‘I like our version better than this,’ Di said. ‘More colour, more bitterness, more edge. It was in the school. Thomas knew who painted it. So did his father. That’s why he wanted to rescue it. Margeurite Gerard never had a chance to succeed in her own right, never had the limelight and that makes her Thomas’s kind of artist. But he rarely bought anything French. Might they notice that?’
‘I doubt it. Edward would never research carefully enough. Nor has he ever looked.’
They were back in the taxi. Di knew the way through the National Gallery; it was she who led Saul towards Gains -borough’s portrait of his two daughters.
‘Even Edward and Gayle will have heard of Gainsbor -ough,’ Saul said. ‘They might even be able to recognise the style. Fragonard? You know if you know, and you don’t if you don’t. Gainsborough’s the better bet. The forerunner of English landscape painting, almost the inventor. His great love, although he was a portrait painter. He put landscapes behind portraits. One of his most touching portraits, I think.’
Di had written that one down, too. She could recite her own description.
Two little girls, almost embracing. The one is almost a baby, the other, older, protective, holding her. Based on the same faces of a more famous portrait of the two of them, chasing a butterfly. Sweet, sweet, sweet anxious faces, transfixed by Daddy. One face full of intelligence, the other, pretty, slack-mouthed and vacuous. Vulnerable faces, bodies dressed as adults.
‘They went mad,’ Di said, saddened by it. ‘Gainsborough loved them as much as any father of his time, but his love for them couldn’t cure them. Perhaps life couldn’t. Look at them now. They were happy then.’
Saul was on full song, ignoring sentiment; no time for it.
‘Gainsborough was different from other successful portrait painters of the time. He didn’t have assistants to do all the extra bits such as lace and shoes like most of the others he followed. He concentrated on the face, first of all, painted from life and got a real likeness. Then he painted the body, and the landscape.’
‘The faces,’ Di said.‘Always concentrated onthe faces, a true likeness, done from life, almost a sketch. Only he didn’t paint the one wrapped up in our cellar,’ Di said. ‘His nephew did. Gainsborough Dupont, nephew and only pupil. Who learned to paint exactly in the style of his uncle, only with greater freedom. He copied, but he copied honestly. May have painted the same things as his uncle, at the same time. Maybe not an inventor of techniques, but just as good, or better. Remained modest and unknown. Another reason why Thomas liked it. The unknown artist, in the shadow of someone else.’
They were out of there, walking, hurrying without reason. It was cold.
‘Either of them,’ Di said. ‘Either. But the Gainsborough’s bigger and the one where they’ll know the name. I wish they weren’t wrapped up in the basement. It went against his nature, keeping things hidden. They were on the walls, ten years ago. I wish Thomas wasn’t so keen on playing games.’
‘He knew about misguided children. He wanted revenge, too.’
‘They’ll go for the Gainsborough,’ she said. ‘They’re welcome. They’ll go for both, and we have both, but they’ll go for the name. They’ll also go for Fragonard, because it’s semi-famous and they’ll go for both because of the subject matter. Beatrice will, anyway.’
‘How so?’
‘The Fragonard’s naughtiness, its theme. The old goat of a tutor, hiding in the bushes. The man looking up the girl’s skirt, that’s what they’ll see. And as for the Gainsborough, what have we got? Two anxious girls, transfixed by Daddy, looking straight to camera, ready to strike a bargain, wanting to please before they stopped wanting to please. A confirmation of some sort of perversion on the part of the collector, or at least the expression of a tendency? That’s what they thought of Thomas. That’s why they’ll expect paintings suggesting perversion. They’ll see what they see. Those paintings were always there. Thomas’s father had them.’
Saul nodded, following in part, realising yet again that, however much he had been trusted, there were things he did not know.
‘Christina would have killed for those paintings,’ Di said. ‘She might have known them.’
‘In terms of value,’ Saul intoned, ‘Marguerite Gerard’s version of The Swing would fetch a few thousand, but if by Fragonard himself, at least a million. The same applies to Gainsborough Dupont. They won’t do badly. Just not nearly as well as they thought. Good commodity, wrong name.’
