‘At least it’s a bloody corner,’ I mutter.
‘Huh?’
‘Nothing, just trying to figure this out. How are you going?’
‘Got the threads aligned so I’m just going to finish trying to reweave what I can and snip the rest. At least they’re not too distorted, and I think the stress of the last couple of days mean my fingers are just damp enough to help the fabric relax.’
I stare at his profile for a moment. ‘So sweaty hands are a good thing for an art conservator?’
‘Great for this, total buzzkill for the ladies.’ John doesn’t look at me, but reaches out a hand, fingers splayed, and mimes wiping it slowly down my face.
‘You are all kinds of gross.’
‘But on the plus side, this is going to be a great restoration job.’
‘I’m not convinced it’s enough of a trade-off, but never mind. The real question is, does that mean you’re almost done with that bit? Because I could use an extra set of eyes to figure this out.’
‘Crumbling under the pressure, Alex?’
I contemplate a snappy comeback, but instead shrug and turn back to my photo scraps. ‘Whatever.’
As I push them into a different configuration, I notice a couple of tiny patches of white. At first I figure it’s just the back layer of the photo itself, a place where the tear had separated the fabric of the paper, but as I look closer I can see the different colour is part of the photo surface. It’s too small for me to make out what it might be, but at least I now have another reference point to reconstruct the image. Some magnification would help, and I push myself back from the bench and stand up.
‘Finished so soon?’
‘Need magnification.’
‘There’s a couple of magnifier lamps over there.’ John gestures vaguely at the far wall.
Sure enough, I find several on the floor under a bench, and select one that has a large magnifier and a base that’s configured with a clamp for the edge of the work bench. Returning to my spot, I fix the clamp to the bench, tighten the screw and wrestle the magnifier into a good position, then flick the switch. Nothing happens. Sighing, I get down on the floor and plug it in. Fortunately, there are plenty of power outlets underneath the benches.
Back on my stool, I peer through the lens at the brightly illuminated photo scraps. The white patches are much more obvious now, and I can also pick out a few bits of a dark, almost black, colour. Reaching in, I start rearranging the pieces. It takes me a moment to sort out my hand-eye coordination while I’m looking through the lens, but once I get the feel of it, things start to take shape. I identify the corner pieces and set them out, then find all the other bits that seem to have a sharp edge. One by one, I start trying to match up an edge piece with one of the corners. I work through three with no success, and the fourth piece also looks to be going nowhere. Then I try it with the third corner and they fit. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
Staring at the two aligned fragments doesn’t tell me anything, so I pick up the next piece and start again. It’s a slow process, but bit by bit I’m reconstructing the photo. Now I can see there are some patches of red that are lighter than others, and there also seems to be more than one area where white was used. For a moment I think I see the edge of a roof, but then I push the idea aside. Until the photo is whole again, I don’t want to speculate about what I might be looking at. We already figured it’s a photo of a painting, but even using the magnifier I can only make out the barest hint of surface texture. That suggests either the artist produced a very slick finish, or the painting is really big, forcing the photographer to stand well back to take the picture – so far back that surface detail is indiscernible.
After almost two hours, I’m down to the last few pieces, twisting them this way and that to fill a hole in the centre of the image.
‘Hey, nice job!’
I jump. John is right behind me, head bent to one side so he can look underneath the magnifier.
‘Crap, you startled me.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t realise you were so engrossed.’
‘I’m nearly done. I had to swap this corner area with that one.’ I point to the offending areas. ‘But once I got that sorted it’s been a lot easier.’ I look along the bench at Man Proposes. ‘Are you done?’
‘Well the fibres are all realigned, but I figure I should wait for Fiona before starting on the next bit.’
‘Are you going to patch it?’
John winces. ‘The tear’s over 14 centimetres, which is about the upper end of what I’d normally patch, and Royal Holloway may decide they want the entire painting lined so it looks like a pristine canvas. Of course lining is a bit harder to undo than a simple patch. Besides that, fully lining the canvas would take too long if MIMA still wants the painting in their exhibition.’
‘So what then?’
‘I’ll wait and see how the front looks when that lot dries, and probably patch it. If Royal Holloway don’t like it when they get the painting back, they can easily remove the patch and line it themselves.’
‘Rule one of conservation, right?’
‘Yup, the principle of reversibility: any work done can be undone at a future date.’
‘Whoever ripped up this photograph definitely wasn’t thinking that way. However …’ I swing the magnifier away from the bench. ‘Voila!’
We both stare at reassembled photo.
John leans in close. ‘Is it just me, or does that look like a Brett Whiteley?’
‘It’s not just you. Only…it’s a red Whiteley. I didn’t really think he did much red. Orange, sure. Blue, hell yes, but red?’
‘Yeah, exactly. Although …’
‘Although?’
‘Not sure. We’ll have to do a bit of book research.’
‘How about we find some cardboard or paper to stick this to first? Before someone sneezes or something?’
‘Then coffee?’
‘I thought Fiona was organising that,’ I say. ‘Did she come back and go again while I was wrapped up in the photo? I didn’t notice her.’
