‘Great,’ says Paul.
There is an A4 photocopy of
The Girl You
Left Behind
pinned up in his office, among other paintings missing or subject
to restitution requests. Paul looks up periodically and wishes that every time he did so
Liv Halston wasn’t looking back at him. Paul switches his attention to the papers
in front of him.
‘This image is such as one would not expect to find in a
humble provincial hotel,’ the
Kommandant
writes to his wife at one point.
‘In truth I cannot take my eyes from it.’
It? Paul wonders. Or her?
Several miles away, Liv is also working.
She rises at seven, pulls on her running shoes and heads off, sprinting alongside the
river, music in her ears, her heartbeat thumping along with her footsteps. She gets home
after Mo leaves for work, showers, makes herself breakfast, drops a tea in with Fran,
but now she leaves the Glass House, spending her days in specialist art libraries, in
the fuggy archives of galleries, on the Internet, chasing leads. She is in daily contact
with Henry, popping in whenever he asks to hold a conference, explaining the importance
of French legal testimony, the difficulty of finding expert witnesses. ‘So
basically,’ she says, ‘you want me to come up with concrete evidence on a
painting
about which nothing has been recorded of a woman who
doesn’t seem to exist.’
Henry smiles nervously at her. He does this
a lot.
She lives and breathes the painting. She is
blind to the approach of Christmas, her father’s plaintive calls. She cannot see
beyond her determination that Paul should not take it. Henry has given her all the
disclosure files from the other side – copies of letters between Sophie and her husband,
references to the painting and the little town where they lived.
She reads through hundreds of academic and
political papers, newspaper reports about restitution: about families destroyed in
Dachau, their surviving grandchildren borrowing money to recover a Titian; a Polish
family, whose only surviving member died happy two months after the return of her
father’s little Rodin sculpture. Nearly all these articles are written from the
point of view of the claimant, the family who lost everything and found the
grandmother’s painting against the odds. The reader is invited to rejoice with
them when they win it back. The word ‘injustice’
appears in almost
every paragraph. The articles rarely offer the opinion of the person who had bought it
in good faith and lost it.
And everywhere she goes she detects
Paul’s footprints, as if she is asking the wrong questions, looking in the wrong
places, as if she is simply processing information that he has already acquired.
She stands up and stretches, walking around
the study. She has moved
The Girl You Left Behind
on to a bookshelf while she
works, as if she might give her inspiration. She finds herself looking at her all the
time now, as if she is
conscious that their time together may be
limited. And the court date draws ever closer, always there, like the drumbeat of a
distant battle.
Give me the answers, Sophie
.
At the bloody least, give me a
clue.
‘Hey.’
Mo appears at the door, eating a pot of
yoghurt. Six weeks on, she is still living in the Glass House. Liv is grateful for her
presence. She stretches and checks her watch. ‘Is it three o’clock already?
God. I’ve got almost nowhere today.’
‘You might want to take a look at
this.’ Mo pulls a copy of the London evening paper from under her arm and hands it
over. ‘Page three.’
Liv opens it.
Award-winning Architect’s Widow In
Million-pound Battle For Nazi-looted Art
, the headline says. Underneath is a
half-page picture of David and her at a charity event several years previously. She is
wearing an electric blue dress and is holding up a champagne glass, as if toasting the
camera. Nearby is a small inset picture of
The Girl You Left Behind
with a
caption: ‘Impressionist painting worth millions was “stolen by
German”.’
‘Nice dress,’ says Mo.
The blood drains from Liv’s face. She
does not recognize the smiling partygoer in the picture, a woman from a different life.
‘Oh, my God …’ She feels as if someone has thrown open the doors of her
house, her bedroom.
‘I guess it’s in their interests
to make you look like some kind of high-society witch. That way they can spin their
poor-French-victim line.’
Liv closes her eyes. If she keeps them
closed, perhaps it will just go away.
‘It’s historically wrong,
obviously. I mean, there were no Nazis in the First World War. So I doubt if anyone will
take any notice. I mean, I wouldn’t worry or anything.’ There is a long
silence. ‘And I don’t think anyone will recognize you. You look quite
different these days. Much …’ she struggles for words ‘… poorer.
