'If you've got a pen and paper,' he said, smiling in a rather disagreeable way, 'I'll give you all available details.'
I'd tried, hadn't I?
Adrian brought Jane Felsham along. I handed him a check.
'You're flush!' he exclaimed. 'Come across a Barraud?' Barraud, a London watchmaker, about 1815 made some delicious flat-looking watches. Only the central sun decoration and the astounding nineteen-line movement and the sexy gold and enamel surface and the beady surround (pearls) tell you it's somewhat above average. The highest artistic imagination crystallized in a luscious context of brilliant science. I smiled, I think. People shouldn't make jokes. I'd once missed a Barraud by five minutes, late for an auction.
'Steady progress,' I replied.
'Will it bounce?' He draped himself elegantly across a chair. Both he and Jane couldn't help glancing sharply around in case any of my recent finds were on display.
'Don't you want it?' I brewed up to show we were still friends.
'I must confess little Janesy and I were discussing whether you'd have the wherewithal, dear boy.'
'It was touch and go.'
'Business going a bit slow, Lovejoy?' Jane lit one of her long cigarettes and rotated her fag holder. 'Not much about for the casual visitor to see.'
'I have these two warehouses…' They laughed.
'That chap last night,' Jane pressed. 'A client?'
'Trying to be,' I said casually.
'After anything we could help with?' from Adrian.
'I doubt it.' I rattled a few pieces of crockery to show I was being offhand.
'A furniture man, I suppose.' Jane waggled her fag holder again. A psychiatrist I sold a warming pan once told me something odd about women who habitually sucked fag holders. For the life of me I can't remember what it was.
'Asking the impossible as usual.' I hoped that would shut them up. 'Wanting something for nothing.'
'Don't they all?' Adrian groaned.
'Did you risk him in your car?' Jane was smiling.
'Of course. Why not? I gave him a lift to the station.'
'Did he survive?' She's always pulling my leg about my old bus.
'He said it was unusual.'
'A death trap,' Adrian interposed. 'All those switches for nothing. Trade it in for a little Morris.'
This sort of talk offends me, not that I'm sentimental about a heap of old iron. After all, though it's a common enough banger, it does give off a low-level bell or two.
'He didn't buy, then?'
'Not even place an order.' I carried in their cups and offered sugar. 'I got a faint tickle, though. Bring in any tassies you find. We'll split.'
'I might have a few,' Jane said, and they were satisfied.
Tassies—intaglios, really—are the dealers' nickname for an in-carved stone, usually a semiprecious one. You know a cameo brooch? The figure—a bust silhouette or whatever—stands in relief above the main brooch's surface. Imagine the same figure carved inward, grooving out the design. That's an intaglio. Mostly oval, about the size of a pea and as high, with a shallow carving. Watch for copies, modern ones you can't even give away except to some mug who can't tell bottle glass from the Star of India, though the way things are going, by the time you read this…
'Harry Bateman phoned in,' Adrian said, pulling a face at my foul coffee.
'On the cadge?'
'Offering.'
'Good?'
'Wordsworth's stuff. Genuine.'
'Really?' I was interested, but Harry Bateman didn't know his bum from his elbow, which when you think of it is pretty vital information.
'His original chair and a shaving case given to him by his daughter Dora, 1839.'
'Oh.'
Jane looked up sharply. It must have been how I said it.
'Chair's a straight Chippendale—' Adrian was starting off, but I took pity.
'—And he's even got the date wrong as well. Trust Harry.'
'No good?'
'How come he doesn't starve?' I demanded. 'He'll catch it one day. For heaven's sake, tell him before he gets picked up. Wordsworth's chair was always a diamond-seater because of his habit of sitting with a hand in his jacket, Napoleon-style. And the National Trust will be narked if he's really got Dora's case. It should still be at Dove
