White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  Was there any point in honesty? Was there anything to lose – he had no faith at all that the necklace would be lying untouched in the wall after seventy turbulent years. He had made love to her, he felt connected, and so he explained that he was uncertain whether Mitrokin could be trusted, and in any case did not deal in jewellery.

  Soon afterwards he left for London, committed to return – in three months with cash deposits. Anya was discreet with him in public, particularly in the hotel, where it was clear that every member of the vast staff was some category of informer. It was the one thing which punctured his mistrust of her.

  Anya visited Mitrokin as soon as their mutual acquaintance, the Georgian Andrusha, next appeared. A recurring cartilage problem had ended his dancing career in his twenties, and he was now a full-time social parasite, a big man among the gangsters who supplied the city with the necessities of life, and a big man in literal terms since with inactivity and high living he had run grossly to fat.

  He sat like a pasha on the Empire chaise that was the dealer’s finest piece of furniture and delivered his judgement. ‘I find no justification for knocking holes in the walls of the Pioneer Palace. If those disgusting little brown-noses have left any walls standing. Too much trouble. He says he’s not really interested, so why don’t we just believe him?’ Anya had always been soft about foreigners, but surely even she could understand that there was nothing in this?

  ‘Not really interested – that’s like saying a little bit pregnant. He’ll go for it if we set him up right.’ She pouted in disappointment.

  ‘She’s right, Andrusha. When he sat here and looked at this picture, I was watching his face. He’ll do the job, all we’ve got to do is give him a hard-on for it. But you’re right, leave the Pioneers to gallop their maggots in peace. There’s a deal here, but we don’t need to disturb their innocent pleasures to get it.’ Mitrokin pulled an envelope from the only working desk in the room and took some photographs from it. ‘Someone I know in Moscow, jewellery is his big number, he knows the market and he has much more stock than I, suggested that we could tempt him – and use this. Look at the picture, it’s a near-enough match.’ The photograph showed a diamond necklace displayed on a dark background so that all its details were clear. He took it over to the portrait. The rendering of the necklace was not precise but both pieces were of similar overall shape. ‘The only difference that you can really see is the drop stones here at the front, but these can be added, for a price. If the man comes back and says he’s changed his mind, or suddenly finds he knows someone who’s into diamonds, we can just give him this. Simple, yeah?’

  Anya was enthusiastic and so he agreed to sanction the scheme – after all it would cost him nothing and with the country opening up to the West, who knew where a contact might lead? ‘I hope he gave you some nice presents, this art pimp. How are you keeping, by the way?’

  ‘I’m great, really good, thanks to you, Andrusha. I can’t thank you enough for fixing this job for me.’

  ‘Any time. What’s an old friend for, after all? You get any more problems, just get in touch and I’ll do what I can. And your toy boy?’ Anya had taken up with the deputy manager of the hotel, ten years younger than her and thoroughly bad news. From the Georgian’s point of view he was thick with all the wrong people, mostly the gang with which his own organization was most often at war. Plus the man was a tightwad, he neglected her, screwed around – and now it was common knowledge that he’d set up his new secretary in an apartment.

  ‘He works too hard, but he’s good to me so I can’t complain, can I?’

  Poor girl, such a dummy. Life was terrible for a woman without a man to take care of her, especially at Anya’s age. ‘Glad to hear it. I thought the younger generation were a bunch of skiving halfwits, but maybe I’m wrong. That freezer I promised you is on its way, the boys will bring it round next week.’ He heaved himself to his feet to kiss her goodbye. ‘Good luck with your necklace scam – maybe you’ll get a collar on an exit visa at last, eh? And if you need anything, don’t forget, you know where I live.’

  Lovat consulted Kusminsky, who gave a good opinion of Mitrokin, and offered the explanation that he had withheld his name only because he knew him as a dealer in Fabergé and small objects and never considered that he might also trade fine art. He offered more detailed advice but Lovat had a powerful instinct that the real information, whatever it was that was crucial for him to know, was being withheld.

