One single picture, quaking in its boots: The Return of the Herd. Unti l … until, just before this one in its turn got struck by lightning, or chopped up to make a campfire at the Battle of Königgrätz, and the whole cycle vanished, they began to reappear.
First came Haymaking. In 1864 it was inherited from Princess Grassalkovich by Prince Lobkowitz, and was discovered in his collection in Prague by the art historian Max Dvořák. In 1884 Engerth recognized the two pictures languishing in the store room in Vienna, The Gloomy Day and The Hunters in the Snow, and returned them to their rightful place on the walls. In 1919 the new empire that had arisen across the Atlantic entered the story, when The Corn Harvest came up for sale in Paris, and was bought by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Then for a few years the three pictures remaining in Vienna vanished once more when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany and Europe was closed by the Second World War; and for a few more years after that, with the extension of the Russian empire to central Europe, the Iron Curtain was drawn down upon Haymaking in Prague.
Since when, as relative stability has returned to the Western world, they’ve settled in their places, three in Vienna, one in Prague and one in New York, not to be disturbed again. Five happy pictures, hanging on the wall.
Until I came on the scene, and then there were six. Or very soon will be. As I believe. As I know. And am on the verge of proving, if only I could see what’s eluding me.
One way of proving my picture’s identity would be to trace it back to its hiding place since it disappeared from the late Archduke’s baggage.
Does it bear any evidence of its passage through the last 350 years of European history? Well, at some point it seems to have passed through the hands of someone who covered up the signature. It’s not the only time that something like this happened. Think of that neat three centimetre-wide strip missing from Haymaking. That didn’t come about by accident – you can’t knock a complete horizontal section off a solid oak panel half an inch thick by banging it against a doorpost. Someone deliberately and laboriously sawed it off. Why? Why should anyone want to conceal the signature that establishes the identity of a major work of art? Only one reason comes to my mind: because its owner didn’t want it to be recognized. Why might its owner not want it to be recognized? Again, only one reason comes to mind: because he was frightened that it would be stolen.
My picture has another clue, perhaps left by the same person who concealed the signature, perhaps not – the label on the back:
Vrancz: Pretmakers in een Berglandschap (um 1600 gemalt).
Who wrote that? Someone who knew Dutch or Flemish, plainly. And although the paper was yellowing, it was typed, so it was someone in this century. As I think about it now, though, I seem to recall that for some reason the date at the end isn’t typed. (Um 1600 gemalt) is handwritten, as if it were an afterthought, added after the label had already been stuck on. A little odd. And suddenly I’m struck by something much odder still about this postscript. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? (Um 1600 gemalt) isn’t Dutch or Flemish. It’s German.
A Dutchman, or a Fleming, frightened that the picture will be stolen if anyone realizes what it is, types a false label in his own language, then adds the date in someone else’s … No. It’s the someone else who adds the date, in his own language. A German, then. Why is the German writing on the Dutchman’s picture? Because what the Dutchman feared has come to pass. It’s been stolen. It’s been stolen by the German.
A scenario:
1940, and the Wehrmacht is requisitioning houses in Brussels. Or Antwerp, or Amsterdam. In some of them they find pictures on the walls. A lieutenant who knows approximately as much about art as Tony Churt looks at the labels on the back of them all, hoping to find a Rembrandt or a Vermeer. He’s never heard of Vrancz, but this one looks quite nice, so he takes it anyway, breaks it out of its frame to make it easier to carry, and looks up the name in the local library before he takes it home as a present for his girlfriend the next time he goes on leave. ‘Painted about 1600,’ he writes on the label, to impress her.
Possibly. But then how did it get into the Churts’ possession?
Another scenario:
1945, and the British army is requisitioning houses in Hanover. Or Gütersloh, or Osnabrück. In some of them they find pictures on the walls. Major Churt, who knows approximately as much about art as the son he will beget when he returns home from the war, has no scruples about relieving the local Gauleiter’s family of The Rape of Helen, which will look impressive at the head of the stairs back home, but is most careful to press packs of Naafi cigarettes on various other, more modest citizens as recompense for two or three vaguely Dutch-looking paintings that have also taken his fancy.
