The Painting

by Alison Booth

  Tick-tock, went the clock, a metronome counting out time, pushing the present into the past. In the background was the faint hum of late-night traffic from Victoria Road. Anika sat up: a lozenge of moonlight illuminated the wall at the end of her bed and the faint dirty mark of a rectangle that framed nothing.

  She doubted if they were ever going to get the Rocheteau back again.

  Chapter 13

  Anika dozed until late morning, with periodic memories of that nightmare flickering through her brain, the police of her dreams occasionally replaced by distorted images of Ryan and Warburton blundering around Rozelle and Balmain. When the downstairs clock chimed eleven, she sat up in bed. Automatically she peered at the wall at the foot of her bed and registered that the painting was no longer there. Maybe she’d never get used to that void. All that remained was that smudged rectangle defining where it used to be, a rectangle that for the barest instant conveyed the hope that the picture might be returned one day.

  It took only seconds to leap out of bed and throw on yesterday’s clothes that lay crumpled on her draughting stool. Then she shouted a greeting to Tabilla through the bathroom door and burst out through the front gate and on to the street.

  Mrs Thornton was nowhere to be seen – she was probably still at church, she went every Sunday – and Anika headed down the footpath to the house that Penny and Jane were renovating, the last in the terrace immediately before the road swung to the right. She pushed open their gate. Really, she shouldn’t have been doing this. It was Sunday morning after all and Penny and Jane would want to sleep in on a Sunday when they worked hard all week and set themselves construction jobs on the weekend. Just looking at the freshly painted wall around their front yard made her feel guilty, but she had to find out and for all she knew they might be going out shortly.

  Now she noticed that there was a radio on somewhere inside the house, so they were definitely at home and awake. She banged on the front door. Guilt fighting with her desire to track down the painting made her rap harder than she might otherwise have done; she sounded as urgent as a debt collector. When Penny opened the door, Anika blurted out an apology. Penny was wearing two towels – an orange one as a turban around her head and a yellow one in sarong-fashion – but in spite of all that cotton she was dripping on to the floorboards. Somehow the dribbling water made Anika feel out of control and she might have wept if it hadn’t been for the self-discipline that she’d learned growing up in Budapest.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Penny said, her smile a little forced. ‘It’s time I got out of the bath anyway.’

  Anika asked her if she could remember what the man she saw in the dunny lane the other day looked like, the one that Mrs Thornton had said was rattling the gates.

  ‘It wasn’t really light enough to see and anyway he was wearing a hat so I couldn’t see his face. He was shortish, I think, though that lane is lower than the bottom of our yard so maybe he wasn’t all that short.’

  ‘Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’

  ‘I doubt it, Anika. I told the detectives all that last night. They were very thorough. I’m really sorry you got broken-into.’

  * * *

  That afternoon Anika realised that something else was bothering her, a little thread of bewilderment about what Tabilla was doing last night, a little thread that was becoming rope-like as the hours passed by. But she needed to handle this with diplomacy and neither she nor Tabilla were at their best when hungry. She waited until after dinner when Tabilla was sitting at the table sipping her mug of tea. Wanting to get this awkward conversation out of the way, Anika swilled hers down too fast, so hot it burned the roof of her mouth.

  ‘Tabilla, did Julius Singer talk to you about meeting me?’ She took a sip of cold water and held it in her mouth for a second or two to cool the burning sensation on her palate.

  ‘No. Should he have? I thought you’d already told me what happened when you visited his gallery.’

  ‘He was very interested in my painting.’ Anika watched Tabilla carefully.

  ‘You said he wasn’t.’ Tabilla gazed back, with wide-open eyes and a baffled expression.

  ‘That’s because he was rather rude. He said it couldn’t be mine.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that. How could he possibly say that?’ Tabilla’s face grew even more puzzled.

  ‘He seemed very confused.’

  ‘You mean, like dementia?’

  ‘Not really. Just muddled.’