  The deal for the two portraits and three small bronzes was done with Mitrokin, the goods shipped through Zimbabwe as tractor parts and arriving via Kusminsky with false French provenance covering their ownership since 1911. The dealer was as good as his word throughout the transaction, and, wanting to keep such a valuable source sweet, Lovat allowed that he might be able to place the Kusminskaya necklace if it could be recovered. He asked for a photograph, which he showed to Kusminsky, the old man dismissed it after the briefest examination as nothing like anything that had ever belonged to his mother.

  ‘She had two diamond necklaces, and she was painted in both; one made from rather poor stones given to her by the Tsar, which was shipped by Fabergé to Paris, recorded in archives with drawing. She sold it in 1920 for very bad price but what to do, it was not the time to sell diamonds. Other one, Orlov necklace, is priceless. Now only I know where it is.’

  For the opening of the exhibition, Lovat hired a public relations firm, who christened the event ‘A Night in St Petersburg’, had half the gallery tented in gaudy, glittering fabrics and hired a balalaika trio. The Tuttlingens flew over with a party and the Russian Ambassador made a twenty-minute speech about glasnost which was laboriously constructed to leave him politically untainted while remaining quite incomprehensible to his audience.

  The guests whispered among themselves, and the least discreet was Isabel, conspicuous in a small black dress encrusted with lurid graffiti in sequins and beads. Lovat thought that his wife looked like a parrot when she was trying to fascinate a man, the way she shrieked, preened and bobbed her head. The performance was for the benefit of one of the Americans, a man with expensively messed blond hair. A bright blue silk scarf was draped around his neck over an ensemble of loose clothes. On his hollow cheeks grew half a millimetre of designer stubble which, being blond, imparted a sheen like good velvet. Since Isabel considered the deconstructed Armani look to be utterly passé, Lovat was surprised that she was paying him so much attention.

  ‘That gentleman is accompanying one of my wife’s friends,’ Don growled in his ear as relieved applause broke out at the end of the speech. ‘Always running around the world with some ballet company, which makes as much sense as digging a hole in the back yard and throwing money into it. He’s supposed to have trained in Russia, although he is American. She is a widow, and her trustees would be extremely relieved if she dumped Terpsichore and took up with a muse that didn’t need so much investment. Cheri tells me she’s about to come around to their point of view so I thought we’d ask’em along. They will be dining with us.’

  At the meal, Isabel gave a virtuoso performance. She now defined herself by what she did not do – she did not drive, smoke, drink alcohol, or eat meat. She seemed also to have given up sex since his return, but Lovat had an instinct that her celibacy was specific only to him. The simple meal was turned into a three-hour spectacle starring her own ego. First, she disdained the common Perrier water on the table and produced her own bottle of Welsh spring water, supplied by a rock star friend from his own farm. Between the first and second courses a box of Nicorex gum appeared in her fingertips and was manipulated unceasingly until someone invited her to explain that a magazine editor friend in New York sent it over for her.

  With operatic verve, she returned the salad to the kitchen for the crime of containing croutons fried in butter. Finally, when the conversation turned to the environment, she struck a series of absurdly tragic poses – face contorted in caring agony, hands wrung in the depth of her hollow belly,
fingers pinching her temples, perhaps in a vain bid to extract a thought.

  ‘You remind me of Martha Graham’s Sophoclean heroines,’ observed the target of these histrionics, obviously unmoved.

  ‘It must have been just physical with her and Scott Fitz, don’t you think? She was kind of androgynous, he was basically gay – I mean, that’s what the impotence was about, really, wasn’t it – so she was the next best thing to a boy …’

  The American’s eloquent grey eyes looked at her as if she were speaking in schizophrenic voices. Lovat laughed out loud. ‘Martha Graham the choreographer, dear. You’re thinking of Sheilah Grahame …’ The end of his sentence was muffled by a slab of monkfish which hit his mouth. Tomato concassé dripped on to his shirt. Isabel had thrown her plate at him. The legs of the Philippe Starck chair squealed as she rose and by the time she reached the door it had clattered to the floor.

  ‘She is your wife, I mean, you’re married, aren’t you?’ There was a hint of wonder in the American’s voice, implying that a man must be powerfully stupid to marry at all, let alone to marry a creature designed to make life a misery. His own companion, who was seated within earshot, bridled visibly.

