“So what did Anastasia have planned for you?” he asked.
“She left clear instructions,” said Ayesha.
Tony raised an eyebrow.
“She wanted revenge.”
“On who?”
“That would be telling.” Ayesha smiled enigmatically.
“Your mother has gone; why bother?”
“Perhaps we never stop trying to please our parents.” She smoothed out imaginary creases in the tablecloth and changed the subject. “What do you think about Blaze’s idea to open Trelawney to the public?”
Tony looked thoughtful. “For eight centuries our family has enjoyed being waited on. Maybe this is divine retribution. I wonder how many teas they’ll have to serve before the novelty wears off.”
“The local council are insisting on a steward in each room.”
“There’s nothing left to steal!”
“It’s to protect the public from falling plaster and rotting floorboards. The place is a health hazard.”
Tony scraped the residue of chocolate from the bottom of his glass and licked his spoon. “It does make one sad. The point of Trelawney is its utter other-worldly fabulousness. It was built to amuse the elite, not to entertain the masses.”
“Blaze wants to make it into a viable business so the next generations can stay there.”
“Why would anyone want to run, let alone live in, a theme park?” Tony snorted. “I can’t see Ambrose making a go of it.”
“Is he so dreadful?” Ayesha had met Jane’s eldest briefly at the funeral, but had not heard a lot about him except that he liked sport.
“He was born with a charm bypass on a highway to nihilism. I can’t think of many good things to say about him.”
“He’s not very handsome,” she said, remembering the flat-footed, auburn-haired young man walking behind the coffin.
“Not very anything, sadly.”
Ayesha burst out laughing. “I wish I could spend all my time with you.”
“A little bit of Tony goes a long way.”
Tony paid the bill and together they walked out into St. James’s, past the palace, and crossed through a pretty rose garden into the park. A group of French schoolchildren chased a pigeon half-heartedly. Two nannies dressed in uniforms pushed old-fashioned Silver Cross prams. Tony walked stiffly with the aid of a silver-topped cane. His well-cut cashmere coat had been darned on one cuff and Ayesha noticed that his shirt collar, just visible beneath a white silk cravat, was also frayed. She had heard that he was almost penniless and lived in a bedsit off the Earls Court Road. Blaze was allowed to support him, but only as far as the poverty line.
Short of breath and wheezing slightly, Tony sat down on a wooden bench out of the wind.
“Are you lonely?” he asked abruptly. “I have never met a beautiful woman who isn’t. Beauty is the most terrible curse. It makes the person into an object, something to stare at or possess. The first time I met poor sweet Marilyn Monroe, she was having dinner alone in the Bel-Air. No one wanted to talk to her, they just wanted to gawk. I went over and asked to join her. She fell on me like a camel coming across an oasis in a desert. I have never seen anyone look so grateful.”
“Was she lovely?”
“You know how cherry trees have that one perfect moment when all the blossom trembles in a slight breeze? When the colour shimmers in the spring sunshine? That was her—but all the time—impossible to take your eyes away.” He looked up at Ayesha. “Your mother had the same quality. The first time I saw her was in the library at Trelawney. She wore a red shift dress and her hair hung around her face like a halo. The whole room went silent. I remember feeling terribly sorry for her. Shall we walk a bit farther?”
They reached a small and incongruous vegetable garden opposite the back entrance to Number 10 Downing Street. Apart from a few rows of cabbages and beetroots, most of the beds were empty, neatly raked and prepared, waiting to be sown or planted.
Ayesha glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “I need your help on two important matters.”
Tony seemed delighted. “I am all ears.”
“You are an art dealer, aren’t you?”
“I like to think of myself as an adviser.”
“I need to sell something: a Monet sketch of the Thames below Westminster.”
Tony looked keenly at her. “Did you steal it?”
Ayesha was horrified. “I was given it!”
“If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I know the owner.”
“It was a gift,” Ayesha said quickly.
“He’s not the man I’d choose for my daughter.” Tony noticed that the young woman looked away guiltily.
“You must not tell Blaze: do you promise?”
Tony shuddered, thinking of Thomlinson Sleet pawing his niece. “What were the conditions of the present?”
“He said the painting was an ‘appetiser’ of things to come.”
Tony grimaced. “No wonder you want to get rid of it.”
“I need the money to invest in a technology company called Apple.” She hesitated. “My friend says it will be even bigger one day.”
“You’re playing the markets?”
“I want to be rich.” She corrected herself. “I am going to be rich.”
Tony laughed. Ayesha didn’t.
“Your Aunt Blaze knows about investments. Why don’t you borrow from her?”
“She’s wiped out.”
“So the rumours are true.” Tony shook his head in disbelief.
“Moonshot Wharf is on the market. The apartment is crawling with estate agents.”
“How is she?” He tried to imagine Blaze without the armoury of her professional life.
“She’s gone to Trelawney to look after her mother. I am home alone until the place sells.”
In the distance, they heard the sound of wings beating against water and turned to see two swans, one black, one white, fighting on the nearby pond. Ayesha and Tony stood side by side, watching the battle play out.
