Now came the scientific tests. I approached them with the nervousness of someone who is going to learn the results of a medical check up. They had been done in the mid-sixties by the Foundation’s own laboratories, either as a routine procedure or in response to Skaekbekker’s article. The X-ray report found considerable overpainting, some of which was late. A map or picture in the upper right-hand corner had been painted out to leave a blank grey-white wall, cast into shade by the fall of light from the hidden window. This was not exceptional. Vermeer not infrequently changed his mind as he worked and added to or subtracted from his composition. Nothing incriminating came out of this test, except a question mark over the signature, which was in the area of late overpainting.
It took me a long time to read the material. I only realised how long when I heard Julian in the bedroom. She was sprawled on the bed, watching a video, laughing aloud from time to time.
‘It’s late,’ she called. ‘Come and watch this with me, Nicholas.’
‘What is it?’
‘Some Like It Hot.’
‘I’ve seen it a hundred times. And so have you, I expect.’
‘I have, but it’s so funny. It’s so stupid and so funny.’
The pigment analysis tests were as positive as the X-ray. For each colour a history has been established, showing the chemical composition of the materials used by painters over the centuries; the pigments used by the seventeenth-century Dutch masters have been extensively studied. The tests seek anachronism. Any impurity in the paint, any substance not commonly used at that time and place cast doubt on the authenticity of the painting. The first test on the Litvak Lady had been done with a high-power microscope. A cross-section of paint, taken with a hypodermic needle, was mounted and polished for examination. A similar sample had been taken for microchemical tests. A minuscule quantity of lead white had been treated with nitric acid and dried. No suspicious elements had been found in the amalgam of the paint. The proportions of silver and zinc in the lead white were found to be consistent with contemporary levels, a conclusion that was confirmed by the X-ray diffraction test.
It was hard to see why Minna had not published these scientific findings that seemed so supportive of her case. However, when I came to an overview of the data I saw that, although a seventeenth-century date was confirmed, it was much less precise than Minna claimed. There was, too, the question of the overpainting and the signature.
Then I came across a second sheet of a minute (the first was missing, torn from its staple) which contained just two lines: ‘in the light of the initial tests the Director has decided that no cleaning of the Vermeer should take place.’ Why would Minna decide against cleaning? The tests might have shown the painting’s fabric was too fragile to withstand it, but even so there are techniques precisely to preserve works of art in such a condition. The Vermeer was a sturdy and undamaged panel. Perhaps the doubts about the signature would only be strengthened by cleaning.
Julian was moaning with laughter. She sat up and adjusted her spectacles, which were falling off the end of her nose. ‘I’m sorry, am I disturbing you? Shall I close the door?’ she called out.
‘No, I like to see you.’
“You should see Marilyn Monroe. She’s wonderful.’
‘I’m not a gentleman. I prefer brunettes.’
‘How can anyone fall for them? It’s so absurd that anyone could think they are women. How can one laugh at it? But one does.’
Her laughter ebbed to a sigh. I heard the music of the credits cut short.
‘Laughter is supposed to be good for you,’ she said, getting up from the bed and smoothing the white linen duvet with which she had replaced my mother’s sheets and blankets. ‘Talk about suspending disbelief. You want to believe so you refuse to see.’
The reproduction of the Lady that Julian had bought gazed up at me from its position propped against the lamp. I looked into the pale, cold world where the light was reflected in the faintest veil of saliva which moistened the full lower lip, in the drop pearl in her ear, in the dark brown-gold silk of the jacket. She was so beautiful, she had to be real.
15
Prisca rang to ask us to come, with Jamie and Sibyl, to a concert she was sponsoring for one other charities. I accepted without consultation, daring Julian to refuse.
At the end of the performance, which was held in a church hall on the borders of Islington and Tufnell Park, Prisca grasped my arm. ‘Don’t leave now,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and eat. There’s an Indian round the corner. Jamie and Sibyl are coming too. Do stay.’
