The Debt

by Natalie Edwards

  Karen eyed her suspiciously.

  “I should get yourself ready,” she said, after a pause.

  “Ready?”

  “To do whatever it is you do. Talk about art, or whatever.”

  “The buyer’s here?”

  “Yeah. Coming down now.”

  More footsteps echoed above their heads, and Lady’s Rose’s brogues appeared on the stairs, followed by Lady Rose herself and, behind her, an older woman, sixtysomething and caked in makeup so heavy that her skin appeared to be cracking. Her hair was jet-black, artificially so, highlighted with streaks of ash-blonde at odds with her South Asian appearance. She was heavy, double-chinned and round-hipped, her fingers short and stubby, and the waft of perfume she brought with her was loud, intrusive. She wore dark, coordinated colours from neck to toe - her upper body sheathed by a navy blue pashmina, her legs by charcoal trousers that tapered at the ankle. There was, El estimated, at least £50,000 of gold jewellery hanging from her neck and earlobes.

  “And here we are,” said Lady Rose, extending a grandiose arm around the room.

  “Oh, I love it!” said the older woman, her voice speaking simultaneously of the Middle East and the US East Coast. “And it’s all yours?”

  “I can’t help myself,” said Lady Rose, mock-bashfully. “I see something I like, and I have to have it. You know how it is.”

  “You know I do!” said the woman with a throaty laugh.

  The two of them paced the room slowly, taking in the artwork and ignoring El and Karen entirely. When they’d completed a full circuit, Lady Rose led her guest to the covered easel.

  “We haven’t met,” said the woman, finally acknowledging El’s presence by thrusting out a hand in her direction. “Maryam Qureshi.”

  “Dr Claire Brandon,” said El, squeezing the hand in hers. It was dry and rough, thick with callouses.

  “Dr Brandon is an expert in American neo-expressionism,” said Lady Rose, in lieu of a proper introduction. “She’ll be authenticating the Haring.”

  “And she’s on your payroll?” said Qureshi to Lady Rose, sceptically.

  “Technically, she’s on yours,” said Lady Rose. “Her fee will be deducted from the price of the painting, should you decide to move ahead with the purchase.”

  “So she gets paid only if I buy your painting,” said Qureshi. “Hardly makes for an objective witness, eh?”

  “You’re more than welcome to have someone of your own do a valuation,” said Lady Rose smoothly. “You know that. But I doubt you’ll find anyone more qualified than Dr Brandon.”

  “Is she from one of the auction houses?” said Qureshi. “Sotheby’s, Bonhams, something like that?”

  “She’s an independent,” said Lady Rose. “A freelancer.”

  “I’m based at the Slade,” said El, piping up to verify her qualifications unasked in exactly the way she suspected Claire Brandon might.

  “Dr Brandon is primarily an academic,” said Lady Rose. “So very much impartial.”

  Maryam Qureshi snorted.

  “If you say so,” she said.

  She lifted the hem of the dust-sheet with the tip of her foot.

  “Is this it?” she asked.

  Lady Rose nodded to Karen, who whipped the dust-sheet off the easel with an entirely unnecessary flourish, revealing the painting.

  Qureshi examined it, carefully.

  “You have all the paperwork for it?” she asked Lady Rose. “The documentation?”

  “All of it,” said Lady Rose. “The sale receipt, the certificate of authenticity… everything.”

  “Then why did you bring her in?” said Qureshi, indicating El. “If it’s already authenticated - why is she here?”

  “Because it never hurts to have some extra peace of mind,” said Lady Rose. “That extra layer of reassurance. The paperwork can tell you its provenance, its value - can tell you what it is, and how much it might be worth. But Dr Brandon can tell you why it’s worth that. She can… bring it to life for you.”

  She’s good, thought El. I almost believe her myself.

  Qureshi looked at El, then at the canvas, and then back at El.

  “Tell me, then, Dr Brandon,” she said, laying down the challenge. “Why should I buy this painting? And why on earth should I pay such an obscene amount of money for it?”

