Memling Winkleman hit the tennis ball with every ounce of strength that his ninety-one-year-old body could muster.
“You are on fire today, Mr. Winkleman,” his coach Dilys called out over the net, struggling to return his smash. She hit the ball too kindly to Memling’s forehand and he hit it back at her stomach with such ferocity that Dilys only just managed to jump aside.
“I might be old and decrepit but don’t hit condescending shots,” Memling barked.
He treated his coach as he treated everyone: with a sense of overriding imperiousness. The combination of wealth, age and intelligence convinced him that he was better than other people and his sense of self-belief was so absolute that it was contagious.
Dilys held up her hands to apologise. She had been playing tennis with Memling three nights a week at 6 p.m. in his private underground court under the Winkleman complex in Curzon Street for nearly ten years. They played for forty-five minutes and at exactly 6:45 p.m. he walked off without saying goodbye. Dilys did not care—it was good money and more challenging than her day job teaching children at a local private school.
Taking the lift from the basement to the fourth floor, Memling walked through his bedroom, through his closet and, tearing off his clothes, stepped into his shower. The water started automatically, pre-set to do alternate blasts of hot and then icy-cold water. Exactly five minutes later, he stepped out of the shower room and glanced nervously at his mobile telephone, hoping for a message. There was none. At a time when he should have been enjoying his dotage, just when his daughter’s and granddaughter’s futures were secure, he was racked with fear. Everything he had built up, his life’s work, his family’s future, was in peril because of one sentimental mistake. The only solution was to find and destroy the piece of evidence that linked Memling to aspects of a past that he had so successfully buried. His thoughts turned to the farmhouse in Bavaria—he had meant to burn the store to the ground on his last visit but, unable to accept his impending mortality, had baulked at the last minute. He made the decision to do that by the end of the month, latest.
He dried himself and put on a navy-blue cashmere suit and a pale-blue shirt before getting back into the lift and going down to his private dining room on the first floor. Annie had left his supper, a piece of steamed fish, some spinach and a half-bottle of red Bordeaux on a side table. If he was not going out, Memling liked to eat undisturbed, with just Tiziano for company. This evening he had no appetite and he sat looking at a Tiepolo sketch hanging on the opposite wall, considering his second great mistake: rediscovering the picture in the junk shop and not purchasing it there and then. Spotting the security camera on the wall, Memling had decided to send Ellis, his bodyguard-cum-chauffeur, one of the few people he trusted to buy the work. Finding the picture gone, Ellis attempted to frighten the shopkeeper. Unfortunately, his “little lesson” got out of hand. Now the man was dead, and the picture was still lost.
Pouring himself a second glass of wine, Memling allowed his thoughts to return to Marianna—she had promised never to sell or give the painting away, that it would remain with her always as the secret reminder of their true love. Her sudden, unexpected death had derailed her good intentions.
For the sake of his children, Memling had never left his wife Pearl for the love of his life. Not a man given to passion, or indeed many deep feelings, he had loved Marianna from the moment she walked up the aisle to marry his close friend. Turning, like the rest of the congregation, to catch a glimpse of the bride, Memling felt a shock pulsate through his body. As she walked past him, she caught his eye and he knew in that instant that the feeling was mutual.
Marianna and Memling spent five painful years denying their love, but one afternoon, meeting by chance near Claridge’s hotel, they spent the first of many happy afternoons in a suite on the fourth floor. Seventeen years after her death, Memling still kept the suite on permanent hire and often returned alone to mourn her memory.
After her death, Memling wrote to her sons asking for his picture. He didn’t add that he had given the priceless object to their mother as a reminder of their love. It was the only sentimental act that Memling had ever committed. Her children (none by Memling) were apologetic but admitted that they had sold all the contents of her house as a job lot to a house clearance firm. Memling had scoured the saleroom and museum catalogues for many years; he made a habit of visiting random galleries and junk shops on the weekend. It was a fluke that he found it in Bernoff’s that Saturday after sixteen and a half years of searching. Why, Memling thought for the umpteenth time, had he given Marianna that painting? There were so many others and many more valuable. The answer was always the same: that painting said everything he believed but could never articulate about love. For the first sixteen years of his life, it had belonged to the only person who had shown him true, unconditional kindness. This, Memling assumed, was what love was all about. When he met Marianna, his understanding of love changed; he was, simultaneously, the impassioned happy man lying at the feet of his beloved and also the morose clown standing in the background of the picture. Being in love pitched him, moment by moment, between waves of ecstasy and misery. Like every other person, he believed his predicament was unique.
