The Judas Pair

Antiques, Inc., can you? The 'Inc.' bit was pure invention, brilliance. It sounds posh, reeks of dollars and high-flying American firms backing that knowledgeable antique wizard Lovejoy.

'Got enough copper in case the bleeps go?' I asked.

'Eh? Oh, sure.'

'Hang on, then.'

I dropped the receiver, crossed to open the bathroom door. There she was, trying to push past me into the room, blazing.

'What the hell do you mean—?' she was starting to say when I gave her a shove. Down she went on the loo amid the steam.

'Now,' I explained carefully, 'silence. Si-lence. Got it, love?'

She rubbed her arm, her eyes glazed at the enormity of these events.

I patted her cheek. 'I'm waiting,' I said. 'Got it, love?'

'Yes.' Her voice barely made it.

'I've got a deal coming in. So shut your teeth. Sit there and listen to all my lovely hot water going to waste.'

I slammed the door on her, locked it again, and found Tinker hanging on by the skin of his alcohol-soaked teeth.

'Big? How big?' I demanded.

'Well…'

'Come on.'

'S and four D's,' he said shakily.

My scalp, already prickling and crawling, gave up as the magic code homed in.

'Give over, Dill.'

'Honest, Lovejoy. God's truth.'

'In this day and age?'

'Large as life, Lovejoy. Look, this bloke's real. He's here now.'

'Where?'

'White Hart.'

My mind took off. Computers aren't in it. Speed they've got and memory too, so people say. I have both those attributes and a bell. This bell's in my chest. Put me within a hundred feet of a genuine antique and it chimes, only gently at first, then a clamor as I get nearer the real thing. By the time I'm touching it I can hardly breathe because my bell's clanging like a fire engine. It's never been wrong yet. Don't misunderstand—I've sold some rubbish in my time. And lies come as natural to me as blinking in a gale. After all, that's life, really, isn't it? A little half-truth here and there, with a faint hint of profit thrown in for good measure, does no harm. And I make a living mainly from greed. Not my greed, you understand. Your greed, his greed, everybody's greed. And I want no criticism from self-righteous members of the indignant honest old public, because they're the biggest school of sharks on this planet. No? Listen:

Say you're at home relaxing in your old rocking chair. In comes a stranger. He's heard of your old—or indeed your new—rocking chair. Could it be, he gasps, that it's the one and only rocking chair last used by Lord Nelson on his flagship the Golden Hind? Good heavens, he cries, clapping his eyes on it in ecstasy. It is!

Now, you put your pipe down, astonished. What the hell's going on? you demand. And who the hell is this stranger butting into your house? And what's he babbling about? And—take your hands off my old rocking chair!

With me so far? Good.

The stranger, confronted with your indignation, turns sincere and trusting eyes to you. I've searched all my life, he explains. For what? you demand suspiciously. For Lord Nelson's famous old rocking chair, he confides. And here it is, at last. It's beautiful. My lifelong search is over.

See what I'm getting at? At everybody's dishonesty. At mine. And at yours. No? Yes! Read on.

Now, if I were a trusting soul, I'd leave you to complete the story, give it a proper ending, so to speak. How you smile at the stranger, explain that the chair's only a secondhand mock-up your cousin Harry's lad did at night school, and how in any case Nelson, who is pretty famous for rocking on the cradle of the deep for years on end, was the last bloke on earth ever to need a rocking chair, and how you kindly proceed to put the misguided stranger right over a cup of tea with gay amusing chat. But you can't be trusted to end the story the way it really would happen! And why? Because the stranger, with the light of crusading fervor burning in his eyes, reaches for his wallet and says those glorious magic words—How much?

Now what's the real ending of the story? I'll tell you. You leap off your— no, Lord Nelson's!—rocking chair, brush it down, bring out the Australian sherry left over from Christmas, and cod on you're the hero's last living descendant. And you just manage to stifle your poor little innocent daughter as she looks up from her history homework and tries to tell the visitor that Nelson missed sailing on the Golden Hind by a good couple of centuries, and send her packing to bed so she won't see her honest old dad shingling this stupid bum for every quid he can.

Convinced? No? Then why are you thinking of that old chair in your attic?

Everybody's got a special gift. Some are psychic, some have an extra dress sense, beauty, a musical talent, or have green fingers. Some folk are just lucky, or have the knack of throwing a discus. But nobody's been missed out. We've all got one special gift. The only trouble is learning which it is we've got.