by Peter Watson
She shook her head and while he was gone drifted into the long gallery, browsing through its sculptures, medieval tapestries and gilt objects. She looked out at the new Italian garden. Wet cypresses buckled in the wind like the tongues of enormous vipers.
When Michael returned, he could not at first find her. As he stepped further into the long gallery, however, he recognised her jeans and sweater. She was half hidden behind a statue.
‘Sorry to keep you,’ he said. ‘Getting a taxi in this weather will be as hard as gambling with Gabriel.’
Isobel Sadler didn’t move. It wasn’t that she was angry with him, though. She reached out with her left hand and grabbed Michael’s sleeve. ‘Look!’ she hissed. ‘Look at those.’
Perplexed, but shaken by her tone, Michael examined the statue she was standing near. It showed a male figure wearing a helmet with wings growing out of it. The figure also had wings on its heels. ‘I don’t see–’
‘Forget the helmet and the damned clock! Look at his tunic!’
Michael followed her gaze to the bronze tunic which the figure had slung about its shoulders. ‘You think there’s a similarity? I don’t see it.’
‘The motifs, the squiggly things … they’re the same as on the picture. Or as near as makes no difference.’
Now Michael saw what she was getting at. Scattered across the statue’s tunic was a galaxy of feathers, or petals, curly somethings that certainly did recall the motifs in Isobel Sadler’s painting. Quickly he searched the base of the statue for a title or an artist’s name. There was none and he cursed the museum’s administration for not being more helpful to visitors. Any other gallery, in Europe or America, would have had an identifying card prominently displayed.
‘Follow me,’ he cried. ‘The shop! The catalogue will be there.’ They hurried along the gallery, turned left into the medieval treasury, rushed by the stained glass and the bone carvings and came out into the entrance hall. The shop led off the hall.
‘Quick!’ said Isobel Sadler, pointing. ‘They’re closing.’
A woman was getting ready to put a cover over the cash register.
‘Look at all those books,’ Isobel Sadler whispered. ‘We’ll never find the right one in time.’
Michael thought fast, then ran to the woman by the cash register. ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ he said in what he hoped would pass as an American accent. ‘I’m flying back to Boston first thing in the morning. I’d sure like to take a museum catalogue with me—you know, the big one. Could you help me please, before you close?’
The woman gave him a furious look and for a moment he thought she was going to refuse. But no, she stopped what she was doing, moved out from behind her counter and went to the shelves. She returned with a box containing three big red books. All she said was, ‘Thirty-five pounds, please.’
Michael winced, but the catalogue might save them a day. He reached for his wallet and laid seven five-pound notes on the counter.
‘Keep the receipt,’ said Isobel Sadler, as they walked back across the hall to the exit. ‘I’ll pay back half your expenses—once I have something to pay them with.’ She grinned. It was the first really relaxed grin he had seen her make.
The rain was slackening at last but it still took them nearly half an hour to find a taxi. When they did so, Michael was livid to find a sign behind the driver that insolently thanked him for not smoking. Isobel Sadler grinned again.
On the ride back to Mason’s Yard, Michael ripped the cellophane off the catalogue and flipped through it, searching for the statue. They saw everything except that—Indian miniatures, jewellery, costumes, old photographs. ‘Where is it?’ Michael gasped. He turned more pages, past German guns, Italian porcelain, Japanese lacquer.
‘There!’ shouted Isobel Sadler suddenly. ‘Turn back!’
He riffled back. She was right. There was a small, single-column photograph of the statue, in black and white. Underneath was written:
Mercury. North Italian. Anon. 15th century (?). Mercury was a very popular god and often appears in art. As the son of Jupiter he was a god in his own right—the god of commerce and the protector of shepherds. He was also a messenger, the patron of travellers and inventor of the lyre. In allegory he personified eloquence and reason, the qualities of a teacher.
‘A teacher,’ said Isobel Sadler. ‘Not a scientist but a teacher.’
‘Hold on,’ said Michael. ‘This is only six lines. There must be more about him in the books back at the office. This doesn’t even explain the design on his tunic.’
