Headlong (25 page)

Now, here’s the first puzzle: at this crucial moment, John himself is asleep. According to Glück, he’s exhausted by his noble vigil. According to Grossmann, though, he’s dream
ing the whole scene. If he is, it may provide an answer to the next puzzle – who the figures are on the left-hand side of the bed.

Traditionally, the dying Virgin’s surrounded by the Apostles, and here they are, all eleven remaining after the suicide of Judas: Peter on the right-hand side of the bed, with eight others in the shadows around him; John, sleeping by the fire; and one other, almost completely lost in the shadows at the foot of the bed. But on the left-hand side of the bed is a crowd of extra figures,
not
accounted for by the traditional iconography, pressing in out of the blackness of the night to kneel at the bedside around Mary Magdalene. Who are they?

Grossmann believes that what Bruegel’s showing, through the device of John’s dreaming vision, is not only the scene at the deathbed, but also a moment yet to come, after the Virgin’s assumption into heaven. Here, according to
The Golden Legend
, the collection of lives of the saints made by Jacobus de Voragine, who’s quoting an apocryphal work by this same sleeping John, she’s reunited with her son in the presence of a multitude of patriarchs, martyrs, confessors and holy virgins. These, says Grossmann, are the figures on the left-hand side of the bed. And they may well be, from what little detail can be made out. But to me, a simple Netherlander, standing here in my wooden shoes, looking at the picture in a very dark hour, they’re something else as well: they’re me and my wretched fellows, pressing in from the darkness to ask succour from the Virgin, the traditional channel of intercession for the ordinary humble citizen.

There’s a third puzzle in the picture, too – a small but curious anomaly that seems to go unremarked by the commentators. None of the Apostles on the right-hand side of
the bed has any of the traditional attributes which are normally used to identify them. They all kneel in anonymous worship. Except for one. In the darkness at the back of the group one of the Apostles is silently holding a cross aloft. It’s not the usual Latin cross but the
crux gemina
, the twin cross, the Cross of Lorraine, with the smaller bar above the main one that represents the inscription nailed over Christ’s head.

I stand here in my Netherlandish clogs, searching this mysterious nocturnal scene for meaning. Almost every single iconographic clue that I expect to see in a religious painting has been withheld. This is almost the only recognizable symbol I’m offered. It has a meaning for me. It must do – that’s why it’s there. It has a meaning for me because it refers to something I already know. What is it?

The complete and authoritative answer, of course, is at hand, waiting at the other end of a telephone. I feel the same delight I felt before at finding a problem that Kate and I can work on together. I’m so excited that it’s only after I’ve heard the instant of silence after my eager ‘Help! Help!’ and the cautious coolness of her ‘What is it?’ that I remember we’re not supposed to be on that sort of terms at the moment. Never mind – collaboration may help to restore peace between us. I’ll kill two birds with one stone.

‘Kate, listen,’ I say. ‘The
crux gemina
. What’s the significance?’

Silence. Good God – she doesn’t think I’m sitting here studying religious iconography with
Laura
, does she?

She sighs. She’s ceased to believe in any aspect of my enterprise.

‘It’s sometimes called the True Cross,’ she says flatly at last.

The True Cross. Yes. Well. It might have some reference to
truth in general. The concealed truth, the unadorned truth referred to in the Ortelius epitaph. I know there’s more to come, though, if I can just get it out of her. I wait. She sighs again.

‘It’s the cross carried by an archbishop,’ she says.

An archbishop? I feel a terrible dismay. It’s not simply a respectful reference to Bruegel’s patron, the appalling Archbishop of Malines? The idea of the corrupt and cynical Granvelle gatecrashing this particular scene, that even I find holy, is peculiarly nauseating.

‘Where is it?’ she says, very slightly interested in spite of herself. ‘What’s the context?’

