Blue after blue. Grinding the azurite coarse for the deep blues, grinding it fine and mixing it with whitelead for the paler tones near the horizon …
Back to the foreground, though. What I have to concentrate on first is disposing of the Giordano. In any case, the true Jerusalem to which my ship’s sailing is not the money or the fame, or any of the other ports at which it may touch en route – it’s the chance to repay my share of the debt we all have to the world that gave us birth by restoring to it one of its lost wonders …
No! Put the azurite back on the palette! First a few murky brown shadows for Helen to disappear into.
I don’t bump into Tony Churt as I climb through the woods below his house. One or two of his hand-raised cock pheasants, yes, to our considerable mutual surprise; but not their proprietor. The carefully crafted scenario of my walk goes wrong, in any case, when I discover that the path has been closed by rusty barbed wire and another Keep Out sign. I happen to know it’s a public right of way, and in the ordinary course of events I should make a point of climbing over the wire and continuing, but in the circumstances it seems more politic to divert to the road, and walk up the drive. Which means that by the time I reach the front door I might just as well have arrived by car.
The house is even less welcoming in the daylight than it is by night. The cataract of rainwater from the gutters has ceased, but the pool it created is still half-blocking the approach to the door, and there are streaks of green slime down the walls in several places marking the site of other leaks and blockages. In the yard at the side I glimpse traces of enterprises in various states of incompletion or disintegration – a collapsed woodpile, a half-dismantled tractor, a pigeon loft with no pigeons, tangles of mud-splashed black plastic sheeting. A huge barking begins even before I’ve negotiated the protective moat in front of the door, and a great weight of thrashing dogflesh has come thundering out of the yard and hurled itself upon me once again, so that by the time Laura’s opened the front door, in scarlet rubber gloves this time instead of a scarlet sweater, and pushed the draggled hair back out of her eyes, the painstaking patina of mud on my boots has vanished into a more general coating of filth. ‘Is Tony in, by any chance?’ I shout over the noise. ‘I just happened to be passing, and …’
She holds the door open for me – rather reluctantly, I can’t help feeling – and flails ineffectually at the dogs. I’m not absolutely sure she recognizes me, even after all the rich amusement I provided her with the other night. But when Tony emerges from some back corridor in the depths of the house and re-establishes control over the dogs, he’s disconcertingly clear about who I am and why I’ve come.
‘I just happened to be passing …’ I explain hopelessly once again.
‘Found me a customer?’ he asks at once.
I commend my soul to heaven ‘Well …’ I begin cautiously, to ease myself into my new career of fiction as gently as I can.
‘Come into the office,’ he says. He’s as brownly dressed and greyly faced as before, and he’s plainly had more trouble with his razor, but he has a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, which suggests some unsuspected scholarly depths. Perhaps he, too, is hurriedly reading up on art history. Laura’s vanished without a word. I kick my boots off to follow Tony as he pads in his carpet slippers back down the corridor to a little room as brown as all the others, filled with a confusion of open box-files spilling papers, and bundles of brown envelopes and folders, some of them done up with pink baler twine. The dogs walk footprints over the papers covering the floor, and settle themselves in a nest of draft accounts. Tony moves a sheaf of what look like bills to reveal a scuffed leather armchair, and dusts it for me to sit down.
‘Nerve centre of the whole estate,’ he says. ‘Where all the business gets done. Got to be businesslike about this thing, too. If you’re going to be my art agent then we need to put our heads together and work out a proper deal that’s fair to both of us.’
He perches on the edge of the desk, and a small glissade of dislodged documents slides smoothly away into the waste-paper basket. He puts his reading glasses in his pocket; he’s moving into negotiating mode.
‘So you’ve had a nibble?’
‘Well,’ I say once again, and once again I hesitate. I’ve spent my entire life up to this point hugging the shores of fact, paddling in the safe shallows of honesty. Now the moment has come when I have to launch out into the open sea of fiction. I have to cut free from the literal and start painting the picture, just as Bruegel did.
And I can’t do it. The words won’t come to my mouth. Creating a fiction isn’t lying, I understand that. But suddenly it seems remarkably like lying, and remarkably unlike anything I’ve ever attempted in my life before.
I look out of the window. My imagination seems to be frozen. The only words that come to mind to end my now bizarrely long silence are a frank confession that I haven’t found him a customer and never will, because I haven’t the faintest idea where to look for one.
And then I remember that he’s gone before me. He’s written his own fiction – he’s done a little painting of his own.
My work on Bruegel wasn’t the only research I did in London yesterday. I also took the trouble to find out a few things about Giordano, since he stands guarding the route to my prize.
He came from Naples, apparently, like multi-coloured ice-cream. His first name was Luca, and he was known in the business as Luca Fa Presto, because that’s what his father told him (‘Get a move on, Luca!’) and that’s what he did. He could paint a large altarpiece in a day, and in his seventy-three years upon this earth he covered large tracts of southern Italy and Spain with Judgements of Paris and Solomon, Adorations of Shepherds and Magi, and Apotheoses of Jove. His favourite subject, though, was sexual intercourse, or rather the final approaches to it, particularly as occurring between females betraying various degrees of reluctance or resistance and males using various amounts of persuasion or coercion.
