The Grail Tree (2 page)

‘Are these in any sort of order?’ I couldn’t help asking. The milling children were giving me a headache. Jean laughed and shook her head.

‘Supposed to be,’ she said a bit helplessly. ‘Actually, you’ll have to see Mrs Cookson. She brought the sword.’ She stared about. ‘Over there. Flowered hat.’

I glanced from the plump elderly lady to Tinker Dill and back. The cultural shock would be too great for one of them. I gave Tinker a note.

‘Meet me in the pub, Tinker,’ I told him.

‘Ta, Lovejoy.’ He burned off through the crowd.

The Arthurian children were already streaming off through one of the gaps to scattered applause. I tried to cut past. King Arthur was flushed with triumph at having got his duty over with. He and one of his serfs were lugging the luscious sword along, trailing it on the grass because of its weight.

I reached the plump woman. ‘Excuse me, please.’

‘Yes?’ She was pleasant, smiling, wide-eyed. ‘Are you with the morris dancers?’

I repressed a shudder at the thought of all that energy. ‘Well, not exactly.’ 1 drew breath. ‘My name’s Lovejoy. I, er, helped Miss Evans with the chariot. It’s the sword.’

A curious gleam of amusement flared for a split second. Then, oddly, when she spoke again it had gone and she was calmly shepherding children into the right pens. Some private joke, no doubt. ‘Oh. Are you interested?’ she said absently. Her accent was faintly transatlantic. ‘It’s very rare, I believe. Early English.’

‘Is is yours?’

‘A friend’s,’ she explained. ‘Do examine it, if you wish.’ King Arthur and his mob arrived. I practically fell on the sword, as politely as I could, gently brushed aside the two serfs and laid it reverently down on the grass. I could hardly breathe at first. Then I calmed and rose.

‘Yes, well.’ I stretched and cleared my throat, trying not to let my disappointment show.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen another antique like it?’

‘No.’ I couldn’t bring myself to tell Mrs Cookson outright it was a forgery. A clever one, but a forgery. I fumed inwardly. There’s only one really good metalwork
forgery artist in our area. Bannon. I’ve a standing agreement with him to show me everything he makes before selling it. I decided to pop across and cripple him, in the interests of fair play.

‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’ The gleam in her eye was one of genuine interest now.

‘Er, no.’ I moved off. There were signs Napoleon was on the move. I hadn’t time to get conscripted into the Peninsular War.

‘Wait a moment, please,’ she called after me, but I was off.

I’d brought my car, a tiny derelict Austin Ruby. A black packing case with an engine. It stood near the hedge ready for a fast getaway. I only found it because I’d remembered where I’d left it among the tall grass. It no longer had its pram-top. Open air. I switched its ignition and stirred the insides vigorously with the handle. It’d win nothing at Silverstone but it will see the century out. ‘I’ll give you a lift, Lovejoy.’ That familiar voice, so dear to all our hearts. He was sitting on one of the trestle tables. Two admiring women fawned nearby. The only person alive to wear an astrakhan coat on a bright summer’s day, the goon.

‘Get stuffed, Honkie.’ Honksworth’s as gruesome as his name. He’s another antiques dealer, Edwardian furniture, late Georgian domestic silver, and ignorant. Like most antiques dealers, Honkie couldn’t tell the Wartski collection of Fabergé jewels from frogspawn.

‘You can put your toy car in my boot,’ he said, cheerfully enough to give offence. He has a shop in Clacton for tourists. Some people you can trust. Some, like Honkie, you daren’t ask the time.

My engine fired. I dashed round and flung myself behind the wheel.

‘This is ground control,’ Honkie boomed into cupped hands. ‘We have lift-off.’ His adorers laughed adoringly. I clattered the Ruby across the grass and out on to the road. Tinker Dill waved from the beer tent as I passed. He hadn’t even made it to the White Hart. I could understand that. It’s almost two hundred yards farther on, and heat’s so tiring.

Bannon was in his forge whistling happily until I pinned him by the throat.

‘Now, Bannon,’ I said. ‘This sword.’

‘For God’s sake, Lovejoy.’

I stood off and let him rub his neck. His forge’s furnace was fading because of our scuffle. I’d kicked the foot-bellows aside to reach him faster.

Blacksmiths are on the way back. Bannon does fancy metalwork now for East Anglia in general and the odd forgery for me – er, I mean for some unscrupulous local antiques dealers. Once, he actually used to shoe horses. Now he couldn’t tell Hyperion from a double bass. I examined the scrap of metal cold on the anvil.

‘A Victorian interior balustrade decoration?’

