The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  She stopped by a pocket-sized, jade-coloured glass bottle. Its handle was as delicate as a sparrow’s leg; its glass was translucent like a dragonfly’s wing. The notice said that it dated from 3200 BC. Annie was amazed. How had it survived? As a prized collector’s item? Accidental good fortune? She turned back to the notice. ‘This extraordinary piece was found in a casket in Mesopotamia where it had been for four thousand years.’ Christ, Annie thought, what a miserable life: all time, no action. Imagine seeing nothing but the inside of a box. No one-night stands, no lunatic directors, no drunken mothers, no broken hearts, no ghastly mistakes or small triumphs – just a lot of accumulated seconds, hours, decades, millennia. Her thoughts turned to Desmond and, for the first time in over a year, her stomach did not lurch. Then she realised that the large weight, a permanent fixture on her heart, had lessened. Perhaps the shattering of her former life was some kind of blessing: at least now she existed on her terms. This new sojourn being alone (she hoped it would be very brief) was a kind of second act, a different movement, however miserable and uncomfortable. She might even find her way through this muddle to a finale. Looking back at the jade bottle, Annie felt a sudden inexplicable trickle of hope.

  She walked on through the cavernous rooms to the east wing of the museum where a small sign announced the drawing study room. Annie showed her driving licence to a young man at a turnstile and walked into a long barrel-ceilinged room. At one end there was a high window. The walls were lined with glass-fronted mahogany bookcases on two storeys, accessible by a gallery. Large desks ran from one end to the other. In the middle a small exhibition space showed items from the collection. Annie looked in wonder at a Picasso drawing, a priapic satyr with a ravishing young woman. Had it been a photograph, Annie reasoned, it would have been banned. Her favourite was a Jim Dine of a single plait hanging down a girl’s back. It was a literal and evocative image, reminding Annie of the terror of first days of term: whom would she be sitting next door to? Would the teacher like her? Will they tease me for having a red biro? What if they notice that my shoes have holes in the soles?

  Agatha had suggested, ‘Start with the works of Antoine Watteau.’ Annie felt a slight twinge of guilt, knowing that Jesse wanted to be there with her. She remembered Evie’s adage: ‘Just because someone loves you, you don’t have to love them back.’ She wondered if the whole world was caught on a merry-go-round of unrequited love.

  In one corner there were huge, leather-bound catalogues. Searching under ‘W’, Annie found twenty entries under Watteau, divided into printed matter and original drawings. She filled in a form and took it to the librarian. ‘Find a seat and we will bring them to you,’ said the young woman behind the desk.

  Annie found an empty table towards the back of the room next to two men who were examining drawings taken from a box labelled ‘Hogarth’. Annie looked over their shoulders and though the images were hundreds of years old she knew at a glance exactly what each person had been like; Hogarth had found the essence of his subjects’ characters with only a few flicks of pencil and smudges of a finger: the self-important little man with his barrel chest, bandy legs and air of superciliousness; the woman in a maid’s dress, her sideways knowing glance crackling with intent; the two boys bent over a bird with a broken wing, clearly not set on fixing the creature or putting it out of its misery. Until recently Annie had thought that paintings were about capturing likeness and that only the cognoscenti could understand hidden meanings and arcane symbolism. Jesse had helped her to understand that an instinctive emotional response was equally valid.

  While Annie waited for her items to appear she tried to imagine the lives of fellow readers. Who was the pretty young woman holding a magnifying glass over a man’s portrait? How about the severely dressed spinster writing notes surrounded by Picasso’s more pornographic images? What were the schoolgirl and her father discussing in such urgent whispers? Was it really the pastoral landscape laid out before them? Looking around the room, Annie liked the aura of seriousness and contemplation.