‘
The Death of the Virgin
,’ I explain. ‘One of the Apostles is holding it.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she says. ‘Well, that’s obvious, then. The figure sleeping by the fire is St John. It’s St John’s house they’re in.’

‘I know,’

‘The
crux gemina
is the symbol of St James the Great. He’s John’s older brother.’

Oh.

‘Is that all you wanted to know?’

I suppose it is. No – I also want to know if she still loves me, if we’re ever going to get back to normal, if
I
still love
her
.

‘That’s all,’ I say, as coolly as her now. ‘Thank you.’

I put the phone down. Oh, well. My suspicions about this particular picture were obviously misplaced. I push it aside, and now my mood begins to change. I’m probably wrong about all of them, I realize. I am, I know I am. I feel the great wave I’ve been riding ever since Tony rushed me round the side of the house slip quietly away from me into the shallows, leaving me floundering in the slack water behind it. I put my head down on my folded arms. I’m
wrong about everything. I’m stuck here on my own, with nothing but the inept image of a long-dead trollop for company, and I’ve lost my way through life.

And there I stay for the rest of the afternoon. The sky outside the window begins to fade, the details of the room slip away into the dusk. Two tears run down my face. The first tears I’ve shed since … I can’t remember when. Since maybe the very first row that Kate and I ever had, outside the Amalienburg Palace in Munich, four days after we met, when suddenly the whole amazing world we’d been living in seemed to have crumbled into dust. What the row was about I’ve not the faintest recollection.

Why
, though? That’s the word I find I’m left with in the end. Why am I here? Why are things like this? Why did I ever begin this terrible enterprise? Why am I going ahead with it tomorrow when I still haven’t honoured my pledge to Kate to find some objective evidence – when I no longer believe in it myself?

Ahead with it tomorrow morning I’m going to go, nonetheless, as soon as the auction rooms and dealers and banks are open. No turning back now. I feel like Lensky, on the eve of his futile duel with Onegin. Still, it will at least put an end to all my doubt and anguish. I go to bed early to prepare mind and body for the critical action.

And just as I turn out the light I remember. Tomorrow’s a Bank Holiday.

Why
, though? The question’s still in my mind when I wake up. What I’m wondering now, though, is why St James on one side of the room is signalling his identity to his brother on the other side, when his brother knows perfectly well who he is.

Yes! Kate’s explanation doesn’t explain anything. It’s obvious, she said. It’s not obvious! It’s extremely weird! James may need to wear a name tag when he goes to international church conferences where no one knows him, but with his fellow Apostles? In his own brother’s house? It doesn’t make any sense at all! It’s just as wilfully obtuse as all the other explanations offered by art historians!

I’ve woken up fighting, in other words. Well, the sun’s shining. If it’s Bank Holiday for me, then it’s Bank Holiday for Quiss and brother Georgie, too, so I’m still one step ahead. And it gives me an extra day to find the objective correlative I’m looking for, and redeem a few shreds of my honour.

All right – the sorceress can’t or won’t reveal her mysteries. But I’ve got all her books of spells. There’s something I know I’ve seen on the shelves in the bedroom, where Kate keeps most of her reference books. I’ll look it up for myself. We’re still on speaking terms, myself and I. We search as we help each other dress … Yes! Réau:
Iconographie de l’art chré-
tien
. Exactly.

St James the Great, I discover, has other claims on our
attention, apart from being John’s brother. He’s reputed to have been the first Archbishop of Spain, and on the pilgrimage to Compostela he’s credited with saving the life of a man falsely accused of theft by a woman whose advances he’d spurned. The man was convicted and hanged. St James supported him as he dangled on the gibbet, and kept him alive for several weeks until his parents had him cut down.

Réau says there’s no evidence for St James ever having been in Spain. But his supposed achievements there, however apocryphal, would have been familiar to anyone in the Spanish possessions. So even
The Death of the Virgin
contains yet another reference to false accusation and wrongful execution.