‘Torch-holder.’ He coughed. ‘What the hell’s up, Lovejoy? I ain’t done nothink.’ He’s a migrant Cockney.

‘You’ve made a forgery of a late Saxon longsword, lad,’ I explained gently. ‘And before I break your two index fingers, explain why you didn’t tell me.’

‘Longsword?’ He seemed honestly puzzled. Scared, but genuine. ‘I never.’

‘Bannon,’ I said warningly. He tried to back through the wall.

‘Honest, Lovejoy,’ he said desperately. ‘I don’t know
how
to forge till you draw the bloody things for me and tell me what to do, do I?’

‘Tea for you and Lovejoy?’ his wife called cheerily from nearby. He lives in a cottage next to the forge.

‘Yes, please, Mrs Bannon,’ I called back merrily, a real bit of Merrie England.

‘Two minutes, then,’ she trilled.

‘I can prove it,’ Bannon urged in a low, frantic voice, still keeping out of reach. ‘Just ask whoever has it.’

I paused. He had a point. ‘Fair enough, Bannon. Know of any others besides yourself?’

‘None any good.’ He thought a bit more. ‘That Southend geezer two years ago.’ He’d been clinked by the magistrates and was still doing porridge. No remission. He’d used Britannia metal of 1897 vintage to solder a forgery of an eighteenth-century Florentine smallsword, so it served him right. I’m all for upholding law and order, I told myself piously. I’d have to find out from Mrs Cookson.

I stepped away, nodding. ‘See you, Bannon.’

‘See you, Lovejoy,’ he called thankfully.

‘Tell your missus I had an emergency.’

Luckily, the Ruby’s engine hadn’t cut. I clattered round the pond in an erratic circle and headed for the pub half a mile away. The wind was behind me so I’d make it before dark. It’s all downhill. Two kids overtook me on their bikes, pedalling and jeering like mad. If I’d the power I’d have caught them up and given them a thick ear.

So there was another expert forger living locally. But who the hell was he and why hadn’t I heard of him? I was extremely peeved. The antiques game is difficult enough. If he was useless, like so many forgers of antiques, it wouldn’t have mattered. But I’d seen the sword. It was good – too good by far.

The pub was crammed. I signalled ahead and Ted the barman waved acknowledgement. The crowd was mainly refugees from the pageant’s shambles, plus the usual sprinkling of antiques dealers. Saturday evening is assembly night. We gather in pubs all over England and lie about how great things are in the antiques business.

Tinker was with a group of barkers near the fireplace chatting light-heartedly of happier and cheaper times, the way they do. During the fight through the saloon I had a word with Angela, a tiny flirtatious piece full of ceramics and pre-Victorian tapestries. She’d married a local landowner a year ago and ran her antiques business on the proceeds of hubby’s colossal income. Every little helps, I always say.

‘Bill’s got a de Wint watercolour,’ she told me.

‘He says,’ I shot back.

‘And you still owe me for that Keppel.’

Today’s tip: buy the best-condition first editions of the early scientific geographers you can lay your hands on. Like Keppel, Cooke, Darwin. Don’t delay or you’ll be sobbing into your beer too. My great fault is I don’t let a little thing like my abject poverty get in the way of buying. It’s a handicap. It’s also why I’m always in debt, mainly to people like Angela.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Er, will tomorrow do?’

‘We might come to some arrangement,’ Angela said, looking cool and straight at me. My eyes wavered first. You never know exactly what women mean, do you?

‘I’ll bring the money round,’ I promised.

‘Do,’ she said precisely. ‘Fancy a set of Windsor wheel-backs?’ She was with John Laxton, her barker. He’s a senile sour-faced rum drinker with a flair
for porcelain. Not as good as Tinker Dill at sniffing antiques out but more knowledgeable.

‘Thanks, love,’ I said. ‘But my warehouse is full.’

There was laughter at that. Ownership of a huge warehouse is the antiques dealer’s favourite myth. Saying it’s full is our slang for being broke.

‘Tinker.’ I got to the bar and Ted had it ready. He was going to exchange a word but saw my face. No chitchat.

‘Here, Lovejoy,’ Tinker began nervously. ‘Don’t blame me.’

I rounded on him. ‘A bloody
forgery
, you stupid berk.’

‘I wasn’t to know, was I?’ He slurped his beer fast to encourage me into buying another. Dealers have to provide their barkers with beer, and on very rare occasions food as well. ‘Even old Sowerby said it was real.’ Sowerby’s been the village schoolmaster since Adam dressed. I wasn’t mollified. Betty would be raging at me for days now, women being notoriously unreasonable. We might not get another chance to meet till the next Open Championship. Her husband’s a golfer.

