The Rich And The Profane

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Bit underdone, this,’ I said, stopping. It was one of those long thinnish sandwiches, cheese and tomato, lettuce. I’d just started.

  ‘Going to waste, hey? Pity.’ He said it pit-ee. A local.

  ‘Unless you could finish it for me?’

  ‘If it’d help.’

  ‘Ta.’ I pushed it across. He fell on it. I gave him my tea. He slurped it. I was hungry, but hadn’t much money left and dared not risk my last groat while he was around.

  ‘You hate Victor Hugo, eh?’ he said, scooping up the crumbs.

  ‘I didn’t. But any genius who uses a Sevres dinner service as wallpaper is a prat.’

  He guffawed, clapped. A waitress wagged a finger and called over, ‘No trouble from you, Walt. Y’hear?’

  ‘That Sevres set was a gift from Charles X of France. Hugo did the same with Delft, porcelain from Rouen.’ Walt eyed me. ‘Upsetting, hey? Like the tapestries.’ He stuck out a hand. ‘Waltjethou. You’re Jonno Rant, n 'eche puis?’

  We shook. ‘I’m looking for a decent painting, say 1890s or so, as a present for my cousin Ada. Looks like I’m on a loser.’

  ‘Painting, hey? You need Gussy, hey?’ He came to a decision with a slap on my arm. ‘I’ll take you! I know everything about every thing on Guernsey.’

  A harbour tout. Well, I could do worse. ‘Ta,’ I said. ‘One thing, Walt. Can you stop saying “hey”? It’s driving me crazy.’

  ‘Oh. Right, Jonno.’ He stood. ‘I’ll get the wheels. Ten minutes, hey?’

  Getting some quick replacement grub, I was in the middle of it when I decided to ring Symie at the Hippodrome back home, got him with Gladys’s help.

  ‘Any joy that end, Symie?’ I asked straight out. I hated the thought of a wasted journey, and this trip was starting to look dicey.

  ‘No, son,’ Symie said. ‘The bird’s flown after her bruv. Where are yer?’

  ‘Here and there, Symie. Sure she’s gone from East Anglia?’

  ‘Sure. Oh, Paula’s brother Horace come in. Asks if you want a cross or a slab.’

  ‘Cross, tell him.’ I didn’t like the thought of a great single rectangle of stone standing up above the hillside like half a jaw with the other in the earth beneath. ‘Symie? Ask Freddy Foxheath to suss out any of them painting look-alikes, eh?’

  ‘Right. And Desdemona’s asking what the hell you erecting stones to her old feller for. She’s narked, Lovejoy.’ ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Hang on.’ I bipped, made a burring noise and clicked my tongue, replaced the receiver. People do nothing but quibble.

  ‘Who’re you trying to get, love?’ a waitress asked. ‘Ask Directory Inquiries.’

  For a second I looked at her. She looked back. I thanked her, did as she said. After which I also looked in the phone book. Prior Georges Xavier Metivier was listed, at Metivier Mansion, in the parish of St Sampson.

  ‘Will you marry me?’ I asked the lass. She said, ‘Get on with you’, and scolded that my tea’d get cold.

  They must have a lifetime of handling duckeggs like me, so many cocky visitors. I ate until my money ran out, but things now weren’t all that bad. From the cafe I could just see the place where Guernsey had burnt its witches at the stake in 1580. Maybe Jersey had behaved even worse? I went out to meet my new ally.

  15

  Waiting on the pavement for Walt Jethou’s car, I thought how to get money. Antiques? In a place you don’t really know, fast gelt can be difficult - I mean quick enough to pay for your next meal, your lodgings. And Walt Jethou would need a few bawbees for chauffeuring me about. Plus, I’d need to pay Rosa Vidamour for the pad. I stood watching happy holiday-makers arriving. When you’re broke, happiness makes you think of con tricks, doesn’t it? Being here wasn’t my idea. I’d been driven to it.

  A toddler came along the pavement, chuffing at its reins. It clasped my trouser leg.

  ‘Dadda!’ it bawled. I said hello. Its dad tried hauling it off.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said, red-faced. ‘He sees a leg and goes for it.’ Passing women laughed, making me redden.

  ‘Like that for life,’ I said. The little family barrelled on down the pavement.