  ‘Can’t you tell? She’s from Australia.’ Lovat offered the only explanation he had. He was surprised to hear an expression of sympathy from this man – why, he could not analyse. Instinctively, he recognized his sexual aura and in the primitive depth of his psyche he saw him as an enemy.

  ‘Mum – beautiful country but no culture. It’s a great deficiency, one has to work hard to remedy it. Still, I am grateful personally since now I can talk to you. What a great thing you have done in bringing these wonderful paintings to the West.’

  Lovat was unused to flattery and it went to his head at once, allaying his gut distrust.

  ‘We haven’t been introduced. I know your name, of course; I am Alexander Wolfe.’ A slight pause, as if he only half expected a reaction. ‘It was a particularly moving exhibition for me, because one of your pictures is a portrait of my grandmother. The lady by the balustrade, the ballet dancer … so strange, to see her as a young woman, when I remember her as elderly. But still magnificent, in her way. When I was at ballet school in Leningrad I saw their portrait of her, but it’s nowhere near as fine as yours.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, of course.’ Lovat had a shred of recollection; Kolya had once mentioned a boy, but not kindly.

  ‘What an extraordinary coincidence. Were you very close?’

  ‘Absolutely. She brought me up, I ran away from home when I was quite young to live with her.’

  ‘And her son Nicolai …’

  ‘My uncle Kolya, yes. He was living in Paris by then, but he was very protective towards me, especially when I was starting out in my career. Now –’ He made a beautiful gesture of regret. ‘My company tours all over the world, but I’m based in New York …’

  ‘He hasn’t been very well.’ Lovat would have put money, a lot of money, on this being news to Alexander Wolfe. Such a shame there was no one to take on the bet.

  ‘Really – I hadn’t heard. How sad. My uncle always radiated good health, good living – he used to absolutely glow with it. He’s an antique dealer, but the foundation of his business was selling my grandmother’s jewels when she first went into exile.’ How eager he was to clothe himself in any shred of importance within his reach. This was a man with an ineradicable sense that in the judgement of serious men he was worthless. He was like an orphan, all sham swagger betrayed by his hunger for care and protection.

  ‘It was quite strange seeing that portrait, and seeing her in her diamonds at last. She always talked about them.’ He shook his head. The melancholy seemed genuine, but Wolfe had the curse of a highly persuasive manner; he was so compelling that he believed himself, and therefore could not discriminate between his own real emotion and play-acting.

  ‘Kolya must have sold those very diamonds.’

  ‘No, there you must be wrong. The story in the family was that in the Revolution the best diamonds – the Orlov diamonds which her protector gave her – had to be left behind in her safe.’

  A notion appeared in Lovat’s mind which he at once rejected. Undaunted, it restated itself in more elaborate form. It was irresistible, he had to comply. The more he considered it, the more flawless it seemed. It begged to be executed.

  ‘Whoever has them now is sitting on a goldmine.’ Be cool, be noncommittal. This man may be stupid but he may not be naive.

  ‘Well, I suppose so many diamonds are worth quite a bit.’

  ‘Oh, but that necklace would be worth more than just the value of the stones – far more. Ten times, a hundred times more. It’s a historic piece. They belonged to Prince Orlov, I take it, the descendant of the lover of Catherine the Great. If it ever went on sale it would be worth a huge sum – probably the most historic piece of jewellery outside the royal collections of Europe.’

  Childlike, the grey eyes widened. ‘I don’t believe anyone has it now. Grandmère’ – one word of French, but remarkably well spoken – ‘believed the necklace was exactly where she left it. She said she wanted me to have it, when she died. I’d even gone off and looked for her old house, and it was still there. She drew me a map of all the rooms, with the safe marked on them.’

  ‘When was that, when you found it was still there?’

  ‘Sixty-eight, sixty-nine …’

  ‘And where was it, do you remember that?’

  Wolfe assumed a sly look, absurd on a face which was not able to register any mental process in detail. ‘What a lot of questions – are you interrogating me?’

