Snatched (7 page)

‘A way with a rounded phrase, hasn't he?' Itagaki said.

‘Oh, forbear your mucking bile and envy, will you?' Kanda replied.

Lepage thought both scholars must have been in Britain for quite a while. They seemed to have picked up some of that Western brusqueness, even belligerence, and now and then lost at least a little of that celebrated Japanese politeness.

‘From the published plans of the Hulliborn buildings, we have been able to study its facilities very thoroughly, which are excellent, and we know all about its history since the founding by Lord Hulliborn of Nadle-and-Colm in the 1830s,' Kanda said, ‘Sir Eric Butler-Minton, previous Director, of course, was a great friend of museums in our country. I have wondered whether his sobriquet,
“
Flounce”, indicated a liking for frills and transvestitism, though this would be of no great significance.'

‘I'm surprised you know the word “flounce”,' Lepage said.

‘Oh, we have our flouncers, too. Think of all the snorting and pirouetting in that film,
The Seven Samurai
.
Anyway, Butler-Minton's foibles are hardly a museums-policy concern! His wife, now widow, Lady Butler-Minton, we admire, too. She has borne matters with splendid phlegm, oh, definitely, splendidly redoubtable phlegm. The Hulliborn has a wonderful reputation for scholarship through Sir Eric and many others, including your good selves, of course – certainly your good selves. It is regarded by my Council and, yes, Government, as an honour that you wish to provide a setting for our little exhibition.'

‘Little exhibition!' Simberdy said.

Itagaki smiled. ‘I'd say it was not inappropriate to ask at this juncture whether the “Fatman” or any other thieves would be interested in running off with some very old Yayoi or possibly Jomon tonsil-removers. Correct me if I'm awry, do, but I don't believe these would be up the “Fatman's” street at all. Hardly in a league with the El Grecos or Monet. How would he unload such commodities, for God's sake, and where find a fence interested in an ancient scalpel for gall bladder removals? I believe “fence” is the correct word for someone who middlemans stolen goods – not, obviously, to do with “a fence” as barrier, or “to fence” with swords.'

Simberdy said: ‘It's most heartening and amusing of you to be so modest about such a magnificent collection, isn't it, Director?'

‘Indeed, yes,' Lepage said.

‘We would like to assure you, and your Government, that we most earnestly wish to provide a worthy temporary home for the so-distinguished JASS wonders,' Simberdy crooned. He seemed to have fallen into their rococo way of doing English. Perhaps out of good manners he was thinking in Japanese and translating, though Simberdy was not famed for good manners. ‘We cannot exaggerate our hopes,' he added.

Dr Kanda, still almost laughing, said: ‘You will understand, gentlemen, that, in our rather tiresome, ultra-methodical Japanese way – I do believe we could give even the Germans a fine pasting in that respect nowadays – I say that, in our gradualist way, we shall be visiting all the museums considered to be front-runners for the JASS show and making our report on each. We Japanese – always reports. We are God's gift to bureaucracy, I do believe! I imagine you might be quite fed up at the prospect of another report. I believe your Government and the museums authority here are doing some scrutinizing, and this will also entail reports. It is like a series of embarrassing and inconvenient medical examinations: the Hulliborn required to drop its trousers.'

‘What did you say?' Simberdy gasped.

‘Just a metaphor, a sally,' Kanda said.

‘We see the need for these things, Dr Kanda,' Lepage said.

‘The Japanese and the British are both stoical races,' Dr Itagaki said, ‘though occasionally, perhaps, we can both go over the bloody top.'

‘I fear so,' Simberdy said. He sounded slightly more relaxed now. ‘It was such affinities that drew me to Asiatic studies in the first place. Yes, “over the top” is certainly fair enough.'

‘Butler-Minton – so strong on stoicism,' Itagaki said. ‘In the matter of Mrs Cray, for instance, and the Wall.'

‘You heard about Mrs Cray?' Simberdy said, less relaxed again. He spoke as if he had assumed they'd heard but hoped they hadn't.

‘We do a small saunter into backgrounds when this kind of thing, the JASS thing, comes up,' she said. ‘“Vetting”, as I believe you call it, in the British way of animalizing so many important matters and items: “pussy”, for instance.'

‘This is very much a preliminary, path-finding visit,' Kanda said. ‘I expect you know how it works – the whole elaborate shebang. We do an initial appraisal for our masters in the first instance. They chew over these findings in their supposedly wise, Oriental way and produce a shortlist. Three? Four? I'm not privy to their procedures in detail, I fear.'

