A Stolen Season

by Rodney Hall

  ‘You know what,’ he finally says.

  She defies him. She is composed, confident of the quality of her design, her eyes intense, the breeze stroking her elegantly disordered hair. He can say what he likes, she will defy him.

  ‘I’ve decided not to sell tickets, after all. So I shall need you to modify the reception area, please, Quentin.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The thing about art’—he finds words for the revelation taking shape in his mind—‘is that art can be a gift. It’s for whoever sees what it is. That’s what makes it art in the first place.’ He probes deeper. ‘I suppose that also makes it political. I mean, if you can’t stop it speaking the truth.’

  Still denied the praise she deserves, Quentin Martinez-Morini accepts this surprising irrelevance as approval, though some personal word of enthusiasm (for even one thing . . . say, the neat way the new building and the old intersect in a narrow sheath of glass) would help. He offers nothing of the kind.

  ‘That’s it?’ she rebukes him tartly.

  ‘Well, my legacy came to me as a gift,’ he explains with contrition, as if to his mother. ‘Entry should be free.’

  Can he bring himself to go through with the rest of the plan? Can he cut through the entanglements of an ancient lineage rotten with indolence and wealth to seize on independence? Why not? Even as old age approaches he still has no idea who he is. His loyalties stole his life. He has been corrupted by having too much. Well, finally, thanks to Monckton Hardingham, long dead, he is given the means to stand up to the family, including his uncle, Viscount Solihull. The HFT family trust—though it never fails him—will discover that financial reliability comes at a price. There can be no weakening. He will play the perfect drawcard: claiming for the family the greatest artist England ever produced.

  The invitations go out.

  Sure enough, back come acceptances from all parts of the world. Ninety-one relatives respond. So, the guest list is fixed (plus a tiny cohort of obligatory critics, three from London, two from New York and a world-famous art historian domiciled in Venice), then at the last minute he adds the architect and her partner to the list. He commissions a specialist travel agent to take care of accommodation and hospitality. He announces the gallery bearing Turner’s name, which makes the front page of the Times and excites speculation on the BBC. Though nothing whatever has leaked out about the artworks except that they are fully authenticated and have never been shown before—not even in J. M. W. Turner’s lifetime. Melbourne is on the map and the art world is agog.

  What can John Philip be accused of? He titivates these expectations by insuring the collection for a cool thirty million dollars . . . a hundred and thirty million . . . three hundred and thirty million. Enormous and unwanted prestige accrues to the family name which, for centuries, has been so assiduously kept out of the public eye.

  So, with everything in place, the time of the opening arrives.

  Early evening. Batting overhead, a media helicopter secures footage as Rolls-Royces and Bentleys glide—glittering and untouchable—between temporary traffic bollards. The occupants emerge bejewelled enough to do credit to a royal wedding. A battery of flashes begins firing off like a declaration of war.

  The only taxi among so many grand vehicles is his and Quentin Martinez-Morini recognizes Chris’s long leg emerging. He ducks back to accept his change from the driver, then stands and straightens his suit. Aware of being watched by bystanders and flattered by his sheer size she feels a touch of colour rise to the tips of her ears. She invites him to envelop her slender hand in his. Fingers mesh as the cameras pop. She approves his YSL and shoes. She is glad he chose not to come in uniform even though, when he touches the tight knot of his tie (as he does), a hint of unsureness shows, and he has slapped his hair around to spike it up with too liberal a scoop of gel. Of course, he is way out of his social depth, poor darling. His signature grin gathers slowly. She has begun to enjoy herself. She commits a secretive smile of her own. What’s more, he remembers her name.

  ‘Quentin,’ the sly serpent rumbles.

  Now she exchanges his for hers in a husky confidential murmur, ‘Sweetheart.’

