I Am Gold (7 page)

‘Three in particular, but never at the same time.'

‘Each had spells living with you and the children?'

‘Very, very limited,' Manse said.

‘What duration?'

‘Never more than weeks.'

‘How many weeks?'

‘Four. Perhaps five or six, absolute max.'

‘And how far did the cohabiting go?'

‘Well, we –'

‘I mean, did they carry out domestic tasks about the house – cooking, cleaning, helping with the children: wifely things? If it came to a dispute, these could have a symbolic significance, suggest further depth. Could any of them cite, say, ironing, freezer de-icing, window-cleaning, hosting parties at your place?'

‘They were very kind.'

‘Have you got names?'

‘Well, of course.'

‘Would you write them down, please?' She pushed a note pad and pencil over the desk to him. He listed the three, Lowri, Patricia and Carmel. She took the pad back and glanced at it. ‘At the end of one of these tours of duty, who decided it was over?' Joan Fenton asked.

‘This often took place without any sign of distress or anger. I live in an ex-rectory and would hate to have screams and yells in that kind of property.'

‘
You
would decide it was over?' she replied.

‘I can see the importance of that question, in the circumstances.'

‘Did any of them, all of them, ever return for a further few weeks?'

‘Never overlapping. They was a real help – I mean, helping keep my spirits up.'

‘Etcetera. I'd say you've got to remember each of them for at least a thirtieth of your assets, and possibly a twenty-fifth. Courts would be sympathetic to them. Did it trouble the children – these women alternating in and out?'

‘They never got the names wrong or showed they liked one better than the others, which could of obviously been hurtful.'

‘Did
you
?'

‘What?'

‘Like one of them better than the others. Shall we make it, two thirtieths and one twenty-fifth? But that might cause aggro and disputes. Where there are several mistresses performing the same services it can be tricky working out which is the
primus inter pares
.'

‘I'd rather think of them as friends.'

‘An eternal problem where there is a multiplicity of crumpet,' she replied. ‘
Primus inter pares
– first among equals is an oxymoron, of course, yet like most oxymorons has an accessible meaning.'

‘I heard they're well known for it.'

She stood up. ‘I suppose that in London you're reasonably safe – lost in the crowd, as it were. But, talking of possible early death, and taking into account your profession and its uncertainties, I hope you normally have a bodyguard, bodyguards, nearby. And a bodyguard, bodyguards, you can trust. Goodbye, Mr Shale. I'll get the trust details worked out. Next time you're in London everything should be ready for signature. Matters have gone very well, I'd say, wouldn't you?'

Shale considered he and the Pre-Raphaelites were very close in a spiritual sense, despite the century and a half gap. At the Denz funeral, Mrs Lake had spoken in quite a decent style of a possible new partner for him, but, obviously, neither of them knew then that on the next afternoon, following the divorce and will discussions, he'd meet Naomi Gage for the first time on this trip. They both came to stand at more or less the same instant in front of an Edward Prentis picture called
The Remembrance
. Shale already had a Prentis on the wall at home, and, eventually, this helped in the conversation with Naomi. But he didn't go forward at a rush talking to her. That would be like trying a pick-up, and he could tell this would turn her off. She did not at all look the type. She gave most of her eye contact to
The Remembrance
. He just stayed there, gazing, the two of them quiet, appreciating. Manse thought the best plan was to let the Edward Prentis do the work.

He could feel an invisible but strong link being made, from the painting to him and from him to her, or possibly the other way, from the painting to her and from her to him. But whichever direction you took, it always started from
The Remembrance
, like that picture had been put there only to draw the two together and offer them a kind of blessing. Yes, he knew this must be rubbish, but the idea did take hold of him for a little while, and brought delight. Although the gallery was quite busy Manse had the notion that the three had become sealed off and private:
The Remembrance
, the woman and himself. Hubert could not of been part of it, even if he'd gone with Manse to the gallery.

Although clearly impossible, Manse would have liked to thank Denzil for causing the visit to London and creating in a roundabout manner the chance for this deep Prentis experience, a kind of unplanned spin-off from his cremation. Manse realized that some refused to class Edward Prentis as a
real
Pre-Raphaelite – not one of the ‘Brotherhood', as a group of painters of that period called themselves. But Manse loved his work and he could see at once that Naomi did, too. But, of course, he did not know her name at that stage.

