She smiled, nodded as if to herself. 'That's sensible. You don't really know me, do you?'
We entered the short drive. 'I might be an enemy, after all. Do come in. My husband will soon be home.'
That almost stopped me. I'd assumed that she and Sir Jesson Tethroe, Member of Parliament, were sort of, well, frankly lovers. The housekeeper who'd first responded to my knock took Mrs Dee's clobber and we went through into a homely parlour overlooking a neat garden. Manse indeed. Christian books everywhere. I should have guessed. Mr Dee was a minister.
We sat to tea and crumpets. No antiques, though. I listened to my chest. Not a thing. I must have looked accusing. She placed herself opposite with that in situ casualness women have. I ate quickly. Survival is timed speed. No antiques meant I ought to be going.
'Look, missus.' I gestured at her home. Quite posh. Nothing like Clovis's grand manor, but well furnished, good Axminster carpets. 'I came to see antiques. Er…?' I wanted to ask if they were at Tethroe's, but married women's love is thin ice.
'Yes, Lovejoy. I would like you to assess their authenticity. If they're forgeries, please say. If not, do a valuation.'
This value thing's a problem. Any antiques dealer can guess what an antique will bring.
Look at TV programmes, those 'Road Shows' which, the presenters piously preach, 'are not about money; they're about learning'. Watch for five minutes, you soon see whether they're about money or not. Out here in real life, dealers will charge you for
'valuation'. Their fee's a percentage. Please remember that not one guess is worth a single groat. If some dealer says he charges a Valuation fee', tell him you'll charge him exactly the same fee for a look at your antique, and stalk off. It's a blinking nerve.
'Thank you, Lovejoy. I didn't think dealers were so honest.'
'Eh?' I must have been thinking aloud. Better watch that.
'Robert seems late. Shall we take a look?'
She rose with that one-move smoothness men can't do. I angled up, a bag of spanners, and followed through the french windows to a small conservatory. No jungles here. The lawn was stencilled, bushes in line, grass swept, trees clinging to their leaves for dear life like nervous visitors scared of spilling crumbs.
It's a queer thing, this divvying. I suddenly felt truly clammy and shivery, like sudden flu. The conservatory curtains, sap green, were drawn.
'I keep it locked, Lovejoy.' She wore a replica chatelaine, and used a key. We entered the conservatory's encapsulated dusk. I halted. She was speaking. I knew that because her mouth was moving, but I didn't hear.
Above the very centre, from reinforced struts, hung a chandelier. Now, everybody knows a chandelier. Some are valuable. But, porcelain? A few lustres hung from the limbs to reflect light. I stood looking up, my chest bonging, sweat stinging my eyes. I felt it drip off my chin.
'Sit, for heaven's sake. Don't you just hate it?'
She had her hand under my elbow and helped me to a chair. I reached it on the slant before my knees went.
'I'm fine,' I snarled. 'Leave me alone, silly cow. I'm okay.'
'Stay still. Is it the antiques?'
'Shut your row.'
'I didn't know you would be like this.' She was all anxious. 'I thought it was just a matter of taking a look.'
Porcelain is a world of history. From porca, Latin for sow, since it suggested pigskin.
The stuff itself's quite simple - mix the right sort of clay with a fusible fedspathic rock, shape it, bake it in a kiln. The Chinese began it in the eighth century, and perfected it with their usual brilliance during our Middle Ages. China's original clay is the plasticky kaolin. The rock was called 'petuntse' by the French missionaries. This 'true' porcelain was the genuine stuff. It came first to Germany's Meissen, then Vienna about 1720-ish.
Nearly fifty years later, the great names of France and England got going, and porcelain was king. We English copied the Chinese porcelain, from the 1740s on, by mixing 'frit' -
glassy bits fused with lime or plain chalk. This made a 'soft' porcelain. There were other
'soft' porcelains - Bow and Chelsea and Liverpool - made with calcined bone chucked in.
Soft-paste porcelains I always think are merely beginners' tries. Real porcelain is the hard Chinese type, white, translucent, and lovely. One annoying fad is to speak with bated breath of 'bone china', brought out by Josiah Spode in 1794, but it's only hard porcelain formula with added bones. Purists regard it with contempt as an in- between.
This chandelier was true hard porcelain of the Vienna factory. This manufactory's products are among the most highly prized and priced. Even at a distance, I could see the coloured onion-shaped churches and steepled roofs of houses depicted on the chandelier limbs. I must have moaned, because she cried, 'I'll get some water!' I restrained her.
Rarest of all in those days was the porcelain room. It sounds enough to make you ill, yet it was once all the rage. Great houses and palaces had rooms where furnishings, tables, and even walls, were porcelain. To me it's over the top, but who am I, when wealth defines luxury? The Vienna factory was created by du Paquier in 1719. It had ups and downs, going broke then thriving only to dive again. Empress Maria Theresa herself even had a go in 1744, but it tottered to a close in 1864. This financial swingbacking always provides one of the antique trade's ingredients for desirability -
rarity.
'Got a table? Chair with porcelain inset?' I asked, hoarse. This was what I needed, to hunt Gluck.
'No,' she said simply. 'Only half a dozen mugs with black figures painted on.' She brought out a couple from under a sheet. 'Aren't they just horrible? Fat men sitting on barrels playing bagpipes?'
So I keeled over. One of us had to.
'Who is he?' this minister was saying, peering at
