The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  Taking her arm, he led Annie across the road.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He asked. ‘You look so pale. Why don’t we stop and get something to eat? Here, have my scarf.’ He wrapped his woollen scarf gently around her neck. Without thinking, he scooped her hair up over it, his fingers running around the back of her neck. She trembled slightly, he hoped with pleasure.

  At the end of the road there was a small cafeteria called Clemmy’s, painted green and red. The windows were fugged up and as Jesse pushed open the door the smell of bacon and chip fat whooshed out. Groups of men sat at Formica tables, tabloid newspapers and breakfast spread out across the swirly-patterned plastic tablecloths. Annie wondered what they had been doing on a Saturday morning so far away from their families.

  ‘Have you had breakfast?’ Jesse asked, pulling out a chair for Annie to sit on. He took some mugs and two dirty plates to the counter. Annie looked around. She felt confused, removed. The men stared at her with blatant interest, a woman in their midst. She outstared them easily and they turned their attention back to the pages of their newspapers. She watched Jesse order breakfast. He was having some trouble with combinations – the number of sausages to eggs, toast to tea. He stepped back to look at the board again and knocked a large, gruff-looking man backwards. Annie sensed trouble. Knocked man seemed cross and flexed his shoulders. Jesse tapped his own head with the flat of his hand; his eyes swivelled in his head. Knocked man smiled in spite of himself.

  Jesse came back carrying two mugs of tea. ‘The lady will bring the food, says she doesn’t trust me with the plates.’

  Moments later a waitress appeared with two full English breakfasts. ‘If you want a top-up of chips, let me know,’ she said and then winked at Jesse.

  ‘I could be insulted by her blatant flirting,’ Annie said, unpeeling gold paper from a small pat of butter. ‘We might be together for all she knows.’

  Jesse thought, I want to be. Do you? Do I have a chance? Why do you look so sad? What’s happened? He watched her eating, knife and fork held proud, shoulders rounded, expression fixed as she attacked the plate. Stabbing eggs with sausages, scooping up juices with chips, a touch of scarlet tomato, yellow yolk, beige mushroom lined up on a fork and slipped deftly into her mouth. She finished long before him.

  ‘So hungry,’ she said. Dabs of colour appeared in her cheeks. ‘Missed dinner last night – very unlike me. Love food.’ She sat back in her chair and smiled for the first time that day.

  ‘Same again?’ he asked as a joke.

  ‘Do you want your chips?’

  He shook his head and, leaning forward, she speared four thick chips on the end of her fork. ‘We lived in Oxford for a few years,’ Annie said. ‘I was about ten. Mum had a boyfriend called Peter, a don.’ Pulling Jesse’s plate nearer, she stabbed a few more chips with her fork. ‘He was married so we used to go to these little cafés in other parts of town, places where his wife wouldn’t go. She was the posh restaurant type. This kind of food always reminds me of Peter. Food does that as much as smell, don’t you think?’

  Jesse nodded. Thank goodness she was finally talking; he thought he’d bored her mute. There was a tiny drip of yolk at the corner of her mouth. He longed to wipe it away with his forefinger. ‘We had this routine. Every Sunday a full English and a movie. There was an arthouse cinema in Walton Street.’ Annie said, drawing her hand across her lips.

  ‘What did the wife do on a Sunday?’ Jesse asked.

  ‘He never said. One of the rules of sleeping with a married man is you don’t ask those kind of questions.’

  ‘Why did your mother take you on these clandestine dates?’

  I hated being left alone and we moved so often that I never made any friends.’

  ‘Did you sit together?’

  ‘He’d buy four tickets. When the lights went down, Mum’d nip into the empty seat next to him in the row behind. It’s funny. Now when I see those films again, the Fellinis and the Bergmans, I miss the squeaks, muted giggles and breathless kisses of Mum and Peter making out.’

  ‘Should you have been there?’ said Jesse, feeling protective of the younger Annie.

  ‘I saw some great movies.’

  ‘What happened to Peter?’ Jesse didn’t care but he wanted her to go on talking. He loved the sound of her low, slightly husky voice.

  ‘He left,’ said Annie matter of factly. ‘They always did.’

  Was it bitterness or resignation in her tone? Jesse wondered. Certainly not a trace of self-pity.

