Gold By Gemini

'Lovejoy.' She had that odd look.

'I didn't touch your knee,' I said indignantly.

'What are you up to?'

I was narked with Janie. Right in the middle of a chattering mob of customers in an ordinary small-town auction she starts suspecting me of being up to some trickery.

Women can be very suspicious of fundamentally good honest motives. It's not very nice. I really do believe they have rather sinister minds. Where there's no reason to be suspicious they suddenly assume you can't be trusted. I find it very unsettling. They're the ones who're always on about trust, then they go and show they've got none themselves. It's basically a sign of poor character.

At Lot Two-Eighty I crossed to Tinker. The crowd had thinned. In the smoke the substitute auctioneer, a hoary old veteran who wasn't letting us get away with anything, droned cynically on. We had space to pretend interest.

Tinker made a great show of pulling out the drawer and complaining about the uselessness of the buy I'd made. The auctioneer called for quiet, please, during the bidding. I slipped the mote spoon into my pocket and relaxed.

'Put the rest back in next week's auction, Lovejoy?' Tinker asked. This is all quite legal.

'Yes.' I made sure we weren't overheard. 'Grumble a lot while you do.'

I’ll try.'

I had to stop myself from a wide grin at Tinker's crack. Barkers can out-grumble the most miserable farmer.

Janie went to have her hair done. We eventually met at a coffee garden near the river walk, a short distance away. I'd tried to get her to come to Woody's but she wouldn't. I said I could return her the money she'd lent me. She said don't be silly.

We talked on the way back to Gimbert's, where the auction was practically over. I caught sight of Beck and said so-long to Janie. They were in the auction yard among starting cars and people hauling various lots out of the covered part. A woman was asking how to get an enormous cupboard home. Time to haul in the net.

'Look, Beck,' I said. He stopped bragging to his mates. 'About that jade.'

'Want it, Lovejoy? It's for sale.' There was a roar of laughter, my expense.

'I've a couple of things you might swap.'

'Good stuff?'

'Two are.'

'What kind of stuff?'

'Good stuff,' I said cagily.

'Where?'

'My place.'

He thought a moment. Finally he trod his cigarette.

'I'll come.'

I got a taxi. In the ride out to the village he showed me the jade.

'Lovely piece of work, eh?'

I could hardly disagree. At the cottage he insisted the taxi waited.

I had the pieces distributed around the living-room. It wouldn't do to show him the workshop.

'This glass jug,' I told him. He reached out for it. 'I've this bowl as well.'

'Both yours?' he asked warily. I nodded. 'Honestly? Roman or Egyptian?'

His eyes were everywhere while I busied myself getting a glass of beer. I had to steady my hands, back turned towards him, while I poured in case the glass clinked and gave away my anxiety. It's a right bloody game this. When I gave him the drink I could see he'd noticed my tiler, hung prettily on the wall. And my non-musical instrument casually placed over the fireplace.

'You've one or two things here, Lovejoy,' he said.

'I don't want to sell.'

'No?' He looked shrewdly about. 'This place looks pretty bare. And where's your car?

You used to have one.'

'Well, I had to sell it.'

'I see.' He sat examining the glass bowl and jug I'd made. 'Good Roman,' he pronounced. I said nothing. 'Cash adjustment, Lovejoy?'

'No,' I said. 'One for one.'

'No deal.'

'Well, then,' I hesitated. 'I'm not really in the jade field any more, but…'

'No?' He actually laughed. 'Then what are we arguing about?'

We began dealing. It's done by mental palpation, not actual utterances. You talk all round the subject, how difficult things are, what clients want nowadays, how troublesome barkers are. We ended with Beck accepting the glass bowl and the jug, plus the painting, in exchange for the jade coin. He took the instrument as well and paid a few notes to make up the difference.

He carried his trophies into the waiting taxi.

'Here, Lovejoy,' he said from the window as the car turned in the lane.

'Yes?'

'I don't see why I should pay the driver.'

I paid up with ill grace and watched the taxi dwindle uphill towards the chapel. He'd paid anyway. He'd be jubilant, until he found out.

Still, I'd not been untruthful. 'That Palmer looks wrong to me, somehow,' I'd said. And I'd told him of the instrument, 'I'm not sure what you'd call it.'

I stood in the garden tying my jade on to a string to wear round my neck under my shirt. Contact with living human skin really does restore life and glow to jade. Never leave jade untouched if you can help it. It's the only antique of •which this can be said.

Jade is the exception which proves my no-touch rule. Even the funeral pieces from ancient China recover their life and lustre by being fondled. Love, folks, as I said, is making it. Jade tells you that.

I totted up. I'd sell the mote spoon to Helen. That would pay Janie back and, with what I'd got extra from Beck just now, give me the fare to the Isle of Man. As for the rest, I'd just swapped one set of forgeries for another. Right?

Yes, right. But there was a balance, the money Beck had just given for the jade at Gimbert's. He had successfully bid for it against fierce opposition. I was proud of him.

I'd promised to ring Janie and say what I'd decided to do, but then I thought it over.

It'd be better just me against Edward Rink.

I went in to pack.

Early morning and I was on the train to Liverpool.

CHAPTER XVI

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THE TRAIN'S the easy bit.

I like the sea. It's natural, somehow never fraudulent. From the ferry wharf I gazed down the Mersey out to sea.

If Bexon was right, Suetonius had probably sailed from Chester. The more I thought about it the more it fitted. The Roman Second Legion had been stationed in Chester when Boadicea vented her spleen. That's known nearly for absolute certain. The wily Roman had left his harbour base firmly held in strength, the most orthodox of all military moves. He'd hardly have needed it protected this way if he'd sailed from Wales because the powerful Queen Cartimandua, as nasty a piece of work as ever trod land, was too busy ravishing successions of stalwart standard-bearers in Manchester to notice if the political weather outside changed much from day to day.

The ferry was two-thirds full with passengers. I must have expected a few logs loosely lashed together because I gaped at this huge ocean-going boat. It had a funnel and round windows and everything. Cars were streaming aboard, even lorries.

You can get a meal or snacks and there's a bar. The general impression's a bit grubby but a few hours is not for ever. I like wandering about on ships. It being latish September holidaymakers weren't too plentiful, only a few clusters of diehards catching the cheaper rates of early autumn. We were a mixed bunch. There were the usual tribes of businessmen discussing screws and valves over pale ales, hysterical crises over lost infants finally miraculously found again where they'd been left in the first place, and couples snogging uninterruptedly on the side decks. They're my favourite. If Janie had been with me she'd have said not to look at them, then looked herself when we'd gone past. Women do that.