Paid and Loving Eyes

“Pick it out, Lovejoy,” Philippe Troude said.

They meant the miniature model lifeboats on the glass-fronted mahogany cabinet against the wall by the door. Two of them, each made by a man who hated the other in the frightening days before there were any such things as modern lifeboats. Historical models are all the rage these days.

“What silly sod spoiled the oars?” I asked. Troude gave a swift give-away glance of triumph at the woman, almost wagging for praise. He was crazy about her, and she didn’t give a damn.

“The oars are exactly level,” La Monique said, coming to.

“They shouldn’t be. Willie Wouldhave made that model. He cut them different lengths in 1789.”

It was a scandal that led to the most terrible row, back when those events could ruin a man for ever. As always, the wrong man got fame and fortune. The honest man starved to death.

That year, a fearsome gale ripped across the River Tyne driving the brig Adventure onto Herd Sands. Ashore, Tynesiders watched appalled as the crew drowned. A prominent local tycoon called Nicholas Fairies offered a money prize to anyone who could create a rescue boat able to withstand the ferocious local seas.

Enter the goodie, one William Wouldhave, honest genius of that parish. He was a dour, morose, barbary bloke who didn’t make friends and influence people. In a dazzling fit of intuition, he abandoned design, and opted for buoyancy. Against all contemporary notions, he built a strange-looking boat with a cork layer actually sheathing the boat’s sides. Greenland style, in shape. The ten oars were strangely of different lengths, but did the job. It seemed ingenious, clever, even brilliant. Willie cooled his famous temper, and basked in the glow of being, for once in his heated life, odds-on favourite in the great rescue-boat competition.

Enter the baddie, one Henry Greathead, who made a duff, mundane boat—sail, mast, no special buoyancy to speak of. A really average plain boat without much to commend it. Very long odds, Henry Greathead’s nowt-new rescue boat.

Except his best friend was none other than Nicolas Fairies, head of the South Shields committee. Who naturally awarded Henry the award, prize money, the accolade that would guarantee him fame, fortune and honour.

And poor hot-tempered honest Willie Wouldhave? The committee invited him in, and gave him a guinea as consolation, “second prize” they called it. Angrily he flung the guinea back in their faces and stormed out, to die in the poverty that bitterness always seems to bring.

And the rescue-boat committee? They let Henry Greathead pinch Willie’s superb design. He received a fortune from Parliament. The first modern “lifeboat” was made, and did its first famous rescue the following year. And Henry Greathead was given medals, prominence, did lauded lecture tours, got gold medals from Royal Societies… I won’t go on, if you don’t mind. It makes my blood boil. Lifeboat men still call the brilliant design “Willie’s Corkie”. The inevitable monument is to both men, the extolled gainer and the sore but honest loser.

“I don’t know,” Troude was apologizing to the gorgeous lady.

“The other one, then.” She spoke dismissively. No tea and crumpet for poor old Philippe tonight.

“It’s dud, lady.” I was narked. I wanted to go and see where Baff got topped, not play her silly game. “Move your pins.”

“Pins?” For the first time she lost composure. Her accent intensified slightly.

“Legs. The chair you’re on’s supposed to be provincial Continental, with a French mortice-and-tenon joint. The pin’s like a dowel, to hold the joint. The French”, I added to nark her, “say goujon. Sorry I can’t say it proper. It stands proud from the wood, in time. Fakers construct it the same, but have to dye the protruding end to get the shade right. It’s darker.”

She moved as if to inspect the chair beneath her, pinked slightly and didn’t. “We paid…”

“Aye, well you’ve been done.” I rose, said thanks and started to go. She’d thought I’d been lusting after her legs all the interview. I had, of course, but only after I’d seen the too-revealing darkened shiny goujon head on the joined chair she adorned.

“Wait, Lovejoy, if you please.” Troude came hurrying after, now more of a go-between. He’d been a god at the Nouvello. “Please inspect the Sheraton table —”

“Fake, Mr Troude.” I’d given the small table a glance on the way in. No gongs sounded in my chest. It was a fake no older than last Easter. But the surface worried me. Beautiful, made with endless unrelenting slog. I didn’t know any faker still did wood finishes that perfect, not since old Trinkaloo died last Candlemas. But still a fake, if an excellent one. How odd to see one this excellent at Sir Edward’s Event, and now another so soon. Dunno why, but I felt sickened. Something I’d eaten? “Inspect? No, I won’t,” I told him, still going. I could see a couple of boats dipping into the wind as they tacked to make the harbour. “You’ve mucked me about once too often. I’m sick of you planting stuff in the Arcade, switching stuff with Frederico in case he was more of a crook than you suspected. It was pathetic. I resign.”

“That is impossible, Lovejoy.” He tried to get ominous. “You are an integral part of the grand design.”

Even I had to grin at that. Grand design? Was he about to march on Moscow, for God’s sake? I sighed, and pushed through the doors shaking my head. The most depressing thing about people these days is that they all talk as if they’re deciding on global nukes when instead they’re merely wondering if they should go down the pub or watch the match instead.

Jodie Danglass fell in with me as I reached the north shore after twenty minutes’ fast walking. I was at the ice-creamio.

“Can I have a lick, Lovejoy?” She wasn’t smiling, but women laughing at you never are. I know.

“No,” I told her, narked. “Get your own.”

She bought one, raising her lovely eyebrows as the ice-cream man laughed out loud. She put her arm through mine. We went to watch the sea, leaning on the railings. I like seaside, as long as it’s like this, with boats and plenty of folk on the sands and all the dross of the fair. The trouble is there’s too much of our coastline left undeveloped: secretive, dark, silent, tree-lined, remote, where hardly anybody goes and nothing happens except uncontrollables like Nature’s cannibal act.