The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  Sometimes Carlo thought of striking out independently but knew that without the Winklemans’ money he was unlikely to get a single film financed. Let the old man hate me, Carlo thought; I control the next generation. Tonight was one of those occasions that he had to show up. It was part of the unwritten contract. Chiara would have to wait a little longer. He decided to call her to keep her warm.

  Hearing her husband talking on the telephone in the next-door room, Rebecca Winkleman assumed, correctly, that he was arranging to meet one of his mistresses. Occasionally she had to silence gossip with a generous present to a newspaper editor for the sake of their daughter’s feelings. The case of the missing picture made Carlo’s latest infidelity seem a comparatively minor issue. For reasons her father would not divulge, one lost painting by Antoine Watteau was threatening to bring down their whole empire.

  Rebecca looked again at the grimy photographs taken from the CCTV footage of the girl placing the painting in her bike basket and pedalling up the Goldhawk Road. Her contacts at the police station had thoughtfully picked up the girl’s route as she turned down Cathnor Road into Melina Grove and when she didn’t reappear at the next camera on Batson Street, they suggested that the young lady must live or work on Greenside or Goodwin Road. Unfortunately so did about eight hundred other people and beyond establishing that the cyclist was a female with curly hair tucked into a woolly hat and slim legs in heavy Doc Martens, there were no other distinguishing features. Nevertheless, Rebecca felt that she recognised her from somewhere. Part of her training as an art expert was to log each composition and every face in every painting she ever looked at. From the age of nine, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, Memling would march his son and daughter around the National Gallery. They examined more than a thousand canvases in the museum’s collection. Week in, week out, over breakfast, lunch and tea, Memling would fire questions at his children: Rebecca and Marty had to recall the composition, brushwork, iconography and pigments of selected works of art. By the age of fifteen Rebecca could correctly identify the tiniest details: which flower lay at the feet of Leonardo’s Madonna of the Rocks or in which Canaletto a tiny washerwoman could be found. Marty could never match Rebecca’s scholarship or memory but both children knew it didn’t matter; Marty, the son and heir, would take over the business.

  Once again Rebecca picked up one of the CCTV photographs and stared at it, hoping that it was a random buy and the picture was hanging innocently on some suburban wall where its true value and dark history would go unnoticed. Rebecca was not a woman who left anything to chance: to stack the odds in her favour she was putting every ounce of effort and resource into finding the girl and the picture.

  She heard Carlo replace the phone and come into her bedroom. Stuffing the photographs in her briefcase, she felt her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘Darling, what on earth?’ Carlo went to her side.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Rebecca jumped away from him and wiped her face efficiently with her pale, varnish-free nails.

  ‘Is it your father? Is he unwell?’ Carlo tried to banish the excitement from his voice.

  ‘It’s a small work issue.’

  Carlo looked at his wife closely and saw fear rather than sorrow.

  ‘What can I do?’ Carlo felt genuinely worried.

  Rebecca started to touch up her face powder. ‘Here, read the notes on tonight’s guests.’

  Carlo sat down on his wife’s bed, groaning inwardly. The object of the evening was to persuade Melanie Appledore to buy a one-million-pound Caravaggio oil sketch for Judith Beheading Holofernes. Carlo doubted the painting would really appeal to the septuagenarian grande dame of Park Avenue who collected French decorative arts. The picture was gory even for Caravaggio and showed the moment after Judith had plunged her knife for the third time into the neck of the Assyrian general.

  ‘Does Mrs Appledore know that the model for Judith was probably the Roman courtesan Fillide Melandron?’ Carlo asked

  ‘She needn’t know,’ said Rebecca. ‘I hope you are not going to be difficult.’

  ‘Will eating dinner in the presence of this disturbing image create the right milieu for a sale? What are we serving? Colour-coordinated raw beef ? ’

  ‘Save your jokes for your whore,’ said Rebecca, snapping.

  Carlo looked at his wife in astonishment. She never spoke to him like this – what had happened? He made a mental note to send her flowers the following morning.

