Headlong

by Michael Frayn

  ‘A Giordano,’ I announce. ‘Valued by Christie’s at £140,000. Is that something you might be interested in making an offer on?’

  She doesn’t blink. ‘I’m afraid Mr Koenig’s in a meeting,’ she says. ‘If you’d like to bring it in some time …’

  ‘I’ve brought it. It’s in the car park round the corner. In its frame it’s about seven feet high by nine feet long. I don’t imagine you want to help me carry it, and I don’t want to leave it for more than a few minutes. When will Mr Koenig be free?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘I’ll wait ten minutes, then I’ll try elsewhere. May I use your lavatory?’

  Is there any tonic in the world that bucks you up the way money does?

  She hesitates for a fraction of a second. She doesn’t like me. But the days when I cared about being liked are over. I’m as much a beast as poor Actaeon now. She leads the way to an ornate door that opens out of the eighteenth century on to a muddled twentieth-century backstage corridor, separated from an adjoining office by a battered hardboard partition, and lined with files and copiers and stacks of catalogues. She indicates another door at the end. As I pee (and I even pee arrogantly in my current mood), I become aware of a man’s voice on the other side of the partition. ‘Charles,’ it says pleadingly, ‘will you please hold your horses a moment, will you please listen?’ But Charles, who’s presumably at the other end of a telephone, is plainly not inclined to restrain his horses at all. ‘I know that, Charles,’ says the man at my end. ‘I know, you’re right – I should have done, and I didn’t – but, Charles … Charles…!’ There’s a defeated note in the voice. Behind the panelling at Koenig Fine Art, perhaps, all is not as well as it should be.

  I wonder, with my brutal new-found realism, if it’s really worth waiting even ten minutes for this broken reed. But then the same realism even more brutally prompts me to wonder whether a little desperation on Mr Koenig’s part might not prove helpful in the negotiations.

  Let’s see how desperate he really is. Now I’ve got the pressure in my bladder back to normal I’m even more insolent in my power.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ I tell the woman when I re-emerge, ‘I think I’ll wait in the car park.’

  ‘I don’t think Mr Koenig would want to …’

  ‘Luca Giordano. The Rape of Helen. From the Churt collection at Upwood. I’m on Level Three.’

  I stroll up the street until I’m out of the woman’s sight, then I run all the rest of the way, suddenly overcome with the certainty that the importance of my cargo, projecting ostentatiously out of its parking bay, will already have attracted a gang of international art thieves – or Georgie – or the police. As soon as she’s out of my sight, no doubt, she goes running to Mr Koenig.

  He keeps me waiting twenty minutes, none the less. Quite nicely judged, I have to say. It’s very quiet and peaceful down in the clean white underworld of Level Three, and by far the most congenial place I’ve been in all morning. I’m within a couple of minutes of giving up on him, all the same, by the time he comes sauntering across from the lift, his offhand buyer’s manner and ironic condescension visible at a range of a hundred feet, and I’m not feeling quite as cocky as I did. If I hadn’t heard him pleading on the phone I should start cutting my price.

  ‘Maybe I should move the business down here,’ he says, shaking my hand. ‘Rather nice ambience.’

  He looks like Gustav Mahler: high bony forehead, a bush of dark hair on either side, small gold-rimmed spectacles. Crumpled shirt, tie half an inch off centre. Not a dealer at all – an academic; a version of myself. Perhaps this is his problem.

  I say nothing. I’m not going to make a social occasion of this, however much like me he is. I’ve got the goods; he needs them. He can take it or leave it. I undo the twine, and we slide the huge package out. He sniffs.

  ‘Sheep’s urine,’ I explain briefly.

  Once again Helen steps out of her drapes and shows her charms. But now I know that I’m pimping for a very high-class girl indeed, an international poule de luxe. He pushes his spectacles up on to his forehead and gazes at her for some time.

  ‘What’s the documentation?’ he says.

  I unfold my crumpled photocopy from the Witt. He examines it in the way that an immigration officer might examine an out-of-date Nigerian driving licence offered in place of a passport. It doesn’t worry me in the least. I know what I know.

