Free The Grace in Older Women by Jonathan Gash

that's people.' I smiled to show I didn't think that, I was
on his side. Well, he had an antique.
    'This great old church is crumbling. We've tried various schemes
but been unfortunate - '
    ‘It's more than misfortune!' La Witherspoon interjected. 'It's a
plot!'
    'Look, padre.' Talking with priests makes me uncomfortable, but I
had to say it. 'East Anglia's famous for dying hamlets. Young folk want out.
They don't want to slog in the fields twelve hours a day. They want town life.
In Lincolnshire - '
    ‘I do not claim we are unique, Lovejoy. Only that it's happening
to us. y Juliana nodded with vigour even before she'd heard him out. 'Our
church appurtenances have been sold. I auctioned our last treasure in Norwich
last Michaelmas- an Elizabethan vestry chest. It was stolen on the way. Are you
all right?'
    'Fine!' I must have groaned aloud with baulked lust.
    It was photographed for a book on antiques,' Juliana complained.
'A very unusual design.'
    'Then there was the fire. We couldn't afford the rewiring, so I
did it myself. It caused a fire in the presbytery.'
    'The antique you want me to guard?' Why I'd come.
    'I will have it collected tomorrow by the auctioneers.'
    'Why not have them collect it today?' I asked. 'You're daft to
leave an antique lying around.'
    'Because today's Sunday.'
    'Ah, yes.' I cleared my throat. 'I forgot. I was just on my way to
morning service when Miss Witherspoon called.' I stared defiantly at her. I was
bloody sick of piety. Because she wanted to ravish this defenceless priest I
was out in these wilds starving to death. She could get on with it. 'Where?'
    He raised his eyebrows. 'The painting behind you.'
    'No, it isn't,' I said, fed up. 'If there's a painting behind me,
it's a fake.' I rose. 'I'll be going. Thanks for . . .' He hadn't done anything
except ruin my dawn.
    'You haven't even looked, Lovejoy!' They said it together.
    'Chance of a lift?'
    'Of all the. . . !' the bird started up, but the priest must have
shushed her. She fell apoplectically mute.
    The painting caught my eye, as paintings will. Even daubs halt you
in mid-stride. It was a good forgery. The colours were right, including the woad
blue. A woman seated at a window, a little girl in pre-Carolean dress at her
knee. They were staring out in sorrow shared. I thought of Frank Bramley's A Hopeless Dawn painting, Tate Gallery,
but this was a faker's attempt to do Elizabethan. Little knowledge and mediocre
talent. One thing he'd done right, though, was get the pigments correct, which
for a forger wasn't at all bad. Most make tragic mistakes with wrong colours.
I've even seen Turner lookalikes done in acrylics-and sold! Unbelievable. Except not quite as unbelievable as all that,
in an age when forgers openly boast that every thing can be made from any thing
(and note those word spaces).
    Woad's funny stuff. It grows frankly as a weed. Rum-looking, even
for a plant. When you first see it you're downright disappointed. Especially
thinking of those Ancient Brits with painted blue faces attacking Roman
legions, that embarrass schoolchildren by reminding them that we were once
almost as barbaric as we are now. For a start woad's not blue. And you never
see as many branches on a plant. And it's yellow flowering, with green leaves.
Only two feet tall. I like to sit on a summer's evening watching insects. They
fly at the yellow blossom and pop each flower. Sometimes on a quiet evening you
can actually hear the petals pop apart, like whinnymoor broom flowers do. Our
old villagers use the seeds for roasting into coffee. (Don't try it. It tastes
horrible, and it makes you nod off all the time.)
    The Romans and Greeks, of course, used it. Its flowers dye yellow,
but its leaves when festered in water for fifteen days dye the loveliest blue
you'll ever see in your life. Not as stark as ultramarine or lapis lazuli, but
a gentle mild blueness you can't help but love. Add the two, and your wool dyes
green.
    Anciently, whole countries flourished on