I must not underestimate, he was thinking, just before Gayle ran back into the room.
‘Where’s Patrick?’ Gayle was shrieking. ‘Where’s Patrick? Where’s my child?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Earlier the same day, a small figure stepped inside the door of a smart auction house in a side street in the West End of London. She looked entirely at home. The entrance to the auctioneers was not auspicious and neither was the street, but a man in uniform opened the door for her and bowed to her interesting companion. The hidden entrance led into a foyer that would have graced a fashionable hotel, complete with wide TV screens, flowers, and a carpet so soft and wood so dark it muffled footsteps and voices. It was a setting of neutral luxury and could have been anywhere from the Business Class lounge at an airport to the boardroom of any successful corporation with the sort of ambience designed to comfort those who were used to it, or bring out the closet revolutionary in another. The scenery was completed by a trio of women with uniform features sitting behind a huge and ancient desk that looked as if it had originated in a Venetian palace. Informed by their screens and half hidden by flowers, they were obeying rules and displaying appropriate manners, trained to react with equal friendliness towards the hopeful punter bringing in a valueless object as they did towards the rich client with serious business. People did not stumble upon this place: they had to know where it was and many did. A free valuation of your work of art was always available and courteously given.
Nevertheless, the patience of the messengers could wear thin towards the endless trickle of unbeautiful people bearing treasures gleaned from attics and back rooms for a free valuation: receptionists and the persons they summoned via the screen had learned that the giving of negative opinions to hopeful faces was difficult. Handling disappointment was better dealt with briskly to limit the hurt.
As Diana Porteous and Saul Blythe arrived, an elderly man was being ushered out, scarlet with embarrassment, having been audibly informed that the precious ornament carried under his arm was a cheap reproduction of an Egyptian head sold by the thousand to tourists in Cairo and not the priceless artefact he hoped it might be. The object was as valueless as the man now felt himself; it seemed as if judgement was made not only upon the item but also upon the person who carried it in. He had not been offered contempt, merely fact, but contempt was what his soul received. Di was hurt on his behalf.
‘It’s not fair,’ she said, seeing the man scuttle out of the door with his bundle under his arm. ‘It’s just not fair.’
‘We are defined by our taste and our ignorance,’ Saul murmured. ‘And we must bear the consequences. What else can they do but tell him?’
Mrs Diana Porteous and Mr Saul Blythe were warmly welcomed and looked fit to grace the place as buyers or as sellers of something worth the trouble. They were a handsome couple; an urbane man in his mid-forties with his mid-twenties wife, no doubt his second, or perhaps an indulged mistress, a tad vulgar. Welcomed inside for the preview of the afternoon sale; really to admire the rooms and be seen to attend.
The rooms were splendid in themselves. The colours of the walls changed by the week or the day and the lighting and the hanging of displays was itself a separate work of art. They were looking at the walls as much as the pictures and the people, looking at how everything was shown to their best advantage. They were out for the day, expensive art tourists, Mr Blythe perhaps continuing Mrs Porteous’s education where her late husband had begun. Also to be seen as big spenders, and Di to absorb the ambience.
They emerged into the quiet street and walked for a while before the sale, Di adjusting the fur collar of her ostentatious coat against the cold.
‘Did you see the way they dismissed that poor man with his sculpture?’ she said. ‘They made him feel an old fool. How could they do that?’
Saul tied his silk scarf and guided her across the road, speaking patiently.
‘Telling someone that their loved object is not worth a penny is never going to be easy. They do their best, and there simply isn’t a kind way to do it.’
‘Yes, there is,’ Di insisted. ‘You sit him down. You tell him it’s a beautiful thing and say thank you for letting me see it. Then you tell him that beauty doesn’t always have a price. You let him go with his dignity and compliment him on his taste. You listen.’
‘They’d be talking all day if they listened,’ Saul said. ‘Deal -ers and salesmen don’t have time for such useless compassion.’
