Gold by Gemini (6 page)

‘I go to all this trouble to get this box of rubbish from that filthy old man,’ she blazed. ‘And all the time you’re –’

‘Jack?’ I yelped. ‘Dandy Jack?’

‘You horrid –’

‘You found Dandy?’ She was carrying an old cardboard shoe box. I took it reverently and carried it into the hall. I didn’t notice Janie storm past.

I removed the lid carefully. There was the inevitable jam-jarful of old buttons – Why the hell do people store buttons? Everybody’s at it – a rusty tin of assorted campaign medals – expression of an entire nation’s undying gratitude for four years of shelling in blood-soaked trenches – and a loose pack of old photographs held together by a rubber band. At the bottom were two worn but modern exercise books, cheap and pathetic. It really did look rubbish as Tinker-Dill said. My heart plunged.

‘Is that all, Janie?’

She was standing in the hall behind me, desperately trying to hold back a smile.

‘I trust,’ she said with pretended iciness, ‘you’ve some perfectly reasonable explanation for your little friend in there?’

‘I asked if this is everything,’ I said sharply. Now she’d rambled Henry it had to be first things first.

‘There’s a sketch,’ she said. ‘Dandy wouldn’t sell it me. What’s he called?’

‘What did it look like?’ I led her into the room. She picked Henry up to fawn on him. He gazed dispassionately back, probably wondering if the changed arrangements meant less grub all round.

‘He wouldn’t show me.’

I put the box down dejectedly. Disappointments come in waves. While I went back to doing Henry’s tea she told me how she’d phoned Tinker Dill at the White Hart. He’d found where Dandy Jack was by then, somewhere over Ipswich way. She’d scooted along the main A12 coast road and cornered Dandy at a little
antiques fair – the sort I had the money to go to. Once.

‘I thought you’d got some woman in here,’ she said.

‘I see.’ I went all hurt, obviously cut to the quick at such mistrust.

‘Don’t be offended, Lovejoy.’ She came over and put her arms round me. ‘I know I shouldn’t be so suspicious.’

One up, I relented and explained about Henry. She thought he was delightful but was up in arms about his food.

‘You’re not giving him
that
!’

‘What’s wrong with it?’ It looked all right to me. I poured the sardine oil on the egg to save waste.

‘I thought it was yours, Lovejoy!’

‘I’ve had mine.’ I shook sauce on. Henry was all on the go.

‘Dear God!’ she exclaimed faintly. ‘Does his mother know?’

‘Well, actually,’ I confessed, ‘I chuck his powder away so she won’t worry.’ In fact, I sometimes eat it to fill odd corners. Well, Henry’s a gannet. I can’t afford to feed us both properly and his own food tastes horrible. He’s not so dumb.

Janie watched in horror as I fed him. All this mystique about feeding babies is rubbish. It’s not difficult. You prop them up in some convenient spot and push bits towards their mouth. It opens. Slide it in lengthwise but remember to snatch your fingers back for further use. The inside looks soft and gummy but it works like a car cruncher. You have to concentrate. I mean, for example, it’s not the sort of thing you can do while reading.

‘His face gets some too,’ I told Janie.

‘So I noticed.’ She looked stunned.

‘It’s all right. There’s no waste. I scrape it off and put it in afterwards. It’s his big finish.’

‘My God. I feel ill.’

I was rather put out by Janie’s reaction. Secretly, I’d expected her to be full of admiration at my domestic skills. Admittedly, he was beginning to get a bit smudged but that always happens. ‘Try it. You can tell when he’s finished,’ I added. ‘He starts spitting out.’

‘What a mess. How does the poor little mite survive, Lovejoy?’

I ignored this. No meal’s ever pretty, is it?

‘Mind your manners.’ Women are great critics, mainly when they see other people doing all right. It’s mostly jealousy. ‘I think he’s full.’ He was bulging but still moving impatiently. ‘Time for pudding.’

‘There’s
more
?’

I’d got Henry two pieces of nougat, which would have to do for today’s afters. I was embarrassed, Janie being there to see it wasn’t done as properly as it should be. Puddings should be on a plate and everything with custard.

‘Here. Unwrap it.’ She took the nougat carefully. ‘Hold it by one end and push a corner in his mouth,’ I told her. ‘Blot the dribbles as you go.’

Once she got going, I took Bexon’s pathetic belongings and began to rummage.

‘Dandy said he’d give you the sketch if you’d scan for him,’ Janie said, intent on Henry.

