They were shunning me because I sat with Billia. Whose bloke Dang had thrown a fight. Oh, dear. One plus one equaled exit.
I went ahem, ahem. 'Look, love. I can't do much for you just now. I've got this sick dog that's dying of…' What do dogs die of, for God's sake? '… er, viruses. And I've to fly to Chicago. A sick uncle…'
Her eyes filled. 'You too, Lovejoy?'
'No, love,' I said earnestly. 'I'll help, sincerely.'
'You will?' Her magic mouth moved, opened, closed on her tongue.
I demanded, hoarse, 'Tell me what you want.'
'See me later? The Nell of Old Drury?'
'Up the West End? Why there?'
'I want you to meet someone.' It was her turn to look furtive.
I couldn't imagine anybody on earth big enough to put the frighteners on Dang. I smiled reassuringly, with no intention of meeting her.
'About seven do, love?' I rose, poised for flight.
'Seven o'clock,' her delicious mouth said. 'I'll do whatever you want, Lovejoy, if you'll help.'
Life's a swine. I dithered. 'I promised, didn't I?'
'Remember that mustard pot, Lovejoy? I've got the original. It's yours, if you'll stand by me.'
I bussed her cheek, and took off. Until she said that, betrayal seemed easy. After all, promises are made to be broken. And me protecting Man Mountain Dang from a lorry load of rabid East Enders was ludicrous. But temptation's never done me much good.
Within a couple of minutes I'd worked it out. By seven I'd want a drink, and where better than one of London's most famous taverns?
I emerged into the open market, intent on sizing up Moiya December, and came upon Fawnance Duleppo, who I'd been avoiding ever since I could remember. What with Sir Ponsonby, Miss December, and the woebegone Billia, names weren't my thing today.
With a name like mine I should talk.
4
THERE ARE PUBLIC gardens where Tower Bridge Road crosses Abbey Street near St Mary Magdalene. Facing the New Caledonian Market proper, Fawnance Duleppo sits. He plays a tuba - only oompah, oompah - in memory of a great-great-grandpa who, he says, in 1853 led the first ever national Brass Band Champions, that started the Victorians' brass-band fever.
Seeing this grubby musician in his tattered trenchcoat, crutches temporarily laid aside, you can easily forget what brass bands meant. Passions seethed. Everything was choirs, silver bands, marching concertina teams. Millmasters vied with each other to bribe away rival factories' best trombonists. There was a corrupt transfer system because rival mine owners hated the thought of some other coal mine seizing the glory at Manchester's famed championships. Judges were seduced, threatened, even waylaid. Nowadays, it's still a musical tradition in the north, but the fervour is no more. We're down to Fawnance playing oompah, his cloth cap out for coins. He wears a medal, Mossley Temperance Band, Winners, First Brass Band Champions 1853. Don't laugh. On that brilliant day there were 16,000 competitors, outdoing our drug-riddled, bribe-skewed so-called Olympics. When the Bess O'T'Barn Brass Band visited Australia in the early 1900s all Melbourne thronged to a standstill. Like I say, though, progress has reduced yet another art-form to a toothless beggar in a cloth cap. I think his medal's homemade, though.
'Wotcher, Fawnance. Nice tune.' It wasn't a tune at all, just parps.
He paused, took a breath. 'It's me teeth, Lovejoy,' he said. 'You're never the same when your lips melt. Mine went both together, lips and teeth.'
'Still, you play pretty well.' I dropped coppers in his hat.
'Ta, wack. Having a bad day? I heard Dosh sent you here.'
'Aye. Don't know where to start.'
'Do Sturffie a favour, Lovejoy. Whatever you do, do it fast. I seen that Doshie here with Chev a week back. Looked a nail job to me.'
'Cash and dash? Ta, Fawnance.' I hesitated, wanting to repay him for vital information.
'Look. They sell a brass renaissance trumpet kit up in Bradford, Manningham Lane I think. It's in the modern D major, which is a pig of a key, but they do a brass crook to get it to D, low pitch. It's got no ornamentation. Get Jerry Sorebones to engrave it. You know him, in Farnworth? Tell him I said not to do modern soldering, okay? Aged right, you'd sell it easy as an antique. Don't for heaven's sake get one of them modern angel faces to decorate the trumpet bell. It's a dead giveaway.'
'Ta. You're a pal, Lovejoy.'
Aye, I thought morosely, to everybody else. Never to me. I drifted into the market, listening, watching, getting shoved.
You can't help loving words. Words were everywhere, this particular Friday. If it wasn't Gock from Pontipool shouting about some duff bureau that was supposed to be priceless Ince and Mayhew but wasn't, it was flirtatious little Samanta Sellers working hard - she alone knew how hard - to sell her dud gemstone inlays to fund her next face-lift. God knows why Samanta resorts to surgery. She's a lovely smooth (not to say surgically whittled) lass of twenty-three. Her loving sister once told her she'd got an odd face and she's been paranoid ever since. Women. Forlorn, I sat on the wall swinging my legs, absorbing the balderdash. The stallholders' patter was so daft I wonder if antiques cause brain damage.
