'Er, no, Tinker.' A lot of ears pricked. 'Hang about.'
'Lovejoy wants you to bid for that drawerful of old knives and forks, Tinker.' Beck again.
'Right,' I said angrily. I didn't have to act. Beck really does rile me. 'Get it, Tinker.'
'It looks a right load of rubbish, Lovejoy - ' Tinker, badly overacting.
'Get it, Tinker.'
'Lost your wool?' Beck said innocently. 'Just because I got that Burne-Jones sketch?
Sold it yesterday, incidentally. To your friend, businessman with the blonde.' So Rink had traced it successfully after all. I hadn't time to worry about the implications for the minute.
'Look, Lovejoy -'
'Do as you're bloody well told, Tinker.'
I pushed off through the crowd, pretending to be blazing.
'Easy, Lovejoy.' Lennie offering me a fag. I shook my head irritably. I deserved an Oscar.
'Those bloody trawlies get to me, Lennie.'
'Jill said she'd be in with that opal photo.'
'Thanks.' I'd dated it for her, about 1800. Photographs were once done on opal glass and coloured by watercolours. She was asking the earth, naturally.
I drifted. Delmer had found a copy of The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes and looked as pleased as Punch. Don't laugh. The public's soaked up over two hundred editions since 1765.
'Is it one of Newberry's?' I couldn't help muttering the vital question as I drifted past.
He dropped it casually back into the job lot and sauntered off, shaking his head absently. A good dealer's a careful one. I touched it for the clang and drifted in the opposite direction. The unique copy's in the British Museum, but Newberry turned them out for donkey's years in St Paul's Churchyard during Georgian times so they're still knocking about. I had a brief look at the rest. Delmer would have spotted the first edition of Ransome's Swallows and Amazons which lay among a pile of gramophone records, so no chance there.
I drifted some more. The crowd collected. Ringers were there, trimmers, hailers, tackers, lifters, nobbers, screwers, backers and sharpers, a real tribe of hunters if ever there was one. I can't help smiling. I actually honestly like us all. At least we're predictable and therefore reliable, which makes us a great deal more preferable than the good old innocent public. Some people were gazing in the window at us. Well, if you stay out of the water at least the sharks can't get you.
The jade coin was in the corner case, numbered seventy. By the time the auctioneer banged us to the starting gate practically everybody in the room was pretending to ignore it.
'Lot One,' he piped, a callow youth on his tenth auction. 'A very desirable clean modern birdcage complete with stand. Who'll bid?'
'Dad send you to feed the crocodiles, sonny?' one of the Aldgate circus called. Laughter.
A woman near me tutted. 'How rude!' she exclaimed.
I nodded sadly. 'Modern manners,' I said. She approved of my sentiments and I was glad. I'd seen her inspecting the kitchen cabinet, and Tinker Dill was on to it, with my money.
Sharks and cut-throats, we all settled and paid rapt attention to the sale of a birdcage.
I watched it come. Ten, twenty. At thirty-two Margaret bid for and got a pair of small Lowestoft soft-paste porcelain animal figures, a swan and a dog. I don't like them much because of the enamelling but I was glad for Margaret. Delmer got his Goody Two-Shoes and a pile of others for a few pence at thirty-eight. At forty Tinker Dill got the cabinet, though Beck had a few laughs at my expense and threatened loudly to compete in the bidding. One of the Birmingham lads wandered over curiously during the bidding to look at the cabinet, but by then Tinker had guessed right and was standing idly by, leaning against the drawer where the mote spoon was. My mote spoon now. The Brummie stared across at me carefully. I smiled benevolently back. I saw him start edging across to the others of the Brummie circus. Well, they're not all daft.
Harry Bateman tried a few bids for a Victorian copy of an anonymous Flemish school oil and failed. Why first-class nineteenth-century artists wasted their talents making copies of tenth-rate seventeenth-century paintings I'll never know, but you couldn't say this to Harry.
'Lot Seventy,' the auctioneer intoned.
