The Collector's Apprentice

by B. A. Shapiro

  She watched him go, surprisingly disappointed by his leave-taking. She shook off the feeling and returned to her work. She didn’t think about him again until about two weeks later when he strolled into the Princess Louise on High Holborn, where she was having a glass of sherry with two classmates from the Slade.

  The girls often met there because it was in central London, close to the British Museum and Paulien’s flat. It was also a beautiful place, with deep wood paneling and a ring of booths—where either single women or couples could be comfortable—circling a bar at which only men were allowed. And the food wasn’t half-bad.

  She recognized him immediately; he was difficult to forget, with his strong cleft chin and the clump of dark hair that lazily fell to his forehead. Not to mention those dimples. His suit was just as fine as it had been that day in the woods, but it was less formal and lent him an air of the urbane rather than the overly proper. She quickly ducked her head so that her long hair covered her face.

  She waited for him to come over, but there was no tap on her shoulder, no friendly cry of recognition in that sultry voice she remembered. She raised her head and surreptitiously watched him. He was sitting at the bar talking animatedly with another man, unaware of her. And she didn’t want him to be unaware of her. She flushed at the thought and lit a cigarette.

  “Why are you all red?” her friend Lannie asked. She followed Paulien’s eyes to the bar. “Oh là là!” she cried. “Who is that dashing fellow?”

  “I have no idea,” Paulien said primly, coloring even more deeply.

  Lannie elbowed their friend Bernice and shrieked at Paulien, “You’re a damn liar, you are!”

  “Shush,” Paulien hissed at her. “He’ll hear you.”

  “I thought you didn’t know him,” Lannie teased.

  Bernice rested her chin on her fists. “Wish I knew someone as dreamy as that. Think he has a friend for me?”

  “I’ve no idea who his friends are—or who he is,” Paulien said, then corrected herself. “Well, I did meet him once, very briefly. I don’t even remember his name,” she lied. “And I’m sure he doesn’t remember mine.”

  “Let’s go find out.” Lannie stood and grabbed Paulien’s hand.

  But Paulien pulled her down instead. “No,” she said, more sharply than she intended.

  Lannie held Paulien’s gaze, and when Paulien dropped her eyes, Lannie laughed softly, but with affection. “Have it your way, Paulie. Although I’m guessing what you really want is to go straight to that bar.”

  Paulien acknowledged the truth of her friend’s remark with a twisted smile, but when she looked back at the bar, George was gone.

  She began dropping into the Princess Louise more frequently, becoming almost a regular despite the fact that she wasn’t all that fond of sherry. But George didn’t return. At night, she dreamed about him; sometimes he chased her and sometimes it was the other way around, but either way, no one was ever caught.

  When she woke from one of these dreams, a deep longing consumed her, frightening her, and she had a hard time falling back asleep. It was ridiculous, she knew, there were other boys who sought her attentions, but they all seemed terribly young and unmannered.

  And then one day he was there. She was by herself, waiting for Lannie and two other classmates to join her for dinner, filling the time by sketching the bar, which was as ornate as the nave of a grand church.

  “Still creating something out of nothing, I see.”

  She sat completely still, savoring the inevitability of the moment. Then she lowered her sketchbook and pencil to the table and raised her eyes. “Hello, George Everard.”

  “I’ve been looking for you, Paulien Mertens.”

  Suddenly confident in the rightness of the world, she said, “And now you’ve found me.”

  5

  George/Benjamin, 1922

  Lisbon is a very agreeable city, and he wonders why he never thought to come here before. Not as dirty as Paris or London, much less frenetic. Safer. He’s sitting on the terrace of an elegant hotel, overlooking the harbor, enjoying the breezes and the pretty women. Granted, the skirts here aren’t as short as they are in Paris, but they’re short enough. He thinks of the suitcases full of cash in his room upstairs and smiles.