Being with Marianna was the only time Memling was granted a respite from self-disgust and shame. For those brief moments, he forgot about the naked, cold child standing outside the Berlin block of flats and about being a disgrace to his parents. Or the shame he felt creeping around the apartment block, ransacking the homes of his former friends, denuding those few survivors of their possessions. Or the indignity that came from stealing another man’s identity, an indignity he deserved. There were times when Memling justified his actions to himself. Cutting the paintings from their frames in the storerooms, rolling up the canvases and hiding them in his kit bag was a way of saving great art, but he knew deep down that he was just a lucky thief.
Marianna’s love ennobled Memling, made him a better person, cleansed of his crimes, while his love for her confirmed that far from being a bad person, there was goodness in that steely heart. Twenty years younger than Memling, she was supposed to outlive him and had promised to burn the painting on news of his death. Damn fate for taking her too early. Damn his stupidity for giving the painting to her in the first place.
Memling looked at his watch. It was already 7 p.m. He did not want to go to the Royal Academy opening but knew that he should be seen out and about, acting as if nothing untoward was happening. Pressing a discreet red buzzer on the wall, he gave the signal for his car and driver to pull up outside his house.
For the entire journey from Chester Square to the Royal Academy, Barty, whose trousers were far too tight, stood on the back seat of Vlad’s car with his upper body poking out of the sunroof. To capture the spirit of the exhibition, “Music, Madness and Mayhem in Eighteenth-Century France,” Barty had dressed as one of Louis XIV’s courtiers in skin-hugging electric-yellow breeches, white silk tights and black patent shoes with shiny buckles. A frock coat made of pink damask fell to his mid-thigh and a shirt made of hundreds of tiny ruffles cascaded from his neck to his waist. Made for a child in a BBC period drama from the 1970s, the costume was several sizes too small, even though Barty wore control knickers and a corset and had refused solid food for three days. However, the pièce de résistance was a huge wig, two foot tall topped with a golden galleon nestling in clouds of white pomaded hair. “Borrowed it from Elton, darling,” Barty would tell anyone who asked, and most who did not.
Vlad pulled the lapels of his leather coat up over his cheeks and, sinking low into the soft white sharkskin seat, hoped that no one he knew would spot them. He felt exhausted by the thought of an evening with Barty.
Bad news had just come in that afternoon from the factory in Eshbijan. A pipe had exploded on the factory floor, spraying 213 workers with molten metal. There were two fatalities, and sixty-four workers were in hospital with fourth-degree burns. Their families’ silence could be bought, suitable reparations made, but if news of the accident got out, Vlad’s hope of launching his company on the London Stock Exchange would be jeopardised. Almost as worrying was that news of the accident reached the Leader two hours and forty-five minutes before Vlad was informed. Clearly the powers were embedded deep in his organisation. Vlad knew there was no one he could trust.
“Oh, do cheer up,” Barty said, catching a glimpse of the Russian’s morose face. “We are going to a party. If we don’t like it we can go on. That’s the lovely thing about the art world—there’s such a gamut of choice. We can be serious in Spitalfields, grungy in Golders Green or chic in Chelsea. Mind you, though the venue changes, the people don’t. Funny how insular cultural life is: same old, same old.”
