The Grace in Older Women (13 page)

'Go ahead,' I grumbled as she borrowed my beach parasol. 'Let me
sizzle.'

She laughed pneumatically like they do. 'This sunshade is mine.'

I'd nicked it by pretending I was Number Forty-two. 'Okay. But
don't start complaining I should pay. You're the rich auctioneer.'

'How - ?' She remembered her catalogue. 'Quick eyes.'

'Here on your tod?'

'No. My husband.' She indicated a figure zipping along the ocean,
skis behind a speedboat. 'He does hang-gliding, scuba diving, that.' She gave
me a wry look that spoke volumes. 'Burns off his excess energy.'

She spoke dismissively. It made me swallow. 'Heavy duty in the
City?' Sympathy wins women.

'Leslie's in banking regulations, investors amok at the drop of a
decimated cent.' She smiled. 'I exercise differently.'

More swallowing. She looked, sounded, was massively voluptuous.
More than ample, and that hidden languour women promise with.

'Lifting antiques about all the time, eh, Mrs. Mulrose?' Her
catalogue wore a 'For The Personal Attn Of' sticker.

She looked startled, cottoned on and smiled, perfect teeth. Then
she started, telling me tales of minor antiques scams, to impress me. But she
laboured under a handicap: I knew who she was, while she'd not a clue about me.
I'd heard the lads talking of this superb blonde auctioneer with an accurate
memory for faces, names, bids, names of substitutes. This was the famous
Sabrina Mulrose. The lads all over East Anglia lusted after this delectable
lass. They'd give anything, antiques excepted, of course. I was here to meet
Leslie Mulrose. I hadn't connected the surname.

Within minutes she had me smiling then laughing. By the second
drink - she quaffed it faster than I ever could -I was learning of the
auctioneer's viewpoint. To this day I don't know what prompted me to ask my
question outright. Was it delight at being one up on an auctioneer? A chance to
show off, laugh at her expense?

‘I read once you lot have trouble with antiques scruffs. They can,
what's the word, divine whether something is a fake. Is it right?'

'Divvies, you mean.' She tossed her hair from her nape with a
hand. I watched, mesmerized. I believed the lads now. Before, I'd taken it with
a pinch of salt because they're a randy lot. 'We've one in our region. He's a
swine, always broke. Cadges off women, a born thief. He's been too scared to
come to our auction since I came.'

'He has?' I was double narked. She could only be talking about me.
Scared? Of
her
?

‘I’ve a degree in fine art, an MA art history. I've written two
books on antiques. I contribute to
Antique
and New Art
, specialist auction articles.'

Gradual graduates. Who profit by degrees, as it were.

It was then that her husband Leslie skimmed in to the beach and
waved. She waved prettily back, extended herself elegantly skywards, brushed
sand off. I couldn't take my eyes from her.

'See you, Mrs. Mulrose,' I said, working out how to come on them
accidentally in the bar, pretend surprise.

'See you. Lovejoy,' she said.

My face burning, I sat watching her retreating figure. I hadn't
told her my name, clever cow. She fell in with her hubby, him explaining with
swooping arms how he'd hung on to that rope and flown like an albatross.

That was the start of it. Needless to say, good old Leslie hadn't
lent me the money, but me and Sabrina went on from there. While her husband
went out flippered and sealskinned to inspect the seabed's detritus, she'd had
the gall to ravish me on her hotel balcony within clear view of the ocean. It
adds spice, Lovejoy,' was all she would say when I remonstrated. She meant
risk. God knows how many I was, in her ordinal list of lovers. She was scarily
frank about her previous blokes. And the reason I had to come when summoned, so
to speak? Two reasons. She dissuaded Leslie from lending me the gelt, then
offered me a lump sum, which saved my skin. Second, she was eager to run a scam
in the Aldeburgh auction, and had been waiting for some gormless dupe like me.

The means? She was the one who checked the secret proofs from
Greenhalgh's printer, before the auction viewing day. Which gave her a head
start on any legal honest bidder like you and me, because a cataloguer can
change descriptions enough to deceive. Tell you about it if I get a minute.
Since then, me and Sabrina had been active in, er, making such adjustments
after clandestine encounters. She was thorough, precise, demanding.

