The Grail Tree

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Marion’s, please.’

  ‘Mel and I had the most fearsome row,’ Sandy said. We revved into the lane and took off.

  ‘And for once, Lovejoy, it was not my fault,’ Mel rounded in his seat. ‘I’ve got this lovely clock by Tompion, honestly quite superbly divine, I mean. And this – this naughty little rascal here –’

  ‘Oh, language!’ from Sandy.

  ‘ – enters it into the next sale up in the Smoke. Honestly.’

  ‘Well,’ I said nervously. Some of their fights last weeks.

  ‘Don’t you dare agree with either of us, Lovejoy!’ Sandy cried. ‘Or I’ll smack your wrist. This conflict is only apparently about a clock. It’s actually about sepia upholstery. We aren’t speaking.’

  ‘Like me and George,’ I said. We halted at the chapel, Sandy happily grinding the gears.

  ‘Yes, we heard all about your drunken el butcho spree.’ He drew alongside George. ‘Hello, sweetiepie.’

  ‘Any of that and I’ll do you –’ George tried threatening.

  ‘Not here, love, surely?’ Sandy reached out a languid hand. George backed away. ‘Prosecute Lovejoy and I’ll park outside your house all night.’

  ‘And your mascara’s just wrong, George.’ Mel came alive long enough to add to George’s discomfiture.

  ‘Drive on, or I’ll book you for obstruction.’

  ‘No, George. Be serious.’ Sandy fluttered his eyelids. ‘Would you change our motor’s fringe back to gold? Isn’t silver on cerise and blue a fearful risk?’

  George eyed the car with hatred. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace.’

  ‘Fasten your flies, George – no advertising, dear.’ Sandy adjusted the driving mirror to see himself better and accelerated away across the front of the arriving post van, causing an ugly squeal of rubber.

  ‘Marion’ll wear one of those maddening brown waistcoats that positively drain colours from every possible wall, Lovejoy,’ Sandy predicted. ‘The cow really is too much . . .’

  I closed my eyes and leaned back, thinking: this bloody antiques game. I sometimes wish I had a dull, easy job, somewhere peaceful like on an oil rig out in the North Sea.

  Marion’s place is past the Castle along South Hill. When she’s absorbed all that Jed can teach her about prints he’ll be shown the door. So far she’s become quite expert in about eight branches of antiques. Hard work.

  ‘Isn’t it the female tarantula which eats its mate?’ Sandy was saying innocently as we pulled in. ‘Mel, dear,’ he crooned, ‘do we stay out here in the noisy, smelly traffic, or encounter dearest Marion?’ Mel glowered silently. ‘He means no, Lovejoy,’ Sandy continued.

  I shrugged and went inside. Marion was pricing two vinaigrettes, one a Willmore silver gilt fob-watch shape and the other an Empire-style gold oval of about 1810. Joseph Willmore loved the fob-watch style. Life in the good old days being sordid, dirty and full of the most obvious of human stenches, people wanted to disguise the terrible pongs of the cities. So you carried a bottle of perfumed vinegar, hence the name. Men carried them as well as women up to about 1840. You get them all shapes, even as ‘vinegar sticks’, where the container is cleverly made into the handle of a sword or walking stick. Women tended to have them as lockets or on chatelaines. The commonest you find nowadays is a box shape.

  I told Marion why I was late. We fenced quite casually, drawing blood over every groat the way friends will. The purchaser has of course only a few quid in hand and ten thousand starving children to support. The vendor has paid a fortune and wants at least a groat or two profit. You know the sort of thing. We settled finally, when our heartstrings could vibrate no more.

  ‘I’ll drop the stuff in tomorrow afternoon, Marion.’

  ‘Great. Oh, Lovejoy. That creep Leyde was asking around after you this morning. Dealing with him nowadays?’

  Bill Leyde. I’d heard the name. Of course. Honkworth’s pal, the sleek sourface who travelled about with Dolly and the blowsy blonde in Honkworth’s car. Leyde, collector of antique gold – ‘geltie’ in our parlance.

  ‘At Woody’s. Got quite agitated.’ She eyed me evenly. ‘Jed and me got the feeling he was waiting for you.’

  And me late into town because of George, the berk.

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No. Jed had to shoot off to Gimbert’s.’ Our local auction warehouse near St Jude’s derelict church.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ I said casually.

