Applause rang out for Mimi Welkinshaw's next striptease. I promised to call on Alice, and eeled into the maelstrom. Things had got on top of me. I wandered, listening and looking. I don't know about you, but when despond takes hold I seek the familiar.
Nostalgia soothes. I looked for Doctor Coffin, who used to lie down in a gilded coffin, and bought any antiques to do with death. The Victorians were great celebrants of mortality, so he did a roaring trade. He dressed as an undertaker, black everything, went for the cadaverous effect. He even had ghoul-riddled patter. Other dealers fed him comic lines: 'You'll be the death of me, Doc!' and he'd say, grinning, 'Promise?' to great hilarity. He's not been seen for donkey's years.
And there used to be a middle ager dressed up as a Navaho squaw. Probably got every detail and feather wrong, but she ran a neat Regency porcelain stall. Puntasia, she called herself. Always had one dazzler, a genuine antique -whoops! There she was! I stopped, joyous.
'Wotcher, Puntasia. How's it doing?'
'Better than you, Lovejoy!' She offered me her peace pipe. It's phoney, smokes like a burned barn and stinks worse. You have to accept it or she does a tomahawk war dance. 'Chatting up Alice? She knows zilch about your gemstone problem.'
Rumour is slow in some places. In Bermondsey it's quarky, if there's such a word. I choked on her pipe's carcinogenic filth.
'And you do?' What had Alice said about Chelsea? I guessed, fishing, 'My pal lost everything to somebody called Dieter Gluck, I hear.'
Puntasia took her peace pipe back and adjusted her feathered head-dress. 'Colette was doomed, Lovejoy. Ever heard of a younger bloke staying with an ageing tart? Always ends in tears. Don't go down Chelsea. It'll break your heart.'
The bobby dazzler on her barrow shone like the sun. A few dealers stopped to eye it with lust. I said nothing, just felt its warm clamour shudder through me. I've always been interested in pot pourris.
Back in older days, homes stank. Coaches, towns, rivers, alleyways, churches, schools, elegant ladies and their beaus ponged to high heaven. Factories were stews from hell.
Miracle of miracles, mankind bravely held on in the filth. In spite of all, civilization advanced by creating wonders. One genius was young Josiah Spode who, about 1762, managed the Turner and Banks pottery in Stoke- on-Trent in the English Midlands.
Risking his all on a dicey mortgage he bought the joint, and began experimenting. His talent made him a front runner, like Wedgwood. Under-glaze transfer printing,
'Staffordshire Blue', white pearl ware, his own blinding Spode blue, and his precise (never smudgy the way forgeries and fakes are) designs, made him a legend. His firm was always honest, even after he died in 1797. This is why antique dealers love Spode, because Spode marks are simple and never cunningly frilled to pretend they were the marks of other manufacturers. He had a Josiah Spode II and Josiah Spode III, and they copied Meissen, Chelsea, and others superbly. The plain fact is that old Spode spells money.
The pot pourri evolved in the smelly past. It's a container to hold mixtures of scented flowers and herbs. These mixtures were kept dry in England, but were wet on the Continent. It's still popular. Find one like Puntasia had on her stall, and you can sleep in next Monday morning. The most sought ones have two lids. One lid is fenestrated - has pierced holes so the lovely aroma will make your room fragrant. It is bigger than the solid inner lid, which is merely to keep the petals' perfume in. When a lady's gentleman was about to call, maidservants would rush about the house removing the inner lids and leaving the outer lids on the pot pourri vessels. The rooms would become scented, allowing romantic thoughts to bloom.
With a mute appeal to Puntasia - her name's a mixture of Fantasia and Pocahontas because she's daft on cartoon films -I removed the lids. Inverting the container I groaned. William Copeland joined Josiah Spode II as the eighteenth century turned.
The indented Spode mark changed to a painted Spode and Copeland, which met my eyes. You can't match the feeling. Just think of the romantic trystes this lovely porcelain had witnessed! Reverently I returned it, my vision misty.
'Genuine, Lovejoy?' Puntasia asked, real pity in her voice.
'Perfect, love. Give me first offer?'
'Can't, Lovejoy. You only pay in IOUs. How much should I ask?'
'As much as you like, love. That's Spode blue. Buy the market.'
'Good luck in Chelsea, Lovejoy.'
'Chelsea? Who said anything about going to Chelsea?'
Quickly I walked down Tower Bridge Road, crossed by the Old Kent Road, and eventually survived the maddening traffic at the Elephant and Castle, to catch the Tube.
If I'd the sense I was born with, I'd have raced to find Colette earlier. That doddering scrumper lady in the market had reminded me of her, yet I hadn't taken my mind's hint. Colette, my 'old pal', was the rich owner I once made smiles with. When in trouble, reach for money.
The journey took minutes, just long enough to think of Colette.
5
THE STEAM HAD left me. I felt lost, my head 'filled with jolly robins' as Gran used to say. She stored up various proofs of this, like proving the same theorem over and over.
I didn't mind. She knew where she stood. 'Vague, do what's necessary,' she used to say, moving about our one room. 'Idle, get on with it.'
London's traffic gets worse. I stood at Tottenham Court Road, where William Blake walked and wrote his poems about Innocence and Experience, meaning, I think, their opposites. A street lady slid past. 'Want business,
