Maestra: The most shocking thriller you'll read this year

by L. S. Hilton

  I had thought things might be different when I got into university. I had never really seen people who looked like that, let alone a place that looked like that. They belonged together, those beings and those buildings; all those generations of effortless entitlement melded honeyed stone and honeyed skin to an architectural perfection in every time-polished detail. I had lovers at college, yes, but if you look the way I look and, frankly, like the things I like, maybe girlfriends won’t ever be your thing. I told myself I didn’t need them, and besides, between the library and my part-time jobs there hadn’t been much time for anything except reading.

  I didn’t stick to the books on my course list: along with Gombrich and Bourdieu I read hundreds of novels, scouring them for details of the customs of the strange country of class, of how to speak, the vocabulary that marks out those who belong to the invisible club from those who don’t. I worked endlessly at my languages: French and Italian were the tongues of art. I read Le Monde and Foreign Affairs, Country Life and Vogue and Opéra Magazine and Tatler and polo magazines and Architectural Digest and the Financial Times. I taught myself about wine, about rare book bindings and old silver: I went to all the free recitals I could, first for duty and then for pleasure; I learned the correct use of the dessert fork and how to imitate the accent on which the sun has never set. I knew better by then than to try to pretend I was something I was not, but I thought if I became a good enough chameleon, no one would ever think to ask.

  It wasn’t snobbery that kept me at it. Partly, it was relief at being in an environment where confessing to an interest in anything apart from fucking reality shows wasn’t an invitation to a cracked jaw. Mostly, when I had skived off school, it was to get the bus into town to visit the Picton Reading Room at the Central Library, or the Walker Art Gallery, because those quiet spaces breathed something more to me than the beauties they contained. They were – civilised. And being civilised meant knowing about the right things. However much people pretend that doesn’t matter, it’s true. Disclaiming that is as foolish as thinking that beauty doesn’t matter. And to get amongst the right things, you have to be amongst the people who possess them. Since one also likes to be thorough, knowing the difference between a hereditary and an honorary marquess always comes in handy.

  When I first arrived at the auction house, it seemed to have worked pretty well; the edges were smoothed off. I got on well with Frankie, the department secretary, even if she had a voice that sounded like a memsahib ordering her bearers over the plains and friends to whom she actually referred as ‘Pongo’ and ‘Squeak’. Frankie fitted in a way I never could, quite, but at the same time she seemed to be floundering a bit in the brash new tide of money that was slowly seeping into the House. The art world had woken from its genteel slumbers in a billionaire’s playground, where girls like Frankie were slowly becoming extinct. She had once confided to me rather mournfully that she would prefer to live in the country but that her mother thought she had more chance of ‘meeting someone’ with a job in town. Though Frankie was an avid reader of Grazia, she never seemed to follow any of the makeover tips – she wore an unironic velvet hairband and her arse looked like a giant tweedy mushroom. Once I had to steer her gently away from a truly disastrous turquoise taffeta ballgown on a sneaky dash to Peter Jones. I didn’t think her mother needed to worry about ordering the engraved invitations anytime soon, but I admired Frankie’s unapologetic style, her magnificent disdain for diets and her perennial optimism that she would some day meet ‘the One’. I really hoped she would – I could see her in a Georgian rectory, dishing out fish pie in front of the Aga to an adoring and wholesome family.

  Sometimes we had lunch together, and whilst I couldn’t get enough of her Pony Club childhood, she seemed to like hearing about the (strictly edited) escapades of my own upbringing, too. Frankie was definitely one of the things I liked about my job: the other was Dave, who worked as a porter in the warehouse. Dave was pretty much the only other person at the House whom I felt actually liked me. He had left a leg just inside the Iraqi border in the first Gulf war and got into art documentaries while he was convalescing. He had a fantastic natural eye and a quick mind; his passion was the eighteenth century. He’d told me once that after what he’d seen in the Gulf it was sometimes the only thing that kept him going, the chance to be close to great pictures. You could see the love in the tender way he handled them. I respected the sincerity of his interest, as well as his knowledge, and I’d certainly learned more about pictures from Dave than any of my superiors in the department.

