The Grace in Older Women (2 page)

'Can't, Jox.' I hate his catchpenny scams. Tourists and other
maniacs adore them.

'Money, Lovejoy? And a meal?'

Grub? I'm pathetic, but hunger rules when your belly's empty. Mine
gets emptier than anybody's. 'Castle, seven.'

He was still bleating as he pulled away. See what I mean,
appearances? In Jox, you see a rich, educated, clever, sophisticated, talented
geezer who couldn't help but succeed. The truth? Gloom and despond.

There was an element of truth in what he said, though. Before
Fenstone, Jox was on top of the world. After, crump. It was decidedly odd.
Maybe the place didn't suit him. I'm one of those who really does believe that
some houses, streets, hamlets, countries even, are simply wrong for you. Like
people, in a way. The place
knows
you're not right for it, and tries to tell you so. If you've any sense you
listen, make a polite apology to the house or village concerned, and exit
smiling. Otherwise . . . Well, I'm not one to get spooked by haunting thoughts.
The least said the better. Moral: if a place doesn't like you, zoom.

Jox was daft to keep up appearances. A stiff upper lip is fine
when you're building empires, but in personal life it only makes you look daft
and talk funny.

Aye, Jox is definite proof that appearances lie. Things aren't
ever what they seem.

Look at Queen Victoria. She was sober, frosty, sombre, right?
Well, no. She was nothing of the kind. Victorian people wanted her to be like
that, set her up in their minds just so. But it is on record that she shoved
guards aside at a Mulready exhibition, the better to thrill over that artist's
'scandalously realistic' nudes, with their disproportionately tiny hands but
luscious bodies. You don't hear much about William Mulready these days, but the
Victorians knew lust better. Thackeray called him ‘His Majesty KING MULREADY',
above all the rest. And I know I keep on about the merriest grin ever
photographed - on the lovely wrinkled face of the old Queen Empress rolling in
the aisles at some drollery.

And look at Einstein. Everybody's perfect scientist, right? Not really.
The reappraisal joke is that MC squared means M for Misogynist and C for Cheat.
Or some other things beginning with C. A swine to his family - including his
shunned mentally sick youngest son, Eduard, and his illegitimate daughter
Lieserl who the saintly Einstein pretended never even existed - he groped and
ravished his way through fawning physics groupies all his life.

It isn't just people, meaning all of us, who prove my theory that
everything's not what it seems. In the midsummer of 1993, the United Nations
Human Rights Convention, presumably in the interests of human rights, barred. .
. guess who? Only the most peaceable bloke on earth, the Dalai Lama. Wherever
you look, preconceptions shatter. Stern old Isle of Man gave women the vote in
1881, long before even New Zealand got round to it. The Japanese Emperor
Akihito, bastion of Japanese culture, prefers Chinese food. Constantine the
Great, the first and holiest Christian emperor, wasn't. You wouldn't want to
meet the likes of him in a dark alley, for the holy Constantine was lethal. He
murdered Crispus, his own son, then his brother-in-law, little nephew, drowned
his second wife in her bath . . . And the impression is that sharks in
Australia's blue waters have killed millions. They haven't. Their total is 182,
since records began when an Aborigine lady was eaten off New South Wales in
1791. And peaceful ancient East Anglia's villages aren't so peaceful or stable
as they used to be. Why, look at that place Jox mentioned. Fenstone, hamlet of
pestiferous Juliana Witherspoon (Miss), is in decline. Its population is
dwindling fast, post office closed from atrophy, young people moving away,
parishes merging, houses unbelievably standing empty. And Tinker, my oppo,
whose antennae for antiques are worth any amount of electronics, and who does
mundane (but not servile) jobs for me, passed through Fenstone itself last St
Pumpkin's Day to pick up some antiques from a church robbery that I was
brokering for some lass. He told me it was like a ghost village. No wonder the
survivors were holding out their begging bowls.

Somebody was asking me something.

‘Eh? Oh, wotch, Addie.'

She stood smiling, tried to take my arm and propel me somewhere. I
shook her off gently, which takes some resolve, seeing I covet Adelaide
Allardyce more than most. Her husband is a security man.

