Rachael's Gift (11 page)

‘I’m impressed – you seem very passionate,’ Francine said.

‘Hasn’t Camille told you? It’s what we came here for. I’ve an interview for art school.’

My skin prickled. This was too soon. ‘Well, not yet, but we think we’ll get one.’

Francine raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Art school?’

‘There’s only one worth going to,’ Rachael said.

‘I didn’t know the Beaux-Arts took students your age. I assume that is where you mean.’ She turned to me. ‘You know how selective they are?’

Rachael assumed her position in a garish armchair and picked up her cup of tea. ‘I’m not too worried. It all feels like everything we’ve ever done has led to this point. Right, Camille? I’ve just won the Whiteley Prize at school and heaps of others before that.’

I frowned at Rachael’s barefaced lie, but let it go. There wasn’t any point in saying anything in front of Francine.

‘You seem very confident,’ said Francine.

‘Don’t they say to let the work speak for itself?’ Rachael gave a cheeky smile.

Francine offered to take a look at Rachael’s portfolio. ‘Some people think I have an eye.’

Was that comment directed at me? Did she want to emphasise the distinction that she was a collector? A real connoisseur? ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘she’s got talent, unlike her mother.’

Rachael agreed to let Francine see her work and slid out of the room to get her portfolio.

Francine smiled smugly. ‘So, the Beaux-Arts?’

‘She’s quite brilliant, Francine. She’s won countless prizes.’

‘In Australia.’

‘Yes.’ Her words stung. ‘If you don’t like it, I’d prefer that you kept quiet.’

‘I’d like to see for myself,’ she replied.

‘She’s only fourteen.’

‘Then we don’t want her wasting her time.’

No, I thought, remembering a vast room filled with tiered chandeliers.

‘I thought you had come to give your mother a proper memorial service?’

‘Yes, and for that.’ I kept quiet about the teacher.

‘Maman has planned it for 17 November. You know, it hasn’t been easy. When you see your grandfather it’ll be a shock. Maman can barely look after herself.’ She sighed. ‘I had to organise two nurses to take care of him – to dress him, feed him, take him to the toilet. You can’t imagine . . .’

An image of my mother standing on a pair of bathroom scales muscled its way into my thoughts: I was holding her upright. Her arm was around my neck, her legs like toothpicks. A pink silk scarf was wrapped around her head – the one I bought her for Christmas to wear around her neck.

‘He’s living in another world – another time.’ That he would remember me would be impossible.

‘Didn’t he always?’ I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.

Sunlight reflected on the windowpane and blinded me momentarily. I felt her hand on my wrist. ‘I’m sorry. Was it awful?’

Was this an act? Was she trying to trick me?

Before I could answer, Rachael appeared carrying her portfolio and sat beside Francine. She began with the photo-reproductions of her self-portrait oil series. She’d maintained a brilliant likeness – the green eyes, the straight nose, the big lips and sharp bone structure – but Rachael was careful not to let her beauty be the focal point; this was realism and she’d painted her flaws as she saw them: cracked lips, a blemish, a freckle, a bushy eyebrow. They varied from close-ups to extreme close-ups; they were dark, figurative, highly textured and enigmatic – searching for something.

My favourite was
Love
. The semi close-up of her face was shadowed by a figure out of frame – the supposed Love – but the expression in her dilated eyes was one of obsession, not bliss, and a small bleeding tear in the delicate skin of her plump lips implied something sexual. The human face, her own in particular, had always obsessed her as if it was an elusive object that she couldn’t comprehend. I was reminded of Klimt’s flat mosaics and the horror depicted by Goya’s own psychological explorations. In spite of her searching, there was a feeling that something was missing – not from the picture, but from the subject herself – and it made you feel uneasy.

‘I see the face as a landscape,’ Rachael explained to Francine. ‘I watch people all the time – on buses, trains, streets – finding entire backgrounds from their faces. What is the life behind the face? I’m like some kind of abstract psychiatrist.’

‘But it is like you have not found them. Or you find them but they are at odds with their labels,’ Francine said.

‘Exactly. They never turn out the way you think they will. I want to explore the contradiction and the void. Sometimes there’s just nothing.’

