Sitting at his computer in his new house in Chester Square, Vladimir Antipovsky punched in seventeen different codes, placed his eye against the iris reader, ran his fingerprints through the ultraviolet scanner and transferred $500 million into his current account. He was prepared to risk more than money to acquire the work.
The Emir of Alwabbi sat in his bulletproof car outside London’s Dorchester Hotel waiting for his wife, the Sheikha Midora, to join him. The auction was the Emir’s idea of torture. A private man, he had spent a lifetime avoiding the flash of a camera, the peer and sneer of a journalist, indeed any kind of life on a public stage. The only exception was when his horse, Fighting Spirit, won the Derby and on that glorious day, the summation of a lifetime’s dream, the Emir could not resist stepping up before Her Majesty the Queen to accept the magnificent trophy on behalf of his tiny principality. It pained the Emir that so few understood that all thoroughbreds were descended from four Arabian horses. The English, in particular, liked to think that through some strange alchemy of good breeding and natural selection, these magnificent animals had somehow morphed out of their squat, bow-legged, shaggy-haired moorland ponies.
The Emir wanted to build a museum dedicated to the horse in his landlocked country. His family’s livelihood had for many centuries relied on the camel and the Arab horse; oil had only been discovered in the last thirty years. But his wife said no one would visit that kind of place; only art had the power to persuade people to travel. She pointed to the success of neighbouring projects in Qatar and Dubai, to the transformation of nowhere towns such as Bilbao and Hobart. When those arguments failed to impress her husband, the Sheikha raged that it would take less than one week’s output of crude oil to build the biggest museum in the world. The Emir gave in; her museum was built. It was universally agreed to be the masterpiece by the world’s leading architect, a temple to civilisation and a monument to art. However, there was one fundamental problem that neither the Sheikha nor her legions of advisors, designers and even her celebrated architect had anticipated: the museum had nothing in it. Visitors would wander around the cavernous white spaces marvelling at the shadow lines, the perfect temperature controls, the cool marble floors, the ingenious lighting, but there was little to break the monotony of the endless white walls: it was artless.
Four flours above her husband, in the royal suite, the Sheikha sat at her dressing table. Betrothed at nine, married at thirteen, mother of four by the time she was twenty, the Sheikha was now forty-two years old. As the mother of the Crown Prince, her future was assured. There was little that her husband or courtiers could do to rein in her spending; they could only watch as she scooped up the best from the world’s auction rooms and drove prices to new heights. The Sheikha needed a star turn, but unfortunately most of the great works were already in national museums or private collections. The moment she saw The Improbability of Love, she knew that it was the jewel for her museum’s crown. Here was a picture capable of drawing tourists from the world over. Unlike those who wanted to buy the painting for a reasonable price, the Sheikha wanted the bidding to go wildly out of control. She wanted her picture (she had made that assumption a long time before) to be the most expensive ever bought at auction; the more publicity the better. While her husband won horse races, she would triumph in the great gladiatorial arena of the auction room – the image of the Sheikha fighting for her picture would flash on to every screen all over the world. After a long and bitter battle, the rulers of Alwabbi would snatch victory from the claws of the world’s wealthiest and most avaricious collectors. It would be the final endorsement of her dream and the ultimate advertisment. Sitting in her hotel suite, the Sheikha drew a last line of kohl around her beautiful dark eyes.
She clapped her hands together and seven ladies in waiting appeared, each carrying an haute couture dress. The Sheikha wore only a tiny percentage of the clothes made for her, but she liked to have options. Tonight she looked at the dresses – the Elie Saab, McQueen, Balenciaga, Chanel and de la Renta – but after some deliberation she decided to wear a new gown by Versace, made from black silk and real gold thread edged in solid gold coins that chimed gently as she walked. The dress would be hidden by a long black abaya, but at least her Manolo Blahnik booties would be visible: mink-lined, white-kid leather with 24-carat-diamond-studded heels that would flash in the photographers’ bulbs as she stepped up to the podium to inspect her latest and greatest acquisition.
