Maestra (17 page)

‘Just one more form then, mademoiselle.’ Black suit reappeared, I signed. Steve had barely registered anything; he was still tapping.

*

I got to turn left again on the flight to Rome early that evening. I declined a glass of champagne with the weary air of the seasoned business-class traveller, which obviously I really enjoyed. My goodbye to Steve had been awkward, though I doubted he had felt it. Even though he didn’t know quite what he had done for me, he had been extraordinarily kind, and had it been any other man I would at least have given him an assiduous farewell going-over on Alberto’s carefully selected Pratesi sheets, but I had the sense not to suggest it. Still, saying ‘thank you’ didn’t seem enough, and there was nothing else I could give him, at least nothing I could explain and expect him to understand. To know that someone sees you is a gift, even love, of a kind, but if there was a part of Steve that remembered what it felt like to be a fearful geek, it had long ago been veneered beyond recognition. To tell him that I saw what he wasn’t and liked him anyway would merely have puzzled him, momentarily. So I settled for a hug and a promise, which he took as lightly as all the hugs and promises I imagine he encountered these days, and left him to the dancing enchantments of the markets.

I spent a while fantasising about what I could do with the money, but that didn’t last long; 10K wasn’t much more than dinner for six at Billionaire. On my hoarded fund of Steve-euros I could have a couple of nice days in Rome, see some pictures, eat some good food. When I got back to London I could wire a couple of hundred quid to my mother, stay in the flat until I could find some work in a contemporary gallery, carefully buy a few pieces on the side and then see. Maybe in a while I could afford a little studio of my own, once I’d paid off the bank loan. Small beginnings, maybe, but a clean start. I wouldn’t be desperate, and somehow that gave me the courage to face down the prospect of Rupert blacklisting me. It would be OK. Actually, it was going to be a lot bigger than OK.

As we waited on the tarmac to pull up to the gate at Fiumicino, every Italian on the plane pulled out their phone. I did the same and texted Dave. I hadn’t dared to contact him before, in case there had been any fuss over James, but this felt like the right time.

‘Hi, it’s Judith. Back in town in a couple of days. Can I take you for a drink? So sorry about that awful scene, hope all OK. Jx’.

He pinged back. ‘I lost my job because of you. Think about that. D.’

Suddenly I was back in the Gstaad Club, poring over some boyfriend’s cramped textual inarticulacy. What did one kiss mean, two? I knew what no kiss meant. Fury. Why would Rupert have fired Dave? He had been acting on my instructions; it was hardly a sacking offence. I pressed ‘Call sender’ immediately.

‘Judith. What do you want?’ I could hear a TV in the background, but it didn’t disguise the weary tone of disgust in his voice.

‘Dave, I’m so sorry, I had no idea. I’ll call Rupert, explain it was all my fault – I’d never, ever have asked you if I thought your job was at risk. I knew how much it meant to you. Rupert had no right to sack you,’ I finished weakly.

‘He did though.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t bother. We’ll be fine.’ I remembered Dave’s wife and felt even worse, if that was possible.

‘Dave, I’ll make it up to you. I will, I promise. Can’t your friend Mike help you? Maybe I –’

‘Leave it, Judith. Just get on with your life.’

He hung up. I felt sick, sicker than I’d felt when I’d found James’s corpse. I knew how much the porters earned and I guessed Dave’s army pension would be predictably pathetic. I covered my face with my hands. I’d done this to him with my stupid conceited meddling. I’d give him half the money, as soon as I got back to town. But then I thought of the bank and the rent and the way I’d felt in the water in Sardinia, of the sour milk of James’s cum in my mouth and what I’d just pulled off in Geneva and I knew that I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