‘“Fear” is rather to overstate, surely,' Itagaki replied. ‘Aren't you talking out of your arse?'

Lepage felt she'd devoted a lot of work to informal language.

‘It's a usage in English. It does not mean I am afraid,' Kanda said. ‘It is merely a kind of apology.'

‘Such usages should be used only when the usage is in tune with the general tone of the conversation, I hold,' she answered.

Kanda said: ‘Then, for those selected, a further visit, this time by the real cultural heavyweights. Another survey: the tough one. Further reports for Tokyo. And so, the final decision is made. It's a crummy sort of bore, I know, but there are no short-cuts, I fear.'

‘Fear?' she said.

‘Due processes, due processes,' Kanda said.

‘However, it's all quite swift,' she said. ‘It will be concluded long before your government's and the Museum Board's evaluation.'

‘We certainly want no favours, do we, Director?' Simberdy said.

‘So, this is the much cherished duck-billed platypus,' she replied.

‘What I would propose is that Vincent and I take you around the buildings now, and perhaps we could discuss which areas would be most suitable for JASS.'

‘That seems a first-rate idea,' Kanda said.

In the Folk Hall, Dr Itagaki said excitedly: ‘Oh, but here is fine light and space. Of course, we knew from the plans, but to see it in actuality is most helpful. It would be brilliantly suitable.'

‘Best not to get your knickers in a mix-up as to which leg goes where owing to excess enthusiasm at this stage, I believe,' Kanda said.

‘There are rooms off, you see, in case one wanted specialized, subsidiary exhibitions,' Simberdy said.

‘True,' Kanda said, and led the way into the Middle Ages Domestic Scene exhibit. Even so many days after the event, Lepage felt a tremor as he followed. All was decently in place and peasant trousers, though.

‘Moving,' Dr Itagaki said.

‘Bloody what?' Simberdy screamed, volume suddenly back to normal-plus.

‘So moving. So redolent of the British spirit,' she replied. ‘The father figure so stalwart and erect.'

‘Oh, right,' Simberdy said.

Olive Simberdy had her legs wrapped around him. She said: ‘Give it to me now, Fatman. Give it to me. Now.' They were in bed.

‘I deal in antiquity not in now,' Simberdy replied. ‘But I'll stretch a point for you.' He kissed her breasts.

‘Yes, stretch your point for me,' Olive said.

They began to giggle, but not fatally. ‘God, but we're a pair of rogues,' Simberdy said. ‘Supposed to have done half the art thefts in the world, including Japan. It's flattering, but I felt damn twitchy with those two and George at the Hulliborn.'

‘You don't feel twitchy now.'

‘I've never had a gang moll before.'

But he saw that Olive had left jokiness and fantasy behind and was concentrating on reality. And why not? The realities were pretty fine.

Afterwards, when they were lying quietly, (Simberdy, a little anxiously, trying to bring down his heartbeat by willpower to at least below 300 a minute), they heard a car draw up near the house. A door slammed, and then there came the sound of running feet, approaching and later receding out of earshot. Simberdy left the bed and went to peer around the edge of the curtain into the street. ‘It's the Vauxhall,' he said.

They dressed and hurried down to it. The keys were on the dashboard. Simberdy saw a large, stiff-edged parcel on the back seat, done up in several sheets of fancy wrapping paper, and tied with blue ribbon, knotted at the centre into a bold, ornamental bow.

‘Oh, Wayne Passow's undoubtedly a swine,' Olive said, ‘but he's always had a streak of niceness. This is his way of apologizing for the other night – the car pinched, but then returned to the doorstep this morning, with a big pressie.'

‘Don't open it yet,' Simberdy hissed. ‘Let's get inside.' He garaged the car and brought the parcel to the living room. They removed some of the paper.

‘The El Grecos!' Olive said. ‘You see what I mean, Vince. There's an element of decency in him, always liable to shine through. He knows he's done something out of his league.'

‘So where's the fucking Monet?' Simberdy replied.

They went back to the car and searched it, but did not find
L'Isolement
.

In the living room again, they took off the rest of the wrapping from the paintings. ‘There's a note,' Olive said. She handed it to him.

He read aloud: ‘This is your cut, oh, Fatman. Till the next caper.' It was not signed.

‘Well, this is crazy, obviously, Vince, but thoughtful.'

