The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked, ‘Promise me you are not going to hurt yourself. I will do anything to stop that. I will walk into the nearest police station. Name your terms.’ Memling’s voice cracked with emotion.

  Rebecca looked down and realised that the sun was setting and their shadows had disappeared. She looked at the diamond rings on her fingers, one from Carlo on their engagement, the other a present from her father when Grace was born. Her hands were already slightly wrinkled and the beginning of a liver spot was forming on her left wrist. She tried to imagine a life without her father, daughter or husband and excommunication from her milieu, the world of art. Turning her hands over, she looked at her unlined palms, her almost white skin and the sliver of a blue artery in her wrist. Her thoughts turned to Marty and his decision. Slowly she turned her hands over and looked at her rings, those bands of love and responsibility.

  She looked up at her father, at his wary, anxious expression. ‘We have lots of work to do,’ she said.

  Memling’s shoulders slumped and he slowly let out lungs full of breath.

  ‘What matters is that Grace inherits a clean title and fortune and that the shame and guilt stops with you. It is your dirty secret, not ours,’ said Rebecca.

  Memling tried to keep a smile of relief from his face.

  ‘You will write a full confession so that if anything is exposed, it is made clear that I never knew of any of this,’ Rebecca said.

  Memling nodded.

  ‘Trichcombe Abufel has a copy of Danica Goldberg’s photograph of the Watteau,’ she said.

  ‘Trichcombe?’ Memling looked amazed.

  ‘He’s been trying to nail you for years,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘But he was always so ineffectual,’ Memling said, shaking his head.

  ‘You need to destroy all his notes, anything that he can trace back to us. If the worst comes the worst, you will have to get rid of him.’

  ‘Get rid?’ Memling looked appalled.

  ‘Cut the crap, Papa – I know you incinerated that poor man in his antique shop trying to find the Watteau – don’t try and pretend otherwise.’

  ‘That was a mistake. I asked Ellis to frighten him.’

  ‘My driver is your henchman?’ Rebecca was amazed.

  ‘He is a former policeman.’

  ‘Two incompetants,’ snapped Rebecca.

  Memling looked at his hands. ‘I have underestimated you.’

  ‘You underestimate everyone,’ Rebecca replied.

  Memling looked at her sadly – he saw now that he had overlooked his daughter, written her off for being a woman, a person of no consequence.

  ‘You need to find that painting and get rid of it. Not hide it – destroy it,’ Rebecca said.

  Memling winced but nodded. ‘I have been the victim of my own sentimentality.’

  ‘Sentimentality!’ Rebecca scoffed. ‘Solipsistic self-regard, flagrant stupidity, greed and weakness is how I would describe it.’

  ‘I am a fool,’ Memling said weakly.

  For a few minutes, they sat in silence.

  ‘There isn’t a museum or curator, dealer or expert who doesn’t owe us something. I have called around, but now it’s your turn. Get on to them. Call it in or the cash dries up. Get every dirty secret on every individual – affair, gambling debts, murky little details – you might need them,’ Rebecca instructed.

  Memling nodded.

  ‘There is one lead – we have to hope that it is simply a ghastly coincidence. Our temporary chef, Annie McDee, was photographed coming out of the same bric-a-brac shop and later with the right-sized parcel in her bike basket.’

  ‘She is still working with us?’ Memling asked.

  ‘Better to keep her closely observed. If she is working with others then she can be a hostage, a bargaining chip.’

  Memling looked thoughtfully into the distance. ‘Does she have access to the computers and records?’

  ‘She has no access to our records. I double-checked all her searches and her emails – there’s nothing.’

  ‘There must be something?’

  ‘The only thing the woman thinks about is food and recipes. I have even tried to decode some in case they contained hidden messages or cyphers.’

  ‘I will send some people round to her apartment.’

  ‘I did that already. Maybe it’s time to create a little damage.’

  Father and daughter sat side by side for a few minutes longer, both lost in thought. Checking her watch, Rebecca got up.

  ‘What will you be doing?’ Memling asked.

  ‘Running the business as normal and keeping up appearances,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘When will I see you again?’ Memling asked.

