Authors: Frances Fyfield
Saul enjoyed the role of tutor and observer, just like Thomas.
‘The reserve price printed in the catalogue is an estimate. The estimate is often based on what the painting sold for the last time when it, or something similar to it, came up for sale at auction. The
real
reserve price, by which I mean the lowest price the seller will accept, is lower than the printed reserve price. Only the auctioneer knows what it is.’
‘So the printed reserve price is based on records and hope. Nothing to do with intrinsic value. Like other commodities,’ she said.
‘Exactly. Now, the advantage of
your
hidden masterpiece, or masterpieces if we insist on the plural, is that it is something that has never been for sale at auction before. No one has seen it for a generation and there’s no real precedent for it. They’ll have to guess the value. No one will be able to predict what it might fetch. That’s why Edward will go for it, because it will be priceless, in one sense. It could go for a fortune if there’s a devotee collector or an institution mad for it. It will be a
discovery.
Some collectors can’t resist that. Edward won’t be able to either, because he’s a gambler, but a lazy one. A man who doesn’t do his research, out for the maximum buck. Willing to risk it, the promise so much better than the certainty. He is thoroughly informed and seduced by me.’
‘Have you really seduced him?’
‘No, dearest, he’s too ugly. But I wouldn’t put it past myself, otherwise.’
‘And you’ve really sold him on this?’
‘Yes. Hook, line and sinker. As for
moi,
I’m in it for a share of the profits, of course, a motive he can understand, although he’ll already have thought about how to cheat me out of that. A contract to act as a double agent is hardly enforceable.’
‘What about Gayle and Beatrice? Will they go along?’
‘Yes. Because they want action, and want it soon, before dear Thomas is buried, in case stuff is buried with him. And they are realising that getting you arrested might not work, and yes, because they’ve been dominated one way or another for most of their lives and they crave to be led even if it means being lied to. But as far as the paintings are concerned, they’ll have to steal them. That was always part of the plan. They won’t get any sense of achievement, otherwise. Stealing it will
be part of their revenge on you and him, they’ll have outwitted you. It would give them such satisfaction. We have to encourage it, we have to turn them into thieves, make them show the courage of thieves. The only way to settle their hash is to turn them into burglars and then, compromise them. They must be thoroughly compromised. Thomas was clear about that.’
He looked at his watch, a flamboyant timepiece, hung round his neck on a black ribbon, half hidden by his tie. A beautiful object, like every single item of his apparel. An old, dull gold circle, an inch in diameter, with a black face and the numbers of the time of the day picked out in gold roman numerals, as easy to read as a book in large print.
‘And now we go and look at the other versions of the paintings in question,’ he said. ‘I want your advice. Your eye. To make sure they’re tempting enough.’
‘Thomas selected them,’ Di said. ‘Thomas thought it would have to be something they
expected
to see. The sort of thing they’d expect him to have.’
‘Edward
does
get it, and he’s the prime mover. I’ve sent him to see them in the Wallace and the National. I’ve sent him images and I’ll hand him transparencies. I fear he was expecting things more heroic. Both of them are real. Both of them are masterpieces in their own right and legitimately owned. Thomas knew exactly what they were. We are not encouraging them to be palmed off with a fraud. We are
not
cheating. Both of the paintings are entirely genuine. With the difference that they are not quite what they appear. They are glorious paintings, but they are not named commodities. Shall we go and check?’
The Wallace collection was in Manchester Square, halfway between Hyde Park and Regent’s Park. Handel’s church
overlooked the collection housed in a big, fat, comfortable house as squat and British as any house could be. Enter the doors and find inside a colossal collection of eighteenth-century art, collected by eccentrics. Di knew where she was in the Wallace, in the company of the maddest collectors of them all. Francophiles, acquisitive nutcases, amassing good and bad with equal verve. They were standing in front of the best-known painting in the whole collection, the one on the front of the catalogue,
The Swing
by one Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
They stood before it, Di smiling and silently reciting the description she had already written of the equivalent painting in the basement.