Vlad’s opinion of the art world was plummeting. In recent weeks he had looked at several highly prized, ludicrously priced and utterly baffling exhibitions. One artist had filled bookcases with hundreds of tiny pots barely visible behind heavily frosted glass, while another, a German, painted deformed upside-down figures in a sea of squiggles. Vlad had been offered a patch of graffiti by a dead street artist for more than the value of his new house, or the work of a wunderkind who lacquered flock wallpaper and sold it for hundreds of thousands. What made the whole sales process even more bewildering was that to buy one of these works, Vlad would have to join an exclusive waiting list, clearing time unknown. No wonder people preferred the cash-and-carry system of the auction house. The week before he had bought a Warhol Elvis and a Chairman Mao at Monachorum’s evening sale, hoping that the Leader would gratefully receive the King and the Potentate.
To his surprise, the Office of Central Control liked Hirst’s fly-and-diamond paintings but rejected Chairman Mao with a note saying, “The Leader doesn’t want any reminder of slit eyes.” This was as near to a joke as the regime got and Vlad had almost laughed. Barty put the Chinaman in Vlad’s new kitchen in Chester Square, saying it was “chic” to have $30 million hanging above the cooker.
Vlad’s car turned through the vast ornate gates of the Royal Academy’s courtyard. The façade was floodlit and the stone steps were lined with semi-naked dwarfs dressed in gold togas and holding flares. An elephant stood disconsolately to one side, ridden by a young mahout wearing an oversized turban, who was almost blue with cold. The elephant swayed slightly from left to right.
“That poor beast is everywhere this week,” Barty said dismissively. “I saw him at Doris’s, then at the Credit Russe bash and again at the Astors’.”
Vlad followed Barty through revolving doors to the foot of a grand staircase.
“Make way, make way,” Barty announced to anyone who might listen. “Meet Vlad.”
A few turned curiously, but most were interested only in the business of seeing and being seen. “He’s frightfully, stinky rich,” Barty said in a stage whisper. “Makes Croesus look like”—he hesitated, struggling for a suitable metaphor—“like a pound store…yes, he makes Croesus look…” But, distracted by the sight of a wall of photographers, Barty instantly forgot his train of thought.
Looking around, Vlad realised that his red T-shirt offered a rare dash of colour in a sea of black and white, punctuated by an occasional yellow or pink handbag and a turquoise glove peeking from a breast pocket. The men wore unstructured suits and white T-shirts. Most of the women sported dresses cut in angular patterns, their hair was often erratically cropped and many preferred identical heavy-rimmed spectacles.
Barty’s outfit delighted the paparazzi and he twirled before them in a blizzard of flashbulbs. Vlad went up the grand carpeted staircase lined with young girls holding trays of champagne. Vlad wondered why the waitresses were so often better-looking than the guests.
Worried that the Russian would tire quickly of the crowd and the paintings with their delicate courtly scenes set in ornamental glades, Barty left the photographers and, mindful of his tight seams, carefully made his way upstairs. Looking around the first room he was delighted to see many old friends and potential conquests. Barty had a strict ratio of chat to status: only the very important got more than a few minutes; the rest got an air kiss and a few sentences.
The first person he saw was a harassed-looking Septimus Ward-Thomas of the National Gallery.
“Barty, hello,” Septimus said wanly.
“You look tired, Septimus,” Barty observed.
“Exhausted, actually. The department is insisting on a restructure—whatever that means.”
“Bloody bureaucrats,” Barty said cheerfully.
“Do you know, I am head of a major gallery but have no time to look at art? My diary is jam-packed with civil servants, union leaders, plutocrats and potential donors.”
“I suspect it was ever thus, dear Septimus—van Dyck and Titian had to spend most of their lives kowtowing to their respective Charleses? Poor old Donatello could hardly pick up a chisel without Cosimo de’ Medici bursting into his studio. Stiffen your upper lip.”
Barty moved off in the direction of Earl Beachendon on the other side of the room. Nimbly avoiding the plump and dull daughter of a client, he greeted the auctioneer warmly.
“Barty, you look marvellous.” Beachendon looked at his old friend with amused eyes.
“One tries, one tries,” Barty said, smiling. “So you know I have this nice big Russian who wants to buy art.”
“The whole of London is talking about nothing else,” Beachendon replied truthfully. “I’m longing to meet him.”
“I will let you have him next Thursday. Can you throw together a little lunch party? Pretty girls and lots of shopping opportunities.”
