Lady Hypatia was, I realized in my dreamery, Colette, who'd had Mortimer. And who, I told my dreaming self heatedly, I was never going to remember, so there. I woke in a bitter sweat realizing that my Lady Hypatias were all portraits of Colette. Colette raves endlessly in night clubs. And I really honestly certainly definitely never hoped the untrustworthy bitch would ever come back. If there was one bird I'd completely forgotten, it's she.
She sometimes sends Mortimer a birthday card. She doesn't get the date right. Pressure of life, I suppose.
But why did Susanne Eggers want the portraits? I guessed she was the one, from circumstantial evidence.
29
THE WRESTLING MATCH, like them all, was innocuous. For me it's not the atmosphere
– smoke, sweat, ring riots. It's the women, as ever. I like to see them chat while bruisers are knocking six bells out of each other. Then if some specially grievous tangle appeals, they instantly shriek like banshees, clawing at some fighter's body should he tumble close. Weird.
Love it? Well, love comes pretty close. The women arrive dolled up to the nines. They take extra pains to glorify themselves, quite as if they're trotting out on some memorable date instead of a gory brawl in a toxic sweat. The ambience – I wish I knew what that means – is irrelevant. It's the violence that takes their fancy. Where I was born there used to be illegal cockfights. The saying was, 'Take your bird to see the birds, you'll have the bird by weekend.' I didn't understand it, being little. Now I do.
Fight scenes stir passions.
I ditched Alicia, and went to see Tex fight.
Tex was already in the ring by the time I'd got to my seat. His speciality is the Triple Ripple, a move he concocted.
He clasps his opponent – the referee will do if the script proves uncooperative – and climbs to the top rope, wriggles to and fro while the crowd yells, 'Ripple, ripple, ripple!'
On the last syllable he flails over backwards, somehow firing the other bloke over his head to smash into the opposite post. Tex then strolls across to pin him to the canvas.
Sometimes, though, Tex dawdles to take applause. The opponent then rises stealthily and smashes Tex down. The crowd bawls warnings, but Tex is so cocky that he's oblivious.
It sez here, as disbelieving folk cynically comment.
Wrestling is a con, one great scripted performance. I'm virtually alone in thinking this.
Alicia was bitterly disappointed that I wouldn't take her, but she would have stopped the show in mid-grapple had she walked down the grubby aisle. She loves making an entrance.
Tex is on an antiques panel, has been for years, which is why I wanted to fix something with him. He owes me from having got him off the hook once. His missus died. He started what polite magazines like Time call 'substance abuse', meaning drugs. Easy to become addicted in the fight game, I'm told.
We met in a posh Oxford gallery. I'd come in out of the rain. The walkers – snobs who judge if a visitor is rich, or a duckegg like me without two coppers to rub together –
were weighing me up. I heard a massive bloke, quite well dressed, protest as he was being taken in charge by two uniformed security officers. I thought the sight comical, because he could have minced both with one hand. I recognized him, Tex the Mighty Hex, wrestling champ.
'I only said it was crap,' he was grumbling.
'We were broadcasting,' the gallery supersnob complained, wafting this hoi polloi away like a bad smell. I then noticed the array of microphones, technicians swigging the cheap white wine and noshing the free grub.
'Excuse me, Sir Rollaston,' I said, going up to Tex. 'For being late.'
'Eh?' he asked. The action froze.
'I'm sorry, sir. The traffic here has worsened considerably since you were a Fellow at Corpus Christi. Is it the Klein?'
There was a Klein painting on the far-wall. Kleins always do cause argument. It was simply a large canvas with huge swishes of blue across it.
'Er, yes.' Tex shook himself free. The gallery owner went into fawning mode and waved the security police off. 'The, er, Clean.'
'Klein,' I amended and led the way to stand in front of it. 'Yves Klein, Sir Rollaston, had a peculiar affinity for blue. He patented his own shade, called International Klein Blue.'
Tex gazed at the picture. It looked like nothing on earth. 'He dipped women in it, then used them to smudge the canvases.'
Tex gaped. The gallery owner started a sales pitch of the 'Klein's imagery challenges modernity...' balderdash that shouldn't fool a whelk. I interrupted.
'I can see why you think it's not a patch on the two you already possess, Sir Rollaston.
You're not seriously thinking of buying another? I wouldn't advise it, sir. Think of your Picasso ...'
We escaped, the gallery boss trying desperately to woo Tex back to see the rest of his gunge. We had a drink round the corner. I told Tex I'd seen him fight once. Tex had to sniff some white crud using a straw while I had tea. He then had a gin and tonic. He was amazed that the gallery folk had taken my made-up prattle seriously.
'It's true, Tex. It's what Klein did. Died in Paris a famous man. Are those drugs?'
'They help, mate. Lost me wife.' He eyed me. 'Why didn't they bounce you? You look a right tramp.'
I flushed. 'That's because I've no gelt. You're a junkie because you've chucked the sponge in.'
He grabbed me by the throat and I flew across the caff, blamming tables and chairs as I went, finishing up slumped against the window. I rose, tottered out into the rain. Try to help folk, that's what you get.
There's a massive antiques fair near Newark, happens every so often. It starts early mornings among the queueing motors, and continues in fields. Hundreds of antique dealers go. It's a celebration of greed. I love it. You meet the world and his wife.
Tex was there. He pretended not to be watching as I divvied a few antiques for a rich American – there's no other kind – who'd hired me for the day plus com. This meant I'd get a percentage of the commission. His purchases, bought on my recommendation, would be valued by the average of three certified London dealers. The American finished buying about noon. Tex was there as I waited with the bags of handles, small portable antiques, for the Yank to fetch his motor. He shuffled a bit.
'Sorry, Lovejoy,' he said gruffly.
'Okay.'
'Were you hurt?'
'Aye.'
I'd had a bad shoulder for weeks. Doc Lancaster said I was a danger to my own health.
I said not as much as he was. He got some physiotherapist, psychotically bent on breaking what Tex hadn't, to give me exercises. Doctors are sadistic swine. Their helpers are no better.
'I gave them up,' Tex said. 'I owe you. You done me a kindness in that gallery. You made me look at myself.' He glanced away. 'I'd lost my missus. Hard, when somebody dies.'
Well, it wasn't my fault, I thought, still narked.
'Want a job?' he asked as the American approached. 'I'm on an antiques club. We need somebody to divvy.'
'Maybe.' I was on my uppers, having just been given the sailor's elbow by Lydia, my ertswhile — and periodic –apprentice. She has the morals of a beatitude, can't accept that mankind is riddled with sinners. We'd parted over my forgeries of Colette the ghost lady. I wasn't sure if I loved Colette yet, still, now, or ever had, but it felt like flu whenever I thought of her. Is that the real thing? I've no way of knowing.
'I'll send word.'
And he did. I got invited to suss out the antiques they bought. Once a week I'd go to a publican's wife in East Bergholt, who was the panel's paymaster. She stored the antiques in a warehouse by the river.
Lots of people do combined investments nowadays. And some, like Tex's mob, chip in to buy antiques. Not all are honest. I've already mentioned that some people (think Horse and FeelFree) make a fine living from defrauding such societies.