And kind of older.’
Liv opens her eyes. There she is, standing
beside David, like some wealthy, carefree version of herself.
Mo pulls the spoon from her mouth and
inspects it. ‘Just don’t look at the online version, okay? Some of the
reader comments are a bit … strong.’
Liv looks up.
‘Oh, you know. Everyone has an opinion
these days. It’s all bullshit.’ Mo puts the kettle on. ‘Hey, are you
okay if Ranic comes over this weekend? He shares his place with, like, fifteen other
people. It’s quite nice to be able to stick your legs out in front of the telly
without accidentally kicking someone’s arse.’
Liv works all evening, trying to quell her
growing anxiety. She keeps seeing that newspaper report: the headline, the society wife
with her raised glass of champagne. She calls Henry, who tells her to ignore it, that
it’s par for the course. She finds herself listening almost forensically to his
tone, trying to assess whether he is as confident as he sounds.
‘Listen, Liv. It’s a big case.
They’re going to play dirty. You need to brace yourself.’ He has briefed a
barrister. He
tells her the man’s name as if she should have
heard of him. She asks how much he costs and hears Henry shuffling papers. When he tells
her the sum, she feels as if the air has been punched clean out of her lungs.
The phone rings three times; once it is her
father, telling her he has a job in a small touring production of
Run for Your
Wife
. She tells him absently that she’s pleased for him, urges him not to
run after anyone else’s. ‘That is
exactly
what Caroline
said!’ he exclaims, and rings off.
The second call is Kristen. ‘Oh, my
God,’ she says, breaking in without even a hello. ‘I just saw the
paper.’
‘Yes. Not the best afternoon’s
reading.’
She hears Kristen’s hand sliding over
the receiver, a muffled conversation. ‘Sven says don’t speak to anyone
again. Just don’t say a word.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Then where did they get all that
awful stuff?’
‘Henry says it probably came out of
TARP. It’s in their interests to leak information that makes the case sound as bad
as possible.’
‘Shall I come over? I’m not
doing much at the moment.’
‘It’s sweet of you, Kristen, but
I’m fine.’ She doesn’t want to talk to anyone.
‘Well, I can come to court with you,
if you like. Or if you wanted me to put your side of it, I’m sure I have contacts.
Perhaps something in
Hello!
?’
‘That – no. Thanks.’ Liv puts
down the phone. It will be everywhere now. Kristen is a far more effective disseminator
of information than the evening paper. Liv is anticipating having to explain herself to
friends, acquaintances. The painting is already somehow no longer hers. It is
a matter of public record, a focus for discussion, a symbol of a
wrong.
As she puts the phone down it rings
immediately, making her jump.
‘Kristen, I –’
‘Is that Olivia Halston?’
A man’s voice.
She hesitates. ‘Yes?’
‘My name is Robert Schiller. I’m
the arts correspondent for
The Times
. I’m sorry if I’m calling at
an inopportune time, but I’m putting together a background piece on this painting
of yours and I was wondering if you –’
‘No. No, thank you.’ She slams
the phone down. She stares at it suspiciously, then removes the receiver from its
cradle, afraid that it will ring again. Three times she places the receiver back on the
telephone and each time it rings straight away. Journalists leave their names and
numbers. They sound friendly, ingratiating. They promise fairness, apologize for taking
up her time. She sits in the empty house, listening to her heart thumping.
Mo arrives back shortly after one a.m. and
finds her in front of the computer, the phone off the hook. She is emailing every living
expert on French turn-of-the-twentieth-century art.
I was wondering if you knew
anything about … ; I am trying to fill in the history
of … ; … anything you have, or know – anything at
all … century art.
‘You want tea?’ Mo says,
shedding her coat.
‘Thanks.’ Liv doesn’t look
up. Her eyes are sore. She knows she has reached the point where she is merely flicking
blindly between websites, checking and rechecking her
email, but she
can’t stop herself. Feeling as if she is doing something, no matter how pointless,
is better than the alternative.
Mo sits down opposite her in the kitchen and
pushes a mug towards her. ‘You look terrible.’