“You could be my knight in shining armour,” Beachendon said.
“There’s serious competition,” Barty said. Both men understood the code.
“Five per cent?” Beachendon offered.
“Call it six and we will see you next week.” Barty smiled happily.
“That leaves me with next to nothing.”
“OK—five and a half if he spends less than three million, rising to six per cent after that.”
“Four if it’s over ten million,” Beachendon countered.
Barty put his hands on his hips. “You are a hard taskmaster.”
Beachendon smiled. “See you on Thursday.”
Spotting Delores in a far corner, Barty headed in her direction. “Why are you standing here? It’s right out of the action.”
Delores jerked her thumb behind her. “The canapés come out of that door. It means I am first in line.”
“What am I going to do with you? If you get any fatter, I will be able to bounce you out of these doors, down Piccadilly and around St. James’s Park.”
“Your breeches are far too tight. I dare you to eat one crudité—I don’t think those seams will hold.”
“Yours will burst before mine,” Barty quipped back. Spotting Mrs. Appledore across the room, he sprinted away from Delores.
“Darling, your hair. I adore the pink rinse.”
“My hairdresser said it was fetching,” Mrs. Appledore replied, gently tapping her curls in place.
“Can I copy you?” Barty squealed excitedly.
“Always,” said Mrs. Appledore, looking rather pleased; imitation was the best form of flattery.
“You haven’t noticed,” Barty said, turning his chin to the left and right.
“You saw Frederick!” Mrs. Appledore clapped her hands together. “I can always spot his work. I love the way that he leaves a tiny dimple as his trademark.”
Both Mrs. Appledore and Barty had recently visited the Parisian plastic surgeon Frederick Lavalle. They also loved Patrick Brown for tummies but disagreed about who did the best knee tucks. Mrs. Appledore preferred Wain Swanson in Kentucky (famous for working on thoroughbreds’ tendons in his spare time), while Barty had recently discovered a “darling man” in Bangkok.
“I am looking for the last trophy painting,” she said. “Do you know of any?”
“Masterpieces are so hard to find these days,” Barty said.
“It’s those Russians—they buy anything,” said Mrs. Appledore.
“Don’t forget the Qataris,” Barty reminded her. “They hold the record.”
“When I was a young girl, it was a buyers’ market—you could have your pick of ten Titians. Now one is lucky to be offered a minor Canaletto.” Mrs. Appledore had rewritten her own history so many times that even she had forgotten her youth was spent on a farm thirty miles south of Warsaw and then in a nunnery outside of Krakow.
“Thank goodness for the three Ds: Debt, Death and Divorce. Eventually good pieces will come up,” Barty said.
“The museums spoil everything by buying things. It’s so hard to get works of art out of national institutions,” Mrs. Appledore lamented.
“Don’t worry, darling, they are all so cash-strapped that it’s only a matter of time before they start de-acquisitioning.”
Looking over Mrs. A’s shoulder, Barty watched the Sheikha of Alwabbi walk up the stairs flanked by four ladies-in-waiting and seven security officers. She was dressed in a magnificent white cashmere couture dress and kid-leather shoes with diamond-encrusted heels.
“Do you know that she has a room the size of a tennis court just for her jewels?” Barty said.
“Who? What are you talking about?” Mrs. Appledore turned to follow Barty’s gaze. “Oh my God. Look at that rock. It’s the Dar a Leila—it used to belong to Shah Jahan. Don’t you love the way she’s had it set?”
The diamond as big as a pigeon’s egg hung on a rope of black pearls.
“Too chic,” Barty agreed. “I’m going to introduce myself.”
Moments later, bending from the waist to the floor, Barty did a deep bow before Her Highness. It was graceful but too much for the seams of his yellow breeches. Those standing behind Barty had a sudden glimpse of his scarlet silk underwear. Barty squealed. Her Highness assumed that this strange man’s sudden yelp was a protestation of allegiance, not unlike the ululations that her subjects let out when a member of the Alwabbi family passed by.
