“Ah,” said Yasha. “I have good news. The painting was restored in the nineteenth century. That’s well documented. They’ll be expecting slightly later whites.”
Serena shrugged. She hoped it wouldn’t be her problem by then. But her attention to detail extended even to the brushes she used. The Renaissance masters had used badger hair, and thus among the haul of goodies Yasha had acquired for her were several old-fashioned gentleman’s shaving brushes, which she would chop into smaller bunches of bristles.
Yasha listened in awe as she explained her methods over dinner on their first night together in the house. She told him why she wanted noxious-smelling formaldehyde. “Traditional oil paints take half a century to dry out. Anyone could find out how recently a canvas had been painted by holding a rag dipped in alcohol over the paint and watching for a reaction.”
“I know,” said Yasha. “That is how I confirmed my suspicions about your other Madonna.”
“The formaldehyde will solve that problem by speeding the process up,” she promised. It would have the added advantage, Serena hoped, of discouraging Yasha from visiting her studio too often.
“Will you join me in an after-dinner drink?” he asked. “It would be nice to get to know each other better, don’t you think? Since we’re going to be together for the next three weeks.”
Serena shook her head. “I’ve got work to do.”
She intended to paint around the clock to ensure that she and Katie were out of this situation as quickly as humanly possible.
So while Yasha sipped a contemplative brandy and watched the stars with Leonid, Serena set to work cleaning the worthless canvas she was hoping to transform into a priceless old master. Yasha had provided a rather ugly daub of a man counting money. He’d bought it in a junk shop two years before, thinking it might have potential, but had never found it another home. It was the exact right period, of course, but it had another advantage. In a funny way, the pose of the man echoed the pose of the Madonna, meaning that should Serena be unable to remove the original painting absolutely, she should be able to incorporate what remained.
To remove the paint was a painstaking process. Serena was grateful for the efforts of so many forgers before her who had refined the methods she was using. Many had tried to remove old paint quickly using harsh solvents, with disastrous results. There was no substitute for plain old elbow grease. With a pumice stone and a bowl of soapy water, Serena lifted the old man from the canvas a micrometer at a time.
It took her the best part of two days just to remove the old painting and the artist’s sketch beneath. She was left with the original primer layer. That layer she needed to leave intact, as a vitally important part of the process ahead.
Yasha looked in from time to time. “Just checking you haven’t climbed out of the window.”
“You think I’d leave my daughter?”
Yasha nodded at the canvas, which was now blank and rather shabby-looking.
“It’s coming on,” he said.
Alone again in the attic, Serena put her hands on her hips and surveyed her work so far. This was a daunting moment. She had her blank canvas. Now she had to find the magic. She picked up a red crayon to begin her own underdrawing. But before she started, she decided it might be a good idea to make a little record of this most important commission.
Though he seemed to have thought of everything else, Yasha had not thought to take Serena’s mobile phone away. The house was extremely remote. To get a signal required an hour-long hike to the nearest high point, and so he had determined that Serena would not be calling for backup. What he had failed to consider was that the camera function on her phone still worked.
Click.
In a second, Serena captured the Ricasoli and the blank canvas that would become its twin. Here was her insurance. Proof that a copy had been made. She would take several more pictures in the days ahead as she completed her underdrawing and at last began work on the painting.
CHAPTER 48
Just as the old portrait of the moneylender had been removed layer by layer, the new Ricasoli was built up in the same way. After each layer, the painting was put into the oven and Serena spent an anxious few hours waiting for the process to complete. A moment too long and her work could come out discolored, overcooked. But the ruse worked perfectly, as a way both of drying the paint and of aging it. After each firing, the craquelure, the fine network of cracks that appear in a painting over time, would reappear exactly as they’d appeared in the primer layer, like a memory. A wash of india ink filled the new cracks to give the impression of centuries of dust. Over the course of three weeks, Serena would age her painting by almost four hundred years.
