inflated pensions. We serfs get ballocked just the same.'
'Your ... sort would think so.' He came near to a sneer. 'You have the arrogance of ignorance. Who keeps this world going, Lovejoy? Commerce, merchants, investors.
People like me. We keep order, protect the lazy and indigent – fools like you, Lovejoy.
Accept it.'
I already knew where his argument was leading. He too was a Name, a heavy investor in Lloyd's. His mob – okay, his clarrrsss – had gone broke because their chits were being called in. He and his pals were looking for a new profitable source of promissory notes, and they'd found me. I was to rescue them. They would stump up with the money gusher they'd get from antiques.
Maud was a carrot, and carrots didn't come any lovelier. My survival was another.
Wealth – soon, I was sure, he would promise me a fortune – was a third. Other benefits? Possibly superb educations for Mortimer, Henry, Uncle Tom Cobley and whoever I favoured. The thought suddenly occurred: wasn't I suddenly important? Brig and his cronies evidently thought so. Except, who'd topped Vestry? And Bernicka?
What I felt at that moment was contempt. Brig had become a Name in order to reap easy profits year upon year. That's what insurance is. It's also why I don't trust it, and always tell folk never to insure. Now, the brigadier had to pay up. He didn't like it. So he wanted out, thought it unfair. The honourable thing would have been to simply keep his promise. Take the money in the good years, pay up in the bad.
'Play the game, Lovejoy. You'll be in clover.'
What he meant was, disobey and I was for it.
'Ta for the drink, Brig,' I said meekly. I'd not even tasted the damned thing. 'I'll do as you say. But. . .'
'Quaker?' He smiled. I was looking at a firing squad. 'He's just a clerk, Lovejoy. He will agree. Every step of the way.'
I left him watching his nags on the screen. Step, see? A jest, Quaker being in a wheelchair. Some joke to do with class, I expect.
If you're like me, you get dispirited. I made it as far as the Donkey and Buskin, where I stopped for pie and mash. I didn't begrudge the brigadier his authority – he'd doubtless sweated in the jungles or wherever in defence of the realm. He was entitled to peace in his advancing years.
Making me team up with his Maud? With married Maud? I felt shanghaied, to save his skin. I'd be under his thumb. That was too much. But he seemed all-powerful. No way out for the likes of me.
I must have been there, sunk in despond, for the best part of an hour, before I realized somebody was standing a yard away. It was the hulk from the Countess's Antiques Emporiana.
'Come wiv me, mate,' he growled.
The motor must have been a converted hearse. The Countess reclined on cushions inside, watching a television. The Antiques Road Show was on, as drilled and rehearsed as ever. She smiled, crooked her finger. I felt my heart yearn.
'Drink, Lovejoy?' Her hand extended with a clang of gold. She'd had diamonds set in her front teeth since I'd seen her last. The perfume was overpowering. Her cosmetics were trowelled on. Beautiful. That's taste.
'No, ta.'
'Lovejoy, would you help me?'
Time for defiance, rebellion against all these tyrants.
'Yes, Countess,' I said faintly. 'Anything.'
'Soon, I'll want you to do something .. . really special. Divvy some antiques that may or may not exactly belong to me.'
'I see.' My voice went hard to manage.
'Would you? No matter whose they were?'
Like Brig's syndicate? I thought it, but did not say.
'Yes, Countess.' Me, the hardliner.
'And could I depend on you for full. . . satisfaction?'
Three swallows later, I croaked, 'Yes, Countess.'
She squeezed my thigh. 'Then I'll let you go. For the moment.' She blew me a kiss. I sat transfixed, a hare in her headlights.
'When can I see you, Countess?'
'Later. Until then, Lovejoy.'
'Thank you,' I said like I'd received the most generous largesse, and got out. The motor drifted off down the road. I gazed admiringly after it, thinking that there went real class, not the brigadier's old-school attitudes. I caught the bus.
Where the hell was Tinker? Time was rushing to the meeting. I wanted at least one ally, and apart from Alicia Domander I'd no real hope of anybody who'd take my side.
And now even she was joined at the hip to the brigadier.
35
ODD WHAT THINGS fascinate people. There's an American university offering millions, to anyone who can solve any unsolved mathematical problem. One is this: why do buses come in threes? No good telling them the old
