Authors: Merryn Allingham
‘The V and A has the archive for the 1851 Exhibition and probably the Royde papers, too.’
‘So I gathered from the net, but not all of them, it seems. That’s the difficulty. They have the stuff on the Carlyon chapel but nothing earlier.’
‘Are you certain there was anything earlier?’
‘The Society is convinced there was. They reckon Royde spent a couple of years in Italy, Lombardy I think it was then, came back to England around 1850 and then got involved in some way with the Great Exhibition. They imagine he was engaged to design one of the hundreds of display spaces. But I can’t find a trace.’
‘So what do you want from me?’
‘Could you discover whether there’s anything earlier than 1852? You’ve probably got a lot more sources available than I can tap into.’
He exuded a confidence I didn’t feel. I sipped my wine slowly while I thought it over. Did I really want to get involved? All I could do was conduct the same search in which Nick had already failed. It was unlikely to yield a different result, although it was possible a specialist’s eye might alight on something he’d missed. I knew I was probably fooling myself, but even so I couldn’t prevent a slight frisson of anticipation.
‘I don’t have other sources, as you call them, but I’m willing to look through the papers at the V and A. There may be something you’ve overlooked, although it’s doubtful.’
His face smiled pure pleasure. ‘You’re a pal,’ he said breezily. ‘And if you do come up with anything, I’ll stand you another drink.’
‘That goes without saying.’ And for the first time I allowed myself to smile back at him. I could see that he was momentarily stunned by the difference. I’ve been told that I look ten years younger when I smile and a great deal more fun. And my eyes, which often seem misty and indeterminate, become an electrifying green. I watched his stupefaction with some amusement.
‘How long have you been a freelance writer?’ It was time to lighten the atmosphere.
‘Too long!’
My eyebrows must have risen and his voice became defensive. ‘Four years, maybe a bit more. I’ve never had what you’d call a “proper” job.’
‘Nor me,’ I confessed.
‘How come? You look pretty well set up.’
‘Looks can be deceptive. I spent years as a student and now I fritter my time away investigating the history, if there is any, behind people’s houses. It’s mostly a vanity project for them—and for me, I guess.’
‘But what about the gallery? Don’t you work there?’
‘Odds and ends when I’m needed. My main role is hostess at events like the Gorski. Oliver Brooke owns and runs the gallery. Actually he runs three galleries, the one here in London, one in Bristol and one he’s just opened in Newcastle.’
‘Busy man.’
‘Successful man.’
‘So why, if it’s not an indelicate question, aren’t you involved in running any of these galleries multiplying across the face of England?’
I took my time to answer. ‘Oliver prefers me to take a background role. I manage my own small business, but I need to be on hand to accompany him on buying trips or trade fairs, new exhibitions, that kind of thing.’
Nick finished his wine before he said flatly, ‘He’s your partner.’
‘Yes, he’s my partner.’ My response didn’t sound hugely enthusiastic even to my ears, and he was encouraged to probe.
‘How did you meet?’
‘Oliver visited my uni when I was an undergraduate. He gave a lecture on gallery management. I got talking to him afterwards and the upshot was that he took me on for work experience at the Papillon during the summer. He even paid me.’
‘Generous!’
‘He is very generous.’ I was suddenly serious. ‘He funded me through my postgraduate studies. I couldn’t have made it without him.’
I wished I hadn’t told him that. He was a stranger, and here I was spilling personal information all over the place. I tried to change the subject.
‘Have you had much published, apart from the series you mentioned?’
‘Bits and pieces. It doesn’t amount to much.’
I must have frowned because his protest was instant. ‘You don’t know how difficult it is to get published.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. I know very well. You must have to take on other jobs—unless you have a wealthy family supporting you.’
‘Wealthy family, yes. Supporting me, no. My father washed his hands of me when I refused to follow him into law.’
‘And your sister? She hasn’t followed in his footsteps either, it seems.’
‘Lucy? No. But that’s okay with Dad because she’s a girl, would you believe. He set her up in business—events management. Did I mention that?’
I nodded.
