Moonspender

by Jonathan Gash

  In the mutterings that followed, Beth actually won that round because the expert said a hundred quid and she'd guessed nearest.

  But when the next serf brought out this vase I really did burst out in a guffaw. I just couldn't help it. It was on the far side so I couldn't see it clearly at first. Its shape told me enough—well, almost. Only as tall as your ordinary neffie modem ornament, it was a pale apple green, bulbous at the base and slender-necked. I laughed because everybody gets scores of these Hong Kong replicas every week. They're less than a quid each, delivered.

  "It's another blinking fake," I said, falling about to Goldie's obvious fury. I couldn't help it.

  Then something happened. I stopped.

  Distantly, yet deep within me, a faint peal of bells sounded. Their chimes intensified, increased, until I was deafened by the resonance. Appalled, I felt myself shake. Their clamor actually set me quivering. Not real bells, you understand, but total.

  The serf came nearer, placed the vase on a stand. The pedestal rotated. I thought, Oh God, no. The world was suddenly glowing. Dimly I heard Goldie say, all acid, "Lovejoy's especially amused ..." but by then I was up and at the vase, apologizing heartbroken.

  There it stood, its luscious ancient soul radiating while I chimed like a Sunday church. Sometimes I'm just thick. I could hardly speak from grief at what I'd just said to it. Alone, among this cretinoidal gathering, it was magic.

  "Look, love," I told it brokenly, "I'm sorry. Honest. I honestly didn't think. It's just this silly bloody game."

  Some people were laughing. Goldie was beaming confidingly at the audience, working their amusement, but I could tell heads would roll for letting me on the panel. That made me feel even worse. "We've never had a panelist make love to a pot before," she simpered. The panic-stricken comic fanned the laughter, uncertain applause.

  I wasn't having this vase spoken to like that. "Pot? You need a bloody good hiding, you stuck-up ignorant bitch." I apologized to the dazzling ornament. The audience quieted. "Do you mind, chuckle?" I asked it politely, and reached out to touch it, thrilling. And I swear it almost did move, a swift gracious response of understanding emanated ... I realized there was almost total quiet. Cameramen, the gecko crawlers, even Goldie, were stunned into silence.

  "Well," I said defensively. "She's worth the lot of you pillocks. She hasn't come down through all these centuries from ancient China just for you to have a frigging giggle, you stupid burkes."

  "Break time now, viewers," Goldie caroled. "Don't go away now!"

  Everybody froze an instant, then all hell was let loose. They hoofed me off. Not a chance to say good-bye to that luscious green glass queen. A burly bloke actually hauled me down corridors, smashing through swing doors at a breathless run while I tried to explain in gasps. I had a glimpse of the drunken comic giving me a hilarious grin and a thumbs-up, then I was lobbed out into the rain. The door slammed and I was alone under an archway near the car park. Disgruntled, I went round the comer to a nosh bar and counted time, worrying about Sykes.

  Scared? Of course I was scared. How was I to know the show was for epsilon-minus stupes?

  Twenty minutes later the crowd emerged, talking and amused. The show had obviously taken a turn for the better. Sykie finally appeared. Mercifully, he was smiling. He gave me a nod, walked by without a word. His Rolls came and wafted him away in grand style, his nerks following in a saloon. One gave me Toffee's basket. She was asleep. Some people nudged each other when they saw me, as if it was all my fault. It was that Goldie. Women always find a bloke to blame, don't they. I was at a loss, hanging about the pavement wondering if Sykie'd send word, but at half-past gave up and caught the tube to Liverpool Street Station.

  Thinking about it, sharing a pasty with Toffee as the train rattled into East Anglia, I was quite pleased. It was over and done with, and I'd done as I was told, right? It wasn't my fault I'd mucked up their neffie program. Three little girls got on at Romford and played with Toffee while I nodded off.

  An hour later I entered the Railway Tavern. He was there, as instructed: rheumy-eyed, in his tatty army greatcoat, resonantly coughing up phlegm from subterranean depths. Tinker Dill, Esq., my barker. The best antiques sniffer in East Anglia.

  "Wotcher, Tinker. Get the notes?"

  "Aye, Lovejoy." He slurped his ale to drought, my cue to buy another pint. " 'Ere. We in trouble?" It's all he ever says to me, but for once I didn't snap his head off.

  "Trouble? Nar, mate. Just wriggled out from under."