To find any trace of the great Upwood Giordano I had to move on from the V & A to the Witt Library, in the vaults of Somerset House, where all the visual art of the Western world over the last eight centuries is being assembled in the form of reproductions from sources such as museum and sale catalogues. File upon file, I discovered, is devoted to the industrious Neapolitan. They look like something out of Forensic. Here, from different angles and viewpoints, is Lucretia being raped by Tarquin, and Europa by the bull; Proserpine being carried off by Pluto, and the Sabine women by the Romans; various gang rapes of nymphs by assorted gods and centaurs; and a number of last-minute rescues.
But what there’s more of than anything is Helen being carried off by Paris. The Witt categorizes pictures as upright or horizontal and by the number of figures involved, but if you add up the totals in all the different categories Speedy Luca seems to have painted the scene no fewer than nine times. There are Helens being abducted left to right, Helens departing right to left, Helens being carried towards us, Helens being carried away from us, Helens with dresses riding up above their knees, and Helens with dresses slipping off their breasts. The model for the Helen being abducted in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen, I couldn’t help noticing, survives her trials in Greek mythology only to be raped by Tarquin at Christie’s.
Among them all, in pre-war brown monochrome, I found Helen as I’ve come to know her and believe she really was, leaving Sparta left to right, landward knee and seaward breast out in the wind, and a definite touch of anxiety on her face about the possibility of a chill. The reproduction, however, came not from some work about the ancestral treasures of the Churts of Upwood, but from the catalogue of a sale to be held by Koch und Söhne, Kunsthändler, Berlin Charlottenburg, in 1937.
So the famous Churt Giordano, which has been in their family for so many generations, was only acquired in 1937. In Berlin, at a gallery almost certainly expropriated from its original Jewish proprietors, in a sale of paintings very probably acquired in much the same way.
It’s no business of mine what the Churts were doing in Berlin in 1937 – it’s evidently nothing that they wish to boast about. Or perhaps they acquired it later still. Maybe it was some local citizen who bought it at the sale in 1937. I can imagine it appealing to one of the new Gauleiters with a palatial home to furnish. In which case Tony’s father presumably arrived with the invading Allies in 1945 and simply looted it, or purchased it from a starving war widow for cigarettes and instant coffee.
In other words I don’t need to have any qualms. If the Churts can liberate Helen from the Germans I can liberate the Merrymakers from the Churts. Biff baff. Moral equilibrium.
And if Tony Churt can fictionalize a history for a picture I can surely fictionalize a future for it. This is what gives me strength and gets me going at last. I’m damned if I’m going to be outdone by Tony Churt!
And I launch boldly out into the deep waters.
‘I was up in town yesterday’, I tell Tony easily, turning back from my long study of the sky outside the window as if I’d simply been wondering whether the matter was worth mentioning, ‘and someone I was talking to thinks he knows someone who might just possibly be interested.’
Tony frowns. ‘Not a dealer?’ he queries suspiciously.
‘No, no – a collector. Said to be keen on Giordano. Very keen.’
‘Money all right?’
‘Money, as I understand it, is far from being a problem. Money coming out of his ears.’
So, it’s all happening. The words are coming. And it’s not at all a bad start, it seems to me. I’m impressed with myself. I’ve given him a good spoonful of jam to sweeten the tiny pill that’s arriving next.
‘Something of a mystery man, though, I gather,’ I say solemnly. ‘Keeps a very low profile. Won’t show his face in public.’
Is this the kind of thing that people say? The subjects seem to be dropping off the front of my sentences, I notice, in deference to Tony’s style. He looks at me thoughtfully.
And sees right through me. All my boldness vanishes at once. I feel the panic rise behind my eyes. I’ve been caught cheating my neighbours! How am I going to show my face round here after this? How am I even going to get myself out of the room?
‘You mean he wouldn’t want to come down here to look at it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I flounder hopelessly. ‘Perhaps … Possibly …’
‘Take it up to town,’ he says decisively. ‘Get your chum to show it to him.’
I’m too occupied in breathing again to be able to reply. He misconstrues my silence.
‘Bit of a bore for you,’ he says. ‘But it might be worth your while, you see. You’ll make a bob or two if we keep this between ourselves. No auction houses, no dealers. Man to man. Arrangement among friends. Look, here’s what you do. You take the old lady to Sotheby’s and get her valued – and then you take her smartly away again. Right? They’ll have knocked ten per cent off what they expect because they’re being cautious, so you bump it up a bit. Yes? Then you add another ten per cent, because your mysterious chum won’t have to pay the buyer’s commission. Add on the VAT you’re both saving, tell me what it comes to, and if it sounds half-way reasonable I’ll tell you to go ahead. Then we’ll split the commission.’
I gaze at him. I find all this remarkably difficult to follow, not being a simple countryman like him. Particularly the bit about splitting the commission. Splitting what commission?