  ‘And Christie’s told you …?’

  ‘A hundred and forty.’

  He laughs. Let him. I’ve heard him in another mode.

  ‘What about Sotheby’s?’

  ‘I haven’t tried Sotheby’s.’

  ‘Why not? They might say a hundred and fifty.’

  He’s as rude as I am. Would he be less cocky if he realized I’d overheard him?

  ‘Why have you brought it to me?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t want to pay the premiums, and you were the nearest gallery to the car park.’

  He pulls the spectacles back on to his nose and transfers his scrutiny to me. Pictures he can see unaided. It’s the rest of the world he has difficulty in focusing.

  ‘Also, you want cash,’ he says.

  I say nothing, because of course I do. I’d intended to demand it boldly, though, not to confess it meekly. He goes on looking at me for a moment. He can see tax avoidance written in my soul just as I can see bankruptcy written in his. Or perhaps what he sees is more than mere tax avoidance. I realize he hasn’t asked me my name, and it occurs to me that this isn’t because he thinks I’m Mr Churt – it’s because he knows I’m not. He suspects that my title to the picture won’t bear too much examination.

  He goes on gazing at me. My confidence ebbs a little. I’m beginning to feel a little like the wretched Nigerian with the driving licence.

  ‘Family situation,’ I say. ‘I won’t bore you with the details.’

  ‘You are the owner?’

  I nod, after the briefest pause for thought. What the pause means to me is that I shall have become the owner retrospectively, in a sense, after I hand the money over to Tony. What the pause means to Mr Koenig, I imagine, is confirmation of his hypothesis.

  ‘You’ll put something in writing?’ he demands. I nod again.

  ‘Very well, then,’ he says decisively, handing me back my piece of paper. ‘I’ll give you £70,000 for it. In cash. Tomorrow.’

  I suppose I should laugh in my turn. £120,000 … £150,000 … £70,000 … The figures balloon and shrivel as arbitrarily as one’s fingers in a fever. I don’t laugh, though; I think. Because of course it probably is stolen, though not by me, and the longer I negotiate and wait for my money the more likely it is that the efforts of brother Georgie and his lawyers will make it unsaleable. This is the weakness of my position. I pluck another figure out of the great emptiness of the car park.

  ‘A hundred and ten.’ What I’m holding on to is the fact that he’s prepared to deal at all, even though he thinks there’s something dodgy about it. This is the measure of his desperation. This is the weakness of his position.

  He smiles, and starts to wrap the picture up again for me. What he’s indicating is that we’re not within signalling range of each other. If this is really what he means he ought simply to walk out of the car park. He’s found an excuse to linger in case I soften. What I ought to do, obviously, is to walk out of the car park myself, and find a few more dealers. It’s manifestly worth a great deal more than he’s offering, or he wouldn’t be offering it. But of course the advantage of overhearing any more moments of defeat and weakness is unlikely to recur. And in any case, at the thought of running back and forth to the car park, of dressing and undressing Helen, of laying out further stocks of aggression and cunning, all the energy drains out of me.

  ‘A hundred,’ I say, ignominiously.

  He’s got me on the run, and he knows it. ‘Seventy-five,’ he says at once.

  Now he’s made a mistake. If he could only have brought himself to
say ninety, I’d have said ninety-five and been on my way home. But for him to go up five when I’ve come down ten is insulting. I find the twine, and he puts his finger on the first half-hitch for me as I tie the second. We glance up at each other at the same moment, and catch each other’s eye. This is ludicrous! Two nicely brought up, well-educated mother’s sons, and here we are, me trying to sell a picture that’s not mine, him trying to buy it with money that’s almost certainly not his. How have we got into this situation?

  And we’re both at the end of our tether. He’s got to go back and wearily cajole a lot more money out of someone who doesn’t want to let it go. I’ve got to go back and find some way to make that money up to … I don’t know. The figures balloon and shrivel again … I can’t even remember what I told Tony. Was it a hundred or a hundred and five?

  We’re both the creatures of unseen proprietors. Two old boxers at the point of collapse, holding each other up.