I haven’t finished with Réau yet, though. The
crux gem
ina
, it turns out, is the symbol not only of St James the Great, but of St Bonaventure, St Claude, St Laurent Gius-tiniani and St Parascève. One after another I look up their lives and works. Bonaventure, Laurent and Parascève I quickly dismiss from the case. But St Claude of Besançon is another matter. Although he was a much more obscure figure than the illustrious James, he’d have been known to Granvelle, because Besançon was the Cardinal’s home town. He’d almost certainly have been familiar to Bruegel, too, and anyone else in Brussels, because his story’s featured in a sixteenth-century Brussels tapestry called
The
Miracles of St Claude
. And one of those miracles was to cut the rope of a wrongfully hanged man.

I put my ancient Netherlandish clogs on again. I come in out of my wasted land, where the bodies of my fellow countrymen twist in the wind beneath so many roadside gibbets, and take refuge for a moment in that quiet and darkened room in Ephesus, alongside the dim multitudes
praying before the radiance of Our Lady. What the artist intended I shouldn’t presume to guess, but I know my saints, and this is what I see in my extremity: the great Apostle and his mediaeval shadow silently interceding once again for the wrongfully condemned.

Yes, even
The Death of the Virgin
! And twice over. My reading of the pictures was right all the time; my confidence has returned. But of all the wobbles so far, that was the worst. I pick up the phone to ring Kate and tell her the whole story. Then I remember: she doesn’t believe a word I’m saying, so I put it back.

I pick it up again and start dialling the Churts’ number, in the hope that it might be Laura who answers. Once again I put it back. What could I ever say to Laura? What could she ever say to me? I’ll just have to sit here with Helen in silence.

What I actually do in the end is take another look at
The
Death of the Virgin
. It’s the figure at the foot of the bed I’m puzzling about now. Is it really the eleventh Apostle? The faces of all the others are towards us, catching the holy light from the dying woman. This one kneels apart from all the others, his back towards us, entirely in shadow, a dim, uncharacterized silhouette. But it’s powerfully and mysteriously placed – in the foreground on the right-hand edge of the picture, exactly balancing the sleeping John on the left-hand edge. I can’t help asking myself – yes, the elusive I consulting my elusive interlocutor once again – if this isn’t the equally elusive
painter
, making what may be his only appearance in his works, busy dreaming John, and also the dream that John’s dreaming.

Then I think of the great cycle of the year. Suddenly, in the midst of all this wilderness of gibbets and broken bodies, of sacked villages and desperate prayers, Bruegel begins to
normalize
. He produces six major works in which the rural year goes on its sweet, untroubled round as peacefully as it did in the days of Philip the Good, with only one tiny distant gibbet to link it to the desolation all around.

I don’t believe it. If even
The Death of the Virgin
makes such a powerful allusion to persecution, then so does the cycle of the year.

If it does, though, there’s only one place where that allusion can be.

In the Churts’ hatchery.

The only way I can fulfil my pledge is to study my picture until I find what I’m looking for. The only way I can study it is to acquire it. The only way I can acquire it is to break my pledge.

An antinomy, as we call it back in the department.

I feel about twelve years old, standing in the elegant foyer of Christie’s in my open neck and slightly mud-splashed brown cords, unwrapping
Helen
from her black plastic in front of the immensely charming young man with bow tie and crisply waved hair who’s come down to look at her for me. No, I don’t, I feel about sixty-five – a flyblown theatrical agent who’s helping some ageing show dancer he represents to step out of her clothes and audition for Cleopatra at the RSC.

The charming young man’s perfect manners reduce me even further. ‘You must have got a horse-box out there for this one,’ he says. ‘Are you on a yellow line? Are our people keeping an eye on things for you …?’ He glides away to talk to the doorman. I hadn’t liked to ask the doorman for any more favours – I’d already had to get him to help me carry my huge client into the building. It was a mistake coming to Christie’s, I see that now. I set out to go to Sotheby’s, but I’ve never set foot in either before, and suddenly the idea of Christie’s seemed a little less intimidating, because it’s just round the corner from the London Library. Also, there was a long enough piece of unoccupied yellow line outside to accommodate car and trailer for a moment.

