-by telling them, say, a genuine painting by Isen (Kano Eishin) is somewhere or other, making it up. Well, who in their right mind can resist Isen's luscious white highlighted robes and his gusting winds driving those painted ships? Naturally one hares off after it. For somebody like Beck it's a joke. For somebody like me, going without grub to raise the fare on a wild goose chase, it's no giggle.
'Sold it,' I said back coolly. He stared. 'Thanks for the tip, Beckie.' That shut him up.
I drifted on, nodding and passing the occasional word. A mote spoon donged for attention from among a mass of crud in a crammed cutlery drawer. I'm always astonished people's heads don't swivel at the sudden clanging. The trouble is that genuine antiques make your breathing funny. I went over casually and pretended to examine the kitchen cabinet. Mote spoons are often forged, but this was true 1752 or so. No maker's mark. Odd long pointed handle and a fenestrated bowl.
Lily and Patrick arrived to look at the phoney tapestries and Big Frank lumbered in to maul the silver. Delmer came flashily in, staggering under the weight of his gold rings.
Even before he was through the door those of us who knew him glanced about to see where the books were heaped and stepped out of the way because he's a fast mover. I like dealers like Delmer. Only books. He'd walk past a Rubens crucifixion painting to bid for a paperback. Sure enough he streaked for the corner, slamming a nice pair of Suffolk chairs aside on the way. I sighed. It takes all sorts, but God alone knows why.
'Anything, Lovejoy?' Tinker Dill, an unnerving sight this early, obediently emerging from the mob on time. This was my cue. I hoped Tinker could remember his lines.
'Not really, Tinker.' I made sure I said it wrong enough for alert friends to notice.
I’ll slide off, then.'
'Er, no, Tinker.' A lot of ears pricked. 'Hang about.'
'Lovejoy wants you to bid for that drawerful of old knives and forks, Tinker.' Beck again.
'Right,' I said angrily. I didn't have to act. Beck really does rile me. 'Get it, Tinker.'
'It looks a right load of rubbish, Lovejoy - ' Tinker, badly overacting.
'Get it, Tinker.'
'Lost your wool?' Beck said innocently. 'Just because I got that Burne-Jones sketch?
Sold it yesterday, incidentally. To your friend, businessman with the blonde.' So Rink had traced it successfully after all. I hadn't time to worry about the implications for the minute.
'Look, Lovejoy -'
'Do as you're bloody well told, Tinker.'
I pushed off through the crowd, pretending to be blazing.
'Easy, Lovejoy.' Lennie offering me a fag. I shook my head irritably. I deserved an Oscar.
'Those bloody trawlies get to me, Lennie.'
'Jill said she'd be in with that opal photo.'
'Thanks.' I'd dated it for her, about 1800. Photographs were once done on opal glass and coloured by watercolours. She was asking the earth, naturally.
I drifted. Delmer had found a copy of The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes and looked as pleased as Punch. Don't laugh. The public's soaked up over two hundred editions since 1765.
'Is it one of Newberry's?' I couldn't help muttering the vital question as I drifted past.
He dropped it casually back into the job lot and sauntered off, shaking his head absently. A good dealer's a careful one. I touched it for the clang and drifted in the opposite direction. The unique copy's in the British Museum, but Newberry turned them out for donkey's years in St Paul's Churchyard during Georgian times so they're still knocking about. I had a brief look at the rest. Delmer would have spotted the first edition of Ransome's Swallows and Amazons which lay among a pile of gramophone records, so no chance there.
I drifted some more. The crowd collected. Ringers were there, trimmers, hailers, tackers, lifters, nobbers, screwers, backers and sharpers, a real tribe of hunters if ever there was one. I can't help smiling. I actually honestly like us all. At least we're predictable and therefore reliable, which makes us a great deal more preferable than the good old innocent public. Some people were gazing in the window at us. Well, if you stay out of the water at least the sharks can't get you.
The jade coin was in the corner case, numbered seventy. By the time the auctioneer banged us to the starting gate practically everybody in the room was pretending to ignore it.
'Lot One,' he piped, a callow youth on his tenth auction. 'A very desirable clean modern birdcage complete with stand. Who'll bid?'
'Dad send you to feed the crocodiles, sonny?' one of the Aldgate circus called. Laughter.
A woman near me tutted. 'How rude!' she exclaimed.
I nodded sadly. 'Modern manners,' I said. She approved of my sentiments and I was glad. I'd seen her inspecting the kitchen cabinet, and Tinker Dill was on to it, with my money.
Sharks and cut-throats, we all settled and paid rapt attention to the sale of a birdcage.
I watched it come. Ten, twenty. At thirty-two Margaret bid for and got a pair of small Lowestoft soft-paste porcelain animal figures, a swan and a dog. I don't like them much because of the enamelling but I was glad for Margaret. Delmer got his Goody Two-Shoes and a pile of others for a few pence at thirty-eight. At forty Tinker Dill got the cabinet, though Beck had a few laughs at my expense and threatened loudly to compete in the bidding. One of the Birmingham lads wandered over curiously during the bidding to look at the cabinet, but by then Tinker had guessed right and was standing idly by, leaning against the drawer where the mote spoon was. My mote spoon now. The Brummie stared across at me carefully. I smiled benevolently back. I saw him start edging across to the others of the Brummie circus. Well, they're not all daft.
Harry Bateman tried a few bids for a Victorian copy of an anonymous Flemish school oil and failed. Why first- class nineteenth-century artists wasted their talents making copies of tenth-rate seventeenth-century paintings I'll
