by James Runcie
‘I must be allowed to pose a few questions, Geordie.’
‘I understand that.’
‘I have been using this lunch as a means of preparing the ground. I’ll ask how the town has changed since the war and if there is anything particular I should look in on. I’ll tell them I’m interested in art and see what happens.’
‘Don’t make the asking about art too obvious.’
‘It will only be enough to get an answer.’
‘Well, I’m off to the gendarmerie.’
It did not take Sidney long to establish that Celine had indeed returned to Dieppe and that a friend had organised an event at the Château Musée. She had been planning her visit with Reveille for three months and was staying until Christmas.
He left the hotel and walked through the gardens skirting the beach. It was half past three in the afternoon, the kite flyers were beginning to pack up, and lights were coming on all over the town. It was, Sidney thought, a French seaside version of Grantchester. He looked at the church of St Jacques with its fifteenth-century tower and made his way back through the town, passing the Café des Tribunaux that Sickert had painted, where Oscar Wilde had written The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and where Graham Anderson had waited for his daughter Celine. Sidney thought of that twelve-year-old girl coming home from school, unaware of the man in the café, and how different her life might have been had Anderson spoken directly to Guy and Delphine Girard or told his daughter the truth.
Sidney passed the castle off the Rue de la Barre, and began his ascent to the Château Musée. He tried not to think how embarrassing it would be if they found nothing. Although his hunch had already proved correct and he had established that the couple were in town, there was still a long way to go if they were to recover the Sickert.
He approached the museum. Quentin Reveille’s word paintings were already displayed in the window. This time they were in French:
L’OBSCURITÉ LUMIÈRE
HAUT BAS
CACHÉ RÉVÉLÉ
Inside the château, they had been hung in opposition to their meaning so that the dark paintings were brightly lit, the hidden painting was the easiest to spot, and the high painting was placed low down against the floor.
Sidney was just inspecting the backs of the pictures displayed in the window when Celine appeared. She was wearing a short white dress and long white boots with hearts under their indented tops.
She gave Sidney a weary smile. ‘I suppose I should say that I am surprised to see you, but I am not. Have you come alone? Are you in love with me?’
‘No, I’m afraid not, I just wanted to have a look round . . .’
‘I didn’t realise that you were so interested in art. Perhaps you will buy something. Quentin takes commissions. You could have paintings for your church. Light and Darkness, the Hidden and the Revealed. Whatever you want.’
‘Yes, I can imagine. Haut. Bas. We look up to the heavens and then down to the ground beneath our feet. You were in the Fitzwilliam Museum a week before the theft, were you not?’
‘I see that you have still not recovered from my performance.’
‘I would be grateful if you would answer my question.’
‘I do not see why. You are not my confessor.’
‘Then you have a confession to make?’
‘There is always something.’
‘Please tell me.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I think it does. The day you walked through the gallery was not your first trip to the Fitzwilliam, was it? The guard saw you on the previous Saturday, even though you had your hair pinned up and looked like a boy.’
‘So?’
‘You were looking at the Sickert painting. And you took a particular interest in it.’
‘Perhaps I did.’
‘And why was that?’
‘I think you must know why. Otherwise you would not have come all this way.’
‘The Trapeze Artist is your mother.’
‘Perhaps. We cannot be sure. I told Quentin about my past life and he remembered the painting. He had once had a girlfriend in Cambridge. So I went to see for myself. Then the Director helped me. I wanted to know about my origins; you understand?’
‘It must have been a strange feeling, seeing the painting for the first time.’
‘I cannot know for sure.’
‘And so you took it.’
‘But how would I do that? I had no clothes.’
They were interrupted by the return of Quentin Reveille. Inspector Keating was with him, and announced their arrival by saying, ‘Look who I’ve found.’
‘This is a complete waste of time,’ the artist answered. ‘The exhibition opens tonight. We have a lot of people coming and although we are used to unpredictability in our happenings they don’t normally include the police.’
‘Well it doesn’t have to if you hand over the painting.’
‘We don’t have it. I wish you would give up your fruitless pursuit.’
‘I wondered if we could have a closer look at Haut?’ Sidney asked.
Reveille was surprised. ‘Why that particular picture?’
‘Don’t,’ said Celine.
‘I would be grateful if you would oblige me.’
‘I suppose there’s no harm.’
An assistant removed the painting from the wall. Sidney took it from him. ‘I’d also like to see the way in which it’s been framed. I know how you take pride in these matters.’ He turned the picture round. ‘Does the back come off?’
‘Not easily.’
‘But simply enough to conceal another painting inside, I would have thought. A substantially smaller image of, say, of, twenty-five inches by thirty-one inches?’
‘You are mad, Canon Chambers.’
‘No, I think I am merely persistent.’ He carried the painting over to a nearby trestle table. ‘You don’t mind if I pull off the masking tape, do you? It will be easy enough to put back. I presume you have a screwdriver?’
‘Of course,’ said Reveille. ‘And I presume you will pay for any damage.’
‘I will be careful. Amanda showed me how to do this.’
