Under the Hammer

by John Mortimer

‘Nothing wrong with O’Finnegan’s is there?’ he asked, almost threateningly.

  ‘I suppose not.’ Camilla thought about her career and forced a smile. ‘So long as it’s with you, Bernard.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be there,’ Lord Holloway promised her.

  Along Piccadilly, up Park Lane and down the Bayswater Road to Notting Hill Gate, Ben rode his Harley-Davidson back the way Sarah had approached Klinsky’s on her bike, happy in the knowledge that Maggie was behind him on the pillion, her hands on his waist, her protests at his playing the traffic lanes, and his speed when the road was clear, safely retained inside her helmet.

  The address Sarah Napper had left with Lucy Starr turned out to be a newspaper shop with many mid-Eastern and far-Eastern newspapers in racks under the high shelf for Busts and Bottoms, Vixen and Asian Babes. The soft-eyed Indian woman at the cigarette counter was anxious to help. Yes, Miss Napper sometimes had letters sent there. ‘Accommodation address. We provide a service. May I ask why you want to know?’

  ‘We’re from Klinsky’s football pools. She might have won something,’ Ben told her.

  ‘Do you happen to know Miss Napper?’ Maggie was still recovering from the way they had zipped through the junk stalls and fruit barrows in the Portobello Road.

  ‘Very nice lady who rides a bicycle. I often see her go into the old picture shop across the road. Had a good bit of luck, has she?’

  If Sarah had been trying to conceal her address, it was a fairly ineffectual attempt. They were soon outside the late Peter Pomfret’s shop which Ben viewed with some gloom, saying that picture restorers had been known to knock off the occasional Old Master when there was a lull in business. They were staring, discouraged, at the ‘closed’ notice hanging behind the glass door when Owly Johnson, who had been watching their arrival with considerable interest, darted out of his doorway and said that if they were looking for Sarah she was in there to his certain knowledge. ‘It’s unlocked. She’s often unlocked when it says ‘closed’. Foolish of her, really, with all the crime that we’ve got about.’ So they pushed open the door which pinged as they went into the empty shop.

  Sarah emerged from her workroom, peering at them through her small, round glasses and seeming annoyed by the interruption. They had come, Maggie said after she had made the introduction, about the picture Miss Napper brought in.

  ‘It’s not that naked woman being fondled by an old man, is it?’ Sarah hunched her shoulders with a small shiver. ‘I always thought that was rather spooky, although he liked it very much.’

  ‘He liked it? Who was he, Miss Napper?’ Ben was curious to know.

  ‘My, my relative. Who left everything to me in his will.’

  ‘Did he possess a name, this relative?’

  ‘I don’t think I should say at the moment.’ Sarah seemed taken aback by the question. ‘I’ll ask my solicitor.’

  ‘You told me your relative kept it in the back of a cupboard. Where was the cupboard?’ Ben pursued his inquiries.

  ‘Well, in his home. That’s where it was.’

  ‘And his home was where?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m allowed to say.’ Sarah smiled helplessly. ‘You have to be so careful of the law, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Napper,’ Ben told her seriously. ‘You have to be very careful indeed.’

  ‘Do you honestly think it might be something really exciting?’ Sarah turned to Maggie, as a way of escape from Ben’s questions.

  ‘I expect you know Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid. It’s in the National Gallery?’ Maggie asked her.

  ‘Not particularly. I hardly get to galleries. We’ve been so busy here.’

  ‘The picture you brought us bears a remarkable resemblance –’ Ben started off but Sarah interrupted him, suddenly breathless with excitement. ‘To the Bronzino? His old picture? It couldn’t possibly be ... I mean, you think it might be’ – by now she was gasping – ‘by Bronzino?’

  ‘We haven’t made up our minds at all yet, Miss Napper.’ Maggie was cautious. ‘We’re going to think about it hard and get some more people’s opinions.’

  ‘And we’ll need full details of its history,’ Ben warned her. ‘Its provenance. I’m sure you know the word. From you – or your solicitor, of course.’