‘Nope. She knew we were almost at the leave-the-canvas-and-wait bit, but still … I assume she was feeling crap about Meredith and went home.’
‘But she was supposed to be getting us coffees. Bit slack to just up and leave without saying anything.’
‘Maybe that’s part of the reason Giles wanted me to oversee this. Her work so far has been pretty good, to the point where I was thinking my presence was just a bit of window dressing for Royal Holloway’s sake. You know, our senior conservator, Meredith Buchanan, is sadly unable to complete the task so we have engaged the services …’
‘Except now you think maybe Fiona’s unreliable and Giles wants to make sure everything is done correctly and on time?’
‘Maybe.’ John shrugs. ‘Or maybe it’s nothing and the fact her colleague and immediate boss just died in the workplace suddenly hit home.’
‘I hope she’s okay. Should we check with Giles?’
‘I don’t want to get her into trouble.’ John pushes his glasses further up his nose. ‘Let’s wait for a bit.’
‘In that case, glue the photo and then coffee?’
‘Lots and lots of coffee.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
I have to scrounge to find a bit of cardboard and some spray adhesive. They’re not the sorts of things you find in a conservation lab, so I leave John with the reassembled photo while I expand the search to the surrounding labs and offices. Most of the offices are locked – I guess a lot of people have gone home because of Meredith – but there is one very intense woman hard at work in textiles conservation. She barely glances at me when I walk into the room, and when I ask about glue and cardboard, she grunts and gives me a withering look. I take her response as a negative, resume my quest, and eventually find wh
at we need in a stationery cupboard several rooms away.
When I get back to John, he is studying the photo intently, turning his body this way and that, looking at it from all angles.
‘If this is a picture of a Whiteley painting,’ he says as I come up behind him, ‘why is it ripped up and what does it have to do with anything?’
‘So you do think it’s a Whiteley, then?’
‘Can’t tell one hundred percent from a photograph. I mean, if it weren’t for the colour I might be more enthusiastic. But then again, the unusual colour would make it something special and significant if it was in fact a Whiteley.’
I shake up the can of adhesive, listening to the distinctive rattle of the pea mixing the propellant with the glue. John picks up a couple of pieces of photo and I spray some glue on the cardboard, then he carefully aligns the pieces and presses them down, immediately collecting the next two. We work like that for a few minutes, not speaking, just focusing. Me on not getting glue everywhere, and him on getting the pieces tight and straight. The fumes are getting a bit heady by the time we’re on the last segment and I step back as John fits the fragments, gulping in the cleaner air but still feeling the glue fumes in the back of my sinuses.
‘Probably should have used an extractor hood for that.’ John joins me a few paces away from the table.
‘It was a bit stronger than I anticipated.’
‘Let’s get those coffees and take them outside.’
I pick up the franken-photo. ‘We can talk about this while we caffeine up.’
‘And sugar. I can feel myself becoming dangerously hypoglycaemic.’
‘That could just be the glue fumes.’
‘Whatever. I want cake.’
I follow John out into the hall and we make our way to the mousehole and then out into the sunshine and ostensibly fresh air of St Kilda Road. As we stand there squinting, I realise how long I’ve been hunched over the work table, straining to see a pattern emerging from the shiny photograph parts.
‘If we’re going to call this lunch, can we try to find something healthy?’
John looks at me blankly. ‘As long as the healthy shit is sitting next to cake.’
Shaking my head, I start walking down St Kilda Road, away from the city.
John hesitates. ‘There’d be plenty on offer in the Southgate food court.’
‘I’d rather be outside for a bit. I know you’re thinking of chips and dimmies, but I’m sure one of the cafés down this way will be able to dip something in grease and fry it for you.’
‘Promises, promises.’
John catches up and we walk past the front of the Museum of Art. Children and tourists are pressing their hands into the water wall, and in the moat, Deborah Halpern’s sculpture, Angel, eyeballs the passers-by from its multiple different faces. The plane trees whisper overhead, filtering the sun and contriving to make the endless stream of traffic seem like a minor aberration in a leafy idyll. Well, almost. We end up getting nearly to Domain Road before we find somewhere that meets all our culinary requirements. John orders a gourmet burger and a lamington, and I opt for a salad sandwich while trying not to think about how much I’d really like a lamington. Both of us ask for macchiatos to follow.
‘You realise the term “gourmet burger” has to be the ultimate oxymoron, don’t you?’ We’re lounging on chairs out the front of the cafe, waiting for our order to be filled.
‘Bull. It’s Angus beef, there’s a house sauce, caramelised onion, rocket, other fancy stuff and a brioche bun. It doesn’t get much more gourmet than that.’
‘I should remember that I’m talking to the man who rated dinner at Jacques Raymond “a top feed”.’
‘I stand by that one hundred percent and I’m sure Jacques would be delighted with my assessment.’
Our food arrives and we shove condiments and the serviette holder to one side. I’ve been holding onto the photograph, but now I put it on a clean bit of table and weigh it down with the bowl of sugar sachets. I glance from the image to John and back, calculating the distance sauce from his burger could potentially squirt. I think it’s safe.
