The Rich And The Profane (12 page)

The fight was already well on. Two thousand spectators, at a guess, craned to see two bruisers brawling. I eeled in. A Cambridgeshire bloke told me it was the third round, but after that the news became garbled as a dozen others told me different. I already knew the match was between two contenders for East Anglia’s bare-fisted championship.

Rules haven’t changed since the Middle Ages. Seconds mark out a ring with ropes and four poles, but it’s arbitrary. Prize money is provided by the pugilists’ backers. They’re often bookies themselves, their lads taking bets all round.

It’s been illegal for donkey’s years - like the cockfighting that goes on at Grand National Day and Derby Day, and like the hare coursing I’ve already said about.

As I watched, one fighter knocked his opponent down. A bell clonked and a hubbub arose. A round isn’t timed like in legal boxing. It comes to an end when one bloke fells the other. Somebody counts a minute, after which both fighters must ‘toe the line’ - hence the saying - that marks the ring’s middle. That’s all there is to it. If you fail to ‘come up to scratch’ you lose. Bets are paid off and arguments begin about how the fight was unfair/fair/rigged/not rigged, et tiresome cetera.

Bare-knuckle scrappers are mosdy from travelling families, gypsies. Each tribe has a champion. There’s a very definite pecking order, so you’ve to be really polite. I mean to say, don’t greet some lowly contender with a cheery hello until you’ve grovelled a greeting to the champ, or you’re for it.

‘What’s the odds?’ I asked, but the next round started and the answers were lost in uproar as the fighters came out. I wouldn’t have known who to back even if I’d had any money.

Occasionally shouting encouragement in case anybody thought I was a bobby sneaking by, I wandered. I’d gone round three sides of the square before I saw him. There he was, in a long brownish raglan, deerstalker hat, green wellies. For all the world Prior Metivier looked a countryman.

That round took about eight minutes. During it, he made two bets. One was with a sour-faced bloke that I didn’t recognize but guessed was a bookmaker, one of a string. The other was to somebody I couldn’t see but standing facing, across the other side of the ring. Metivier did it with great slickness, a couple of gestures, eleven to eight on, from his tictackery. Three
thousand
zlotniks, though? I don’t know all the signs, but regular punters can translate bookies’ signals faster than they can read. This prizefight seemed home turf to the high-rolling Prior George Metivier.

A fish out of water, I went to the pie stalls and beer tents. There’s always a following mob. I stayed there, thirsty and hungry from unco-operative servers, until the roars reached a crescendo about an hour later and pandemonium told me the fight was over. I flagged Tomtit, asking him to wait until the crowd had drifted and all bets were settled. I promised him a scheme for betting on antiques by the following Thursday. Surly, he agreed and went to drink himself stupid in the ale marquee while I mingled self-effacingly.

The bookie was easy to find. I hung about the outskirts of the throng surrounding his pitch. At these illegal matches bookies don’t have stands, wooden shingles and gonfalons like their on-course pals. They’re just there, handfuls of dockets in their fists with maybe a half-dozen touts. By the time the punters had evaporated I’d seen Prior George leave, head down, and I grabbed the bookie’s head tout.

‘Here, wack.’ I did my northern accent. ‘Yon clergy won, eh?’

The tout was enormous. I’ve never known one who doesn’t swell when you speak. He eyed me with suspicion.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Only, he owes my gaffer, see? If he’s well up, my boss’d be real pleased’.

‘Don’t hold your breath, booy,’ the tout said. He spat, hitting a dandelion head at seven paces. I really envy skill. ‘He’s a born loser. Beats me what the fuck they do it for.

Loses every time. Hare coursing last week. Cock mains last month. Who’s your gaffer, then?’

‘Ted Hoawson from Harrogate,’ I invented,^pretending gloom. ‘Ta, pal.’

The crowd had dispersed when I approached the fighters’ caravans. They were set apart on the heath in a small encampment. One scrapper was sitting swilling ale at a campfire among a dozen cronies. It was all very raggle-taggle gypsies oh, with little children playing and dogs on the roam. Two women standing by to serve his ale eyed me belligerently.

‘Congrats, Charley,’ I said, standing off a pace or two.

‘Who might you be, then?’ the champion said.

‘Punter, that’s all.’ I knew better than to sit down uninvited. I heard one of Charley’s men mutter something. His mates stared me down. ‘Er, I met your brother two years ago, in Suffolk.’

He beckoned. A woman came for his glass and strolled off for a refill. Why didn’t she just bring the ale bucket? It was by the caravan door.

