It didn’t look much, just a small hard-porcelain figure of Moses with his tablets inscribed in Hebrew. But it was Chinese, old as the hills, typical feeling and colours. They’re not even imitated (yet, yet!) by porcelain fakers on the antiques marts (yet!) so you’re almost certainly in possession of a wonderful find if you’ve got one at home. They’re supposed to come in a set of six, various Old Testament characters—Joshua, Noah, that lot.
Weakly I passed it to Annalou, and pulled out a roll of money.
This was props gelt, high-denomination notes drawn through Tye, to be returned in the plane. People gasped at the size of the roll. Ostentatiously I peeled one off, and gave it to Zole with a flourish.
“Here, sonny,” I said loudly. “Your need is greater than mine, as the Lord sayeth.” Or somebody. “Now, lady. Go and sin no more!”
“Praise the Lord!” somebody said mercifully.
“Amen!” I chirped. I was so moved I honestly felt tears.
Magda and Zole were ushered away, but I walked after them and beckoned a taxi forward from the car park line. I didn’t want vengeful devotees inflicting an impromptu penance on them. I gave them what I hoped looked like a genuine blessing as they pulled out. Show over.
I turned, bumped into Annalou. Prez was talking in low tones to Glad Tidings and three other serfs. I dried my eyes.
“Lovejoy!” Annalou said, dropping her voice three notches and taking my arm. “You’re so sweet!”
It’s true. I am. I was thinking what could have happened to me if that Zole hadn’t done his stuff.
“God is in each of us, Annalou,” I intoned. “Though I am the worst of His flock. Can I admit something to you, Annalou? It’s this. I’m sore afflicted by lust—yes, even now, even as we were about to enter the temple of the, er, Deus.” I’d forgotten the bloody name. God, it was a mess. “For you, love. I’ve never felt this way before, not even since I found the sacred Mildenhall Treasure, or that missing Rembrandt from Dulwich Art Gallery.”
“Not since…?” She took my arm. Her breast pressed against my quivering form. “For little me, Lovejoy? You fell carnal sinful desire…?”
“I have to admit it, Annalou. The instant I saw you, I fell. I’m sure Satan sent me—”
“Shhh, Lovejoy.” Prez was approaching. The three devotees were looking hard at me. She whispered, “Say nothing yet, Lovejoy. Until you and I’ve had a chance of a prayer together.”
I composed myself and together we went into the Exhibition of Eternity. I paid the admission fee with a large denomination, and managed to look offended when the devotee offered me change.
Two hours later I was breathless and stunned.
Take any—for that read every—art form, cram it into a partly finished glass building arranged as caves, crystal porticos and arches, alleys and terraces, all under one great luminescent ceiling. Add dancing fountains, glass chapels and glowing altars rising musically from the ground. Add moving glass walls with portraits of bad, bad art (“Unfolding in eternal sequence!” gushed Annalou). Add automaton choirs, electrically powered with glutinous hymns pouring out from crannies everywhere, on stages which rose and sank. Add Eternal Damnation with a fire shooting from a bottomless pit where automated gremlins stoked furnaces and electronic groans put the fear of God in you. Searchlights reamed away in dark corners—“Let there be lights!” Prez crowed ahead of us.
“The greatest scene of all, Lovejoy!” Annalou told me, more friendly than ever. “Real Genuine People choirs are still the greatest pull!”
The RGP choristers sang, swaying delirious with joy. People clapped in time and rocked to and fro.
They were all dressed in cottas and cassocks, reds and whites and blacks. Microphones, that least sanctified instrument, dangled
“A small choir, only a few folks come, see?”
“A big choir means a bigger crowd, more revenue?”
“You better believe it.”
The Sanctum Antiquorum charged a special admission fee. You got a plenary indulgence on a Parchment of Prayer, for an extra fee. It looked like real parchment to me, which raised the unpleasant thought that some sheep somewhere had given one hundred per cent.
“This is a genuine scale copy of the Vatican Museum’s forum, Lovejoy!” Annalou claimed. “We’re hoping to buy a church from your Wiltshire, complete with gravestones, and install it as an added attraction in a Cornice of Contemplation.”
The antiques were a mixture of fake, fraud, and the genuine. Paintings, mainly Italian School, mid-eighteenth century, a couple of frescoes, walls from genuine old monasteries, arches and pillars from Germany, a couple of French cloisters. It was a marvellous show, but an impossible mishmash. Yet what’s wrong with that?
Silver chalices, gold monstrances, rings claiming kinship with ancient bishops and saints, a chunk of everything vaguely religious was included. There was a hand-shaped left-handed tea-caddy spoon I particularly fell for—once used in Catholic services for shovelling incense into the thurible at High Mass. (Tip: any collector will give his eye teeth for a left-handed one of those, being so much rarer than the right-handed sort.) Madonnas abounded, statues bled and wept with artificial abandon. Crutches dangled from arches, testifying to spontaneous recovery from afflictions.
I’m not knocking all this, incidentally. Whatever your salvation depends on, go to it and good luck. Just don’t ask me to subscribe to the magazine.
I spent too long gazing at the small sextet of ancient figures from China, one of which I’d rescued from Zole. Seeing them all together, I honestly wished I’d not bubbled the kid, but sent him back for the other five and waited in the getaway helicopter or something.
“Honey.” Annalou squeezed my hand, having detected but misunderstood my sincerest form of emotion. “We can maybe work something out, okay? You and me?”
“It’s Jove, you see,” I explained thickly, gazing at the wonderful small porcelains. The Jesuits had these done in seventeenth-century Peking. I reached and touched them one by one, feeling the glow.
