Armadillo by William Boyd Read Free Book Online Page B

which he often went and sat quietly alone in a corner for some minutes. But those rheumy, bulging eyes were alive with malice and intelligence and somehow his feeble frame endured.
    Ivan began to enthuse about ‘almost an entire garniture’ he was assembling. ‘It’ll go straight to the Met or the Getty. Amazing the stuff coming out of Eastern Europe – Poland, Hungary. Turning out the attics. Might have a couple of things for you, old chum. Lovely closed helm, Seusenhofer, with beavor.’
    ‘I’m not so keen on the closed.’
    ‘Wait till you see this. I wouldn’t wear a white shirt with that tie, my dear old china, you look like an undertaker.’
    ‘I was having lunch with my ma. Only a white shirt will convince her you’re in gainful employ.’
    Ivan laughed until he coughed. Coughed until he stopped, swallowed phlegm, patted his chest and drew heavily on his cheroot. ‘God love me,’ he said. ‘Know exactly what you mean. Let’s have a look at our little treasure, shall we ?’
    The helmet was of average size and the bronze had tarnished and aged to a dirty jade, encrusted and flaky, as if it were covered by a vibrantly coloured form of lichen. The curved cheek plates were almost flush with the nose guard and the eye holes were almond-shaped. It was more like a mask than a helmet, a metal domino, and Lorimer supposed that was another reason why he instantly coveted it, why he desired it so. The face beneath would be almost invisible, just a gleam from the eyes and the lines of the lips and chin. He stood staring at it, some ten feet away from where it had been placed on a thin plinth. A small two-inch spike rose from the centre of the cranium.
    ‘Why’s it so expensive?’ he asked.
    ‘It’s nearly three thousand years old, my dear friend. And, and it’s got some of its plume left.’
    ‘Nonsense.’ Lorimer approached. Some strands of horsehair trailed from the spike. ‘Come off it.’
    ‘I could sell it to three museums tomorrow. No, four. All right, twenty-five. Can’t say fairer. I’m making almost nothing.’
    ‘Unfortunately, I’ve just bought a house.’
    ‘Man of property. Where?’
    ‘Ah… Docklands,’ Lorimer lied.
    ‘I don’t know a soul who lives in Docklands. I mean, isn’t it just a teensy bit vulgaire? ’
    ‘It’s an investment.’ He picked the helmet up. It was surprisingly light, one cut sheet of bronze, beaten thin, then shaped to fit a man’s head, to cover everything from the nape of the neck and the jawbone up. He knew infallibly whenever he wanted to buy a helmet – the urge to put it on was overpowering.
    ‘Funerary, of course,’ Ivan said, breathing smoke at him. ‘You could chop through this with a bread knife – no protection at all’
    ‘But the illusion of protection. The almost perfect illusion.’
    ‘Fat lot of good that’d do you.’
    ‘It’s all we’ve got in the end, isn’t it? The illusion.’
    ‘Far too profound for me, dear Lorimer. It is a lovely thing, though.’
    Lorimer replaced it on its stand. ‘Can I think about it?’
    ‘As long as you don’t take for ever. Ah, here we are.’
    Petronella, Ivan’s remarkably tall, plain wife, with a rippling swathe of thick, dry, blonde hair down to her waist, came percussively down the stairs with a tray of coffee cups and a steaming cafetière.
    ‘That’s the last of the Brazil. Good afternoon, Mr Black.’
    ‘We call him Lorimer, Petronella. No standing on ceremony.’
    270. The current collection: a German black sallet; a burgonet (possibly French, somewhat corroded) and, my special favourite, a barbute, Italian, marred only by the absence of the rosette rivets and so ringed with holes. It was the strange music of this lost vocabulary that drew me first to armour, to see what things these magical words actually described, to discover what was a pauldron, a couter, a vambrace and fauld, or tasset, poleyn and greave, beavor, salleret, gorget and besague. I derive a genuine thrill when