Manse stood in front of the Edward Prentis
Remembrance
painting with Naomi, though, clearly, he wasn't exactly
with
Naomi and did not know her to be Naomi at that time. He had to realize that many people stood close to other people in galleries when looking at pictures, but this did not necessarily bring them together at all, beyond the togetherness of looking at the same pictures. Any linking was with the pictures not with one another. As Shale saw it, the difficulties he met came in two special kinds.

First: how could he start a conversation? Manse would feel ashamed to seem like some slimy git sniffing around galleries for women on their own to chat up. That meant high-quality and famous art would be treated as nothing more than a classy route to a pull, showing rotten disrespect for the Pre-Raphaelites and for Naomi. As Manse saw things, he had come to the gallery for the Pre-Raphaelites, not to prowl for attractive women, but if an attractive woman turned up in front of a Pre-Raphaelite, and the same Pre-Raphaelite that Manse was enjoying, this could be regarded as possibly a pleasant bit of luck. Possibly, yes. The piece of luck could be ruined, though, if he said or did anything that made her think he was just a schemer on the lech trail.
Such glorious use of colour, wouldn't you say? Or, to put it another way, Feel like a fuck?

Second … but Manse found the second problem much more complicated. While they was both admiring the Edward Prentis a family came into the room, parents and two boys, the boys aged about ten and twelve, one crew-cut, the other blond curls. Manse could tell at once these was the kind of offspring who didn't give a monkey's about galleries or the Pre-Raphaelites. He didn't understand why the parents had brought them. They should of left them home with their warder. The two kids started chasing each other and shouting and pretending to fight and did most of it in front of the Edward Prentis. There ought to of been an attendant in the room to tell them to quieten down, but there wasn't and Manse said: ‘Now, lads, this isn't the place for games. You're spoiling our view of the picture.'

One boy, the younger one, gave him the finger and the other – crew-cut – said, ‘Piss off, ugly mug.'

Manse said: ‘That's enough. Get lost.'

The father said in a big, icy voice: ‘Hey, you, did I hear you speak to my boys?' He and his wife were on the other side of the room looking at a picture by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, a definite true star of Pre-Raphaelites.

‘Are they your boys?' Manse said.

‘What does that mean?' he said.

‘What do you think it means? It means are they your boys?' Manse said.

‘He's being rude, Geoff,' his wife said. He was about forty, hefty, wearing a brown leather waistcoat over a red T-shirt. Maybe this was his gallery outfit. Manse could imagine him this morning in Ruislip, or Guildford – that kind of place – thinking to himself, ‘What will I put on today for the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition? Ah, of course – the brown leather waistcoat.'

‘If they're your boys, and I can believe it, why don't you tell them to act decent?' Manse said.

‘Who are you to tell me what I should tell them?' he said.

‘I'm me to tell you what you should tell them,' Mansel said.

‘The method of his rudeness is to repeat what you've just said, Geoff, and explain your own words to you, as if you're too dim to understand them,' the wife said. ‘It's a convoluted insult.' She had a burliness to her not like the women in most of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

‘Take no notice of him, lads,' he said. ‘Carry on as if he never spoke.'

‘But I did speak,' Manse replied. This was what he meant by ‘complicated', when he considered the situation. Clearly, he needed to go over and scare the shit out of this loudmouth and inform him that if he didn't quell his damn kids there'd be results, and not of the art type. But, along with this urgent idea, Manse did not want the woman he'd been watching the Edward Prentis sort of with to think he was the kind of presence that could scare the shit out of loudmouths by nothing much more than sudden nearness and a handful of sotto words. He would prefer this woman to have him marked in her mind as a lover of high-quality, famous pictures and especially the Pre-Raphaelites. He
was
a lover of high-quality, famous pictures and especially the Pre-Raphaelites, though also the kind of presence that could scare the shit out of loudmouths by nothing much more than sudden nearness and a handful of sotto words. This extra aspect of himself, a sort of bonus aspect, or like the part of an iceberg under water, he would rather stayed unknown to the woman.

