'How the hell?'

  'How the hell could I know that, Lovejoy?' Her voice didn't even waver. 'The same way I know about the Ashmolean Museum's cat snatch. Remember that? The whole country was aghast. New Year's Eve celebrations. Fireworks. Dancing in the streets of Oxford.

  Students in fancy dress.'

  'You saw it in the papers.' Feebler and feebler.

  'He used a smoke bomb. Single-handed, shifted nine roof slates to cut a hole. Dropped through with a nautical rope ladder. Let off the bomb, wafted the clouds with a battery-driven fan. He visited no other room. Cut the Cezanne from the frame. Left his holdall, scalpel, gloves behind. And danced off amid the crowds.'

  No laughs now.

  'The raj told him to penetrate the Ashmolean Museum through the new Sackler Library building site, because the University of Oxford can never – and I quote, Lovejoy –"make up its mind about agreeing with its benefactors". The raj deducted twenty per cent of his thiever's fee because he dropped his gloves.'

  Now I was gaping. The nine slates hadn't been in the papers, nor the nautical rope ladder.

  'The painting?' I croaked.

  'Auvers-sur-Oise, by Paul Cezanne. The only Cezanne the Ashmolean had. He ignored the Leonardo da Vinci because the raj ordered him to. And the Picasso. You want measurements? Dates? Anything else?' She smiled, power to womenfolk.

  For a second I had a terrible urge to scarper, clear off and never see her again. I must have looked shaken because her eyes took on that hard glaze when a woman sees a man's terror. I'm not a coward, honest, but the raj tops people for eavesdropping.

  Actually kills. I could name names. All dealers could. Maud smiled.

  'Lovejoy. Why d'you think he's in a wheelchair? There's more technology in it than the parson preached about. Everything he says is recorded. He has transmitters to spare.

  Get the joke?'

  'No.' I didn't get any joke.

  'His phoney cups, trophies, all his fake awards. People laugh at him. The joke's on them, because nothing they own is secure. Any instant, he could simply advise the raj, and somebody would lose every penny piece. I mean you, the British Museum, America's Metropolitan, anywhere that owns anything.'

  I sank back, laid my tired head on the pillow. She came over me, smiling down, her breast in view.

  'Are we being broadcast?' I bleated, frightened.

  'No, darling.' Her face clouded slightly, then cleared. 'No. Impossible. Quaker wouldn't do that.'

  What man wouldn't keep track of his missus, though, if she kept sneaking out to see a scrounging ape like me? My throat dried. Quaker could say the word and I'd get found in a ditch, victim of some hit-and-run. Nobody would know. I'd be forgotten in an hour, that old Lovejoy, serve him right.

  'Come on, darling,' she said, smiling as her confidence returned. 'You're forgiven. I know you're Quaker's friend. The only one he's got, truth to tell.'

  Thank God for that, I thought but did not say.

  'Course I am,' I said instead. 'I always am. Always will be.'

  I said it for a gillion hidden cameras and tape recorders in my fertile and terrified mind.

  We joined, Maud and I, and made smiles. My smile was weak, but no less heartfelt.

  'Tea, Lovejoy?' Maud asked, teapot poised, as Quaker smiled fondly and decided where his new trophies would go. 'Scone or cake?'

  Ten of each was the right answer. 'Please.'

  Quaker laughed. I kept my eyes off his electronically loaded wheelchair. Probably emitting signals to Planet Mongo, where menacing minds were judging every syllable. I felt weak so fell on Maud's grub. I love a bird like her.

  'Wish I could eat like you, Lovejoy,' Quaker said wistfully. He slapped his protruberant belly. 'In training, see.'

  'Ever think of retiring, mate?' I asked, mouth full.

  'No.' He looked sad. 'I know what people say about me, Lovejoy.' I hoped I didn't look stricken with terror. Even Maud froze for an instant. 'That it's an addiction, me striving to achieve things when most blokes just have on hobby.' He sighed at his dazzling array of awards.

  'Well,' I said heartily, 'they expect it.'

  'True,' he agreed eagerly. 'Today, there'll be TV cameras all along the river to watch me scull. Interviews after. That Frenchman has a reputation.'

  His opponent had been a Bavarian minutes ago. He'd forgotten. Too much on his mind, cluttered up with antique robberies? I wondered for a second whether there was a way of finding out where all his information was kept.

