‘That’s what Reede believes. Ever heard of Saint Rufina?’
‘No.’
Quick sipped her gin. ‘The image of Mr Scott’s painting fits the story perfectly. Rufina lived in Seville in the second century. She was a Christian potter, who wouldn’t kow-tow to the authorities’ rules when they told her to make pagan icons, so they chucked her in an arena with a lion. The lion wouldn’t touch her, so they cut off her head. And with this mention of a “companion piece”, Reede believes he’s found a connection between Mr Scott’s painting and the more famous Women in the Wheatfield, which might change the way we look at Robles entirely.’
I gazed at her, feeling determined, ready to enter into a battle of wills. ‘But you told me that Isaac Robles didn’t paint it.’
Quick slugged back another painkiller. ‘And yet, we have a certified telegram from a world-class art collector, stating that it was intended as a companion piece to one of the most important paintings to come out of Spain this century, currently in the Guggenheim collection in Venice.’
‘Yes, but there was someone else in that photograph too. A young woman.’
I waited for Quick to speak, but she did not, so I carried on. ‘I think she was called Olive Schloss. In that letter at your house, it appears she won a place at the Slade School of Art around the time that Isaac Robles was painting. I think she painted Women in the Wheatfield.’
‘I see.’ Quick’s face was impassive, and my frustration grew.
‘Did you think she made it, Quick?’
‘Made what?’ Her expression turned hard.
‘Do you think Olive ever made it to the Slade?’
Quick closed her eyes. Her shoulders sagged, and I waited for her to reveal herself, to release the truth that had been broiling in her ever since seeing Lawrie’s painting in the hallway of the Skelton. Here it came, the moment of confession – why she was in possession of the telegram from Peggy Guggenheim and the letter from the Slade – how it was her own father who had bought Isaac Robles’s painting, a piece of art she had created herself.
Quick was so still in her chair, I thought that she’d expired. She flicked her eyes open. ‘I’m going to hear what Mr Reede is saying,’ she said. ‘I think you should come too.’
I followed her down the corridor, disappointed. I was getting nearer, I was sure. Why didn’t she just speak?
WE KNOCKED ON REEDE’S DOOR and were told to come in. Lawrie and he were sitting facing each other in the armchairs. ‘Can I help you?’ Reede said.
‘Miss Bastien and I will be the ones on the front line once this exhibition gets underway,’ said Quick. I saw how tightly she was gripping the door frame. She was torturing herself. ‘It might be wise if we were to sit and take notes, to understand what you’re proposing.’
‘Very well,’ said Reede. ‘You can sit over there, ladies.’
We looked to where he was gesturing; two hard wooden chairs in the corner. Either Quick was being punished, or Reede was blind to how frail she was. Lawrie caught my eye as I sat down; he looked excited, alive with the possibilities of his painting. Rufina and the Lion was propped up on the mantelpiece, and I was no less overwhelmed by its power than the first time I saw it, by how much that girl and the severed head she held in her hands had already changed my life. If Lawrie hadn’t used it to try and take me on a date, would any of us even be sitting here today – would Quick be unravelling like this, despite her insistence on blaming the cancer and its painkillers?
Directly above Reede’s head sat the lion, imperial and implacable as so many lions are in paintings. Yet in this instance, it looked so curiously tamed. I gazed at the white house in the distant hills; its painted red windows, how tiny it was compared to the vast, multicoloured patchwork of fields which surrounded it. Rufina and her second head stood looking back at me, at all of us. Thirty years ago, Isaac Robles and a girl I was sure was Olive Schloss stood before this very picture, for a photograph. What had Isaac and Olive been to one another?
Inevitably, I looked to Quick. She seemed to have gathered herself from her earlier distress; sitting straight now, notebook on her lap, eyes on the painting. Whatever the truth was, it seemed to me that she was going to let this exhibition go ahead with no sabotage on her part, and I felt confounded by her capitulation.
