The Garden of Lost and Found

by Harriet Evans

  The little girl, Eliza was her name, with the silvery wings glinting in the sun. The way she was beginning to turn back to the viewer as if she knew she was being watched – did she know what would happen? Was that her expression in the final picture? And the glimpse inside the house, the octagonal study lined with books, the woman writing there, the centre of the home, her face obscured, loosened hair tumbling down her back – was that Liddy herself? The paper on the floor, the knocked-over candle – what did they mean, or was it simply the breeze from the open french windows? And the golden bolt shooting overhead in the sky, like a star, showering sparks on to the ground beside the house – no photograph showed this was in the final picture. Why hadn’t he painted it in? Was it a comet, bringing bad luck? Was it simply an accident, some paint knocked on to the sketch and cunningly disguised – she knew he’d done it before, with The First Year, when Eliza, then a baby who had just learned to crawl, had plonked a hand covered in chrome yellow on to the corner of the almost-finished canvas. It is much improved by her addition. I think she will be a painter, he had written to Dalbeattie.

  ‘Who lives there now?’ Gemma (Lawyer/Runner Tribe) asked. Juliet blinked. The mums were all watching her intently.

  ‘Oh, an old couple bought it after Grandi died. I haven’t been back for years.’

  Fourteen years. Bea had been a tiny baby. Juliet rubbed her eyes again, looking round, and then glanced at her watch. ‘Right. I’d better go.’

  She, Zeina, Katty, Dana and a few others murmured goodbyes and smiled. Zeina patted Juliet’s arm and gave her a strange look. ‘Listen, lovey, I hope it goes well today. Call me later, afterwards, OK?’

  Juliet watched her friend hurry off, the brisk familiar motion as she swivelled her leather shoulder-bag-cum-briefcase behind her. She turned and walked down the fume-clogged road where the smell of freshly mown spring grass mingled with the constant smell of drains that plagued the corner of the road by the Heath.

  As she headed for the Tube, her mind tiredly sifted through the morning thus far – Henry on the radio, the fact that today was the last day she’d be able to pop out and look at that little sketch whenever she wanted, Bea’s face when she asked if Amy was still bullying her, the memory of her feet up on the roof, of the Royal Wedding, Isla’s heartbreaking smile and cool, firm little hand in hers, Matt’s fetid contempt for her, oozing out of him like a fecal smell, like the drains, that was what it was like, and last of all the steady warmth of Zeina’s friendship that sometimes meant Juliet just wanted to lay her head on her shoulder and weep, and stay like that. But you didn’t, you couldn’t. Ridiculous to think like that. As Grandi used to say, you simply kept on going.

  Chapter Two

  Juliet loved auctions, always had. Grandi had a great weakness for bric-a-brac and unusual items, and once made Juliet, aged nine, carry a large glass case with a pair of stuffed ferrets in it back to Nightingale House while she forced her best friend, Frederic, to wrestle with a huge astrakhan coat in the broiling heat which had allegedly belonged to an officer in the Russian Imperial Army. This coat had fleas and afterwards Frederic (himself an antiques dealer in the village) refused to go with her to another sale.

  As Juliet pushed open the doors into the auction room, she caught sight of Henry Cudlip, talking to Emma, his terrified assistant, who was hopping from one leg to another, like a gazelle in need of a pee. Identical posh and immaculate girls buzzed around them, positioning the chairs, the cups and jugs of water on the stand next to the auctioneer’s block, the bid slips, the catalogues with precise efficiency. On the far side of the room was the bank of chairs, phones and headsets for those dealing with telephone bids: the all-important overseas buyers, that was where the money was these days.

  There was a huge screen behind the auction block on to which was beamed

  Dawnay’s

  17th May 2014

  Sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & Edwardian Art

  which was a vain attempt to pretend the other paintings, even now being hung on flocked screens on wheels by jovial porters, mattered in the slightest. Everyone knew there was only one painting on sale today. There, at the front of the great hall, bathed in clear spring sunshine from the cupola lightwell high above, so tiny, so unsuited to its ornate thick gold frame, hung the sketch of The Garden of Lost and Found. This different setting gave it, to Juliet, a new energy. The strokes were sure and true, the tension in the children’s small bodies apparent. The different brushes – the stiff hog’s-head which suggested the lichen on the wall, the softer sable brushes for the sky, the little details which you could see had been scratched in by the thumbnail Ned kept long for just such a purpose, and the delicacy of the different glazes and scumbling, adding depth to the steps and the house with its sitting room where the figure sat writing. Today, the gold star shooting from the sky in a graceful arc seemed to shimmer. Oh, what would the finished painting have been like, when this sketch was so close to perfection itself!