In another corner of London, east Clapham, in her one-bedroom flat, the art critic Delores Ryan sat mired in despair. The only way she could imagine salvaging her reputation was to destroy the picture or herself, or both. It was universally known that she, one of the greatest experts in French eighteenth-century art, had held the work in her hands and dismissed it as a poor copy. With that one poor misattribution, one wrong-headed call, she had eviscerated a lifetime’s work, a reputation built on graft and scholarship. Though Delores had more than four triumphs under her belt, including the Stourhead Boucher, the Fonthill Fragonard and, most spectacularly of all, a Watteau that had hung mislabelled in the staff canteen of the Rijksmuseum, these were now forgotten. She would be forever known as the numbskull felled by The Improbability of Love.
Perhaps, all those years ago, she should have accepted Lord Walreddon’s proposal. She would now be the Lady of a Manor, living in dilapidated grandeur with a cacophony of children and ageing black Labradors. But Delores’s first and only love was art. She believed in the transformative power of beauty. Being with Johnny Walreddon made her feel desperately bored; standing before a Titian reduced her to tears of sweet delight. Like a monk drawn to the priesthood, she had put aside (most) earthly pleasures in the pursuit of a higher realm.
The failure to recognise the importance of the work, coupled with the mania surrounding its sale, represented for Delores not just a loss of face but also a loss of faith. She did not want to be part of a profession where art and money had become inextricably linked, where spirituality and beauty were mere footnotes. Now even Delores looked at canvases wondering what each was worth. Her beloved paintings had become another tradable commodity. Even worse, this rarefied subject with its own special language and codes had become demystified: only yesterday she had heard two yobs in a café discussing the relative merits of Boucher and Fragonard. Delores was no longer a high priestess of high art, she was just another lonely spinster living in a rented apartment.
Delores wept for those wasted years of study, the hours spent reading monographs and lectures, the holidays stuck in subterranean libraries. She cried for the pictures that had passed through her hands that could, if she had been more financially astute, have kept her in perennial splendour and comfort. She sobbed for her unconceived children and the other life she might have enjoyed. She was devastated that her younger self had lacked the foresight or wisdom to anticipate any of these outcomes.
At exactly 7 p.m., one hour before the auction began, an expectant murmur hovered over Houghton Street as the first limousine purred towards the auction house. Lyudmila knew how to make an entrance: very slowly she released a long leg, letting it appear inch by inch out of the car. The paparazzi’s bulbs exploded and had certain events not taken place, the image of Lyudmila’s iconic limbs clad in black fishnets emerging from a black Bentley would have adorned the front pages of tabloid newspapers from Croydon to Kurdistan. Her fiancé, Dmitri Voldakov, who controlled 68 per cent of the world’s potash and was worth several tens of billions of pounds, did not attract one flash. He didn’t mind: the fewer people who knew what he looked like, the smaller the chance of assassination or kidnap. Dmitri looked up at the surrounding rooftops and was relieved to see his men stationed, armed and alert; his bodyguards, only two of whom were allowed to enter the building, were already tucked in on either side of him. Dmitri supposed that the little upstart Vlad would try and outbid him tonight. ‘Let him try,’ he thought.
‘Lyudmila, Lyudmila!’ the photographers called out. Lyudmila turned to the l
eft and right, her face arranged in a perfect pout.
Two dazzlingly white, customised Range Rovers, each pulsating in time with booming rap music, drew up to the front entrance.
A whisper snaked through the expectant crowd. ‘Mr Power Dub-Box. Power Dub-Box.’
A brace of large bodyguards dressed in black suits with conspicuous earpieces jumped out of the first car and ran to the second. As the door opened, the street vibrated to the beat of Mr M. Power Dub-Box’s number-one sound: ‘I Is da King’. The statuesque self-anointed High Priest of Rap wore jeans and a T-shirt, and was followed by three women who appeared to be naked.
‘Bet they’re pleased it’s a warm night,’ Felicia said to Dawn, looking on in amazement.
