The Girl You Left Behind (31 page)

The doorbell rings. Mo will have left her
keys at work.
She unfolds herself from the desk, stretches, and heads
for the entryphone.

‘You left them on the side.’

‘It’s Paul.’

She freezes. ‘Oh. Hi.’

‘Can I come up?’

‘You really don’t have to. I
–’

‘Please? We need to talk.’

There is no time to check her face or brush
her hair. She stands, one finger on the door button, hesitating. She depresses it, then
moves back, like someone bracing themselves for an explosion.

The lift rattles its way up, and she feels
her stomach constrict as the sound grows louder. And then there he is, gazing straight
at her through the railings of the lift. He is wearing a soft brown jacket and his eyes
are uncharacteristically wary. He looks exhausted.

‘Hey.’

He steps out of the lift, and waits in the
hallway. She stands, her arms folded defensively.

‘Hello.’

‘Can I … come in?’

She steps back. ‘Do you want a drink?
I mean … are you stopping?’

He catches the edge in her voice.
‘That would be great, thank you.’

She walks through the house to the kitchen,
her back rigid, and he follows. As she makes two mugs of tea, she is conscious of his
eyes on her. When she hands one to him he is rubbing meditatively at his temple. When he
catches her eye he seems almost apologetic. ‘Headache.’

Liv glances up at the little modelling-clay
figure on the fridge and flushes with guilt. As she passes she deliberately knocks it
down the back of the fridge.

Paul places his mug on the table.
‘Okay. This is really difficult. I would have come over sooner but I had my son
and I needed to think what I was going to do. Look, I’m just going to come out and
explain the whole thing. But I think maybe you should sit down first.’

She stares at him. ‘Oh, God.
You’re married.’

‘I’m not married. That
would … almost be simpler. Please, Liv. Just sit.’

She remains standing. He pulls a letter from
his jacket and hands it to her.

‘What’s this?’

‘Just read it. And then I’ll do
my best to explain.’

TARP
Suite 6, 115 Grantham Street
London W1

15 October 2006

Dear Mrs Halston

We act for an organization called the Trace and Return Partnership, created to
return works of art to those who suffered losses due to looting or the forced
sale of personal artefacts during wartime.

We understand that you are the
owner of a painting by the French artist Édouard Lefèvre,
entitled
The Girl You Left Behind.
We have received written
confirmation from descendants of Mr Lefèvre that this was a work in the
personal possession of
the artist’s wife and the
subject of a forced or coercive sale. The claimants, who are also of French
nationality, wish to have the work returned to the artist’s family, and
under the Geneva Convention and the terms of the Hague Convention for the
Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, we wish to
inform you that we will be pursuing such a claim on their behalf.

In many cases such works can be restored to their rightful owners with the
minimum legal intervention. We therefore invite you to contact us to arrange a
meeting between yourselves and representatives of the Lefèvre family in
order that we may commence this process.

We appreciate that such notice may come as something of a shock. But we would
remind you that there is a strong legal precedent for the return of works of art
obtained as the result of wartime transgressions, and I would add that there may
also be some discretionary funding to compensate for your loss.

We hope very much that, as with other works of this nature, the satisfaction of
knowing a work is finally being returned to its rightful owners will grant those
affected some additional satisfaction.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to discuss this further.

Paul McCafferty

Janey Dickinson

Directors, TARP

She stares at the name at the bottom of the
page and the room recedes. She re-reads the words, thinking this must be a joke. No,
this is another Paul McCafferty, an entirely different Paul McCafferty. There must be
hundreds
of them. It’s a common enough name. And then she
remembers the peculiar way he had looked at the painting three days earlier, the way he
had been unable to meet her eye afterwards. She sits down heavily in her chair.

‘Is this some kind of a
joke?’

‘I wish it was.’

‘What the hell is TARP?’

‘We trace missing works of art and
oversee their restoration to their original owners.’

‘We?’ She stares at the letter.
‘What … what does this have to do with me?’

