He Made Me (Booker & Cash Book 2)

by Oliver Tidy

  Romney Marsh was spread out before us. The flat landscape, broken up only by the legacy of enclosure – lined with random and irregular hedgerows – and dotted with the odd clump of trees, stretched out for miles. It wasn’t clear enough to see as far as one could on a clear day but the stretch of the landscape was quite impressive.

  Jo said, ‘Why am I looking at this? Is there something I’m missing?’

  ‘Because she’s beautiful, Jo,’ I said.

  ‘She?’

  ‘Romney Marsh. All true Marshens refer to Romney Marsh as “she”.’

  ‘Why am I not particularly surprised?’

  ‘...and the sun’s out and we’ve been here twice already – one of my favourite places in the world – and not appreciated it.’

  ‘This isn’t a God thing, is it?’

  ‘No! It’s about a lovely view, that’s all.’

  We sat and soaked it up for a few minutes. The sun was on my face and I felt quite content as I pointed out places and landmarks I knew, thereby showing off my extensive local knowledge.

  Just as I was about to remark on something that caught my eye, a fat drop of rain hit me on the knee. This was followed by several more in quick succession falling around us. Disappointingly, Jo seemed almost pleased. She stood up and said, ‘It’s going to piss down any moment and I haven’t got a coat on.’

  She could have been a mystic. Within seconds the glorious winter sunshine had been replaced by dark brooding skies and the heavens properly opened. We bolted around the side of the church in search of shelter.

  ‘It’d better be open,’ called Jo over her shoulder.

  ‘The house of God is always open,’ I said. And it was.

  ‘We burst into the little porch and the hailstones that had quickly replaced the rain hammered down on the tiled roof, like someone had emptied a crate of ball bearings directly above us. There was no sign of abatement and with little else to do after we’d read the local notices Jo decided to push into the church proper and stir the trapped air and a memory.

  The church was bloody chilly, as one would expect for the time of year in an old church with stone walls feet thick. It was quite gloomy inside, too. No candles burned now. Jo strode away down the aisle towards the back of the church and where Sigmund had pitched off. I didn’t ask what she was looking for. Perhaps it was just a macabre interest.

  I wandered around looking at things that took my interest until I found myself at the place where I’d found Nigel Tate’s briefcase. I smiled at the memory. As my eyes naturally roamed around the spot, my attention was caught by a black bin liner that looked like it was being used as a protective covering for something. It wasn’t very visible. It was stuffed behind a bookcase that held a quantity of Bibles and children’s picture books with biblical themes. I can’t say why, but I was moved to investigate. Maybe Jo’s detecting tendencies were contagious. I leaned in, reached out and slid the bin liner out and felt it held something rectangular, thin and not heavy. Just the feel through the plastic of what I’d closed my hand around made my heart pick up its pace. Like a little boy who prepares to unwrap a birthday present shaped like a bicycle, I would have bet money that I knew what was in it before I unveiled it.

  Carefully, I slid out a medium-sized framed painting of Dymchurch sea wall. The style was instantly recognisable. The signature confirmed it. I was struck speechless.

  I called for Jo, but because my breath had been taken away hardly any noise came out. I cleared my throat, inhaled and called louder. She hurried over to stand next to me.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘If you think it’s a Paul Nash fake, then I think you could be right.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘Tucked behind the bookcase. Next to where we found the briefcase.’

  ‘How did we miss it before?’

  ‘We weren’t looking for it, were we? We were looking for a briefcase and only a briefcase.’

  ‘Is there anything else there?’

  ‘You look. I’m happy looking at this.

  Jo got down and peered back there. ‘Dust and cobwebs.’ She sneezed.

  ‘Isn’t it stunning?’ I said.

  ‘Not my cup of tea,’ said Jo, like the philistine she was turning out to be. ‘Have you got a tissue?’

  ‘Well, it’s mine. And you should take more of an interest because this is what it’s all been about. Life and death, broken dreams and broken laws.’

  ‘You swallow a poet?’

  My whole body was tingling with pleasure. And it was only a fake.

  Then something occurred. I felt the warmth wash out of me to be replaced by something icy and bitter. I said, ‘Jo.’ I met her eye. I felt she knew what I was going to say. I realised I was anticipating great disappointment, preparing myself for her ruling. It was her call. It was her case, her decision and I would accept it, whatever it was, with good grace, maybe. But she was so infuriatingly honest and I wanted that picture. ‘Can I keep it?’

  She studied my face for a long moment and said, ‘Keep what?’

  ‘The painting.’

  ‘What painting? I don’t see any painting.’

  I had to make sure she wasn’t winding me up.

  ‘I think it’s stopped chucking it down,’ she said, turning to leave.

  I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t say anything. I slid it back into the black bin liner. And realised there was something else nestling in the bottom of the sack. I fished it out. An envelope. It wasn’t empty. I called and went after her, brandishing it above my head, like a man running for the plane desperately waving his boarding pass.

