‘Oh, all right’ – Johnny wiped his hands on his apron. ‘Where will you be?’
‘I’m going to have a look at something,’ said Cyril. He sounded both stern and slightly shifty. ‘Try not to sell anything, and for God’s sake don’t buy anything.’
‘I’ll just take it in, shall I.’
‘Just take it in and give them a ticket,’ said Cyril. ‘They can reserve things, if they look serious. And of course don’t let them in here. Never let anyone in here.’ But just as he was putting his coat on the bell jingled and he looked through the door into the shop to see who it was. ‘Ah . . . good morning!’
‘You’re going out,’ said a man’s voice from the shop.
‘It’s not at all urgent,’ said Cyril.
‘I’ve not been in for a while.’
‘No, I’m pleased to see you,’ said Cyril, with a drop to another register, guardedly flattering. He slipped off his coat and hung it on the back of the door, which he pulled half-to as he went to talk to the customer. It was a thin-voiced man, with the uncommon vowels, some plumped, some pinched, and the scurrying, dawdling manner that still flourished in the London art world. The tone of the conversation was almost abrupt, and neither he nor Cyril addressed each other by name. In the workshop the radio, on at medium volume, engrossed by the events that had followed the election, muddied the conversation. Johnny went to the bench where the cut-down frame for the Maitland was waiting.
Late Summer, Dusk was very much a Cyril picture. Cyril liked paintings small, and it was one of his hang-ups that subjects were spoiled by being treated on too large a scale – his ideal was the ‘big small picture’, in which a lot of life was conveyed in a tiny space. To Johnny, who at college had been encouraged to splosh paint over areas of canvas as tall as himself, this took a bit of getting used to. He felt its charm and its constraints. The Maitland also owed a great deal to Whistler, who was Cyril’s god: it had the quality of a sketch, the rapid lifelike movement he lacked so completely in himself, but had an eye for in a picture. Cyril didn’t deal in prints, and Johnny was told no painting by Whistler had passed through the shop in ten years; so the ‘school’ of Whistler was the thing to focus on. Once you’d gone for the school, obscurity became a lure, almost a virtue. It seemed Maitland himself was an artist only experts knew of, no one had written about, and no member of the public was likely to find in a museum.
Johnny freed the frame from its clamps and laid it over the painting lying on the workbench. Frame-making, at Hoole, was neglected – they showed their freaky portraits and gigantic abstracts unadorned on their stretchers and boards, or at best with a thin rim of untreated plywood tacked round, no gallery pretensions. Cyril was teaching him the further art of the wooden oblong – this little green and brown canvas now, on its first loose try in its ‘Whistler’ frame (really one gilt frame inside another), became suddenly focused and desirable, more present and also more covetably remote. It still looked too small – a further narrow slip would have to be cut and gilded in just the right shade to enclose it and hold it exactly in its shrine.
‘Perhaps he’d care to bring it through,’ said the voice from the shop, with its note of scant patience under perfect politeness.
Cyril looked round the door. ‘I’ve got Sir George Skipton here,’ he said, ‘he wants to see the Maitland.’
‘Oh . . . shall I bring it just as it is?’
Cyril stared and nodded confidentially. For a moment there was a clear understanding between them.
The customer wasn’t how Johnny had pictured him. He had a lean hawkish face, his long sideburns a gesture at fashion resisted entirely by his camel overcoat, red scarf and trilby hat, which he’d kept on. He seemed carefully wrapped up against any of Cyril’s inveiglements about a rare new picture; his thin smile made it clear that his listening to you did not in any way imply that he agreed with you. It was the smile of someone proud of his own judgement – hence surely the cleverly deferential tone that Cyril adopted with him.
Johnny laid the picture on the table, and said, ‘The frame’s not quite finished . . .’ Sir George moved his head up and down as if surveying a far larger canvas, and made two barely audible noises, the first, with head raised, a momentary high-pitched whine, in which surprise and reserve were both implied, the other, with head lowered, a warm but regretful grunt. Johnny looked from one face to the other, unsure if he was being praised or condemned. Then Skipton’s smile slid upwards from the painting to him.
‘How do you find it here?’ he said.
‘How do I find it . . .’ – Johnny gasped and glanced at Cyril. ‘Working here, you mean. Oh, it’s very interesting, sir.’