She turned on him.
‘Yes, they do. They have all the time in the world. Yes, they should. If you’ve got time for the rich one wanting to flog a masterpiece, you should have time for the others as well and you should be kind to them at least. You should welcome them, express an interest.’
He shook his head, amused by her.
‘Beg to differ, ma’am. They are businesslike, that’s all. Places like this exist to make money out of beauty and aid in the general distribution of wealth. It’s only a theory that they are accessible to all. Fine Art is a commodity with a variable price and this is a market place, not a charity. We, on the other hand, come to great places like this to see fantastic things we might not otherwise be able to see anywhere else, because they’re hidden until the moment they come up for sale. You come here to see things that have lived in private hands in private houses for most of their lives. You come here to make comparisons, get an idea of values, but above all, to see what there is. Then you go scatting about. You hang around auction rooms so that people know you’re looking. Then they come to you.’
He paused at a junction of rich roads, leading into richer roads, facing a traffic jam of rich cars. The environs of St James’s, King Street, the nest of the big dealers in art, handsome streets leading into squares and endless, secret places. The bright cold weather required good, warm clothes. They sat outside a cafe, wrapped up in the winter sun; Di smoked, rapidly.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Collectors like me and Thomas don’t belong here, because we’re too modest. We’re hunters for quality, first, no matter who made it. It doesn’t have to be a named artist. He wouldn’t buy a bad painting by a famous person just because it had financial value. It’s pointless, unless you’re an investor. You have to start with thousands to shop here. This auction house isn’t going to sell a picture for you unless it has a start price like that. They’re dealing in named commodities, artificial values. Not real ones.’
‘When this is all settled you may well have millions to spend or burn, Di,’ he said, mildly. ‘Shall we go back in? Watch the sale? You’ve got to learn to think big, look ready to spend the money and look as if you know how. It’s part of the plan.’
‘What I want,’ Di said, ‘is a proper learning job.’
‘You have one. You’re a curator and a collector. You learn all the time. That’s why we’re here. We’re also here to look as if we’re spending money before the relatives can get at it. That’s what we’re here for. Looking rich, acting rich, willing to spend if not actually doing it. No one can really tell which.’
She let out a peal of raucous laughter.
‘Spending in the sky. Virtual spending. I like it. Better than the real thing.’
He leant towards her.
‘Could you laugh like that again? Only louder? Only I know Edward haunts these streets, also his spies, and he may be in the vicinity, watching himself. Or someone he knows. He’s been scouting for months, putting himself about, trying to find out what Thomas might have been worth, not knowing he was in the wrong place and not learning anything. He’s set his spies, including me. As you know, I report to Edward. Speak louder, will you dearest? And look at me as if you really trust me, body and soul?’
She touched his hand, playfully, gazed into his dark blue eyes. Thomas’s eyes were translucent, pale blue, incapable of deceit. These darker blue eyes were full of guile. He was dressed for the day in a maroon waistcoat with a splendid watch, every inch the serious stylist and the very opposite of anony
mous.
‘The master plan?’ she asked. ‘Are they hooked?’
‘We have set the hare,’ he said. ‘As Thomas planned, some time ago. Everyone knows that the late Mr Porteous had a semi-valuable collection of paintings and ephemera. What is less well known is that he had at least one painting of greater value than the rest put together. These paintings are not of course included in any inventory. I have been drip-feeding this information for months, long before he died. The hare is set. If we, you, are seen about these places, it would be assumed that we are scouting about for the best place to sell the really high-priced goods, whatever they are. By our very presence, we are announcing that not only do we have money to spend, but also you may have something to sell. You are putting yourself about. Our presence on these not-so-mean streets indicates that you are in debate with someone about something, ready to sell the family gold and pocket the money as soon as, so they better get a move on and get what they can. And they have to steal it. Thomas wanted that. It is entirely necessary.’