  ‘Not at all. Forgive me, I’m fascinated by the story. The idea of that magnificent treasure just lying undiscovered for seventy years … I don’t deal in jewellery myself, but if I did I’d be dying to get my hands on it.’

  ‘Would that be possible?’

  ‘Oh yes. Look, this isn’t the best place for a proper conversation – come and see me at the gallery tomorrow, have lunch if you’re free – and we can talk it through.’

  Wolfe appeared promptly at midday and toured the pictures in the manner of a five-star general inspecting troops: leisurely, condescending, uttering a few encouraging monosyllables through barely parted lips. He was nervous and at pains to hide it.

  Lovat hardly recalled Kusminsky’s judgement on him. ‘What makes man become gigolo? He’s lazy, he’s a tapette – at the bottom, he wants to deny what really he is. That is my nephew – he thinks he desires woman like young dog thinks he wants tin can tied to car bumper. Making much noise, make whole street look at him, never see that he does not desire her at all, that is not his sexuality. I try, I Kolya, his uncle, I talk to him, but always he deny this. And then woman come with money – he goes. Then another one, and another one. Now he is women’s dream, that’s all.’

  Cheri Tuttlingen had been less analytical. ‘He’s been telling my friend he needs ten million for the next season – I mean, no cock is worth that much, right?’

  In another man’s company, insecurity was written all over Wolfe. The only fear Lovat had for his scheme was that the man would not have the guts to act. Lovat assumed command of the lunch, took him to Harry’s Bar and noted the looks he gathered from a table of property-developers’wives who tossed their hair and flicked about their salads, restless like antelope scenting a lion.

  ‘Leningrad people are quite passionate about their heritage, I expect you know. While the rest of the country was pulling down statues, they went to extraordinary lengths to preserve the Imperial palaces, for instance.’ Lovat ordered a magnificent bottle of wine and watched him drink it as if it were Coca-Cola. ‘What I’m thinking is that if Kusminskaya’s house was intact in the late Sixties, and it was presumably in that lovely old part of the city which has been preserved intact, then it will be there today. You could go and simply claim your birthright. If your grandmother left a will you might even be able to do it legally – the Foreign Office negotiated with She
vardnadze a couple of years ago for claims for foreign assets seized in the Revolution to be settled.’ He watched Wolfe’s mobile face closely. No, there was no will. ‘Even without a paper claim, it shouldn’t be too much trouble. I’m sure you’ve found how easy it is to bribe the Russians.’

  ‘Oh sure, but then what would I do with it? I’d have trouble smuggling it into the States …’

  ‘There are ways … if it was my problem, I’d sell in France, where they’re not so hot on paperwork. But through a British auction house – there’s one which is developing a special interest in Russia, Berrisford’s. And I’d take it straight to their new business director, Bianca Berrisford, but don’t be fobbed off with anyone junior.’

  A haze of Giorgio announced the entry of Evgenia Panopoulis, sixteen-year-old daughter of a Greek banker and an American socialite, whose coal-black eyes smouldered on the cover of the current issue of Vogue. She paused by their table, Lovat rose to greet her and she lingered at his side, fingering her snaking black curls, complimenting Wolfe on his past season in New York and angling for an invitation for the next. Once he named a theatre and suggested she look him up her smile raked the corner of the room like a lighthouse beam and she almost skipped away.

  ‘Nice kid – but that was so embarrassing,’ Wolfe confided. ‘I don’t even know when we’ll be able to open. Our last show was a smash, the first time we’ve ever been a hit in New York and we’ve got a great programme in preparation now, but I’m kind of uncertain about the backer.’ He sighed again. It seemed to him to be the greatest of human tragedies that all passion was finite. He manipulated a natural end to his affairs, and no woman had ever left him, but there was a first time for everything and the more generous women were in the beginning, the more embittered they seemed to become at the end. The widow was grateful to him for lightening the first years of her bereavement, but what they had was dead now. His need to fall in love again was pressing, but not with a child like Evgenia; he liked confident, independent women, who controlled their own lives and of course their own money. It would be too humiliating to run after an heiress. ‘Where were we? You think I should look up this Mrs Berrisford?’