  El thought back to her research, to the sheaves of notes she’d made on Haring and his contemporaries. The speech virtually wrote itself.

  “Aside from the obvious value inherent in a work considered lost for the last decade and a half,” she began, as if addressing a packed lecture hall, “and assuming that its initial authentication date is accurate, which I have no reason to doubt - this piece contains the first use of Haring’s signature figures on a canvas background. All recorded uses of the same figures prior this one appeared as street art - as chalk or spray-paint outlines on walls and New York subways.”

  “This is significant for two reasons,” she continued. “One, it represents a substantial stylistic development - the first step in Haring’s evolution from experimental street kid to studio artist. Two, and for me more interestingly: it gives us much greater insight into the meaning of the figures. By pinning their first use down to a specific time and date, and cross-referencing this date with documented incidents from Haring’s life and the environments he was immersed in at that time, we can begin to understand with much more certainty why he began using the figures, and what he intended to communicate through them.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m sold,” said Karen to the room at large.

  “You say you have no reason to doubt the date of the painting,” said Qureshi to El, as if Karen hadn’t spoken. “But is there any reason to doubt its origin? Taking the initial authentication out of the equation for a moment: is there any cause to imagine that it might be, for example, a convincing replica, or a homage to Haring’s style by another artist of the same period?”

  El had been expecting this; had prepared for it.

  “Absolutely none,” she said, with all the certainty Claire Brandon would have channelled into the defence of her PhD thesis. “There’s at least one clear marker here that points unequivocally to Haring as the artist, rather than an imitator.”

  “Which is what?” said Qureshi.

  “The lines,” said El. “Haring both drew and painted his figures in clean, unbroken lines - the same kind of lines you see here.” She gestured towards the painting. “He’d take a pencil, or a paintbrush, or a piece of chalk or whatever he happened to be working with, and pull it from one side of the canvas - or the wall, or the paper - to the other without ever lifting the pencil, or the brush, or the chalk. He was a master of not breaking the line. The imitators, conversely, and I’ve seen a few... the lines on the figures are broken, or they’ve been rubbed out. So when we’re looking at a real Haring, an original - it’s a very clear signature.”

  El paused to catch her breath. Karen, she noticed out of the corner of her eye, was watching her, amusement drawing her lips up into a barely-concealed grin.

  Qureshi studied the painting.

  “I have to say,” she said finally, turning to Lady Rose, “this tallies with what I know of Haring. It’s possible I may want to get a second opinion on the valuation before finalising the purchase. But at this stage, certainly, I think I’d like to proceed.”

  “Wonderful,” said Lady Rose, beaming.

  “Could we perhaps discuss it upstairs?” said Qureshi, with a glance at El and Karen.

  Not in front of the help, thought El. Never in front of the help.

  “Absolutely,” said Lady Rose. “Let’s.”

  She ushered Qureshi up the staircase, following closely behind without so much as a look over her shoulder.

  “Nice one,” said Karen when they’d gone, a note of respect in her voice that hadn’t been there previously.

  “Did I do alright?” asked El, some of Claire Brandon’s residual uncertainty colouring her words as
the adrenaline ebbed out of her.

  “Like I said,” said Karen. “I was sold.”

  ———

  Karen walked her up the stairs and back through the house, leaving her to find her own way out of the driveway.

  “She’ll call you,” she said, then closed the door in El’s face.

  There was a car on the driveway, El saw, that hadn’t been previously - a Bentley, gold and gaudy, the back windows blacked out and a uniformed driver humming to himself at the wheel. She approached the electronic gates, and they opened automatically - urging her out onto the street just as they’d urged her inside.

  She walked to the end of road, where the cul-de-sac met the traffic of Hampstead Lane, and lit a cigarette. Claire Brandon, she’d decided as she’d packed her bag that morning, was a smoker, like El - albeit one with less demanding and firmly entrenched a habit than El’s own.

