'Shhh,' I whispered, though what good's whispering when modern sound booms might be concealed in every twig? I added in a voice of thunder, 'Tell Quake good luck with the, er, boat.'
'Friday, Lovejoy,' Maud whispered, bussing me so-long. I left, exhausted.
To find the brigadier waiting for me at the bus stop.
'Isn't it time, Lovejoy,' he said without preamble, 'that you made an honest woman of Maud?'
People in the queue turned to look. He has a delivery like a Shakespearean herald: now hear this, oh world. I went red.
'Sorry, Brig,' I apologized. 'She's married.'
'That doesn't stop people these days, Lovejoy. And from what I hear—'
'Brig,' I said, broken. 'Ask Maud. If I were you I'd just fall into line.'
'She's living with a dud,' he boomed. 'He's not even a genuine dud. He's a sham dud, for heaven's sake. All that let's-pretend lameness, when he actually floats off in his punt at all hours. I reckon he's got another woman anyway, so where's the harm?' He eyed me wistfully. 'I'd like a son-in-law like you, Lovejoy. No mockery. And something would keep happening.'
'The bus is here.' It wasn't.
'I wish the silly bugger really was lame,' he said sadly. 'You see, Lovejoy, my world has changed. If there are floods in Mozambique, or a new miracle genetic rice gives some coolie the bellyache, then my generation's very existence is up the creek. Our Defence Weapon Procurement makes a trivial mistake, another chunk of my life shreds. A passenger plane crashes, and more of my generation becomes penniless. It's true, Lovejoy. It's that serious. I'm closer to the edge every time I open The Times.'
Seemed a bit pessimistic to me. I said so. And what could a penniless antique dealer do to straighten earth's calamities?
'You know the theory, how mankind started?' For a second he seemed deeply moved, but how could that be, him a stalwart brigadier and all?
'Which one?' I'd heard dozens, each as unbelievable as the next.
'Three million years ago, primitive australopithecines living in the rain forests divided.
One branch stayed vegetarian and are still monkeys. The others became carnivorous and learned to make war. They're us, Lovejoy. Man. Just remember that's all we are.'
He looked sad. I blurted out, 'Cheer up, Brig. Anything I can do, I will.'
'Thank you, Lovejoy. See me Friday, then. No later. Chin chin.'
I thought of saying toodle-pip, but he'd had enough disappointment in one visit. He looked a tired old man weighed down by desperation. How could I help a rich man like him, for heaven's sake?
'Tara, Brig.' I caught the bus. Things to do.
12
IT WAS THE most peaceful scene; village girls practising the maypole dance with ribbons, folk feeding ducks on the White Hart pond, no rain for once. Couldn't be better. Dealers were chatting all about, readying for the auction at Bledsew's. I wasn't restful. Inside I was in turmoil, with the worst of all feelings.
Hesk was trying to get me to endorse some fake Georgian drawings – Roman women seducing lovers in baths, frolicking maidens at it under arboreal fronds. I was waiting for Mortimer. Hesk narks me, always trying something on and getting it wrong. If he'd only take trouble, he'd be a classy forger. His drawings were not bad, just copies of those rapacious Pompeii scenes.
'Your black-letter Gothic inscriptions are wrong, Hesk,' I told him. 'You included the word pornography in, see?'
'It is porn, Lovejoy!' he cried, the prospect of a fortune dwindling. Two dealers, Becky and her mate Tony who deal in Jacobean (approx) glassware (approx) sniggered.
Derision is the way dealers express sympathy with others.
'No, Hesk,' I said patiently. 'The word pornography wasn't coined until Dunglison put it in his medical dictionary in 1857.' Hesk had dated them all Pornography 1813-1816.
'Oh.' He looked close to tears. 'Should I change it?'
He left, glumly studying his drawings. Suddenly Mortimer was there beside me on the bench. I managed not to infarct at his abrupt manifestation.
'Keep your voice down,' I managed to say when my heart resumed. 'There's a dozen dealers about. What ghost painting?'
'You painted four, Lovejoy.' He gave me a second to adjust. 'The ghost was a lady.'
'I remember.' The portrait was of a seated woman, an oval canvas. Pretty good. I'd auctioned one, done three duplicates, and had eaten real food for almost two months.
'Didn't you sell one to your friend Ferdinand?' he asked.
'Children are the pits,' I told him, resigned. He looked puzzled.
Once, a pal of mine Ferd had the happiest life imaginable. Bonny wife, decent job, twins – pigeon pair, boy and girl – could life be better? One day hankies waved, and off the twins went to university. 'We're independent now,' they told their parents, beaming.
Ferd and Norma his missus sighed fondly. Brave children, off into the big wide world.
Peace in the old homestead! Not a bit of it. I met Ferd the following week and asked him for a lift.
'Can't, Lovejoy,' he said. 'No motor.'
The twins had returned carrying sacks of washing for Mum to do. 'They carried a sack of clinking pots,' Ferd told me gloomily. 'And two bicycles to be mended.' When challenged about this novel version of independence the twins said heatedly, "Hey, Dad, who's got the washing machine, tools, and the dishwasher?''
The visit was brief. They emptied the fridge of everything edible, ordered Ferd to fill his motor with petrol, promised to return at weekends, and drove away to continue being bravely independent in London's Soho, that well-known raw frontier. The daughter instantly shacked up with a penniless andromorph guitarist, her brother with a gorgeous lass hooked on anorexia who claimed, with a certain accuracy, to be a street juggler. Norma's washing load quadrupled, the bills became a Danegeld on the hapless Ferd. The twins' monetary demands soared. ('Hey, Dad, aren't we allowed to smoke, drink, have fun?' etc, etc.)
Ferd, once a Foreign Office diplomat, began to long for the halcyon days when his children had been completely parasitic infants at home while he slogged like a dog in London. 'They're so-say independent now, Lovejoy,' he told me wistfully, 'and I'm broke. Norma's out of her mind. We're worn out.'
Sadly, Ferd did the unthinkable. He cashed in his pension to open an antiques shop.
The horrible trade joke is, 'Leap off a cliff, play Russian roulette – but don't do anything really dangerous like going into antiques!' Except it isn't a joke. Recorded history is crammed with famous wars, but Man's unwritten odyssey is littered with the wreckage of failed antiques businesses. One of those was Ferd's. He had a nervous breakdown after bankruptcy. His children were outraged ('What on earth is Dad thinking of, falling ill when we're deprived?' etc). Norma now goes out cleaning, four zlotniks an hour, to maintain Ferd in his silent despond while the twins, now a sturdy, booze-swilling twenty-two years of age, smoke their heads off in the idle manner to which they have become accustomed. Occasionally I visit Ferd, teach him watercolours; I've heard it's a good cure-all. Doesn't work, of course. Usually I paint while he gazes in silence, and that's it. But a friend has to try.
'See what I mean?' I told Mortimer defiantly. 'Independence for some is parasitism to others.'
'I'm not a university student,' he pointed out quietly. 'I don't smoke or drink. I protect you more than you do me. And I'm not a twin.'
Doesn't it nark you when other folk are reasonable? One less troublesome zygote, however, was good news. I said this with bitterness. He took no notice.
'Just stop ruining the antiques trade, please. They're threatening me.'
'Sorry, Lovejoy. It's not fair. Dealers pretend everything's genuine.'
Give me strength. I gave him the bent eye.
'Isn't Ferd the man at Tolleshunt Knights? His wife used to wheel him down the water with a radio?'
'That's Ferd. Ruined!'