Perry The Great Pretender

A Catalogue of Chaos and Creativity
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78885-192-3
Verlag: Polygon
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

'Give me three years and we'll be millionaires,' Nick challenged his long-suffering family in 1980, when cash was king. 'I've got an idea that's going to take us to the top.' Tinkering with alchemy in an old stable he shared with a Shire horse, Nick discovered how to create the most convincing antique replicas ever made. He started by selling a few of his netsukes on a market stall at the Birmingham Rag Market and met extraordinary and eccentric people, the risk-taking gamblers with fast tongues. Each had their own money-spinning ideas; you name it, he replicated it for the wheeler-dealers chasing the dream. When Nick and his crew reached the rarefied circles of the London art world he realised he could be dangerously out of his depth. This is the unlikely and often hilarious story of where nothing but enthusiasm and self-belief can take you.

Nick Perry spent his childhood in Dorset, out in the countryside daydreaming most of the time. He was educated at Parkstone Sea Training School before leaving for London where he worked for ATV Television. He travelled around Europe moving from job to job until he came into money. On impulse he bought a hill farm in North Wales. He lives with his wife Arabella in the Wiltshire countryside where he spends his time writing, walking and listening to classical music.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Perry, Nick

Leseproben

2

At last the time had arrived. I’d worked incessantly, and having taken only Christmas Day off now had enough product to sell at the Birmingham rag market. I’d already driven up there to take a look; it was a weekly market held every Monday where people sold furniture, jewellery, old postcards, second-hand clothes, military memorabilia . . . you name it, you could find it there, mostly on the stalls of traders who had come down from the north.

Despite my telling her it wasn’t necessary, Ros got up to see me off at five o’clock on a freezing January morning. I hadn’t slept for much of the night, revved up, nervous and excited. Then there was the cold fear that the day would bring total failure, that all the work I’d done was the result of an incredible self-deception, and today life would slap me in the face and teach me the hard lesson that I was nothing but a fool.

Ros gave me a thermos of coffee, and as we hugged on the doorstep I could feel in her embrace a kind of tense hope, a will, that after all the effort we would succeed.

The car wouldn’t start, even though I had the choke out, and as I kept turning the ignition the battery began to fade and eventually died. I said to Ros I’d give it one more go, although I’d probably already flooded the engine. That last try failed too and I realised we were doomed. I was not going to Birmingham today. Ros was still standing on the doorstep in her dressing gown, shivering.

‘We could bump-start it,’ she said.

‘What, the two of us?’

Then, with defeat staring us in the face, who should come purring round the corner but Ben Warriner, happily whistling in his electric milk float, bottles clinking. Ros joined him at the back of the car and together they pushed the Fiat down Chester Street. The old girl finally fired up, and with my foot flat to the boards I sped off in a great surge into the starlit night. I shouldn’t have beeped the horn, not at that time in the morning, but I wanted to thank Ros and Ben while I could still see them waving in the rear-view mirror.

The motorway was quiet, just lorries in the slow lane, so I kept my foot on the throttle and, with the Fiat needing a good run, did a steady eighty mph. I got to the market ten minutes early, despite the delayed start, and queued up behind Ford Transits and estate cars pulling trailers, all piled high with furniture precariously tied on to roof racks. No one was out on the frosty pavement wheeler-dealing. Everyone sat in their cars with the windows slightly open, having an early cigarette, exuding blue tobacco smoke into the cold morning air.

Inside, I set up the table for my stall and draped a purple curtain over it, the very one that used to hang in my grandmother’s bedroom. Next I placed a wooden tiered display stand in the centre, a professional touch to show off the netsukes to their full effect. Then I just waited in the vast, freezing building; a bare, forbidding place without any heating. To get any warmth into it would be impossible. It was a harsh environment to do any business in, let alone to put a hand in your pocket and pull out some cash. I didn’t know what to expect; all I felt was what the hell am I doing here?

For the first few minutes I just stood there rubbing my hands together, stamping my feet, trying to keep my blood pumping. Who on earth would want to come out at this time of day? Surely no one was that hungry to make a pound.

But I was wrong. When the great steel shutters rolled up at least a couple of dozen hardy types appeared, moving with purpose. They were all dressed as if they were going out for a day in Siberia, wearing bearskin hats, balaclavas, thick heavy coats, and scarves wrapped several times around their necks. Some wore great fur boots like those worn by trappers out in the Canadian Rockies, and all of them walked with a heavy, purposeful tread, sniffing out a bargain.

