“Delores Ryan called for you,” said Marsha, the receptionist, to Annie. “Here’s her number.”
“Surely she wants to talk to Rebecca?” Annie replied.
“No, she mentioned something about cooking.”
A few days later, when Rebecca and her father were abroad, Annie found herself outside Delores Ryan’s apartment in Stockwell at eleven o’clock in the morning. From the outside, it was an unprepossessing, 1950s block, like so many others in that part of London, just off a main road. The communal areas were run down and Annie had to pick her way past discarded toys and a wheelless bicycle. Annie checked the address again and rang the bell hesitantly. On a whim, she had brought the picture along.
To her surprise, a maid, dressed formally in black with a white frilly apron, opened the door and led Annie along a narrow corridor. Once inside, Annie entered a different world; etchings and drawings were carefully placed on damask-covered walls. The maid’s court shoes made a clack-clack on the parquet floor; Annie’s trainers squeaked noisily. At the end of the passage, two double doors opened into a large, low-ceilinged room with drawn, heavy brocade curtains. The only light came from a table lamp spilling a little pool of brightness on to a leopardskin-print carpet.
“Madame Delores is at brunch,” the maid said in a south London accent. “She will return shortly.”
“Thanks.”
The maid held out her hand. Annie stepped forward to shake it.
“Your coat,” the maid said.
“I’ll keep it, but thank you,” said Annie, blushing, glad for the gloom around her. Taking the picture out of her rucksack, she propped it on a tapestry-backed chair.
“There’s got to be another light. Can’t see you properly,” she said to the painting. Her eyes flicked around the room, searching for a switch or a lamp. The furniture was arranged to form little groups of tables and dainty chairs. Everything was on a small scale: slim backs balanced on finely turned legs; tabletops were piled high with books, objects and miniature boxes. There were several standard lamps with heavily fringed shades. Running her fingers around the bulbs and down the stems, Annie felt for a switch. Her hair caught in a fern, it frightened her and she jumped back, knocking a fist-sized china pug on to the ground. She held her breath. Don’t break, please, she prayed, watching it bounce across the carpet and come to a halt below a golden harp. Nervously Annie examined it. She couldn’t see any chips. Putting it back, she decided it would be safer to wait in one place. She tried to sit still but soon got up and picked up a book, one of many written by Delores Ryan and left in neat piles.
Annie read the blurb on the dust jacket about Watteau: “French painter (10 October 1684–18 July 1721) whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement. He was responsible for revitalising the waning Baroque idiom that became known as Rococo.” Looking at the other books by Delores in the stack, Annie saw Watteau and the Court of Louis XIV; Watteau and Music and the most recent, Watteau’s Women: The Importance of the Model in the Artist’s Oeuvre.
Taking up the last book, she flicked through the pages. Delores’s premise, as Jesse had explained, was to match sketches and drawings of people in each of the paintings and show how the painter had revisited the same subjects again and again. Annie was not particularly interested in this; to her it seemed obvious that an artist would repaint the same composition, or person. But she was fascinated by the preparatory drawings and how the compositions evolved before her eyes as Watteau played with different arrangements of figures, hands, glances and clothes until he found the pose that worked. Sometimes a finger moved an inch to the left or right but those tiny adjustments made all the difference to the success and strength of a composition.
As she turned the pages, Annie saw that the same woman cropped up again and again throughout his work. Turning to the foreword, Annie read. “During his short life, Antoine Watteau found little comfort in love. He was a sickly loner and a misanthrope who was never recorded as marrying. All his passions were reserved for his drawing and painting. However, in her ground-breaking new work, world-acclaimed scholar Delores Ryan shows that Watteau did form deep attachments and identifies the great love of his life as Charlotte Desmares, whose stage name was Colette.” Annie read that this famous actress’s career had started at the age of eight in 1690. “A renowned beauty, she became the mistress of the Duc d’Orléans, the nephew of King Louis XIV and the future Regent of France. By association, Charlotte became one of the most influential women at court. Far more than a pretty face, Charlotte was a shrewd collector, leaving thirty-seven great works by Italian, French and Dutch masters.”
Lifting her painting from the sofa, Annie placed it next to Delores’s book. Flicking through the pages, she tried to match the woman in her painting with any of the reproductions before her. There were likenesses but nothing startling. Annie started on other parts of the body. On one page there was a sketch of a pair of hands resting in a lap; though Annie had trouble seeing through the heavy varnish, she thought that there were similarities in the way the sitter rested her thumb on her index finger, the long tapered fingers, the perfectly formed nails.
