The Grace in Older Women (16 page)

Whereupon Henry returned to Rome and lived in offensive opulence.
He forgot his former holy vows somewhat in personal pleasures, styling himself
'Henry the Ninth' with six-horse coaches and liveried servants, courtesy of
handouts drawn on Coutts, the London bankers, paid by Great Britain's kindly
King George. Go to Canova's grand marble monument in St Peter's in Rome to see
the end of the story. It was compassionately ordered in 1819 by the future
George IV. See what I mean, myths being their own opposite?

Oh, I make excuses for Charlie. His dad, James VIII (Scotland) and
III (England), lived on handouts from Italian monarchs - not easy. Charlie's
mum, the Polish Princess Clementina Sobieska, was demented by James's
womanizing. They had terrible rows - James accused her of infamous tyranny,
called her a hypocrite because she finally hopped it while he was carousing
with Lady Inverness et al. Poor Little Charlie.

It gets you down. Legends ought to be romantic.

I checked my appearance in the cracked mirror, ignored the
symbolism, replaced the trapdoor, and went to the pub, wondering where the heck
my planning talents had gone.

Vasco was in the Marquis of Granby, a stroke of luck. He's a
discouraging dealer from Aldeburgh and is a mine of forgery fact and fiction. A
rough hunched bloke, he always looks just back from bear hunting.

'Wotch, Vasco.' I shook my head with reluctance at Marion. She
smiled, drew me an ale, mouthed that I could owe her.

'Wish they'd do that for me, Lovejoy,' Vasco said glumly.

'Jacobites?' I asked, toasting Marion.

'Good or dud?'

'Either, preferably the former.'

'Christ,' he said, turning to look at me. Until then he'd only
watched me in the bar mirror. 'Into money?'

'Clients have. Remember those Stuart glasses I engraved?'

'Mmmh. Rose with two buds on one, Amen verse on the other?'

'Remember where they went?' I'd actually sent them to the coast by
Tinker to a collector. These two engravings are the commonest on genuine
crystal Jacobite glasses. The rose is England, the two buds the Old and Young
Pretenders. Verses that end with Amen are the ones to go for. 'I hated doing
them. They were genuine old drinking glasses. Made them something they
weren't.'

'Don't be daft, Lovejoy. Their value upped six thousand per cent.
Dutch bloke bought them outright.'

'What else's sold lately?'

'Jacobite?' He shrugged. 'Sod all. A pendant, lock of Charlie's
hair, ha-ha-ha. One of his dud poems about Drinking not Thinking, but the
parchment didn't look right. Too yellow, probably Doothie's work. He's gone mad
on bloody saffron. Somebody ought to have a word with him. Give us all a bad
name.'

'Well, he's getting on.'

'He should age parchment like you do. That dehydration.'

That made me anxious. The trick is to make it feel friable. Any
chemistry book tells you how. 'Shush, Vasco. What else?'

He thought. 'The only other Jacobite was a little table,
triangular. Opened out on lopers to a six-sider. Had a drawer. Supposedly from
Holyrood Castle.'

'That's rare,' I said, awed. 'What wood?'

'Walnut, lovely turned stretchers, three legs. Went for nine
thousand quid to some Columbian importer.'

Which made me swallow, because that too was one of mine. Corinth
had sold it for me on commission. Montgomery, her sniffer, told me it'd gone
for four thousand. I'd got twenty-five per cent. My debtors heard the glad
tidings and came a-running. Of all the antique tables - and there's a maddening
variety - the triangular-to-hexagon table is without doubt the most useless.
It's small, a triangular flat top on three turned walnut legs. The surface
unfolds in three flaps to form a hexagon, the flaps supported on lopers (that
is, slides). Three rods, stretchers, connect the legs for strength. Lovely, and
a devil to make properly, but rare. I’d made a drawer beneath one side - only
one, because the table's triangular so you can't have three; there isn't room.
Lovely but useless, nothing but trouble. It needs intensive care when you use
it. Must have driven maids-of-all out of their minds in case it toppled when
they served.

'Corinth's lately interested in Jacobites,' Vasco said.

Come to think of it, she'd commissioned the triangular table from
me. I'd been glad. Forgery does wonders when you're starving.

