“And you thought you’d show it to Jim and see what he thought? He does them valuations.”
“No. I found the receipt in the attic. I went back and braved the mice. I found the receipt in a box. So I thought if we came here with it we could find who sold the painting.”
“Oh, I don’t think Jim’ll tell you that, love. It’s privacy, ain’t it?”
My eyes followed a tiny minotaur as he patrolled his miniature labyrinth.
“You take care, love,” said the tall man. He stood and left me alone with a gravel maze and no thread to show me the way home. I started to think about Alison, again. Alison could look at the painting. She had listened when everything had happened and she had come to see me in hospital, in the days before Emily came to collect me, because Emily had not come, not at first, and I had called Alison. So, she would help and not take it from me, but keep it all safe for me, give me a thread.
I heard footsteps and I thought that the tall man had returned, but it was Emily who walked past and headed towards the car. I decided that I could not leave without some more information because otherwise I would have to call Alison and I was wrong about her: she would pry and invade and take what was mine. Emily waved a strip of paper at me, without looking round or pausing in her journey across the gravel. I got up and followed her, scuffing over the labyrinth, burying my bull-headed guard in dust. By the time I reached the car Emily had buckled her seat belt and was sitting with her hands on the wheel and the engine running. She did not acknowledge me when I sat beside her and neither of us spoke until we were a few miles from the auction house. Finally my eagerness to know what she had done outweighed my fear of her temper.
“What—”
“Shut up,” she snapped and fumbled in her trouser pocket, until she found the strip of paper. She handed it to me. It was torn from the pages of a spiral-bound notebook: the binding holes down the left-hand side gaped open, wounded. On it was written, in a scrawl I did not recognize, “Gerald Carter, Whitstable,” and a telephone number.
“Is this…?”
“It’s the number of the seller, yes,” said Emily.
“Can we call it now?”
Emily reached over and plucked the paper out of my hand, passing it across to her right and putting it in a trouser pocket, away from me. I stared out of the window as the suburbs gave way to the ineffectual greenery of roadside landscaping.
“I’m sorry, Anna. It’s just that… It’s just… What you did in there wasn’t fair.”
“Fair?”
“Yes. It wasn’t fair to that poor man, and it wasn’t fair to me.”
I lost my temper, and just as Emily directed her anger towards me so did I. Whatever Emily had done had worked, and I ought to have been able to do it because I was smart, as smart as she was, and it was not a legal disagreement, it did not need her specialist training, so why could I not stay calm? I had not even understood that I was not calm. I still did not understand but if she said I was not calm then I was not, and if she said what I did was not fair then it was not.
“I’m sorry. I thought I was doing well. I tried,” I said.
“It’s all right. I’m sorry I got angry. I just wish that sometimes you’d let me deal with things, trust me with them.”
Trust.
I told her I was thirsty.
We turned off and parked by a soulless café where we sat and drank synthetic lemonade from polystyrene cups, and shared a plate of chips.
“How did you do it?” I asked.
Emily munched a chip, washed it down with lemonade, replaced her cup.
“I listened to what he was saying and used it to my advantage. Honestly, I used your outburst to my advantage, too.”
“Outburst?”
She ignored me and continued:
“Kemp couldn’t give us the details of the seller. Even if he’d wanted to, I could tell he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t compromise the privacy of his clients. You just had to look at him. He’s been in the game too long to make exceptions to the rules. Anyway, I listened to what he’d said—”
“Which was?”
“I’m getting there, if you’ll let me.”
I studied the pattern on the plastic tablecloth.
“Sorry,” Emily said. “I listened to his reasons for not giving us the details. I figured that if he couldn’t give them to us perhaps he could use them himself, call the seller himself.”
“And that’s what he did?”
“Not at first. He pointed at all the paperwork, complained that he didn’t need the hassle. So I used you.”
“Me?”
“I explained that you weren’t well, that I was looking after you, that the painting was important because it gave you something to do.”
