After several secret nocturnal journeys to see the Weeping Woman Turton has become conceited in his role as guide. Just as a modern Egyptian feels personal pride as he leads American tourists around the pyramids, as though he were sheened with sweat from lifting those very blocks of stone himself, so Turton Pym, an artist, just like Picasso was an artist, feels a sense of pride and responsibility when he shows off the Weeping Woman. When that light twangs on and his visitors gasp, Turton heats with a blush of accomplishment.

Tonight he drapes an angora rug across Harry’s shoulders and hands him the picnic basket laden with petit-fours and two bottles of Moët. Harry is more than a little pissed off that his expedition and his woman have been hijacked by Turton dressed like a French Riviera cat-burglar in grey overalls, from beneath which emerge the cuffs and rollneck of a striped skivvy, on his head a beret and on his feet espadrilles. Turton looks likely to skip and dance. Spry, he looks, he thinks. He takes the key from his desk and, setting aside the painting of the boy in the candlebark tree, he unlocks the green steel door. Gently taking Mireille’s hand he steps into the gallery. He leads them with his torch beam up the dark stairs and along the goat-track through the thickets of art in the storeroom, Harry bumping canvases with the picnic basket and being called an ox and a zombie by his teacher.

Turton leads them through dark galleries until they are in the hall of the Great Europeans. He spreads the rug, sits Harry and Mireille on the floor beneath the Weeping Woman and goes to the light switch. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, presenting, in all her divine pain … Señor Picasso’s Weeping Woman.’ In a gesture of showmanship he makes them wait five seconds before turning on the spotlight dedicated to her, leaving the rest of the enormous room in darkness.

There she is. Isolated. A screaming diva upon a stage, her ostentatious horror accentuated by the silence and darkness of the gallery. Harry watches Mireille smiling at the woman. Not a smile of admiration, he thinks. Not a beam of adoration. The wistful smile that emerges slowly, unbidden, is of someone reminiscing. Turton pops the cork on the first bottle of Moët and pours the champagne into flutes.

During the night they wander with their torches and glasses of champagne and joints from painting to painting, enjoying having these riches to themselves. Little tête-à-têtes break out between Harry and Rembrandt, Mireille and Sickert, Turton and Gauguin, such is the dream-like feeling in the air. But always they return to home base, the Weeping Woman, beneath which their picnic rug is spread, with news of their conversations with long-dead artists.

As they are about to leave Mireille begins to cry. They ask her why. ‘It is … it is … so intimate,’ she says. ‘The dark. Such an intimacy that unshackles the art and allows it to … to live.’ Holding her cheek against Turton’s she whispers thanks.

After this Turton stops taking his posse of students into the gallery at night. Instead he chaperones Harry and Mireille. Mireille packs picnic baskets and they camp beneath the Weeping Woman and take strolls from there. Turton puts his arm through hers and squires her around as if he were a duke or a tycoon, the owner of all this priceless wonder.

On their fourth visit they are reclining beneath the Weeping Woman when Mireille asks, ‘What is so special about her? Why is she so difficult to paint that only Picasso could paint her?’

‘She’s not so difficult to paint,’ Turton says. ‘Now that she exists, anyone could paint her.’

‘Not anyone could paint her. I could not paint her. Harry could not paint her. You could not paint her.’

‘I could paint that same painting, stroke for stroke identical, inside a week. The artistic skill required is nothing to speak of. The thing is, I could never have invented her. Picasso invented her. He came up with the idea of her.’

‘You could not paint her. Not the same. Your animals are groovy, but, you know … this is another thing, Turton.’

Turton is wounded by the mention of his animals. ‘Identical twin,’ he boasts. ‘Only half a dozen people in Oz could tell them apart. I’m not boasting, you understand. Many an artist can replicate another fellow’s work.’

‘Bullshit,’ she says. She is lying full length on the rug, her skirt pooled mid-thigh, a joint angling from her lips, staring at the Weeping Woman. ‘Bullshit. You could not get close.’

‘Oh,’ he says with stubborn finality, ‘I could do it.’

Mireille’s feet are in Turton’s lap and he is massaging them, forcing surprised whimpers from her. Harry looks on, wondering if he has the right to protest. Is she his woman or not? Are people in the art world naturally licentious? Maybe this is free love and he has to get used to it. It would probably be uncool to say anything. He tries not to bat an eyelid while Turton strokes and kneads her feet.

‘I could,’ Turton says softly. ‘Identical.’

‘No. No, no, no. I bet you a foot-massage to a fornication you cannot get anything close of her.’ She laughs. Harry strenuously doesn’t bat an eyelid.

Turton looks at her with his face held calm and asks slowly, ‘If I can copy that painting exactly, you have sex with me? If I can’t, I give you a foot massage? That’s the bet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you aware I win either way?’

‘Well, you cannot do it. So … that is the bet.’ She is serious now. Harry looks on with the pulse rate of a charging Hussar, still frantically not batting an eyelid.

‘Then …’ says Turton, his mouth suddenly dry, pausing as if considering his options. ‘Then, yes. As my artistic integrity is at stake, yes – I accept the wager.’