A born misanthropist, even now he was waiting in his car. As if
people like me can't be trusted, the swine.

'Come and see this, Lovejoy. We're all agog about it.'

'It?'

‘A colander. Two proddies came peering at it.'

A proddie is somebody who goes ahead of an antiques road show,
which is a group of 'antiques experts' that travels from town to village, city
to hamlet, offering to value (free of charge!) any antiques you might bring
from your attic. They are loosely described as honest, and claim to act in your
very best interests. Ahead of them barnstorm their proddies, putting up
posters, bleating enthusiasm on local radio, flagging newspapers, stirring up
eagerness. If you think of it, the proddies
have
to get us all searching our cellars for antiques, otherwise they'd get the
sack. Their nickname is synonymous with unscrupulous.

'This way. Item 98, think it is.'

There's no point in hurrying through an auction viewing day. I
take my time, drift, feeling the love that emanates from the few antiques
hiding among the crud. There's always one beautiful antique, take my word for
it. For always read every single time. Don't say I didn't warn you. If you go
to a viewing day and see only an appalling mess of junk, and depart seething at
time wasted cursing me for a fibber, then you've missed it. Serves you right
for being unable to hear love shrieking in your earhole.

'Slowdown.'

Addie tutted impatiently. 'You
amble
,
Lovejoy.'

Women are great at impatience. It's not their fault. They're
simply born with it. For me, hurrying is a terrible waste of all the seconds in
between. Amble if you've a mind to. Don't gawp, ogle, rubberneck your way among
the mangles, cupboards, flower stands, bureaux, old desks and boxes of decrepit
toys. Looking never does much for me. It's feel that detects love. Simple as
that. Eagle eyesight can't do it. Nor can those cunning electronic devices that
folk carry about these days to peer microscopically at veneer or vaporize old
paint.

Addie stamped her foot, pretty but pointless. I've been pushed by
fearsome pushers and still stayed put.

Give you an instance: once, in Yorkshire, I saw a dealer
inspecting

a painting at a big auctioneer's. He had more gadgets than the
parson preached about. Stereoscopic MacArthur microscope, water immersion and
polarizing lenses, pigment anaylser, electronic impedance device to suss out
precious stones - he was a walking laboratory, him and his briefcases. Even had
a bonny secretary taking dictation as he probed and fussed. The reason I fell
about laughing was that later I saw him bid, chucking away a fortune on a dud.
The biggest joke was that next to the forgery was a genuine slip-inlaid celadon
ewer. It had been made in Korea by firing the pottery piece on a ring of sand,
producing the most gorgeous of colours, in the Koryo dynasty-which began over a
century before our Battle of Hastings. It would have bought me a house,
freehold, taxes paid. It went for a song, but not to me. Tragically, the four
blokes I'd been trying to con -er, encourage - into buying it for me didn't
turn up. The Japanese of the 1590s had sense: they invaded Korea and kidnapped
the Korean potter families wholesale, kilns and all.

Drifting, I saw a few half-decent pieces that could be restored,
mostly Victorian or Edwardian, but I'd not the money to bid. There was a lovely
amber pendant, biggest I'd ever seen, carved in the form of a crucifixion
scene, but it didn't feel right so I didn't stop to look because it would only
have told me that Scandal was out of gaol and had resumed doing his stuff in
Walberswick. He's our best amber carver, but can only afford amberoid - amber
chips heatwelded together to simulate the real thing.

But this colander stopped me cold.

Some things don't need inspecting. They just glow like a star at
dusk. I wobbled, crashed into a chai»- that almost gave. Adelaide caught me
with a faint shriek.

‘You all right, Lovejoy?'

A tweedy bystander, stiff country-gent collar, asked Addie what
was going on. I heard her explaining, 'It's all right. He goes like this near a
genuine antique . . .'

Feet thumped as people gathered, asking which was it, was it that
painting over there that looked like Holman Hunt ... I broke out in a sweat,
same as malaria I'd had once when getting shot in indescribable foreign
foliage.