  She waved to me from the doorway as I stepped into Sandy’s car. I’d been over an hour.

  ‘Marion, dearie,’ Sandy called in syrupy tones. ‘Don’t stand about in the street. People are so quick to misunderstand.’

  He drove off with a squeal of tyres into the traffic before she could reply.

  ‘Did you see that absolutely fearful russet bolero she was welded into, the stupid hag?’ Mel hissed malevolently.

  ‘Couldn’t look past those crocodile shoes, dearie,’ Sandy said blithely. ‘If only she had some friends willing to tell her, poor cow.’

  ‘I thought she looked nice,’ I offered.

  ‘Lovejoy,’ Mel said over his shoulder with feeling, ‘you were so brave.’

  ‘Liz Sandwell’s, please, lads,’ I said.

  ‘That purulent green wallpaper!’ Sandy shrieked.

  They both groaned.

  I had a lot to think about during the journey. Martha said Dolly had gone with ‘her friends’ when old Henry and I tottered up the garden yesterday, sloshed on his vitriolic rum. Presumably that included Leyde. Now here he was practically champing on his reins wanting to see me.

  ‘Marion said Leyde was zipping about,’ I said, too casually.

  ‘A real el butcho,’ Mel said. ‘Consorts with your buddie Honkworth.’ They tittered, knowing we didn’t get on.

  ‘Gelt man,’ Sandy added. He gave a serene regal wave to a demented gatekeeper at the level crossing towards the by-pass. I opened my eyes as the Norwich express thundered past inches from me. Sandy sounded his horn at it, irritated. ‘Pestered the life out of us for some lovely Belgian niello and gold pendants, didn’t he, Mel?’

  I scraped my memory for details of Leyde but could find very little. I’d heard he seemed to deal mostly in London and the Midlands.

  By the time we reached Liz Sandwell’s place, I was so uneasy I wasn’t able to keep up with Sandy’s racy comments on his side of the trade. Mel pretended I was lovelorn. Great jokes at my expense. The pubs were open as we pulled in to the kerb at Liz’s shop.

  ‘You will forgive us, Lovejoy,’ Sandy said. ‘But we need something to settle our little tummies. We’ll come back for you elevenish.’

  ‘She asked us to have a bite with her,’ I said, but I know they sometimes go to this tavern for supper in Dragonsdale. They tittered, nudging.

  ‘Bouillabaisse,’ Sandy warned me. ‘It’s all she can do, poor cow. Wrong seasoning.’

  ‘Do take care, dear boy,’ Mel said. ‘Avoid her horsehair sofa at all costs. Gallant lads have been known never to return.’

  They blew extravagant kisses at Liz’s window as they pulled away.

  ‘They send their apologies,’ I said apologetically to Liz. She laughed. ‘I quite understand, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Leyde,’ I found myself saying as we went inside. ‘Any news of him lately?’

  ‘Bill Leyde?’ Liz sounded surprised. ‘The geltie? Not for weeks. He got a gold-mounted George the Second scent flask from Margaret in the Arcade, last I heard. Why?’

  ‘Nothing.’ That sort of small purchase is a typical purchase for the dedicated geltie. ‘May be a deal on, that’s all.’

  It lingered in my mind, but I chatted about this and that. It was bouillabaisse, Liz told me, whatever that is. I said fine and did the wine. I’m all thumbs at things like that but Liz only laughed at the shredded floating cork. She said we could spoon the bits out. We spent some moments on her horsehair sofa after supper.

  It was a chance remark she made much later that connected oddly in my mind
and fetched me back to earth.

  ‘You’ve torn my blouse again, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Oh, er, sorry.’

  She smiled and said not to worry, rubbed her forehead on my face. The clock said eleven. ‘Everything you touch gets changed, doesn’t it?’ she said, still smiling but looking into me. I pulled my eyes away and went for the antiques.

  We settled faster than I should have done. Unease was settling on me. The air seemed thicker. For some inexplicable reason the Irish glass seemed suddenly of secondary importance. Everybody gets these feelings, don’t they? By the end of our deal I was almost hurrying and trying not to. Eventually, it was half-past and the pair not back yet.

  ‘I’ve suddenly remembered something, Liz.’

  ‘Lovejoy.’ She was looking at me. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ I found myself at the door. ‘I’ll ring you about collecting the stuff, right?’

