Well, I laughed. Honestly, I was helpless. Here was this nerk threatening a bloke like me. I've been in more dust-ups than dances, so maybe you can't blame me for the hilarity. I had to sit down on the orange-box. He stood there, ashen.
'Listen, mate,' I managed to gasp at last. 'Dandy Jack's having you on. If it was a bird bought it, she wasn't mine. And,' I finished, sobering, 'if you'd asked more politely I'd have sold you the diaries for a couple of quid. As it is, get lost.'
'So Dandy Jack was lying?'
'How the hell should I know?'
He looked me over, a really cold fish.
'The next time we meet you'll beg me to accept them as a gift, Lovejoy,' he said portentously. 'You've been adequately warned.'
'Sure, sure.'
He turned and stalked off.
I was still laughing when I caught the noon bus.
On the way to town I found myself thinking about an old chap possibly finding a coffin full of antiques.
You may believe that expecting to find (as opposed to buying) is something of a pipedream. Long may you so believe, because that lessens the chances of you doing any finding. The odds for me then get better. From the bottom of my atherosclerotic heart take my tip: keep looking. And above all keep expecting. When all's said and done, those London bankers who found that stash of Lord Byron's poems in their cellars weren't out for a casual stroll, were they? They were tidying up old deed boxes. Hence the now legendary discovery of documents and poems from 1820, the Scrope Davies find (of 'inaccurate memory', as Byron called this celebrated Dandy - note the capital letter; they were very particular). So when I hear of 'lucky' finds I always think to myself, what were they doing looking in the first place? And I mean them all. The nine-year-old Yorkshire lad who found that priceless Saxon longsword in the silt of the stream at Gilling West. The two Colchester children who dug down on to the Romano-British temple in Lexden. The East Anglian farmer who noticed a large circle of wheat standing tall and perfect during a recent wilting drought and had the sense to measure the circle carefully with his hobnails for thinking about after the harvest was gathered in
- and discovered the burial tomb circle of one of King Tasciovanus's tributary kings. And me: I once bought an 'old' Victorian knitting needle found locally from Wilkie's shop (he's navigation and naval instruments of the eighteenth century) and 'an iron Georgian drinking cup' from Harry's in our High Street on the selfsame day - because I can smell a Roman legion's doctor's instruments at a thousand leagues. So look with courageous expectation, folks. You may have a king buried in your own back yard.
I wistfully remembered the story of the lovely, mystic Beaworth Box, holding a good ten thousand dazzling coins from AD 1087. It was a small lead box, very like a coffin. Like the Cuerdale Chest, complete with its precious silver ornaments. Like the Flaxton Box. I can't go on. It's too painful. And really delicious hoards have been found on the Isle of Man, like the two at Andreas.
See how you can talk yourself round?
'This is as far as we go, mate,' the conductor was saying, giving me a nudge.
'Then I'll get off,' I said, and I did.
In town I phoned Janie. Luckily she herself answered. I asked her if she'd gone to Dandy's and bought the Burne-Jones sketch. She said no, still mad at me. That made Nichole, Janie, Nichole's private nutter Edward Rink, Mary the housewife, Kate, and eighteen debtors all blazing at me, just within two days. I honestly do try but sometimes nobody else bothers. There are times like that.
CHAPTER VIII
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EARLY AFTERNOON. I was in Margaret's shop in the Arcade. She and I had been good friends when Janie'd happened, which was a bit tough. There were a score of customers drifting along the covered pavement, a few in and out of Margaret's. I jokingly accuse her of showing herself off to get customers in. Like all women she has attraction, but I like Margaret especially. No bitterness and a lot of compassion. She could teach a million things to a lot of younger women.
Margaret had picked up a job lot of eighteenth-century household stuff I'd promised to price. We sat in her glass-fronted area as I sorted through. It was interesting enough but low grade. Best was a collection of Regency pipe stubbers in the form of gloved hands, erotic figurines, tiny pipe racks, people, tennis racquets, rings, shapely legs, wine bottles. You get them in silver, brass, ivory, pewter, even hardwood and glass.
She'd got twenty, by some miracle. Incidentally, always go for collections rather than items. I also liked a box of braided matches, R. Bell & Co., the elegant braid still on every single match - quaint Victorian elegance if you like, but fascinating.
'Not bad, Margaret.'
'I was lucky.' She eyed me. 'Anything you like?'
'Everything.' I couldn't keep the bitterness out.
Her hand touched my arm.
'It's a spell of bad luck, that's all, Lovejoy.' She paused. 'Anything I can do?'
I pulled a scary face to show I couldn't care less. Women who offer help need watching. Just then Patrick hurtled in with a fit of vapours and flung himself down on a William IV diamond seat, a nice pale oak with very few markings.
'Lovejoy!' he screamed, holding out his handbag to me.
'Yes?' I gazed apprehensively at his gilt plastic accessory.
'Well?' he screeched. 'Get my smelling salts out, you great fool!'