  I’ll miss you, little thing. I wish you were mine. Juliet frowned. She had recommended it be sold without its Rococo-esque frame, which had been taken from another painting of the exact dimensions and put on to this, another rather desperate ploy by Henry Cudlip and Dawnay’s to drum up interest and market this sale of a sketch – a vibrant, technically dazzling work but a sketch nonetheless – into a four-ringed circus, as though this were the original on sale.

  She suddenly wished she had brought her children in to the auction house to see it. Why hadn’t it occurred to her to do so? It was their history, Ned Horner was their great-great-grandfather, and who knew where the painting would end up after today? In the study of an American billionaire with a fetish for Victorian and Edwardian children’s paintings? In the new Louvre in Riyadh, visited only by rich people in haute couture? Or in a vault in Switzerland? For both Victorian and Edwardian art historians and collectors Ned Horner was divisive, she knew: either you liked his bolder, energetic, realistic earlier work or you liked his later ‘sellout period’, the ramped-up patriotism and sentimental soldiers, but the myth of The Garden of Lost and Found seemed to straddle both.

  Looking around it was apparent what a big deal this sale had become: TV cameras, the journalists standing at the side, the anxious Dawnay’s grandees huddled in the doorway of the boardroom, scrutinising the unfolding scene, and, of course, the busy young women. She had been one of them – never as glossy but still placed front and centre on a day like this, when she was thin, and had time to blow-dry her hair every day, and wore wrap dresses and proper suede slingbacks, instead of long Titian hair hastily pulled into a bun from which it kept escaping, a too-long fringe that tickled her eyelashes, a long flared silk skirt covered in a pattern of curling peacock feathers which she’d found in a charity shop and decided to rebrand as a vintage find, much to Zeina’s amusement (‘It’s from the Sue Ryder shop down the road,’ she took great pleasure in informing everyone every time Juliet answered mysteriously at drop-off, ‘This? Oh, it’s vintage’) . . . She didn’t care about her appearance, not now. She just wished it wasn’t so obvious that at Dawnay’s, at least, her appearance mattered, that she didn’t go with the interiors.

  Henry Cudlip was adjusting his cufflinks and smoothing back his hair. The heavy tweed jacket he always wore was too warm for this bright May day, its sea-green velvet collar soaked at the edge with perspiration. Juliet could hear him giving instructions in his loud, almost bubbling voice. As if he felt her eyes on her Henry looked up and, with a jerk of his head, beckoned her over.

  ‘Well, this is your last chance, Juliet,’ he said, rubbing his hands in what seemed to be a jovial manner. ‘Are you sure?’

  As Juliet nodded, smiling coolly at him, she realised she hadn’t had time to brush her teeth that morning. She hesitated, running her tongue around her mouth in what she hoped was a surreptitious manner, then said:

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll happily talk about the painting, but I won’t stand next to it and pose for pictures.’r />
  Henry kept rubbing his palms together, fingers pointed towards her, like he was imitating a shark. ‘Lord Dawnay has asked me to convey to you just how much it would mean to the company if you did.’

  ‘I’m the expert, Henry.’ She could feel her temper unfurling like a dormant beast. ‘You know I am. I should be conducting this auction. I should be talking about the paintings. Not because I’m Ned Horner’s great-granddaughter but because it’s my job. The clients know me, and I know the work –’

  ‘All we ask for is a nice photo of you next to the sketch, Juliet,’ he said, teeth bared in a wide smile, and she knew now he was furious. His pale round blue eyes fixed on hers. ‘You must see it adds a note of personal interest to the story.’ And he reached up. ‘Here, like that,’ he said, tugging her rose-gold hair out of its coil and down over one shoulder. The extraordinary thing was no one seemed to notice. ‘There. Come on, Juliet—’

  Though this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, Juliet was so astonished she didn’t know what to say, both at the act and at the physical contact itself – no one, apart from Isla and Sandy, if they fell over or when she was wishing them goodnight, touched her any more. She said, ‘Oh!’ and took a step back into a lectern placed next to the painting in readiness for the auction. It wobbled. She watched it, as if in slow motion, fall against the grey baize of the stand upon which the painting was placed, sharply hitting the gold frame.

