Just before everything closed one day Tinker found a small piece of pietra dura in Jeff Archer's shop in the antiques arcade. We shot over, me blathering halting explanations to Maria. Jeff's a pleasant bloke who lives with a young blind woman in Arlesford. He has the most phenomenal luck. I don't actually believe in luck, but there's a lot of it about.
'Wotcher, Lovejoy.' Jeff shoved a small gold box on the counter. Tinker took the quid I slipped him and faded like grinning mist, duty done. 'Genuine Florentine, seventeenth century.'
'Pietra dura.' The lovely pictorial stone was beautifully laid on the box lid. 'But Derbyshire, early nineteenth.“
'Sure?'
In raptures, I began to explain how the Duke of Devonshire's fluospar mines actually made a continuous profit but the resultant craftsmanship never quite matched Italian work. You can't help being enthusiastic.
I came to feeling my smile dying on my face. Maria was looking at me. Shoppers were dwindling all around, pausing only for a glance on their way through the Arcade to the bus station. Nothing seemed wrong, but there again was that wrong feel. As if she was comparing me with… with…?
I guessed, 'Wrong declension?'
'No, Lovejoy.' She was holding my arm. 'But I just can't see it.' She sounded helpless.
'You have such potential. You could be doing so much—'
I dragged her to one side. I've had all this before and you can't let it get a hold of you.
All this reasonable criticism can be very corrosive if it isn't soldered shut. Fast. Jeff hastily busied himself in a corner.
'You ever heard of love, Maria?'
'Love?'
'Yes. That stuff two people occasionally make.“ I saw her almost imperceptible nod.
'Antiques are it. Love's not a feeling, or a mystic dream. And sometimes,' I finished brutally, 'antiques are the only true pieces of love some people can ever find. So don't knock them. Okay?'
'But—'
'Shut it,' I said savagely. I drew back then, looking at the ground because I could feel people staring, thinking we'd had a row. An elderly couple were going tut-tut.
Maria thought. 'I hope you're wrong, Lovejoy.'
'Women always do.'
She was glancing round Jeff's antiques with new eyes. 'Which antique do you like best, Lovejoy?'
'The next, love.'
She looked back at me then, and asked sadly, 'And is there no stopping?'
I had the strange notion she was asking me something about herself. I hadn't a notion what. Not then.
'You mean relax?' I snorted. 'Sooner or later we relax for ever. What's the point of starting early?' My answer did not please her.
She said abruptly, 'I think that's enough for today, Lovejoy.' Jeff was relieved it hadn't come to blows and took my promissory note for a deposit on the lovely box. He was glad to see the back of us.
Maria walked with me through the churchyard to her car. She seemed morose, withdrawn for some reason though I could have sworn I'd got the grammar more or less right. Her skin looked drawn and tired, her eyelids developing a faint crinkled texture as if she had begun to age. Normally she'd have been gunning verbs or rattling off sentences for me to construe, but she drove in silence right to my cottage garden. I got out in a bit of a huff because guilt makes you feel bad, especially if it's someone else's. I've always been able to get rid of my own pretty quick.
'Look,' I said miserably. 'If it's another bad report—'
She averted her head and started to reverse. 'Just put the kettle on, Lovejoy,' she ordered wearily. 'While I bring my things.'
I said, 'Eh?' but she simply drove off up the lane leaving me standing there feeling a pillock and wondering if I'd heard right.
Then I went in with the dusk falling round the cottage like a huge coverlet, and frantically began tidying up before she came.
* * *
That was how Maria and I really began. And I really loved her. I honestly mean that.
We lasted until they gave me my final examination. I've already said how I screwed (I mean obtained) the result from Maria.
Six next evening Arcellano came, dead on time.
CHAPTER 4
After the previous day's examination Miss McKim had given a little teaparty. All eighty of us stood about with little fingers hooking air, and trying to look as though we were in a rave-up. Miss McKim made a tearful little speech. We gave her a bunch of flowers and a book token. Hyacinth shook me by giving me a ruler which she had decorated in oils. In return I gave her a hair slide of brilliants in a bow-shaped setting, only 1870-ish but quite bonny. In the final farewells she whispered to me that she quite understood about Mrs Peck and me because after all it was Only Natural These Days, though I should be On My Guard Against Duplicity. I wish now I'd listened to her warning. She kissed my ear, her specs practically gouging my right eye out. Everybody shook hands with everybody while Jingo Hardy boomed a last speech full of jokes in bits of everybody's languages so we all understood two per cent. Old Fotheringay creaked out a farewell poem in Latin modelled on Catullus, while we applauded at the wrong place. We'd all clubbed for theatre tickets to give all our teachers. Then it was break up and goodbye.
* * *
Next day with Maria gone by eleven the cottage felt bare. It only looked the same. For a while I hung about and walked the garden, gave the robin his cheese and all that.
There was no trace of her anywhere. She might simply never have been there at all, never crooked her fingers in midair when we made love, never called exhortations against my neck, never uttered hoarse cries for the light to be switched on… Finally I couldn't stand it and walked through the drizzle to the pub.
Tinker brought the suitcase to the Queen's Head about one o'clock. It was there that I was called to the phone in the saloon bar and heard Arcellano's voice telling me he would be at the cottage by six. From the background noise I guessed he was at some airport or other.
My money used to come in an envelope simply marked 'Lovejoy'. I still had my final envelope, and snared the gelt with Tinker. I told him I'd be away a few days.
'With that bird with the big bristols, Lovejoy?' He nearly fell into his pint at this witticism, his only joke.
'Very droll, Tinker,' I said. 'Remember. While I'm away buy nothing. Just look out for musical boxes, William IV jewellery and anything that even smells of Nabeshima porcelain.'
'Christ.'
'And try for commemorative plaques, especially any with town names. There's word of some being unloaded in Coggeshall soon. And dancing automata. You'll find two already at Southwold, but don't touch them because they're crap. Somebody's subbed them.'
'Bastards.' Tinker spoke with feeling. 'Subbing' means to replace a few parts of an antique with modern bits. Do it often enough and you have all the spare bits for a genuine original. It is done most often—for this read always—in the field of watches and clocks, automata, early scientific instruments, and early printed books where it's done by dissecting pages. Dealers call this illegal process 'twinning', though that's illogical because you finish up with 'antiques' of different ages.
I drew breath to tell Tinker to keep an eye out for a rumoured Brescian miquelet-flint pistol but that made me think of modern weapons which made me think of revolvers which made me think of Arcellano so I shut up.
Tinker got the vibes. 'Want me to come wiv yer, Lovejoy?'
'No,' I said. 'I'm in enough trouble.'
He would have, though, if I said yes. What he didn't know was that he and the rest—