'No, no. It's okay.' Shining eyes on my parcel.
I unwrapped it, stood there like a duckegg with my glittering phoney cup and the silver kite model.
'It's your award, Quake. Eastern Hundreds Kite-flying Champion. They asked me to accept it for you at the National Awards Centre.'
He smacked his forehead.
'God, I clean forgot! Thanks, pal. You got me out of a real mess!'
I donated the award. He received it, eyes moist.
'Sorry, Lovejoy. It's just that I remember how Bushido looked after the match. Japan always held the title until I beat him in the playoffs.'
He sniffed a bit. I welled up myself. It's not often you meet a dynamic champ who is decently sympathetic about the chap he's defeated.
'Was Bushido there?' he asked sadly.
'Yes,' I invented. Well, I'd invented the championship, so I'd a right to invent who turned up. 'He looked pretty down. Said he'd give you a run for your money, next world championships.'
'You know, Lovejoy,' he said seriously, fondling his cup and the trophy, 'I admire that.
Taking defeat on the chin.'
'So do I,' I said fervently. I know defeat.
The brigadier couldn't hear behind the glass wall, but guessed the conversation. His headshake was graphic.
Maud entered at a sprint with a tray of edibles, thank God, all her own making. She was defloured, so to speak, in a clean pinafore and gave a smiling wave to her dad who nodded and returned to his newspaper. We settled down facing the river. Folk walk along the riverbank footpath into town. They pretend not to look in Maud's window, sometimes. They must wonder at Quaker's array of trophies and guess which sporting over-achiever lives there.
'How marvellous of you to bring Quaker's new award, Lovejoy!'
'No bother, love.'
Maud's grub is legendary. She cooks from Mrs Beeton's All About Cookery for the homeless of Suffolk. It's a wonder they don't all die from clogged arteries because it's heavy suety stuff. Or maybe that's the Council's plan? Some charity buys the raw ingredients for her. I like Maud. She and I started making smiles soon after Quaker took to his wheelchair, but I got worried. Anyhow by then I'd met Georgina from Stoke.
There you go.
The whole point of this is that Quaker doesn't even do sports that he can do. Doesn't shoot, no Paralympics, doesn't sketch or study ornithology. He just accepts awards.
It's all myth.
In fact, even The Day Quaker's Legs Got Crushed In That Accident is also a fable, invented for reasons nobody knows. There is no paraplegia. Quaker is as fit as a flea.
He could jump up and ramble his riverbank with the best of them.
We all deceive ourselves. Which raises the question of his missus.
This is Maud: thirty-six, palish hair, blue of eye, shapely if a bit dumpy. Nice legs, and what the county set call 'good bones', though I should think that all bones are pretty decent things to have around. Features pleasant, smile animated and alert. A bright compassionate woman is Maud Quaker.
She knows Quaker's a fraud, and told me about him when we were resting after having tired ourselves.
'Quaker's not to be blamed, Lovejoy,' she explained along the pillow. We were in my cottage, my chair propping the door because the lock needed mending.
'Why not?' I'd asked, mystified. 'He's a total con.'
'We all deceive ourselves. You. Me. My dad. Government. Why only blame Quaker?'
'Because he sponges on you,' I said, offended.
'So do you, Lovejoy.'
She pointed out that she paid for my food. She lent me her motor. She kept on about it until I got narked.
'At least I do a job,' I said heatedly.
'So does Quaker,' she'd said to my surprise. 'And he doesn't just scrounge off women and faint when he looks at silly old antiques.'
'What job?' I challenged. 'The idle bugger just sits in his wheelchair making up imaginary bloody trophies while I'm slogging in muck and bullets.'
I don't usually get narked, especially with blokes who've thought up a good scam. I too am an idleback. People who live in glass houses and all that.
It was then that she started to speak about Quaker really for the first time. Reluctantly, both of us naked as a grape, she told me in whispers. Afterwards she seemed scared, and swore me to secrecy. I promised, hand on her heart. And kept silent for ever and ever. Until now.
'Quaker's the conduit for the raj,' she'd said.
'Eh?'
My mind wearily chugged its synapses into action. Nerve ends groped. Electrons flickered.
'He can't be,' I got out. In fact, I almost laughed.
