Given Time

by Anthony Burn

  ‘Thank you so much.’ She smiled, but soon became earnest again. ‘Can we talk about the money?’

  ‘What? Isn’t two hundred thousand enough?’ I asked.

  She laughed. ‘Please be serious, Kee. I know we were only joking when we talked about this, but I was hoping you might pay me a little bit more than I’m getting now. It’s okay if you can’t, but would you consider sixty thousand?’

  I couldn’t help baiting her. ‘That’s not really a little bit more, is it Lauren?’

  She flushed scarlet and said, ‘It’s just my opening position. Can we negotiate?’

  ‘Okay, I’m being completely serious now. In the restaurant we were laughing, but I wasn’t joking. I offered you two hundred thousand, and it still stands. That’s what I want to pay you, no jokes.’

  ‘But… you can’t. You said the gallery has to make money. It can’t possibly if you pay me that much. I mean I want to accept but… Oh, I don’t know what to do, Kee. I just don’t know…’

  ‘The gallery can, and will, make money,’ I assured her. ‘Even just from the sales – but with the agency as well, we can definitely justify your wages. Look, let me help you with the decision. The job pays two hundred thousand. If you want the job you have to accept the pay.’ As I said it I failed to wrestle away the voice in my head that said, ‘Let’s see how Dan competes with that!’

  She looked completely thrown and shook her head as my words sank in. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s less than I’m paying you as a consultant.’

  Her humour returned. ‘Oh, you cheapskate!’

  ‘What do you mean? I just bought you an ice cream,’ I retorted. ‘Anyway, is that a yes?’

  The heat in her face increased dramatically, and she gushed, ‘Yes… yes, it is. Oh my God, oh my God, I don’t know what to say… Yes, I do. Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh my God.’

  I thought about suggesting she calm down, but I loved that she was expressing the excitement I was feeling, so I took a few licks at my cone while she relaxed, and then I held out my hand for her to shake. ‘Welcome to the company, Miss Dinsdale.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, her eyes holding my gaze. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get used to the way she did that, but I was becoming steadily more fond of it.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ I said, taking my phone out and bringing up the website I’d been working on. We’d previously discussed names for the gallery, and had gone through all sorts of ludicrous ideas, mainly based on my name, before settling on Gallery K. Even then, I’d been lukewarm about it and I’d been privately working on other possibilities in the hope that Lauren would accept the job. ‘What do you think of this?’

  I tapped a hidden link I’d included, and the name changed from Gallery K to KAYELL.

  ‘Okay, that’s different,’ she said, sounding puzzled. ‘Is it a proper word? What does it mean?’

  ‘No, it’s KAY for Keegan and ELL for Lauren. You’ve been such a big part of getting it started, and now that you’re going to be an even bigger part of running the gallery, I thought it was only fair to include you in the name. Is that okay?’

  She stared at the screen for some time, and when she looked back to me her eyes were wet. ‘If this day gets any better, I might cry,’ she said, and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘I love it. Thank you.’

  ‘I took out the word Gallery because I like it better without, but do you think it should have one “L” or two at the end?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. It doesn’t need Gallery, and definitely two “L”s.’

  I nodded.

  ‘No, one,’ she said.

  I tapped another hidden link, and the last ‘L’ disappeared from the name.

  ‘No, two,’

  I tapped once more, and toggled the letter back again. ‘Are you sure? I’m not certain I want to pay you to be this indecisive.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said, her eyes alive with delight until a frown creased her brow. ‘Oh, I hope we’re not too late for the stonemasons.’

  ‘Stonemasons?’

  ‘I totally didn’t say that,’ she said, and the heat redoubled in her face as she realised she’d let slip part of the surprise she was planning.

  ‘You know, I love the way your face matches your hair,’ I told her.

  She pouted at me. ‘Oh, shut up!’

  I laughed. ‘Is that any way to talk to your boss?’

  The next few weeks passed in a blur of activity. Spurred on by the promised bonus, it was soon evident that the building work would be completed a few days ahead of schedule. Lauren visited the site every day, but soon reported back that the project manager, aware that any complaint she made could set the work back, was making sure that the builders stuck rigidly to the plans, leaving her with nothing to do other than admire the progress.

  The only thing that bothered me was her often repeated enthusiasm for Dan. I wanted to believe that she was only excited about his designs, but I couldn’t help thinking it might be something else. They seemed to be spending more time together than was necessary, given that they weren’t apparently making any changes. I kept telling myself that I didn’t know if there was anything between them, but the idea wouldn’t go away.

  With everything on track, we set the opening date for a week after the work was completed, with a private viewing on the Friday evening followed by the official start of business on the Saturday morning. Invitations for the evening launch went out to our featured artists, their families and friends, as well as prominent people in the art world and members of the press and media. Lauren’s parents and several of her friends were coming, and I invited Drew and Amy, but my brother was in the middle of an important tour in the USA and couldn’t make it.