‘I'm all right,' I told Addie, and ta, mate, to Tweeds.

'Lovejoy's like this. Never forgeries. Only genuine –'

'Shut up, silly cow.' I would have clocked her one but I was still
shivery from the colander.

'Can he really, well,
tell
?"
a lady asked, fascinated. I could only see her shoes. They could have bought
me, my immobile Ruby motor, and my prospects. Rare species had died to shoe her
feet. She'd probably wear them twice.

'Every single time,' Addie announced proudly to the assembling
multitude, her voice gaining decibels with every syllable. My secret gift was
no secret any more. 'He's famous. We swear by him.’ In auctions she bids like a
rock'n'roll drummer. The essence of tact.

'Then why's he look destitute?' a manly voice intoned.

'Oh, well.' Addie was stuck, wanting to retreat. 'Lovejoy's, ah,
affairs cost.'

To my relief a gravelly voice cut short Adelaide's broadcast.

'Lovejoy's shagnasty. Never the price of a pint.' Tinker, my
barker, shuffled waveringly into view and hauled me upright. 'Come on, mate.
Where is it?'

'There.' No point in trying to conceal the colander. Its price
would now be astronomical, all the world and his wife poised to bid.

He all but dragged me to the table. I stared, for politeness. It
didn't look much, but neither does the Mona Lisa.

Stoneware, a sandy brown, a simple pottery colander. That's all it
was, the thing you strain vegetables with. Shaped, though, like a small basket,
with plain holes all the way up its straight sides. The handle had two grooves.
Nothing else to be said, except that it was the rarest piece of kitchenware. I'd
seen one in my Grandma's when a little lad. Genuine, pure, lovely. I couldn't
help smiling. Each little hole - all perfectly matched - had a small line
grooved from it to the next horizontally, not vertically. The times I'd run a
slate pencil along Gran's, hole to hole, making a grey-blue decoration.

Wasn't worth more than a week's wages, though, despite its rarity
and pristine condition. Except to someone like me, who loved it.

'Genuine, Lovejoy?' from Addie, queen of the bloody obvious.

'Beautiful. Lanes., eighteenth century.' My voice wobbled.

'Imagine!' Addie shrieked, clapping, just in case somebody in the
Midlands hadn't heard her first pronouncement.

Trice?' That man, peremptory.

'What it'll bring,' I said curtly and turned away.

'I asked you a civil question,' the man thundered.

Notice that people who aren't civil always say that, when they've
been downright rude? I still hadn't seen his face. I felt for my hankie,
decided not to bring it out because the women would holler it should have been
washed last Easter, and instead blotted my dripping forehead with my frayed
sleeve.

'Isn't it a
stupendous
gift?' Addie shrilled. 'Can you
imagine
?
Coming over queer for a moment, then you simply
know
genuine? I've known Lovejoy for
ages
, ever since . . .'She coloured, ahemed.

'Lady, leave orff.' Tinker coughed, the burbling notes of his
emerging phlegm magically clearing a space round us. His chest heaved, his old
threadbare greatcoat swaying as his wheezes shook him into rigor. A fetor
wafted away the delectable aroma of dust and must. Everybody wilted. 'Come on,
mate.'

We got out, him marching me along the pavement like a squaddie to
the guardroom. I shook my arm free.

'Where are we going, you stupid burke?'

'Forgotten, you pillock?'

'What? Forgotten what?' We'd reached Marks and Spencer's, stood
there getting buffeted by prams and shoppers.

'The law, that's what. You're due in court.'

'Oh.' He was right. 'Have I got to?'

'Better had,' the scruffy old devil ground out. 'A bird's
following you.' He jerked his chin stubble at the window. The girl in the
bright peach frock was reflected at the bus stop, staring intently.
Coincidence?

Anyhow, I'd no time. I had to get thinking about theatre glasses,
as used by London's elegant ladies in 1750 to spy on other women making love.

“I say! You there! Lovejoy!'

The thunder man's voice, dopplering as he approached. I didn't
even look. Tinker was right. The law wanted me.