  ‘Oh, never mind about all that. Never mind about all these words. Can’t you just look at it and decide what you feel?’ Sarah came out from behind her counter then and went to Maggie, smiling and effusive. ‘Thank you! Thank you so much for coming with this wonderful news! I really am most grateful. In fact ... In fact, I’d like to give you something.’ Now she was searching among the dusty pictures in the shop window and brought out a small canvas, an oil painting of a windmill against fleecy clouds in a blue sky. ‘A little token of thanks for all your interest. It’s not a Bronzino, I’m afraid. But it is an oil and a genuine Sarah Napper. I’ll be very hurt indeed if you don’t take it. Here. I’ll put it in a bag for you.’

  She found an old plastic bag from Tesco’s. When it was wrapped up, Maggie took the picture and forced a smile. When she and Ben were mounting the motor bike, she asked him what he had made of Miss Sarah Napper. ‘Why did she give us an accommodation address?’ Ben asked. ‘Because she didn’t want us to know she was a picture restorer? Also she knows damn well where it came from. All that nonsense about the solicitor! Is she a restorer or a forger?’

  ‘So far as I’m concerned she’s only done one crime we can prove.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Given me her ghastly picture. All right, back to the Wall of Death!’ And Maggie put on her helmet.

  Sarah Napper’s discovery was propped on a chair in the main office of the Old Masters department. Ben Glazier sat opposite it, staring at it hard and dictating notes into a small machine. ‘Painting on slate,’ he said, ‘is unusual for Bronzino. However, slate was used by Florentine painters of this period. Vasari deals with this method in his book on technique and recommends sliced Genoese paving-stones.’ This was the scene which met Camilla’s eyes as she came in from another lunch date, her makeup a little smudged and her balance on her high heels less certain than usual. She called across to Maggie, who was busy with a catalogue, in challenging tones, ‘I know what you’re going to say to me. You’re going to say, “Had a good day at lunch, Camilla?”’

  ‘Actually, I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort.’

  ‘We went to a rather dear little place behind Victoria Station,’ Camilla told her. ‘You should try it, Maggie. They specialize in Irish stew. As served to the genuine Irish.’

  ‘I suppose if I wanted to forge a Bronzino, I’d paint it on slate ... No need to fake wormholes in a wooden panel with a dentist’s drill.’ Ben stopped dictating and used a small magnifying glass to look carefully at the back of the slate.

  ‘Is that your great find of the century?’ Camilla tottered towards him, looking amused and unconvinced.

  ‘There’s something rather encouraging on the back here,’ Ben called across to Maggie.

  ‘A fossilized lump of Florentine sixteenth-century chewing-gum?’ Camilla found her joke hilarious. Ben took a thin sheet of paper and a soft pencil and started to make a rubbing of the mark on the back of the slate. As he was doing this, Camilla was saying that she knew Maggie didn’t approve of her coming back from lunch at three in the afternoon.

  I really didn’t notice,’ Maggie was rude enough to say.

  ‘But I was doing important business for Klinsky’s.’ Camilla sounded very grand indeed. ‘I’m not at liberty to tell you more about it, just at present.’ With which Camilla wandered away to the Old Masters lavatory.

  ‘It’s here.’ Ben looked at the pattern that now showed white against the black pencil marks. ‘Something that’ll give Miss Napper’s picture an air of authenticity at least.’

  ‘Don’t tell Camilla,’ Maggie warned him. ‘She’ll be terribly disappointed.’

  Alone at last, Camilla wiped the tarnished mirror, pursed her lips a
nd whispered seductively, ‘Bernard! Why don’t you ever show me off in public?’

  Maggie’s father had travelled in soap. He also sang ballads, accompanied himself on the piano and took her, from the age of five, once a week to the cinema. She drew well at school, decorated her bedroom with posters of exhibitions and got a scholarship to Manchester University. When she got a first in art history and wrote to Klinsky’s, her mother looked at her sadly and asked why she didn’t go for a job at the Nat West Bank and make something of herself. Now she was head of Old Master Paintings, and her mother, now widowed, would shake her head sadly and say that if only Maggie had found a nice niche at the bank she might have been married by now, like her sister.