  With a low scream Henry lunged forward, as the lectern’s edge sliced away a curlicue of burnished wood, managing to push it to the side before the sharp corner landed on the thick paint itself, on the little figures in their tangled reverie. The painting was pushed up, off its hook, and clattered loudly to the floor.

  An elderly elegant lady by the door turned, sharply. Juliet bent down to pick the painting up, thrilling to its touch, as Henry crouched over the frame, muttering in a low voice, ‘Shit. Oh shit, shit. What the hell have you done, you bloody . . . Oh shit . . .’

  The veneer of bohomie that coated him was gone, and he was exposed, wild-eyed, red-faced, foolish. Juliet set the lectern right again and moved it out of danger. She glanced around the room – one journalist, and a man with closely cropped grey hair in the third row looked up, but the journalist was half diverted by her phone and didn’t seem to have fully appreciated what had happened. The man, however, gave her a small, rather strange smile, his green eyes moving from her to the painting. Juliet returned his gaze then followed it, staring at this small perfect thing in her hands.

  ‘This is your fault.’ Henry picked up the piece of gold frame.

  ‘I’m—’ Juliet began, and then she stopped before she apologised. ‘No, it’s not my fault, Henry,’ she said, surprising herself again. ‘You touched me. You shouldn’t have.’

  Henry laughed. ‘What the hell do you mean?’ he said, as the tiny figure of Lady Dawnay materialised beside them.

  ‘Dear God. What on arth is going on,’ she said, in appalled tones.

  ‘Nothing, Lady Dawnay—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped, clenching and opening her hands, old garnets and amethysts glinting as her bony fingers flexed. ‘Good Lord, Henry, have you dimigid the painting?’

  ‘No, no . . .’ Henry smoothed back his hair. ‘No, it’s fine, absolutely fine – dear Lady Dawnay—’

  ‘Den’t call me “Dear”. The frame is cricked. What on earth do you have to say for yourself, Hen?’

  ‘I – I—’ Henry sputtered, and hung his head.

  ‘The frame isn’t original,’ Juliet said, quietly. Lady Dawnay turned slowly towards her, beadily appraising her. ‘For what it’s worth, I don’t like it at all. It’s wrong for the sketch.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Juliet Horner. Victorian and Edwardian specialist, Lady Dawnay.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Lady Dawnay, ‘may I ask you why on arth has it been used to frame this painting?’

  ‘Well,’ said Juliet, ‘it was felt by some that the sketch required a traditional gold-leafed oak frame to best display it. But I disagreed. It’s from Goldschmidt’s gallery, it used to be on a small oil painting of Rome by Frederick Fortt with the same dimensions. The sketch of The Garden of Lost and Found wasn’t ever framed. It was painted on to a stretcher. If you remove the stretcher, you can see the notes he was making, trying different colours and so on.’ Very carefully, she gestured, with the bent knuckle of her little finger. ‘The detail of the tangled bushes, the daisies on the steps – he’s tested them all out in this corner, where the fabric is folded up. It’s a valuable resource for decoding the final painting itself. If it was up to me it would be unframed, as it always used to be.’

  ‘If it was up to you,’ Henry said, ‘there’d have been no frame on it to protect it and it’s highly likely the picture would have been ruined beyond repair.’

  ‘As you know quite well, Henry, that wasn’t down to me,’ said Juliet in a low voice. She stared at him, suddenly not caring.

  She had been scared of him when he’d joined three years ago and told her he hated working mothers: ‘Just joking, my dear, but their mind’s not on the job.’ She’d been scared of him when she’d told him she was pregnant and wanted to come back four days a week and to leave at four every day and he’d said he’d employ her for three days but she’d have to work four. And she’d been scared of him when he’d kissed her at the Christmas party six months earlier, a ‘festive kiss’ where he’d slid his fat, wet tongue into her mouth and said she had to shape up because since coming back from maternity leave with Sandro her breasts were fantastic but otherwise she was well below her game. She was scared, because he’d stare at her sometimes – and her hair in particular – and that fat tongue would dart between his plump lips. He treated her like a wounded animal, wobbly, pale, tired, confused, he the lithe younger male stalking her, tripping her up all the time. Even though she knew more than him, was better qualified than him and with far more experience, and he was only there because he was Lord Dawnay’s godson and had gone to the right school.

