by Bill James
‘Quent, Flounce is dead and burned.’
Youde smiled solemnly. ‘I do know that, Director, as a certainty. But, I know, too, that the person who called me tonight does not speak wildly, does not exaggerate. So, please, can we go to the Hulliborn now?’
‘Julia will do her nut.’
‘Please, George.’
Youde drove him there. In the museum, Lepage led the way, carrying a torch, which he part hooded with his fingers, for secrecy. They turned into the Raybould, and Youde, staring at the wall, sobbed and wailed at once. There was enough light to see the spaces: ‘No, they’re not here. It was too much to hope. Of course it was. Of course. I really am sorry for the foolishness, George.’
‘Not the “El Grecos”, but the Monet’s back,’ Lepage replied. The shock at seeing L’Isolement had gutted his voice of volume and made it hard for him to frame words at all, but Youde heard very well.
‘What do you mean, “El Grecos”?’ he snarled.
‘Sorry, Quent. El Grecos.’ Lepage walked to the Monet. ‘It looks intact.’
‘Yes?’
Lepage swung the torch beam around the gallery. ‘No immediate evidence of a break-in.’
‘Of course not. These are accomplished people.’
From the doorway came a loud shout. ‘Hold still, vile pillagers. We’ve had your sort previous. Game’s up. “Security” is speaking.’
‘Relax, Jervis,’ Lepage said. ‘It’s your Director and the Keeper of Art. There have been developments.’
Keith Jervis came forward very warily, carrying his own torch and a lavatory brush, which might have been the best he could grab as a weapon. ‘Oh, the Monet’s back!’ he said and put his beam on to it. ‘Not money this time. Monet.’ He lit another stretch of wall. ‘But not the “El Grecos”.’
‘What the hell do you mean, “El Grecos”, you fucking non-staff porter?’ Youde howled.
‘Come on now, Art. Don’t get hoity-toity,’ Jervis said. ‘It makes your skin blotchy.’
‘What? What?’ Youde hurried to a Corot landscape that was under glass and tried to check his reflection in it, despite the semi-darkness, trawling for blotches.
‘Anyway, although I call them “El Grecos”, that’s only because I’m influenced, despite personal feelings, by current talk and media blab. I really mean El Grecos,’ Jervis said.
‘Yes?’ Youde replied, his tone at once sweet with gratitude and comradeliness.
‘Oh, yes. I liked them and miss the three something rotten. They’re the real thing all right, kosher absolutely,’ Jervis said.
‘Keith, this is wonderful,’ Youde said. ‘Tell me how you can be so sure.’ He clearly wanted to shake the part-time porter’s hand, so Jervis put the lavatory brush under his arm and responded, smiling in true, chummy style at Youde.
Jervis said: ‘As to being sure, well, for one thing you bought them, didn’t you, Art? Is someone in charge of that whole section of the Hulliborn going to make such a ginormous mistake?’
‘Thank you, Keith.’
‘And then, it’s just obvious looking at them – that’s when I could, of course – just looking at them it was plain they’re the goods,’ Jervis said. ‘I mean, for example, the Vision of Malarkey—’
‘Malachi,’ Youde remarked gently.
‘Is anybody going to tell me a picture with that sort of clout was done by some pipsqueak in a night-school class?’ Jervis asked. ‘OK, all sorts can have visions, I grant you. We got someone down the club who’s into all that mystical carry-on. But visions like that Malachi’s? It got to be done by a lad with status. Fake it? It just don’t figure, Art.’
Lepage said: ‘Keep alert, Keith.’
‘But within reason,’ Youde said.
‘What are you getting at, Quent?’ Lepage asked.
‘Should someone want to replace the El Grecos also, we don’t want him scared off,’ Youde said.
‘Ah, I see. Of course. Of course,’ Lepage said. The repetition and emphasis were to compensate for the falsity. Yes, frighten the sod right off, finally off, Jervis. Lepage would have liked to speak this thought aloud, but didn’t. ‘Eyes open, Keith,’ he said. Jervis had the lavatory brush back in his hand and held it out in front of himself pointing upwards like a sword or truncheon.
On the return journey to Lepage’s house, Youde said: ‘Perhaps the fact is I need to believe the rumours, the fables, about Flounce. Some part of them, anyway. If this benefactor can return the Monet, he can possibly do the same for the El Grecos.’
