I'll not give it, not wanting to encourage grue. They kill wrens. The tiny corpses are plucked, and the feathers worn as adornments until next year, when they do it again.
Wren feathers in your titfer, bad mark from me.
'Sent,' I said. 'Somebody duffed a spark.' Translation: faked a gem. Heaven knows why we don't just use English, a language for which there's been a transient vogue, but antiques has its own lingo. What with that and Cockney rhyming slang, it's a wonder London is able to communicate at all.
'Oh, dear!' he boomed. Sir Ponsonby's notion of subtlety is to bellow as if addressing an Eton prize day. 'Allow me to present my new apprentice, Miss Moiya December.'
'Er, wotcher, miss.'
A beautiful lass was coiled on a stool beside Ponsonby's barrow. She was gloriously blonde. Everything about her shone, teeth, lips, eyes, tan leather coat. In bed you could have used her as a nightlight. I'm ever in hope. Religion did wrong, making sex a sin.
We'd all be holy, if Moiya took the evensong collection of a Sunday.
'Is this he?' she asked Sir Ponsonby, as if I'd been expected.
'Yeah verily, I be he,' I said. Which raised the question, who she?
Ponsonby leant to confide some secret, and thundered, 'Moiya's learning the trade, Lovejoy!' He swelled like Mister Toad. I recognized a gay quip on its way, and stepped back a yard. 'Isn't the trade lucky?' And he guffawed.
This is not your average splutter. Harness its latent energy, we'd not need fossil fuel.
Nearby stallholders laughed along with him.
'Hey, Sir Pons!' a silver vendor called when the decibels finally lessened. 'My trouble in Aldgate says keep the racket down!' Trouble and strife, wife, the Cockney rhyming slang I was just moaning about. 'Is that you, Lovejoy? Where y'been, mate?'
'Wotcher, Sturffie. I'll look over your clag in a sec.'
That set nearby traders roaring, giving me chance to tell Sir Ponsonby I was anxious to find the source of padpa fakes. I phrased it with care, not wanting my investigation broadcast by Radio Ponsonby.
'See you when you get a minute, Sir Ponsonby?'
'Oh, secrecy, is it, Lovejoy?' he roared. 'Right! By the tuck shop, ten minutes, hey?'
He meant the nosh vans, of which Bermondsey antiques market has half a dozen. I made a cursory inspection of Sir P's stall - one enormous chipped Satsuma vase among old cameras, militaria, bayonets, photos of pale youths in uniform staring beyond life, and some decent Victorian watercolours of cottages with village women in aprons, with a few fruitwood boxes and other treen. Politely I lied how marvellous his antiques were, then went to Sturffie.
'How'd yer know Lord Haw-Haw, Lovejoy?'
The best about London marketeers is you can take up where you left off. Even after a lapse of years, bump into them and they'll say, 'Wotcher, mate. Come and look at this.
Picked it up on Portobello Road. And how yer keeping?' No hard feelings because you didn't keep in touch.
'Eh? Oh, met him years since. You've a good piece there, Sturffie.'
'Me?' He was amazed, stared at his goods as if they'd just swanned in from outer space. 'You having a pig, Lovejoy?' Pig in a poke, joke.
'Straight up, Sturffie.'
The market was now crowded. I was being jostled by dealers and tourists shoving down the narrow barrow lanes. Itinerant dealers carry carpet bags, or canvas-lined holdalls. One per dealer, never two. Some of the lads claim to be able to recognize nationalities. I don't think it's true. I suspect it's just clothes, maybe having glimpsed individual dealers the week before, that sort of thing. However, stall and barrow traders are a canny lot. Some work a sort of illegal ring deal if opportunity strikes and other hawkers don't notice. And even if they do.
'Which is it, mate?' Sturffie grinned through clenched teeth.
He was once a lowlife, got done for knifing somebody outside an East End pub. I like Sturffie, though. A hard nut, he once did me a favour. It was inexplicable, really, because before the incident he hadn't known I was a divvy or that I was anything to do with antiques at all. I must be the only bloke on earth saved by genuine charity.
It had been near the famous Prospect of Whitby tavern in the East End. In the gloaming I'd accidentally stumbled on cobbles, and bumped against a motor. A long natty bloke had angrily uncoiled from within, and belted me so I fell against the kerb.
He'd been just about to punt me into the Thames when this little whippet of a man said, 'Here, knock it orff. He did nuffink,' meaning me.
'Who sez?' asked the natty thug.
'Me.' Sturffie, only I didn't know him then, had walked over and helped me up. My head was ringing, me legs wobbling.
The tall yobbo looked the sort who'd normally tackle anything, on principle, but Sturffie's eyes never wavered. The motorist finally shrugged, abandoned his rage, and strolled into the tavern.
'You okay, mate?' my saviour had asked.
'Aye, ta. Good of you.' ,
'Think nuffin of it. Me old man wuz a bad drinker too. Looked arter him times out of number.'
He'd thought I'd been drinking. I hadn't. I'd just spent forty hours driving a massive pantechnicon of antiques from Carlisle to the loading bays for Poppy West and her cousin Walshie. I was naturally bogeyed. Sturffie and his mate strolled away.
I'd called after him for his name. 'Here, mate. Got a moniker?'