  ‘He was fine when I saw him last night. And he certainly didn’t mention your painting.’

  ‘Did you talk to him for long?’

  ‘We met at the Opera House and chatted for a few minutes before the performance and in the interval. That was all.’

  ‘I’m wondering if he arranged to have it stolen.’

  ‘He’d never do a thing like that.’ Tabilla began to jiggle her leg so the table shook. ‘He’s one of the most honourable men I know.’

  Anika kept to herself her view that Tabilla was biased and that anyway she didn’t know many men. ‘He knows where you live.’

  ‘So what? He was with me all the time. While we were at the performance, that is. Anyway, lots of people know where I live but that doesn’t mean they’d break into my house and steal something.’

  ‘But it’s odd that only the painting was taken and nothing else.’

  Tabilla frowned at the kitchen sink. ‘Well, here’s another theory that’s got nothing to do with Julius – suppose that your new curator friend told people about it. Isn’t Daniel supposed to be taking you to an auction house this Wednesday for a valuation? He would have told them about it. And who knows how many other places he might have called up.’

  ‘I’ll have to cancel the appointment.’

  ‘Leave it. The picture might turn up before then.’

  ‘Get bloody real,’ Anika snapped. ‘It will never turn up.’

  Tabilla’s face was pained and at once Anika wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Her aunt didn’t deserve such rudeness, her kindness and generosity repaid with ingratitude. She was probably feeling at least as upset as Anika was. After all, it was her Tomas’s painting – a bit of her old life that had gone as well as a bit of Anika’s.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tabilla, I really am. I don’t know what possessed me.’ Filled with remorse, Anika bent down to hug her and without the slightest hesitation Tabilla hugged her back.

  ‘We mustn’t let this upset things between us,’ she said. ‘We’re family, after all.’

  ‘Yes, we’re family.’

  Anika sat opposite her. Smiling in a forced sort of way, Tabilla nudged the Clarice Cliff mug towards her. ‘I wouldn’t mind another cup of tea if there’s one going, Anika,’ she said.

  Chapter 14

  The mellow voice of Anika’s design tutor, Howard Meyer, reverberated off the towering stone wall to one side of Butler’s Stairs. Howard was standing halfway down the long stair, so far below that Anika had a bird’s eye view of him, his face foreshortened so that only his chin was visible and the narrow-brimmed homburg covering his bald pate. He was pointing to the escarpment at right angles to the steps, the sandstone quarried away or eroded by millennia, the brick arches set forward to support the dunnies and the backs of the terraced houses above. When all the students in the group caught up with him, the stragglers too, those who had trouble finding parking spots, he began all over again, gesticulating as he talked. Anika’s friends Sally and Peter smiled at each other, including her in their exchange.

  Their tutor had already given his students the dimensions of the arches; he didn’t want them trampling all over the yards of the houses below them. Now that everyone was gathered around him, some on higher steps, some lower, he gave them a pep talk. ‘Be inspired by this glorious structure,’ he bellowed. A couple of students sniggered but Howard ignored the
m. ‘Think of the person who conceived this idea! These brick arches are a wonder of nineteenth-century design.’ He explained that the design project this semester was for clients – imaginary of course – who wanted to use the space behind the arches for an apartment. The students’ mission was to provide them with the floor space they needed.

  They took out their pads and knocked out a few sketches. This was one of the things Anika loved most about this course: summarising what she saw, in a few lines drawn with a 6B pencil on a sheet of blank paper. She augmented her drawings with photos – she’d borrowed Tabilla’s Instamatic for the excursion – and what the camera revealed and what her sketches exposed were not the same. Her eyes looked at the arches but somehow her brain altered what she saw, and her drawings came out different – all strong verticals. And who was to say what was reality? These were complementary views and both the sketches and the photographs would be useful when it came to designing the apartment. Already she knew it was going to be all about internal design. The integrity of the strong and soaring arches could be maintained only by setting the apartment back a bit. The colonnade would remain and the apartment would be recessed, illuminated by a wall of glazing.

