The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  Jesse looked around. The tiny space was full of her collection of musical instruments, a cornucopia of strange-shaped drums, pipes and lyres. As she gathered the ingredients for dinner together, Larissa explained that a lute from Rome made an entirely different sound from one from Flanders and why the world’s most beautiful violins came from one village, Cremona. Jesse momentarily forgot about Annie as he heard how Larissa matched the different instruments to particular kinds of music, a painstaking process of searching contemporary inventories, diaries and accounts.

  Jesse sat on a bar stool while Larissa cooked. She flung the ingredients together in the same way as she dressed, extravagant dashes of colour and textures mixed together.

  ‘Annie is a cook,’ Jesse said. ‘You should meet her.’ His voice, shot with excitement, rose slightly.

  ‘I’d like to, very much,’ Larissa said. ‘She must be rather extraordinary to have this effect on you. In four years I have never seen you so bowled over.’

  ‘Knocked out, more like,’ Jesse said.

  ‘One of the good things about falling in love,’ Larissa commented, ‘is that it makes you open and vulnerable; you end up in unexpected places.’

  ‘Like here?’ Jesse laughed.

  Later, sitting by her small three-bar electric fire, Larissa urged him to adopt a lighter but more tactical approach. The painting was a perfect foil, providing endless scope for romance. He should present it as an opportunity for two people locked together into a common purpose, a quest against the odds. Solving the riddle of the painting would lead them to different places and demand a variety of skills. Through their attempts to uncover the identity of the artist, Annie and Jesse would create a bank of shared experiences; love needed connections and shared events to thrive. It didn’t matter, Larissa argued, whether the picture was a masterpiece or a cheap reproduction, what mattered was that it became a cypher for seduction. Even if one expert discredited the work immediately, there was always another person’s opinion to seek and another avenue to explore. That was the glorious thing about art: its value was entirely subjective.

  It was nearly midnight when Jesse left and though the temperature had dropped to below freezing, he felt warmed by hope and good food. In his hand he held a piece of paper on which he and Larissa had plotted ways to see Annie again, all tied up with the steps necessary to authenticate her painting. The pubs had disgorged their last drinkers and the restaurants had shut, leaving the pavements free for Jesse and the odd dog walker. He wondered how surprised Agatha would be to hear from him after all these years and whether she’d agree to see Jesse, a strange girl and a small canvas. Jesse had, until now, studiously avoided any painful or avoidable reminders of his father and this included visiting the National Gallery, even though he missed some of the paintings as much as absent friends. Two of his worlds were about to collide.

  Had Jesse looked up, at that moment, and into the back seat of the large black Mercedes travelling at speed down the Embankment, he would have seen Rebecca Winkleman driving home from a fundraiser at Battersea Power Station. Sponsored by Credit Russe, the evening was in aid of Breast Cancer Awareness and, for Rebecca, it had been a waste of time.

  The seated dinner was held in the main atrium. Throughout dinner there had been an aerial bombardment of acrobats suspended from silk ropes and a display of indoor fireworks. Rebecca had sat next to a hedge-fund manager and opposite his art dealer. ‘I have made as much money off my art as off gilts,’ he informed Rebecca, never thinking to ask what she did or if she knew about art. Saul Franklin, his dealer, tried to put the manager right. ‘Freddie, you must know of Rebecca Winkleman of Winkleman Fine Art, a world-renowned connoisseur of Old Master paintings?’

  Freddie Hedge Fund ignored him. ‘How much is my Richter worth these days, Saul?’

  ‘Twenty-two million, Freddie.’

  ‘Did you hear that, lady? That’s what I call a return. How much did I pay for it Saul?’

  ‘Eight million,’ Saul said wearily.

  ‘What about my Warhol?’

  ‘You paid eleven and it’s worth eighteen.’

  ‘Can you get me any more like that?’

  ‘I offered you a car crash last week.’

  ‘It might upset the kids. Can you get me a Chairman Mao?’

  On Rebecca’s other side was a member of the British aristocracy who had a title, a dwindling fortune and a disproportionate sense of his own importance.