‘So that is why you insisted on seeing her last week?’ said Keating. ‘That was very devious of you.’
‘There are reasons for everything,’ Sidney replied. I will just lift the top away. Of course I may be wrong but this is quite fresh. The paint still has some tackiness to it.’
‘That is because the exhibition opens tonight.’
‘I think we’ll decide on that,’ said Keating.
Reveille was unrepentant. ‘You realise that you have no jurisdiction here?’
‘That’s not entirely true. It is why I brought my colleagues from the gendarmerie. They are intrigued; not least by our clerical friend. And they want to impress their superiors at Interpol. I’ve promised them the credit.’
‘Then I presume you’ll take the blame when this has proved to be a wild-goose chase?’
Sidney slid the wooden back off the frame. Then he carefully pulled out an old canvas and turned it over. It was The Trapeze.
‘I had no idea that it was there . . ..’
Keating looked inside the frame. ‘Perhaps you would like to explain, Miss Bellecourt?’
‘There is nothing to say.’
‘I think there is.’
‘I wanted to take it. It should have been mine. And I thought of a way.’
‘It was before you took off your fur coat,’ said Sidney.
‘It was.’
‘But no change of clothes has ever been found,’ Keating continued.
‘That is because the dress Miss Bellecourt travelled in was made of paper,’ Sidney answered.
‘I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘Neither had I, but Amanda pointed out how flimsy her dress was after The Festival of Misfits and how she had seen other women in paper outfits; they were the first examples of immediately disposable clothing.’ He turned to Celine. �
��You wore such a costume to Cambridge under your fur coat, and then threw it away in the Ladies’.’
‘What about the knife to cut away the canvas?’ Keating asked.
‘Hidden in the paper dress in the wastepaper basket. Omari Baptiste was responsible for three rooms. You waited until he had left the gallery containing the Sickert and seized your opportunity. Then you went to the Ladies’, rolled up the painting and hid it in the sleeve of your fur coat. The display was calculated to show that you had nothing to hide, but you had it all the time and left by the front door.’
Reveille tried to deny the obvious truth. ‘An ingenious theory. So you’re saying she travelled all the way back to London in nothing but a fur coat.’
‘It was large enough. Miss Bellecourt then went to your workshop. Perhaps, Mr Reveille, you really did know nothing. But it seems unlikely. We have already established that you do your own framing.’
‘Celine is just as capable.’
‘Then you are distancing yourself from her?’
Celine interrupted. ‘How did you know it was there?’
‘A guess, I’m afraid. But it would be too obvious to conceal it in a painting called Caché or Révélé. Much better to acknowledge the subject matter: the height of the trapeze and the chasm below. You were also hesitant when we discussed the titles. I just needed to check the picture was newly framed with the back sealed tightly.’
‘I didn’t realise that you were such an expert in picture framing?’ Reveille asked.
‘I’m not. But I have a friend at the National Gallery and I tested my theory on her. She was intrigued and we tried it out. There’s often plenty of room between the canvas and the frame. She told me that in the war people sometimes varnished the canvas of a masterpiece and then painted over it; an amateur daub that could be removed later. But you wouldn’t want to stoop so low as to appear amateur, would you?’
‘I don’t see why either of us should tell you anything.’
‘Of course you can remain silent. But you will have to speak to others.’
Keating explained. ‘The gendarmes are waiting at the door.’
‘Will I go to prison?’ Celine asked.
‘Probably.’
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘I think, first of all, it was the way you walked,’ Sidney replied. ‘You were unaware of the audience but glided through the room, looking straight ahead at all times, as if you were sleepwalking or thinking of something entirely different. And you never looked down. Your mother would have been proud of you.’
That night Sidney and Geordie decided to have a celebratory drink at a bar in the harbour, in a venue similar to one Sickert had referred to as ‘the kind of place a European prince visits just after he has been ruined’. They watched the boats bobbing and ringing under a chain of evening lights before enjoying a seafood stew. Sidney imagined Sickert painting the scene before going on to the circus, Graham Anderson as a young man in love, and Mademoiselle Alexis on the trapeze, waiting to jump, each character in the story unaware of their future or their fate, swinging briefly over the abyss.
There was paperwork to attend to the following morning, and Sidney managed to persuade the Chief of Police to let him see the prisoner once more, if only to say goodbye.
Celine was dressed in a pale blue slip, with no shoes or shoelaces or trousers with a drawstring, but was, in a curiously French way, still allowed to smoke. It wouldn’t take her long, Sidney thought, either to escape or to persuade everyone to let her off completely.
He began by apologising; for intruding into her detective work about her mother and for ‘spoiling the party’.
‘It wasn’t much of a party. But it’s over now.’
‘Perhaps it would have been easier to bring your foster parents over to Cambridge than take the painting to them. Have they seen it yet?’
‘They came last night.’
‘They didn’t tell us that.’
‘They are proud. And they think you are tourists.’
‘And do they think the painting is of your mother?’
‘They understand that I wanted to believe it. So they said it was. But we cannot know for sure.’