Within half an hour we were sitting in front of an array of bowls with the smell of ginger and turmeric in our nostrils. Prisca was on the high that follows a successful performance, estimating how much money she had made. Julian listened, questioned with the intense focus of regard which made you believe that what you said was completely captivating.
Sibyl wanted to know about the battle for the Lady in a Pelisse. I had a theory, I said, but I was not ready to expose it yet. Fortunately, Sibyl was too impatient ever to allow someone else to express himself slowly, when she could do it for him quickly and much more articulately. She was a natural philosopher, moving rapidly from the specific to the general, spinning theories out of nothing, to which she played her own devil’s advocate. I allowed her to take over my part in the conversation as well as her own. I helped myself to some black dal. I never knew where I was with Indian food. I liked to know what to expect, with things coming in a proper order.
‘Revenge is a sort of hangover from love,’ I heard Prisca saying. ‘It happens when you can’t step out of the past and would rather cling on and be hated than cut the link completely.’ She had put small mounds of vegetables and rice on her plate and was expertly scooping them up with her right hand, using two fingers and her thumb.
“You think it’s a sign that love still exists?’ Julian was speaking now. She was looking steadily at Prisca, who, I noticed, darted a quick glance in my direction.
‘Yes, it’s self-immolation. The revenger would rather still be in the eyes and mind of the beloved, even hated, than completely forgotten.’ I thought, Prisca is aiming this at me. She thinks this is why Emily and I are fighting over the children, but she’s wrong. I did not want to maintain a connexion with Emily, for I could not envisage our living together again. The break was final. I wanted justice.
Jamie was mopping up sauce with naan, leaning forward over his plate to take the dripping morsel into his mouth.
‘Prisca’s ideas are always upside down,’ he complained. ‘Revenge as an act of love, it’s like saying very noisy people are basically shy. You can make it seem to be true, but it goes against common sense. We all know that shy people are quiet and retiring and revenge is done out of hatred not love.’
‘Perhaps it’s neither love nor hate,’ Julian said, voicing my thoughts. ‘It comes from a sense of justice. Where there isn’t a tribunal you can appeal to, as in emotional matters, you are driven to act, because there is no other way to redress the balance.’
‘The real tragedy,’ said Prisca, ‘is that you destroy what you love. And that’s your punishment, probably the hardest of all.’
It was nearly midnight when we had finished and were saying goodbye outside the restaurant. A taxi was passing with its light on and Prisca stepped into the road to hail it, cutting short our goodbyes. Sibyl and Jamie got into their car, parked opposite, and Julian and I linked arms and walked back to where I had left mine. We were crossing a side road and Julian stepped out without looking. With a roar, a motorbike swung past us, leaning into the curve. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back towards me. I felt the air of the machine’s passage, the smell of its exhaust, like the meaty breath of an animal.
‘Careful, I don’t want to lose you like that.’
We drove home and I put the car into its habitual place, on the first level of the underground car park. The place was empty of people, full of cars. Our footsteps echoed on the concrete, re
bounding from the low ceiling. The lighting, strung along the rows of cars, was dim, just illuminating the empty alleys, leaving corners of darkness which blurred the light, taking it over.
The attack erupted out of normality with a roar. I heard the sound of an engine, of a motorbike, stopping at the barrier above us, but I only became aware of danger when two more bikes burst up the ramp from the floor below. The air vibrated with the revving of their engines. Julian was swifter to understand. She was just ahead of me and I saw her bend down to take off her high-heeled shoes. Instead of continuing their ascent, the two bikes abreast swung into the passage between the parking spaces. For a second I faced them as they rode at us in formation, charging us, fantastic beasts with thick leather skins and shiny, globular heads. They were coupled to their bikes to form a smooth-running mechanical centaur, a unit of beast and machine without any human features.