‘As I was saying, Mr Scott,’ Reede went on, ‘three years ago, Peggy Guggenheim’s entire Venetian collection came to the Tate on temporary loan. Whilst Women in the Wheatfield was here on the Tate’s public walls, your own Robles painting was hiding in the shadows. It’s extraordinary to think we could have matched them then, had we known. There was so much to-ing and fro-ing over that exhibition, between the British government and the Italian authorities,’ he said. ‘Tax issues, mainly. But that was for a hundred and eighty-odd pieces, and I’ve only asked for three. So the good news is, they’re letting us borrow their Isaac Robles pieces.’
‘That is good news,’ said Lawrie.
‘It’s wonderful. It’ll really bolster the exhibition. I hope the news pages will give us coverage as well as the arts sections. We’re getting Women in the Wheatfield, a landscape called The Orchard, and rather brilliantly, something I wasn’t aware of – his Self-Portrait in Green. And what will be exciting about the reunion of Women in the Wheatfield with Rufina and the Lion is that it could change the way we view Isaac Robles generally.’
‘Why?’
‘Rufina was one of a pair of sisters,’ Reede said. ‘Justa was the name of the other.’
‘Justa?’
‘The story goes that Justa was thrown down a well to starve. I believe that Women in the Wheatfield is actually the story of Saint Justa – and that there’s only one girl in it, not two. We see Justa before and after her punishment, once in happiness, and then in torment. The smashed pots around her back up this idea. It’s the mask of the goddess Venus, broken in half, and that appears in the myth.’
‘I see,’ said Lawrie.
‘There have been different interpretations of the circle that the woman lies in over the wheatfield. Some art historians say it is one of Dante’s circles, others says it’s the moon – and some identify it as the rotundity of planet earth, particularly with those woodland animals around it. But I believe she’s actually lying at the bottom of a well, as per the myth. Here,’ he said, handing Lawrie four pieces of paper, which had copies of paintings on them. ‘Robles wasn’t the only Spaniard to paint Rufina and Justa. Velázquez, Zurburán, Murillo and Goya, all four great Spanish painters, painted those sisters. I’m trying to get a loan of at least one of these paintings to complement the exhibition.’
‘Do you think you’ll get them?’ asked Lawrie.
Reede rose to his feet, and rubbed his hands together. ‘Maybe. Maybe. I really do hope for it.’ He smiled. ‘It would be something extraordinary. The chances are Robles was well aware of these other works. I’ve told the galleries who have these pieces that I want to examine the particular Hispanic pathology around the myth of Justa and Rufina.’
‘The Spaniards have always been incredibly subversive artists,’ said Quick.
‘Yes,’ said Reede, looking at her more warmly, one arm propped up on the mantelpiece. ‘Creative rebellion against the status quo. Just look at the Goya. He would be the one to put in a lion, kissing her toe. And can you imagine what Dalí would do with it?’
‘But why is the Guggenheim Robles called Women in the Wheatfield, with no reference to Saint Justa, if mine’s called Rufina and the Lion?’ Lawrie asked.
‘Harold Schloss might have called it Women in the Wheatfield, not Isaac Robles,’ said Reede. ‘Robles might have easily have called it Saint Justa, for example. We’ll never know. He may not have given it a name at all.’
At the mention of Harold Schloss, I glanced over again at Quick. She had her head bowed, and she was massaging her temple. I wondered if she needed ano
ther painkiller. She seemed determined to get as close to Reede’s plans as possible, despite the visible trauma it was causing.
‘The salesman in Schloss,’ Reede went on, beginning to pace around us, ‘probably wanted to make the painting more attractive for Guggenheim’s purchasing sallies. She hadn’t bought much before this; he didn’t want to scare her off. It’s the same sort of thing as Picasso wanting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon to be called The Brothel of Avignon, and his exhibitors changing the name, apparently to make it more appealing. And Schloss may not have known that a companion piece to Justa and her well was on its way. Somewhere along the line, I believe that what Isaac Robles wished to communicate in these paintings was lost.’
‘And what did he want to communicate?’ said Lawrie.