  Maggie’s flat in Belsize Park showed what she sometimes regretted, that she had visual taste in the way that some people are born with perfect pitch, or a talent for higher mathematics. At times she longed to introduce a real piece of kitsch: a pink glass bowl full of plastic fruit, gilded cherubs to hold back the curtains, a pair of redfaced cardinals drinking port, a cigarette box decorated with nuns, which played ‘The Sound of Music’ when you opened it. But she was physically incapable of living with such things. In her living-room there was a big white sofa and chairs, a dining-table set for two with art nouveau candlesticks, bookshelves and a disc-player now discoursing a Haydn quartet. She couldn’t, of course, afford any of the Old Masters she dealt in, but she’d saved much of her Klinsky’s salary, and a few lucky commissions, and bought her own treasures: a Léger lithograph, some Henry Moore prints signed by the artist, a John drawing of a long-legged, standing nude, a small, much-prized Bonnard etching and a small bronze of a horse and rider by Liz Frink. Over the fireplace hung her prized possession, a glowing painting of a naked girl curled upon a sofa by Matthew Smith. Among these possessions, Maggie, wearing a silk shirt and black trousers, called to the man in the kitchen who was opening and banging doors. ‘Nick, darling, what the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Just getting the Bolly out of the fridge. Andrew gave me a couple of cases. Tickled pink by the price I got for his slightly iffy Pichon-Longueville.’

  When he had found two tall thin glasses, Nick Roper threw the wire and gold paper of the bottle at the tidy-bin, which was being held open by a small oil painting. He pulled it out and saw a recognizable windmill against fleecy clouds. He brushed off a few tea leaves and a couple of potato peelings, and put it on the drinks tray which he carried into the living-room.

  ‘What’s that?’ He asked for Maggie’s expertise. ‘I found it in the rubbish bin.’

  ‘It’s a picture someone gave me. And,’ she had to admit, ‘I couldn’t think of anywhere else to put it.’ Nick was laughing at her as he propped the picture up on the mantelpiece, stood back and asked what was so terrible about it.

  ‘It just doesn’t go with anything else I’ve got,’ she told him.

  ‘It looks all right to me.’

  ‘It’s well drawn. It’s accurate. It looks like what it’s meant to look like.’

  ‘That’s more than you can say for some of the stuff you’ve got plastering your walls. These women, for instance.’ (Léger’s solid girls were linked closely to wheels and girders.) ‘They look like pieces of machinery.’

  ‘I thought that would rather appeal to you.’ Maggie was angrily protective of her Léger.

  ‘Oh, God!’ Nick passed her a glass of champagne. ‘We’re going to have all this female stuff again, are we? We’re not going to quarrel?’

  ‘No. No, of course not. We’re going to have a wonderful dinner.’ She raised her glass to Nick. ‘Cheers, darling.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that picture?’ He had wandered to the mantelpiece and was making a close study of Sarah Napper’s windmill.

  ‘I’ll tell you.’ She stood with an arm round his shoulder. ‘It’s got no life. It’s got no energy. It’s got no opinion of its own. It’s got absolutely no personality. Anyone could have done it.’

  ‘It’s signed Sarah Napper.’ He examined the canvas as though it were an Old Master.

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s authentic. I can’t think why anyone should bother to forge a Sarah Napper.’

  ‘I just think a lot of people would like it.’ He broke away from her, his voice rising in protest. ‘You’re so bloody patronizing, Maggie. You think the only thing that’s any good is what you like.’

  ‘It’s because I like what’s original. What’s done with passion. What has something to say. What’s done as well as it can be done. On top of that I like what’s true!’

  He looked at her and smiled. ‘Didn’t you sell a phoney Raphael? That’s what they’re saying.’

  ‘The Raphael was good!’ Maggie protested. ‘It was right! I swear to God it was right. I had no doubts about it. Not like this perhaps Bronzino.’

  ‘Another iffy picture.’ Nick’s temper was restored and he was back in control, having, he thought, caught her out. He sat at the table, where the avocados were already halved and laid out on small, green plates. She sat opposite him, the candles flickered between them. ‘Tell me all about it,’ he said.

  ‘It might be another version of the Bronzino Allegory in the National Gallery. And if it were ...’

  ‘Klinsky’s would make a great load of dosh?’ Nick got the point at once.

  ‘And that extraordinary woman would be worth a fortune,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Which extraordinary woman?’ He filled his mouth with avocado.