  We flirted, of course, the nearest I ever got to water-cooler banter, but I also liked Dave because he was safe. Beneath his occasional saucy joke, he took a rather old-fashioned, paternal interest in me. He’d even sent me a congratulations card when I got promoted. But I knew he was happily married – his wife was always referred to as ‘my missus’ – and to put it bluntly it was relaxing to be around a guy who didn’t want to fuck me. Aside from rococo art, Dave’s other pleasure in life was garish ‘true crime’ paperbacks. Marital cannibalism was a popular trend, with many a disgruntled wife serving her husband as a pâté accompanied by a nicely chilled Chardonnay, and Dave, whose encounters with weaponry had been efficient and gun-shaped, delighted in the Shakespearean ingenuity of their fatal instruments. It was astonishing what you could do with a pair of curling tongs and a penknife if you put your mind to it. We had many a happy double-fag break in the dusty area of the warehouse, analysing the latest trends in gruesome murders, and I wondered sometimes how his interests connected, whether the prettified gods and goddesses who cavorted delicately through the canvases Dave loved were a solace for the violence he had witnessed, or an acknowledgement in their often erotic beauty that the classical world was as brutal and cruel as anything he had witnessed in the desert. If I was impressed by Dave’s self-taught expertise, he was sometimes embarrassingly respectful of my own specialist status.

  One morning after my latest evening with James, a Friday in early July, I had a few minutes before the department opened, so I ducked into the warehouse to find Dave. It had been a long night at the Gstaad and my retinas felt raw with smoke and sleeplessness. Dave clocked it when he saw I had my sunglasses on at 9 a.m.

  ‘Rough night, darlin’?’

  He produced a mug of sweet tea, two Nurofen and a Galaxy. Nothing like crap chocolate for a bad head. Dave kindly maintained the fancy that like many of the other girls who worked there I lived a dazzling social life amongst the reeling toffs of Chelsea. I didn’t enlighten him. Once I felt human enough to remove the shades, I got a pad and my tape from my case to start measuring a small series of Neapolitan landscapes for the upcoming ‘Grand Tour’ sale.

  ‘Shocking,’ Dave remarked, ‘putting that on at 200 reserve as a Romney. It’s barely a “school of” .’

  ‘Shocking,’ I muttered in agreement, pen between my teeth. One of the first things I’d learned at the House was that the reserve is the minimum price a seller requires a piece to fetch. I jerked my head towards his back pocket. ‘New book, Dave?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll lend it to you if you like. Smashing.’

  ‘Remind me when Romney was in Italy?’

  ‘1773 to 1775. Rome and Venice, mostly. So, this bloke’s wife did him in the Cuisinart. In Ohio.’

  ‘As if, Dave.’

  ‘As if that’s a Romney.’

  My phone pinged with a text from Rupert, the head of department. I had to get out on a valuation the minute I’d taken the notes up.

  At his desk Rupert was treating himself to what was probably his third breakfast of the morning, a sausage sandwich that had already oozed mustard onto one of his heavy double cuffs. I’d be off to the dry cleaner again later, I thought ruefully. What was it about me and fat men? He gave me an address in St John’s Wood and the client details, and told me to get a move on, but as I reached the door of his office, he called out to me.

  ‘Er, Judith?’ One of the many things I hated about Rupert w
as his affectation that my first name was ‘Er’.

  ‘Yes, Rupert?’

  ‘About these Whistlers –’

  ‘I read up on them yesterday, like you told me.’

  ‘Er, yes, but please remember that Colonel Morris is a very significant client. He will expect absolute professionalism.’

  ‘Of course, Rupert.’

  Maybe I didn’t hate Rupert so much, I thought. He was trusting me with a serious valuation. I’d been sent on a few jobs before, minor things, even out of London a couple of times, but this was the first opportunity I’d had to speak to a ‘significant’ client. I took it as a good sign, that my boss’s confidence in me was growing. If I could judge the price right, accurate but appealing to the seller, I could score the deal for the house by acquiring the pieces for sale. Whistler was a major artist, one who attracted serious collectors, and could mean serious money for the House.