Not if the bugger’s aim was to help the Hulliborn. But, again, Lepage stayed quiet. At home, he drank the beer dregs from the tankards used by Youde and himself earlier, and soon afterwards went to bed.
Julia grunted a bit and then asked: ‘Where in God’s name did you go, George?’
‘The Hulliborn. Quent thought Butler-Minton had brought the missing pictures back.’
After a minute, she said: ‘Sorry, I must be drifting off. I imagined you said Quentin Youde thought Flounce had returned from the fiery furnace, bringing paintings.’
‘That’s it,’ he replied. ‘Somebody has replaced the Monet. And perhaps it was somebody clever enough and thoughtful enough about the Hulliborn’s prospects not to bring the “El Grecos” with it.’ He cupped his hand delicately and lovingly over the warm right cheek of her behind, but she was asleep, or pretending, which would be worse.
Twenty-One
Who would have thought that Mrs Cray herself would suddenly arrive on the Hulliborn scene in that way and bring some clarification to all those rumours about the windsock and the haversack straps and so on? Lepage certainly didn’t expect it, but he was getting used to dealing with outsize, Director-type shocks. And who would have thought Her Majesty’s government would all at once take a big and dictatorial interest in the proposed memorial to Flounce Butler-Minton? Lepage certainly didn’t expect it, but, yes, he was getting used to dealing with outsize, Director-type shocks. These two unforeseen factors, though – Mrs Cray and the government – came more or less on top of each other, and Lepage did feel momentarily dazed, caught by the old one-two; oh, longer than momentarily. The advent of Mrs Cray, bringing with her all those glimpses of Flounce’s days behind the Wall, was the bigger and more sensational surprise of the two, of course. And it seemed to hit Lepage harder because the lead up to her appearance involved what had seemed a more or less routine Hulliborn visit by the Cabinet member with responsibility for the Arts, Sam Vaux, plus his dogsbody civil servant.
As they walked swiftly through Urban Development, Vaux said: ‘What I’d hate you to think, Director, is that my inability to attend your Founder’s Day Ball this time was in any sense retaliation for that accident with the vol-au-vents last year. And I’m sure it was an accident, though one had to expect more or less anything from that mad, gifted bastard Butler-Minton, God rest what passed for his soul. There we stood, all blissfully munching Stain-Out! and chatting away happily as if we’d never tasted anything nicer. “Regardless of their doom,” and so on. No harm done, in the long run.’
‘Very regrettable, but fortunately only a very light contamination,’ Lepage said.
‘You’d go with the accident theory, I imagine,’ Vaux said.
‘Unquestionably,’ Lepage said.
‘I’ve heard it questioned,’ Vaux replied. ‘Flounce Butler-Minton liked a jape. Nobody can recall his eating one of the vol-au-vents himself.’
‘He was fussy about diet,’ Lepage said. ‘More of a couscous man, from his time in the Middle East.’
‘Anyway, no lasting resentment or grievance,’ Vaux said.
‘The Minister is always inclined to take the wider, more tolerant, point of view,’ Lionel Clode, the dogsbody said.
‘One was absolutely prevented from coming this year,’ Vaux said. ‘A further crisis with the National Theatre just about then? I think so. Something of that order. God, but don’t they love themselves over there? I can never understand why they need an audi
ence or applause: they can supply the lot in-house. Yes, as a matter of fact, I was extremely disappointed I had to miss your do. One always likes to see the Hulliborn en fête, as it were – just as one loves seeing it on a normal working day, like now, for that matter.’
Clode glossed: ‘I remember well your saying how disappointed you were, Minister.’ He was taller than Vaux, better dressed, more effectively deodorized and with a full, expressive voice, ready for any tone or mode needed to endorse the Minister’s.
Lepage felt uneasy. This was Tuesday, and Kate Avis often turned up on Tuesdays, ravening tremblingly for love, and liable to be rather unthinking and peremptory in seeking it. She would sometimes ring him from near the Hulliborn, and they would make a rendezvous. But now and then she simply rolled up and sauntered around the galleries until she bumped into him, and they hurriedly and gleefully made their arrangements then. She rather liked the spontaneousness and risk of this, but it might not be a good idea for her to intrude today. Although Lepage had known Vaux was coming, he knew, too, that if he warned Kate off, she would be hurt and possibly angry. It would make things look furtive, cheapen her, as she’d see it.