  Wrong, Lovejoy, wrong.

  3

  Too drunk, Tinker doesn't function. Sober, he's hopeless. But middling sloshed he's a gem. Now he was coughing really well and tipsily crumpled, all good signs.

  "I seed yer on the telly, Lovejoy," he wheezed. "That Goldie tart's got lovely bristols, eh?"

  "Good legs, too. What about the auction?"

  "Everybody bought everyfing, Lovejoy." Translation: He'd guessed right about all the notable items in the sale I'd sent him to. With the stimulus of a fresh pint, he embellished. "Maggie paid a bleedin' fortune for that set of mugs. Lennie made a balls-up, bidding too fast for that little mahogany Canterbury. Liz Sandwell got the Pembroke table . . ."

  This is lifeblood. I listened hungrily. Sounds daft, I know, but every syllable might be worth a mint. It took him six pints to run down the list

  ". . . and Jessica got them old shoes cheap, folk said. That's it, Lovejoy."

  "Them old shoes" were about 1895, very pointed patent leather pumps with big flat bows of grosgrain ribbon. I groaned. They were mint collectors' items. I hate these delectables going to the undeserving, which means anybody else.

  "Another pint, love," I told Megan at the bar—she was fawning on Toffee—and asked Tinker, "Jessica bidding separate from Lennie?"

  "Aye."

  Interesting news, this. Jessica is Lennie's mother-in-law, and possesses glamour, wealth, and, rumor hath, Lennie as well. She furthers his interests with all the effort of which she's capable, which is a great deal. Sadly, Lennie is a numskull. You never see Lennie's wife. Scandal gets vigorous local help, one way and another..

  ". . . you'd be there at ten, Lovejoy."

  "Eh?" Tinker had been talking. "Me where at ten?"

  "Dogpits Farm. Some tart." He coughed, a long crescendo that shook soot down the bar chimney. I paused with the respect due a world champ.

  "What for?" As far as I was concerned Dogpits was a place famous for being where they'd found a little Roman amphitheater years ago, and nowt else.

  "How the bleedin' hell should I know?" he graveled out, peeved. His glass was empty. I paid for more lubrication. "And Sykie sent his lads over. Sez be home tomorrer."

  "Two places at once?" It wasn't Tinker's fault. A barker's job to collect messages, sniff out hearsay about illicit antique goings-on. I'm the brains of the outfit, God help us. Meanwhile he was eyeing Toffee speculatively.

  "Stuffed moggies is good money, Lovejoy."

  "Only before 1910, though." Toffee looked at me, but the thought honestly hadn't crossed my mind.

  "You can age them. Didn't you show Brad some trick with formalin tablets?"

  "You mean stuffed fish and hydrogen peroxide." It had made me queasy for days. Never again. "That it, then?"

  "Yih." He nearly shook himself apart with another world-beater cough. " 'Cept for George Prentiss."

  "George? He still owes me for three Boer War soldiers, Afrikaans, painted lead; and a book." That's the trouble with me, too trusting.

  "Not now, Lovejoy. Frigging great farm bull killt him." He spat into the fire. "A rubbish animal, big as a barn."

  "Dead? Dear God. When?"

  "Last night. Boothie found him, Pittsbury Wood way."

  Tom Booth is a famed poacher. Seemed an odd business to me. I said so, and a well-loved voice agreed with me from the taproom doorway. I sighed wearily. It was one of those days. Maybe I ought to have accepted Mrs. Ryan's job and be safely baling straw in some orchard or whate
ver.

  "Pint, Megan." Ledger leaned on the bar beside me. "Evening, Dill."

  "Mumble, mumble." Tinker edged away, leaving me all alone. Friends, I thought bitterly, though Ledger's not really poisonous, as peelers go. That is to say he has standards, which have even veered towards righteousness when all else has failed.

  "Don't tell me. Ledger," I said. "You watched telly and have popped in for a friendly gloat."

  "What are you on about, Lovejoy?" He sounded quite affable, a bad omen. "No. I've come to demand an explanation. In," he twinkled with repellent merriment, "the name of the law."

  "Should you be drinking on duty?"

  "No. Cheers." He sucked on the rim. The most obnoxious sight in the world, a copper enjoying an illicit pint, whooping it up on our taxes. Fuming, I looked away. Megan's mobile mammae were more gorgeous any day of the week. "George, as you said, is a very odd business."