  ‘We will meet at the Italian gardens at 9 a.m. in four days’ time. I will book you on to a flight to Munich tomorrow morning. There will be a car in the name of Brueghel at the Hertz desk. You will drive to the farmhouse and start a fire in the cellar.’

  ‘You want me to burn the paintings? There are Fragonards, a Leonardo, five Titians, three Monets and about forty others. Catherine the Great’s Amber Room – the greatest treasure known to anyone.’

  ‘What value do they have to us? Think, Papa. Think. They are cords around our necks.’

  ‘Can’t we just leave them and hope that someone finds them one day?’

  ‘And wait for them to put two and two together? The young man picked up in the same location in 1946? The times you have been driven there?’

  Memling nodded sadly. ‘And if I fail in any of your tasks?’

  ‘The next time we meet will be at your graveside,’ Rebecca replied. She walked away, her back straight as a rod.

  Chapter 31

  Evie sat on the side of the bed and wept. Two days had passed since Annie’s triumphal dinner, but since then her daughter had avoided her. She wanted to share in Annie’s triumph, not to take any credit for her success, merely to insert one small positive memory into the bank of their shared experience. The last few weeks attending AA meetings had helped Evie understand how the child Annie had been forced to live in the vortex of her compulsive world, a hapless victim of Evie’s chemically enhanced or withdrawn moods. Returning from school, the child would never know which Evie was waiting behind the door. Would it be the happy-go-lucky-just-had-a-drink mother, or the nervous, fidgety let’s-try-not-to-have-a-drink-person? The angry withdrawing Evie, or the flat-out black-out mother? Sometimes Evie wasn’t there – it would be days, occasionally weeks, before she returned, offering no explanations. No wonder Annie learned to cook; she had had to.

  This morning, the weight of guilt was almost unbearable. Evie did not know how to forgive herself. Without her daughter’s love what was the point in living? Evie looked back at her life, the shipwreck of dreams; added up to so little. Half-started careers, messy relationships and a river of alcohol. Perhaps a little drink would help ease the pain of this moment? After all, booze was her friend, her constant companion. They’d had some fun together, hadn’t they, her and Billy Bottle – at least she had lived, had a bit of fun. Where was the fun in Annie’s sterile, lonely life? Work, work, work. Get up at the crack, slave for someone else’s benefit, come home and sleep. And as for the cooking, I mean, that just proves it, doesn’t it – make something that is eaten and shat out. Who says that’s a more worthwhile existence? Who’s judging whom now?

  Evie felt the fire returning to her spirit. She got up and looked at herself in the mirror and laughed; she did look awful. She splashed cold water on her face. Surely one drink wouldn’t hurt? One is too many and a thousand never enough, the mirror mocked back. Evie scrubbed at the mascara stains under her eyes, took off her clothes and ran a damp cloth under her armpits and between her legs. Never know, she said to herself, Mr Right might come a-poking today. She looked at herself naked in the bathroom mirror. Not bad, really. Not like some of those smug bitches you see with their semi-detacheds and their second-hand sports cars. They might have a bank account bu
t they couldn’t even pull their own husbands. Evie could, mind you. She could get those titties up and out, and in a good light you couldn’t see the crepey surface at all. She was only forty-seven and her stomach was flat and her legs firm. Most men said she would pass for a thirty-five-year-old. Mind you, men said just about anything at closing time.

  Evie did her hair carefully, backcombing it into a springy, fluffy helmet, hiding the worst of the roots under a little gold clip. She took Annie’s diamanté earrings – nothing like a bit of paste to lift the face. She made up her eyes carefully, dabbing concealer to cover the bags and a light dust of reflective powder. Then she took Annie’s ‘best’ dress and her pair of black heels. Looking at herself in the glass, Evie decided she was ‘outside world’ ready.

  Evie stopped. She had forgotten one important thing – the most important thing, perhaps. She had no money. Not even a pound. She felt a sense of rising panic. Now that the decision to drink had been taken, nothing could get in the way. She needed money. She opened the drawers and cupboards hoping to find a roll of cash; only take ten, maybe twenty, she didn’t need much. Evie could not find anything – not even a handful of pennies. She felt a faint sweat rising on her temples and under her armpits.