  So, Lieutenant Christian Fletcher, one step behind, escorts her as they walk in at the front door and across a threshold of sorts. Guests already fill the lobby. The rich and the old greet one another with exclamations of weary surprise. She misses nothing. These people know how to move in company. When and when not to speak. Monotonous droning priorities are asserted with a click of dentures. One woman circulates, lonely as Saturn, under her big hat. Gossip and expensive rustling materials drown out a cluster of violin players sawing away in one corner. Men with lazy accents give off a faint musty aroma of cedar clubrooms. She watches her new man, an alien from another time zone, as his antennae pick up undercurrents of power beneath the lassitude—some sort of seething malice being generated—and the tactical game that extends to every corner of the foyer. It amuses her that he is so gratified to be there.

  Quentin still has much to find out about Lieutenant Fletcher. During the two days they have been together he has told her next to nothing, apart from explaining that his bullet wound happened in Iraq. Also that he postponed an overseas holiday to be with her yesterday. Nice. And there was another thing: a change of tone. Yes, when he avoided talking about his promotion. Was it bitterness? The unexpected is always intriguing. The question is not desirability but whether his taciturn silences might indicate a violent nature. Does she feel safe? Well, no, actually. But he is a lover who knows what to do and he carries himself as a man to be respected. Self-contained and unsmiling, he stands close enough but not too close, attentive to the fact that she might need to mingle on her own account. She approves.

  The elderly guests drift around him not bothering to make contact. Even among themselves she intercepts shrewd glances, greetings without warmth, cold-shoulderings and glints of rivalry. A choice of costly perfumes. Champagne glasses clink. ‘Cristal,’ an immensely fat man gasps, politely touching her glass with his as he squeezes past to surrender his weight to a leather bench. Babble builds, insistent, languid, loaded. Waiters with trays of canapés appear among the guests. Fragments of background music survive like rags of an obsolete civilization.

  Lieutenant Fletcher sinks several shots and accepts a third. As an intruder, aware that his size and strength are a dead giveaway, he occupies his own space with the controlled power of a man trained in combat, ungreeted, calm and relaxed. The sheer novelty of his situation keeps him engaged. The members of this privileged clan oscillate like sleepwalkers, exchanging platitudes as quacking exclamations. They engage and disengage in provisional clasps and gasps. The portly and the cadaverous. Old hags with sculptural hair and diamonds a-twinkle on wrinkled fingers. Now and then he encounters a neutral questioning glance actually intended for him.

  Just once a lady with walking sticks even thrusts her nose at Quentin, demanding, ‘Are you related?’

  He watches that beautiful head shake slowly, feigning regret. Pure class. He sees her with fresh clarity—what the hell!—she’s a knockout and definitely worth a few more laps in the cot. He has done the right thing coming. And with this weird event behind them there’s a good chance she’ll agree to the trip to Thailand.

  ‘So, you must be one of the critic people then! How interesting!’

  ‘Not that either. I’m the architect.’

  ‘Oh, I should imagine architecture is tremendous fun.’

  When Quentin chooses not to respond to this he rewards her with an arm around her waist.

  ‘Though might you have made the place a little larger?’

  Another old lady eavesdrops and intervenes, claiming attention by waggling soft knotted knuckles. ‘This used to be my bedroom, Lydia.’

  Lydia does not seem too impressed.

  A plump young man joins in.

  ‘Hello
, Auntie,’ he says.

  ‘Good heavens, James, you gave me the shock of my life,’ protests the lady whose bedroom this used to be, unflappably offering the side of her face to be kissed.

  Lieutenant Fletcher moves on. Now two men parting company, one old and one young, shake hands with affection. The tail end of their conversation snags his interest.

  ‘. . . so telephone me anytime, dear boy.’

  ‘I shall hold you to that, you know. Board members are eternally grateful. All this has blown up out of nowhere. The military-industrial complex, indeed! And, of course, it’s gone public, what with government involvement.’

  ‘They make such a virtue of clumsiness you’d think it was their job description.’

  ‘But I never once mentioned hedge funds. Or buying anything up. Let alone commodities. Of course not.’

  ‘It’s for us to hold the fort. That’s our cross,’ the elder of the two concedes, rolling his rheumy eyes dramatically. ‘When was it otherwise?’ And laughs a dry clutter of common pebbles. ‘As for technology, it all depends on whose hands it’s in. Well now, speak of the devil, if you’ve not yet met Major-General Sir Douglas Beauchamp . . . behold, the opportune moment! Chap with specs. Related on your mother’s side. Propitious, you see? Half a tick, in a moment he’ll be bored witless by Toby and we’ll seize the opportunity . . .’