Picture:
shows a girl on a swing in the middle of a verdant garden/ forest, with plenty of hiding places. The girl is gorgeously clothed, with full petticoats and a bonnet; no underwear, they didn’t then; the swing is at its highest as she kicks off her delicious little shoe; the breeze lifts her skirts and she smiles with glee. An old goat of a man, perhaps her tutor, hidden in the undergrowth, watches her with helpless fascination. A young man, stage left, looks up her skirt.
‘Knockout,’ Di said. ‘Girl without knickers.’
‘You,’ Saul said, keeping her on track, ‘have an alternative version. Similar, but with the swing going in the opposite direction. The same hidden, satyr-like figure who is going to rape her innocence, the same boy who will be helpless to protect her. Your colours will be equally brilliant, it may even
be a better version than this, a little naughtier, the girl more knowing, the predators more determined, more transfixed by lust. There was more than one version. You have one, the best one, better than this. Are you listening?’
She was.
‘The only difference,’ he continued, ‘Is that
your
version was not painted by Monsier Fragonard, although he painted several versions. It was painted by his sister-in-law, Margeur -ite Gerard, who came to live with him and his wife in 1775. Ostensibly to take painting lessons. She learned to paint just like him, as well as.’
‘I like our version better than this,’ Di said. ‘More colour, more bitterness, more edge. It was in the school. Thomas knew who painted it. So did his father. That’s why he wanted to rescue it. Margeurite Gerard never had a chance to succeed in her own right, never had the limelight and that makes her Thomas’s kind of artist. But he rarely bought anything French. Might they notice that?’
‘I doubt it. Edward would never research carefully enough. Nor has he ever looked.’
They were back in the taxi. Di knew the way through the National Gallery; it was she who led Saul towards Gains -borough’s portrait of his two daughters.
‘Even Edward and Gayle will have heard of Gainsbor -ough,’ Saul said. ‘They might even be able to recognise the style. Fragonard? You know if you know, and you don’t if you don’t. Gainsborough’s the better bet. The forerunner of English landscape painting, almost the inventor. His great love, although he was a portrait painter. He put landscapes behind portraits. One of his most touching portraits, I think.’
Di had written that one down, too. She could recite her own description.
Two little girls, almost embracing. The one is almost a baby, the other, older, protective, holding her. Based on the same faces of a more famous portrait of the two of them, chasing a butterfly. Sweet, sweet, sweet anxious faces, transfixed by Daddy. One face full of intelligence, the other, pretty, slack-mouthed and vacuous. Vulnerable faces, bodies dressed as adults.
‘They went mad,’ Di said, saddened by it. ‘Gainsborough loved them as much as any father of his time, but his love for them couldn’t cure them. Perhaps life couldn’t. Look at them now. They were happy then.’
Saul was on full song, ignoring sentiment; no time for it.
‘Gainsborough was different from other successful portrait painters of the time. He didn’t have assistants to do all the extra bits such as lace and shoes like most of the others he followed. He concentrated on the face, first of all, painted from life and got a real likeness. Then he painted the body, and the landscape.’
‘The faces,’ Di said.‘Always concentrated onthe faces, a true likeness, done from life, almost a sketch. Only he didn’t paint the one wrapped up in our cellar,’ Di said. ‘His nephew did. Gainsborough Dupont, nephew and only pupil. Who learned to paint exactly in the style of his uncle, only with greater freedom. He copied, but he copied honestly. May have painted the same things as his uncle, at the same time. Maybe not an inventor of techniques, but just as good, or better. Remained modest and unknown. Another reason why Thomas liked it. The unknown artist, in the shadow of someone else.’
They were out of there, walking, hurrying without reason. It was cold.
‘Either of them,’ Di said. ‘Either. But the Gainsborough’s bigger and the one where they’ll know the name. I wish they weren’t wrapped up in the basement. It went against his nature, keeping things hidden. They were on the walls, ten years ago. I wish Thomas wasn’t so keen on playing games.’
‘He knew about misguided children. He wanted revenge, too.’
‘They’ll go for the Gainsborough,’ she said. ‘They’re welcome. They’ll go for both, and we have both, but they’ll go for the name. They’ll also go for Fragonard, because it’s semi-famous and they’ll go for both because of the subject matter. Beatrice will, anyway.’