  After fifteen minutes, the librarian brought out a box and a pair of white gloves. Annie put on the gloves and carefully opened the folio. They are letting me hold three-hundred-year-old drawings, she thought as she looked down at the head of a woman. There’s no one hovering at my side. No protective covering. No CCTV cameras spying. The first drawing she held was done in the same red, black and white chalk that she had seen in Delores’s book. Reaching into her handbag she took out Jesse’s sketches taken from her painting and laid them on the desk, looking for a resemblance between her image and a drawing entitled Les Agréments de l’été, of a girl on a swing. To Annie’s untrained eye, all the people in Watteau’s drawings looked similar and artificial: regular-featured, nicely proportioned, ample-bosomed, with delicately turned ankles.

  Inevitably, her thoughts strayed back to Delores’s dinner and a recipe she had studied for crayfish in a Sauternes sauce. Concentrate, Annie chided herself, and turning back to the job in hand, she tried to imagine, as Jesse had suggested, that this was a crime scene and she was a detective looking for clues. Perhaps, Annie thought, the features of a face aren’t the things we recognise. Closing her eyes, she thought about Jesse, trying to capture the way his nose and mouth sat in relation to his ears, his hair. She could picture parts but failed to render the whole. She started again; fine brownish hair, summer-blue eyes with dark edging. Six-foot-ish. Slight freckling on his cheeks. Long thin hands. Narrow face, high cheekbones. But physical attributes didn’t conjure up the essence of a person. Putting herself back into the café, she tried to remember his mannerisms, the way he brushed his fringe out of his eyes with a quick swipe, or rested his chin on clasped hands. That soft, deep voice. She remembered his eyes most: always moving, searching, running over her face, scanning. Perhaps this was the clue to art detection: don’t look for the whole thing, look for an aura, a suggestion; try to find the artist’s character in the drawings.

  The stare of a stranger pricked Annie out of her reverie. She felt the eyes on her before she saw the man watching her intently from a few tables away. He was elderly and foppishly dressed with a spotty cravat and a velvet frock coat, his silvery lank hair framing a face as pointed as an anvil. A magnificent chain looped from his coat pocket to a button on the opposite side and hanging dead centre was an open-faced fob watch. Annie met his stare with as much hostility as she could muster. The man looked back with hard blue eyes and a thin-lipped smile of acknowledgement. Annie ignored this and returned to her research.

  The librarian placed a second folio of drawings on Annie’s desk. It was a heavy green-leather box with gold tooling and she opened the cover carefully. The first drawing was markedly different: a portrait crackling with individuality. The woman looked straight at Annie with a cool but amused stare. Annie smiled back at her. There was an inscription, ‘Charlotte: la plus belle des fleurs ne dure qu’un matin.’ What was that about? The most beautiful flower ne dure . . . un matin, morning. Ne dure, ne dure, she repeated to herself. Endure? Duration? Last, that must be it. ‘Beautiful flowers don’t last the morning.’ There must be a story here. She placed Jesse’s sketch next to the drawing and called up the photograph of her picture on her telephone. It was definitely not the same person. Pity, she liked Charlotte’s face, her vivacity. Annie wondered if this was the same woman she had read about in Delores’s book, the love of Watteau’s life. The other women in his drawings lacked Charlotte’s intensity. The next image was the head of a man, a self-portrait: Watteau. Annie studied it carefully. His features were distinct, a long-faced man with oval heavy-lidded eyes and a full mouth. In his left hand he held a brush and in the right a piece of parchment. His clothes were rather splendid; the coat was edged in fur; the waistcoat had pearl buttons. His hair was long and curly. The expression on his face was deeply melancholic and disappointed, as if the world consistently let him down. The kind of person who would emit little involuntary groans and sighs as he went about his daily work. />
  Leafing through other drawings she found portraits of the artist from every different angle. Was he a narcissist or too poor to hire a model? His depictions of women were rather bland, as if he wasn’t particularly interested in their characters, but then Annie came across another drawing of the beautiful Charlotte. Again the artist’s energy and excitement fizzed out of the composition. Annie wondered what had happened to the girl – were she and the painter lovers? She was fairly sure he wasn’t enamoured with any of his other subjects, or at least none that she’d come across so far.

