The place they land is Castle Heath, a greensward where centuries ago some baddies shot some heroes to death, or the other way round. They come like night-thieving arabs, suddenly there in full swing. It’s one of the most exciting scenes to see an early morning fairground with wagons and tents and fanciful structures. I love their colors, for the same reason I love them on canal boats; they are the brilliance of an earlier century showing through modern grot.
Francie welcomed me as always as I shouted at the steps and climbed into her caravan, which is to say with hardly a glance. In her tribe it’s an insult to dawdle at the door.
She immediately put the kettle on.
“How do, love.” I bussed her and quickly sat down uninvited, another must. “How’s it among the oppressed nomads?”
“How is it among the static fascists, darling?”
“Bloody grim. Better for seeing thee, though.”
“So you got off.” That always makes me blink. The fair only arrived a day ago, but here she was knowing everything.
An infant came in, looking vaguely familiar, fetched a toffee out of the fridge.
“Is this good for your teeth?” I demanded, obediently unwrapping it for her.
“Ta.” The kiddie left to join six others milling about outside. Fairground children are always so businesslike.
“Yours, Francie?”
She didn’t look up. “Mmmmh. And you got off today from Tipper Noone’s accident, Lovejoy. Two out of two.”
That explained the familiar feeling I’d got from looking at the little girl. Family likeness.
“Eh? Oh, aye. I’m a master of escapology.” She came and sat on the bunk seat, facing me so our eyeballs practically touched. Odd that I’d never seen her kiddie Betty before, though I’d been to her caravan a few times. Shy, I suppose.
“Still trying to fit two days into one, Lovejoy? Still hopeless with women, with money?”
“Don’t talk daft.” The kettle was whistling. She rose to see to it. Women are always narked when they find somebody who understands them better than they know themselves. And as for being useless, they should bloody well talk. “You got much to divvy?”
“Maybe.”
These caravans are modern trailers, windows and bunks in tiers, a kitchen at one end.
Francie’s is small, but mirrors cunningly exaggerate the space she has. Tables fold out of walls, all that. She saw me looking.
“Fancy the life yet, Lovejoy?”
“Among the raggle-taggle gypsies o? When the Mounties are after me, happen I will.”
She was bringing out the stuff while we spoke.
“Over there,” I told her, nodding at the table across from where I sat. A reasonable light falling semi-obliquely across my field of view. Francie knows the drill.
“Yes, love,” she said. “I’ll be quiet.”
Eyes closed, I relaxed and waited until she told me, “Right, Lovejoy.” I faced the heap of items and began reaching, touching, stroking, listening, feeling.
It seems daft to say things actually speak, doesn’t it, but they do, they do. Correction: Antiques speak, and do it with a resonance that tremors through your very being.
Gunge—and I do mean everything modern—is inert, lifeless. It deserves to remain so.
The explanation is that you can’t trick Nature. Humanity gets back exactly what it puts in. Passionate learning plus artistic creativity are what made little Tintoretto a bobby-dazzler instead of simply a paint-mixer for his dad. Look at a great oil painting, and then at the front cover of a magazine. Just as many colors, maybe the same size and even the same subject. But there’s a difference.
The caravan’s interior was hot. I lifted objects, peered, sniffed, fondled, laid them aside and went on to the next.
Feeling—I mean touch—is the great modern omission. People dance apart. Even old lovers merely wave hello. It was different when I was little. You got a thick ear for not remembering to kiss even your most wrinkled auntie. Folk embraced, patted, impinged.
Human contact was in. Nowadays everybody intones catchphrases proving we’re hooked on togetherness, yet we run from contact. Talk loudly enough of love, and you conceal from yourself the terrible fact that you’ve forgotten the human act of loving.
That wondrous joy of loving is everything, everything…
Headache. God, it was terrible. The interior was suffocating, the watery sun blinding. I felt old, drained, weary. There were three objects left on the table. The caravan’s floor was littered with junk. Francie was sitting with her little girl watching me.
“You talk to yourself,” the little girl said.
“Shut your teeth and brew up.” I didn’t need criticism from a neonate.
“Are those genuine, Lovejoy?” Francie asked.
“Yes.” Pulling myself together, I priced them. “This tatty watercolor’s not much to look at, Francie, but it’s worth a bit.” No known artist, admittedly, and a crudely drawn row of Georgian shops. “Mid-eighteenth century. He’s painted the three balls on the pawnbroker’s sign blue. They didn’t change to brassy gold until modern times.”
The little girl said, “Mam said you’ll mend my doggie bell.”
I tried to sip the tea but it was scalding. Francie remembered, quickly rose to cool it by pouring it into a bowl.
The doggie bell was a bell-shaped silver fox’s head. “It’s a cup, sweetheart. Posh people drink from them before, er, going riding.” Ritual drinks are still taken when the unspeakable pursue the inedible. These marvelously embellished cups are the best thing that ever came from fox-hunting. “Don’t let anybody stick a clapper in it, for Gawd’s sake.” The AB and GB initials were probably the Burrows, a rare husband-and-wife team of silversmiths in Old London. Francie would have the sense to look them up.
The trouble is that nowadays people make them into “nice” things. I’ve seen a silver beagle-head stirrup cup, 1780 or so, made—with great skill—into an egg timer. Clever-daft, my old granny used to call such folk. Leave beauty alone, I always say.
Sometimes.
“Is the dolly’s house yours too?” It was a white porcelain cottage, two stories. Colored porcelain flowers adorned it. Antique dealers the world over call them Rockingham, but you never see these little white cottages marked.
“No. Daddy found it. Mam’ll sell it.”
Daddy is Dan, nice bloke if you like swarthy and tough. He does a motorbike act, Wall of Death.
“Tell Daddy to ask a lot of money, love. It’s a pastille burner.” I showed her the recess that led to the cottage’s hexagonal chimney. “You put a perfume cone underneath, and the chimney smokes a lovely scent all day long. Mam will light it for you. People called them Staffordshire fumiers. This is a lovely one, 1830.”
“Is Staffordshire near Penrith, or Edinburgh?”
“Er, that way on, love.”
“We’re going there.”
Those were the three. Betty and I chatted while Francie sorted the crud. A few good collectibles lay among the discards—fairly recent wooden household implements people call treen (cheap but soaring); a few Edwardian photos but none of the most highly sought kind (military, industrial, fashion, and streets); a recently made pair of miniature wainscot chairs six inches tall (very fashionable to collect these small repros).
“You did well, Francie. Got any grub?”
She made me some nosh, then walked me to the war memorial with Betty. She’d worked out ten percent of my estimates and insisted on giving me a part of it.
“I’ll post the rest, Lovejoy. Buy an overcoat.”
“Er, good idea.” It was coming on to rain. I left them there, crossing among the traffic.
They stood side by side. Betty had a little yellow umbrella up. I acted the goat a bit, turning and waving umpteen times till she was laughing. It was fooling about that saved me.