Headlong

by Michael Frayn

  ‘What do you think, though?’ says Tony.

  I look at Kate, to pass the question on to her, but without much hope. She shrugs. ‘Not my period,’ she says.

  Not mine either, of course. One of the dogs yawns and settles to sleep; not his, apparently. The other one sneezes thoughtfully. I privately agree with this assessment. But the scholarly fastidiousness of Kate and our two critical friends on the floor leaves me with the task of offering some more extended appreciation.

  So, all right, what do I think? Well … Let’s look at this systematically, in the way that an art historian would, since an art historian I am in my own small way trying to become. What do we have here?

  We have some kind of mythological scene. There are many figures. It’s taking place at night. The period, to judge by the costumes, is classical.

  What’s the subject? A number of armed men are hurling instructions and imprecations over their shoulders, some to the left, some to the right, none of them apparently listening to what anyone else is saying. They’re supporting what seems, from the strain on their muscles, to be a substantial burden – a stoutish lady whose clothes have been disarranged to reveal her left knee and her right breast. There are flames in the darkness, and the night sky is full of chimeras. Waves are breaking around the men’s legs, oarsmen are straining at oars. Yes, what the armed men are struggling to do is to place the stout party in a boat. She’s the wife of a Greek shipowner, off on a Mediterranean cruise. No – concentrate on the iconography. The figure hovering in the air above their heads, pointing out to sea, is Cupid. There’s plainly some love interest involved. I believe Cupid is pointing in the direction of Troy.

  ‘The abduction of Helen?’ I hazard.

  ‘The rape of Helen,’ corrects Tony.

  ‘Rape?’ says Laura. ‘It doesn’t look much like rape to me.’

  ‘Ratto di Elena,’ says Tony firmly. ‘Written on the back. Rape of Helen.’

  ‘She’s not exactly pressing her little alarm thing,’ says Laura. ‘She’s not exactly squirting her little gas thing in their eyes.’

  ‘Rape,’ says Tony. ‘That’s what we’ve always called it.’

  I don’t think the Giordano shifting dimly about in the depths of my memory is a painter. Didn’t he write operas? Perhaps it’s the same one, though. Perhaps the picture’s a kind of solidified opera. They’re not shouting at each other – they’re singing. This would explain why they’re not listening to each other. People can’t listen to each other if they’re all singing in counterpoint together. Now we know what’s going on we can guess, even without surtitles, that there’s some dispute among the tenors about the correct bearing for Troy, perhaps a cautious suggestion from the baritone about going back to pick up some life-jackets.

  ‘Rather splendid piece,’ says Tony. He sounds not boastful, but humble at finding himself called by fate to serve as its guardian.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I murmur, continuing to gaze respectfully at the great work so as not to see the expression on Kate’s face. Sometimes, I have to say, she carries honesty to unacceptable extremes.

  ‘They really knew how to do it in those days,’ says Tony. ‘Real drama. Real feeling. They weren’t afraid to let rip.’

  Rip Signor Giordano has certainly let. But I’m not sure about the feeling, in the case of the soprano at any rate. Helen’s not singing. Laura’s right; she’s remaining remarkably cool and collected. She seems to be neither pleased nor displeased by the turn of events – not even surprised. You can’t help feeling that strange chaps are always carting her off in the middle of the night and starting major wars over her. Her right hand’s upraised, it’s true, which suggests she’s mildly concerned about something. Perhaps she has a delicate chest. One more breast exposed to the freezing air of the Churts’ breakfast-room, she thinks, and she may be spending her first night of illicit passion under the Trojan stars with a hacking cough and a streaming nose.

  ‘So,’ says Tony, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ I say. ‘Very … very …’ Very something, certainly. But exactly what eludes me. Very unlike the Master of the Embroidered Foliage, at least. And very funny. In fact the more I struggle to think very what it is precisely, the funnier it seems. In every sense. Everything about it, starting with the way it’s hung, with its elbows resting on the mantelpiece as if it were a bartender in a slack period leaning across the counter for a chat. It plainly doesn’t belong here – the proudest possession of the Churts of Upwood is hanging on hooks put up for a picture at least a foot shorter. Don’t they have a staircase here to hang it on? What’s it doing in the breakfast-room of all places? It’s not the kind of thing you’d want to come face to face with after a heavy night on some of Mr Skelton’s by-products.