  Sitting down at the kitchen table, she tried to breathe slowly and even thought of calling her sponsor. Maybe her higher power was looking after her. Then she saw the picture – that was worth something, wasn’t it? It’s not like Annie even wanted it – she had told her often enough that she regretted buying the thing. If Evie took it she’d be doing her daughter a favour, wouldn’t she? But where would she sell it? The pawnshop? What would they want with an old picture? Evie remembered a pub in the East End, a place where young artists went to drink – maybe she could take it there and leave it behind the bar as collateral. Kind of a brilliant idea, she thought; she wasn’t selling her daughter’s picture, just getting it to earn its keep. Wrapping the painting in an old jumper, Evie put it into a Sainsbury’s bag, and grabbing her coat, hurried out of flat, down the stairs. It was 11 a.m.: opening time.

  I am too old to be messing around with petrol cans and flame torches, Memling thought as he sloshed the corners of the farmhouse with diesel. Once he could have lifted five-gallon cans on his own, but now he had to struggle with a single litre. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, he had driven an extra thirty kilometres to stop at different stations to buy individual cans. He had never set fire to a building before and had little idea how to ensure that it really burned. Later he would walk through the small orchard to the hillock where the trap door to the disused mine was located. He was almost too old to negotiate the steep steps down into the bunker. He had lost count how many times since the war he had come back – thirty, maybe forty. It was strange how pictures that had been almost worthless in the 1950s had come back into fashion. Once he nearly threw out a pair of late Renoirs, never believing that anyone would really want those sickly sweet rotund bathers. Today both would fetch crazy prices, Memling thought, remembering the sale of Renoir’s Au Moulin de la Galette in 1990 for $78.1 million to the Chairman of a Japanese paper manufacturing company. The new owner intended to be cremated with the painting; fortunately his company ran into serious difficulties and the Renoir was sold privately to a collector with less grandiose ideas about funeral pyres.

  Memling had grown to love the pictures in the cellar. He allowed himself one last trip into the bowels of the small hillside, one last browse among the stacks. He could remember where most of them came from. That Léger had been in a Jewish collection in Paris; he had carried the Titian out of a small church near Venice; the van Loo came from an attic in Amsterdam where some Jews had tried and failed to hide it above a cupboard; a golden cup, probably by Cellini, had been found in a French château where it had been used to keep a baron’s cufflinks. Memling doubted that any of the original owners had loved these pieces as much as he did. For him, these works of art represented beauty and also escape – they were the magic bridge connecting an impoverished, joyless childhood in Berlin with the luxurious, powerful position as one of the world’s pre-eminent dealers. Once, Memling’s name was likely to appear only on the school register; now it was engraved into the walls and architraves of the great museums of Europe, in rooms and extensions that Memling had paid for. In the Holocaust Museum in Bremen above the entrance hall there was an inscription, each letter a foot high, that read ‘Opera Memlingi Winklemani in perpetuum admiranda sunt’. The deeds of Memling Winkleman should be admired for ever.

  Memling had to crawl through the tangled bushes to reach the entrance to the cellar. These days even sinking down to his knees was a terrible effort. I might never get back up, he thought grimly as he shuffled slowly through the dense thorny undergrowth. Ten feet on he saw the familiar mound covered with brambles and ivy. Luckily he had remembered his heavy rubber gloves and a small crowbar. Clearing the top of the trap door he prised the door open inch by inch until he could raise it and prop it up with the wrench. Then he turned around, still on all fours, and reversed towards the hole. Until even a few years ago Memling could walk up to the trap door, lift it up with two hands and walk down the steps facing forward. Now he didn’t trust either his legs or his balance. It occurred to him that he could save a lot of bother by self-immolating in the cellar and thus doing away with both the evidence and the perpetrator simultaneously. But Memling had always dreamed of a grand funeral. He had pre-booked the Liberal Jewish synagogue but was thinking of the Barry Rooms at the National Gallery or perhaps the Guildhall. He suspected that the Prime Minister would want to say a few words. No doubt the Chief Rabbi would officiate.

