‘You said you went to see Mary about something else . . .’ Jan stopped, seeing Charlie’s expression. ‘That’s part of what you can’t tell me, right?’
‘’Fraid so. Look, as I say, I’m here as an interested visitor, not as a cop. There’s really no reason why you should tell me anything. ’
‘I’m happy to tell you what little I know about Mary.’ Jan seemed reassured. ‘You’re definitely not her best friend?’
Charlie smiled. ‘If you’re holding back some vitriol, there’s no need. It’s no skin off my nose whether you love her or hate her. I’m just interested to find out as much as I can.’
Jan nodded. ‘I’d never heard of her until one day in October last year, when she turned up here unannounced, no appointment, nothing. You’ve met her, right? So you know how striking she looks—that hair, the ultra-posh voice. Like a mad queen who’s lost her kingdom. I was a little intimidated by her.’
You and me both, thought Charlie.
‘She’d brought a picture with her, one she wanted framed. She told me she lived in Spilling and that she’d fallen out with her old gallery, the one that used to frame all her work . . .’
‘Did she say what about?’
‘No. I didn’t ask.’
‘Sorry. Go on.’
‘She informed me, rather regally, that I was going to frame the painting for her, even told me how much I should charge her—same as the old gallery would have. I’d have laughed if she hadn’t been so obviously serious. She told me that, from now on, I would be framing her pictures. At that point I had to interrupt and tell her I didn’t do framing—I’m not a picture-framer. It took a lot of guts, let me tell you. She’d been in here less than five minutes and already I was terrified of being a disappointment to her.’
Charlie smiled. She was used to dealing with people who released the occasional jerky, incoherent sentence if she was lucky. Jan Garner was a welcome contrast.
‘It was hard to tell her without sounding patronising that in London, galleries that sell contemporary art don’t do framing, whatever happens in Spilling. The artists I represent deliver their pictures already framed.’
‘How did she take it when you told her?’ Charlie asked.
‘Oh, badly. Mary took everything badly. I offered to recommend framers, but she wouldn’t let me. I asked her why she’d come to London. I mean, I know it’s a relatively short train journey, but still . . . wouldn’t it have been more convenient for her to find a picture-framer in Spilling? There must be others apart from the gallery she’d fallen out with.’
Apart from Saul Hansard, there was only one that Charlie knew of: Aidan Seed. ‘What did she say?’
‘That it had to be me. Beyond that, she wouldn’t elaborate. To this day, I don’t know why she chose me rather than anyone else, or how she first heard of me. I asked her again later, once we’d established a working relationship and knew each other better, but she still wouldn’t say.’ Jan caught Charlie’s puzzled look and said, ‘Oh, sorry. I should have said: yes, I did end up framing pictures for Mary. Having them framed for her, rather, by a friend of mine. Mary Trelease is a woman who makes sure she gets what she wants.’
‘But you’d told her you didn’t do framing,’ said Charlie. ‘How did she persuade you?’
‘She didn’t. Her picture did.
Abberton.
’ Jan’s eyes lost their focus and she sighed. ‘It was brilliant. Something really special.’
Charlie glanced at the nearest of the paper-doll pictures. ‘In a different league from those,’ said Jan, reading her mind. ‘Mary’s paintings—that first one I saw and every one I saw subsequently—they were
alive
. They were beautiful and ugly at the same time, full of passion.’
‘So you agreed because you liked her work,’ Charlie summarised.
Abberton
: another thing Ruth Bussey had told the truth about.
‘Not at first,’ said Jan. ‘At first I tried to persuade her to let me represent her. That was when she told me she’d never sold a single picture and never would. It was also when I got to hear her rules: I wasn’t allowed to show her work to anyone, or mention her name to anyone—oh, it was crazy! I didn’t understand the woman at all, but I quickly saw that if I wanted to maintain any connection with her, I’d have to take her on her terms, which meant doing her framing. I hoped that in time she’d come round to the idea of exhibiting her paintings, but she never did. Not while I knew her, anyway. I don’t know what she’s doing now. You’ll know more about that than I do.’ Jan eyed Charlie tentatively.
Charlie didn’t see that it would do any harm. ‘She’s the same. Fiercely private about her work. And you have no idea why she’s like that?’
