embroidery. It's called drizzling, or parfilage. Women to the last, they'd collect the gold thread in a bag and sell it back to the goldsmith-embroiderer, who'd then make a lovely gold-fringed item, such as a bookcover, with an appropriate expression of devotion woven in. Then he'd sell it to a suitor, who'd give it to his ladylove, who'd take it to the theatre and unpick the gold thread and put it in a bag and sell it back… Women may be very funny creatures but I never said they were daft. The unpicking sets are now valuable antiques and not uncommon. Gold fringe embroidery of the eighteenth century is, as you've guessed, very rarely found.
Incidentally, this pernicious fashion was ended at a stroke and we actually know who stopped it. The writer Madame de Genlis condemned the habit in her novel Adele et Theodore in 1782 and it vanished like snow off a duck. That saved a few rare pieces, now naturally worth a fortune. Light a candle for her, like I do occasionally.
'We go shopping.' Janie spoke emphatically.
'Er, great.' I tried to sound straining at the leash. 'Me too?'
'You especially.'
'Well, great.'
'Then we have a lovely quiet meal together.' She fanned her toes with her hand.
'Algernon can eat alone. Elsewhere.'
'Where do you cut your toenails?'
'In the bath.'
Funny that. We know the most intimate secrets about everyone throughout history except for toenail cutting. There's no really accepted etiquette. So you do it in the bath.
Well, well.
'Couldn't we go past Isabella?'
'No.'
I gave in, but there'd be no half-measures. I decided I'd make the meal, a really posh one complete with garnish. I stood watching Algernon in the distance, thinking, what's garnish? It sounds some sort of mushroom.
In the town we had a great time shopping. I mean, really breathtaking.
It's great. You trudge along a row of shops, then trudge back. Then you trudge between two or three shops which all have the same stuff. Then you trudge about searching for a fourth, also identical. Then you trudge back and forth among all four.
Then you find a fifth. You keep it up for hours. As I say, it's really trudging great. We got Janie some shoes. It only took a couple of months or so.
I cut loose and bought the stuff for our meal, following the advice of a booklet which told me about the teasing of my taste-buds by tournedos bordelaise. It sounded really gruesome but I persevered. It seemed to be some sort of meat with gravy. I met Janie under my mound of vegetables. She fell about laughing, but I replied coldly that I was working to a plan. We went shopping for a few more years before returning to the bungalow where I crippled myself cooking for the rest of the day. I learned my least favourite occupation. It's cooking. Janie sent Algernon out to eat.
By evening the kitchen looked like Iwo Jima. We started our meal elegantly, holding hands now and again over the tablecloth. Well, so far so good. But it'd be touch and go making love later on.
I was knackered.
That evening Algernon came in and said he'd have used a little more thyme and possibly a shade less garlic. Janie pulled me off before I could reach the cleaver. Then he made me feel quite fond of him by eating everything left over.
CHAPTER XX
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I GOT RID of Janie and Algernon among the cottages where people park their cars. It's forbidden to drive right up to Lady Isabella. I was quivering with excitement.
'You'll miss me up there, Lovejoy.' Janie sat watching me go.
'No, I won't,' I called back. In an hour or so I'd own a wealth of genuine Roman golds.
Mind you, I thought uneasily, I'd told myself that a couple of mornings ago and finished up bushed and poor as ever.
'Good luck,' from Algernon. He was geared for lunar orbit. A pal was lending him a motor-bike.
I climbed the steep road above the river. Where it turned right and humped upwards towards Lady Isabella I glanced down. Janie waved, small now on the flat stones by the water. I plodded on between the cottages. At the caf6 I resisted the temptation to look.
She ought to have gone by now because I'd said to, but I knew exactly what she was doing. She was noting the time. If I wasn't down in a couple of hours she'd come after me with the Army. They never do what you say. I heard the crackle of Algernon's bike maniacs arriving.
The wheel seemed even more huge in early daylight than it had in the dusk. One could stand on the paving and look upwards. From there the paddles were hurled swiftly towards the sky, dripping water where they thinned abruptly, then vanished, replaced by other swift soaring slats. I made myself giddy watching. Curious how a simple motion can be exhilarating and even beautiful. The clack-clack sound so close became almost numbing after a few minutes. I shook the feeling away and cast around.
The wheel was fed by a narrow stone aqueduct which ran from a hillside cleft to the left. One of the unpleasant facts was that the derelict mine shafts lay that way. The good bit was that the huge beam pump wasn't working, thank God. It looked gruesome enough as it was, still and silent. Like I'd thought at Beckwith's mines, a mine is a terrible intrusion into the earth, almost an offence against living rock. I could understand a mountain getting mad
