The Lies of Fair Ladies Read Online Free Page B

them.
    "He's right!" an old crone cheeped. "I can remember
..."
    The babble of reminiscence rose to a hubbub, which let me out
unscathed. No, though. It makes my blood boil. These posh shops'll have us in
our graves. Cost-efficiency tactics never work, do they? Prices'd go down if
they did. I headed down East Hill to Sandy's Dutch Treaty, fuming. Same with
antiques. Look at stamps. I pick stamps because they're utterly boring. Yet
they're the classic example of antiques holocaust. A lesson to all antique
grabbers, like you and me.
    Lately, there'd come a mighty flood of philately. It was worrying
me sick. In fact, this was the reason I'd gone to the Arcade, to suss it out.
Somebody said Sandy—more about him in a minute—was offering a whole stamp
portfolio. In this day and age! Can you believe it? A caution: Avoid stamps.
    Back in the fabled Good Old Days, when singers sang the words and
gold was simply color at Christmas, bureaux used to bring out catalogues
listing prices of British Colonials and Persian Commemoratives and whatnot.
That set the scene for ever and a day—or at least until the next catalogue.
Then things changed. Inflation (remember that old thing?) happened. Currencies
wobbled. Oil did, or didn't, do something vital. Stock markets seethed. One
fateful dark day in 1980, London awoke jubilantly to the Stamp World
Exhibition. To find the floor had vanished. Nobody wanted stamps.
    Prices fell like a stone. Stamp empires were engulfed. Down
through the widening cracks plummeted dealers, traders, speculators'
portfolios. Amsterdam to Tel Aviv, Geneva to New York, the philately world went
crunch. This is my point: If you want to speculate, fine. Anything you
like—gold, stocks, shares, land—and good luck. But speculate in antiques?
Stick, please, to those where collectors
provide a permanent floor to market prices. Better still, don't speculate
at all. Be a pure collector; you can have the top brick off the chimney.
    The Great Stamp Catastrophe of 1980 was odd. All portents were
favorable. Times were mindbendingly boomy. Wasn't the sixth of May the one
hundred fortieth anniversary of the first Penny Black? Wasn't the Cold War
dissolving? Everybody was over the moon, joyous with profits.
    You see, nobody
bought.
    Dealers wept, gnashed, pleaded. But the only sound was the popping
of speculators' bubbles, the splashing of tears.
    Since that date, there are two markets in old stamps. One's the
top market, where unique stamps still bring buyers for the yawn-some little
things. Here sells the 1849 vermilion tete beche for a fortune, and the
American 1918 twenty-four-cent airmail with an upside down middle. The other
market is down here, you and me. Forget dealers, portfolio managers, that lot.
Think only of Joe Soap next door. How often does he come home rich and
rejoicing? He's your market.
    See? Not boring at all. I wish it were. It's something far worse.
It's really rather scary. Because there's a terrible hidden question here: What
exactly turned the floor into Scotch mist in sunny old 1980? Answer: Nobody
knows. Which is when fright creeps night-stealing into the soul. It crouches,
chewing its nails and blubbering every time the door goes. Antique dealers want
straight upward graphs, not ones that nuzzle the lino.
    If I knew all this, what was my problem as I fumed down East Hill?
The sudden influx of old stamps. Like swallows at midwinter, they just don't,
aren't, can't. But they'd come to town, via Sandy. And he truly is your rare
bird.
     
    Sandy was alone. This was the other mega news of the century. He
was determinedly showing he Didn't Care by setting up shop near the Ship
tavern. He'd rowed with Mel—cerulean taffeta for a wall hanging—and ended the
only permanent partnership our local antiques scene has. Had.
    The door blared "Y.M.C.A." I blocked my ears.
    "Wait, too lay mond!" a voice trilled.
"Coming!"
    East Hill's a trailing string of small dumps. Never been any
different since the Emperor