The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  Looking around the cellar, Memling could not summon up the courage or barbarity to realise Rebecca’s wishes. Taking his torch, he said a last goodbye to his private collection. Heaving himself up the narrow steps and out into the sunshine, he turned and closed the trap door and pulled earth, twigs and other matter over the surface then, sinking painfully to all fours, he crawled back through the hedge and down the slope to the track.

  Reaching the farmhouse, Memling took a match and set fire to a heap of rags and kindling that he piled in centre of the room. He stood for a while watching the tiny flames lick and flicker through the debris. Going to the next room, he sloshed more petrol on to the old kitchen table, chairs and across the threadbare pre-war curtains. There was, he knew, no point at all in burning an abandoned farmhouse but at least he could pretend to Rebecca that part of her instructions had been completed. No doubt the local police would come to investigate and assume that a group of vandals had taken advantage of an empty site. Looking into the records, they would see that the house and hectares surrounding it belonged to a company registered in Buenos Aires. The police would spend many frustrating hours trying to track down the rightful owner. Memling had set up a series of shell companies, a trail that led from Buenos Aires to the Cayman Islands to Guernsey to Bermuda and back to South America. At some point, long after Memling’s death, the local authorities would give up, requisition the land and sell it off. He hoped that the new owners would be delighted to discover a stash of great masterworks beneath their property. Memling’s only regret was not to be present to hear the speculation regarding how the works came to be lodged in a long-disused underground mine and who, if anyone, knew about their whereabouts. As he always wore gloves to inspect his work, even the cleverest forensic scientist would be unable to match DNA samples.

  Memling drove away from the house, occasionally glancing in his rear-view mirror at the plume of black smoke curling in the distance behind him. On the main road he checked to see if any other cars were coming, and once sure that no one saw his Fiat Panda pull out from the track, he turned into the road and headed back to the airport. In less than four hours he would be home. On his return, he expected to hear that the joint problems of the missing picture and that pest Trichcombe Abufel had been properly dealt with. Then he would have a large Scotch and an early night.

  Though Trichcombe had not seen his nephew for nearly twenty years, he would occasionally post copies of his manuscripts to Maurice at his terraced house in Mold. It made the art historian feel better that there was a hard copy of his work safely stored in a small attic in his native Wales. He doubted that Maurice bothered to open the envelopes, but at least his nephew was kind enough to acknowledge safe receipt with a postcard. Some of Trichcombe’s students laughed at these Luddite impulses, urging him to use the Cloud or a hard drive. Trichcombe would smile and ignore their suggestions.

  Today he mailed a copy of the document to Maurice by registered mail. He even telephoned Maurice to ask him to watch out for the postman. Maurice’s wife Della (or was it Delia? Trichcombe could never remember) had sounded irritated. ‘Will I have to go out of my way to sign for it?’ she asked. Trichcombe could hear her breathless tones; she had been fat on her wedding day and was probably obese by now. He imagined her struggling up the lane, pausing to catch her breath at the crossroads before heading up to the local post office, thighs chafing, droplets of sweat collecting between moist rolls of fat, bunions aching slightly.

  ‘I would not normally ask such a humungous favour, dear Della,’ he said unctuously.

  ‘Delia,’ she corrected.

  ‘Delia. This is the most important document I have ever written. If something happens to me, make sure it gets to the police, my dear.’

  Delia nearly laughed; what would the local police force make of an ageing art historian’s thoughts on a long dead artist? She would certainly not be trying their patience with any of Trichcombe’s words. Her husband’s uncle was an anomaly in their family – an academic – those four short dry syllables made Delia reach for a cigarette – what kind of life was that? Buried deep in books and in the past. Life was for living – you only got one shot, as Maurice often said.

  ‘Dahlia, dear – are you still there?’ Trichcombe asked querulously.

  ‘It’s Delia. Don’t worry – I’ll get your package,’ she replied, drawing deeply on her cigarette.