Charley had bruises across his forehead, like they’d been laid in place. His knuckles were raw, bleeding away, his cheeks savagely cut.

‘Our Dicker tellt me of
some jinney-mengro
he once sellt to.’

Jinney-mengro-.
their talk for a wise man. It can also mean know-all.

His brother Dicker had robbed a St Edmundsbury bloke I didn’t like - still don’t, come to that. Dicker had no idea. He’d nicked nine fairings, those cheap garish pottery figures they give you on fairgrounds. He’d also thieved a candlestick. God knows why, but there’s not a travelling man born who can resist a candlestick. This had been a creamy earthenware, shaped like it wished it was Georgian silver -these clues scream early Wedgwood. I loved it, hadn’t the heart to do Dicker down because he’d once given me a bicycle tyre for nothing. I’d bought the fairings for a few quid (those were the days; I was loaded) but tipped him off where to sell the Wedgwood candlestick for a mint.

I was pleased at Charley’s compliment. Being called a wise man was better than a clip round the ear, especially when he’d kindly used his own speech.

‘Nice bloke, him,’ I said, ‘that Dicker.’

‘The
gorgio
gave him back a genuine old thing. He could have kept it, but was honest.’ He took the replenished mug from the woman without saying ta. Well, if I was his size and king rabbit, maybe I’d be offhand. ‘I forget his name.’ ‘I’m Lovejoy.’ Was more proof needed? ‘Your brother plays what he calls a
bashadi.
Looked like an ordinary fiddle to me. He ever get the tune right?’ We’d argued about how to sing ‘She Walks Through the Fair’. I’d been right, of course, but gypsies are stubborn.

Charley grinned, jerked his battered head to the grass. I sat, relieved.

‘Are you really a
chobawno,
a wizard?’

‘Me? Nar, Charley. I just listen. Antiques shout the truth.’

He nodded. One of the men started to cut in, but Charley gave him a stare and the bloke subsided. I recognized him. I’d been on remand, in clink, for ringing auctions. He’d been in the same cell.

‘We thought you were a
moskey,'
Charley said. I looked askance. My gypsy lingo had run out. ‘A spy, Lovejoy, skulking around the churchman.’

They’d seen more than I’d wanted. Me and my clever skullduggery.

‘He’s taking money from church charities to gamble with,’ I said, shrugging to say it didn’t matter to me either way.

‘Not the first
rashengro
to steal.’

‘Some priests do thieve,’ I agreed. ‘Have you seen him at other meets?’

‘Grass races. Local matches. Football. Wherever there’s a bookie or a bet.’ He spat again. ‘Brings a grand
gorgie.
Some churchman, eh?’

‘A posh lady?’ Now, I wonder who?

‘GrasniP
his woman said under her breath. I knew that word: bitch.

Charley beckoned her closer and cuffed her. She went back, satisfied about something, God knows what.

‘The woman’s maybe the prior’s
mort,
his shag on the side,’ he said. He then described Mrs Crucifex to a T.

‘He’s a man without luck,’ he concluded. Gypsies are big on luck. ‘Gets a rich woman, is an important
rashengro,
yet still he loses.’ He asked his people, doing no more than cock his head, ‘What was his last plan?’

My ex-cellmate answered, still looking hard at me, ‘Walnuts, Charley.’

‘Eh?’ I asked. Had he said walnuts?

Charley chuckled without moving his swollen lips, in case they haemorrhaged some more into his drink.

‘Albansham Priory’s got a bonny walnut orchard, Lovejoy. Not a selling orchard, like at Boxford, just been there from olden times. The
rashengro
decided to install a walnut press to make pure walnut oil. Walnut oil’s expensive, see?’

He rolled in the aisles. His men made huff-huff noises like kiddies playing trains. After a brief ponder I recognized it. They were laughing. The women, more obvious, screamed with hilarity.

‘What’s wrong with walnuts, Charley?’ I asked, blank. It seemed quite a good idea to me. This, note, is my native land. I hadn’t a notion. They fell about at my stupidity.

‘See, Lovejoy,’ Charley resumed, wiping his eyes, ‘my tribe’ve stolen from that orchard for four hundred years. Walnuts that grow here don’t
make
oil. The weather, see? English walnuts peel like a dream. But no oil. He hocked the priory’s silver for it. A fool. Everything he touches turns to dross.’

‘People the same,’ my old cellmate said. I remembered his name: Pral. ‘Prior George’s a bad-luck man.’

