Snatched

by Bill James

  Lepage said he would write to Kalamazoo declining the offer but heartily thanking the Society and Guild for their interest in Butler-Minton’s work.

  Eighteen

  ‘Jubilation!’ Dr Kanda said.

  ‘I tell you this, you could have felled me with a feather,’ Dr Itagaki said.

  ‘We decided to come in person to bring the good news,’ Kanda said. ‘Or should it be “in persons”? Two.’

  ‘Oh, heavens, it’s Syntax Day,’ she said. ‘The Hulliborn has almost certainly won the medical exhibition. That’s the full long and short of it. Yours on a damn plate.’

  ‘This is wonderful,’ Lepage said. ‘It calls for a drink.’

  ‘Something to lubricate the tonsils, mine being as yet unremoved, regardless of the exhibition,’ she said.

  Lepage went to his cupboard and brought out the decent brandy. ‘I’ll ask Vincent Simberdy to join us in a minute, if I may. Asiatics.’

  ‘You called?’ Itagaki replied, laughing considerably.

  Lepage poured, using some fine, antique brandy balloons.

  ‘Somehow, by means not intimated to us, of course, the Hulliborn seems to have avoided all the usual Tokyo red tape,’ Kanda said. ‘One had better term the development a miracle, I believe, for, as we understand it, you are more or less sure to be chosen, and without a final selection procedure. As I think I explained, there was to have been our visits, ahead of a further inspection by the Embassy heavy mob. Well, that second stage has been declared superfluous by someone in Tokyo – and someone mega powerful, I’d guess, so the victory is yours, as long as we encounter no last-minute hitch. The most lavish congratters, Dr Director.’ He drank some brandy.

  Lepage said: ‘I feel vastly in your debt, and that the Hulliborn is. The report from the two of you must have been very favourable and very effective.’

  ‘We love this place, that’s the straight fact,’ Itagaki said, ‘and we did make this damn clear in our recommendation. OK, there’s a flasher in the Folk, and old Falldew doing his nut in public – maybe the flashing, too, and I don’t say this for the sake of alliteration – plus the “El Greco” thing, and the simmering Youde, Pirie, Lady Butler-Minton pot pourri—’

  ‘Not to mention the mysterious haversack straps,’ Kanda said.

  ‘So you mention them!’ Itagaki said. ‘Paralipsis! But so fucking what? These are superficialities. These are, indeed, in some ways endearing quirks, and for all we know at this point the haversack straps, Mrs Cray and the windsock might be pluses, positives. An error to find them off-putting.’

  ‘Returning on the train after one of our earlier visits, we both came up, independently, with this phrase to describe some of the goings on at the Hulliborn – endearing quirks,’ Kanda declared. ‘It was a remarkable moment in the carriage when we leaned across to each other, as if governed by the same impulse and said “endearing quirks”. Other passengers were mystified. “Strange people these Asians, what, Bessy!” One can imagine that kind of Blimpish remark from a passenger to his wife.’ He laughed, too, now.

  ‘These factors are nothing but the marks of a lively and possibly sometimes outré individuality,’ Itagaki suggested. ‘Swipe me, Lepage; if an ex-Keeper can’t use a bit of body language in his own former museum, where the hell can he? We stressed such points forcefully in our findings. Hulliborn uber alles!’

  ‘You’ve been very kind,’ Lepage said. He rang Simberdy and asked him to look in.

  ‘But there are other hidden factors, not the smallest doubt,’ Itagaki said. ‘I can tell you, Director, it would be stark-staring idiocy to posit that Tokyo has acted solely on the say-so of a couple of travelling nobodies.’

  ‘I think you are too self-disparaging,’ Lepage rushed to say. ‘After all—’

  ‘Oh, somebody in Tokyo has a feeling for Lady Butler-Minton, I would hazard,’ she replied, ‘and that has been extended to the Hulliborn, with which her name is still identified, of course. I always say, “Cherchez la nooky,” when matters as totally inexplicable as—’

  ‘Seemingly as totally inexplicable,’ Kanda stated.

  ‘When well-established, previously slavishly followed procedures are skipped,’ Itagaki continued. ‘Butler-Minton and his wife were in Japan quite often, Flounce helping several of our museums with priceless advice, and Penelope – well, Penny radiating in that glorious, questing way of hers. There’d be a lot of time to fill in. And to get filled in.’

