Sidney Chambers and The Persistence of Love

by James Runcie

  West Riding Hall was a smaller version of Harewood House, built in the eighteenth century by the same architect, with a large Italianate terrace, a series of cottage, rose and fruit gardens and a ha-ha that separated the grounds from the nearby farmland, stables and tenanted houses. The Fairley family were selling off as many of their possessions as they could. They too had been hit by death duties.

  The auction was divided into the contents of the rooms – hall, drawing room, study, gun-room, stairs, bedrooms and library – with plenty of furniture, carpets, stags’ heads and curios. Selling alongside the Old Master paintings was a series of fine French and Continental silver, extensive sets of porcelain dinner plates, Japanese bronze vases, model ships, barographs, barometers, clocks, guns, and the head of a water buffalo that had been shot in East Africa. There was a random assortment of Persian rugs, antique books and furniture; a Louis XV tulipwood and marquetry commode, three Italian cassones, a collection of taxidermy (including a bizarre display of frogs at a boxing match) and some Dutch blue-and-white delftware. There were also lacquer cabinets, walnut hall chairs, an Etruscan satyr, two fine Egyptian cats and an ancient terracotta figure of a woman playing knucklebones.

  Sidney was intrigued to see one of his old sparring partners, the journalist Helena Mitchell (née Randall), in attendance. ‘I thought you normally covered crime?’ he asked.

  ‘I could say the same about you, my old friend. Perhaps it’s both of our days off?’

  ‘Do you think if the two of us are here then the chances of anything going wrong are doubled?’

  ‘I’m writing a special “state-of-the-nation” piece. It’s with a photographer. We’re going to show contrasting Britain. You know the kind of thing: a stately-home auction and a struggling coal mine slap bang next to each other.’

  ‘Not exactly subtle.’

  ‘There’s not much about contemporary journalism that is.’

  ‘And the photographer?’

  ‘Frank Downing. I’ve known him for years. He’s mainly done war stuff – you’ll have seen his Biafran photos – but he wants a rest from being shot at. He’s doing a book: England Through the Lens.’

  Downing was on the other side of the room framing up an image; a handsome man with ‘colourful past’ written all over him. He carried a Billingham bag and wore a gilet packed full of lenses, filters and light meters. Sidney remembered another photographer, Daniel Morden, planning a similar venture over ten years previously. It was odd to think how the old ideas came round again.

  ‘How’s Malcolm?’ he asked.

  ‘He doesn’t like me going away, especially at weekends, but it’s overtime and we need the money. You know how it is.’

  ‘Hildegard is often telling me how we need to economise.’

  ‘No one joins the Church of England for the money, Sidney. But now you’re here I feel right at home. Something unusual is bound to happen. You must have been out of trouble for, what is it, weeks? It would probably be easier if the paper made me their Sidney Chambers correspondent. It would save so much time.’

  ‘You’d soon get bored of me.’

  ‘That’s one thing I know for sure will never happen. I will never tire of you, Sidney. I’m just amazed how you’ve got away with it all for so long. But we should take a good look at what’s on sale before the bidding starts. God knows who all these people are and what will turn up.’

  Plump women with sharp elbows and an advanced air of entitlement were shown to their chairs by weary men who would probably rather have been on a Mediterranean cruise than stuck in a damp environment that smelled of dying lilies and old school dinners.

  Sidney, Charles and Amanda sat next to a few young would-be connoisseurs who dressed like their parents. Also in attendance was the owner of a group of Chinese restaurants, a tweedy hotelier after some ‘classy tat’, and an aristocratic couple who would never buy anything but were there simply to check the prices and revalue their possessions accordingly. There were journalists from the Yorkshire Post and the West Riding Gazette, a local estate agent, a woman Amanda recognised from the Courtauld Institute speaking in Spanish to a friend with a notebook (how much did they know? she wondered) and a mustachioed man in a sheepskin coat who had just won the pools and was looking for ‘some proper swank’ for his new country house outside Ripon.

