(meaning exquisitely rare) pier tables that are more of an ellipse than half a circle. Find one in mahogany, mint, you're into your next world cruise, three times round. Find a pair, you can retire.
'Got a superb backer, Lovejoy!' He tasted the wine, nodded so the serf could withdraw to her slavery. 'See my potato rings? Two!'
'Aye. You've done well, mate.'
Dealers call them that, but they're properly termed dish rings. They're never much to look at, just a curved circlet of silver a few inches tall. You put them on tables then lodge your hot serving dishes on top, to stop the table getting scorched. What goon first called them potato or spud rings I don't know. They're hollow, of course, the silver quite thin, cut to depict flowers, birds and villeins doing their stuff. One dealer I knew sold one cheaply, thinking it was merely a dressing-table stand for ladies' necklaces.
While Ferd expounded on life's gracious turns of fortune I heard motors drive up, car doors slam. Norma came to sit with us. I noticed her gold ring, her lovely sapphire and diamond. She'd had to pawn them three months since. Now they were back. Affluence is as affluence does. She looked brilliant. I wanted to eat her, but the thought of chewing her thighs honestly never crossed my mind.
'Who's the backer, Ferd?' I asked.
He smiled and wagged a finger roguishly. 'Now, now, Lovejoy.'
'Sorry.'
You don't ask three things of any dealer: how much, where from, and who else. (Why, is always self-explanatory, for we all know why, or so we believe.) Norma was smiling. I noticed she'd donned a lovely cold green pendant in gold. Risky, but on her effective. The gem was demantoid, a semi-precious garnet. (God, how I hate that term. You wouldn't call a diamond a semi-opal, or dawn a semi-day, so why are gemstones called semi-precious? We think of everything as money, that's why. I reckon it's an insult to gemstones.)
Demantoid: think of an emerald trying hard to be peridot, wash out more than half of the colour you have left, and there you have it. I love demantoid. It's actually a very pale clear green variety of andradite, but has a luscious lustre. Heaven knows why women don't go more for this exquisite stone, but they don't. Maybe they don't like the name. She caught me looking and had the grace to blush. She carolled a covering laugh.
'Lovejoy's noticed my new pendant, Ferdinand!' She fingered it. 'I got it from a maiden aunt who died.'
Possibly in the Soviet Union, when there was such a country? Because that's where demantoid and andradites mostly come from. The gold mount was devised to resemble niello, a Russian form of decoration.
'God rest her,' I said politely, as if I believed her. Ferd looked amused, full of himself.
Some pleb called out for him and he waved nonchalantly. Mortimer was right; this was a transformation the like I'd never seen. From defeated relic to a mercantile prince all in a week.
'Can I help, Ferd?' I asked. When I'm broke I start whining. I'm rubbish. 'I'll sort your incoming. I'll divvy for you,' I added recklessly, though it always gives me a terrible headache, sorting genuine antiques from fake.
'No, thanks, Lovejoy.' He rose, stretched, waved to his minions that he was coming.
'I've got everything I need.' And strode off to his burgeoning empire, monarch of all.
'Leaving two green bottles hanging on the wall, love.' Norma said, 'Shhh. I told you, Lovejoy. No more.'
'I'm glad he's got a money partner. Is it permanent?'
A shadow crossed her face. You can always tell. No clouds in the skies, yet something darkened her eyes very like a portent. It happens more with women's eyes than men's, because women look close. Men gaze afar. 'Yes. As near as we can tell.'
'At great cost, love? Or does he come free?'
'It's a partnership, for heaven's sake!' She rose angrily. 'I knew you'd start the minute I heard you on the phone. You'd better go now. And take your ridiculous daubs with you!
You're never anything but trouble!'
Off she stalked, leaving me alone. My ridiculous daubs? She meant my watercolours that I tried to cheer Ferd up with when he was ailing. No need of them now. I looked after her. She even moved alluringly in high heels on her greensward, which takes some doing. I waited until she was gone, then cadged a lift back to town with Openers, a shabby little geezer from the street barrows. He makes lunatic starting bids at auctions to rile the auctioneers. 'Penny-farthing for openers, guv,' is his usual squawk.
He never laughs, though others do.
On the way I asked him what he'd bought from Ferd's magnificent new storehouse.
'Nil,' he groused, surly. 'Where the hell could I get money to buy that sort of kite?' Kite is antique-speak for quality. 'Especially with Sandy and Mel buying everything for Ferd that's not nailed down.'
'Eh?' Now, Ferd and Norma hated Sandy, wouldn't do business with him for a knighthood, yet here was Openers saying that Randy Sandy was Ferd's new backer. A headache began.
'Here, Lovejoy. Can you help me?'
'Hardly, wack. I'm on my uppers.'
'It's my wife. I promised I'd pay for her wedding if she'll divorce me. Let me say we're doing some deal, eh?'
'Oh, right,' I said, blank. 'Er, it'll be her third husband?'
'Course,' he said, like it was the most usual thing in the world. 'She's fixed on splicing with him before Bonfire Plot. She says it'll be unlucky otherwise.'
'Okay, if it'll get you out of a hole, Openers.'
'Ta, Lovejoy. You're a pal. I owe you.'
Some debtor. Openers had never been solvent. I've always had an eye for a bargain.
He dropped me at the war memorial, so I decided to go and scrounge from Alanna, a reporter who broadcasts falsehoods to the sealands on local stations, which only goes to show how desperately worried I was.
13
I LIKE THE way women look. I mean the way they glance, stare, peer. They look even when they're not looking, if you follow. Mostly they do it at other women, sizing rivals, is she likely to cause trouble or just a stain on the backdrop. They're interesting because they're interested.
There's a species of frog that lives in trees, if you can imagine anything so daft, that generates chemical molecules called splendipherin. It's a sex pheromone that makes the male frog become gorgeous with tones, hues, colours, so the female Litora splendida gives him a glance and thinks, hey, what a dazzler, and clambers to his branch to make smiles. We blokes need something. We're a pretty dull lot. If I could bottle that stuff I'd make a fortune selling it in our market.
My actors' army made me sigh. I'd seen better routs. The Duke of Wellington's crack came to mind: 'I don't know what Napoleon will think of our new recruits, but by God they frighten me!' and other anecdotes. They stood there, nervy and shambolic. The nerk called Larch, like me lacking splendipherins, had tarted himself up in dark leathers, obviously borrowed to impress. My gran used to say, 'Fashion today, fool tomorrow,'
and it's true. Pictures of 1920s flappers in their cloche hats and strapped bodices make you exclaim, 'They wore that?' and roll in the aisles. And those wide Windsor bags, trousers with creases unbelievably pressed sideways – the late Duke of Windsor's only contribution to civilization, 'tis said – make you think, 'God in heaven, who donned those?'
'You know the drill?'
I'd gone over it as we'd driven over in Jacko's coal wagon, him my last resort singing bad opera as we clattered across East Anglia. They were still dusting themselves down, Tina and Wilhelmina – mercifully minus her shahtoosh – were angry. So was I, because they'd made a special dress effort when I'd told them not to. On a scale of ten, I felt twice as narked.
'I thought it was a real production, Lovejoy,' Larch said. Jules was quiet, sensing my desperation.
'Larch, it's more real than you'd ever imagine.'
'I'm nervous,' Wilhelmina whispered as Taylor Eggers came to the door and smilingly beckoned us. 'What if I forget the signal?'