The taxi dropped them off by the archway leading into Mason’s Yard. Before going to the office Michael stepped into the Chequers, the pub just next to the arch, and emerged with a couple of Havanas. Seeing the look on Isobel Sadler’s face, he said, ‘Love me, love my cigars. Look, I’ve been a good boy all afternoon. I’ll be losing the habit if I’m not careful.’ He grinned and led the way into the Yard.
The gallery was closed—Gregory and Patrick had gone for the day. Michael opened the main door, deactivated the alarm and led Isobel Sadler upstairs. He found some glasses and a jug in a tiny kitchen at the very top of the building, and took them back down to the office. Isobel Sadler was already going through the reference book at the top of the pile on the desk which Michael had given her to use. He poured the Scotch and topped the glasses up with water. This time Isobel Sadler accepted. ‘It’s after six,’ she explained, smiling.
After a few minutes of reading solidly, she swallowed some whisky and said, ‘This is it, I think. What we’ve been looking at are not feathers or leaves or petals but upside-down flames. I’ll read it to you: “Upside-down flames may have one or more of three meanings. In his illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Botticelli dots the spheres of heaven with upside-down flames where they are intended to represent individual souls burning like stars in the crystal sphere of the firmament. Second, in the painting entitled The Virgin of the Book, in the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli in Milan, the same flames in a badger-like formation appear on the shoulder of the Virgin’s cloak. Here they radiate downwards from a star and must surely represent divine inspiration. It was, after all, tongues of fire which came down from heaven on the day of the Pentecost and sat upon each of the Apostles filling them with the Holy Ghost so that they began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
‘“Another use of the emblem in antiquity was as a characteristic of Mercury in his guise as guardian of secret knowledge. The inverted torch was in fact an early symbol of death, one of Mercury’s roles being to conduct souls to the underworld of Hades. But the badge, the upside-down flame, eventually came to symbolise all of Mercury’s functions, not just this gloomy one.”’
Isobel Sadler rested the book on the desk in front of her. She took another gulp of whisky. ‘Am I being defeatist, or does all that tell us what we already know, only more so?’
Michael sat back in his chair so that he wouldn’t blow smoke into her face. She had a point. He was tapping ash into the lacquered tray on his desk when he suddenly noticed a folder that hadn’t been there when they had left. He picked it up and opened it. Inside were the colour prints of the painting. He slid one across to Isobel Sadler and swallowed his whisky. Raw sand itched his veins. He gazed at the photograph as if for inspiration.
At length he said, ‘We’re obviously not reasoning like medievalists. Let’s try thinking out loud. We’ve been directed to this figure who, we find out, is three things: a guardian of secret knowledge, a teacher and a messenger, a conductor of souls into strange lands. As you say, we knew a lot of that already … therefore this is a kind of underlining. Why would it need underlining?’
Isobel Sadler was only half listening, still scanning the figures in the photograph in front of her. ‘What I find odd,’ she said, ‘is this man’s hairstyle. Why is it shaved so high … It doesn’t—well, it doesn’t look very Greek or Roman, does it? It’s hardly godlike; quite the opposite, in fact–’
‘That’s it!
That’s it!’ Michael slapped the palm of his hand on the open book in front of him. ‘Well done! Why didn’t I think of it?’
He got up and went round to Isobel Sadler’s desk and stood behind her, so they could look at the photograph together. He held the bottle of whisky in one hand.
‘Look at the faces on the other figures … All of them are idealised, some are hidden, none of them is carefully painted or properly drawn. The detail is coarse or simply not there. Yet this face, this first face as we can now call it, is painted very carefully. Not just the hair, which, as you say, is very real-looking, but the eyes, the nose, the lips, the jawline. Strong dark eyebrows, a thick neck, a cleft in the chin. Remember the first day you came to the gallery? I remarked how well this face was painted and how weak the rest was? Damn—I should have put two and two together right away. There was a reason for it! The reason this head is much better than any of the others is because, unlike the others, this man actually existed. He must have been famous in his day. People would have recognised him, either because they knew him or because he had been painted in other pictures, pictures where he is identified. That’s it! You see! The identity of this man takes us to a place, where he lived, or taught, or preached, or died. That is where we start. He’s both a guardian of the secret and the messenger—the man who can conduct us to it.’