‘Perhaps it is better in the imagination.’
‘It is almost the same as memory, don’t you think?’
‘You need imagination to remember.’
‘I just wanted to think of a time when my mother was happy,’ Celine began. ‘I can picture her standing on the trapeze, holding the attention of the crowd below and then taking that leap into thin air, flying, even if it was only for seconds. I don’t want to think of her being hit by my drunken father or shot when the Germans took over the town. I want to imagine her there; la balance, la jetée, la liberté. That moment of flying and floating and being free. That is why I wanted the painting. It’s like watching your mother with her future still in front of her, the air unknown even though it surrounds her: all that it requires is the bravery to make the leap into who we are and will be.’
‘Did you ever plan to give the painting back?’
‘It was a stupid thing to do. But I hope she would understand. I too needed to do something rash and sudden; a great jump over everything that does not matter. We all have to do this at some point in our lives. Perhaps you have done this too?’
‘People talk about the leap of faith,’ Sidney began. ‘You have to dedicate yourself. Then, once you are committed, it’s almost impossible to go back. You take the risk that what you are doing and what you believe is true.’
‘And what is life without risk, Canon Chambers? It is no life at all.’
‘I think it was Kierkegaard who said that “without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith”.’
Celine smiled. ‘You must love flying more than the fear of falling. Have you read Anaïs Nin? “La vie se rétracte ou se dilate à proportion de notre courage”.’
As she spoke, Sidney could see why Reveille had loved her. ‘I’ll be taking the painting back to the Fitzwilliam.’
‘Mr Anderson will be pleased.’
Sidney did not know how much to say. ‘Do you have any message for him?’
‘You can tell him that I am sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘It is his favourite painting.’
‘I wonder why?’
‘I think you should ask him that.’
‘That may be a long time away. I shall be in prison.’
‘I will ask him to come and see you.’
‘Why would he want to do that?’ Celine asked.
‘Because the heart has its reasons,’ Sidney replied.
Even though the trip had only lasted a few days, England appeared different on their return; darker, colder and ready for Christmas. Lights had been put up in the Cambridge town centre, trees both real and artificial were on sale in the marketplace, the window displays in the shops were frosted and silver, and tinsel tipped over the tops of shopping baskets as parents tried to restrain the excitement of their children. The Fitzwilliam Museum had put on an exhibition of nativity paintings, and Sidney found Graham Anderson in a swirl of Ghirlandaios, Correggios and Parmigianinos, with all the fat babies, obedient angels and improbable weather that comprised those stilled romanticised versions of what must have been a more difficult birth and a harsher truth. The Director drew his attention to a Dürer engraving of the Nativity and an Altdorfer of the Adoration of Kings, saying that if ever Hildegard wanted to come and look at the museum’s German holdings she would be welcome. ‘But I can’t imagine that’s why you’re here.’
‘No. We have obtained the Sickert, as I think you know. It was your daughter, after all, who stole it.’
‘And what will happen to her?’
‘Prison, I am afraid. Keating thinks it will be a minimum of three and a maximum of eight years. It depends on how the trial goes.’
‘Should I say something?’
‘I think you should
see her. You don’t have to tell her everything but you could start with her mother.’
‘I know that it’s wrong for a child not to know her own father.’
‘And I think,’ Sidney continued, ‘that it might not be the shock you are expecting. Celine is used to doubt, secrecy and uncertainty. She knows of her own tragic past. Perhaps you can give her hope. The man she thought was her father is dead and you are alive. What can be more joyous than that?’
‘I wish I could have been better for her.’
‘There is still a future.’
‘I’m not sure if I know how to be a good father or what it means at all.’
‘I am not sure anyone does. I don’t have children myself but my own father seems to regard the whole business of parenting as a benevolent accident that has little to do with him.’
‘Perhaps it’s all to do with the confidence of a happy marriage?’
‘I am sure that helps.’
‘And will you have children, Canon Chambers?’
No one had ever asked Sidney this question so directly, and so he had never prepared an answer and he found himself saying, to his immense surprise, ‘Actually, I do hope so, however unlikely it may be. I think I’d like to be a father.’
As instructed by Amanda, Sidney had managed to bring back a souvenir from Dieppe as a thank you to his wife for letting him go in the first place. Despite being a little too pleased with himself with the purchase, he knew that he still had to be careful because Hildegard was cautious about their finances, especially just before Christmas. In fact, they had already agreed upon a rather unusual money-saving scheme involving the presents they gave to each other. Instead of buying anything new they had decided, as an experiment, to wrap up possessions that they already had and had forgotten about. The idea was that this would make them appreciate the things they took for granted, and rediscover objects that Sidney thought had either been lost to the vagaries of his behaviour or the eccentricity of Mrs Maguire’s cleaning. Thus, his grandfather’s leather pouch that he had kept for change, a newly cleaned jumper that had been something of an old favourite, and a silver matchbox case were all about to be given to him as if for the first time; a metaphor, if ever there was one, for the need for light and rebirth in the darkness of winter.