  Could these be bankers and philanthropists—what a joke!—the hidden class. Relic of the old colonial system at the heart of the new. Men who exist above and beyond the chain of command. Making decisions for the captains of industry to put into effect, decisions that steer the nation. Would a snap of these frail fingers bring even the treasury and defence forces to attention? Lieutenant Fletcher prides himself on his intellect. Only the other day he read an online article about a cabal of super-rich billionaires who corrupt elections by feeding private fears through Facebook. Targeted persuasion on an international scale based on data retention. The mobile phone as weapon. Are these the voices on the other end of the line when prime ministers are told what to do? No doubt their investments, entrenched hundreds of years ago, reach every cranny of the great structure of international finance. So, in any country taken over by a dictator, it’s such as these who have to be dislodged, controlled or executed.

  Here they are.

  Operating behind their screen of etiquette and insolent courtesies they are disconnected from reality. His reality. Talkative without pausing long enough to communicate, meanwhile moving around him to avoid contact as one might avoid colliding with furniture, they exchange guarded enthusiasms about the novelty of the occasion. While he studies their faces and mannerisms he registers the fact that not one of them returns the compliment. His opinion doesn’t count and he knows it. What’s so creepy is that they might actually despise him. Okay. The gap is a measure of the ruthlessness a man will need if he hopes to rise—on his own terms and still in his youth—to the world of their cabal. So watch out.

  ‘Chris,’ Quentin whispers, calling attention to the fact that the official speech of welcome is about to begin.

  Using the back of one hand John Philip Hardingham taps an empty champagne glass with his signet ring. The time has come. Almost swooning under the rush of success, he straightens his back. Breeding tells. He is a Hardingham, after all. With the aplomb his education was supposed to have supplied (fifty lost years ago) he claims attention. The gently circulating crowd, set in motion by the centuries, gradually loses momentum, grows still and falls silent. Privilege-hardened, refined, intelligent but impervious faces turn his way, as if the colossal blanket of world-weariness has, at last, lifted for some oxygen to reach their prominent noses.

  ‘Bravo!’ declares the harridan in a wheelchair, her lipstick a caricature, her white hair crowned with a perfect chignon.

  ‘Thank you. Dare I say . . . this is a great occasion?’ John Philip smiles in all directions. ‘Here we are, dear people, for a family celebration . . . a preview . . . the public opening will follow in due course. First let me thank our architect, Ms Martinez-Morini, who has designed this remarkable gallery. As I hope you will agree, the integration of the old building with the new, her skilful sleeve of glass, the elegant use of indirect daylight, if I may so describe it, are all beyond reproach.’ He meets her eye politely, triggering a flutter of surprised applause from the gathered assembly. ‘Well, now, some of you have come a very long way to be here. From London and Vancouver, Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Wilhelmshaven and so forth. I do hope you have sufficiently recovered from jet lag. Awful inconvenience, jet lag. Which—for some mysterious reason—is usually worse going the other way. With or against the rotation of the earth, if you see what I mean. Be that as it may, my gratitude to you . . . for coming . . . my gratitude is . . . boundless. Let me mention, in particular, my esteemed uncle Evelyn, Viscount Solihull. It’s no secret that he celebrated his eightieth last April. A fine innings. But, naturally, to each of you in particular . . . my sisters, brother, uncles, Aunt Olivia—hello, Aunt Olivia—Mother dear, of course, and a whole eminent . . . what is the collective noun . . . colloquium of aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, second cousins and spouses . . . all individually eminent and too many to list. United by memories. Having so much in common. As we know, with the advancing years. Oh dear! Too swift, the passing years. Only our precious history left. Ah, the long-gone innocence of childhood. I shan’t bore you with that . . . unless . . . well, never mind. It’s my pleasure to share a legacy I received from a great-granduncle, the Honourable Monckton Hardingham, without whose foresight none of this would have been possible. Well, so . . . here we are together . . . just for today . . . to claim for the family a truly great artist . . . to be shared . . . in private, so to speak. Are we ready to go in? Please do justice to the Roederer. And enjoy the gallery that bears your name . . . my name too, of course. I think you’ll be surprised. Follow me now. Come through this way.’