‘
The Girl You Left Behind
is
the subject of a restitution request. The painting is by an artist called Édouard
Lefèvre. His family want it back.’

‘But … this is ridiculous.
I’ve had it for years. Years. The best part of a decade.’

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out
another letter, with a photocopied image. ‘This came to the office a couple of
weeks ago. It was sitting in my in-tray. I was busy with other stuff so I didn’t
put the two things together. Then, when you invited me up the other night, I recognized
it immediately.’

She scans it, glances at the photocopied
page. Her own painting stares back at her from the coloured page, its colours muddied
through reproduction. ‘The
Architectural Digest
.’

‘Yeah. I think that was it.’

‘They came here to do a piece on the
Glass House when we were first married.’ Her hand lifts to her mouth. ‘David
thought it would be good publicity for his practice.’

‘The Lefèvre family have been
conducting an audit into
all Édouard Lefèvre’s works,
and during the course of it they discovered several were missing. One is
The Girl
You Left Behind
. There is no documented history for it after 1917. Can you tell
me where you got it?’

‘This is crazy. It
was … David bought it from an American woman. In Barcelona.’

‘A gallery owner? Have you got a
receipt for it?’

‘Of sorts. But it’s not worth
anything. She was going to throw it away. It was out on the street.’

Paul runs a hand over his face. ‘Do
you know who this woman was?’

Liv shakes her head. ‘It was years
ago.’

‘Liv, you have to remember. This is
important.’

She explodes: ‘I can’t remember!
You can’t come in here and tell me I have to justify ownership of my own painting
just because someone somewhere has decided it once belonged to them a million years ago!
I mean, what is this?’ She walks around the kitchen table. ‘I – I
can’t get my head round it.’

Paul rests his face in his hands. He lifts
his head and looks at her. ‘Liv, I’m really sorry. This is the worst case
I’ve ever dealt with.’

‘Case?’

‘This is what I do. I look for stolen
works of art and I return them to their owners.’

She hears the strange implacability in his
voice. ‘But this isn’t stolen. David bought it, fair and square. And then he
gave it to me. It’s mine.’

‘It was stolen, Liv. Nearly a hundred
years ago, yes, but it was stolen. Look, the good news is that they’re willing to
offer some financial compensation.’

‘Compensation? You think this is about
money?’

‘I’m just saying –’

She stands, lifts her hand to her brow.
‘You know what, Paul? I think you’d better leave.’

‘I know the painting means a lot to
you but you have to understand –’

‘Really. I’d like you to go
now.’

They stare at each other. She feels
radioactive. She is not sure she has ever been so angry.

‘Look, I’ll try to think of a
way we can settle this to suit –’

‘Goodbye, Paul.’

She follows him out. When she slams the door
behind him it reverberates so loudly that she can feel the whole warehouse shake below
her.

Their honeymoon. A honeymoon of sorts.
David had been working on a new conference centre in Barcelona, a monolithic thing,
built to reflect the blue skies, the shimmering seas. She remembers her faint surprise
at his fluent Spanish and being awed both by the things he knew and by the things she
did not yet know about him. Each afternoon they would lie in bed in their hotel, then
stroll the medieval streets of the Gothic Quarter and Born, seeking refuge in the shade,
stopping to drink mojitos and rest lazily against each other, their skin sticking in the
heat. She still remembers how his hand looked resting on her thigh. He had a
craftsman’s hands. He would rest them slightly splayed, as if they were always
holding down invisible plans.

They had been walking around the back of
Plaça de Catalunya when they heard the American woman’s voice. She had been
shouting at a trio of impassive men, close to tears as they emerged through a panelled
doorway, dumping furniture, household objects and trinkets in front of the apartment
block. ‘You can’t do this!’ she had exclaimed.

David had released Liv’s hand and
stepped forwards. The woman – an angular woman in early middle age with bright blonde
hair – had let out a little
oh oh oh
of frustration as a chair was dumped in
front of the house. A small crowd of tourists had stopped to watch.

