by L. S. Hilton
‘Enjoy the pictures, Colonel.’
*
At the Planet Organic in St John’s Wood I ordered a turmeric latte and used the bathroom to clean up, pulping the little patches of skin in a tissue and flushing them down the loo. The used gloves were back in my pocket. I’d get rid of them later. My DNA was still probably all over the flat, but then whose DNA was it? It wasn’t as if Elisabeth Teerlinc actually existed. I was beginning to come round to that. All that bother constructing a self, becoming a real person, and then you just get blamed for it. I replaced my messed-up skirt and blouse with the fresh white Alexander Wang T-shirt dress rolled up in my bag, wiped a telltale spot of blood from my ankle then took my cup of saffron-coloured foam outside, watching the mothers and children from behind my sunglasses and enjoying the limpid haze of the still July day. I once told someone I wasn’t interested in revenge, but then I say a lot of shit. Maybe the colonel made it to the phone, but I wouldn’t have put money on it.
27
It was a short walk from Claridge’s to the House, but they had troubled to send a car. Before I left, I sent a text to Elvis, confirming the time and place of our meeting later in the evening, then I took a long look in the mirror. So many eyes to dress for. I remembered changing for my first show at Gentileschi, the unabashed pleasure I had felt then when I viewed the reflection of my own achievements. My dress that night had been black, now it was white, a Maria Grachvogel column, draped low behind and tied loosely on the hips, Yermolov’s earrings my only jewellery.
Da Silva stuck his head round the bathroom door. ‘Wow.’
‘Don’t touch! Your hands are all wet.’
‘Spoilsport.’
‘You’ll see me at the sale? And then afterwards, in the warehouse? Eleven?’
I was planning something special. Romantic. Something I wanted him to see after the sale, to celebrate before we went back to Italy. After I had returned from St John’s Wood, I had taken him down to the House to walk him through the route to the warehouse. I used the pass Rupert had given me to let us in. I remembered the bustling atmosphere of sale days, the trolleys with the carefully wrapped works being hauled through the workrooms, the porters for once giving directions to the experts. I had waved to Jim, who was boxing a small picture for transport. I noticed with pleasure that it was Mackenzie Pratt’s Utrillo, withdrawn from the sale.
‘Good luck tonight!’ he called, and I blew him a kiss. When we’d passed him, I put my tongue in da Silva’s ear and explained a bit more about my surprise. It got a positive reaction.
‘You’ll need this, love.’ I handed him my pass. ‘You’ll be going in through the public entrance, I’ll go straight through the lobby to the party.’
He tucked it carefully into the waistband of his towel.
‘Don’t be late!’
‘I promise, my love. In bocca al lupo!’
I watched his naked back as he closed the bathroom door.
Once I heard the shower running again, I opened the wardrobe door and then the safe inside. The combination was Franci’s birthday. I’d noticed it when da Silva had stowed his Caracal away when he arrived. There was no reason for him to remove the gun this evening. My bag was a Balenciaga Giant City tote in apricot lizard skin, good and roomy. There were X-ray machines for security on the public door, but it could go in just fine with me.
You know you’re wearing a good dress when you walk into silence. The sunlight from the street filled the air with motes of gold. It reminded me of Calabria, of those long days of heavy heat. I’d stayed, then, because – well, it didn’t matter much now why I’d stayed. The reason had proved as transient as the phosphene stars which had danced in my eyes when I rubbed them against the glare. One thing remained the same though. I still wanted to win. As I crossed the hotel lobby to the waiting driver, the only sound was the ring of my heels on the marble.
*
A red carpet had been unrolled from the kerbside up to the main door of the House. The crowd might have been for a movie premiere – they had even erected barriers to keep the gawkers back. I asked the driver to make a lap of St James’s Square while a tall television actress in a plunging gown posed for the bunch of paps hovering on the pavement. Two media vans were parked outside the London Library and I recognised the art critic of The Times giving an interview to a journalist with a microphone on the steps. I waited discreetly to one side while the paps shot a pair of fluorescent reality stars hand in hand, clutching catalogues, then walked through in their wake.