  'Next week I'm boxing.'

  'You're fighting again?'

  'Lovejoy,' he said gravely, the light of lions in his eyes. 'I couldn't let the Lonsdale Belt go to Czechoslovakia.'

  'But you might get clobbered.'

  He smiled nobly. 'Then I'll go down fighting.'

  We made similar merry chat until it was time to go. I said ta for Maud's grub. He never shakes hands, says that's for Americans and other foreigners. Nor do I, come to think.

  'Oh, Quake,' I said, clumsily bringing in my panic as I rose to leave. It was the reason I'd come, after all. 'I hope you don't think less of me.' It was awkward. I shifted from foot to foot. 'Over my, er, lad. They're saying,' I explained for the recording devices Maud had told me about, 'that this lad Mortimer from Saffron Fields is my son. He's causing trouble, telling tourists which antiques are genuine and which aren't.'

  'Your what?' he said, playing astonished well enough for the Old Vic.

  'Your what?' Maud exclaimed, with hatred.

  'It's said,' I amended. 'He's fifteen.'

  'Good heavens!' Quaker almost offered his hand in congratulation. Maud did no such thing.

  'Who is she, Lovejoy?' she asked in a voice of sleet.

  'Only, I have no friends as such.' I almost moved myself to tears. 'Not ones I could trust.'

  'It's all right, Lovejoy,' Quaker said. 'We understand.'

  'He's not poor or anything. I'd like to think somebody like you might look out for him if... he needed anything. His mother frolics full-time in Sohor. His dad – who brought him up – is dead. He might need somebody.'

  'Tell him we will, Lovejoy,' Quaker said. 'You're our friend. If a cripple and a cook from the soup kitchen will do?'

  'Ta, wack.' I was really – I mean really really – moved, and retreated as Maud showed me out. They could have said go to hell, but hadn't.

  'Lovejoy,' Maud said urgently on her doorstep.

  'Shhh,' I whispered, though what good's whispering when modern sound booms might be concealed in every twig? I added in a voice of thunder, 'Tell Quake good luck with the, er, boat.'

  'Friday, Lovejoy,' Maud whispered, bussing me so-long. I left, exhausted.

  To find the brigadier waiting for me at the bus stop.

  'Isn't it time, Lovejoy,' he said without preamble, 'that you made an honest woman of Maud?'

  People in the queue turned to look. He has a delivery like a Shakespearean herald: now hear this, oh world. I went red.

  'Sorry, Brig,' I apologized. 'She's married.'

  'That doesn't stop people these days, Lovejoy. And from what I hear—'

  'Brig,' I said, broken. 'Ask Maud. If I were you I'd just fall into line.'

  'She's living with a dud,' he boomed. 'He's not even a genuine dud. He's a sham dud, for heaven's sake. All that let's-pretend lameness, when he actually floats off in his punt at all hours. I reckon he's got another woman anyway, so where's the harm?' He eyed me wistfully. 'I'd like a son-in-law like you, Lovejoy. No mockery. And something would keep happening.'

  'The bus is here.' It wasn't.

  'I wish the silly bugger really was lame,' he said sadly. 'You see, Lovejoy, my world has changed. If there are floods in Mozambique, or a new miracle genetic rice gives some coolie the bellyache, then my generation's very existence is up the creek. Our Defence Weapon Procurement makes a trivial mistake, another chunk of my life shreds. A passenger plane crashes, and more of my generation becomes penniless. It's true, Lovejoy. It's that serious. I'm closer to the edge every time I open The Times.'

  Seemed a bit pessimistic to me. I said so. And what could a penniless antique dealer do to straighten earth's calamities?

  'You know the theory, how mankind started?' For a second he seemed deeply moved, but how could that be, him a stalwart brigadier and all?

  'Which one?' I'd heard dozens, each as unbelievable as the next.

  'Three million years ago, primitive australopithecines living in the rain forests divided.

  One branch stayed vegetarian and are still monkeys. The others became carnivorous and learned to make war. They're us, Lovejoy. Man. Just remember that's all we are.'

  He looked sad. I blurted out, 'Cheer up, Brig. Anything I can do, I will.'

  'Thank you, Lovejoy. See me Friday, then. No later. Chin chin.'

  I thought of saying toodle-pip, but he'd had enough disappointment in one visit. He looked a tired old man weighed down by desperation. How could I help a rich man like him, for heaven's sake?