Turning into the courtyard of the Royal Academy and seeing a large, living Indian elephant, Annie wondered if she had gone mad. It stood forlornly in front of the doorway, ridden by a frozen-looking boy wearing a turban.
Why the hell did I come? Annie thought, taking a glass of wine in each hand and heading up the large staircase. The email from the lonely hearts club had arrived that afternoon. “Last-minute call-up for all you lonely hearts. Come to the opening of the fête galante exhibition at London’s Royal Academy tonight, 6:30 to 8 p.m.” Not knowing how to kill the hour between finishing Memling’s dinner and meeting Jesse at the National Gallery, Annie decided to attend. Perhaps an exhibition called “Music, Madness and Mayhem in Eighteenth-Century France” would provide inspiration for Delores’s dinner.
Vlad, keen to escape from Barty, found himself looking idly at the paintings. Most were whimsical pastoral scenes: people dressed much like Barty, frolicking in glades. The subject matter and atmosphere were in total contrast to Vlad’s former life in Siberia, and for that reason alone he quite liked the pictures.
At the end of the main room there was a single canvas of a nearly life-size clown dressed in white with the saddest expression that Vlad had ever seen. Vlad looked into the man’s eyes and was shocked to realise that this inanimate Pierrot, painted nearly three hundred years before Vlad’s birth, understood exactly what he was feeling. The clown radiated a feeling of loss, of being isolated in a strange country, of a life lived without purpose or meaning; above all, the clown knew how it felt to be rejected. Vlad knew this strange painted man had, like him, loved a woman who was unobtainable and was also an exile from his homeland. Vlad began to cry; great fat salty tears coursed down his face followed by involuntary sobs pressing the wind out of his ribcage. Patting his pockets, he hoped that someone, one of his many servants perhaps, had thought to put a handkerchief there. There were none, of course, and he raised his jacket towards his nose.
“Here, have this.”
Through tear-filled eyes Vlad looked down and saw a delicate hand holding out a large piece of material.
“It makes me want to cry too. I know exactly how he is feeling,” Annie said, handing the dishcloth that she had forgotten to take out of her work trousers to the weeping man.
Vlad wiped his eyes with the stripy material and looked at the woman dressed in black trousers, a duffle coat and Doc Martens standing beside him. She had a mane of curly auburn-coloured hair and a dusting of freckles on her nose.
“You an art advisor?” he asked, thinking of Lyudmila.
“I’m a cook,” Annie said.
Though she was not blonde and was rather small, Vlad thought there was something attractive and wonderfully tender about her.
“Do paintings always reduce you to tears?” Annie asked.
Vlad shook his head—he was beginning to feel embarrassed.
“Shall we walk round together?” Annie asked. “I don’t know anyone here.”
Vlad nodded and followed her into the next room. Few had strayed away from the central party and Vlad and Annie were able to look at the pictures unimpeded.
“I am beginning to really like Watteau’s works,” Annie said. “His characters are so real, his colours so vibrant and the compositions crackle with life.”
Vlad nodded but he was looking at Annie. Could she be the one to help stave off his loneliness?
“You can almost overhear their conversations. In fact, I wonder if, viewed together, these pictures are an early version of sitcoms? Look,” she said, glancing from one canvas to another, “the same people appear in different pictures.” Annie pointed out a flat-faced man and a woman with an upturned nose who seemed to pop up in one painting and then in another. “Oh do look—here is the clown again, looking even more downcast.”
Though his English had improved, Vlad had trouble following the conversation.
“Dinner tonight, you?” Vlad asked Annie, assuming that Barty would know the best place.
“No thank you,” she said firmly.
“Please,” Vlad said. Suddenly, he really wanted this woman to talk to him, and to share an evening with him.
“I have an appointment,” said Annie. A few weeks ago she might have said yes. She liked the Russian’s sad face, his battered demeanour and even the hideous oversized leather jacket. She was also amused that in this sea of wealthy, connected people, the only other seemingly poor and lonely person had asked her out.