There was a snuffling and scuffling outside the door. Annie quickly placed the painting back on the sofa and closed the book. She realised that she had been waiting an hour. Moments later, the handle turned and two fat pugs waddled into the room, barking at Annie before sitting down on either side of a pretty padded armchair. Delores appeared moments later, huffing and puffing nearly as much as her animals. Around Delores’s neck there was a confection of ruffles. These glowed white, apart from the stains of tomato and egg that had clearly strayed during the journey from fork to mouth. Delores had a large double chin, running from ear to ear, but within that blubbery frame there was a pretty, fine-featured face with bright china-blue eyes and a bee-stung mouth.
“So tell me,” Delores said, kicking off a pair of kitten-heeled mules made from pink silk with gold edging, “what are Memling and Rebecca like to work for?” She had a tinkling voice, delicate, musical, quite out of proportion to her size.
“I have signed a confidentiality agreement,” Annie replied.
“How dull,” said Delores, looking disappointed. “I have eaten with the Winklemans for twenty years and your dinner was the first decent meal they have served. You did very well.”
Annie blushed.
“Do you know anything about fêtes galantes?” Delores smiled condescendingly at Annie.
“Not really,” Annie admitted.
“It’s shorthand for the pursuits of the idle rich in the courts of Louis XIV and XV and I think it would make rather an amusing and appropriate theme for an art-world dinner, don’t you think?”
Annie didn’t know whether to agree or demur so she looked at one of the pugs.
“You did the Caravaggio evening so amusingly—how would you do mine?” Delores pressed.
Annie thought about her painting.
“What about creating a beautiful glade, a clearing in a wood, bowers of roses and spring flowers, a statue. The mood of the food has to be flirtatious, coquettish, light and ornate.” Annie spoke quickly; her eyes shone with excitement as she thought of the evening’s possibilities, of the dishes she could research and try and make.
“You are hired!” said Delores, clapping her hands together.
Annie’s spirits sagged. “I would love to, but I can’t. I don’t have the time to do this assignment justice.”
“Aren’t you owed any holiday?” Delores asked. “It’s to celebrate my sixtieth birthday—I want it to be a night that no one will ever forget. My friends are such a jaded lot.”
Annie tried to keep her enthusiasm at bay but could not help making a suggestion. “There should be a dress code—choose one of the pictures in the Wallace—I can’t remember the names,” she suggested.
“You seem to know an awful lot.”
“I was just reading your book.”
“How much will the dinner cost?”
“It would be terribly expensive.”
“Your budget is five thousand pounds.”
“Five thousand pounds!” Annie could not believe what she was hearing.
“Isn’t that enough? It would not include the hire of the room or the wine but would have to cover staff and sous chefs and catering equipment.”
Annie shook her head in disbelief. It was more money than she had ever seen. Again Delores misunderstood the signs.
“Okay, six thousand for the food and I will pick up the tabs for the set dressing and catering equipment. Your own fee, the ingredients, and the wages of the staff will have to be taken from that.”
“For how many?” asked Annie
“Fifty, sit down. Can you do it?”
Annie nodded. It was crazy. Of course she couldn’t do it. The dinner for Memling and Rebecca was a fluke.
Annie suddenly became aware that the only noise in the room was the heavy breathing and snuffling of the pugs. She looked up and saw Delores considering her thoughtfully.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Thirty-one,” Annie replied.
“No husband or children. Left it a bit late. So did I. You and I have to make our careers our lovers; work is the only thing one can rely on, isn’t it?” Delores took a small gold compact out of a pocket and, flicking it open, examined her nose. “The date is the first of April, but don’t make a fool out of me.”
Delores looked at the door, as if she was expecting Annie to simply evaporate.
“Actually, I have brought something—would you mind looking at it?” Annie reached over to the chair and handed the painting to Delores. “I got it in a junk shop.”
Delores looked at the picture propped on the chair. “Do you know how many people buy things in junk shops thinking they’ve discovered a masterpiece?”
“No.”
“If I took even a few seriously there would be no time to write my books,” Delores continued. “It’s very tiring being a world expert. Let me see it.” Delores held out her hand dismissively. Annie handed her the painting.
“Shall I turn on a light?”
“It’s not necessary,” said Delores, taking a small torch from her pocket and shining it over the picture’s surface. The bright light bounced ghoulishly back on to her face. Delores spat on to the canvas and rubbed the foaming spit over the surface, muttering inaudibly, then heaved her body off the chair and waddled over to the window.