“Your picture is worth about £800,000, but only to the right client. Unfortunately the former owner is the biggest collector of Impressionists; he outbids everyone else.”
“Can we put it in an auction? Maybe he’d buy it back?”
“I don’t think he’d be too amused to see his present flipped so quickly.”
“So sell it privately. I’ll take a lot less for it,” Ayesha said firmly.
Tony started to walk slowly in the direction of the Mall. “One of the worst things about ageing is that if you stop, there’s a danger you might never get going again; muscles seize up and then every tiny movement is uncomfortable. I used to ski and run after tennis balls, now a short stroll is a second-by-second choice between pain and paralysis.”
Ayesha slipped her arm through his and they continued towards Admiralty Arch. It was bitterly cold and the end of Tony’s nose dripped. A fierce wind whipped across Trafalgar Square and they sheltered behind one of Landseer’s monumental lions.
“Will you sell my picture?” Ayesha asked.
Tony nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. Now let’s go to the blessed National Gallery. At least it’ll be warmer.”
Circumnavigating Nelson’s Column, they went up the flight of stone steps into the museum, where there was an exhibition of paintings by the Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna. The two stood side by side in front of a picture of St. Sebastian, a beautiful young man tied to a Corinthian column, every part of his body stuck with arrows.
“He looks so gloomy and resigned,” Ayesha said. “He should be furious and writhing in agony.”
“His faith gives him courage and forbearance.”
“This old art is so dreary. All martyrised men and long-suffering women. If I have to look at art, I like something understandable like
a soup tin or a misty bridge,” Ayesha said with finality.
“I’ve never had communion with a soup tin or a bridge,” Tony said.
“How many human pincushions have you spoken to?” Ayesha pointed at Sebastian.
Tony felt it was his duty to try and impart to the next generation some of the knowledge accumulated over a long and rather pointless life. In his opinion, a love of aesthetics differentiated man from beast.
“Warhol and Monet are so obvious. Mantegna has real profundity. Every part of the painting has a hidden meaning. Think of it as the difference between a pop song and a symphony. One is all synthesised and catchy; the other’s intention and significance deepens and expands over time.”
Ayesha gave a fake yawn. “Who has the time to lie around listening to old music? Pop songs might be bad but they’re mercifully short.”
Tony was insistent. “Try to put yourself into the picture, to imagine yourself as the subject.”
Ayesha let her eyes roam around the painting. “I am never going to be a martyr!” she pronounced. “I’m going to come out on top of every situation.” She walked away from St. Sebastian dismissively.
Tony refused to be defeated. Taking her by the arm, he led her to another picture. “This one is much more fun. Triumph of the Virtues, painted in 1502.”
Ayesha had to admit that it was rather entrancing; her eyes roved over the strange semi-human creatures masquerading as vices; other-worldly beasts emerging from a putrid pond. Nearby, Diana the Goddess of Chastity was about to be raped by a lascivious centaur watched by truncated gremlins. Fat baby angels fired bows and arrows from the sky and a beautiful Goddess Minerva strode through their midst, driving away the wicked with golden locks and a giant spear.
“A great improvement on the gloomy old Sebastian,” she pronounced, and Tony felt a tiny lurch of hope.
“It must have caused a scandal?” She bent down to look at the date. “It was painted nearly six hundred years ago!” She let out a low whistle.
“I suspect mankind has always had venal proclivities.” (Tony smiled to himself. Why do the young think they are the inventors of bad behaviour?) “It was one of a series of paintings commissioned by the young Marquise of Mantua, Isabella d’Este, for her private rooms.”
Ayesha looked bored.
(The only way to get her attention is to make this all about her.) “She was very beautiful, imperious, only fifteen years old when she got married. She used her station and wits to become one of the most powerful women of her time.”
Ayesha turned back to the picture.
(Bingo, I’ve got her again.)
“I’d like to have met her,” she said.
“She was a brilliant monster.”
“Sounds like Anastasia.”
(Like mother, like daughter.)
“Isabella ruled her court with a rod of iron, commissioning many of the great artists: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Giorgione and, of course, Mantegna. She was one of the greatest patrons of the Renaissance.”
“Why isn’t she better known? I’ve heard about the Medici, the Borgias and so forth.”
“I’ve never understood.”
“Almost certainly because she was a woman written off by male historians as an inconsequential wife.”
“Possibly.” (Never get between a feminist and their cause.)
“Did artists paint her?” Ayesha asked, examining a particularly odious-looking beast at the bottom of the canvas.
“She rarely liked her own portraits; had most of them destroyed.”
“I love pictures of myself,” Ayesha said.
“Artists must be clamouring to paint you.” (The narcissism of youth is so amusing.)
“Not yet,” she replied. “Maybe I’ll make Isabella my role model.” She thought for a while before adding, “It would be fun to be her reincarnation and commission the greatest artists of the day.”
“What a good idea.” (Oh, to be back in that wonderful intermission between the uncertainty of childhood and the disappointment of maturity.) “You’ll need a lot of money and power.”
“I will have both,” Ayesha said confidently.
Tony laughed. (This young woman is going to learn a few bitter lessons.)
As if reading his mind, she replied, “Watch me.”
