edges. But when I bought it, there had only been two legs and a snapped-off stump. Some fool had sat his fat backside on one end and . . . bingo.
I examined the four legs. The turning on the two new ones was as exquisite as the original; James was a genius with the lathe. Tiny blemishes on all four legs, where the feet of ages had kicked them. The soft patina of polish was the same, and the colour . . .
‘The back legs are the fakes,’ I said to James.
‘Why?’ he demanded indignantly.
‘Because only a fool would put the fakes to the front where they’d be noticed.’
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong. That’s what any fool of a dealer would think. They’d examine the back legs extra careful, so I put the replacements on the front.’ He sniffed in wicked and righteous triumph. ‘The colour was hell to match. Know how I got it? Three layers of black coffee, one of lemon juice and Worcester sauce; mixed. Just right, innit?’
I must explain about James. He is an interesting case. To look at, he is the soul of nonconformist righteousness. Silver hair, short-back-and-sides. Six feet three and a back like a ramrod. A red-veined drinker’s nose, red-veined drinker’s cheeks, even red-veined drinker’s ears. Which is unfair, because he never touches a drop. He blames it on his indigestion. In his more relaxed moments, he jokes that he cannot stomach this wicked world. Preaches twice most Sundays, going out in his old Humber as far off as Ealing, where the congregation never numbers more than twelve. Preaches hell-fire. Doesn’t want much mercy on earth for sinners either. Wants to bring back hanging, and not just for murder. For adultery too. People think he’s winding them up at first. Their kind, liberal faces when they realize he’s serious . . .
But in the matter of restoring antiques, he’s the best liar in the business. He says he learnt all he knows in Italy, in 1945. The soldiers hadn’t a lot to do, once the War finished. But he found a little Italian who was making a good living gathering brass off the battle-fields – cartridge-cases, shell-cases – and melting it down to fake small classical statues. And ageing them a lovely green by burying them for a month in the urine-sodden straw from cow-byres . . . he reckoned that Italian’s work was still on view in the V&A to this day.
How he equated the tricks he pulled on antiques with his religion, I could never quite work out. Except that we sold, not to the rich, exactly, but not to the poor either. And he never ceased to rail against the habits of our Wheatstone rich; the wife-swapping, which he still maintained went on in our local wine bar (though why he was so certain I have never been able to find out); the divorces and remarriages so that some men could boast three wives and ten kids; the teenage sex of the latchkey kids who came home from the comprehensive at lunch-time to make love in comfort in their parents’ beds . . . there was no point in arguing with him, because once started he could go on for hours. Of my good working-time.
I had tried sharing my unease with him, about the young man who had died on our motorbike. All he could find to say was that what he had been doing must have been wicked, simply because he was doing it at half-past three in the morning, a time when God-fearing people had been in their beds and asleep for hours.
He had even vouchsafed an unhealthy interest in the wreck of the bike. If we could get it back, perhaps we could restore it again for another good profit . . . He gave me a look of utter contempt when I shuddered and closed the subject. But I wasn’t having anything to do with death-bikes.
And it still worried me, in quiet moments. If we had not saved that bike, the young man would be alive still. Maybe there was something we had missed . . . that even the police vehicle-examiners had missed. I’d never killed anybody before – it’s quite different from swindling someone.
Just then, young Lenny came in, wild as a kid with excitement, to say they’d started pumping out the Wheatstone Pond. There was an appliance from the local fire brigade up there now, and the water they were pumping out was