The Possessions of a Lady (9 page)

Look at the evidence. I turned under my blanket, stared at the
embers. Lydia must be sleeping, selfish cow. She sleeps on her side, hands
bunched under her chin, as if kipping is a sheer slog. She does her hair in a
bun, olden style, except when she goes to bed. My mind wandered after Lydia, deep
in slumber . . . Where was I? A rival divvy.

Evidence: Tinker was busy searching for Roadie's missing sister
Vyna. Tied up with Thekla, I'd sent Oddly after the mazarine. And it had
already gone.

More evidence: that fish, Tinker's words, had been shuffed—illicitly
pre-sold. You could count on the fingers of one hand the people who'd spot, as
I had, a J. Cooper display of antique stuffed fish.

Yet more evidence: lately, I'd been out-sprinted on seven genuine,
heart-burning antiques. One that really grieved me was a plain flat piece of
iron with a sharp angular point. It was priceless, a 1490s fireback from some
country house nigh a century older than Good Queen Bess. In a scrap metal yard
in Goldhanger. The yard gaffer was out, and I was hurrying to meet Betty about
a silver salver so I didn't have time to wheedle the fireback out of the
gaffer's bonny missus. I sent Tinker. Unbelievably, he'd come back
empty-handed. Somebody had bought it minutes before.

Now, this simply doesn't happen. Never ever. I could understand
losing the mazarine—everybody falls for silver, queen of metals. I could accept
losing the fish display— angling is the kingdom's most frequented 'sport'. I
could even believe losing a Bow Factory soft-paste porcelain mug, decorated
with crude copper-plate printed figures coloured in with enamels. It had the
one feature that makes collectors squeal with joy—a little heart-shaped blob at
the handle's bottom. You may have to look hard to see it, but it means a
fortune.

But a soot-encrusted chunk of iron from behind a fireplace?
Crudely made, in a sand-floor mould, rope and sword-handle indents its only
decoration?

Never in a million years.

I'd only gone into the scrap yard to ask if I could use their
phone. The chimes from the fireback had literally knocked me reeling. I'd told
the scrappie's lass not to sell it please, promised the earth . . . Gone.

Conclusion: there
must
be an evil divvy in the Eastern Hundreds. He had a car, and money, therefore a
backer. Uneasily I thought Big John Sheehan, except he is straight as a die and
ferocious, yes. Devious? No. Somebody new in these remote east lands, was
funding my mystery foe. It was driving me to drink.

Or it would be, if I hadn't alienated Frothey.

The rain lashed on the windows. The gale howled. The embers fell
with a tiny crash. Dozing, I remembered Jessica, in her church. That
conversation when Tubb arrived was phoney, some way. Two people pretending
they'd never met. Like they both knew all about Carmel's sand job. I watched
the embers.

Antiques are the strangest things. People think that some genius
makes them, the world applauds and the antiques are fixed for ever. Wrong.

Antiques are a shifting sand. Often they're so ephemeral that
they're gone like will-o'-the-wisps. Other times, they're staring you in the
face unnoticed. Like poor old Vincent van Gogh's paintings that nobody wanted,
and now you have to queue for days even to glimpse them under armed guard. And
Lowry's once-derided paintings of matchstick people in grimy mill townscapes.
And Munch's 'formless, vulgar, brutal' paintings, that caused such an uproar in
Berlin in 1892 that the artist rose to fame.

It can go the other way. What is at first priceless can become
cheap, like money, that halves in value each decade. A generation ago, you
couldn't give old steam railway engines away. Today, whole towns turn out
merely to see one puff by. We have a well-heeled woman called Fortune Phoebe,
who stands eternally by the council rubbish dump. She makes a mint out of
discarded dross, squirrelling a car load away every nightfall.

Like the 'lilly-narcissus', a.k.a. the tulip. Brought innocently
from its native Turkey to Vienna about the 1540s, the tulip showed up in
England in 1577 to no ado. So what, a different flower? Then it took off, in
Holland in 1594. For forty years the Dutch went crazy. One—
one
—bulb of a red-white stripey flower
fetched 10,000 guilders, the cost of a pricey town house. Dealers used
diamond-merchants' scales to weigh bulbs out. The dirt cheap old flower zoomed
to priceless.