‘The nine or ten per cent I’d have paid if we’d gone ahead at Sotheby’s, or if I’d taken it to a dealer,’ he explains. ‘So you get five per cent, I get five per cent, and we’re both happy.’
I see. What I think he’s saying is that since I’m a personal friend, and have somehow managed to find him a particularly satisfactory purchaser who may for obscure reasons be prepared to offer a top price even in the most dubious circumstances, and since I’m also prepared to risk prosecution for avoiding VAT, he’ll pay me half of what he would pay a dealer.
‘Fair enough?’ he says, watching me. Plainly not; though fair enough is what it seems to me, I have to confess, because after all I’m not a personal friend, and I haven’t found him his purchaser; and being cheated on the percentage would also relieve my conscience somewhat regarding the little corollary to the deal that he doesn’t know about yet. For the sake of verisimilitude, though, I supposed I’d better bargain about it.
‘Five per cent?’ I query. ‘I think seven would be more like it.’
‘Seven?’ he cries, pretending to be shocked, delighted to have drawn me to battle. ‘Come off it, matey! You haven’t got a gallery to maintain. You haven’t got some smart little piece on the front desk to buy lunch for.’
True. ‘Six,’ I say.
‘Five and a half,’ he says.
I bow to the force of his personality. ‘Five and a half,’ I agree.
He’s so pleased with this victory that he can scarcely contain himself. He jumps up from the desk. More papers fall into the waste-paper basket.
‘Want to take her away with you now?’
It’s like one of those dreams where you suddenly find you can fly. I struggle cautiously to get back to earth, and pat my pockets humorously.
‘Money?’ he says. ‘Settle up when you’ve sold it. Good God – friends, neighbours. We can trust each other for a few thousand.’
Actually I hadn’t even got as far as thinking about the money, let alone credit arrangements.
‘I mean,’ I explain, ‘I don’t think I’ve got a pocket large enough to put her in. I’m on foot.’
‘Take the Land-Rover.’
I hesitate. I’m tempted, if only to get back into the breakfast-room, where I might find a moment to sneak another look at their excellent arrangements for stopping soot falling out of the fireplace. Then I see myself arriving back at the cottage, with Kate watching as I untie the baler twine on Tony Churt’s tailgate … and unload The Rape of Helen. Not the kind of surprise that would go down well with Kate. I’ve a certain amount of preparation and negotiation to do there, I think, before I’m ready to roll. I also need to have a few words with the bank manager. Then again, a little seemly reluctance now may pay dividends later.
‘I’d better find out first how interested this chap really is.’
‘Suit yourself. Pick it up any time.’
The dogs get up to help see me out. But at the door of the office their master pauses, struck by a moment of doubt.
‘I mean, I trust you,’ he says. ‘But I assume you won’t go handing the goods over to whoever it is until you’ve got the money off him?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Something dodgy about him by the sound of it. Shady customer?’
‘I’ve never met him,’ I say carefully. ‘I know absolutely nothing about him.’
No, that’s too bland. I need to know one thing about him, one small but colourful detail for Tony’s imagination to work on. I have one of my lightning flashes of illumination.
‘All I know’, I say, ‘is that he’s a Belgian.’
I’ve hit exactly the right button. Tony’s immensely amused.
‘Say no more!’ he says. ‘Cash down, tell him! Belgian banknotes on the table!’
He leads the way back to the hall, still laughing.
‘I don’t know why you think it’s so funny,’ says Laura, on her hands and knees, trying to fasten a loose rug in place with what looks like Superglue. ‘Second time in a week this fucking thing has shot away under my feet. I nearly killed myself.’
‘We’re talking business, my sweetheart,’ says Tony.
I look to see what’s hanging at the head of the stairs, in the place where Helen of Troy should rightly be. I’m none the wiser, though, because it’s a picture so small that from the bottom of the stairs you’d need a pair of binoculars. I feel confident enough of our newly established intimacy to inquire about my business partner’s eccentric exhibition policy.
‘Why don’t you hang the good lady where
we can all see her?’ I ask.
‘I beg your pardon?’ snaps Laura, straightening up in amazement.
‘Helen, Helen. Why isn’t she gazing down at us from the top of the stairs?’
‘Good eye you’ve got,’ says Tony. ‘Because you’re right – she used to be over the stairs. I remember her up there when I was a boy. Been off on her travels since then, though.’
‘His mother grabbed her,’ says Laura.
‘I wouldn’t say “grabbed”, exactly.’
‘When your mother ran off with Dicky. They grabbed Helen and half the family silver as they went!’
‘Spot of ill feeling about the marriage settlement,’ Tony explains to me.
‘Not to mention about Dicky being left to carry the can when the racecourse thing went phut!’
‘Look, he was my father’s man of business …’
‘He was your father’s life-support system!’
‘It’s a long story, and frankly, my sweet beloved, you know fuck all about it.’
‘Anyway,’ I say, to help their marriage back on to the rails, ‘Helen was a rather appropriate item to take.’
They’re too irritated with each other to enquire why, but at least I’ve silenced them.
‘She and Paris took all Menelaus’s treasure when they ran off together,’ I explain.
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