“Pull the curtain back,” commanded Delores. Annie got up and drew the heavy curtain; below, two boys loitered outside a doorway, one picking his nose extravagantly. Delores spat again and this time, rubbed harder at the surface before turning to Annie.
“It’s a nineteenth-century copy in the style of Watteau. They were mass-produced for the Victorians. Very few could and can afford the real thing,” Delores said, crossing the room and lowering her body back into the chair.
“How can you tell just like that?” asked Annie.
“It’s my life. It’s what I do. Day in, day out.”
“But you only looked at it for a few seconds.”
“I really don’t need more time,” said Delores, tapping her nose. “The great Bernard Berenson once said, ‘Scholarship is largely a question of accumulated experience upon which your spirit sets unconsciously.’ I feel it in my gut.” She handed the picture back to Annie.
Annie could not help feeling disappointed. Though it was ridiculous to think that she had found something of merit in a junk shop, there had still been a glimmer of hope, something to show for her relationship with Robert.
“Don’t be upset!” said Delores. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you twenty pounds for it.”
“I paid more than that.”
“So you just threw away even more money! If we could buy masterpieces in junk shops, we’d be multi-billionaires.”
Annie nodded sadly. Delores was right.
“You are an interesting cook and a lousy judge of art—I am a rotten cook and a brilliant connoisseur. That’s the right way round. Now cheer up and toddle off, dear girl—time for my afternoon nap.” Delores pointed at the door. “Send me menus in the next fortnight.”
Placing the painting carefully in her rucksack, Annie walked out of the room and along the corridor. When she got to the top of the stairs she started to run, out of the apartment block, down the stone steps and along the street.
Less than two miles away, at Tate Modern, Vlad walked alone through a retrospective of the artist Damien Hirst, who, Vlad noted, was a few years older than he was. A week ago he had not heard of the Tate or Hirst, but in the last few days Barty had arranged for several experts to talk to the Russian about art and now for him to meet Ruggiero De Falacci, a dealer famous for regularly outperforming his colleagues by multiples of five. This year, when the art index had, for the first time since the last dip in 1990, fallen to –3.28 per cent, Ruggiero’s clients were still up by 16 per cent.
Vlad had arrived early and walked into the first room, devoted to works by the artist done when he was in his twenties; these included brightly coloured pots, an upended hairdryer whose hot air kept a ping-pong ball bobbing happily in mid-air above it, and a messy painting of brightly coloured spots. When I was that age, Vlad thought, I was working underground in a coalmine a hundred feet deep, considering my first murder. He wondered how he would have translated that experience into art. Hirst’s naïve and colourful work demonstrated that the artist had enjoyed a relatively sheltered life.
In the next rooms there were fish and a shark and a calf suspended in formaldehyde in glass tanks. Vlad shuddered, trying to imagine what his brother would look like pickled. That would be truly shocking, he thought wryly, seeing a dead man rather than a dead fish. Walking through the rooms he saw the artist try out the same ideas in different forms: life, death and spots over and over again. Vlad tried to be moved or interested in these themes, tried hard to feel and understand what Hirst was telling him. Nothing happened. Looking around at the other visitors, staring earnestly into the mouth of a shark or the back end of a cow, Vlad felt bewildered and slightly humiliated: why did these objects do so little for him? Wasn’t he supposed to have some transformational, transcendental reaction? He supposed it was the poor educational system in Smlinsk or the vodka in his mother’s breast milk.
Vlad decided to try harder and looked the shark straight in the mouth, willing the animal to transport him from the vast empty spaces of the Tate Modern to somewhere else. He wasn’t sure what or where this other destination was supposed to be. Please, Mr. Hirst, he prayed silently, spirit me from this group of earnest bystanders, away from London, from my loneliness, away from my issues with the Office of Central Control. Reach out and tell me that you understand my difficulties and my dilemmas. Vlad imagined that he was whitebait swimming up the open jaws into the belly of mutual understanding and willed Hirst and his strange beasts to swallow his feelings. But when Vlad opened his eyes, he was still stuck in front of the torpid beast in this temple of illusion.
Vlad walked on through the exhibition. The artist, he decided, was like so many others, nothing more than a one-trick pony. Spots, flies and dead things all repackaged and rearranged in different orders, on different backgrounds and in varying formations. Still, Vlad thought, most don’t have even one new idea and just dumbly follow previous generations, repeating the same patterns and mistakes over and over again. Vlad’s father and grandfather had been miners and their forebears had slaved in either the feudal or the communist systems. Only one small idea set Vlad apart from his father—to get away from Smlinsk. Like Hirst, Vlad had just been repeating that same thought over and over again: everything he did, whether it was a business deal or a murder, was to put distance between himself and his hometown.