Well, possibly. We can guess this much about my picture, though – that it’s been tumbled along in the great stream of history like the others. Tumbled and tumbled, all six of them, until they’ve reached the placid waters of our own times, and come to rest. Three in Vienna; one in Prague; one in New York; one in the Churts’ hatchery.
And, yes, there’s something about them that I haven’t put my finger on yet. Something that I’m just about to locate. Because even in that idyllic year of 1565 something was worrying Bruegel; it was at some time in those same twelve busy months that he was also doing The Calumny of Apelles and Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, his two great appeals against denunciation, false and true.
The answer hovers at the edge of my mind, like an elusive word or a half-remembered face. I’ve a feeling that I’ve got what I’m looking for in front of my eyes already, if only I could see it.
And when I wake in the morning, alone in the double bed at Oswald Road, I have it: baler twine. Everything fits together! The pink baler twine that you can see in my picture when you look closely is binding it to a whole series of other pictures scattered around the world. These pictures make a terrifying historical pattern that ties them in with the Churts’ estate, and clearly connects them to the peasants who go squawking up into the air from under your feet at every step, only to be shot dead and roasted alive by faceless figures cowled in black plastic sheeting – the brutal henchmen of the German Inquisition.
Even after I’m on my feet and cleaning my teeth, my mind keeps slipping back to this vision. And later still, long after I’ve thought my way out of everything else in the tangle, long after I’ve got Helen loaded up for the last time, and set out with her for south London, one element of it somehow ridiculously persists at the back of my consciousness:
Baler twine.
But what this unlikely detail might conceivably signify I can’t imagine.
Almost over now. By the end of the day I’ll have my picture in my hands.
I’ve got the baler twine out of my mind by this time. It’s ‘almost over’ and its variants that are filling my head now. I’m standing outside the NatWest in Lavenage holding a Sainsbury’s plastic carrier bag. In the bag are not groceries but neat bundles of banknotes: 1,920 fifties in seventy-eight fat packets of twenty-five, and an assortment of loose notes. Sixty-two of the packets are from Mr Koenig’s unsavoury-looking associate on the Tidewater Industrial Estate in Rotherhithe, sixteen from the bank, filled with the mortgage extension and the money from Kate. Now I’m waiting while Laura collects the final seven thousand pounds. I’m waiting on the pavement outside because I feel that curious glances might be directed at me by employees and customers who know her if I stand next to her while the clerk counts out the fifties, and she drops them into my carrier bag.
I’m not only waiting for Laura – I’m also waiting to be mugged. It seems unlikely that people are attacked for a bag of groceries in the middle of the afternoon in Lavenage, but rural crime’s on the increase, and then again I may have been followed from Rotherhithe by some of Mr Koenig’s associate’s even less savoury friends. In any case I’m also waiting for the police, for court officials, for private security staff hired by brother Georgie. I’m waiting for Tony to spring out of nowhere, ju
st as Laura comes out of the bank waving her money at me, though how he can get into Lavenage when we’ve got his Land-Rover I’m not sure. I’m waiting for Kate to appear, in town for a little implausible last-minute shopping.
But mostly I’m waiting for it all to be over. Which it will be very soon. Half an hour or so. Say an hour or two, to be on the safe side. By the time the sun goes down this evening, everything will be beginning to get back to normal.
Out of all the eventualities I’m braced for, some likely, some unlikely, the one that actually materializes is Kate. Of course. I knew it would happen. I knew it as surely as I know who painted the Merrymakers. Tilda’s dangling in the sling in front of her, and she’s carrying a plastic carrier bag like mine. I realise without surprise that she’s crossing the road towards me, and the very first thing that goes through my head, in spite of all my fears, is a flash of tenderness and delight. It takes her a moment or two longer to realize that it’s me, since she’s not expecting me as I am her – and then the first thing that crosses her face is that same brief flash of happiness. In the next instant, though, she’s remembered how things stand, and the light’s gone again, almost as soon it appeared.