  ‘The one who painted that windmill you’re so fond of. That uninteresting artist, Miss Sarah Napper.’

  ‘Oh, her. What does Ben think about this Bronzino business?’

  ‘Secretly, I think he wants it to be right.’

  There was a pause while Nick spooned out more fruit and swigged champagne. Then he said, more amused, ‘Secretly, Ben wants a lot of things.’

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’ Maggie asked, although she knew the answer perfectly well.

  ‘You, for instance. Not so secretly, he wants you. Poor old Ben, I do believe he’s jealous of me.’

  ‘That sounds appallingly self-satisfied, even for you.’

  ‘Why? You don’t mean I ought to be jealous of him?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You don’t mean he’s in with a chance? He doesn’t think he might actually notch you up on his braces?’

  ‘Your dinner-time chat, Nick! It’s about as subtle as Sarah Napper’s painting.’

  ‘But tell me!’ Everything she said seemed to make him more confident.

  She thought about Ben and knew she would rather be talking to him. They would have been easier together, more alike. But then when dinner was over, she said, ‘My feelings about Ben are something you couldn’t possibly understand. So don’t try. Change the subject.’

  ‘God, you look sexy when you’re cross!’ He looked at her with admiration and she felt, as she saw his smile of triumph, near to despair about him.

  I could cry salty tears;

  Where have I been all these years?

  Little wow,

  Tell me now:

  How long has this been going on?

  Ella on compact disc sang to Ben Glazier, alone in his flat, overlooking Bloomsbury Square, where he lived in a state of total muddle. Bits of statues, paintings, drawings, etchings and prints he’d picked up in the course of a lifetime were perched on unsteady towers of books erected on his table among half-empty coffee cups, a bottle of wine and a glass. The Bronzino book open at the Allegory was propped in front of him. Beside it was his tracing, the pale image of a stag over the letter S, scratched on the back of Sarah Napper’s slate. Also open was another reference book, a work on collectors’ marks, the signs and seals of ownership the old aristocratic punters used to stamp their titles on works of art. Ben was singing along with Ella as he turned the pages, looking for a stag mounted above an S. And then he was silent, and turned his attention once again to the naked, white Venus, fondled by a young lover, oblivious of time.

>   Maggie was completely happy. In bed Nick was silent, purposeful, pleased with his own performance, often unexpectedly thoughtful. Without his clothes on he seemed years younger, almost a boy who smelt of soap and the heat of a summer day. She was on top of him, melting into a state of unknowing, with pictures and the price of pictures quite forgotten, when the telephone rang and wouldn’t stop ringing, ‘if that’s my mother ...’ She dismounted reluctantly, rolled over on to her stomach, picked up the troublesome little instrument, gritted her teeth and muttered, ‘Yes?’

  ‘“Little wow, Tell me now:”,’ Ben started to sing down the phone.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ben. Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘What the hell does time matter? I’ve been looking back down the centuries. Let me tell you, there’s a collector’s mark on the Napper Bronzino and I’ve identified it.’

  ‘All right, tell me.’ Maggie’s world had come back to her. Nick sighed and lit a cigarette. Later she put down the telephone, rested her head on his chest and told him that the collector’s mark seemed to be that of the Marquis of Saltery, whose descendant was alive and living in Saltery Hall, somewhere in Dorset. Ben wanted her to zip down there on the back of the dreaded Harley-Davidson.

  ‘Do you smoke after sex?’ Nick seemed to be totally uninterested in Ben’s discovery.

  ‘You know I’ve given it up.’

  ‘No! What you’re meant to say is, “I don’t know. I’ve never looked.” ’ He laughed. She didn’t, but moved even closer, her leg burrowing between his.

  ‘You know what, Nick?’ she told him. ‘You’re the only thing in this damned flat that isn’t a result of my ghastly good taste.’

  The door of Pomfret’s shop pinged and Sarah came out of her workroom to meet Nick Roper, who leaned on her counter, exuding charm. He introduced himself and said that he had been deeply impressed by a painting she had done. ‘A really smashing landscape with a windmill in it.’

  ‘You saw my windmill picture?’ Sarah’s eyes, behind her round glasses, were startled.

  ‘It was quite wonderful, Miss Napper. I’m a great admirer of your work.’