illuminated along their entire lengths, gold light warming the restaurant as far as the crystal fountain in the centre.
Needless to say, an incoming tramp flashing a card and being given an ostentatiously hysterical welcome by the senior captain caused no little stir. You can't help feeling a right duckegg sometimes. Even people in the alcoves looked up to see the fuss.
I was given a dry sherry as if I'd asked for it. The offered smokes I declined. I was nervous as hell, though I'd washed. The invitation presumably meant I was to dine with the Albaneses, rather than in some quiet corner. But what did one talk about with a bloke like Signor Albanese? And I'm a clumsy sod. I was sure to drop everything or knock his wineglass all over his precious papers. Every portent indicated a really swinging time. I sat miserably listening to the gentle background music and trying to work out things to say.
There are times when even portents get things wrong. This was one of them. A second sherry had just arrived to make me hungrier still. I could hardly remember the pizza I had had at two o'clock. I'd just decided that the invitation had been some kind of elaborate joke when a cough alerted me, one of those directional look-out-we're- here coughs waiters use. I looked up, and there was Adriana, being ushered towards my table.
I stumbled to my feet, nudging the bloody table so the glasses tinkled dangerously.
Calm hands steadied it and trained voices murmured apologies for the habitual clumsiness of serfs, as if it had been them and not me.
'Good evening, signora,' I mumbled.
'Good evening, Lovejoy.'
They say Queen Victoria is the only person in history never to check that a chair was available before sitting down. (One always was, of course.) Well, Adriana did it too, sinking elegantly in the sure conviction that enough kulaks were around to spring forward with a chair. She was blinding. Her dress was a simple sheath thing in green with a scooped collar. The emerald on her breast seemed out of place at first until she raised her arms to the table and the gold bracelets picked up the emerald's gold setting. Her emerald ear-rings shed a million lights. I'd never seen anything so exquisite before. The waiters hurtled about to bring her sherry.
I had to tell her. 'Look, signora. I'm letting you down, being here.'
She said coolly, 'I invited you, Lovejoy.'
'I know. But you're… perfect. Just look at me.'
'Appearances are unimportant, no?'
'That is untrue, signora. As your husband will agree.'
'Signor Albanese will not be able to join us this evening. He's unavoidably detained.'
Until then I'd assumed he was merely telling the chauffeur where to park that purple Rolls. 'Oh. I'm sorry.' Unsuccessfully I tried to suppress my overwhelming relief.
'You're very kind.' While she accepted the sherry I wondered if I detected a certain dryness in her tone but decided I couldn't have. 'Lovejoy. I saw Signor Gallinari over the weekend.'
The bloke who'd sold us the lovely Jacobean piece. 'You didn't tell him I'm on your staff?'
'Yes. He remembered you.'
I pulled a face. 'Pity. He has two luscious early Wedgwoods, both underpriced.' We couldn't pull the same lift twice. Gallinari wasn't that dim. A lift is persuading somebody to sell an antique ridiculously cheap. Dealers are always on guard against other dealers.
Her brown eyes flicked up at me, seeming big as saucers. 'He called you that young man who loves things.' Lustrous. That's the word. 'You rather surprised him, Lovejoy.'
'How?'
'When I said you… assist me, he expressed astonishment that you had not asked for a special deal.'
'I don't do milkers.' A milker is a trade trick. You claim you've had to pay more than the real purchase price. Had I done a milker, Gallinari would have given me two invoices, a genuine and a phoney one. The loser would have been Adriana. 'Is that what Piero and Fabio expected, too?'
'Of course. And I.'
'Look.' I cleared my throat. Even a perfect woman can be dim. 'Antiques are valuable to me even if they aren't mine. They're not just hard currency. They are love. Some people—kids in slums, men and women slaving in intolerable conditions, dying as they worked—solidified love, welded it into things they made. When you think of it, it's magical. There's nothing more valuable than that.'
'There's feeling.' She was watching me again.
'No there's not.' That sort of yap riles me. 'Feeling isn't love.'
She waved away a hovering waiter. 'What are they, then?'
'Feelings are feelings. Nothing else.'
She was nonplussed. Women hate the cold light of truth. I saw a milliard doubts flicker across her face, to and fro like dappling sun on a stream. She said slowly, staring past me, 'I'm not used to this kind of discussion. You'll have to explain…'
'Look,' I said apologetically. 'Erm, sorry about this, but could we possibly, erm…?'
'Oh, certainly!'
She ordered, and mercifully the grub started coming. I just lasted out. Apart from the prawn cocktail being so natty it was practically microscopic, the grub was lovely. I fell on it, desperately trying to maintain a light chitchat till each next lot appeared. The signora kept it coming, thank God. By the time the second lot of dessert rolled up I had slowed to a steady noshing rhythm and only then noticed that conversation had ceased at the adjacent tables. A good number of diners were watching us—well, me. Adriana had hardly eaten a thing. I reddened and glanced up