  I suggested to Lauren that I could help her with hanging the pictures, but she insisted that she didn’t want me to see the gallery until everything was in place. We agreed that I would arrive at five o’clock on the Friday, which would give me an hour to make my inspection before the guests arrived for the private viewing. Dan sounded dubious when I told him, saying he had never known a client to leave it so late before seeing the completed project, but I explained that I had trusted Lauren so far and I didn’t see any reason not to continue to do so. He said he would meet me at the building when I arrived, and as long as I was satisfied, I would be able to sign off for the work there and then.

  The taxi stopped at just after five on the opposite side of the street, and if I hadn’t known better I might have thought I was in the wrong place. It was hard to believe it was the same building. The old-fashioned windows had been replaced by two massive slabs of granite that stood over four metres high either side of the facade. The block on the left was about five metres wide, with the word KAYELL carved into the stone and picked out in gold leaf. Its counterpart was a little under two metres wide and unadorned. In between, a plate glass window, set back from the surface of the granite blocks, revealed a large easel holding a single beautiful painting.

  Dan was waiting for me by the window and held out his hand to shake as I approached. Despite my suspicions, I couldn’t find it in me to dislike the man.

  ‘How do you like this aspect?’ he asked.

  ‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. It’s very impressive.’ I glanced around me. ‘Where’s Lauren?’

  ‘She’s waiting inside. She wants to see your face as you come in.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but I think I’ve noticed the first problem.’

  He laughed. ‘No door?’

  I nodded in anticipation of what was coming next.

  ‘This is the position for when your shop is closed.’ He winced as he thought about what he’d said.

  I grinned at him. ‘I’d be very careful about calling it a shop in front of Lauren.’

  ‘I know.’ He laughed. ‘She’s torn me off a strip several times already.’

  He took out his mobile phone and wave
d it across a tiny sensor in the frame of the building. There was a small click, and the right-hand granite slab moved slowly inwards as the whole block began to pivot on its left edge.

  ‘It’s a Bluetooth sensor,’ he explained. ‘We’ll install the app on your phone, and then remove mine. You’ll just need to put in your own access code.’

  ‘Surely if I lose my phone or if someone steals it, they’ll be able to get in,’ I said.

  ‘That’s just as true with a traditional key, but the difference here is that all you have to do is remove the code from the system rather than change the locks. Anyway, it’s only the first stage, as you’ll see in a moment. You can also use the app to log in to the security system and remotely open or lock the doors from anywhere in the world.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that next time I’m in Australia,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, okay. Maybe not much use in that instance, but handy if it’s chucking down with rain when you come to work – you can open the doors before you get out of your taxi.’

  The granite slab completed its movement at ninety degrees to its original position and became the left side wall of the vestibule, revealing a smoked glass entrance door in front of us.

  ‘Now you’ve got thirty seconds to enter the correct code,’ Dan said as he pushed on a small panel in the wall, which swivelled to reveal a keypad, ‘before all the alarms go off and the boys in blue come racing in to take you away. It’s deactivated at the moment.’ He turned the panel back and invited me inside.

  As I stepped through the door, I gasped in awe. I’d half expected, with the granite considerably reducing the window size, that it would be quite dark inside, but the gallery was flooded with natural light. My eyes darted in all directions, trying to take it all in, but everywhere I looked there was a new wonder.

  The room appeared much bigger than I remembered, partly due to its soft white panelled walls, and partly because it was now one continuous space. Halfway back and precisely in the centre was a giant desk in the shape of a ring, about five metres across. Its top surface was a single sheet of dark glass, while the outside was faced with curved granite that matched the front of the building. The front was carved with the name of the gallery in the same style as outside.

  Lauren stood next to the counter, her hands flat together and the tips of her fingers pressed to her chin as she watched my reactions with unconcealed excitement. As much as I wanted to continue looking at the building, I found it difficult to take my eyes off her. She was wearing a bottle-green off-the-shoulder and below-the-knee length silk dress with coordinating killer heel shoes. Her outfit was completed with a small leather clutch bag, tucked under her arm. She had tied her hair back into an intricate crown that resembled an ornate wickerwork cage, with deliberately placed ringlets that fell against her shapely neck. Diamond drop earrings reflected light back onto her face, while a matching pendant hung from a short silver chain around her throat. The covering of freckles across her bare shoulder and down her arms only heightened her attractiveness. She looked breathtaking.

  As I approached her, she couldn’t contain herself any longer. ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘I think you look stunning,’ I told her.

  She laughed, and her cheeks coloured. ‘Thank you. I meant the gallery.’

  ‘I’ll tell you if I ever get my breath back,’ I said.

  I looked up from where we were standing, and now I could see where the light was coming from. The ten-metre gap in the ceiling that I’d seen on my previous visit remained open, creating a space directly above the desk. Two curved steel bridges at either side of the building spanned the gap. The centre of the ceiling above contained a large round multi-faceted lantern that resembled the underside of a brilliant-cut diamond, its milky-white translucent panes diffusing natural light into the building.

  ‘How can we have a skylight when there’s two more floors above it?’ I asked.

  Lauren and Dan exchanged a knowing look. They had clearly anticipated the question, and it was Dan who answered. ‘There were already skylights in the top floor, so we’ve simply replaced four of them with domes and run reflective solar tubes down to the lantern. You get ninety-five percent of the light, but if the glass were transparent you wouldn’t be able to see the sky – just the tubes.’