‘Are you okay?’ he had said, his
hand at her elbow.

‘It’s the landlord. He’s
clearing out all my mother’s stuff. I keep telling him I have nowhere to put these
things.’

‘Where is your mother?’

‘She died. I came over here to sort
through it all and he says it has to be out by today. These men are just dumping it on
the street and I have no idea what I’m going to do with it.’

She remembers how David had taken charge,
how he had told Liv to take the woman to the café across the road, how he had
remonstrated with the men in Spanish as the American woman, whose name was Marianne
Johnson, sat and drank a glass of iced water and gazed anxiously across the street. She
had only flown in that morning, she confided. She swore she did not know whether she was
coming or going.

‘I’m so sorry. When did your
mother die?’

‘Oh, three months ago. I know I should
have done something sooner. But it’s so hard when you don’t speak Spanish.
And I had to get her body flown home for the funeral … and I just got divorced
so there’s only me doing everything …’ She had huge white knuckles
beneath which she had crammed a dizzying array of plastic rings. Her hairband was
turquoise paisley. She kept reaching up to touch it, as if for reassurance.

David was talking to a man who might have
been the landlord. He had appeared defensive initially, but now, ten minutes later, they
were shaking hands warmly. He reappeared at their table. She should sort out which
things she wanted to keep, David said, and he had a number for a shipping company that
could pack those items and fly
them home for her. The landlord had
agreed to let them remain in the apartment until tomorrow. The rest could be taken and
disposed of by the removal men for a small fee. ‘Are you okay for money?’ he
had said quietly. The kind of man he was.

Marianne Johnson had nearly wept with
gratitude. They had helped her move things, stacking objects right or left depending on
what should be kept. As they had stood there, the woman pointing at things, moving them
carefully to one side, Liv had looked more closely at the items on the pavement. There
was a Corona typewriter, huge leather-bound albums of fading newsprint. ‘Mom was a
journalist,’ said the woman, placing them carefully on a stone step. ‘Her
name was Louanne Baker. I remember her using this when I was a little girl.’

‘What is that?’ Liv pointed at a
small brown object. Even though she was unable to make it out without stepping closer,
some visceral part of her shuddered. She could see what looked like teeth.

‘Oh. Those. Those are Mom’s
shrunken heads. She used to collect all sorts. There’s a Nazi helmet somewhere
too. D’you think a museum might want them?’

‘You’ll have fun getting them
through Customs.’

‘Oh, God. I might just leave it on the
street and run.’ She paused to wipe her forehead. ‘This heat! I’m
dying.’

And then Liv had seen the painting. Propped
up against an easy chair, the face was somehow compelling even among the noise and the
chaos. She had stooped and turned it carefully towards her. A girl looked out from
within the battered gilt frame, a faint note of challenge in her eyes. A great swathe of
red-gold hair fell to her shoulders; a faint
smile spoke of a kind of
pride, and something more intimate. Something sexual.

‘She looks like you,’ David had
murmured, under his breath, from beside her. ‘That’s just how you
look.’
Liv’s hair was blonde, not red, and short. But she had known
immediately. The look they exchanged made the street fade.

David had turned to Marianne Johnson.
‘Don’t you want to keep this?’

She had straightened up, squinted at him.
‘Oh – no. I don’t think so.’

David had lowered his voice. ‘Would
you let me buy it from you?’

‘Buy it? You can have it. It’s
the least I can do, given you’ve saved my darned life.’

But he had refused. They had stood there on
the pavement, engaged in a bizarre reverse haggling, David insisting on giving her more
money than she was comfortable with. Finally, as Liv continued to sort through a rail of
clothes, she turned to see them shaking on a price.

‘I would gladly have let you have
it,’ she said, as David counted out the notes. ‘To tell you the truth, I
never much liked that painting. When I was a kid I used to think she was mocking me. She
always seemed a little snooty.’