Losing a bet, he'd bet his way out: 'Okay, so it's Sheraton and I lose,' he'd say, spirits instantly lifting as something else caught his eye. 'Then that tallboy over there. Betcher it's Chippendale. Double or quits?' He used me as referee, seeing I was the only divvy around.
There was a problem. He longed for Trudy and hadn't the nerve to tell her.
'Trudy's got everything, Lovejoy. Bright, bonny. I'm rubbish.'
Tact seemed the best tack so I said, 'You frigging burke. Ask her out, God's sakes. This isn't Jane Eyre.'
'Help me, mate.'
I get uneasy in affairs of the heart. I'd lately been in trouble with Big Frank's new betrothed lady – his fifth wife, maybe sixth – and I didn't want to be anybody else's go-between.
'Look, Betch, I'm pushed at the moment.'
'She likes that thing. I could win it on a bet.'
He described a pendant that Trudy admired in Fookleston's window. Fookie is a cadaverous, stooping bloke of immense height, bespectacled and thin. He inherited our town's best jewellery shop, and spends his profit in the bookmaker's in Head Street.
Another gambler. I'd never known a bloke like him – well, I have, but you've got to say that. Fookie gambles serious money. With Betcher gambling's a mere introductory spiel leading, he hopes, to better things.
'That spinel?'
'Isn't it a sapphire?'
'No. Fookie's just trying it on. It should only be a tenth of the price.'
People let themselves get carried away by simple points of recognition. Men do it with women – she's got a terrific shape, so she must be desirable / holy / honest / kind /
trustworthy, etc – and women invariably do it with jewellery. They see something prettily mounted and blue, and think, 'Egad! A princely sapphire in twenty-four carat gold! Astronomically priced, so it must be terribly valuable . . .' and so on. A spinel can be red, through blue to black. Most people think that so-called 'noble' spinel (only means gem quality) is always red, which isn't true. Okay, blue spinels are sometimes cloudy and not so bonny, but when you see transparent violety or frankly blue stones, they don't come any lovelier. The great 'Black Prince's Ruby' in our Crown jewels is secretly a spinel, not a ruby at all, but don't let on. Blue and red spinels have been substituted for sapphires and rubies over the centuries.
Like a duckegg I decided to help Betcher. I got Fookie to sell me the blue spinel pendant for a fraction of his asking price. I sold it on to Betcher for exactly what I'd paid. He wooed Trudy, heavenly violins soared and angels sang, and we all waited for wedding bells to chime. No such luck. The sky fell in. Trudy abruptly resigned and went to Manchester. Betcher sank into profound dejection, recovered slowly to his usual,
'Wotcher, Lovejoy. Betcher that new cat of Chrissy's gets lost within the week, ten quid on it?' I thought, oh well, lovers' parting is such sweet sorrow and all that. I'd done my bit so was it my fault?
Needless to say, yes it was.
One day I was in Manchester collecting some fake English secretaire bookcases – lovely mahogany, narrow, finely dovetailed drawers. Manchester repros are by far the best anywhere on earth. They're dead ringers for 1795. Dunno why, but Manchester craftsmen take the trouble of matching wood grain top and bottom, banding the same.
Other forgers are too damned idle, don't do a proper job ... Where was I? Manchester, bumping into Trudy in an antique dealer's.
She still wore Betcher's spinel pendant. In fact I recognized it before I even looked at her. We said hello. I stood shuffling, waiting for her to get mad over something I'd done / hadn't done, the usual female response to me. Until she said, 'I'm married now, Lovejoy. A little girl, twelve months.'
'Oh, good.' What can you say?
'It didn't work out with Brendon,' she said wistfully. I remembered in the nick of time that was Betcher's real name. 'I waited, but he never said anything. I saw it was hopeless.' Sorrow pained her eyes. 'I just had to leave.'
Betcher had been too much of a dope to speak out and I'd been too thick to bang their silly heads together and tell them to get on with it and stop annoying us. A classic tragedy, English reserve versus ardent longing.
The question was, what to say? Tell Trudy the truth, that Betcher had always loved her, now she was married with a family? Or reveal all to Betcher? Or let things slide? Being me, I took the easiest, saddest route. When next I met Betcher he said wistfully, 'Back from Lancashire, eh?' And asked, heart in his eyes, 'Betcher didn't see Trudy, Lovejoy.
Tenner on it.'
'No,' I lied evenly. What else could I say?
So Betcher languishes and Trudy languishes and me helping made it shambolic. And that, said Alice, was that.
The lesson? When I help, things get worse. My gran used to say, 'Lord save me from helpers.' She meant me.
There's no doubt. Morality's punk, dud from start to finish. I believe there's only one moral problem in life. It's this: if you could save somebody's life and you don't, then you're a murderer. That's the only moral dilemma since the dawn of man, like Brigadier Hedge's australopithecines question. Except it's no problem, for it's solved before you even utter the question.
Whoever else was responsible for Florence and Timothy Giverill's deaths – plus the deaths of whoever else had died in the crash – there was no doubt who was the real culprit. It was me, as surely as if I'd driven Timothy into that tree.
No sleep that night. The bluetits knocked on my window at seven as usual. I got up, filled their thing full of nuts, diced cheese for the robin and scattered a load of gunge for them to get on with. The plod came and took me in. I wasn't quite ready for them, but answered as I'd worked out during the lantern hours.
