The Painting

by Alison Booth

  But the painting had changed her. ‘I don’t want it back,’ she said. Her words came out loud and overemphatic. ‘By rights this belongs to Julius.’

  When Julius coughed, she could feel the emotion he was barely containing. It was as if it were vibrating through his arm and into hers. Neither detective spoke, though they both looked surprised, eyebrows raised, the roly-poly one with his mouth falling open.

  The wall clock continued measuring out the seconds. After a good few had gone by Julius said, his voice wavering, ‘Anika is a wonderful young woman whom I’ve been fortunate to get to know a little since we met nearly a year ago. I think she and I would be in full agreement that it would serve the painting best to be given to the state gallery where everyone can see it. And this is what I propose,’ he continued, his voice stronger now. ‘That we – Anika or me or whichever one of us the police decide the painting should be restored to – donate it to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and that you don’t prosecute my wife Sarah.’

  ‘I’ll go along with that,’ Anika told him. ‘With pleasure.’ And with great relief too. She could feel her shoulders – and her jaw that she hadn’t known until now that she was clenching – start to relax.

  Julius began to describe in some detail the various pieces of legislation likely to cover this sort of gift but Anika was finding it impossible to concentrate. Her legs gave way and she collapsed on to a chair. The circumstances in which the painting came into her family were horrible. It was rightfully Julius’s. And really it was far, far better that the state art gallery should have the Antoine Rocheteau rather than either Julius or her. There everyone would see it and be able to enjoy it.

  She picked up her handbag. It held the envelope containing the photo of Tomas holding the painting. In the envelope was also a picture of Tomas and Tabilla on their wedding day. Anika had thought of these as her insurance, as something that she’d show the police if she had to. She would save them for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, although she would first show them to Julius after they finished with the police. The curators would be able to initiate a provenance search proceeding backwards from this. Somewhere in Vienna there could be art catalogues from the early twentieth century, records that might list the original sale of the painting to the Singer family.

  And the provenance of this picture was no longer Anika’s concern. She could hand the whole burden of the painting to others. For too long she’d been obsessed by it, and now at last she could move on.

  Julius put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Are you OK, Anika?’

  She smiled at him and he beamed back. He looked years younger. ‘Never better,’ she said. ‘This is the right thing to do.’

  Chapter 36

  Anika was exhausted that evening when she got home. As she pushed the front door open, she nearly knocked over Tabilla, who must have been standing immediately inside.

  ‘There’s someone to see you, Anika.’

  ‘Oh, Tabilla.’ Anika’s voice came out all cross and that was not what she’d intended at all. It was only that she was so tired and seeing her aunt there was a surprise, and anyway she’d wanted to be able to have a drink with her without having to deal with some visitor first. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘They’re sitting out on the back terrace. I’ve just come in to get my cardigan. Why don’t you put your things down and go out there and say hello.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just say I wasn’t at home?’

  ‘Of course, I said you weren’t here but then I said you’d be back shortly and offered a cup of tea. I wanted a chat, you see, but now you’re home I’ve got some sewing to do so I’ll leave you to it.’ She went into the front room and shut the door behind her.

  After hanging her handbag from the newel post at the bottom of the staircase, Anika made her way through the kitchen. She felt clammy and uncomfortable. Her dress was damp with sweat, after a nightmare ride in a bus with no spare seats and too much balancing in the crowded aisle with nothing much to hold on to as the bus lurched erratically from one stop to the next. The cool breeze blowing through the kitchen was pleasant after all that heat.

  Too quickly she stepped out of the kitchen on to the brick paving of the terrace. If the man sitting there hadn’t jumped up to catch her, she would have been over on her knees and grovelling before him. He held her by her elbows for rather longer than necessary, as if he thought she might collapse again with the shock of seeing him. And it was true that she was completely flummoxed, maw open for so long it was a wonder a fly hadn’t settled on her teeth. It was only the dryness of her mouth that made her realise she’d been gawping at him, his face only a few centimetres away from hers, and so close she could see the bristles of his incipient beard and the pores of his skin. She looked down, anything to avoid gazing into those dark eyes. His shoes were brown and scuffed and in need of a good polish, and this seemed somehow out of character. When he bent forward to kiss her lips she was shocked again.