  She turned the corner into Hampstead Lane, and paused, deep in thought. She finished the cigarette in short order, and immediately lit another - the smoke filling her lungs and drowning out the taste of strawberry lip-gloss and the White Musk body spray Claire Brandon’s mother had got her for her last birthday.

  Three cigarettes later, the hideous gold Bentley pulled out of the cul-de-sac and onto the road in her direction, where it slowed to a crawl. She took one final drag, stubbed out the cigarette with the toe of one hiking boot and walked towards it.

  The Bentley stopped abruptly. The driver, visible in the front, wound down his window, stuck one hand and a crab-red face outside and beckoned her over.

  “Hop in,” he said. “She wants a word.”

  El opened the back door tentatively and slipped into the back of the Bentley. Maryam Qureshi was waiting inside - a long black cigarette-holder of her own clenched between her teeth.

  She leaned in towards El, smiled, transferred the cigarette from mouth to ashtray and ran two fingers along El’s cheek with maternal tenderness.

  “Darling,” she said before El could speak, in a cut-glass, English-accented voice that was nothing at all like the one she’d used earlier. “You were marvellous in there.”

  Chapter 6

  Edgware

  1978

  The Ruby who emerged into the courtyard was an entirely different woman than the one that El had met the day before.

  Her hair had changed, for one thing - the salt-and-pepper now a smooth mousy blonde, pinned back with a wooden clip and what looked to El like chopsticks. The Jackie O. shades were gone, replaced by a pair of tortoiseshell glasses connected to her neck by a string. Behind the glasses, her makeup-less eyes were wide and owlish - the eyes of a dazed librarian taking her first steps out of the stacks and into the sunlight. Her blouse was moss-green and sensible, buttoned to the neck and half-hidden behind a heavy waxed jacket. There were clogs on her feet.

  Under one arm she held a porcelain doll - old-looking and slightly dirty, traces of dust clinging to its bonnet and petticoats. Its skin was inhumanly white; its cheeks were rouged, its yellow ringlets curling down into the thick fronds of its eyelashes. It was undeniably sinister.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting the doll at El. “This is for you.”

  El looked down at the doll, disgusted. What was she supposed to do with it, exactly?

  “I’m 14,” she said in response, pointedly not touching it.

  “Well, you look younger,” said Ruby impatiently. “So use it. In fact… here’s your first lesson for you: everything you’ve got, use it. You look young, play young. You look old, play old. You look like a gormless village idiot… you let people think you are a village idiot. Other people’s misperceptions are the best friend you’ve got in this game.”

  She adjusted her jacket. There were tweed patches on the sleeves.

  “Now,” she added, “take the bloody doll. We’ve got work to do.”

  ———

  They caught the bus to Oxford Circus, neither of them saying much as they climbed the stairs and took their seats at the back of the upper deck. After five minutes of watching the green-grey scenery of the North London suburbs pass by them, El dipped into her satchel and withdrew a box of matches and a Silk Cut, freshly stolen from her Uncle’s packet.

  Ruby snatched them both from her hand and stowed them away in her jacket.

  “Give them back!” El protested. “They’re mine!”

  ‘You’re too young to be smoking,” Ruby said.

  “Not for you to say, is it?” snapped El.

  “It is today,” Ruby snapped back. “You want to learn, then you do as I say. And I’m not having you walk in there reeking of fag smoke. You’ll give the whole thing away like that.”

  She snapped her fingers for emphasis.

  “Walk in where?” said El. “You haven’t told me where we’re going yet.”

  “The where ain’t important. It’s the who and the how that matters, for this one.”

  “And are you planning on letting me know what they are, then?”

  The bus pulled into a stop in Hendon, conveniently dislodging the only two other passengers on the top deck down the stairs and out onto the pavement.

  “Probably should, shouldn’t I?” said Ruby.

  And told her.

  ———

  They got off at Baker Street, by Madame Tussauds. There were tourists everywhere, taking pictures and biting into sandwiches and ambling along slowly enough to clog up the whole of the road. Ruby fell into step behind a cluster of them, El pressed into her side like a baby duckling.

