Jessica tutted. 'Shut it, Dennis, or I'll smack your wrists.'
Jessica is holy, runs a prayer chapel to bring us all back to purity, and lives down the estuary with her son-in-law in a state of mortal (I sincerely hope) sin, wears enough perfume to stop a clock and slinks about the Eastern Hundreds in a full-length dress adorned with zodiacal symbols. I like her, too.
'Mortimer does no harm,' I said. Plant your flag and name the price, there's not much anybody can do.
Jessica took out a list. The waft of scent almost keeled me over. I leaned away for oxygen. 'He told the truth about these antiques in the Arcade.'
A groan arose, really heartfelt. I could have hired them out for a biblical epic. Antique dealers go weak when honesty sneaks in. Truth is death. Get any dealer tipsy, and he'll admit that only three per cent of all the antiques he's ever seen are genuine. Get him utterly kaylied, he'll finally admit that it's only one per cent. Which means, so you get the point, that ninety-nine per cent of all antiques currently on sale anywhere are forgeries.
'You want chapter and verse, Lovejoy?' Willie Lott said quietly. 'Marry-Me Burnside's fuddling cups, genuine slip-ware? Jessica's papper mash genuine Henry Clay table?'
For genuine read fake. Dealers speak in fable. 'Two hundred items last week, Lovejoy,'
Margaret said with sorrow. She loves me, a true friend. 'Speak to the boy. That's all we ask.'
'And Rose Madder's printed Hours of the Virgin on vellum—'
'He what?' I interrupted, because I'd done that fake medieval manuscript myself.
Sweated blood on it, only finished it a fortnight back.
Vellum's not parchment, incidentally. It's a pig to print on, slips and shuffles as the type comes down. It was a beautiful forgery, though I say it myself. I'd throttle Mortimer, the little sod.
'I never see him,' I said lamely. I'm really good at sincere indignation so I tried that.
'And who says he's my responsibility? How can I find somebody who lives wild?'
'By tomorrow, Lovejoy,' I got from Willie. 'No later.'
He slit my jacket from top to bottom in a movement so swift I didn't even see the knife.
Hero that I am, I froze.
Tronker, one of Willie's goons, approached carrying my unfinished Gainsborough. He slashed it to ribbons. It made an odd sound, grush, grush. I watched stonily. More heroism.
They left then, skittering motors spattering me with mud. I looked at the slashed Gainsborough. Destroyed. No chance of marouflaging it. I gave them ten minutes, then walked to the trunk road and thumbed a lift home.
An hour later I was in my overgrown garden sitting on my unfinished wall by my old well. The robin came, saw I'd no cheese, flirted off with an angry cheep. Six bluetits did the same.
After a few minutes I spoke into the air. 'Mortimer?'
Silently he came out of the hedge and sat with me. Fifteen years old, thin, brown hair awry. Shoddy as me, but cool.
'I wish you wouldn't do that,' I said, narked. 'Can't you knock?'
'Sorry, Lovejoy. I didn't know they'd get mad.' He waited. 'I've found you a customer.
Dangerous, but rich.'
'They go together.' I was so tired. 'Let's go.'
'What's a fuddling cup?' he asked as we walked down the lane. 'What's slipware?
What's papper mash? Who was Henry Clay?'
'Shush. I'm thinking.'
Being with Mortimer was strange. I never knew what to say, how to behave. I mean, a child's a terrible thing. When you unexpectedly come across one who's fifteen, they're worse. Am I right or what?
They're also that third risk I mentioned.
On the bus, I pondered.
The dealers' vehemence seemed wrong. Okay, the antique trade is always chaos in search of a wardrobe. Frankly, it's mayhem. Lives are lost in the scramble for this gorgeous pendant, that perfect Chippendale. But lately the whole trade had been depressed. Antiques are riddled with calamities. An example: Not long since, an elderly lady made her way, heart pounding, into a jeweller's. She fetched an old watch. Could the jeweller be so kind as to please value it? The jeweller's heart also pounded. He offered her a handful of zlotniks –fifteen to be precise, twenty dollars barring the handshake, enough for a meal. Not more, dear sir?