This was it. My jade piece, a dark lustrous green with brown flacks and one oblique growth fault, was carved in the form of an ancient Chinese cash coin. Jade is the wonder stone, matt and oily and soft to look at yet incredibly hard. It can resist shock blows time after time. (Remember that those large but thin uninteresting jade rectangles you see are most probably nothing less than temple bells, to be struck when tuning string instruments. Very desirable. A complete set is worth… well, a year's holiday. Give me first offer.) I saw Beck glance around. The bidding started. I went in quick, too quick for some. Jimmo was prominent in the early stages. Then Jonas came in, raising in double steps to the auctioneer's ecstasy. Jonas is a youngish retired officer with money, no knowledge and determination. This combination's usually at least fatal, but Jonas has survived in the business simply by refusing to give up. From an initial dislike his fellow dealers, me included, switched to neutrality and finally with reluctance to a sort of grudging acceptance. He's silver and pre-Victorian book bindings with occasional manuscripts thrown in for luck. Lily was there but left the bidding when I started up. Patrick looked peevish when she stalled - there'd be trouble over her tea and crumpets when he got her home. Four others showed early and chucked up. That left me, Jonas, a Brummie and Beck. I bid by nodding. Some people bid by waving programmes or raising eyebrows. Remember there's no need to wave and tell everybody who's bidding. Don't be afraid your bid will be missed. A creased forehead is like a flag day to an auctioneer. He gets a percentage.
On we went, me sweating as always. I was beaten when Beck upped. Jonas must have sensed something wasn't quite right because he hung on only briefly, then folded. I saw that the Brummie bidder was the one who'd crossed to look at the kitchen cabinet.
He finally stopped when Beck showed the first sign of wavering, clever lad. The jade was knocked down to Beck.
Beck glanced triumphantly in my direction through the throng. I glared back. He would brag all year how he picked up this rare ancient Chinese jade coin in the face of organized local opposition.
'He had us, Lovejoy,' Jonas said, pushing past at the break. I followed him muttering to the tea bar.
'Hard luck, Lovejoy,' from Jimmo. 'Hell of a price.'
'Outsider!' I heard Patrick snapping at Beck.
'Things are getting worse every day,' I agreed.
Janie had our teas waiting in the brawl. We had to fight our way into a corner to breathe. Tinker kept Janie a part of a bench. I kissed her.
'Watch out, Lovejoy,' she said, smiling brightly to show eagle-eyed watchers we were only good friends. 'One of my neighbours is here.' She flashed a brilliant grimace towards a vigilant fat lady steaming past. 'I'm sorry, love,' she added, moving primly away from my hand which had accidentally alighted on her knee.
'What about?'
'The old jade.' She reproved me under her breath, 'I'd have given you some money.
Nobody need have noticed.'
'Why?'
'Then you could have got the jade instead.'
'Oh. Thanks, love,' I said bravely. 'You get these disappointments.'
She eyed me shrewdly. 'Didn't you want it, Lovejoy?'
'Of course I did,' I lied evenly. 'I always want ancient Chinese jade, don't I?'
She kept her eyes on me. 'Then why are you so pleased, Lovejoy?'
'Oh, just life in general.'
'Was there something wrong with it?'
'Certainly not!' I said indignantly.
I ought to know. It had taken me nine weeks to make, nine weeks of pure downright slavery over my old pedalled spindle. It was absolutely perfect. Authentic in every detail, except for the small point that it was a forgery.
Now calm down, gentle reader. Can I be held responsible if some goon buys a piece of jade - it really was jade, which is mined nowadays in Burma, New Zealand and Guatemala -without examining it? And if you're still wondering why I bid for a forgery I'd made and put up for auction myself, take my tip: please feel free to read on, but don't ever go into the antiques game. My name and address I'd scratched in minute letters around the margins of the inside hole, date included. If customers don't look with a handlens, it's just tough luck, and the more fools they. I couldn't exactly put my name in neon lights on a thing the size of a dollar, could I? It would spoil the effect.