ladies in the foreground, players batting and fielding, it was mindbendingly dull. The old lady heard my yelp of glee and, pleased, made tea, the better to show me her grandad's cricket memoirs. The old geezer had played at the Marylebone Cricket Club in his youth. Bless him, he'd kept detailed diaries. It was a gold mine. In case you don't know, the MCC to cricket is the world centre. I came away with two more paintings, one of the first Eton and Harrow cricket match. Not important, you say? Not unless you admire Lord Byron, a club-footed titch bravely playing in 1805. (His side, Harrow, lost.) The most valuable painting was of a game in Dorset Square, the first really important cricket ground of plain Mister Thomas Lord. (Don't for heaven's sake get him wrong, or cricketers from Rawalpindi to Lahore, from Durban to Sydney, will drum you out of the Brownies.) Yorkshire Tom Lord set up in Dorset Square in 1787. Go there today, its houses on the north side are unchanged, give or take varnish. I rejoiced, and sold the paintings for enough to keep the old lady and her ailing hubby in clover. See?
Cricketana is in. Old cricket balls, bats, boots even, caps - don't throw them away. Get me to sell them. You'll make a mint, if genuine that is. Noble me, I took no commission, and didn't steal a single thing of the old dear's. But I did forge each painting, for sordid gain. I think they were better than the originals. I really do believe that I have a lovely nature.
'What's the score, mate?' I asked a newspaper lad on the corner opposite the main entrance. He pulled a face, the Aussies were winning.
Lord's has Father Time, complete with scythe, stuck up there. Another quirk is a line of Sir Henry Newbolt's poem 'Vitai' Lampada' on a wall, corner of St John's Wood Road. I stood, heard the applause and groans of the crowd within. Test matches you can't get into. No hope of buying a ticket and wandering the stands. Wrinkle must be a member, so he'd be in posh. I could phone an urgent message with some heart-plucking story, but I didn't know what name he was using. Antique dealers often use pseudonyms, like crooks. I've heard.
Wrinkle was dedicated. He'd watch until close of play. I settled. The poem was maddening. I'd learned the wretched thing at school, couldn't remember a blinking line.
Two hours later, me as desiccated as a prune, the crowd surged out, scrambled for buses and dashed for the Tube. No Wrinkle. The mob dwindled, left me like a lemon.
Surely I couldn't be wrong? By then I was almost in a dream, saying over to myself that bit from 'Vitai' Lampada', 'Play up, play up, and play the game!' It should have been Kipling's poem 'If, because there's more cheating in cricket than—
'The emphasis in 'If ought to be on the initial syllable.' Honor slipped her arm through mine. 'Otherwise, the closing line can't stress on the final 'And'. Criticism from a Yank okay?'
'Fine.' I was so relieved. 'Is Wrinkle still inside?'
'Due out after drinks.' She smiled. I liked her. 'What's your deal, Lovejoy? I don't fish for tiddlers.'
'It's huge. And a matter of life and death.'
She shivered deliciously. 'Wrinkle's told me all about you. I was sorry about last time.
Shall we go?'
She had a massive sports motor, the shape of a sucked toffee. I had to practically lie down to get in. As Wrinkle came into view, she spoke with intensity.
'For years I've hunted for somebody like Wrinkle, Lovejoy. I won't sell him cheap.
Capeesh?'
'I really like Americans, Honor.' I smiled as I said it. When a Yank comes in at the door, doubt dives out of the window. They crave certainty. 'When do we meet?'
'An hour after I've worn him out,' she said tersely, then switched moods as Wrinkle opened the door. 'Darling! Look who's found us!'
He got in, stared morosely back at Lord's cricket ground. 'Where's all the spin bowlers gone, Lovejoy? I blame the bloody schools.'
The whole journey he grumbled. I daresay I would have agreed with every word, except I fell asleep before we'd gone a yard. I dreamt of killing somebody.
31
WOULD YOU CREDIT it, but Wrinkle's new workshop was only round the corner from where he'd been before in Spitalfields. The window was filled with old radios, gramophones, a jukebox.
'Cunning enough, Lovejoy?' Honor blithely led the way. 'Where do you hide a tree? In a forest. I knew you'd never find us.'
'Except for cricket, I wouldn't have.'
'You got lucky,' she snapped. 'I never thought to check his notices.'
The place was astonishing. I counted at least a dozen jukeboxes, their old 78 black records stacked within, and ancient TV sets of every size and hue with tiny bulbous screens. It was a great collection, if you like that sort of thing.
A sharp-suited bloke stepped straight out of the sixties from behind an array of this junk. He wore a wide-shouldered suit, drainpipe trousers, a thin tash like an old Movietone announcer, trilby at a spivvy angle.
'Who's this, honey?' He was actually flicking a US dollar.
'Lovejoy. An antique dealer.' I thought, so much scorn, so little time? 'Friend of Wrinkle's. Watch he doesn't pinch anything.' She glared at me. 'Hymie's my brother, Lovejoy.'
'Indeed,' I said politely. Who was kidding, and about what? 'How do, Hymie.' You can tell, can't you, if there's something between a man and a woman. And if they're siblings. Or, as in this case, not. I shook hands like an American.
'You're dressed like a gangster,' I told him, striving for a Class A ingrate. 'You look smart!'
He preened. Any prat who dressed 1920s must crave admiration even from a scruff.