  The auctioneer was a suave, thin, silver-haired man with a slight stutter that might have been an affectation in order to prolong the bidding. He was wearing a three-piece brown tweed suit and a yellow polka-dot bow-tie. His quiet demeanour was perhaps a counter-intuitive attempt to persuade people that it was perfectly natural to spend vast sums of money on objects that might not merit the financial outlay.

  Sidney was surprised how deceptively low some of the estimates were and was informed that the ‘punchy prices’ had been set to lure people into bidding. It was easy to get carried away by thinking ‘it’s only another twenty pounds’, as if the amount people had already offered no longer counted.

  The heavy old furniture, some of it in poor condition, sold cheaply while the porcelain, the paintings and the taxidermy exceeded expectations. The bidding for the José de Madrazo y Agudo, Amanda’s alleged Goya, started at £1,000, with the auctioneer announcing that it was a handsome curio that ‘should clean up nicely’. There appeared to be two rival bidders and the price reached Amanda’s intended price of £4,000 in under a minute.

  Sidney wondered whether she would continue, but every time he tried to give her one of his quizzical ‘Are you sure?’ looks she brushed him aside to concentrate as the auctioneer kept up the interest.

  ‘I’m at £5,000. Do I have £5,100? Thank you, sir. £5,200. Madam? £5,300, £5,400, £5,600, £5,700. Was that a nod or a bid? Thank you. £5,800, £5,900, SIX THOUSAND POUNDS. It’s with YOU at the back, sir . . .’

  Who were these rival bidders and did they suspect as much as Amanda? Might one of them be a plant to push the other two up? Sidney knew that as long as there were three people bidding, the price was likely to rise, but he didn’t expect them to reach £10,000 in the next minute and a half. This was double the amount that Amanda had said she would bid and the battle showed no sign of abating. By the time the price hit £15,000, one of the bidders dropped out but that still left what appeared to be an American gentleman in the race to acquisition.

  ‘Now at £16,800, £16,900, SEVENTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS. It’s with you, madam. Seventeen thousand pounds. £17,100, £17,200, £17,300, £17,400, £17,500, £17,600, £17,700, £17,800, £17,900. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS. At eighteen thousand pounds, do I hear £18,100? Thank you, sir. £18,100, £18,200, £18,300, £18,400, £18,500 – with you now, madam. £18,500. Sir?’

  The rival bidder shook his head.

  ‘Last chance at £18,500. All done? No more? No one? Going once, going twice, at £18,500 . . .’

  The hammer came down.

  ‘Sold to the lady in the red coat at £18,500.’

  There was applause. Charles Beauvoir asked Amanda what the hell she thought she had been doing. With the auction house adding their charges to the hammer price and the cost of transport, insurance, cleaning and restoration, the total was likely to touch £25,000.

  ‘I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t go above £4,000; £5,000 in an emergency: how are you going to cover it?’

  ‘With the profit.’

  ‘But what if you’re wrong?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘It’s £25,000, Amanda,’ said Sidney. ‘Isn’t that the cost of your house?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘Well, risk is exciting, don’t you think? Provided all goes well after the reauthentication, we are still going to make around £180,000 profit at the next sale.’

  ‘And if you’ve made an error of judgement?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘But if you have?’

  ‘Then I’m ruined.’

  Back in Ely, Sidney’s mind turned to
lesser expenditure and the curious case of the offertory collection. Vanessa Morgan had tightened her net of suspicion.

  ‘It’s either Ted Burgess or Canon Jocelyn Smith.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because they were the only two people present when the money banked does not match the money raised.’

  ‘I find it hard to imagine either of them stealing from the cathedral. Why would Jocelyn want to do such a thing? Doesn’t he have everything he needs?’

  ‘That may be the case, Archdeacon. But does he have everything he wants? Perhaps there’s a bit of devilry in him?’

  It was true that Jocelyn had recently read a newspaper article which argued that men became more attractive as they get older, and he had been vain enough to think this applied to him, but that, as far as Sidney was concerned, was the limit of his sin.

