by Neil Hegarty
‘We advise on tracking and recovering stolen artworks,’ Ward said evenly, goaded to irritation by this sensation of invisibility. ‘On counterfeiting. If a gallery or a dealer or a museum comes across a suspect piece, they ask us for advice – so, is it the genuine article, or a counterfeit? That’s mainly what we do.’
She looked at him.
‘And because it’s big business – counterfeiting, forging – it was decided to set up what you might call a centre of excellence.’
‘Counterfeiting?’ she said.
It was more and more difficult to tell a forged painting from a real one, he told her: it was a huge international business – ‘huge, huge,’ he said – with vast amounts of money at stake. So it was decided that a body needed to be set up to advise. He said, as he always said, ‘To offer advice on provenance, you know? Think Unesco, without the resources,’ and now she nodded, as they always nodded, once they saw a label attached. ‘And after a heist, after a painting or artwork gets stolen, and that also happens all the time, the local police will ask us for advice. Because if you think about it, there are only so many people who can afford to engage in this kind of theft; and part of our job is to maintain a database, to advise on likely subjects.’ And now he paused, inviting her to think about it. ‘And that’s it. That’s what we do. Possible forgeries, and thefts, and we offer guidance, and insights. It’s very much below the radar.’
He stopped, and she nodded again, and Martin raised an eyebrow. ‘Imagine,’ he said again. ‘Isn’t that clever of him?’ he said to the woman. ‘I do think that’s awfully clever of him.’ He had stepped sideways from his neutrally middle-class educated-English accent into something fruitier. ‘Really awfully clever. Lots of European cases, you know – but hush!’ Martin tapped the side of his nose. ‘We don’t like to make too much of that side of things, not nowadays. We don’t want him strung from a lamp-post for being thought European, not really.’
The woman blinked. ‘European, how? Are you, like, French?’
Ward shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Are you based in Brussels?’
Another shake of the head. ‘No, here in London. London is a centre of the global art trade, and unfortunately it’s a centre for the global art theft trade too; so it was decided to establish it here. And we go where the crime goes, no borders. But we’re not a police force,’ he added with a smile that she did not see. ‘I mean, we’re art historians, we don’t carry guns. We discreetly offer advice, and guidance, and leads. That’s it. Did you,’ he said, ‘ever hear of the Gurlitt Collection?’ She shook her head. ‘You should look it up,’ he said. She nodded.
‘No borders,’ Martin said. ‘Or if there were, he could just cross them as though they weren’t even there. Imagine the privilege of that. We’ll all be stealing his passport soon, and using it ourselves.’
‘Sounds great.’ The woman’s gaze swivelled back to Martin.
It was – great was perhaps not the word, Ward thought at the time. But it meant something; it brought satisfaction in its wake. And standing now in the waiting area, noticing that the light was slightly ruddy from the slab of crimson plastic on the wall, looking about him, even with Charlotte crouching in her den just over there, and a slashed throat as well as a stolen painting awaiting him in Dublin – he felt a wash of relief, a sense of security.
Something that resembled the security that other people assumed he had already claimed for himself.
Because he was already sorted – that was what people thought.
He had his job, and he had a house off Highgate Hill with stained glass in the front door, close to the park, and the tube, and even the hospital, should Ward stub his toe and need attention. True, Ward himself said he lived in Archway, while Martin said, ‘Highgate, darling!’ and scoffed at Ward’s careful reverse snobbery. But the fact was that they had a lovely house, with its little south-facing back garden, and enough room to swing Felicity.
‘You want to wise up,’ Martin had said.
15
And for ten years now, Ward reminded himself, they had had each other.
They had met the best way – through mutual friends who had organised a Saturday evening meal (a big meal, lots of people, safety in numbers) at a Spanish place in Farringdon. A night in November. He hadn’t known it was a set-up, though Martin had, and had arrived preened to within an inch of his life. They had clicked – Ward tried to remember this, during the bad days, the silent days – over the patatas bravas, and the tangled mess of octopus tentacles soused in garlicky oil, and the olives black and green. They had left together, just the two of them, gone for more drinks, and at the end of the night they had gone home together – to Martin’s home, which at that time was a bit of a dive on the top floor of a run-down house in Tufnell Park; but the bed was big, and that was all that either of them had at that moment cared about.