I bristled.
“Is that what you believe, Ems? That I need something to do? That I’m not well? Did you tell him why I’m not well?”
“Anna. Please. You know you’re not well, weren’t well before… Before. Anyway, it worked. He knew exactly where to find the paperwork. The place looks like a tip but it must have some sort of organization, even if it’s just in his head. So, he pulled out whatever it was with the details and made a call.”
“What did he say?”
Emily ate a chip and then another and another. Then drank lemonade. Then answered.
“I don’t remember exactly. He just told the guy that we had found the picture and wanted to know more about it.”
“And that was enough?”
“Yes. It surprised Kemp, too. And me. But he hung up the phone and yes, that was enough. He scribbled the name and number and told me he had work to be getting on with. And that was that.”
“Thank you.”
Chip, chip, chip. The last of her lemonade.
“No problem. Let’s go home.”
At the cottage we hung our coats and placed our shoes carefully beneath them. I asked Emily for the number so I could call Gerald but she said that it would wait until tomorrow, and then there was tea and purples, yellow on the side. Emily disappeared through the white-plank door and from above I heard the sounds of a running bath.
Jacques-Louis David was in his mid-forties when he painted The Death of Marat. There lies Marat, politician and journalist—a martyr for David and those like him—whom David came to praise, not to bury. Marat had a severe dermatosis, was covered in blisters and sores, except not in the painting because who would mention a skin condition in a eulogy? He spent all his time in his bathtub because of it, his unseen affliction, and that is where David places him, slumped over to his right with an arm hanging over the side of the tub and down to the floor. Echoes of Thomas Chatterton, the young poet, a suicide on a bed in an attic in Gray’s Inn, London. Immortalized in oils by Henry Wallis. Chatterton, poisoned, his arm hanging over the side of the bed and down to the floor, his hand surrounded by torn manuscripts, and Marat holds a quill and the letter from Charlotte Corday which gained her entry to his rooms and gained him a single stab-wound below his collarbone. The bloody knife has been dropped on the floor by his assassin, who left, who went upstairs for her own bath. And the water had stopped running and was still. Charlotte did not run. She stayed and was tried and executed because, for her, it was the bather who had the guilt and his killer the martyrdom.
Paul Baudry painted the same scene, over seventy years later. The room is small and the man is smaller still in the foreshortened perspective of his ugliness with the blade in place and its handle jutting out, pointing to the resigned face of a waiting Charlotte. She stands scared but resolute in front of a map of France, of her France, with her hand still clenched around an imaginary knife which is no longer hers to hold. And all is still, but waiting, waiting, because Charlotte’s future is the story. But all is still.
From upstairs there came the sound of water lapping the sides of the bath and I wondered if I should go and join Emily, but I had my map of France on the table there beside me, and Munch had joined us. Edvard Munch, who painted the d
eath of his fifteen-year-old sister from tuberculosis, yellow-faced like the tall man. Munch, who waited until the twentieth century to paint a scene of Marat and Charlotte, where bath becomes bed and Charlotte stands as naked as Marat, and the blood on the sheets could be hers, and the ownership of betrayal is not in the painting but in the title, because we know the story even if the couple are shown as lovers. My France was on the table and I could have taken the paper from Emily’s pocket and called the father of la Patrie, but Emily said it would wait until tomorrow.
It was late evening when Emily came downstairs and sent me away to sleep. I went alone as she settled down with a book. There was nobody in the bathtub whilst I brushed my teeth. I switched my own light off before closing my eyes.
Emily woke me the next day. She had already been to church. She woke me with a hand shaken by the vicar, and kissed me on the forehead with lips tinged with wine.
“Can we call now?” I asked.
“I have. It’s all arranged. I made you a cup of coffee. Here.”
I sat up, took the cup from her, blew on the coffee to cool it, stayed calm. Purple pills.