  'Tara, Brig.' I caught the bus. Things to do.

  12

  IT WAS THE most peaceful scene; village girls practising the maypole dance with ribbons, folk feeding ducks on the White Hart pond, no rain for once. Couldn't be better. Dealers were chatting all about, readying for the auction at Bledsew's. I wasn't restful. Inside I was in turmoil, with the worst of all feelings.

  Hesk was trying to get me to endorse some fake Georgian drawings – Roman women seducing lovers in baths, frolicking maidens at it under arboreal fronds. I was waiting for Mortimer. Hesk narks me, always trying something on and getting it wrong. If he'd only take trouble, he'd be a classy forger. His drawings were not bad, just copies of those rapacious Pompeii scenes.

  'Your black-letter Gothic inscriptions are wrong, Hesk,' I told him. 'You included the word pornography in, see?'

  'It is porn, Lovejoy!' he cried, the prospect of a fortune dwindling. Two dealers, Becky and her mate Tony who deal in Jacobean (approx) glassware (approx) sniggered.

  Derision is the way dealers express sympathy with others.

  'No, Hesk,' I said patiently. 'The word pornography wasn't coined until Dunglison put it in his medical dictionary in 1857.' Hesk had dated them all Pornography 1813-1816.

  'Oh.' He looked close to tears. 'Should I change it?'

  He left, glumly studying his drawings. Suddenly Mortimer was there beside me on the bench. I managed not to infarct at his abrupt manifestation.

  'Keep your voice down,' I managed to say when my heart resumed. 'There's a dozen dealers about. What ghost painting?'

  'You painted four, Lovejoy.' He gave me a second to adjust. 'The ghost was a lady.'

  'I remember.' The portrait was of a seated woman, an oval canvas. Pretty good. I'd auctioned one, done three duplicates, and had eaten real food for almost two months.

  'Didn't you sell one to your friend Ferdinand?' he asked.

  'Children are the pits,' I told him, resigned. He looked puzzled.

  Once, a pal of mine Ferd had the happiest life imaginable. Bonny wife, decent job, twins – pigeon pair, boy and girl – could life be better? One day hankies waved, and off the twins went to university. 'We're independent now,' they told their parents, beaming.

  Ferd and Norma his missus sighed fondly. Brave children, off into the big wide world.

  Peace in the old homestead! Not a bit of it. I met Ferd the following week and asked him for a lift.

  'Can't, Lovejoy,' he said. 'No motor.'

  The twins had returned carrying sacks of washing for Mum to do. 'They carried a sack of clinking pots,' Ferd told me gloomily. 'And two bicycles to be mended.' When challenged about this novel version of independence the twins said heatedly, "Hey, Dad, who's got the washing machine, tools, and the dishwasher?''

  The visit was brief. They emptied the fridge of everything edible, ordered Ferd to fill his motor with petrol, promised to return at weekends, and drove away to continue being bravely independent in London's Soho, that well-known raw frontier. The daughter instantly shacked up with a penniless andromorph guitarist, her brother with a gorgeous lass hooked on anorexia who claimed, with a certain accuracy, to be a street juggler. Norma's washing load quadrupled, the bills became a Danegeld on the hapless Ferd. The twins' monetary demands soared. ('Hey, Dad, aren't we allowed to smoke, drink, have fun?' etc, etc.)

  Ferd, once a Foreign Office diplomat, began to long for the halcyon days when his children had been completely parasitic infants at home while he slogged like a dog in London. 'They're so-say independent now, Lovejoy,' he told me wistfully, 'and I'm broke. Norma's out of her mind. We're worn out.'

  Sadly, Ferd did the unthinkable. He cashed in his pension to open an antiques shop.

  The horrible trade joke is, 'Leap off a cliff, play Russian roulette – but don't do anything really dangerous like going into antiques!' Except it isn't a joke. Recorded history is crammed with famous wars, but Man's unwritten odyssey is littered with the wreckage of failed antiques businesses. One of those was Ferd's. He had a nervous breakdown after bankruptcy. His children were outraged ('What on earth is Dad thinking of, falling ill when we're deprived?' etc). Norma now goes out cleaning, four zlotniks an hour, to maintain Ferd in his silent despond while the twins, now a sturdy, booze-swilling twenty-two years of age, smoke their heads off in the idle manner to which they have become accustomed. Occasionally I visit Ferd, teach him watercolours; I've heard it's a good cure-all. Doesn't work, of course. Usually I paint while he gazes in silence, and that's it. But a friend has to try.

