Gold by Gemini Read Online Free Page A

can’t think of everything.
    As I emerged, Janie signalled at me from near the post office, tapping her watch helplessly. Duty obviously called. I must have been longer than I thought. Through the traffic I signalled okay, I’d stay. I’d phone later. She signalled back not before seven. I signalled eight, then, I watched her go, and crossed back to the Arcade. Now I’d drawn a blank over Bexon, poverty weighed me down. I meant to go but you can’t avoid just looking at antiques, can you? Especially not in the Arcade. Patrick yoo-hooed me over to his place before I’d gone a few windows. I forced my way acrossthe stream of people. He always embarrasses me. Not because he’s, well, odd, but because he shows off and everybody stares.
    ‘Just the little
mannikin
I’ve prayed for!’ he screeched, false eyelashes and fingers all aflutter. ‘Lovejoy! Come here this
very
instant!’ Heads were turning and people gaped at the apparition posturing in his shop doorway. ‘This way, Lovejoy, dearie!’ he trilled. I was a yard away by then.
    ‘Shut your row, Patrick.’ I entered the shop’s dusk. ‘And must you wear a blue frock?’
    ‘Ultramarine, you great buffoon!’ he snapped. ‘Everybody pay attention!’ He did a pivot and pointed at me in tableau. ‘Lovejoy’s in one of his moods.’ The trouble is I always go red and shuffle. I can only think of cutting remarks on the way home.
    ‘Don’t mind Patrick, Lovejoy.’ I might have known Lily would be there. I don’t have time to tell you everything that goes on, but Lily (married) loves and desires Patrick (single and bent). Lily insists – in the long tradition of women hooked on sacrificial martyrdom – that she’s just the bird to straighten Patrick. As if that’s not enough, both are antiques dealers. You see the problem. ‘He tried to get a museum expert over,’ Lily explained, ‘but he’s gone to Norfolk.’ She spoke as if Norfolk’s in Ursa Major. Our locals are very clannish.
    ‘This way, Dear Heart!’ Patrick sailed to the rear followed by the adoring Lily. Three or four customers hastily got out of the way of someone so obviously and flamboyantly an expert as Patrick. I trailed along. ‘
Regardez!
’
    It was a stoneware bottle. A large fish swam lazily in brushed iron design under the celadon glaze. I reachedout reverently, chest tight and breath dry. My mind was clanging with greed and love as I turned the little table round to see better.
    ‘Pick it up, Lovejoy,’ Patrick offered.
    ‘Shut up.’
    ‘Oh!’ he snapped petulantly. ‘Isn’t he absolutely
vulgar
.’
    I sat and let the beauty wash from the brilliant work of art into the shop. The master had coated the bottle’s body with a luscious white slip. It was lovely, a lovely miracle. The ninth-century Korean pots are very different – those imprinted with hundreds of those tiny whorled designs in vertical rows tend to get me down a bit. This was from a much later period.
    ‘It’s genuine, Patrick,’ I said brokenly. ‘Superb.’
    ‘You perfect
dear
, Lovejoy!’ he whooped ecstatically.
    ‘Korean, about latish fifteenth century.’
    Excited, he dragged me away and showed me a few other items – a phoney Meissen, a modern Hong Kong copy of a Persian-influenced Russian silver gilt tea and coffee service, supposedly 1840 (it’s surprising, but modern eastern copies always give themselves away by too rigid a design) and suchlike. We had a final row about a William and Mary commemorative plate. He was furious, wanting everything he showed me to be genuine now.
    ‘It’s a genuine blue-and-yellow, Lovejoy!’ he protested.
    ‘I’m sure it is, Lovejoy.’ That from the anxious Lily, unbiased as ever.
    ‘It’s modern,’ I said. I touched it. Not a single beat of life in the poor thing. ‘They always get the weight and colours wrong. The yellow should be mustard. The blue should be very blue.’ The dazzling loveliness ofthat Korean bottle was making me irritable. I