It wasn’t all work. Due to the nature of the process, there were moments when Serena had nothing to do but sit on the Tuscan terrace and watch Katie playing in the sun. Katie seemed to be having a wonderful time. She had made quite a friend of Leonid, whose size and frighteningly scarred face belied a gentle nature.
“It’s funny,” said Yasha as he joined Serena on the terrace with two glasses of wine. “How children see straight through to the essence of people. They can easily tell good from bad.”
Serena knew at once that he was talking about Leonid, who, to fulfill a role in one of Katie’s complicated games, was submitting to wearing a straw hat that was far too small for his enormous square head.
“He misses his children,” Yasha continued. “He has two. A girl your daughter’s age and a son who just turned nine. His ex-wife won’t let him see them.”
“That’s sad. Well, he’s been great at keeping Katie amused,” Serena admitted. “As have you,” she added grudgingly. “What was that story you told her yesterday? The one about the witch in the mortar and pestle?”
“Baba Yaga,” said Yasha. “She lived in a house that moved around on chicken’s legs, and she ate small children for breakfast. It was my favorite story as a child. I hope I didn’t frighten Katie.”
“No,” said Serena. “Not at all. She said it was much better than boring old Charlie and Lola.”
“A drink?” Yasha offered her the glass of wine. Serena took it cautiously. She had been careful not to drink too much, mindful that she might need to scoop up her daughter and get out of there at any moment.
“I’ve got much more to do tonight,” she said. “So you can have your painting ready on time.”
There was just a week left to go before The Virgin had to join its new owner on a yacht in Portofino.
“I’m very grateful for your hard work,” said Yasha. “I know you feel you didn’t have a choice.”
“Did I have a choice? You didn’t make it seem that way.”
Yasha shrugged.
“I understand why you must hate me,” he said then. “Trust me, I hate myself for bringing you out here against your will. I wish I could have left you in peace down there in Cornwall. I’m sorry. But when I found out about your talent for imitation, it provided a solution to a very sticky problem in my life.”
Serena decided to let him talk.
“You see, the Virgin is about to be ‘found’ in the attic of an old manor house in Ukraine, stashed there by a Russian soldier who picked the painting up in Berlin and didn’t have a clue what he’d gotten. Of course, as property looted by the Nazis, it should be returned to its original owners. But the Polish family who were the last legitimate owners of the painting are all dead. Most of them went to Auschwitz.”
Serena shivered. “And there really are no descendants? Some of them must have survived.”
“Trust me,” said Yasha. “There is no one left now. And so, the painting will in all probability be allowed to remain in the hands of the person on whose property it was found. My client. And he will be able to show off his new acquisition to his friends. However, should that not be the case, he doesn’t want to lose it to some museum, and so, if that looks likely, your painting will be the one that is given away. It’s an insurance policy.”
“That’s d
isgusting,” Serena said.
“I don’t expect you to agree with it. I don’t agree with it myself, but my client is a very persuasive man. And unfortunately, I owed him a favor …”
Yasha looked into his glass contemplatively. He thought about his brother Pavel and the mess that had been made of his face. Belanov had helpfully provided a Polaroid photograph of Pavel’s injuries to help focus Yasha on his mission. If he told Serena about that, Yasha knew he would seem like less of an arsehole, but it was unlikely to make her feel any more comfortable about being there in Italy with him and Leonid, knowing the kind of people they were dealing with. He decided not to elaborate.
“So, tell me more about yourself,” he said instead, all jollity. “What were you doing? Living down there in the middle of nowhere with no one to keep you company but an idiot like Julian Trebarwen?”
Serena gave a strained smile. “I’m getting a divorce,” she explained. “My husband lost his job because the woman he ran off with was his boss’s wife. As he couldn’t afford to keep the house in Fulham, we had to sell it, and I couldn’t find anything else where I wouldn’t get mugged on the way to the tube, and that is how I ended up in Cornwall. It’s my brother’s house,” she added. “In case you were planning to torch it when the painting’s finished.”
