WE WENT TO buy large-scale maps. I can’t do without them in a new place, partly because I always have the addresses of antique shops and collectors about my person.
While Janie went to the grocer’s, I pulled Algernon aside on the pavement.
‘When I tip the wink,’ I said urgently, ‘make some excuse to stop the car.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’ll be near an antique shop,’ I explained.
He still looked puzzled. ‘Lovejoy. Why is it always antiques?’
I recoiled, almost knocking an old lady down. There he stood in the cake-shop doorway, your actual neophyte antiques dealer. Typical. At that moment I really gave Algernon up.
‘Never mind, Algernon,’ I said, completely broken. ‘It’s just something that comes from breathing.’
‘All ready?’ Janie was back. We’d parked the car dead opposite Refuge Tower, now partly sinking its little island into the encroaching tide. ‘Incidentally,’ she warned, smiling prettily at us both, ‘no sudden mysterious excuses to make stops near unexpected antique shops. Okay, chaps?’
‘What do you take me for?’ I said innocently.
I avoided Algernon’s accusing gaze as we got in. Janie was rolling in the aisles so much at her really hilarious witticism she could hardly start the engine.
‘What a lovely smile the lady has,’ I said coldly. ‘Are they your own teeth?’ I only made her giggle worse. That’s women for you.
‘We’re embarking to visualize entrancing spectacles of natural miracles!’ Algernon cut in merrily, his idea of light chitchat. Cheerfulness from Algernon’s enough to make people suicidal.
I’d the copies of Bexon’s diary with me. We listed all the named sites, putting them in the same order Bexon had.
‘It’s less distance,’ said He-of-the-Blurred-Vision, ‘and more economical on petrol to proceed circumferentially round Castletown, with –’
‘Hold it.’ I was suddenly suspicious. ‘You seem to know a lot about these place names.’
‘So does everybody else, Lovejoy,’ he said with maddening arrogance.
‘Except me,’ I pointed out. We were gliding upwards to the south of Douglas town.
‘Motorbikes,’ he explained. ‘The races.’
I’d heard of the TT races. Naturally, Algernon would know. I’d never seen him without a racing magazine. He started to tell me about engine classifications but I said to shut up.
‘We’ll do it Bexon’s way,’ I replied huffily. I saw Janie hiding a smile and explained, ‘It’s more logical.’
‘Yes, darling,’ she said, the way they do.
‘Right, then.’ We drove on in stony silence.
The Isle’s a lovely place. The coolth gets into you quickly. You unwind and amble rather than sprint. Even the Lagonda began coasting, giving the feeling of a thoroughbred cantering on its home field.
We drove that day what seemed a million miles. After each place that Bexon had mentioned I took a vote. I had the veto, because of my detector bell, though Janie complained about being tired after only four hours or so.
We drove to the House of Keys at Castletown and from there hit the road to Cronk Ny Merriu’s ancient fortwork. Algernon saw some sort of stupid swimming bird there, which led to a blazing row because I expected him to keep his attention riveted on my quest, not bloody ducks. He got all hurt, and Janie linked his arm till I cooled down. The trouble is she thinks he’s sweet.
We bowled into Port St Mary after that, then Port Erin for fish and chips. Another tick, about one o’clock. They wanted to rest but I said not likely. We walked from the folk museum up Mull Hill to the six-chambered stone circle. I loved it, but time drove us off. Janie thought it all rather dull. Algernon saw another duck, so he was all right. The Calf of Man, a little island, couldn’t be reached, so we turned back to the main road after Janie had flasks filled at the little café. We climbed the mountainside north of Port Erin to the Stacks, where the five primitive hut-circles were just being themselves. Another tick, and varoom again.
Beckwith’s Mines were rather gruesome, like any mine with shale heaps and great shafts running into the earth between two brooding mountains. I was relieved when Bexon’s lyrical comments led to nothing. After all, a mine is nothing but a very, very deep hole. It was nearly as bad as that seal pen.
‘I don’t dig mines,’ I quipped merrily, snickering, but Janie only raised her eyes and Algernon asked what did I mean. No wonder I always feel lumbered.
The last thing of all was the great peak of South Barrule. We left the car and climbed, walking with difficulty among the dry crackly heather tufts. I was glad when Algernon found something. We stopped. I almost collapsed, puffing. He fell on his knees.
‘It’s Melampyrum montanum!’ he breathed reverently, pointing. ‘What astonishing luck! The rare cow-wheat! Glacial transfer, from Iceland with the Ice Age! How positively stupendous! Oh, Lovejoy, Janie, look!’