  ‘It’s certainly a very striking backdrop to cornflakes and boiled eggs,’ I venture at last.

  Tony gazes at me, baffled, out of his depth in the critical vocabulary.

  ‘Breakfast,’ I explain. ‘I thought you said this was the breakfast-room?’

  ‘We have breakfast in the kitchen,’ says Laura. The idea of using a breakfast-room to eat breakfast in is obviously a naïve solecism. ‘This is one of the rooms we keep shut up.’ She shivers. Kate shivers. I shiver. The room’s damp as well as cold. So they sit in the living-room looking at sporting prints, and keep the mighty Upwood Giordano shut away in the damp and dark to collect mildew unseen? What a lovable pair of eccentrics they are.

  But apparently a critical assessment isn’t what Tony was after.

  ‘I mean,’ he says, ‘how much? What would it fetch? Current state of the market?’

  ‘I’ve not the slightest idea. Why, are you selling it?’

  ‘Might. If I could get the right price. Breaks my heart to see it go out of the family after all these years, but one has to make hard choices.’

  ‘Not doing much good in here,’ says Laura.

  ‘So what do you reckon?’

  I glance at Kate. ‘I’ll go and fetch Tilda,’ she says, and leaves me to struggle on alone.

  ‘Why don’t you ring up Sotheby’s or Christie’s?’ I say. ‘Get them to come down and take a look?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t trust them,’ says Laura.

  ‘Of course I trust them! I trust them to take ten per cent off me, and another ten per off the poor mutt who buys it, and VAT off both of us! Don’t tell me Sotheby’s. I sold the Strozzi at Sotheby’s. Christie’s? Gave them the Tiepolo.’

  Tiepolo? They had a Tiepolo? Good God.

  ‘And don’t say go to a dealer.’

  ‘He certainly doesn’t trust dealers!’ says Laura.

  ‘Been had once too often.’

  ‘What, with that Guardi? Yes, because you went to some crook in a back street!’

  And a Guardi! What else has run through their fingers?

  Tony turns back to me. ‘Anyway, off the top of your head. Ball-park figure.’

  No wonder he gets ripped off, if he goes round asking for valuations from people like me. Let’s make a guess, all the same. Start from first principles. I imagine that pictures of this sort have a value as interior decorators’ properties. They’ll be sold by acreage, like so much arable or grazing. How much per square foot for basic period oil on canvas? It can scarcely be less than £100. So what are we looking at here? It’s about as tall as I am, and a foot or so longer. Say six foot by seven foot. Forty-two square feet. What’s that? Over £4,000! This is ridiculous.

  All right, knock off a thousand for plausibility. But then the frame must be worth a few hundred. And probably the bare breast increases its saleability. Perhaps even the naked knee’s an attraction. Add a tenner for the inimitable expression on her face. Another couple of thousand out of politeness to my hosts. A thousand off again as a sop to honesty … Where have we got to?

  ‘No idea,’ I finally conclude. ‘Fifteenth-century Netherlandish I might just conceivably be able to help you with. Seventeenth-century Italian – you might as well ask me
about pheasant breeding.’

  ‘Netherlandish?’ says Laura. ‘You mean Dutch?’

  ‘Well, the Netherlands in the fifteenth century included Flanders and Brabant.’ I can hear the pedantry in my voice again, the Erwin in the Erwin Panofsky. But this time it’s Tony who laughs.

  ‘What, Belgium?’ he says. ‘Chocolates and beer – that’s all that ever came out of Belgium.’

  So much for my little fling with the Master of the Embroidered Foliage. So much, for that matter, for the Master of the St Lucy Legend. Also for van Eyck, van der Weyden, van der Goes, Memling, Massys, Gerard David, Dirck Bouts …

  ‘But that’s one of your Dutchmen,’ says Tony. ‘Skaters and whatnot?’

  I turn round. Propped up against the serving hatch is a little winter landscape. It looks like the lid of a rather large box of chocolates, though it’s certainly not Belgian, and there’s an odd chocolatey tone to everything about it, from the frozen polder to the plangently sunshot winter clouds. It’s rather nice.

