Troy had little that was new in his sitting room. In that respect his room was like Laura Narayan’s or Méret Voytek’s or even like that of Mr. Gibbs—it was all hand-me-down, and past its best, but less from its being a matter of make do and mend than of some sense of the tatty chic of heirlooms. The only thing he’d bought was the Bösendorfer upright piano—he had bought it impulsively and without regret one day in the summer of 1940—and that was far from new. Made in 1907, it was older than he was. He had two small Constables above the mantelpiece—dummy runs for works much larger, depicting near-identical views of Dedham Vale—that his father had picked up for next to nothing in an auction nearly forty years ago. If he moved them both and stuck in a hook somewhat higher up the wall there was just enough room to hang the Venus travesty.
Stepping back, he took in the posture of the goddess, the sexiness of ƒ-holes, and for the first time he could see what it was Skolnik had meant to add on the last day of his life. In her left hand, Venus was surely meant to be holding a cellist’s bow? She was the cellist. A left-handed cellist. And she herself was the cello, its neck invisible between her breasts, the bridge below her groin hidden in blonde tresses. And . . . what tune was she playing?
He called the left-handed cellist and invited her to an impromptu dinner. If she said yes, he’d go on the scrounge.
“I’m not a bad cook. I know how to spin out the ration and I’ll be at my mother’s this afternoon. She grows all her own vegetables.”
“I don’t need convincing, Troy. Just don’t serve cabbage or turnips. Even if your mother has grown them and blessed them.”