  ‘I liked him, more than most. He was clever and funny.’

  ‘Are you married?’ Jesse asked.

  ‘No.’ Annie was surprised at his presumptuousness. ‘Are you?’ She didn’t really care.

  ‘Who on earth would want to marry me? I haven’t got any money and even fewer prospects.’ He stood up and picked up the plastic bag. ‘We’re going round the corner for another coffee.’

  ‘What’s wrong with here?’ Annie asked.

  ‘I’ll explain when we get there,’ Jesse said and held out his hand to her. Annie didn’t take it.

  Leaving the café, they walked the few hundred yards in silence. Jesse turned down a side street and stopped outside a silver-fronted restaurant with Le Breakfast written on the outside in flashing pink letters. The metallic ceiling was lined with neon tubes and the tables and floor were in spotless white Formica. Reeking of stale grey-fleshed meat, it was quite the nastiest place Annie had ever been to. This encounter, she thought, sliding into a red plastic booth, was definitely a mistake.

  ‘We’re not here for ambience,’ said Jesse, reading her mind. ‘The best place to look at a dirty picture is in the window seat of an aeroplane; the force of the sun at high altitude cuts through years of grime. On a dull Saturday in London this place is as good as anywhere.’ Fishing around in his pocket, he brought out a small flashlight. ‘A guide’s secret tool, it beams out over five million candlepower. Can I see the picture?’

  Annie pulled it out of the bag and placed it carefully on the table between them. The waitress came over. They ordered coffee. Jesse bent over the painting and ran the beam of light across its surface.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said quietly to himself.

  Annie blew on her steaming coffee and watched a group of young American backpackers translate local prices with a pocket calculator.

  ‘Come round here,’ said Jesse, patting the seat beside him. ‘You have to imagine it without the yellow varnish.’ He blew his hair out of his eyes. ‘The torch helps, look,’ he said, tracing its beam along the edge of the picture and, as the light passed, colours shimmered under layers of dirt, animating the figures. Looking closely, Annie detected some kind of tension between the man and the woman – Annie could suddenly feel the man’s desire, and sense the woman’s disdain.

  ‘Is that a shadow in the corner or a figure?’ she said, just able to make out a white shape under a lump of discoloured varnish.

  Jesse shrugged.

  Suddenly Annie wanted to know about her picture. Who were the couple? Why were they there? What was happening between them? If she could prove that it wasn’t just a bad copy, that it was painted by an individual with care and precision, her judgement would be proved sound. Somehow authenticating the picture meant validating herself.

  ‘I think you might have found something wonderful,’ said Jesse, his eyes glowing with excitement. ‘Look at the way the painter has layered the paint to give the effect of light shining subtly out of it. See how he’s used five dabs of colour to create that man’s face, but we know exactly what he is feeling; we are him, we can almost taste his longing and his despair.’

  ‘Why assume a man painted it?’ asked Annie.

  ‘Most painters in history were men. Women weren’t given the opportunity. One or two made it – Artemisia Gentileschi in the seventeenth century and Rosalba Carriera in the eighteenth – but they were the exceptions.’

  ‘So what’s next? Can’t we just look it up in a book?’ A lump of
excitement was caught in her throat. Calm down, she told herself. Things like this don’t happen to people like you.

  ‘First we have to guess the artist and when it was painted.’

  ‘I can’t help you there. I know nothing about art,’ said Annie.

  ‘You bought this.’

  ‘I bought it for someone else.’

  Jesse looked at her sharply but said nothing. Who was this person looming so large between them?

  ‘Attribution is like detective work. Occasionally things are obvious – a slam-dunk, no contest about who did it. For less obvious works authentification requires slow painful steps. The first thing is to put a vague date to it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We can tell a lot from the clothes, the hairstyles and from the paint,’ said Jesse, counting out some pound coins and leaving them on the table. ‘Shall we get out of here? This neon is stinging my eyes.’

  ‘All my senses are complaining,’ Annie admitted.

  They walked along Tooley Street towards the underground station.

  ‘My studio is just up that road,’ said Jesse.

  Annie looked at him dubiously.

  ‘Do I look like a murderer?’ Jesse asked.