  Yes, if he said £95,000 I could persuade myself. Obviously I’m not going to get anything like the full auction price from a dealer. I have to accept that. In any case, it’s a question of perspective: £95,000 standing as close as the merrymakers in the foreground looks bigger than £110,00 standing way off among the mountain blue.

  ‘Ninety-five,’ I say. Yes, ninety-five plus the fifteen from the bank might just about do it. If I told Tony a hundred and five, then I’d still have a few thousands left over towards the other three pictures.

  ‘Eighty,’ he says. ‘And that’s absolutely final.’

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Ninety.’

  Ninety? What am I saying ninety for? I can’t settle for ninety! It would leave me at least five thousand still to find!

  ‘Eighty,’ he says again.

  ‘Eighty-five,’ I hear myself saying, to my despair. Because this is madness! I must go elsewhere! I must try at least half a dozen places before I even think of going below ninety-five!

  ‘Eighty,’ he repeats blankly.

  ‘Eighty-five,’ I repeat, no less blankly. Madness, madness! But I can’t go through this again!

  ‘Eighty.’

  ‘Eighty-five!’ And here I have to stand, whatever the outcome.

  Silence. He gazes into the distance, waiting for me to weaken. I don’t weaken. At eighty-five I finally stick. I say nothing. I wait for him.

  And in the end he breaks.

  ‘Eighty-one,’ he says flatly.

  ‘Eighty-one,’ I agree.

  Because I can’t go through it again, I really can’t.

  Together we tie the tailgate half-closed. We avoid each other’s eye. We both know we’ve made a terrible mistake.

  ‘And you’ll have the money tomorrow?’ I say with insulting sternness, to compensate for my humiliation. ‘In cash? By what time?’

  ‘By midday,’ he says.

  ‘Midday. Right. And you’ll be there to help me unload it if I stop outside the gallery?’

  ‘No need to bring it to the gallery,’ he says. He takes a little notebook out of his pocket, writes something, and tears the page out for me. It’s the address of a forwarding company, in a unit on an industrial estate in Rotherhithe.

  The deal’s not going through his books, any more than it is through mine. He has a Belgian of his own.

  ‘Fifties all right?’ he says. ‘You don’t want it in fives and tens?’

  I drive back to Kentish Town in a state of mild post-traumatic shock. So now I’m a thief, on top of everything else. Fives and tens? But I’m not a thief! I’m not!

  A receiver, possibly. A fence …

  Oh, nonsense. I’m merely trying to help out in someone else’s family dispute.

  I find somewhere to stop outside the flat, but neither Midge nor any of the others is at home to help me carry Helen in, so I simply designate the Land-Rover as my command post. I sit back as comfortably as I can in a headquarters smelling so strongly of leaking petrol, and I review the situation.

  I’ve got the major part of the job done. Not done as well as I was hoping. But done. All I have to do now is to raise the balance of the money.

  I run all the way to the High Street for a sandwich and a bottle of mineral water, and then I set to work with Tony’s mobile. First a rather enjoyable call to the bank. Yes, the mortgage extension has gone through – £15,000 has been credited to our joint account. Fifteen thousand! It seems small change now, to a man who’s spent the morning bandying figures up to ten times as large. I treat it as such. ‘I’ll come in tomorrow morning and draw it out,’ I tell the voice at the other end. ‘In cash. All right? In fifties … Yes, three hundred fifty-pound notes … Thank you.’

  The voice gives no sign of surprise, but it must be speculating. Does it think I’m buying a consignment of heroin? Paying blackmail? Hiring a hit man? Let it think what it likes. I no longer care what anyone thinks about anything.

  Now, the eighty-one from Koenig plus the fifteen from the bank makes ninety-six, so I need another nine to pay Tony for Helen. Dare I deduct from that the five and a half per cent commission I negotiated for myself? I don’t know. I’ve no idea whether Tony understood the figures I mentioned on the phone to be net or gross. I’ve no idea, for that matter, whether I did. My fingers bulge and waste away … In either case I’m going to need several more thousand on top of that to buy the other three pictures.