‘So we aren’t selling them a fraud or a copy. That’s important. And we’re letting them take away something of real value, which is what Thomas wanted, but we’re making them fight for them, steal for them. It’s cruel, isn’t it?’
‘It’ll teach them a lot about themselves, Di. Come on, Di, you still don’t hate them enough.’
‘Oh yes I do. I didn’t before, but I do, now. Problem is, I don’t hate their children.’
She thought of Patrick, shuddered, as if a cloud had descended over the sun, and then, as if it was an afterthought, rather than a real one, she said, ‘I’ve got go home. I wonder what they’re doing at home? I feel as if I need to go home, There was a flood warning. Let’s go home. Now.’
‘Tell me things,’ he said, urgently as they walked faster and faster. ‘Tell me what happened to Christina when she came to call on Thomas. Tell me what he wouldn’t tell me. Tell me more about your father.’
She was walking along, looking at a text on her phone, stopped so suddenly they bumped into one another. She was tight-lipped and pale.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Christina jumped off a cross-channel ferry, everyone knows that. As for my father, he follows death. I can feel him. He knows the house. Something’s happening. He’s there, I can see him.’
‘Nonsense. We can’t go back, not tonight,’ he protested. ‘There are other places to visit tomorrow. The flat, Raymond Forrest, things to do.’
‘It can all wait. I have to go home.’
‘Why, for Godsake?’
‘Because there’s a shadow,’ she said, shivering. ‘He’s watching. He won’t come near me, but he would go for someone smaller. I told you the other night, Saul, my father won’t come for me head on, but he might sneak round the back, he’ll come in sideways, for something smaller than me.’
A boy who looked like a child sat on the train, sketching in his book for something to do, the way he always did. ‘On your own, son?’ the ticket inspector asked. Patrick stared at him. Of course he was on his own; that much was perfectly obvious. He was usually on his own, wherever he was, whoever he was with. He looked to either side of him, impertinently, and said, yes it seemed as if he was, so why did he ask? The inspector did not quite like his tone; strange little chap, with an old voice. Patrick was sick of explaining that he was older than he looked. Twelve, and the size of an eight year old, the year he stopped growing. But he was growing now: he could feel it surging beneath his pale skin, making him six feet tall, already. Getting dark out there, didn’t matter, he had a map, a watch with a compass. He wanted to see the sea.
He had kept the map for years, the way he kept so many things, ever since Di gave it to him. It had come with the invitation to the party. When he grew up and could choose what to do, he would make maps. When he was a baby, a hundred years ago, when Mum and Dad still visited Grandpa until they stopped, they came by car, squabbling all the way. When he came for the party, he came on the train with the horrible cousins; part of the adventure, and that was how he learned the route. And then, Auntie Beatrice, coming in there screaming. Pervert, she screamed, fucking pervert. She just didn’t get it, did she? Nor did the cousins, they never got the magic at all.
Didn’t matter: he knew the way to the house from the station like the back of his hand. Anytime, Di said; but you must tell your mother. That’s what she said at first, anyway. Then she gave him food and put him back on the train.
Money for the ticket was easy. He siphoned a little from his mother’s burgeoning pu
rse every day. She was useless with it, never knew how much there was. She never noticed much and nor did Dad. They wouldn’t even notice he was gone. Should have kept his mouth shut, though. Shouldn’t have said anything to the stupid cousins, although he doubted if they heard.
Patrick loved trains. He went on one every day, only the Underground on the days he went to school, on the days when he didn’t bunk off. Di worried about that. No one else did.
‘He’s gone where?’
‘Said he was going to Grandad. What’s wrong?’
‘She’s done it, she’s abducted him. It’s her. She’s a spider and she got him into her web.’
Beatrice was so thrilled, she was clapping her hands. ‘We’ve got her now, we’ve got her, abduction, kidnap, the lot—’
‘Shut up,’ Edward yelled.
