Blaze Away

by Bill James

  Jack’s mother loved riding, and he had extended the Darien stables to accommodate a couple of extra horses so she’d have a good choice when she went out, sometimes with Jack and Helen, sometimes with Helen only, sometimes alone. She could develop a roaring enmity towards a particular animal, perhaps because it had behaved poorly in some way while she was aboard; or perhaps because at a random moment she had a stack of spare hatred looking for a taker, and this horse might as well get a fair whack of it. Duty compelled Jack to have a replacement always available. It greatly pleased him that he could fulfil that duty. He realized, of course, that many sons would be unable to offer their mother a choice of horses, supposing she rode, which not every son’s mother did. Jack could not expect her to pick a mount which, at the time, she loathed for good reasons, or, alternatively, and maybe more importantly, for no reasons at all, just pure, free-range, inexplicable loathing. It made him anxious when she went solo, not because she might have a fall and lie undiscovered in the woodland near Darien: improbable – she rode too well. But there were dangerous, watchful people about.

  He knew this didn’t make much sense. If someone wanted to do damage, he would most likely be the target. Perhaps she’d actually be safer alone, rather than with him present. That was logic. It didn’t convince Jack, though. Something less than logic, or a lot more than logic, told him he and/or Helen should be there or thereabouts when his mother was in the saddle, exploring. A mother brought responsibilities, regardless.

  The two women were in riding gear now, Helen with jeans tucked into calf-length brown boots, tight tweed jacket, black helmet; Mrs Lamb, in proper jodhpurs and boots, similar jacket and helmet. In contrast to her usual clothes, she looked totally right for that gear: jaunty, commanding, trim. Jack thought she would possibly regard the art as in competition with her, displaying itself so damn blatantly on the walls, claiming classical distinction, clamouring for attention, trying to sideline her. As she’d said lately, she didn’t know much about art, but she did know what she detested: most of it. On none of her previous visits had he ever heard her swear at one of the pictures, but she would walk past them in the drawing room, facing unwaveringly frontwards as if to avoid seeing something, to right or left, that was distasteful or even obscene, but not obscene enough. She did swear quite a bit, including ‘motherfucker’, abbreviated to ‘mother’. He felt she wanted to show how at ease she was now with US day-to-day, domestic conversation. She’d told him that the way many artists chose and applied colour made her think of someone ‘blind bloody drunk and part concussed conducting an orchestra in a notoriously difficult concerto by Schoenberg’. She had a mind that could move adroitly between different art-forms, rubbishing both or more en route.

  ‘Well, hello there, Mr Harpur,’ she cried with a terrific, welcoming smile, her head slightly to one side, apparently trying to see round him. ‘Is that a Castellani I glimpse behind you?’

  Of course it wasn’t a fucking Castellani. It infuriated Jack when she pulled this kind of palsied tactic. He’d seen it frequently before. She’d go about claiming art meant nothing to her, or less, and then come out with a name she’d read somewhere, liked its foreign tinkle, and memorized it, so that when she saw a chance she could chuck it into the chat to astonish and confuse people. It wrong-footed them. She loved seeing that effect. They wouldn’t know whether they were dealing with the kind of ignoramus she claimed to be, or someone who knew plenty and was therefore licensed to have widespread contempt for most art, but didn’t want to go on about the extent of her knowledge, out of English-fashion modesty.

  She seemed to have a strange effect on Harpur, though. He turned and glanced at the non-Castellani and said, ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Ah, you cops – guarded, cagey, non-committal,’ she cried with a genial woman-o’-the-world chuckle.

  ‘Possibly,’ Harpur said. Then Jack saw him seem to grow very unsettled. ‘But I’d like you to come with me to look at Amelia with Flask. Would you, please?’

  Jack thought he heard a kind of plaintiveness in the ‘please’. Maybe it should have been, ‘Please, oh, please!’

  ‘Why?’ she said. She’d stopped smiling now and gave Harpur a sort of interrogation bark.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he said. ‘There are matters of interest.’

  ‘Which?’ she said.

