‘Is all that possible in half an hour?’ I was getting toey, nervously glancing at my watch, as useful as a scrub nurse at a triple by-pass.
Claire shrugged casually. ‘We’ll soon find out.’ She was enjoying this. Not just the professional challenge, either. She began extracting the tacks that held the canvas on the stretcher.
I paced. A compressor sat on the floor, its hose leading to a pneumatic guillotine on a side bench. Pricy items. Staple guns. Sheets of glass. Tools. Racks of unframed prints. Two metal folio cabinets, not cheap. Cardboard mounts. A whole wall of shaped timber. Add the rent, the rates, utility bills.
Claire, pulling tacks, read my mind. ‘Not exactly what I imagined when I left the National Gallery. I saw myself sitting in a trendy little gallery offering the works of interesting young contemporary printmakers to a discerning clientele. The trouble is, ten other places within half a mile had exactly the same idea.’
‘Is that why you left the National Gallery, to start this shop?’
‘Other way round,’ she said.
Gracie tugged at my sleeve and handed me a piece of paper. Two blobby circles in felt-tipped pen, one circle with a hat and currant eyes.
‘That’s me, isn’t it?’ The child nodded. Who else? ‘Why, thank you. It’s lovely.’
Claire looked up, the table between us. ‘Sleazebag,’ she muttered. In the nicest possible way. It was all I could do to stop myself vaulting the table and giving her a demonstration.
‘Other way round?’
‘I’d been at the gallery six years, ever since I graduated. That’s where I met’—she flicked her eyes towards Gracie, back at her drawing—‘Gracie’s father, Graham. He was an administrator. We were together for a couple of years and when Gracie was on the way I applied for maternity leave. No-one had ever done that before. Women who got pregnant were expected to quietly fade away. They said there was no provision, knocked me back.’
‘That’s discrimination,’ I said. Reviewing the National Gallery’s employment practices would, I resolved, be my number one priority when I got back to the office. If changes hadn’t already been made, they would be damned soon, if I had any influence on the proceedings. We’d see how soon they smartened up if their conduit was squeezed a little.
‘I wanted to make an issue of it, but Graham didn’t like the idea. He thought it might adversely affect his career. He encouraged me to set up this business, put some money into it. After Grace was born, he got a job offer from overseas. Now he’s Director of Human Resources at the Hong Kong Museum of Oriental Antiquities and I’m sticking nonreflecting glass over chimpanzees and framing other people’s holiday photos.’
She wasn’t bitter, just telling a story. She dropped her voice a register, whether for my benefit or the child’s I couldn’t tell. ‘We don’t see him any more.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Great progress you’re making.’ She only had about half the tacks out. Now that she was handling the painting proper, her technique was meticulous, painstakingly slow. The time was 12.58. My feet were inscribing an ever-decreasing circle on the workroom floor.
‘For Chrissake,’ she said, moving around to my side of the table for no apparent other reason than to accidentally brush her rump against me. ‘Stop prowling around like a caged animal. You’re making me nervous.’
Jesus, what did she have to be nervous about? I was the one with the crisis on my plate. Maybe, I thought, I should temporarily remove my twitchiness elsewhere. Make more efficient use of my time by taking Red and Tarquin around to Leo while Claire got on with the job, unencumbered by my stalking presence. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘You’re no use to me in your current state.’
‘The heat’s off,’ I told the boys, bustling them and their dripping stumps of half-sucked carob-chip ice-confectionery into the car.
The Curnows’ place was less than a kilometre away through the backstreets of Fitzroy. Even though I knew it would take me scarcely ten minutes to deliver the boys and return to Artemis, I still had to fight the urge to speed. This painting demolition rigmarole had certainly shot the shit out of my quality time with Red. The one o’clock news came on the radio and I leaned across and hiked up the volume.
Prince Sihanouk had walked out on the Cambodian peace talks. Again. F. W. de Klerk had been elected head of the South African government. Fat lot of difference that would make. Emperor Hirohito had died. Not before time, the old war criminal. Police had refused to rule out suspicious circumstances in relation to the death of the man whose body had been found in the moat of the National Gallery. The weather bureau had amended the forecast top upwards to thirty and the All Ordinaries was steady at 1539.4.