By the time my charming expert gets back, Helen’s grimy underwear is scattered all over the floor around her. Our sordid traffickings are occupying a fair amount of the foyer. People waiting at the enquiry desk and along the catalogue racks are beginning to stare.

My man remains completely unfazed. The first thing he does is to sniff at her and identify the smell she’s giving off. ‘Sheep’s urine,’ he says. ‘What a witty idea! Some pastoral scene?’

He steps back and examines her. ‘No, of course – it’s Helen,’ he says at once, with the gracious ability of the really polite to place the names of people they hardly know, and to find the right things to say. ‘Oh, yes! Yes, indeed! What a splendid piece! Such a bold, free treatment.’

I wonder if I should tell him the name of the painter, before he embarrasses us both with a wrong guess. But he already knows. ‘Absolutely off the cuff,’ he says thoughtfully, ‘my feeling is that it may perhaps be the best of all his
Helens
. How good of you to bring her in. She’s been hiding away at Upwood for so long. Very exciting! Let me fetch Mr Carlyle.’

And before I can compliment him on his amazing knowledge he’s vanished back into the depths of the building. All his insincere flattery has made me begin to feel slightly defensive about my poor client; I think I’d prefer him to look down his nose quite openly. She’s not
that
bad, for heaven’s sake. She covers up a lot of wall. And then there’s all that strength and plasticity … all that chiaroscuro … Though what I feel worst about is knowing that I’m not even going to let Christie’s have her at the end of all this, however well-informed and gracious they are about it. I’m just going to get a valuation to satisfy Tony, and then I’m going to hawk her round the streets in an even sleazier manner.

I have a moment of panic as I stand there waiting for my man to come back. What’s he doing? They haven’t already had a call from brother Georgie, have they? He’s not phoning the police?

He reappears, as charming as ever, looking through a file of papers. ‘I’m afraid Mr Carlyle’s doing a valuation in
Somerset today,’ he explains. ‘I’m so sorry. You’ve taken us a bit by surprise. It
was
Mr Carlyle you saw when you came in before, wasn’t it?’

I can’t understand what he’s talking about. A crossed line here somewhere.

‘When you came in last week,’ he says. ‘With the documentation.’

He takes a piece of paper out of the file and holds it up. It’s what I have folded away in my pocket ready to show
him
– a photocopy of the catalogue entry on
Helen
from the Witt.

‘Oh, right,’ I say uncertainly. What I’m uncertain about is whether to confirm it or deny it, and why I’m uncertain is because it takes me at least two seconds more to work out what’s happened. Of course! That’s what Tony Churt was doing in London! Not just pursuing his scholarly researches into the works of Sebastian Vrancz. He was looking out the documentation on
Helen
, and checking up in advance on what I was going to tell him about the price. He thought I was going to Sotheby’s, and he wanted a second opinion from Christie’s, not to mention a third from John Quiss, and probably a fourth from some man he met in a pub. How absolutely characteristic of him! And how absolutely characteristic of me not to have seen it coming!

‘I don’t think we quite realized you were intending to bring it in,’ says my man. ‘I do apologize, Mr Churt.’

Mr Churt? He thinks
I’m
the double-dealing, incompetent, pathetic Mr bloody Churt? This is too much!

‘It
is
Mr Churt, isn’t it?’ he says, shaken in his outrageous assumption by the expression on my face.

