“Frigging booksellers.” Tinker hawked phlegm. I raised a finger. He went to the window and spat out.
Porcelain, cutlery, decorative ceramics were in the east wing. We clumped, steps echoing, the length of the corridor and worked backwards to the Great Hall. Fireplaces, fire tigers, gasoliers, pole screens in one room. Conservatory furniture and garden items in another. The big east drawing room, once a light bathhouse green, was now hung with sixty or more paintings.
“Thought that was in France,” I remarked in surprise. A Victorian lady admiring a flower in a pale lavender dress.
“Should’ve been,” Tinker grumbled. “More frigging trouble than a square dick.” Barkers are addicted to pessimism for the same reasons as Opposition politicians: There’s more mileage in it.
Farm implements, machinery, carts outside in the bay between the densely overgrown rose beds and the east windows. “Good old Antioch,” I praised. They were arranged in a kind of Boer lager. The presence of a steam plowing engine explained the bulky carrier in midconvoy.
“Fair old lot, that, lads,” I said.
“Ta, Lovejoy.” Tinker smirking’s a horrible sight, but the old soak deserved praise.
The jewelry was in one strip, a grotesque higgledy-piggledy array spread as it had arrived, in bags, trays, boxes, on wobbly trestle tables. Tinker grumbled at the trouble the roomful had caused him. He hates jewelry. “Fiddly little buggers.”
“Shouldn’t we be examining each piece?” Michelle exclaimed.
“Please, missus,” Trembler said.
“Aye,” Tinker added, “gabby cow.”
The glass was in the east wing’s smoking room. The smaller withdrawing room held the first miscellany.
“You described the laird as ‘that well-known collector,’” Trembler said. “So you’d want the collectibles separated?”
“Right.”
A room of bronzes, statuettes, sculptures. Two of silver. One of arms and armor. I left them chatting in the Great Hall as the retainers returned. Michelle seemed rather put out, par for the course, as I went outside and sat on the steps.
When preparing for a divvying job, I can never keep track of time. It must have been nearly an hour when Trembler emptied the whole house of people, Elaine and all. They came out in twos and threes, giving quizzing glances my way, one or two talking softly.
Robert carried Elaine. She waved. Tinker stood waiting behind me, gruffly shutting Michelle up when she started to speak. Some things must be done in quiet. Women never learn. He knows this sort of thing can’t be hurried. Trembler strolled past with a
“All yours, Tinker,” and got a wheezed “Fanks fer noffin’.” Silence. The great crammed house paused.
Afternoon moor light plays oddly on the rims of high fells. I’d often noticed it as a kid.
For quite a while I’d been watching the hues discolor and blend. According to the map, some Pictish houses stood over to the south beyond the loch. I’d love a visit in peacetime. Miles northwesterly, Joseph languished alone. Behind me a bottle clinked. A gurgle, wheeze, a retching cough. Michelle tutted. A cloud slightly darkened the moor, fawns umbered, ochers into russet.
Maybe it was an omen. I rose and dusted my knees off for nothing. My big moment.
Just me and antiques. Probably all I’m good for, showing off to nobody.
“Let’s go,” I said.
« ^ »
—— 26 ——
The tapestry was hung beside the stair foot. I’d heard Tinker say to Michelle, “Shut it, missus. Just friggin’ scribble,” but I was no longer listening.
Sometimes the best plan is its absence. Like, I never know how I’m going to divvy.
Setting about examining an antique is as individual as making love. Even people who know a little (which excludes all known experts, museum curators, and antique dealers) approach the task differently. There’s a geezer in Manchester who goes through a whole superstitious ritual, knocking wood, hex signs, the lot. Another, a Kendal bird good with amber, always sits on the floor even if she’s in public. Me, I just touch and listen. No particular order, no magic incantation.
Single antiques are easy, in a way, because meeting any one is like meeting a woman.
The love quantum is immediately apparent. Encounter two together, and immediately there’s difficulty. They react on each other, so a man’s bemused. The only way he can recognize that inner essence is by concentrating on one, to the utter exclusion of the other. Society calls it rudeness. In divvying antiques, it’s essential. The trouble is the process is so seductively pleasing that it sucks time from the day. I mean, here was I with hundreds, maybe thousands, of alleged antiques to divvy, and I couldn’t resist touching this tapestry, the first thing I’d clapped eyes on stepping through the porch.
“Hello, Jean,” I said to it, mist blurring the figures. Jean Bérain, Frenchman, once turned fashion upside down. He and his son struck eighteenth-century nerves by depicting naked courtesans reclining provocatively wearing the haunches and legs of a lion. You see Sèvres porcelain with similar figures. It became quite the thing for a famous beauty to have herself erotically depicted thus, like Peg Woffington, the famous actress, for example. “Long time no see.” I touched the lovely tapestry’s texture. Warm.
The feeling was heat, an exalting swirl of energy to the chime of melodious bells. I found myself starting to move, slowly at first, then quicker, quicker still, all else forgotten in a wondrous hedonistic spree. Distantly, Tinker’s emphysematous croak was there, “Hundred ern free, no; eight-six-nine, yeah,” but only for a while.
Battles do it. Orgies do it. Mysticism is said to do it. And women. Maybe it’s true. The experience of beauty leads to a temporary death from recognizing its unattainability.
I’ve never been in a trance as far as I know. I often wonder if it’s the same as recovering from these other things. If so, I don’t envy mediums. Certainly, coming out of one of these divvying sessions is appalling.
There was light intruding everywhere. My head was splitting. People talking in murmurs. A long leathery cough. A bottle, glugging. Somebody spluttered, murmured,
“Gawd.” A woman’s voice, thin as a reed pipe, played out on the water. She was asking about something with numbers. I must have slept.
Headaches are a woman’s best friend. They’re not mine. The kitchen, shimmering. Mrs.
Buchan peeling something, one of her scullions doing mysteries on a cake’s top.
Another minion teasing about hair done different.
This end of the long table was fenced with beer and bottles. The talk was going on, that cough, her still counting. I drew breath.
“Help us up, Tinker.”
Hands hauled, propped. The place swam for a few seconds. I swigged the tea and stared at my hands until the world tidied itself up. Tinker scornfully refuted the women’s suggested medications, clove inhalations, feet up, sal volatile. “He needs a coupler pints, obstinate bleeder,” Tinker said.
“Shut it.” I got out, and winced at his cackling laugh.
“He’s back. Wotcher, Lovejoy.”
“All right?”
“Aye, great. Missus, brew up. He’ll be dry as a bone any mo.”
Michelle was there, weary. I told her she looked like I felt and got a wan smile.
Trembler reached across to pat my shoulder.
“Beautiful, beautiful. A few questions when you’re ready.”
That cheered me up. Auctioneers lust in percentages. Trembler was thinking ahead. As I recovered coherence, he began slowly introducing particular antiques into the conversation.
“That bronze cat, Lovejoy. What’ve you got, lady?”
“One-five-oh-seven.” Michelle’s papers rustled as she worked her clipboard. “It’s one of six from Boy Tony, Winchester. Six reproduction metal sculptures, 1850, Birmingham.”