mouth, graciously tilted his head so that his shelt wouldn't have too far to reach with the lighter, puffed smoke to share his carcinogens, and left saying, 'Pay the lazy sod seven days.'
And that was that. I'd be able to buy Iana's Minton cup. I'd square my conscience later.
I always invent excellent reasons for surrender. I bought the Minton cup from Iana, endured her tearful farewell, and left on the London train after an equally tearful farewell from Cathy to whom I sold the Minton cup for twice what I'd paid Iana. I also was in tears, because the Minton is the most exquisite early pottery you'll ever see. Tip: if you find a piece that seems greyish instead of pure white, and is troubled by little black flecks, then you've got in your hand one of the most important pieces in the history of the world. Phone any Minton collector, and he'll run up panting, bulging wallet at the ready.
Having to sell it broke my heart, but I exacted a promise from Cathy that she'd give me first refusal. I made her swear on everything she held dear, and I didn't believe a word.
I'd have sealed it with loving smiles, but her bloke was in. He's a mechanic hooked on axles and carburettors. Cars that actually go, he thinks a waste of time.
It was on that fatal train that I read - the lady opposite had a newspaper - of Holloway University's criminal sale of their vast heritage of Old Masters. I went berserk. The lady was called Shar, a lawyer, astonished at my anger. I said I'd hire her to sue Holloway University. Which is how I got arrested, bound over to keep the peace, three days late for my doomed encounter in the antique street markets.
These markets look the soul of innocence, street barrows lined up under merry bunting.
In fact they can be scary, while seeming the friendliest places on earth. You've been warned. Much good warnings ever do, though. When greed and antiques meet everybody ignores warnings. Like me, like you. Into antiques, in Olde London Toon.
2
SOMETIMES, EVERYTHING SEEMS the opposite of what we're told. That Benedictine monk Dom Perignon, experimenting with double fermentation, is supposed to have sipped his prototype champagne and yelled out, 'Come here! I'm tasting the stars!' Did he really? What are the odds he actually called out, 'This batch is no good, lads!
Another failure!' then sat there alone in his cellar cackling his head off and wickedly swilling it all back himself? You can't help thinking.
Free of Shar, I inhaled the London antique market's perfumed air. Pure nectar, aroma of the gods. Paradise, but where you can lose your shirt. You might be in raptures thinking you've finally collared that missing Da Vinci and made zillions, when in fact you've just mortgaged your whole future and put your children into penury.
It's still life's most glorious arena.
Across the Bermondsey greensward, by St Mary Magdalene church, with twittering birds pecking among the tombstones, you see warehouses, antique shops. But the main feature delighting your eye is shoals - no other word - of stalls, stalls as far as vision allows. Among them drift two or three thousand hopefuls. You hear every language under the sun - Greek, Italian, French, Chinese. The globe flocks.
To find it, go to lower Bridge. Walk south down Tower Bridge Road. Takes you fifteen minutes. I'd advise you to take sandwiches, because you may never leave. There's tales of folk who've turned up with an hour to kill before zooming home to Rotterdam, wherever, and simply stayed. Everyone's dazzled by the antiques, forgeries, collectibles, the sheer exhilaration of hundreds of stalls bulging with antiques. It is concentrated wonderment.
The good cheer is ineffable, if that's the right word. Euphoria rules. Stallholders joke, laugh, arguing good- naturedly about everything on earth from corruption to cricket.
Here, an old lady wears a tall Ascot topper with serene aplomb. Over there's a delectable lady in enticing attire, and everywhere's noise and pandemonium with - I assure you - some utterly genuine antiques among the dross.
Lesson for today: Go to Bermondsey at six a.m. Fridays. It dwindles about noon. Other days, you've to roam in warrens of converted warehouses and godowns near the green.
Oddly, the indoor stallholders are less jovial than the open-air barrow folk. Is it the gypsy element, some thrill of travelling as opposed to the lurk? Dunno. But go there, best entertainment on this planet. Not only that, but you might finish up with a priceless silver salver or that porcelain Worcester jug you just know is waiting. (Sorry.
I've just realized this reads like an advertisement. Won't let it happen again.) I made for a bloke who might help me. Crooks first, saints second. A warning, though: never in the field of human nonsense is so much gunge being sold as antique. Even in a posh listed auction, only 3 per cent will be genuine. The rest will be bodge-ups, twinners, or downright fakes. Never, never ever, is more than one in ten genuine.
Sir Ponsonby P. Ponsonby, Bart. - no prize for guessing that middle initial - was there, bold as brass. He's a florid bloke of forty, has a stall on the Corner Green, a little triangular plot beyond the main market. You go up three steps to it. Make sure you don't fall off the raised little plateau, where eager tourists sometimes come a cropper.
Kindly souls rush to help you up, meanwhile nicking your purse, wallet, and every credit card and groat you possess. Subtlemongers, our ubiquitous pickpockets, are about, so beware.
'Wotcher, Sir Ponsonby.'
'Lovejoy, old sport! What brings you to this urban decay?'
He seemed delighted to see me. Sir Ponsonby was once headmaster of an imposing public school - which every other country calls private - and was deposed for embezzling funds. He's never looked back. He dresses flamboyantly - deerstalker hat, Sherlock Holmes cape of expensive Harris tweed, plus-fours and spats. He sports a monocle, muttonchop whiskers, knows Ancient Greek, Latin. He's one of the few stallholders in this most fabled antiques market to sport his own sign above his barrow.
The rest go anonymous into the good fight, or have discreet cards.
One reservation: Sir P wears wren's feathers in his hat. It's a hideous country custom.
St Stephen's Day, village lads beat the hedgerows, chanting a gleeful ancient rhyme -