I open my mouth to scotch the libel at once, then close it again and nod, because if I’m
not
the razor-nicked, tax– evading, thick-witted Mr bloody Churt and I’m even so standing here with the brother-cheating, wife-beating, first-
wife-murdering, mother-neglecting, neighbour-seducing Mr bloody Churt’s picture, then I can’t think for a moment quite who I
am
. I should have got this straight in my head on the way here, of course, but what with the traffic, and the brakes, and the steering … I’ve got so used to lying that it takes me a little time to realize that I could simply tell something more or less like the truth, and by then the conversation’s moved on.

‘It doesn’t matter too much, though, Mr Churt,’ my man’s saying, ‘because Mr Carlyle and I did have a chance to talk about it together on Friday, and we’ve done a little homework. The picture appears to be in very reasonable condition, now that I see it – though of course we’d want to take it in and get our people to go over it absolutely thoroughly – and it is an important piece. I can certainly confirm that we should be more than delighted to try and sell it for you. I think Mr Carlyle suggested that we should be looking for a hundred to a hundred and twenty, didn’t he?’

I stop thinking about who I am. A hundred to a hundred and twenty? I’m stunned. A hundred pounds odd? For a painting this size? But that’s frankly insulting! It’s insulting to me – it’s more insulting still to Helen! And once again I want to spring to her defence. To humiliate her like this to her face, when she’s in no position to defend herself! Caught at a disadvantage, half-dressed, a complete mess in every way, certainly – but a hundred pounds? All right, my ten or twenty thousand was perhaps a little over-gallant, but … ‘A
hundred
?’ I say, in frank amazement.

To a hundred and twenty, ‘he repeats, obviously a little taken aback once again by my outrage.’ Though that was very much a first rough guess. The figures are only intended as a guide, of course, but having actually seen the piece I feel that we were being perhaps a shade conservative. It does
have something of the same quality as his
Rape of
Proserpine
in that ceiling he did for the Medici Palace in Florence.’

Giordano did a ceiling for the Medici? A sudden chill of unease checks my outrage.

‘I’m always reluctant to raise people’s hopes too much,’ continues my man, as courteously as ever. ‘But I think we could probably quite safely make that a hundred and ten to a hundred and thirty.’

And I suddenly grasp what he means. He doesn’t mean pounds. He means thousands of pounds. He’s saying £110,000 to £130,000. He’s telling me it’s worth something like ten times as much as I’d supposed. He’s informing me that my whole scheme is based on a complete misapprehension.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a fool in my life. It’s as if I’d gone round to the local recreation ground to knock a tennis ball about with Kate, and found by some dreamlike transformation that I was facing a major international star on the Centre Court at Wimbledon. I can’t find any words to cover my retreat. I silently put on an expression that I hope suggests regretful refusal even to debate such a paltry figure, and start to wrap
Helen
up again. The young man hands me pieces of fetid black plastic, as courteous as ever.

‘I’m sorry if that seems disappointing,’ he says. ‘Do by all means see if you can find a more ebullient view elsewhere.’

He hands me pieces of baler twine. I silently tie my parcel together. I’m still in shock.

‘And do of course feel free to come back, if our friends round the corner don’t feel they can say any better. I’ll talk to Mr Carlyle again. He might feel on reflection that a hundred and twenty to a hundred and forty was more realistic.’

I heave one end of the parcel up off the floor. ‘No, no – let me!’ he cries, taking it from me and signalling to the doorman to take the other.

‘It may well go above that, of course,’ he says, as he watches me tie the tailgate of the trailer half-shut. ‘A long way above, even. We sold a rather larger piece by Giordano a few years ago,
The Raising of Lazarus
, that achieved £298,000.’

‘Thank you,’ I manage at last, as he opens the driver’s door for me, and closes it behind me.

‘Thank
you
, Mr Churt,’ he replies. ‘It was a pleasure to see it.’