Twenty minutes later, Annie was standing with Jesse and Agatha in the National Gallery’s conservation studio considering the painting. It was just after 7:45 p.m., the sky outside had turned an inky black and the room was lit by one harsh tungsten bulb. Jesse tried to appear nonchalant and not look at Annie too often. Since their last meeting, she had, he decided, become more beautiful. Her hair settled like an auburn halo around her face and her white skin seemed to glow in the dark. Everything about her was fragile yet strong, energetic yet wistful. In the unflattering glare of the overhead light, he marvelled at her black lashes, the bluish hue of her eyelids, the pink curves of her earlobes and a tiny smattering of freckles, shaped like a crescent moon, on the back of her left hand.
“Though it is far too soon to make pronouncements,” Agatha told Annie, “there is good evidence to suggest that your painting is from the early eighteenth century and is not a copy.”
“How can you be so sure?” Annie tried to swallow her excitement.
“There are several technical tricks we use. The first is a cleaning patch.” She pointed to a piece of sky and the treetops in the top left-hand corner. Compared to the dull yellows in the rest of the painting, this little area, about the size of a matchbox, had sprung into life; the foliage shimmered.
“Why didn’t you go further?” Annie asked.
“Even that little patch test took about fifteen hours of painstaking work,” Jesse explained. “It has to be done at a snail’s pace to avoid accidental damage.”
“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to sound presumptuous.” Annie blushed, feeling brash and ungrateful. This woman was working for free and in her spare time.
Agatha smiled. “As I said, this picture has brought Jesse back into my life, so it’s a fair exchange.”
Jesse smiled gratefully at Agatha.
“The main problem is that the original paint had been covered with successive coats of thick brown varnish. Going forward, we will have to make a decision whether to take it all off or thin it out. Although the first is easier to achieve, it can remove the old patina. Thankfully the last few people to slap on a coat or two of varnish used a mastic resin base, which is the most reversible.”
Taking her torch, she beckoned for Annie to come close to the painting and, with her finger hovering over the surface, she pointed to the cleaned patch.
“Whoever did this was an extraordinarily skilled painter: just look at this foliage. Although it has all the depth and movement of a deep glade on a hot summer’s day, though you can almost hear the bird song and smell the sun’s warmth on the leaves, he has made the whole thing with just a few dabs of brown and reddish brown.”
“But the effect is green and gold,” Annie said, staring in wonder.
“He prepared a blue and white ground and then flicked the colours over,” Agatha said, shining the torch over the area. “It’s also possible that he used a green or brown glaze of his own. If we take off too much varnish, we could wipe away his work.”
Putting down the torch, she went over to her worktable and returned with three large black-and-white photographs. Annie looked at one but could not really understand it—it was grainy and smudged but there was a ghost of a figure and a few highlights in white, visible in one corner. Looking more closely, she recognised the outline of a clown. In the next photograph, she detected the woman and her admirer. The last photograph was unreadable, to her untrained eye; a series of squares and numerals.
“You are right to look nonplussed by this one,” Agatha said, smiling. “Two of the X-rays are obvious but this one is of the back of the canvas. Those odd shapes hint at significant and revealing stamps hidden under different linings.”
“A bit like pass the parcel—you never know what you will find when you take off the wrapping,” Jesse said, and he and Agatha laughed.
“Stamps?” Annie asked, baffled by the conversation and failing to get the joke.
“In much the same way as a farmer stamps his cows, owners like to leave a proprietary mark,” Agatha explained before bringing out two photocopies of similar crests taken from a book and placing these next to the large photograph.
“This crest is undoubtedly the same insignia that Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, used but even more interestingly, this number, three hundred and twelve, is a cataloguing system that Louis XV put on pictures that entered his collection between March and September 1745.”
“How on earth do you know that?” Annie asked, studying the sequence of numbers.
“A colleague’s life work has been cross-referencing contemporary sales catalogues and inventories from that period. Using his research we have been able to pinpoint when works went in and out of the royal collection.”
“Perhaps the gallery should start hanging paintings with their backs on show,” Jesse joked.
“You might laugh but we have often discussed doing just that,” Agatha said.
“What else did you discover?” Annie asked.