I no longer cared now. 'Who's interested in Whistlejack?’

'The big Stubbs painting? Everybody, Lovejoy. But that priory's
security's like a bullion bank.'

'Hard, eh?'

'The lads tried last Christmas. Got nowhere. Alarms, radar,
heat-seekers. It's a pig.' He sounded grieved, as a baulked antique dealer will
when proud possessors guard their antiques from robbers. 'A special gallery to
itself.'

'Tough indeed, Vasco.' I had a grim thought. If it was so
difficult, why did Ashley and Roberta Battishall want me? Surely not to help
them actually nick the damned thing? I went cold. I managed to swallow with the
help of my ale. 'Look, Vasco.' I lowered my voice further as a crowd came in on
a gust of laughter. Scouse Oliver was among them, a pleasant dealer eager to
make a fortune before he was thirty. He'd done it by robbery with violence, and
now was trying antiques. He gets off on technicalities.

'Corinth doing anything at Fenstone?'

Vasco snorted. 'Middle Snoring, Lovejoy? I'm sick to death of the
bloody place.' He wagged a hand to Marion, who came across to refill. 'I had
four offers of antiques, turned up to collect, and they'd already gone.'

My groan was heartfelt, not acted. 'That's terrible.'

He almost wept in self-pity. 'That Dame Millicent should keep her
farm going without dabbling in antiques.'

'Aye.' Fervently I blessed my instincts. Jubilation made me add
something I immediately wished I hadn't. 'Tryer said the same thing. Must have
been the same woman. Big landowner beyond Fenstone proper?'

He eyed me in a way I didn't like. 'Tryer? The Sex Museum nut with
that ugly cow whatshername?'

'Chemise, aye.' I felt something was wrong, wanted to get away.

I’d missed some vibe, and I wasn't sure what. 'He was getting
ready to leave when I bumped into him.'

‘That so.’ His eyes in the bar mirror were looking.

Getting out smiling, cheerily waving to Scouse Oliver and his
pals, a merry carefree soul, was the hardest thing I've ever done. I'd promised
to return the Misses Dewhurst's old Morris Minor, but instead decided to drive
to Juliana Witherspoon, hardworking spinster of Fenstone and pillar of the
Church. I got a yard. The Americans were crowded on the pavement outside,
listening to Gwena, our town guide.

‘. . . Queen Boadicea's wild Iceni tribesmen stormed the town,'
she was saying. 'And on this very spot crucified the Romans - '

'Lovejoy!' Hilda cried, joyously enveloping me. 'Vernon! Look
who's here!' She rounded on Gwena, who was suddenly guilty. 'You said he'd gone
abroad, young lady!'

'No, Hilda.' I surfaced for breath and beamed. Gwena hates me
because her older sister Tarlene lends me a groat now and again. But what's
charity for? It's holy, for Christ's sake. I vaguely recalled, didn't this lot
owe me breakfast? 'No, Hilda love. They tried to hire me for, er, the Amsterdam
antiques meeting. But I insisted on staying. To see you.'

'Fantastic, Lovejoy!' Hilda cried. They crowded round, talking excitedly.
'We'll be just in time!'

'How long we got?' Vernon checked a fob watch. Lovely, old. That
explained the vibes when we'd met.

'One hour, Vernon. Let's go!' cried Hilda.

Beatific, I smiled at Gwena. We left her fuming on the pavement.

14

They had a small coach, fifteen seater for four couples and two
extra women. Age range oh, sixtyish down to thirties. Chatty, going for laughs
as all Americans do when mobhanded. Hilda asked what I'd done to my mouth. I
milked sympathy telling them I'd stumbled in the dark, which got us onto street
lighting. They had strong views. As we pulled away from the fuming Gwena we
were into suing town councils for street maintenance. God, but Yanks are
litigious. They know their rights.

We left town on the eastern trunk road to the estuaries. Then we
swung north after a mile or two, coastward but more rural. All in all, a
journey shortened by needling, quips, their mood of banter. But I was glad when
we made it to the destination.

Except I hated it.

Dragonsdale's no place for me. Rural, bonny river, thatched
cottages, fourteenth-century flintstone church, farms, a forest sulking
black-green on the horizon, utterly countrified. I groaned miserably as we
climbed down.