The need to wheel and deal cannot be suppressed; it’s in the blood and drives you on. The inner satisfaction that rushes through you when you’ve bought something for a pound and know you can sell it for two. That’s what everyone was chasing as they pored over the stalls, picking up what interested them, holding it up in the fluorescent light to examine it with a beady eye before coming up with an offer. And then the cold smirk when they heard the asking price, which no one ever paid but haggled over instead, some seriously, others in a light-hearted fashion. We all have our individual ways of conducting a business transaction, but everyone seeks the same result: to make a profit.

The downtrodden were there as well, coming in from sleeping rough, searching out the tea trolley, hoping for a warming cup of soup. What a diverse bunch walked past my stall that first morning, most of them without two pennies to rub together. Lonely souls wanting to engage me in chat, many with their stories, some speaking of their great achievements before the cruel vagaries of fate had struck them down and now living on benefits that they drank away, all of them victims of a long run of bad luck.

And walking past them as if they didn’t exist came an expensively dressed, elegant woman wearing a brown suede hat with a bright red band, a coat belted at the waist showing off her slim figure. She stood out; no one dressed up in the rag market. All you needed were large pockets to hide bundles of cash. Her name was Isobel, and she immediately admired my netsukes.

‘Adorable,’ she said, picking up the rats in a cornsack, smiling warmly as she held them in the palm of her gloved hand.

Retired now after many years in the diplomatic service, she told me that the finest Japanese carvings came from Kyoto in the eighteenth century, and shared more of her knowledge for the next twenty minutes.

I had to ask. ‘What is it that draws you to the rag market?’ She looked completely out of place.

‘I come every week. I find it absolutely fascinating, and now I have discovered you,’ she said, with a slightly seductive tone in her voice.

Isobel became my first ever customer, spending thirty-five pounds on five netsukes.

‘They’re far too cheap,’ she said. ‘You should charge a lot more. Not to me though, of course,’ she added, with a twinkle in her eye. ‘I’ll come next week. You really have made my day.’

Opposite me was a woman selling Art Deco jewellery. She was doing good business, and I could tell that all those who gathered around her stall were regular customers. Most of them had eye-glasses and examined everything two inches from their noses. She stashed a lot of cash away in her money belt, and no wonder: she hadn’t stopped since the market opened. Mid-morning, she came over and introduced herself as Aileen. Wearing a torn anorak and a bobble hat, she looked rather masculine and lacked the feminine touch, which I felt when we shook hands; there was a man’s clasp to hers.

‘There’s always a lull now. Everyone disappears for a cup of tea.’

‘You’ve been busy,’ I said.

‘I’ve been coming for years, so I have my regulars.’

‘Your clientele.’

‘Sounds a bit posh.’

At that point we were joined by Graeme, her partner. They lived in Lutterworth, a place I’d never heard of, and had no children, just a Jack Russell tied up under the stall. That’s what Graeme told me, his heavy-lidded eyes appearing half closed and giving him a mean look, which was harsh of Mother Nature, for the rest of his face was warm and friendly. He dealt in pocket watches, and he and Aileen spent most of the week driving around looking for stock to buy.

‘Do you manage to make a living from it?’ I asked.

‘We’d like to, but it’s impossible. I’m a barmaid pulling pints three nights a week.’

‘Why do you deal in pocket watches?’ I asked Graeme.

‘I don’t know. I’m not obsessed with them, I can’t repair them, and most of the ones I buy don’t work.’

‘He doesn’t like to tell the story,’ Aileen chipped in, ‘he thinks it makes him sound cocky, but once he bought an old stationmaster’s watch after driving all the way to Devon and made six hundred pounds. Some of them fetch a high price, but you’ve got to know your stuff.’

‘It rarely happens, but isn’t that what we’re all after, searching for hidden treasure?’

They were keen to know what I was up to. ‘Are they antiques? They look genuine.’

‘Replicas,’ I said, as Graeme began picking them up, scrutinising each one under his eye-glass.

‘Well, you could have fooled me,’ said Aileen. They both believed I’d be successful. ‘They’ve been faking jewellery for years, but not ivories. What a clever idea. All you have to do is keep making the same stuff, and I suppose you don’t even have any competitors. We’re out all week searching for something to buy.’

As I was packing away the stock I hadn’t sold, I was approached by a dealer no bigger than a jockey. He was wearing a sea captain’s hat, a polo-neck pullover and white bell-bottom trousers. I had to take a second look; he reminded me of a cartoon character. He was from Manchester, not that his accent gave him away, and was certainly sure of himself.

‘You’re a first timer, aren’t you?’ He was probably thinking he could put one over on me. ‘I’ve been watching you and I think we can do some business. Are you interested?’

‘Of course. Who are you?’

‘They call me Sifta, but it’s not my real name.’

‘Yes, I can see why. You look like the chap in the salt adverts.’

‘I’ve heard that a thousand times. Now, are you interested? I can sell your stuff up north.’

‘You mean you’d be my sort of...