'Not now, Lovejoy. He's better.' Mortimer didn't quite smile. I had the uneasy feeling that I was being manipulated. Odd that he'd twice brought up the name of somebody he'd never known.
'Can't be. Ferd's gone doolally, prey to his offspring.' I said this pointedly, still irked at this sprog getting me in bad with that Mrs Eggers and her barmy scheme. 'I saw Ferd only last week.'
'Go and see him this week, Lovejoy. Follow the Rolls Royces.'
Which was how I came across a reincarnation, and some ugly bits of the jigsaw fell into place.
I hitched as far as Maldon, always easy to get to. There, I phoned Ferd. A startlingly bright Norma answered, gushed that she'd come for me. She arrived in an electric blue Rolls the size of our church. Humbly I got in.
'You don't look like a cleaning lady any more, love.'
She sparkled. You know the way women go when they're on top of the world? They become radiant, elated, their clothes priceless. They zoom down to twenty-four years of age when really they're over fifty. She dazzled. Except she'd dazzled me a week ago when she was in scrubber's clothes, and we'd made do with a tin of soup for the three of us. I wondered uneasily if my visit was superfluous.
'One thing, Lovejoy,' she said, concentrating on the steep hill down to Maldon's titchy river bridge. She blushed charmingly. 'Before we reach home. Ferd's made a miraculous recovery from depression. Totally fit. So whatever happened in the past between any two persons mustn't recur. You do see that?'
'Erm...' Being baffled is nothing new, but this was exceptional. First the Rolls, then a Cinderella transformation without the mice, and now Ferd has shazammed into wealth plus the Olympics?
'You mustn't, Lovejoy.'
I mustn't what? Then I twigged. She meant ravishment was out of the question. Ferd was hale and vigilant. We hadn't made smiles as routine, honestly. But Norma had utterly lost her spirits, gone from being comfortably off to eking out the pennies, her husband a broken man while she skivvied for neighbours. I didn't blame her for raping me while Ferd dozed and twitched in his deckchair. I was the only bliss she'd had. Back then, of course; no longer.
'No ravishing,' I translated. 'Right?' , She coloured deeper still. 'I was weak, Lovejoy.
Naturally I was grateful. You were the only friend who had the decency to stay loyal to Ferd while ...' et pious cetera.
Join those dots for the usual cop-out. I honestly don't understand why women think like this. They believe in words too much, assume that feelings have to be spoken aloud, every twinge detailed. The opposite is true, but they just don't get it.
Once, I was subjected to a long diatribe by a lady I'd only just met. I'd taken her a jump-up. This is a lovely antique baby chair with a little tray that stands on a small beautifully edged table so the chair can't fall off. Lift the baby down, and you have a table and chair set! The Victorian joiners of High Wycombe made these. They're still unbelievably cheap, a mere three hundred zlotniks in mint condition, though by the time you read this .. .
That particular lady spoke for a full hour, staring past me at the middle distance, gradually encroaching on my bit of her couch until we were virtually seated in the same spot. The inevitable happened, and we made smiles. See what I mean? Too many words, when a simple beckoning gesture would have done. Where was I? Being warned off Norma, by Norma.
'I understand, love. No groping.'
'Lovejoy! Must you say everything straight out?' Which from her . . .
We drove in silence the rest of the way, me the scruff, she the brilliantly lovely fashion goddess at the wheel of her cruiser. At Ferd's house I saw an instant transformation.
One of those huge Scandinavian wooden sheds had been erected by the dwelling. A new shingle drive had been laid. Notices proclaimed FERNORM ANTIQUES, INC in flashing neon. Two lasses dressed as Edwardian housemaids were busily enticing customers in from the main road while pretending to arrange antique furniture on the cloistered forecourt. A week ago, note, it had been the usual unkempt grassy shambles of the impoverished sinking classes. I wondered where the buildings and curved drives had sprung from. We alighted.
'Ferd's inside arranging antiques,' Norma said a little breathlessly, leading the way. A fortnight ago they couldn't afford to run their TV.
The maids chorused a welcome. Two dealers I recognized stalked among the antiques, hardly gave me a glance when I called a hearty wotcher.
'Hello, old friend!' Ferd boomed, advancing.
He too had changed. From a morose shaky old man he'd filled out, smartened, become the village squire in tweeds and plus-fours. Everything he'd ever dreamed of, in fact.
'Wotcher, Ferd. No painting session today, then?'
He boomed, actually boomed, a hearty guffaw and shook my hand in a grip of iron. I yelped, lacking manly pride.
'Heavens, no, Lovejoy. I'll show you some antiques, old fruit!'
As I followed I marvelled. Norma avoided my eye, said she needed to see the housekeeper, and left me to it. Servants, wealth, new buildings, a thriving antiques business, all in a matter of days?
'Look at these, Lovejoy!' Ferd was intoning. 'Who says you can't make a splendid living from antiques, hey?' He actually said that, Heyyy? like calling the first round at boxing.
'Well, I do,' I said, but it was a weak quip. I stared.
The main shed – grander than the word tells – was about twenty strides square, crammed with antiques. There were two small back rooms. One was an office, the other he opened with a flourish.
'Seen anything like this, Lovejoy?'
There's a saying among antique dealers that 'before 1750 nothing came out of Ireland, but that after 1750 everything did'. Meaning that older Irish antiques are virtually nonexistent, whereas after the mid-eighteenth century you find plenty of Irish artefacts.
Irish furniture isn't to my liking, not unless you like massive masks on your Georgian yew-wood furniture, weird faces carved on to table edges and the like. They went in for bog oak, even dyed mahogany to resemble it. Can't understand it myself, but whatever turns you on. The room was crammed with Irish furniture. I gulped, sweated, felt my chest thump and my hands go clammy. It was genuine. I reeled, made the door and onto the grass, inhaling cooler air.
He followed.
'What, Lovejoy?' He hadn't lost confidence. 'You're not saying it isn't genuine?'
'No, Ferd.' I gradually came to. 'Antiques do that to me, set me off.' I edged away from the shed, glancing back at it as I did so. The place must have cost him a fortune. The Rolls, the assistants, Norma's clothes. The main room was also thickly strewn with mixed antiques and junk, fifty-fifty. I was witnessing a resurgence, a miracle. 'Where'd you get the pier tables?' There'd been two.
'Oh, around. Got a backer.'
He smiled modestly, waved, and a maidservant approached with a chilled bottle of white wine and two glasses. Ferd led the way to a wrought-iron table with matching chairs. We sat. He raised his brogues, placed the heels on a chair, graciously allowed the lass to light his massive Cuban cigar.
'You'd need a backer, to afford them.'
Pier in antiques doesn't mean that thing sticking out of a seaside town into the sea, for the populace to stroll and take the air. It's the architectural term for a bit of the wall between two windows in your withdrawing room. From Queen Anne's time on, ladies became specially concerned with it as a feature. So 'pier glasses' were produced by London craftsmen. These were mirrors especially designed to occupy that wall space and give an illusion of space. A lady's talent could be gauged by her adept use of furnishings that didn't make her parlour piers look daft. So pier tables came into being, small semicircular pieces that stood against the pier, unfolding into round tables with a superimposed leaf. And very lovely they are. Now, in Ireland, walls of Dublin's town houses lent themselves to slightly different pier tables, so you find 'typically Irish'