‘I don’t think he ever expected to see a penny of his money back, but amazingly she’s turned out to be businesswoman of the decade. My brother is the most successful barrister in his chambers, which leaves me as the family failure.’
‘Hardly.
Art Matters
is a prestigious magazine. If
they
thought you were good enough to publish, you should get other offers.’
‘That’s what I thought, but it hasn’t happened. I’ve been hanging around on the off chance that some eager editor will get in touch—I’ve written a corker on art fraud in Romania—but no one’s interested. So it’s back to waiting tables very soon.’
‘And that’s presumably why you contacted me.’
‘I’ve worked really hard on the papers from the Exhibition,’ he assured me. ‘It’s not that I want you to do my work.’
I allowed myself a slight smile since that was precisely what I did think. In response he leaned across the table, his body tense. ‘I figured that if you looked through the stuff at the V and A and came to the same conclusion, then I’d be justified in telling the Royde Society that earlier plans simply don’t exist.’
‘And you can happily advise them to use the Carlyon chapel for their nostalgia fest, meanwhile collecting your fee en route?’ I finished for him.
‘If they do pay out when they get the news—I’m not convinced, these cultural societies are often tightwads. Anyway, if they do pay, I’ll stand you dinner.’
‘My reward is rising all the time. How can I refuse?’ It was a very slight mystery, but any mystery was an event in my present limbo, and there was always a chance that I might strike gold. ‘I’ll have a look through the V and A archive once I’ve settled Mrs Carmichael,’ I found myself saying.
‘Who’s she?’
‘Don’t ask. She is my current burden—sorry, client. I’ll give you a ring when I know more.’
He got up to go, pulling down the tee shirt that had ridden up over what was a neatly compact body.
‘Thanks, Grace, you’re about to save a dying man,’ he said, and started off at a sprint.
‘Hadn’t you better leave me your number? Do you have a card?’
‘
Please.
Do I have a card?!’
He grabbed the menu and looked hopefully around for a pen, as if one might materialise out of the air.
‘Here.’ I handed him my silver ballpoint and he scribbled on the menu. ‘And I’ll have it back.’ He was halfway to the door again.
‘Sorry, but there’s a pawnbroker around the corner,’ he joked and handed me back the pen.
Perhaps not such a joke. Nick Heysham appeared to live on the edge of respectability. Oliver would not approve. He would see him as a liability and wonder why I’d taken it into my head to befriend him. But when I broached the subject over dinner that evening, he seemed relaxed about the idea of my undertaking research for someone I hardly knew and without any likely recompense. His mind was on other things.
‘I’ve an idea to move the Gorski up to Newcastle next month.’ He absently stroked the small, spiky beard he’d managed to grow in recent weeks. ‘The exhibition worked brilliantly at the Papillon, and we did a good deal of extra business from it.’
‘Do you think Gorski is well-known enough in Newcastle?’
It was a foolish thing to say. Oliver is very strong on the notion of ‘art for the people.’ But at the same time he’s good at spotting the next big thing, which is why he lives in a large house in Hampstead and drives a top-of-the-range Mercedes.
‘Don’t be snobbish, darling. The art world there is buzzing. Think of the Baltic, the Laing, the Shipley.’
I thought about them while he began to clear the table.
‘We might take a trip together.’
‘To Newcastle?’
‘Yes, of course to Newcastle.’ He sounded a trifle impatient at my obtuseness. ‘If the exhibition is as successful as I expect, we must celebrate.’
He was loading the dishwasher in a distracted fashion, imperilling some very expensive china. He always performed household chores in a kind of disassociated way, as if they were being done by someone else. He straightened up with the last rattle of cutlery and allowed a smile to lighten his customarily austere expression.
‘We could travel on from Newcastle. We haven’t had a real holiday for a long time and we’d enjoy a few days in the Highlands.’
I tried to smile back convincingly but wondered why Oliver always talked about ‘we.’ He made the decisions and I went along with them. It was feeble, but I wasn’t going to feel ashamed at taking the easy road: the past was still written large in my mind. And since it looked as though I was shortly to be hoisted northwards, I’d better get on with Nick’s research as soon as possible. I knew for a fact that there were volumes of papers involved in the Great Exhibition, and they would all need to be checked. Once Mrs Carmichael was placated. And she would be. Tomorrow.