  But a glim of truth shone there. See one, see all. See one painting in the feeble gloaming of a dim chapel, and you think of lots of others. After I’d proved their O’Conor worthwhile by nicking it - Gesso obviously babbled before he’d, well, whatever. Then somebody had stolen it back from my workshop - plenty of suspects for that, including Prince, even including Hawkeyes Summer of the Plod. Then Marie Metivier confidently sold it off. A new big question was looming in my mind. Was their canvas from a hidden cache of many?

  A scarecrow flapped up on a wheezing moped which coughed to a standstill in front of me as I waited. The figure wore a bulbous crash helmet, black visor, and beckoned. I was about to tell it to sod off, then peered closer.

  ‘That you, Walt?’

  ‘Hop aboard, Jonno.’

  Chauffeur, indeed. I hopped and clung. A policeman waved us down.

  ‘Helmet, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s the law.’

  Walt grunted, gave me his. I put it on. Inside it stank of brandy. Walt unfolded some home-made leatherette thing, inserting mysterious slabs into slots. The policeman watched, sighing.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s legal, Walt,’ he said.

  ‘It’s my own patent design, Pete,’Jethou told the bobby, muffled.

  We puttered off in style. Within a furlong I saw a likely antique shop, but the blighter wouldn’t stop.

  Augusta Quenard’s gallery - Walt kept shouting its praises over his shoulder - was basically a wooden lean-to shed with half a window and a drunken door. The board cladding was rotting. Eight feet square, no more.

  We drove up, the little two-stroke croaked to silence, and we alighted. Walt took off his helmet and shouted, ‘Gussy! Customer!’

  ‘Hardly that,’ I said, uneasy. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Where it matters, Jonno,’ Walt said. ‘She’ll be out in a minute.’

  The shed looked slammed against a brick barn wall. I noticed an improvised chimney stuck on the gable. Talk about ramshackle.

  ‘When tomatoes were the thing, Jonno,’ a lady said, emerging, ‘this bam was filled with workers, packing produce for the London markets.’

  You try not to gape, but some women deserve astonishment. This lady looked elegant, but in a demented way. Wide golden hat, flowers adorning its brim, white lace gloves, a full skirt with high heels, a neckline frothy to her chin, so much make-up that she looked camera-ready. Thick red lipstick, rouge, eyelashes caked with black mascara, earrings dangling to her shoulders. Beautiful, needed only a little more make-up. My old Gran would have called her ‘mutton dressed as lamb’; but what’s wrong with mutton?

  ‘How do you do, missus.’ Regally she extended her hand. I almost bent to kiss it, but squeezed instead. ‘Er, everything changed, has it?’

  ‘You can’t imagine, Jonno. Things have gone sadly down.’

  That surprised me, though you always get knockers who can’t see good in anything. To me, Guernsey looked on the crest of a wave, friendly and lovely, as long as you came for the right reasons, unlike me.

  ‘Really?’ I did a crest-of-a-wave plug. She wasn’t from -gasp! - Jersey?

  ‘Certainly not! Enter.’

  She said it like admitting me to the Sistine Chapel. Into the shed Walt leapt, switching on a light. He too felt this urge to serve in the presence of a lady. One naked bulb, half an erg, showed a wall crammed with paintings, mostly copies of Victor Hugo’s useless daubs in Hauteville House.

  ‘Superb reproductions, Jonno,’ she breathed. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Mmmmh,’ I said, walking round. Two paces, two across, then back. They were rubbish, the sort that fills boot fairs to no purpose. A kiddie could have done better with a paint-by-numbers birthday box. ‘Really, er, ta for showing me.’

  ‘Tell me, Jonno,’ she trilled, spinning quite like a ballerina on an off day. ‘Which one reall
y gets your fancy?’

  ‘Well, Gussy, they’re all, er ...’

  She sagged. I really do mean drooped. Her shoulders slumped. It’s a terrible thing to see hope drain away so nothing’s left. Men do it differently. When it happens to us we more or less look the same outwardly, but it’s our spark that fades as our irises hollow out. But women somehow reveal it as a whole, as if their life is condemned.

  ‘I know,’ she said in a broken voice. ‘They’re no good, are they?’

  ‘No, love.’ You have to be honest.

  ‘Here, you,’ Walt said. I gave him the bent eye. I didn’t want a brawl.

  ‘Did you paint them, Gussy?’

  ‘Yes.’ She tried a smile, which was even worse. ‘When Walt phoned that he was bringing a rich customer I put out my very best.’ She blotted her eyes. The mascara ran. ‘I’ve others, but they’re more or less of a kind.’

