The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  She got up and walked around the sofa and looked at the thick paint-encrusted palette by the easel. ‘Surely science has advanced far enough to help out? Can’t they analyse paint or even pick up samples of DNA?’ she asked.

  Jesse pointed to the black-and-white photograph of the man and the woman.

  ‘Funny you should say that. My father was working on an ingenious scientific analysis project when he died. He thought he’d found a way of fingerprinting paint in much the same way that we fingerprint a criminal.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He rang my mother to say that he’d cracked it and was on his way home. But he never arrived. He was found the next morning under Battersea Bridge. The odd thing is that his wallet, keys, money were still in his briefcase, only his computer and notebooks were missing.’

  ‘Was it an accident?’

  ‘The police claimed it was suicide.’ Jesse hesitated. ‘It meant they could close the case. But my father would never ever have committed suicide. He adored life. Adored my mother. Adored us. Adored his work. My guess, though I have never been able to prove it, is that there were people in the art world who were terrified of his discovery. There’s a lot more money in fakes than there is in proving authenticity,’ said Jesse.

  Annie detected a slight tremor in his voice. Turning away from her, he reached for a bottle with ‘turpentine’ written on the outside.

  ‘When did this happen?’ she asked.

  ‘About fifteen years ago, and then we moved to Shropshire.’

  ‘Perhaps that is what painting one field is about – trying to keep the memory of your father alive.’

  ‘You’re the first person to say that out loud.’

  ‘I apologise – presumptuous of me.’

  ‘Perceptive, actually,’ said Jesse, taking up a piece of cotton wool in one hand. ‘I wish there was one person who could carry on his work, but he never explained his process to anyone. He had an assistant, Agatha, who understood a bit, and is trying to pick up where he left off.’

  ‘Do you see much of her?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I should.’ Jesse picked up the bottle of turps. ‘Ready to glimpse into the underworld?’

  Annie looked apprehensive.

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ he said gently.

  She nodded.

  ‘Come closer,’ said Jesse, tipping the bottle of turps against a swab of cotton wool. Annie held her breath as he began to rub the cotton wool over the top left-hand corner of the picture. The white spirit made a shiny lens on the dirty surface. For a brief moment they saw through the layers of brown varnish to a mass of delicate emeralds, yellows and limes. The brushstrokes danced. The drapery of the woman’s dress floated in a spring breeze. Her plump bosom seemed to rise and fall under a satiny sheen. Jesse and Annie looked at each other with delight.

  ‘Try the face,’ Annie whispered.

  He rubbed the cotton wool gently over the woman’s hair; they both bent forward expectantly. Again, as if by magic, the real picture revealed itself and her face swam through the layers of dirt. Jesse grabbed a pencil and began to sketch it on a small piece of paper.

  ‘Look,’ he said his excitement rising, ‘her face is made up of four major strokes – three delicate slices of pink and a dash of pale lemon. Yet in those subtle, gentle marks you get an idea of her character. She’s feisty, uncompromising. You can tell, can’t you, by the curve of her mouth, by the direct way she looks at you.’

  ‘Who do you think she was?’ asked Annie. The white spirit began to evaporate and once again the face was obscured. Jesse shrugged.

  ‘Shall we do him now?’ she asked, pointing to the figure lying on the grass. Jesse nodded and tipped more white spirit on to a fresh piece of cotton wool. The man’s face was partially hidden by a hat. Again, Jesse made a sketch, an aide memoire.

  ‘Have you got anything stronger?’ asked Annie.

  Jesse laughed. ‘You are a funny mixture – cautious and impulsive. Ten minutes ago you were flinching at a sponge.’

  ‘So what else is in those bottles?’ said Annie, ignoring the last remark.

  ‘Acetone would be the next step.’

  ‘Nail varnish remover?’

  Jesse nodded. ‘It can take off more than dirt. Particularly if our painter mixed varnish and paint to make a glaze; some painters were really sloppy. Watteau, for example, never bothered to prepare his canvases or clean his brushes; you get all sorts of dirt and bugs in with his paint. Turner was supposed to dilute his paint with beer.’

