by Peter Helton
SIX
‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ Annis, incredibly, had not only woken up before me but had got up, showered, gone downstairs, made breakfast and plonked some on a tray for me while I was still asleep having teaching nightmares. In my dream I had given a PowerPoint presentation at BAA where all images turned out to be pictures of me, aged four, playing naked on a beach in Devon. I was uncharacteristically glad to be woken up.
‘I’m pacing myself. Don’t want to overwhelm the students. What’s this?’ I surveyed the breakfast offering.
‘Hot waffles, blueberries, crème fraiche and maple syrup.’
‘You’re getting the hang of this breakfast lark.’
‘Tim likes it. I thought it might work on you, too.’
‘You’re now testing everything out on Tim first, is that it?’ What else was she trying out on him first?
‘Yes,’ she said, getting up from the bed and making for the door. ‘It’s safer because he’s more grateful when I do.’
‘I’m grateful!’ I called after her, probably a bit late. ‘Truly thankful,’ I added and fell on my waffles.
I had decided to have another stab at the exhibition list. Once I knew who was showing, when, where and what, I’d feel more settled and would bestow my decades of painting experience on the BAA students in unthreatening, easy-to-digest lumps, first making sure I had loaded the right images for my slide show. There were two more artists on the list who might agree to show and one of them could turn out to be the trickiest. He didn’t give out his phone number to mortals, had a website but no friendly ‘contact me’ button and his address was no more precise than Hufnagel’s. Landacker lived at ‘The Old Forge, Motterton’.
Motterton was a one-eyed Cotswold village not all that far from Batcombe. As I drove through villages and hamlets on my way there I noticed that here most things were ‘old’: The Old Mill, The Old Vicarage, The Old School House, The Old Post Office, all closed down and converted. How long, I wondered, before people were living in The Old Pub, The Old Church, The Old Phone Box? Conspicuous by their absence were The New Pub, The New School House, The New Post Office.
Landacker had done well for himself if he could afford to live around here. In fact I knew he had done well, keeping a jealous eye on one’s fellow painters’ careers being a favourite pastime. Landacker had given up teaching after a dramatic shift in his painting had produced a sell-out show that had established him at one stroke as one of the more collectable painters outside London. Since then he had had several, usually long-awaited and successful shows, some of which practically sold out even before the private view. He rarely even turned up to his own private views, which made me doubt that I might persuade him to come and contribute to the Batcombe exhibition. Yet his painting persona as a mysterious and intriguing recluse had to be pure fabrication. I had met him years ago, before his work had taken off, at some do at the Holburne Museum, and he had struck me as a normal, slightly boring and even fusty guy who was perfectly able to hold a conversation after a couple of glasses of red. Of course anyone could have a sudden brainwave that transformed one’s work but no one became suddenly enigmatic and interesting.
When I got to Motterton I made the mistake of trying simply to drive around until I might spot the house, always assuming it was happy to advertise its name. But the lanes were narrow and after being forced to turn around for the second time I did the sensible thing and asked directions – at The Old Post Office, as it happened. A young woman opened the door and told me to keep going to the bottom of the winding lane until it joined the stream. The Old Forge would be on my left. ‘You can’t miss it,’ she said, not having met me before.
As it turned out I had driven past it once already, probably because the house was so far removed from my naive idea of what a forge looked like, an idea that had been formed by a surfeit of black-and-white westerns in my childhood. Now I remembered that smiths, along with millers, used to be important people in the village economy. The Old Forge turned out to be a large house made to look even more substantial by being completely surrounded by a freestone wall that looked the part but was almost certainly a modern addition. It sported a double wooden gate wide enough to admit a Waitrose delivery van and it was wide open. On the generous teardrop-shaped drive stood a silver BMW. The driver door was open. Next to it slumped a ‘bag-for-life’ supermarket carrier that had disgorged some of its content on to the ground. I left my own car in front of the gate and walked up the drive.
The house was a squat and solid two-storey building with a massive converted barn right next to it. From the pointed end of the teardrop drive, dark hardwood steps led up to a wrap-around terrace. The converted barn, if Landacker had any sense at all, housed his painting studio and probably had north-facing skylights on the other side. On this side it only had one high window and a half-glazed door with its glass smashed through. It was ajar. I briefly paused by the shopping bag; French butter, Parma ham and a mango had slid to the ground, while strawberries, lamb chops and cartons of cream remained safe in the bag.
I am not one of those unfortunate private eyes who keeps stumbling over dead bodies, but even once is enough to make one forever a little sensitive to this kind of still life, which the French so fittingly call nature morte. So far it looked very much like Landacker had arrived in his Beemer (3-series, nothing special, I’m told), dropped his shopping when he spotted that his studio door had been mutilated and rushed in to investigate. It was only natural that I should follow him inside so I could catch a glimpse of the man’s work in progress. Picking my way gingerly across the vestibule strewn with broken glass and past the house brick that had presumably been used to break it brought me straight into the inner sanctum. ‘Hello?’ I had been unprepared for the sight that greeted me.