Until a terrible April in 1637, when the whole inverted
pyramid—paper shares of paper wealth on paper promises balancing on a
tulip—toppled. Speculators' fortunes crumpled. Ruin stalked Holland's proud
cities. The lesson, if only we'd hark: money is whim.

Sometimes, too, antiques can change and we forget. The worthless
suddenly focuses today's lust in a new way unprecedented even though nothing
about the antique has changed. Nowadays, we all boggle at the daft Victorians
who couldn't see the blindingly obvious, that barmy old Turner's strange daubs
are worth a king's ransom.

Sand job, but where? No prizes for guessing that Roger Boxgrove's
new wealth was funding it. He'd put me on to Carmel, the instigator. But what
was the stripe? Jessica, and Tubb already knew, if I'd guessed right. I knew of
few museum loans, though I don't follow news much. Should I ask Lydia, in the
morning? Something she'd said vexed me, but I didn't know what.

It's unusual for me not to wake about five. The wind had abated,
the rain a steady drizzle. In the gloaming Mavis's garden seemed to have been
put through a tumble drier. I tiptoed about, had my bath without splashing. By
the time I emerged, unshaven but clean, I knew Lydia was listening. You can
always feel a woman awake in bed, even with walls in between.

Toast is easiest. I managed to strangle the toaster's beeping when
it popped. Mavis only had inferior marmalade, really annoying. What good is
stealing a neffie breakfast? I brewed up. The house listening in silence. We're
odd, people.

I stole a teaspoon, drank the milk, nicked the milk bottle,
Mavis's kitchen salt, a half-pint commemoration mug, and a bottle of spring water.
Off to make some free money. We homeless waifs have to.

Dressed, dry, I let myself out, walked to the bypass, where I got
a lift from a returning student. I told him I was late for my fishing smack. He
drove me the extra three miles to the harbour.

Brad was about to put to sea. With a cheery greeting I jumped
aboard, thrilled that his lass Patsy was with him. She's the most beautiful
female on earth, dark eyes, pale skin, lips you'd jump into without hanging on
to the selour. She's one of these exquisite women who wears clumsy garb to
accentuate the entrancing figure beneath.

'After mackerel, Lovejoy?' Brad joked. He knows I think fish come
in batter.

'Ha ha, Brad,' I said gravely. 'Land me at Toosey Stone?'

'Morning, Lovejoy,' said Patsy, stopping the world.

Weakly I returned the greeting, sat in the thwarts, whatever those
are. The clouds were wearing thin, the wind whippy.

'What's in the bag, Lovejoy?' Patsy asked.

Brad grinned. 'Lovejoy's broke. He's hunting amber.'

She eyed me, coiling a rope. Everything Patsy does looks erotic.
We'd once made smiles when Brad was away at Birmingham's flintlocks auctions. I
hoped Brad didn't suspect. I wouldn't like to fall overboard.

'Amber?
Hunting
amber?
At Toosey Ness?'

'I'll show you,' I offered, and quickly added, 'Er, when you're
both free.'

Toosey Ness is the local way of saying Saint Osyth's Point, after
the priory. It's marked by a great stone, for sailors to take sightings.
There's one each side of every estuary, predating the Romans.

'Amber's cast up on shore after storms.'

'Got enough salt there, Lovejoy?' Brad's often seen me wash for
amber.

'Aye, ta. I nicked all Mavis had.'

'Mavis who?' Patsy asked, quick as a flash.

The boat pulled as the river widened and the sea's expanse showed.

'Mind your own business, Patsy,' I said. 'Have you a bowl?' Mavis
who, indeed. Women are nosey.

Brad put the sails up, hauling away, Patsy heave-hoing along. I
clung on. The wind tugged and shoved. Land receded. We were in the North Sea.

Half an hour later I plopped onto the muddy foreshore and was
alone on a desolate sea mudbank in the dawn, with solid land two furlongs of
mud away. I was lonely, but my pursuit of the evil divvy needed money, and
amber was the only free money left.

My shoes sucking at every step, I ploshed along the windswept
shore after the precious sea gold.