  He’ll be boarding his ship in the morning. Heading back to the good old US of A. New York City this time. Another financial scam, but with a different tenor. He has it all worked out. In fact, he’s already slipped into his new persona, Benjamin F. Talcott, American magnate. Needless to say, he isn’t Benjamin Talcott, any more than he was George Everard. Nor is he British, as he’s claimed for the past five years. He shifts in and out of identities and nationalities as easily as another man might shed a business suit for the weekend. One of his talents. Of which he has many.

  Everard Sureties was his biggest con yet. So simple, really. Buying international reply coupons in Italy, where the exchange rate is low, and cashing them in England, where the exchange rate is high. Too small a return for an ordinary man who thought small. But no one could accuse him of thinking small. Or being ordinary. He saw the potential, enticed investors who were so enamored of their paper returns that they never cashed out and then encouraged their friends to invest. The newcomers feeding in from the bottom, he taking it all off the top. Child’s play.

  Marks are everywhere, and they have only themselves to blame when disaster befalls them. Maybe he’ll find another comely, rich girl like Paulien Mertens to help with Talcott Reserves. Too bad she didn’t want to leave with him. Such a live wire. Smart and sexy and good in bed, if naive. From her reaction to him in Paris, still crazy in love with him, if a little angry at the moment.

  He’s guessing Paulien will be accompanying Edwin Bradley when he returns to Philadelphia. The two have been working well together; she appears to be in awe of Bradley, while Bradley appears to be completely infatuated with her. Now won’t that be nice? A ready-made conduit to one of the wealthiest men in America. Just as she was a conduit to one of the wealthiest men in Belgium. Philadelphia is right around the corner from New York.

  6

  Vivienne, 1922

  For over three weeks, Vivienne scouts for Dr. Bradley. She visits studios and galleries, roams the city and its outskirts, searches for pieces by both known and unknown artists. Some of these places are from the list Dr. Bradley gave her, and some she’s discovered by asking the artists and dealers for names of others doing exciting and original work. Papa always said this was the best way to find the most promising art before anyone else did.

  It takes all her time and all her thoughts, which is good, as it keeps her from tormenting herself over her parents’ renunciation and George’s deceit. Being in a world swirling with new ideas and boundless talent, eating and sleeping and breathing it every day. The sharp odor of paint and turpentine; the artists, clothes and hands and faces splattered with color; canvases scattered about, finished, unfinished, primed and abandoned; listening to them talk about their work, their influences, their hopes for the future. It fills her with delight and unremitting sadness.

  She pretends she isn’t doing this for Dr. Bradley, that she’s searching for unheralded masterpieces to add to the Mertens Museum of Post-Impressionism. She imagines the marvel of living with André Derain’s The Drying Sails, which he painted in the Mediterranean village of Collioure during the summer he spent there with Matisse. Or the deep cobalt embedded in fragments of red, orange, and white in Woman in Blue by Fernand Léger. She’s particularly fond of the paintings of André Masson, who, like Vivienne—or more precisely like Paulien—grew up in Belgium and took classes at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. The line between playacting and reality grows indistinct.

  She’s heading to her rooming house after a long day of touring, ruminating about adding more Belgian artists to the Mertens collection to increase its distinctiveness, when a furry shiver worries its way up her spine. Someone is following her, and she’s afraid to look. She speeds up
, steals into a recessed doorway. If only she were still in London, where dusk takes possession much earlier than it does in Paris.

  The narrow alcove lends little protection, and she can’t stay where she is. There’s an alley to her left. She slips into it, crouches behind a pile of trash, pushes her nose into the elbow of her coat in a failed attempt to mask the smell. Shame fills her. For what she allowed to be done to her and for what she allowed George to do to her family, to Alexandre’s brother, to so many others.

  Maybe she should just stand up and take what’s coming. There’s an appeal to this thought, to surrendering to her fate, to ending what will surely be a life of vigilance and remorse. A life pretending to be someone she isn’t, of never allowing anyone to get close because she can’t trust her ability to judge another’s character. A putrid waft of rotted fish assaults her nostrils. She takes off at a run.

