The Possessions of a Lady (10 page)

Oh, hell. I'd left it on the beach. 'Look, love . . .'

'Don't you dare "love" me!'

The door slammed. I turned, nowhere to go, with mv little sack of
raw amber. I felt sorry for it. Umpteen millions of years in forming, the most
beautiful bio gem in Creation, reduced to being hawked about. Rain came. I
thought of Roger's posh scheme, of the aromatic Jessica, Carmel, and her superstitious
Tubb. I was hungry.

Hunger means food. The card was in my pocket. I found a phone
kiosk, told a sulky operator I'd been instructed to reverse the charges, and
got through to the Mayfair number. She'd promised me grub, after all.

'Hello? Lovejoy, for Orla Maltravers Featherstonehaugh.'

'This is she.' Brisk, curt.

'Er, sorry about last night. I tried . . .'

'Don't lie, Lovejoy. Be here, five-thirty, today.'

'I can't. I've no money, and I'm . . .' Mavis had spotted it, so
all women would. 'I'm filthy.'

No question, just an amused assertion. 'Then clean yourself up.'

'I can't. My home's gone.' Even to me I sounded pathetic.

Orla purred, 'Stand or deliver, our Thekla. You weren't destitute
at the fashion show. What happened?' She was falling about laughing, but hard
in the voice.

'Are you a dealer?' Into the unexpected silence I said eagerly,
'I've harvested some sea amber. I'll fake you a Georgian pendant. Just give me
place to work.'

'You'll
what?
’

Well, she'd been too good to be true. When all else fails, try
truth.

'I rang hoping you'd stand me a meal, love.'

'Is it really that bad?'

She was probably a fashioneer friend of Thekla's anyway. 'Cheers,
love. Ta for the offer of yesterday.'

She started to say something, but I rang off. I walked into rain.
Well, rain washes mud off.

Behind the town library's a derelict area. Rag-and-bone men,
shoddy-and-tat dealers, assemble there. When I was little, they'd go round our
streets crying 'Rag bo-o-o-o-one! Donkey sto-o-o-o-one!' For old rags or bones
you got a block of white, grey, sandy rubbing stone, to do your front steps
with. Donkey carts have gone now. It's all dodgy pickup trucks with peeling
number plates. The space is about an acre, weeds, bare soil, rusting cars, and
a shed where Kent the Rammer sells tea and fruit cake. When all else fails,
this is the place. A few people were mulling over loads of clag in the damp. I
drifted to the tea shed.

'Lovejoy?' Tinker, begrimed mittens full of cake, was slurping his
breakfast in his natural habitat. Sometimes he sleeps in abandoned vans, to
save having to cross into St Peter's churchyard, his permanent abode.

'Wotcher, Tinker. I'm looking for somewhere to work.' I felt
slightly odd, my insides palpitating. I looked about; not an antique in sight.

'Been amber fishing? Kent's got better.'

Kent the Rammer's a ram raider. He raced motors at Silverstone, Brands
Hatch, the famous places. Retired for taking bribes, he's in demand for driving
rammers—nicked cars fitted with battering rams, for crashing into shops or
warehouses. It's the modern way. Birmingham rammers are best, present company
excepted. I'd seen Kent actually do it, and he's dynamite. He's slight,
placid-looking, butter wouldn't melt and all that.

'Wotcher, Lovejoy.' Kent leant over his counter. 'Fire tigers,
three sets. Poncey, but maybe old.'

Now, you used to see fire irons at house clearance sales when
auntie's imbecile cousins sold her house off. Poker, fire tongs, and a little
shovel is one set. Remember when everybody had coal fires?

Guess what common antiques have soared most in price over the past
thirty years. Have a stab. Impressionist paintings? Tompion clocks? Georgian
silver, used by the Prince Regent? None of the above.

The answer is fire irons. Once, you couldn't give them away. They
were scrap, for pennies. Astonishingly, you can make your fortune from them.

Unless you're like me, able to detect the melodious chimes of an
antique's secret beauty, you have to know what people want. That means
learning. And anybody can learn fire irons.

Think only of the shovels. Fancy shovels are carved. Shell shapes,
bell shapes, hearts, flowers, rounded shovels with twist-stem handles. Iron, of
course, the first ones were. But came the age of brass. The Victorians, my
heroes, put brass handles on the steel shafts.
The brass handles almost always unscrew and make a perfect fit
.
Valuable tip, that.

