “Where is it now?” a baffled enthusiast asked the innocent, honest Assessore. We all know the poor bloke’s reply: “Disappeared.” How? Dunno, nobody knows anything… And even the sterling, upright, efficient and honest, Soprintendenza is meshed and helpless. A fraction of gelt creeps back from That Company when a fuss is raised, but the rest stays salted.

  Politics always bulges the sinister corridor curtains where big money flows. The Soprintendente who raised Cain about the vanishing moneys allotted to Pompei’s restoration was replaced with Byzantine alacrity. The lovely and outspoken lady who tried to ginger Venice into
honesty has gone. Okay, it’s politics. What I want to know is, are the priceless masterpieces stashed away in the Galleria Borghese’s (permanently closed!) quadreria still there? Reasonable question, because the restoration money isn’t, not any more. It’s been disappeared, it’s politics.

  “Buy it, Monsieur,” I said, coming out of the trance.

  “The plate, Monsieur?” The dealer was suave, polished. “Yes. It is genuine Palissy. You observe the carefully worked snakes, and leaves of plants—”

  “Not the fake, Monsieur.” His partner, a smart middle-aged lady, wore a genuine Breguet watch on her fitted jacket—you can tell them from their plainness, the matt background and narrow chapter ring showing up the plain hands superbly. “Breguet et fils, Madame?”

  “Yes,” she said, pausing uncertainly. That meant not pre-1816, but still a valuable watch.

  Palissy was a Huguenot glass-painter, one of the unlucky ones. Even though the royal family patronized him, he still died in clink. When he turned to pottery, he got good whites without tin oxides. No mean feat, because you have to put on a translucent lead glaze and let the white clay underneath show through. Everybody fakes Palissy, though, except his small plates. And this was a big exotic one, but without a single chime. Fake.

  “The Majorelle, Monsieur.” I smiled hello at it.

  A water-lily table, little over two feet tall. Called so because it was carved literally to look like a water lily. Not truly an antique, except to avaricious Customs and Excise, who want everything older than fifty years down in their little ledgers. About 1900, Art Nouveau ran riot, basing everything on Mother Nature. It’s bonny stuff, if you’ve the stomach, but I can’t honestly take such blunt copying, however polished the tamarind and mahogany, the gilt-bronze lily buds, creepers crawling up furniture legs on to the top of the damned thing. Majorelle was a lone cabinet-maker, who knew wood. Pity he didn’t go straight and make proper stuff (apologies if you’re an Art Nouveau nut. Wish you better).

  “To be shipped, Monsieur?” The lady was sizing me up: non French, a new buyer, non-haggler and pretty much unconcerned with a few percentage points here and there…

  “My assistants will tell you, Madame, later today.” I scribbled a note for the price as marked, thanked her profusely, and withdrew. She tried catching my attention but I was off into blissland. I find it really quite easy keeping tabs on the antiques I buy. The difficulty is remembering where. I suppose women have this trouble when they’re on a spending spree, except they like to scoop everything up as they go, which saves bother. But I had assistants. What did I pay them for, for heaven’s sake, if not to help? I always finish up doing the donkey work. Not today.

  A little over an hour, I’d bought forty-seven antiques, almost all furniture and genuine, for a fortune in IOUs. “My assistants will be along immediatement,” I carolled every time. “Name of Solon…” I’d not seen a single piece of furniture that had made me queasy, in the way that Troude forgery in the Mentle clubhouse had. I felt the serenity that comes when rewakening after love. Love is moreish, same as antiques. I hurtled out from the place, collared a taxi and told him anywhere in the sixth arrondissement, starting with the very best antique shops. He was pleased, warned me darkly against the dealers. I said ta, I’d watch out, and tipped him well. He called out his warning after me. I waved, keeping an eye out for Guy and Veronique.

  And plunged into the separate antique shops, not sparing the grottier brocanteurs. I must say, the stuff was pretty good. Oh, forgeries abounded, as always, and nothing wrong with that. Fakes provide mirth, where very often there is only weeping and gnashing of teeth. I was happy to see the usual dross of Dutch fake silver—and I don’t mean fake Dutch silver—with its phoney marks, its duff baroque “strapwork” so gross and unlike the real thing. You’ve only to see one genuine piece in any museum to be warned off it for life. Why the Dutch love faking Louis XIV silver, heaven alone knows, because they’re no good at it. Electrotyping’s more of a difficulty, because you do this by making a mould from an original, say a valuable bronze. You coat the copy with plumbago, as we forgers (sorry, we honest copyists) still call black lead, then sink it in a bath of electrolyte. Wire it to a chunk of copper, give it a little current, and sit back. Copper covers the copy’s surface. Clue: it will be beautifully fine, deposited atom by atom, unlike the real bronze, which is rough.

  The piece I came across didn’t need the test, but I gave it a knuckle tap for old times’ sake, and heard the tell-tale clunk instead of the lovely faint singing note of genuine bronzes. I smiled an apology to the dealer, then bought a fake painting. It was a mediaeval Madonna and Child, so say, on solid wood panel, done in the true old style. It would have fooled me but for my chest’s stony silence when I touched it.