  ‘Some matters of interest,’ Harpur replied. He went and stood in front of Amelia but seemed, yes, seemed to Jack scared to view it head-on. Harpur gave the picture little, nervy side glances, as if to check bit by bearable bit what was on show, and as if he couldn’t risk eyeing it all at once, in toto, because … because … But Jack couldn’t think of a reason. People who were old enough to remember said Harpur looked like a fair-haired Rocky Marciano, undefeated world heavyweight boxing champion, who must have been fearless and physically daunting. That seemed all wrong for Harpur now, though. He appeared terrified. But of what? A picture of a woman? Why? Harpur beckoned Mrs Lamb. She shrugged and in a while came with Helen and stood alongside him. ‘It’s Amelia With Flask, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I need a sort of independent opinion.’

  ‘Well, sure it bloody is,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a name plate,’ Helen said, gently.

  ‘What else could it be?’ Mrs Lamb asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Harpur said. ‘And you’re OK, Jack?’

  ‘Right,’ Lamb said.

  ‘Definitely OK?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Completely,’ Jack said. What the hell was this about?

  ‘Yes, you are, you are!’ Harpur muttered, but a gloriously happy, relieved mutter.

  The four of them stood in an arc facing Amelia. Alice Lamb pointed laboriously, wearily, as if explaining something to a particularly thick child: ‘Here’s Amelia. OK? It’s a woman in a crimson robe. Still OK, Harpur? You following?’ Slowly, she shifted the direction of her finger. ‘And there’s the Flask. So we arrive, you see, at Amelia With Flask. “QED”, as they say in mathematics – meaning “which was to be proved”.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Harpur said. To Jack he sounded full of gratitude, as though he’d been saved from some bewildering, immensely distressing experience, ‘It is Amelia, and it is the Flask,’ Harpur murmured contentedly.

  ‘What did you think it was, a pig’s arse?’ she replied. Jack noticed that although his mother had picked up some Americanisms in her talk, she’d remained faithful to the British pronunciation of arse, rhyming with farce, rather than the shorter, sharper, US, ‘ass’, rhyming with lass. She gave Jack no consistent impression. Her slang was nomadic, cosmopolitan. But he would agree that ‘a pig’s arse’ seemed somehow – he thought he saw why – yes, seemed somehow to give a better idea of a pig’s arse than a ‘pig’s ass’ would have. ‘Pig’s ass’ sounded only matter-of-fact, like ‘pig’s ear’ or ‘pig’s trotter’. ‘Pig’s arse’ caught the amplitude and topography of it, and the absence of house-training. It was good to think she still clung to some Britishness. Obviously, though, he wouldn’t want foolishly to over-encourage that in case she decided to come back permanently, intending to live with or near him and Helen. A well-known term for his mother’s Anglo-Americanism existed – ‘mid-Atlantic’. Jack felt fond of this map reference. There was a Victorian popular song, Alice, Where Art Thou?, used as an introduction to a BBC TV series a while ago. Jack thought that ‘mid-Atlantic’ would be an excellent answer.

  ‘So, you’re very keen on Amelia With Flask, are you, Harpur?’ she said.

  ‘The juxtaposing,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Of what?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, the Dutch can always get juxtaposing right,’ Harpur said.

  ‘The Germans do it, too.’

  ‘I don’t argue,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Think of A Lady With A Squirrel And A Starling by Hans Holbein the Younger.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘It’s a red squirrel, not one of those vicious grey hellers you’ve got so many of in GB.’

  ‘They exterminated the reds.’


  ‘The squirrel, the starling – Nature. Of course. The lady is in the kind of formal attire demanded by the thinking of her time – bosom just about covered, matching white scarf and headpiece. So, we have creatures of the wide outdoors alongside someone who shows the cultivated, imposed refinement of her social class.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder about you,’ she replied. ‘Both.’

  ‘In which respect?’ Harpur said.

  ‘The juxtaposing,’ she said.

  ‘Of what?’ Harpur said.

  ‘The relationship. You and Jack,’ she said.

