Twelve Red Herrings

by Archer, Jeffrey

  Sally wrapped a towel around her and grabbed the phone, hoping it would be Tony.

  “Hi, Sally, it’s Simon. I’ve got some good news. Mike Sallis has just called from the P.A. He’s coming around to the gallery at midday tomorrow. All the pictures should be framed by then, and he’ll be the first person from the press to see them. They all want to be first. I’m trying to think up some wheeze to convince him that it’s an exclusive. By the way, the catalogs have arrived, and they look fantastic.”

  Sally thanked him and was about to ring Tony to suggest that she stay overnight with him so that they could go to the gallery together the following day, when she remembered that he was out of town. She spent the day pacing anxiously around the house, occasionally talking to her most compliant model, the sleeping cat that never moved.

  The following morning Sally caught an early commuter train from Sevenoaks so she could spend a little time checking the pictures against their catalog entries. When she walked into the gallery, her eyes lit up: half a dozen of the paintings had already been hung, and she actually felt, for the first time, that they really weren’t bad. She glanced in the direction of the office and saw that Simon was occupied on the phone. He smiled and waved to indicate that he would be with her in a moment.

  She had another look at the pictures and then spotted a copy of the catalog lying on the table. The cover read “The Summers Exhibition,” above a picture of an interior looking from her parents’ drawing room through an open window and out onto a garden overgrown with weeds. A black cat lay asleep on the windowsill, ignoring the rain.

  Sally opened the catalog and read the introduction on the first page.

  Sometimes judges feel it necessary to say: It’s been hard to pick this year’s winner. But from the moment one set eyes on Sally Summers’ work, the task was made easy. Real talent is obvious for all to see, and Sally has achieved the rare feat of winning both the Slade’s major prizes, for oils and for drawing, in the same year. I much look forward to watching her career develop over the coming years.

  It was an extract from Sir Roger de Grey’s speech when he had presented Sally with the Mary Rischgitz and the Henry Tonks Prizes at the Slade two years before.

  Sally turned the pages, seeing her works reproduced in color for the first time. Simon’s attention to detail and layout was evident on every page.

  She looked back toward the office and saw that Simon was still on the phone. She decided to go downstairs and check on the rest of her pictures, now that they had all been framed. The lower gallery was a mass of color, and the newly framed paintings were so skillfully hung that even Sally saw them in a new light.

  Once she had circled the room, Sally suppressed a smile of satisfaction before turning to make her way back upstairs. As she passed a table in the center of the gallery, she noticed a folder with the initials “N.K.” printed on it. She idly lifted the cover to discover a pile of undistinguished watercolors.

  As she leafed through her rival’s never-to-be-exhibited efforts, Sally had to admit that the nude self-portraits didn’t do Natasha justice. She was just about to close the folder and join Simon upstairs when she came to a sudden halt.

  Although it was clumsily executed, there was no doubt who the man was that the half-clad Natasha was clinging onto.

  Sally felt sick. She slammed the folder shut, walked quickly across the room and back up the stairs to the ground floor. In the corner of the large gallery Simon was chatting to a man who had several cameras slung over his shoulder.

  “Sally,” he said, coming toward her, “this is Mike …”

  But Sally ignored them both and started running toward the open door, tears flooding down her cheeks. She turned right into St. James’s, determined to get as far away from the gallery as possible. But then she came to an abrupt halt. Tony and Natasha were walking toward her, arm in arm.

  Sally stepped off the pavement and began to cross the road, hoping to reach the other side before they spotted her.

  The screech of tires and the sudden swerve of the van came just a moment too late, and she was thrown headlong into the middle of the road.

  When Sally came to, she felt awful. She blinked her eyes and thought she could hear voices. She blinked again, but it was several moments before she was able to focus on anything.

  She was lying in a bed, but it was not her own. Her right leg was covered in plaster, and was raised high in the air, suspended from a pulley. Her other leg was under the sheet, and it felt all right. She wiggled the toes of her left foot: yes, they were fine. Then she began to try to move her arms. A nurse came up to the side of the bed.

