Paid and Loving Eyes

Liz Sandwell was better value. I kept looking back at Frederico’s other box. It pealed chimes in me, reverberating.

“Eh?”

“I said go halves, Lovejoy.” She smiled, a lovely offer. But you have to be sure what a woman’s offer actually is. I keep making this mistake.

My throat cleared. “Halves of what?”

“Not me, Lovejoy. This illuminated panel.”

“It’s rubbish.” I turned on my heel.

She caught me. “Why, Lovejoy?”

Because it didn’t utter a single boing. Except Liz wanted a reason reason. So I looked at her neffie panel. A parchment egg tempera painting, St Sebastian dying heroically for something or other. Lovely, the right style and everything. If I’d been a buyer I’d have said Early English, worth a small house. Then I looked across at the dejected Frederico.

“I’ll tell you why, Liz, if you persuade Vasco Da Gama there to show me the antique in his other box.”

She went and wheedled, returning in a trice with the box. The closer it came the more certain the chime. I swallowed to wet my throat for speech. Talk is problems.

“Can I look?”

Frederico, offhand, nodded. I reached inside the humble cardboard and felt a warm loving living thing slip smiling into my palm. I lifted it out, my soul singing.

It was beautiful. Besides glass, the one class of antiques that has stormed ahead of the world price spirals is that of scientific instruments. This was superb. For sheer price it could have bought the whole Arcade, and the street too I shouldn’t wonder.

A travelling sundial. Octagonal base, incised with lines and numbers, with a recessed compass. Its gnomon — the little raised bit that casts the shadow—was shaped like a bird. Four hour scales, and latitude marks for 43 and 52 degrees North. You would adjust the bird gnomon for whatever latitude you were sailing in.

“Michael?” I heard my voice ask. “Is it really you?” I rubbed the grime, licked a thumb, tried again. And it was.

Michael Butterfield—spelt right, thank God; contemporary fakers got his name wrong, like Smith the great porcelain faker did with Wedgwood—was an Englishman in Paris. For over fifty years he turned out superb works of genius. Naturally, from 1670 on his brilliant creations have been forged, stolen, faked, copied, like all things bright and beautiful. A true hero of talent. Can you imagine him, striving for perfection by candlelight when all around was filth and degradation, with—?

“Sit down, Lovejoy.” Liz was holding me.

“No.” I pulled away from the silly cow. They treat you like a cripple, women. “How much, Frederico?”

He looked amazed, me to the sundial. “It’s only brass, Lovejoy,”

“Butterfield made in silver and brass, nerk. How much?”

A distant cough sounded, coming nearer with a pronounced Doppler. The vibration shuddered through the Arcade. A flake of paint gave up clinging to the wall under the force. Tinker was approaching along the High Street.

“You sure, Lovejoy?”

He was asking me? Gawd above. “How much?”

He licked his lips, tried to take his dial back. I kept it. Just because an instrument’s made of brass doesn’t mean lunatics can’t damage it.

He glanced at his duff glass. “I thought it was the other…”

The other way round? I might have known. A put-up job. Who’d given him the two boxes? No wonder he’d got the wrong suit on today. With tears in my eyes I replaced the Butterfield dial in its box and handed it over. Neither the fake glass nor genuine instrument was his to sell. Life is a pig.

“Sod off, Fred.” Where was I? “Your parchment, Liz.”

“Ere, Lovejoy.” Tinker came in, shuffling behind his thundering cough like infantry following a creeping barrage. “There’s a tart wants you over at—”

“A sec, Tinker.” I gave the filthy old devil the bent eye, to restrict my trade secrets to a few square miles. His idea of tact is to pluck my sleeve in a theatrical mimicry of stealth, while booming out anything confidential as if yelling from a distant shore. I’d promised Liz a reason reason. I scanned her illuminated parchment.

“Blue, love. They should have used lapis lazuli instead of Prussian blue. Diesbach discovered Prussian blue in 1704, centuries too late for your mythical mediaeval monk.”

Actually, I’d have given modern French ultramarine a go, made up in egg yolk. Better still, I’d have re-re- remortgaged my cottage, and bought quarter of an ounce of genuine lapis lazuli. I hate fakers who’re too flaming idle. So what that genuine lapis lazuli’s the costliest pigment on earth? Ha’p’orth of tar and all that. Tip: get round the experts on this vital point by mixing a proportion of Guimet’s synthetic ultramarine, available since 1824 for heaven’s sake, with twenty per cent ground-up lapis. You finish up with an almost perfect faker’s blue

“That posh tart with the big knockers, Lovejoy,” Tinker interrupted. “Her’s a frigging pest. Wants you outside.”

“Thank you, Lovejoy,” Liz Sandwell said sweetly, retrieving her parchment. “You may go, seeing duty calls.”

I leaned away from Tinker. His breath emerges very, very used. Must have been drinking solidly since dawn. His old army greatcoat was stained, his mittens filthy, rheumy eyes bloodshot, his stubble encrusted with food residues.