But if he did nothing to scare the shit out of this loudmouth the woman's enjoyment of the Prentis, and his own, would be greatly negatived. Manse believed he had a responsibility to her and to the Edward Prentis and to the world of art generally. He remembered a scene from that American TV gangster show,
The Sopranos
, where one of the toughs thinks a group in a nightclub are getting too boisterous. He puts up with it for a while but then goes and whispers something to one of the men in the group who suddenly looks terrified, and the nuisance behaviour stops at once. A girl watching is fascinated by the delicate show of power and gets to fancy the tough. They're soon off somewhere as a pair and well into passion. But Manse couldn't be sure this woman in front of the Prentis would feel like that. Manse preferred to be rated a Prentis person, a Pre-Raphaelite person, not a Soprano-type person.

Yes, tricky, tricky. Yes, complicated, complicated.

‘What a crummy old picture they're looking at, anyway,' the father said.

‘Crap,' the younger boy said.

‘Feeble,' the mother said. ‘Half-baked. Wishy-washy.'

And to Manse now the comments seemed to mean that, unavoidably, he would have to scare the shit out of this loudmouth by sudden nearness and a handful of sotto words. Shale spent a little while carefully selecting the sotto words to be spoken into the loudmouth's ear. They were: ‘Get these kids under control, as would be suitable for a room of beautiful and fascinating works, I'm sure you'll agree, cunt, or I'll have your fucking throat out.' Manse could see that the loudmouth heard this pretty well. His face went like that frightened face in
The Sopranos.

‘What did he say, Geoff?' the wife snarled with genuine interest.

‘Excuse me, I didn't intend to interrupt your gaze at the Burne-Jones etcetera, but I asked Geoff which of the seven or eight pictures in this room he thought the most Pre-Raphaelitish, if we take “Pre-Raphaelitish” to mean “in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites”,' Manse said.

‘What?' the wife said. ‘Geoff, are you all right?'

‘I think Geoff's trying to make up his mind on which to choose,' Manse said. ‘It's a bit challenging to have a question like that chucked at you without warning.'

‘Boys, we're going,' Geoff said. ‘Now.'

‘Why?' the older one said. ‘Because of ugly mug?'

‘Why?' the wife said.

‘Now,' Geoff said.

‘Has he scared you somehow?' the wife said.

‘These aren't my kind of pictures,' Geoff said.

‘Geoff seems to me more a Michelangelo man. It's a matter of taste,' Manse replied. When the family had gone, he went and stood next to the woman again, studying the Prentis.

‘When it comes to pictures, people's tastes
are
various and unpredictable,' she said.

‘My mother used to remark, “There's no accounting for taste.” She didn't mean it in a cruel or snobby way. No. Just that people varied. One taste was not
better
than another, but
different
, nothing else. The Pre-Raphaelites don't do the trick for some folk and it is entirely their right to state this and move on to some other art, for instance Michelangelo, as I suggested, or, perhaps, Per Kirkeby or Manet or, indeed, Monet. Or, then, Jackson Pollock. I always think of taste as being truly democratic.'

‘But I definitely would not say wishy-washy for
Remembrance
.'

‘Nor half-baked. I'd prefer the words “subtle”, “refined”,' Manse said.

Chapter Eleven

2009

For Harpur, another very notable thing about Iles was that occasionally he would accept advice. At these moments he definitely seemed to realize there might be people around who knew more about a particular area than he did himself. Now and then, Harpur had seen him allow someone else to talk quite a bit. And he'd listen, at least for a while.

At the charity shop siege now he would have to listen to the official negotiator as well as to Andy Rockmain, a police psychologist, who'd been brought in fast. Harpur felt glad to see him. Just before Rockmain turned up, Harpur was beginning to worry about Iles. A lot of lives could be at risk here. So far, the ACC had unquestionably followed settled methods for a hostage crisis, but Harpur feared he might not stick to them. Harpur thought he had already spotted some signs of wavering. He would
expect
some signs of wavering. This didn't mean Iles might order an attack. He'd fear putting lives in peril. But he might decide to do something solo.