  ‘Any time.’ She followed me anxiously on to the step. A cold wet wind was blowing. ‘See you at the White Hart tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure.’

  We waited, talking in brittle sentences, neither knowing quite what to say. Liz asked if it was something she’d said. I told her of course not.

  They came at midnight, talking simultaneously, neither listening to the other’s inane prattle. Beats me how they communicate. They had full glasses of wine.

  ‘Goodness!’ Sandy squeaked, pointing, as I rushed in and slammed the door. ‘What did she do to you, dear boy? You’re so pale.’

  ‘Er, could we go now, please?’ I felt choked. ‘Buresford,’ I said.

  ‘At this time?’ Mel decided to sulk again. ‘Sodding hell.’ He gave me his glass to hold while he took the wheel.

  Despite some bickering they did as I said. I was in an ugly sweat by now. Maybe I was sickening for something but I didn’t think so.

  ‘This is like going to London via Cape Horn, Lovejoy.’ Even the tolerant Sandy was narked at me now. Great.

  I began to wish I’d never heard of old Reverend Henry Swan and Martha and their faked bloody sword. I didn’t even wave to Liz.

  Approaching Buresford, a police car overtook us, flashing and wailing. I watched it, my heart heavy with foreboding. Mel drove one-handed, gave it a silent toast, his glass of port raised.

  ‘They took no notice of us!’ Sandy complained.

  ‘It’s their loss, dear,’ from Mel.

  We braked suddenly.

  ‘Mel! You’ve spilled my drink!’ Sandy squealed. ‘Oh, it was doomed from the start.’

  Ahead the road curved to enter Buresford near the church, the black-and-white cottages in headlights by the river bend. A constable flagged us slowly on. Two police cars at rest flashed impatient lights in Martha Cookson’s gateway. An ambulance whirred out of the drive and tore past.

  I racked the window down. My hand was shaking.

  ‘Can we go in, Constable?’

  ‘There’s been an explosion. I’ve orders to admit no one.’

  ‘Anybody hurt?’ The feeling was gone now, only a certainty of tragedy remaining.

  ‘Yes. One member of the family and two anglers.’ He seemed worried and somewhat lost.

  I told Mel to drive through the gateway. The policeman was relieved somebody else had made a decision and waved us in. I honestly don’t know what the police are playing at these days, sending bobbies out the way they do. They all seem worried sick and green as grass. No wonder there are criminals about.

  We couldn’t reach the house because of two motorcycles propped across the drive. It looked like a film set with lights and cables. Three policemen were talking and scribbling by the ornamental fountain. I made myself observe the lunatic scene yard by yard. A small cluster of people were down by the river. A few others were gathered around the ambulance parked incongruously in the centre of the lawn’s edge. The ground everywhere was scored by tyre marks.

  For some seconds the essentials failed to register in my mind. Then I began picking them up more sensibly, one by one. It was as if my mind was checking off items accepted for recognition. The two white-coated figures. A nurse running the few steps in to the ambulance for something shiny. Tubes. An inverted bottle of yellow fluid. One doctor with shiny shoes, one doctor in white slipper things. Another constable being told to hold on to this for a moment, please, just like that thank you, and kneeling his creased trousers into the muddy ground carefully doing as he was asked. Sweat trickling from under his helmet. Smoke pouring up from the river and two fire vehicles blinking redly across the other side of the water. Hoses snaked down and pulsing in time with the throbs from the engine. One fireman in a yellow helmet shouting orders from among the bulrushes. Another ambulance over there, with doors flung wide and two white coats huddled down.

  ‘My God!’ I heard Sandy say faintly. ‘Lovejoy . . .’

  A policeman was holding me back on the drive. Somehow I was pushing past and saying get out of the bloody way. Then running to the little riverside terrace and the people there.

  A long bundle on the ground. Anglers on the opposite bank in twos and threes talking and looking, one with his small son carefully folding a keepnet as black oily smoke rolled among the weeds. Everything was in half shadow, macabre.