This news—the foul play, not the All Ordinaries—was not entirely unexpected. Salina’s disappearance was bound to have raised suspicions, even if none had existed before. The ripples thrown up by Marcus Taylor’s drowning were spreading outwards in ever-widening circles. An image of Agnelli on the placid waters of Lake Eildon crossed my mind. I couldn’t help but wonder what boats might get rocked before this affair was over.
Leo accepted delivery of the boys with a wave from the Curnows’ front door. ‘See you after work,’ I told Red. ‘About six o’clock. We’ll have our pizza then, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Red, easy-going as ever.
I was back at Artemis Prints at approximately 1.10.06. Enough time for a quick gasper. While I sucked, I perused the offerings in the front window. The least I could do, all things considered, was buy something. The Pre-Raphaelite maidens weren’t exactly my cup of hemlock. I settled on a Mondrian print. Remembering my little something for Gracie, I dashed back across the road to the car and retrieved Marcus Taylor’s stamp album from where Red had tossed it behind the back seat.
The buzzer rang as I went in the door. When Claire stuck her head around the curtain to see who’d come in, I was standing by the counter like a waiting customer. ‘Psst,’ I said and beckoned her over. She came cautiously, a questioning look on her face.
‘I haven’t thanked you properly.’ I said it deliberately low so she had to step closer to hear me. Then I took my life in my hands. I put my arm around her waist, drew her to me and kissed her gently on the mouth.
Her lips, soft and dry, yielded tentatively. I inhaled the scent of her hair, apple shampoo, dizzying. She leaned into the kiss, accepting it, returning it. We shifted on our feet, neither of us breathing. Her hands found the small of my back and pressed me closer. The kiss went on. And on.
Suddenly, she broke. We stepped back from each other, both swallowing hard, blinking. ‘Your friends,’ she said. ‘How much did they pay for this painting?’
Her eyes shone with anticipation. ‘I dunno,’ I shrugged. I’d already done the mental arithmetic, speculated on the cost of restitution. Wondered about insurance. Forty-odd paintings in the CUSS collection, total value half a million dollars. Average price, say $12,000. Drysdale one of the stars. ‘Maybe twenty thousand dollars. Why?’
‘Take a look at this.’ Claire tugged at my hand, drawing me into the workroom. At the parting of the curtain, her touch fell away just as Gracie looked up from her colouring-in. The stamp album was still in my hand. I held it out to the child. ‘Do you like stamps?’
‘Stickers?’ She grabbed the book avidly, her diffidence forgotten.
Claire stood at the work table, hands on hips, inviting inspection of her handiwork. The replacement frame was finished, indistinguishable from the original. It sat empty. Next to it was the repaired stretcher, a cross-braced timber rectangle, naked of fabric. Beside them was the unstretched canvas of Dry Gully. Ochre red and russet brown, it looked like the freshly-flayed skin of some desert reptile. Then there was another piece of canvas, the same size as Dry Gully. This one was a rather amateurish seascape that seemed to have been roughly cut down from a larger picture. Finally, propped open with a thick ruler was a reference book, The Dictionary of Australian Artists.
‘I thought there was something odd about this pictu
re.’ With all the exaggerated staginess of a conjurer about to execute a marvel of prestidigitation, she proceeded to show me what. First, she turned Dry Gully over and invited me to examine the condition of the canvas. Before, when it hung on the stretcher, it was a dusty parchment colour. Now, it was a fresh-looking chalky white. Attached to the fabric, right in the centre, was a small piece of paper on which was printed an image, some words and a number. As I bent forward for a closer look, Claire whisked the canvas away. ‘One thing at a time.’
