Headlong

by Michael Frayn

  ‘I don’t think we quite realized you were intending to bring it in,’ says my man. ‘I do apologize, Mr Churt.’

  Mr Churt? He thinks I’m the double-dealing, incompetent, pathetic Mr bloody Churt? This is too much!

  ‘It is Mr Churt, isn’t it?’ he says, shaken in his outrageous assumption by the expression on my face.

  I open my mouth to scotch the libel at once, then close it again and nod, because if I’m not the razor-nicked, tax– evading, thick-witted Mr bloody Churt and I’m even so standing here with the brother-cheating, wife-beating, first-wife-murdering, mother-neglecting, neighbour-seducing Mr bloody Churt’s picture, then I can’t think for a moment quite who I am. I should have got this straight in my head on the way here, of course, but what with the traffic, and the brakes, and the steering … I’ve got so used to lying that it takes me a little time to realize that I could simply tell something more or less like the truth, and by then the conversation’s moved on.

  ‘It doesn’t matter too much, though, Mr Churt,’ my man’s saying, ‘because Mr Carlyle and I did have a chance to talk about it together on Friday, and we’ve done a little homework. The picture appears to be in very reasonable condition, now that I see it – though of course we’d want to take it in and get our people to go over it absolutely thoroughly – and it is an important piece. I can certainly confirm that we should be more than delighted to try and sell it for you. I think Mr Carlyle suggested that we should be looking for a hundred to a hundred and twenty, didn’t he?’

  I stop thinking about who I am. A hundred to a hundred and twenty? I’m stunned. A hundred pounds odd? For a painting this size? But that’s frankly insulting! It’s insulting to me – it’s more insulting still to Helen! And once again I want to spring to her defence. To humiliate her like this to her face, when she’s in no position to defend herself! Caught at a disadvantage, half-dressed, a complete mess in every way, certainly – but a hundred pounds? All right, my ten or twenty thousand was perhaps a little over-gallant, but … ‘A hundred?’ I say, in frank amazement.

  To a hundred and twenty, ‘he repeats, obviously a little taken aback once again by my outrage.’ Though that was very much a first rough guess. The figures are only intended as a guide, of course, but having actually seen the piece I feel that we were being perhaps a shade conservative. It does have something of the same quality as his Rape of Proserpine in that ceiling he did for the Medici Palace in Florence.’

  Giordano did a ceiling for the Medici? A sudden chill of unease checks my outrage.

  ‘I’m always reluctant to raise people’s hopes too much,’ continues my man, as courteously as ever. ‘But I think we could probably quite safely make that a hundred and ten to a hundred and thirty.’

  And I suddenly grasp what he means. He doesn’t mean pounds. He means thousands of pounds. He’s saying £110,000 to £130,000. He’s telling me it’s worth something like ten times as much as I’d supposed. He’s informing me that my whole scheme is based on a complete misapprehension.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a fool in my life. It’s as if I’d gone round to the local recreation ground to knock a tennis ball about with Kate, and found by some dreamlike transformation that I was facing a major international star on the Centre Court at Wimbledon. I can’t find any words to cover my retreat. I silently put on an expression that I hope suggests regretful refusal even to debate such a paltry figure, and start to wrap Helen up again. The young man hands me pieces of fetid black plastic, as courteous as ever.

  ‘I’m sorry if that seems disappointing,’ he says. ‘Do by all means see if you can find a more ebullient view elsewhere.’

  He hands me pieces of baler twine. I silently tie my parcel together. I’m still in shock.

  ‘And do of course feel free to come back, if our friends round the corner don’t feel they can say any better. I’ll talk to Mr Carlyle again. He might feel on reflection that a hundred and twenty to a hundred and forty was more realistic.’

  I heave one end of the parcel up off the floor. ‘No, no – let me!’ he cries, taking it from me and signalling to the doorman to take the other.