‘Hello,’ she says, as cautiously as if she were answering the phone.
‘Shopping?’ I ask fatuously.
‘One or two things.’ She doesn’t enquire what I’m doing there, in the middle of the afternoon, on my way from London to the cottage. I lift my carrier bag an inch or two, as a self-evident explanation, though whether I’m suggesting I’ve money or groceries in it I’m not sure. I don’t need to ask her what she’s got in hers. It’s some small treat to offer me for dinner later, as a wordless gesture to mark my homecoming.
‘I take it you don’t want a lift home?’ she says.
‘No, thanks,’ I say, and start to explain that I’ve got to drop the Land-Rover off at Upwood. But a more graphic explanation has already materialized beside me.
‘Seven thou,’ says Laura, dropping five more fat packets and another handful of loose fifties into my bag. ‘Though frankly I think we should blow it all on a weekend in the Bahamas … Oh, hello!’
‘Hello,’ says Kate.
A pause. Almost over, though. Almost there. Soon, soon, soon be there.
‘Why’s there always someone just in front of you in the queue who seems to be paying in their life savings in five pees?’ Laura asks Kate in a tone of humorous complaint.
Kate says nothing. For a moment she simply stands there, not knowing what to do. Then she walks away. I run after her. ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’ll be back very shortly … I’ve just got to …’ I gesture with the bag, but she can’t see it, because she’s walking away from me and she doesn’t turn round.
1565. The uneasiness, the terror, the wrath … Yes, rapidly culminating to a crisis.
‘Sorry,’ says Laura humbly when I get back to her. ‘I should have looked first.’
‘No, no,’ I say gallantly. ‘My responsibility. Don’t worry.’
‘You hadn’t told her about the money?’
‘No.’
‘Oh dear.’
Oh dear indeed. But then I haven’t told Laura about Kate’s money. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
‘And that was a joke,’ says Laura.
‘What was a joke?’
‘About the Bahamas.’
‘I realize.’
‘She wouldn’t have thought …?’
‘Probably. We’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch.’
We walk towards the car park.
‘My fault?’ she asks quietly.
‘You come into it.’
‘But that’s crazy!’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing happened!’
‘No.’
We get awkwardly into the Land-Rover.
‘Just take me back and drop me off where you found me,’ she says. ‘Then you won’t ever have to see me again.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. She laughs, wounded.
‘I mean for the money,’ I explain.
‘Unless you want to see me.’
‘Yes, yes. And I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.’
‘Of course,’ she says, but she doesn’t ask when that will be.
We sit in silence as I drive her towards Upwood. When will I be able to pay her back, in fact? As soon as I’ve completed my gradual discovery of the real identity of my picture. I adjust the time scale for this as we drive; I can’t keep Kate and Laura waiting for their money just so that I can observe the kind of niceties I originally had in mind. ‘I should think I’ll be able to let you have the money in a month or two,’ I tell her. ‘Will that be all right?’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to start ringing you up. I’m not going to go bombarding you with letters.’
‘Thank you,’ I say again. I can’t think of anything else. She glances at me.
‘I do realize how bloody it was for you,’ she says gently, ‘running into Kate like that. I’m sorry. I can see how sick you are about it.’
‘Yes. You don’t have to think about it, though. I’ll be all right. Thank you.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying thank you.’
I stop just short of the drive. ‘You’d better leave it twenty minutes or so before you put in an appearance,’ I tell her. ‘Just in case he starts putting two and two together. I’ll probably be more or less through with him by then, anyway.’
‘I’ll give you ten minutes,’ she says, as she gets out. ‘I can’t hang around for ever. Even for you.’
‘Fifteen,’ I counter-offer. All my old aspirations to the transcendental truth of the universe have crumbled into a life of endless chaffering.