  He said, ‘Do you remember we almost kissed the night I brought you home after we had fish and chips at Watson’s Bay?’

  She made a show of struggling to remember but then thought better of it and nodded her head.

  ‘Your neighbour was standing on her front verandah right behind you. As soon as we heard that car backfire, I spotted her watching us. I thought that kissing you passionately under her scrutiny would have been a tad embarrassing for everyone.’

  Suddenly conscious of the sweat stains around the armpits of her dress, Anika held her elbows close to her side and took a step back.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he said gesturing to one of the canvas directors’ chairs, as if he were the host and she the visitor.

  She sat next to him. Her dress seemed to have become shorter and her legs were pale and bare. After one quick glance at them he looked away, as if he too were uncomfortable. He transferred his gaze to the garden. Two orange and black butterflies flitted by, their pace leisurely, as if they would live for ever rather than just a few weeks. Above the paling fence at the bottom of the yard, you could make out the wheat silos in the distance, beyond the roofs of the terraced houses stepping down the hill. They sat in a silence that felt like an eternity, although it was probably no more than a few seconds.

  ‘Did you get my letter, Anika?’

  ‘Tabilla forwarded it to me in Budapest. I sent you a postcard but you probably won’t get it for another week.’

  ‘What did it say, can you remember?’

  ‘It said that I was sorry and that I’d phone you when I got home.’

  The words in Daniel’s letter sprang to mind. I can’t help but wonder if, when you get upset about one thing, you immediately start looking for something else you can vent your anger on. He was right, this was a character trait that she had. Together with half of the human species.

  ‘What were you sorry for, Anika?’ She could hear emotion block his throat and make the words indistinct.

  ‘Sorry for all that business about your uncle, Jake Rubinstein. Whoops, I mean your Great-uncle Jacob Lacey.’

  He smiled and she could tell that he was struggling not to, that he thought she might be annoyed because he was grinning at the apology. His face looked so comical that she couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

  ‘I think we might put that behind us, don’t you?’ Daniel said, beginning to laugh with her.

  His face looked even lovelier than she remembered, and suddenly it seemed to her right that he was here by her side on this glorious summer’s evening. ‘I think it might be a very good idea to do that, Daniel.’

  He reached out to take her hand. It was still hot and sweaty but he didn’t seem to mind. Her watchband slipped round her wrist, exposing the scar on her left forearm. Daniel gently raised her hand and kissed the puckered white skin. A kiss that conferred acceptance, or maybe it was a blessing.

  Anika began
to feel lighter, as if she might float above the terrace, but Daniel’s hand was anchoring her, grounding her in this city to which she knew she now belonged. Together they watched the pair of orange and black butterflies fluttering by again, until the clicking of heels on vinyl heralded Tabilla’s arrival in the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ she called through the open doorway. ‘Of course, I’d hate to interrupt you, but would either of you like a glass of wine?’

  ‘Do come out and join us,’ Anika replied, leaping to her feet. Her aunt was standing in the middle of the kitchen, her expression slightly vulnerable, as if she felt she might be disturbing them. Anika darted inside and threw her arms around Tabilla. ‘I’ll get the wine,’ she said. ‘You go outside and sit with Daniel. I’d like to tell you together about what happened to the painting.’

  Acknowledgements

  Warmest thanks to early readers Alison Arnold, Kerrie Barnett, Heather Boisseau, Clare Christian, Tom Flood, Maggie Hamand, Tim Hatton and Michelle Wildgen. I am very grateful to Alastair McAuley for sharing his expertise on the former Soviet Union and Hungary, although in no way can he be held responsible for my interpretation of the period. Thanks to the team who brought this book into production, and to the many booksellers and librarians who contribute so much to getting a new novel out into the world of readers. Thanks also to Varuna the Writers’ House for the opportunity to write with no interruptions when this was most needed. Last but not least, I thank my beloved family for being there.