  Then the longboat. I never realized their hulls were so flat underneath, flat as a pavement. Rust showed and some weeds stuck along the sides. Smoke billowed. I mean that it billowed like smoke in famous poems and children’s pirate stories, roll after roll from the barge. You only need to see a devastated boat for all the sea sagas ever written to become instantly understandable. Oh, I know a ruined house or a wrecked plane that can never fly again is utterly pathetic. But a crumpled boat is somehow so tragic that even to look is almost unbearable. The crackled windows, the ruptured cabin. The crumpled metal sides, sort of owning up that the gaunt sea-creature is actually a thing put together and made of iron plates and logs. The paint already blistering from an unseen fire at one end. Piteous.

  It had been creased downwards, broken as if smashed from above. Both ends were sticking out of the water, and as I stared a fireman clambered on to the front bit and ran nimbly through the smoke unwinding some trailing hose along its length. He managed it without falling into the river, jumping over the ruined sunken middle fold and hauling himself up into the smoke. Fishes floated white-bellied in the water.

  I crossed to the ambulance, stepping over the steel hawser cut clean through on the grass and pathetically still warped to the angled bow. The weird medical ritual always looks the same, doesn’t it? Whether it does any good or not nobody seems to know. I hope somebody is adding it up somewhere.

  The long bundle was being stretchered into the slots. A nurse gave me the elbow to reach past. The constable was helped up, still holding the inverted bottle. One white coat was bloodstained to the sleeve elbow now, the other still spotless. Car tyres spun mud against my legs. A voice spoke from an intercom, horribly distorted. I realized I was coughing because the smoke was blowing over the lawn now. Whatever the firemen were doing was making the smoke worse.

  A police sergeant was ordering the grounds cleared. Somebody else was taking names and addresses. Somebody spoke to me. I said sod off. The man put his hand on my arm and said, ‘Cool down, friend. I’m Maslow, CID. We have to take a few details, that’s all.’

  Doors slammed and the ambulance rolled away towards the drive. A motorcycle kicked into deep sound. A voice called to clear the gateway.

  ‘He’s a family friend,’ Sandy said to somebody. He was ashen. ‘We’re with him.’

  ‘The old chap,’ I managed to get out.

  ‘That was him in the blood wagon.’ Maslow nodded at the drive.

  I turned to see the ambulance leaving the garden. Mel was in difficulties. A constable was making him do a bad-tempered three-point turn. More sulks were on the way.

  My mind registered again. The long blood-soaked bundle under the tattered old car blanket was therefore the Reverend Henry Swan. The person
of, the expiring person of, or remains of?

  ‘What are his chances?’

  ‘None, I’m afraid.’ The CID man was a benign elderly square-shaped man, neat and tidily arranged in a crisp suit. He had a clean handkerchief in his top pocket. I’d thought the nonuniformed branch were all fashionably sloppy and soiled. ‘You know him, then?’

  ‘A bit.’ I walked back to the river. The smoke was as bad as ever. They’d got a punt from somewhere and two firemen were poling along the shattered boat. River water was shooting into the fire from three hoses. Why did the engines have to make that piercing whine? Probably something to do with pumping. How pathetic to bring such massive ladders for nothing. Then I apologized mentally when I saw the far tender’s ladder was stretched sideways over the river, with a fireman stuck on the end of it spraying his jet into the split barge.

  There was an explosion.’ Maslow had followed me. Sandy went back to rescue Mel.

  I thought a bit. ‘How can a boat burn when it’s made of tin?’

  ‘Steel,’ Maslow pointed out. ‘And wood. There’s all its fuel.’

  ‘It hadn’t any.’

  ‘Oil generator.’

  ‘It had electricity from the house.’ I nodded to the grass. ‘There’s a conduit cable under there to Mrs Cookson’s.’

  ‘Gas, then.’

  ‘He’d none.’

  There was a long pause. We both watched the oily smoke. Oily.

  I decided he’d need prompting. ‘Isn’t this where you’re supposed to tell me who did it?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Maslow asked. He seemed angry.

  ‘Find out,’ I said. ‘You’re the detective. Where’s Mrs Cookson?’

  ‘The hospital,’ he answered evenly. ‘And I would advise you not to adopt that tone with me, sir.’

  I honestly pity them when they go all official. ‘And I would advise you to use your frigging cerebral cortex,’ I heard myself say. ‘Try.’

  ‘Are you impeding a police officer in the performance of his duty?’ he intoned.

  ‘Some performance.’ Sometimes they’re just pathetic.

  I walked to the drive where Sandy and Mel were arguing. Mel rounded on me spitefully.