‘He's heard the “El Grecos” are probably shit,' he said.

‘But—'

‘I don't want the bloody things here. The police. All that mad “Fatman” stuff, for God's sake. I could be on their list already. Both of us. In their book we might be a black-garbed, big-time team.'

Olive arranged the pictures on their sideboard, then stood back and viewed them. ‘Who says they're rubbish, anyway? I love this one. What's it called?' She bent down and read the plate:
The Stricken Fig Tree.
‘It reaches out to one, don't you think, Vince? Isn't that the mark of truly great art?'

‘Ol, how would I know? I'm Asiatics.'

‘The title even – spot-on. I can feel real empathy with that fig tree, although it's so long ago and in a different country. As a matter of fact, I see it as a fig tree for all ages, an environmental emblem, in a way. Like for the Green Movement? In those days, too, they might have had pollution. I mean, when was El Greco? Not pre-soot?'

‘I told you, I'm Asiatics.'

‘Stricken by a plague, or a curse. It might be a Bible fig tree. Didn't God take it out on trees sometimes in the OT when He was having a wrath?'

‘Anyway, this “El Greco” could be 1986.'

‘Does it matter? Does it really matter, if the message is there? It's a stricken fig tree, just as stricken, I mean, whenever. How many ways are there for a fig tree to look stricken, after all? Does that change through the ages?' She looked at the other captions. ‘
Vision of Malachi.
Ochre, black, livid white. Something like this – supernatural, other-worldly, fears of hell, maybe: isn't that the same for all of us, everywhere, no matter what the period? You see what I'm getting at, Vincent? Actually, I feel it really thrilling, deep down. I wouldn't mind going back to bed.'

She did look warm and eager and very beautiful, more beautiful than anything in the
Vision of
sodding
Malachi
,
though with its clutch of barmy and wino faces that wasn't saying much. Might it be a characteristic of art that it turned women on, even phoney art? Or could Olive be turned on by almost anything? At one time, an old 78 of Peter Dawson singing ‘Shipmates o' Mine'
used to get her unbelievably juicy and urgent, and it was a record he'd never heard the end of without a hard-on. Confusing, really, because it could seem as though the shipmates of his had got the desire going.

Briefly, they did return to bed, and she was wonderfully sweet and tender. His heart would just have to put up with it.

Downstairs again, he'd concede that with the morning sun on them the pictures did add something to the sideboard. Ol had set them out exactly right. She could give Quent Youde lessons in display. Most people could give Quent lessons in some aspects of art. Even breakfast assumed a special quality because the pictures stood in the way of the cheap crockery they generally used, and Olive took the real china. ‘Well, obviously, you'll have to return them at once,' she said sadly.

‘Think of the questions that will be asked.'

‘Couldn't you just dump them where they'll be discovered?'

He drank some coffee and thought he felt a slab of toenail tear at his tonsils as it went down, reminding him of the JASS exhibition. ‘Anyway, I'm not sure the Hulliborn wants them back.'

‘Don't get it, Vince.'

‘As long as they're missing they could be genuine. Robbers don't bother with duds.'

‘Oh that again,' she said. ‘I thought we'd decided it didn't really matter whether they were so-called genuine, or not. Isn't it … well … isn't it the inherent worth that matters – what it does to the viewer?'

‘There's no such thing as inherent worth where art's concerned. It's fixed by the opinions of a gang of influential people. Value is belief in value. So, all that shit about provenance and attribution might not signify to you and me, but it signifies to the museums board in London, and to its inspectorate. And it signifies to the insurers: as things stand, they owe the Hulliborn many millions because the “El Grecos” are in the policy as genuine, and authenticity can't be effectively queried if they are unavailable for re-scrutiny. Above all, the status of the pictures matters to the Japanese. At the moment, they have an equation in their tidy, systematic minds: it says that if the Monet is real and precious, then the “El Grecos” must be, too, because the famous Fatman does not make mistakes. You've heard of guilt by association? This is worth by association. The Hulliborn enjoys some of that worth, even though the paintings have been stolen. This is a museum distinguished
enough for their exhibition. But, if the triptych goes back on the wall, and half a dozen El Greco experts fly for a gaze and pronounce Quentin Youde a fool for buying them, then all of us at the Hulliborn – every department, including Asian Antiquities – partake of that foolishness. We've failed the pay-your-way test, and this is the only one that counts these days.'