The next series was entitled
Empty Rooms
. It was the same with rooms as with the faces; they appeared to be empty, passive, but as the detail began to emerge, so too did a narrative. Room number one showed a wooden floor and the corner of an empty room. A rectangle of soft light shone from outside the canvas, revealing tiny scar-like fissures, dirt, scuff marks and indents from the feet of furniture that once may have stood there. An old cigarette butt was stamped into the wood and the remnants of a dirty tissue lay scrunched in the corner. The walls were painted in olive green and, on closer inspection, were also marred by scratches, cracks and the rust-red smear of what appeared to be a bloody fingerprint. Shades of violence and desolation began to leak through, but then one caught the imprint of a lipstick smudge on the dirty tissue and the dynamic changed again.

‘Hmm, interesting,’ Francine murmured.

‘Interesting?’ I cut in, feeling the suffocation of criticism.

‘Okay. They are a little . . . How shall I say? School project.’

‘Seriously? Her work is original and –’

‘Camille,’ Rachael interrupted.

‘No, Rach – Francine’s is only one opinion.’

‘I understand you’re proud of her work,’ Francine said, ‘but she could profit from some real guidance.’ She placed her hand on Rach’s wrist. ‘Please don’t make conclusions. You have something, Rachelle – whether it is good enough for the Beaux-Arts, we can only wait and see.’

Rachael was unreadable. I couldn’t tell whether she was broiling inside or if she was taking her great-aunt’s comments on board. I feared an outburst. Her eyes were lowered, but when she looked up she placed her hand over Francine’s. ‘I appreciate your honesty. I’d rather people said what they really thought than try to flatter for the sake of it. It’s so fake and pointless. How can I get anywhere without real feedback? You seem to know what you’re talking about and perhaps you’re right – perhaps there is a schoolgirl element to my work, but then, I am a schoolgirl!’ She smiled, dazzling Francine with perfect teeth.

Francine appeared to glow. ‘You must know how exciting it is for me to meet you.’

I felt my diaphragm relax with Rachael’s reaction and yet still a question pulsed inside me. Why was I so surprised that Francine would warm to Rachael? Was I so afraid of her? Did I need her approval so badly? Surely, after all these years, I shouldn’t have cared less. I should be glad that Rachael had charmed her so easily – but, then, Rachael was a master at charm when she wanted to be and she wanted more than anything to be in Paris and going to art school.

Rachael packed up her portfolio.

‘Let me think, dear, there may be something I can do. But don’t get excited just yet.’ And then out of nowhere she said to me, ‘Did you know Lucien’s got an entire show at Yvon Lambert’s? It’s just opened.’

Hearing her utter his name made my cheeks colour.

‘Yes, I remember how you used to love him,’ Francine continued. ‘You used to drive us mad with your adoration. “What a genius!” you used to say. My father certainly thought so. Lucien’s become one of the top living painters in France today, but you probably knew that.’ There was mischief in her face. She’d brought him up on purpose. Why would she do that, if not to embarrass me?

‘Your mother, Rachelle, used to have quite a crush when she was a young woman.’

‘I knew it.’ Rachael eyed me saucily. ‘So I was right. There was a bloke.’

*

Dark and small, our room faced the inner courtyard of the building – other people’s bathrooms. The French loved to decorate their public spaces lavishly at the expense of their private ones. There were two single beds and a tiny ensuite. I dumped our suitcases. I needed a moment and sat on the loo trembling. I’d travelled for over thirty hours with my daughter and my mother’s ashes to see this woman, the source of many long-ago sleepless nights, and had not accounted for how nervous she would make me feel. The halogen light buzzed; there were no windows in the bathroom.

I showered and afterwards lay on the bed, hearing the whoosh of a toilet flushing somewhere in the building. Rachael was now showering. I finally switched on my BlackBerry and it bleeped with messages. The majority of them were from Wolfe.

‘
Picking up fish and chips – any requests?
’ His voice was warm with a touch of an apology. His next message said, ‘
Hey, just wondering where you guys are. Give me a shout
.’ Followed by: ‘
Getting a bit worried – should I be calling the brigade?
’ I felt a twinge of guilt; he still hadn’t realised. I hit the delete button and buried the feeling. In the fourth message he yelled down the line, his voice cracking and his words slurring. ‘
Where the bloody hell are you? You can’t just fuckin’ leave like that
.’