'The last thing I want, Lovejoy,' she'd told me when first we made
smiles, 'is for Leslie to find out that you do this to me. Understand?'

'Yes, Sabrina.'
Me
doing. . . ? Who was doing what to whom?

'He wouldn't tolerate you messing about with me like this.'

'No, Sabrina.'

'He can be vicious, Lovejoy. So obey my signals to the letter when
you start seeing me regularly at home. Understand?'

That was the first I'd heard of her permanent interdict, to coin a
phrase. It had been over six months ago, and I'd come once a week,' Sabrina's
Sunday seduction. Only twice had Leslie failed to sail, fly like a bird or dive
like a duck. Then, we'd met the following day when Leslie was beavering for
dinars on some London heat seat. Sabrina hadn't paid me a groat yet. 'It's in a
numbered account, Lovejoy,' she told me huskily whenever I asked for my cut.
'I'll pay it eventually. Now, where were we. . . ?'

Answer: where me and Sabrina always were, in her spare room,
outhouse, on her stairs even. She never took me into her own bedroom. Some fine
sensitivity, perhaps.

'The catalogue, darling,' she said. Her voice always goes kind of
sleepy afterwards, though she's wide awake. It's the same with a lot of women.
Even Liz Sandwell and Margaret and Josie and Cerise, and the wood nymph Beth,
even when she was worried sick we'd be startled by forest ramblers.

‘I’ll get it.'

'No. Let me.'

Which meant a wait, while she padded about, returned with the
proofs. She kept hold of it, as always.

'This stool, Lovejoy. The lady wants a massive reserve price.'

'Oh, aye.’ Casual, but that knowing heart of mine pounded.

‘Funny thing. Looks old, walnut, round top covered in thick faded
embroidered fabric, might have had a coat of arms.'

Now, don't mock stools just because they're not chairs. Truly old
ones are rarer than chairs, believe it or not. The great find is always the
tabouret, a round-topped stool like this might be. Sinful old James I brought
with him the continental politeness of letting the wives of important lords
actually sit down in his presence, the famous tabouret etiquette' of that age.
Quite a concession. Charles II favoured it, too, but the courtesy died out with
the Georges, whereon round stools petered out mostly until Victoria. I'd go so
far as to say that the stool is more of an historical indicator than almost
anything else, from monarchs down to the level of my labouring ancestors. Mind
you, if you happen to snap up one of Queen Mary IPs own set of eighteen from
Windsor Castle, complete with its original green damask covering, you can start
your own antiques firm straight off. The familiar music stool that can be
adjusted on a central pillar screw is one of my real favourites. (Tip: seek out
the ones that the Victorians, after about 1847, cased in with a wooden sleeve.
They did this because that screw, sliding erotically into that plush circular
top, clearly suggested something unthinkable in the Victorian withdrawing room.
The wooden-sleevers are a lovely unusual craftsmanship.) Hepplewhite in 1778
wanted stools taken back to stark simplicity, delectable mahogany, or japanned
'to match the suit of chairs', he said. My mouth watered. A dressing stool
matching a set of chairs -

'Eh?' Sabrina'd mentioned her this-week scam.

 
‘. . . send somebody to
bid, make the bid come from you.'

A think. This was the wrong way round. 'No, love,' I said
patiently. 'We pick out the good items, get them for a song by distorting the
catalogue description, see? As we always do it.'

'Not this time, lover.' She leant over me, talking, me recumbent.
Her breast curved eloquently near my eye. 'We give it a poor description, true.
But this time you send your terrible old tramp to bid a fortune.'

Her breast made me inclined to agree. 'Why?'

'Because of what you just said, Lovejoy. Hepplewhite, the matching
chairs. It occurred to me as you spoke.'
Spoke?
I hadn't realized I'd been talking out loud. 'We con folk into thinking there's
a matching suit of chairs somewhere!'

'And lose the tabouret?' Reason's a mistake with women.