  “Welcome back to the world, Sally.”

  “How long have I been like this?” she asked.

  “A couple of days,” said the nurse, checking Sally’s pulse. “But you’re making a remarkably quick recovery. Before you ask, it’s only a broken leg, and the black eyes will have gone long before we let you out. By the way,” she added, as she moved on to the next patient, “I loved that picture of you in the morning papers. And what about those flattering remarks your friend made? So what’s it like to be famous?”

  Sally wanted to ask what she was talking about, but the nurse was already taking the pulse of the person in the next bed.

  “Come back,” Sally wanted to say, but a second nurse had appeared by her bedside with a mug of orange juice, which she thrust into her hand.

  “Let’s get you started on this,” she said. Sally obeyed, and tried to suck the liquid through a bent plastic straw.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” the nurse told her once she’d emptied the contents of the mug. “He’s been waiting for some time. Do you think you’re up to seeing him?”

  “Sure,” said Sally, not particularly wanting to face Tony but desperate to find out what had happened.

  She looked toward the swing doors at the end of the ward, but had to wait for some time before Simon came bouncing through them. He walked straight up to her bed, clutching what might just about have been described as a bunch of flowers. He gave her plaster cast a big kiss.

  “I’m so sorry, Simon,” Sally said, before he had even said hello. “I know just how much trouble and expense you’ve been to on my behalf. And now I’ve let you down so badly.”

  “You certainly have,” said Simon. “It’s always a letdown when you sell everything off the walls on the first night. Then you haven’t got anything left for your old customers, and they start grumbling.”

  Sally’s mouth opened wide.

  “Mind you, it was a rather good photo of Natasha, even if it was an awful one of you.”

  “What are you talking about, Simon?”

  “Mike Sallis got his exclusive, and you got your break,” he said, patting her suspended leg. “When Natasha bent over your body in the street, Mike began clicking away for dear life. And I couldn’t have scripted her quotes better myself: ‘The most outstanding young artist of our generation. If the world were to lose such a talent …’”

  Sally laughed at Simon’s wicked imitation of Natasha’s Russian accent.

  “You hit most of the next morning’s front pages,” he continued. “‘Brush with Death’ in the Mail; ‘Still Life in St. James’s’ in the Express. And you even managed ‘Splat!’ in the Sun. The serious buyers flocked into the gallery that evening. Natasha was wearing a black see-through dress and proceeded to give the press sound bite after sound bite about your genius. Not that it made any difference. We’d already sold every canvas long before their second editions hit the street. But, more important, the serious critics in the art pages are already acknowledging that you might actually have some talent.”

  Sally smiled. “I may have failed to have an affair with Prince Charles, but at least it seems I got something right.”

  “Well, not exactly,” said Simon.

  “What do you mean?” asked Sally, suddenly anxious. “You said all the pictures have been sold.”

  “True, but if you’d arranged to have
the accident a few days earlier, I could have jacked up the prices by at least fifty percent. Still, there’s always next time”

  “Did Tony buy ‘The Sleeping Cat That Never Moved’?” Sally asked quietly.

  “No, he was late as usual, I’m afraid. It was snapped up in the first half hour, by a serious collector. Which reminds me,” Simon added, as Sally’s parents came through the swing doors into the ward, “I’ll need another forty canvases if we’re going to hold your second show in the spring. So you’d better get back to work right away.”

  “But look at me, you silly man,” Sally said, laughing. “How do you expect me to—”

  “Don’t be so feeble,” said Simon, tapping her plaster cast. “It’s your leg that’s out of action, not your arm.”

  Sally grinned and looked up to see her parents standing at the end of the bed.

  “Is this Tony?” her mother asked.

  “Good heavens no, Mother,” laughed Sally. “This is Simon. He’s far more important. Mind you,” she confessed, “I made the same mistake the first time I met him.”

