Mr Saintly? In other circumstances a joke about his name would have bubbled to the surface, but I was out of froth. His eyes bored into me. I felt relieved. This was a pro ploddite, cold and cynical. At least I'd escape from the hooligans. Two uniformed ploddites stood about doing sod all, boredom their only art-form.
'He tried to run. Bern caught him.'
'Don't I know you?' Saintly said to me. -
'Me? No, guv.' I lapsed into vernacular. 'I phoned the owner, Arthur Goldhorn. He told me to wait inside.'
'Wrong. Arthur Goldhorn is dead.' Mr Saintly was still looking hard. 'Sure I don't know you?'
'Dead?' I went wobbly. A bobby held me up until the room straightened.
'Mr Gluck has been the new owner for months.'
A terrible suspicion gripped me. Arthur and Colette would never have gone, unless—
'Where's Colette?' I asked. Sudden realization made me grovel into my trusty whine.
'Er, sorry if I come in when I shouldn't, guv'nor. I didn't nick anything, honest.'
'Pressing charges, Mr Gluck?' Saintly asked, reading my card note.
'Not really. We got him before he managed to escape.' Gluck sounded smug.
Saintly turned, paused. 'Name and address?'
'James Churchill,' I said. 'No relation. Of 4, Hyde Park Gate, Sandy, Bedfordshire.' The best I could do, seeing my giddiness was back. I clung on the desk.
'Who really told you to come in here?'
'Bloke I asked for a humping job, shifting furniture. I'm a vannie, guv.'
'All right.' Saintly's eyes were everywhere. For some reason he seemed reluctant to go, but finally gestured me to leave first. On the pavement I reeled a bit. Dieter Gluck's henchman Bern had disappeared. 'Off, lad,' Saintly said. 'Behave yourself.'
'Yes, guv. Ta.'
The pavement went up and down like those trick footways on fairgrounds. I swayed along, shoving my feet out ahead of me with a thump. I wasn't even sure which way I was heading, wanting only to put some distance between me and the shop I'd thought the abode of friends. I glimpsed Bern on the opposite pavement. Scared, I flagged a taxi. The cabbie said, 'What the friggin' 'ell 'appened to you?'
'I lost. Liverpool Street Station, please.'
Nightfall, I was back in my cottage. I washed in well water, cold because the gas and electric were off again. I tried to phone my latest, Camilla, but the phone was off. I lit a candle stump to inspect myself in a piece of mirror I was re-silvering. I looked like nothing on earth, but my face was spared. Clever old Dieter Gluck. My shoulders ached, my spine throbbed. My upper arms, legs, chest were black and blue. Moving made me yelp. I had no aspirin. I would have been hungry as hell if I'd had any food to be hungry for. I creaked into my divan bed. I couldn't even reach the candle to blow it out.
Geologists say you can find the street level of Roman Londinium best by standing three men, average height, atop one another. The top man's hair would touch the Roman streets' paving. Modern London has sunk nearly eighteen feet, six yards.
I thought, thank you, London, fare thee well. The way I felt, London could go on sinking forever.
7
LIGHT DOZING is the best I can do at sleeping. I realized that my trouble was antiques.
To me, they're more real than people. I knew this when a lad. Ever since, my life's been lived in a mental world of distortion. Except for antiques. They alone are as they seem.
It follows - ugly thought - that people are peril.
Antiques alone have the power to eliminate, to change. I once knew this woman Eth, lovely, determined politician. She'd have been in the Cabinet now, except for an antique. I met her at some village thing. She gave me a lift, talked politics all the way.
At Braiswick, I asked her to drop me off at Alfredo's junk shop. It masquerades as a jeweller's. Posh exterior, grot within. She said that she'd hand in her earring. It needed a new clasp.
Alfredo showed me this chalice thing. It was blotchy, parts gilt, parts gold leaf, other bits looking like dirty ivory. Eth laughed as I took a shufti.
'Lovejoy, even I can tell that's not genuine!'
'Sorry, love,' I told the chalice. 'She's ignorant.' I sat down, smiling, and held it so it would know some of us humans were as human as any antique.
'What did you say?' Eth turned puce. She'd given her wonky earring to Alfredo.
'There's a tree grows in Malaysia, missus,' I told her. 'They called it Isonandra gutta in the mid-nineteenth century. It secretes a gum, gutta percha. This clayey stuff is it. Can I turn you over, love?' I asked the chalice, and examined its base.
No marker's mark, yet the pale grey gives itself away. Try to ping it with a finger nail, it tries desperately to sound like metal, yet fails. You only ever get a dullish ponk, like a really resonant heartwood. This doesn't mean it's worthless, as the lady assumed. It's tough, firm, so the item - chalice, bowl, figurine - seems, and nearly is, hard as ivory, and is nearly as whitish, too. The heyday was the mid-1860s, following the Great Exhibition. Tip: don't ignore gutta percha artefacts.
'Of all the insolence!' she was going. Alfredo was trying not to grin.
'Don't run it down,' I said sternly. 'This is worth ten times your ugly earring.'
