My eyes wandered while Lennie grumbled on about some Caffieri cast bronzes he'd missed. Dottie Quant was on a barstool, straining half a mile of stylish leg to reach the ground and making sure we all noticed. She's ceramics and silver, in the local antiques arcade. Her legs bring in a lot of deals, they say. I believe it. I waved over, nodding affably, and got a sneer in return. That's better than my average. Distaste from Dottie's like a knighthood. She was talking to a fair-haired thickset man, maybe a stray golfer or a buyer? Her balding husband grovelled about trying to coax his noonday sneer from his alluring wife. A domestic rural scene.
I promised to sell Lennie my mythical embroidery frame. I offered to buy Lennie a drink, and escaped before he could draw breath and say yes please. I blew Dottie a noisy kiss to get her mad and left, my mind dazzled by old Bexon's wonderful faked painting which might mean so much.
What messes people get themselves in, I was thinking as I crossed the road. I stood waiting for Janie under the trees for coolth. There's Lennie, in his wealthy mother-in-law's clutches more ways than somewhat. And there's Dottie having to rub at least shoulders with the riff-raff, and her with carriage trade aspirations and a whining hubby.
Still, I'd my own problems. Where the hell could I find a late Georgian embroidery frame by Saturday? The problem was worsened by not having any money to buy, even if I found one.
A week ago I'd 'missed a rosewood table - you won't believe this - actually signed by Timothy Walford, about 1810, complete with fringed base-edge carving on triple scrolls.
If this page is wet it's because I'm sobbing. Good class furniture with a provincial maker's name is so rare. It was sold an hour before I reached the Arcade. What with taxes and an unbelievably greedy public, life's hard.
You may be developing a low opinion of my most endearing qualities. Don't. My qualities are yours, folks, same as everyone else's. I would have been as fascinated and excited by old Bexon's lovely forgery if I'd just made a million in gold minutes before, instead of being broke and getting desperate. I tell you all this now because the behaviour you actually see around antiques is only the tip of the dealer's iceberg. From there it sinks on and on, down and down to include the thousands of fearsome emotions sociologists do not know. And if at the end of this you think I'm lascivious, crude, sexist and selfish, do you know anybody who isn't?
Janie drew up, calling gaily, 'Hello, sailor!' Her joke.
'Where've you been?' I said coldly. 'I've been here an hour.'
'I've been exactly ten minutes,' she said, calmly eyeing me. I climbed into her Lagonda.
'Where've you been?'
'Working.' And how hard, I thought.
'You look exhausted, Lovejoy.'
'I am.'
'Was she worth it?' she asked sweetly, pulling out.
'If you're going to nag -'
'And where were you last night?'
'Ah,' I said, thinking quickly. 'I got stuck.'
'In…?' she prompted, all bright innocence.
'Cut it out, Janie.' I tried to seem annoyed. 'With a deal.'
'Anything really good?'
'No.' True, true.
'Where are we going?'
'Woody's.'
'That filthy place gives me fleas, Lovejoy.'
It gives me a living. Or rather,' I added bitterly, 'it should do.'
'Let me, Lovejoy.' A pause while hedges and fields swished by. 'Give you a living,' she added.
I turned to watch her drive. The Lagonda didn't even purr. Janie's beautiful, twenty-six, wealthy in her own right. Her husband's wealthy too. He often goes abroad to mend companies sick of the palsy. Crackpot. They have a mansion in Little Hawkham, the next village to the one I'd just been working. Great Hawkham has two houses more, hence the adjective.
'I'm good value,' she said, smiling. 'Worth a quid or two. Good legs. Teeth my own.
Socially trained, convent-educated. I could buy an antiques auction firm for you to play with. Think, Lovejoy. And take your hand off my knee when I'm driving.'
'And your husband?'
'Who?' She gave me a 1920 stare, trying to make me laugh. They only do that when they're serious. 'Spell it.'
'Look, love,' I said wearily. 'Am I loyal?' You can't muck about. You have to tell them outright.
'No.'
'Kind?'
'Never.'
'Considerate?'
'Hopeless.'
I went down the list of virtues getting a denial every time.