These memories were worth retaining, worth treasuring, surely they were.
The next day – in fact, the next evening, the winter darkness already settled onto the streets, the whole day gone – Ward had left, with Martin’s number stored safely on his phone, and had made his way back to Gipsy Hill, and phoned Martin as soon as he closed the front door behind him. No playing of games, no hanging about until Tuesday evening before making the next move, he was thirty years old now, life was too short for elaborate and unnecessary games of Twister – and Martin had answered on the second ring; and they had met to go to the cinema on Monday, and met again on Wednesday; and within a month Ward had given notice at Gipsy Hill and moved in with Martin. And two years later, they had cashed in their chips, and bought the house on Despard Road.
No marriage yet, but surely that would come.
So. House, partner, clothes, south-facing back garden, cat, job.
But the house was the thing. He had said something like this – perhaps not quite wisely, but it had to be said, his heart was swelling and bursting – to Martin a few months after they had moved in. That the house was the centre of it all. It might have gone wrong: surely Martin was the foundation, that was the way it worked, a house was just a pile of bricks, when it came right down to it? A little frown mark, then, a cleft, on Martin’s forehead, but on this occasion quickly smoothed away: he understood, he said. He could see where Ward was coming from.
Because Ward had had his demons, said Martin’s expression.
And Martin knew all about them, now.
And oh, how Ward had loved that house, from the first moment. They had viewed it on a Saturday morning, an autumn morning, a touch of gold in the air and light: and they had stepped into the narrow London hall, and looked up the narrow London stairs, and there was the sun shining through the windows at the back of the house, through the squares of yellow glass on the corners of the generous window on the half-landing, into all the back rooms. Not much of a view – but high enough to see a wide arc of sky.
Ward clocked another couple, a straight couple with a small boy in tow, arriving on their heels. The adults nodded warily, the estate agent handed out brochures. ‘1860 or thereabouts,’ she told them, riffling distractedly through her notes. ‘It’s down on its luck at the moment,’ she went on, eyes down, lashes curling back almost 180 degrees, reading from the brochure in front of her, ‘but a very little investment and you’d have a home to be proud of.’
Martin took Ward’s elbow, pushed him into a light-filled rear sitting room. ‘Right, you look downstairs, and I’ll look upstairs, and I’ll see you in the garden in a minute.’ This was their usual operation, after weeks and weeks of looking: it saved time; you could tell if a house was right inside of two minutes, the property pages told them, and they had realised that this was the truth. So Martin took the steep stairs two at a time, and Ward slipped into the kitchen, from where iron steps led from a back door down into the garden – there was a tiny little basement too, with direct garden access; the house had everything. They met in the garden. ‘Two good bedrooms,’ Martin reported, ‘and wai
nscoting in the bathroom, this is it,’ and ‘this is it,’ Ward repeated, and the two men turned and kissed – on the lips, this was no time for anything uptight – and the sight of the kiss caused the other people, now heavily descending the iron steps, to turn sharply and retreat back into the kitchen, shepherding the little boy in front of them – and yes, this was it. The decision made: other people were arriving to view the house, and others again behind them; but the house was theirs. The first home Ward had ever had – and he could see that Martin knew this, and knew too that, for now, there was no need for frowns.
*
‘Well, good morning,’ said Rob, glancing up from his screen, stretching, cracking his knuckles.
‘In early?’
‘Ish. I was supposed to have the kids this weekend, so plans to be made, you know.’ He was expat New Zealand, married-and-divorced with a brood of children; Ward liked to pretend he couldn’t remember exactly how many children. ‘Since Dublin seems like a foregone conclusion: Charlotte says,’ Rob added, ‘that she wants us in asap, as soon as you’re settled, she says. Good holiday?’ he added and Ward rolled his eyes. ‘Bummer, I know.’ A pause. ‘How’s Martin about it?’
Ward shrugged.