  The Painting is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Of the many historical books that I read as background for this work, readers might find particularly interesting the following: Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. London: Vintage, 2010; Michener, James A., The Bridge at Andau, London: Secker & Warburg, 1957; Sebestyén, Victor, Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, London: Phoenix, 2010; Sebestyén, Victor, Twelve Days: The Revolution 1956, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007; and Ungváry, Krisztián, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

  Chapter 1

  His Hands Could Span an Octave Easily

  ‘That brings me to my penultimate point.’ Dr Bagnall looked up from his lecture notes and peered at Aunt Charlotte, who was sitting next to Sarah in the front row of the packed hall.

  At last, Sarah thought. He’d been droning on for a good fifteen minutes and nothing that he’d said was new. Everyone who attended meetings of the Women’s Franchise League knew all about the history of the women’s suffrage movement. She glanced at her father and Mrs Lydia Buxton. Slumped in their chairs at the back of the platform, waiting their turn at the lectern, their posture could surely not meet with the approval of Aunt Charlotte, who’d nudged Sarah awake only minutes before.

  ‘Get on with it, why don’t yer?’ shouted a female voice. ‘It’s about bloody time we ’eard yer last point!’

  Sarah felt a thrill of excitement. But alas, Dr Bagnall took no notice of the interruption and continued to develop his second-last point, which seemed indistinguishable from his previous one. Or perhaps it’s all too subtle for me, Sarah thought, losing the thread of Dr Bagnall’s argument as she vanished into the world of her imagination, a landscape whose features were defined by sound. In her mind she was running through the piano suite she’d been practising that afternoon. She was passing through its valleys and was now uplifted on to a plateau; she was being carried forward towards the peak that was just a few bars ahead when her progress was halted by a harsh sound.

  ‘Give the women a go, why don’t yer!’ It was the same voice as before. ‘We want to ’ear wot Mrs Buxton ’as to say. Get off the stage, yer long-winded burbler!’

  Swivelling around, Sarah narrowly avoided bumping hats with Aunt Charlotte. She stood up to see better and – in the instant before the rest of the audience did likewise – saw a tall middle-aged woman in a clinch with two slightly shorter policemen. The woman was still shouting although her words had become muffled, in part by the constabulary embrace, but also by the uproar as fifty or so voices began to talk.

  Although Sarah could hear Dr Bagnall continuing with what must now be his last point, no one was listening. All heads were craning towards the performance at the rear of the hall. Surely Dr Bagnall couldn’t have failed to notice what was happening to his audience. She turned at the moment a tomato flew towards him. He ducked and it landed on his papers; his shout and the exploding tomato were like a firework on Guy Fawkes Night. Poor Dr Bagnall, how humiliated he must feel. Sarah found a handkerchief and ran up the steps to the platform. While Dr Bagnall wrung his hands, she knelt on the floor and gathered up his notes. She wiped off the tomato pulp as if she were cleaning blood from a wound; her expiation for being pleased, for just an instant, by an act of aggression.

  The racket at the back of the hall was becoming louder. People were shouting. Many high shrill voices, mingled with fewer deep male voices, moving towards a resolution of the crisis, as in the final movement of a concerto. Dr Bagnall seemed to have lost all interest in his lecture notes. He leapt down, almost athletically, from the stage and joined Sarah’s father and aunt in the side aisle. Sarah absorbed herself in methodically cleaning the pages of the lecture notes. Some of the writing had been washed off with the liquid of the tomato, and her handkerchief was stained with red juice and blue ink.