  After putting away the camera and her sketches, Anika found Howard Meyer by her side. ‘I heard you’ve had a painting stolen. I was sorry to learn that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ With unsteady hands she folded down the top of her satchel and fastened the straps. Sally and Peter were heading up the steps, arguing about the arches, whether the apartment should be in modern idiom or in character with the 1870s.

  ‘An Antoine Rocheteau, the newspaper said.’

  ‘The newspaper?’

  ‘Yes. There was a piece in today’s Gazette. The painting must be worth a fortune.’

  ‘It hasn’t been valued.’ Though it was hardly Meyer’s fault the papers took up the story of the theft, Anika’s annoyance transferred itself straight to him, and she feared that her words sounded like a snarl.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. All Rocheteau’s pictures are worth a fortune, even the small ones. Did you know?’

  ‘No.’ She stared at Meyer’s polka-dotted bow tie while a little worm of anxiety began to wriggle in her stomach.

  ‘My wife said Sotheby’s just sold a Rocheteau for half a million. Half a million sterling, that is. You’ll be rolling.’

  Anika’s palms had begun to sweat. She lunged for the railing and clutched it tightly. ‘It wasn’t insured,’ she said. A couple of thousand dollars, that’s what she’d thought the Rocheteau might be worth. OK, she’d fantasised that it might be worth more, but that was just a daydream and one that she’d dismissed almost at once. If she’d thought the portrait was really valuable she would have hidden it, not left it hanging on her bedroom wall. What a fool she’d been.

  Meyer’s lips curled with what looked like a suppressed smile. It was that old human reaction of smiling at another’s misfortune. Trying to restore emotional equilibrium, Anika’s mother used to say: you heard bad news and it was instinctive for some people to smirk. Yet this didn’t stop her wanting to punch him.

  And she wanted to punch herself too. When you were born and bred under communism, you didn’t think of insurance. Communism provided for all, didn’t it? Panic began to expand in her chest and her throat closed up. If she’d been thinking like a true Australian, she would have acted quickly after her trip to the gallery. She would have hidden the painting somewhere safe and insured it herself, even though she had no idea of its true value. The person who stole it knew its worth – its monetary worth. But they didn’t know its psychological value, all those family memories encapsulated in a canvas that she would never get back.

  ‘Did you see the report, Anika?’

  ‘No. I haven’t read the paper today.’

  ‘I tore it out of the Gazette. You can have it, if you like.’ Meyer pulled out of his top pocket a crumpled piece of paper and passed it to her.

  Nodding her thanks, Anika peered up at the arches, as if they required her attention rather than the tatty piece of newsprint in her hand. She couldn’t bring herself to look at it right away. Seeing the theft reported in the Gazette would make its loss more real. The police must have notified the media, or their neighbours had. Neither she nor Tabilla had spoken to any journalists.

  ‘Like a lift somewhere?’ Meyer said.

  ‘No, thanks.’ Anika’s breathing was ragged and her voice no more than a croak. ‘Sally’s driving me.’

  After he’d gone, she unfolded the paper.

  Art thief steals valuable painting from Rozelle home

  In a brazen suburban art heist, a thief has stolen an expensive portrait painting from a Rozelle home.

  The Impressionist painting Lady in a Blue Dress by renowned French artist Antoine Rocheteau was stolen on Saturday night while the owners were watching television.

  Lady in a Blue Dress is a portrait of a young woman with dark red hair, and is forty-six centimetres high by thirty-eight centimetres, Miss Anita Molnar aged 24 explained.

  Balmain crime manager, Detective Inspector McIntyre said the theft was reported on Saturday night by the owners, believed to be mother and daughter.

  Police were appealing for information, especially from anyone in the art world.