  He hasn’t been hawking photographs of them around, too, has he? I’m not going to get three more horrible surprises?

  I assume not. I have to assume not, because if he’s shown a picture of the Merrymakers to anyone then the game’s up.

  So how much more money am I going to need?

  It’s like trying to measure fog. Nothing’s fixed, nothing’s solid! My head swims. Another two or three thousand should do it, shouldn’t it, on top of what I’ll actually be getting for the skaters and the cavalrymen? No idea. Sounds plausible. So altogether I need about another twelve thousand. If my original calculations are right. But supposing they’re not? Supposing I’m as far out with the skaters and the cavalrymen as I was with Helen? In that case I should need … I can’t begin to guess.

  The question really is how much I can get.

  Yes. The next phone call’s going to be the difficult one. I sit gazing at the great eventlessness of Oswald Road for half an hour or more while I nerve myself. And then the phone’s in my hand and the number’s been dialled.

  ‘Hello?’ says Kate, as cautious as always. I used to love that guardedness of hers. Now my spirits sink at once.

  ‘Hi. It’s me.’

  I wait for a response. None comes. I hurry on.

  ‘How’s Tildy?’

  ‘All right.’ Her tone is as neutral as if I’d inquired about the weather.

  ‘Still no sign of Mr Skelton?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve managed to sell Helen. I’ve got to wait until tomorrow to collect the money, though. I should be back around the middle of the afternoon.’

  ‘I see.’

  I close my eyes for the next part. Why do we close our eyes when we’re talking on the phone and we’re ashamed of what we’re saying? Is it because we’re trying to become invisible to ourselves? Or because we’re hoping to abolish the accepted everyday realities of the world?

  ‘Kate,’ I say through my closed eyelids, ‘you once with great sweetness, with great generosity, with a sweetness and generosity that made my heart almost burst, offered to lend me some money your father had given you, and I said that I could never accept it, not in any circumstances whatsoever, not even if it was my last hope …’

  ‘It’s in the joint account,’ she interrupts. ‘I transferred it last week.’

  Silence. What can I say? The tears run down my cheeks.

  ‘Kate …’ I begin.

  ‘I’m not lending it to you. I didn’t really think of it as mine. It’s ours. It’s just part of our money.’

  ‘Kate …’ But I can’t get any more words out. ‘Kate …’

 
‘I’d better go. I left Tilda on the rug.’

  ‘Wait!’ I beg her. ‘Wait!’

  Because there’s something more I have to say, and it’s the most shameful thing yet.

  ‘Kate … how much?’

  Another moment of silence, that lasts until the end of time.

  ‘Six thousand and something.’

  What words could I ever find to thank her? I can’t even begin to try because she’s already put the phone down.

  The important thing is not to think. Just to act. These things have to be. There might once have been a time for turning back, but that time’s now behind us. All this will be over soon, that’s the important thing, and we can get back to where we were. Until then I must close my heart and act, act, act.

  A somewhat ridiculous call next – the bank again. ‘Was it you I was talking to before? About collecting £15,000 tomorrow in fifties…? Right, slight change of plan. Could you make that £21,000?’

  A few kilograms of crack cocaine on the side, obviously. Now another embarrassing call. I dial the Churts’ number. If it’s Tony who answers, I’ll tell him he’s getting a hundred and five less five and a half per cent, which he’s going to shout about. That’ll be bad enough. If it’s Laura, though … It is Laura.

  ‘Hi,’ I say for the second time today. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘You want to talk to Tony?’ she says coolly. My spirits sink once again. Another icy blast. Why is she being like this? I thought this one at any rate would be pleased to hear from me. Then I remember the slight misunderstanding that arose at the end of our last conversation.

  ‘Yes! Sorry about that! I didn’t mean I didn’t want to talk to you! I did! I do! You’re just the person I want to talk to, because, Laura, listen, listen …’ I close my eyes again. ‘Something very embarrassing I need to ask you …’

  ‘Hold on,’ she says coolly. She turns away from the phone to speak to someone else. ‘It’s Skelton about that bloody stove,’ she says. She turns back to the phone. ‘I’ll check the number on it and call you back.’