  Still keeping a watch for my two nerks, I asked, “Can I see the reverse, Monsieur?” (Please—always look at the back. Here’s why.) It was American hickory of the sort we call pignut: very straight, coarse but lovely smooth grain. It’s a beautiful elastic wood, can resist any amount of thumps. In spite of these qualities, it doesn’t last, so is highly favoured by forgers for painted panels. This faker had really done his stuff—glued several small panels together to make one large one. And he’d stuck them like Theophilus did in the eleventh century, mixing quicklime and soft cheese (I really do mean cheese). Theophilus thought highly of this method, and so do I.

  “I’ll buy it as a fake, Monsieur,“ I suggested. He was outraged, scandalized, overwhelmed, underwhelmed, and finally whelmed. I gave an IOU. My two assistants would be along…

  There were plenty of antique shops, a few with two or three proprietors. And still no sign of my golden pair. The rest of the time I concentrated on furniture, with a few other antiques here and there. I bought an especially fine piece of fake Strasbourg faience, but pretty old. I liked it because Strasbourg faience was copied right from the off. (You often get the number 39 underneath, because fakers misunderstood the significance of numbering. Once you’ve seen the original brilliant carmine you’ll never get taken in; even modern fakers can’t match it.)

  An hour I worked, darting quickly in and out of shops, eyes open for Guy and Veronique. Eventually I went down an alley, feeling worn out, and settled to a nosh in a busy restaurant. I sat where I could see the street.

  Less than forty minutes later I was back in the shops, buying, testing, looking, sounding pieces out, rejoicing fit to burst in a way I hadn’t for days. I could hardly keep myself from choking while examining furniture, on account of the robbery that was going to hit the street come nightfall. I could even pinpoint the exact shops. In fact, I returned to one and bought a Davenport drawing-room desk. I’d passed on it first time round, but saw it would be right in the robbers’ firing line and probably get marmalized when the ramraiders struck. It was too bonny to die.

  “Can I have it taken out of the window’s sunlight, Mademoiselle?” I begged the dealer. “Only it might fade.”

  “In three hours, Monsieur?” I’d promised her my assistants would be along. But she complied.

  Captain Davenport’s original desk-and-chests had desktops that slid backwards to cover the chest, for use in a narrow ship’s cabin. Adapted for a lady’s withdrawing room, the desk surface could stay projecting, supported by pillars on a horseshoe platform. Yellow walnut, and lovely even if it was Victorian.

  Which gave me time to inspect more closely the bloke pacing the pavement. A fly lad, tough, fit, earring. I hid a smile. He’d been in the Louvre des Antiquaires, then here, consulting a card list and catalogues. A dealer never misses somebody putting ticks on a catalogue. Sign of an innocent, or somebody not innocent at all. One thing about ramraiders, they’re the least subtle thieves in creation.

  The ramraider’s one of Great Britain’s exports. Just as we invented most of the world’s sports, in order to lose at them in the Olympics, so we’re indefatigable inventors of scams. The bluntest, not to say most aggressive, robbery in antiques is the ramraider. It’s so simp
le it’s almost beautiful. At least, it would be if it wasn’t destructive.

  Method: take any van—and I mean steal, nick, thieve. Weld scaffolding poles to the rear bumpers to form a battering ram. Early in the owl hours, you reverse at speed through the window of any convenient antique shop, shattering whatever protection it’s got. Spill out, go straight to the antiques your sussers have previously marked on a rough sketch-plan you’ve learnt by heart. Load up, and be off and out of it in less than ninety seconds. Again, I do mean that quick. The London and Provincial Antiques Dealers’ Association has been moaning for years about the eruption of ramraiders in the Thames Valley. The best (for best read worst) thing is that it’s thieving to plan. Exactly like the art works —Van Gogh, Old Masters— in France, Holland, Germany, during the 1980s and early 1990s, it’s theft by prescription. One place in Leeds got hit three times in as many weeks. I’m against ramraiders, actually, because they’re pro hooligans. That is, they go straight for whatever they’re told, never mind what’s in the way. They’ll shred any painting, mash any furniture, to reach the priceless pieces they’ve been sent to steal.

  How did I know the lank lad with the soiled jeans and golden earring was a susser? Well, who else would pace a street of antique shops like a drum major, his lips moving as he did his phoney “stroll”? Then, unbelievably, pause to mark the distances down! Where I come from these daredevil youths’d starve. The pillock thought himself among a load of dupes. I hadn’t known the ramraiders had reached Paris, but here they undoubtedly were.

  “Monsieur?”

  God. I found myself shaking my head, tut-tutting audibly. I smiled apologetically at the girl. She was smart, really well turned out. I apologized. “The traffic, Mademoiselle! I admire your Parisian drivers’ skill. So fast!”

  We prattled a bit. I said what splendid stock she had. She was pleased I liked it, tried to persuade me to buy some more. I told her my name, Lovejoy. Claire Fabien offered me coffee for a merci beaucoup and a smile. We talked of the antiques locally. I kept an edgy eye on the window, twice almost starting up as I imagined a couple of blond heads, subsiding to chat some more, false alarm. I was drawn, through no fault of my own. I realized after an hour that I should get on, hoover up more antiques, and rose to go. I hesitated.