  TIMEO DANAOS …

  Arnold Bacon would have made a fortune if he hadn’t taken his father’s advice.

  Arnold’s occupation, as described in his passport, was “banker.” For those of you who are pedantic about such matters, he was the branch manager of Barclays Bank in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, which in banking circles is about the equivalent of being a captain in the Quarter Master Pay Corps.

  His passport also stated that he was born in 1937, was five feet nine inches tall, with sandy hair and no distinguishing marks—although in fact he had several lines on his forehead, which served only to prove that he frowned a great deal.

  He was a member of the local Rotary Club (hon. treasurer), the Conservative Party (branch vice-chairman), and was a past secretary of the St. Albans Festival. He had also played rugby for the Old Albanians 2nd XV in the 1960s and cricket for St. Albans C.C. in the 1970s. His only exercise for the past two decades, however, had been the occasional round of golf with his opposite number from the National Westminster. Arnold did not boast a handicap.

  During these excursions around the golf course Arnold would often browbeat his opponent with his conviction that he should never have been a banker in the first place. After years of handing out loans to customers who wanted to start up their own businesses, he had become painfully aware that he himself was really one of nature’s born entrepreneurs. If only he hadn’t listened to his father’s advice and followed him into the bank, heaven knows what heights he might have reached by now.

  His colleague nodded wearily, then holed a seven-foot putt, ensuring that the drinks would not be on him.

  “How’s Deirdre?” he asked as the two men strolled toward the clubhouse.

  “Wants to buy a new dinner service,” said Arnold, which slightly puzzled his companion. “Not that I can see what’s wrong with our old Coronation set.”

  When they reached the bar, Arnold checked his watch before ordering half a pint of lager for himself and a gin and tonic for the victor, as Deirdre wouldn’t be expecting him back for at least an hour. He stopped pontificating only when another member began telling them the latest rumors about the club captain’s wife.

  Deirdre Bacon, Arnold’s long-suffering wife, had come to accept that her husband was now too set in his ways for her to hope for any improvement. Although she had her own opinions on what would have happened to Arnold if he hadn’t followed his father’s advice, she no longer voiced them. At the time of their engagement she had considered Arnold Bacon “quite a catch.” But as the years passed, she had become more realistic about her expectations, and after two children, one of each sex, she had settled into the life of a housewife and mother—not that anything else had ever been seriously contemplated.

  The children had now grown up, Justin to become a solicitor’s clerk in Chelmsford, and Virginia to marry a local boy whom Arnold described as an official with British Rail. Deirdre, more accurately, told her friends at the hairdresser’s that Keith was a train driver.

  For the first ten years of their marriage, the Bacons had holidayed in Bournemouth, because Arnold’s parents had always done so. They only graduated to the Costa del Sol after Arnold read in the Daily Telegraph’s “Sun Supplement” that that was where most bank managers were to be found during the month of August.

  For many years Arnold had promised his wife that they would do “something special” when it came to celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, though he had never actually committed himself to defining what “special” meant.

  It was only when he read in the bank’s quarterly staff magazine that Andrew Buxton, the chairman of Barclays, would be spending his summer sailing around the Greek islands on a private yacht that Arnold began writing off to numerous cruise companies and travel agents, requesting copies of their brochures. After having studied hundreds of glossy pages, he settled on a seven-day cruise aboard the Princess Corina, starting out from Piraeus to sail around the Greek islands, ending up at Mykonos. Deirdre’s only contribution to the discussion was that she would rather go back to the Costa del Sol and spend the money they saved on a new dinner service. She was delighted, however, to read in one of the brochures that the Greeks were famous for their pottery.