  ‘It may well go above that, of course,’ he says, as he watches me tie the tailgate of the trailer half-shut. ‘A long way above, even. We sold a rather larger piece by Giordano a few years ago, The Raising of Lazarus, that achieved £298,000.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I manage at last, as he opens the driver’s door for me, and closes it behind me.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Churt,’ he replies. ‘It was a pleasure to see it.’

  I drive up King Street and into St James’s Square, my mind blank of anything except shock and humiliation. I drive slowly round the square. I’ve plainly got to reconsider my plans. By the time I’ve gone round twice, though, I’ve realized that thinking’s not really possible to combine with driving round St James’s Square. I need to find somewhere to park for a moment. But there isn’t anywhere to park. I need two spaces together, one for the car and one for the trailer, which obviously increases the difficulty, and there isn’t even a single space. I drive round the square a third time. Still nowhere. What I should do, obviously, is to think of somewhere else to look. But I can’t even focus my mind on anything as simple and concrete as this. I drive round a fourth time.

  I can’t go round a fifth time! People will begin to talk. The police will take an interest. With a great effort I snap out of the loop, and drive on down into Pall Mall. And there’s a parking space! No – two parking spaces together! But by the time I’ve made seven attempts to reverse into them, and each time succeeded only in pushing the trailer in the opposite direction, out across the traffic, my nerve breaks, and I drive on. Along Pall Mall, up St James’s Street, along King Street again, and back into St James’s Square.

  Where’s this car going? It found London all right. Now it seems to have lost its way in life completely.

  By this time, however, a few thoughts are beginning to come back into my head. Incoherent rage, for a start, at Tony. For what? For knowing what the picture was worth and not telling me! For going behind my back! For finding out what it was worth, if he didn’t know before – and still not telling me! Then rage at the world in general. For much the same thing – for knowing about Giordano and keeping it from me!

  At myself next, for never getting round to looking up the sale-room prices, as Kate kept urging. At Kate, for being right.

  No, at myself, myself, for making such a mistake about Giordano – for ever getting involved in all this. As I pass the London Library in the corner of the square for the sixth time, I recall, with a bitter sense of irony, the long days of peaceful research in the Reading Room, when everything seemed clear and hopeful and accessible to reason, when I thought my life was moving towards some great goal, not towards driving round and round St James’s Square, unable to set foot to ground, shackled to an ageing Land-Rover, like the Flying Dutchman to his ship, for all eternity, or at any rate until the petrol runs out, which I calculate will be after I’ve gone round the square something like a thousand times.

  By now the circuit of the square is beginning to settle into such a routine that calculations like this are becoming possible. It occurs to me that some of my panic may be misplaced. £100,000 to £120,000 – this is what he told Tony – forget all the wilder guesses that Tony knows nothing about. Terrifying figures, certainly, for a man who’s had difficulty in extending his mortgage by fifteen thousand pounds. But £100,000 to £120,000, it slowly comes to me, isn’t what I should have to find, because if that’s what the picture’s worth, then it’s also what I should presumably be getting from the dealer I sell it to. All I have to find is the difference between his commission and mine – between his ten per cent and my five and a half per cent, which is … well, I can’t do the sum precisely while I’m driving round St James’s Square, but it’s something like – I don’t know, five thousand pounds.

  Five thousand pounds! But that’s nothing! I’ll still have t
en thousand in hand to buy the other three pictures! All it means is that I’ll have to scale back my absurdly over-generous plans to pay Tony twenty thousand pounds for the Merrymakers. Since he’s behaved so badly he doesn’t deserve it, though. And since he’s also going to be getting five times as much as I thought for Helen, I don’t see that he’ll have much to complain about.

  Five thousand pounds! Good God! All my despair was completely misplaced, as it has so often been before! Just double-check that I don’t mean five hundred thousand pounds … Or five million pounds … No! I’m in business!

  Another thought comes to me. I may possibly find a dealer who’s prepared to pay more than a hundred to a hundred and twenty. I may find one who’s prepared to follow Christie’s thinking upwards to a hundred and thirty … a hundred and forty … If by any chance I do, I can’t see that I need feel obliged to be any franker with Tony than he was with me.