  The library assistant brought over another huge book, volume two of the catalogue raisonné of Watteau’s work: pages and pages of prints copied from original paintings. As she turned the pages, Annie saw more and more bucolic, highly mannered scenes of courtly love and artifice, and her impression of the artist became increasingly dismissive. How could anyone be seduced by these endless social events, these overdressed figurines being serenaded by a succession of musicians? They reminded Annie of the party for Carlo’s most recent premiere, where the overindulged chased the underdressed. Annie had watched guests engaged in desperate rounds of bonhomie and back-slapping while secretly plotting the downfall of friends and foes alike. Some were there for love of movies; most were panning for gold. Perhaps, Annie thought, these mannered, artificial human transactions were exactly what Watteau was painting. The behaviour in the courts of famous film directors and fabulous monarchs was probably similar, all kowtowing to a potentate in the hope of securing favours. Perhaps Watteau was trying to imbue these scenes with irony and pathos. She wondered if he had been born poor or wealthy, if he was a natural libertine. Did he feel as unsettled as she had done overhearing snatches of conversation at the Winklemans’ dinner party?

  Turning the page, Annie saw a print after a painting called The Embarkation to the Isle of Cythera, which showed couples getting on to a boat. At first glance it was a bucolic scene, with fat little angels cartwheeling with apparent joy through a summer sky. Looking more closely, Annie saw hints of trouble ahead: the couples looked away from each other; there was a dead tree in the foreground and dark clouds were massing over distant snowy peaks.

  Annie did not see the anvil-faced man get up from his chair and slip into the seat next to her.

  ‘Excuse me, but those of us who appreciate Watteau are few and far between,’ he said silkily, peering over at Jesse’s sketch. ‘What have you got there? May I?’ Without waiting for a response he picked up the drawing and stared at it, his eyes devouring every pencil mark.

  ‘Did you do this?’ he asked.

  ‘A friend made a copy of a painting for me.’

  ‘Where is this painting?’ he asked. Annie detected a catch of excitement in his voice.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I love Watteau’s work,’ he said pronouncing the artist’s name in a heavy French accent with a ‘V’ rather than a ‘W’ at the beginning.

  ‘How do you know it’s by him?’ said Annie.

  Without asking, he took her phone and looked hard at the photograph. Annie took it back firmly.

  ‘I’ve been looking for this for a long time,’ said Anvil Face, pushing back in his chair and looking thoughtfully at Annie. ‘Where did you get the painting?’

  ‘A junk shop,’ said Annie, thinking him extremely presumptuous and more than a little creepy. She took the sketch from him and folded it in half.

  ‘Why did you think it might be by Watteau?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t and I don’t,’ Annie replied. ‘A friend suggested it could be, and,’ she hesitated, ‘I thought I would do some sleuthing.’

  She could hardly tell this stranger that she was lonely and needed to escape from her mother.

  Anvil face cleared his throat. ‘I would really like to see your painting,’ he said.

  Annie closed the book and did up her rucksack.

  ‘Before you go, just look at this.’ The man walked over to his desk, only a few feet away, picked up the large book he had been studying and brought it back to Annie. He flicked carefully through several pages.

  ‘Voilà,’ he said with great flourish, pointing to an engraving. ‘The first volume of Julienne’s catalogue, Le Recueil Julienne, published by the artist’s dear friend and sometime dealer. As you can see, there is a very definite likeness between your sketch and this engraving. Q.E.D.’

  Annie looked again at the reproduction. Though it was in black and white, there was a clear resemblance. That strange white cloud on the left was, as Agatha suspected, a downcast clown who appeared to have been kicked out of a charming glade by the dainty foot of the woman. Behind her there was a classical fountain and a nymph astride a column laughing.

  ‘It’s not the same painting. The lady in mine has a different face,’ Annie said.

  ‘There is a reason for that,’ said Anvil Face.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Bring me the painting and I will tell you a very interesting story.’

  Annie looked back at the engraving and at the title of the picture. ‘L’improbabilité d’amour faithfully engraved by Benoit Audran the Younger in 1731.’ Anvil Face translated for her, ‘The Improbability of Love.’

  Annie almost laughed.

  ‘There are three hundred attributed paintings in Julienne’s catalogue,’ he said, ‘but only a hundred survive or are known about. I have found ten missing pictures so far. To find this one would make me and a lot of other people happy.’