  Trichcombe waited until the post office van arrived and watched his copy disappear into a large grey sack. He stayed till the van had disappeared around the corner before heading back to his flat. He had waited forty-two years to wreak revenge on Memling Winkleman – forty-two long years. And now, finally, after all that painstaking and meticulous research, he had him. The fish was truly hooked. Later that day Trichcombe was meeting the editor of Apollo – the magazine might not have the biggest circulation, but it would get to everyone who was anyone in the art world and after that it would seep out into the wider press. Again Trichcombe decided not to send his precious research over the Internet. Better to hand it over in person.

  I will probably be on the news, Trichcombe thought. Almost certainly. They were bound to give him some hackneyed sobriquet like ‘Nazi Hunter’ rather than ‘Art Historian’. He wondered if Delia would see it – whether she would adopt that condescending ‘do hurry up, old man’ tone when he next called. Maybe there would be a film or even a book by him that sold more than a few hundred copies. His last work, Les Trois Crayons of Antoine Watteau, had performed disappointingly, shifting only 124. Trichcombe wondered what to call this book – The Improbability of Love, maybe, after the painting itself. Or A Question of Attribution? Provenance, or what about Nice and Nazi – Trichcombe was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice the two men waiting near the entrance to his building. Putting the key into the lock and turning it to the right, he pushed on the door and felt, to his surprise, a sharp prick in his neck. Turning, he saw a man, short, burly and dark with a hat pulled over most of his face, holding a large syringe. Trichcombe tried to cry out but from somewhere else another hand appeared with a thick cloth. Trichcombe felt strangely fuzzy, his legs gave way and the stairs came up to meet him. His last thought was of a Piero Della Francesca altarpiece, The Flagellation of Christ, last seen in Urbino when he was twenty-one.

  Chapter 32

  Earl Beachendon sat alone in his small basement kitchen in Balham looking at a large damp patch on the wall; he was sure that it had got noticeably larger since the night before. Earlier in the year, it had looked small and unthreatening, the shape and size of a fifty-pence piece, but over the last few months it had grown to resemble a headless piglet leaping over a half-eaten loaf of bread. Soon, he thought gloomily, it would probably look like a carthorse stepping over a lifeboat. The Earl couldn’t afford to pay a man to investigate the rising damp, let alone a builder to fix it. I wonder who will last longer, the damp patch or me, he thought.

  A few months ago, the Earl still took The Times but that had gone along with organic eggs, Berry Brothers claret and dry-cleaning, in an endless and apparently futile attempt to prune the household budget. The Ladies Halfpennies could dispense with a whole week’s allowance on new tights alone – what was the point of buying more when they laddered immediately? As for his son, Lord Draycott – the Earl despaired of the pimply youth ever making good. His heir should have been born in the late eighteenth century when the Beachendons had money to burn, estates to lose.

  The Earl opened the fridge in search of a snack before dinner – there were at least four hours to go before his next meal. Staring out from the cold white abyss were four pots of face cream, some cottage cheese and three low-fat yoghurts. Thank goodness for business dinners, Beachendon thought gloomily. Yesterday he had been caught purloining some bread rolls – he didn’t care if colleagues thought him greedy as long as they didn’t suspect that the fifteen little loaves stuffed into his briefcase were intended to fill six hungry mouths back home. ‘The man who could not feed his family�
�� – Beachendon was unable to imagine a more shaming epithet on his tombstone. Every single one of his attempts to lure a great collector or collection to the auction house had failed. Without a performance-related bonus, his miserable salary hardly covered the basic bills, let alone the nylons.