PART THREE

OUTSIDE

14

The second time was much less of an accident. I had thought of a room at the Hassler, overlooking the Spanish Steps, for my last hurrah, but unsurprisingly, and despite my attempt to bribe the concierge with a 100-euro note and a winning smile, all their rooms with a view were taken. There didn’t seem any point in spending the money to look at a Roman wall, but as the receptionist was checking the register, I saw a name I recognised: Cameron Fitzpatrick. I’d last glimpsed him chatting to Rupert at the gruesome Tentis party. Fitzpatrick was a dealer I had sometimes contacted for the department; he had a poky, old-fashioned gallery in one of the forgotten eighteenth-century closes up by the old Adelphi buildings in London. His generally raffish air and the slight blush of the whisky in his cheeks made him appear as though only his blarney charm stood between him and the bailiffs, but the manner belied him – he had a good eye for quirky second-rank pieces; thinking on it I recalled a newspaper piece last year about an impressive price for a self-portrait by Oscar Wilde’s mother. The clock behind the reception desk read 12.05 p.m., just about time for an
aperitivo
. Maybe it would be worth hanging around to see if I could bump into him? I was keen to know if the Rupert debacle had caused any rumours, not that I had been remotely important enough at the House for that to be likely, but, still, he was a potential contact now it looked like I might actually be in business. Perhaps he’d even have a job going. I asked the receptionist to let me know if Signor Fitzpatrick came in and took myself off to the terrace at the back of the hotel for a glass of prosecco and a spot of people-watching. Half an hour later it didn’t seem as though he was going to appear, and I was walking back to the front door when I heard my name.

‘Judith Rashleigh?’ The accent was a soothing bath of Irish bonhomie. Cameron was a big, shambling man with a thick head of coffee-coloured hair, attractive for a straight guy who worked in the art world.

‘Cameron – what a nice surprise!’ I didn’t think I needed to mention that I’d been lurking about hoping to see him.

I stepped up to him and offered my cheek for the now-obligatory metropolitan kiss and we bobbed awkwardly at one another the way Londoners still do.

‘I’m just checking in. Are you staying here?’

‘Sadly not. But Rome in August? It must be business. How’s the gallery?’

We chatted for a few moments while he went through the business of handing over his passport and credit card. It was an appointment with a client that brought him to Rome. I got in quickly with the information that I had left British Pictures – I didn’t imagine Rupert and co thought enough of me to bother saying anything unpleasant, but it was better not to seem to be hiding anything.

‘You staying here?’

‘No. With some friends, actually. The de Grecis.’

I said it as if he ought to know them. There had been a Francesco de Greci at my college; we’d screwed once. His family had a street named after them in Florence.

‘Lovely.’ He seemed taken in. I made as if to leave. ‘I was just collecting something. So . . . it was nice to see you.’

I hovered, knowing he would ask me to lunch, and when he did I pretended surprise and looked at my watch and said that would be lovely. While he went up to his room I quickly loaded my bags into a cab and paid the driver to take them to a small hotel I remembered in Trastevere. The de Grecis, I decided, had a charming old villa up beyond the Borghese.

‘Do you know Rome well?’ He still wore his navy suit, though the collar and tie had been replaced with a crumpled white linen shirt. There was a swag of paunch at his waist, but he was a good-looking man, if one liked things on that scale.

‘Hardly at all.’ Always better to play the novice.

So we talked of other places we knew in Italy as he led me down through the gazing crowds. After the thick gold blanket of dusty heat that lay across the open spaces, the tight, dim streets felt vicious and secretive. We came out in a small piazza whose dinginess suggested the restaurant would be good. The groups of men eating under the awning spoke with Roman accents, a few beleaguered politicians’ lawyers, I imagined, imprisoned here while the rest of their city’s inhabitants were spread over the beaches of the peninsula. A solitary tourist in a baseball cap and sweat-ringed shirt read a French guidebook. I let Cameron order, saying nothing but an appreciative
grazie
. I wanted to charm him, to make him feel good. He drank a negroni
sbagliato
, we had razor clams and a delicate fresh pasta with rabbit and candied orange peel. After the first bottle of Ligurian Vermentino he asked for another, though I was still finishing my first glass, topped up with water. He was a good man for talking to women, I had to give him that, full of easy compliments and gossip and taking the trouble to ask for your opinion and look like he was paying attention to it. When I judged he was sufficiently confidential, I asked him who his mysterious client was.

‘Well,’ he said, leaning forward conspiratorially, ‘would you believe I’ve a Stubbs to be selling?’

‘A Stubbs?’

I practically choked on my makeshift spritzer. Why was Stubbs doing this to me? I’d always rooted for him, the northern boy pushed aside by the London snobs. Was he my personal chimera, a kind of horse-headed albatross?

Then Cameron pulled a folded catalogue from the breast pocket of his jacket and the razor clams nearly reappeared for an encore. I didn’t need to look at it to recognise it, just the way I didn’t need to look at it to guess immediately what Rupert had been up to, and why he’d fired poor Dave and me for snooping. The only thing that surprised me was how extraordinarily thick I’d been, swotting along, playing the ideal employee, when anyone with real experience would have twigged straight away that Rupert had been working a scam.