‘This one,’ Rob continued after the briefest pause, ‘sounds, well, not all that nice, really. Cut throat. Poor guy. Still, at least he’s not dead. Not yet, anyway.’
‘I know,’ Ward said, and blew out a long breath. ‘Well, come on. Let’s do this.’ As he bustled for a moment, picking up and putting down pieces of paper, he caught the edge of Rob’s cologne. Woody, an acrid tincture of sweat, masculine. He glanced at Rob, but Rob was intent on his own papers, mess, screen, and he did not glance back.
Ward watched Charlotte, seated behind her desk, watching them the length of the corridor. The corridor seemed to lengthen the moment you set foot on it, Ward always thought, like a mile-long monstrous something you’d expect to find at an airport. Also, there was Charlotte herself, and the way she made you feel. Made Ward feel, and made Rob feel, anyway: they had talked this over many times over pints of red beer and bags of designer cheese-and-onion crisps in the craft beer boozer. ‘Like you’re the biggest fool she’s ever seen,’ Rob sighed. It wasn’t a sexist thing: they were both sure it wasn’t that.
No, it was Charlotte herself.
Charlotte as a human being, Charlotte the Leaver, Charlotte who had been pretty awful before the referendum, but who since then was beyond the pale.
‘Beyond the beyond,’ Rob said that day, gazing into the supernaturally red depths of his glass of craft beer.
They knocked, entered.
‘There you are,’ Charlotte said. ‘At last. Sit.’
They sat.
‘We’re a little late getting this off the ground,’ Charlotte went on. ‘We were alerted at five o’clock this morning – of course, you both got my text.’ They nodded, naughty schoolboys. ‘So now we have a little catching up to do.’
‘You could have had someone else on a plane to Dublin at eight o’clock,’ Ward pointed out. He looked over Charlotte’s shoulder at the clock on the wall: nine ten. ‘They would have been there by now. You didn’t need us.’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘You’re the right people for the job. And you’re Irish, Ward: I thought you’d jump at the chance to do some field work, you know, on home ground.’
‘You were wrong about that.’
‘Well, wrong or not, you’re on the job: so let’s make a wrong into a right, shall we?’ She rustled some papers together: her desk was a mess too. Ward’s own desk was a shrine to order; and he didn’t believe in paper. ‘I’ll need you in Dublin by lunchtime.’
‘Ah, Charlotte, for fuck’s sake.’
This was one thing he appreciated about Charlotte: just the one. She didn’t dislike salty language; indeed, she embraced it herself. The rustling got louder. ‘Don’t you fuck’s sake me,’ she said. ‘I need you on this job, Ward; this is Victorian, this is your patch; and I want you with him, Rob; and that’s all there is to say about it. If you don’t like it’ – well, she had voted Leave – ‘you can fuck off back to Ireland, or New Zealand, or wherever it is you came from. And take me to court if you like, for saying that. Now. Take this: read about it, come back in an hour, ready for the off.’ She gestured at the door.
They did as they were told, of course: retreating down the corridor, feeling Charlotte’s gaze on the backs of their necks, ducking into one of the meeting rooms to digest and discuss, all in an hour.
‘So,’ Rob said, settling himself. ‘Tell me about this Sandborne.’ Victorian wasn’t his period: but Rob had a knack of making connections, of putting a fact to a name, and dragging the name from the agency database. They had all seen it in action, again and again.
‘What, haven’t you covered it?’
‘I’ve looked at it, mate. But I want you to tell me about it.’
Ward rolled his eyes – but of course he was pleased, too. Rob liked to listen to his stories. He sat upright now, waiting. ‘Emily Sandborne,’ Ward began, slowly. ‘Mrs Sandborne, they used to call her. Well, it’s a sad enough story.’
‘OK,’ Rob said.
‘OK. Where to begin.’
Where to begin. The crimson grooved plastic wall panel in the lobby cast an oblique ruddy light even here: refracted from one wall and through a pane of internal glazing to fetch up, he noticed, as a rosy patch on Rob’s smoothly shaven right cheek, and conflicting with his green eyes.
Emily – Mrs – Sandborne.