  They broke away from the crowd at Allsop Place and turned right into York Terrace, where Ruby stopped. She took El by the shoulder and spun her around so they were face to face.

  “You remember what to do?” she said.

  “Yes,” said El, rolling her eyes. “It didn’t sink in the first three times you went over it, but now? Definitely.”

  “I take back what I said before,” said Ruby. “You are a teenager. You sounded just like one of my boys then. Still got the doll, have you?”

  “In my bag,” said El, shaking the strap of her satchel.

  “Good,” said Ruby. “Right, then. Off you go.”

  She turned El back around by her triceps and gave her a light shove in the small of her back, propelling her off down the street.

  Without turning around to look behind her, El walked on, eyes straight ahead - all the way along to where York Terrace became York Gate. There, by the crossroad, was the place she was looking for: a squat pink birthday cake of a building, its long windows flanked on either side by Greco-Roman pillars. The sign above the open door advertised it as the Cafe Italia, while the menu on the glass and the cooking smells emanating from the doorway billed it as a purveyor of bacon, egg and a fried slice for less than 80p.

  She went inside, the bell over the door jingling as she entered.

  The decor was exactly what she might have expected had she thought about it, all red vinyl chairs, Formica tables and bottles of tomato sauce on the tabletops. Despite the density of the crowds two streets away, it wasn’t busy; there was, as far as she could tell, only one other person in there, an old white man picking listlessly at a plate of baked beans on toast with the tip of his fork. By the counter, a younger white man in an apron - she supposed the manager - was slurping at a mug of coffee, his lips smacking at the rim of the mug whenever he took a sip.

  She walked slowly across to the counter, stomach turning with nerves.

  “Can I help you?” said the maybe-manager, warily. She wondered what part of her was responsible for his wariness - her age, the scruffiness of her jeans and sweater, her unwashed hair, the suspicious light-brownness of her skin.

  She looked up at the chalkboard menu above his head, ostensibly studying the myriad combinations of sausage, egg, bacon, chips and beans with great interest.

  “Full English, please,” she said, in the meekest voice she could manage. “And a tin of Tizer.”

  “Have a seat,” he said, with no trace of
friendliness. “I’ll bring it over.”

  She sidled over to the table furthest away from the old man and sank nonchalantly down into the vinyl. She pulled a book from her bag - a new one from the library, Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, the pages still crisp and unthumbed - and settled down to read.

  She was barely five pages in when the manager brought over the food, dropping the can of pop and the warm plate down so gracelessly that two of the mushrooms spilled out onto the tabletop.

  “Thank you,” she said, all politeness.

  He grunted something she couldn’t make out, and strode away without looking at her.

  The food was good: hot and greasy and filling, the bacon cut thick and the bread a satisfying mix of sweet and salty. She finished it all, clearing the plate with a crust fried crisp, and washed it down with the Tizer, thirsty enough by then to drain the can in a half dozen gulps.

  She crossed her knife and fork over the plate and pushed it to one side, and before long the manager was back, looming over the table like a raincloud.

  “Got the bill,” he said, handing it over.

  She took it and smiled up at him; made a show of digging into the pocket of her jeans. When she failed to find what she was looking for in there, she let her forehead crease in confusion. She plunged a hand into the other pocket, fingers pressing down into the lining of the denim - but there was nothing. Her hand came up empty.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, mortified. “My Auntie gave me two pounds for my lunch, and I thought I’d put it in my pocket but I must have left it at home…”

  The manager’s small eyes narrowed, his lips tightening in disgust.

  “I ought to call the police,” he said, his voice low and dangerous, and for a minute she worried that he might - that she’d leave the cafe in the back of a Panda car.

  “Please,” she said, willing herself to tears. “She only lives round the corner - I can run back and get it. It won’t take me 5 minutes.”

  “Run off, you mean,” said the man. He muttered something under his breath, something she couldn’t quite hear.