For a long time I didn't speak.
When I was a youth, my gran once told me the following adage. A girl wants a man to make her a woman. The woman wants a husband to make her a wife. A wife wants a youth to make her a girl again. So life goes round.
At the time I simply took the crack at face value. Only years later did I wonder why life never asks what the bloke himself is after. Maybe that's the point, that everyone pretends that a man's desires are common knowledge, 'men are only after one thing,'
etc.
Hell of an assumption –to make about nearly fifty per cent of the species.
Try to guess what the next ten geezers you meet really really crave. I'll bet you'd get every single one wrong. I know I would. In antiques, however, you have to guess right every time. Guess wrong, you starve.
At the big roundabout where the Norwich dual carriageway slinks onto the old Roman road, I finally drew breath. 'What are you really, Mrs Thomasina Quayle?'
Smiling, she took off her hat and lace gloves, shaking her hair out like they do. 'Call me Tally, Lovejoy, when we're not in company.'
'You didn't even check the portraits,' I remembered.
'They're rubbish,' she said carelessly, watching the countryside slide past. 'Wake me when we're there, please.'
And slept with that curled grace women can do at a millisec's notice. I realized suddenly that my headache wasn't quite as bad. A good sign? Except sometimes I find the headache's less trouble than its cure.
The day had begun to chill by the time we arrived. You can't park next to Shell's houseboat. You've to walk a furlong, hell in wet because of brambles on the footpath but nice in sunshine because of bees and flowers. The houseboat's a converted longboat, barge as folk say to annoy watermen. No sign of life, though, which on board meant a prolonged drone from Chanter, hard at it composing new monotones in C
natural.
Before we'd got there Shell was already hurrying, calling, 'Chanter? Darling? Are you all right?'
The place was locked. We wobbled up the gangplank. Shell let us in down a narrow gangway. Mrs Quayle was slick, looking everywhere. I noticed she felt the kettle, touched the half-drunk mug of tea. I went back up on deck to look back at our motors.
No sign of marauders, except for a lone angler in the distance. There was a watercolourist painting at a portable easel. She wore a floral hat and a long elegant floral dress, a left-over Victorian perhaps.
'He'll have left a note for me,' Shell said, and plucked a paper from under the keyboard.
It looked hell of a complicated gadget, for one note, but whatever turns folk on.
'People about,' Chanter had scrawled. 'Left to the nook.'
'Nook?' Mrs Quayle said sharply.
'It's our haven,' Shell said, her eyes shining. 'He's safe!'
She quickly checked that Chanter's drones were secure. This entailed waiting while she went through a stack of tapes and discs. I got fed up. If her bloke was hale and hearty what the hell were we doing here? I almost burst out that the important thing was my portrait, but Mrs Thomasina Quayle stilled me with one of her radar glances. For God's sake, I tried to beam back in silent indignation, one lost moan would hardly count as nicking the Crown jewels. He'd got millions of the frigging things, could always drone out a few more.
'All present!' she cried, exultant.
'I'm so glad, dear,' said Mrs Quayle, still busily sher-locking round the boat's interior.
'Has the portrait remained safe also, do you surmise?'
'It's here.' Shell sounded surprised that we hadn't noticed it, and lifted it down from a slot in the ceiling. Until she did that, I'd thought it was a hatchway. I noticed Mrs Quayle colour slightly. She'd been caught out. I smiled to myself. We had a professional investigator in our midst, that's what we had.
'Is this it, Lovejoy?' Shell asked.
'Yes.' Even in the poor light I could tell.
'You have the newest devices, Shell,' our intrepid huntress remarked, taking the portrait.
I looked at the two illuminated screens, their small green lights and red staring things casting phosphorescent glows on our faces. Those colours always remind me of those flare matches that you lit fireworks with.
'Aren't they nautical, er, things?' I asked, then went red at my stupidity. A houseboat doesn't sail anywhere, does it, just stays moored.
'Chanter's music must be protected,' Shell said, serious as a girl learning her first skipping. 'I pay a fortune for the best systems. It's how Chanter realized the place was being watched.'
'Are they still there?' I asked nervously. Mrs Quayle gave me a glance of withering scorn. 'We'd best be going,' I said, on edge. Mrs Quayle took the portrait. I followed her off the boat and looked back. 'You not coming, Shell?'
'No, Lovejoy. I'll make my own way.'
We left her there. I stopped to wave. She waved to me. I felt slightly nauseated at the risks I was taking. I was the only one without a safe haven. Mrs Quayle was part of some team, so she was okay. Shell had her nook with Chanter.
She placed the portrait on the back seat and took the ignition key from me. 'It's reckoning time. Tinker will be