'Oh, Lovejoy!' Hilda exclaimed, tears starting. 'Isn't this the most
pretty, well, England you ever did see?'

‘Aye.' Enthusiasm has limits.

'Don't be shy, Lovejoy, boo-oah,' said Vernon. 'That scene is
straight out of the most famed landscape Old Masters.'

'It's so. . .
sweet
,”
cried Mahleen, a fortyish lady with gold, literally shiny gold, teeth, and gold
pendant earrings that touched her shoulders. She wore a gold scarf and had, I
assure you, gold-flecked hair on a gold pony tail bee. Her stockings had gold
clocks, her heels shone gold. Her astrakhan coat had gold cuffs. She smiled
gold lipstick. I thought her gorgeous, though her pals were critical. They made
laughing comments. She gave as good as she got.

'Glad you like it.' I wondered why the little lane we'd stopped in
was familiar. Two cottages, a distant farmhouse, the church a furlong off. Not
deserted by any means, but definitely rural.

Mahleen called her Wilmore, a chubby Friar Tuck, always losing his
spectacles so he couldn't see a damned thing. He loved golf, and more golf.
That's all that can be said of any golfer, anywhere. He admired the countryside
in smiling silence, mentally laying out yet more golflinks.

'Brilliant country, Mahleen,' Wilmore said. Two eighteens, before
my very eyes.'

Then why not get on with it? I couldn't help thinking. A clubhouse,
concrete car parks, lights and civilization out here instead of those silent
watching trees, that lurking river, hedgerows shielding vast acres from
encroaching mankind. Bring in the neon lights, let roads shove our boundaries
out, eliminate Nature's unknown.

'Now, where is it?' Hilda the Organizer demanded of the driver, a
taciturn uniformed man hunched from years at his wheel.

'End place, lady.'

'This wayeeee!' cried Hilda, and we were off down the lane.

We walked in the ruts. No vehicles this way evidently, except to
make deliveries. Mahleen quizzed me, should she pay Jox to be made a dame or
not? I said it was up to her, recalling meeting Hilda and Vern at Jox's daft
fraud. I was beginning to work out whether I ought to start it up myself,
actually, because Mahleen's friend Wilhelmina-same age, but blues, no gold -
from New Jersey said she'd been seriously thinking of forking out for a
ladyhood. The price Jox had quoted her set me coughing, especially as I was
still owed for dressing up like a pillock.

'Howdy!' Jox thundered, speak of the devil, emerging.

The group enthused greetings. Jox shook hands. I'd never seen so
much handshaking. Americans never stop.

'And Lovejoy!' he said, abruptly less hearty.

'Wotcher, Jox.'

'I
love
that wotcher,
Lovejoy.' That from Nadette, a slender business lady, always well groomed, from
Ark-an-saw, 'not like this bunch.' It always got a laugh. 'We need Lovejoy
along because he's a natural. Ain't that so, Jerry?'

'Sure is.' Jerry, her husband, never smiled. He seemed gloomy, except
for his plus fours, chequerboard shirt and yellow boater.

'Good!' Jox's enthusiasm fell further. I wondered, natural? 'Mr.
Hopestone is waiting where it actually happened.’

That set them off speculating nineteen to the dozen. I hadn't a
notion what we were going to see. Something rustic? As long as it wasn't
gruesome, like a two-headed calf. I followed, Mahleen asking about my divvying
gift.

'It's nothing,' I said, wary lest I was dragged into something else.
I had that silver ditchery to do for Sabrina, some partnership thing to arrange
with the Misses Dewhurst, Beth to con out of her antique Bilston enamels,
Tinker to find - where the hell was the old soak? -and discover who was going
to steal
Whistlejack
. And see
Juliana, see if she truly was a forger.

'It sure is!' she insisted. 'You tell me, or I'll - '

'I get a sick feeling from a genuine antique.'

'See?' she breathed, but Wilmore was ogling the landscape with a
developer's theodolite eyes. 'Lovejoy's
real!
’

'This land for sale, Lovejoy?' Wilmore asked.

'Hush up!' Mahleen spat in golden fury. 'This isn't speculator
land, Wilmore! This is
family
land.
History!'