‘I could hazard a guess,’ said Jan. ‘Fear of failure? Fear of commercial considerations coming into play, and how that might change things? If you forbid the sale of something, you have no opportunity to see whether people want to buy it or not. If you don’t let people see your work, they can’t hate it. Mary used to say it was a matter of principle, that you can’t and shouldn’t put a price on art, but I never believed that line. I think she was scared, and I can’t say I blame her. The art scene chews people up and spits them out. It’s merciless.’
Charlie couldn’t help smiling. ‘We’re talking about people buying pictures, right? Or not buying them? Nothing life-threatening? ’
‘You can laugh, but I could tell you some horror stories. There was a young artist recently whose entire degree show sold to a world-famous collector. Usually if that happens, you’re made—you can write your own ticket—but in this case it didn’t work. There was a huge backlash against the idea that one collector could up the value of an artist’s work just like that. Both the collector and the artist became the target of some of the most vicious word-of-mouth I’ve ever heard. The irony is, the artist’s a talented guy. His work’s great.’
‘Then why the viciousness?’ Charlie asked.
‘Bad timing, that’s all. It had happened too often—the Charles Saatchi effect, we call it. All it takes is for a few artists to build their careers on it and become world-famous, and suddenly everyone’s suspicious and ready to make sure no more slip through the net.’
Charlie downed the rest of her tea and tried to look more sympathetic than she felt. If Charles Saatchi threw a few million in her direction, she wouldn’t care how many people slagged her off afterwards. She’d buy diamond-studded earplugs and go and lie on a beach in the Caribbean where the whining of jealous bastards wouldn’t reach her.
Jan’s eyes were wide and bright as she plucked another sorry tale from her repertoire. ‘I represented an artist once, years ago, who was out-of-this-world fantastic: talented, ambitious, absolutely guaranteed to succeed.’
‘Better than Mary Trelease?’ Charlie couldn’t resist asking.
Jan chewed her lip as she thought about it. ‘Different. No, not better. It’d be hard to say anyone was
better
than Mary. Mary’s a genius.’
‘And this other artist wasn’t?’
‘No, I think he was—in a very different way from Mary, much more muted. He had his first show with me. He wasn’t expecting much from it and neither was I—these things tend to build slowly if they build at all. I did my best to get publicity, but it’s never easy for a first show. The private view was reasonably well attended, nothing out of the ordinary. Only three of the pictures sold. But somehow, even though the first night had been nothing special, word got around. Quality will out, that’s what I always say. Within three days, all the pictures in the exhibition were sold—every last one, all to people who were eager to buy more as soon as more were available.’
Jan put her hand to her throat, which had turned pink. ‘It was the most exciting moment of my career, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘I had to beat the collectors off with a stick. And that’s collectors plural—not just one man buying the whole lot to publicise himself as much as anything else.’ Jan let out a heavy sigh. ‘I hate to think about it now.’
‘What went wrong?’ Charlie asked.
‘I rang the artist to tell him all the work was sold and the buyers were begging for more. He was thrilled, as you can imagine. Completely beyond his wildest dreams. Then I waited. And waited. I heard nothing from him. I called him—he didn’t return my calls. It took me a while to realise he was avoiding me. In a paranoid moment, I even wondered if he’d decided to dump me, buoyed up as he was by his success. Why should he pay commission to a gallery when he could keep all the money for himself? But it wasn’t that at all. When I finally tracked him down, he told me he’d stopped painting.’
‘What?’ Charlie hadn’t been expecting that.
‘He said he couldn’t do it any more. Every time he picked up a paintbrush, he froze. I tried to persuade him to get help, but he didn’t want to. All he wanted was to leave it behind. I couldn’t force him.’
‘Stupid idiot,’ Charlie said, before she could stop herself.
‘With approval come expectation and pressure.’ Jan looked sad. ‘Perhaps Mary’s approach is the sensible one. It’s still a tragedy, though—all those amazing paintings and no one’s seeing them, no one but her. She does the most wonderful portraits. Did you see any of those?’
‘A few,’ said Charlie. ‘Her neighbours.’
‘Hardly.’ Jan laughed. ‘Mary’s not interested in anyone who’s had it easy. She said to me once, “I only want to paint people who have really suffered.” She painted disadvantaged, deprived people. There was a particular estate, I can’t remember its name . . .’