She pointed to the other canvas. ‘When I took the Drysdale off the stretcher, I found this underneath.’ To demonstrate what she meant, she turned Dry Gully face down on the table and placed the fragment of seascape over it, also face down. The two canvasses fitted together perfectly. Dry Gully’s obverse side now appeared the same dirty cream colour as when it was still stretched. ‘Two canvases,’ said Claire. ‘One on top of the other—creating the impression that the painting in front is much older than it really is.’
‘Why would someone do that?’ I asked.
She now removed the false back and allowed me to examine the little square of paper. It had serrated edges and bore an image of the Sydney Opera House surmounted by the head of William Shakespeare. Australia Post, said the inscription, 43 cents. UK–Australia Bicentenary Joint Issue.
‘Big Bill in Tinsel Town,’ I said. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means that if Russell Drysdale painted this picture,’ Claire said. ‘He did so posthumously.’ Her index finger settled on the biographical entry in the reference book. ‘By 1988, he’d been dead for seven years.’
‘You mean it’s a forgery?’
Jesus H. Christ. What was it about me? I’d only been in this culture caper three days and the fakes were jumping out of the woodwork at me. First Our Home, now Dry Gully. Was no representation of the Australian landscape, no work of art safe now that I was in the field?
Claire’s professional curiosity was piqued, but she wasn’t jumping to any conclusions. ‘Not necessarily. It’s certainly not an original, but as to being a forgery—well, that depends.’
‘Depends on what? Surely it’s either genuine or it isn’t.’
Claire sucked in her cheeks and held the counterfeit Drysdale up to the light, as if trying to penetrate its secret. ‘I’m no expert, but this seems to be a very competent attempt to replicate Drysdale’s work. But the fact that it’s been done with a considerable degree of skill does not, in itself, make it a forgery. Owners of valuable artworks sometimes have high-quality copies made—to reduce their insurance premiums, from fear of theft, in case of accidental damage. They lock the original away, hang the copy and let people think it’s the original. Perhaps your friends did that.’
‘What, like a duchess who keeps her diamond tiara in the safe and wears a paste imitation?’ Except there were scant few duchesses around the Trades Hall.
‘Exactly. Or maybe your friends are just engaging in a little harmless pretension. Bought themselves a replica and told people it was an original.’
What sort of friends did she think I had? ‘Not these people,’ I told her. ‘Not their style.’
‘I don’t suppose you happen to know if it came with a certificate of authenticity, do you?’
‘What’s that?’
‘A letter provided by the seller giving details of the picture’s origins and attesting that it is what it’s purported to be.’
I told her I couldn’t imagine my friends buying anything without all the paperwork being in order.
‘You don’t happen to know where they bought it?’
‘It was arranged privately, I believe. Through a firm called Austral Fine Art.’
She swung a phone book down from a shelf. ‘Never heard of them. But there’s no shortage of art dealers in this town.’ There was a page of them, including the Aubrey Gallery. But no Austral Fine Art.
‘Forgery isn’t my area, I’m afraid,’ Claire said. ‘My only experience has been with inaccurate attribution and genuine mistakes. The National Gallery has a Rembrandt self-portrait that turned out not to be a Rembrandt at all. We changed the caption to “School of Rembrandt” and left it where it was. But deliberate misrepresentation, that’s another matter altogether.’
I was deliberately letting her walk me the long way around this, covering all the bases. I already had a grim feeling that I knew what it meant. But I wanted to be absolutely sure I wasn’t jumping to any conclusion just because it was the obvious one. ‘What do you think the stamp means?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Interesting isn’t it? It’s obviously some sort of personal mark. A secret signature, if you like.’
‘If it’s secret, why is it in such a prominent place? Surely that would increase the chances of the deception being discovered?’
‘True,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps whoever did this intended that it be discovered.’
‘But why would a forger want to be discovered? Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?’
‘It would if the motive was financial gain. But in some cases I’ve heard about, the forger was less concerned with money than with fooling the experts. After the critics and curators have waxed lyrical about the unmistakable hand of the master being visible in every brushstroke, the forger pops up and reveals that the picture in question was painted not by Van Gogh in Arles in 1889, but by Joe Bloggs in Aunt Gertrude’s garden shed last December.’
