by John Harris
The girl was fair-haired and blue-eyed like a Florentine, and her clothes were old but good. Like everybody else in Italy she looked as if a hearty meal would help. They waited for the ancient housekeeper to show her into the studio and they were all three standing near the painting when the door opened. The girl smiled nervously at them.
‘You’re from the De Castro Galleries?’ Marco asked.
‘How did you know? Did they telephone?’
‘You must be good to work for De Castro.’
She stared at them, her brows wrinkled, then she smiled. ‘I think there must be some mistake,’ she said, ‘I don’t work for De Castro. I was just directed here by them. I remembered reading that he acted for my father.’
Marco’s glass fell to the floor. He kicked the fragments from his feet. ‘For a moment,’ he managed, ‘I thought you said “my father”.’
The girl turned to him, looking like a figure from a painting by one of the Florentine School. ‘I did,’ she agreed. ‘I’m Tamara Detto Banti. I’m Boccaccio Detto Banti’s daughter, and when I saw he’d died I thought there might be a small painting I could have. Since there’s nobody else, I suppose I could.’ She studied them. ‘Non è vero? Surely that’s so?’
Five
You could have cut the atmosphere in the big studio with a knife. Marco Detto Banti had fled at once studio to the brandy bottle and at the moment he was making no attempt to hide it with wine. Only the girl was happily unaware of what was going on, her neat head turning from one to the other.
‘I saw an expert,’ she said. ‘He was busy trying to date me so I thought I might as well pick his brains a little. He said I ought to come here. He said even pencil sketches by someone like my father would be valuable. He understands the belli arti and he’s dealt with paintings before, so he knew what he was talking about. I took a few days off from my job at the hospital to come.’
‘Who was this expert?’ Pugh asked. ‘This man who told you to come here?’
‘He was an American officer,’ she said cheerfully. ‘In the legal department of their army. In Naples. I met him at the hospital.’
Pugh wondered why he’d never met her, because he’d always made a point of meeting every pretty girl he saw and he wasn’t unknown at the hospital.
‘And it was in Naples you learned your father was dead?’ Tassinari asked.
‘I read it in the paper. They said he was English. But he wasn’t. He was Italian.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ Pugh said. ‘Did you know him?’
‘I never met him in my life. My mother never got on with him. Particularly when she remarried. Non c’è un vero grande amore. And after all, he made no provision for her. There was just no contact at all.’
‘What about you? Why didn’t you ever meet him?’
‘Xenia didn’t like babies. She hadn’t expected one and when I arrived she made a point of getting rid of me as soon as possible. I was placed in the care of an old couple called Dulcecuore in Caserta. They brought me up and, I suspect, did a better job of it than she would have. I owe them everything – affection, common sense, help. They both died in 1939 and I never thought much about my father until I saw in the paper that he was dead. I knew he had no other children and I thought I’d like one of his paintings – as much for sentimental reasons as anything – and I got the address. Signor de Castro didn’t seem very eager to give it to me.’
Probably he was hoping to collar the paintings himself, Pugh thought. He had seen enough of liberated Italy by this time to be suspicious of everybody.
‘In the end I got it in a sort of backhanded way from one of his typists,’ Tamara Detto Banti went on.
Pugh indicated Marco, who was gulping at a fresh glass. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is Marco Detto Banti. He’s your father’s younger brother.’
‘I didn’t know he had one.’
Pugh glanced at his watch. ‘Until about three minutes ago, he thought he was the heir.’
The girl stared at Marco. ‘Oh, Madonna,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly sorry. Can’t we come to some arrangement?’ She stared at the canvas. ‘Is that one of my father’s paintings?’
‘Yes.’
She frowned. ‘You know, as a matter of fact, I do not particularly like Detto Bantis.’ She looked at Pugh. ‘Do you like Detto Bantis?’ she asked.
‘I’m not here to like or dislike,’ Pugh said. He was there to collect them for the British Government – or Colonel Tasker. Perhaps even for Colonel Baracca. Now, he thought gleefully, neither looked like getting them. The British Government’s loss left him cold. Governments could handle that sort of thing. But Tasker’s loss delighted him.
