'Lovejoy! Must you say everything straight out?' Which from her . . .
We drove in silence the rest of the way, me the scruff, she the brilliantly lovely fashion goddess at the wheel of her cruiser. At Ferd's house I saw an instant transformation.
One of those huge Scandinavian wooden sheds had been erected by the dwelling. A new shingle drive had been laid. Notices proclaimed FERNORM ANTIQUES, INC in flashing neon. Two lasses dressed as Edwardian housemaids were busily enticing customers in from the main road while pretending to arrange antique furniture on the cloistered forecourt. A week ago, note, it had been the usual unkempt grassy shambles of the impoverished sinking classes. I wondered where the buildings and curved drives had sprung from. We alighted.
'Ferd's inside arranging antiques,' Norma said a little breathlessly, leading the way. A fortnight ago they couldn't afford to run their TV.
The maids chorused a welcome. Two dealers I recognized stalked among the antiques, hardly gave me a glance when I called a hearty wotcher.
'Hello, old friend!' Ferd boomed, advancing.
He too had changed. From a morose shaky old man he'd filled out, smartened, become the village squire in tweeds and plus-fours. Everything he'd ever dreamed of, in fact.
'Wotcher, Ferd. No painting session today, then?'
He boomed, actually boomed, a hearty guffaw and shook my hand in a grip of iron. I yelped, lacking manly pride.
'Heavens, no, Lovejoy. I'll show you some antiques, old fruit!'
As I followed I marvelled. Norma avoided my eye, said she needed to see the housekeeper, and left me to it. Servants, wealth, new buildings, a thriving antiques business, all in a matter of days?
'Look at these, Lovejoy!' Ferd was intoning. 'Who says you can't make a splendid living from antiques, hey?' He actually said that, Heyyy? like calling the first round at boxing.
'Well, I do,' I said, but it was a weak quip. I stared.
The main shed – grander than the word tells – was about twenty strides square, crammed with antiques. There were two small back rooms. One was an office, the other he opened with a flourish.
'Seen anything like this, Lovejoy?'
There's a saying among antique dealers that 'before 1750 nothing came out of Ireland, but that after 1750 everything did'. Meaning that older Irish antiques are virtually nonexistent, whereas after the mid-eighteenth century you find plenty of Irish artefacts.
Irish furniture isn't to my liking, not unless you like massive masks on your Georgian yew-wood furniture, weird faces carved on to table edges and the like. They went in for bog oak, even dyed mahogany to resemble it. Can't understand it myself, but whatever turns you on. The room was crammed with Irish furniture. I gulped, sweated, felt my chest thump and my hands go clammy. It was genuine. I reeled, made the door and onto the grass, inhaling cooler air.
He followed.
'What, Lovejoy?' He hadn't lost confidence. 'You're not saying it isn't genuine?'
'No, Ferd.' I gradually came to. 'Antiques do that to me, set me off.' I edged away from the shed, glancing back at it as I did so. The place must have cost him a fortune. The Rolls, the assistants, Norma's clothes. The main room was also thickly strewn with mixed antiques and junk, fifty-fifty. I was witnessing a resurgence, a miracle. 'Where'd you get the pier tables?' There'd been two.
'Oh, around. Got a backer.'
He smiled modestly, waved, and a maidservant approached with a chilled bottle of white wine and two glasses. Ferd led the way to a wrought-iron table with matching chairs. We sat. He raised his brogues, placed the heels on a chair, graciously allowed the lass to light his massive Cuban cigar.
'You'd need a backer, to afford them.'
Pier in antiques doesn't mean that thing sticking out of a seaside town into the sea, for the populace to stroll and take the air. It's the architectural term for a bit of the wall between two windows in your withdrawing room. From Queen Anne's time on, ladies became specially concerned with it as a feature. So 'pier glasses' were produced by London craftsmen. These were mirrors especially designed to occupy that wall space and give an illusion of space. A lady's talent could be gauged by her adept use of furnishings that didn't make her parlour piers look daft. So pier tables came into being, small semicircular pieces that stood against the pier, unfolding into round tables with a superimposed leaf. And very lovely they are. Now, in Ireland, walls of Dublin's town houses lent themselves to slightly different pier tables, so you find 'typically Irish'
(meaning exquisitely rare) pier tables that are more of an ellipse than half a circle. Find one in mahogany, mint, you're into your next world cruise, three times round. Find a pair, you can retire.
'Got a superb backer, Lovejoy!' He tasted the wine, nodded so the serf could withdraw to her slavery. 'See my potato rings? Two!'
'Aye. You've done well, mate.'
Dealers call them that, but they're properly termed dish rings. They're never much to look at, just a curved circlet of silver a few inches tall. You put them on tables then lodge your hot serving dishes on top, to stop the table getting scorched. What goon first called them potato or spud rings I don't know. They're hollow, of course, the silver quite thin, cut to depict flowers, birds and villeins doing their stuff. One dealer I knew sold one cheaply, thinking it was merely a dressing-table stand for ladies' necklaces.
While Ferd expounded on life's gracious turns of fortune I heard motors drive up, car doors slam. Norma came to sit with us. I noticed her gold ring, her lovely sapphire and diamond. She'd had to pawn them three months since. Now they were back. Affluence is as affluence does. She looked brilliant. I wanted to eat her, but the thought of chewing her thighs honestly never crossed my mind.
'Who's the backer, Ferd?' I asked.
He smiled and wagged a finger roguishly. 'Now, now, Lovejoy.'