  "Tinker just told me. What was he doing having a run-in with a bull in candle hours?"

  He gave me a warning finger. "Shut it, Lovejoy. I ask. You answer. Follow?" He nodded to Megan for a refill, my only benefit being an upsurge in Megan's nubility as she manipulated the lever. The symbolism was wearing me out. If it hadn't been for this pest I'd offer to give her Toffee for a—"How come, Lovejoy, that George had in his possession a book belonging to you?"

  "Me?" I went all innocent.

  "Don't irritate me, lad. I've checked."

  The book was practically new, a 1962 thing called Erotic Love. I'd faked the pseudonymous author's autograph, Sardi, on the flyleaf, a common dealer's trick. If he/she can secretly be anybody, the signature can be in anybody's handwriting. It should have kept me in grub a whole week. George had seen me in the Ship pub on East Hill trying to sell it to Lily. I'd come by the Sardi book almost legitimately by nicking it in a church jumble sale, a temporary loan from the Almighty—one way of improving His poor record of assisting the disadvantaged.

  "Ah, that book!" I said with theatrical remembrance. "Yes. Original author's inscription, I believe. Not quite my kind of subject, you understand ..." I'd strangle Lily for bubbling me with the Old Bill.

  He frowned. "What I want to know is why George Prentiss should be carrying your book across a field, committing night trespass, and getting gored to death."

  "Beats me."

  "What I mean is, did George fall, or was he pushed?"

  "Ask the frigging bull." And these goons get paid. I ask you.

  He sat silent for a few seconds, watching me. Some darts players over by the fire cheered a victory. They practice days at a time, but I've never seen a darts match end by anything but a fllike. "What's the book, Lovejoy?"

  I spoke frankly because Ledger's tone had gone normal. "Truth is, I got it at a church jumble. It was big erotic stuff for the sixties. Now, it's old hat."

  "Was Prentiss a known collector?"

  "George? Hardly. He just helps various dealers with early electrical gadgets. Nice bloke. Sometimes bought a few models- -soldiery, model cars, dinkies we call them all in the trade." I told him about the Boer War riflemen. "That was a month back. Real collectors are maniacs. Sell their missus for a beer label if it'd make a set."

  He left then, to the Railway Tavern's wholesale relief Not a word of thanks, note, for the invaluable assistance I'd rendered to the forces of law and order. Tinker shuffled over.

  After I'd got him ale-oiled, I asked, "Here, Tinker. What rank is Ledger now?"

  "Him? A boss summert. Why?"

  "Odd." I kept my voice down. Megan's form undulated nearby as she did her thrilling best with the beer handle. "A boss growser, asking around pubs about a farm accident? He should be watching football on telly with his missus brewing cocoa."

  "Workin' a free pint," Tinker said with venom.

  "That's it," I agreed, smiling. "Another?" But my mind was going: Pittsbury Wood abuts on Dogpits Farm. I decided then to keep the appointment with Tinker's "some tart" at ten o'clock. You see, I knew something about George Prentiss that nobody even suspected and it's this: George wouldn't be found dead in the countryside. No, sorry, I didn't mean that. What I mean is, George hated the dark. And he hated truly rural countryside almost as much as I do, which is considerably. Let me explain.

  One of my worst disappointments was discovering that life needs management. Like, sometimes a week will start so badly that you simply want to stop it and start again. When an especially bad week happens along, I simply halt it and go about pretending it's last Sunday. I call them my Sunday weeks. I loll, feed the robin, read, go to a nonexistent evensong and hum my way through maybe a Tantum Ergo, all alone in a surprised but empty church. The next morning, lo and behold! It's last Monday again, but second time around, as it were. It confers a kind of spirit-world lebensraum. And guess what? That week suddenly changes. It becomes easy, friendly, and trouble-free. Try it.

  I'd learned about George's particular weakness three months before. I was merrily drunk on homemade wine and telling a bored robin how I'd stupidly missed a Benin bronze in a Suffolk auction by stopping for a quick, er, chat with the delectable Liz Sandwell in Dragonsdale. That escapade cost money. Not many people can manage penury, shame, and degradation all at one go, like me. Instantly recognizing I'd fallen unsuspectingly into a Sunday week, I zoomed home to pretend it was the previous sabbath. By evening I was happy, and warbling a Thomas Tallis madrigal to an indifferent universe from the confines of my workshop—no thriving mill; it's a crumbling ex-garage set among brambles.

