The host positioned himself directly in front of me, but his eyes stared obliquely off at an angle. It gave me the creeps.
“What were you doing?”
“It’s a set of library steps made to look like a table. Sheraton often did that. And Ince and Mayhew —”
“Jennie?”
For a bloke with a quiet voice his words could penetrate. Jennie drew breath.
“Sheraton’s the antique maker, Nicko. A couple of centuries back.”
Wrong dates, but I shut up in case Nicko disagreed. Might is right in these situations.
“What steps?”
Jennie hesitated. She didn’t know. I carefully opened the Pembroke table to show them it was phony clever, as made by the immortal Sheraton. “See? This table’s really steps. Sheraton often did that trick. Made them like leather-covered stools as well.” Hadn’t they ever looked, for heaven’s sake?
Nicko glanced down. It might have been a plank, instead of the most beautiful furniture ever made by the hand of man. A cret, though a scary one.
“Has he excuse to be here?” he asked the air beside Jennie.
“Something about a mark on the surface, Nicko.”
“You crept in here? To check a scratch?”
I showed him that too, him staring off into the middle distance. Jennie examined it.
“Shouldn’t we rub it off?” she asked.
“No. Leave it. Rub it well when it’s hard, never straight away. It might not need repolishing, with luck.”
Nicko turned away, but like a fool I opened my mouth.
“Er, excuse me, sir. It was the lady with the zircons did it, not me.
Jennie’s sharp intake of breath should have warned me, but I’m basically thick. So I went on to describe how she’d put the glass down and moved away to talk to the Spanish gentleman…
Nicko inclined his head and Jennie went with him as they talked. Me standing beside the Sheraton, worrying what I’d said wrong. I was barely ten feet from them and couldn’t hear a word. She returned as Nicko went to the study, the door closing behind him. The two Suits evaporated.
She looked at me. “You’re from Fredo, Lovejoy?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I paused, not quite knowing what was going on. “You can check.”
She paced a step or two, not quite wringing her hands. For a happy supper party there was a lot of anguish here. I was tired enough to fall down. And us serfs hadn’t been offered a bite, not even with tons left over.
Then she said, “Zircons? Mrs. Brandau wore zircons?”
“Yes. The lady in the blue velvet dress, ma’am.” They paid me, got me a taxi back into Manhattan, making sure I had all my things.
Simple as that, and I’d earned a few dollars on the side. I was so pleased with myself. Like a million others, me and Americans were an instant success.
When I’m stupid I go all the way.
CHAPTER THREE
« ^ »
NEW York’s a collection of islands, then?”
Rose laughed, vivacious. The breeze along the boat kept blowing her hair. I’d have told her she was bonny, but she believed she was ordinary. They’re full of daft ideas. We were just docking after a circular trip round Manhattan.
“The song, Lovejoy! To the New York Islands…” She pointed across the Hudson River, singing about this land being her land or something.
“Oh, aye,” I exclaimed quickly so she’d know I’d only forgotten for a sec. “That barge?”
“Every day, Lovejoy. Garbage goes out on barges, dropped into the ocean. The city’s almost blocked with the stuff we New Yorkers throw out. Unbelievable.”
“I’m struck by the buildings.” And I was.
Everything in a new country’s astonishing, I know, but New York is beyond belief. Until then I’d only seen New York in rain. My images had been formed from cinemas, that skyline they always show you—skyscrapers, tugboats, traffic on those bridges, the same old longshot of people crossing that long street between blocks.
I now saw New York was beautiful, kaleidoscopically and mesmerizingly lovely.
Most of Manhattan’s buildings are no more than three or four storeys, all different. And the ferryboat had steamed between forested hillsides and cliffs studded with lovely houses, chalets, countryside so colourful it could have been Tuscany. I was so taken aback I’d asked Rose, “Are we still in New York?” when I’d run out of landmarks. Several people standing along the boat’s railings had turned and laughed, made jokey remarks.
“Not often New York gets such a good press, Lovejoy,” Rose said as we watched the docking. “Especially from a Californian.”
“Why not?”
She gazed at me. “East Coast and West Coast. Sibling rivalry.”
“Oh, that old thing.” I laughed, I thought convincingly.
The city seemed really… well, bright. Remade yet sound, not at all like the brash New World I’d expected. And such friendly people. Preconceptions are always wrong.
We got a taxi.
“Hey!” I’d spotted something. “There’s a pattern. Avenues north to south? Streets east to west?”
Rose laughed at my exitement. “Sure. The rule here.”
“And numbered!” I was more thrilled than Columbus. “In sequence!” How simple it all was.
“Except for Broadway,” the taxi driver cut in. “And lower n’ 14th Street’s real bad. Old-fashioned, y’know?”
He and Rose engaged in an incomprehensible dialogue about whether all even-numbered streets should all have eastbound traffic. I looked out. The place was heaving, for all that it was Sunday. Rose had told him to go round the southern tip of Manhattan to show me SoHo and Greenwich Village. I thought it all wonderful. And I was safe here, which was more than could be said for the place I’d left.
More parks and open spaces and different architectures than the parson preached about. I was exhilarated when we stopped in West 56th Street to disembark. I had an ugly moment of terror about the tip. Rose explained.
“A tenth, fifteen per cent if you’re pleased.”
We were standing in a quiet street outside an antiquarian bookshop of the name Hawkins. Hardly any traffic, and Rose looking distinctly flushed as she fumbled for a key. Why was she nervous? I’d not made any serious mistakes, not said the wrong thing.
“I work here, Lovejoy. I’d like you to see it.”
If she said so. I followed her up the steps into a pleasant but confined shop. She seemed a little breathless, talking too much.
“My sister’s business, really. She’s the one with the knowledge. I’m just a hanger-on.”
“Mmmh, mmmh,” I went, saying the books were really quite good, the usual lies. There’s a feel you get from reading old pages that you don’t from new. I thought Blake a swine until I read his own printing.
“That glass case holds Moira’s special sale stock.”
I paused. Nothing special, save a tatty copy of Martin Chuzzlewit. It bonged me like the first edition, which is fine but common. “Great,” I said heartily, trying to please.
“Of course, Moira dreams of the one really big find,” Rose said, switching lights on so I could be impressed all the more.
“Don’t we all, love,” I said with feeling. “Same back home. Er, in California.”
There was a desk at an angle between the cabinet and the door, with unanswered letters spread about.
“We have associates in England, France, Germany. Coffee?”
She had a silvery pot all ready, fresh milk in a carton, cups. Modern gunge.
“Please.” I didn’t like Rose’s let’s-pretend conversation. But that alone wasn’t what was worrying me.
One of the addresses I could see on the letters was not far from where I live. Lived.
“Moira’s on the trail of something now.” Rose already had the pot making a noise. I watched her.
“Special?”
“Something drastic, fantastic”
Oh, dear. I almost switched off. Antiques are an open invitation for every extraterrestrial to orbit in from Planet Greed. We’re all avaricious, wanting Tutankhamen’s gold bracelet for a song, dreaming of finding a Turner watercolour behind the wainscoting so we can ballock the boss and eagle off to Monte Carlo. And legends don’t help, teaching us about King Arthur’s lost crown, Shakespeare’s autobiography, the fabled gold ship lost in the North Sea. Newspapers make us worse, always full of little lads digging up early Christian silver chalices, old aunties discovering that their plain gilt earrings are the ones Cleopatra lost in the Nile, all that. You think I’m against romance? Work a week in antiques. You’ll get weary with reports of miraculous finds that turn out to be utter dross. It’s always somebody else’s exultant face under the banner headline, never mine.