probably guessed why I’d come the instant he saw me wander in.
“Best is not to be noticed at all.” Gobbie looked about the field. “Know what, Lovejoy? The old antique game’s coming apart. Looks safe, ordinary. Feels corrupt, horrible.”
“Shouldn’t you be doing something about them dancers?” I was worried the kiddies’d catch it from that cricket goon.
“Eh? Nowt to do with me, son.”
Blokes like Gobbie make me smile. I can’t help it. He’d sounded like our bishop, telling the cricketer he’d handle it. Now there was a disturbance out there, three adults arguing, the furious gent pointing angrily towards us, the morris dancers faltering, handkerchiefs fluttering slowly to a stop.
“Leon was something to do with Troude. Right, Gobbie?” There are so few divvies around, each of us had heard countless stories of the others. It’s pub gossip in the trade. Troude the high-flyer wouldn’t know that.
“Leon snuffed it.” Gobbie’s old eyes took me in. “You sub?”
“Aye, substitute. Silver imports, Troude said. ”
Gobbie snorted. Folk came hurrying our way, all furious. I was sick of their bloody cricket pitch.
“Much he’d know, silver or owt else.”
“Is he not an antiques roller?” I was astonished. Why did Troude need me, then? “Or a dealer?”
Gobbie’s laugh of derision set him coughing, a gentle ack-ack-ack. “Him? There’s no such thing, Lovejoy. Not no more.” His bleary stare raked the approaching mob, but he spoke only of the antique dealers, now arguing over some fake. “Just look at those buggers. Nobody knows naffink no more. Twenty antique dealers, not one has a clue. All they want is a few quid. Wouldn’t know an antique if one bit them in the arse. Troude neither.”
People talk truth, you listen.
“You distinctly said —” the cricketer started heatedly, while organizers and brownies surrounded us, all yammering.
“You didn’t rope them a different square,” Gobbie said, pontifical in reprimand. Lies didn’t alter his tone one jot. I marvelled. “I wrote to your secretary last week telling him to rope them off a separate square. Avoid misunderstanding. Not the kiddies’ fault. They were told, dance in the roped-off square.”
“I got no letter!” the cricketer cried.
“See?” the brownie mob cried righteously. “See?
Gobbie announced, “Rope off a different square. They got permission. You didn’t do your bit.”
They all left, still arguing, the cricketer scurrying for some rope. I looked curiously at Gobbie. Some blokes simply exude status. You have to admire fraud, wherever it walks with style.
“Know when antiques wus, Lovejoy?” The old visage cracked into a dozen little smiles. “Fifty year since. I played the violin, dance bands in the Smoke. Then the talkies came, fiddlers out of work everywhere. Became an antiques runner. You should’ve been there. Running down Aldgate, three o’clock of a rainy morning. Hauling trestles up Cutler Street silver market—not that frigging shed they got now, the real one. The barrers in Petticoat Lane, iron wheels sounding like tumbling coal on the street stones. Old Tubby Isaacs singing on his whelk stall—real live eels—top end, where you could look at Gardner’s Corner or Aldgate Pump. Nobody about in the shiny black morning ’cept real folk.”
“What happened, Gobbie?”
He came to, bemused, astonished I was still there. “Gawd knows, son. Everybody became a great greedy herd, just feeding and fucking, never lifting their heads to look. See Maisie?”
“Mmmmh?” I knew Maisie, fair, fat, forty, fly-by-night with the reliability of a weather forecast.
“Says she’s been antique dealing six year. I told her, ‘No you not, ducks.’ She got narked. You’re the only one who knows what I mean, Lovejoy.” He paused. The antique dealers drifted. Their argument would linger through several nights’ drink-up times at the pubs. “Nice here in the country, though. Daughter, grandkids, her bloke good- hearted. No telling anybody what I seen.”
He has bad feet, did a practice shift of weight, wanting me to ask.
“What’ve you seen, Gobbie?”
His smiles coalesced. It was strangely beautiful. “I seen a Thomas Tompion clock on a street barrer, Lovejoy. Seen a Hester Bateman inkstandish pledged for a half-a-crown Derby roll-up bet.”
He made to go, with that I’m-hurrying gait of the arthritic.
“Ain’t no antique trade no more, Lovejoy. Nor no dealers.”
“Leon the last, eh?”
He halted, staring at the dancers being triumphantly roped off by the cricket-club man.
“Last but for you, Lovejoy. Watch out, son. They did for him in a loading accident. Some roadside in France. Heard from a box shipper. Me mate, ’fore the London docks went posh.”
Well, old matelots tell each other things.
“But why did they top Leon, Gobbie?”
“Dunno that, Lovejoy. Word is, he wouldn’t play along.”
“With what?”
“Gawd alone knows.”