‘You’ll learn a lot from Mr Hendy’ – at which Cyril looked aside and down in a strange way. ‘He knew Sickert, you know.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Johnny.
Sir George chuckled. ‘Small oils,’ he said, ‘that’s the thing.’ His look played round Johnny’s head, with a kind of critical amusement about his hair in its ponytail, folded up twice. ‘Have you been working here long?’
‘Oh . . . two months now, sir,’ said Johnny.
‘Two months’ – again, praise and ridicule in his tone. ‘And what do you think? Should I buy this picture?’
This time Johnny didn’t look at Cyril, though he used his words: ‘It’s an extremely nice little painting.’
‘Yes, quite. I expect you’ve done a certain amount to it?’
‘We’ve just cleaned it up a bit,’ said Cyril.
‘Indeed,’ said Sir George with a sigh, but still looking at Johnny. Cyril seemed unhappy at this turn of events and Johnny himself felt uncomfortable till Cyril said rather brusquely,
‘I’m asking ninety guineas for it.’
Johnny couldn’t tell if this seemed steep to Skipton – whose face was impregnable to any vulgar shock of cost. ‘Look, would you hold it for me, Hendy, and I’ll come by next week and look at it again.’ Was ‘Hendy’ how you spoke to a servant, or a colleague? – Johnny wasn’t sure.
Cyril said he would, and looked displeased but unsurprised. There was a tempo to the art world – delays were written in to it, as well as frighteningly swift decisions. ‘Thanks so much,’ said Skipton, and as he went, as if unwilling to waste more time, towards the door he turned back and said, ‘No, my daughter told me you were working here.’
‘Oh . . . really?’ said Johnny.
‘The exquisite Francesca,’ said Sir George.
‘Oh! I see . . .’ said Johnny, beaming suddenly and feeling himself in some sort of trap. ‘I don’t really know her.’
‘Oh? Well, she’s taken quite a shine to you,’ said Sir George, which sounded the kind of parental certainty often far from the truth, and in this case embarrassing in other ways. Johnny felt he could tell one truth at least, but it came out oddly,
‘I think I’m a bit scared of her.’
Her father seemed puzzled for a second by his tone, but added very drily, as he opened the door and tightened his scarf round his neck, ‘I think I know what you mean.’
When Skipton had left, Cyril put on his coat with resumed impatience, and dashed off. The door banged, the bell protested losingly, and a little Chelsea view hung seductively near the entrance rocked from side to side on its hook. Johnny stood in the eddy, oddly aware of how Cyril, prey to the rival tugs of selling and buying, owned everything here, it was the world he had made and would live and die in; while he himself was merely, barely responsibly visiting on his way to a very different life, where of course he would be painting pictures of his own.
Today was Thursday, early closing, so it was only till one. He stood looking out past the wares in the window at the parked cars by the kerb and the occasional pedestrians, any one of whom might decide to turn in to the shop and set the still air, with its smell of wax and linseed, jangling again. He felt relieved, light-hearted and exposed, and went through to the back of the shop frowning at his own desire to mess around. His rebellion took
the form of turning the milled dial of the old wireless ten degrees, to Radio 3. Beethoven, at once, but which symphony? He ruled out Three, and Five to Nine inclusive – he wasn’t so sure about the earlier ones. As often in the past at home, or in his shared study at school, where he had to claim odd half-hours between his friends’ Doors and Stones for intoxicating shots of Mahler and Strauss, he felt the presence of an orchestra as a private overwhelming luxury; and then, being alone, he turned it up and made noises, not singing along, little hisses and yelps of emphasis and agreement.
He got back to work, painting the fine angled slip with a gold paint that sank into the untreated wood. It gleamed and then dulled in the violent dazzle of the scherzo – number Four, surely? He set it on a sheet of paper to dry, and there was the racket of the bell again, and the repeated jangle that half-covered the closing of the door. He looked apprehensively through the blue and then through the clearer red glass in the door of the back-shop, a woman by herself; then he went in – it took him a moment to recognize her from behind, in a long black coat and red boots, peering closely at a landscape then standing off with a shake of the head. ‘Oh, hello!’ he said. ‘That’s funny.’
She looked at him over her shoulder. ‘Why is it?’ she said.
‘Oh, it’s just that your father was in here half an hour ago.’ He came forward.