  ‘It looks incredible,’ I told them. ‘I really like the subtle changes in the light. I guess that’s as clouds pass over?’

  ‘That’s right. Have you noticed that it does the same down here?’ Lauren asked, her excitement unabated, as she pointed to the ground-floor ceiling.

  I’d noticed that there was a wide band of milky glass all around the edge, which I’d assumed concealed strip lights, but as I looked again I could see it was also changing in brightness with the weather. I watched for a while, trying to work out what they had done, but I just became more confused; it would have taken a lot of tubes to get the consistent light all the way around, and even then there would surely have been breaks for the joists. As it was, it appeared as if there was nothing above the glass, giving the impression that the ceiling was floating in thin air.

  ‘Okay, how…? I mean, what’s holding the ceiling up?’ I asked.

  They both laughed and Lauren clapped her hands, delighted at the deception. She looked at Dan, who said, ‘They’re OLED panels – you know, like you get in TVs. Lauren wanted as close as possible to natural daylight for the paintings, so we could have put strip lights all the way round, but that would have meant either lowering the whole ceiling to conceal them or putting them between the joists, but that would have been very inconsistent. These are simply attached to the ceiling and give a more natural light than fluorescent strips.’

  ‘But how are they changing with the daylight?’

  It was Lauren who answered this time. ‘We’ve got sensors up in the skylights, so when the light changes the computer changes it down here.’

  ‘Clever,’ I said. ‘It’s really effective. I was convinced it was daylight coming through.’

  ‘Actually, you can use the computer to project anything you like,’ Dan added. ‘In effect, they’re just TV screens.’

  ‘What happens when it’s dark outside?’ I asked.

  ‘When the light drops to a certain level, the panels switch gradually to full light. You shouldn’t even notice a difference,’ Dan explained. ‘It always stays like daytime in here.’

  ‘Very impressive,’ I said, ‘and it lights the pictures perfectly.’ The walls were lined with striking works of art and beautiful paintings. I looked closer at the nearest one, and realised it wasn’t touching the panelling. Each painting appeared to be hanging about three centimetres away from the surface.

  ‘It’s a special type of hidden hanger,’ Lauren told me as I tried to look behind the painting. ‘You won’t see it, but it keeps the picture away from the wall, so it looks as if the canvas is hovering in mid-air.’

  ‘I like it.’ I tried to get a better look by pulling the painting forward a little, and immediately set off an alarm. Lauren grimaced at me, and rushed to the desk. She put her hand flat on the glass surface and the noise stopped. Several people from the catering firm I’d hired for the event had been busy at the far end of the room, but they had now stopped what they were doing and were staring in our direction.

  Lauren apologised to them before turning back to me. ‘Do not try to steal the works of art,’ she said with affected severity.

  I pointed to the desk. ‘Is that a touchscreen?’

  ‘Yes, it is. The computer screens and EPOS are all built into the surface.’

  ‘Nice… What exactly is EPOS?’ I asked.

  ‘Electronic Point of Sale.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. What used to be called a till?’

  She laughed. ‘That’s right, Grandad.’

  Dan had watched the exchange with amusement, but he was obviously keen to get on. ‘Shall we look at the rest?’ he asked.

  We moved towards the back of the room, and as we did,
I said, ‘This is a nice idea.’ Running along the centre of the room before and after the desk were long back-to-back cream leather sofas, interspersed with elegant glass plinths each holding an ornate sculpture. The furniture created a calm atmosphere and gave the impression of a public gallery. I hadn’t seen any seating in any of the private galleries I’d visited, and now I couldn’t understand why.

  Lauren caught my train of thought. ‘I just think it’s nice to be able to relax and enjoy the art without feeling as if you’re being pressured into a sale, in the way you might if you were just walking around.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking.’ I was already tempted to sit, as painting after painting caught my eye, but we still had more of the architecture to inspect.

  At the end of the room, a wide glass staircase rose from the centre of the floor towards a landing against the far wall, and from there two more flights climbed in either direction to the floor above, their glass treads cantilevered into the back wall, leaving them unsupported at the front. I’d seen the design before on TV, but I was still impressed at seeing it for real.

  ‘How much weight will they take?’ I asked Dan.

  ‘Tested to more than a tonne,’ he answered, ‘so you won’t have a problem. Everyone asks.’

  Under the right-hand staircase, we dodged the catering staff as we passed through an arch into a small passageway that ran back across the width of the building. Lauren stopped to ask a couple of guys to take up their positions at the entrance, in order to check invitations if anyone turned up early, and then we continued with the tour. The first two doors led to customer toilets, and at the far end a compact kitchen-cum-lunchroom was currently filled with trays of canapés and champagne glasses ready to be filled when the guests arrived.

  We made our way upstairs, past another impressive picture hanging above the landing. The upper floor of the gallery was every bit as remarkable as the space below. It was laid out in the same way, with sofas in the centre of each section; the only difference was that now there was a hole in the floor rather than the ceiling. As we crossed one of the bridges, I briefly leaned on the railing and admired the desk below.