“You’re very funny.” Yasha delivered that line in such a deadpan way that Serena shuddered before she realized that he was teasing.
“Well, either your husband’s mistress is an incredible woman, or, much more likely, he is a stupid man who didn’t know what he had. I am sure that he will regret having walked away from you. And from your daughter.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Serena.
“Well, he should regret it,” said Yasha. “Only an idiot allows his child to be raised by another man.”
“Julian and I … we’re not … he’s not …”
“Good,” said Yasha. “He’s an idiot too.”
“I wish I could disagree.”
“Now tell me how you came to be such a great painter.”
“A great painter?” Serena shook her head.
“You are a great painter,” Yasha reiterated. “And I want to know all about you. Where did you study? Who were your influences? What is your favorite painting in the world?”
“That’s easy. Vermeer. Girl with a Pearl Earring,” Serena told him.
“Sentimental,” said Yasha.
“Sentimental? It’s exquisite.” Serena bristled. “Tell me yours.”
“Nicolas de Staël. Piano Rouge.”
“You surprise me. That’s very abstract. I thought you had a thing for pretty portraits.”
“I have a thing for whatever I can sell to my clients. But I love de Staël.”
“He had an unhappy life,” Serena observed.
“Perhaps I can relate to the melancholy. It’s a Russian thing.” Yasha grinned. “All that biting wind across the steppes. The constant snow around the Kremlin. The howling wolves. The vodka.”
“It all sounds rather romantic.”
“Nothing romantic about where I grew up.”
“Where did you grow up?” Serena asked, but before Yasha could answer, Leonid interrupted to tell them that the timer had sounded on the oven.
“I turned it off,” he said.
“Thanks.”
Almost missing the table as she put her glass down, Serena raced into the house like a cook worrying about a soufflé. Using oven gloves, she carefully lifted her Virgin from the top shelf and placed it on a wire mesh tray. She examined the surface minutely. Yasha watched from the kitchen door.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“I think so,” said Serena. “Good job Leonid was in here. Would be too much to lose her at this stage.”
Yasha nodded.
“I got distracted. I’ll get back to work,” Serena told him. “Thanks for the wine.”
“My pleasure,” said Yasha.
CHAPTER 49
Finally, after three weeks in which Serena hardly had time to sleep, the new Ricasoli was complete. She called Yasha into the studio and showed him the results. He was suitably awed.
The original Ricasoli and Serena’s copy stood side by side on their easels. To the untrained eye, there was no difference.
“The painting is perfect. My client will be delighted. Are you pleased with it?”
“I did my best,” said Serena. “But I very much doubt you could get it past a real expert.”
Like the mother of identical twins, Serena could see only the differences.
“I sometimes think the great Renaissance painters must have been working with an angel on their shoulder …,” she said.
There was just one more thing to add. The mark of the devil.
Yasha handed Serena a stamp.
“The real thing,” he admitted. “Don’t ask me where I got it.”
Serena held the little swastika gingerly.
“The position of the stamp on the original hasn’t been recorded,” said Yasha. “Change it slightly. It’ll help us tell the paintings apart. You and I.”
The original bore its mark in the top right corner of the back. Serena took a deep breath and stamped her painting in the exact same place but turned the swastika very slightly counterclockwise. It felt like putting a scar on someone she cared for.
Yasha squeezed her shoulder.
“I’ve gotten quite attached to them both,” Serena told him.
That night, for the first time since their arrival in Italy, Serena allowed herself more than a single glass of wine in celebration. Changing out of her overalls for dinner—Yasha insisted he would cook—she regarded herself in the mirror. She looked thin and tired, the very opposite of how a woman who had spent three weeks in a beautiful Tuscan farmhouse should look.
Katie, thank goodness, had thrived. Her bright blond hair was almost white from the sun. Her chunky little legs—she had Tom’s legs, poor girl—were brown despite the slathering of sunblock Serena had forced on her, throughout the day. It wasn’t just that she looked healthy, she seemed very happy. While her mother had viewed Yasha and Leonid as their jailors, Katie had come to see them as friends.
