'There must be easier ways to earn a living, Lovejoy.' Janie pulled the Lagonda in and sat staring at me.
'Why are you so bloody late?' I couldn't unlock the car door for fumbling.
'I'd like to point out that I'm early,' she said sweetly. 'And good morning, world.'
'Well, then,' I said lamely.
'And it isn't locked.'
Two down. I got in sheepishly and we left the village sedately, a visiting lady and her agent respectably bound for an ordinary sale. I always feel so sick at this stage. The first sight of town by the nursery gardens makes me retch. That's the trouble with ordinary sales - there's no such thing. Every single one's a matter of life and death.
'Are you all right, darling?' Janie slowed at the station. 'Shall I stop?'
'No.' I'd only have to get out and run.
'If I see something I like in the auction, can I get it?'
'Tell me.' It took me three tries to speak. My mouth was sand. 'And I'll tell you what to do.'
'Oh, I can bid,' she said, poor little innocent. 'I know how.'
The eternal cry.
'Everybody knows how about everything,' I said. 'Only Caesars and Wellingtons know when.'
She shrugged. 'Anyway, there may be nothing nice there,' she countered. 'And keep your hand off my knee when I'm driving, Lovejoy.'
'Oh, sorry.' My hand had actually fallen on her knee again. My mind was on other things.
No matter what the auction is, somewhere deep in that crush of old mangles, derelict bikes and discarded trinkets is a gem, a real trophy going for a song.
I've never yet been to an auction where every single thing's rubbish. I don't deny that on viewing day you'll hear plenty of people all about you saying disgustedly, 'Did you ever see such rubbish?' Have you ever wondered why? If you'd spotted, say, the missing chunk of the Cullinan Diamond thinly disguised as a paperweight between a battered radio and a heap of gardening tools, what else would you do but go about pretending everything was a waste of time? I mean, you don't want all Hatton Garden clattering in. So naturally you go about saying it's all a heap of dross. Loudly. Often. We call it 'shading' the stock. It puts honest people (me, maybe you) off. You'd be surprised how effective it is. You'd also be astonished at seeing how many of these doom-gospellers actually turn up on sale days all eager to bid for the same rubbish they've previously decried.
Janie put the Lagonda in Gimbert's yard with the dealers' old bangers. We left it looking like a cathedral among kennels. We walked down the hill, Janie primly keeping her distance from me and smiling good mornings to one and all. We were all assembling.
Barkers tend to huddle in doorways, smoking and nodding. A housewife who will be bidding usually stands waiting vigilantly in one spot, presumably in case Sotheby's suddenly send a dozen experts to bid for the ashtray she fancies.
It's a saying round here that the best trees are found in forests, and they're very hard to tell from all the rest. When you go bidding just remember that people aren't what they say or think or seem. We're all what we do.
There were already eighty or so people in. Everybody was on tenterhooks, hearts thumping and fingers itching. I had to tell Janie about her coat. She had unconsciously adopted the old shoplifter's trick of carrying her coat over her arm.
'Do you mean they'd think me a… thief?' She was outraged.
'No, love. Er,' I invented, 'you remind them, that's all.' It had to do, though she was deeply riled. The dealers relaxed as she slipped the coat over her shoulders.
This morning Gimbert's auction warehouse was offering several hundred items of assorted junk ranging from battered old tables to tatty trinkets in those pathetic little boxes signifying recent bereavements and relatives desperate to clear out. Some people say all life's only must, dust and rust. People wandered about among the bicycles and lawnmowers, mostly without any idea. From the entrance it was ugly, dowdy, pretty rough. To me, exquisite. Somewhere in all that rubbish was that missing Leonardo. I would find it or get damned close. To some that single bargain would be nothing more than a ring, a worn Edwardian matchbox, a Victorian maid's mob cap. To me, a delight as spectacular as the Crown Jewels.
There's a technique. You drift. Don't tear in thinking to see it all and race on to the next auction. Don't search. Idle about. After an hour or so a gradual change takes place.
Objects begin to move like swallows shuffling on a wire. I swear it. You can feel it, even see it. Dusty old items you wouldn't look at twice shift into prominence as if they somehow grow taller and beckon stealthily. But take no notice yet, just carry on drifting. In time one will be practically shrieking for your attention. That grotty old desk covered with rubbish will have grown to twice its size and be throbbing like an old cinema organ. Everything else will fade into the background. And of course it will turn out to be a genuine early New England block-fronted desk, so ugly yet so much desired today. On a good day maybe two or even three items call you. Once I even had to mortgage my cottage again to pay for the seven delicious items I'd bought.
Smiling with anticipation, I drifted in.
Gimbert's is two enormous galleries half-roofed in glass so the shadows confuse the innocent. Light's the auctioneer's worst enemy. It isn't bad as auction halls go but you have to watch it. Ringers turn up once a month. They're easy to spot, shuffling about looking at customers and nowhere else the way they do. They have to, in case a serious collector turns up. If one does he spells trouble - the collector may be willing to pay an antique's true worth and ringers aren't. They pretend to ignore the desired object, except for one ringer who bids. After the auction they'll meet in some bar and auction the antique among themselves, sharing the net gain.
It's illegal.
'Morning, Lovejoy.' Dear old Beck. Fancy that.
'Morning.'
'On the borrow?' he asked, grinning. 'Or selling that Isen?'
He'd fished me more than once, knowing I can't help going after antiques. You fish friends - or, indeed, enemies -by telling them, say, a genuine painting by Isen (Kano Eishin) is somewhere or other, making it up. Well, who in their right mind can resist Isen's luscious white highlighted robes and his gusting winds driving those painted ships? Naturally one hares off after it. For somebody like Beck it's a joke. For somebody like me, going without grub to raise the fare on a wild goose chase, it's no giggle.
'Sold it,' I said back coolly. He stared. 'Thanks for the tip, Beckie.' That shut him up.
I drifted on, nodding and passing the occasional word. A mote spoon donged for attention from among a mass of crud in a crammed cutlery drawer. I'm always astonished people's heads don't swivel at the sudden clanging. The trouble is that genuine antiques make your breathing funny. I went over casually and pretended to examine the kitchen cabinet. Mote spoons are often forged, but this was true 1752 or so. No maker's mark. Odd long pointed handle and a fenestrated bowl.
Lily and Patrick arrived to look at the phoney tapestries and Big Frank lumbered in to maul the silver. Delmer came flashily in, staggering under the weight of his gold rings.
Even before he was through the door those of us who knew him glanced about to see where the books were heaped and stepped out of the way because he's a fast mover. I like dealers like Delmer. Only books. He'd walk past a Rubens crucifixion painting to bid for a paperback. Sure enough he streaked for the corner, slamming a nice pair of Suffolk chairs aside on the way. I sighed. It takes all sorts, but God alone knows why.
'Anything, Lovejoy?' Tinker Dill, an unnerving sight this early, obediently emerging from the mob on time. This was my cue. I hoped Tinker could remember his lines.
'Not really, Tinker.' I made sure I said it wrong enough for alert friends to notice.
I’ll slide off, then.'