The Minister wanted a formal visit to the returned Monet and would be photographed alongside it for the local Press. He thought this would provide an emblem of the triumphant durability of great art and those associated with it, such as, in this instance and snapshot, himself, at least until the next Cabinet reshuffle or election. Lepage led him and Clode towards the Raybould gallery.
‘I suppose you’re laughing all over your fucking chops, if the truth’s known, George,’ Vaux remarked. ‘You’ve got L’Isolement back in good shape, but not those dodgy “El Grecos”. You collect the full, as-if-non-fake insurance for them, I take it, plus that twenty grand in the envelope which I heard about, and which ended up so helpfully in Hulliborn funds.’
‘Director, this is a right fucking turn-up for your book,’ Clode stated.
‘Youde’s still wholly convinced about those three works,’ Lepage counter-stated, with a firm, counter-stating intonation.
‘Who’s Youde?’ Vaux replied.
‘Oh, D.Q. Youde is Art here,’ Lepage genially explained.
‘Yes, I know that,’ Vaux said. ‘But what I mean is who the hell is Youde?’
‘In the sense of, well, who the hell is Youde?’ Clode said.
‘Who listens to Youde?’ Vaux said.
‘Is he a rated voice?’ Clode asked.
‘D.Q. has an enviable reputation worldwide in his speciality, Minister,’ Lepage said.
‘Which is what, buying crap in triplicate?’ Vaux chortled.
Clode had a properly rounded guffaw in support, the more definitive because of his height. ‘Unerring, unique and universally recognized flair for sending good money after bad, unprovenanced art?’
‘But I do admire your loyalty to him, George,’ Vaux said.
‘Admirable,’ Clode said. ‘To stand by one’s troops regardless of their balls-ups is a basic of leadership. Bravo, George, if I may.’
When they arrived at the Raybould, they found Lady Butler-Minton giving L’Isolement a damn good stare. Near her, against the wall, were a suitcase and holdall, as if she were about to travel. ‘My dear Penelope,’ Vaux cried, ‘a double treat, L’Isolement and you.’
‘Eric loathed this picture,’ she replied cheerily. ‘He could be such a twisted idiot. He used to say the blue had the grandeur of an aniseed ball and refinement of a bruise. I felt I had to come down at once and welcome it back. It’s so lovely.’
‘Well, off the record, ducks, I can take Monet or leave him alone,’ Vaux replied. ‘See one water lily, you’ve seen them all. Same as pussy. Bloody Impressionists making a career out of blur. Still, J.F. Kennedy did pretty much the same. Well, if Flounce hated it we must try not to put his bust anywhere near, and possibly not in the Raybould at all. Let’s all sit on the sofa over there and give L’Isolement some steady eyeballing until the photographer arrives, shall we? Impressionists often seem fractionally more tolerable when one’s off one’s feet and the arse is well-spread. Such a jumble, this gallery. All periods mixed. That Youde?’
‘Quentin says Art is not a slave to sluttish Time,’ Lepage replied.
‘I’d love to hear him enunciating that, the trite ponce,’ Vaux remarked. ‘Sorry, Penelope, you and he have something nice going, haven’t you?’
‘But pretentiousness is so much a bête noire with the Minister,’ Clode pointed out.
He, Sam Vaux and Lady Butler-Minton sat in a cramped, unrelaxed line, like refugees hoping their papers would eventually get them across the border. Lepage stood near.
‘No,’ Vaux said. ‘It’s hardly better from here. Still like the product of a sudden sneeze while eating blackberry pie. Would it be better if that section on the right – the fronds and other guppy-nest pool stuff – were scratched out? I think so. But, obviously, there’d be a deal of hoo-ha over any proposed improvement of that sort.’
‘Knee-jerk protests from hidebound pedants,’ Clode suggested.
Lady Butler-Minton turned to Vaux: ‘You spoke of a bust of Eric. But I believe that notion has been decisively rejected. This is so, isn’t it, George?’
‘The Kalamazoo suggestion has been, yes,’ Lepage said.