‘But how on earth can we find out who he is? He’s been dead for four hundred and fifty years. And where are we going to look to find a likeness for him? There must be thousands and thousands of pictures still in existence from that time. And what about the clock? We still haven’t explained that.’
‘The clock’s not a problem,’ shouted Michael, still excited and puffing huge folds of blue smoke into the room. Isobel Sadler pushed his hand with the cigar away from her. ‘It has nothing to do with Mercury, or this man, whoever he is. Dammit, again it’s obvious.’ He leaned forward, over Isobel Sadler’s shoulder, again catching a brief smell of the Willowherb on her hair. With the neck of the upturned whisky bottle he traced the nine figures in the picture. ‘Look at the composition as a whole … The people are arranged, very roughly, in a circle, a flat ring. Now think ahead. Say we do eventually find out who this character is, the one with the shaved head and the cleft in his chin. What then? Which way do we go, where is the next clue? Along the top or along the bottom? I’ll put it another way: do we go clockwise or anticlockwise? See? That’s what the clock means.’
Isobel Sadler was impressed. She twisted in her seat to look up at him. ‘Clever. I can see that nothing in this picture is going to be straightforward.’ She looked at her own watch.
‘Where did you decide to stay?’
‘With a friend, near Harrod’s. I shouldn’t be too late on my first night. It wouldn’t be polite.’
‘Tell you what, then. Since I’ve won my wager, let me claim my reward straight away. Let’s have a quick dinner together tonight. We can carry on trying to work this out over a bottle of something or other—and then I’ll drop you off. I live that way.’
‘Not the prettiest invitation I’ve ever had. But we might as well get it over with, I suppose. Is there somewhere I can wash my hands, please, and comb my hair?’
Michael showed her to a small bathroom at the top of the building, on the same floor as the kitchen. He put out the lights in his office and waited for her down in the main gallery. There was a fresh picture where the Gainsborough had been; the Australian collector who liked breakfast so much had taken it on approval. That meant he could have it at home on his walls for up to three months before deciding whether he wanted it. It was a nerve-racking way of doing business. The picture was worth about six months in overheads, which was fine if a sale went through. During that time, however, no one else was able to see the picture and fall in love with it. But Whiting & Wood Fine Art had no choice: everyone else operated that way.
When Isobel Sadler reappeared they both went out into the Yard, after Michael had set the gallery alarm. The rain had eased but the roads were still very wet. They threaded their way through the narrow streets of St James’s. ‘I love this part of London,’ said Michael, as they walked. He pointed to one gallery selling old master drawings, another selling coins, a third with a small watercolour in the window and yet another with an eighteenth-century French chest of drawers in red lacquer and gold on show. ‘There are more beautiful objects in these few streets than almost anywhere else in the world. Eggshell lacquer, ormolu, mahogany veneers, lapis lazuli, parcel-gilt, watered silk. Even the words are promiscuous. It’s like a museum and all for sale.’
He took her to Keating’s, a restaurant in a small mews behind the Ritz Hotel. It was an art-world favourite and Michael was known there; he didn’t have to book in advance.
‘Drink?’ he asked as they settled into their seats. ‘It’s very arty here—so they do all those fancy Venetian cocktails, you know, “Bellini”, “Tiziano”, “Tiepolo” and so on.’
She pushed her hair away from her eye. ‘I’ll have a Bellini.’
He ordered two.
She looked around her and he saw her eyebrows lift in wonder.
‘This place is called Keating’s in honour of that old rogue and forger, Tom Keating. Every picture on the walls here is a fake. Some are Tom’s but by no means all. It has become the practice in the art world that when a dealer finds himself landed with a forgery, or spots one and picks it up cheaply, it is given to this restaurant. Look,’ he added, and pointed, ‘that’s a “Raphael” over there, with a “Titian” next to it and a “Picasso” on the other side.’
Isobel Sadler’s gaze raked the room. There were a few pictures so famous that even she recognised them, ‘Have you donated anything,’ she said at length, ‘or do Whiting & Wood never get caught out?