I looked at Quick again; she was gazing up now at Reede, with a blank expression on her face.
‘I think Robles was very interested in this myth,’ Reede said. ‘And discovering this connection between the Guggenheim Robles and the Surrey Robles allows us a new window on to his artistic process, to reinterpret his preoccupations – to reinvent him, if you like. This exhibition may be “The Swallowed Century”, but we are still trying to digest it, so to speak.’
‘Reinvent him?’
‘Succeeding generations do it all the time, Mr Scott. Don’t be alarmed. We can never bear to think we haven’t thought of something new. And tastes change; we have to be ahead of them. We are resurrecting an artist at the same time as enacting his retrospective. My approach will allow us to describe Robles’s awareness of a glorious national historical tradition – Velázquez and the rest – whilst being something of a contemporary international star, cut down in his prime.’
‘You’ve really got it all planned, haven’t you.’
‘That’s my job, Mr Scott. I can’t tell you yet what exactly he was trying to communicate, but I want to take a political slant with your painting in particular. Rufina, the defiant worker saint, facing down the lion of fascism. Have a look at this,’ he said, handing over yet another document for Lawrie to read. ‘I was sent that from Barozzi at the Guggenheim foundation. Harold Schloss wrote it to Peggy Guggenheim when he was in Paris again, and she had returned to New York.’
‘Mr Scott,’ said Quick, and the men jumped. ‘Could you read it out loud? Neither Miss Bastien nor I are furnished with a copy.’
Lawrie obliged.
‘Dear Peggy,
Forgive me for not making my presence known to you in time before you left Paris. Everything, since my departure from Spain to my arrival back in this city, has been very difficult. I tried to bring Rufina with me, but have failed. I know how much you were looking forward to it, and I am deeply sorry.
I have a couple of early Klees you may like to look at instead – I myself will not travel to Vienna, but am organizing them to be sent to London – or perhaps, if you’re staying in New York for some time tying up matters, and are interested, I may send them straight there?
My best to you, as ever,
Harold Schloss.’
Lawrie looked up at Reede. ‘He doesn’t mention Robles at all.’
‘I think we can do something with that. I’d like to blow this letter up large, and have it on one side of the gallery wall. We could speculate on what happened to Robles.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t think he made it through the war. We would surely have heard about him if he had. There was a lot of bombing in the south of Spain in those days. Say the rest of Robles’ paintings went up in flames. We could consider how the immolation of Robles’ body of work reflects the disappearance of the artist himself.’
Reede began to pace again, his hands behind his back, lost to us as he expounded his vision. ‘We could extend the metaphor, into the conflagration of the Iberian corpus, and the world war to come. The man is a symbol, as much as an individual. He was a vision of Spain’s future, which was annihilated.’
Lawrie crossed his legs, his voice hard. ‘But you don’t know his works went up in flames. You can’t build an exhibition on a rumour. They’ll laugh at me.’
‘They won’t laugh. People love a rumour, Mr Scott. You can do more with rumour than you can with fact. And the fact is, we have a limited supply of paintings. Another fact: Harold Schloss did not have Rufina and the Lion when he went back to Paris. Where was it? That’s where you come in.’
‘Me?’ said Lawrie. Something in his tone of voice made me turn. I looked to Quick; she had clearly thought the same as Reede, for her eyes were on Lawrie, concentrating hard.
Reede came to sit opposite Lawrie, and spoke more gently. ‘I think that Harold Schloss realized it was untenable to remain in Spain, and in fleeing, the painting fell out of his possession, either through theft or carelessness. It is unusual for a dealer to confess so openly a loss, as he does in that letter. Normally they’re glib, smooth talkers. I think Harold Schloss came back to Paris with his feathers ruffled.’
‘And you think the painting was left behind in Spain?’ said Lawrie.
‘Well, Schloss doesn’t seem to have it. He’s got no reason to lie to his best collector. But I don’t know, Mr Scott. The next person to be attached to it was your mother. And apparently, we have no idea of she got hold of it.’