‘The Winstanley estate?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Her neighbours,’ Charlie said again. ‘Mary lives on the Winstanley estate, on a semi-derelict cul-de-sac that you wouldn’t want to walk down on your own at night or even during the day. She lives side by side with . . .’ Charlie had been about to say, ‘the dregs of the dregs,’ but she stopped herself. She had a hunch Jan’s view of the underclass was somewhat rosier than her own.
‘But Mary’s . . .’ Jan looked flustered. ‘She’s . . . I always assumed she’d live somewhere . . . you know. I mean, what’s a Villiers girl doing living on a run-down estate?’
‘Villiers?’ Charlie had vaguely heard of it.
‘It’s a girls’ boarding school in Surrey. I’ve only heard of it because I happened to grow up in the next village,’ said Jan, a hint of apology in her voice. ‘Mary went to school with diamond heiresses and the daughters of film stars. Seriously.’
‘Her family are rich?’ Charlie pictured 15 Megson Crescent, its peeling wallpaper and blackened carpets.
Jan laughed. ‘They must be if they sent her to Villiers. She told me the fees were around fifteen grand a year when she went, and that was years ago. A lot of her friends were called “The Hon” this or that. Mary said most of them were thick, but then she never seemed to rate anyone’s intellect very highly.’
‘Did you ever see any of her other pictures, apart from the ones she brought in for you to frame? When I was at her house I saw some unframed ones she’d put up on the walls—of a family who used to live on the estate, I think.’
Jan looked puzzled. ‘Mary was obsessive about framing her work. She didn’t regard a picture as finished until it was framed. She used to hassle me mercilessly, wanting everything framed straight away. It was almost as if . . .’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. As if she didn’t think they were safe until they were behind glass, or something. Or as if she didn’t think they counted, somehow. Are you sure the unframed pictures you saw were hers?’
‘Positive.’
‘How odd.’ Jan rubbed her collarbone, thinking. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong—Mary’s style’s unmistakeable—but I can’t understand it. It’s just not Mary to leave her work unframed.’ She peered into her empty mug. ‘Another tea?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d best be off in a minute.’ She didn’t know how to ask about the
Access 2
Art fair without sounding as if she was trying to catch Jan out:
I know someone who says you lied.
‘I take it you no longer frame for Mary,’ she said eventually. ‘What went wrong?’
‘Two things, and they happened in quick succession. Mary painted something I hated—something I objected to, actually—and I couldn’t pretend to feel otherwise about it. She took exception. I still framed it for her, but that wasn’t good enough. She was used to me raving about the brilliance of everything she did—the last thing she expected was disapproval, but I honestly couldn’t help it.’
‘How come?’
‘The picture was of a young woman who was . . . well, dead.’ Jan sounded apologetic. ‘I can’t remember her name, though I knew it at the time—it was the painting’s title. Not a neighbour this time—someone Mary had been at school with. Another Villiers girl. A writer. She only wrote one novel, though, before she hanged herself, tragically young. Not that there’s an age when suicide isn’t tragic. I wish I could remember her name.’
‘Maybe Mary was close to her,’ Charlie suggested, remembering what Mary had said about painting people you cared about.
Like offering yourself an emotional breakdown.
‘Yes,’ said Jan. ‘She told me they were inseparable, that this woman had meant everything to her and nothing to me. As if that gave her every right, and I ought to shut up if I knew what was good for me.’ Noticing that Charlie looked puzzled, she added, ‘Sorry, I should have explained. Mary painted her dead, with the noose round her neck.’ She shuddered. ‘The full suicide scene, in all its vivid, gory, undignified detail. The picture was utterly grotesque. I can’t imagine I’d be more shocked if I saw a real dead body. I mean, the poor woman . . . oh, her name’s on the tip of my tongue, what is it? It’ll come to me.’ Jan looked angry. ‘I know she’s dead and it can’t hurt her, but still, her family . . . Even if Mary never shows the painting to anyone, even if all she does is stick it in the loft . . .’
Charlie’s thoughts drifted back to the forbidden zone: Ruth Bussey and the wall of newspaper cuttings. Jan would have understood why Charlie wanted it destroyed, even if Dominic Lund didn’t. The thought that it was there, that it existed, was unbearable, no matter who saw or didn’t see it. Charlie felt a deep coldness in the pit of her stomach.