'Promise me you won't nick any?'
Narked, I went into his kitchen while he settled down to watch the football match on telly. Everything on the North Hill slopes, including churches, houses, lintels, the lot.
The houses and shops have a zero mortgage rating, can you believe, when they've been there nigh nine hundred years. Banks trust modern builders, but won't trust those of the thirteenth century whose edifices are proudly still here, if slightly on the wonk.
Barmy.
Here's how you make a decent forgery, costing only a few moments of your time and virtually no money. (Honest readers please skip this bit.) Cut up isinglass into rainwater in a warmed pan. Bring slowly to the boil. Stir. Scum away the surface dross - I use a washed stick of firewood. Keep it heated, de-scumming as you go. Remove it from the stove, and let cool.
Meanwhile, I'd laid out the coins and medals on the kitchen table, touching them only with my hankie. I had to use Jenny's best pouring pans. I added a little powdered ochre to some of the goo, and poured it onto - not over - the coin to a thickness of an eighth of an inch. (Metric loons may convert, if they want.) Cool. Let it dry slowly. It comes away of its own accord, and there you have it. A genuine impression - neater than any modern setting epoxy resin can manage - of an ancient coin.
The point? Whole collections of these impressions were once made as collector's items by gentlemen on the Grand Tour two centuries ago. So finely is the surface imprinted into the isinglass, that they were posted home. They were sold in cabinets. If I'd had the money, I'd have got some expensive colours, but had to make do with what Harry had on his shelves, malachite green, some naffie Prussian Blue (I hate Prussian blinking Blue), ochre, scarlet lake, the usuals that antique dealers, ever hopeful, always have but never use.
In three hours I had a collection of Roman staters, a few Greek, and one real treasure.
It was a James I gold rose rial, which is a thirty-shilling piece. My wretched honesty almost made me weep. If I hadn't promised Harry, I could have nicked the gorgeous thing. And a five-guinea gold piece of William and Mary, 1694. All in all, thirty-nine impressions. I was worn out.
Harry was asleep in the front room, so I forgot the mess - well, what else is a kitchen for, but to leave in a mess? And Harry had nothing else to do except clean up. The medals and coins I replaced in the safe. I made a telephone call, brewed up, watched some game show where you had to guess whose face was behind a coloured disc.
While I was waiting for Topsy to arrive I ate Harry's biscuits. He snored on.
She beeped her car horn. I let myself out and handed the impressions through the motor window.
'Ta for coming, love,' I told her. 'Careful. They're only wrapped in Harry's tea towels.
Shirley'll caravan them.'
Topsy's a dancing teacher from the Institute, trains infants to prance and whatnot.
Reputedly forty, is fifty. I like her friendliness. We once made smiles, and I'm grateful.
Her husband Ben designs windows, which must be the neffiest job I've ever heard of.
She's a mean forger of boxes and velvet. No better person to dress up a collector's box of precious hard-won coin impressions taken by some Regency traveller on the Grand Tour.
'Any writings to go with them, Lovejoy?'
That was a thought. 'Aye. Get Fonk - you know him? - to do me letters to somebody in, say, Yorkshire. Hint at a literary connection, but no Brontes. Everybody's had them up to here.'
'Right. How much can Fonk charge?'
'You second it, love.' That meant she'd pay him out of the price she'd charge me.
'Will do. I take it you're in a scramble?'
'Well spotted.' I'd have bussed her, but North Hill has a constant stream of traffic.
'Toodle-oo.'
'Come round, Lovejoy. You can stay overnight. Ben's working away. Pity Sturffie's involved.'
'You come round to me, eh?'
I watched her drive off, thinking, does everybody know everything I do, or is it simply me?
9
WALKING IN THE country quickens you, but towns are more pleasant. I got a lift from a commuter who wanted to tell me about falling - rising? - bank rates. I made the right noises. He asked after my job. I told him. He was eager about that, too, and said he'd bring an antique for me to see, left him by some uncle. I said fine, and alighted at a housing estate, all the roads named for roses. Pretentious, though Daniel Defoe did say that the town was famed for 'beautiful roses, ugly women'. He'd got it wrong. All roses are beautiful, aye, but so are all women. Nil points, Dan, good luck with Robinson Crusoe.
When I knocked, she thought I was the blinking milkman, called out of the bedroom window, 'Two pints of skimmed, please.'
'Can I interest you in some solid protein, missus?'
'Who…?' She peered, withdrew.
Chains eventually rattled. The door opened. (Sorry about all this pedantry, but Lydia enforces it on everyone with whom she comes into contact. See? Even that little sentence.) Lydia looked through a crack. I could see that she wore a nightdress, a thick woollen dressing gown, tufted pink slippers.