  ‘I still think we should have a go,’ urged Annie.

  ‘It’s your picture,’ said Jesse, nervously. ‘Pass me the blue bottle.’

  Pouring the water out of the bowl, Jesse added a few drops of acetone to some white spirit and, winding a small amount of cotton wool around an orange stick, he dipped it into the mixture. Hesitating, he straightened his shoulders and rubbed gently at the canvas. Nothing happened so he added another drop of acetone into the bowl. Again nothing. Annie noticed that tiny beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead. He added another drop, then got up and, flicking some switches, bathed the room in harsh light.

  ‘One can’t rush these things,’ he said wiping his hands on his suit. In the drawer of the large bureau he found a set of magnifying lenses and strapped them on to his head. His hand shook slightly as he poured another drop of acetone into the bowl. Then he stopped. ‘This is too risky; I don’t want to make a mistake. We could take it to Dad’s friend Agatha at the National Gallery. She’d know what to do.’

  ‘Thank you for helping me,’ said Annie, smiling at him.

  ‘Maybe you’d like some dinner?’

  ‘Yes, some time that would be nice,’ said Annie non-committally. She wished he hadn’t asked. The thought of any emotional entanglement made her feel sick. Suddenly she wanted to get away from this helpful man.

  ‘Perhaps I could have your number?’

  ‘I have yours!’ Annie said firmly.

  ‘I hope you call.’

  Annie smiled. He wasn’t her type – there was no point pretending he was.

  Chapter 10

  ‘Delores Ryan called for you,’ said Marsha, the receptionist, to Annie. ‘Here’s her number.’

  ‘Surely she wants to talk to Rebecca?’ Annie replied.

  ‘No, she mentioned something about cooking.’

  A few days later, when Rebecca and her father were abroad, Annie found herself outside Delores Ryan’s apartment in Stockwell at eleven o’clock in the morning. From the outside, it was an unprepossessing, 1950s block, like so many others in that part of London, just off a main road. The communal areas were run down and Annie had to pick her way past discarded toys and a wheelless bicycle. Annie checked the address again and rang the bell hesitantly. On a whim, she had brought the picture along.

  To her surprise, a maid, dressed formally in black with a white frilly apron, opened the door and led Annie along a narrow corridor. Once inside, Annie entered a different world; etchings and drawings were carefully placed on damask-covered walls. The maid’s court shoes made a clack-clack on the parquet floor; Annie’s trainers squeaked noisily. At the end of the passage, two double doors opened into a large, low-ceilinged room with drawn, heavy brocade curtains. The only light came from a table lamp spilling a little pool of brightness on to a leopardskin-print carpet.

  ‘Madame Delores is at brunch,’ the maid said in a south London accent. ‘She will return shortly.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The maid held out her hand. Annie stepped forward to shake it.

  ‘Your coat,’ the maid said.

  ‘I’ll keep it, but thank you,’ said Annie, blushing, glad for the gloom around her. Taking the picture out of her rucksack, she propped it on a tapestry-backed chair.

  ‘There’s got to be another light. Can’t see you properly,’ she said to the painting. Her eyes flicked around the room, searching for a switch or a lamp. The furniture was arranged to form little groups of table
s and dainty chairs. Everything was on a small scale: slim backs balanced on finely turned legs; tabletops were piled high with books, objects and miniature boxes. There were several standard lamps with heavily fringed shades. Running her fingers around the bulbs and down the stems, Annie felt for a switch. Her hair caught in a fern, it frightened her and she jumped back, knocking a fist-sized china pug on to the ground. She held her breath. Don’t break, please, she prayed, watching it bounce across the carpet and come to a halt below a golden harp. Nervously Annie examined it. She couldn’t see any chips. Putting it back, she decided it would be safer to wait in one place. She tried to sit still but soon got up and picked up a book, one of many written by Delores Ryan and left in neat piles.