‘Next time . . .’ I let the threat hang. Of course both of us were smiling affably, just being a dealer and his barker chatting in the pub. You don’t advertise arguments in our game.

‘I didn’t know it was naughty,’ he said defensively.

Naughty is also dealers’ slang. Old pewterers’ marks, if forged, were called ‘naughty’ hundreds of years ago. Now it means crooked, fake, wrong, in the sense of being deliberately falsified.

‘Never mind,’ I said, hoping some kind recording angel would note my forgiveness and somehow
persuade Betty to say the same to me. ‘What’ll you have?’

‘Ta, Lovejoy.’ Tinker was relieved. ‘Here.’ He pulled out of the depths of his filthy old overcoat a piece of paper. ‘That fat lady gave me this.’ He meant Mrs Cookson.

I took in gingerly. A group of helpers gusted in from the pageant calling greetings and orders. It must be about finished. They had a lorry outside the pub’s garden, laden with wood and scaffolding, obviously thirsty work.

Her letter asked me to call on her at my earliest convenience. An elegant little scribble on a page torn from a notebook, obviously done hurriedly on the spur of the moment. The address was in Buresford, a larger village about seven miles north.

‘What the hell’s she want?’ I grumbled.

‘You must have made an impression,’ Tinker leered, nudging me suggestively.

‘Shut your teeth.’

‘It, er, looks a good tickle, Lovejoy,’ he urged. I eyed him suspiciously.

You can always tell when a barker doesn’t come clean. Barkers are a curious mob. They’re never precisely honest on principle. This doesn’t mean they’re treacherous. On the contrary, it requires a very durable kind of morality to be a barker – you’ll see why later on.

I decided I’d better go, even if it only turned out a commission job for a quid.

‘Look, Tinker.’ I spoke fast. ‘When Lardie comes, tell him I’ll have that Gujerat silver brooch, but his Whiff-Waff’s too dear. Okay?’ Lardie’s a wealthy po-faced lanky dealer from Norfolk, in love with
antique jewellery, old West African ethnology, a rich Clacton widow and himself, in reverse order. To him that hath shall be given.

‘His what?’

‘Whiff-Waff. Table tennis was called that years ago.’ The cased sets aren’t worth much even now but they add colour to any antiques shop which displays one. Our trade admires touches like this.

I pushed to the exit, waving to Angela. Honkworth barged into me at the door, arriving with sundry crawlers. There are only two kinds of people who can’t go about without an entourage. One kind’s the real leader of men, like your actual Napoleon. The other kind’s the born duck-egg. Guess which category Honkworth’s in.

‘Why, it’s Lovejoy!’ he boomed. ‘Let’s see him off!’ They trailed me outside, to my embarrassment. We all park our cars end-on towards the old inn’s forecourt. Honkie had cleverly placed his massive Rolls-Bentley tourer blocking my little Ruby in, a typical touch of light humour. He made a noisy exhibition of shifting it, revving and backing. I just waited while this pantomime was going on, leaning on the wall and saying nothing. A few people emerged from the public bar to cheer him on. Honkworth attracts sightseers, but so did Attila the Hun.

He had three adorers with him. One was a bleak unsmiling man, young and tall with a waistcoat like a flag day. Hair slicked down, thin tash, early Gable. I’d seen him before somewhere, a property agent if ever I saw one. Even when he smiled it came out as a faint sneer. You know the sort. The two women were sharp contrasts. The younger was looking slightly uncomfortable at all this mullarky, bonny and light.
Good bones. I don’t know quite what it means when people say that, because all bones are good, aren’t they? But it sounded exactly right when I looked at her. Somebody had chosen the wrong earrings for her, pendants too long with a casual dress. The older woman was florid and bouncy, given to sudden shrill burst of laughter through teeth like a gold graveyard. She darted excitedly malicious glances at me with every one of Honkie’s noisy witticisms.

‘Milord, the carriage awaits!’ Honkworth yelled. Only Honkie can misquote a sentence that short.

I swung the handle. Naturally, it didn’t fire till third go, to ironical jeers of all. By then I was red-faced and looking at the ground.

‘Remember the speed limit, Lovejoy!’ Honkie yelled.

‘Everybody pray for rain!’

And they say wit is dead.

I climbed in and clattered off. As the diminutive Ruby began to move I got in a wink at Honkworth’s young blonde, just to set folks wondering. Passing between Honkie’s massive tourer and the laden lorry made me feel I was pedalling a walnut. The swine reached out and patted me on the head as I passed.