Cameron hadn’t bothered asking exactly when I had left British Pictures and I hadn’t bothered telling him, so I could exclaim as though I was seeing the Stubbs for the first time. I scanned the pages, making appreciative noises, noting that Rupert had at least bothered to add my research on the Ursford and Sweet sale to the provenance. Cameron had had it on a tip, he said, wasn’t quite sure until it had been cleaned up and then offered it for auction, until he’d thought better of it and found himself a private buyer. I could hardly believe my own dimness. They were in it together – presumably that was what they had been whispering about at the Tentis party. They had put up the money to buy the picture from the Tigers together, listing it at British Pictures to gloss over any doubts about authenticity, then they would have withdrawn it from the auction and sold it on beyond the eyes of anyone who could say otherwise.

I had been right. It was not a Stubbs and Rupert had never believed it to be so. He would have called Mr and Mrs Tiger to ruefully confirm that their ‘Stubbs’ was merely a ‘school of’, an imitation by a minor artist of the period. Hence the cross-purpose awkwardness of our conversation on the phone. Then Cameron, pretending to be acting independently, would have purchased it. Once it was legally in Cameron’s possession, the painting would have been ‘cleaned’ by a man in from Florence or Amsterdam in an industrial workshop in the East End, and, lo and behold, it turns out to be genuine after all. The hoo-ha of the projected sale rendered the provenance impeccable via the stamp of the world’s greatest house; it would all make the buyer feel they were getting a bargain. The two of them had never intended for the painting to reach a public sale. That explained the low reserve – if a seller withdraws a piece too close to the auction, they are required to guarantee the reserve fee as a fine to the house. The 800K was a manageable amount for Cameron to produce, assuming he and Rupert were expecting a much higher price from their buyer. What had they paid the Tigers? Mrs T had sounded pretty pleased when I had called her. Say 200K, which meant that with the reserve fine a million all told. Serious money, then, which made me wonder how much they were coming in for from the eventual buyer.

It was brilliant, and perfectly legal, if the picture was real. Mr and Mrs Tiger might have seen their picture offered as a Stubbs and made a noise, but then it was withdrawn before the sale, false alarm. Any enquiries and Rupert could say that they had bought it and thought they’d got lucky, then reverted to the original valuation on investigation. Probably blame the ‘intern’. And even if it wasn’t genuine, and I was convinced of that, the client could sit it in a vault for a year and then offer it to some even more naive buyer, new money from China or the Gulf somewhere, with the back-up of the catalogue I held in my hand, and take the profit.

If there’s anything that being a woman has taught me, it’s when in doubt, play dumb.

‘That’s wonderful, Cameron,’ I breathed. ‘Go on, how much?’

‘Judith!’

‘Go on. I can keep a secret. Who would I be telling?’

He held up five fingers with a gleeful grin. Five million. Still low. Stubbs could easily fetch ten. The 1765 canvas ‘Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath’ had made over twenty from Piers Davies in New York a couple of years ago. But five would be cash, effectively. High enough to be genuine, low enough to make the client feel they’d been brilliant. Clever.

And then, just for a moment, I felt outside time. I saw myself again, ten years ago, my first time in the Uffizi, standing in front of Artemisia’s
Judith Slaying Holofernes
. It’s a standard subject, the Jewish heroine murdering the enemy general, but Artemisia makes it raw, almost unpainterly. When you look at the delicately enamelled sword at Holofernes’ neck, you see that it’s not laid there ceremonially, suggestively, but caught in the flesh at an inelegant angle, quite the wrong angle for a graceful composition. This is from the hand of a woman who had sliced off the head of fowls in the kitchen, wrung rabbits’ necks for the pot. Judith is butchering him properly, grimly sawing through the sinew, her muscular arms tense with effort. There’s something domestic about it; the plainness of the sheet, the ungainly spurt of the blood, a curious sense of quietness. This is women’s work, Artemisia is saying, impassive. This is what we do. I saw my wrists resting lightly on the edge of the table next to my espresso cup with its twist of lemon as though from far away, yet in the sudden amber stillness of that moment I felt surprised that the jump of my pulse wasn’t rattling the china. I had made her so many promises, that girl in the museum. I owed her. So I knew then that I was going to steal that painting.