As she walked downstairs on the evening when she finished the painting, Serena could hear her daughter chatting away as happily as she had once chatted to Julian. Katie and the Russians had forged quite a bond during their days by the pool. Yasha had even taught Katie to play that snatch of folk tune he’d learned to fool the border guards.
“Mummy!” Katie jumped up excitedly when Serena came into the kitchen. “Leonid has taught me Russian dancing. Watch this!” She managed a brief parody of a Cossack before landing on her bottom in a fit of giggles.
“Very good,” said Serena.
“Dinner is served,” said Yasha, bringing a pot to the table. “Leonid,” he complained to his colleague, “did no one ever teach you to lay a table?”
The knives and forks were the wrong way round.
Leonid shrugged like an overgrown boy.
“I’ll teach you,” said Katie.
This would be the first time they had all sat together at a table since that first day. While Katie was with them the conversation jumped effortlessly from one lot of nonsense to the next but soon it was time for her to go to bed. Leonid went upstairs shortly afterward, leaving Yasha and Serena alone.
“I need you to arrange for us to go home as soon as possible,” said Serena as she helped him carry plates to the dishwasher.
“Of course,” Yasha replied. “As quickly as I can. That was my promise to you.”
“And the money?”
“Already in place.”
Serena nodded. “Good.”
The table was all but cleared.
“Thank you for sorting the cash out. I’m pretty tired now so I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Won’t you stay and finish this bottle of wine?” Yasha asked. “To celebrate a job well done?”
They sat back d
own at the table. Yasha poured them both a glass. “I’d like to raise a toast,” he said. “To your talent.”
“I’m just a copyist.”
“You’re a genius. And I’d like to thank you. Thank you for working so hard but also thank you for these past few evenings. The conversations we’ve had. Even the arguments,” he added with a smile at the thought of Serena’s vociferous defense of the artist Tracey Emin. “I’ve enjoyed having such an interesting companion with whom to share my thoughts.”
Serena nodded in agreement. “Me too,” she said. “Me too.”
It was true. Once the ice between them had broken, Serena had looked forward to those moments when the painting was being fired and she had time for conversation. Talking to Yasha had made Serena aware of another part of her life that had been sadly lacking of late. She had missed having someone to talk to about art. Not that Tom had ever fulfilled that need. Serena had realized, as she’d grieved for her marriage, that there were some areas in which she and Tom had never had much in common. Sure, when they’d first started going out, he’d been only too happy to trail around galleries on a Sunday afternoon, but only because there was a chance that she might let him cop a quick feel while they were studying a Canaletto or a Rubens. To Tom, galleries were just foreplay. And pretty soon after they got engaged, he made it clear that he just wasn’t that interested. Likewise, Julian Trebarwen’s interest in art was far from sincere.
Yasha was different. Serena hadn’t met anyone with such an encyclopedic knowledge of painting since she’d left art school. Yasha had something interesting to say about everything. Had they met in different circumstances, perhaps they would have been friends.
“You’re a very special woman,” said Yasha.
For a moment after he said that, they just looked into each other’s eyes. It was Yasha who glanced away first, leaving Serena looking at the thick dark hair that she suddenly felt a very strong urge to touch. She looked down at Yasha’s hands, which rested on the table. The table was bare but for their wineglasses and a bottle of Chianti with just half an inch of wine left in the bottom. Serena put her own hands on the table, her long fingers still dotted with paint that wouldn’t come off with soap and water no matter how hard she scrubbed. Her pose echoed Yasha’s exactly. Her fingertips pointed toward his square fingers with their neat pink nails. She gazed at the veins on the backs of his hands, which looked so masculine compared to her own. As though they were engaged in some children’s game, Serena and Yasha regarded each other and the small space that remained between them. Would either one reach out?
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