  It was then that George stopped by for a drink. I sang him a difficult second stanza and gave him a jam jar full of my best elderberry. George is, was, a quietly calm bloke. Anyone not knowing him'd call him reserved.

  But anyone with half an eye could suss George out as a harmless, tinkering bloke good as gold. We chatted. I sang. He stayed, and stayed. I was frying us both some tomatoes and bread when I suddenly realized two things: It was eleven o'clock, and George was terrified. I goaded my irate neurons into action. They decided something else was odd. George hadn't explained why he'd come.

  "Here, George," I said. "Anything I can do for you?"

  "No, Lovejoy. Thanks." He gave a ghastly grin. "Only, I was mending Sandy's electrics and forgot the time. That's why I dropped in."

  Sandy and Mel I've already mentioned. They live in our village, and are rich, aggressive dealers. Nowt as queer as folk, my old gran used to say.

  "To wait for the bus, eh?" Mel and Sandy are also famous for not giving people lifts in their fantastic battleship of a car. "Sorry, George. My crate's off the road at present." The ancient ruby, corrosive sublimate of motor, was dwindling into oxides among the foliage—a disagreement with the authorities.

  "I saw."

  Odd. Only then did I concentrate and actually examine George's features. In my drunken state I'd not noticed, but now I saw the symptomatology: the sweat, tremors, the quick glances. Even as he spoke he leapt out of his skin because of a snuffling at the door.

  "For Christ's sake, George. It's only the hedgehog."

  Crispin stood there blinking while I went to make its pobs, bread in milk. It has its own saucer. Soon he'd start screaming at night along my autumn hedge, a horrible scary cry to show that he's packing up for the year. George stared fearfully into the dark night, while Crispin slurped his nocturnal calories and gave me reproachful glances. He isn't used to slow service caused by trembling visitors. Narked, I bent down and showed it my fist. "I want no criticism from you, chiseler," I threatened. Mother Nature really irks me. All she does is breed scroungers, then sends them round to me for alms. It's basically bad organization. One of these days I'll send the whole frigging lot packing. "If it isn't you it's the bloody birds hammering on the window," I grumbled. Crispin slurped the last and left, pink feet high-stepping aloofly into the night. No wonder I'm bitter. Dignity comes easy, on other people's graft.

  "It's the dark, George, eh?"

  "Yes." He unwound slightly as the door closed, and gave me a feebl
e grin. "I was always terrified, right from a kiddie."

  That night he slept on my floor, a blanket and cushion job. And went off right as rain in the morning, noshing fried tomatoes and marching out for the first bus. I watched him go from my porch, gave him a wave. Nothing wrong with having a phobia, as long as you keep quiet about it.

  That's what I meant about George not being a lover of night-walking. Maybe he'd had some premonition? A daft thought, really, because I'm determined not to believe in hunches and all that. Real life's trouble enough.

  So, the morning after my epic television drama, aiming to keep that ten o'clock appointment, I was plodding between the mathematical white fences of Dogpits Farm while horses raised heads and belligerently stared me down. The house grew lovelier with every plod, a resplendent black and white Tudor voyager among modernity. I wondered hopefully how the lady in residence would take a proposal of marriage from a scruff like me.

  Then this bloke came galloping at me on a horse the size of an elephant, intending to whip me, while a bonny mounted girl nearby laughed admiringly. Served me right for daydreaming.

  4

  Well, I wasn't having that. The first I realized of the assault was a thudding of hooves, and this giant horse was charging directly at me with a mounted idiot whooping like a maniac. In panic I fled and crawled under the nearest fence—faster than most people leap—and started sprinting across a field. The maniac leapt the obstruction—I'd forgotten that horses were natural jumpers—and came thundering after me. Instinctively as the bloody nag hoofed closer I made my dash curve, ever tighter, so the mad cavalry floundered to regain direction. Then I was off", straightlining to a distant hedge. Of course it wasn't all athletics. I was also screaming explanations about being invited to call for a job, and begging in terror, anything, but it was no use. The frigging lunatic kept coming, and the acreage grew wider and me more knackered with pain in my chest and side from exercise. And a bit of fear.

  A cheering noise sounded, but it might have been my ears roaring. Maybe the blond girl had friends. Third rush I glanced, terrified, to check her distance, but she was only circling at a genteel trot and calling, "Go on, Christopher," and this goon shouting tally-hos and similar intellectual expletives.