'You can't exactly buy your own theatre, love, but it'll keep you in clover until you storm the Old Vic. At least a year or two in a comfy bedsit. Go into any pub. Ask for Tinker.
Tell him Lovejoy sent you. Take your shawl, if you want to sell it, to Blossom Arrance in Williams Walk in the Dutch Quarter. Don't sign anything, okay? Real antique deals are all done on the nod.'
She stared at the shawl in awe. 'Tinker?'
'You'll know him by his cough. It's like a foghorn.'
'The old man in the churchyard?' Her nose wrinkled. 'Who smells and spits?'
'That's him. Don't be snooty, love. He might not look much, but he's the world champ barker.'
'What's a ...?'
Listening to the others is painful. I couldn't stay to see the rejects banished, so lurked in St Peter's until Tina came for me, scoffing.
'You're too soft, Lovejoy. Know that?'
'My granny always said.'
We assembled in the Castle Bookshop's upper room, where Heidi Pansock shut us away from pryers. I looked at them. Not much of an army.
'You'll be well paid. It's one hour's acting.' I extinguished the hope in their eyes by adding, 'Not a TV, er, movie.' I always try to sound American, and fail. I lied in a flare of genius, 'There might be one if this goes well.'
'Okay!' they exclaimed eagerly. Even Larch looked stirred.
'I'm Lovejoy. I'm the paymaster.' I chuckled. They didn't. Maybe they'd spotted that I hadn't a bean. I kept up my lazaroid grin. 'Names, please?'
'Larch,' said Larch. 'I kip in the park,' et angry cetera.
'Wilhelmina,' said the shahtoosh lady. 'I'm thirty-five, two children. A widow. My interests are the Romance poets, Tennyson and Ben Jonson with reference to ...' and so on.
The nervy bloke who'd wanted us to go once more into the breach dear friends, was the third. I glanced at Tina. She avoided my eye.
'I'm Jules. I've been ... away.' He coloured slightly, forged gamely on. 'I'm in the Refuge, no other fixed abode.' He waited anxiously, but nobody threw him out. The Refuge is a doss-house where violence holds sway, so I'd guessed right. He was newly out of prison.
'What've you done on the stage?'
'I did a series of leads,' he said, eyes shining. 'Ayckbourns, Shakespeare, two Cowards.'
'You're all hired,' I said. I'd placed him. I only knew of one Refuge inmate. He'd starred in prison shows, had a past nearly as interesting as mine. He wasn't called Jules, though. Fine by me.
'The pay is basic Equity rate. It's . . .' I paused. I didn't know exactly what Equity was.
And what style of acting, for heaven's sake? That Yank actor, who called his stage improvisations art. 'It's improvisation. Hidden cameras.'
'Where? On stage?'
'In a manor house hired for the purpose. You,' I said, pacing, well underway, 'must pretend. There's no script. It's, erm—'
'Off the top of your head,' Tina put in with a narked glance.
'That's it. Tina will lead. You're all supposed to be divvies in the antiques trade. The plot will evolve as we go, okay?'
'We're all interviewed together?'
'By an American lady with a massive track record in,' I coursed on in a blaze of inventiveness, 'Channel Eight-Seven-Zed in Hollywood. She's starred in thirty-one soaps and two major documentaries.'
They gasped. I smirked modestly, really making their day.
'What must we do?' asked anxious Wilhelmina.
'We go in together,' I explained. 'The lady will scrutinize us, and be especially rude to me. That,' I lied serenely on, 'is deliberate. You must pretend to be in the antiques trade. Wilhelmina, devise a background in an antiques shop down the coast. Larch, you're a hawker on the Saturday barrows. And, er, Jules, you're an auctioneer from the Midlands, okay?'
Jules looked at the floor. 'Thank you, Lovejoy.'
'Pretend that you're each a divvy. That's somebody who can detect genuine antiques by simply being near them. Right?'
'How on earth do we do that?'
'I'll have four test objects. You guess. I'll signal whether they're genuine or not. Tell you how on the way. Above all, keep in character. Any questions?'
'Will she be acting too?' Wilhelmina asked apprehensively.
'Superbly,' I answered. 'You won't be able to tell she's not genuine. There will be sixteen hidden cameras. If you start looking round, you're fired on the spot and don't get paid.'
'And what am I, Lovejoy?' Tina asked innocently.
'You're somebody who wants to be a divvy and hasn't got it,' I said cruelly, put her in her place. She was heading for a tanking. I wanted no loose ends. 'I don't know what script she'll choose. That's the scheme. I'll send to tell you when.'
'Like an audition?' Wilhelmina breathed, thrilled.
'No,' I said sadly. 'This is the real thing.'
Before I go any further, there's greed. Greed is a wish for success, ambition, secret romantic desires ... In other words, money. There's a way of making it, from nothing.
Some things I can explain. Like, when Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, hunted with the Wynnstay Hunt (think Chester / Flint / Denbeighshire) in the 1880s, she had herself stitched into chamois leather knickers. Reason: vicious brambles locally.
Some things, I can't explain. Like, why is Russia's Great October Revolution called that, when it occurred in November? Did the Gregorian Calendar have something to do with it? Dunno. Or, how come the vast Wedgwood porcelain conglomerate forgot to renew its own name / title recently, and redfacedly have to make a deal with some eleven-year-old to buy its own name back? Or why all women don't realize that they can possess any man on earth, whatever their own age, shape, status. There are other inexplicables: Scotland has banned mystic William Blake's exquisite poem 'Jerusalem'.
Sociologists, people who've never heard of a smile, have banned the children's game of Musical Chairs because it might be competitive (like life isn't). To most questions, I hold up my hand and say I don't know.
Antiques are different. And fakes are very very different. It's because of money. Don't read on unless you are prepared to consider a little bit of sin, okay?
Now, we're all greedy. I do mean all of us.
Let's say you happen to be a housewife – that honourable position now hated by every talk-show host in the known world. 'Housewife' was once a name for an eminently praiseworthy, all-knowing mainstay of society, pillar of common sense. Nowadays, though, girls spit the word with unequalled venom in bus queues. 'What, be a frigging housewife?' they snarl. Or they whine, 'Listen to my mum, you'd think everybody has to keep clean and do homework . . .' Parents please fill in the dots. You know the feeling.
Back to greed. Let's say you're a lady whose daily round is well established. You've done the housework, seen the infants to school, had your snack (tomato soup for the hips, one sinful slice of bread, and tea without sugar). What now? Time on your hands, because soon George will be home, et mundane cetera, okay?
Your eyes light on a TV film. An old black-and-whitey, maybe Brief Encounter or some flashy 1950s thing where everybody has spacious motor cars and smokes themselves to death, the actresses gorgeously dressed, diamonds sparkling in every scene.
You watch, smiling. And you think how marvellous it would be just to have one day of that kind of life. Romance? Maybe. Affluent wealth? Oh, yes, very desirable. And you scan your own lot. Not with any kind of animosity. Because George is reliable, does his stint at that hellish factory. And the family, thank God, is healthy. No, nothing sinister.
But something starts whispering. It's gremlin-shaped, green. It is Envy. It talks quietly, as you flip through pictures of models who've earned a king's ransom just for dressing to the nines and standing still while society photographers take snaps for the centrefold.
It whispers of jealousy.
It says things like, 'Just look at her! In her baronial hall, gem-studded elegance and Vervainoo clothes! Never done a day's work in her life! She was always the idlest at school...'