she’s quite a bit older than me I find more gratification in older women, and anyway they’re better. It isn’t just staying power, it’s having more style or something. When she left at one o’clock to get some shopping done I had a sleep and was packing my small – actually my one-and-only – cardboard suitcase by two, and feeling fine. I remembered to put a three-foot length of hosepipe conspicuously in the centre of my garden. Cats think it’s a snake and go elsewhere, so I’d find no dead birds about when I got back. Lyn and the twins would scatter bird cheese morning and afternoon for me.
There turned out to be only one snag when it came time to catch the train, and it was Jason at the station. I’d made Janet go, after borrowing some change for the phone, because I hate these farewells. I waved her off, then rang Helen, and Margaret Dainty, and Liz at Dragonsdale. Finally, thinking I was laying a false trail, I dialled Patricia Harvest, a money-mad investor who with her husband Pete ran a fruit farm down the Goldhanger estuary. Patricia’s one of those rich women who dress like a scrapyard. She’s always crying poverty, but then so do her three gardeners. I asked her what museum exhibitions were on at the moment. She can afford the posh antiques journals where they’re advertised.
‘Nobody else would know, not like you, Pat.’ I awarded myself ten points on the creep chart for grovelling.
‘Patricia,’ she corrected mechanically. ‘Where? National museums? Oh, Turner watercolours in the Brit Muzz – they’re doing that sublime bit. Then there’s Manchester . . .’ She prattled on, visions of tax-free capital obviously warming her marble heart.
‘And Dublin?’
‘Yes. The Derrynaflan finds, with early exhibits from Armagh. And the Dublin Antiques Fair’s on next week.’ Her voice broke momentarily under the stress of listing so much wealth owned by somebody else. ‘Ooooh, Lovejoy,’ she moaned. ‘Are you doing a sweep? Take me, and I’ll see you right, darling.
Please
.’ The thought made her frantic.
Weakness struck, but I remembered that lives were at stake – mainly mine. So I lied, ‘See you in Dublin, sweetheart. That big hotel, the poshest one, right in the centre near that park.’ I was smiling, because in any city there’s always a big posh hotel in the centre near a park. ‘I’ll divvie for you. Next week, okay? You can pay me – in kind.’
Her voice went husky. ‘You will, darling? I’ll be there. You’ll not regret it.’ She’s always trying to get me to divvie for her, and has heap big methods of persuasion.
Cheerfully I put the phone down and damned near scalped myself emerging from the idiotically-designed perspex hood – to realize a thin spread of waiting travellers had listened to every word. Of course they were carefully pretending, in the very best English manner, to be preoccupied with books and the middle distance. Even that crook in the ticket office was all agog. That would not have mattered much, but Jason mattered very much indeed after the warning Sinead had given me about him the other night.
He was buying a paper so very casually from the girl on the box stall. The local mental hospital sets it up to give the patients pin money. People mostly give more money than the newspapers cost. Like I say, folk are a rum lot. No good trying to work their motives out.
Jason saw me with a theatrical start of astonishment and took in my battered cardboard case.
‘Hello, Lovejoy. Off on holiday?’
‘No. Taking stuff up to Maggs on the Belly.’ Even as I spoke I knew I’d made a mistake. It was too early in the week to be making deliveries to the Portobello Road antique market. And he could phone Maggs to check.
‘Big dealer, eh?’ He grinned, all even teeth and perfumed talc. ‘Think you could wait a day or two and take a couple of things for me?’
‘Due in today. There’s this painting . . .’
‘Ah.’ He nodded wisely. ‘I
There turned out to be only one snag when it came time to catch the train, and it was Jason at the station. I’d made Janet go, after borrowing some change for the phone, because I hate these farewells. I waved her off, then rang Helen, and Margaret Dainty, and Liz at Dragonsdale. Finally, thinking I was laying a false trail, I dialled Patricia Harvest, a money-mad investor who with her husband Pete ran a fruit farm down the Goldhanger estuary. Patricia’s one of those rich women who dress like a scrapyard. She’s always crying poverty, but then so do her three gardeners. I asked her what museum exhibitions were on at the moment. She can afford the posh antiques journals where they’re advertised.
‘Nobody else would know, not like you, Pat.’ I awarded myself ten points on the creep chart for grovelling.
‘Patricia,’ she corrected mechanically. ‘Where? National museums? Oh, Turner watercolours in the Brit Muzz – they’re doing that sublime bit. Then there’s Manchester . . .’ She prattled on, visions of tax-free capital obviously warming her marble heart.
‘And Dublin?’
‘Yes. The Derrynaflan finds, with early exhibits from Armagh. And the Dublin Antiques Fair’s on next week.’ Her voice broke momentarily under the stress of listing so much wealth owned by somebody else. ‘Ooooh, Lovejoy,’ she moaned. ‘Are you doing a sweep? Take me, and I’ll see you right, darling.
Please
.’ The thought made her frantic.
Weakness struck, but I remembered that lives were at stake – mainly mine. So I lied, ‘See you in Dublin, sweetheart. That big hotel, the poshest one, right in the centre near that park.’ I was smiling, because in any city there’s always a big posh hotel in the centre near a park. ‘I’ll divvie for you. Next week, okay? You can pay me – in kind.’
Her voice went husky. ‘You will, darling? I’ll be there. You’ll not regret it.’ She’s always trying to get me to divvie for her, and has heap big methods of persuasion.
Cheerfully I put the phone down and damned near scalped myself emerging from the idiotically-designed perspex hood – to realize a thin spread of waiting travellers had listened to every word. Of course they were carefully pretending, in the very best English manner, to be preoccupied with books and the middle distance. Even that crook in the ticket office was all agog. That would not have mattered much, but Jason mattered very much indeed after the warning Sinead had given me about him the other night.
He was buying a paper so very casually from the girl on the box stall. The local mental hospital sets it up to give the patients pin money. People mostly give more money than the newspapers cost. Like I say, folk are a rum lot. No good trying to work their motives out.
Jason saw me with a theatrical start of astonishment and took in my battered cardboard case.
‘Hello, Lovejoy. Off on holiday?’
‘No. Taking stuff up to Maggs on the Belly.’ Even as I spoke I knew I’d made a mistake. It was too early in the week to be making deliveries to the Portobello Road antique market. And he could phone Maggs to check.
‘Big dealer, eh?’ He grinned, all even teeth and perfumed talc. ‘Think you could wait a day or two and take a couple of things for me?’
‘Due in today. There’s this painting . . .’
‘Ah.’ He nodded wisely. ‘I
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