  Had Juliet known what life as a working mother would be like, watching as she and her friends were slowly, gently, suffocated in socks and bath toys covered in black crud and unanswered party invitations and plastic Peppa Pig magazine toys, would she have thought again? No, of course not, because life without the children was unthinkable, because of the mere fact of their existence. Before children she wouldn’t have understood this new, dreary sexism that beset you when you became a mother, which had dragged her into a pit out of which she couldn’t ever seem to climb, but she did know one thing, fourteen years on: she was tired of it all. Tired of it being her fault, of bringing up girls, of dealing with phones, and friendships, and the children’s Italian granny buying Sandy T-shirts that said: ‘Uomo di Casa’ – ‘The Man of the House’. Tired of broken glass and spilled drinks and endless, non-stop fear. Of men who swore at you when the buggy blocked their way, of women who gave you side-eye when your child screamed without stopping in the supermarket check-out queue. She’d tried discussing this with her own mother once, but Elvie Horner had almost backed out of the room as her parents tended to when uncomfortable emotion was in play. And though every newspaper or website tried to persuade you otherwise, she knew one thing: it was nothing to do with how much she loved her children, but everything to do with being a mother.

  Juliet pressed her thumb hard against the bridge of her nose, as Lady Dawnay looked at Henry Cudlip. ‘Is she right about the frame? Does it metter? She’s the expert, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry, after a moment’s pause, glancing down at the chip of gold-painted wood in his hand. ‘We can remove the frame.’

  ‘I would,’ said Lady Dawnay. ‘You’ll have to work out how to explain this to the sale room but, as they say, that is very much your problem, not mine.’ And she turned on her brown court heel and left.

  ‘It’s – it’s really time to get started,’ said Emma anxi
ously. ‘Shall I open the main doors?’

  Henry Cudlip twisted his signet ring round and round. ‘Wait five minutes. Here. Take this.’ He wrenched the picture from Juliet’s hands. ‘Graham can remove the frame. Now. Now!’ he snapped, as Emma, eyes huge, grabbed the little painting and skittered away with it, as though she were carrying the Ark of the Covenant and running for the bus. ‘Oh, Juliet,’ added Henry. ‘I’ll want to see you afterwards. My office. Thank you.’ And he turned his back on her.

  Juliet realised then she couldn’t bear to stay and see the painting being sold and so turned to look at it one more time as it was borne out of the room by the restorer. ‘Goodbye,’ she said to it under her breath, eyes fixed on the disappearing figure through the french windows, her straight back, her delicate profile.

  So instead Juliet watched the sale on the internal live feed in her office and saw the little sketch go for £1.25 million to an unnamed bidder after a frenzied, ping-pong few minutes, Henry’s eyes practically popping out of his head as he tried to keep up with each bid and counter-bid. Juliet knew from the pre-sale briefing that the buyer was probably Julius Irons, the Australian oil billionaire who collected late-nineteenth-century art – she had sold him pieces before. He was as close-fisted and dry as a bone, no apparent passion for any of the Millaises or Leightons or Alma-Tademas he’d snap up whenever they came on the market. Though it wasn’t the most expensive piece of art of this type one could buy, this sketch was the great prize. Would he put it in his sitting room above the fire and gaze at it on cold winter nights, or donate it to the Tate, where it could sit alongside Ophelia and April Love and the other great works of the era? She doubted it. It would go into a vault. If it was the finished painting, it’d never be allowed to leave the country: an export ban would be slapped on it – but it was a sketch. Just a little sketch.

  Juliet chewed her pencil. For the umpteenth time she wondered who was selling it. A small-time dealer from a small market town had brought it into the gallery, acting on behalf of an ‘anonymous client’. The client was fanatical about not wanting to be identified and Juliet knew what that meant. Of course, the painting was kosher – it had been verified by three separate experts, Juliet not included: the characteristics of Horner’s later work were all there. The fresh white paint background he used for extra brilliance, even on sketches, the freeform, dazzlingly confident brushwork, the ingenious structure that showed so much and yet left you wondering, and the figures – no one since Hogarth was as good at capturing personality and character, even here – you could tell the little girl was the leader of the two, her brother a willing accomplice.