  ‘That man,’ Lord Clifton said, nodding at Freddie Webb, ‘is the kind who has to buy his own furniture.’

  Hoping that the noble lord might want to dispose of his family’s last good picture, a Goya, Rebecca tried hard to engage him in conversation, but she knew as little about breeding Herefordshire cattle as he did about de Hooch or Canaletto.

  It was a long, tedious evening. Dinner wasn’t served until 10 p.m., followed by interminable speeches with the director praising the generosity of Credit Russe and various benefactors, including Freddie Webb. Rebecca could think of little apart from Memling’s missing picture. Her father refused to let her enlist their network of spies and informants: the search had to be kept secret. The art world is so small, he reasoned, that sooner or later the culprit would surface. Rebecca again thought of her father’s tremulous voice, his refusal to fully explain the reasons for wanting the picture back so urgently. Memling left his daughter in no doubt that unless it was recovered, their livelihood was in peril.

  It was midnight before Rebecca managed to get away. She hadn’t drunk or eaten much and though it was late, she could fit in a few hours’ work. Slipping out of the grand hall, she hurried down the broad staircase to freedom. As her car sped through London, Rebecca tried to imagine what her father was hiding. Perhaps as a younger man he was involved in a dealing ring, like the one which had bought a Duccio di Buoninsegna Madonna and Child for a few thousand and sold it on to the National Gallery for £140,000. Or was it the work of a forger and would humiliate or discredit Memling? One by one Rebecca considered and discounted these theories. Nothing quite made sense.

  As her car pulled up outside the rear entrance to the office, Rebecca saw a figure slip out of the back door, unlock a bicycle and pull on a woollen cap.

  ‘Who is that?’ Rebecca asked her driver.

  ‘Looks like your chef, Annie, madam,’ Ellis replied. ‘She often works late.’

  Peering through the tinted windows at Annie’s disappearing figure, Rebecca knew for certain that this was the person in the CCTV footage, the one who had bought the picture. Rebecca shivered – it had to be more than an extraordinary coincidence. No wonder her father was frightened: it took a sophisticated and determined enemy to mastermind an infiltration of their business.

  Ellis opened the door and held out a hand.

  ‘Are you all right, madam?’ he asked. ‘You look very pale.’

  Rebecca took his hand. Her legs felt weak and her heart was beating. The same girl had worked for her husband, for her, had even eavesdropped on a private dinner. What bugging devices had she secreted in the Winkleman household? What had she already found out?

  ‘Madam? Can I get you something?’ Ellis asked with concern.

  ‘No, thank you, Ellis. It is under control,’ said Rebecca, trying to stay calm. She walked briskly to the back door and, punching in the code, let herself into the building. Closing the door behind her, she leant against the wall to steady herself. Her next moves were crucial and she wondered whether to pack up the chef’s belongings or call the police. No, Rebecca thought, much better to keep her enemy close at hand. She went straight to her office bureau, opened the secret drawer and checked her pistol was loaded.

  Chapter 13

  Imagine my horror at the latest turn of events: the young man has found a restorer. The mere mention of the word sends shivers through my paintwork. The atrocities committed in the name of restoration; look no further than a certain Velázquez in London or a Leonardo in Paris. I am so delicate that whole swathes of my composition
could disintegrate in the wrong hands. Though my patina is smeared with layers of soot, candle smuts, human effluents, tobacco smoke and varnish, the prospect of a restorer let loose with bottles of noxious spirits fills me full of quaking, mind-blowing terror. I long to be in sparkling mint condition again; I am frightened that during the process, I will literally fall to pieces.

  My conception was hurried, urgent and magnificent: my master was desperate to catch the feeling of first love, the thrill of emotion. I was painted at top speed with dirty brushes and a mixture of oils, ointments, alcohol and even paint intended for walls. If you look closely at my skyline you’ll see a tiny fly embedded in the top left-hand corner. It was buzzing around that afternoon in 1702 and had (in my opinion) the good fortune to be immortalised, embalmed in my albumin and impasto. My master created that wild, vibrant shimmering foliage by mixing a slosh of wine, chicken soup and oil paint. Sometimes he used his fingers, other times a brush, a palette knife or even his sleeve in his urgent mission to capture in paint his orgasm of desire.