Shouting, screaming, fury, distress. Edward held up a magisterial hand.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait.’
‘He’s gone,’ Gayle said, so quietly she was almost inaud -ible. ‘He’s gone to her.’
‘Our boy has eyes in the back of his head,’ Edward said.
‘This could turn out fine. Should I ask Di’s father to look out for him? Just look out, not do anything? He’s there, isn’t he?’
‘No,’ Gayle said, knowing it was too late and he’d already done it. You undo that. We phone Raymond Forrest. We phone the messenger boy.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Peg loved this house, she really did. Even the cold bits, because it was the sort of house that hugged you. Peg was tired, in a good way. It came from all that cleaning. She had started at the top in the wide-open attics; it was such an open house, windows everywhere, light even when it was dark. She had done all the windows on the inside, worried about how the salt blurred the outside, because of the wind that carried the spray and plastered the salt against the glass. It won’t last, Jones said; the rain’ll see to that.
The place wasn’t dirty as such, although much of it needed spring-cleaning and Peg reckoned she’d been born with a duster in her hand. There wasn’t anything bad about being paid to do work like this. There was a linen cupboard the size of a small room, warmed by a hot water tank: she was in love with that room, full of enough old cotton sheets for an army. She folded them with care. Look at me, she said to herself, a few days here and I’m well at home.
The feeling of being alright without being uneasy really began because Di had given her clothes. It was not the fact that Peg had woken after the first, full night she had slept there to find a pile of them by the bed, it was the choice of them, not any old stuff, not clothes that would never fit, but carefully chosen, good stuff. Di had left the best and told her to take anything else that she liked. Cosmetics, perfume, make-up, help yourself, you know, just go in there and get it whenever you like, so that it didn’t feel like charity; it felt like a gift. Today, Peg was wearing a red sweater and black leggings with boots. She and Di were the same shoe size. It gave an uncanny sense of belonging, stepping into Di’s boots and finding them fit. It meant this was fate, and she was supposed to feel at home.
Peg was told what to do, did it willingly and then found other things to do on her own initiative. Jones tinkered and mended locks on windows and screwed down floorboards, did things with drains, muttered about installing a security system, kept on tinkering around as Saul ordered and was an excellent handyman and cook. That left Di free to closet herself with Saul and do stuff on the computer in the big room. The house was so large that hours could pass without any one of them being aware of where the others were, but Saul and Di were likely to be together, moving things about, organising quietly. When they all ate together, they talked easily of nothing and everything, mostly about the house and the virtues of the town which Di banged on about because she certainly liked the place. They did not talk about pictures and paintings, or the future, but they did talk.
Peg loved the pictures, but felt shy about passing comment, not wanting to ask the kind of questions that would make her look stupid. There were other things she liked much more than the things hung up the walls, and paintings were by no means the only things collected here. Peg loved the stash of old suitcases with labels she had found on the top floor: then there were the map books, the drawers full of watches, and after that, there were the trunks full of children’s toys, and the other one full of fancy dress costumes … it went on and on. She even found a wooden box full of shells. Just make things better, Di said. Make sure nothing’s got moth, or rotting. Nothing was.
Peg just wanted to be where she was with no one else in the world knowing she was there for the time being. She did not want to know what would happen next, so it was nice when Saul and Di went away to London and left her and Jones. She really, really liked Jones; she was dead easy with Jones as Jones was with her. They were in the same boat, homeless but at home. With Di and Saul out of the way – and she liked Saul OK, he was funny, but there were buts, such as the way he looked – she could ask all she wanted and say what she thought. As if she would.
The bruise had faded, but her hair was such shit, and she had a thing about her hair. She really needed to get it fixed – the state of it troubled her, so bloody thick it was out of control. It was the only feature of herself she could not sort out and it made her feel like a slag, now she had clothes and a job. One of the good things about Jones was that you could talk to him about stuff like that.