  ‘This is an association going way back,’ Jack said.

  ‘Yes, way back,’ Helen said. ‘Art and other interests.’

  ‘I don’t mean gay,’ Alice said.

  ‘No,’ Jack replied.

  ‘Friendship,’ Helen said.

  ‘You look after each other?’ she asked.

  ‘In which sense, Mother?’

  ‘You tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Tell you what? Harpur said.

  ‘Do I get a whiff of snitch?’ Alice said.

  ‘If you do it’s a dud whiff of snitch,’ Jack said.

  ‘This is a big-job cop up in your property looking at a haul of pics from who knows where?’

  ‘Me,’ Jack said. ‘I know where.’

  ‘Jack is meticulous on that kind of thing,’ Helen said. ‘Sources.’

  ‘Meticulous?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Tirelessly scrupulous,’ Helen said.

  ‘Famed for it,’ Harpur said. ‘Mention the name Jack Lamb in artistic circles and someone will automatically comment, “Meticulous.”’

  ‘You help Jack with his business; he helps you with yours? The rattletrap car you come in, parked outside, has “Untraceable” written all over it,’ she said.

  ‘Spelt all right?’ Harpur said. ‘Is there an e after the c?’

  ‘How do you think he looks?’ Alice Lamb said.

  ‘Who, Jack?’ Harpur said.

  ‘I come back after a gap of nearly a year and what do I see?’ Alice replied. ‘Possibly, I’m more likely to notice changes.’

  ‘With regard to Jack, you mean?’ Helen asked.

  ‘With regard to Jack,’ Alice said.

  ‘Well, he’s fine, as ever, surely,’ Helen said.

  ‘Yes, surely,’ Harpur said.

  ‘But you sounded anxious about him just now,’ she said.

  ‘Did I?’ Harpur said.

  ‘You know you fucking did,’ she said.

  ‘Did I?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Shall I tell you what I see?’ Alice replied.

  ‘Why not?’ Harpur said.

  ‘I see fear, I see cringing, I see shame, I see suffering, I see doom,’ Alice said. She swung her head about giving each of the other three a bit of special, dogmatic gaze. Jack had experienced that kind of thing from her often as a child and later. It didn’t upset him now. The other two could probably cope with it.

  ‘I just see Jack as Jack,’ Harpur said.

  ‘You’re not his mother,’ Alice said.

  ‘Well, no,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I see an onset,’ Alice said.

  ‘Of what?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Dread of retribution,’ Alice said.

  ‘For what?’ Helen said.

  ‘Dread of punishment,’ Alice said.

  ‘For what?’ Helen said.

  ‘Dread of hatred, dread of contempt, dread of that final, savage injury,’ Alice said.

  ‘Which?’ Helen said.

  ‘Do you know the name “Whitey” Bulger?’ Alice replied.

  ‘“Whitey”?’ Harpur said.

  Jack thought he sounded utterly puzzled, and so most likely wasn’t.

  ‘Once a gang lord in Boston, responsible for a dozen or so murders. He was on the lam without a final b for years, but they caught him at last, put him in court. What do you think seemed to trouble him most?’

  Helen said: ‘Well, I suppose—’

  ‘Not the blame for those murders. No. But an ex-FBI guy said Bulger had been an informant. Whitey screamed a denial. For him, informing was a much more disgusting crime than murder. A snitch was filth. Perhaps some of his murder victims were informants. He wouldn’t regret their deaths. That’s what informants deserved. And, now, perhaps some informants realize this and the funk is in their faces. Have you noticed, Helen, when we’re out riding how he’s staring about the whole time, nervy, tense, terrified, like expecting pay-off for his betrayals?’

  ‘No,’ Helen said. ‘What betrayals?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harpur said. ‘What betrayals?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said.

  ‘Oh, Helen, he’s your man. You have to stand by him,’ Alice said.

  ‘He’s your son,’ Helen said. ‘You should stand by him, too.’

  ‘I want him safe, intact. I didn’t bring him up to have his throat cut,’ Alice said.