  I could be making money on the deal.

  All I’ve got to do is to find a phone to ring Tony on, to give him my edited report on the Christie’s estimate. I break boldly out of the St James’s Square loop, and drive down into Pall Mall again. I simply need a double parking space with a phone near enough to it for me to keep an eye on the trailer, and large enough for me to drive into forwards. In my new positive mood this seems not too much to hope for.

  There’s no such parking space in Pall Mall, however. Nor in St James’s Street nor King Street. I go round again. As I wait in traffic outside Christie’s their charming young man in the bow tie emerges from the door. At the sight of the Land-Rover, and the great black plastic parcel in the trailer, he stops and smiles more welcomingly than ever. So, I’ve been to Sotheby’s and I haven’t liked what they had to say. I’ve come crawling back, just as he foresaw. He beckons me into my old place on the yellow line. But the traffic loosens, and I drive straight past him, with a gesture that may mean I’ve a wealthy Belgian impatient to pay everything that Christie’s are estimating and more, or may mean simply that I’m on my way back to St James’s Square.

  Which I am. On the corner of York Street a young woman stands laughing, I assume at me until I observe, the next time I pass her, that she’s sharing the joke with a mobile phone. I feel a bitter pang of jealousy. I might have some faint chance in life if I had the basic equipment like a mobile phone that everyone else takes for granted …

  I do have a mobile phone, though! This is the one thing I have got! One more trip round the square and I’ve found it. One more again and I’ve found Tony Churt’s number. Another two and I’ve discovered how to get the latter into the former.

  ‘Hello?’ says Laura tensely, and I realize at once that she’s hoping it’s me. ‘I knew it was!’ she cries, as soon as I confirm it. ‘Where are you? Are you still in London? How’s it all going? I tried to ring you! When are you coming back? What’s the weather like? Everything here’s ghastly beyond belief! Have you got shot of that great fat tart yet? I’ll scratch her eyes out!’

  ‘I’m in St James’s Square,’ I tell her. ‘The weather’s OK. Is Tony there?’

  ‘Does it sound like it?’ she laughs. ‘No, it’s all right – he’s out in his beastly little workshop place. I’m all on my own. Now – sound of trumpets! – I’m still not smoking! Not a single one since you left! Are you proud of me?’

  ‘Very good,’ I say. ‘Listen.’ Because I might as well tell her the whole story before she fetches Tony. I’d be interested to know if he’s told her what kind of money was involved. At that moment, though, I catch sight of a blue four-wheel-drive in the mirror. It’s following me slowly round the square.

  ‘Go on,’ she says impatiently.

  It’s still right behind me. It’s been there for some time, it occurs to me. I think this is our second go round together.

  ‘What’s happening?’ says Laura. ‘You’ve gone all quiet. Are you still there?’

  The four-wheel-drive turns off into a parking space in the centre of the square, nose first, that I might perhaps have got into if I hadn’t been watching it instead of parking spaces. Damn. Not Georgie, though, presumably. Might be sensible not to hang around waiting for him, though.

  ‘Did you say Tony’s in his workshop?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes! Don’t worry!’

  ‘No, I mean, could you fetch him for me?’

  A brief but wounded silence. ‘I see,’ she says in a rather different tone of voice. ‘It’s Tony you want to talk to?’

  I realize I haven’t handled this as well as I might.

  ‘I’ll tell him to call you.’ she says coolly, before I can explain, and hangs up. Well, all right – but I can’t do everything! I can’t drive round and round St James’s Square, and look for parking places, and watch in my mirror, and calculate five and a half per cent of some vast sum of money, and tiptoe around people’s feelings …

  Now there’s a police car behind me. I drive down into Pall Mall, up St James’s Street, along King Street again, and I’m just getting back into St James’s Square when Tony calls.

  ‘So what do Sotheby’s say?’ he demands. ‘How much?’