  'See what I mean?' I told Mortimer defiantly. 'Independence for some is parasitism to others.'

  'I'm not a university student,' he pointed out quietly. 'I don't smoke or drink. I protect you more than you do me. And I'm not a twin.'

  Doesn't it nark you when other folk are reasonable? One less troublesome zygote, however, was good news. I said this with bitterness. He took no notice.

  'Just stop ruining the antiques trade, please. They're threatening me.'

  'Sorry, Lovejoy. It's not fair. Dealers pretend everything's genuine.'

  Give me strength. I gave him the bent eye.

  'Isn't Ferd the man at Tolleshunt Knights? His wife used to wheel him down the water with a radio?'

  'That's Ferd. Ruined!'

  'Not now, Lovejoy. He's better.' Mortimer didn't quite smile. I had the uneasy feeling that I was being manipulated. Odd that he'd twice brought up the name of somebody he'd never known.

  'Can't be. Ferd's gone doolally, prey to his offspring.' I said this pointedly, still irked at this sprog getting me in bad with that Mrs Eggers and her barmy scheme. 'I saw Ferd only last week.'

  'Go and see him this week, Lovejoy. Follow the Rolls Royces.'

  Which was how I came across a reincarnation, and some ugly bits of the jigsaw fell into place.

  I hitched as far as Maldon, always easy to get to. There, I phoned Ferd. A startlingly bright Norma answered, gushed that she'd come for me. She arrived in an electric blue Rolls the size of our church. Humbly I got in.

  'You don't look like a cleaning lady any more, love.'

  She sparkled. You know the way women go when they're on top of the world? They become radiant, elated, their clothes priceless. They zoom down to twenty-four years of age when really they're over fifty. She dazzled. Except she'd dazzled me a week ago when she was in scrubber's clothes, and we'd made do with a tin of soup for the three of us. I wondered uneasily if my visit was superfluous.

  'One thing, Lovejoy,' she said, concentrating on the steep hill down to Maldon's titchy river bridge. She blushed charmingly. 'Before we reach home. Ferd's made a miraculous recovery from depression. Totally fit. So whatever happened in the past between any two persons mustn't recur. You do see that?'

  'Erm...' Being baffled is nothing new, but this was exceptional. First the Rolls, then a Cinderella transformation without the mice, and now Ferd has shazammed into wealth plus the Olympics?

  'You mustn't, Lovejoy.'

  I mustn't what? Then I twigged. She meant ravishment was out of the question. Ferd was hale and vigilant. We hadn't made smiles as routine, honestly. But Norma had utterly lost her spirits, gone from being comfortably off to eking out the pennies, her husband a broken man while she skivvied for neighbours. I didn't blame her for raping me while Ferd dozed and twitched in his deckchair. I was the only bliss she'd had. Back then, of course; no longer.

  'No ravishing,' I translated. 'Right?' , She coloured deeper still. 'I was weak, Lovejoy.

  Naturally I was grateful. You were the only friend who had the decency to stay loyal to Ferd while ...' et pious cetera.

  Join those dots for the usual cop-out. I honestly don't understand why women think like this. They believe in words too much, assume that feelings have to be spoken aloud, every twinge detailed. The opposite is true, but they just don't get it.

  Once, I was subjected to a long diatribe by a lady I'd only just met. I'd taken her a jump-up. This is a lovely antique baby chair with a little tray that stands on a small beautifully edged table so the chair can't fall off. Lift the baby down, and you have a table and chair set! The Victorian joiners of High Wycombe made these. They're still unbelievably cheap, a mere three hundred zlotniks in mint condition, though by the time you read this .. .

  That particular lady spoke for a full hour, staring past me at the middle distance, gradually encroaching on my bit of her couch until we were virtually seated in the same spot. The inevitable happened, and we made smiles. See what I mean? Too many words, when a simple beckoning gesture would have done. Where was I? Being warned off Norma, by Norma.

  'I understand, love. No groping.'

  'Lovejoy! Must you say everything straight out?' Which from her . . .

  We drove in silence the rest of the way, me the scruff, she the brilliantly lovely fashion goddess at the wheel of her cruiser. At Ferd's house I saw an instant transformation.