‘Thanks.’
Mo watches her type listlessly, takes a sip
of her tea, and then pulls her chair closer to Liv. ‘Okay. So let’s look at
this with my History of Art, BA Hons, head on. You’ve been through the museum
archives? Auction catalogues? Dealers?’
Liv shuts her computer. ‘I’ve
done them all.’
‘You said David got the painting from
an American woman. Could you not ask her where her mother got it from?’
She shuffles through the papers.
‘The … other side have already asked her. She doesn’t know.
Louanne Baker had it, and then we bought it. That’s all she knows. That’s
all she ever bloody needed to know.’
She stares at the copy of the evening paper,
its intimations that she and David were somehow wrong, somehow morally deficient to have
owned the painting at all. She sees Paul’s face, his eyes on her at the
lawyer’s office.
Mo’s voice is uncharacteristically
quiet. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes. No. I love this painting, Mo. I
really love it. I know it sounds stupid, but the thought of losing her
is … It’s like losing part of myself.’
Mo’s eyebrows lift a quarter of an
inch.
‘I’m sorry. It’s
just … Finding yourself in the newspapers as public enemy number one,
it’s … Oh, bloody hell, Mo, I don’t know what on earth I’m
doing. I’m fighting a
man who does this for a living and
I’m scrabbling around for scraps and I haven’t a bloody clue.’ She
realizes, humiliated, that she is about to cry.
Mo pulls the folders towards her. ‘Go
outside,’ she says. ‘Go out on to the deck and stare at the sky for ten
minutes and remind yourself that ultimately ours is a meaningless and futile existence
and that our little planet will probably be swallowed by a black hole so that none of
this will have any point anyway. And I’ll see if I can help.’
Liv sniffs. ‘But you must be
exhausted.’
‘Nah. I need to wind down after a
shift. This’ll put me to sleep nicely. Go on.’ She begins to flick through
the folders on the table.
Liv wipes her eyes, pulls on a sweater and
steps outside on to the deck. Out here she feels curiously weightless, in the endless
black of night. She gazes down at the vast city spread beneath her, and breathes in the
cold air. She stretches, feeling the tightness in her shoulders, the tension in her
neck. And always, somewhere underneath, the sense that she is missing something; secrets
that float just out of sight.
When she walks into the kitchen ten minutes
later, Mo is scribbling notes on her legal pad. ‘Do you remember Mr
Chambers?’
‘Chambers?’
‘Medieval painting. I’m sure you
did that course. I keep thinking about something he said that stuck with me – it’s
about the only thing that did. He said that sometimes the history of a painting is not
just about a painting. It’s also the history of a family, with all its secrets and
transgressions.’ Mo taps her pen on the table. ‘Well, I’m totally out
of my depth here, but I’m curious, given that she was living
with them when the painting disappeared, when
she
disappeared, and they all
seemed pretty close, why there is no evidence anywhere of Sophie’s
family.’
Liv sits up into the night, going through
the thick files of papers, checking and double-checking. She scans the Internet, her
glasses perched on her nose. When she finally finds what she is looking for, shortly
after five o’clock, she thanks God for the meticulousness of French civic
record-keeping. Then she sits back and waits for Mo to wake up.
‘Is there any way I can tear you away
from Ranic this weekend?’ she says, as Mo appears in the doorway, bleary-eyed, her
hair a black crow settling on her shoulders. Without the thick black eyeliner, her face
seems curiously pink and vulnerable.
‘I don’t want to go running,
thank you. No. Or anything sweaty.’
‘You used to speak fluent French,
right? Do you want to come to Paris with me?’
Mo makes for the kettle. ‘Is this your
way of telling me you’ve swung to the other side? Because while I love Paris,
I’m so not up for lady bits.’
‘No. It’s my way of telling you
that I need your superior abilities as a French speaker to chat up an eighty-year-old
man.’
‘My favourite kind of
weekend.’
‘And I can throw in a crap one-star
hotel. And maybe a day’s shopping at Galeries Lafayette.
Window-shopping.’
Mo turns and squints at her. ‘How can
I refuse? What time are we leaving?’