  Beachendon chose a rather stale bun left over from yesterday’s buffet. There was no butter but he did find some ancient plum conserve at the back of the cupboard; it had a large coating of mould on top, enough to put off the female inhabitants of the household. Opening the free evening paper, he turned immediately to the obituary pages in case there were any rich pickings to be had from the deceased: the odd estate, maybe a Gainsborough heirloom or, if he was really lucky, a cracking art collection built lovingly during a man’s lifetime and readily offloaded by the heirs. It was such a bore that people were living longer – damn modern medicine, Beachendon thought. Once upon a time a Duke would drop off his perch every sixty years; now the average nob was living till his late eighties. Beachendon kept a notebook of those likely to die soon. Once the death was reported, he would write a long, flowery and utterly insincere letter to the relatives, inveigle himself into the funeral proceedings and hope to pick up the dispersal of assets as soon as the body was decently cold. Unfortunately these days, an awful lot of art-world vultures were circling graves. Only last week he had attended the funeral of the widow of a relatively minor abstract expressionist artist. To his astonishment he saw the heads of the major national British and American museums, three of his counterparts at auction houses, no fewer than seven dealers and, sitting by the family in the front pew, a certain solicitor from Narrahs, Shattlecock & Beavoir. Mental note to self, Beachendon thought, take the solicitor out to lunch, tea and dinner.

  The only noteworthy death today was that lizardy old art historian, Trichcombe Abufel. Beachendon’s eyes flicked to the end of the obituary to establish the cause of death. A heart attack. How dull. ‘Trichcombe Llewellyn Abufel of Mold in Wales was a distinguished art historian of the eighteenth century who wrote about the Rococo with as much panache as he wore a silk cravat,’ Beachendon read. That is a really silly line – what was the writer trying to do? Entirely discredit the man? ‘Mr Abufel wrote several interesting books on large subjects such as Watteau; Courtly Love in the Time of Louis XIV; The Interplay of Etchings, Drawings and Paintings and Les Trois Crayons of Antoine Watteau.’ What about his masterwork, his monograph of Antoine Watteau, still the standard text on the artist – didn’t that get a look-in, a small mention? ‘Trichcombe Abufel remained resolutely independent during his long career, never taking a significant post at a major museum or a chair at any university but preferring to work alone.’ Utter rot, Beachendon thought; he worked closely with Memling Winkleman for ten years, bringing immense intellectual kudos to that establishment. How odd that this wasn’t mentioned at all. ‘Abufel’s contribution to academic discussion was always careful, considered and he would develop his arguments with a passionate eloquence.’ Beachendon wondered what his own obituary might say: ‘Auctioneer who brought both his family and his company to bankruptcy.’

  Done with the serious section, Beachendon went to the Daily Tits and Tittle-Tattle. Though he had never heard of most of the people, he couldn’t resist examining some revealing bikini shots of a little-known starlet called Kelly who had ‘snapped’ back to her pre-pregnancy body. Princess someone or other was literally fellating an ice cream. A minor royal was caught snogging her best friend’s boyfriend outside a nightclub in Havana. A footballer was papped drunk the night before a major league game. Oh, to have such an interesting life, Beachendon thought.

  He was about to go upstairs for his evening shower when his eye was caught by a small headline, ‘The Painting, the Piss Artist and the Publican’. Beachendon looked at the picture of a public house in Spitalfields, The Queen’s Head, and at the rotund publican holding a small painting. In a side bar there was a smudgy photograph of a dishevelled middle-aged woman being loaded into the back of a police van. Beachendon looked more closely at the painting. It was hard to tell, as the image was pixelated – it was probably some cheap copy, the kind of thing you bought in the back of a colour supplement. He read the article. A lady turns up at a bar with no money and persuades the barman to take a painting as collateral before her friend turns up to meet her. The barman, Percy Trenaman, knows a little bit about art and thinks ‘this is a fine work of the Baroque period’ and accepts the woman’s proposal. Cut to five hours later, there is no sign of a friend but there is by now a huge unpaid bar bill. Percy Trenaman’s boss Phil gets back, sacks his barman on the spot and calls the police. Now the painting and the so-called Piss Artist are being kept courtesy of HM in a police cell in Paddington. ‘I don’t care if it’s a Leo-fucking-nar-do,’ Phil tells the reporter, ‘people are expected to pay for their drinks in my establishment.’ If only life were that simple, Earl Beachendon thought. I could take any number of old canvases to John Lewis or Waitrose or Berry Brothers. Not a bad idea, really. Putting the paper back on the table, he lifted himself painfully out of his chair and climbed the stairs to his bathroom.