Every amber hunter's dream is the famous 'Burma Amber' in South
Kensington's museums, huge at 33 pounds 10 ounces. But not all amber's immense.
It's not all amber, either.

Baits favour white opaque amber, we clear honey-coloured amber. I
particularly love the deep red ambers of China. On the beach, amber looks like
flotsam, utter rubbish. Hunt some yourself. It's easy. It's free. You'll find a
piece sooner or later.

Measure ten level teaspoons of salt into half a pint of clean
water. The specific gravity of this fluid will be near the all-important 1.13.
Then scour the beach. Plastic's trouble— shredded plastic's everywhere
nowadays. Your magic bowl of salt solution is your secret weapon, for most
plastic sinks in it. Glass also sinks. Stones sink. Rusty metal sinks. Rubber
floats, but bends. Wood floats, but wood splits like, well, wood. Also, flotsam
wood is pale, veined, striated.

That leaves only two things floating on your salt water. One is
jet—itself a seashore thing, black, and a genuine organic gem, though fashion
killed it long since except in Whitby.

The other floater is amber. Never mind what it looks like. If it doesn't
sink, it's a contender. It's S.G. will be 1.12 or just less, which is all that
matters.

Within ten minutes I found one scrap, then two more. Another half
hour, six, one thumb-nail size. Two hours I went at it. A dilute sun started
washing St Osyth's tower, which ancient smugglers' swift cutters used for
guidance to the despair of the Excise. I made fresh salt solutions as I went.

Finally I had twenty pieces. The largest chunk was cindery brown,
nearly an inch across. Several bits were the size of my little fingernail, the
smallest a spicule. I'd got enough to survive.

Even a remote windswept shore is wondrous. I found several blobs
of copperas, but left them. In years gone by, these heavy masses were excitedly
sought on the Eastern Hundreds sealands by village boys. They'd teem down at
low tide to Walton and suchlike places, gathering sacks of the stuff. In one
year, 150 tons.

People'd buy the copperas, which country folk still call
'vitriol', and put it into open-air tanks. Rainwater would wash its goodness
into lead buckets. This horrible liquid (it stinks to high heaven, really
ruffs) was then reduced in a heated lead-lined boiler, into crystals of iron
sulphates, your original vitriol. Once, highly saleable, but not now. It's
still used by the older antique forgers, but younger fakers have no patience,
too hooked on mass markets to do a proper job.

There were other things. Wood, jetsam from ships. Here, I'd once
found a Roman coin, a denarius sadly honed by the sand. You occasionally find
fossils, ammonites. As I hunted, I saw Wonker beachcombing three miles to the
north—he's a flotsam sculptor, holds shows in London galleries. He didn't wave.
Odd. I'm sure he saw me.

Elevenish, I hailed a man fishing in a rowing pram out of Pyefleet
Channel.

'Caught any yet?' I hullooed.

'Not a thing.'

'Ferry me, please? Not near the oyster beds.'

He laughed. 'Squeamish, eh, booy? Brad told me.

All in all, a good start. Ominous.

8

To snare somebody l didn't even know existed, I'd need gelt and help.
I headed back to Lydia's mother's place. A vintage Bentley stood outside.

'Lovejoy.' Mavis welcomed me glaring, a tribute to finishing
schools, polo, and vitamin supplements, she made my name a denunciation.

'Hello, Mavis.' I gave her time to invite me in for breakfast,
Nothing. 'Er, is Lydia in, please?'

'No.' Her lip curled in scorn. I like to see that, even if it's me
that's being bollocked. Mavis's lips are magic. '
Look
you, Lovejoy! Filthy, muddy. I've forbidden Lydia to have
anything more to do with you.'

I didn't understand. 'I want help, please.'

'You mean you want some woman to scrounge off, to . . . to use, Lovejoy!
Don't come here again!'

'But . . .'

'Lydia is joining Lissom and Prenthwaite real professionals! I
have just arranged Lydia's salary. Mr. Prenthwaite has signed forms.'

'She can't.' I was aghast. 'She's my apprentice.'

'Apprentice? For how many more years, Lovejoy? And you stole my
commemoration mug! A wedding memento! I shall report you to the police!'