‘So go and get it done, why don’t you?’ Jones said the morning after Saul and Di left. ‘Monica’s never busy on Tuesdays. Go on, girl, you’ve worked hard and you’ve got your pay. Monica will fix you up. Get out of here and get straight back before the rain sets in. It’s going to be nasty later. You haven’t seen real bad weather yet.’
He showed her where to go on the map. Peg didn’t want to go out alone, yet, but the hair was too important and the place would be easy to find. She wrapped up warm in one of Di’s jackets, the nice green one. The colour combination of red and green reminded her of Christmas, she felt jaunty and free to please herself. When she came back, she would tell Jones what was really bothering her, because she really was in the shit, except it didn’t feel like it right now. She felt OK.
The sea was too vast for Peg: she did not really like walking alongside it with all that noise it made. It was better seen from the inside of a window; closer than that, it was threatening, and she had no wish whatever to pass by the pier, so she followed the back way via a wide and well-used path which sent her uphill first, skirting the backs of the big houses, and then down into the town. It kept her away from the stirring wind, which sounded better in trees than it did with the crash of water. Sweeter in summer, perhaps: would she still be here in the summer? What did it feel like on a warm day, would it be that different? She didn’t care. If this would keep her safe for a bit, that was fine.
Monica’s was dead easy to find and when she did, it was half empty and it made her feel like a kid because the three other customers were ancient. Monica was an old crow, obliging although hardly friendly to a stranger without an appointment, nodded her to a chair, and said, yes, you’ll have to wait a minute. She did.
Peg waited and listened as Monica fastened rollers into an old, grey head with a mouth that talked all the time.
‘So where’s that Jones when you need him?’ Delia said. ‘He was supposed to be fixing my door. Left his rod on the pier all night the other night. Someone came and stole it.’
Peg opened her mouth and closed it again, sitting very still, thinking of the rod leaning against the back door. Di had gone and fetched it that first morning when they all slept. Peg looked around. When she was small, she had a burning ambition to be a hairdresser. That way you got to make people happy all the time, like cleaning, you could only make things better. You couldn’t go wrong with that, even though this Monica was not exactly a bundle of laughs and she seemed a bit stressed out.
‘Jones knows when he’s in trouble,’ Monica was saying. ‘He goes walkabout. He’s goo
d at hiding.’
The old head nodded.
‘’Cos old Quig’s hanging around, is that it? That who he’s running from? You were sweet on him once, weren’t you, Mon?’
‘Shush, you. That was a long time ago,’ Monica said, finishing off. There was a cackle of laughter.
‘Get on with you, you’d still give him house room, you would.’
The lid of the hairdryer came down. Monica turned to Peg. ‘Hair needs cutting right back,’ she said, abruptly ‘Nice jacket, that. Where did you get it?’
‘Charity shop,’ Peg said, defensively, without thinking why she said it.
‘Clever girl,’ Monica said. ‘I suppose you got the jumper there, too. Thought I’d seen them before. Got to be careful about what you give away in this town. Cut and blow dry’s ten pounds today, alright?’
It wasn’t easy being in there, because Monica never said anything else and kept interrupting her styling to answer her phone and Peg was glad to get out of there even if she was pleased with the result. Nice jacket, Monica said again. Have you signed the register? Only I got to keep records. Peg signed her full name without thinking and then, instead of looking at the other shops as she had planned, bought a packet of three-inch screws from the hardware shop and other stuff on a list as directed by Jones, plus a bottle of wine, and then she lost her nerve and began to scuttle home, again avoiding the sea as far as she could. The sky was huge and threatened rain. There were flood signs in windows, sandbags outside doors; she had heard warnings on the local radio when she was working in the morning, remembered Jones saying about how it would get nasty. None of that worried her, no flood could possibly threaten that house which had so quickly become hers, but she wanted to be indoors near a fire. She dreamed of cheese on toast as she walked faster, trying to look over walls into gardens, meeting no one but a man and a dog hurrying home, all the time afflicted with the feeling that someone was following her and knowing that was absurd; no one knew who she was, or where she was, and Jones said there were no police in this town. All the same, it did take all the pleasure out of light, floating, freshly cut hair.
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