He seems so bloody delighted at the oddest things. I staggered closer and looked. He’d cupped his palms round some grass.
‘Isn’t it breathtaking?’ he crooned.
‘It’s lovely, Algernon,’ Janie said. ‘Isn’t it. beautiful, Lovejoy?’ She was glaring at me. Her eyes said, Just you dare, Lovejoy, just you dare.
‘It’s great,’ I said defiantly. I would have praised it anyway, because I’m really quite fond of grass. ‘Really great, Algernon.’
‘Nowhere else except this very hillside!’ he cried. ‘What a staggering thought!’
I gazed about. There were miles of the bloody stuff as far as the eye could see. And I knew for a fact that the rest of Britain was covered knee deep.
‘Well, great,’ I said again. ‘Take it home,’ I suggested, trying to add to the jollity. I should have kept my mouth shut. Algernon recoiled in horror.
‘What about propagation, Lovejoy?’ he exclaimed. ‘That would be quite wrong!’
So we left the grass alone because of its sex life. Silly me.
And after all that, nothing. We rested at the top for a few minutes but I was worried about the daylight.
‘You said we’d do it all in two hours,’ Janie complained.
‘I lied,’ I said back. ‘Avanti.’
The rest of the search was enlivened by Algernon describing the spore capsules of the Pellia epiphylla, while I went over the Viking burials and tumuli we’d seen. Nothing. Still, I trusted my feelings about Bexon. He’d got on to something. Put me within spitting distance and I’d sense it. I knew I would.
I came to with us heading north on the metalled road and Algernon explaining the difference between a bogbean and a twayblade, whatever they were. I’d have given anything for a pastie. Not to eat, just to shut his cake-hole.
That day seemed months long. My mind was reeling with views of yachting basins, harbours, promontories, inlets, small towns huddled round wharves, castles, Celtic burial mounds, Neolithic monuments and encampments, tiny museums (musea? I never know the proper declension) and stylish period houses. We finished Bexon’s list baffled and bushed. I was knackered. Only Algernon the Inexhaustible chattered on. Janie thinks he’s marvellous. She likes talkers. Whenever he seemed to slow up she’d actually ask a question and start him off again in spite of frantic eyebrow signals from me. I swear she likes riling people sometimes. He seemed to know everything about everything except antiques. He even tried telling me there were different kinds of sheep.
‘Never mind, Lovejoy,’ she said, all dimples, towards the end of the day. ‘We might have had to travel in your hired Mini.’
I tried not to laugh but women get through to you and I found myself grinning. Just shows how tired we were.
‘Let’s pull in,’ I suggested.
‘A mile further on, please, Janie,’ Algernon asked. ‘There’s a pull-in there.’ Surprised, we all agreed. It wasn’t far from Douglas anyhow, and we’d reached the end of the list, so what did it matter?
I saw why he’d suggested this when we arrived. Even though it was quite late people were milling about. A café stood back from the road on the exposed hillside. A mile further along the hill a television transmitter’s mast poked up, its red light shining to warn aircraft. A large stand for spectators had been built on a macadam apron beside the road. Motor-bikes littered the ground.
‘It’s one of the TT checkpoints,’ Algernon beamed with delight. ‘Look! An Alan Clews fourstroke! Good heavens!’
I went in and got some pasties. Three teas in cardboard. When I emerged Janie was back in the car trying to keep warm. A wind was getting up. Algernon was admiring a cluster of bikes. Some were in pieces. Enthusiasts in overalls and bulbous with bike gear compared spanners. What a life.
‘Isn’t it a positively stimulating scenario, Lovejoy?’ Algernon said, really moved. It looked a hell of a mess.
‘Eat,’ I said, thrusting a pastie into his mouth.
God help the Almighty when we all come bowling up to heaven, each of us with a different definition of Paradise. I wish Him luck. And if everything there’s lovely and new I for one won’t go.
‘Thank you, Lovejoy,’ he said. ‘Come and see this Villiers engine.’
‘No.’ I’d rather his rotten grass than his rotten engines.
I gave the grub out.
‘Oh, Lovejoy,’ Janie complained. ‘I hate this soya stuff.’
‘I asked for it.’ If you save only one cow a year it’s a lot. Indeed it’s everything, if you’re the cow concerned.
‘We’ve finished, love,’ Janie said, pausing. ‘He didn’t mention any more places.’
‘Don’t nag.’
She gave me a searching look and then tried to cheer me up with questions about Suetonius and Co. I was too dejected to respond. The trouble is I tend to get a bit riled when I’m down.