Rupert was waiting in the lobby in black tie, distractedly greeting the buyers and checking his watch. Every now and then he mopped his head with a flamboyantly printed silk handkerchief. He greeted me effusively with a kiss on both cheeks and ushered me up to the boardroom, and on into the inner sanctum of the chairman’s drawing room. I hadn’t even got past the door when I’d worked at the place. Slender, serious-looking women holding champagne flutes hovered on eighteenth-century silk sofas talking to a mixed crowd of men, some in black tie, a few younger ones in open-collared shirts and jackets with jeans. Jeff Auerbach, the CEO of the tech company KryptoSocial, was defiant in fat sneakers and a worn polo shirt. I remembered Carlotta trying to persuade me to have a crack at him in St Moritz last winter; I nodded at him and he grinned. Rupert introduced me to a group near the door, but as I moved across the amber parquet several people greeted me. Everyone knew I was the Gauguin seller, and while no one was vulgar enough to mention the money, I might as well have had the reserve stamped across my forehead. If the House made the price, I was going to have a whole lot of new best friends.
‘You look beautiful.’ A soft voice at my shoulder. I turned to look at Yermolov.
‘Thank you. Not as beautiful as your gift.’
‘You must be very excited, Miss Teerlinc,’ he added in a more social tone.
Rupert was still hovering solicitously, but the distance created by his stomach between us was driving him frantic. Pavel Yermolov was famous in the art world for never appearing in the salerooms, preferring to buy his masterpieces through anonymous intermediaries, and yet here he was, at Rupert’s party, munching on a wild mushroom and white truffle tartlet. Yermolov reached round to shake hands.
‘I was just complimenting Miss Teerlinc on her extraordinary eye.’
‘Indeed, indeed,’ spluttered Rupert.
The room was becoming more crowded. It would soon be time to move down for the sale. Protocol and avarice were at war in Rupert’s face. The idea was, we were all supposed to pretend this was an agreeable social occasion, with the impending auction a mere charming formality.
‘Do you have your eye on something tonight, Mr Yermolov?’ asked Rupert casually, as though a representative of the House would never stoop to following his clients’ intentions through the tabloids.
‘Naturally.’
Rupert excused himself and scuttled as rapidly as his bulk allowed to a minion at the door. He would be getting a message down to the phone bank, to confirm Yermolov’s presence to Pandora Smith. As Zulfugarly was bidding from New York, I had requested that Pandora be his representative. It was her first big auction, and she had been thrilled. Rupert’s progress opened a corridor towards us, and as Yermolov was recognised, the atmosphere was twisted up a further key. It reminded me of the other parties I used to go to, back when I lived in London, the endless moment of tight anticipation before someone reached out a hand or dipped in for a kiss, everyone waiting on the brink of the action, taut with the promise of ecstasy.
‘Elisabeeeth!’ Angelica was brandishing her phone for a selfie with Yermolov, but he stepped firmly out of range. We did a bit of breathy squeaking which was mercifully interrupted by the tannoy.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. The sale will begin in five minutes.’
Yermolov offered me his arm. ‘Shall we?’
*
Downstairs, the Spice Rack were busy checking invites, distributing paddles and assigning seats. Major buy
ers were seated in the middle of the room, towards the front, with the sellers ranked behind. On either side, the standing pens were jammed with gallerists, students, journalists and a few curious tourists. Auctions are public affairs – in theory, anyone can attend for free. At the back, still in their brown coveralls, were the porters. I checked to see if Jim was amongst them. For minor sales, the porters themselves carried the works to the rostrum, but tonight the House had selected a pair of tall, good-looking boys, matched like footmen, done up in tails and white gloves like the entertainment at a hen party.
Yermolov accepted a numbered wooden paddle and saw me to my seat.
‘So, maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?’ he asked quietly.
‘Maybe.’