  Jesse led them up a side street past a railway line; a train clattered over old arches converted into workshops and car garages. As they went up the road, Jesse greeted the mechanics as old friends. At the far end, he stopped by two old doors held together by a giant padlock. Outside there was a black-branched flowering tree covered with carmine-pink flowers.

  ‘That is so lovely,’ said Annie.

  ‘I am told that it comes from Japan – so how it ended up in a street in south London is anyone’s guess.’

  ‘Do you know what it is called?’ she asked.

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact – Prunus mume “Beni-chidori”, which translates as “the flight of the red cranes”. It is good to find someone else who loves plants and trees.’

  ‘It’s one of the things I miss most,’ said Annie, pausing for a few seconds. ‘In London, I can’t tell when one season stops and another begins. Where I used to live I could tell you the date by looking at the flowers or leaves unfurling. This month I’d be waiting for the primroses and aconites.’

  ‘And then for the wild narcissi, cranesbills, foxgloves and wild orchids,’ Jesse added.

  ‘Followed by bluebells,’ they said together and laughed.

  It was the first time Jesse had seen her laugh and he loved the way she stuck her pink tongue through her small white teeth and how tiny crinkles appeared around her eyes. Taking a large key out of his pocket, Jesse unlocked the padlock and then an inner door to reveal a large wooden-floored room lined with canvases and dotted with piles of books. In the far corner there was an unmade bed and along one wall a basic kitchenette.

  ‘It’s a little untidy,’ said Jesse, trying to hide some unwashed plates and other detritus. Annie sat down on a careworn chesterfield sofa made of leather with curly wisps of horsehair exploding from various parts and watched as Jesse moved quickly around the room assembling odd objects: a lamp, a couple of magnifying glasses, a glass bottle, some cotton wool. He placed them carefully on a large trestle table in the centre of the workshop. Then he took the picture gently out of the plastic bag and put it face down on a cloth in front of him.

  ‘Have you got a coin?’ said Jesse.

  Annie handed him a ten-pence piece. Gently, Jesse started to work at the little nails keeping the frame in place. ‘You have to be so careful with these things. Sometimes the paint gets stuck to the wood. At the Wallace they pulled off a chunk of a Lancret.’ Slowly he lifted the frame away. The picture suddenly looked vulnerable and much smaller and Annie felt a rush of tenderness towards it. Jesse turned it over and looked along the edge.

  ‘Come and see,’ he said. ‘There are two edges to the picture. The original painting has been laid on top of a new canvas. It’s called re-lining,’ he explained.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Annie.

  ‘Over time, the original canvas deteriorates or becomes baggy, so to strengthen it you peel the whole composition off and stick it on to a new backing or stick the whole thing on to a new canvas. Many pictures have been ruined this way but there aren’t many alternatives: canvas degrades after a hundred years; sooner if the painter did not prepare their ground properly.’

  Annie ran her finger gently along the edge. ‘There are three ridges to this picture,’ she said. ‘Could that mean it’s been relined twice?’

  Jesse picked up the small torch and shone it up and down the edge of the painting. ‘You’re right. That would make it a few hundred years old.’

  Annie let out a low whistle. ‘I think I’d better stop stuffing you in my backpack,’ she said to the painting.

  Turning the picture over, Jesse shone his torch across the back of the canvas. ‘Look at this stamp; owners often leave a mark more indelible and visible than the artist’s signature. It’s part of the impulse to possess. There are pictures in the National Gallery and the Wallace with the Duke of Milan and Charles I’s crest.’

  ‘“I was here”, kind of thing?’ Annie asked.

  Jesse nodded and went over to the sink. Filling a bowl with warm water, he carried it carefully back to the table. He dampened a small sponge and ran it over the surface of the painting.

  ‘Is this really a good idea?’ Annie asked nervously.

  ‘You can often get rid of superficial dirt this way: smoke stains, everyday fug. Just like washing your hands.’ The yellow sponge turned a muddy brown as he rubbed gently at the picture’s surface.

  ‘Pouring water on troubled oil,’ Annie said softly.

  ‘Sometimes whole figures and trees appear just by doing this, but this one is so dirty, it’s made very little difference. Now we have to get a bit tougher.’ He unscrewed the glass bottle, unleashing the sharp sweet smell of white spirit.