Julian, her fingers hooked into her shoes, her feet bare, was already racing towards the door that led to the lifts and stairs. I saw her glance back, to assess the threat, to check on me. Still running, she shouted, ‘Run, Nicholas, run.’ I could see her face contorted, her mouth moving, but I was deafened into paralysis by the engines. At last, I jumped aside into the shelter of the nearest line of parked cars and the two bikes from below swept past me, their momentum carrying them onwards, circling the parking lot I ran across the next alley and into another line of cars. Julian had reached the doors to the lift. I knew what she would find. I watched her grab the handle, pull and push, with frantic, useless force.
The first bike, the one which had entered from above, was circling in the opposite direction from the other two. They were by now on the far side of the car park, two going anti-clockwise, one clockwise. The noise of their engines boomed around the low space, disorienting me. I reached her and took her hand.
‘We’ll have to use the ramp,’ I said. We looked across the endless empty expanse to the ramp leading from level to level. The upward slope to the exit was narrow, with barely room for two cars to pass. It offered no cover and I couldn’t see how we could reach the top before the bikes caught up with us. I changed my mind.
‘We’d better go down. The door below may be open.’
Without a word, Julian nodded and ran across the roadway to the ramp. Instead of taking the slope to the level below us, she climbed the metal barrier that marked the drop and let herself down. I followed her. She moved ahead of me, running for the lift. We reached it together. It was locked. These men, whoever they were, who had frightened Colin Trevor into rejecting my commission, were professionals. They had locked all the doors, not just the one on our floor.
Above us they were regrouping. The single biker who had seen where we had gone, led the way down the ramp, followed seconds later by the other two, still in formation. Julian was crouched behind a car, between its bumper and the wall. She dragged me with her.
‘We can’t keep on going down,’ she said. ‘All the doors will be locked. We’ve got to go up the car ramp.’
I was silent. I still could not see how we could run up two floors without being caught by the bikes. And then what? Even when we reached the open air, which seemed like freedom from down here, what would we face? What were they trying to do, kill, maim, terrify? My lack of understanding felt like a physical incapacity, as if I was lame.
‘If I go down another floor, perhaps they would follow me and you could get out.’
‘No, no. It’s no good. They’d split up. Stay with me. We’ve got to go up.’
The bikes were circling in the old routine, two together, one alone, one clockwise, two anti-clockwise, like a tightly choreographed ballet.
‘They’ve lost us.’
‘They know we’re here somewhere. It won’t take them long to find us.’
They had slowed down now, the carapaced heads swinging backwards and forwards, the black-tinted visors as blank as computer screens, as they examined the spaces between the cars. They met in front of the ramp and stopped, all three together, and the noise dropped till it felt like silence. They did not speak, but redirected one another by swift gestures. The engines revved and they went back to combing the alleys.
‘Let them look for a bit,’ I said. ‘If they think we’ve gone lower still, we’ll have a better chance of getting out.’
She nodded, not looking at me. She had gathered up her coat, so that it did not drag on the ground. Below its hem I could see her feet, the toe nails, painted dark red, poking through her torn tights.
We were in luck. After making another circuit at a still slower speed, the pair swooped down the ramp to the next level, while the single bike continued its trawling. As it worked its way to the far end, Julian said, ‘When he gets to the top, we’ll go.’
‘You first.’
‘Come right behind. It’s our only chance.’
She squirmed out of the space between the bumper of the car and the wall in which we had been pressed. We both bent double to conceal ourselves behind the lines of cars. But when we reached the ramp we were exposed to view. I could tell he had seen us by the violent revving of the engine and the acceleration down the alley towards the ramp. I allowed Julian to keep ahead of me. I could have overtaken her, but only with an effort, for she ran fast. Fear must have been pumping adrenalin into her, to give her a feline burst of speed.
We reached the first level and continued to run, making for the next rise. The bike was immediately behind us. I ran straight on into the car park, not turning for the ramp, hoping to offer a distraction. Ignoring me, the biker pulled his machine round after Julian. I stopped and waited for the impact. Julian ran on, not looking back. She judged when to swerve by the noise of the approaching machine.