  I resist the short-term satisfaction of telling him that I went to Christie’s, not Sotheby’s, so I know that he knows already, and stand out for the longer-term benefits of getting credit for my honesty. ‘You’re going to be amazed,’ I tell him. ‘A hundred to a hundred and twenty.’

  He’s not amazed, though. ‘So tell your Belgian a hundred and forty,’ he says.

  Of course. I should have seen it coming. I’ve been pushed far enough, though. I’m not going to let myself be pushed any further.

  ‘I’ll tell him a hundred and twenty,’ I inform him flatly, ‘since that’s what they said.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool! You’re saving him the buyer’s commission! That’s ten per cent, for a start! Plus half the seller’s commission!’

  Oh yes. I’d forgotten the commissions.

  ‘All right,’ I concede. ‘A hundred and thirty.’

  ‘No, but you’ve got to bargain, you’ve got to fight! For God’s sake! How is it that I always find myself in the hands of some amateur without a grain of business sense? Start high! Try him on a hundred and forty! Tell him you’ll take it elsewhere! And all right – be prepared to settle at a hundred and thirty-five.’

  ‘I’ll start him on a hundred and thirty-five,’ I say. I’ve got the picture, after all. And I’m very sick of St James’s Square, and the stink of petrol in the car. Also, I need a pee.

  ‘A hundred and thirty-five?’ he shouts. ‘A hundred and thirty-five is your absolute rock bottom after you’ve tried every trick in the book!’

  ‘My bottom is a hundred,’ I say calmly. ‘Since that’s what they said.’

  ‘A hundred? What is this? Whose side are you on?’

  ‘No one’s,’ I say simply. ‘But I’m not going to be a party to cheating Mr Jongelinck just because he’s a Belgian.’

  ‘In that case bring the thing back and I’ll find my own bloody Belgian!’

  ‘Bring it back?’ I say calmly. ‘Sure. Delighted to. Save me a great deal of trouble. With any luck I’ll roll up the drive just about the same moment as your brother and his lawyers.’

  I switch the phone off. I feel I’ve regained control of my destiny at last. What I’m going to do if he doesn’t back down, I haven’t the slightest idea. But something. With my newly recovered autonomy I break effortlessly out of the loop in which I’ve spent so long. I turn out of St James Square into Charles II Street, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. I don’t know where I’m going, but at least it’s somewhere else.

  The phone rings again as I’m driving across Piccadilly Circus.

  ‘A hundred and twenty,’ he says. ‘And not a penny less.’

  At once I feel I can be generous. ‘A hundred and five,’ I counter.

  Silence. But now I know where I’m going. There’s a car park in Old Burlington Street with a number of galleries close by. I shan’t be able to stir far, o
f course, in case the tempting whiff of sheep’s urine on the breeze lures some tearaway into investigating the contents of the trailer.

  ‘A hundred and ten,’ says Tony at last, pathetically. ‘There’s no point in selling her at all if you go under that.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I tell him noncommittally, and switch the phone off.

  I’ve become battle hardened. I can shove the bayonet in now without a second thought.

  Koenig Fine Art is the place I decide to try, because it’s the first one I come to, as I run from the underground car park in Old Burlington Street, that seems to deal in Old Masters. There’s a fair-sized Death of Actaeon in the window that suggests they may have a taste for the grandiose. I’m attracted by the subject, too. I can’t help feeling a touch of sympathy for someone who’s been changed into a beast and torn to pieces because he happened to catch a glimpse of transcendent beauty. Though in my case I now have renewed hopes of avoiding at any rate the second half of this fate.

  The gallery inside is panelled, with period furnishings and a woman sitting at the scrolled table in the corner who appears to be carved out of various highly burnished hardwoods herself, hair included. A concealed mechanism snaps her lips into a brief smile as I approach, but it also flicks her eyes briefly down at what I’m wearing, and almost audibly registers a disposable income too low to allow my adventures in the art market to get much beyond postcard reproductions. This time, however, I’m not the slightest bit disconcerted, because I know I have high chips to play with. I fling them down on to the table with complete openness.