'Come to mine,' Shell said, gauging the newcomer. 'But let me leave first.'
My new ally agreed, and explained, 'How very wise! Mrs Shell means that we will not appear to be in collusion.' She added, 'Perhaps we should leave the market square by different exits, as further subterfuge?'
'Okay, love,' Shell said, giving me a look that asked if this bird was real or if somebody round the corner was working her with levers. 'Lovejoy knows the way.'
The boot of Alicia's motor locked on the two portraits, I drove out of St Edmundsbury heading north. There was no sign of Shell's motor.
For a long time I didn't speak.
When I was a youth, my gran once told me the following adage. A girl wants a man to make her a woman. The woman wants a husband to make her a wife. A wife wants a youth to make her a girl again. So life goes round.
At the time I simply took the crack at face value. Only years later did I wonder why life never asks what the bloke himself is after. Maybe that's the point, that everyone pretends that a man's desires are common knowledge, 'men are only after one thing,'
etc.
Hell of an assumption –to make about nearly fifty per cent of the species.
Try to guess what the next ten geezers you meet really really crave. I'll bet you'd get every single one wrong. I know I would. In antiques, however, you have to guess right every time. Guess wrong, you starve.
At the big roundabout where the Norwich dual carriageway slinks onto the old Roman road, I finally drew breath. 'What are you really, Mrs Thomasina Quayle?'
Smiling, she took off her hat and lace gloves, shaking her hair out like they do. 'Call me Tally, Lovejoy, when we're not in company.'
'You didn't even check the portraits,' I remembered.
'They're rubbish,' she said carelessly, watching the countryside slide past. 'Wake me when we're there, please.'
And slept with that curled grace women can do at a millisec's notice. I realized suddenly that my headache wasn't quite as bad. A good sign? Except sometimes I find the headache's less trouble than its cure.
The day had begun to chill by the time we arrived. You can't park next to Shell's houseboat. You've to walk a furlong, hell in wet because of brambles on the footpath but nice in sunshine because of bees and flowers. The houseboat's a converted longboat, barge as folk say to annoy watermen. No sign of life, though, which on board meant a prolonged drone from Chanter, hard at it composing new monotones in C
natural.
Before we'd got there Shell was already hurrying, calling, 'Chanter? Darling? Are you all right?'
The place was locked. We wobbled up the gangplank. Shell let us in down a narrow gangway. Mrs Quayle was slick, looking everywhere. I noticed she felt the kettle, touched the half-drunk mug of tea. I went back up on deck to look back at our motors.
No sign of marauders, except for a lone angler in the distance. There was a watercolourist painting at a portable easel. She wore a floral hat and a long elegant floral dress, a left-over Victorian perhaps.
'He'll have left a note for me,' Shell said, and plucked a paper from under the keyboard.
It looked hell of a complicated gadget, for one note, but whatever turns folk on.
'People about,' Chanter had scrawled. 'Left to the nook.'
'Nook?' Mrs Quayle said sharply.
'It's our haven,' Shell said, her eyes shining. 'He's safe!'
She quickly checked that Chanter's drones were secure. This entailed waiting while she went through a stack of tapes and discs. I got fed up. If her bloke was hale and hearty what the hell were we doing here? I almost burst out that the important thing was my portrait, but Mrs Thomasina Quayle stilled me with one of her radar glances. For God's sake, I tried to beam back in silent indignation, one lost moan would hardly count as nicking the Crown jewels. He'd got millions of the frigging things, could always drone out a few more.
'All present!' she cried, exultant.
'I'm so glad, dear,' said Mrs Quayle, still busily sher-locking round the boat's interior.
'Has the portrait remained safe also, do you surmise?'
'It's here.' Shell sounded surprised that we hadn't noticed it, and lifted it down from a slot in the ceiling. Until she did that, I'd thought it was a hatchway. I noticed Mrs Quayle colour slightly. She'd been caught out. I smiled to myself. We had a professional investigator in our midst, that's what we had.
'Is this it, Lovejoy?' Shell asked.
'Yes.' Even in the poor light I could tell.
'You have the newest devices, Shell,' our intrepid huntress remarked, taking the portrait.
I looked at the two illuminated screens, their small green lights and red staring things casting phosphorescent glows on our faces. Those colours always remind me of those flare matches that you lit fireworks with.
'Aren't they nautical, er, things?' I asked, then went red at my stupidity. A houseboat doesn't sail anywhere, does it, just stays moored.
'Chanter's music must be protected,' Shell said, serious as a girl learning her first skipping. 'I pay a fortune for the best systems. It's how Chanter realized the place was being watched.'
'Are they still there?' I asked nervously. Mrs Quayle gave me a glance of withering scorn. 'We'd best be going,' I said, on edge. Mrs Quayle took the portrait. I followed her off the boat and looked back. 'You not coming, Shell?'
'No, Lovejoy. I'll make my own way.'
We left her there. I stopped to wave. She waved to me. I felt slightly nauseated at the risks I was taking. I was the only one without a safe haven. Mrs Quayle was part of some team, so she was okay. Shell had her nook with Chanter.
She placed the portrait on the back seat and took the ignition key from me. 'It's reckoning time. Tinker will be worrying. Shall we go?'
'Tinker?' How the hell did she know Tinker?
'Such a nice man,' she said, reversing quickly away and barrelling us towards the road.
'I do rather think you ought to pay him. He needs more food and less alcohol. Have you considered an employment medical scheme?'
'I'll see to it, Mrs Quayle,' I said gravely.
Aye, I'd see to it by ballocking Tinker first chance I got. He's the biggest lead-swinger in the Eastern Hundreds, him and his sob stories. I'll bet he conned her out of a fortune in his campaign to drink the breweries dry.
'You ought to see that he has one pint a day, Lovejoy,' she continued, confirming my suspicions. 'An occasional drink does help his chest so . . .' etc, etc.
The forged portraits behind me burned my shoulders as if they were red-hot. I tried not to see Lady Hypatia's eyes looking at me. I had to ask Mrs Quayle to stop a few miles north of Bures and was sick on the verge. She said nothing. Her silence made me feel worse.
That night I remembered Lady Hypatia.
I wasn't dreaming, yet I knew I was.
The Eastern Hundreds, like much of our tatty old kingdom, are addled with ancient titles. Arthur H. Goldhorn was Lord of the Manor of Saffron Fields, East Anglia. One day, Arthur's wife Colette decided to have her portrait painted.
Which is where I came in.
I painted her. I've already said paint the lady, love the lady. The inevitable happened. I went on my merry way, dealing, divvying. It was only years later that I heard Arthur had passed away. Little Mortimer must have been about twelve, something like that.
Colette disintegrated, fell for sundry oafs and sharks. With my help, the estate came back to her. Finally I realized who Mortimer really was, if you follow. It wasn't easy.
Fool that I was, I assumed I'd walk straight back into Colette's affections. Rich again, she went off with a bodybuilder called Dang. Mortimer knew. The estate workers and villagers rallied round him, naturally. They thought me a pillock, also naturally.
It was afterwards, when I realized I'd lost Colette, that I sank into near oblivion. To earn enough to make a new start in antiques, I painted a few Cromwellian portraits, of somebody I'd made up. I invented a name for her, Lady Hypatia Parlayne. Her face was youthful. I sold the best ones.