Michael turned and pointed. ‘That one is ours. It’s a “Turner”.’ He shifted in his seat so as to face her again. ‘The grand old man is always supposed to have produced a number of erotic drawings and paintings—but Ruskin, the art critic, who was a great Turner fan, destroyed them after Turner’s death. They contradicted what he—Ruskin—thought a great artist should produce.
A waiter brought the Bellinis and two menus.
‘Some bright spark had the idea of “rediscovering” a few of the erotic Turners and brought them in to us. The style was quite good. The provenance was weak—but then you’d expect that. Sadly, the paper which the drawings were made on wasn’t itself produced until the 1860s. Turner, of course, died in 1851. It was a nice try. The drawings would have been very popular if the hoax had come off.’ He smiled. ‘Let’s order.’
After they had chosen, he said, ‘No more art chat for a bit. If we give our brains a rest we’re more likely to come up with a solution. Tell me about the farm. By the sound of it, you love it but find it hard—yes?’
She accepted a bread roll from a waiter. ‘Yes and no. I love the land—yes. The countryside, the fields, the Cotswolds. And I love horses—I was a very horsey schoolgirl.’ She brushed her hair away from her face. ‘But I don’t think I’m a natural farmer, not like my father was. He was a widower most of his life. My mother died having me so I never knew her. After he retired from the foreign service, he threw himself into farming, which I think he loved even more than diplomacy. If he had to get up in the middle of the night, even in the middle of a snowstorm, because a sheep was lambing, he loved it … it was all part of the adventure for him.’ She swallowed her drink. ‘That meant he was quite happy to get by, financially I mean. Farming was a way of life for Pa, not a means by which he could become a millionaire.’
‘You don’t see it like that?’
‘No. I suppose I’ve kept on the farm out of loyalty. And because Tom and his family depend on us.’
‘What would you rather be doing?’
The wine arrived before she could answer. Michael tasted it, a Volnay, and the waiter filled their glasses.
‘Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to be a millionaire either. Not especially.
But if I were to sell the farm tomorrow I would probably spend the money on a boat.’
‘What sort of boat?’
‘A big one.’ She laughed. ‘Well, a fairly big one. Big enough to live on.’ She drank some of her wine. ‘I’d like to live in the sun—Florida or California, maybe. Or Australia. Where people could charter my boat. Where not many people smoke.’
Michael pushed down the Havana in his top pocket, so that it no longer showed. ‘But you haven’t done it, so far?’
‘I’m stubborn. When I sell the farm—when, not if—I want it to be from a position of strength, as a going concern producing healthy profits, not because I have to. If I couldn’t do that I’d feel like a failure for the rest of my life and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy any boat I bought.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘I’m talking too much. All this is such a change for me. A whole day away from the farm. I must be a bit disorientated and you are a stranger, Mr Whiting, after all … I’m being more honest than I’m used to being.’
Oddly, Michael was hurt by this remark. ‘I had hoped that we were about to get on to first-name terms,’ he said softly.
Just then the food arrived and she waited for it to be served before replying. After the waiter had gone, she said, ‘I’m not that easy with men, Mr Whiting—Michael—as perhaps you’ve noticed. I’ve not had very happy experiences. I’m sorry but I can’t help it.’
Michael could not pursue this, not for now. He smiled as warmly as he could. ‘My own experiences with women, in the last few months anyway, have been not so much unhappy as non-existent. If I’m not easy, it’s because I’m rusty.’
She let this go. ‘Tell me about Michael Whiting, and Whiting & Wood Fine Art. How did you become an art dealer?’
Since Michael had promised not to smoke until the end of dinner, he was nervously playing with his matches. ‘By accident, really. I should have been a musician. I went to a school which worshipped music in general and the local composer, Elgar, in particular. I was one of those people who was naturally good at music—I played the cello—and with that went an ability in maths, as it often does. I loved numbers. I loved them for their own sake and I knew—and still know—how many pieces of matter there are in the universe, how many grains of sand there are in a mile-long beach, how many drops of water pour over Niagara Falls every minute. The love of numbers, of course, led to an interest in probability—odds—and that led to an interest in gambling.’