‘I’ll smoke a cigarette, then,’ she says defiantly, closing the door. Then she pulls it open again, fumbles in her bag, and throws a crumpled pack of cigarettes into the car. ‘No, I won’t,’ she says. But she looks as bleak as I imagine I do.
I drive on, past the Keep Out sign, prudently remembering to conceal the cigarettes in my pocket. Almost over. By the time the sun goes down I shall be there.
Yes, the sun’s still shining. We’re coming to the end of a warm spring day, well down the green hillsides towards that happy blue town beside the sea, where the ship’s just spreading its sails.
By sunset I shall be there.
The Deal Done
As I knock on the great front door, and start the dogs barking, my spirits revive. What I feel now is that I’ve been through some kind of initiation rite to test my fitness to handle high art. I’ve passed through stage after stage of humiliation and hardening. I’ve rolled my trouser leg up, I’ve drunk my yard of ale down. I’ve had my head shaved and my skin slashed and I’ve watched all night in the Chapel Perilous. Now I’m hammering on the temple doors to claim my reward.
‘Got the money?’ says Tony anxiously, even before the door’s open enough for the dogs to squeeze through. I hold up my carrier bag. He smiles. ‘Sainsbury’s! Excellent! Must be good stuff!’ The dogs slaver and prostrate themselves. We’re welcome guests, my carrier bag and I.
He leads the way into the dark room with the threadbare carpet and the deconstructed sofa where we went that first evening. I count out eighty-four packets of notes and seventeen loose fifties from the stock in the bag, and lay them on the long table behind the sofa, while he pours two glasses of his cut-price aperitif. We seem to have come full circle.
‘£112,000,’ I say crisply. ‘Minus five and a half per cent. I make that £105,840. Call it £105,850, because I haven’t got change.’
I’m braced for an outburst of fury at the mention of the commission, which I suspect he’s completely forgotten. Not a word, though. Now the deal’s done he behaves in the most gentlemanly manner. He re-counts the packets, but trusts me for the number of notes in each of them and scarcely glances at the loose fifties, then normalizes most gracefully.
‘Sorry if I got a bit raw-arsed at times.’
‘Not at al
l,’ I say magnanimously. ‘Life’s a battle. We’ve all got to fight our corner.’
‘Also, things here were somewhat on my tits.’
‘I can imagine. Happier days ahead, though.’ I raise my glass. ‘Is Laura going to join us?’ I ask, with effortless disin-genuousness. All my newly learned skills in suggestio falsi have returned in the hour of victory.
‘She’s out somewhere,’ he says, ‘God knows where.’
He sits down in his old armchair, in front of the great empty fireplace, and gazes gloomily into his drink, suddenly overtaken by melancholy.
‘Meant quite a lot to me, you know,’ he says. ‘Your help in all this. Not just the money. I sometimes feel I’m fighting a pretty single-handed battle here. Government’s doing its level best to destroy me for a start. Neighbours aren’t much better. Two sons – total washout. One’s mucking out in a dogs’ home. Which I thought was a job for girls. The other’s a social worker. Another girl’s job, isn’t it? What do you make of that? According to Laura they’re trying to tell me something. God knows what. And now that charming brother of mine’s crawled out of the woodwork. I sometimes wonder what the point of it all is. Get you to tell me some time, perhaps.’
As a philosopher, presumably. ‘Well, one of these days,’ I say with a sympathetic sigh, though I’m absolutely determined that I’ll never set foot in this house again. ‘Except that I’m not sure I’ve much idea myself.’ The only idea I have in my head is impatience to take the pictures and get out of here. I hadn’t foreseen grateful speeches and sudden confidences. I’m becoming consumed by an irrational fear that Georgie will return in the next few minutes with enforcers and sniffer dogs trained to nose out arsenic sulphide and copper carbonate, and just pip me to the post.
‘Well,’ I say regretfully, looking at my watch.
‘You’ve brought the Land-Rover back? I’ll drive you home.’
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