‘That is funny,’ said Francesca, ‘very funny.’ She looked at parts of him other than his face when she spoke, she examined his paint-smeared old Sotheby’s apron. ‘So you’ve met Daddy’ – she smiled narrowly at him then, so that he saw her daddy in her, at the moment she distanced herself from him: ‘Was he being difficult?’
Johnny sniffed. ‘I think he rattled Cyril a bit.’
‘That’s what he does,’ said Francesca, sounding pleased at least by her father’s consistency. ‘He’s a great rattler. I don’t suppose he bought anything?’
‘He’s thinking about it.’
She savoured this. ‘Well, he’s a great thinker too.’
‘He seemed to know what’s he’s talking about.’
Francesca perhaps found this remark misplaced. ‘You’ll have to come and see his collection,’ she said, in a tone which didn’t promise an immediate invitation.
‘I’d love to, thank you,’ said Johnny, feeling this must be a privilege. ‘What does he collect, mainly?’
‘Well, he’s got three Whistlers, for instance,’ she said. And as if that was enough about that, ‘So this is where you beaver away.’ She looked round again, as if more intrigued by the existence of the shop than by anything specific in it. ‘A lot of pictures’ – advancing and looking very quickly at two or three in a way that might equally have conveyed ignorance or unhesitating connoisseurship. Then she stared at the half-open door behind Johnny, with its coloured glass window let in and the uninterrupted noise of the radio beyond. ‘I suppose all the fun takes place at the back.’
‘I don’t know about fun,’ said Johnny, and felt slightly ashamed. ‘No, it can be fun.’ He was pleased she wasn’t going to see round the back. ‘That’s where I am mainly, I don’t come out here much.’
And in a moment of course she was going towards the door, and Johnny with a pained smile following her. She peered in broad-mindedly, a hand on the doorknob, like an adult shown the children’s playroom. ‘Gosh, all those frames.’
‘I know,’ said Johnny, keeping close by her as she crossed the threshold. ‘You’re not really —’: he felt he couldn’t say it to her; and she ignored the bad form of what he’d started to say. Anyway, why shouldn’t she go into the room? He found he wanted her to see it, it confirmed what was otherwise a mere rumour about what he did all day. He made something chivalrous of it, looking round with fresh eyes at the stove, the tables, the two hundred frames hanging inside each other on the wall: ‘Cyril doesn’t like people coming in here, I don’t know why.’
‘Well, Cyril’s not going to know, is he,’ said Francesca.
The Maitland which her father was or was not about to buy was on the table. She picked up the magnifying visor and fitted it over her blonde curls and was suddenly inside what Johnny had been doing. He thought even so she wouldn’t be able to tell. Standing back she was clumsy for a second before she took the visor off. Neither of them said anything about the picture.
‘So do you get time off for lunch?’ she said, direct but tactful. Who knew what picture-dealers’ apprentices got?
‘Well, today it’s early closing. I’ll be shutting the shop in ten minutes.’
‘Oh, good. So we can have lunch together.’
‘Oh! . . . yes . . . all right’ – he had no other plans, but this one was a bit of a jump. ‘If you don’t mind waiting.’
‘Not a bit,’ she said, and sat down unnervingly in Cyril’s chair.
‘I suppose, um . . .’ – but anyway he got on with fixing the gilt slip, with the feeling, as she watched him, that he was acting out his own job. He didn’t want to refuse her, that was the thing.
She got up after a minute, and looked into the small glass-windowed cubicle, like the office in a garage, which was where Cyril did the books and where there was a square safe under the desk. Johnny had never had more than a glimpse into the safe, last thing on Fridays, which was when the week’s takings were carried in Cyril’s briefcase to the safe deposit chute at the bank, and when Johnny himself was paid, with an odd little cough on Cyril’s part, as if to counter any hint of warmth or congratulation. He had seen that the safe had things in it other than money. ‘Is this him?’ she said.
‘What’s that?’ He was worried about her making trouble for which she, at least, would not be punished. He put down his brush and went over. She was looking at the framed photo on the wall above the filing cabinet, Cyril thirty years ago, with another man, looking at a picture, which Cyril was holding in his hands. ‘Yes, I don’t know who the other man is.’