“There are two other numbers—here, at the bottom, two hundred and thirty-four, and in the top right-hand corner, you can just see the outline of an eighty—the latter looks a little bit like Catherine the Great’s, but that would be far too exciting.”
“Why?”
“It would mean that your little picture has the most interesting history or provenance of any work I have ever come across,” Agatha said.
Annie, Jesse and Agatha looked at the painting. Annie thought back to the anvil-faced man at the British Museum: was this the answer to his riddle? She tried to remember the kings’ and queens’ names. What was it he had said? Louis, Catherine and Victoria? Annie tried to remember.
“Just imagine—you would be linked to some of the greatest rulers in history,” Jesse said to Annie.
“From king to queen to Miss Annie McDee, mistress of a small flat in Shepherd’s Bush, four pairs of trousers, eleven shirts, three pairs of shoes, a black dress, and a broken washing machine,” Annie said, with more than a trace of irony.
“Plus a masterpiece,” Jesse added.
“It partly explains why people want to own great works. It connects them to a glorious heritage and magnificent rulers,” Agatha said.
Annie made a fake royal wave at Jesse, who bowed deferentially.
“Actually, there is more good news,” Agatha said, producing what to Annie looked like an X-ray. Just visible among the greys were the flowing white lines of the artist’s preparatory sketch.
“We used infrared reflectography on the painting and if you look closely, you can see an underdrawing.”
“What does this mean?” Annie asked, confused.
“That it is highly unlikely to be a copy. Copyists don’t need to work out where or how to place their figures—the original artist has done that for them.”
Agatha produced a handful of photocopies of the reflectographs taken from other pictures by Watteau as comparisons.
“I don’t want to raise your hopes but these images are X-rays of other paintings by Watteau and you can see certain similarities.”
Annie looked closely, but to her the white marks could have been done by anyone.
“It’s like spotting a person’s handwriting,” Jesse explained. “Different artists used different strokes and techniques.”
Picking up one example, Annie thought she could detect a faint pattern beneath the pastoral scene—a shield? Or a lance? “What does this mean?” she asked.
“Watteau was often too poor to buy canvas so he painted on whatever came to hand. In this case it was the back of coach doors covered in heraldic signs. We know of another painting, La Declaration, that he painted over a copperplate engraving.”
“He was too poor to afford a piece of canvas?” Annie asked.
“That’s what we assume. We found another clue about his financial circumstances. Follow me,” Agatha said, leading them through the door, along a narrow corridor and through two large doors. Beyond these were a series of rooms organised like a scientific laboratory.
The room was small and dark. There were several computers on the table and the walls were lined with shelves laden with test tubes and scientific paraphernalia. Annie looked at Jesse in amazement. She walked past the National Gallery twice a day and assumed that it was merely a repository for paintings.
Sitting at one screen was a man in a white coat, with wild grey hair and an irrepressibly cheerful expression.
“This is Dr. Frears,” Agatha said.
“The lucky lady,” Dr. Frears said, getting up from his computer and holding out his hand. “Most of us can only dream of walking out of a junk shop with a lovely work of art.”
“Maybe it only happens to people who know nothing,” Annie said wryly.
“Would you like to see what I have been studying?”
Annie nodded. In spite of her scepticism and Delores’s impending dinner, these engaging people and their extraordinary expertise were capturing her imagination. She followed Dr. Frears to his computer and looked at an image of a mille-feuille gateau with layers of different-coloured cream and fruit.
“A cake?” she asked.
“This is a cross-section of a pinprick of paint taken from the side of your canvas multiplied several million times,” explained Dr. Frears. “While not visible to the human eye, that little spot can tell us many stories.”
Fascinated but entirely bewildered, Annie looked back at the image.
“The pigments used in your painting are identical to others in works by Antoine Watteau. What is fascinating is this tiny fragment of Prussian blue—we know that this pigment only arrived in Paris in early 1700. How your man could have afforded it is anyone’s guess. In this lower section is an iron oxide that he often used and which we know came from a shop quite near to his lodgings.”
Annie and Jesse leaned in to the computer to inspect the layers of gradated colour and grain.