Wearily, I leaned on the car. In an hour it would be dusk. The motorbike fiends were undeterred by mere changes in the environment. Algernon was joining a group busy stirring a heap of metal tubes on wheels with spanners. One oil-daubed bloke even seemed to recognize him and shook Algernon’s hand.
‘I’m so sorry, darling.’ Janie put her hand on mine. ‘I wish I could help.’
I shook her off and looked about, simmering.
‘Lovejoy,’ she said warningly, but I was beyond talk. I’d nothing against the bike fiends, but I had to sort somebody out for light relief. I was suddenly breathing fast and angry, all my hopes in ruins. Yet I knew we were close. One small clue . . .
‘Lovejoy. Please.’
Over in one corner was a little group clustered about a couple of soap-boxers. One was a bird from the Militant Feminist League. I ignored her, though I’m on their side. I really do hope the suffragettes get the vote. I needed somebody worth a dust-up. And there he was, the inevitable rabble-rouser, I saw with satisfaction. You get at least one where there’s a crowd. He had a soap-box near the café steps. My blood warmed and I moved casually towards him.
‘Lovejoy.’
I heard Janie come after me. I honestly wasn’t spoiling for a fight, but these political nerks do as well as any. You can’t go wrong because they’re all stupid.
‘You’re all capitalist dupes and lackeys,’ he was yelling, an unshaven political gospeller. He got a few catcalls and jeers back from the bike fiends but kept going, a game lad. ‘Your bike races are personalized general crimes!’
I drifted past Algernon. He was asking the others about plugs.
‘Joe Faulkner’ll have a spare,’ a voice replied from underneath a bike.
‘Lives up near Big Izzie,’ another explained. ‘Anybody’ll direct you to her.’ The lads laughed along with Algernon. Some local joke.
Algernon tried to interest me in the bike’s pipes but I strolled on to hear the politician. I’d give him five minutes’ skilful heckling, then I’d cripple the bastard.
‘It’s the day of the Common Man!’ he shouted. Nobody was listening. ‘The day of equality is dawning! Share all! Possess all! Equality, the word of the age!’ One of those.
He was really preaching against antiques. I hate jargoneers, as Florence Nightingale called folk like this twerp. It’s today’s trick, urge everybody else to be mediocre too. People everywhere talk too much about the Common Man, what a really terrific bloke he is and how anybody different’s either a secret anarchist or fascist at heart. It’s all balls. Let’s not forget that the Average Man’s really pretty average.
‘Nobody’s ever equal,’ I pointed out loudly. ‘It’s a biological and social impossibility. Inequality’s right,’ I said pleasantly. ‘Equality’s ridiculous.’
I honestly believe this. I’ve been striving all my life in the glorious cause of inequality.
What can you say to stupid bums like this, that shut the Sèvres porcelain factory so we could all have none?
‘Clever dick,’ he sneered. ‘Piss off. Go and piss Izzie round.’
A few of the bike fiends who overheard laughed at this crack from beneath their tangles. Probably that local joke. I began to move towards him happily, then stopped. Izzie? Anybody’ll direct you to her, they’d told Algernon as I’d passed him. To her. Female. Izzie. Isabel? Isabella? Piss Izzie round – like a wheel? It reminded me of something. Janie came hurrying over. She’d collected Algernon. ‘We really ought to be going,’ she was saying as they arrived. I was watching them approach. ‘We’re all too tired to think. I can cook us a hot meal. It’s been such a tiring day. We need a rest.’ She looked at me, worried. ‘Lovejoy?’
‘Is anything the matter, Lovejoy?’ Algernon asked.
‘You’re so pale,’ I heard Janie say. ‘Has he said something to offend you?’ She spun angrily on the startled orator and snapped, ‘You keep your stupid opinions to yourself, you silly old buffoon!’
‘No, Janie. Please.’ My mouth was dry. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I explained gently to the speaker. ‘It’s my first visit here. Where is Big Izzie, please, comrade?’
‘I knew you were one of us deep down, comrade,’ he said, smug with pride. ‘It always shows through the capitalist-imperialist veneer. Comrade Marx’s definition of class illustrates –’
‘He never defined class,’ I said. ‘He promised to in that footnote to his first German edition, now very valuable, but never got round to it. Big Izzie, comrade. We’ve a, er, political meeting near there.’
‘Laxey,’ he said. ‘We ought to get together, comrade, to discuss class fundamentalism –’
‘It’s a date,’ I said. ‘Laxey, you said?’
‘Long live the revolution!’ he called after us.
‘Er, sure, sure.’
