worrying. Shall we go?'
'Tinker?' How the hell did she know Tinker?
'Such a nice man,' she said, reversing quickly away and barrelling us towards the road.
'I do rather think you ought to pay him. He needs more food and less alcohol. Have you considered an employment medical scheme?'
'I'll see to it, Mrs Quayle,' I said gravely.
Aye, I'd see to it by ballocking Tinker first chance I got. He's the biggest lead-swinger in the Eastern Hundreds, him and his sob stories. I'll bet he conned her out of a fortune in his campaign to drink the breweries dry.
'You ought to see that he has one pint a day, Lovejoy,' she continued, confirming my suspicions. 'An occasional drink does help his chest so . . .' etc, etc.
The forged portraits behind me burned my shoulders as if they were red-hot. I tried not to see Lady Hypatia's eyes looking at me. I had to ask Mrs Quayle to stop a few miles north of Bures and was sick on the verge. She said nothing. Her silence made me feel worse.
That night I remembered Lady Hypatia.
I wasn't dreaming, yet I knew I was.
The Eastern Hundreds, like much of our tatty old kingdom, are addled with ancient titles. Arthur H. Goldhorn was Lord of the Manor of Saffron Fields, East Anglia. One day, Arthur's wife Colette decided to have her portrait painted.
Which is where I came in.
I painted her. I've already said paint the lady, love the lady. The inevitable happened. I went on my merry way, dealing, divvying. It was only years later that I heard Arthur had passed away. Little Mortimer must have been about twelve, something like that.
Colette disintegrated, fell for sundry oafs and sharks. With my help, the estate came back to her. Finally I realized who Mortimer really was, if you follow. It wasn't easy.
Fool that I was, I assumed I'd walk straight back into Colette's affections. Rich again, she went off with a bodybuilder called Dang. Mortimer knew. The estate workers and villagers rallied round him, naturally. They thought me a pillock, also naturally.
It was afterwards, when I realized I'd lost Colette, that I sank into near oblivion. To earn enough to make a new start in antiques, I painted a few Cromwellian portraits, of somebody I'd made up. I invented a name for her, Lady Hypatia Parlayne. Her face was youthful. I sold the best ones.
Lady Hypatia was, I realized in my dreamery, Colette, who'd had Mortimer. And who, I told my dreaming self heatedly, I was never going to remember, so there. I woke in a bitter sweat realizing that my Lady Hypatias were all portraits of Colette. Colette raves endlessly in night clubs. And I really honestly certainly definitely never hoped the untrustworthy bitch would ever come back. If there was one bird I'd completely forgotten, it's she.
She sometimes sends Mortimer a birthday card. She doesn't get the date right. Pressure of life, I suppose.
But why did Susanne Eggers want the portraits? I guessed she was the one, from circumstantial evidence.
29
THE WRESTLING MATCH, like them all, was innocuous. For me it's not the atmosphere
– smoke, sweat, ring riots. It's the women, as ever. I like to see them chat while bruisers are knocking six bells out of each other. Then if some specially grievous tangle appeals, they instantly shriek like banshees, clawing at some fighter's body should he tumble close. Weird.
Love it? Well, love comes pretty close. The women arrive dolled up to the nines. They take extra pains to glorify themselves, quite as if they're trotting out on some memorable date instead of a gory brawl in a toxic sweat. The ambience – I wish I knew what that means – is irrelevant. It's the violence that takes their fancy. Where I was born there used to be illegal cockfights. The saying was, 'Take your bird to see the birds, you'll have the bird by weekend.' I didn't understand it, being little. Now I do.
Fight scenes stir passions.
I ditched Alicia, and went to see Tex fight.
Tex was already in the ring by the time I'd got to my seat. His speciality is the Triple Ripple, a move he concocted.
He clasps his opponent – the referee will do if the script proves uncooperative – and climbs to the top rope, wriggles to and fro while the crowd yells, 'Ripple, ripple, ripple!'
On the last syllable he flails over backwards, somehow firing the other bloke over his head to smash into the opposite post. Tex then strolls across to pin him to the canvas.
Sometimes, though, Tex dawdles to take applause. The opponent then rises stealthily and smashes Tex down. The crowd bawls warnings, but Tex is so cocky that he's oblivious.
It sez here, as disbelieving folk cynically comment.
Wrestling is a con, one great scripted performance. I'm virtually alone in thinking this.
Alicia was bitterly disappointed that I wouldn't take her, but she would have stopped the show in mid-grapple had she walked down the grubby aisle. She loves making an entrance.
Tex is on an antiques panel, has been for years, which is why I wanted to fix something with him. He owes me from having got him off the hook once. His missus died. He started what polite magazines like Time call 'substance abuse', meaning drugs. Easy to become addicted in the fight game, I'm told.
We met in a posh Oxford gallery. I'd come in out of the rain. The walkers – snobs who judge if a visitor is rich,