I drive up King Street and into St James’s Square, my mind blank of anything except shock and humiliation. I drive slowly round the square. I’ve plainly got to reconsider my plans. By the time I’ve gone round twice, though, I’ve realized that thinking’s not really possible to combine with driving round St James’s Square. I need to find somewhere to park for a moment. But there isn’t anywhere to park. I need two spaces together, one for the car and one for the trailer, which obviously increases the difficulty, and there isn’t even a single space. I drive round the square a third time. Still nowhere. What I should do, obviously, is to think of somewhere else to look. But I can’t even focus my mind on anything as simple and concrete as this. I drive round a fourth time.

I can’t go round a fifth time! People will begin to talk. The police will take an interest. With a great effort I snap out of the loop, and drive on down into Pall Mall. And there’s a parking space! No – two parking spaces together! But by the time I’ve made seven attempts to reverse into them, and each time succeeded only in pushing the trailer in the opposite direction, out across the traffic, my nerve breaks, and I drive on. Along Pall Mall, up St James’s Street, along King Street again, and back into St James’s Square.

Where’s this car going? It found London all right. Now it seems to have lost its way in life completely.

By this time, however, a few thoughts are beginning to
come back into my head. Incoherent rage, for a start, at Tony. For what? For knowing what the picture was worth and not telling me! For going behind my back! For finding out what it was worth, if he didn’t know before – and still not telling me! Then rage at the world in general. For much the same thing – for knowing about Giordano and keeping it from me!

At myself next, for never getting round to looking up the sale-room prices, as Kate kept urging. At Kate, for being right.

No, at myself, myself, for making such a mistake about Giordano – for ever getting involved in all this. As I pass the London Library in the corner of the square for the sixth time, I recall, with a bitter sense of irony, the long days of peaceful research in the Reading Room, when everything seemed clear and hopeful and accessible to reason, when I thought my life was moving towards some great goal, not towards driving round and round St James’s Square, unable to set foot to ground, shackled to an ageing Land-Rover, like the Flying Dutchman to his ship, for all eternity, or at any rate until the petrol runs out, which I calculate will be after I’ve gone round the square something like a thousand times.

By now the circuit of the square is beginning to settle into such a routine that calculations like this are becoming possible. It occurs to me that some of my panic may be misplaced. £100,000 to £120,000 – this is what he told Tony – forget all the wilder guesses that Tony knows nothing about. Terrifying figures, certainly, for a man who’s had difficulty in extending his mortgage by fifteen thousand pounds. But £100,000 to £120,000, it slowly comes to me, isn’t what I should have to find, because if that’s what the picture’s worth, then it’s also what I should presumably be getting from the dealer I sell it to. All I have to find is the difference between his commission and mine – between his ten per cent and my five and a half per cent, which is …
well, I can’t do the sum precisely while I’m driving round St James’s Square, but it’s something like – I don’t know, five thousand pounds.

Five thousand pounds! But that’s nothing! I’ll still have ten thousand in hand to buy the other three pictures! All it means is that I’ll have to scale back my absurdly over-generous plans to pay Tony twenty thousand pounds for the
Merrymakers
. Since he’s behaved so badly he doesn’t deserve it, though. And since he’s also going to be getting five times as much as I thought for
Helen
, I don’t see that he’ll have much to complain about.

Five thousand pounds! Good God! All my despair was completely misplaced, as it has so often been before! Just double-check that I don’t mean five
hundred
thousand pounds … Or five
million
pounds … No! I’m in business!

Another thought comes to me. I may possibly find a dealer who’s prepared to pay
more
than a hundred to a hundred and twenty. I may find one who’s prepared to follow Christie’s thinking upwards to a hundred and thirty … a hundred and forty … If by any chance I do, I can’t see that I need feel obliged to be any franker with Tony than he was with me.

I could be
making
money on the deal.

All I’ve got to do is to find a phone to ring Tony on, to give him my edited report on the Christie’s estimate. I break boldly out of the St James’s Square loop, and drive down into Pall Mall again. I simply need a double parking space with a phone near enough to it for me to keep an eye on the trailer, and large enough for me to drive into forwards. In my new positive mood this seems not too much to hope for.