  ‘No harm looking.’ God, they were dreadful. She’d have done better chucking the paint at the canvas and calling herself a neo-modemist.

  ‘Gussy’s a great artist, hey,’ Walt growled.

  She led me into the barn. The end was partitioned off, wood erected on a dicey run of breeze blocks. Derelict, except for old fruit boxes.

  ‘Come in.’ She did her heart-rending smile, pulled aside a screen.

  It was a dosser’s quarter. A truckle bed, one chair, a lopsided chest of drawers. In the corner stood an easel, with paints, brushes, jam jars. Paintings sloped against the wall. Above, girders and rafters. So she lived here. Well, she was behaving like a real artist, if nowt else.

  ‘Don’t you get cold?’ Women are always on about cold.

  ‘Terribly. I have an electric fire.’ She spoke dully. She turned her canvases like leaves of a book while I stood.

  ‘She’s marvellous, hey?’ Walt Jethou almost choked on admiration.

  ‘Mmmh.’ Love comes in many a guise, they say. It wasn’t for me to pop his balloon, but I couldn’t honestly encourage Gussy. It’d only end in tears. ‘Hang on, Gussy,’ I said, noticing. ‘That’s the fifth.’

  She had exposed several paintings more or less identical - ‘of a kind,’ she’d said. Greys, muted patches of greys variously tinted, with black intersecting curves across its face. All five were bigger than her pathetic copies of Victor Hugo’s daubs. An artist is crucified by expense - canvas, frames, paints, brushes. I really do believe that artists should be heavily subsidized, if not by tons of actual money, at least by making pigments and materials untaxed and cheap as possible. The point was that Gussy, broke, had copied a single painting time after time, on large canvases she couldn’t even afford. This phenomenon shrieks of the artistic impulse, whatever the result.

  She laughed self-consciously, but bitter. ‘Guernsey people call it my mad picture.’

  ‘Gussy does it often, that’s all.’ Walt would take a swing if I sneered.

  ‘Excuse me, please.’ I stepped round him to see.

  Nine? She’d done nine. I sat on her chair unasked and had her arrange them in a line in front of me. They were the same, as near as anybody could tell. Now, one artist painting the same vision over and over varies things, however slightly. Like Paul Klee’s simple bird paintings, never the same twice, and he turned them out like Fords. These were copies, but not of a vision. They were copies of a painting.

  I cleared my throat, looked from Gussy to her row of canvases.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Gussy asked Walt nervously.

  ‘Gussy, love,’ I said. ‘Brew up. You and me need a chat.’

  She’d clearly been obsessed, over and over. I’d done right, coming to Guernsey. An idea germinated.

  Her tea was execrable, but under Walt’s glare I drank it good as gold.

  ‘Nice tea, Gussy,’ I said.

  ‘I paint a painting I once saw as a child,’ she said. She felt awkward, confessing to a secret neurosis. ‘Does that sound silly?’

  I told her, ‘I paint paintings I sometimes haven’t seen at all. When and where was the original?’

  ‘I was a little girl,’ she said, going dreamy with reminiscence. ‘I used to walk by the shore. It’s quite safe here in the Channel Isles. I was trying to paint.’ She smiled shyly. ‘I was always like that, artistic, without talent.’ She dabbed her eyes, had a go with a hand mirror, gave up. ‘I was drawing a huge offshore rock called La Grosse. It was a fine day, so I walked down to the beach, climbed over some rocks, leaving my drawing box up above.’

  ‘The scene evoked the image?’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘No, silly. I saw the painting.’

  ‘Somebody else was down by the sea, painting it?’ There was that famous short story, wasn’t there, of a man meeting Picasso, who was sketching in the sand with a walking stick, and the tide came and washed the sand drawing away.

  ‘No. The painting.’ She spoke as if to an imbecile. ‘There was a pram standing out to sea, a man rowing round the headland. The light was glary, too bright for me.’ She laughed, shamefaced. ‘I was always poorly sighted, though Dr Oldham has done wonders and I see quite well since—’ ‘The picture, love.’

  ‘There was a rock tunnel, for ammunition supplies, an old gun mounting. Water was on the ground, a trickle down one wall. It caused the eeriest reflections. I can see it now.’ She was so tranquil it worried me, her voice sounding far off, staring into space.