Our studio at Mill House being a wholly unconverted barn, my imagination had badly let me down when it came to envisaging what one might do to a barn with a few spare quid. Especially a few ten-thousand spare quid. A spiral staircase to a balustraded mezzanine hadn’t featured. Hardwood floors and Persian rugs had been completely missing. Conspicuously absent had been two leather sofas facing each other across a glass coffee table. On the table sat a modern glass ashtray, a heavy silver cigarette lighter and a glass container full of hundred-millimetre cigarettes. I slid one out and lit it to steady my nerves for the rest of the tour. The most studio-like part was at the far end where there was a rosewood studio easel with brass crank, perfectly lit by the north-facing skylights and by a bank of adjustable daylight lamps. It held a large canvas that by the looks of it had just been started, next to a custom-built painting table on castors full of expensive French oil paints. Further back, on another table, sat some kind of projector, scanner, printer and an Apple computer.
‘Hello?’ I climbed the cast-iron spiral staircase to a gallery that was one third of the width of the floor below. From up here, close to the ceiling beams and skylights, the place looked even more impressive. Apart from a writing desk and an armchair, the gallery housed several bookshelves crammed with coffee-table art books, journals, files and some bronze nick-nacks. At the back of the gallery was a shiny black door with a Yale lock but no door handle. I walked up to it and listened for a moment, then I knocked tentatively but got no answer. Ah, well, I’d try the house then. I clattered back down the spiral staircase and ran smack into a podgy fist that smashed straight into the side of my face.
‘Ow, you bastard!’ howled Landacker, cradling his fist in his other hand and sinking at the knees in pain.
I was pretty busy being in pain myself so I went easy on the sympathy and stood well back. He’d missed my nose but I just knew I would have a spectacular black eye tomorrow. ‘Landacker, you moron, it wasn’t me who broke in here!’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t think so. Too nonchalant. Who the hell are you and what’s the idea of just wandering in here?’
‘Honeysett. Chris Honeysett.’
‘The painting detective? Lord have mer
cy,’ he said, still wincing.
‘We met once, quite a while ago.’
‘Really?’ He looked me up and down and shook his head. ‘I don’t recall. Heard of you, obviously. A chameleon, wasn’t it?’
‘Iguana.’
‘Ah yes, called Knut. I read about it. Quite a story.’
Greg Landacker had put on a bit of weight since I’d last seen him – hadn’t we all? – and had gone greyer. He had small ears and a narrow nose which seemed to overemphasize the few pounds he’d gained. But he was immaculately turned out in brogues, designer jeans and shirt and wore a hefty gold signet ring on his right hand. The one he’d thumped me with. ‘I’d appreciate some ice,’ I said, still holding my face, which already felt like it was swelling up. I was glad his swing had missed my nose and teeth.
‘Yes, me too, actually,’ he admitted, wriggling his fingers experimentally. ‘I never hit anyone before. You have a hard nut.’
‘I think I should warn you, they’re all like that.’
‘Let’s go in the house; I’ll find some ice and you can tell me what the hell you’re doing going through my studio.’
Like a complete idiot I even helped him pick up his shopping from where it had spilled: he was probably the most important artist on my list, he had just had his studio broken into and had simply overreacted, I told myself.
It didn’t work. If I hadn’t been desperately keen on Landacker at our first meeting, just seeing his studio had put me in a bad mood. Its antiseptic affluence had put my back up the moment I crunched inside. What kind of painter had Persian rugs in a painting studio, and right by the entrance, too, making it the first thing you’d notice? A painter who needed to impress people. Or perhaps wanted to impress himself.
I was relieved when I found I disliked his house as much as the man. His studio had made me green with envy but what the architect had done to the forge didn’t make me want to live here. The interior had been trashed, walls removed and features obliterated with designs that would have been more appropriate in a newly built house. There were glass doors everywhere, a large, space-age kitchen that made me shiver with cold and a lot of 1990s chic that, predictably, now looked dated. To the left of the entrance and running the length of the house was another gallery but this time made entirely of glass. Even the stairs leading up to it had glass treads, etched with a swirling design, and rails made from glass or other see-through materials. There was a large Landacker canvas over what had once been a fireplace but was now full of candles and ornaments; enormous hi-fi speakers towered either side of it and uncomfortable-looking chrome and leather armchairs stood facing them. I just knew they would squeak if you tried to sit on them. In the futuristic kitchen, Landacker dropped his shopping on the table and then sluiced cold water over his hand at a Belfast sink.
‘Ah, yes, ice for you. Just as well this makes crushed ice, isn’t it?’ His enormous American two-door fridge dispensed iced water as well as crushed ice on the outside of the left door. He filled a freezer bag with ice and handed it to me, then started putting his shopping away.
‘Was anything stolen?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said firmly.
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Strange. Plenty of valuable stuff there for a burglar. You must have surprised them when you came back. Didn’t see anyone?’
‘No one. I checked the studio, then checked in here. They didn’t try and get into the house. Too many alarms, I guess.’
‘And your studio isn’t alarmed? Why?’
‘Never got around to it. It was finished long after I’d finished the house.’
‘Called the police?’