  Four nights after the dinner, Annie’s life slipped back into a predictable form. The Winklemans had hardly been in the office and when they were there, had asked for their steamed fish to be left in the warming cupboard. Unable to face her mother’s amateur dramatics, fearful that her trips to AA had stopped, Annie had slept in her galley kitchen for three nights in a row. Finally, realising she could not stay away for ever, she made her way home. At the end of her road, she decided to delay her confrontation with Evie for a little bit longer and stopped off at a pub where she ordered a Campari and soda. It was a drink that reminded her of summer, of holidays and being young, of sitting in a piazza in Italy or on a beach in Spain, not the kind of drink you would normally take in a back room in Hammersmith on a soggy evening in April. As this week marked the start of her new life, Annie decided to have an unlikely cocktail at an unusual hour to celebrate. In a plastic bag beside her there was a new dress, the first she had bought for over six months, and a radio – part of her campaign to get her voice back.

  Looking into the pink depths of her drink, Annie thought of her former local, the Fox and Hounds in Devon, and the regulars; Ted the builder, Joe the shepherd, Ruby from the corner shop and Melanie the publican’s wife. The conversation would have been comforting and circular, no need to find a beginning, middle or end when you were sure of seeing each other most nights that week – that year, probably. Tentatively she let her thoughts stray to Desmond and she visualised him in the Hounds drinking his usual, a pint of 6X with a packet of cheese and onion crisps. He would go around the room greeting the drinkers in the same way, ‘You all right, Joe? You all right, Ruby?’ until he had finished and then, taking his pint, he would sit in his seat near the bar; Desmond was a man to set your watch by. To her surprise Annie was able to think of him with a sense of detachment and there was something else, something new, an honesty, a realism about their relationship. She now saw that for most of her adult life she had been trapped on Planet Desmond, in a world governed by his rules, customs and sensibilities. For the younger, more fragile Annie, this had been comforting, necessary even. But as she grew older, she had begun to feel claustrophobic and stifled. By ending their relationship, she suddenly realised, Desmond had set her free to live a different kind of life, her life rather than his. Annie shook her head in wonder: Desmond had actually done her a good turn.

  Taking out a notebook and pen, Annie finally started to tackle her telephone messages. There were now fifteen, two more from Delores about the painting. There were three from Jesse, each asking, in different ways, to see her again. The most surprising message was left by Agatha saying that Winkleman Fine Art was offering a ransom for a missing Watteau. Annie assumed Agatha must be mistaken.

  The most exciting messages were from a journalist from the Evening Standard wanting to do a feature on Annie’s dinners and another from Mrs Appledore w
ondering if Annie could re-create the dinner at her Museum of Decorative Arts in New York the following month. Annie drained her Campari and soda in one. It was happening; Annie could hardly believe her luck.

  Annie’s telephone rang again – a blocked number. It was time to re-enter the real world. She answered it tentatively.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Is that Miss Annie McDee?’ a voice asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Paddington Green Police station. We have your mother here. Again.’ It was the same policeman who had arrested Evie on the previous occasion.

  ‘Again?’ Annie couldn’t keep the weariness out of her voice.

  ‘Could you come and collect her, please?’ The policeman sounded equally weary. ‘You will need to bring your chequebook – the publican is keeping the painting as collateral for damage caused.’

  ‘What painting? What damages?’ Annie asked, though she had a good idea about both.

  ‘She swapped a picture for a few drinks, promising a friend would be along later. The friend never turned up. She got abusive, broke a mirror and a few glasses.’

  Annie sat back in her seat. She had enjoyed less than a week of success, and now this.