  By the time they boarded the coach to Heathrow, Arnold’s junior staff, fellow members of the Rotary Club, and even a few of his more select customers were becoming tired of being reminded of how Arnold would be spending his summer break. “I shall be sailing around the Greek islands on a liner,” he would tell them. “Not unlike the bank’s chairman, Andrew Buxton, you know.” If anyone asked Deirdre what she and Arnold were doing for their holidays, she said that they were going on a seven-day package tour and that the one thing she hoped to come home with was a new dinner service.

  The old Coronation service that had been given to them by Deirdre’s parents as a wedding gift some twenty-five years before was now sadly depleted. Several of the plates were chipped or broken, while the pattern of crowns and scepters on the pieces that were still serviceable had almost faded away.

  “I can’t see what’s wrong with it myself,” said Arnold when his wife raised the subject once more as they waited in the departure lounge at Heathrow. Deirdre made no effort to list its defects again.

  Arnold spent most of the flight to Athens complaining that the aircraft was full of Greeks. Deirdre didn’t feel it was worth pointing out to him that if one booked a passage with Olympic Airways, that was likely to be the outcome. She also knew his reply would be, “But it saved us twenty-four pounds.”

  Once they had landed at Hellenikon International Airport, the two holidaymakers climbed aboard a bus. Arnold doubted whether it would have passed its MOT in St. Albans, but nevertheless it somehow managed to transport them into the center of Athens, where Arnold had booked them overnight into a two-star hotel (two Greek stars). Arnold quickly found the local branch of Barclays and cashed one of his traveler’s checks, explaining to his wife that there was no point in changing more, as once they were on board the liner everything had already been paid for. He was sure that was how entrepreneurs conducted themselves.

  The Bacons rose early the following morning, mainly because they hadn’t been able to get a great deal of sleep. Their bodies had continually rolled to the center of the lumpy concave mattress, and their ears ached after a night resting on the brick-hard convex pillows. Even before the sun had risen, Arnold jumped out of bed and threw open the little window that looked out onto a backyard. He stretched his arms and declared he had never felt better. Deirdre didn’t comment, as she was already busy packing their clothes.

  Over breakfast—a meal consisting of a croissant, which Arnold felt was too sticky, and which in any case fell apart in his fingers, feta cheese, which he didn’t care for the smell of, and an obstinately empty cup, because the management refused to serve tea—a long debate developed between them as to whether they should hire a
taxi or take a bus to the liner. They both came to the conclusion that a taxi would be more sensible, Deirdre because she didn’t want to be crammed into a hot bus with a lot of sweaty Athenians, and Arnold because he wanted to be seen arriving at the gangplank in a car.

  Once Arnold had settled their bill—having checked the little row of figures presented to him three times before he was willing to part with another traveler’s check—he hailed a taxi and instructed the driver to take them to the quayside. The longer than expected journey, in an ancient car with no air conditioning, did not put Arnold into a good humor.

  When he first set eyes on the Princess Corina, Arnold was unable to mask his disappointment. The ship was neither as large nor as modern as it had appeared in the glossy brochure. He had a feeling his chairman would not be experiencing the same problem.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bacon ascended the gangplank and were escorted to their cabin, which to Arnold’s dismay consisted of two bunks, a washbasin, a shower and a porthole, without even enough room between the bunks for both of them to be able to undress at the same time. Arnold pointed out to his wife that this particular cabin had certainly not been illustrated in the brochure, even if it had been described on the tariff by the encomium “Deluxe.” The brochure must have been put together by an out-of-work realtor, he concluded.

  Arnold set out to take a turn around the deck—not a particularly lengthy excursion. On the way he bumped into a solicitor from Chester who had been innocently strolling with his wife in the opposite direction. After Arnold had established that Malcolm Jackson was a senior partner in his firm, and his wife Joan was a magistrate, he suggested they should join up for lunch.

  Once they had selected their meal from the buffet, Arnold lost no time in telling his newfound friends that he was a born entrepreneur, explaining, for example, the immediate changes he would make to improve efficiency on the Princess Corina had he been the chairman of this particular shipping line. (The list, I fear, turned out to be far too long to include in a short story.)