'Ferget it, mate.' He was already off down the alley, as if rescuing me was nothing.
'He's called Sturffie.' His pal gave a cackle. 'Nasty piece of work.'
'Ta, then.' I knew better than use his name without his sayso.
Later, I'd bumped into him, him surprised when he'd realized I too was in antiques.
Cockneys can be gents, despite rough edges, and he never asked. I was pleased to get a definite bonging vibration from his barrow.
'How much?' I picked up the tea caddy. It was solid fruitwood, shaped like a pear but the size of a large coconut.
'Forty quid,' he said, looking at me.
Its lid opened, genuine lovely interior, lovely handmade hinge as genuine as the day it was made two centuries before. The best tea caddies were made of fruitwood, shaping the final container to match the fruit. If you're lucky, you get apple-shaped tea caddies of applewood, pear-shaped ones of pearwood, and so on. Lovely big ones are rare, rare. The last one I'd seen was found in an old rector's study. He'd used it as a tobacco jar. It sold straight off for three thousand quid, no haggling. Tea was anciently regarded as a most important herb, full of magic potency for health, sexual power, heaven knows what and consequently went for unbelievable sums. I passed a surreptitious hand, palm down, over Sturffie's tea caddy. He saw my gesture, the dealer's universal sign to keep it back for a fortune.
If Sturffie hadn't been a pal, I would have bought. As it was, leaving it there broke my heart.
'Ta, Lovejoy. Can't afford it, eh?' he said, jocular, because the woman on the next barrow might have caught my sign. He put it in his capacious pocket, which was even more of a giveaway, but that was his business.
We talked of this and that, me telling him I was up in London to buy gems and I'd see him later. Then I went to the nosh van to meet Sir Ponsonby. I noticed the exquisite Moiya December (Miss) on guard at his barrow.
Going through the market is always hard. I took my time, not wanting folk jumping to the conclusion that I'd come specifically to see Sir P. Traders who knew I was a divvy were keen for me to prove their wares 100 per cent genuine and therefore highly valuable, while buyers wanted me to pretend that the antiques they wanted to buy were worthless, to lower the price. The best, and riskiest, game on earth.
Sir Ponsonby was sitting on a low wall eating bacon and eggs from a silver tray. He brings his own cutlery, cup and saucer, milk jug. Tourists photograph him in mid-nosh.
His white napkins are monogrammed with his crest, and he affects a George III table screen of walnut, date about 1815, a lovely piece worth more than the entire nosh van.
'Here, Sir Ponsonby,' I asked, wondering. 'Why is it, keen antiques trader that you are, you don't sell that table screen?'
Georgian ladies used them to protect their lovely pale complexions - sign of high breeding, before leathery tans became fashionable. They wrote letters in a sunlit arbour, by firelight or candlelight. There's a daft belief among antique dealers that protecting fair cheeks is the pole screen's only value. Wrong. Why, I can remember my old dad reading by firelight. He'd sit by the hob, one hand holding his book, the other shielding his eyes from the embers. I do it myself when Electricity Board fascists cut the power.
'Sprat to catch a mackerel, old boy,' he boomed. 'They trek me to my barrow, object of all their desires!'
Sir Ponsonby embarrasses me. The lads say glitterati, slitterati. Me, I'm not even sure if he really is who he says, or if he's one gigantic fraud. A cynic would ring the public school, ask outright, but I haven't the heart. Whose business is it but his own? All about, the market milled as only Bermondsey Antiques Market can. I noticed an old lady, struggling to hump boxes of porcelain from a handcart. You see these desperate folk about - past it, hoping to keep Time at bay by reliving a successful youth. I looked away, ashamed for her, for all the greedy lot of us.
Meanwhile, Sir Ponsonby noshed on. I stood awkwardly making conversation while he finished his repast. Seeing I wasn't gainfully employed for the moment here's details of the padparadsha: Deep in Sri Lanka's fruitful mountains, gemstone orchard to the world, an occasional enticing precious stone is mined. The 'padpa', as dealers call them, is of all things a true sapphire. But no plain old sapphire, this miracle. It's a luscious transparent orangey-pink! These lovely wonders aren't common. So, naturally, greedsters thought of manufacturing synthetic padpas. Lo and behold, now they're everywhere. Fashions worry me. I keep warning myself of my homemade law: Fashion today, fool tomorrow. Like, an entrancing orange skirt of last year today looks ridiculous, but who resists fashion?
Nobody, because fraud raises its ugly head. Synthetic padpas (they're actually corundum, if you're hooked on taxonomy) soon became cheap, while genuine gemstones stayed costly. Which is why, back in rural East Anglia, Dosh Callaghan decided to buy some genuine padpas, have them made into ornate 'early Victorian'
jewellery. He'd mount a score of synthetics in similar settings - rings, necklaces, earrings, suites of ladies' jewellery. I guessed he'd got the whole scam planned, fake settings, forged certificates. He'd already had me paint an early portrait of Lady Howarth wearing the settings he was having made. The cost to Doshie would be about eight thousand. Profit? Half a million, played right.
Except the original 'genuine padparadsha gems' he'd bought turned out to be cheapo tsavorites. I was here to suss out who'd done Dosh down. Once I'd fingered the miscreant, he would wreak vengeance. I was unhappy, but beggars can't, can we?
With a genteel dabbing of linen at his lips, Sir Ponsonby concluded his nosh, handed his tray to the noshbar proprietor, and strolled with me into the churchyard among the winos.
'You see the problem, Sir Ponsonby,' I said sadly. 'Dosh Callaghan is well narked. You met him when he collected a thick-skirted late card table, supposedly Hepplewhite only the drop wasn't shallow enough, remember? He's paid me to discover who swapped his genuine padpas for tsavorite.'
'Didn't you ask him?'
'Dosh said they were delivered by a wonker called Chev, who's somewhere in Edinburgh.' A wonker is a driver who ships small antiques, up to about chair size, anywhere in the kingdom, door to door. Very reliable, wonkers are, because they lose their livelihood - maybe their legs - if they default. 'Chev' after his huge American car.
Dosh had given me registration, phone numbers, address.
'Can't you contact him?'
'Tried that. Chev's due back Thursday. Something going down.' Meaning a clandestine robbery, when a trusty wonker is worth his weight in gold.