  ‘Dutch, yes, certainly,’ I assure him. ‘Very attractive. Way out of my period, though. Seventeenth-century again. Who’s the painter?’

  He picks it up and turns it round. ‘Doesn’t say. So what do you think? Couple of thousand?’

  ‘Very possibly.’

  ‘Three? Four?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I say. Who knows, for that matter, why it’s propped against the serving hatch instead of hanging on the wall? The hanging policy in this house is certainly difficult to understand. Who knows why there’s another, rather smaller picture beside the skating scene lying flat on its back? Tents and flags in this one, with three men on horseback, and a girl pouring them drinks from a pitcher, with more horsemen dashing about in the smoke in the background. The name Philips Wouwerman comes to mind. Another seventeenth-century Dutchman. Good. Fine. Not my kind of thing, though.

  ‘Label on that one,’ says Tony. I turn it over. I was right – I should have spoken out and got the credit. ‘Wouwerman: Cavalrymen Taking Refreshment near a Battlefield.’

  Tony waits expectantly.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I still can’t help. Anyway, it depends what they mean by “Wouwerman”. Whether it’s School of, or Circle of, or Follower of, or Style of, or nothing much at all.’

  ‘Too much to hope that “Wouwerman” might mean Wouwerman?’

  ‘That’s the one thing it doesn’t mean,’ I explain. ‘This label was written long before the Description of Goods Act. If it just says “Wouwerman” and not “Philips Wouwerman”, the one person in the entire world you know they’re certain it’s not by is Wouwerman.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a Rembrandt,’ says Laura.

  ‘Well, possibly. But if you really want my considered advice – ring Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Pay them their premiums. I think it would be worth it.’

  Kate reappears with the carry-cot. ‘I thought we were going?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Laura, ‘let’s get out of here. We’re all going to have tuberculosis by tomorrow, like the sheep.’

  I move thankfully towards the door.

  ‘Sorry we couldn’t be of any assistance,’ I say. ‘Delightful evening, though …’

  But Tony’s stopped.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he says. ‘Where’s the other one?’

  ‘What other one?’ says Laura.

  ‘There were three of these Dutch buggers.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Laura. She goes over and reaches behind the fire screen that hides the empty hearth beneath the Giordano. ‘Sorry, but it just fitted. Those bloody birds in the chimney keep bringing the soot down.’

  She struggles to shift a large, unframed wooden board.

  ‘It weighs a ton,’ she says. I move to help her. ‘Wait,’ she says, ‘you’ll get your hands filthy.’

  She finds an old newspaper under the empty coal box and scrubs at the board as best she can. Then between us we hoist it out of the fireplace and balance it on the table.

  So it’s there, in the freezing breakfast-room, among the indifferent chairs, with Laura still holding the filthy newspaper she’s just been scrubbing away with, and Tony looking over my shoulder, still hoping for a valuation, and Kate in the doorway, still patiently rocking the carry-cot back and forth, that I first set eyes on it. On my fate. On my triumph and torment and downfall.

  I recognize it instantly.

  I say I recognize it. I’ve never seen it before. I’ve never seen even a description of it. No description of it, so far as I know, has ever been given. No one knows for sure who, if anyone – apart from the artist himself – has ever seen it.

  And I say instantly. The picture’s uncleaned, and for a few seconds all I can see, until my eye adjusts to the gloom, is the pall of dirt and discoloured varnish. Then again, how long is an instant? The human eye sees very little at any one moment. All it can distinguish with any clarity is what falls on the fovea, the pit no bigger than a pinhead in the centre of the retina where the packed receptors are closest to the surface. If I’m holding it at arm’s length, as I am, to keep it upright, what I’m seeing at any one moment, really seeing, is a patch of paint about an inch in diameter. I’m seeing one tiny detail.