‘No, what’s the point? All I’ll get is a lecture. I think it was actually 1983 when they last caught a burglar and got someone’s stuff back.’ He poured a couple of punnets of strawberries into a glass bowl and set it on to the polished black kitchen table. It looked good there. ‘I called the glazier and locksmith – they damaged the lock before they decided to go through the window. Right, now tell me in three short sentences what you want.’
‘I’ve come with a request. It is an invitation from beyond the grave. Which means you’ll find it hard to turn it down.’
‘And did he?’ Annis asked later.
‘Did he what?’
‘Find it hard to turn it down?’
‘He did indeed. I think the thought tickled him straight away. And he went all nostalgic about Batcombe House.’
‘Fancy that.’
‘As soon as I mentioned it he went and made tea, in a glass teapot of course, which I had to drink at a very chilly kitchen table from a glass cup. How he persuades water to boil in that place is a mystery. He actually said he owed a lot to BAA, and by extension to John. So he agreed to contribute.’
‘Excellent. Just one more to go.’
‘He did go a bit weird when I said John insisted on there being a sketchbook to accompany the finished work. He tried to get all mysterious and “oh, I never let people see” etcetera until he remembered that I was a fellow painter and wasn’t going to fall for it.’
‘You didn’t like him much, then,’ Annis concluded.
‘He hit me!’
‘A natural impulse. But apart from that,’ she said and pretended to wring another drop of wine out of the bottle we had emptied over supper.
I leant back and pulled another one from the wine rack under the kitchen counter. ‘He’s too … antiseptic. No painter should live like that.’
‘Like what? With money to spend?’
‘All that architect-designed opulence. Walk-in smegging fridge. Häagen and Dazs hi-fi. It’s not natural.’
‘But I bet he doesn’t start hyperventilating every time a gas bill lands on his hall table.’
I poured more wine. ‘I’ll open it tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I promise. I’ve got a job now.’
Starting a new job with a multicoloured shiner was embarrassing. The next morning Annis rummaged among our large and interesting collection of out-of-date medicines, yellowing bandages and curled-up plasters and found me a black eye patch that covered nearly all of the affected area. I slipped it on and asked her if she thought I now looked rakishly piratical but she was too busy laughing to answer the question. I didn’t get far in the car with the patch on. How did one-eyed people drive? I nearly rear-ended the first car I came across. I only slipped it back on when I turned off the engine in the Batcombe House car park, hoping that, if not rakish, the eye patch would look more dignified than the display of a black eye. If anyone asked me I’d just shrug it off as some minor accident.
Kroog was the first person I encountered. She was standing in the entrance as though waiting for me, with a saucer-less cup of coffee in one hand and her long pipe in the other. Next to her stood one of her acolytes, a young sculpture student called Alexandra who emulated Kroog’s style of dress and smoked fat roll-ups made with brown liquorice paper. ‘I’ll see you at the house later, Alex,’ Kroog said to her and Alex disappeared without a word. ‘What happened to you?’ Kroog asked me.
‘Landacker. The bastard hit me the moment he saw me!’ There was no point lying to Kroog; she’d never accept polite gloss as an answer.
‘Was that before or after you asked him to exhibit?’
‘It was before I had a chance to say who I was.’
‘Did he stop hitting you when you did?’
I told her about my encounter and what followed. I didn’t hide my envy of Landacker’s financial success nor my disdain for his taste.
‘Yes,’ Kroog said, knocking her pipe out against the heel of her work boots. ‘Greg always was quite conventionally minded. Which makes the direction his painting took all the more baffling. It has an edge that I could never find in the man himself. Mind you, look at Matisse, what an innovator, but you couldn’t have found a man more bourgeois. Do you think he was shagging his secretary?’
‘Matisse? I hope so.’
‘But bourgeois
or no I’m glad Greg has agreed to contribute. You did tell him that it has to be a new painting, done especially for the show and all that?’ I nodded. ‘All right, good. Have you given some thought as to what you’ll be doing with your students?’
‘I was just on my way to inflict myself and my ideas upon their cosy existence,’ I said, nodding my head at the glass entrance door.
‘Good, that’s what I hoped you might say. Let’s approach them from the garden,’ she added. ‘They won’t expect an attack from there.’
As she pulled me away I could see through the glass behind Kroog that Anne Birtwhistle had appeared in the hall. Perhaps Kroog had seen a reflection in the half-open door or else she had eyes at the back of her head. ‘I get the distinct impression that you are avoiding John’s daughter.’
‘And I suggest you do the same. It’s hard to believe she sprung from John’s loins. She doesn’t have one artistic bone in her body. She’s only been here a few days and people have already started calling her the Dementor because she manages to suck all the happiness out of you if you let her talk to you. I fear she may be a bean counter.’
‘I expect there must be a lot of those to count in a place like this.’
We had walked along the west side of the house and reached the doors of the studio. ‘It always depends what kind of beans you’re counting. There are many types. Well, good luck in there. Give them hell, they’re half asleep. Oh, erm, here.’ She thrust the empty cup in my hand. ‘Drop that back at the canteen for me, will you?’ Then she looked left and right like a burglar climbing from a window and walked quickly towards the sculpture sheds, using the various sculptures on the lawn to give her cover across the open ground.
