'Sober as ever was,' the phone said. That'll be the day, I thought. I'd never seen Tinker Dill vertical in twenty years. Horizontal or listing, yes.
'Any particular ones?'
'See him first, Lovejoy. I'll keep him here.'
'All right.' I suddenly decided. A chance was a chance. And buyers were what it was all about. 'Hang on to him, Tinker. Can you hear a car?'
He thought for a second.
'Yes. One just pulling into the car park,' he said, sounding surprised. 'Why?'
'It's me,' I said, and shut off, grinning.
To my surprise the bath taps were running and the bathroom door was shut. I opened up and there was this blonde, somewhat sodden, sulking in steam.
'What on earth—?' I began, having forgotten.
'You pig,' she said, cutting loose with the language.
'Oh, I remember.' She'd been making a racket while I was on the phone. 'You're Sheila.'
She retorted, 'You pig.'
'I'm sorry,' I told her, 'but I have to go out. Can I drop you somewhere?'
'You already have,' she snapped, flouncing past and snatching up her things.
'It's just that there's a buyer turned up.'
She took a swing at me.
I retreated. 'Have you seen my car keys?'
'Have I hell!' she screamed, rummaging under the divan for her shoes.
'Keep your hair on.' I tried to reason with her, but women can be very insensitive to the real problems of existence.
She gave me a burst of tears, a few more flashes of temper, and finally the way women will began an illogical assault on my perfectly logical reasons for making her go. 'Who is she?'
'That she is a hairy bloke,' I told her. 'A buyer.'
'And you prefer a buyer to me. Is that it?' she blazed.
'Yes,' I said, puzzled at her extraordinary mentality.
She went for me, firing handbag, a shoe, and a pillow as she came, claws at the ready. I gave her a backhander to calm the issue somewhat, at which she settled weeping while I found a coat. I'm all for sex equality.
'Look, help me to find my keys,' I said. 'If I don't find them I'll be late.' Women seem to have no sense sometimes.
'You hit me,' she sobbed.
'He's been recommended to me by London dealers,' I said proudly, ransacking the bureau where my sales and purchase records are kept—occasionally and partly, that is.
'All you think of is antiques,' she whimpered.
'It isn't!' I said indignantly. 'I asked you about your holidays yesterday.'
'In bed,' she cut back viciously. 'When you wanted me.'
'Look for keys. They were here the day before, when I brought you back.'
I found them at last under a Thai temple woodcut and rushed her outside the cottage, remembering to leave a light on and the door alarm switched over to our one vigilant hawkeye at the village constabulary station, in case the British Museum decided to come on a marauding break-in for my latest acquisition, a broken Meissen white I'd have a hard time giving away to a church jumble.
My elderly Armstrong-Siddeley waited, rusting audibly in the Essex night air between the untidy trees. It started first push, to my delight, and we were off.
'Antiques are a sickness with you, Lovejoy.' She sniffed. I turned on the gravel and the old banger—I mean the car— coughed out onto the dark tree-lined road.
'Nothing but,' I replied happily.
'I think you're mad. What are antiques for anyway? What's the point?'
That's women for you. Anything except themselves is a waste of time. Very self-centered, women are.
'Let me explain, honey.'
'You're like a child playing games.'
She sat back in the seat staring poutishly at the nearing village lights. I pushed the accelerator pedal down hard. The speedometer needle crept up to the thirty mark as the engine pulsed into maximum thrust. With a following southwesterly I'd once notched forty on the Cambridge Road.
'He might be a collector,' I said. She snorted in an unladylike manner.
'Collector,' she said scornfully.
