“Will I see you again, Lovejoy?”
“Eh?” Blank for a second, but she was right to stay in character. We were travellers with the hotel hots. “I couldn’t go on without that, love.” It was easier to say than usual. Her eyes filled. “It’s true, Lilian. You were magic.”
We whispered a few more phrases, enough to convince any eavesdropper, then I stepped reluctantly into the corridor as somebody came upstairs.
And I glimpsed something round Lilian’s neck that made my blood run cold. But I managed to keep smiling, nodding goodnight, as she put the door to and I went for a well-earned kip.
God knows how I’d failed to notice it. Heat of the moment, I suppose. Only a small gold medallion, with a monogram. Its initials, SAPAR, round the periphery, struck into my brain and set my two lonely nerve cells clanging like clappers in a bell. Stolen Art and Purloined Antiques Rescue.
But quite the most frightening was a single gold letter stencilled in the centre, larger than the others Letter H. Lying on my crumpled bed, I found myself shivering like in a malarial rigor, except this was much, much worse. I wondered for the first time who Lilian and Gerald really were. And the gorgeous golden maniacs in the posh racer. The world had unglued, to clatter all about me. Marimee would have me shot twice a day for a week. Paul, Almira, Troude, Monique, were on a dead loser. And me? I was in the worst-ever trouble of all.
H stands for Hunter.
Time to run.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
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About sexual emblems.
They have a fascinating history. The antiques that have filtered down to us oftener than not go unnoticed. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that sexual antiques get shunned. Women, as with everything else on earth, hold the key.
In every age, every fashion, sexual artefacts flourished. They do now, except we won’t admit it. My favourites are nipple jewels. Not merely studs in the nipple’s eye, but lovely pendants with question-mark supports for pierced nipples. All the rage late in Victoria’s reign, the ancient world’s fashion came round again. Breast lassies, some with erotic tails of hair, tiny whips, even fine blades, offered all kinds of fetishes for the woman who preferred to mount her own performance, so to speak. Merkins were natural, in an age of wigs, though very few survive. These flattish wigs made for the pubis —smallpox tended to denude your genital hair—mostly human hair in kid leather, were desirable enhancers. They came adorned with every kind of jewellery, including gold stitchery. Belly jewels, implanted precious stones actually surfacing through the skin, spectacular ornaments for the genitalia, they’ve all had their day.
Because more boy babes died than girls in those past days, women outnumbered us. Superstitions ran rife about conception, a must for a woman to hold up her head. The more she produced, the better. With ineffable logic, they decided that the greater the arousal, the more certain the chance of fruition. They invented with ingenuity and skill. They called in seductive lady helpers of great beauty, who’d excite to passion—using any devices they could think up—then escape from between as husband and wife came together, to coin a phrase, with an almost audible clang. Hence the toy phalluses, images, statuettes, paintings, erotic prints from the Far East, precious gems (of course of the right birthstone significance, because you wouldn’t want your rival to benefit simply because you’d used emerald instead of ruby, right?). I’ve even seen one locket, made for some Victorian lady, which contained the beautifully carved miniature male genitalia of sapphire on one leaf, and the female sculpted of amethyst on the other. Conjures up the charming image of a demure lady praying in church, fingering her locket, which, being firmly closed, made the male and female jewels inside the locket unite in the most intimate manner. Presumably she was born in February, her lover in September—and note that astrological stones aren’t quite those of the calendar months. Semiprecious stones became a means of communication. Diamond, emerald, amethyst and ruby look rather rum in a linear gold mount, but they spell DEAR to the observant swain. I’ve seen a fairly modern platinum- mounted one of feldspar, a gap, then chrysoberyl, then kunzite—the gap standing for “unknown’. Incidentally, if you see kunzite—violet pink of different colour depths as you rotate it—in a brooch for its name, then the gem’s really not a genuine antique, for G.F. Kunz was an American at the end of Victoria’s reign…
Where was I? The gold-lettered pendant on Lilian’s gold chain. Husbands give their ladies depictive jewellery showing occupations. Gerald was a SAPAR man. There’s only two grades in SAPAR’s organization: A for the admin, legal, research lot; H for the self-effacing, but ruthless, hunters.
Escaping, that’s where I was. On the run from H for Hunter Gerald, the clever swine.
First, nick a motor. Fifth car I tried, I got in, started up with ease. Reasonably modern, so it wouldn’t conk out and embarrass me. Hot-wiring a motor at a somnolent night town’s traffic lights attracts attention.
Knowing what theft is exactly, is Man’s dilemma. I thought this abstruse quandary as I guided my new possession from the hotel car park and zoomed back the way we’d come.
Stealing a car, possibly to save my life, was not theological or moral theft. The Church teaches that stealing bread to save your starving children isn’t. As the lights on the south-east road lit my reflection in the windscreen, I worried in case the Church didn’t teach any such thing. If it doesn’t, it ought. Naturally I felt sorry for the lady whose dawn would be clouded by her missing Peugeot, but I didn’t choose to be here, driving wrong-handed into gathering night rain. Everything simply wasn’t my fault. She looked quite smart, did Madame Jeanne Deheque in her photo snap, with her deliberate hair and long eyelashes. No credit cards, maps, nothing to help a stray escaper, the thoughtless cow. Typical woman.
The memory of the service station on the main road was fresh in my mind. No passport, no knowing where I could find refuge. But I was pretty sure I could find the town, the car park, the cafe where Marimee had grilled me. From there, it would be easy to trek back to Almira’s house and the chalet by the lake. Thence filch my passport, and home. No speeding—French cops are death to dashers. I was the sedate motorist. Enough petrol to last a lifetime. I settled down to a steady night drive.
Gerald had been pretty cool, all right. His cover, a travel agent looking for time-share accommodation, bonny homely wife along picking up the odd antique for the business premises. No wonder he spent hours on the phone. No wonder they exchanged glances when their casual hitchhiker knew an Astley Cooper chair and all of its off-key