‘Is the last one wearing anything?’ asked Dawn.
‘Her bra-let is the same colour as her skin,’ observed Felicia.
‘It isn’t the top bit I am talking about,’ said Dawn as she snapped a picture on her phone of the woman’s naked bottom disappearing into the auction house.
‘What a great pleasure to meet you, Mr M. Power Dub-Box,’ said Earl Beachendon, stepping forward to shake the musician’s hand. He tried and failed not to look at the half-naked women beside the rapper. M. Power offered him a half-hearted high five before turning to the waiting film crews. His three female escorts arranged themselves around him like petals framing a large stamen.
‘Hi there,’ cried Marina Ferranti, the diminutive presenter of BBC Arts Live, greeting M. Power Dub-Box like a long-lost friend. ‘Why are you here tonight?’
‘I like shopping,’ he said.
‘This is fairly high-end shopping!’
‘Yep.’
‘Are you hoping to buy this picture?’
‘Yep.’
‘How much will you spend?’
‘What it takes.’
‘Would it make a good album cover?’
‘No.’ M. Power Dub-Box looked incredulously at the presenter. Surely the BBC knew that albums were so last century? These days it was all about simultaneous viral outer-play.
‘So why do you want to buy it?’ Marina asked.
‘I like it,’ he said, walking away.
Unperturbed, Marina and her TV crew circled Earl Beachendon.
‘Lord Beachendon, are you surprised by the amount of attention this picture has received?’
‘The Improbability of Love is the most significant work of art that Monachorum has had the pleasure of selling,’ he said.
‘Many experts say that this picture is just a sketch and that the estimate is completely out of proportion to its importance,’ continued Marina.
‘Let me answer your question with another: how does one value a work of art? It’s certainly nothing to do with the weight of its paint and canvas or even the frame around it. No, the value of a work of art is set by desire: who wants to own it and how badly.’
‘Do you think this little painting is really worth tens of millions of pounds?’
‘No, it is worth hundreds of millions.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘I don’t decide on the value. My job is to present the picture in its best light. The auction will set the price.’ The Earl smiled.
‘Is this the first time that a painting has been marketed with a world tour, a biography, an app, its own website, a motion picture and a documentary film?’ asked Marina.
‘We thought it important to highlight its history using all varieties of modern technology. This is the picture that launched a movement, which changed the history of art. It also has a peerless provenance: belonging to some of history’s most powerful figures. This canvas has witnessed greatness and atrocity, passion and hatred. If only it could talk.’
‘But it can’t talk,’ Marina interjected.
‘I am aware of that,’ the Earl replied with withering condescension. ‘But those with a soupçon of knowledge about the past could imagine what illustrious events, what significant personages have been associated with this exquisite jewel. The lucky new owner will become inextricably linked to that history.’
Marina decided to press a little harder. ‘I’ve only spoken to one person tonight, M. Power Dub-Box, who actually likes the painting. Everyone else seems to want it for a different reason,’ she said. ‘The French Minister of Culture and his ambassador say that it is of significant national importance. The Director of the National Gallery told me that French eighteenth-century painting is under-represented in Trafalgar Square. The Takris want it for their new museum in Singapore. Steve Brent wants it for his new casino in Vegas. The list goes on and on. Do you think that loving art is irrelevant these days, that owning pictures has become another way of displaying wealth?’
‘Some rather important guests are arriving. I should greet them,’ Beachendon said smoothly.
‘One last question?’ Marina called out. ‘How much do you hope the painting will make tonight?’
‘I am confident that a new world record will be set. Now if you will excuse me . . .’ Aware that he had said too much, Earl Beachendon moved quickly back to the reception line to greet the Emir and Sheikha of Alwabbi.