  Miss Morgan was not so sure. ‘What about the lure of disobedience and the thrill of the theft? Canon Smith may be compensating for the mundanity of his surname. As for Ted, well, you just have to look at him.’

  ‘You cannot judge people by appearances, Miss Morgan. I know that you wouldn’t approve of that.’

  ‘But it’s obvious he has very little money. Have you seen his shoes?’

  ‘Perhaps we should buy him a new pair?’

  ‘Not until we get to the bottom of this, Archdeacon. Charity has to be earned.’

  ‘I’m not sure the quality of mercy should ever be strained.’

  ‘There’s a difference between drama on a stage and the reality of life itself. We can’t all be in a Shakespeare play and, before you say anything more, I would ask you not to tell me which character I most remind you of.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare do such a thing,’ said Sidney. ‘You are beyond comparison: quite unique.’

  ‘I’m not sure you intend that as a compliment, Archdeacon, but I’ll take it all the same.’

  A week later Amanda travelled with Charles Beauvoir to have their painting examined by the appropriate Goya expert. Under a swooping black seventeenth-century cloak Xavier Morata was dressed entirely in red. He was a thin but fit man with long dark hair streaked with grey, a waxed moustache and a pointed beard that made him look like a cross between Salvador Dalí and a Manchester United footballer.

  He shone a light across the surface of the painting, took out his magnifying glass and scraped a tiny sample of paint from the edge of the canvas where it would have been hidden under the frame. He then asked to see the paperwork and pointed out that the picture was not named specifically and the inventory could refer to almost any painting.

  ‘The watermark on the documentation is genuine; D and C BLAUW, which occurs in at least two of Goya’s drawings, dated 1810, and now in the Prado,’ said Amanda.

  ‘And you think the handwriting is Goya’s?’

  ‘It is a fair match with other documents in Wellington’s possession.’

  ‘People were taught to write very similarly in those days. It is not necessarily Goya’s handwriting . . .’

  ‘The title also matches one of his Caprichos.’

  Xavier Morata completed his examination, took off his glasses and, after an overdramatic pause, announced: ‘I think this is a pastiche at best; and a contemporary forgery at worst. Goya wouldn’t reuse his subject matter three times like this. The composition is too crowded. He preferred the simple strong image rather than a portmanteau. The lack of a signature is also a problem. He liked to sign. I need only remind you of the 1797 portrait of the Duchess of Alba, pointing to his autograph on the ground beneath her feet: Solo Goya.’

  ‘But she was his mistress.’

  ‘Are you suggesting the reclining figure here could also be her?’

  ‘No,’ said Amanda. ‘I think it is Pepita Tudó, the Spanish Prime Minister’s lover; the same woman that is in the celebrated Maja paintings.’

  ‘Why would he want to ridicule her with an ass’s head in the mirror?’

  ‘This is a vanity painting. Goya is the young immortal painter; any model, no matter how beautiful, will grow old and die.’

  ‘And the war in the background?’

  ‘A sign of the times in which they live. The painting is a nude, a memento mori and a vanity painting all in one.’

  ‘Goya always tells one story; never three. I cannot authenticate on this evidence.’

  ‘Could you say that it is possibly by Goya?’

  ‘No. You should have come to me before you bought the picture.’

  ‘But then you would have bought it for yourself.’

  ‘You think I can afford that kind of money, Mrs Richmond?’

  ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Then you should have thought about that before you bid.’

  ‘But if it is a Goya . . .’ said Charles.

  ‘It is not.’

  Charles had begun to sweat around the neck. ‘And what if we made it worth your while to say that it was?’ he asked.

  ‘That would be most improper. I have my reputation to consider.’

  ‘No one need know.’

  ‘You might have enough to convince an auction house to take it on. But without my word, I don’t think you will get very far. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s will ask me.’

  ‘We’ll give you £10,000,’ said Charles.

  ‘Please do not insult me.’

  Amanda was surprised by such resistance. ‘You want more than that?’