“I wanted to do that, Ems. You knew I wanted to do that,” I said. No tears. Allowing tears would have allowed that she was right in making the call and my story would have been stolen.
“I know,” she said. “But you were so tired and upset yesterday. I thought it would be best if I called and explained.”
“Explained what?”
“About the painting. About how important it is to you, now.”
“Now?”
“I mean, with everything that’s happened. It’s important. Don’t get upset.”
I did not get upset.
“What did he say?”
“It’s all organized. I’ll tell you when you come down.”
She stood up and headed for the door.
“Ems,” I began, but finished lamely with, “I’ll be down for breakfast. Lunch. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Over bacon sandwiches she told me about Gerald. He had been delighted to receive the call, repeating several times that it was nice to know someone had an interest in the painting. When he last moved house he was forced to get rid of many of his possessions: there was no room for them in the new place. He thought he had some boxes of papers which might shed light on things. Would we like to meet in person? Emily said she had arranged for us to see him on Tuesday.
“You have work. Am I going alone?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I’m going to take the day off. Well, technically, I’m going to work from home. There’s no way you’ll wait until next weekend.”
“Thank you,” I said and reached across to take her hand. She tolerated the touch of my palm on her wrist.
“But it’s the last time, Anna. I really have missed too much work these past couple of months. The team needs me. They’ve been really good about it but there’s a limit.”
“So we’re going to Whitstable?”
“We’re going to Whitstable. It’s a long drive, but we’re not expected until early afternoon. I think we might drop into the flat on the way through London. I need some stuff from there.”
“Can I pick up some books?”
Emily nodded with a mouthful of sandwich.
“Tomorrow I’ll make a list of questions for Harold,” I said.
“Gerald,” she corrected.
“Gerald. What does he sound like?”
“Old, but sharp. I think he’s lonely. We’ll take him a cake or something. It’s only polite.”
Sunday afternoon was groceries and ingredients and the making of a Victoria sponge. Corday with a kitchen knife.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Monday, 31st October, 1887
I have read Matthew’s letter a dozen or more times, and now comprehend its true nature. That which I had taken to be detachment is the writing of a man exercising caution lest his words be read by one other than its intended recipient. Matthew’s abstraction is a deceit, but not one of which I am the target. No, I am clearly the Galatea to his Pygmalion, his desires made flesh. Why else would he ask me to sit for him? Such are these advances to me that his gaze can hardly be met by the same sight as greets my friends, or which I face in the mirror. I am become some Lamia, my daily appearance an untruth beheld by all but Matthew. It may be wrong of me to want to see him again, but surely it is crueller that I should deny him his muse, that those canvases skulking between kitchen and office should remain without purpose?
Tuesday, 1st November, 1887
After this afternoon’s lecture—a tedious hour on the historical importance of Thucydides—I met with Diana. She offered me a seat in her carriage, which I was eager to accept. Elizabeth, with whom I had attended the lecture, did me a great kindness in allowing my departure whilst she herself walked back to college with others of her set. The lecture being a private occasion, solely attended by the women of our college, Diana was not in the company of her usual chaperon, and we were able to lean and loafe at our ease and talk a little during the carriage ride. We continued our conversation in my room, she having no pressing engagements until later this evening.
She is a free soul, even if prone to the air of sadness which one would certainly expect to arise from the recent death of a beloved brother. It would be too much to suggest that her behaviour is in any way scandalous, but it is certainly true that she casts a wide social net and faces no shortage of suitors, if her stories are to be believed. She conveys no individual details of these men, treating of them, rather, as one might expect a farmer to treat of his livestock: a collection of animals to be nurtured as a matter of duty, with only the lightest of fondness.