The dear sir regretfully said no, madam. Worth only scrap value. The lady took the paltry sum. Thank you and good day.
Normal business in the antiques trade, right?
The jury thought it shouldn't be, and said so at the trial. For it seemed the watch had quite a history.
Cut to the ship that's always in the news, the Titanic. It happened, on the fateful day the great ship sank, that the waters closed over a certain lady. Horror! But two brave jolly jack tars hauled her into a lifeboat. Saved! She was the Countess of Rothes, and was eternally grateful.
So thankful was she, in fact, that she had two special watches made, engraved with the date of the sinking, a dedicatory inscription, and the sailors' initials. Two watches, then, eminently collectable.
Time passed.
The old lady's watch was one of the pair. The jeweller, a witness said, 'gloated'. A similar watch – presumably the partner – sold for a cool $30,000. Somebody blew the whistle. In came the plod. The jury thought the jeweller heartless. Guilty verdicts abounded.
What gave me a wry smile, though, was the front page headline, now famous among dealers. It read Fears of 'fair price' precedent. Get it? 'Fair price' was a threat! Suddenly antique dealers were terrified. When buying an antique from the innocent public (assuming there is such a thing) maybe they'd have to pay a 'fair price' for everything!
Gulp.
Dealers call it the Southampton Case. Where antique dealers meet, the ghost of the Southampton Case lurks in their midst. And the commonest grumble of all? It's this:
'Whatever happened to caveat emptor, buyer beware?' Dealers sob into their muscatel, drop crocodile tears on their caviar. Cruel fate, making them behave!
Me? I think that Law, as ever, simply won't work. It never does. The innocent get taken to the cleaners, and the robber barons get the Rolls, blondes, and villas in Monte Carlo.
The bus trundled. I slept.
3
WHEN I WOKE on the bus Mortimer gave me three home-made vegetarian sandwiches and a bottle of water, I had them, mourning my ravaged portrait.
The greatest portrait ever painted is that of a beautiful lady, Portrait of the Artist's Wife by Gainsborough. Some folk think that one woman's face is just like another. After all, what is a phizzog? Couple of eyes, mouth, eyelashes, whatever.
Untrue. For years I've been painting that same portrait over and over. I'm still at it. I'm the one who knows.
Go and see her. The painting just hangs there like all the rest in London's Courtauld.
You may think, 'Hey, she's ordinary!' Disappointment! If so, you're looking wrong.
I admit she isn't young. She certainly isn't sprawled naked in a tangle of erotic satins.
Her breast is modestly covered. She has a double chin at that, quite plain, holds back a mantilla in an awkward pose. Dullsville, no big deal. (I'm being honest here.) Except you're looking at the most beautiful portrait painted since the world began.
Others are fine, sure. Tell me that Rembrandt is superb, I'll go we-e-ell, ye-e-es. And I'll give you points if you're the indignant Hon Sec of the Michelangelo Appreciation Society. But are their works the greatest? Sorry and all that, but no. Not by a mile.
Because out in front, winner by a street, is the lovely plain face of Mary Gainsborough.
Confront her. Let other viewers walk on. Imagine you are the artist himself, holding her gaze. Then wonder what sort of bloke was this Gainsborough?
Frankly, Tom G was a bad lad. If you say to local folk hereabouts, 'I'll pop over to Sudbury today,' something odd happens. They smile knowingly and reply, 'Lot of artists in Sudbury!' Sounds innocent, right? It isn't. They mean that Tom Gainsborough was wicked for the ladies. They still nickname a footpath Tom's Walk because there it was that young lusty Tom – and, in time, middle-aged lusty Tom –used to frolic with maids, matrons, wives. Anything in skirts. Plenty of unexpected little babes grew up to be astonishingly talented artists thereabouts . . .