  The sorry, shuttered storefronts, the crumbling bricks of the facades. There has to be somewhere she can hide. But the buildings are pressed too tightly together, too miserly to provide deliverance. He’s catching up. His footsteps are closer. His shadow falls on her shoulder.

  A hand grips her arm. “Paulien, it is—”

  Vivienne pummels him with her fists, tries to twist out of his grasp, but he’s larger and stronger than she is.

  He grabs her hands, presses them together. “Stop. Look at me. Stop. It is me. It is Franck.”

  Franck. Her baby brother. How could she not have recognized his voice? Terror. She hugs him tight. The sight of his crooked smile, the feel of his narrow waist, the smell of him. At seventeen, he towers over her. She presses her face into his chest and breathes him in.

  Franck awkwardly extricates himself. “Paulien, please.”

  “Vivienne,” she corrects. “Vivienne Gregsby. That’s who I am now.”

  “I cannot stay long,” he says, his tone oddly vacant, cold. “We need to talk.”

  “Come,” she says. “I know a place.” She takes him to a small café that opens onto the alley behind her rooming house. It’s moldy and smoky, and mice scamper in one corner—far different from anywhere she and Franck have ever been together. But it’s hidden and shadowy and almost completely empty. They take seats at a table that backs up to a greasy brick wall and pull their chairs close together.

  “Tell me,” Vivienne begs. “Tell me everything. How are you? How are Papa and Maman?”

  Franck hesitates and then says, “Papa has been stoic. Even after losing the estate, the mills, all the money, even after turning over most of the art collection to the Royal Museums. He is a strong man.”

  “Everything?” she whispers.

  “There are some paintings left. The ones in the colonnade. But not—”

  “Oh. Thank God he has them. At least . . . at least he has them. At least he has . . .” What has she done?

  “The Royal Museums would not take them, and no other museum wanted them either. Something about standards, I think.”

  “So he’ll be able to keep them?”

  Franck looks around. “I do not have much time. We must—”

  “Please tell me he can keep them.”

  He sighs the sigh of a much older man. “There is one potential buyer who wants them for his private collection. He is willing to pay only a fraction of what Papa is asking, and Papa has refused. But the courts will force him to accept the offer if a better one does not come soon.”

  “Oh,” Vivienne moans. “How will he bear it?”

  “He has given up many things far more valuable, and I do not understand why this is so trying for him.” Franck’s voice is thick with bitterness. “He says the paintings must be seen, that the public is finally ready. That the price is an insult to the paintings. An insult? After everything that has happened, this is what he sees as an insult?” He spits on the cobblestones. “They are nothing.”

  She covers her face with her hands. “This is all my fault. I’ve destroyed everything Papa loves.”

  He runs a fingernail along the edge of the wooden table, not bothering to contradict her. “This is not what I was sent to tell you.”

  Vivienne jerks her head up. “What?”

  “There are rumors of arrest warrants. For you and Papa.”

  “But Papa did nothing. I did nothing.”

  “There are people who say you are guilty of fraud. They claim they have proof Papa was taking what I think is called ‘a sweetener.’ That you and Everard were working together.”

  “Working together? This is madness.”

  “They say if you were not, why would you both disappear at the same time? At the same time as all the money.”

  “What proof do they have? There is no proof. Papa and Maman sent me away days after George left. You know that. Who are these people?”

  “Monsieur Lavigne—you remember, he is, was, one of Papa’s largest distributors? He has been the most outspoken. Threatened that he and the others would take the law into their own hands if the police did not act. He has been speaking to the newspapers.”

  “You just said Papa was forced to sell the estate, that there is no money. How can—”

  “This is what Papa’s lawyer argued. But Monsieur Lavigne says he has evidence that Papa is only pretending to be poor. That he has hidden the money outside the country and will claim it when he meets up with you and Everard.”

  “I’m not with George. I hate him. I detest him and—”

  Franck stands. “Please do not do this. You are my sister, but I cannot listen to your lies.”

  “What . . . what lies?” Vivienne sputters. “There are no lies.”

