“Wrong, Hawkeyes. Does anything tip you off that the firm of Lovejoy Antiques, Inc., is bankrupt and defunct?”
He brightened and trod about, jubilantly trying to seem downhearted. I sat on my half-finished kitchen wall, where he found me a minute later. “Your furniture’s gone. And your Ruby.” He nodded under the stress of linking neurons. “They’ve stripped your workshop.” He trudged off and read the “For Sale” notice. “And,” he said, returning to perch nearby, “your ‘Lovejoy Antiques’ notice has been—”
“Algernon,” I said, broken. “Shut up, there’s a good lad. And sod off. Okay?”
Archaeologists reckon we’re only 150 generations since Mesolithic Man. Algernon’s proof.
He shook his head, his face set in mulish determination. “Desert you, Lovejoy? Never!
Loyalty is seriously undervalued. It behooves me to remain faithful—”
“Stop behooving and listen.” I scuffed my foot. It was perishing without my jacket.
“Your apprentice contract’s canceled. Tell Squaddie I’m a bit of a low ebb.”
“We should leap beyond idiolectic confines, Lovejoy,” he declaimed, ready for one of his soulful spiels. He talks like this. I honestly don’t think even he thinks he knows what he means, if you see what I mean.
“I said shut it.” He fretted agitatedly behind his specs. Pretty soon he’d think up some madcap scheme to do with engines to restore our fortunes. You can tell he’s barmy because his other hobby’s nature study, wildflowers and that. A nutter. I felt really down. “Algernon, you’re an antiques cretin. You’re the worst apprentice the trade’s ever had. Go rejoicing. This is the parting of our ways.”
“My friend needs another motor-body welder—”
Told you he’d have a scheme, the nerk. “Algernon,” I said patiently. “Ever seen me do anything else except antiques?”
He went prim. “Robberies, forging, fakes—”
“No details. Yes or no?”
“No, Lovejoy.”
“QED, Algernon.” I looked at him. He was over the moon. Realization was sinking in that he was free as air. “What’ll you do?” I asked from curiosity. He’s quite a nice bloke, for a lunatic.
“Join the racing syndicate,” he said, face lifted rapturously. “The first shipments left for Macao three weeks ago on the Ben Line.” He went shy. “My friends offered me a chance of driving, if I could get time off. I’ll fly today.”
“Well, now you’ve all the time in the world.” I knew he practiced at Brands Hatch, paying a fortune to race round and round and finish up where he started from. Mental.
“Good luck.”
“Thank you, Lovejoy, for your good wishes.” He rose theatrically. A farewell speech seemed imminent. “Ave atque vale!” He finally left on his bike as a cream Jaguar swept into the garden. Both vehicles paused for both drivers to exchange prophesies of doom, then here came Mrs. Markham, twenty-six, beautiful, rich, and good-humored. The way I felt, she was dicing with death even calling.
“Top of the morning,” I greeted her. “Pal.”
“It’s the end of the beginning, darling.” She looked so happy, blond hair moving in the morning air, expensive garb hugging her delectable form.
“You did all this deliberately, Janie?”
“Of course, darling! Now you’ll have to accept my hand in marriage.”
I cleared my throat. “And your husband?”
“He’ll quite understand.” From the way she spoke, this was all a temporary hitch in serviettes at a supper party. “He may not even notice. Why not?”
Because he was a multimillionaire whose City companies had branches everywhere.
Because he was a magistrate who hated me. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Meanwhile, the poor innocent was prattling more balderdash, as if the world still spun on its normal axis.
“It was your problem with Mr. Sheehan that gave me the idea, Lovejoy.” She sat on the wall beside me, thrilled, arm round me. She’d scooped the pool. “You’ve prevaricated long enough.”
“The cottage sold from under me?” I was shivering by now, in my shirtsleeves.
Her lips thinned. I was for it. “It wasn’t yours. You’ve borrowed on it all over the Eastern Hundreds.”
“My beautiful workshop stolen?”
“A derelict garage with a few old tools, Lovejoy? Think of it!” her eyes were shining. “I’ll buy you a new place, the most expensive machines you could wish for. And get a trained assistant to save you having to go to those dreadful smelly auctions.”
“With a university degree in fine arts?” I can’t help being cynical about education. What does it fit you for?
“But of course, darling!” She’d missed the irony. I was in deeper trouble than I realized.
“You’ll never regret it. Our new life’s beginning!”
“You’re right, Janie,” I said, knowing I simply had to escape. She had no earthly idea.
Antiques are everything.
“Darling Lovejoy,” she said, eyes filling. “I knew I’d make you see reason. Get your coat. We’ll celebrate.”
“They took my coat, Janie.”
“They did?” she exclaimed. “How very nasty!” See what I mean?
2
« ^ »
VIRGINITY gets everywhere, if you think of it. Of course it’s purely a temporary state, like life. I used to get lectures at school advocating it —not lessons, note, but long gusts of passionate opinion which actually advocated its opposite. Great stuff, passion. I came to love it at quite an early age, me being such a sensitive flower. In the antiques game, passion’s our staple diet. We’d all starve without it. All souls would shrivel.
Passion and virginity are identicals masquerading as differences, yet are irreconcilable.
Now, poor old virginity’s not just a state of pre-sex, not really. It’s practically pre-everything, but not, please observe, thought or suspicion. I’ll give you an instance. This bird I used to, er, lodge with once was about thirty-eight admitting twenty-nine. A lovely singy bouncy sort, Imogen was, all long fluffy hair and scallop earrings that cut my eyelids on the couch. Though brief, it was a complicated little affair. She had a fifteen-year-old daughter Lucy who admitted to nineteen in the most threatening way.
Virginal yes, in the sense of inexperienced, but bolshie about it. She saw herself as disadvantaged, and decided to rape me as a leveler. Consequently, living with Immie became desperate. Even getting up for a pee in the middle of the night was a cliff-hanger with me darting from door to alcove in terror, like a cartoon cat. As if a gay Restoration comedy were being played for real, with all the somber mortal purpose of a Byzantine court. Finally something horrid began to happen between mother and daughter, though honest, I’m really innocent, et cetera, et cetera. I got so jumpy in the suspicion-laden atmosphere, with them seething mutual hatred, that I simply pushed off. Couldn’t stand it. Immie—she still writes—wasn’t virginal but she couldn’t cope with Lucy’s newfound passion. Lucy, the snow-white virgin, on the other hand, was a rapacious predator by intent. See?
Well, Janie was thick as a plank from mental virginity—the most capable lady in East Anglia, the boastest hostess, a talented lover, but totally unqualified in sordid behavior.
I mean, there we were sailing blithely into town, with her on about how we’d throw lovely supper parties and how I’d simply love the Duke of Beaufort’s hunt ball and whatnot, and me worrying how Big John Sheehan’s mob would murder me this afternoon when I couldn’t produce the Unterberger. “Um, love,” I kept saying.
“Perfect.” But my mind was sighing. Nothing for it. I’d have to risk both our lives to save mine.
She parked her car by the war memorial. In Jackson’s posh restaurant I borrowed a coin and, making her wait with me, phoned Big John Sheehan’s number. I kept my smile on so Janie’d know there was nothing really the matter.