We were all sprawled on the divan.

‘Dandy would,’ I said bitterly. Scanning means examining supposed antiques to separate genius items from the junk. I hate doing it for others. It’s something I never do normally, only when I’m broke. Dealers are always on at me to scan for them because I’m a divvie.

‘Where does this infant put it all, for heaven’s sake?’ Janie exclaimed. She glanced across and saw I was flicking through one of the exercise books. ‘You’re wasting your time with that rubbish. I’ve looked.’

‘Keep your mind on your job,’ I said. I hate being interrupted.

It
was
rubbish. The old exercise books were just scribbled boredom, perhaps some fragments of a diary of the sort one always means to start but never quite gets round to. Dejected, I decided on the spur of the moment to teach Henry to read, which of course made Janie split her sides. I’ve tried before but Henry ate the highly educational alphabetic book I got him. I showed him a line and said to concentrate. He seemed to be amused, but obligingly gaped at the pages while he noshed the nougat.

‘I then caught the train back to Groundle Glen,’ I intoned, pointing to the words as I read.

‘They start learning on single letters, Lovejoy,’ Janie criticized.

I reached obligingly for the other booklet. Maybe there was a set of capitals.

‘I then caught the train back . . .’ caught my eye. ‘Hello. What have we here?’ It was the ninth page about halfway down. ‘That’s the same sentence.’

I flipped the pages over. The sentence was identical, ninth page about halfway down.

‘What is it, Lovejoy?’

‘They say the same things.’ And they did, both dog-eared exercise books. ‘One’s a copy of the other.’

The pages were ruled, obviously for school use. About twelve pages were filled with meticulous writing, ballpoint I examined both books swiftly. The words were identical, word for word. Even the blot on page
ten was carefully copied into the other book’s tenth page. Each written sheet was signed ‘James R. Bexon’. I picked a page at random. Page six. The other book’s page six was identical, sentence for sentence, down to the last comma. Crazy.

‘If you ask me he’s a madman,’ Janie said. ‘Who writes a diary, then copies it out all over again?’

Maybe the old mart
was
a maniac. The Restoration forgery and its clever give-away leapt into my mind. Then again, I thought carefully, maybe he wasn’t.

‘Bexon was no nutter. I’ve seen a painting he did.’ I checked Henry over. ‘He’ll need changing in a few minutes.’

While Henry whittled his way through the rest of his nougat, I read one of Bexon’s exercise books. Absent replies from me kept Janie going while she prattled away, how she’d buy a town house for us and I could keep the cottage on if I really wished. I was absorbed.

The diary was twelve pages, each page one day. A simple sentimental old chap’s account of how he had a holiday on the Isle of Man. The dates were those of a couple of years previously. It was all pretty dreary stuff. Well, almost all.

He’d rented a bungalow, walked about, visited places he’d known once years before. He’d gone to the cinema and hadn’t thought much of it. Pub on a few occasions at night. He complained about prices. Chats with taxi drivers, boats arriving and the harbour scenes. He’d gone about, seen a few Viking tumuli and Celtic-British remains, watched the sea, ridden on an excursion. Television shows, weather. It was dead average and inordinately dull. Home on the Liverpool ferryboat. Argument with a man over a suitcase. Train
to London, then bus out to Great Hawkham. That was it.

But there was this odd paragraph about the coffin. The same in both books, in Bexon’s careful handwriting:

I eventually decided to leave them all in the lead coffin, exactly where I would remember best. I can’t face the publicity at my age – TV interviewers are such barbarians. That is to say, some three hundred yards from where I first dug down on to the mosaic terracing. I may give a mixed few to the Castle. Let the blighters guess.

Both diaries continued with chitchat, how the streets of Douglas had altered after all these years and what changes Millicent would have noticed. That was his wife. Apparently they’d honeymooned on the Isle years before.

‘It sounds so normal there,’ Janie said into my ear. ‘Even sensible.’ She’d been reading over my shoulder. Careless old Lovejoy.

‘Very normal,’ I agreed. Then why did it feel so odd?

‘What do you think he gave to the Castle?’ she asked. Henry gave a flute-like belch about C-sharp.

‘Heaven knows,’ I said as casually as possible. Popplewell’s face floated back. The cracked glass, the cards in disarray under the cloth. ‘It could have been anything. Henry needs changing. The clean nappy’s in his sponge bag.’

I half filled a plastic bucket with water and undid him. It’s easy as long as you stick to the routine. Unpin him on a newspaper, wash off what you can in the lavatory, chuck the dirty nappy in the bucket and wash him in a bowl. Then dry and dust. Five minutes.

