loss of confidence now her Gay had given her the sailor’s elbow, her hopes, her sports, her having to give up the flat. Routine incidentals, you might say, that make up life’s plenteous pageant.
At the pick-up, I stayed well out of sight, just watched her lights dwindle from the taproom bar, then merrily tried to get a lift back to civilization, away from the lonely estuary and its one tavern and boats swinging in the night breeze. Mercy Mallock was in my mind. I felt more cheery than I’d done since hearing about Baff getting topped.
Lucky enough to get a lift from Spange, a dealer without portfolio—meaning not an idea in his head—I made it to my Ruby and thence the White Hart, and organized a whip-round for Baff’s missus. A paltry sum, but plenty of IOUs made it seem more. Enough excuse to see Sherry, anyway. So I left smiling. Quite a good evening, really. I’d covered some ground. Oh, and I’d made arrangements to see Mercy again, the point of it all. If France loomed as ominously as it seemed, I wanted allies.
But just how far things had gone was brought home to me as I was leaving for home. Donk came hurtling in just as I made the outer door. He had an envelope. Reluctantly I paid him his message money out of Sherry’s whip- round. Only borrowing. I’d owe.
“Urgent, Lovejoy. Meeting’s in an hour.”
“Eh? It’s bedtime, for God’s sake.”
“You heard.” And off he thundered. I glanced guiltily about, in case any of the antique-dealer mob had seen me misuse their donations, brightened at the good omen when I saw they hadn’t, and opened the envelope. In the solitary light of the forecourt I read Jodie’s rounded scrawl. The meeting with Troude and one other would be tonight, quarter before midnight, outside the George.
Some hopes. I wasn’t their hireling. They could take a running jump. So I lammed it down the dark country road to my cottage, brewed up, sat and read a couple of antique auction catalogues that had come, generally faffed about doing nothing, and settled down by about one o’clock.
Which was how I came to be heading for France. Not quite instantly, but in circumstances definitely beyond my control.
CHAPTER TWELVE
« ^ »
A book was published in 1869 entitled,
“Lovejoy, babbikins!” she screamed into the phone. I held it a mile from my ear, but was still deafened. “What’ve you got?”
Forna is her own invention—I mean her name. She denies ever having received any cognomen. I don’t believe her. Obscure of background, indeterminate of accent, no known family, Forna has a serene individuality that defies pinning down. She lives alone, on information culled from anywhere. She says she’s written seventy-nine books under that name, all on sex and ways of doing it. I like her. She’s a slender yet blowsy middle-ager with glittering teeth, peroxide hair, and wears more gold than a jaunting gypsy.
“I need your help, Forn,” I said into her screech. “Sorry about the late hour.”
“It’s early, babbikins!” Her voice is that shrill noise chalk makes on a school blackboard, if you remember that far back. Sets your molars tingling. “You know me, always at it!”
The laughter almost melted the receiver. I waited it out. Forna works harder at her records—perversions, lists of clients seeking ecstasies of a hitherto unpublished kind—than most antique dealers do theirs. I like a professional. No, honest. Standards mustn’t be allowed to fall.
“A certain bloke, Forna.”
“Can’t be done on the telephone, babbikins,” she cried. “Come round if you’re desperate. Same position, same old place!”
She has a knack of making the most mundane phrase suggestive.
I sighed, got dressed, found matches for the Ruby’s headlights. Twenty-past two I was chuntering into Forna’s Furnace.
Lest I give the impression that all the Eastern Hundreds are mad on surreptitious goings-on, what with Gazza’s outfit and all, I ought to explain that Forna runs her own publishing house. It’s respectable, as such places go, with a logo, two secretaries and a small printing works near Aldeborough. She’s the dynamo and prime mover, though, and runs it from her cottage in Sumring, a hamlet trying hard to be noticed for something else besides Forna. She has automatic locks on the doors, successive stages of entry under banks of hidden cameras.
“Enter my inner sanctum, babbikins,” she screamed.
Several locks later, I passed through the last of the reinforced doors. A sitting room, with one Turner seascape, watercolour, testifying to her taste among a load of Art Deco nymphets and erotica statuettes you can’t keep your eyes off. Forna wore pink satins, impossible pink lace flounces, synthetic pink furs. She always wears a ton of make-up, which I admire. I chose a chair at a distance, got nowhere. She cuddled me on the sofa, poured me a drink I didn’t want.
“Wants, babbikins?” she shrilled in my ear. “Every man’s got those. I want yours, that’s all!”
“Ha ha, Forn,” I said gravely, hoping for fewer decibels so I could at least hear the answer. “Any news about a bloke called Jervis, or Jay, related to Mrs Almira Galloway?”