He kissed my cheek then continued down towards the stage. Flanking the platform, the telephone bidders waited by their polished, old-fashioned bank of landlines. Another innovation – they were done up in the House colours, the young men important and solemn in lounge suits and pale gold silk ties, the same shade as the matching strapless evening gowns worn by the young women. Each rested a hand lightly on the receiver, their pose adding to the tension in the room, like racehorses lined up before the gun. Pandora caught my eye and gave me a quick, conspiratorial smile. She looked proud and nervous. I spotted da Silva over my shoulder seconds before the lights went down. He was wearing a dark-blue shirt with a big white Polo logo, not one of the things I’d bought him. But he was there. I felt my muscles ease, loose and rangy with anticipation. Game on.
Speakers blasted the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth as the strobes went up, the screen behind the podium illuminated with the House logo. The chorus line of phone buyers lifted their sets as the ‘sizzle’ kicked off to whoops and cheers from the crowd, who applauded as each lot streamed up, the images morphing through the letters of the artists’ names. Phones mushroomed everywhere, grabbing the action – any minute now they’d have their lighters out. The film segued through twenty of the major lots, from Manet to Pollock, to abrupt blackout. Silence. Then the first notes of the theme tune from Rocky. Jesus. The lights threw up a stream of electric pink and blue like fireworks as the de Kooning and the Gauguin – my Gauguin – flashed up side by side, while Charles Eagles jogged down the central aisle in a velvet dinner jacket, the crowd applauding and fist-pumping his entrance as he climbed the rostrum. What had happened to the House? Poor Rupert. Eagles waited like an actor as the lights came up, absorbing the tension. The Dreamboys carried on the first work, a Basquiat, and set it reverently on the stand. And we were off.
Exuberance switched to concentration. Eagles made his way through the first few pieces with no surprises – the Basquiat, which went for eighty, followed by a Caillebotte and the Manet, each exceeding the reserve by a couple of hundred thousand. Number four was the Pollock, set at one fifty. Immediately, a girl in the bank next to Pandora raised her paddle, her opposite number bid, a sign from the floor, another phone bid, a quiet sign from a Japanese lady on the front row.
‘One hundred and fifty,’ called Eagles. ‘Do I have your bids?’
The mounting price flashed on the screen behind his head in pounds, dollars, euros and roubles. A new bid from the bank, then another and a collective exhalation concentrated the room. One eighty. And then, as the invisible buyers seemed to become infected with the lust of the mob on the sales floor, Eagles could hardly keep up with the bids, each one winding the thrill of the figures ever higher. Two thirty. You could buy a hospital for that. Two fifty. Two sixty. The bids dwindled until there were just two figures moving in the bank, the original girl and a fiercely concentrated boy, eyeing each other as they spoke behind cupped hands, urging the buyers on. Two seventy. Two eighty. A long pause.
‘Do I hear two hundred and ninety million?’
The boy was muttering rapidly, but his face had already conceded defeat.
‘Going once . . .’
The boy signed a cut-off.
‘Going twice and . . . sold! Ladies and gentlemen, for two hundred and eighty million pounds.’ Roaring from the spectators.
I dug my nails into my palms as the next few lots dragged by, holding my back straight, trying to appear cool, unconcerned. Yermolov had not so far raised his paddle.
‘And now, Intersection, by William de Kooning.’
At about four metres square, the canvas gave its handlers some trouble raising it into position. Even under the spotlights, it had a faded look, the usual vivid colours typical of the artist seemed bleached out, a rackety assemblage of bamboo and pale pewter spindles hunching round a single flash of deep manganese blue. It unnerved me. There was something cold and spidery in its density that I had to admit was powerful, the forms skittering across the picture, crisp and horribly predatory. It pulled at the eye in a way which was almost hypnotic – at least, not a picture you would feel quite safe turning your back on. You’d want to see what it was doing. Eagles was tensed forward on his toes, loving the anticipation.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said slowly, lowering his voice to a seductive murmur, ‘opening the bids at sixty million.’
The reserve was twice that – it had been all over the newspapers and was printed in the catalogue, yet the room thrilled sensibly. Almost immediately, Pandora picked up her phone. Fuck. Zulfugarly was bidding.
‘I have seventy million, ladies and gentlemen. Do I hear eighty?’