Tony wished he was younger and had more energy: Ayesha was the most exciting person he had met for many years. Too bad he wouldn’t be around to witness the spectacle of her ambition and arrogance.
“I’m going to learn everything there is to know about art,” she announced. “And you are going to teach me.”
Before he could remonstrate, she was on to her next topic. “There’s a second matter we need to manage.” She hesitated. “It concerns Blaze’s love life.”
Tony held up his hands. “A lost cause, my dear. I’ve been pushing dusty dukes and cadaverous counts her way for years. She simply isn’t interested.” They had reached the gallery’s Central Hall and he leaned against an old iron radiator, drawing the tepid warmth into his frozen bones.
“She’s met someone.”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Pray tell.”
“And it’s requited.”
“And I suppose she’s pushing him away with all her might?”
“How did you know?”
“She is hopeless and stubborn.” Tony closed his eyes to think. “What can we do?”
“We’re going to arrange a ‘spontaneous’ meeting. She mustn’t know about it or she’ll back out.”
“I suppose you have it all planned?”
Ayesha smiled knowingly. “Of course, I need your help.”
Tony looked at her glowing face and felt a distinct sense of foreboding. He had played Cupid before with Blaze and, on each occasion, the arrows ended up embedded deep and painfully in his own flesh, like those in St. Sebastian’s torso. He and Blaze were the same: some are born lucky; others just have to bear their lot.
Ayesha’s phone rang. She looked at the screen and frowned.
“Who is it?” Tony asked.
Ayesha pulled a face. “I have to go.”
“Where, why?” said Tony. “What about Blaze?”
His niece kissed him on the cheek. “Unfortunately, this is a summons I have to obey.”
“I can’t imagine you kowtowing to anyone.”
“It’s only lip service; part of a master plan.” She waved and ran down the stairs towards Trafalgar Square.
23
Curtains
WEDNESDAY 22ND APRIL 2009
Blaze was staying in her mother’s apartment at Trelawney. The upper-floor bedroom had been hand-painted in the 1930s with bouquets of lily-of-the-valley wallpaper. The silk curtains, though massively faded, had been handwoven using the same flowery motif. A small double sleigh bed was placed to the side and on the opposite wall there was a dressing table whose glass surface was covered with hairbrushes, hand mirrors and powder compacts, all embossed with the initial “T.” Above the window was a curtain pole and on it an earlier resident had carefully placed a handleless saucepan to catch the rain which made its way through the ceiling during heavy showers. In the far corner of the room, a second vessel, formerly used as a chamber pot, was strategically positioned beneath another hole. Blaze was used to cold, but hated the sound of mice scampering across the floorboards and along the rafters above her head. There was only one bathroom in the Mistresses’ Wing; access was through her mother’s suite.
Next to Blaze’s bedroom there was a study. From her desk, overlooking the back entrance to the castle, she had a perfect view of the comings and goings at Trelawney. By the time her own alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. and she drew her curtains, her sister-in-law was already awake. Blaze could see down into the kitchen where Jane made breakfast for her children. This morning, as on every other
, she would then carry any kitchen slops down to the hen house, followed by Pooter, the bucket held as far as possible from her body to avoid spillage onto her jeans. If Blaze stood up and craned her neck to the left, she could just make out the corner of the cowshed and the stables, Jane’s next stop, where she would help Jim, the farmhand, let out the animals and muck out their sheds.
In bad weather, Jane wore a woollen hat and an old oilskin over a tweed jacket. In good weather, she wore much the same. Blaze noticed that, most of the time, Jane was alone. Late at night, Blaze could see a single lit window in one of the servants’ wings and wondered what her sister-in-law did up there. It hadn’t occurred to either of them to salve their boredom and isolation by becoming friends; both were firmly locked into their respective positions of mutual mistrust.
“Shall we continue with the Trelawney history?” Clarissa asked most nights. “Where’s your notebook?” Blaze kept the red-backed journal and a pen close by in case her mother wanted to recount another story. For Clarissa, recording these snippets of family history had become an obsession. No detail was too arcane, no meander through minor characters too ephemeral, and she took cues from random events or thoughts. The previous evening, inspired by beef and Guinness pie for supper, she’d recounted the time when the 5th Earl had slaughtered his entire herd of cattle to provide a feast in honour of his only daughter’s wedding to the second son of the King of England. Nobility from as far afield as Scotland and Ireland had been invited for the great event but, the day before, a flash flood washed away the bridge across the Tamar and half the guests were stranded at Tavistock. Undeterred, the Earl floated the carcasses upriver and a huge banquet was held in the town square.
Another evening, Blaze and her mother had been sitting by the fire when a spark flew from the grate and nearly set the carpet alight. This reminded Clarissa of the 16th Earl, a man so drunk and debauched that he liked to build conflagrations in the middle of the ballroom and dance naked around them attended by local beauties. Inevitably, the ceiling caught fire and the Elizabethan wing nearly burned down. His heir, a more prudent and sober character, fully restored it and added a fine baroque extension. For Blaze, writing down her mother’s memories was easier than talking, more restful than thinking.
House of Trelawney Page 26
