Well, so am I. I was just scared I'd shoot so badly I might actually hit one of the creatures. I mean the pheasants.
'I'll behave, love. And thanks.'
'You'll enjoy the dinner, Lovejoy. Tit for tat.'
'Eh?' She'd not said anything about a dinner. I saw her glint.
'The awards night. You're taking me. It's soon. I'll send the invitation.'
'Ta, love. Tarra.' I'd joined the county set.
12
EVENING IN LONDON, coming on to rain. Bee the lovely Aldwych flower seller was there as usual. India House looked glamorous floodlit. Theatres were agog, last minute ladies rushing in, skirts lifted, squealing. The butty bars were giving place to pubs.
Covent Garden was thronged - when is it not? Crowds, traffic, the Thames doing its swarky stuff waiting for yet another poet to rubbish it from Westminster Bridge. I love the place. And I was determined to find out what the hell, wasn't I.
So, the light of eagles in my eye, I slouched into the Nell of Old Drury tavern for some swill and a wad. It was crowded by theatricals and street lads off the barrows. Antique dealers were making last minute trade-offs - why do they always glance round furtively before showing their dud little silver salt cellar to a no-hope buyer? Is it to aggrandize a threepenny transaction, make it look like they're Springheel Jack? Thinking about it, I do the same. Pathetic. One was Flymo from Romford. He's expert at the old assume trick, always with a little lawn mower. He knocks on your door, puffs in carrying a mower saying, 'Where do you want it, missus?' while you express astonishment and deny all. During the baffling expIanations, Flymo susses your locks, whether you live alone or not, if you've got much worth nicking. Then he'll creep back at night and burgle your house.
No good asking these dealers about Colette, though. A titled lady, wealthy, owner of vintage cars maintained by uniformed serfs, she was in another league. I sat and dreamed in the warm fug.
You send somebody out on a quest for one reason only - to bring something back.
Hence Sir Galahad, the Holy Grail, Go ye hence, brave knights. The point is, you're desperate for your hunter to find whatever it is, or you wouldn't bother sending out your expedition in the first place.
Unless?
This 'unless' was troubling me. Unless you deliberately want to send out a nerk. Like, I realized, spirits plunging, me. Dosh could have made a few calls and sorted it out from home. Instead he sends me, specifically to Bermondsey, precisely where the gem courier Chev wouldn't be back for some time.
Why?
Missing padpas, said Dosh. He'd paid for them, and instead received tsavorites. Simple.
Find the genuine ones, hand them to Dosh, easy. Unless?
I sipped my ale in the crowd.
Once upon a time there'd been this bloke, Pope Sylvestrus II. He quested cleverly, and found his Grail. Except it turned out a poisoned chalice. It happened like this: Anciently, all Rome speculated about a statue in the Campus Martius. It stood there, its arm pointing. The words Percute Hic were on the base - means strike out, pierce, shoot, bore down. It also means dig. Over centuries, lots of Romans had a go, measuring the arm's trajectory, even burgling nearby buildings. No luck. Then Pope Sylvestrus II worked it out: the statue's finger's shadow alighted at one exact spot at noon. In the dark hours the pope and his chamberlain stole back and dug. They fell into an ancient vault, where an ancient king and queen, court and all, were mummified amid their treasures, brilliantly illumined by an eerie light from a giant ruby. The chamberlain joyously grabbed for the gold. A mummified cupid, bow and arrow ready, moved. His bow twanged, the arrow shattering the ruby into a ghastly darkness. The dead figures rose up, rustling in the subterranean blackness. Pope Sylvestrus legged it. He escaped yards ahead of his servant. Which is why some make pope and others stay mere chamberlains, I suppose.
See? Give a quest a bit of think, you get it right, but watch out.
Sometimes you can have the answer - treasure, wealth, antiques - in the palm of your hand, and still make a mess of things. I've done that. Like, our Ministry of Defense alone has thousands of antiques, and still creates a shambles. Last count, it had lost 205 valuable pictures. The entire Government does it too, managing to evaporate 427
pictures, nearly 700 if you take into account other bureaus. These are our precious paintings. The Civil Service simply lends them to itself, and forgets where. But they don't lose them all in one fell swoop. They're vanished over a long time, loss not by gush but by drip. They all ought to have stayed, of course, in the terribly secret guarded place nobody knows about (it's in Wardour Street, Soho, London). Authority is good at making barmy laws for the rest of us, useless with responsibility.
Our government could easily notify the Art Loss Register, but that would announce how cackhanded they actually were. Mind you, other folk lose things they shouldn't. In July, 1996, the famous missing pages of George Washington's inaugural address turned up -
under a couch in somebody's parlour in Aldeburgh, here in Suffolk - and got auctioned off for a mint. Gormlessness rules.
For me, I wonder at hunters. They often go on hopeless quests, when the whereabouts of giant wealth are known. Along the jungles of the Shangani River, in January, 1894, the great Matabele king Lobengula passed away. By tradition his grave was secret, same as his father's, M'Silikatze. Over the years, Lobengula had received an annual gift
- a piece of gold, a diamond - from each of the thousands of his warriors who downed spears and went to work in the South African mines. King Lobengula's treasure was buried with him. I'm not advocating grave robbing, just wondering why robbers don't rob where common sense dictates.
Other times, though, hunting is money for jam. Borrow a metal detector. Go to any village in East Anglia. Troll your detector along the soil near any old garden wall. You'll find old zinc alloy labels from espalier fruit trees, which