  I digress. Back to that afternoon. We were met by a woman at a side entrance of the National Gallery. Whippet-thin, straight-backed, grey-haired with heavy-rimmed glasses, she wore plain clothes in the dowdiest way, with no spark; sartorial imagination. I hoped that she approached her work with the same lack of self. So many restorers are artistes manqués, believing they can improve on an artist’s work. The woman – her name is Agatha – greeted Jesse like a long-lost friend, holding him tight to her scrawny chest. He was polite and didn’t struggle. My mistress looked the other way, clearly a little embarrassed.

  ‘You look more like your father than ever,’ said Agatha, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘David, his father, and I worked together for nearly twenty years,’ she told my mistress.

  What was Annie supposed to say to that? How nice? How interesting? She smiled nervously.

  ‘Now come upstairs,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ll make you tea; we can chat and you can show me the surprise.’

  Annie looked longingly towards the closed door.

  One was relieved not to walk through the main collection and be sneered at by old friends. Away from the public areas, the place is a real rabbit warren. Agatha led us at breakneck speed down twisty corridors into a cavernous groaning lift and up another narrow staircase. Suddenly, we were in the eaves above Trafalgar Square, in a huge room lit by a north-facing skylight. Along one wall there were shelves lined with glass jars filled with different pigments. On a large table, brushes stood to attention in metal pots. The floor was painted black and across it were easels and palettes and pigments, lights, cameras and other paraphernalia. I suppose it was a kind of studio. You see, my master didn’t have a place or assistants to keep his paints or brushes in order. Indeed, he never had a fixed abode – for long, anyway. His restless spirit always moved him onwards. Most pictures left his studio soon after they were completed.

  He had three protectors: his dealer, Monsieur Julienne; his principal collector, the stupendously wealthy Pierre Crozat; and his biographer the Comte de Caylus. All three gave him lodgings in return for drawings. Dirty old Caylus (a wealthy, seasoned traveller who had the temerity and bad taste to write a nasty biography of my master) liked pictures of naked woman in naughty poses, so he employed lots of models for my master to paint. But Antoine was a libertine more in spirit than in action. Indeed, he was so shy he could hardly order a glass of wine without collapsing into palpitations.

  As a character, he was both scathing and nervous – not, one has to admit, an endearing combination. Though he received no formal education he was an intellectual, wonderfully well read and thoughtful. Aside from drawing and painting, reading and music were his twin passions. The only thing he disliked deeply was himself. Those assuming that a modicum of success might have soothed his critical soul and inflated his self-esteem are wrong. He was even more sickened and self-disgusted. Night after night he would lie sobbing beneath paintings by Rubens and Titian, lamenting his lack of ability, his cack-handed attempts to measure up to his heroes.

  A slightly lesser shade of fury was levelled at the importunate who disturbed his labours. I remember one incident when a miniaturist who had acquired a small oil stopped by the studio to ask Antoine to fix some ‘minor imperfection’ in the cloudscape. My master looked from the miniaturist to the composition and asked for clarification. ‘Where exactly do you find it lacking?’ he asked.

  The miniaturist pointed to the top left-hand corner. Without pausing, my master took some cleaning fluid and erased the whole canvas, save for the offending cloud. ‘Perhaps you will be happier now,’ he said, shoving the offender and the ruined work out on to the street.

  Where was I? I get a little lost. So would you if you were three hundred years old.

  Agatha, the restorer, and Jesse chatted on about his dead father and how much she missed him. Officially they were colleagues but any damn popinjay could see she loved him; history doesn’t relate if the feelings were returned. They bored on with endless reminiscences, each as scintillating as a wet sponge on a cold winter’s day. Annie gave up looking interested and wandered around looking at other paintings. Finally they came to me.

  Agatha shone a strong light on my surface before placing a strange contraption, huge magnifying goggles, on her head. Then, taking a wedge of cotton wool, she gently (I’ll admit she was gentle), rubbed it over my surface.

  ‘Where did you find this?’ she said, turning to Annie.