  Quentin, having waited politely, is the last guest to walk through into the gallery. But even as she does so, ushering Chris ahead of her, the babble of pleasantries promptly dies. Something strange is happening. The assembly falls ominously silent. The milling slows, falters and freezes. Something has gone wrong with her building.

  Lieutenant Fletcher watches heads turn, receptors of shock, as the guests are overwhelmed by some unspoken—and unspeakable—crisis. Stricken individuals reach for support. Squinting and gaping at what confronts them, they purse withered lips and suck at falsely youthful teeth. Old pampered faces harden with disgust and contempt. Ambushed and exposed, they have been set up. Glaring patriarchs tower to protect their womenfolk. One fat man with baggy florid cheeks and fugitive eyes boggles while an aged dandy with a rosebud buttonhole boggles back. A cripple in a wheelchair wrings her hands, twisting them to arthritic claws. Bald hoary specimens wrinkled by slow- consuming senility are stopped in their tracks, shocked back to life. Fury makes them young again. An elegant crone with spectacular jewels faints against her husband who staggers to hold her, his hollowed temples, paper frail, tick with desperate black veins. The only teenage girl present, as apparently one of her mother’s belongings, meets the emergency with deep opaque all-questioning helplessness.

  Faintly, futilely, the helicopter bats above.

  Lieutenant Fletcher’s mobile vibrates in his pocket and he checks the new message: Report for duty tomorrow 0700 special assignment. Shit. He looks around him with a kind of provisional self-mockery: if he hadn’t agreed to this weird event he would have been safely overseas on leave. The print-out of his airline ticket in his wallet. Useless regrets. What’s done is done. And too late to change. He is a sucker for sex. Only now, at last, does this trained observer of people—this virtuoso of violence—actually look at what is displayed on the walls.

  John Philip Hardingham’s status is established. He is untouchable. Apart from two critics busy taking notes no one moves. The silence has become so glacial the scribbling pens
can be heard. The deadlock is interrupted by the architect’s escort, who commits a gaffe by approaching to shake his host by the hand. Then in a final blunder of inappropriateness he offers an opinion: ‘I like your choice of enemies.’

  John Philip acknowledges this with a mild grey gaze and unsmiling lips.

  ‘I didn’t choose them.’

  5

  ADAM & BRIDGET

  Working one finger at a time Adam posts a message on his blog. depression. withdrawals feel bad. it’s stuff on your conscience. Having timed how long this took to type—six minutes—he goes back over it and counts the letters and spaces: sixty-four. About six seconds per letter. He can measure his progress as he goes. bombing someone’s house invites trouble. worse. the more unjust it is the more you have to go on hurting them. like there’s no way out. you can’t stop. Fifteen minutes for 151. That’s consistent. in the end the disconnect is between shooting a guy and the moment he actually falls. then it hits you that this is the kind of shit you’re going to have to deal with. a life sentence. Eighteen and a half: 184.

  He reads what he has written. He sorts through the wide range of examples in his experience (memory being mercilessly comprehensive) until he finds himself flung across the road into the war zone where he stands flattened against a wall at the foot of an ancient cracked stairway. Ready. The weapon heavy in his gloved hands. All too soon the door opens up there. The kid who leaps out, sixteen at most, will forever spring the same surprise. Bright good-looking face, cropped hair, the dusting of a moustache shadowing his smile, a thick artery standing along his neck, eyes dark with the impact of the bullet in his chest. At that same instant disclosing what he concealed in his hand instead of the expected grenade: a stolen apple. Too late to think again or react otherwise. Too late not to squeeze the trigger. Training has already outwitted intelligence. The boy’s corpse tumbles, ugly, unhinged, heavy with gut-wrenching disjointedness, an arm flung out, the green apple bouncing beyond reach.