  In the kitchen three floors below, Annie was overseeing the last-minute preparations. Taking a still life, another painting by Caravaggio, as inspiration, Annie had worked with a team of Carlo’s set designers to transform the Winklemans’ dining room. The walls were now a ruby red; heavy garlands of roses, pinks and poppies festooned the white damask cloth; the sideboards groaned with figs, plums, peaches and apples along with stacks of vegetables, cabbages, gourds and even garlic; the guests would drink water from golden goblets and eat from the finest bone china sat on golden plates.

  Jesu, the Winklemans’ head butler, measured the distances between the glasses and plates with a small ruler while his wife, Primrose, painted glitter on the flowers’ petals to make them sparkle. Annie dotted the fruit with globules of glue to simulate drops of water, hoping no one would be tempted to eat any. Each napkin was two-foot square, made of heavy monogrammed linen and arranged into the shape of a Spanish galleon. Rebecca swept into the room and looked around in astonishment.

  ‘This is not how we do things here,’ she said to Annie.

  ‘I wanted to show off the painting,’ Annie said quietly. She had hoped that her employer would be pleased.

  ‘You are risking one hell of a lot on a meal,’ Rebecca said crisply.

  Annie did not demur.

  Upstairs, Carlo was doing up the last button on his shirt when Jesu appeared.

  ‘Guests are arriving, sir. Madam has asked that you come down.’ Crossing the room, Jesu took the cufflinks from Carlo’s palm and clipped them into the cuffs of his shirt.

  ‘Who’s here?’ Carlo asked wearily.

  ‘Very old woman and friend of very old woman.’ Jesu hesitated.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Mr Memling and Ms Rebecca are in another room. Talking alone. Not disturb.’

  Carlo went downstairs, wondering if this unusual behaviour was connected to Rebecca’s tears. In the grey drawing room he saw the guest of honour. Carlo bowed and took Mrs Appledore’s wrist in his hand. It was hard to believe that the old lady had the strength to raise an arm so weighed down by jewels; Carlo estimated that there were several million pounds’ worth of diamonds in her rings and bracelets.

  ‘What a great pleasure to see you again,’ he said letting his lips hover above Mrs Appledore’s hand.

  ‘Carlo,’ she said smiling.

  ‘What brings you to London?’ Carlo said, noticing that her face had been frequently lifted and her skin was parchment-thin and as smooth as a child’s.

  ‘Shopping. I normally do London in July but the Met has such a boring season this year.’

  ‘I thought they were doing Tosca?’ Rebecca came sweeping into the room and interrupted their conversation. ‘With Renée.’

  ‘Don’t you just love Renée?’ Mrs Appledore cooed. ‘She got sick, didn’t you hear?’

  ‘It has ruined our plans.’ A small, dapper man in a velvet suit advanced towards Carlo with an outstretched hand, ‘William Carstairs the Third. Thank you for having us.’

  William Carstairs, the director of Mrs Appledore’s museum, doubled up as her permanent companion, calorie counter and handbag carrier.

  ‘How are the motion pictures?’ Mrs Appledore asked Carlo. ‘Is there a new one?’

  ‘The Sun King with Chiara Costanzia.’

  Mrs Appledore looked blank. ‘Willy, make sure we get it for the jet.’

  Two more guests arrived. Rebecca made the introductions. ‘This is Septimus Ward-Thomas, director of the National Gallery. You must know Melanie Appledore?’ />
  ‘Always a pleasure,’ Septimus Ward-Thomas said.

  ‘Melanie, I am sure you already know Delores Ryan, who has just completed a new book, Watteau’s Women: The Importance of the Model in the Artist’s Oeuvre.’

  ‘Indeed, I bought it yesterday. An important work which I look forward to reading.’

  ‘Is it true you have a Boucher on your jet?’ Delores asked Mrs Appledore.

  Septimus Ward-Thomas coughed, trying to hide his intense disapproval; he hated the thought of that delicate paintwork subjected to take-offs and landings.

  ‘I did, but little flakes of Madame de Pompadour’s dress came off when we hit a turbulent patch,’ Mrs Appledore confessed, ‘so I hung a few drawings by Lancret instead.’