  ‘In a junk shop.’

  ‘Poor beauty,’ the restorer said, turning me over and examining my back.

  It is not the first time a human has spent more time looking at my ‘other side’. As we have established, there are all manner of interesting clues to be found there, including the age of my canvas, the stamps of those who have owned labels, dealers’ descriptions, and so forth.

  ‘It has been relined three or four times,’ Agatha said.

  Jesse nodded. ‘So someone thought it was worth enough to do that?’

  Agatha nodded. ‘It implies value. Or a sentimental attachment.’

  Taking a torch and magnifying glass, she shone it on my surface.

  ‘There’s one area here where we can see the quality of the work through the layers of dirt,’ she said, looking closely at the top right-hand corner of the picture. Taking another stronger light, she passed the beam backwards and forwards over the foliage. ‘I am really interested in the fineness of painting of the leaves and in this patch of silk on her dress.’

  Putting on another pair of magnifying goggles, she stared even harder at the clump of bushes.

  ‘If I am not mistaken that white smudge in the corner is a figure.’

  ‘I thought it was a cloud,’ Annie said, peering behind the foliage.

  ‘It’s a man dressed all in white. In fact, if my hunch is right, it could be Pierrot.’

  ‘Pierre who?’ Annie asked.

  Leaning back in her chair, Agatha said, ‘A character made famous in the late sixteenth century by the Italian commedia dell’arte. Sometimes Pierrot was portrayed as a wise clown or a buffoon, but he was always the innocent.’

  ‘Why would anyone put a clown into a love scene?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Pierrot was also the hapless and unsuccessful rival to Arlequin for the love of Columbine.’

  ‘So rather than being a painting about love on a summer’s day, this might be saying the very opposite? It could be that all-too-familiar tale of its cruelty?’ Annie said.

  ‘Or just love’s unlikeliness,’ Jesse added, gazing wistfully at Annie.

  ‘The first and most famous Pierrot was by Antoine Watteau, done in about 1718 and now in the Louvre. It’s a character so full of pathos and melancholia, so twisted with sadness, that most find it moving rather than ridiculous.’

  ‘I like the picture much more now that I see its darker side,’ Annie said.

  ‘All good works of art are about complexity and emotion,’ Jesse said. ‘That’s thei
r power. They enunciate something that we can’t quite put into words.’

  ‘You remind me of your father when you talk like that,’ Agatha said, fighting away tears.

  Jesse gave Agatha an awkward hug before steering the conversation back to moi.

  ‘Why have so many generations painted this figure?’ he asked, peering at the painting.

  ‘Pierrot has become a universal symbol. From Cocteau to Picasso, Hockney . . .’

  ‘Juan Gris,’ Jesse offered.

  ‘Sickert,’ Agatha replied.

  ‘Matisse,’ Jesse batted back.

  ‘Modigliani.’

  ‘Max Beckmann.’

  ‘Chagall,’ Jesse laughed. ‘What about Paul Klee?’

  ‘I love his Head of a Young Pierrot,’ Agatha agreed.

  ‘How does it help us?’ said Annie. She was feeling lost and slightly irritated by their sparring.

  ‘At the time of your picture, there were only twenty artists painting Pierrot. Watteau was probably the first and best and then there were his followers Lancret and Pater.’

  ‘We could go to Paris to see the most famous version. It’s in the Louvre.’ Jesse said to Annie.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Annie said with little enthusiasm.

  She did not need to go to France. I was the first.

  The restorer picked me up and walked over to a side door, gesturing for Annie and Jesse to follow. The room was small and windowless, painted entirely black. When the restorer closed the door behind her, we were all stuck inside this tiny airless box.

  ‘Are either of you claustrophobic?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Annie said nervously.

  Agatha picked up a large black lamp. ‘Annie, hold the picture up please,’ Agatha asked. ‘Jesse, can you turn the main light off ?’

  We were plunged into immediate darkness. What on earth was the woman thinking? She flicked a switch and her contraption spluttered out a harsh violet-coloured light.

  ‘UV light helps us to see through layers of paint.’ Agatha explained to Annie, ‘and most importantly, different campaigns.’