Paid and Loving Eyes

Seven o’clock, I was downstairs in a panic having that nonbreak-fast breakfast they give you, one measly crescentic pastry and a cup of coffee. It was urgent to do something in antiques that looked really legitimate, even if it never is.

Which means auctions. It’s practically the definition.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

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Roused, bathed, and having conquered the breakfast charade, I strolled the morning streets until Veronique and Guy came at a run and we embarked on our impending spree.

“Did the Colonel say how much money we had to blue?” I asked, but only got shrieks of laughter.

“We must avoid the Parisian winds,” Veronique said at my look. Her coat was heavy, its high collar surprising. “Paris has only wind tunnels. London’s chaotic streets give protection.”

If she said so. I thought it mild if fresh. Guy thought of nothing but his next tumbleweed and roaring his motor through impossible thoroughfares. I’d never met a bloke like him for getting off the starting grid. We’d no sooner walked round the corner than he was in his motor, revving like the maniac he was.

“Antique shops were sprinkled about the arrondissements, Lovejoy,” Veronique explained, her head wobbling and jerking as she tried to talk against the lunatic’s darting accelerations between delivery vans. “An arrondissement’s a Paris district, with a mayor, a town hall as you call it, everything. They’re numbered in a spiral on maps, from centre outwards.”

“Which one has the antiques?” There should be a special nook in heaven for the bloke who invented roofs for motor cars. And one in hell for the bloke who took them off.

“Sixth. I think,”, she added, managing to sound dry, “near the Luxembourg Gardens.” Women nark me. It was clearly my fault, I’m not French.

“There are true antique shops, Lovejoy, and brocanteurs.” Guy screeched a mad screech at the word.

“Brocanteurs are what you call junk shops, second-handers.”

“Have you a big flea market, love?” I tried to explain Petticoat Lane, Portobello Road, but she was there ahead of me.

“That’s where we’re going, not your posh shops. The Marche aux puces. On Saturdays to Mondays, bargains galore.” Her dryness reached sarcasm.

“Turn back,” I said after a momentary think, which at Guy’s speed meant a least a million miles out of our way. “The sixth arrondissement, please. No dross today.”

“No, Lovejoy,” Veronique said. “We’ve got a planned sequence.”

“Do as you’re frigging well told,” I said, all quiet and quite calm. “And tell your frigging loon to do the same.”

You can’t muck about when it’s antiques-time, and I’d had enough of her dryth and his mania. I wasn’t here by choice. I wanted out of their daft unknowable scam. The only exit was by doing my job, then lam off leaving them to it.

She stared at me over her shoulder. “ What?” Guy actually shouted in astonishment, so loud that pedestrians turned to look.

“You heard.” We screeched to a stop at some traffic lights. Guy revved his engine, Fangio on song.

“Lovejoy,” Veronique said, tight-lipped in the erotic way women show fury in public. “You will obey orders.”

“Ta-ra, love.” That’s the advantage of a bucket seat. You can spring lightly—or even clumsily —into the churning snarling honking Paris traffic, at risk of life and limb, if you’re feeling specially suicidal, or even fed up.

Guy swore incomprehensibly, Veronique shrieked warnings, threats too I daresay. The traffic crescendoed to deafen the city. But I was free, and off down a side street like a ferret. It seemed to have no motors in it, by some extraordinary Parisian oversight. I walked a bit, looked back. No sign of Veronique, nor Guy. Nor his motor, thank God. A bloke passed me trundling a handbarrow, which cheered me. Reality was about.

Without any idea of where exactly I was, I found a nosh bar and tried to negotiate something to eat. The stout man seemed surprised to be asked for a lash-up so early in the morning, but responded well. It’s really being served with eagerness. Back home you get a surly uncooperative grunt like in Woody’s cafe, but this man seemed really pleased. He did me some scrambled eggs—he’d no real notion about kippers on account of my language barrier — and some hot sliced meat I didn’t recognize, some eccentric jam, an astonishing variant of tea, toast by the ton, and some hot cylindrical bread things. After, I asked for some vegetable soup with more of his scalding bread sticks, then some cake (cold; I insisted on froid, non chaud). He turned out to be good on cakes. I had four small ones, then slices of a big dark monster with embedded fruit. He brought his missus out to see. She tried giving me some red wine, really weird this hour in the morning. She understood with regret that wine, to me, came apres tea o’clock. She pondered—which you do gesticulating volubly in Paris—then brightened, and brought out some liqueur. I had to accept it, but slung it into my tea to dilute the stuff. I took a few cakes for the road, and paid. We all rejoiced.

We even shook hands, more oddity. In East Anglia you shake hands with your new brother-in-law and that’s it for life. Still, when in Rome. I felt fit at last. No sign of my helpers, all to the good.

Taxi at the main road, and I was on my way to Antiquaires, wherever that was.

“Louvre des Antiquaires, Monsieur,” the driver explained.

“C’est it,” I agreed. “Merci, Monsieur.”