  To celebrate I charged a cab to the department’s account, even though we juniors weren’t permitted cabs. That budget was reserved for vital transportation such as fetching Rupert from the Wolseley round the corner on Piccadilly. I let it off a few streets from the address so that I could walk quietly under the summer-heavy trees by the canal. My head was clear now, and there was a scent of wet lilac from security-walled gardens. It made me smile to think that these streets, with their gangs of solemn Filipina nannies and Polish workmen installing vast basement pools, had once been little more than a vast and notorious high-class brothel, where women waited behind heavy plush curtains, arranged like Etty nudes, for their lovers to call on the way home from the City. London had always been and would always be a city of whores.

  *

  A beady laser eye scanned over me as I rang the bell at the ground-floor flat. The client opened the door into the creamy double-fronted stucco himself. Somehow I had expected a housekeeper.

  ‘Colonel Morris? I’m Judith Rashleigh,’ I introduced myself, holding out my hand, ‘from British Pictures? We had an appointment about the Whistler studies?’

  He snorted a greeting and I followed his Cavalry-twilled rump into the lobby. I’d hardly been expecting a dashing officer, but I had to prevent myself from recoiling as the yellow-nailed claw of his hand briefly grasped mine. Vicious little eyes twitched above a greying Hitlerish moustache, which clung to his upper lip like a slug on a ski jump. He didn’t offer me a cup of tea, leading me straight into a stuffy drawing room, where fussy pastel drapes made an odd, provincial contrast with the extraordinary paintings on the walls. The Colonel drew the curtains as I gazed at a Sargent, a Kneller and a tiny, exquisite Rembrandt cartoon.

  ‘What wonderful pictures.’ At least ten million’s worth. This really was going to be a proper valuation.

  He nodded smugly, treating me to another walrus snort. ‘I have the Whistler drawings in my bedroom,’ he wheezed, skittering towards a second door. This room was yet more dim and close, with an unpleasant acrid smell of dried sweat cut with astringent, old-fashioned cologne. A large bed, made up with sheets and hairy moss-green blankets, took up most of the space. I had to sidle round it to reach the bureau, where five small pictures were lined up. I took out my torch and examined each one thoroughly, checking for the consistency of the signature and very gently unfastening the frames to check the watermark on the paper.

  ‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘The preps for the Thames Sonata series, just as you suggested.’ I was quite pleased with the sound of my own confident, efficient attribution.

  ‘I didn’t need you to tell me that.’

  ‘Of course. But you are thinking of offering them for sale? They wouldn’t be quite suitable for the Italian show, but they’d be perfect for the spring catalogue. Naturally you have the provenances?’ Provenance was key in this business – the trajectory of a picture from the artist’s easel through its various owners and salerooms, the paper trail that proved it was genuine.

  ‘Naturally. Perhaps you might like to have a glance at these while I hunt them out?’ He handed me a heavy album. ‘They’re late Victorian. Most unusual.’

  Perhaps it was the two grasping hands which were scrabbling at my buttocks, but I had a depressingly clear idea of what the Colonel’s etchings were going to look like. Nothing I couldn’t handle. I simply twitched the hands off and opened the album. Not bad, for nineteenth-century porn. I turned a few pages as though I was actually interested. Professionalism, that was all I needed. But then I felt one of those hands creeping around my breast, and suddenly his weight was on me, pushing me abruptly down on the bed.

  ‘Colonel! Let me up immediately!’ I gave him my best outraged-head-girl voice, but this wasn’t feeling like panto anymore. His body pressed heavily on my lungs as he rolled sideways to try to get those repulsive cuspate fingers under my skirt. The green blanket was stifling me; I couldn’t lift my head. My attempts to buck him away were obviously doing something for him, as he planted a foully wet kiss on my exposed neck and hauled his body further over mine.

  I was breathing in shallow gasps – I couldn’t get any air, and that was making me panic. I really don’t like that. I tried to work my palms beneath me to throw him off in a press-up, but he pinioned my right wrist to the bed. I managed to turn my face to the right and sucked foetid air from beneath his armpit. Sweat drenched the front of his Viyella shirt and the bunched wrinkles of his face pulsed next to mine. This close, his teeth were hideously tiny, browning foetal stumps.