Lawrie gazed up at the painting, and down again, into the empty grate. ‘It’s always been on her walls,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t remember a time it wasn’t there.’
‘So you say,’ Reede sighed. ‘Well, we can play with the question mark. I don’t think we have a choice. The survival of an artwork through the Spanish Civil War and a world war to a house in Surrey is not without its romantic possibilities.’
‘What do you think happened to Isaac Robles, in the end?’ asked Lawrie.
‘Mr Reede,’ said Quick, her voice hard and clear across the room. ‘What is the timescale for this? When are you planning to open this exhibition?’
Reede turned to her. ‘A delegation from the Guggenheim is coming in two weeks with the paintings. And two weeks after that, I believe we can open.’
Quick looked down at her diary. ‘Four weeks from now? That’s ridiculous. That’s no time at all.’
‘I know, Marjorie. But it’s what I want.’
I watched as Quick marked the day of November 28th in her diary, a slight tremor in her hand, the pen drawing across the page in a thick black cross.
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That evening, Lawrie and I took the commuter train to Surrey. He told me that he’d already sold the MG. ‘I just didn’t use it much,’ he said, but he sounded wistful. I considered that perhaps there was more pressure than I initially imagined to sell his mother’s painting.
As we pulled out of Waterloo, me with the Xeroxes from Reede on my lap, I looked at the four paintings of Rufina and Justa by the older Spanish artists. I loved the passive lion in the Goya, but my favourite overall was the Velázquez; a young girl with dark hair and an inscrutable gaze, holding two little bowls and a plate in one upturned palm, and a huge plume in the other. Velázquez, like Robles, had painted Rufina on her own too. I moved on to the copy of Harold Schloss’s letter. Schloss had written by hand, and had started it neatly enough, but in places it became barely legible. His rounded arcs and sweeping curves descended into crossings-out and ink blots everywhere. I did not think it was the letter of a happy man.
‘We’re here,’ said Lawrie.
We were not normal passengers getting off at Baldock’s Ridge; the normal passengers were men in their late forties, paunch incoming, signet ring, Telegraph under their arm, an embossed briefcase. Women, country-tweeded, middle-aged with distant faces, thoughts buried deep within their handbags, coming back from a day in town.
‘After you left the
meeting, Reede said he could try and sell the painting for me,’ Lawrie said as he opened the door and helped me down. ‘For a commission.’
‘How much does he think it will fetch?’
‘It’s hard to say. “Art doesn’t always behave itself like other things you might put up for sale, Mr Scott”,’ Lawrie said, parroting the pomposity Reede could stray into when on home turf. ‘He said it isn’t like a late Van Gogh coming onto the market.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, apparently everyone would want one of those. But Rufina and the Lion is unique in a different way. Reede said he doesn’t want to underplay it, but neither does he want to over-egg the pudding. He said selling always has its risks.’
‘But he’s so enthusiastic about it.’
‘As a historian, maybe. As a personal preference, yes. But perhaps as an auctioneer he wants to manage my expectations. Not everyone’s going to like Isaac Robles.’
‘You could always donate it to a public institution.’
Lawrie laughed. ‘Odelle, I haven’t got any money.’
QUICK AND I HAD NOT had a chance to talk for the rest of the day. She had gone home shortly after the meeting with Lawrie and Reede was finished. She claimed a headache, but I knew of course it was more. I felt torn; I wanted to be with Lawrie, to revel in the rush and headiness of making up, of realizing how much a person means to you, the thrill of having nearly lost them only to be reunited. But at the same time, I was the only person who knew something was very wrong with Quick, that her pain seemed to worsening, and yet I had no idea how to help her manage it.
‘Are you all right?’ said Lawrie.
‘Just thinking about Quick,’ I said. ‘She’s – not very well.’
‘She didn’t look very well.’
Lawrie leaned in to kiss my cheek as we walked down the station path. There was an intake of breath behind us. I turned; one of the tweed women, trying to look as if she hadn’t made the noise at all.
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