  The envelope had been opened. Jo took out a British passport and a headed letter. She checked the passport, although we both knew whose it was. No surprises there, just confirmation.

  Jo scanned the letter and said, ‘What’s today’s date?’

  I told her.

  She said, ‘The final part of the puzzle, I’d say. This is notification from Hudsons that Nigel was to be formally investigated by the authorities. It’s dated seven days ago. Two days before Nigel topped himself. Allowing for two days in the post this chimes in pretty well with the time of death.’

  ‘What’s it doing in here?’

  ‘Maybe Sigmund took it when he took his passport.’

  We let the quiet of the church possess us for a few seconds.

  In an uncharacteristic display of sympathy for a crook, Jo said, ‘He’s the one I feel some sympathy for in all this.’

  ‘Who? Nigel?’

  ‘No, dummy, Sigmund. He was clearly off his trolley, deluded. He thought he was related to a famous artist, it takes over his life; he has his heart broken, his life ruined, by some horrible man; he becomes a recluse, living with his controlling sister, only to have the love of his life walk back into it, marry his sister, quite possibly renew his affair, then use him and his talent to profit from and finally learns that his lover was going to desert him once again for another woman.’

  ‘I might have studied something like that for A level English literature but it was set in Venice or Denmark.’

  ‘I’m honestly surprised Sigmund didn’t kill them. He must have been such a tormented soul.’

  ‘They all are,’ I said, rather flippantly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Artists. It comes with the calling. Will you go back and give Rebecca Swaine the answer to one of her questions?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Who killed her husband.’

  ‘Sigmund?’ I nodded. ‘Did he though? Nigel strung himself up without any help from a third party, according to the police report.’

  ‘If Sigmund had hidden his passport, his way out, and with all his other troubles crowding in on him maybe Sigmund should shoulder some responsibility.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I will,’ said Jo. ‘It’s not going to make any difference to anyone now, is it?’

  Before we left I stuck a twenty – one of my own – in the collection box
.

  As we walked back to the car, me carrying the painting in the bin liner in two hands in front of me, Jo put her arm through mine.

  I said, ‘He made me.’

  Jo must have been off somewhere. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Remember, Sigmund said he made me before he swan-dived to his death. It bothered you for a while. And me. It was a bit cryptic for a man’s last words. Do we think we know what he meant now?’

  ‘He made me, as in Nigel made him paint the fakes?’

  ‘How about, he made me, as in Nigel made Sigmund act by taking his passport so that Nigel couldn’t leave him?’

  ‘Or, he made me, as in Nigel made Sigmund the person he was?’

  ‘Maybe, he made me, as in Nigel completed Sigmund?’

  ‘That’s too sad.’

  ‘All right, what about, he made me, as in, and here I burst into song: he made me love him, I didn’t wanna do it, I didn’t wanna do it.’ And despite, or because of, my horrible singing and the crass inappropriateness of my outburst we laughed all the way back to the tank.

  ***

  Epilogue

  Some time after I wrote up this account – in true Doctor Watson style – of Jo’s and my first proper outing together in the private sector an article appeared in one of the Sunday broadsheets that had me laughing into my coffee and cake and then scrabbling around for my phone to get hold of Jo and get her downstairs sharpish. I’d read it through twice more before she showed up looking peeved that I’d got her out of bed on a Sunday.

  I sat her down with her favourite coffee-based drink in my special wing backed chair, a sure indicator that this was important, and then handed her the neatly folded article I wanted her to read, while I went and chatted amiably to one or two of my Sunday morning regulars. But I watched her.

  ‘Missing’ Nashes re-surface to shock art world while a talent is lost and found.

  The art world has been rocked in recent weeks by revelations of forging and the meteoric rise to fame, albeit post mortem, of a widely acknowledged modern master.

  Romney Marsh, once described by RH Barham as ‘the fifth quarter of the globe’ (which made his maths about as good as mine) nestles in a corner of the county of Kent in the south east of England. Probably best known for its breed of sheep, which have been exported as livestock as far away as Oceania, it has also attracted the attentions of several important artists over the years as they have gone through the many and varied phases of their careers. Among the most notable of these who called Romney Marsh home for several years was Paul Nash (1889-1946) who is probably best known for his work as a First World War war artist.

  In the 1920s, Nash spent time in the sleepy seaside village of Dymchurch, where the conflict between sea and land was to engage and influence him significantly. Nash’s interest in the sea wall – that testament to human ingenuity and endeavour which has kept the English Channel at bay for centuries and allowed thousands of acres of rich farmland to be reclaimed from Neptune’s grasp – provided the basis for some of his most recognisable and iconic post-war works.

  Jump forward almost a hundred years to the present day and Nash’s influence in that part of the world is still going strong. Enter Sigmund Swaine who, rumour has it, was a direct blood descendant of Paul Nash – his grandfather being, perhaps, the result of an affair between married man Nash and a local woman. Whatever the truth of that, the influence of the story has reached its paint-stained grasp into the twenty-first century.

