“What info? And for whom?”
“Info about any especially good antique buy. Or a fake that’d fool experts. I sell info.”
He wasn’t looking at me. Honesty was having a rough time in Steerforth’s soul. “Sell…
in a sort of way.”
So the details were shaky. What else was new? “Fine,” I said to encourage. A group of Japanese moved garrulously into the viewing room. “To seller or buyer?”
“Buyers.” Plural. Another aha.
Now I knew what to look for. “Right. In we go. Oh, one thing,” I said apologetically as we made a move. “Shtum, eh? Say nothing. Antiques is a difficult-enough game as it is without blabbing to the universe.”
“Can we do it, Lovejoy?” I could see he’d lost heart.
“Can?” I was quite touched. “No question, mate. Easy. We only want a brilliant fake, or a genuine antique so unusual that nobody’ll quite believe it’s not a fake. Right?”
“Er, well…”
Some hours are golden. They stay with you like a past love. This is why if you’ve ever loved—and I don’t mean just had a fond moment—you can never be alone ever after.
Oh, she may wed another, be living round the corner with a wrestling champ, have vanished beyond your ken. But you are part of each other for ever and ever. Antiques share in that creative love, so confer the same character on your soul. This is why that single hour was miraculous to me. It gave me back life in a way that no grub or money ever could. All right, so I was a mere down-at-heel interloper—I’d been that before. But I floated into that paradise with joy, keeping my feet on the ground for the sake of appearances.
After a period of ecstasyblissrapture—there being no word in any language —my world was in order. “I’ve narrowed us down to four items,” I told Steerforth.
A surprise to me was the amount of Russian antiques (Why? Russia’s been stuck to China for millennia.) I explained, Steerforth nodding anxious attention.
“Item eighty-one. That kokoshnik hat. You see it?” Kokoshniks vary in different regions, but this was a beauty. Merchants’ wives wore them, tubed up on the head. It was unusual, though encrusted with pearls as normal, because it was undercouched with gold thread. Its perfection shook me as I touched it. A straight piece of old Russia, yes, but so very intricately done it denoted exalted rank. Odd. Steerforth needed another whiskey to take it all in. With a little less brain he’d have made an antique dealer.
“Just a minute, Lovejoy, er—”
“Look, James.” Exasperated serf as I was, I spoke patiently. “Russian nobility didn’t wear your trad garb. A Russian princess wouldn’t be seen dead in an ordinary kokoshnik. That was for Mrs. Babushka and upstart kulaks. Only European haute couture would do for lineage ladies. This kokoshnik is almost unbelievably crafted.
Never mind the real pearls and honest gold; its maker had miraculous skill. It shrieks eighteenth century.” I waited for an outburst of astonishment. Zilch.
“Yes?” he said, waiting.
Some folk just can’t. I sighed, drove the nail home. “Your average Russian granny didn’t nip down to the court goldsmith for a nifty hat, James. Nor did they ape their betters. But the royals sometimes—”
“Hey!” he exclaimed at last, thank God. “I’ve got it! What if a high-born had it made, say, for a fancy dress! I mean, like our nobles dressing up as peasants, masked balls and that!”
He was so thrilled at having invented the wheel, I let him rabbit on a few seconds while I marveled at mankind’s inability to see the obvious. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t thought that, but sometimes I’m really thick without trying. I cleared my throat to get on. If I dragged this nerk on all fours, we’d finish in some time warp.
“—So I picked it because the big dealers might think it a fake and not bid. That means it’ll go for a tenth of true price. The second is—”
“Great! Half a sec!” He was scribbling delightedly on a bit of hotel notepa-per. “Item eight-one. Genuine. Bid up to—”
“Shhh.” A group of Chinese were strolling towards the bar and tourists were on the stairs. All were in earshot. I waited until it was safe. “There’s a fake pagan polychrome in the end cabinet which’ll fool most dealers. Lot one- five-oh.” I explained there are two main sorts of these north German brooches. Both are usually circular, but one type is light-years ahead of the other in beauty. And fakers always go for best, as we say in the trade.
This brooch was definitely luxury class. Its base plate was gold. On this, small cells had been cleverly gold- worked up to receive flat-cut stones and glass, with minute filigree-wire panels ornamenting the interstices and rim. In a final flourish the faker had followed the ancient practice by laying a fragment of pattern-stamped silver foil to reflect light, giving an alluring zest to the brooch’s appearance. The stones were mostly garnets and colored glass, which was fine by me, because it had been fine by the ancient goldsmiths. A lovely, lovely fake. I could have eaten the damned thing.
“The mundane type of brooch is stamped out of one piece of metal and you only get garnets, not often colored glass. The stones in these have a border ring of black niello.
People say the Scythians started these cellular brooches, then the Black Sea Gothic lot did it, then the Hungarians…”
Talk to the wall. He wasn’t listening, just scribbling eagerly. “Piece of old jewelry, reddish-gold, round.”
No use. I’d tried. “Lot three-three-two,” I said curtly. “An English George the Third necessaire, fake. And a complete set of Jesuitware, lovely fakery, item four hundred.
Okay?”
“Got it!” he said, thrilled. “How do you spell necessaire?”
To think I’d almost shown him the French clockwork automaton, how it actually smoked its hookah and drank its coffee; and the hideous but genuine Venetian-glass epergne which was sure to go for a fortune; and the blue- dash charger, tinglazed in England before 1800, which would set the tills ringing; and the mind-blowing meticulous Japanese porcelains in those absolute colors that have never been equaled—and it made me sick. All right, so he’d rescued me from being arrested. But that didn’t entitle him to take liberties by treating antiques as if they were just