The girl was still staring at the painting on the easel, her brows wrinkled, and she didn’t seem to hear what he said. ‘And after all,’ she pointed out, ‘he wasn’t very popular, was he?’
‘His canvasses will still fetch four million lire.’
She looked startled. ‘That much?’
‘That much.’
She brushed her hair out of her eyes and stared hard at Pugh.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘What’s your interest?’
‘This,’ Tassinari said, ‘is Sergeant Pugh. He is an English soldier.’
She sniffed. ‘What has he to do with it?’
‘He has come to collect the paintings.’
She gave Pugh an old-fashioned look. ‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘That is what soldiers do. Collect everything.’
‘I might even find a buyer for you,’ Pugh said shortly. ‘I’m trying to help.’
‘Soldiers are always trying to help Italian girls.’
‘They happen to like them.’
‘I’m not so sure the girls like the soldiers. They’re arrogant and loud and stupid. They boast too much. And you bombed our cities.’
‘The Germans happened to be in them.’
‘And now we have the British and the Americans instead.’ Her anger boiled over. ‘Why does nobody listen to us? You tell us what to do but you never ask what we think! You’re so busy telling us to be your allies because it’s good for Italy, but logic doesn’t make converts. A few shiploads of food would win us over much more quickly than politics.’
Tassinari smiled. ‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘can love the unwanted guest in his house, whether he’s a friend or an enemy.’
Pugh shrugged. He could understand her bitterness, especially since the Allies didn’t always seem to be very allied. The British envied the Americans and despised the Canadians; the Canadians hated the British and envied the Americans; the French sneered at the British and shook their heads in disbelief at the Americans; the Americans just felt sorry for everybody. In addition, pedestrians were killed with monotonous regularity on every corner by military vehicles that were too big and too heavy for the small towns through which they were driven with total indifference by their drivers. There always seemed to be someone dead or dying in the gutter, covered with a blanket or a coat until the ambulance or the carabinieri came to take them away. Since there were no medicines in the hospitals, they were even considered lucky if they died en route, while the blood remained as a warning in a thick pool in the gutter.
Tamara Detto Banti was still studying Pugh with great suspicion. ‘If you’re a soldier, what do you know about painting?’
‘I used to be a painter, too. Here. In Italy. I even met Boccaccio Detto Banti.’
‘You did?’ Her eyes lit up and she forgot her suspicion at once. ‘What was he like?’
‘Pretty old at the time.’
Her suspicion seemed to recede and she looked at him with more interest.
‘Are they really worth a lot of money?’
Pugh shrugged. ‘Well, they’re not very good for Detto Bantis.’
‘They’re Detto Bantis all right.’ The voice came from behind the easel in a choking quaver.
Tassinari joined in. ‘Shall we say, Signorina, that they’re different and that might affect their price? Bocco Dett
o Banti was never an inspired painter but he was a craftsman. He had great skill and a lot of knowledge. So, if they are Detto Bantis I imagine they’d fetch roughly what we suggest.’
‘Madonna mia!’ She seemed awed. ‘You said, “they’d fetch”. Are there any more?’
Pugh gestured at the paintings propped up around the room. ‘Twelve altogether.’
She did a quick mental calculation and her face fell. ‘Mamma mia,’ she said, ‘that’s 48 million lire!’
‘Precisamente,’ Avvocato Tassinari said dryly. ‘Exactly.’
She stared at them, obviously a little shaken. ‘48 million lire!’ She turned to Marco, who had hardly said a word since she’d appeared. ‘I seem to have put my foot in it, don’t I?’
Marco waved a hand, still speechless.
‘I expect we can come to some arrangement,’ she repeated, with a disarming willingness to share. She gazed at the canvas on the easel again. ‘Do you really think it would fetch that much?’ she asked.
Avvocato Tassinari nodded. ‘A Detto Banti would fetch four million lire anywhere. A good one might even fetch five or six. People buy paintings these days as investments.’
‘Bocco would be a lousy insurance,’ Marco growled.