John takes a huge bite, causing an assortment of vegetables to fall out the other side of the burger. He sighs rapturously and rolls his eyes at me. ‘Soooo gourmet.’
‘Doofus.’ I pick up my sandwich and then put it down again.
‘Admit it. You’re craving the burger.’
‘I’m just thinking about the photo. Should we assume Meredith had the photo?’
John has his mouth full but nods.
‘Based on the fact the scraps were in the mess where she was found?’
John swallows. ‘There’s always the possibility the picture is nothing to do with anything and a random person just happened to rip it up and throw it in the bin nearest Meredith’s work area. But if that’s the case, we’ve got absolutely nothing that would shed any light on her death. We may as well play around with this basic assumption and see if we get anywhere.’
Pushing my sandwich to one side, I pull one of the paper serviettes out of the holder and unfold it in front of me.
‘I need a pen,’ I say, then half stand and reach across the table, pulling the soft HB pencil out of John’s shirt pocket.
‘Meredith has picture of mystery painting.’ I write the words at the top of the paper as I say them, then enclose them in a circle. John takes another bite of burger.
‘Do we also think Meredith was the one to rip up the photo? And if so, why? Hiding something? But if it was something she already knew, she wouldn’t need a photo. So the photo was proof of something she’d discovered or been told, and once she’d seen it, she tried to get rid of it.’ I’m writing and drawing as I talk and a flow chart of sorts is starting to appear on the serviette.
John uses his last piece of brioche bun to wipe up the mess on his plate. ‘Why did she try to get rid of the photo?’
I stop writing and look across at him.
‘If it was proof of something, why get rid of the proof?’
I bounce the point of the pencil against the paper. ‘Um … saw the real thing so didn’t need a photo anymore?’
John doesn’t answer but reaches across and lifts up a corner of my sandwich, wrinkles his nose at the contents and lets the bread drop back into place.
‘Okay, that’s flimsy. Well, if the photo is somehow linked to her death, we can be fairly sure it wasn’t torn up because it no longer mattered. And it must have mattered, because even though it was shredded, the bits were all bundled up together in a rag.’
‘You’re skirting around the obvious and you know it, Alex.’
I wad the serviette into a ball and throw it on his plate. ‘Meredith destroyed the photo because she didn’t want anyone to find her with it.’
John points at me. ‘Bingo. Having the photo was bad news. It either implicates Meredith in something, or it tells someone else that Meredith knows something about their business.’
‘Which we think is a red Brett Whiteley.’
‘And Meredith knowing about the red painting could be bad for two reasons.’ John uses the plastic knife that came with his burger to cut the lamington in half and pushes a piece toward me.
‘I get three reasons. The first is, it’s a previously unknown painting and the owner wants to keep it quiet.’
‘I’ll grant you that’s a reason for the photo and for ripping it up, but not really an excuse to kill a person. Assuming Meredith was killed.’
‘Fair point. So the second reason – and now we’re getting more into potential murder territory – is that the painting is stolen, and Meredith found the painting and knew the identity of the thief.’
‘Plausible.’
‘And then of course, the final hypothesis is that the painting is fake and Meredith knew it was fake, but someone wants to pass it off as the
real deal and make a small fortune.’
John nods enthusiastically and we simultaneously reach for lamington chunks.
‘But wait,’ I say, spraying coconut across the table. ‘If you were going to fake a Whiteley, wouldn’t you go for the more obvious colours? That intense ultramarine or burnt orange?’
John makes a show of brushing coconut from in front of him. I’m sure that mess is all his own. ‘On the one hand it would make sense to fake something you could easily slip into the general oeuvre. Like doing another Arthur Boyd Shoalhaven. I mean, who knows how many of those he cranked out? So what’s another Whiteley Sydney Harbour or Lavender Bay painting? Who’s counting?’
A guy appears with our coffees and we sit in silence as he serves, tidies our mess, purses his lips at my untouched sandwich and departs.
‘But on the other hand …’ John empties a sugar packet into his coffee. ‘If there was documentation relating to a lost red painting, what better way to attach a ready-made provenance – albeit one with gaps – to your newly-minted fake? If there are records of Whiteley painting a red canvas and the painting itself disappeared, well …’
‘It would also work if there is a smattering of genuine red Whiteleys, wouldn’t it? They’d be rare, so you could expect that to be reflected in the value. More of a risk, but potentially more of a payoff than just producing another Big Blue Lavender Bay.’
‘Good point.’
‘Another thing. If someone has faked a red Brett Whiteley and Meredith found out, it would sort of help explain how the Alizarin Crimson ended up everywhere. If you were a forger under pressure, you’d use a fast-drying paint because you’d want the painting ready ASAP. Perhaps Meredith was suspicious and caught someone with the paint, or she had the tube of paint and was planning to confront someone with it and the photo.’
‘It’s possible, I guess.’ He taps the photograph. ‘Hopefully once we understand this red painting a bit better, other things about Meredith’s death will make more sense. I think our next job is to research red Whiteleys and the artist’s technique in general.’ John stretches both arms above his head and leans back in the plastic chair.
Painting in the Shadows Page 7
