'That what they call it?'
I shoved in anyway, and immediately halted at the most glorious sight. Not the middle-aged lady in her nip, but a magnificent array of furniture. I went giddy as vibes shook me. For one second I thought he'd discovered some way to fake genuine antiques.
Then I saw three pieces of ancient furniture against the side wall. They were his models, and genuine. My shivering knees almost let me down. I sat on a stool.
The workshop was no bigger than the ground-floor area of your house, say. The centre held the workbench where I'd seen Wrinkle, er, hard at it. On the left wall furniture was stacked. It looked desiccated, practically ready to fall to powder.
Don't know if you're into Chinese antiques, but it's certainly where money is, these switchback days. Before communism fragged, all interest was in porcelains. After the 1980s, though, Chinese furniture - pottery too - soared. Dealers everywhere spoke about Ching Dynasty (1644 to 1912 - think from our Great Civil War to King Edward VII) and Ming (preceding, to 1368). In the USA, it was Ching time in the Rockies.
Dealers went doolally for Chinese furniture and porcelain. Europe bulged with artefacts robbed from Chinese tombs. Folk say China has eight million burial sites, of which 99.5
per cent remain unlooted', archaeologists licking their lips like it's their duty to ruin ruins. The figure's important, since in 1974 a serf blundered into the Terracotta Army of over seven thousand massive figures in a huge underground City of Burials. That peasant was honest - I'm not kidding, there is such a thing - and told his guv'nors.
Wholesale looting began.
China was displeased. Beheadings followed. So stern did China become about this, that if some kulak was found homeward plodding his weary way with a Warrior's terracotta head in his knapsack he himself would suffer the same gruesome penalty. Did the looting of tombs and archaeological sites halt? Certainly not. Peasants simply got the message: If authorities executed a starving villein simply for stealing an earthenware figure, it meant something earth-shaking. It meant the figure was valuable. Lovejoy's formula: hunger + treasure = loot.
Loot exports boomed. Hong Kong was doing its stuff. Exports hurtled merrily to dealers everywhere. Then the oddest thing happened.
During the 1980s and 1990s Chinese unglazed earthenware tomb figures became common. They were in every dealer's window, on every collector's shelf. Their value tumbled. Small figures costing the price of a good new car in 1980 wouldn't buy a respray by 1995. But furniture? Furniture soared, and soared. And kept on.
A hardwood yokeback armchair in pretty good nick would have cost you the price of a mere week's holiday twenty years before the millennium. And they were common. You simply phoned Hong Kong, paid your four hundred dollars, and took delivery. Then China realized. Simultaneously, Hong Kong's lease ebbed. And the price of that hardwood curved-spine squarish chair? It rose hundredfold. If rare, like your folding swing-pin hardwood sitter that museums fight tooth and nail for, you're into half a million US zlotniks, and pay your own security guards. The prices, and the scarcity, have got worse.
Enter Wrinkle. I honestly don't know where he gets his woods from, but they're good.
The usual ones are what we call huang-hua-lee (dunno what it means). There's some called zee-tan - ditto - and of course a whole variety of Indonesian and illicit Burmese redwoods and mahoganies. One piece already finished took my breath away.
'Here, Wrinkle,' I gasped. 'That's zylopia wood!'
Zylopia's curiously coloured, hard and tough. I went closer and peered. Its grain is tight, close, and very straight.
You can get it fairly easily from importers. Except it comes from Africa, and is often a curious grey. Using zylopia was a stroke of genius, saving the need for dehydrating and staining all in one go.
He reddened, shrugged. 'I'm in a hurry, Lovejoy. A friend's lending me the gelt. Make hay while the sun shines, eh?'
'Doesn't it pick up when you're working it?' I was fascinated.
Picking up is horrible. It means the wood tends to break away where the grain interlocks or crosses. A forger's nightmare, and a real giveaway.
'Terrible, Lovejoy. You have to be so careful.'
Wrinkle's lifetime ambition, I might add, is to fake all the main variants of furniture design of the Ming and Ching periods. One example of each, in the right woods. He'd done about twenty-six when he'd defaulted on paying for the Angelica Kauffmann panel I'd done.
'How many so far, Wrinkle?'
'Thirty-seven, Lovejoy. Nine to go.'
Full of admiration, I whistled. A true craftsman, he uses original methods, tries to make the right glues. He even makes his own tools.
'Got my money, Wrinkle?'
His innocent eyes blinked. 'Money, Lovejoy?'
I grabbed him by the throat. A woman's voice said drowsily, 'What's the matter?'
In the corner was a vast four-poster bed, four blunt-S shaped legs, carved low railings top and bottom. It was beautiful (I mean the bed). The lady stirred. Now, this was a forgery (the bed) but wondrously done. It was a year's job, piercing and slaving (t.b.). I walked over. The surface could have been ancient, powdery in places just like the real thing.
The joints had come away from contracture and shrinkage. The surface edges looked genuine. Only the absence of my bells told it was a fake.
Wrinkle had discovered his own ageing process. I had tears in my eyes. 'Beautiful, mate.'
'Why, thank you kind sir,' she fluttered.
'Not you, you silly cow,' I said. 'The wood.'
She sat up and glared. I touched the genuine three pieces against the opposite wall. I knew where he'd got those. They were from a colonel's elderly widow in Norfolk. He'd met her through his lonely hearts ploy, got them as a gift. The curvature of Chinese arms is just that little bit odder than on our furniture. I came to.
'Can't you hang on a month, Lovejoy? You'll get your money.'
'How do you shrink this wood, Wrinkle?'
There's a rough rule that wood cut in the long axis of its grain shrinks only one per cent. Wood cut radially, 2 to 7 per cent. Cut it tangential, it can shrivel up to 15 per cent. This is why old oak pews hurt your bottom when the sermon drones on - the dowel pegs poke up after a century by as much as an eighth of an inch. This is why church seats ladder ladies' stockings and scag your trousers.
'Got a good Far East supplier.'
'Excuse me!' This harridan stormed up. 'I've spoken to you three times and you've ignored me!'
It was Wrinkle's woman, presumably the one 'helping' him with gelt. Close to she was even bonnier.
'It's only Lovejoy, Honor,' Wrinkle said, fumblingly brought out a note. 'Here. On account.'
'I need it all, Wrinkle. I'm skint.'
Honor was wrapped in a large towel, furious. 'I'll pay you, Lovejoy. Then you get right out of here!'
She wrote a cheque. I demanded she write her address on the back, said so-long, wished Wrinkle luck, caught the bus to Liverpool Street station.
Where the bank politely informed me that there was no such account. The cheque was phoney. They politely asked me to wait while the police arrived. I politely said I'd just go to the loo, and eeled out into the street. Infallible at antiques, excellent at forgeries, useless with money.
And with people? Dud, dud.
6
ODD HOW RELIEVED I was to catch the Tube away from the street-barrow life I love.
Old enemies, old friends, make me tick. Yet here I was, jostled by commuters and tourists, heading out of my natural grotty world into the sleek wonderland of Chelsea's glamorous King's Road.
The King's Road, Chelsea, starts at Sloane Square and heads south-west, towards Parsons Green. Oddly, road maps number its upper stretch A3217 and its lower the A308, but this is only cartographers having us on. They make changes in case we cotton on that they've no real job. Incidentally, note that definite article - The King's Road, like there's no other. It's deserved, for the King's Road, Chelsea, has its own peculiar message. That message has only one word in it, but is utterly vitaclass="underline" Money.