Paid and Loving Eyes

Temperature—controlled storage, bond areas…”

“Great.” Only sixteen? Did that explain the grumbles of international dealers? Mind you, I’m prejudiced. There’s nothing wrong with auctioneers that retirement wouldn’t cure.

“This way.”

Just think of the wasted corridor-miles humanity’s logged over the centuries! If it wasn’t for flaming corridors we’d have colonized the universe yonks ago. As it is, we’re all still plodding down boring corridors, trying to reach our respective launch pads.

Dreyfus was a small pleasant bloke, so respectably dressed he had me notching my own markers of suavity— curling lapel, slanted tie, shirt without a top button, grubby shoes. We greeted each other warmly. He had a partitioned office. No antiques in the inner sanctum. The sofa table by the wall was a dud. Or maybe not so dud? Its luscious surface patina felt right, but the table seriously wrong. It was brilliantly done, looked exactly right. The four feet with their castors gave an authentic bong. But the resonance of it mixed with that terrible fraudulent surface made me nauseous. I looked away.

“Jacques Dreyfus,” he said, twinkling, “and no relation! Beautiful, isn’t it?” He’d be quite at home in any language. “It will be catalogued soon.”

As a fake, I hoped. The old trick. Its base, castors and all, were nicked from a genuine cheval mirror —“swing dressers”, dealers call them. In Regency days they’d had to make them strong, to take heavy glass. Cheval mirrors are not so valuable, even now, so forgers marry the support to the best flat heartwood. Presto! Your “genuine 1825 sofa table”—and we challenge anybody to do any tests they like. Your usual patter is, “No, take your sample for chemical analysis from the feet, please—the tabletop is irreparable, you see…” The tests prove exactly right for 1820, and you have your certificate of authenticity. Then you buy some old wood, fake up some feet with castors for the cheval mirror, and sell that as completely genuine. Only now your patter goes, ”No, take your sample for chemical analysis from the ebony-inlaid top, please. The base is irreparable…”

“The system,” Veronique said. Impatient women aren’t new, but there was a new edge to her voice. Social- philosophy time? I’d hated the bit I’d already received.

“Our auction system in France endures,” Jacques said cheerily,“ despite all attempts. We operate a monopoly, though the Common Market lawyers wring their hands in Brussels.”

“I’m ashamed of my ignorance,” I put in. I moved from the chair to sit on a low couch, trying to get away from the distress of that ghastly hybrid.

“The Compagnie de Commissaires-Priseurs de Paris has controlled auctions since the eighteenth century, Lovejoy.” He rippled his fingers like a pianist gathering pace. “The auction firms—etudes— can have offices wherever they like, but must rent a saleroom in the Hotel Drouot for a sale.”

“Must?” That would account for the gripes of the non-French antiques traders. “Il faut?”

Jacques chuckled at my pronunciation. I began to like him. I was doing my best in a mad mix of French and English.

“Il, as you perceive, faut, Lovejoy. We are also forbidden to prepare our own sale catalogues. Those are formed up, descriptions of the antiques and all, by a corps of experts certified by our Government.”

“Is there a guarantee?” I asked without thinking. Then I had to struggle so as not to see Veronique tense at my question. I’d have to be even more circumspect. I’ve the brains of an egg.

“Thirty years.”

“The expert cataloguer is more important than the etude, then?”

“That is often the case.” Jacques Dreyfus smiled with guarded apology at Veronique, who was busy pretending she was bored. “The money is the other, Lovejoy. The Compagnie holds half the sale money until the year’s end.”

“And dishes it out when it wants?” I was aghast. “Don’t the big boyos mind? They’re subsidizing the small fry, right?”

He shrugged that Gallic shrug. “The smaller etudes don’t have to catalogue each sale.” He looked at Veronique in exasperation, smiley still. “It’s the way things are.”

“No more, Jacques,” Veronique said. Guy came zooming in. “We must show Lovejoy your collection.”

I brightened. “Antiques? All as good as your sofa table, Jacques?”

His smile was quite brave, in the circumstances. I had a vague idea he’d sussed me out, but wasn’t sure. “I believe exactly!” He wanted to show me a saleroom. I asked for a loo first, please, and received directions.

There, I was violently sick, retching and leaning gasping against the tiled wall until I could retch no more. I put my forehead against the cold surface a few minutes. Afterwards I rinsed my face in cold water and emerged pretending a kind of I’m-casually-interested-looking-about. Veronique and Jacques Dreyfus were waiting in the foyer. Guy had streaked off somewhere.

“Are you all right, Lovejoy?” Jacques asked. “You’re white.”

“Fine, thanks.” My head was splitting. I grinned like a goon, having remembered where it was I’d been sick like this before, and why. “Have we far to go?”

“With you along, Lovejoy,” Veronique said through thinned lips, “ the answer’s yes.”

Me and Jacques chuckled merrily. In my case—and maybe his? —it wasn’t much of a chuckle. But I thought hard of having got my letter off, overloaded with stamps from a tobacconist, and managed something near a jovial croak.

We drove in Dreyfus’s motor, a more trundlesome job than Guy’s zoomster. I kept sane, and more importantly in a non-puke state, by exclaiming at the Parisian landmarks—the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe, the bigger-than- expected Sacre Coeur—then a double through tangled streets to finish up in an unprepossessing district within sound of trains. It looked the sort of district Paris shouldn’t have, grotty, down at heel, soiled.

“This it, Veronique?” I let my surprise show. I was getting fed up with being careful all the bloody time. It’s