The Lies of Fair Ladies Read Online Free

juice and pollution?
"Er, Harriet moved away."
    "Pity." He sobered, eyeing me. "A nice girl,
Lovejoy. I don't think you played fair."
    The reason I'm the only dealer in the Eastern Hundreds who'd know
that Prammie Joe did Cornish Place was that I'm the only one ever seen him in
action. And that was pure accident.
    Harriet—if I've got her name right—was a carnivore from Wapping.
On a sweep for some Antiques Road Show. (A sweep is scavenging ahead of the
main shoal of predatory televisioneers.) She fell on me, lit. and met. Knew
nothing about antiques. I had to stop the lads selling her collections of
pre-1842 trademarks and French Revolution photographs. She and I were making
heavy-duty smiles on the banks of the Deben when a gentle rhythmic shushing
disturbed the rural peace. I thought it was Harriet, until somebody ahemed in my
earhole. And there was Prammie Joe in his modified boat. His bare foot worked
steadily at his stern-mounted oar. He lay on his back, holding the gunnels.
    That would have been a quick embarrassed adjustment of clothing,
and the usual sheepish conversation until he'd gone by. But in the prow of his
pram stood a Martinware jug. I’d seen the same one sold seven days before at
Southwold. Martinware is grotesque—salt-glazed stoneware, mottled as hell, so
gray and muted you wonder why the Martin brothers bothered. Anyway, they're no
earlier than 1873. The Martins packed up in 1914. The jugs often feature
hideously contorted faces, or supposedly comical fishes and ducks. Horrible.
    "Mr. Martin, I presume,'' I managed, as Harriet squealed and
we rolled apart. I thought that pretty witty in the circumstances, on the
Deben, in flagrante delicto.
    Prammie had paused, peering sideways at us. He nodded, sussed fair
and square. Simply mentioned a tavern near Wood-bridge, saying he'd be there
about eight. We all three then resumed our activities, some more carefree than
others. I christened him my secret nickname Prammie that very evening.
    "You could have been anybody, Lovejoy," he told me
inside his hut. "A godsend it was only you."
    That "only you" stung. He could have met a blackmailer,
is what he meant. He's got a sense of fair play—which should tell you straight
off he's no antique dealer.
    "I feel it too, Prammie," I said most sincerely. Harriet
had mauled me bog-eyed. I was almost at death's dark door when she had to move on.
She wrote to me hourly for five months, made sudden unnerving visits. My
guardian angel made sure I saw her Ferrari coming. "I was heartbroken,
Prammie. Truly. Her mother's an M.P. . . . Well, my face didn't fit." I
sniffed, quite overcome by cruel fate and Harriet's snooty bitch of a mother
who came between us. In the nick of time I remembered I was making this up for
Prammie's benefit.
    Prammie murmured, "Never mind, son. Time the great
healer."
    Sometimes you have to stare. I mean, this old goat'd just pulled off
a robbery anybody would be proud of, and deep down he's a sentimental softie.
    "Er, ta, Prammie.” Kind, though. ''Got any torn handy?"
I was dying to see the stolen stuff.
    "Nar, Lovejoy." His rheumy eyes were shining. He's
teetotaler, non-wencher. "Know why I risked it, son? My plan. You know I
breed?"
    Breed? I didn't even know he had children. I was just about to
say, when I looked out through the window.
    His cabin is an old reed cutter's hut. Low down, among reeds and
bullrushes. You haven't a hope of seeing it unless you know it's there. He has
a way through the hedgerows. He uses the waterways for getting anywhere. For
proper journeys, he uses a proper dinghy. His night-stealing's all done on his
pram. He keeps it buried in the reeds. Even anglers don't come down this marshy
stretch, and they're daft enough to go anywhere there's a tiddler. Breed. He
had mentioned waterbirds a few times with passion.
    "Ducks and them?"
    He smiled. "That's Lovejoy," he said. "Yes, ducks
and them. Migratories, transients, indigens. I foster and propagate them
all."
    "Well,