I could not see if the bike hit her, or if she had thrown herself to the ground, face first, her arms outstretched. Just when she seemed most vulnerable, the biker lost his appearance of invincibility. He overshot and could not turn fast enough to come back to her. In attempting to do so, he scraped clumsily on the rear end of a car and had to put his foot to the ground, awkwardly kicking himself round, his engine screaming.
Julian had already picked herself up and was once again running for the ramp to the exit. I was racing after her. The two bikers from below were roaring up to join their colleague. I was between them and her, but I could see that the single bike, for all its momentary clumsiness, was going to reach the ramp before I did.
Amid the booming and echoing of the bikes, we did not hear the approach of the quietest car in the world. I saw Julian draw into the side of the tunnel before the magnificent dark green bonnet of the descending car came into my view. It was too sudden for the speeding biker. He hit the Rolls full on and the centaur split. The man rose in the air, his body describing an arc over the bonnet, striking the roof, sliding over the boot and crashing to the ground. His machine recoiled and slithered back down the slope on its side, its wheels still revolving. As I ran past them, I saw the aghast face of the driver, a chauffeur on the evidence of his peaked cap, getting out on the opposite side. Julian was ahead of me and I only caught up with her at the barrier. She was panting; her breath grating in her chest; her mouth and eyes like ragged black stains on a white cloth.
We slowed to a walk. Julian sank down onto a doorstep, putting her head on her knees.
‘Are you all right? Can you make it?’
She looked up and said, ‘Oh dear, you’ve torn your trousers.’
‘I’ve torn my trousers. You mean they’ve torn them, whoever they are.’ Then my fury evaporated in fear for her. ‘What about you?’
I reached down to unwrap her coat and revealed blood streaming from horizontal gashes on her thighs and knees. She made no sound, though my movement had lifted a flap of skin and revealed the flesh beneath. A new surge of blood was released, liquefying the surface in front of our eyes. With one hand she delicately replaced the lump of flesh, still attached by skin on one side, and held it in place as the blood ran through her fingers.
> ‘Oh, God, Julian.’ I got out my handkerchief and blotted the blood from the cuts. ‘You need stitches.’
‘No. Don’t say anything to Victor. He gets so upset.’
Once in the flat I changed from my torn trousers, while she cleaned herself up in the bathroom. When she emerged, she lay on our bed with her legs outstretched and I applied dressings to the cuts. She was fine, she insisted, and in no need of any medical treatment at all. She lay propped up against the huge square pillows with which she had transformed my mother’s chaste bed, looking extraordinarily sexy, naked, apart from a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles that she always wore when she had removed her contact lenses, holding a glass of brandy. I sat at the end of the bed holding one of her feet in my hands. It was red and swollen, the sole cut from running in bare feet. I flexed the joints of ankle and toe and they moved easily, without resistance.
‘Julian,’ I said. ‘After this evening, don’t you think you could tell me what’s going on? Who’s trying to kill you?’
‘No one is trying to kill me.’ Her face had resumed her impenetrable look.
‘Julian.’ There was silence. ‘Julian.’ I rotated her ankle, persuasively.
‘No one is trying to kill me,’ she repeated. She put down her empty glass and rolled onto her stomach, leaning on her elbows, her head lowered so that her forehead rested on her hands. She spoke with exasperation, as if she did not want to have to explain something that was so self-evident. ‘If they’d wanted to kill me, I’d be dead.’
I lined her feet up side by side and stroked the damaged insteps like a pair of cats.
‘They don’t make mistakes about killing people,’ she said.
‘So what’s going on?’ From my view at the end of the bed I could see the dark hair falling forward on either side of her neck to reveal her spine. It was raised and vulnerable, waiting for the executioner’s axe.
The Art of Deception Page 11