A few months ago Vlad would never have wasted hours in a gallery. Recreation was a distant dream. Only now that he had great swathes of time could he begin to have hobbies. This was why art was such an incalculable luxury: it sent out a message saying, “I have time to subcontract all the menial, dull chores out to others; I waste hours in idle contemplation of a piece of cloth covered in spots; I am an art lover; I am time-rich. I can mooch about in a sea of pickled sharks.”
Pushing through some plastic doors, Vlad found himself in an artificially heated room where live butterflies feasted before dying. He looked around at the endless circle of life and how, once dead, broken corpses were stuck to large canvases on the wall. Again Vlad thought about his brother. Instead of butterflies he saw hundreds of tiny suspended Leonards. Feeling panic rise in his throat, Vlad took off his leather jacket and forced himself to breathe slowly. These were butterflies, not brothers, he told himself, pushing open a plastic door and leaving the steamy morgue for the cool of the next room.
He walked past cabinets full of medical instruments and surgical tools and into another room where the artwork was a huge blackened sun made of dead flies. Vlad thought, It takes a lot of shit and death to make a world. Suddenly he got Hirst: the man was a brilliant comedian making a joke out of life and the art world and all those who took it seriously. Vlad almost sprinted into the next room and, getting there, laughed out loud when he saw that every work of art was studded with diamonds and backed with gold leaf. For Vlad the artist’s message was simple: you can encase anything, add jewels and precious metals, but it’s still the same old shit. You might think you have got out of Smlinsk, you might be dressed in posh clothes and stuck in a fancy multi-million-pound house, but you’re still just a turd covered in diamonds—you are still the same old Vlad.
Vlad had been so engrossed in his reverie that he failed to spot Ruggiero De Falacci shadowing him through the rooms. As he came to a stop beside a gold-plated vitrine filled with cigarette stubs, the man sidled up to him.
“Clearly you are a person of exceptional discernment and intellectual capabilities,” Ruggiero said in a slightly breathy but appreciative voice.
“What?” said Vlad.
“I was watching you look at the art and saw that you totally understood what the artist is saying.” The advisor’s tone was honeyed.
“I get it,” said Vlad.
“Ruggiero De Falacci at your service,” said the man, bowing slightly. “Barty has told me so much about you.”
“Expensive?” Vlad asked, looking around him.
“Exceedingly,” Ruggiero purred mellifluously.
“Get me that one,” said Vlad, pointing to the fly heap. “More diamonds. More gold.”
“These are one-off artworks,” Ruggiero said. “Mr. Hirst doesn’t do commissions.”
“Tell him name price.”
“I will do my very best. Perhaps Damien will make an exception.”
Ruggiero tried to keep the smile from his face. That Barty was a clever weasel, worth every cent of his large commission.
Vlad walked out of the Tate and slid into the rear seat of his new pale blue Maybach.
Staying south of the river, the car passed Lambeth Palace and turned over the bridge opposite the Houses of Parliament. Looking out of the window, Vlad had to admit that though London was not Moscow, it was a beautiful city. But all pleasant thoughts evaporated as the traffic slowed to a crawl. Money could buy him a smart car and a chauffeur but it couldn’t clear the roads. In Moscow every person worth anything had police outriders to clear the way. London, Vlad thought, is so backward. Thirty minutes passed and they were only just on Pall Mall.
“There is a demo, sir,” said the chauffeur to Vlad, who sat in the back looking out of the window. “Complaining about Israel, most likely.”
“Late,” said Vlad, tapping his Rolex impatiently.
“Doing my best, sir.”
Vlad stared out of the window at the angry youths waving placards. “Out of Settlements,” “Not your promised land, our homeland.” Where was his homeland now? Was it here in England? In Smlinsk? Or somewhere in between? Could he go back again? Vlad knew he could never go back. He had seen too much, done too much. He had lost the ability to talk to the people he grew up with but had yet to learn how to talk to anyone else.
