The Possessions of a Lady (30 page)

You've to be careful, thinking. Lost archaeologies frighten me. TV
programmes about the cosmos also scare me, trillions of galaxies with, likely
enough, umpteen gillions of long dead civilisations floating in black space . .
.

'Aaaargh!
' I went, my screech
echoing down the empty streets as something stroked my leg. I'd leapt a league,
but it was only a cat, tail up, purring.

Bending, I growled, 'Stupid moth-eaten moggie. Do that again and
I'll marmalise you.' It came for a fondle. I stroked it in despair. That's me
all over. I can't even bollock a cat without giving in, even when I'm the
injured party. I was waiting here secret as a moon in a mine, not even the
sense to bring a flashlight. But would I need one? The street lights were
enough. The archway was recessed a few gloamy paces. Its single gaslight,
placed there 150 years ago, was a gnarled relic. I felt so lonely. I thought of
Wanda. She'd be doing Briony Finch's auction soon. Knowing Wanda's shrewdness,
she'd hold it somewhere other than Thornelthwaite Manor, another symbol of lost
greatness.

Just as some things get sickeningly lost, some can be found. A
French official lately discovered some caves near Avignon. Why does it never
happen to me? This lucky bloke delved into a Palaeolithic cave. Saying it means
hardly anything, because most caves are Palaeolithic or that way on. But this
contained staggering paintings of Ice Age animals. Naturally, the world went
crazy. Well, 20,000 years, or more. Bears, reindeer, the woolly rhino, owls,
leopard and ibex, even a bloke's hand outlined in red, 300 Cro-Magnon animal
pictures wondrously preserved. But not every cave is honest. The Avignon find
might turn out to be brilliantly authentic, like Spain's Altamira find, and
France's Lascaux of 1940. There are supposed to be nigh on seventeen dozen
Stone Age caves with authentic paintings in the bottom bit of Europe alone, and
over a thousand dozen Australian aboriginal rock art sites on the Arnhem Land
plateau, some a cool 40,000 years old.

When the Chauvet-Hillair caves were discovered, I scoured every
report about Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, spoke to every expert. They all sang the same
dirge. 'Just think,' they sobbed, 'how many undiscovered caves, whole
city-equivalents, cathedral-equivalents, are lost! Basic sea level, back in
Upper Palaeolithic times some 12,000 to 70,000 years gone, were three hundred
feet lower than now. The great polar ice caps were enormously vaster.' One
archaeologist had been to Cosquer in France to see the cave paintings—but
chickened out, because you can only reach them now by swimming underwater.

Other experts try 'recreating' the Cro-Magnon art. Know the best
way? It isn't with brushes, but by taking the colour into your mouth and
spitting it onto the cave walls. Sadly, it's where fakery begins. Waiting by my
arch, I didn't want to think of faking, until the world put its daylight head
on. Dark sinister caves are horrible, like those magicalised paintings in red
ochre, and dangerous manganese oxide black. This latter stuff can send you
insane. But it wasn't that. The Cro-Magnons who painted at Vallon-Pont-d'Arc
were probably our true ancestors. They came drifting, brawling, out of Africa,
overrunning Europe some 35,000 years ago. That wouldn't be so bad, if they
hadn't simply replaced the Neanderthals of Europe. No peaceful coexistence. Ice
Age Europe said survive or die. The Cro-Magnons had the knack of trading, and got
organised in houses for up to fifty folk. They hunted mammoths. Fine, eh? Not
if you're Neanderthal it's not.

The town hall clock struck four-thirty. The cat had given up,
gone.

Worse, why did those Cro-Magnon cave artists leave an animal's
skull on a rock, a few piles of pigment, a fragment or two of bone, and nothing
else? Whose caves were they, one over 200 feet long? Priests keeping the shrine
sacred? Most of the animals depicted were terrors, not food, not domesticated.
So why go to the trouble of protecting the Combe d'Arc caves, teaching young
Cro-Magnons your ceremonies?

The frightening question is always there, waiting for when you've
examined every antique ever made. It can only be asked when you're alone and
cold and wondering what frigging cosmos and God are doing and why some innocent
bloke's lying perilously linked to life by a thousand tubes in a hospital. It's
this: if what you were doing was so vital, so life-enhancing, so beautiful, why
stop?

