confiding phone chats, at some station or theatre. By then he's got her address, of course, for haven't they exchanged letters?
While she's on her way to Mayfair for that ground-breaking hand-holding lunch, all eager, Wrinkle the swine turns up at her house and steals whatever antiques he can cram into his Ford van. The lone bone.
Meanwhile, he creates his fakes in London's Spitalfields.
'Is that you, Lovejoy?' He looked bleary.
'I bawled my name, Wrinkle. It was a clue.'
'Look.' He tried to block my way. I'm a bit pushed.'
'That what they call it?'
I shoved in anyway, and immediately halted at the most glorious sight. Not the middle-aged lady in her nip, but a magnificent array of furniture. I went giddy as vibes shook me. For one second I thought he'd discovered some way to fake genuine antiques.
Then I saw three pieces of ancient furniture against the side wall. They were his models, and genuine. My shivering knees almost let me down. I sat on a stool.
The workshop was no bigger than the ground-floor area of your house, say. The centre held the workbench where I'd seen Wrinkle, er, hard at it. On the left wall furniture was stacked. It looked desiccated, practically ready to fall to powder.
Don't know if you're into Chinese antiques, but it's certainly where money is, these switchback days. Before communism fragged, all interest was in porcelains. After the 1980s, though, Chinese furniture - pottery too - soared. Dealers everywhere spoke about Ching Dynasty (1644 to 1912 - think from our Great Civil War to King Edward VII) and Ming (preceding, to 1368). In the USA, it was Ching time in the Rockies.
Dealers went doolally for Chinese furniture and porcelain. Europe bulged with artefacts robbed from Chinese tombs. Folk say China has eight million burial sites, of which 99.5
per cent remain unlooted', archaeologists licking their lips like it's their duty to ruin ruins. The figure's important, since in 1974 a serf blundered into the Terracotta Army of over seven thousand massive figures in a huge underground City of Burials. That peasant was honest - I'm not kidding, there is such a thing - and told his guv'nors.
Wholesale looting began.
China was displeased. Beheadings followed. So stern did China become about this, that if some kulak was found homeward plodding his weary way with a Warrior's terracotta head in his knapsack he himself would suffer the same gruesome penalty. Did the looting of tombs and archaeological sites halt? Certainly not. Peasants simply got the message: If authorities executed a starving villein simply for stealing an earthenware figure, it meant something earth-shaking. It meant the figure was valuable. Lovejoy's formula: hunger + treasure = loot.
Loot exports boomed. Hong Kong was doing its stuff. Exports hurtled merrily to dealers everywhere. Then the oddest thing happened.
During the 1980s and 1990s Chinese unglazed earthenware tomb figures became common. They were in every dealer's window, on every collector's shelf. Their value tumbled. Small figures costing the price of a good new car in 1980 wouldn't buy a respray by 1995. But furniture? Furniture soared, and soared. And kept on.
A hardwood yokeback armchair in pretty good nick would have cost you the price of a mere week's holiday twenty years before the millennium. And they were common. You simply phoned Hong Kong, paid your four hundred dollars, and took delivery. Then China realized. Simultaneously, Hong Kong's lease ebbed. And the price of that hardwood curved-spine squarish chair? It rose hundredfold. If rare, like your folding swing-pin hardwood sitter that museums fight tooth and nail for, you're into half a million US zlotniks, and pay your own security guards. The prices, and the scarcity, have got worse.
Enter Wrinkle. I honestly don't know where he gets his woods from, but they're good.
The usual ones are what we call huang-hua-lee (dunno what it means). There's some called zee-tan - ditto - and of course a whole variety of Indonesian and illicit Burmese redwoods and mahoganies. One piece already finished took my breath away.
'Here, Wrinkle,' I gasped. 'That's zylopia wood!'
Zylopia's curiously coloured, hard and tough. I went closer and peered. Its grain is tight, close, and very straight.
You can get it fairly easily from importers. Except it comes from Africa, and is often a curious grey. Using zylopia was a stroke of genius, saving the need for dehydrating and staining all in one go.
He reddened, shrugged. 'I'm in a hurry, Lovejoy. A friend's lending me the gelt. Make hay while the sun shines, eh?'
'Doesn't it pick up when you're working it?' I was fascinated.
Picking up is horrible. It means the wood tends to break away where the grain interlocks or crosses. A forger's nightmare, and a real giveaway.
'Terrible, Lovejoy. You have to be so careful.'
Wrinkle's lifetime ambition, I might add, is to fake all the main variants of furniture design of the Ming and Ching periods. One example of each, in the right woods. He'd done about twenty-six when he'd defaulted on paying for the Angelica Kauffmann panel I'd done.
'How many so far, Wrinkle?'
'Thirty-seven, Lovejoy. Nine to go.'
Full of admiration, I whistled. A true craftsman, he uses original methods, tries to make the right glues. He even makes his own tools.
'Got my money, Wrinkle?'
His innocent eyes blinked. 'Money, Lovejoy?'