  ‘A better idea,’ Ward-Thomas said weakly.

  There was a slight hush as Memling Winkleman entered the room, flanked by his large white husky, Tiziano. Memling was over six foot but carried himself so well that many assumed he was taller. He had a huge head, an aquiline nose and a full crop of silvery hair. Though his jawline and cheekbones were obscured by slightly loose, wrinkled skin, his features could still be described as chiselled. Known in his office as ‘Capo’, he rarely spoke except to issue instructions in almost inaudible lisping fluent English, French, Russian or German. He never bothered to say hello or goodbye but left meetings or disconnected telephones when it suited him. Tiziano rarely left his side. This dog, now five years old, was the cloned son of Raphaello and had been hand-delivered by Memling in a clinic in South Korea. Raphaello was the great-great-grandson of Leonardo, Memling’s first white dog.

  Arriving in England without a formal education at the age of twenty-four, Memling went on to gain a first in mathematics and two years later another one in chemistry at Cambridge, followed by a PhD in history of art at the same time as building his business. Ninety-one on his last birthday, Memling still looked fitter than most men twenty years his junior. He played tennis regularly in the indoor court under his house and walked his dog most days. He drank one or two glasses of red wine in the evening and ate only organic food. Like his daughter, and his dog, Memling had the palest blue eyes. Those fumbling to find an appropriate word to describe him often said ‘patrician’, and commented that Mr Winkleman looked more like an emperor than the grandson of a Frankfurt rabbi. Most assumed that his icy self-control, his inability to suffer fools or indulge any kind of emotion was a legacy of enduring two years spent at Auschwitz, where every other member of his family perished.

  Rebecca had never met a person, including herself, who was not frightened of her exacting and domineering father. Loathing fools or loose talk, Memling took pleasure in humiliating those who were either careless or indulgent. He reserved charm for wealthy clients and with them, though never flirtatious, Memling became almost playful; but this entirely artificial charm did not last a second longer than necessary. He had never mastered the art of small talk or conversation. He refused to carry a mobile phone, read an email or watch television. He carried a small leather notebook and made copious notes on every conversation and decision in his tiny writing.

  ‘Good evening, Memling,’ Mrs Appledore said. ‘My, my, you are so handsome.’

  ‘You are as soignée as ever,’ Memling replied.

  ‘Are you keeping up with tennis?’ Mrs Appledore said. ‘Your arms are so . . . so virile.’

  ‘I challenge you to a friendly match.’

  ‘I think my days of overarm serving are over, sadly.’

  Earl Beachendon and his wife Samantha arrived moments later, followed by the ageing rock star Johnny ‘Lips’ Duffy, who’d been invited to try to make the evening look a little more rounded, a little less like a major selling offensive. Johnny ‘Lips’ had once been at art school and collected British pictures. His fame had waned and these days his only public appearances were in commercials touting a new golf course or a shopping centre. He had brought his wife Karen, a former Olympic equestrienne who wore a backless gold lamé dress.

  When Rebecca led her guests into the dining room there was a collective gasp at its transformation into a post-Renaissance tableau. Hanging directly opposite Mrs Appledore’s place was the Caravaggio study.

  ‘The Doria Caravaggio sketch!’ Septimus Ward-Thomas clapped his hands together. ‘For years I’ve longed to see this painting and feared it destroyed.’

  ‘It’s a little bloody,’ Mrs Appledore said hesitantly.

  ‘That is great blood, magnificent bloody blood.’ Carlo said, unable to think of anything else. ‘If only I could direct blood like that.’

  Rebecca shot him a poisonous look; she had been appalled by the transformation of her impeccable white dining room into a tiny but perfectly formed banqueting hall. Her father walked in and looked questioningly at his daughter, who shrugged.

  ‘Great art never shies away from difficult subjects,’ Ward-Thomas said tactfully. ‘Think of Christ on the Cross or the beheading of John the Baptist.’

  Mrs Appledore nodded politely. She knew, like everyone else in the room, that the evening was about trying to sell her the picture. At her age any attention was nice, so she decided to play along.