  ‘Forgive us if we seem to be carelessly impugning Lady Butler-Minton’s character, Director. But it can safely be said, I think, that she appreciates life.’

  ‘Zounds! Back to British understatement,’ Itagaki said. ‘The fact is, Lady B-M shags like a rattlesnake, but, fair-e-bloody-nough, “appreciates life” will cover it.’ Brandy balloon in hand, she did a little tour of the room, giving a nice, formal bow to the platypus, so that her large blue spectacles shifted on her nose and had to be adjusted. ‘I don’t make these remarks out of absolutely nowhere, Director. There are signs that Flounce and therefore Penny had some bearing on this decision.’

  ‘Tokyo feels quite powerfully that there should be a permanent memorial to Sir Eric,’ Kanda said. ‘This is an additional reason for our coming to see you today. We have a proposal to put.’

  ‘It entails a sort of package,’ Itagaki explained. ‘The Arts and Culture Council had instructions from the stratosphere level of the embassy to let you know about the probable Hulliborn success—’

  ‘Very probable,’ Kanda said.

  ‘And to suggest at the same time that Tokyo wants to show recognition of Butler-Minton’s status and help to Japanese institutions by commissioning a bust to stand in the Hulliborn, with a suitable plaque as to its donors,’ Itagaki said. ‘Now, please don’t puke. I know it’s the corniest of notions, but those stuffy old sods in Tokyo can think only in cliché: stone-fucking-memorials in this day and age! I ask you! Any time now, they’re going to emerge into the nineteenth century. We’re lucky they don’t want him on a horse, I suppose.’

  ‘“A sort of package”?’ Lepage asked.

  ‘They seem to have rolled the two things together – exhibition and bust,’ Kanda replied. ‘The plaque would be in stone taken from near Mount Fuji where all the rubble is supposed to have holy significance, you know. It would speak briefly of Sir Eric’s vivid career, while also recording permanently the visit of the medical exhibition. I suppose it’s a natural thing with museum people that they do seek the enduring, the lasting.’

  ‘A couple of sculptors have been mooted, as I hear,’ Itagaki said, ‘one American, the other a Scot, probably both out-and-out dullards and frights or Tokyo would never have picked them: Amy Jessica Pill and Raymond Norville.’

  ‘This is so interesting,’ Lepage said.

  Simberdy arrived. He was looking terribly bad these last few days, his cheeks and jowls that worrying grey shade of old mackerel, his great gut no longer assertive and buoyant, but carried laboriously, like a curse. Could such grim damage have been done by the incompetent blows from Quent Youde?

  ‘We’re on course to get the exhibition, Vince,’ Lepage trilled. ‘Come and join us in a celebratory drink.’

  ‘This is grand,’ Simberdy replied. ‘It will ensure a fine future for the Hulliborn.’ He smiled, but this didn’t do much for him.

  Lepage waited until Simberdy had sat down, with the brandy balloon safely placed, before adding: ‘Dr Itagaki and Dr Kanda bring a fascinating suggestion from their embassy. Tokyo would like to commission a bust of Flounce for the Hulliborn.’

  For someone who’d been at the Conclave where the idea of a memorial sculpture was treated like shit, Simberdy reacted magnificently, regardless of his appearance. ‘But this is, as you say, well, fascinating, Director,’ he replied at once. He took a good mouthful of the brandy.

  ‘It’s what could be described, and has been described, as a package,’ Lepage said. ‘We owe a double debt of gratitude, don’t we? Oh, yes.’ He answered the questi
on himself so as not to put further strain on Simberdy’s nerves. The Keeper of Asiatics would need time to get fully used to the idea that, having rejected the Kalamazoo bust, the Hulliborn must now enthusiastically welcome an identical proposal from the Japanese. The simple, ghastly equation went like this: Hulliborn needed the prestige of winning the exhibition if the museum were to be sure of flourishing and expanding, sure of surviving, in a harsh commercial climate; and, in that harsh commercial climate, the exhibition would come only if Lepage, Simberdy and the rest of the management agreed to terms stipulated by Tokyo.