  Annie read the blurb on the dust jacket about Watteau: ‘French painter (10 October 1684–18 July 1721) whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement. He was responsible for revitalising the waning Baroque idiom that became known as Rococo.’ Looking at the other books by Delores in the stack, Annie saw Watteau and the Court of Louis XIV; Watteau and Music and the most recent, Watteau’s Women: The Importance of the Model in the Artist’s Oeuvre.

  Taking up the last book, she flicked through the pages. Delores’s premise, as Jesse had explained, was to match sketches and drawings of people in each of the paintings and show how the painter had revisited the same subjects again and again. Annie was not particularly interested in this; to her it seemed obvious that an artist would repaint the same composition, or person. But she was fascinated by the preparatory drawings and how the compositions evolved before her eyes as Watteau played with different arrangements of figures, hands, glances and clothes until he found the pose that worked. Sometimes a finger moved an inch to the left or right but those tiny adjustments made all the difference to the success and strength of a composition.

  As she turned the pages, Annie saw that the same woman cropped up again and again throughout his work. Turning to the foreword, Annie read. ‘During his short life, Antoine Watteau found little comfort in love. He was a sickly loner and a misanthrope who was never recorded as marrying. All his passions were reserved for his drawing and painting. However, in her ground-breaking new work, world-acclaimed scholar Delores Ryan shows that Watteau did form deep attachments and identifies the great love of his life as Charlotte Desmares, whose stage name was Colette.’ Annie read that this famous actress’s career had started at the age of eight in 1690. ‘A renowned beauty, she became the mistress of the Duc d’Orléans, the nephew of King Louis XIV and the future Regent of France. By association, Charlotte became one of the most influential women at court. Far more than a pretty face, Charlotte was a shrewd collector, leaving thirty-seven great works by Italian, French and Dutch masters.’

  Lifting her painting from the sofa, Annie placed it next to Delores’s book. Flicking through the pages, she tried to match the woman in her painting with any of the reproductions before her. There were likenesses but nothing startling. Annie started on other parts of the body. On one page there was a sketch of a pair of hands resting in a lap; though Annie had trouble seeing through the heavy varnish, she thought that there were similarities in the way the sitter rested her thumb on her index finger, the long tapered fingers, the perfectly formed nails.

  There was a snuffling and scuffling outside the door. Annie quickly placed the painting back on the sofa and closed the book. She realised that she had been waiting an hour. Moments later, the handle turned and two fat pugs waddled into the room, barking at Annie before sitting down either side of a pretty padded armchair. Delores appeared moments later, huffing and puffing nearly as much as her animals. Around Delores’s neck there was a confection of ruffles. These glowed white, apart from the stains of tomato and egg that had clearly strayed during the journey from fork to mouth. Delores had a large double chin, running from ear to ear, but within that blubbery frame there was a pretty, fine-featured face with bright china-blue eyes and a bee-stung mouth.

  ‘So tell me,’ Delores said, kicking off a pair of kitten-heeled mules made from pink silk with gold edging, ‘what are Memling and Rebecca like to work for?’ She had a tinkling voice, delicate, musical, quite out of proportion to her size.

  ‘I have signed a confidentiality agreement,’ Annie replied.

  ‘How dull,’ said Delores, looking disappointed. ‘I have eaten with the Winklemans for twenty years and your dinner was the first decent meal they have served. You did very well.’

  Annie blushed.

  ‘Do you know anything about fêtes galantes?’ Delores smiled condescendingly at Annie.

  ‘Not really,’ Annie admitted.

  ‘It’s shorthand for the pursuits of the idle rich in the courts of Louis XIV and XV and I think it would make rather an amusing and appropriate theme for an art-world dinner, don’t you think?’

  Annie didn’t know whether to agree or demur so she looked at one of the pugs.

  ‘You did the Caravaggio evening so amusingly – how would you do mine?’ Delores pressed.

  Annie thought about her painting.