‘How so?’
‘The Fragonard’s naughtiness, its theme. The old goat of a tutor, hiding in the bushes. The man looking up the girl’s skirt, that’s what they’ll see. And as for the Gainsborough, what have we got? Two anxious girls, transfixed by Daddy, looking straight to camera, ready to strike a bargain, wanting to please before they stopped wanting to please. A confirmation of some sort of perversion on the part of the collector, or at least the expression of a tendency? That’s what they thought of Thomas. That’s why they’ll expect paintings suggesting perversion. They’ll see what they see. Those paintings were always there. Thomas’s father had them.’
Saul nodded, following in part, realising yet again that, however much he had been trusted, there were things he did not know.
‘Christina would have killed for those paintings,’ Di said. ‘She might have known them.’
‘In terms of value,’ Saul intoned, ‘Marguerite Gerard’s
version of
The Swing
would fetch a few thousand, but if by Fragonard himself, at least a million. The same applies to Gainsborough Dupont. They won’t do badly. Just not nearly as well as they thought. Good commodity, wrong name.’
‘So we aren’t selling them a fraud or a copy. That’s important. And we’re letting them take away something of real value, which is what Thomas wanted, but we’re making them fight for them, steal for them. It’s cruel, isn’t it?’
‘It’ll teach them a lot about themselves, Di. Come on, Di, you still don’t hate them enough.’
‘Oh yes I do. I didn’t before, but I do, now. Problem is, I don’t hate their children.’
She thought of Patrick, shuddered, as if a cloud had descended over the sun, and then, as if it was an afterthought, rather than a real one, she said, ‘I’ve got go home. I wonder what they’re doing at home? I feel as if I need to go home, There was a flood warning. Let’s go home. Now.’
‘Tell me things,’ he said, urgently as they walked faster and faster. ‘Tell me what happened to Christina when she came to call on Thomas. Tell me what he wouldn’t tell me. Tell me more about your father.’
She was walking along, looking at a text on her phone, stopped so suddenly they bumped into one another. She was tight-lipped and pale.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Christina jumped off a cross-channel ferry, everyone knows that. As for my father, he follows death. I can feel him. He knows the house. Something’s happening. He’s there, I can see him.’
‘Nonsense. We can’t go back, not tonight,’ he protested. ‘There are other places to visit tomorrow. The flat, Raymond Forrest, things to
do
.’
‘It can all wait. I have to go home.’
‘Why, for Godsake?’
‘Because there’s a shadow,’ she said, shivering. ‘He’s watching. He won’t come near me, but he would go for someone smaller. I told you the other night, Saul, my father won’t come for me head on, but he might sneak round the back, he’ll come in sideways, for something smaller than me.’
A
boy who looked like a child sat on the train, sketching in his book for something to do, the way he always did. ‘On your own, son?’ the ticket inspector asked. Patrick stared at him. Of course he was on his own; that much was perfectly obvious. He was usually on his own, wherever he was, whoever he was with. He looked to either side of him, impertinently, and said, yes it seemed as if he was, so why did he ask? The inspector did not quite like his tone; strange little chap, with an old voice. Patrick was sick of explaining that he was older than he looked. Twelve, and the size of an eight year old, the year he stopped growing. But he was growing now: he could feel it surging beneath his pale skin, making him six feet tall, already. Getting dark out there, didn’t matter, he had a map, a watch with a compass. He wanted to see the sea.
He had kept the map for years, the way he kept so many things, ever since Di gave it to him. It had come with the invitation to the party. When he grew up and could choose what to do, he would make maps. When he was a baby, a hundred years ago, when Mum and Dad still visited Grandpa until they stopped, they came by car, squabbling all the way. When he came for the party, he came on the train with the horrible cousins; part of the adventure, and that was how he learned the route. And then, Auntie Beatrice, coming in there screaming.
Pervert,
she screamed,
fucking pervert
. She just
didn’t get it, did she? Nor did the cousins, they never got the magic at all.
Didn’t matter: he knew the way to the house from the station like the back of his hand. Anytime, Di said; but you must tell your mother. That’s what she said at first, anyway. Then she gave him food and put him back on the train.