  ‘The exhibition could be in place before your tiresome Board of Museums inspection and grading rigmarole,’ Kanda pointed out. ‘An advantage, possibly?’

  ‘Your government has become damn choosy in where it places its largest grants. Hulliborn, with the exhibition, will look a grand place for maximum investment. This will be to support success – the gospel of Mrs Thatcher,’ Itagaki said. ‘Snatch the chance, do.’ She nodded definitively. ‘Yes, this is how Tokyo would like things to go. We pass the message, as per instruction. But I do sympathize with you. I mean, who the devil wants the head of some old supremo stuck on a stand, as if he’d come back to cast his bullying eye over everything?’

  ‘My colleagues will be intrigued,’ Lepage remarked, with ample joyfulness in his voice. ‘Don’t you think so, Vincent?’ By now he considered it safe to invite another comment, another slice of acting, from Simberdy.

  ‘Extremely intrigued,’ he said.

  Nineteen

  ‘Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!’ Olive Simberdy yelled. Then: ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh, my God, YES! Vince, come now! Now!’

  Simberdy opened one eye slightly and saw that Olive was no longer in bed with him. She must be shouting from downstairs. Resentment at being disturbed throbbed in his head. He had been enjoying an inspired dream in which D.Q. Youde’s coffin, en route to burial on a purple-draped gun-carriage, preceded by a gazooka girls’ band, suddenly tumbled off, burst open, and the body hit the ground with a gloriously rounded but splatty sound, rolled into a ditch and was fed on by lemurs. He did a swift count and decided there were at least eighty-eight of them. The hungriest seemed to go for Youde’s balls. In the surreal way of dreams, the words ‘A Right Goodly Number’ appeared in red and green neon on what looked like the new electronic scoreboard at Lord’s cricket ground, but stood now in the middle of a cemetery that had been serenely awaiting Youde. Simberdy didn’t really have much reason to want the worst for Youde – he was not, like Pirie, a rival for love from Penny Butler-Minton – but dreams didn’t require reasons.

  This one had another sizeable plus. The girls’ band wore very tight, short, silver lamé shorts and pushed out their chests and behinds unstintingly with the effort of playing their instruments. As Olive’s bellowing intruded, Simberdy tried fiercely to hang on to the totality of his vision. He began to count the lemurs again, while also urgently seeking to redeploy more sets of animal teeth towards that arrogant, would-be Degas phiz. Slowly, though, despite this resistance, he was tugged into almost full wakefulness, not only because of Olive’s noise, but also by the stupid pedantry of that bit of his brain already conscious which said lemurs were nocturnal, whereas funerals weren’t. ‘What the hell’s up, Ol?’ he growled.

  ‘Oh, Vince,’ she cried excitedly again. ‘Come.’

  ‘What do you mean, for God’s sake, “Come.” People don’t say “Come” except in plays by Terence Rattigan. It’s “Come here” or “Come and see” or “Come into the garden, Maud”.’

  ‘Oh, do come, Vincent,’ she replied, her voice ecstatic still.

  For a moment he slid half back into sleep again and, to his delight, the dream seemed to resume at once as before, but reverting to the start, with the body still on a gun-carriage. Then, as he waited for that crux moment when it was pitched off, he realized that the shape in the shroud looked much bulkier this time, and he saw that the uncovered face was not D.Q. Youde’s, or even Degas’s, but his own. Horrified, he simultaneously felt himself rolling towards the ditch. He screamed as an infinite number of punitive, sharp pains began in his genitals and elsewhere, but especially his genitals. He reckoned that at least eighty-eight sets of teeth were having a go at him.

  ‘Vince, what is it?’ Olive said.

  He opened his eyes and found himself on the bedroom carpet, both hands clasping his crotch.

  ‘I heard you call and fall out of bed,’ Olive said, standing over him. ‘The impact brought down the light in the kitchen.’

  ‘What were you making a din about?’ Simberdy asked from the floor. ‘It’s those fucking paintings again, isn’t it? Nothing Known’s dumped them as before, yes?’ He managed to stop himself giving a long, voluminous, crazed groan.

  She nodded, obviously wanting to look grave, but – more obviously – entirely thrilled. ‘Why are you holding yourself like that? Did you fall awkwardly?’ She held out a hand and, after a moment, he took it and she helped him to his feet.