Because some new tribe rubbed you out?

Once, I knew this bird. She was exquisite, titled, wealthy, young,
had everything. Her husband was handsome, ditto, and had everything else. She
used to visit me when he was away, then, worryingly, when he wasn't. Well, I
was really proud of this lady. I tried to borrow money, have the electricity
switched on, pay my water rates so she wouldn't have to carry water from my
well. I honestly tried to haul my cottage into the light of civilisation's
bright beacon. Know what? She went berserk, threatened, 'If you do, Lovejoy,
I'll never see you again.' This, note, from a noblewoman used to satin, central
heating, grapes in aspic, ten maids per hankie. She'd never known anything
except luxury and subservience from adoring regimental officers.

Baffled, I asked, 'What's got into you? I thought you'd be
pleased'. She lay there shivering in my damp cold cottage, no light, no grub,
no cooking thing, no hot bath. Beside her I must have looked like some, well,
Cro-Magnon. She said, 'Don't ever stop being stupid, Lovejoy. Promise?' She
actually made me do that cross-my-heart. I did it, to shut her up. Immediately
she was right as rain.

Twenty minutes to five.

Fakery only compounds this problem. There was a similar cave found
in the Basque country. It had everything, paintings, extinct animals, red
ochre, the blacks, renderings of our ancestors. A mistrustful researcher
discovered small fragments of manmade sponges underneath the cave
drawings—sponges on sale at modern supermarkets. The whole thing was sham. I
often see slices of limestone sold from cars, allegedly from 'cave paintings in
southern France', three feet by four, mounted on fibreglass. I've never seen a
genuine one yet.

I looked down the arch's narrow ginnel. A few paces. Can you trust
anything, like messages from lifetime friends? The bobbies of my youth smoked
their secret cigarettes in this recess before plodding on. Down there, the
ghost of the murdered man lived. I could feel him. The wind was blowing colder,
mizzle enough to soak. A sensible bloke’d shelter down there and wait for
Tinker, stay dry. Not me, and I don't believe in ghosts. What was Tinker doing,
saying to meet here? He'd know I'd be scared. Almost as if he wanted me not to
be here. Barmy old soak had probably been sloshed.

I decided to see what the old place opposite had turned into. It
had once been the Queens cinema, all velvet seats and thick guide ropes. I
crossed over. A single motor came slowly from Manchester, accelerated gently at
the traffic lights' promise.

Suddenly tired, I leant against the old cinema's wall. I used to
queue here for the cheap seats, hoping for a snog with some sceptical lass. The
cat purred round me. I stooped to stroke it.

'Bloody moggie.' I stroked it. 'Chiseller.'

The building now seemed to be some sort of supermarket. You can
never tell these days . . .

A
whoomph
almost knocked
me over, more light than blast. I tumbled back, not trying to save myself. I
slid a yard, glass shards scratching and raining onto the wall.

'Christ!' I remember yelling, looking round.

The motor car had no lights I remembered, now it was no use
noticing anything. It accelerated off along Bradshawgate. From there, Halliwell
and the moors quick as a wink, or Blackburn. I lay still, the cat lying on my
feet, scared out of its wits, poor little sod.

A purplish blue light was flickering from across the street. From
the ghost's arch. I strove to recall, but couldn't get things in order. Had
there been a crash of glass, just before that ominous whoomph? I vaguely thought
so. But the flames died quickly even as I watched, and I knew. A bottle filled
with petrol, a rag down the neck. Light it, and chuck. Crash goes the glass,
splash goes the petrol, and whoomph goes the Molotov cocktail. And the person
gets crisped, screams, burns to death.

No cars about. I reached to stroke the moggie, felt it sticky on
my fingers, yelped, looked in the street light of Station Brough, and spewed on
the cat's entrails and my blood-soaked trousers. I screamed, shuffled myself
feverishly along the pavement away from the dreadful thing. A large shard of
glass had penetrated its soft form, slicing and slitting as it went. I found
myself staggering away from the dying flames, seeing Spoolie all over again,
and began walking steadily, steadily, as if I had somewhere to go.