‘Mrs Sandborne. They called her this, for years. Very old-fashioned. Kept her in her place. She was English,’ Ward said. ‘One of those Victorian lady painters who weren’t really taken seriously in their time, and weren’t really taken seriously for years and years afterwards. Not in mainstream quarters, at any rate.’ A curled lip – he imagined – and an eye raised to the heavens when the name cropped up. Sandborne: oh yes. Mrs Sandborne. Emily Sandborne, didn’t she kill herself? So many of them did. A just imagining, probably. Feminist scholars have done their best with her, he said, and with whole generations just like her, but too few female curators, and too few female scholars, still.
And the men, ‘You know, they blather on piously about resurrecting lost painters and rediscovering forgotten stories and dissolving the canon – all without ever actually intending to do much about it.’
‘Too many old farts,’ Rob said, ‘who just aren’t interested.’
‘That’s it. You know how it is.’
Rob nodded.
‘The thing is,’ Ward went on, ‘she’s incredibly good. Incredibly vivid: the colours shine like they’re on fire. I’ve never seen anything like her use of colour’ – by anyone, he thought, from any period – ‘and nobody seems to know how she did it.’ Those beautiful colours, as though lit from within. And her versatility: oils, watercolours, pencil drawings and chalks, the lot. Though not some gigantic body of work, either: she took her time, and she got it right. And was essentially ignored for her pains. ‘Some pieces at the Academy summer shows,’ he went on, ‘but in general, the gents didn’t take her seriously. And her work didn’t sell, not that much anyway, and she was always sidelined. Ruskin wrote something about her, what was it—’
‘I know this bit. I have it here, somewhere,’ Rob said, and he riffled through the papers on the table. ‘Here it is,’ he said, and read aloud, his Kiwi accent conveying the words oddly: ‘“If art is greatest, as I say it is, when it suggests to the mind of the spectator, the greatest number of the greatest ideas: if this is so, then I declare that the ideas conveyed by Mrs Sandborne are poor and pallid things. For while her work glows and shines like stained glass, it in the end signifies nothing. The glow and the shine soon fade: and the ideas fade too; and they become little and womanish and in all ways incapable of exaltation.”’ Rob blinked. ‘God, what a bitch. Ruskin, didn’t he have some, what, some issue with, what was it, women’s pubes? Couldn’t stand the sight of them?’
Ward paused scrupulously. ‘So they say. Might be an urban myth. Let’s not talk about pubes. Sandborne’s husband had money, and she had a little money,’ he said, ‘so she was never, you know, starving in some frozen garret. She did OK. But she became a little eccentric in her ways: reading between the lines, isolation, lack of—’
‘Affirmation,’ said Rob. ‘Getting kicked in the head by the likes of Ruskin.’
‘Right. She—’
‘Retreated into herself,’ said Rob. ‘Christ, it’s just the same story, over and over. Called mad.’
Doing nobody any harm, Ward thought, but the word went around that she had gone mad, and people didn’t like that: and she probably thought that they’d be coming to lock her up. ‘Besides which, her husband went and gave her syphilis, probably on her honeymoon. In the true Victorian style.’
Rob nodded. He clearly knew this bit too. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Stylish.’
‘So she came up with a plan,’ Ward continued. ‘To paint, as she approached the final stages of her illness, her last piece, and bring it to the grave with her.’
‘Yeah,’ Rob said. ‘That’s what Wikipedia told me.’
‘A sort of a shroud idea. A distemper piece, painted quickly, and sealed, and wrapped, and brought with her when she—’
‘Realised she was dying,’ said Rob mournfully. ‘And that’s The Jewel.’
‘Yeah. Which was forgotten about for years and years.’
Eighty years, he thought. They opened her coffin in 1919, just after the First World War. Word got out that some painting had been buried with her, her vulture descendants applied for permission to open the grave, and the distemper piece was found – untouched, unfaded. The descendants took one look and flogged it off – to an eagle-eyed curator in Ireland, and she treasured it, and stored it, and told the story to whoever was interested. And her gallery exhibited it once a year, quietly, for a month.
