dear?' I walked into a Charing Cross Road bookshop pretending to hunt some tide. Chinese furniture? I looked, and thought of Wrinkle. Now, Wrinkle owed me serious money, had for a twelvemonth. And here was me short of brass. A hint!
The crossroads is properly called St Giles Circus. It was here that the carts carrying condemned prisoners halted on the way to Tyburn's gallows for their last drink. People still joke, when summoned to see their grim boss, 'Better have a St Giles bowl, eh?'
Except it feels ghostly. Take away the swirling buses, the chugging taxis, hurrying people, and all that's left is the silent church with its silent churchyard. The eerie rumbling of tumbrils and the victims' pale faces are too recent for comfort. It was here too that child pickpockets - think Dickens - teemed. They even had schools for subtlemongers to teach the trade, infants grubbing for crusts in these very alleys.
For a while I watched the traffic. Make yourself forget the spirits, you instantly see that modern life is beautiful. That's why America must be pure heaven. A country that has everything, free of all these phantoms and dark histories. I got quite a lump in my throat. Good old Yanks, getting it together. No wonder they're all millionaires.
Yes, time to be decisive. I shook myself free of vagueness, and caught the Tube for Whitechapel.
Wrinkle's lock-up garage where he does his forgeries abuts on a furniture retailer's in Spitalfields. I crossed Commercial Street. Jack the Ripper's first victim Martha Turner was found nearby, but who believes in spooks? Anyway, it was daylight.
Shinning up the corrugated tin roof, I peered through a grimy window, and there he was. The god of fakery was with me. Watching a craftsman is one of life's pleasures.
He was carving a chair arm. Chinese, from the curvature. That too warmed me, because he fakes nothing but Ching Dynasty and earlier. Standards lived in Spitalfields!
The radio was playing, some lass crooning of inadequacy. Wrinkle said something, testy and sharp. I sympathized. Being interrupted at vital creativity's a nuisance. A lady moved into frame. She wasn't young, but so? She danced to the music, writhing, enticing. I blinked, a bit embarrassed, but couldn't resist spying.
Years ago me and a bird were walking past an alley on our way to the pictures.
Lamplight revealed a couple snogging against the wall. The bloke was, as it were, entering oblivion, the lass clinging for dear life. I stared. My lass hissed, 'Lovejoy! Don't look! It's mean. So I stared straight ahead. And glimpsed, from the corner of my eye, my bird having a right old butcher's, gaping at them. See what I mean? We all want to be thought proper, but deep down we're rotters.
Wrinkle's called Wrinkle because he's got the smoothest face on earth. Cheeks, brow, smooth as a babby's bum. He looks about fourteen. I only know two things about Wrinkle besides his forgeries. One is, he owes me for a fake Angelica Kauffmann painting. I did him a beauty on genuine panel like she did for the Adam brothers.
Wrinkle never paid me. Kauffmann was a Swiss bird who came to London, helped to found the Royal Academy, being a friend ('nuff said) of the great Reynolds. Wrinkle wanted me to copy some fake antiques of her lovely Georgian porcelains but I wouldn't because they're ten a penny, and faking signed Angelica Kauffmann porcelain plates is really naff. They're dead obvious. Shepherdesses in their nighties, colours marvellous, playing musical instruments in idyllic groves, they look the business, the sort of decorative porcelain plate you'd show to your friends. Except Angelica never signed her name, and never really did paint on porcelain. You can see the tiny dots where the colours were printed on - and the skill of printing pictures on porcelain wasn't invented until she'd long passed on. I'd slaved over my panel. In fact, I remember making my own Naples Yellow, hell of a risk—
The woman started to dance voluptuously.
Wrinkle tried to keep working but his strokes, like my concentration, weakened. His interest in the sinuous lady became what I can only call unconcealed.
The woman shed some clothes.
Wrinkle weakened, angry, complaining.
The woman shed all her clothes.
'Look!' Wrinkle yelled, frantically trying to keep going, his former chisel shaking, his mallet definitely on the wobble. 'I'm finishing this frigging—'
The naked woman wrapped herself round him, smiling. I sprawled flatter. I heard Wrinkle moan as he dropped his chisel - and it takes a lot to make a craftsman surrender his tool.
Some things I'm not proud of. There was I, mesmerized on his roof while she and he went at it on his workbench. She didn't complain about the wood shavings. And Wrinkle no longer objected about interruptions. It was a beautiful scene. Okay, I ought to have gone about my business. But love is filled with enchantment. And what's wrong with it?
I felt honoured, really privileged.
At the finish, waves and heavenly violins and smiles made, she lay among the wood fragments, replete, and looked up. And smiled at me. While Wrinkle was pulling himself together she even gave me a little wave, rippling her fingers. I almost waved back, caught myself in time.
Sliding quietly off the roof, I went for a walk, gave them ten minutes, then came up shouting, 'Wrinkle? It's me, Lovejoy.'
The only other thing I know about Wrinkle is his scam. It's called the lone bone. Before I go on, I suppose I'm making us antique dealers out to be all crooks, on some nefarious con trick. I want to be frank. We're no better or worse than other folk. It's just that antiques are high profile. Money's where it's at, so can we be blamed? Take ten thousand antique dealers, a thousand will make some sort of precarious living. Of those, a hundred will be doing well. Of those, nine will have decent holidays and a good motor. If you harbour a lifelong ache to be an antique dealer in a 'nice little antique shop', remember Lovejoy's Law of Dealers: of every ten thousand wannabe antique dealers, nine - repeat nine - are affluent. The rest give up, go broke, lose heart, scrape by.
Where was I? The lone bone scam is survival, Wrinkle style. It's unpleasantly easy.
He replies to lonely hearts adverts, pretends he's middle-aged gentry. Ex-officer, own car, loves theatre, Rome holidays, adores animals. He sends photos of handsome minor actors, even using their name. When the lady replies - he accepts them up to seventy, give or take an hour - he visits, gets to know, etc. She's impressed, if a bit puzzled. He's so much younger! But true love finds a way, and he milks her of whatever goods and chattels she feels inclined to offer. This is Method A. Alternatively, in Method B he arranges to meet her, usually after several