The bids climbed, the figures above Eagles’s head barely spinning fast enough as his hands moved like a conductor, summoning mounting gambles from all over the saleroom. It passed the reserve and climbed towards two hundred. Pandora was still speaking, raising her hand to counter as each new price was raised. Had Zulfugarly changed his mind? Was he going for the de Kooning instead of the Gauguin? Rupert would be on the verge of a coronary. No more than the fat bastard deserved, but the last thing I needed.
At two hundred and fifty million there were three bidders remaining. One on the floor, a silver-haired American I had seen in the drawing room, two in the bank. The American pulled out at two seventy.
‘Do I hear two hundred and eighty? Two hundred and eighty million pounds?’
A nod from Pandora. A nod from her counterpart in the bank.
‘Three hundred million pounds.’ If they went any higher they would break the record. I forced my breath into my stomach, praying that Zulfugarly was being strategic, exhausting the ammunition of a potential rival for the Gauguin.
A squeak from the floor. In the front seats, where a tiny, elderly Asian woman in black had calmly raised her paddle.
‘Three hundred and ten million pounds, ladies and gentlemen.’
The de Kooning was now officially the most expensive painting in the world. In the stands, the journalists were tapping their feeds, breaking the news even as Pandora motioned, casting an anxious glance in my direction. The other phone raised. The little old lady made another slight sign.
‘I have three hundred and thirty million pounds. Now it’s against you, miss.’
Eagles nodded to Pandora, who paused, spoke, paused. Was she raising? No, she was out. Thank Christ. If they’d carried on any longer I would have suffocated, along with half of the room – for the last few minutes I’d forgotten to breathe.
‘Between the lady and the buyer at the telephone. Do I hear three hundred and forty million?’
She raised, even as the other handler on the phone shook his head.
‘Three hundred and fifty million pounds for Willem de Kooning, Intersection! To you, madam.’
The sum had bludgeoned the exuberance from the crowd. Momentarily, the room shared a moment of silent awe. Then the blind rush, the swarming release. Most of the House employees managed to retain their professional composure, but Eagles was panting audibly into his microphone, offering out his hands to the love.
‘And now, the last lot of the evening, Paul Gauguin, Woman with a Fan II.’
I could feel the eyes of the group from the reception seeking me from every corn
er of the room. As the picture came in, I couldn’t resist a look at da Silva. He seemed calm, absorbed in the screen of his phone, barely glancing up as Li’s work was positioned on the stand.
‘Phew!’ joked Eagles, echoing Rupert’s gesture with the handkerchief. ‘Quite an evening, ladies and gentlemen, quite an evening. But now, do I hear an opening bid of fifty million?’
For a horrible second, I half expected someone to stand up and denounce the painting. Knowing it as I did, I was suddenly unable to see it properly, each line and layer of colour screaming ‘fake!’ Now it was exposed, the thousand times my eyes had traversed the canvas seeking the slightest millimetre of a flaw seemed to count for nothing. I had a wild urge to call it myself, to stand up and throw everything away. What did I care if Raznatovic got his money, if da Silva was reprieved? I sat on my hands, stared fixedly at the stiff collar of the man in front of me. It has to sell. If it doesn’t sell, it’s not over.
The first bids were already climbing before I focused on Yermolov’s back, searching for a hint of movement. The number above Eagles stood at eighty-five. Yermolov raised his paddle. One more look over my shoulder. Da Silva was sure as fuck paying attention now, his eyes like mine streamed on Pandora. She raised. Yermolov countered. More bids from the floor. One hundred, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and fifty. From across the seats, I could almost feel da Silva’s relief. Raznatovic had his price. But I wanted more.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have two hundred million pounds.’
Eagles was dropping his voice now, focusing the whole energy of the crowd on the duel between Yermolov and Pandora as one by one the other bidders cut. I fixed my eyes on my lap, willing Yermolov to continue. It isn’t about the money for these people. Boats, planes, girls, pictures. The money is just how you keep score. I had to hope that Zulfugarly’s desire to win would conquer. He’d gone to three thirty for the de Kooning – was that the limit of his insane idea of a budget?