  Anyone with information can call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

  Sloppy reporting and she’d never spoken to a journalist; the reporter must have got garbled details from the police or a neighbour. But at least they’d got right the description of the painting and its size. Anika found it an effort to plod up the steps, there was litter everywhere and the sun beat down relentlessly on her head. Sally and Peter were waiting at the top; Sally’s face was concerned when she saw Anika’s expression. Anika told her and Peter about her conversation with Howard Meyer and showed them the article.

  ‘This makes everything worse.’ Anika climbed into the back seat of Sally’s car. Sally would drop her off at the Rozelle traffic lights on Victoria Road.

  ‘But why should it?’ Sally pulled out in front of their tutor’s car. Meyer had banked-up traffic behind him. Like a traffic cop he waved out the cars of his design group. Sally gave him a mock salute and a tiny toot of her horn and slipped into second gear with a crunching sound.

  Peter’s sharp intake of breath showed his sympathy lay with the engine. ‘It’s going to be harder for the thief to get rid of it if it’s that well known,’ he said.

  Anika kept her thoughts to herself for the journey home through the busy peak-hour traffic that claimed most of Sally’s attention. Tonight, she was going to have to phone Daniel to cancel the valuation meeting and she really didn’t want to. Cancelling the meeting was equivalent to abandoning all hope that she’d get the painting back and she wasn’t ready for that yet.

  The painting had hung in Nyenye’s flat for as long as Anika could remember. Maybe Nyenye knew something else about its provenance. Something more than the wrong name of the man who’d given it to Tomas. Anika and Miklos had spent hours playing in Nyenye’s living room when they were very young. A room full of contrasts, darkness and dinginess until you looked closely at the walls through the dim lighting and saw the beauty of the paintings hanging there; the backdrop to the games that the children played, when Nyenye gave them ancient curtains from her rag bag and a free rein to push around the furniture to make a cubby house. The Rocheteau had hung to the right of the chimney breast – the fireplace that was never used – and immediately above it was a painting of women in brightly coloured hoop dresses proceeding through a gloomy landscape. Anika had grown up with those paintings, she’d grown up with the Rocheteau. Losing it was losing a bit of her past.

  Tabilla clearly had no idea of its value or its origins. Maybe knowledge of its provenance had vanished with Tomas. They were almost at Pyrmont Bridge when – mouth suddenly dust-dry and hands cl
utching at the edge of the seat – Anika was blindsided by a question. How did her parents come to give her such a valuable painting to carry out of Hungary – could they really have had no idea of its worth? Surely if they’d known it was so valuable they would have told her to be careful. Yet they hadn’t said a word about that and they’d never mentioned it since, apart from asking in their indirect way if it had cleared customs OK.

  Chapter 15

  After dinner, Daniel phoned Anika before she had a chance to ring him.

  ‘I saw that article in the Gazette,’ he said, once the courtesies were out of the way. ‘Why didn’t you tell me your painting’s been stolen?’

  ‘I was just about to. I didn’t want to call you any earlier because I’m still hoping it’ll turn up.’

  ‘I’ll put off our meeting with the dealer.’ There was a pause during which she heard the phone’s static and then Daniel’s sigh, before he said, ‘It might turn up yet.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘You must be feeling awful. I’m so sorry, Anika.’

  ‘It’s a terrible shock.’

  ‘I bet it is. How did it happen?’

  While she explained he made sympathetic noises, and from time to time asked a question. When she’d finished, he said, ‘You need cheering up. Would you like to have dinner with me next Friday night?’

  ‘I can’t on Friday. What about Saturday night instead?’

  ‘I can’t on Saturday.’

  Anika imagined a girlfriend. Maybe that was why their kiss last Saturday night was aborted. It was as if the car back-firing and Mrs Thornton’s arrival had given him a chance to have second thoughts about that almost-kiss. The girlfriend would be artistic and pretty, with a confident manner to match his. Or perhaps it was a boyfriend. Arty and devastatingly handsome, like those men in the advertisements for impossible clothes that you see sometimes in the colour supplements of the weekend newspapers.