True, but I’d better get rid of her sharpish after dawn because Liz was due about ten with a genuine pair of mid-Victorian nipple jewels, sapphires set in diamonds. I joked nervously as we pulled out. “Promise not to ravish me again.”
“Very well, dear,” she said seriously. “Look, Lovejoy. The lorry’s left its light on. It’ll waste its electricity.”
“How careless,” I said uneasily. “No, love. Don’t stop.”
Next morning I had three jobs. First was Liz, chatty antique dealeress from Dragonsdale that I was conning into selling me those lovely nipple drops—think of earrings with bigger loops for dangling pendant-like from the pierced nipples of interesting Victorian ladies. Liz had found a set with their accompanying large gold sleepers. I’d been banking on profit from the bureau to afford them.
My second and third jobs were easy, now I was broke. Two lithophanes of erotic couples, and a pride of tortoiseshell seamstress scissors, 1840, were in the auction. I’d hate seeing them sold to some flush swine, but I could no more keep away than fly.
Ellen fried me a good nosh. She brings supplies because I’m always strapped, and leaves little labeled packets in the fridge—“Boil 10 Mins In Slightly Salted Water” and all that. I never do it, because it always goes wrong. I got shut of her at a safe nine o’clock. She always wants to strip the bed and hang sheets on the line, God knows why.
What good are they waving in the breeze? I lied that I’d do it, to make her trip home to Ipswich less of a rush. She said I was an angel. Modestly I waved her off, concealing my relief, and got down to the problem of sussing out The Missing Bureau Problem.
First, however, remember this ratio: five to one. Not a Grand National bet, but the number of phony/fake/reproduction bureaus to the genuine. Five times as many fakes as genuine. And that’s here, in rural East Anglia, where habits—and furniture, and paintings and porcelain—don’t change. I have figures for most antiques. Jewelry is eight to one; pearls twenty; pre-Victorian oil paintings three fakes to one genuine. So, all in all, the odds are heavily against the honest buyer and heavily in favor of the crook.
It stands to reason that you’re on a loser. The dice of honesty are loaded against you, the poor unsuspecting customer.
Lately, though, I’d been having a bad patch. Even though I’m a very special type of antique dealer—tell you more in a minute—it was pathetic. Sometimes, antiques vanish like snow off a duck. Buyers evaporate. Collectors get a collective flu. Money zooms into the Inland Revenue’s coffers untouched by human hands. In other trades things never become utterly hopeless. I mean to say, a farmer at least still has the good earth if his crop ails, and doctors can always look forward to a really great epidemic if their patients strike a depressingly healthy patch. But in the antiques game there’s nothing. An antique dealer with no antiques feels a right prune. A hungry prune, because when you’re broke the Chancellor simply refuses dole. No, subtract antiques from the great equation of life and all is zero.
Well, nearly zero.
Because there’s fakes. And frauds. And counterfeits, reproductions, marriages, twinners, naughties, copies… I finally found my note about the bureau in a heap of paper clippings that makes my tatty armchair a hell of comfort: Jo: Teddy repro b. split m/u, Inv. T. fix Thurs. M.
Roughly translated, an Edwardian-period reproduction bureau was available. I’d agreed to divide the markup (i.e., my hoped-for profit) with the sender, who would ship it from Inverness, a collecting center for the four northernmost counties by these night wagons. I’d told Tinker to fix delivery for the previous night. Jo—Josephine—had been my original contact. Tinker’s my old barker, my message ferret.
I’d better try to catch Jo, then get to the town Arcade where antiques and dealers congregate.
For a second, guilt tugged. I glanced around. The cottage’s interior was a mess: books, newspaper cuttings, a moldering heap of unpaid bills, the divan bed I’d promised Ellen I’d make. I opened the door, masterful with guilt. I was actually smiling from the relief of having triumphed over housework, when my jubilation ended.
“Morning, Lovejoy.” Liz Sandwell stood there in the tiny flagged porch. Pretty as a picture. The trouble is, her live-in boyfriend’s one of those strength-through-joy fanatics who gasp their way through our rain-soaked countryside and finish up where they started. A tough rugby player.
“Morning, love,” I said brightly, slamming the door to edge on past.
“Well? Did it arrive?”
Blankly I stared at her. “Eh?” I never know what the hell women are on about half the time.
“The money. From your Uncle Percy.”
“Ah.” Evidently one of my less memorable myths. Swiftly I switched to heartfelt grief.
“No, love. Uncle Percy’s just sent a telegram. He’s ill and needs me.”
Concern leapt into her eyes. “Oh, how terrible, Lovejoy. Are you very close?”
Not as close as I’ll be to that burke of a wagoner who lost my bureau and disappeared, I thought grimly, but said brokenly, “Yes. Can we postpone the deal over the nipple jewels, love? Only I’m hurrying to town to borrow the fare to, er, Llangollen.”
Liz took instant charge. “Let me run you to the station, Lovejoy. How much is it? You can’t shilly-shally at times like this.” A warmhearted, lovable lass is Liz. Where the hell’s Llangollen? I wondered, getting into her car. Let’s hope it’s a fair distance. Then with that money I’d have enough to split-purchase Margaret Dainty’s Belleek porcelain trelliswork basket—no harp-and-greyhound mark, so post-1891, but lovely…
A few minutes later I was mouthing gibberish at a puzzled railway clerk while watching the reflection of Liz’s departing car in the glass. She’d lent me a real handful of notes.
“ ’Ere, mate. You going any bloody where or not?” A soldier in the queue behind me was growing impatient.
“Sorry, sorry.” Liz’d gone. I stepped aside. “I can’t leave Nellie and the little uns,” I said nobly.
Twenty minutes later the bus dropped me outside Jo’s school. It was playtime.
« ^ »
—— 2 ——
The playground was a screaming turmoil. Through the railings I said to a snot-riddled urchin, “If I give you a million zlotniks, will you give Miss Ross a message?”
“Piss off, Lovejoy.”
I sighed, and looked about. Most of the little psychopaths are from my village and believe I’m a bum. “Lottie,” I called. One of the tinier girls skipped closer, pigtails flying with each bounce. I used to babysit her.
“Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper,” she chanted breathlessly.
“I’m going to elope with Miss Ross,” I said. “Say I’m here.”
Lottie bounced off, chanting. I sat and waited while the playground roared on. Five minutes and Jo came, red-faced and embarrassed. She’s a lovely slender faun of a woman, mid-twenties. Infants flocked round, staring.
“Lovejoy! What on earth?”
“Aren’t you escaping, miss?” a kiddy asked disappointedly.
“Certainly not! And get away, the lot of you!”
They dispersed with that silent scorn only infants can attain, Lottie explaining, “I told you he tells lies.”
“That bureau, love.” I had the scrap of paper out.
“You interrupt school and make me a laughingstock just to ask stupid questions?”
Women are always narked. You just have to ride out the storm. I nodded. “Yes, love.
Only it didn’t arrive.” She’d given me the original address, an Inverness box number.
“Well, I can’t help that, can I?”
“Why did you tell me instead of some other dealer, Jo?”
Momentarily she colored deeper. “You happen to be the first antique dealer I thought of.”
I turned to go, and said loudly, “Pretend to start teaching, darling, then slip out. I’ll be waiting—”