Paid and Loving Eyes

CHAPTER SEVEN

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Once upon a time, antiques were a rarefied pursuit for scholars. Oh, don’t misunderstand. A few titled gentlemen really did pursue antiquities all over the ancient world. They spent fortunes, founded private museums in attics. Great, but kind of chintzy.

Until July, 1886.

In that month the great antiques hunt began, when an auctioneer intoned ‘Lot One’—and the Duke of Marlborough’s Blenheim Palace’s magnificent art, furniture, statuary went under the hammer. That gavel was gunfire that reverberated round the world. The Great Antiques Rush was on. Think of a rocket soaring upward, that’s never yet begun to fall. Okay, it’s levelled off now and then, but always resumed rezooming prices into the stratosphere.

Now, we’re all at it. Clever people draw graphs of antiques’ values, starting back in that lovely summer of 1886. Don’t be fooled. It’s not a mathematical proposition. It’s not philosophy. It’s a scramble.

Umber Auctions took over from Wittwoode less than a month after he got nicked for “discretion”, that hoary old get-out by which auctioneers absolve themselves of blame for trickery. They behaved like a new Prime Minister. Wholesale sackings, Under New Management posters everywhere, advertising campaigns—then no change. The same whifflers drift aimlessly about hoping to make a few quid on the side, crooked auctioneers, crooked vannies, crooked antique dealers moaning that the antiques are pure unadulterated gunge. It still stank of armpits and stale smoke. I love it. An auction has paradise within. All you have to do is look.

“Lovejoy.” Practical was over like a shot, trying to pull me to see. “What d’you reckon?”

Even before we pushed among the grumbling dealers I knew it would be the same old fake. You have to laugh at blokes like Practical because they’re a waste of time, yet sensible in a weird kind of way. He fakes only the cheaper end of antiques. Not badly, but not well either. Fortyish, thin, stained with his famous watercolours. He uses his jacket for a rag, so half of him is always rainbow, the other half taupe tat.

“Good?”

I looked. The famous George Cruikshank, who died in 1878 or so, illustrated Charles Dickens’s works. He also sketched as he wandered, producing little watercolours that have never really caught on. You can get genuine Cruikshank for less than a week’s wage. This is the sort of thing Practical fakes—hence his nickname. Old Masters ‘aren’t practical’. Cheaper, less risky forgeries are.

“Not bad, Prac. Not, definitely not, good.”

My tone disappointed him. “Give me a tip, Lovejoy?”

“Get a couple of decent old frames from Farmer. New fake frames are a dead give-away. And stop using tea to mimic foxing. Everybody nowadays knows to look for a sharp rim. Leave the watercolour surface undamaged. Say it’s just been cleaned. And for heaven’s sake stamp its reverse, Prac—you can buy a fake Agnew’s stamp for ten quid down the market.”

I turned away, exasperated. Folk drive you mad. Then I paused. Seeing Diana enter from the street, swivelling every head, made me think.

“Here, Prac.” Voice low—antique dealers have three-league ears. “You still a neb man?”

Door-to-door con tricks come in many guises. The commonest among antique dealers is the neb man. The old game where you pretend to be a council/social worker/health inspector—some kind of semi-authoritative official. You talk your way into somebody’s home, filch a small antique, and scarper lightly on your way. It always works. In fact, it’s so easy I sometimes wonder if people actually want to be tricked. “Neb” comes from the old word for the peak of a cap—as once worn by officialdom’s intruders. You still see market barrowboys and bus crews surreptiously touch their foreheads, symbolizing touching a neb, to signify an inspector’s on the way.

“A bit. Why?”

Practical hates doing it since he lost his teeth. No smile. A con man needs a smile. Too much booze had rotted his fangs, and pot teeth were looming from the dentist on Chitts Hill. For Practical, it had been the Year of the Tooth. I watched Diana out of the corner of my eye. She was urgently questing, not strolling. Drowning, not waving. I ducked. I’d my own problems.

“Done anything round Mentle? Ladyham?”

“Me and Baff did turn and turn about. I sold him Mentle a month since.”

“Ta, Prac.”

I promised to see Farmer, persuade a frame out of the stingy old nerk to help Prac out, and eeled towards the door. It was then that Donk saw me and yelled my name. A right pest he was turning out to be. I had to stand upright and pretend I’d been casually inspecting an Eastern mirror mounted in a brilliantly cut mother-of-pearl surround. Diana came over as soon as she could, all the oafs deliberately not getting out of her way.

“Hello, Lovejoy. I thought I’d find you here. Can we speak?”

“What do you think of this?” I seethed with disgust. “Leave mother-of-pearl in sunshine, you never get its glisten back. A waste of all that lovely carving.” Actually, there are ways, but they’re not good.

I went with her, but only so she wouldn’t give me that can-we-talk? routine. I hate it. It’s all they ever say on telly soaps: Can we talk? As if you have to set up a Security Council before telling a bird her dress is a mess and you love her. God, but the world needs me.

“My own fake’s here, Di,” I said shyly. “Want to see it?”

“Which is it, Lovejoy?” our greatest failed lover butted in to ask.

Dicko Chave. He’s hopeless, which is to say an average dealer. A pompous, bluff bloke, he’s proposed to every woman in the Eastern Hundreds, rejected every single time. Nobody knows why. He’s begged me to tell him where he goes wrong. I’m stumped. I mean, an ex-officer, doesn’t drink much, his own house, keeps accurate tax accounts would you believe, church-goer, shoes polished, reliable as a Lancashire clock. You’d think women’d find