We spoke again of poetry—not, this time, of the greats, but of our own, more intimate passions, mine for Whitman and hers for Swinburne—and of literature. She quoted Jane Eyre: “It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.” I told her of my love for that passage and how, when I was younger, but of an age to comprehend its import, my mother had read it to me. I pointed to the copy resting in a pile of volumes on the ledge of the window and then I, too, quoted from it: “Women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts.” Diana picked up the thread and we recited in unison: “It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” Then she laughed and listened as I spoke of my secret passion for Treasure Island, which led her to close one eye and exclaim a “Yo-ho-ho!”
Our spirits were so high, and the mutuality of our appreciation so evident, that I decided she ought to be shown the Warber, then and there. So close has grown our friendship, and so important is the book to me, that I could not but feel that to do otherwise would be to hide some part of myself from Diana, and thus, through selfish inaction, undermine all else that we share. I took it from the small leather valise which I keep underneath my bed. Diana was sitting by the desk, leafing through my tattered edition of Byron’s poems. Finding “The Destruction of Sennacherib” she began to read aloud. I rested on the bed, with dear Warber on my lap, listening to Diana’s voice as it galloped and panted through the lines of verse. On reaching the penultimate stanza she beckoned to me. I joined her and we delivered the final lines together until, on an otherwise quiet afternoon, the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, had melted like snow in the gaze of the Lord.
My handing the Warber to her was met with a brief, inquisitive glance. I asked her to spend some minutes in reading the book and to tell me her impressions. Only then, I added, should I tell her its history and how it became known to me. She gently untied the old bootlaces which hold the covers in place and spent some twenty minutes with the book, making hardly a sound but for the occasional rustle at the turn of a page. I lay on the bed and diverted myself with the examination of some passages by Thucydides, in
the light of our recent lecture.
When Diana had finished her reading—which must have been cursory but complete—she placed the book on the desk and smiled at me. She declared it to be “a funny little thing” and asked me to tell her how I came to own it. This I did, being good to my promise.
Mr. Taylor had been taken aback by the attitude shown by Father on finding me in his study, reading a book I had removed from a closed cupboard. In Diana, however, I could discern no such astonishment at the thought of my being discovered, afraid, only to have Father share his secret with me. On reflection, this reaction was to be expected of a lady who doubtless came out with great success and yet has been permitted, encouraged even, to attend Oxford: she must possess a most unorthodox father, a most persuasive mother, or both.
I used the Warber as an excuse to gain a better understanding of my friend’s attitude towards those relationships which occur between two people, transcending their ability for rationality. I inquired what she thought of the book itself. Her reply concerned not the author’s choice of subject but his use of language; that is, his adoption of a supposedly historical style. It could be, she suggested, that he was another Thomas Chatterton, a charlatan, faking early poetry in fear that works in his own style would never be circulated or held to be of any value. Her suggestion is persuasive, but not pressing. I again asked her for her opinion, being clear that I wished to hear her views on the narrative. She gave the story some deeper thought, and then said, “I quite like it. What do you think of it?”
It is curious that I found myself without an immediate answer when faced with the echo of my own question. I realize now that I, too, have invested my connection to the book with every nuance of technical appreciation—of language, of physical form, of historical placement—but have never troubled myself with deep reflection on the tale itself, even in these few days since Matthew asked a similar question of me. I know it by heart, of course, but that is not the same thing at all. It is as though I have become affianced to a gentleman on account of his dress and Cologne water, his turn of phrase and demeanour, and yet have never once devoted time to the essence of the man himself, the “who is he?” of it all. Facing a need to appraise that essence, I struggle to disentwine my feelings about the book from my feelings for Mr. Taylor, the two sets of emotions seemingly irreversibly tangled. I put down the Thucydides, which I still clutched in my hand, and stared at Diana, unable to speak a word. She must have sensed something of my distress as she gently assured me that we could talk on the subject at a later date, and that she would always be ready to hear my opinions but could most certainly wait. She stood, handing me the Warber, and excused herself on account of her needing to return home and rest a little before the evening. As she made for the door I followed and called her name with a breathless urgency which even I had not been prepared to encounter.
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