  “A friend of Léon’s saw you embracing Everard outside of Café de la Rotonde a few weeks ago. This friend said he heard you talking of love, heard you speaking each other’s names.”

  “That wasn’t what it was!” She stands and grabs the lapels of his coat. “It’s a misunderstanding. I sent George away. I told him I never wanted to see him again. You have to believe me.”

  He shakes her off. “Papa had almost convinced Maman to let you return. But then . . . then this news came and—”

  “But it isn’t true!”

  Franck takes a step back, stares at his shoes. “Papa said that you must never contact anyone from before, never tell anyone your real name.” His voice cracks. “He said it is the best way to protect the family—and to protect you.”

  Vivienne also stares at her brother’s shoes. Papa is assuming the worst of her, yet he cares enough to send Franck. He worries for her and her future, yet he’s casting her into permanent exile. She whimpers softly.

  Franck drops an envelope on the table. “Tante Natalie sent this for you. She said to tell you that she thinks of you often. And fondly.”

  He walks away, shoulders heaving, and Vivienne is undone. When she discovers that the envelope is filled with francs, she begins to sob. Tante Natalie is the only family member who didn’t invest with George. The only one who can still think of her fondly.

  Vivienne stumbles back to her room. She doesn’t know what to do and knows that there is nothing she can do. She wishes she had someone to talk to, but she’s told none of the girls about her family, confided in no one at any of her jobs. Her own dear papa has been forced to tell her, his only daughter, they can never meet again, forced to save his family by tearing it apart. Because of what she did.

  She lies down on her cot. All those hours she and Papa spent discussing art and artists, collecting and curating, how he used to laugh at her intensity, how proud he was of her aptitude for the work. She begins to cry again, or perhaps she never stopped, remembering how he would tease that she was attracted to Matisse and Picasso because their notions fit with what he affectionately called her irrepressible nature.

  And now it’s all gone, the last pieces of all they shared soon to be dispersed, virtually stolen at far less than their worth. Hidden from public view, breaking her father’s heart, possibly breaking her father. An insult to the paintings, Papa had said
. Franck didn’t understand, but Vivienne does.

  She closes her eyes, and she’s back at the estate. She’s standing in the great foyer with its branching staircase and double-high ceiling. The fresh flowers exquisite to the eye and nose, the thick carpets and carved furniture fashioning a comforting hush, the sun from the large mullioned windows throwing parallelograms of light over it all.

  There are shipping crates in the foyer with her. Each holds a single painting. Each is addressed to Aldric Mertens. They vary in size, and she knows exactly what’s in each of them. The tiny Cézanne. The large Seurat. She’s waiting for her father to return from his offices, standing in the shadows to watch his response.

  When he finally arrives, he steps briskly through the front door, fine looking and confident. Then he stops, his eyes riveted to the cartons. Slowly, as if in a trance, he approaches them, drops to his knees. He places his hands gingerly on the top of one. Then he reaches his arms out and touches each of the others, his expression flashing from confusion to wonder to exhilaration. He presses his forehead to the first box and murmurs, “You have come home to me.”

  Then he stands and takes her into his arms, full of gratitude and forgiveness. “As have you. Thank you, my darling girl. Thank you. All is forgiven.”

  Vivienne shakes off the dream, climbs from the narrow bed. If only there was something she could do to spare her father this final loss. She hits her head on the sloping ceiling, stoops, and stares into the cloudy mirror hanging next to the door. Her reflection is wavy in the old glass and only slightly resembles the face of the girl who once lived on the handsome estate she just saw, who once curled on a couch rapturously soaking in the paintings of Matisse and Picasso.

  And then it hits her. The colonnade seven are perfect for Dr. Bradley. Matisse, Cézanne, Seurat, and Picasso are all artists he greatly admires. He would pay a fair price, keep them together, hang them in his museum for the world to appreciate. And if she can persuade Dr. Bradley to take her to America, she’ll be able to be with them, watch over them. Maybe even find a way to bring them home, a gesture of restitution to her father.