Tassinari smiled. ‘That’s something we don’t tell eager buyers.’
‘I’m only organising them, of course,’ he went on. ‘I don’t fix the price. That comes from the state of supply and demand, and the supply of Detto Bantis is limited, while the supply of unknowns isn’t.’
‘And if they aren’t Detto Bantis?’
Pugh studied the pictures. ‘The lot – 120,000 lire. That’s all, and that’s not much.’
She looked at Marco with an expression that was a cross between pity and an apology. ‘We had better take our pick, you and I, I think,’ she said.
‘There’s no question of him taking his pick,’ Tassinari pointed out. ‘If you’re who you say you are, in the eyes of the law the paintings are yours. All of them.’
The man behind the easel choked and, as they turned towards him, he turned away, his eyes streaming, a hand waving to indicate he didn’t need assistance. The door slammed.
‘Poor man,’ Tamara Detto Banti said. ‘Did he really think they were his?’
Pugh nodded. ‘I think he’d got his life mapped out to the grave on the strength of them.’
‘Can’t we share them?’
Tassinari shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to stop you giving away your own property, of course, Signorina,’ he said. ‘But it isn’t as easy as all that. The law takes its time.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of beggaring him! I never met my father, of course, and I know nothing of him. But if there are that many, I wouldn’t miss one or two, would I? Couldn’t I arrange not to have them? My friend said I could do what I liked with them, and he’s a lawyer.’
‘As it happens,’ Tassinari said gravely, ‘so am I.’
‘Oh!’ She stared at him. ‘I thought you were a dealer or something.’ She stared at the canvas again. ‘But 48 million lire. Dio mio, I don’t want that much! I’d only waste it.’
‘Not if you were well advised.’
She seemed a little unnerved. ‘One picture would do.’ She gestured at the easel. ‘That one. That’s all I expected. I’d settle for four million any time. Less. He could keep the rest.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Pugh said, ‘they’re not his to keep. If a man finds a piece of jewellery in the street he’s not entitled to sell it as his own. When your uncle found these canvasses, he seemed to have the right to them as the nearest relative. Now it seems he’s suddenly lost that right. You could always reward him for finding them, of course.’
‘Can’t I give them away then? To my uncle.’
‘It becomes you, Signorina,’ Tassinari said, ‘but I’d suggest not immediately. And if you’ll accept my advice, which I’ll offer you, in a most unlawyer-like way, for nothing, I’d wait until we’ve established that they are Detto Bantis.’
‘And assuming they are?’
Pugh glanced at the easel. ‘It could start a run on Detto Bantis,’ he said. ‘Because there haven’t been any for a long time and, with damage, looting and theft by the Germans, there’s a great shortage of pictures. When the war ends, art treasures of any kind will be in great demand and a lot of people will be looking for them. Twelve at once could start a fashion. However, these were painted in a hurry – perhaps even with that in mind. Or else under difficult conditions – perhaps because the Germans were here, perhaps because he needed the money and then it was found there was no movement in art sales so he couldn’t get rid of them and had to stick them in the cellar until times were better. I would suggest releasing one of the best ones to stir up interest and let buyers think about it for a while.’
The girl frowned. ‘You’re sure you’re not a dealer? You think like one. How long would it take?’
‘The law doesn’t move fast,’ Tassinari said. ‘The first thing is to get them to where they can be appraised. They certainly oughtn’t to remain here.’
‘I could arrange for money to be advanced,’ Pugh said, knowing even Tasker ought to be willing to cough up something to make sure he got his mitts on his loot. ‘This, of course, is providing you can establish your identity.’
She looked contemptuous. ‘The law is stuffy, isn’t it?’
Tassinari shrugged. ‘The law doesn’t take chances,’ he reminded her. ‘That’s why it’s the law.’
She seemed to be vaguely hostile, as though she resented their opposition to her offer to help Marco. ‘Allora,’ she said. ‘It so happens I have all my mother’s papers, including the registrations of her marriage and my birth. They all came to me when she died. I kept them. I was proud of being Boccaccio Detto Banti’s daughter, you see.’