Between spells of reeling in and out of terror, my mind demanded,
Who'd want me crisped when I'd done nothing? The act of a madman. Madmen?
Madwomen? Aureole, Carmel, Faye, Lydia, Sheehan, Roger, Tubb the bodybuilder?
Not poor Viktor Vasho. Not poor Spoolie. That moggie had only wanted to be
friends. Death comes to my pals.

Tinker had known where I'd be. Tinker knew the ghost's arch. He'd
asked me to be there.

Ta, Tinker, I said fervently. Ta, for having saved my life. I owe
you, my one trustworthy ally, thank God. More than I could say for anyone else.
Get defilthed, then to Manchester. The show at Scout Hey was tomorrow now,
coming too quick for tricks.

29

The Manchester train was only half the size it used to be. Two
coaches, no engine to speak of, cramped as hell. I envied the Pack Horse's
morning burden, Faye waking there. And Lydia, frosty. Maybe there'll be sex in
heaven, or have I said that? I needed speed.

The textile museum didn't open until ten. I seethed in a nearby
nosh bar. What in God's name do curators do, until they can be bothered?
Museums are a bobby's job. I wandered to the delivery entrance.

'What's want fert see, mate?' a friendly old uniformed bloke
asked. He was on the soot-blackened gate while a massive lorry finished
loading. Two blokes in overalls were wheeling out the last case on a trolley.

'Is there a special display?'

'Theh't a day late, lad.' He was quite jovial. I stared in alarm.
'This is it, just going.'

'Late?' I pulled myself together. 'Can I see?' One of the loaders
undid a latch of the canvas covering. It was a glass display case. Inside, a
life-sized dummy, wearing an 1880s dress, complete with trinkets, hairdo, that
scary smile dummies wear, maybe come alive when you're not looking. I stared
trying to remember every detail to tell Florsston, the shawl, the browny silk,
the pink glass brooch, the jet necklet.

'Ta, mate,' I said dully. They fastened it, racked the case onto
the pantechnicon.

'The Victoriana.' The old man wore soldier's ribbons.
'The Empire's Textile Wonders
. Rotten
name, eh? I remember my dad . . .'

'What was it, exactly? All like that one?'

'Oh, long frocks, special materials. On dummies—they were
Victorian, too, heavy as lead. Wools, cottons, made overseas in them days,
shipped home in windjammers for fettling in Lancashire.' He beamed, proud.

'Where's it going?'

'Don't tek on, lad. Catalogues at yon kiosk, full of pictures.' He
pointed to the museum building. 'You can still catch it. They're doing a
special show at some old church not many miles north. Scout Hey. Never heard of
it myself

He waved the huge vehicle outside, locked the gates and beckoned
me in via the rear entrance. It was exactly ten o'clock. A party of
schoolchildren arrived, noisy starlings in the foyer. Two other adults came in.
One was a middle-aged woman, headed upstairs, knew where to go. The other was a
lovely lass, schoolmarmish among the children, hair dragged back into a bun
behind formidable hornrims. Wish they'd had teachers like her in my day. But no
Vyna. The commissionaire chuckled.

'That lorry driver was an interesting chap. His dad used to play
football for Accrington Stanley. See these little bairns? Half’ll lose
themselves unless . . .'

'Ta.' I left him, bought a catalogue for a king's ransom. No
use—what catalogue is?—but it was psychotherapy. I felt the chiming malaise
from the museum's antiques, but resisted. I had a journey to make. The image of
what I'd seen in the display case burned in my mind's eye.

Scout Hey I knew. I had to discover Stella Entwistle, suss out her
auction. I'd evaded all my helpers. Now I had to decide where Amy's fashion
show began and La Entwistle's antiques sale ended. I stuck the glossy under my
arm and went out into Manchester's rain.

'Lift, Lovejoy?' Tubb called from a car.

'How come you don't get fined, parking here, Tubb?' I was narked.
I get wheel-clamped if I slow down.

He grinned. He was gripping palm springers, Popeye forearms
flexing. 'An auspicious day, Lovejoy. I couldn't get a parking ticket if I
tried. Nothing can go wrong. I've done runes, tarot, the lot.' Confidence oozed
out of him. 'You're a swine to find. I've spent a mint on phones.'

'Lift where to?' I asked cautiously.

'Where you're going.' His grin widened. 'Don't tell me. Bet I put
you down at the door.'