  ‘Not wise to let imagination run away with us,’ Harpur replied. ‘Enjoy the tranquillity and beauty of great art instead, such as Amelia With Flask.’

  ‘He’s got two kinds of worry, hasn’t he?’ Alice said. ‘First, there’s the betrayals. People see the lovely house, the grounds, the horses, all of it, and they deduce he’s got it and is allowed to keep it because he’s built a nice connection with a cop. This nice connection has put some of their relatives or mates in jail. That’s very irritating for them. And then, second, he has all this stuff on the walls, some of it valuable. Maybe all of it valuable. There will be hard, knowledgeable folk out there who’d like to get hold of it.’

  ‘It’s here for them to get hold of, Mother, if they have the price.’

  ‘I’m not talking about paying for it. You know I’m not talking about paying for it,’Alice said. ‘If you get in their way, Jack, what do you think will happen to you? There might be no time for you to call out Mr Harpur in one of his old cars. I hear art theft is up there for profitability with drugs and guns.’

  ‘All trades have their risks,’ Jack said. ‘I keep alert.’

  ‘Jack keeps very alert,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Alice said. ‘So play naive.’

  FOUR

  George Dinnick’s art firm had three main people. First, obviously, himself. Then, equally valuable for their different skills, Liz Rossol and Justin Benoit. Managing them into useful cooperation with each other was how George saw his chief role as head of the company. Useful cooperation with each other didn’t mean making love to each other, which they might or might not be at. They wouldn’t need an impresario for that. But this Jack Lamb project illustrated pretty well how the two of them, Liz and Justin, should function together. They had their specialities, like consultants and football players.

  What George called Liz’s fieldwork had provided the original tip that now and then Lamb might have some good stuff at his country house. George didn’t ask who the tipster was and knew he’d have got no answer if he had. He caught a half hint the guiding voice might have been Danish. That was as much as would be forthcoming. Liz did a lot of travel, particularly in Scandinavia, Belgium, the Low Countries and Luxembourg. Art was like that – cosmopolitan. Liz had at least the basics in a handful of languages, fluency in three, and knew how to listen and, more important, how to find people it was worth listening to. In only a few years she’d built up an excellent network of what she called ‘friends’ in the art game, but who were actually clients or customers. By now she had quite a hold on some of these, enabling her to apply a kind of genial, irresistible pressure – Liz’s kind of genial, irresistible pressure, which could reasonably be translated as outright blackmail, even menaces. She had a round, cheerful, almost jolly face and features, which helped a lot.

  The thing about the art business was that in matters of legality and/or morality there existed considerable areas of vagueness. Nobody known to George Dinnick was better at exploiting this vagueness than Liz. She thought of it as her habitat. Her relationships
with her friends could be very complicated. For instance, there were collectors who considered themselves utterly law-abiding and honest in buying and/or selling their paintings and sculptures. They wanted all their dealings to be entirely transparent – a modish term that George found deeply unreal. And then one of Liz’s friends would get offered something he or she particularly greatly desired and which he or she was willing pay the asking price for; and was willing, also, to assume that the work came validly on to the market. That is, it had been properly sold by a previous owner, who had previously properly bought it, ‘properly’ here signifying the work at no stage had been stolen. The friend of Liz would probably long to believe everything was immaculate but might not have the time or ability or inclination to do a real look into its history. Liz could make use of this reluctance.

  Naturally, if there had been publicity about a spectacular robbery of works named in the media, perhaps with photographs, it would be mad for any collector to act as if ignorant of where the items came from. But Dinnick knew matters weren’t always so clear, thank God. Consider booty: the Nazis confiscated art works from galleries, museums, private collections in every occupied country, and there were a lot. Marshal of the Reich, Hermann Goering, cornered a heap of looted works. After the German surrender in 1945, some paintings, sketches and sculptures were traced and returned to their owners. But some were not. They came on to the market with their histories obscure, often deliberately made obscure. ‘Ownership’ turned into a tangled, very shifting and shifty term.