“Queue theory, Henry,” Lorela replied without blanching. “One line moves more expeditiously than several.” She ushered me and Monique to the head of the column. Two wall vents were already running conveyor walkways, each as wide as the lane leading to my cottage. One exit was painted yellow, one black. “Here you will select the destinations, and check that your antiques have all arrived undamaged.”
“Well planned, Lorela!” I was starting to dislike this bird. There’s such a thing as being too efficient.
“Your antiques for shipment along the yellow conveyor, storage into the black.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Where do they lead?”
“That information is classified, Henry.” She smiled, indicated the workers. Not in front of the hired help. “Personnel are not entitled to details that are inessential for their work sector. When you have finished, you shall be shown.”
“And the security?” I asked. “Can’t be too careful!”
Monique could have throttled me, which told me what I wanted to know. “That I’m sure is also classified, Henry. Hadn’t we better get on?”
When a woman says “we” like that, she means you, not her.
“Sure thang.” I called for bourbon, though I can’t stand the stuff, shouting let’s get the hell on with it, and shelled my jacket, shoving a clerk off his stool. “Hey!” I called as the vannies wheeled the first antique on to a disc-shaped area down below and stood waiting in the pool of light. “Hey, Monique! All I need here’s a green eyeshade to be calling the shots in the pool championship! Remember that time in Reno, Nevada?”
“Would Madame like to inspect our display of Japanese art upstairs?” Lorela suggested gracefully, signalling for the work to begin. “I hope Madame will not be disappointed…”
“Thank you.”
There’d be trouble after this. I could tell from the way Monique walked, slightly faster than usual, straight as a die. Women don’t walk straight as a rule, unless they’re blind with rage. Check it. Watch a woman on any pavement, she proceeds anywhere but directly forward. Women waver, men walk ahead. It drives me mad when I’m in a hurry, always get stuck behind a bird and have to duck into the roadway at peril of losing my life simply to get past. Monique walked straight. Ergo, furious. And who at? I was doing my best, for God’s sake. I mean, all this trouble just to case a storage dump was barmy. Mad military overkill.
“Okay, men,” I told the waiting crews of vannies. “Zoom on.”
“One, Monsieur.” The first pair wheeled their trolley forward into the cone of light, halted.
“Turn it round, please.”
The men stepped aside. The floor revolved slowly, the piece revolving at viewing pace. An inbuilt turntable. Screens on the ceiling announced the piece’s weight, the relative humidity, temperature, reflectances, dimensions scanned from a million angles. Equinoctial phases of the moon in Burundi too, I shouldn’t wonder. Never seen so much data, and more searchlights than the Edinburgh Tattoo. Even the floor was illuminated, like in coffee dances. Monique and Lorela had gone. I relaxed.
“Look, lads,” I announced. “I don’t want a frigging circus. Just enough light to see the items. Switch off, and for Christ’s sake stop everything spinning round.”
In silence, checking that I meant what I said, the clerks made the screens vanish to where good screens go. The lights dimmed to partially blinding.
“No frigging ears in your heads?” I yelled, really getting narked at their hesitancy. I slid off my perch and walked about, pointing. Turn that off, leave that on. Honest, you’d think this lot had never seen an antique in their lives, let alone handled daily intakes of the world’s most precious antiques. I wouldn’t have got so wild, except the first was a genuine card table, William IV, of the rare kingwood so dark it was almost purple. And not stained with a single dye! Lovely fold-over pattern, plain as King Billy himself always loved furniture to be. Dealers call these “Adelaide tables’, but the Queen had nowt to do with progress except import the Christmas tree to our fair land.
“Right.” I swarmed back up, looked along the clerks similarly perched, down at the whifflers in their tan overalls. Like a Le Mans starting grid, except this was interesting and important, and motor racing never can be. “Light down to daylight candlepower. Floor still. No information.” And antiques somewhere around. Ready, steady.
Genuine. For a second I let myself bask in its warm glow, then came to. Into the yellow conveyor, right? Wasn’t that the way round? Genuine antiques for shipment, fakes into the black for storage? I had to think to make sure.
“Down the yellow chute, lads.”
The pair wheeled the card table up the ramp, and unloaded it through the yellow entrance. A man accompanied it on the conveyor, standing like a moving duck on a fairground shoot, out of sight. You couldn’t moan that lovely Lorela Chevalier was disorganized. Her —sorry,
“Two, Monsieur.”
Marble-topped table, Dresden manufacture about 1729, give or take. Hoof feet, “Indian” masks high on the table’s knees to show trendy obsession with the cult of the Americas. Gilt gesso, very flash, beautifully preserved. Dealers would advertise it as mint. Except it was fake. Phoney, false, dud, it was still exquisitely made, by all the same old processes that the ancient craftsmen had used, in their hellish conditions…
“Eh? Oh.” Somebody had asked me what I’d muttered. I gave my glittering grin, but mirthless. “Black. Storage, please. Next.”
And the next. Next. And next. Genuine down the yellow conveyor, false down the black.
An hour or so, I called a halt for a stretch. Clearly, I was here as a double-check, that the vannies hadn’t pulled a switch somewhere along the way, right? Otherwise, anybody could have done it. Just sit there, sending our genuine antiques, the ones I’d bought in Paris or ordered Guy and Veronique to arrange bids for through the Hotel