‘But now the Japanese desperately want to sponsor a memorial of that kind,’ Vaux said. ‘We’re very lucky. They’re sentimental old biddies really, and these days nothing like The Bridge on the River Kwai. As you know, Penny, they thought very highly of Flounce. Perhaps quite rightly. Well, almost certainly. I feel we must not stand in their way as to the bust. You can imagine, I’m sure, that there are more matters involved in this than the Hulliborn, more even than the general museums situation. Her Majesty’s government is fervently seeking to attract more Japanese industry here, and to open markets for ourselves over there, so it’s very important we maintain a happy relationship on all fronts. Oh, I know the Japanese are reputed to have played the white man and ditched restrictions on imports, but they can still make things orientally sticky if they take a hate. Although the bust might seem a marginal issue, even a rather esoteric issue, Tokyo is very quick to feel a snub, or to read in an apparently small rebuff a general insult. I’m not saying it would be a hari-kari job for someone, but while we seem to be talking about Flounce in stone, really the subject is exports and the wooing of Honda and Sony and Nissan. You understand, Penny? They’ve got a couple of people coming to see me here today, as a matter of fact: on site, as it were.’
‘But has the Conclave actually voted in favour of the Japanese offer, then?’ Lady Butler-Minton asked.
‘I feel convinced it will,’ Vaux replied.
‘These things take on a kind of grand inevitability,’ Clode assured her.
‘One deduces you are not at all in favour of this recognition for Flounce, Penny,’ Vaux went on. ‘I’m unclear as to why not. But presumably you feel that the old creep is already too much of a posthumous presence, infringing on your own time and space. What was that German thing meaning they had to eat up Czechoslovakia and Poland and France? Lebensraum – room to spread themselves and develop? You feel that? I’m not unsympathetic, believe me. I walk into the Hulliborn and the memories of Flounce hit me immediately – not just the poisoned vol-au-vents and subsequent choral vomiting, but his whole egomaniac, vicious, foully indomitable, enragingly jolly persona. The point is, though, Penny, as I see it at least, busts are always of very deads, so allowing this to proceed – even boosting it – is simply an affirmation that he has become a memory only.’
‘It has to be the case,’ Clode said. ‘Think of that stone image of Marx in the London cemetery. OK, his work can still cause havoc and boredom, but not him personally.’
Vaux said: ‘I imagine you might retort, Penny, there’s nothing only about the memory of Butler-Minton. But, after all, they’re going to do the thing in some scorched and shagged-out stone from a volcano, aren’t they? Could any materi
al have less of life about it? There’ll be a plaque, too, and it will say very clearly when he died. We can insist on this, if you wish. I mean, much bigger figures than his birth date. The whole project will declare Flounce well and truly gone. In every sense, the bust is a plus.’
‘I’m against it, Minister,’ Lady Butler-Minton answered. ‘Let’s leave him as ashes.’
‘But as I hear it, this is not at all how you behave personally, Penelope,’ Vaux said. ‘Would you deny feeling he is near you sometimes now?’
‘I sort of talk to him,’ she said. ‘I can control that. I initiate these sessions, and I close them. Well, obviously. They are just an occasional lapse, a tic. I call him “Lip” not “Flounce”, in tribute to his brutal mouthings. I don’t want the bust. I’ve moved on, Perhaps we all should.’
Vaux sat back on the sofa looking ratty. He’d be approaching fifty, plumpish, mid-height, dark slightly receding hair, a small chin beard also dark, heavy horn-rimmed glasses, a suit of very good material and cut, but not cut for him, or not recently enough, though not as bad as those Dominican Republic suits Flounce used to wear in order to insult people. Behind the glasses, Vaux’s eyes looked unforgiving and clever. A snub nose did its best to give him a cheeky-chappie charm, but Lepage was not a great believer in noses as character tests.
‘Well, I’m distressed you feel like that, Penny, I really am,’ Vaux said. ‘We would have much preferred things went ahead with your approval, or, better still, encouragement. However, it must go through, either way. Once we can demonstrably establish a really sound Hulliborn–Tokyo rapport – agreement for the bust and then the medical exhibition – this museum is certain to be placed in the government’s premier category, with all that implies for prestige funding. Absolutely certain, you see. I’ll have a word with H. de T. Timberlake – Board of Museums chairman – and everything will assume its proper place. Timberlake – known familiarly as Gadarene, of course – can be utterly reasonable if you catch him right. He writes a kind of poetry and at present is into composing something rather longer than The Faerie Queen about rust, so he won’t be looking for distracting aggro with me and the Cabinet. The Board’s intended grading audit of the Hulliborn would be a formality, or even waived – as so much of the procedure for the medical exhibition might be. I’m sure, Penny, that Dr Lepage and the rest of the Conclave would be only too happy with that outcome, and one does hope you can see things from the Hulliborn’s point of view. We must all adapt to conditions – the new, tough but bracing conditions of viability. Hulliborn cannot be an exception, nor any other institutions, however worthy.’