‘Oh, well, it’s John,’ said Francesca, ‘John Rothenstein. Daddy knows him – and Evert, all that lot. Evert used to work with him at the Tate.’
This should really have been Johnny’s territory. ‘Oh, did he?’
‘John used to run the Tate,’ said Francesca, masking her impatience with a sentimental smile at his pug-like Mandarin face and circular horn-rimmed glasses. Beside him Cyril, looking not a day younger, was wearing a remarkable canvas garment with buttons up to the chin and no collar. Its cuffs too were buttoned back, perhaps to save them trailing in paint and glue. It gave him a specialized, ecclesiastical air.
‘Cyril hasn’t changed,’ said Johnny.
‘He’s still got that silly coat on,’ said Francesca, and the joke was funnier than it should have been – a first break in the high-pitched tone.
The bell jangled again and Johnny went through to see who it was. To his horror it was Cyril, closing the door and turning towards him with a picture in a carrier bag under his arm. ‘Success?’ said Johnny eagerly, stepping forward as if expecting him to unwrap it and share the joy at once. There was no way Francesca could be smuggled out of the back room, but his instinct, even so, was for delay.
Cyril’s response was a clearing of the throat suggesting it was none of Johnny’s business. ‘Anyone been in?’ he said.
Well, it was a chance. ‘Actually, Sir George Skipton’s daughter came in. Francesca, you know?’
‘The one you’re scared of,’ said Cyril.
‘Well, not really,’ said Johnny, ‘no, no. In fact she’s here now.’
Cyril stared. ‘Where is she then?’
‘Well, she wanted to see the Maitland that her father’s interested in, so I said—’
‘I’m here,’ said Francesca, looking round the door, and coming towards Cyril with her head on one side as if at the great pleasure of meeting him at last. ‘Francesca Skipton.’
‘How do you do,’ said Cyril.
‘My father’s always talking about you,’ she said.
‘Well . . .’ said Cyril, and with a little nod at them b
oth he went past her and into the workshop. Johnny followed a few seconds later. A dread of almost parental disapproval was mixed with a feeling of defiance that was just as childish. The music carried on, a harp concerto now, and he hovered by the radio, unsure whether to turn it off. Cyril went through to the office, where Johnny saw him stoop to unlock the safe and slide the white carrier bag and its contents into it, and lock it up again.
‘Have I dragged you into the mire?’ said Francesca when they were out on the pavement – ‘I wasn’t quite sure.’
‘I’ll let you know tomorrow,’ said Johnny. And now there was the more pressing thing of lunch to cope with. They went up Old Church Street, both slightly self-conscious.
‘Ivan’s going to join us later,’ said Francesca.
‘Oh . . . OK,’ said Johnny, and his relief that he wouldn’t be alone with Francesca was mixed with relief that he wouldn’t be alone with Ivan. Again he had a certain flustered feeling of being talked about: Francesca seemed to have a plan. ‘I don’t know about Ivan,’ he said.
‘Oh, Ivan . . .’ – she chuckled in an odd way that suggested no friend of hers could be safe from ridicule. She glanced at him narrowly. ‘No one’s quite sure what’s going on between you two.’
‘Well, nor am I!’ said Johnny.
Francesca had a judicious look. ‘You don’t fancy him.’
‘No, he’s extremely attractive . . .’
‘Just not your type, then.’ It was as if Johnny was spoiling things.
He blushed. ‘I’m just not his type, I think.’
But it seemed she was on his side. ‘Well, you’re far more attractive than he is,’ she said.
‘I think he likes me,’ said Johnny, laughing in his surprise at her remark.
‘Hmm,’ said Francesca. ‘So you mean you’ve never done it with him?’
Johnny had done it with few enough people to feel reluctant as he said, ‘We kissed, you know, but that’s about it.’
‘Well, he’s sillier than I thought,’ she said, and as they turned the corner on to the busy street she took his arm, as though to reassure him. They were astonishing questions from someone he hardly knew, but they showed she had got his number: she wasn’t taking him out with any designs of that kind herself – and at this he felt suddenly light-headed. ‘We’re going to Bond Street,’ she said, looking over her shoulder. ‘Blast, that cab’s gone.’ She left him and went back past the turning to get ahead of the shoppers spaced along the kerb but the only cabs that came in the next few minutes were already taken too.
The Sparsholt Affair Page 23