'Got a few,' Kent staggered me by saying.

'Don't!' I yelped. As scavengers looked up at the fuss, I ahemed
and strolled to Rammer's side door.

He got the point. Tinker came to shield me from sight. Rammer
handed me a pierced bell-shaped fire shovel, steel. I started to sweat. This
explained my odd feeling, for it was genuine. Twisted steel handle, matching
rivets symmetrically placed to hold the undamaged, exquisitely pierced, thistle
pattern blade.

'Want to see the others?' Rammer asked casually, turning to serve
a vagrant motor dealer tea and a wad.

Weak at the knees, I waited until the customer had gone. 'The
rest, Rammer?'

'I think there's three sets. Not much use, though.'

'The ponceys, please?' Rammer'd meant fancy. 'Any with . . . ?'

With leaves twining along the handle, different colours of copper,
vine tendrils perfectly preserved. And fire tongs still with their dual central
tips, quite like axle caps, covering the ends of the pivot rivet. Nowadays,
this Art Nouveau work may not look much, but it means wealth. Victorian
craftsmen were so keen on Nature's emblems that they threw caution to the
winds. Hang durability, they cried, show off your skill. So they swapped brass
and steel for the milder copper. Hence, copper fire irons are rarest. Like
these.

Tears filled my eyes. Perfection, a dream. And I'd begun to doubt
myself. I was off my rocker.

'Here, Lovejoy.' Tinker stuffed my bag of amber into my pocket. I
must have let it drop. Rammer went to serve somebody at the front of his little
shed. Tinker hid the fire irons under his coat flap.

'How come, Tinker?'

He grinned with triumph. Bristly stubble improved him somehow.

'That old fireback, Lovejoy. I asked, along the road they're
building. Some old houses got spliced. Where there's Elizabethan firebacks,
there might be more stuff. So I tipped Rammer off. He's done rams for the
navvies' ganger. But they'll cost, Lovejoy.'

'Price doesn't matter, Tinker. I'll pay.' I'd have to. I'd let
myself get too dispirited. Tinker had done well, taken over, doing my job. I
felt ashamed.

'Three full sets, and one matching fender.'

'No bucket?' I held my breath.

'Aye, Lovejoy. Copper, flowers going daft on its outside.'

An Art Nouveau coal scuttle, properly called a bucket, with a fire-kerb,
would buy a house. Or my cottage back.

'What do we do, Lovejoy?'

'I'll have the gelt for Rammer by closing time. Cash. Tell him my
price is . . .' Quickly I judged Rammer's old Escort corroding listlessly nearby,
Rammer's affair with a barmaid that had cost him. His brother was in gaol.
Rammer has a gambling streak. 'A new motor plus a thousand in his hand. Okay?'

'Right, Lovejoy. Here,' Tinker asked as I turned to go, 'got
enough for a pint?'

'Sorry, mate.' Dealing in a fortune in one breath, not a bean the
next.

'Where'll you go now, son?' he asked.

That made me pause. I ran through possibilities in my mind, then
slumped at reality.

'Aureole's,' I said sadly, and went, lamb to Aureole's dating
chain. Even when I try to look posh I'm no Douglas Fairbanks, Sen. or Jun. But
she had a vested interest in lending me her flat to do the amber.

As I hurried off I was hailed by Vinegar. He always has money,
just enough to cue scroungers.

'Wotcher, Lovejoy. Do me a job?'

'How do, Vinegar. No. Too pushed.'

Folk like Vinegar are always in troubles of their own making. He's
nicknamed Vinegar because he scooped a wondrous antique once for a song,
clearing out an attic. A marble bust of Pope Sixtus IV, of unholy memory. It
was mint, worth a fortune, and he'd paid cornflakes. Then he committed a
cardinal sin—cleaned it with vinegar, a.k.a. acetic acid. Marble's very name is
a byword for hardness ('Hard as marble,' et lying cetera), yet it's soft, as
stone goes. Kitchen vinegar rots it like bad teeth. I slaved to rescue his
precious bust for weeks, impregnating it with coloured waxes like the ancient
Romans and Greeks did. No good. The bust was ruined.