‘Thomas didn’t have any one thing worth a million,’ Di said.
‘Maybe not, but he does now,’ Saul said, crossing his fingers. ‘As of when I set the fable running, you are the de facto owner of an unknown masterpiece or two. Not an Impressionist or anything like that, nothing so obvious, but high value all the same. Something to gamble with. And you aren’t willing to let it go, you’ve lied about its existence already, please remember that. Even you might not know how valuable it might be. The story is that I acquired it for Thomas many moons ago from an old lady who knew no better, someone who had possessed either one of them or both of them for years. Please also remember that you are a foolish child, a local girl made good and you would do anything for money. Now, let’s go back in and watch an auction. It’s a lovely game, even Thomas couldn’t have invented it.’
The room inside was like a ballroom hung with paintings, a stage, screens, a quiet army, moving paintings from place to place around the people who sat as if watching a performance. The sound of phones trilled from the galleried corner at the back next to where they stationed themselves among the discreet, restless and alert audience. A tall, urbane auctioneer with tanned skin and white hair was standing on his lectern below a screen which showed the lot he was selling, the same lot lifted on to the easel on his left. Prices in six currencies appeared on the screen above and the screens on the walls, left and right, along with an image of the painting under the hammer, the price altering with each bid, from wherever the bid came. Phone bids, commission bids already logged, or a bid waved from the floor by someone nodding a head and raising a numbered paddle, bidding in person. The bidder knew the code, acting with nods and winks and understated gestures, a hidden understanding between them and the auctioneer at his rostrum in a shorthand of exchanges. One lot every minute, max, each minute seeming to last far longer. A sale of ninety lots with a minimum price of five thousand: a collection and a catalogue which had taken nine months to assemble, gone within little more than an hour and with it the crashing of some hopes and the raising of others. A minor sale in the scale of things for an auction house regularly selling in the millions.
Di marked her catalogue, desecrating the glossy pages with her pen. So many paintings not meeting their reserves by thousands: too many paintings by the same artist, so they all looked the same and lost distinction. She could see how the sale was staged and how on this occasion, the staging, the proximity of one thing to another had failed, and she could see how the audience responded. They watched and they waited; they did not scream or shout. Some had passion for the purpose, all the more intense for being curtailed by the manner of the place and the clothes they wore. Rivalries and tensions breathed life into the room and then died, alongside a text of quiet babble and suspense.
‘There were only a couple of exceptional paintings,’ Di said a little later. ‘Only three. The rest weren’t bad, but they just weren’t worth the money. Not by themselves, not for what they looked like. Half of them weren’t sold because they didn’t meet the reserve price. Who says what a thing’s worth?’
Saul enjoyed the role of tutor and observer, just like Thomas.
‘The reserve price printed in the catalogue is an estimate. The estimate is often based on what the painting sold for the last time when it, or something similar to it, came up for sale at auction. The real reserve price, by which I mean the lowest price the seller will accept, is lower than the printed reserve price. Only the auctioneer knows what it is.’
‘So the printed reserve price is based on records and hope. Nothing to do with intrinsic value. Like other commodities,’ she said.
‘Exactly. Now, the advantage of your hidden masterpiece, or masterpieces if we insist on the plural, is that it is something that has never been for sale at auction before. No one has seen it for a generation and there’s no real precedent for it. They’ll have to guess the value. No one will be able to predict what it might fetch. That’s why Edward will go for it, because it will be priceless, in one sense. It could go for a fortune if there’s a devotee collector or an institution mad for it. It will be a discovery. Some collectors can’t resist that. Edward won’t be able to either, because he’s a gambler, but a lazy one. A man who doesn’t do his research, out for the maximum buck. Willing to risk it, the promise so much better than the certainty. He is thoroughly informed and seduced by me.’
‘Have you really seduced him?’
‘No, dearest, he’s too ugly. But I wouldn’t put it past myself, otherwise.’
‘And you’ve really sold him on this?’