  ‘Isn’t that what Delores Ryan does?’ Annie asked.

  The man sneered. ‘Miss Ryan can only sniff out things covered in chocolate.’

  Annie smiled, in spite of herself.

  ‘So, when are you going to show me your little picture?’ he asked.

  Suddenly Annie wanted to get away from this rarefied room, this strange man with his pointy beard and chiselled features. She wanted to be the anonymous Annie McDee, free and inconspicuous on the streets of London.

  She pulled on her coat and slung the bag over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got to go; I’m in a hurry,’ she said.

  ‘My name is Trichcombe Abufel. You need me, my dear, much more than I need you.’

  The name jogged something in her memory but Annie could not place it.

  ‘You have heard of me,’ Abufel said thoughtfully.

  Annie started walking towards the door.

  ‘Listen, miss,’ Abufel said as he followed her. Several readers looked up, annoyed by the chatter. ‘Your picture is probably nothing more than a cheap copy but there is an outside chance that it is not.’

  Annie walked out of the reading room and down the long corridor. To her irritation Abufel was still at her side.

  ‘There is only one expert in the world whose opinion counts and that is me. I would suggest you stop walking and listen.’ Abufel was slightly out of breath. Annie didn’t stop. She had had enough of being told when to stop, when to start, like a child’s toy.

  ‘You clearly have no idea what you have, so I will give you a clue or two. When you have solved these I suspect you will be only too eager to get in touch for help finishing the riddle.’

  Annie stopped and turned around. She wanted to shout some obscenity at the man but her interest had been piqued. Abufel smiled triumphantly, revealing stubby yellowing teeth and rather grey gums.

  ‘The first clue is King Louis XV, the second is Catherine the Great and the third is Queen Victoria. See if you can join the dots.’

  He bowed slightly. ‘Trichcombe Abufel, Fine Art Consultant, 11D Lansdowne Crescent, W11. I look forward to seeing you in less hurried circumstances.’ Smiling, he turned back towards the drawings room.

  Annie marched on. ‘Like bloody hell,’ she said under her breath. ‘Like bloody hell.’

  Walking away from the museum, once again Annie felt the heavy cloak of loneliness settle on her shoulders. Looking at her phone, she saw it was four o’clock. Exiled from her office and her home, she felt purposeless and lost.

&nbs
p; Annie decided to cook for her mother that night. It would be the first time in weeks that the women had spent any time together.

  ‘It would be better with a nice claret,’ Evie said that evening, swallowing a small piece of duck.

  ‘What do you think of the taste?’ Annie hovered nervously by the stove. This was the ninth practice dish she had made and none so far had worked.

  ‘It’s delicious,’ said Evie, taking a second bite. ‘Who’d have thought of putting orange and chocolate with duck? It sounds rather horrible but tastes quite nice.’

  ‘So it’s better than the beef with eels?’

  ‘Anything’s better than that.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘there’s a lot of sugar on your menu.’

  ‘It was a sign of great wealth,’ Annie said.

  ‘Or maybe it just hid the taste of mould; I don’t suppose they had fridges at Versailles.’

  Annie sat down next to Evie.

  ‘Why aren’t you eating?’ Evie asked her.

  ‘I’ve been tasting it for the last two hours – It would be wasted on me.’

  ‘You’re wasting away.’

  ‘Don’t eat too much; there are two more courses for you to try.’

  ‘Can’t I have a drop of that cognac? It will cut through the fat.’

  ‘Mum, don’t make me the policeman in this relationship,’ Annie said.

  ‘I was just asking for a wee dram,’ said Evie, plaintively.

  ‘When has it ever been a wee dram?’

  ‘You can’t take drink away. That would leave me with nothing. Nothing.’ Evie said.

  ‘What exactly is booze giving you? Friendship? Support? A living?’ Annie started to fuss around the next dish, a puréed chestnut soup. On the night it would be sprinkled with truffles but for now a few sprigs of parsley would suffice. Some of the dishes that Annie intended to prepare were too expensive to practise.