'Put the rest back in next week's auction, Lovejoy?' Tinker asked. This is all quite legal.
'Yes.' I made sure we weren't overheard. 'Grumble a lot while you do.'
I’ll try.'
I had to stop myself from a wide grin at Tinker's crack. Barkers can out-grumble the most miserable farmer.
Janie went to have her hair done. We eventually met at a coffee garden near the river walk, a short distance away. I'd tried to get her to come to Woody's but she wouldn't. I said I could return her the money she'd lent me. She said don't be silly.
We talked on the way back to Gimbert's, where the auction was practically over. I caught sight of Beck and said so-long to Janie. They were in the auction yard among starting cars and people hauling various lots out of the covered part. A woman was asking how to get an enormous cupboard home. Time to haul in the net.
'Look, Beck,' I said. He stopped bragging to his mates. 'About that jade.'
'Want it, Lovejoy? It's for sale.' There was a roar of laughter, my expense.
'I've a couple of things you might swap.'
'Good stuff?'
'Two are.'
'What kind of stuff?'
'Good stuff,' I said cagily.
'Where?'
'My place.'
He thought a moment. Finally he trod his cigarette.
'I'll come.'
I got a taxi. In the ride out to the village he showed me the jade.
'Lovely piece of work, eh?'
I could hardly disagree. At the cottage he insisted the taxi waited.
I had the pieces distributed around the living-room. It wouldn't do to show him the workshop.
'This glass jug,' I told him. He reached out for it. 'I've this bowl as well.'
'Both yours?' he asked warily. I nodded. 'Honestly? Roman or Egyptian?'
His eyes were everywhere while I busied myself getting a glass of beer. I had to steady my hands, back turned towards him, while I poured in case the glass clinked and gave away my anxiety. It's a right bloody game this. When I gave him the drink I could see he'd noticed my tiler, hung prettily on the wall. And my non-musical instrument casually placed over the fireplace.
'You've one or two things here, Lovejoy,' he said.
'I don't want to sell.'
'No?' He looked shrewdly about. 'This place looks pretty bare. And where's your car?
You used to have one.'
'Well, I had to sell it.'
'I see.' He sat examining the glass bowl and jug I'd made. 'Good Roman,' he pronounced. I said nothing. 'Cash adjustment, Lovejoy?'
'No,' I said. 'One for one.'
'No deal.'
'Well, then,' I hesitated. 'I'm not really in the jade field any more, but…'
'No?' He actually laughed. 'Then what are we arguing about?'
We began dealing. It's done by mental palpation, not actual utterances. You talk all round the subject, how difficult things are, what clients want nowadays, how troublesome barkers are. We ended with Beck accepting the glass bowl and the jug, plus the painting, in exchange for the jade coin. He took the instrument as well and paid a few notes to make up the difference.
He carried his trophies into the waiting taxi.
'Here, Lovejoy,' he said from the window as the car turned in the lane.
'Yes?'
'I don't see why I should pay the driver.'
I paid up with ill grace and watched the taxi dwindle uphill towards the chapel. He'd paid anyway. He'd be jubilant, until he found out.
Still, I'd not been untruthful. 'That Palmer looks wrong to me, somehow,' I'd said. And I'd told him of the instrument, 'I'm not sure what you'd call it.'
I stood in the garden tying my jade on to a string to wear round my neck under my shirt. Contact with living human skin really does restore life and glow to jade. Never leave jade untouched if you can help it. It's the only antique of •which this can be said.