‘Yes. Hook, line and sinker. As for moi, I’m in it for a share of the profits, of course, a motive he can understand, although he’ll already have thought about how to cheat me out of that. A contract to act as a double agent is hardly enforceable.’
‘What about Gayle and Beatrice? Will they go along?’
‘Yes. Because they want action, and want it soon, before dear Thomas is buried, in case stuff is buried with him. And they are realising that getting you arrested might not work, and yes, because they’ve been dominated one way or another for most of their lives and they crave to be led even if it means being lied to. But as far as the paintings are concerned, they’ll have to steal them. That was always part of the plan. They won’t get any sense of achievement, otherwise. Stealing it will be part of their revenge on you and him, they’ll have outwitted you. It would give them such satisfaction. We have to encourage it, we have to turn them into thieves, make them show the courage of thieves. The only way to settle their hash is to turn them into burglars and then, compromise them. They must be thoroughly compromised. Thomas was clear about that.’
He looked at his watch, a flamboyant timepiece, hung round his neck on a black ribbon, half hidden by his tie. A beautiful object, like every single item of his apparel. An old, dull gold circle, an inch in diameter, with a black face and the numbers of the time of the day picked out in gold roman numerals, as easy to read as a book in large print.
‘And now we go and look at the other versions of the paintings in question,’ he said. ‘I want your advice. Your eye. To make sure they’re tempting enough.’
‘Thomas selected them,’ Di said. ‘Thomas thought it would have to be something they expected to see. The sort of thing they’d expect him to have.’
‘Edward does get it, and he’s the prime mover. I’ve sent him to see them in the Wallace and the National. I’ve sent him images and I’ll hand him transparencies. I fear he was expecting things more heroic. Both of them are real. Both of them are masterpieces in their own right and legitimately owned. Thomas knew exactly what they were. We are not encouraging them to be palmed off with a fraud. We are not cheating. Both of the paintings are entirely genuine. With the difference that they are not quite what they appear. They are glorious paintings, but they are not named commodities. Shall we go and check?’
The Wallace collection was in Manchester Square, halfway between Hyde Park a
nd Regent’s Park. Handel’s church overlooked the collection housed in a big, fat, comfortable house as squat and British as any house could be. Enter the doors and find inside a colossal collection of eighteenth-century art, collected by eccentrics. Di knew where she was in the Wallace, in the company of the maddest collectors of them all. Francophiles, acquisitive nutcases, amassing good and bad with equal verve. They were standing in front of the best-known painting in the whole collection, the one on the front of the catalogue, The Swing by one Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
They stood before it, Di smiling and silently reciting the description she had already written of the equivalent painting in the basement.
Picture: shows a girl on a swing in the middle of a verdant garden/ forest, with plenty of hiding places. The girl is gorgeously clothed, with full petticoats and a bonnet; no underwear, they didn’t then; the swing is at its highest as she kicks off her delicious little shoe; the breeze lifts her skirts and she smiles with glee. An old goat of a man, perhaps her tutor, hidden in the undergrowth, watches her with helpless fascination. A young man, stage left, looks up her skirt.
‘Knockout,’ Di said. ‘Girl without knickers.’
‘You,’ Saul said, keeping her on track, ‘have an alternative version. Similar, but with the swing going in the opposite direction. The same hidden, satyr-like figure who is going to rape her innocence, the same boy who will be helpless to protect her. Your colours will be equally brilliant, it may even be a better version than this, a little naughtier, the girl more knowing, the predators more determined, more transfixed by lust. There was more than one version. You have one, the best one, better than this. Are you listening?’
She was.
‘The only difference,’ he continued, ‘Is that your version was not painted by Monsier Fragonard, although he painted several versions. It was painted by his sister-in-law, Margeur -ite Gerard, who came to live with him and his wife in 1775. Ostensibly to take painting lessons. She learned to paint just like him, as well as.’
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