* * *
In the event it was nearly a week before I tripped up the sweeping grey arc of steps to the front entrance of the Victoria and Albert museum. Mrs Carmichael had been speedily dismissed, but a new client, Leo Merrick, had been phoning me constantly and growing more agitated with each call. He had begun to renovate a partly derelict building that he thought had once been a school, and he’d hit problems. Not the everyday problems of a dodgy roof or an inefficient drainage system. No, this problem was a ghost. His wife, who was refusing to visit the site again, let alone live there, swore that she had felt, heard, even seen, a deeply unhappy spirit. Since exorcism didn’t feature prominently in my list of skills, I couldn’t see how I could help. But he was adamant that if I could discover more of the history of the building, it would in some miraculous fashion show him the way forward. I wasted a lot of time trying to persuade him otherwise, but in the end I agreed to find out what I could.
This morning the statue of Prince Albert looked benignly down on me as I passed through the revolving glass doors, exchanging the noise of Cromwell Road for the hushed echo of voices and footsteps. Even on a busy weekend, the bustle of bodies and the swell of chatter were muffled by the sheer scale of the place. Today, with few visitors, the building seemed more than ever like a cathedral: cream-flecked marble pillars, immense arches giving on to long vistas and the pale light of a diffused sun filtering and falling amid the ornamented stonework.
The National Art Library was my destination and once through its double doors, I signed myself in and took a numbered disc from the board. Soft light trickling through arched windows and the smell of old leather were comfortably familiar, yet I was still surprised to find myself here. It was a measure of my restlessness, I suppose, that new sense of being captive, that I’d started on a path that was bound to lead nowhere. But even though a eureka moment was unlikely, I was looking forward to a few hours in the hallowed quiet of the Reading Room.
I changed my mind as soon as the librarian pushed the loaded trolley towards me. I’d always known the store of papers would be large but never appreciated quite how large.
‘I’ve picked out what I think will be the most relevant papers for your search,’ she said a trifle grimly. I wasn’t surprised at her terseness since it must have taken her most of yesterday to put together the huge cache.
‘There’s more, of course. You’ll have to let me know what else you need, if you get through these.’
She didn’t sound too hopeful and no wonder. I’d be here all day and more if I had to stagger my way through the pile of boxes she was carefully parking beside my reading desk. It was a far larger collection than I’d ever tackled before. But I’d agreed to do the research and a woman’s word is her bond. I thanked her and started with the obvious which is usually a good place to start.
The original proposal for the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851, contained illustrations, plans, elevations and sections from the working drawings of the building contractors but though the overall structure of the Exhibition Hall was clear, there were no specifics of individual display spaces or their architects and sponsors. The official Catalogue issued by the Royal Commission was more forthcoming with detailed accounts of the exhibits and at the very back, a list of the architects employed on the grand project. This was just what I needed, and it looked as though I’d be able to return my trolley largely untouched. But I searched the Catalogue in vain for the name of Lucas Royde. The major difficulty with the listing was that it recorded architectural practices rather than individual architects. The Society hadn’t been clear whether Royde had set up his own practice immediately after he’d returned from the Italian states or whether he’d first joined an existing firm. Trying to discover whether Royde had ever been an employee would mean researching each individual partnership. And the records were almost sure to be incomplete.
Deflated, I turned to the trolley again and pulled out the box containing the prospectuses of all the exhibitors. These could be promising except for one crucial problem: they came in sixteen volumes and covered everything from raw materials to machinery to manufactures and since I had no idea who might have sponsored Royde’s display space, if it ever existed, it meant trudging through every single book.
I broke for lunch around volume nine, and by then my eyes were raw. A deep longing to be elsewhere took hold of me, but I hate to be beaten, and a cheese and tomato sandwich later, I abandoned the idea of an early escape and drove myself back to the Reading Room. In my absence the surrounding desks had acquired a clutter of students and bags.