Paid and Loving Eyes

“This way, Lovejoy,” said Cissie, walking sternly between us, not glancing at me. I was deflected into a drawing room where Paul stood, trying his distinguished best to seem in command. It was doomed to fail within five furlongs of Cissie.

She walked sternly to the fireplace and swivelled sternly. (If any spaces happen in the next few sentences, insert sternly; it’ll save endless effort on my part. Cissie is stern personified.) Blondish, exactly the right height-to- weight Quartel Index from working at her figure in pools and leotards, exactly the right height, clothes, teeth, attitude. She’s the most depressing example of perfection that ever crippled a bloke. Imagine a gorgeous death ray, you’re close.

“Lovejoy,” she snapped, “you have to help Paulie.”

“Why’d you not invite me to your wedding?”

Note the absence of greetings, won’t-you-sit-down. What the hell was I doing here? I make me exasperated. I mean, I’d had two whole months of being wed to her Churchillian imperatives, enough to last several reincarnations, and here I was reflexly coming back for more. I’m beyond belief. I honestly get me wild.

Paul is a posh lawyer, investor. City gent. He looks the part. I say that with all the derogatory effect I can muster. It’s all Paul ever does, look the part. I think he’s just a suit. Occasionally, like now, he can seem really lifelike when despair shows through, but he’s still only a Madame Tussaud replicate escaped from gene control.

“In trouble, Paulie?” I kept pretty meek at this stage, because I can fly off the handle.

“You must do as Philippe Troude says,” from Cissie.

“In trouble, Paulie?” Me, still meek.

“I said you must work for Philippe,” from between Cissie’s perfect teeth.

“In trouble, Paulie?” Still meek, still on that old handle.

She swung on him in fury. “I told you he’d be insufferable!” she honed out. There’s no other word for her speech. It’s a whine, a mosquito in your earhole at night that wakes you up flailing air, or a distant forester with a band-saw in the woods of an autumn. But the word doesn’t work for Cissie. She never, never ever, whines. She shrills, screams, shrieks, thunders, but never whines. Honing, that scrape you get from metal on a honing stone, is the best words can manage.

“I. T. comma P.?” I said, so affable.

“Listen to me,” she honed. I stepped back. The band-saw had moved closer, and forests give absolutely no protection from the likes of her. “Paulie has invested a great deal—a very great deal!—in Monsieur Troude’s enterprise. He’s not going to suffer on account of a worm like you, Lovejoy!”

Like at The Hague and the UN, her arguments always plead her own case in the guise of philanthropy. I listened with a sudden glim of interest. Why me?

“Why me, Paulie?” Still a meek handle-hanger.

“Tell him!”

Half the trouble was, I’ve only to see a couple and my treacherous mind starts asking absurd questions. Like, how do they make love? Does he ever ravish her over the breadboard? Or in the garage unloading shopping? What do they say during grunts of passion? Have they ever wept in prayer? What charities do they support? Does he squeeze his blackheads? Hers? If so, what does he do with the end-product? Is he a mattress-wiper, or a surreptitious flirter of the rolled-up…?

“Lovejoy! Pay attention!” honed in my ear. I honestly swiped at an imaginary mosquito. Paulie had been droning for ages. What with Paulie droning and her honing, they were a concerto of sound Schonberg would have envied with his mere twelve tones. Tone, hone, drone. I stood there, an imbecile amid exhortations.

“… investment opportunities balanced against shortfall fiscal inputs retrograded leverage-wise…” he was saying. (I’m making this up; I haven’t a clue what actual words he was using. Like I said, an investment lawyer. You get the idea.)

“… cullage from antiques reinvested across the board,” he said. And stopped.

“And?” I prompted. He’d got to the only word I could understand, antiques.

“And what?” he asked. He even managed to drone that.

“What do you want me to do?” This is so typical, rich people greedy to be richer. If you want to become rich, don’t invest everything, and don’t spend virtually nothing. Simply buy a good, rareish antique. That’ll do the job. You want to know how? Right, a tip: Knocking around this old kingdom of ours are some thirty white-enamel-face long- case (so-called “grandfather”) clocks, with the most unusual dusty pinkish floral decoration on the dial. Birds, vines, leaves, the odd tendril, all painted so very slenderly. Simply go and buy one, average market price. What a rotten tip! you exclaim angrily, because the average long-caser is a whole month’s wages—expensive, no? Answer, no. Because that delicate manganese decoration signifies a value ten times that of the average grampa clock. See? Instead, prats like this Paul-Cissie molecule want to be moguls overnight. Hence the contumely.

He looked pleadingly at Cissie. She glared. “Lovejoy knows all the time, Paulie. He’s just being aggravating.” She made me sound like a tooth abscess.

“Words of one syllable, please.”

“Help Philippe to identify certain genuine antiques overseas, Lovejoy. So he can reimport them here, for auction on the international market. Otherwise the profit vanishes.”

She paused, to my relief. I felt like I”d got clogged ears from swimming underwater. You know how your hearing goes thick after being in the plunge for an hour?

“The percentage return is —”

“Paulie!” from honer to droner. He fell silent. Very, very wise of him. Disobedience was not tolerated in her ranks.

“Why aren”t the antiques being auctioned off on the Continent?” I should have asked Troude that.