  ‘That’s just not big enough for the job,’ said a voice that reverberated like a double bass. Sarah saw a large white handkerchief first, and behind that, a tall figure silhouetted against the harsh lighting. When he squatted next to her, she saw that he had curly blonde hair and a broad, lightly tanned face. ‘Such a shame about your handkerchief,’ he said.

  ‘Such a shame about the lecture notes. We’ll never know Dr Bagnall’s last point now,’ said Sarah.

  ‘I think we can predict it, don’t you?’ the man said. ‘You have some tomato on your sleeve. Use my handkerchief.’

  His hand holding out the handkerchief was large, with long fingers. They could span an octave easily. As she took his offering, her fingers accidentally touched his. She felt a shock as if she had felt something very hot and withdrew her hand so quickly that his handkerchief fell on to the floor. Each of them went to pick it up simultaneously and again she felt that electric touch. She was blushing now and didn’t want to look up. As she wiped up the few tomato seeds clinging to the sleeve of her pale-grey jacket, she noticed the monogrammed initials HV on a corner of the handkerchief.

  ‘I’m Henry Vincent,’ the double bass man said. ‘Delighted to meet you, Miss Sarah Cameron. Charles Barclay told me who you are.’

  She wound the handkerchief around her fingers. Sarah, the eighteen-year-old younger daughter of widower James Cameron, that was how Charles might have described her. She wasn’t usually shy but she didn’t know quite what to do or say next. To offer to return the handkerchief after having it laundered seemed forward, as if she were proposing a future meeting, while to return it covered in tomato seeds seemed inappropriate too. She wished that Aunt Charlotte would join them to offer some guidance but most of all she wished her blushes would subside.

  The fuss at the back of the hall was now over and people were resuming their seats. Henry Vincent said, ‘Let me take that from you. You’ve bandaged your left hand expertly. With all those bits of tomato pulp, it looks like a shocking injury.’

  She laughed and unwound his handkerchief. His eyes seemed yellow in the artificial lighting, as yellow as the eyes of next door’s cat, Lucifer. But people didn’t have yellow eyes; they must be hazel or light brown. She forgot her earlier embarrassment and stared at him, almost mesmerised by the yellow. He stared back, unblinking. ‘Your eyes are a light brown,�
� she said at last, as if making a scientific observation, when what she was really expressing was a startling new discovery: that golden blonde hair and light brown eyes were the acme of male beauty.

  ‘And yours are blue,’ he said.

  She recognised this as a declaration of sorts and not a statement of the obvious. Their eye contact was broken by the appearance of her father, who was puffing slightly after his climb up the stage steps.

  ‘Such an unpleasant incident. This sort of thing should never happen,’ he said, nodding to Henry. ‘Though Dr Bagnall did go on too long. We’ll have to schedule him last next time.’

  ‘Or not at all,’ said Sarah.

  Henry followed her down the steps. ‘There’s a lesson to be learned from every incident, our old parson used to say,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s hope the good doctor has learned his,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Up with brevity.’

  ‘And down with repetition.’ She stopped and grinned at him. He smiled back. The gap between his two front teeth reminded her of a rodent, of the endearing mole variety. Before she sat down next to Aunt Charlotte, she observed him moving along the line of seats several rows behind, and sitting next to Charles Barclay. Charles, a man of average appearance in every regard, looked slight next to Henry’s tall figure.

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,’ she said to Aunt Charlotte, whose hat had become tilted at a jaunty angle in the excitement.

  ‘Nor I. But the most interesting talks are yet to come. Do try to stay awake, Sarah dear!’

  There was no chance that Sarah would fall asleep; she had too much to think of, including her father’s speech. His words were as carefully reasoned as always, but he dropped the calmness of his usual conversation and adopted the language and cadences of the natural orator. The subjugation of women was political and psychological in origin. It was based on emotion and not reason, on prejudice and not logic, on feelings and not the intellect. And it was prejudice that had led to the creation of institutions and customs that perpetuate this subordination.