“So, as this young man suspected,” Dr. Frears nodded at Jesse, “we cannot discount that the picture was by Watteau’s hand.”
“Surely it proves it?” Annie said.
“Unfortunately we can’t conclude that. Our work is mainly to discount rather than prove,” Agatha said.
“Another absolutely fascinating discovery is here.” Dr. Frears pointed to a tiny black mark. “This turns out to be part of a brush bristle.”
Annie bit her lip—she wanted to giggle—what else would someone paint with?
Dr. Frears ploughed on. “There is also a trace of wine and blood and some kind of animal fat mixed in with the paint.”
“Perhaps we should send his DNA to our friends at King’s College?” Agatha suggested.
“So they can clone the painter?” Annie asked.
Dr. Frears smiled. “You never know!”
An hour later, in a small pub off St. James’s Square, Annie and Jesse sat at the corner table drinking white wine.
“I’d love to have bought you champagne,” Jesse said apologetically.
“This is lovely, thank you,” Annie said.
“Here’s to your painting.” Jesse raised his wine glass and Annie tapped hers against his. Having a drink with him was the least she could do. There was a clock on the wall behind the bar, it was 8:30 p.m.; Annie was tired and wanted to get home.
“You must be excited about the picture,” Jesse said.
“Excited? I don’t understand this world. There is evidence to say that the picture is authentic. The restorer likes it and the scientist admires it. Age tests bear out. Paint tests stack up. There is even an engraving of the same work in a catalogue but yet none of this matters unless certain experts agree.”
“Art is subjective,” Jesse said.
“So is God.”
“Isn’t it comforting that beauty can’t be decided by science? That it is in the eye of the beholder?” Jesse asked.
“That is too random for me.”
“Isn’t it like cooking—you can never quite tell how things will turn out?”
“At least there is a time frame with food—if you go on too long it spoils or burns.”
“We have found out so much in a relatively short time,” Jesse said. “We know that the picture is old, that it was painted at the time Watteau lived. That it was owned by some swanky people and that it isn’t a copy.”
“What next?”
I would like to kiss you, Jesse thought. I long to take you in my arms and brush the crossness and hurt out of your shoulders and kiss your eyelids. I want to stand next to you every minute of every day. I want to tell you how extraordinary you are to me.
Forcing these feelings aside, he said, “Let’s try and prove a strong line of ownership from the present day back to the early eighteenth century and make the case far more compelling.”
Annie looked across the pub at another couple sitting hand in hand looking at a holiday brochure. Something about the way that the woman leaned into the crook of the man’s arm made her longing to be held almost overwhelming.
“Why?” Annie asked, forcing herself back to the present.
“Why what?” Jesse asked.
“Why are you helping me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jesse said. “I like you. A lot. I was hoping that you might like me enough, a little bit enough, that is, to go on seeing me.”
Annie looked into her glass of wine, a feeling of panic welling up inside her. She could cope with meaningless encounters, but the prospect of real emotional involvement was terrifying.
“I don’t feel the same way. I’m sorry.” She stood up, pulled on her coat, rushed out of the pub and on to the street. Walking away as fast as she could, she told herself: I must not fall for anyone again, it just leads to desolation. I must not.
Jesse sat for a few moments staring into his half-drunk glass of wine, unable to understand how he had misjudged the situation so badly. While it was true that Annie had never actively encouraged him, nor had she rejected him. He didn’t feel angry, just abject. Jumping up, he ran after her.
Looking up and down King Street, he caught sight of her hunched figure heading towards St. James’s. Jesse sprinted down the road and caught up with Annie as she turned the corner.
“Wait, please,” he said, panting, out of breath. “I am not in the habit of making declarations to women—in fact, you are the first and, if you must know, I feel like an absolute idiot pursuing you like this, but I am overwhelmed, literally, by my feelings for you—I realise that this will probably be the death knell, the final straw, but even if you walk off now, even if I have got this completely wrong, at least if you ever change your mind, you know how to find me.”
With this, without giving Annie a moment to reply, he turned and walked quickly away.