  ‘What about creating a beautiful glade, a clearing in a wood, bowers of roses and spring flowers, a statue. The mood of the food has to be flirtatious, coquettish, light and ornate.’ Annie spoke quickly; her eyes shone with excitement as she thought of the evening’s possibilities, of the dishes she could research and try and make.

  ‘You are hired!’ said Delores, clapping her hands together.

  Annie’s spirits sagged. ‘I would love to, but I can’t. I don’t have the time to do this assignment justice.’

  ‘Aren’t you owed any holiday?’ Delores asked. ‘It’s to celebrate my sixtieth birthday – I want it to be a night that no one will ever forget. My friends are such a jaded lot.’

  Annie tried to keep her enthusiasm at bay but could not help making a suggestion. ‘There should be a dress code – choose one of the pictures in the Wallace – I can’t remember the names,’ she suggested.

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot.’

  ‘I was just reading your book.’

  ‘How much will the dinner cost?’

  ‘It would be terribly expensive.’

  ‘Your budget is five thousand pounds.’

  ‘Five thousand pounds!’ Annie could not believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Isn’t that enough? It would not include the hire of the room or the wine but would have to cover staff and sous chefs and catering equipment.’

  Annie shook her head in disbelief. It was more money than she had ever seen. Again Delores misunderstood the signs.

  ‘Okay, six thousand for the food and I will pick up the tabs for the set dressing and catering equipment. Your own fee, the ingredients, and the wages of the staff will have to be taken from that.’

  ‘For how many?’ asked Annie

  ‘Fifty, sit down. Can you do it?’

  Annie nodded. It was crazy. Of course she couldn’t do it. The dinner for Memling and Rebecca was a fluke.

  Annie suddenly became aware that the only noise in the room was the heavy breathing and snuffling of the pugs. She looked up and saw Delores considering her thoughtfully.

  ‘How old are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Thirty-one,’ Annie replied.

  ‘No husband or children. Left it a bit late. So did I. You and I have to make our careers our lovers; work is the only thing one can rely on, isn’t it?’ Delores took a small gold compact out of a pocket and, flicking it open, examined her nose. ‘The date is the first of April, but don’t make a fool out of me.’

  Delores looked at the door, as if she was expecting Annie to simply evaporate.

  ‘Actually, I have brought something – would you mind looking at it?’ Annie reached over to the chair and handed the painting to Delores. ‘I got it in a junk shop.’

  Delores looked at the picture propped on the chair. ‘Do you know how many people buy things in junk shops thinking they’ve discovered a masterpiece?

  ‘No.’


  ‘If I took even a few seriously there would be no time to write my books,’ Delores continued. ‘It’s very tiring being a world expert. Let me see it.’ Delores held out her hand dismissively. Annie handed her the painting.

  ‘Shall I turn on a light?’

  ‘It’s not necessary,’ said Delores, taking a small torch from her pocket and shining it over the picture’s surface. The bright light bounced ghoulishly back on to her face. Delores spat on to the canvas and rubbed the foaming spit over the surface, muttering inaudibly, then heaved her body off the chair and waddled over to the window.

  ‘Pull the curtain back,’ commanded Delores. Annie got up and drew the heavy curtain; below, two boys loitered outside a doorway, one picking his nose extravagantly. Delores spat again and this time, rubbed harder at the surface before turning to Annie.

  ‘It’s a nineteenth-century copy in the style of Watteau. They were mass-produced for the Victorians. Very few could and can afford the real thing,’ Delores said, crossing the room and lowering her body back into the chair.

  ‘How can you tell just like that?’ asked Annie.

  ‘It’s my life. It’s what I do. Day in, day out.’

  ‘But you only looked at it for a few seconds.’

  ‘I really don’t need more time,’ said Delores tapping her nose. ‘The great Bernard Berenson once said, ‘‘Scholarship is largely a question of accumulated experience upon which your spirit sets unconsciously.” I feel it in my gut.’ She handed the picture back to Annie.

  Annie could not help feeling disappointed. Though it was ridiculous to think that she had found something of merit in a junk shop, there had still been a glimmer of hope, something to show for her relationship with Robert.