  ‘Have you done this before?’

  ‘On my own pictures, yes. I use it to rub out oils.’

  ‘Rub out! Stop now. You might make a hole,’ said Annie.

  Jesse put the cotton wool down. ‘You’re right but the alternative is to take it home, prop it up on your mantelpiece and enjoy it.’

  Annie searched his face for signs of sarcasm but instead she saw a kindly expression.

  ‘I feel strangely protective about it,’ said Annie. ‘Silly, it’s only a piece of cloth and oil and wood.’

  ‘Good art is affecting; that’s its point.’ He smiled at her. ‘Let’s consider your options. Here’s a painting measuring about eighteen by twenty-four inches. The composition is lovely, a glade in a park, a dancer, a man at her feet. There are trees overhanging, sunlight coming from top left, but it’s so dirty that it’s difficult to make out their faces or the brushstrokes the painter used. So how do you tell who it’s by or even roughly when it was painted?’

  ‘We already know that it’s a few hundred years old.’

  ‘It would be fun to narrow that down a bit, wouldn’t it? It certainly looks French in style – you found that out at the Wallace by holding it up next to other works of art.’

  ‘What would that prove?’

  ‘All artists have unique handwriting that distinguishes them. A Rembrandt horse is completely different to a van Dyck horse; a tree by Constable is totally individual and so is one by van Eyck. Your picture’s trees and compositions look like a style known as fête galante. The problem is, though, that all great art and artists have hangers-on and copyists, so how do you tell what is the real McCoy?’

  Annie wondered what he was talking about.

  ‘I was just looking at a new book by the expert Delores Ryan called Watteau’s Women.’

  ‘What a coincidence – I cooked for her last night.’

  ‘She is not someone one forgets, though as a mere guide, she hardly notices me. Her thesis is based on identifying the artists’ models. Most painters relied on the same models so it’s a kind of mix-and-match school
of attribution.’

  ‘Sounds like upmarket gossip.’

  ‘Many a career has hinged on excavating the private life of artists. Most artists painted and repainted the same people. Delores has written books and curated exhibitions around the identity of sitters and she has built an enormous database around who they were and when they sat for particular artists. Show Delores a group portrait by David and she’ll tell you the name of every person in it. She can cross-reference paintings and painters, find out who was sleeping with who, who got paid what. Like I said before: it’s detective work.’

  ‘And if the people in my picture didn’t fit her list of models?’

  ‘She would discredit your picture.’

  ‘That sounds limited,’ said Annie.

  ‘It’s not just Delores,’ Jesse explained. ‘A Rembrandt is only a Rembrandt if Ernst van de Wetering and his Rembrandt Research Project endorse it. John Richardson, Picasso’s old friend and biographer, could out a fake from a hundred yards.’

  ‘Is Delores the only expert in this period?’

  ‘It’s down to her or Trichcombe Abufel. His work is based on careful scholarship and provenance. He forensically examines every aspect of the painted surface and every place that picture might have hung.’

  ‘Great, let’s call him.’

  ‘He’s a virtual hermit, notoriously difficult to see.’

  ‘How can a picture’s identity be decided by just two people?’

  ‘Art is big business but ultimately authenticity is subjective and the only way to prove that a picture is ‘right’ is through circumstantial evidence. The older the painting, the harder it is to identify. Most of the time it’s guesswork and for the French eighteenth century, Delores and Abufel are the most trusted guessers.’

  Annie looked around the studio, intrigued by this guide-cum-artist. There were stacks of books on every surface: monographs of artists, letters of artists, biographies of artists. On one wall there, he had pinned drawings and some reproductions of Old Master paintings. On an easel there was a large, mainly monochromatic painting of a meadow bound by trees on one side and a river on the other. Though unfinished and sketchy, she liked its grandeur and boldness. On another wall there was a photograph of a man and woman, arms entwined, laughing on a beach. It was in black and white and Annie guessed that these were his parents. She looked for signs of a girlfriend but could see none. Unlike her own spartan, sparsely furnished flat, this space, though roughly the same size, felt like somebody’s home. It wasn’t about the stuff or the work or the photographs, it was about an atmosphere.