I felt edgy. Perhaps I should call him? But I remembered how he wanted to take Rachael to the police and I braced myself. I moved on to the next message, dreading the inevitable tirade. But it was a different voice this time: Barry Lonsdale. ‘Mills, you didn’t give us much notice. Is this necessary? Have you found a lead? Suppose we could use a second man on the ground for the big meeting.’

The last two messages were hang-ups.

Wolfe’s text –
WTF????!!!
– made my hand shake. I pressed delete and it disappeared.

Barry had also emailed and there were replies from Christie’s and Sotheby’s all insisting they had no further information about
La Baigneuse
, and denying any knowledge of its questionable provenance. Unfortunately, because of their confidentiality clauses, they could not provide me with the details of previous buyers and sellers. No surprise there. The Getty Institute, however, had sent an email confirming Georges Bernard’s purchase of the painting in 1908 for twenty-five thousand French francs.

I hit reply on Barry’s email.
Just arrived. Definite exciting lead in Paris. Imperative preparation for meeting with claimants. Need to approve expenses – flights etc
. . .
Staying with family so money saved there. Will email further shortly.
I hit the send button and the travel fog buried any hint of guilt I might have felt for not clearing the trip with Barry first.

A moment later, I wandered through the apartment, taking in the works of a collector. Perhaps a Seurat? Yes, and there was the Bonnard,
Man and Woman
, I remembered that, and then the Denis Brihat photograph of an onion, and a new contemporary piece by someone whose work I did not recognise. It was a silkscreen print, an inky blue and black of the body of a man with the head of a wolf.

Another day and there was still no word from them. Paris. Never been and never had the desire. But I made a brave face of it, swallowed a can of harden-the-fuck-up and took it like my father would’ve: just got the hell on with it. Be patient, I kept telling myself. And yet, there was no word.

Rain drizzled, a constant nagging whinge from a grey sky, on the day I had to man up to Sheehan. I’d considered calling and making an excuse to postpone but felt it was better to come in and tell her in person and gauge where they were at with this situation.

I sat like a naughty boy outside her office, drumming my fingers on my kneecaps and sweating even with the air con. I’d managed a pair of jeans and a shirt with a collar this time. The door swung open and Ms Sheehan, in her signature sausage-squeezing dress, hung from the doorknob, waving through a file of people in dark suits. She grimaced at me and said, ‘Come this way, Mr Larkin. We’ll meet in the boardroom.’

The table in the boardroom was set up with a camera, a microphone and several laptops. Carol, with her blackboard-screeching talons, pulled down the blinds, and the magnificent view of a great stump of an angry storm moving across the harbour disappeared, along with what felt like my connection to the real world. She switched on fluoro lights and our skin turned the colour of a liver disease. Ms Sheehan waddled to the head of the table. ‘These are the representatives of Bagshot & White. They’re conducting the investigation on behalf of the school.’

Each of the suits introduced themselves and I shook their hands.

‘Have a seat, Mr Larkin – help yourself to some tea or coffee.’ There were cups and pots on a drinks trolley in the corner.

The suits lined up on one side of the table: one behind the camera, another behind the laptop and the other two beside Sheehan, who sat at the head. There were vacant chairs on the opposite side of the table, obviously reserved for the Larkins. I dragged out a chair.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I began, ‘I didn’t realise you’d gone to so much trouble.’

‘It’s procedure, Mr Larkin.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I stammered. ‘Unfortunately, something’s happened.’

There was that cat’s-bum mouth again. Sheehan leant forward, the folds of freckled skin beneath her chin crinkling.

‘There’s been a death in the family – I’m not sure you know. Camille’s mother died recently and they’ve had to go to Paris for the funeral.’

‘Oh, my.’ She looked mildly sympathetic and shot a glance at her entourage. ‘I’m very sorry to hear about that.’

We sat in uncomfortable silence until Ms Sheehan said, ‘When are they due back?’

‘Maybe a few weeks.’

The suit on the left leant in and whispered something. Sheehan nodded and looked at me. ‘Mr Larkin, would you mind giving us a moment?’

‘Sure.’ I rose and stepped back into the reception area. Carol was typing; she smiled but it looked more like a wince.