  Memling took each step carefully – he knew there were thirty before reaching the bottom. Once he had navigated these he felt in the dark, on the brick ledges, for the torches that he left waiting. Once he thought of running a cable from the house to the cellar, but that was too detectable. Taking the flashlight, he turned it on and shone the powerful beam down a narrow corridor. He and his colleagues had chosen well and there was no hint of dampness even after recent heavy rains. After twenty paces, he arrived in the first room. Measuring twenty by twenty foot, it was stacked from floor to ceiling with paintings, each in its own crate marked with the artist – he looked at one row – Donatello, David, Degas, Daumier, Delacroix, Denis, Domenichino, van Dyck and Dürer. To think he had not even opened many of these. It was estimated that over forty thousand works of art were still missing from Nazi looting – Memling suspected that eighty-four or maybe eighty-five remained here in the cellar; he had, over the years, sold another sixty-five. He walked through to the next room – it was even bigger – Maretti, Matisse, Martini, Matsys, Michelangelo, Nattier, Oudry and Parmigianino. Beyond that was an exquisite treasure, the Amber Room – fifty-five square yards of exquisite panelling weighing over six tons. Known as the Eighth Wonder of the World, it was made for a Prussian king at the turn of the eighteenth century. Memling had been one of the officers in charge of its freighting and shipping from St Petersburg. He and his colleagues had worked in silence inspired by sheer wonder. It was a German masterpiece and belonged back in the fatherland. Given to Peter the Great when the two countries had been allies, it should now be taken back to its rightful home.

  Memling stroked the delicate panels with the tips of his fingers. When he shone his torch on to the amber it glowed like a furnace, light dancing along the panels and bouncing off the delicate gold carving. Rescuing the Amber Room from Königsberg Castle had been the single greatest act of his life. Hearing that the store was likely to be attacked, he led a group of men to take the crates out. They had worked solidly through the night with only a few mules and a rickety cart before requisitioning a train to get the pieces across Germany to Bavaria. When news broke that Königsberg Castle had been bombed and only a few fragments of brick remained, Memling and his team decided not to speak of their successful mission – the fewer who knew, the better. Now my own daughter wants me to destroy the things that I risked m
y life to save, Memling thought, as he shone his torch around the store. If his life counted for anything, if he had served any purpose, it was to help preserve these great treasures for future generations.

  Memling thought about the kindness of Esther Winkleman, who had taken pity on the unloved child even though he was the son of a man who hated her race and her family. She had fed him scraps off her table, had helped him learn and had inadvertently given him a skill that helped him to survive and prosper. Of course this woman could never have known that she would save another man’s child rather than her own. Shining his torch on a Leonardo portrait of a young woman, yet another mistress of his patron the Duke of Milan, he thought about the Watteau, the pictorial embodiment of the few.

  His tastes had evolved over the years. He liked to rearrange the works in the mine like a personal mini-museum, pulling particular paintings to the forefront of the stacks, according to his mood or situation. It seemed to Memling that great artists had the power of divination and could predict and translate even the most minor human travail. In the vast panoply of life, there were paintings to suit every predicament. No emotion, however base or delicate, had been considered too petty or panoramic. Artists’ brilliance went further than compassion or empathy; masterpieces could inspire as well as reflect different emotions. As a young man, Memling had been unable to stand anything sentimental and had prized guts and gore above beauty. He had loved Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, recently sold to Mrs Appledore, as it suggested that violence, if pragmatic, was acceptable. He thought of a Claude landscape whose bucolic scene quieted a troubled mind or the Bronzino statesman whose magisterial looks inspired leadership and fortitude.

  After Marty had died, Memling shut himself in the cellar for five days and five nights. He had taken water but no food and intended to die there, but his desperate spirit was rescued by a Duccio Madonna, whose sweetness of expression amid her own suffering had cajoled him back to life. When he had been in love with Marianna, Memling had pulled Renoirs and Del Sartos to the fore; sweetness emanated from those women that suited his mood. But no work ever matched up to his little Watteau – that extraordinary work embodied the agony and ecstasy of love. By asking him to destroy the constants, the sources of joy and comfort in his life, these tender renderings of the universal human conditions, his daughter was depriving future generations of solace that he had not just enjoyed but depended on.