I rushed them to the Lagonda and had Janie hurtling us towards the road to cheers and waves of the surrounding multitudes of the bike people. She was screaming for instructions at the fork but I didn’t know where Laxey was. We scrambled for maps, then two cars came by and we had to wait till they passed.
‘Laxey?’ Algernon said at this point. ‘Go left.’
‘Sound your horn!’ I cried in anguish, but anyone who beeps a horn In Britain is either on fire or psychotic. Janie’s upbringing held firm. We moved sedately out on to the Laxey road.
‘Who’ll be there?’ Algernon asked pleasantly.
‘How the hell should I know who lives in Laxey?’ I said, baffled.
‘He means the meeting,’ Janie began to explain. ‘There isn’t really any meeting, Algernon, you see. It was a . . . a ruse.’
‘There’s an enormous waterwheel at Laxey,’ Algernon said brightly as Janie gave the car its head.
‘Then why didn’t you say so?’ I hissed. If I’d not been in the front I’d have thrown him out.
‘Is it what we’ve been looking for all this time? Its picture’s on the coins.’
I fumbled in my pocket. It bloody well was, the imprint of a great waterwheel. One day I’ll do for Algernon.
‘It’s even got a name,’ he continued cheerfully. ‘Lady Isabella. They say that when it was first made –’
‘Algernon!’ from Janie, tight-lipped. Algernon had known all along, the stupid sod.
I closed my eyes. Sometimes things just get too much.
The wheel’s beautiful. You know, the Victorians really had it. If a thing is worth doing at all, they obviously thought, then it’s worth doing well. On the side of the supporting structure was a plaque: LADY ISABELLA. There she was, gigantic and colourful, pivoted with such exquisite balance that a narrow run of water aqueducted downhill was sufficient to power her round at some speed. She was breathtaking.
She was set in the hillside valley near a stone bridge. A deep crevasse sliced into the hill, exposing a ruined mineshaft. Old discoloured mine buildings eroded slowly block by block higher up.’ An enormous massive beam projected skywards from the ruins, probably one arm of a pump of some sort for the underground workings.
‘How colossal!’ Janie said it. Colossal was the word.
There were steps up from the path to its main axle. Algernon rushed up to see the giant waterwheel swinging its immense height skywards.
‘Imagine the size of the bike engine you’d need to –’
‘Algernon,’ I interrupted. ‘Don’t. No more.’
Janie was watching me. Just then she tapped me firmly on the shoulder.
‘Well, everybody!’ she cut in brightly. ‘Home time.’
‘Home time, I said.’ Janie put her hand on my arm like a constable.
‘We’ve only just got here!’
‘And now we’re going. You owe me a day, Lovejoy.’
‘But you said it wasn’t today,’ I yelped. ‘And we’ve found her! My main clue!’
‘No,’ Janie said. ‘It wasn’t today, Lovejoy. But today’s over. Look.’
I came to. The day had faded. Our car was the only one left in the car park beside the river down below. The little toffee shops had closed. In the distance lights showed where the seaside promenade of Laxey lay. Lights were coming on in the cottage windows. An old woollen mill blotted out the foreground. Mill owners of years ago had laid out the valley like a stone pleasure garden, now somewhat sunken and ill-kept. It was swiftly quietening into dusk.
‘But, Janie, for God’s sake –’
‘It’s dangerous, Lovejoy,’ she said in that voice. ‘Derelict mines, ruined mine buildings, horrid great pumps underground and a wheel this size. If you weren’t so deranged by being near whatever the poor old man left, you’d realize how exhausted and frightened you really are.’ She took my arm. ‘Home.’
I tried appealing to Algernon but he backed down. Friends.
‘I claim my day, starting from this instant,’ Janie said. ‘Twenty-four hours.’
Women make me mad. They’re like the soap in your bath. You know it’d be good value if only you could find out what it’s up to and where it is.
Algernon was nodding. ‘True, Lovejoy. You’re bushed.’
‘There, then!’ cheerfully from Janie. ‘We’re all agreed.’
1 was defeated. I looked up at the Lady Isabella.
‘Check the time, Algernon,’ I said coldly.
‘Twenty past eight.’
‘Twenty-four hours, then.’ I waited for orders. ‘Well?’
‘Home, chaps.’ She fluttered her eyelashes and waggled seductively down the steps ahead of me. ‘You’ll thank me later, b’wana, when we’re all cosy.’
Algernon joined in.
‘Never mind, Lovejoy,’ he said brightly. ‘There’s always another day.’
I didn’t speak to either of them on the way home. People who know what’s best for you give me a real pain.