  ‘I can’t be bought. If anyone found out, I’d never work again. Thirty years of ignominy? You can’t put a price on that.’

  ‘Try me,’ said Charles.

  At Canonry House, Anna was watching Look: Mike Yarwood on television with her mother. They were laughing at the impressions of Harold Wilson, Denis Healey and Edward Heath. Sidney wondered how much Anna understood and how much the joke fell flat if you didn’t know whom he was impersonating. The entertainer ended his show with a song prefaced by the words ‘And this is me . . .’ but, Sidney thought, was it really Mike Yarwood or was he performing a showbiz version of himself? When was ‘Mike Yarwood’ really Mike Yarwood? When are we ever ourselves?

  Amanda telephoned and attempted a breezy tone to assure her friend that the situation was under control, but Sidney knew her well enough to recognise that she feared she had made a colossal mistake.

  Later that night he raised the question of authenticity in literature, art and music and the differences between an original, a fake and a pastiche. He asked Hildegard what, for example, made a Bach piece better than anything by his pupils or his imitators?

  ‘I think there has to be an authority of expression; a sense of control that is also combined with effortlessness – what the Italians call sprezzatura. It never shows how hard it is. It seems easy, right, natural, even if it is hard to play.’

  ‘With music it needs interpretation and performance. It cannot just exist on the page.’

  ‘It can. But it is meant for more than that. It also needs an audience to become itself; just as we always need other people to help us realise who we are.’

  ‘Perhaps, then, there is no such thing as the authentic self? We are defined by our parents, our children, our friends and those we love. We are dependent on how other people see us and change us; and how we change them.’

  There was, however, no alteration in the formal authentication of the Goya painting and, in a second telephone call, Amanda confessed that she was starting to panic. The auction house was requesting immediate payment (bailiffs had been mentioned) and Roland Russell, her boss at the British Museum, had heard what he referred to as ‘unsavoury stories’. If it were true that she and Charles Beauvoir had tried to bribe Xavier Morata to say that a certain painting was a Goya when it plainly was not, then she would have to look elsewhere for employment.

  ‘Bribery, Amanda! Whatever possessed you?’

  ‘It wasn’t me. It was Charles.’

  ‘Were you in the room at the time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And
you didn’t stop him or retract?’

  ‘It’s only Morata’s word against ours. Nothing happened. He said no and then reported us.’

  ‘And you’re denying it.’

  ‘I can’t really admit it, can I?’

  ‘But you could be ruined. Morata might try to do that.’

  ‘But if he does then that will prove the painting is a Goya.’

  ‘Has he offered to buy it from you?’

  ‘Not yet. But I think he is waiting until we are desperate.’

  ‘And the Fairley family won’t take it back?’

  ‘The deal is binding.’

  ‘Why can’t you put it up for sale? What about the underbidder? The man who stopped at £18,400? Can you find out who he is?’

  ‘The auctioneer won’t say, but I suspect Morata knows. He may even have been in on it. This is jealousy and envy. It is his revenge on us for preventing his own little adventure.’

  ‘It was your adventure too.’

  ‘I will not let him beat me.’

  ‘Can’t your parents help?’

  ‘I don’t want to tell them too much. They’ve hardly recovered from my divorce. And then if I lose my job as well . . .’

  ‘There’s no chance of that, surely?’

  ‘There’s every chance, Sidney.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m taking the painting to Spain. There’s a man in the Prado. He’ll authenticate it for me.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I’m going to make him do it by any means I know how.’

  Vanessa Morgan’s investigations into clergy finances settled on the head verger and she insisted that Sidney question him. This was straightforward but awkward; Ted Burgess was an uncomplicated character without guile or malice who had served Sidney well ever since he had arrived in Ely.

  ‘Am I in trouble?’ the verger asked.

  ‘That depends on your answers,’ Miss Morgan replied.

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You need to tell us if you feel you’ve done anything wrong,’ said Sidney, ‘even if you didn’t intend to do so. It may be a misunderstanding.’