In the last few weeks, Barty had insinuated himself into every aspect of Vlad’s life; finding the Russian a smart group of friends, a larger house and a better tailor. There were intensive English lessons and “improving” events. Barty was “preposterous” and “outlandish” but he was also amusing, irreverent and fantastically useful. Last night they had started at a drinks party at Downing Street where, following a donation to party funds, Vlad met the prime minister and his chancellor; later, they caught the first act of Tosca at the Opera House, missing the rest to attend Paris Hilton’s launch of a new shampoo, and then went to M. Power Dub’s for dinner. The evening ended with a visit to one club called the Box and another called Lulu’s. For Vlad, the evening was like sitting on a carousel, spinning round and round, getting dizzier and dizzier.
Half an hour later, in the far corner of the Zianni restaurant in London’s Brook Street, Vlad sat down opposite another émigré, Dmitri Voldakov. Although he was only a year older than Vlad, Dmitri had become his mentor since arriving in London and it was a huge relief to talk in his native tongue. Like Vlad, Dmitri had been summoned one afternoon to the Office of Central Control and offered two exit strategies: the left door led to prison, the right to the airport. Dmitri chose London because he liked soccer and it had the most advantageous tax system.
A waiter approached their table and shook out Vlad’s napkin with the flourish of a matador approaching a ten-ton bull.
“We will have truffles in scrambled eggs to start, lobster pasta for main course. Château Latour 1960 to drink,” Dmitri told the waiter. Then he told Vlad in Russian to take the batteries out of his phones. “These things act like microphones to the authorities.” He also insisted on covering the glasses with napkins. New technology meant lasers beamed from space could listen in to any conversation via convex materials.
After knocking back a few glasses of wine and deliberating upon the latest Chelsea matches, Vlad gathered up his courage to ask his friend’s advice.
“I have a problem,” he confessed.
“No worries—I have good doctor,” Dmitri said, patting Vlad on the arm.
“Not that kind. Money,” said Vlad.
“Can’t be!” Dmitri knew that Vlad’s tin mines were producing millions of dollars of metal a month.
Vlad looked around the restaurant to make sure that they were not overheard. “How to make the weekly payments.”
“Ah. Yes,” Dmitri said, tapping his nose. Like Vlad, he had to pay at least 30 per cent of his income to the Leader to guarantee his safety. Only last week, a fellow countryman who had fallen behind on his dues was found face down in St. Katharine’s Docks.
Since 9/11 and anti-terrorism initiatives, transferring large sums of money from Britain had become increasingly difficult. Transferring money directly into Russia attracted too much unwanted attention.
Lowering his voice to a whisper, Dmitri told Vlad, “Alternate stocks and shares with art or jewels. Make drop at the safe house.”
Vlad was about to ask for more details when an astonishingly beautiful woman sashayed towards their table. The whole restaurant fell into a silent appreciative hush. Next to the Europeans in the room, she looked like a thoroughbred horse let loose in a field of Shetland ponies.
“Lyudmila.” Dmitri rose to kiss the apparition on her cheek. “Meet Vlad, a recent arrival.”
Vlad could only nod. He felt a stab of disappointment upon seeing an enormous diamond on her third finger.
“Lyudmila is my fiancée,” Dmitri said firmly.
Lyudmila smiled sweetly at Vlad. “See you around,” she said and returned to her table of friends. Vlad saw that she had dropped her handkerchief on the floor and, pretending to tie up his shoelace, he bent down and placed the scented linen discreetly in his pocket.
“She was my art advisor,” Dmitri said.
“Art?” said Vlad. If he bought art would he also find a Lyudmila?
“Barty set me up with her. He said that I needed a hobby and an advisor. I was not sure, until I saw her. Barty is a fucking genius.”
Vlad nodded in agreement.
“She is also a genius,” Dmitri said. “She made me buy an Andy Warhol for twenty-five million dollars last month; I was offered fifty million this morning. I will make a drop next week. Gold is far too volatile and rather heavy.”
“I am also going to buy art,” Vlad said.
Dmitri took hold of Vlad’s wrist and squeezed it hard, hard enough to convince Vlad that the next piece of advice was not friendly.
“My friend, remember that I have monopoly on Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, late Picasso—I have forty-four in storage waiting to give Leader. You can have rest,” said Dmitri and then let go of Vlad’s wrist.
Vlad shifted uncomfortably in his seat, thinking of a certain piece made of dead flies and diamonds, which he had already decided was a perfect metaphor for the regime back home. The Leader could hardly complain: after all, it was art. Dmitri, Vlad reasoned, need never know.
Neither man realised that the beautiful woman sitting at the adjacent table had a camera concealed in her earring. A few days later Dmitri received a package containing footage of Vlad purloining the handkerchief and a copy of a commission note for a new work by a certain artist. Dmitri interpreted these as declarations of war: he was in no doubt who would win.