Half an hour later, once all the major players had arrived and been safely matched to their carers, the Earl slipped behind the two vast mahogany doors and into the inner sanctum of Monachorum’s auction room. Leaning on his dark wooden podium, he surveyed the rows of empty chairs beneath him and looked over the banks of telephones lining the back of the room. This was his amphitheatre, his arena, and in exactly twenty minutes time he would preside over one of the most ferociously fought battles in the history of art. The bidders’ arsenals were full of pounds, dollars and other currencies. His only weapons were a gavel and the voice of authority. He would have to pace the assailants, draw out their best moves and keep the factions from destroying each other too quickly. Beachendon knew that when emotions ran as high as tonight, when so much more than pride and money was at stake, when gigantic egos and ancient sores sat in close proximity, much could go wrong.
He looked down at his secret black book which held his notes on all the buyers; where they were sitting and how much they were likely to bid. In the margins, the Earl made lists of the telephone bidders and those who insisted on anonymity. That afternoon, fourteen new hopefuls had registered and the Earl’s colleagues had to scramble bank references and other securities. He already had an underbidder who had guaranteed £250 million; a record was in place before the first public bid had been made. If no one bettered that price, the auctioneer would knock it down to an anonymous buyer on the telephone. Beachendon ran through a practice round, calling out imaginary bids from empty chairs and unmanned phone lines. ‘Seventy million, eighty million two hundred thousand, ninety million three hundred thousand, one hundred million four hundred thousand. The highest bid is on the phone. No, it’s on the floor. Now it’s with you, sir. Two hundred and fifty million, five hundred thousand.’ Later, each bid would be simultaneously translated into dollars, euros, yen, renminbi, rupees and rupiah, and flashed on large electronic screens.
The Earl sounded calm and collected; inside he was in turmoil. A little over a century earlier, this picture had belonged to a member of his mother’s family, no less than Queen Victoria; its disposal was yet another example of the inexorable decline of his noble line. Now the painting’s fabulous price and its notoriety mocked Beachendon, reminding him of all that had been lost: 90,000 acres in Wiltshire, Scotland and Ireland; swathes of the Caribbean, along with great paintings by van Dyck, Titian, Rubens, Canaletto and Leonardo. If only we had hung on to this one painting, the Earl thought sadly as he looked at the tiny canvas resting in its protective bulletproof glass case. He imagined a different life for himself, one that didn’t involve the Northern Line, kowtowing to the ridiculously rich and their shoals of hangers-on, the dealers, advisors, agents, critics and experts who circled the big moneyed whales like suckerfish in the waters of the international art world. Within half an hour the floor beneath him would be swi
mming with those types and it would be up to Earl Beachendon to tickle out the best prices. At least, the Earl consoled himself, his personal discovery of the picture proved that although the Beachendon family had lost a fortune, they never lost their eye.
Along with the rest of the world, Beachendon wondered what the little picture would fetch. Even at its lowest estimate, it would be enough to buy a couple of mansions in Mayfair, an estate in Scotland and the Caribbean, pay off his son and heir Viscount Draycott’s gambling debts, and secure decent flats for each of his five daughters, the Ladies Desdemona, Cordelia, Juliet, Beatrice, Cressida and Portia Halfpenny.
Though he was a godless man, Beachendon was a pragmatist and he offered a small prayer to the heavens.
The Earl was so lost in a private fantasy that he didn’t see a young male of Chinese origin dressed as a porter examining the velvet-covered plinth. Many hours later, when the security team and police reviewed the CCTV footage, they would wonder how one individual could have pulled off such an audacious move in front of the wily Earl, the silent cameras and security guards. Most had assumed he was someone’s son on work experience, one of the legions of young people paid nothing for the glory of working for a big auction house and needing something to set their CV apart. Of course, the heads of HR and security fell on their swords and resigned immediately but it was too late then. Much too late.
Chapter 1
Six months earlier (11 January)
Though she often passed Bernoff and Son, Annie had never been tempted to explore the junk shop; there was something uninviting about the dirty window piled high with other people’s flotsam and jetsam. The decision to go through its door that Saturday morning was made on a whim; she hoped to find a gift for the man she was sleeping with but hardly knew.
The Improbability of Love Page 2