‘Eleanor takes the dirty one,’ I explained.

I set about making some coffee. I keep meaning to buy filter papers and a pot thing but so far I’ve never managed to get beyond that instant stuff.

‘Lovejoy. Mine’s different after all.’ She’d been showing Henry how the pages turned. ‘At the back.’

I came over.

‘There’s a drawing of a lady in mine. Yours hasn’t.’

On the inside cover, Bexon – or somebody – had painstakingly drawn a snotty crinolined lady riding in a crazy one-wheeled carriage, splashing mud and water as it went. A carriage with one wheel? It looked mad, quite crazy. The drawing was entitled ‘Lady Isabella’. Pencil, Bexon’s hand.

‘There’s no horse pulling it,’ Janie pointed out. ‘And only one wheel, silly old man.’

‘Unless . . . Janie.’ I fetched coffee over. Henry likes his strong. ‘You said Dandy Jack has a separate sketch?’’

‘Yes. He said he’ll see you tomorrow.’

We all thought hard.

‘So if there’s a message,’ I reasoned aloud, ‘it’s in the words, not the sketch. The drawing’s only a guide.’

‘Oh, Lovejoy!’ This made her collapse laughing. ‘You’re like a child! Are you sure it isn’t a coded message from the Black Hand Gang?’

‘Cut that out,’ I said coldly, but she was helpless laughing.

‘Anyway, who in their right minds would make a coffin out of lead?’ she gasped.

‘You’re right.’ I gave in sheepishly and we were friends again.

But the Romans did.

You know, sometimes events gang up on you. Even if
you decide against doing a thing, circumstances can force, you to do it in the end. Ever had that sensation? The last time I’d had the same feeling somebody’d got themselves killed and the blood had splashed on me. For the rest of Henry’s time we played on the divan. I’d invented this game where I make my hands into hollow shapes and Henry tries to find the way in.

I shivered. Janie looked at me a bit oddly. She switched the fire on, saying it was getting chilly. Henry began to snore, about an octave deeper than his belches.

‘He sleeps for an hour now, till Eleanor comes,’ I said. ‘You’d better go just before she calls.’ I didn’t want my women customers believing the cottage was a den of vice.

I lay back and watched the ceiling.

I’ve been assuming up to now you know the facts, but maybe I’d better slip them in here. If you’re a bag of nerves you should skip this bit. It gives me nightmares even yet, and I read it first as a lad at school.

Once upon a time, our peaceful old land was still and quiet. All was tranquil. Farmers farmed. Cattle hung about the way they do. Folk didn’t fight much. Fields, little towns, neat forests and houses, Thursday markets. Your actual average peace. Then one day an anchor splashed in the Medway, to the surprise of all.

The Romans had landed.

The legions, with Claudius the God Emperor bored stiff on his best war elephant, paraded down our High Street after dusting over the Trinovantes, boss tribe in those days. Our town was called Colonia, capital of the new colony of Britain under Governor-General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.

It would have all gone smoothly, if only the Druids
had not got up his Roman nose. They skulked over to Anglesey, off the coast of Wales, almost as if Rome could be ignored. Well, you can imagine. Suetonius was peeved and set off after them, leaving (here it comes) Britain in the hands of tax gatherers. Usual, but unwise, because Claudius was a real big spender and had left millions for the tribal kings as a gesture of goodwill. The politicians showed up and pinched the money. Sound familiar? They had a ball – especially the night they raped the daughters of a certain lady called Boadicea.

Now, Boadicea was no local barmaid. She happened to be the Queen of the Iceni, a tough mob. Breasts seethed in the Iceni kingdom. And, remember, Suetonius was away in Anglesey with his legions, a detail the arrogant conquerors forgot.

It was all suddenly too much for the bewildered British tribes. One dark day the terrible Iceni rose. The whole of eastern England smouldered as the Roman settlements were annihilated crunch by savage crunch. The famous Ninth Legion strolled out from Lincoln innocently intending to chastise the local rabble, a shovel to stop an avalanche. The thousands of legionaries died in a macabre lunatic battle in the dank forests. St Albans was obliterated in a single evening’s holocaust. The outposts and the river stations were snuffed as Boadicea’s grim blue-painted hordes churned southwards, until only the brand new Roman city of Colonia was left. Catus the Procurator skipped to Gaul in a flash, promising legions which never came. Politicians.