  ‘I was asleep, but I’m sure I counted four “Oh!”s. Or was it eighty-eight?’

  ‘Vincent, what are you saying?’

  ‘Let’s get it clear. There were four “Oh!”s from you, weren’t there?’

  ‘Were there? What’s the odds?’

  ‘There are only three “El Grecos”.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’ She seemed to be smirking.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She still held his hand. ‘Come.’ She drew him towards the door.

  He pulled on a shirt and his jeans. ‘I wish I had a black tie handy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My dream. And the way I feel.’

  Downstairs, the three ‘El Grecos’ stood as previously around the dresser. On a chair was L’Isolement, the Monet, isolated, alone. Nearby, the extensive wreckage of their British Home Stores light fitting lay scattered interestingly on the tiles, as though someone had mounted a small exhibition in their kitchen, part conventional – the paintings – part modernistic with artefacts.

  ‘I don’t know which I like best now,’ Olive said.

  ‘How the hell did he get the Monet back? Is it real? Should it be “Monet”?’

  Olive cleared some of the debris and went closer. ‘Well, I think genuine.’

  Simberdy sat down. ‘What’s his game this time?’

  ‘Darling, do you feel all right?’ she replied.

  ‘Of course I don’t bloody well feel all right. Would you?’

  ‘If?’

  ‘If somebody left paintings that might be worth millions in your kitchen.’

  ‘Somebody has.’

  ‘Yes, well.’

  Gazing lovingly in turn at the works, she said: ‘He’s a very complex laddy.’

  ‘Which? El Greco or Monet?’

  ‘Wayne Passow. The paintings do brighten the room wonderfully.’

  ‘We’ll still need to get the light repaired. Did he phone? Has he called at your office to explain? Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing. The Monet could be shown off better, I feel.’

  ‘We don’t want to show the fucker off. We want to hide it. We’re not a gallery.’

  She went to the chair and lifted L’Isolement, ready to transfer it to a clear shelf high on the dresser. Then she said: ‘Wait a minute,’ and fiddled with something on the back of the picture. ‘There’s an envelope stuck here with tape, Vince.’ She pulled it off and replaced the Monet on the chair. ‘It’s addressed to you. Well, to “F. Man Esq”.’

  ‘Oh, God, do I want to know, Olly?’

  She tore the buff envelope open and handed him the letter. Olive read it with him over his shoulder for a moment but then moved off.

  Dear Old Fatman,

  When you get this and the choice items with it, I’m going to be a long way away and God knows about the phones out there, so I thought I better write even though I hate putting certain matters on paper you can bet. Eat this as soon as you’ve read it. You got the digestion.

  ‘
Here,’ Olive said. She’d done a tour of the kitchen, looking for signs of Nothing Known’s entry, and was now calling from the living room. ‘It’s very neat, almost imperceptible, but that’s what we’d expect from Wayne boy, isn’t it?’

  ‘I never know what to expect from the sod.’

  Olive came back and resumed reading with him.

  This will be a bit of a shock to you I know and most special, this Monet, called L’Isolement, which if you puts it into Anglospeak becomes Lonesome, or something like that they tell me.

  Simberdy felt his heart start fighting its moorings.

  I’ll be telling you concerning the Monet in a minute, worry not. There been some very big snags, Fatman, and maybe I don’t know so much about the art game as I thought. This would give a new fucking meaning to ‘Nothing Known’, wouldn’t it, meaning I don’t know much, not the courts? Look then, the nice dealer who is doing so nice by me and slagging off the others turns out to be a cop. Yes, you heard right, a cop. This sweetheart is just stringing me along. So, ten mill today, twelve tomorrow, and twenty next week, just so I’ll keep in touch. No real loot anywhere in sight, just words. What this is called is ‘a sting’. How did I find out? This ‘dealer’ keeps saying he got to meet the rest of the team before he can clinch things proper. I say why is that, and he says because he’s afraid I might of pinched the paintings from other members of the team, who would come after him. He said he needed all my mates to be with me giving the orders to sell, and most important he wanted to meet the man in charge. That was going to be needed defenight before any money could come my way.

  Well, that gave me a shock, as you can understand, and I nearly said, ‘All right,’ and I would of brought him round to your house, Fatman—