  What is that detail? The first one I see? I don’t know. Perhaps the highlights on the new green leaves where they lie in the track of the sun. Perhaps the figure caught for all eternity just off-balance, with his foot ridiculously raised to stamp the ground. Perhaps just the foot itself. But already my eye’s doing what the human eye always has to do to take in the world in front of it. It’s flickering and jumping in indescribably complex patterns, back and forth, up and down, round and round, moving over and over again each second, assembling patch after patch into a first approximation of a whole; amending the approximation; amending it again. For a picture this size, some four feet high by five feet long, even the most cursory scan must take a matter of seconds.

  Already, even as I look at it in those first few instants, what I’m contemplating is not the picture but my accumulated recollection of it.

  And already, somewhere in those first few instants, something has begun to stir inside me. In my head, in the pit of my stomach. It’s as if the sun’s emerging from the clouds, and the world’s changing in front of my eyes, from grey to golden. I can feel the warmth of the sunlight spreading over my skin, passing like a wave of beneficence through my entire body.

  How do I know what it is that I’m seeing? As with the orange of oranges once again, as with the loveliness of Tilda, I just do. Friedländer, the great Max Friedländer, is very good on this. ‘Correct attributions’, he says, ‘generally appear spontaneously and “prima vista”. We recognize a friend without ever having determined wherein his particular qualities lie and that with a certainty that not even the most detailed description can give.’ Friedländer, of course, had spent his life among these friends of his. I’ve spent only whatever time I could manage over the last five years or so. And in any case, I’m still way out of my period with this one. All the same, I know. It’s a friend. No, it’s the long-lost brother of a friend. A long-mourned child walking back into our lives the way the dead do in our dreams.

  Here’s what I see through the grimy pane of time:

  I’m looking down from wooded hills into a valley. The valley runs diagonally from near the bottom left of the picture, with a river that meanders through it, past a village, past a castle crowning a bluff, to a distant town at the edge of the sea, close to the high horizon. Running along the left-hand side of the valley are mountains, with jagged crags sticking up like broken teeth, and snow still lying in the high side valleys. It’s spring. On the woods below the snowline, and tumbling away in front of me from where I’m standing, there’s the first shimmer of April green. The high valley air’s still cold, but as you move down into the valley the chill dies away. The colours change, from cool brilliant greens to deeper and deeper blues. The season seems to shift in front of you from April into May as you travel south into the eye of the sun. />
  Among the trees just below me is a group of clumsy figures, some of them breaking branches of white blossom from the trees, some caught awkwardly in the middle of a heavy clumping dance. A bagpiper sits on a stump; you can almost hear the harsh, pentatonic drone. People are dancing because it’s spring again, and they’re alive to see it.

  Far away in the mountains a herd is being moved up the familiar muddy scars towards its summer pasture.

  Just in front of me again, half-hidden in the raw spring undergrowth, watched only by a bird on a tree, a little thickset man holding two small wild daffodils is expres-sionlessly touching his comically pouted lips to the comically pouted lips of a little thickset woman.

  And away the eye goes once more, and the heart with it, out into the vast atmospheric depths of the picture, into deeper and deeper blue, to the blue sea and the blue sky above it. The last clouds are just clearing in the warm westerly. A ship’s setting sail, bound for the hot south.

  But by now I can’t see the picture any more – I’m ceasing to take it in. My eye’s flickering back and forth too fast in its excitement, and my mind’s clouded with anguish. Because it’s all too obvious. It’s so blindingly evident what this picture is that it can’t be so, or someone else would have recognized it already. Yes, who else has seen it? How can even these two fools not know what it is?

  I daren’t think the name of its creator to myself, because it simply cannot be so.

  ‘Very nice,’ I say politely, laying it down on the table. ‘Most attractive. Now, I’ve got a coat somewhere …’

  Because now my mind’s moving over the situation as fast as my eye did over the picture. I mustn’t go on looking at it. I’ve grasped that first essential (and how long have I been looking at it already?). I mustn’t make any sudden movement with the muscles of my face, mustn’t let my voice shake – mustn’t speak any unnecessary words. How do I manage to maintain this iron self-control? Everything inside me is urging me to shout out in astonishment – to let everyone know the joyful news, to claim the credit for my discovery. But I can’t even wordlessly bring Kate across the room to look at it, because she’d recognize it even faster than I did, and in her guileless, straightforward way she’d simply announce it to the world.