  ‘What do you think?’ he gasped, narrowing his boiled eyes seductively. ‘I’ve got lots more like that. Videos too. I bet a little bitch like you would love that, eh?’

  His stomach was gibbering against my back. I gave him time to fumble at his fly. God knows what he thought he’d find there. Then I bit his hand, as hard as I could, feeling the flesh give under my jaw. In the moment it took him to squeal and rear up, I’d grabbed my bag, found my phone and aimed it firmly at his crotch like a pistol.

  ‘You little –’

  ‘Bitch? Yes, you said that already. Problem with dogs is, they bite. Now. Get the fuck away from me.’

  He was nursing his hand. I hadn’t drawn blood, but I spat at him just in case.

  ‘I’m going to call Rupert immediately!’

  ‘I don’t think so. You see, videos are a bit behind the times, Colonel Morris. We’ve gone digital. Like my phone. Which can film this and automatically email it to all my friends. Though there’s no magnifying glass if you’re planning to pull out whatever you’re hiding in your trousers. Have you heard of YouTube?’

  I waited, keeping my eyes on his face, feeling my vertebrae tense inside my shirt. There was still no way I could get past him in that cramped space unless he was prepared to let me. I inhaled and exhaled very slowly. This was a very important client.

  ‘Thank you so much for your time, then, Colonel. I won’t take up any more of it. I’ll have someone from the warehouse come to pack the drawings this afternoon, shall I?’

  I had another brief moment of panic at the front door, but it was unlatched, closing quietly behind me with a heavy click. I kept my back straight as far as Abbey Road. I breathed in for four, held for four, out for four. Then I cleaned my face with a wipe from my bag, tidied my hair and called the department.

  ‘Rupert? It’s Judith. We can send someone for the Whistlers this afternoon.’

  ‘Er, Judith. Did everything, er, go alright?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it have done?’

  ‘No, er, trouble with the Colonel?’

  He knew. Sweaty fucking Rupes knew. I kept my tone smooth.

  ‘No trouble at all. It was quite – manageable.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘Thank you, Rupert. I’ll be back at the office soon.’

  Of course he knew. That’s why he’d sent the pretty one instead of doing such a significant valuation himself. Why are you such a mug, Judith? Why did you believe that he might have sent the departmental nobody on a major call unless the client expected a little extra? He was cl
ear in his own mind, wasn’t he, about what I was good for?

  Then, just for a few seconds, I leaned against a wall and hid my face in my arms, letting the adrenalin surge through me. I was shaking so hard I felt the muscles of my stomach ache. I felt coated in the stink of Colonel fucking Morris and I was so furious I felt winded, like something had punched out my heart. I made a fist of my face in the effort to keep the sobs back. I could cry, I thought. I could press my face to the grainy London brick and weep for all the things I didn’t have, and the unfairness, and how bloody tired it made me. I could cry like the chippy little loser a part of me still was, because I just had to take this shit. But then if I cried I might not stop. Couldn’t have that. This was nothing, nothing. I caught myself thinking that Rupert might actually be grateful to me, because I hadn’t done the obvious thing, screamed harassment and insisted on the police, but I squashed that down along with my waver of self-pity. It was a waste of time for me to expect praise, just as it was a waste of time to be bitter about it. I might not have the right name, or have gone to school or on fucking shooting weekends with the right people, but I didn’t resent the Ruperts of the world, and I wasn’t insecure enough to despise them. Hate is better. Hate keeps you cold, keeps you moving fast, keeps you lonely. If you need to make yourself into someone else, loneliness is a good place to start.

  *

  When I had gone for the interview at Prince Street, Rupert had boredly shown me a few postcards to identify; elementary stuff – a Velazquez, a Cranach. I wondered then if he’d bothered to read my CV and, later, when I mentioned something about my Master’s, realised from his expression of perturbed surprise that he hadn’t. The last postcard, which he pushed slyly across the table, showed a slim half-nude girl wound in gauzy draperies.