'And gain. . . ?' she prompted, going on when I said nothing. 'We
learn who the rich cow is, see?'

'The vendor is anonymous? You said a lady.'

'Yes, but through that mare Corinth's pimp.'

You have to sigh. I don't understand why women hate each other. I
mean, she hardly knows Corinth, and here she was slagging off. . . Hang on.
'How d'you know the vendor's a bird?'

'Montgomery let it slip when he brought the stool in. Reverence,' she
sneered, 'for titles is the bane of antiques. Mind you, he's only doing what
the rest of the trade's been up to these past weeks, clearing out a decaying
village.'

'Any idea which one?' I asked, dreading the answer.

'The one that changed its name,' she said. 'Fenstone.'

'That old dump,' I dismissed the whole thing. 'Any more?'

'A coffee biggins is in, genuine silver they're saying.' Her gaze
slipped gently down her breast and met mine, a feat. 'Here it is,
One-one-nought. How much d'you think?'

'A fortune.' Silver is slowly recovering. A biggins would temp Big
Frank from Suffolk, silver maniac and bigamist.

'I want it, Lovejoy. Myself. Can we blam the bid price?'

'You'll bid through a nominee?'

'Of course.'

This really hurt. I could do that brilliantly, yet here she was,
naked as Eve when God got narked, getting somebody else to do her clandestine
illicit bidding. 'No trust?'

She smiled. My vision couldn't get past her nipple. 'Lovejoy. You
serve one purpose. My employees serve another.'

Only one purpose? It was a crude admission, that I was utterly
superfluous to tender-hearted Sabrina, except for my antiquery talent. Love was
out, even carnal lust was incidental. I was a pawn. But what bloke isn't?

George Biggins was one of those dazzling intellects who suddenly
explodes into history. Tragically only remembered for his coffee percolator
nowadays, back in the 1790s George shone. He was a musician, inventor, a clever
mechanic - this at a time when Great Britain was knee-deep in genius mechanics
- and a clever chemist. Equating this outstanding polymath with a coffee pot's
like honouring Shakespeare for walk-ons. George's name was synonymous with the
coffee percolator soon after he made the first one in the mid-1790s. It's a
simple cylinder with a snouty pouring lip, a three-legged lampstead beneath.
With decoration of the time, nothing unusual.

'Has it a strainer?'

'No. Should there be one?'

'Not if it's a true biggins. He pegged out in the early 1800s.
Henry Ogle patented a modified biggins with a strainer in 1817, fifteen years
after George died. You see the hallmark?'

Her breast was blinding. I could hardly speak, swallow, think. A
breast, sloping like that when a woman leans over, has cruel effects that
damage rational thoughts. My mouth was watering. It's not fair.

'Yes. I think it's 1798.'

‘Oh, is it really?' I said, voice quaking.

Sabrina was casually paying no attention but probably rolling in
the aisles inside.

'Give it to me, I'll ditch the hallmark.'

To 'ditch' a hallmark is not to get rid of it. It's to add metal
round a genuine hallmark so that people will assume the hallmark has been added
later. Many silver items-coffee pots, tea urns-were imported from the Low
Countries, and escaped being hallmarked. They're around still, common even in fly-by-night
roaming antique fairs. It's become quite the thing for an unscrupulous dealer
to simply impose some famous London silversmith's hallmark, complete with the
period assay mark. Duty payable from 1797 was a shilling - twelve whole pence!
- per ounce of silver, so it was worth evading. Needless to say, an unhallmarked
piece of silverware costs peanuts compared to a genuine item with a London
master's mark.

'Will you, darling?'

Now, our law says you can't buy a Regency silversmith's die, even if
genuine, and use it on silver, even if that's genuine too. But villains do
this. Big Frank does, on the rare occasions he's not getting married again. The
alternative is to 'float', as we call it, a hallmark from some relatively
unimportant, cheaper, silver piece - like a church communion patten - and stick
it on the desirable costlier piece. It becomes a small recessed hallmark set in
a circular 'ditch' with raised shoulders. Once a dealer glimpses that, he walks
off, because it means the silverware's a boring old piece with a fraudulent
hallmark.