Tassinari smiled at Pugh. ‘A clever one, this, non è vero?’ he said. ‘She reminds me of my daughter who died in 1937.’ He spread his hands as if to exhibit signs of the stigmata. ‘Her documents appear to be sound, too. I wonder if we can get her lawyer friend to act for her.’
Tamara looked him straight in the eye. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You can’t. The night before I came here, I found he’d been taking a girl friend of mine to bed.’
Pugh decided that with Tamara Detto Banti around, the lawyer friend must have been a nutcase.
‘If it’s any help,’ he said, ‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘You don’t have to,’ she said stiffly.
‘I know I don’t have to. But it seems there’s a lot to clear up and it might be as well.’
‘Because it’ll help you? Not because it’ll help me?’
‘The law’s stuffy,’ Pugh reminded her. ‘You said so yourself. It doesn’t make a habit of doing things for people just because their eyes are blue or because they have a nice smile.’
She looked pleased. ‘Have I?’ she said.
Six
Tamara Detto Banti sat opposite Pugh at a table in the little restaurant in the main square of Vicinamontane. There were a few restaurants open, but the place had been swept too often by the hand of war and all they seemed able to offer was soup made out of God alone knew what part of a chicken, and rissoles made from black market British army corned beef. But there was a Camaldoli wine from the slopes of Vesuvius which, if it was rough, was still wine.
Avvocato Tassinari, worn out by the toils of the day, had decided to rest, while Marco Detto Banti was well drunk by this time. Since there was no sign of the old help, Enrichetta, Pugh had suggested eating out.
‘My father married Xenia after the last war,’ Tamara was saying. ‘He served in the Italian army, but he had lived in England up to 1914 and he went to Paris after the war. It was then that he met Xenia, who was a refugee from the Russian revolution. She left him in 1920, by which time he was in England again. He left there in 1934 to return to Italy.’
‘Have you no other relations?’ Pugh asked.
‘No.’
‘You’re not marri
ed?’
She frowned. ‘My fidanzato went into the army and was killed in the winter of 1940/41.’ She looked as if she had a world of sorrow on her shoulders. ‘His family sent his belongings to me. I realise now I didn’t know him very well.’ She paused. ‘And now, after three years, I can hardly remember what he looked like. I took refuge in work. I am a segretaria privata at the hospital in Naples. Technical assistant, you would say, I think. To Signor Finzi, the surgeon. Very special. With much knowledge, because I was once a nurse.’
Pugh had met a few secretaries and nurses in Naples. Some of them would sleep with anyone for a meal, but he didn’t think this one would.
She was gazing at Pugh in a way that started up all his old ambitions, and an unexpected itch to paint the smooth curve of her cheek. With her fair hair, short upper lip and green eyes, she reminded him of one of Botticelli’s goddesses or Bronzino’s portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi.
‘Sergeant,’ she went on after a long silence, ‘I think you and I are going to see a lot of each other because of these pictures of my father’s.’
‘That seems likely,’ Pugh agreed, not at all alarmed by the prospect. Her face was full of character, and when she allowed herself to smile it seemed to take over and made her a different person altogether.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I can’t go on for ever calling you Sergeant Pugh.’ She pronounced it Poo. ‘It is such a silly name. No Italian would have a name like that. What is your Christian name?’
‘Tom.’
‘Tomaso,’ she said. ‘That is a good Italian name.’
‘Not Tomaso – Tom.’
‘That is what I said. A good Italian name.’
‘There’s another. Wooster. Thomas Wooster Pugh.’
She looked up. ‘Oo-ooster?’ She made it sound like a train going through a tunnel. ‘This is surely not true?’ She gave an unexpected grin. ‘Under the circumstances I had better go on calling you Sergeant Poo. In Florence, where I came from, we do not stand on ceremony much. And, since you say you are an Avvocato also, perhaps I ought to call you Avvocato Poo.’ She considered it. ‘But perhaps not,’ she decided. ‘It is too difficult.’ She frowned. ‘If you are an Avvocato, why do you not practise as one?’