I grabbed him by the throat. A woman's voice said drowsily, 'What's the matter?'
In the corner was a vast four-poster bed, four blunt-S shaped legs, carved low railings top and bottom. It was beautiful (I mean the bed). The lady stirred. Now, this was a forgery (the bed) but wondrously done. It was a year's job, piercing and slaving (t.b.). I walked over. The surface could have been ancient, powdery in places just like the real thing.
The joints had come away from contracture and shrinkage. The surface edges looked genuine. Only the absence of my bells told it was a fake.
Wrinkle had discovered his own ageing process. I had tears in my eyes. 'Beautiful, mate.'
'Why, thank you kind sir,' she fluttered.
'Not you, you silly cow,' I said. 'The wood.'
She sat up and glared. I touched the genuine three pieces against the opposite wall. I knew where he'd got those. They were from a colonel's elderly widow in Norfolk. He'd met her through his lonely hearts ploy, got them as a gift. The curvature of Chinese arms is just that little bit odder than on our furniture. I came to.
'Can't you hang on a month, Lovejoy? You'll get your money.'
'How do you shrink this wood, Wrinkle?'
There's a rough rule that wood cut in the long axis of its grain shrinks only one per cent. Wood cut radially, 2 to 7 per cent. Cut it tangential, it can shrivel up to 15 per cent. This is why old oak pews hurt your bottom when the sermon drones on - the dowel pegs poke up after a century by as much as an eighth of an inch. This is why church seats ladder ladies' stockings and scag your trousers.
'Got a good Far East supplier.'
'Excuse me!' This harridan stormed up. 'I've spoken to you three times and you've ignored me!'
It was Wrinkle's woman, presumably the one 'helping' him with gelt. Close to she was even bonnier.
'It's only Lovejoy, Honor,' Wrinkle said, fumblingly brought out a note. 'Here. On account.'
'I need it all, Wrinkle. I'm skint.'
Honor was wrapped in a large towel, furious. 'I'll pay you, Lovejoy. Then you get right out of here!'
She wrote a cheque. I demanded she write her address on the back, said so-long, wished Wrinkle luck, caught the bus to Liverpool Street station.
Where the bank politely informed me that there was no such account. The cheque was phoney. They politely asked me to wait while the police arrived. I politely said I'd just go to the loo, and eeled out into the street. Infallible at antiques, excellent at forgeries, useless with money.
And with people? Dud, dud.
6
ODD HOW RELIEVED I was to catch the Tube away from the street-barrow life I love.
Old enemies, old friends, make me tick. Yet here I was, jostled by commuters and tourists, heading out of my natural grotty world into the sleek wonderland of Chelsea's glamorous King's Road.
The King's Road, Chelsea, starts at Sloane Square and heads south-west, towards Parsons Green. Oddly, road maps number its upper stretch A3217 and its lower the A308, but this is only cartographers having us on. They make changes in case we cotton on that they've no real job. Incidentally, note that definite article - The King's Road, like there's no other. It's deserved, for the King's Road, Chelsea, has its own peculiar message. That message has only one word in it, but is utterly vital: Money.
Nowhere else in the antiques world does money bend behaviour more than in pricey, spicy, decidedly dicey Chelsea, where Cheyne Walk runs from Cremorne Gardens along Old Father Thames to the suave Embankment. If ever you stroll this way, keep your hand on your ha'penny, as folk say, because every single thing is expensive, from the stones beneath your feet to the windows gazing haughtily down onto thronged serfs hoofing glumly below. Money rules.
In spite of all, it's gorgeous in ways that other streets aren't. Chelsea's antiques shops, their facades announce snootily to us hoi polloi, not only have made it but also have it made. Provincials like me snort derision at some signs. I mean, The Original Chelsea Antiques Market (EST. 1967), for God's sake? A grocer in our local East Anglian town says how badly his business fared during the war. 'Yes, sir, 1648 was a bad year,' he'll sigh with regret, 'on account of disturbances concerning the late King…' and so forth.
You are expected to understand that Mr Gunton of course means the Great Civil War, and the late King Charles I. So Chelsea's antiques mart hardly dates from the Dark Ages. But it's a commercial law that touristy venues must claim themselves ancient, even if they're not.
Outside on the pavement, I felt the peals. Because of worries collected in Bermondsey I stoically walked on past 'London's Oldest Antiques Market', as it advertises, Mon-Sat, etc, thinking aye, make that claim among the traders of Camden Passage or Whitechapel and you'd be for it.
One place I'd not visited for a while was The Furniture Cave. The ruinous music that dins you is enough to drive you to drink, but its antiques are reward enough - if you have money. Another of my laws is: Fakes recede in gelt's gleam (meaning the more affluent the antiques shop, the less likely you are to happen on a fake). I honestly mean it. You can lay odds that in the King's Road forgeries are less common than in grotty flea markets.
But I'd a job to do. I had to find Colette, and quickly get some sanity into my troublesome little jaunt. London's antiques venues are droolsome, sure, but the prices I saw coded everywhere were giving me a headache. I even managed to march, eyes averted, past 'Antiquarius', where they cram their stands too densely with antiques.
Life's a pig. I was heartbroken, feeling the bonging of antiques as I forced on past.
And came at last to Lovely Colette Antiques, Ltd. My spirits rose. The sign was now silver on sap green, where it used to be scarlet, but that only made me smile. Colette was a traditionalist. I pinged the door and entered smiling, knowing she'd be delighted to see me. Once a duckegg, always. It's another of my laws, but like a fool I forgot it.
'Hello?' I called, quite at home. 'Colette? Arthur?'
