Every Last Cent

'I can't believe that.' I was shot by his glance. 'Not like you say it.'

'You think I'm immune?'

'No. But look at what I do.' I shrugged, made sure Maud hadn't reappeared, Quaker not lurking. 'Antiques is a grubby trade. Rooting through people's cast-offs. Rust and dust, to earn a crust.' I told him about Marjorie, queen of the rubbish dumps. 'She's our only grubber with style. I have no style at all. I scrape along by cadging. You said so yourself.'

'That's because you're stupid, Lovejoy.'

'Eh?' I said, narked. Even shame has its pride. Except the trouble with shame is that it's indivisible. It has no components, doesn't arrive in bits. And it has only one speed, flat out and total. Shame overwhelms you.

He leaned forward, eyes piercing. 'You could be a multi-billionaire. Why? Because you can divvy a single genuine antique among scores of lookalikes.'

He kept his voice down. A bloke like him, military background, would be aware of any bugging devices.

'It's not as easy as that.'

'You mean you're weak, Lovejoy. You give your divvy skill away to grope some bint. Or because you're sorry for a friend. Or to protect your by-blow Mortimer.' He stared me down. 'In my book that's utter stupidity. Well, those days are ended, Lovejoy. You are now subject to discipline.'

'Who says?'

'I do. Until further notice.' He added, not without a hint of regret, 'Everybody agrees.'

So I was enslaved for ever and ever? 'What if I refuse?'

'You will...' He searched for the right phrase, 'Be put down.'

Like a vet puts down sick cats? I gulped. He smiled, seeing cowardice.

'There is a positive side, Lovejoy. You will earn the undying gratitude of me and all my ilk.'

It didn't sound much. I'd got along pretty well without it so far. My expression must have shown because he leaned forward, keen to explain.

'Reluctance is all very well, Lovejoy.' He said it like my teachers used the phrase. When people say something's all very well they mean its opposite. 'You fail to understand the plight of my class.'

Here we go, I thought. His class? There's no such thing any longer. I used to know an old Polish soak who was mystified that one of our royal princes had failed some college examination. 'It could never happen anywhere else,' he said over and over in bafflement. I couldn't see why he was thunderstruck. 'Lazy little sod should have studied harder,' I'd told him in puzzlement. It was some time before it got through.

Other countries weigh breeding with advantage. Middle Eastern professors' sons get an extra twelve per cent free marks in exams. But here, that's all back in the Dark Ages except in romance stories. We've simply exchanged class for robber barons in council offices and government.

'There's no such thing any longer, Brig,' I said straight out. 'Class has been replaced by jacks-in-office with inflated pensions. We serfs get ballocked just the same.'

'Your ... sort would think so.' He came near to a sneer. 'You have the arrogance of ignorance. Who keeps this world going, Lovejoy? Commerce, merchants, investors.

People like me. We keep order, protect the lazy and indigent – fools like you, Lovejoy.

Accept it.'

I already knew where his argument was leading. He too was a Name, a heavy investor in Lloyd's. His mob – okay, his clarrrsss – had gone broke because their chits were being called in. He and his pals were looking for a new profitable source of promissory notes, and they'd found me. I was to rescue them. They would stump up with the money gusher they'd get from antiques.

Maud was a carrot, and carrots didn't come any lovelier. My survival was another.

Wealth – soon, I was sure, he would promise me a fortune – was a third. Other benefits? Possibly superb educations for Mortimer, Henry, Uncle Tom Cobley and whoever I favoured. The thought suddenly occurred: wasn't I suddenly important? Brig and his cronies evidently thought so. Except, who'd topped Vestry? And Bernicka?

What I felt at that moment was contempt. Brig had become a Name in order to reap easy profits year upon year. That's what insurance is. It's also why I don't trust it, and always tell folk never to insure. Now, the brigadier had to pay up. He didn't like it. So he wanted out, thought it unfair. The honourable thing would have been to simply keep his promise. Take the money in the good years, pay up in the bad.

'Play the game, Lovejoy. You'll be in clover.'

What he meant was, disobey and I was for it.

'Ta for the drink, Brig,' I said meekly. I'd not even tasted the damned thing. 'I'll do as you say. But. . .'

'Quaker?' He smiled. I was looking at a firing squad. 'He's just a clerk, Lovejoy. He will agree. Every step of the way.'

I left him watching his nags on the screen. Step, see? A jest, Quaker being in a wheelchair. Some joke to do with class, I expect.

If you're like me, you get dispirited. I made it as far as the Donkey and Buskin, where I stopped for pie and mash. I didn't begrudge the brigadier his authority – he'd doubtless sweated in the jungles or wherever in defence of the realm. He was entitled to peace in his advancing years.

Making me team up with his Maud? With married Maud? I felt shanghaied, to save his skin. I'd be under his thumb. That was too much. But he seemed all-powerful. No way out for the likes of me.

I must have been there, sunk in despond, for the best part of an hour, before I realized somebody was standing a yard away. It was the hulk from the Countess's Antiques Emporiana.

'Come wiv me, mate,' he growled.

The motor must have been a converted hearse. The Countess reclined on cushions inside, watching a television. The Antiques Road Show was on, as drilled and rehearsed as ever. She smiled, crooked her finger. I felt my heart yearn.

'Drink, Lovejoy?' Her hand extended with a clang of gold. She'd had diamonds set in her front teeth since I'd seen her last. The perfume was overpowering. Her cosmetics were trowelled on. Beautiful. That's taste.

'No, ta.'

'Lovejoy, would you help me?'

Time for defiance, rebellion against all these tyrants.

'Yes, Countess,' I said faintly. 'Anything.'

'Soon, I'll want you to do something .. . really special. Divvy some antiques that may or may not exactly belong to me.'

'I see.' My voice went hard to manage.

'Would you? No matter whose they were?'

Like Brig's syndicate? I thought it, but did not say.

'Yes, Countess.' Me, the hardliner.

'And could I depend on you for full. . . satisfaction?'

Three swallows later, I croaked, 'Yes, Countess.'

She squeezed my thigh. 'Then I'll let you go. For the moment.' She blew me a kiss. I sat transfixed, a hare in her headlights.

'When can I see you, Countess?'

'Later. Until then, Lovejoy.'

'Thank you,' I said like I'd received the most generous largesse, and got out. The motor drifted off down the road. I gazed admiringly after it, thinking that there went real class, not the brigadier's old-school attitudes. I caught the bus.

Where the hell was Tinker? Time was rushing to the meeting. I wanted at least one ally, and apart from Alicia Domander I'd no real hope of anybody who'd take my side.

And now even she was joined at the hip to the brigadier.

35

ODD WHAT THINGS fascinate people. There's an American university offering millions, to anyone who can solve any unsolved mathematical problem. One is this: why do buses come in threes? No good telling them the old Cockney's joke: buses only come in convoys so they don't get torpedoed, ha-ha. That won't earn you the money. Another is this: why is it harder to discover a solution than have it explained? Seems simple to me, but brainboxes say no. If you can write down the mathematical proof, post it off.

Honest, they'll send you millions. They think numbers are reasonable.

Others work with equal devotion doing wrong. It's sad, bad news. In antiques there's the doc job. (This is where you go into hospital, then antique dealers raid your house.