Watch how an antique dealer approaches any marble object. He'll
run a hand over it, rubbing his fingers afterwards to see if they're waxy. You
can tell that marble has been 'wax improved' by examining the surface in
oblique sunlight, to see wax. That's why dealers always take time studying
'improvable' marble antiques. All the marble stones lend themselves to fakery.
Thus, the pretty serpentine—soft enough to cut with a knife—is often dyed to
imitate jade. Plain old calcite, stained by cobalt pigments, is a famous
let's-pretend turquoise. Marble itself is sometimes stained coral to fake,
well, coral. Cheap humdrum magnesite subs for precious lapis lazuli. The list
is almost endless. My favourite dye is indigo, dissolved in urine.

Gently heat the marble, dip it in, and presto!—a precious new gemstone
instead of common marble. It's a rotten trick, though, and I would never do it.
Hardly ever, honest.

'I've a bit of dosh, Lovejoy.' Vinegar's droopy dogface was under
an umbrella. I slowed for shelter.

'What's it to do with, Vin?'

'Sfrags, Lovejoy. A job lot. Divvy them, eh?' Sphragistics is the
study of seals—the amulet and insignia kind, not those cruel nautical salmon
slayers.

'Are they any good?'

'Brilliant. Romans, I reckon.'

'No, Vinegar. Ta. I'm doing contract work.'

He halted. 'You don't look in work, Lovejoy.'

'Cheers, Vinegar.' I went, plunged in despond. If word had reached
Vinegar that I was touting for work, I'd sunk really low. He was always last to
get any news.

Anyway, his Roman sfrags were probably a group of eight I'd made
months back from shells I'd snaffled at Brightling-sea. Forged Roman seals are
quick to make, five a day, and cheap. Last thing I wanted was to buy my own
fake handiwork back.

Twenty minutes later I was in Aureole's fiat. She gave me the key,
delighted. It's down by St Leonard's. I had a bath, got my clothes drying on
her radiator. I towelled dry, brewed up, foraged and scoffed, then lay on her
bed, alone. You can't have everything.

9

Coming to, I washed the amber in cold salted water for a proper
look.

Folk wrongly call it 'sea crystal'. Amber contains no real
crystals at all. I nicked a lens out of Aureole's specs. You sometimes see
small insects, ants, and the like trapped within. Gruesome, but ladies, and
antique dealers, love them. Proof of antiquity, they think. Not quite true—a
bloke along the coast incorporates live ants into copal varnish and does a
pretty good fake amber. You can be fooled. Copal resin, worthless, is the only
amber fake you need worry about. It comes from all sorts of hot-climate trees,
and you find bits dislodged from lumber jettisoned by shipping. The famous
'electric test' for amber—rubbing it on your blouse, then seeing if it will
pick up paper by its negative electric charge, is useless; almost any plastic
comb will do it. The Ancient Greeks called amber 'electrum', from the sun,
hence our word electricity.

Aureole has a gas cooker. Finding no paper clips, I borrowed one
of her earrings, prised out the modern grotty stone and chucked it. I heated
the wire to redness. With the blade from her manicure set I scraped a flake off
each amber piece, touched it to the hot wire, and got a satisfying aromatic
pong, a good positive sign. One or two little flies were inside. I avoided
their reproachful gaze, transfixed since Eocene and Palaeocene times these
sixty million years.

One good-sized piece was cloudy, whitish. I searched Aureole's
kitchen for some rapeseed oil, but she had none, really uncooperative. The
trick is dunk the amber in hot oil. Cloudy amber clears quickly—the oil's
supposed to soak into the minute bubbles. I hate it, because it's cheating. The
oil causes minuscule circular cracks, which make the amber gleam more.
Everybody does it, even to valuable cuts from block amber. Needless to say, if
you're offered an amber pendant, examine it with a lens. Those little fissures
produce an almost sequin-like glittery look and are a give-away that the
amber's been abused.

Like I was doing. Sorry.

Then a slice of luck. Aureole had just ironed clean linen
handkerchiefs. I borrowed two, tore them into strips, laid my ambers one to a
strip. Her whisky I'd poured into her fridge's ice tray, so the alcohol
separated. Soak linen in neat alcohol, you have the perfect instrument for
amber. Not only does it clean it, but it gives further proof—copal smudges your
white cloth after thirty seconds.