He was trying to warn me. Waiting for our respective cases to be called, Pral’d shown me card tricks using an unmarked deck. When I’d got sprung - I was going out with a woman solicitor that week - I’d begged her to take his case, and she’d somehow got him off after a bit of remand. Well, it’s an ill wind.

‘A bad-lucking man,’ Pral said direct to me. I nodded, ta.

Saying this kind of thing is all very well, but who believes in luck? Luck’s got an abysmal record, like God, like purity. Even the idea of luck worries me. I’d rather just trust people’s faces, and do the best I can.

That was all the information I got. I had to drink four pints of his women’s beer as the talk became general. The ale was unbelievably rough. No wonder Charley was moving up the bare-fisters’ stakes if this was his staple.

When his women brought out a tin bath and started filling it with hot water to bath him, I rose, politely shook hands and left beerlogged, all his mob calling
‘Rak tute'
after me, take care. The sky was nigh on dusk.

So Prior George nicked the priory’s funds, gambling his way into debt. But hadn’t Jutta told me he’d just got an antiques windfall and would soon be in clover? Yet so desperate was the prior’s plight that his fund-raising team of Summer and the Crucifex pair wanted to include me on their side, for a sale of antiques.

Where was Gesso?

I paid prince off, Lovejoy.’

Florida insisted on meeting me at the grandest restaurant in town. She likes to show off. It’s called Franco’s, being Spanish you see. It doesn’t look much, being opposite the sleaziest auction rooms our town - indeed, the world - has got. Inside it’s unprepossessing, but the grub’s the best. Every dish they bring is magic. Makes you wonder who’d go to all the bother, working everything out for each recipe and cooking just so. A triumph of mankind over misery.

The truly amazing thing is that the waiters love Florida. They are crazy about her. I can’t see why, because in a restaurant she’s nothing but trouble. For one thing, she insists on going backstage to inspect the raw food. Is anything more gruesome? For another, she argues the hind leg off a donkey. They offer single cream, she insists on double. They’ve got fresh tomatoes, she’ll want sun-dried. Yet they love it, dash about obeying. Once, she sent some lettuce leaves back, played merry hell. So we both had to starve to death, everybody in the restaurant pretending we didn’t hear the screams coming from the kitchen while they swapped frigging lettuces. I mean, who’d know? More to the point, who’d care? A lettuce isn’t a space shuttle or neurosurgery. It’s a frigging leaf.

Once, I asked Franco why he admired Florida so. He said, eyes dreamy, ‘Ah, she beautiful! She
know
cuisine!’, proving that he’s as barmy as she is. Her beauty matters less to him than her expertise on aubergines.

You have to be careful, though. Florida can go berserk over even less. She asked me to marry her once. I smiled politely, thinking it some joke. She got really furious, stormed out. See what I mean? Even a simple misunderstanding can send her mental. Women are odd. Where was I?

‘Ta, love.’ About Prince.

‘Hence, Lovejoy, you and I are now inextricably linked.’

‘Hence, eh?’ I was well into the grub. Franco’s the only bloke in captivity who gives you enough mushrooms. Nobody else does. Ever notice that? ‘What do you mean?’ That’s my commonest question with Florida, ever since That Time I Misunderstood Her Proposal.

She smiled, acknowledging that I was now properly trained. I wasn’t happy. Subservience is nothing new to me, but what with Mr Summer, Irma, Mrs Crucifex, Prior Metivier, Prince, Gesso’s disturbing absence and my own chronic penury, I’d had enough serfdom lately to be going on with.

‘This forgery in which you engage, Lovejoy.’

She smokes between courses. This doesn’t mean her ladyship actually had to slog it out alone, find her own handbag, rummage for a fag, struggle for a match, all the exhausting business that can wear a lady out, oh no. Florida calmly poses, forearm upright, fingers gently parted, and waits. Waiters instantly sprint up with fags of every hue and carcinogenicity. She deigns to select one. They hurtle for a match. Sometimes she wants her fag lit from a candle, a lighter, a taper. They dash to comply, and Creation is saved for the next millennium. It’s a hard life.

‘You make it sound grim, love. Can I have your soup?’ Carrot and something. She’d had half a spoonful. Makes me wonder why she orders it.

‘I gathered from Prince, when I was purchasing the commission he gave you, that you are an expert forger?’

I eyed her warily. What was she up to? ‘Forgery’s legal, as long as you don’t sell it as a genuine antique.’