How did the declaration found in Marcus Taylor’s pocket go? You so-called experts…You speculators and collectors who do not even know what you are buying… You are all allowing yourselves to be deceived and defrauded. There was another line, too. Something about taking action to draw public attention. Since the note was found on his body, the assumption had automatically been that the action he meant was his suicide. But if he hadn’t, in fact, killed himself, what could he have been referring to?
‘Gracie, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Can I borrow back that sticker book for a minute?’
Gracie, having found the stickers already stuck down, was feeling gypped enough. She warily surrendered the album. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Just for a minute, but.’
The stamps dated from the previous year. Beneath each, inscribed in minuscule block capitals was a name. Some I recognised as belonging to artists. William Dobell was below a stamp commemorating the Seoul Olympics. Runners breasting a tape, 65 cents. Margaret Preston got paired with a possum. The British–Australian joint issue with the high culture theme bore the inscription ‘Drysdale’.
The CUSS catalogue that Bernice Kaufman gave me was still in my pocket. I unfolded it and checked the names against those under the stamps. There was a stamp corresponding to every artist in the collection. Thirty-eight names, thirty-eight stamps. The album was Taylor’s register of production, his output ledger.
Claire, naturally, was regarding my behaviour with a degree of incomprehension. ‘What’s all this?’ she said.
‘Just a minute.’ Using The Dictionary of Australian Artists, I checked two of the names. Noel Counihan and Jon Molvig. I wouldn’t have known their work if it was up me with an armful of impasto, but their names rang a bell. According to the reference book, they were both dead. I tried a name I didn’t recognise. It wasn’t listed. Nor were three others that were unfamiliar. By the look of it, the CUSS art collection contained only works by dead or undiscovered artists.
If this meant what it looked like it meant, the whole lot were what Salina Fleet would probably call referential images at the cutting edge of post-modern discourse. Fakes.
‘For Chrissake, tell me what’s going on!’ Claire was getting impatient, irritated by my lack of communication. ‘This is a joke, right? You’re playing an elaborate trick on me, aren’t you?’
‘I wish I was,’ I said. ‘Mind if I use your phone?’
‘Only if you tell me what’s going on.’
Gracie was all ears, galvanised by her mother’s response to my evasiveness. When I thrust the stamp album towards he
r, she went all shy and refused to take it back. I put it on her little desk instead.
‘I will,’ I told Claire. I put my hands lightly on her upper arms, a conciliatory gesture. She shrugged them away. ‘I promise. Just as soon as I find out myself. In the meantime, do you think you can put that picture back together the way it was?’
‘Aren’t you going to tell your friends?’
‘Tell them what? “You know your Drysdale? Well guess what? It’s not really a Drysdale at all. And here are the bits and pieces to prove it.” I’ve taken it without their knowledge or permission, don’t forget. Right now, the only option is to stick to the original plan and get it back where it belongs before they notice it’s gone. That way, I’ll have enough breathing room to figure out how to break it to them, or have them discover the truth themselves.’
She was, I could see, far from persuaded. But she was also curious enough to put her better judgment temporarily on hold. ‘Phone’s on the counter,’ she said.
I went out into the shop and dialled the Police Minister’s office and asked for Ken Sproule. ‘Is that criminal intelligence?’ I said. ‘What’s this I hear on the news about Taylor’s death being down to suspicious circumstances?’
The methodical whoomph of a pneumatic stapler came from the workroom.
‘I’m as much in the dark as you are,’ claimed Sproule. ‘Now that it’s become a police operational matter, it’s strictly arm’s length from us here in the minister’s office.’
‘Come off it. You must have some idea. What’s this about the girlfriend shooting through?’
Sproule’s ears pricked up audibly. ‘How’d you hear about that?’
‘So you do know something, then?’
Ken got fatherly. ‘A word to the wise, Murray. Don’t go dipping your bib in here. The cops are notoriously sensitive to any suggestion of political interference in the operational side of things. Do yourself a favour and keep well clear.’
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