  Exactly five minutes after the first guest sat down, Annie sent out the baby quails. She had arranged leaves of lettuce and herbs to look like tufts of grass and balls of flecked gnocchi resembled eggs in nests of spun potatoes. Through the open door, Annie heard gasps of appreciative delight as each dish was placed before the guests. In most areas of her life, Annie fought away nerves but in the kitchen she felt ethereal and calm, working slowly and steadily, one eye on the clock, another on the pots and pans.

  Through the open door, as she cooked, Annie could hear snatches of conversation.

  ‘Did you hear what Gerry paid for the Richter?’ a voice floated through the door.

  ‘Twenty-five million plus taxes and commissions,’ another answered.

  ‘Do they charge key money just to sit on the Board of the Met these days?’

  ‘Stanton Holsters offered fifty million dollars and were still refused.’

  ‘Manet or Monet?’ somebody asked.

  ‘They are both correct,’ came the answer.

  ‘Did you see the Velázquez show?’ a woman’s voice demanded.

  ‘What was the point? All the pictures belonged to museums – there was nothing to buy.’

  ‘Felicia’s got a new yacht.’

  ‘Best advice I was ever given,’ a man’s voice rose above the others, ‘if it floats, fucks or flies, rent it.’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘Who’d like more wine?’

  ‘Did you hear that the Fairleys redid their apartment for the new Koons?’

  ‘How does it look?’

  ‘Empty – the artist has yet to produce it.’

  ‘Guess what Norton is asking for the David?’

  ‘My shrink says I have a bad case of FOAS: Fear of Appearing Stupid.’

  To his surprise, Carlo liked Mrs Appledore. Many mistakenly assumed that her long-term position as the doyenne of New York society was founded solely on the size of her fortune. They missed the point: Mrs Appledore had style, that elusive, indefinable, un-teachable, un-inheritable, un-purchasable quality that most could only dream of. To celebrate the opening of a new wing at the Appledore Museum, she remodelled speedboats in gold and white feathers so her guests could be ferried from Manhattan upriver in giant swans. When a society hostess fell seriously ill and was bedridden, Mrs Appledore hired the New York Philharmonic to play outside her window. Overhearing that a craze for sorbets had swept down Park Avenue, Mrs Appledore had the ingenious idea of making a watermelon ice and substituting the seeds with chocolate pips, served the confection from a faux watermelon husk made of frozen apple striped with ribbons of gold leaf. After that, New York tables groaned with increasingly elaborate concoctions until Mrs Appledore won ‘the battle of the frozen puddings’ by serving a sorbet made from Château Lafite 1929. Profligate? Yes. Unbeatable? No. Her generosity w
as legendary: staying with the Duke of Denbighshire, she presented His Grace with Goya’s drawing of his ancestor, the first duke. When her old friend the Maharani of Batsakpur lost an eye in a riding accident, Mrs Appledore sent her seven eye patches, one for every day of the week, each decorated with fabulous jewels and seed pearls.

  Though she and Horace never lacked money, it was Melanie’s understanding of the power of cultural capital that propelled the couple into the highest echelons of society. She endowed the opera, the theatre, concert halls and museums. Using her acumen and knowledge, she created the pre-eminent collection of French eighteenth-century pictures and decorative arts outside France. While most collectors amassed ‘greatest hits’ in their areas, Mrs Appledore dug deep around her subject. In addition to masterpieces she bought drawings, etchings, books, furniture, commodes, bureaus, sconces, candelabra and even the original wooden panelling.

  Entirely self-educated, Melanie knew more than most curators and art historians; she had read every monograph and visited the most obscure churches and museums from Odessa to Monmouth. Using her position as a grande dame in society, she made art a fashionable, serious and relevant subject. It was Mrs Appledore who persuaded her friends at the White House to introduce generous tax breaks to sweeten the case for donations. Leading by example, Mrs Appledore had given, during her lifetime, over $500 million worth of art and other chattels to her beloved museum. Her generosity was such that other museum directors frequently bemoaned their lack of a Mrs Appledore.