  ‘I saw a stack of canvases propped against the sea cave’s wall.’ She came to, to explain, ‘You do that in case the surface—’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘I felt really excited, like in some brilliant adventure, you know, Enid Blyton, those children’s writers?’ I nodded. ‘They were all beautifully framed, some gilded and heavy looking. I was naughty, but a look could do no harm, could it? It was quite bright in the tunnel, only a few yards in, that horrid sea glare reflecting everywhere. I pulled the end one away, and stared at it.’

  ‘And it was the painting?’

  Her expression was so utterly serene that I couldn’t help wishing I could have painted her there and then.

  ‘Yes. Grey, seeming at first nothing more, with thin arcs of black intersecting each other. Simple touches of greens, fawns, blues, rose madders, all so faint that you’d think there was nothing but grey.’ She smiled, wistful. ‘It seemed the purest thing I’d ever seen in my life. I do mean purest. I still see it in the night, in my mind’s eye. It was an artistic miracle.’

  ‘Purest?’ That was an odd word.

  ‘Watch it, you,’ Walt growled, thinking I was criticizing. ‘Shush up, Walt,’ Gussy said sadly. ‘He knows what I mean.’

  ‘It was exactly like these that you’ve done?’

  She spoke with the longing of sorrow. ‘Exactly? No, hardly that. But I try.’

  ‘What did you do?’ She looked back at me blankly. I went on, guilty. ‘Well, there you were alone in the sea cave. Plenty would have nicked it, and scarpered off up the cliff.’ I added quickly, in case she got the wrong idea, ‘I don’t mean that I would, of course.’

  ‘Steal it?’ said this emotion-filled saint, in horror. ‘I’m speaking of a work of art, Jonno!’

  ‘Course you are,’ I said weakly, avoiding Walt’s accusing eyes.

  ‘I climbed back over the rocks, making sure the pram was now out of sight. I went up to the greensward, got my sketch box, and went back down. I had the silly idea of copying it while nobody could see. Going down to the sea took me quite a time.’

  ‘And the man in the rowing boat?’

  ‘Gone. So was the lovely picture. And so were all of them,’ she said in sorrow. ‘I hurried to see if he was rowing the paintings out to some boat anchored offshore. I hoped to recognize it, you see, if it came into the Marina. Nothing.’

  ‘That was it?’ I couldn’t take my eyes off her copies. ‘Vanished. Quite like a dream. I tried drawing it that same night. 1 even sent my copy painting in to the children’s art competition.’ She sniffed, blew her nose. ‘They laughed at me, and said I
was deranged.’

  Not while Walt was around, I’ll bet.

  ‘People think me silly in the head.’ She rummaged in a handbag for another tissue. ‘I painted it every chance I got. Still do. I became a figure of fun. I started dressing up to match their perceptions.’ She looked defiance at me. ‘Flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face, you see.’

  John Ruskin’s famous condemnation of Whistler that led to the notorious lawsuit in Victorian London.

  ‘Were there any paintings left in the cave, love?’ I asked gendy. ‘You did check?’

  ‘Of course. I went again and again. I was always there, until Father stopped me going. He tried to get me into an art school on the mainland. I wasn’t good enough.’ She smiled, gathered herself. ‘But I won’t be beaten. You see, those who deride me never saw the original, did they? But I did. I shall carry on. One day Walt will bring somebody who likes my work. Then maybe people will stop laughing at Daft Gussy.’

  ‘Walt?’ I asked. ‘You bring customers here. Is that it, how you manage?’

  ‘Yes.’ He did his glare, until I told him to knock it off for Christ’s sake. I’d had enough trouble without nerks like him.

  ‘Let me get it straight,’ I said. ‘Gussy does her paintings. You haunt St Peter Port where the ferries dock. You try to wheedle tourists here, and sell them Gussy’s copies of the Hugo pictures?’

  ‘Yes. It’s how we make ends meet.’

  A shore tout and a repro shed. Hardly a scam to keep Scotland Yard sleepless.

  ‘Have you any antiques at all?’ I asked this loony, not so loony, pair.

  They both said no. Gussy was looking. I don’t like women to look at me closely like she was doing, quizzical but with a half-knowing obliquity.

  ‘Do you know anybody who has?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ Walt began. ‘There’s three shops in St Peter Port.’

  Gussy laid a hand on his arm. He went quiet.

  ‘One thing first, Jonno,’ she said quietly. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘I told you. I’m an impressario from ...’ I petered out. She was a laser gazer, and a man can’t resist much of that. I shrugged. What harm could it possibly do? Jonno Rant, impressario, or Lovejoy the wandering antique dealer, I was still broke.