  It is no secret that many of Nash’s works from his time on Romney Marsh went unrecorded and into local ownership – Nash would often sell to friends and casual acquaintances. These are part of what are referred to in the art world as the ‘missing’ Nashes. It is believed that potentially dozens of these paintings could be hanging unnoticed, unappreciated for what they are, on the walls of a good many homes in the area.

  Sigmund Swaine, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, lived for most of his adult life like a recluse with his sister, Rebecca Swaine, in a property once owned and lived in by Noel Coward. Goldenhurst is an imposing and roomy period property that sits atop the hills overlooking Romney Marsh. On a clear day, one can see all the way to where the English Channel meets Romney Marsh at Dymchurch – all the way to where Paul Nash spent years of his life recording the area for posterity and our appreciation, with brush, paint, canvas and his genius.

  Sigmund Swaine grew up encouraged to believe he was a blood relation of Nash. The truth of this has yet to be proven, but to Sigmund, a man who built his life on the idea, it will make no difference now. Sigmund took his own life earlier this year by leaping to his death from the rafters of St Rumwold’s church, a place only a good stone’s throw from Goldenhurst.

  What drove this newly acknowledged genius to the ultimate act of self-destruction remains, according to his sister, Rebecca – who kindly agreed to be interviewed for this article – a complete mystery. She says that Sigmund had spent his adult life a troubled man, drifting in and out of periods of depression and uncertainty. His demons had tormented him and he sought solace and distraction in his art.

  Enter the villain of the piece, who, ironically, has arguably turned out to be the one responsible for catapulting Sigmund’s name and work to the attention and high praise of the most respected critics in the art world today, not to mention a good and increasing number of well heeled collectors and investors in fine art.

  Nigel Tate, who shared the Swaine family home at Goldenhurst, also took his own life in mysterious circumstances only a day before Sigmund ended his. (Police continue to assert that there is no suggestion of foul play in either death.) It was Tate who, with his unexplained hold over the emotionally vulnerable Sigmund, coerced, according to Sigmund’s sister, the impressionable Sigmund into producing several ‘missing’ Nashes, which subsequently found their ways into the hands and then onto the walls of a number of private art collectors. How many were created we may never know, especially as those who paid tens of thousands of pounds for the fakes will be naturally reluctant to offer themselves up for public ridicule. Or will they be the ones having the last laugh?

  How did this happen? According to Silvia Jenner, senior faculty member at the Royal College of Art and one-time tutor of Sigmund Swaine, factors such as the replication of style, essence of Nash’s spirit and faux-authenticity of the painting are as extraordinary as they are exquisite. It is, we are assured, impossible to determine one of Sigmund’s fakes from a genuine Nash simply with the naked eye.

  But the exposure of the lucrative scam that ran for months is not the end of the story. When Sigmund Swaine was not rattling off fakes of ‘missing’ Nashes to satisfy the orders of his devious mentor he was painting in his own peculiar style. There is no doubt that the style of Paul Nash is a strong influence, but Sigmund’s work is described by art dealer, art college student friend and now curator of the estate of Sigmund Swaine, Lewis Edwards, as having a breathtaking originality of style, which is only matched by his technical ability and vision for representing the themes of his work with a flair and uniqueness that has seen appreciation of his work inflate, both economically and critically, to the extent that a decent sized Sigmund Swaine is now in danger of fetching as much as one of the missing Nashes he sought to create.

  Sigmund’s early and tragic death has ensured that there is a limited number of his works available for study and fewer for purchase. This is another factor that has seen the salerooms buzzing with anticipation and the bandying about of six figure purchase prices. For now it is the wish of Sigmund’s sole surviving relative, Rebecca, that Sigmund’s work will make a tour of Europe’s most important art galleries before being auctioned in London sometime next year, an event that this journalist looks forward to with eager anticipation. Lest anyone should remain in any doubt regarding the importance of this chapter of British art history and its impact on the art world, it has been confirmed by Rebecca Swaine that a household name Hollywood director has been in touch with her personally to discu
ss the possibility of her cooperation over the commissioning of a blockbuster movie documenting Sigmund Swaine’s life and death.

  As a footnote and final thought to this incredible and moving modern tragedy, it is this particular art lover’s lament that once again history repeats itself. Once again a unique talent devoted to his traditional art has been lost prematurely, dying in virtual poverty and complete obscurity, without recognition in his lifetime of his talent only to be ‘discovered’, celebrated and profited from after his death. This art lover appeals to those who fund and promote the arts to give less time, attention and money celebrating piles of house bricks, farm animals dunked in preservative, and the unmade beds of unimaginative and lazy ‘artists’. Look both backwards and forwards to the traditional arts that give pleasure to, and can be understood by, thousands, and endure in a culture’s consciousness long after the bricks are thrown into a skip, the preservative has evaporated, the sheep’s carcass rotted away and the unmade bed stripped of its dirty laundry for washing.

  The End

  Hello,

  Firstly, I’d like to say thank you for taking a chance on downloading this book whether you have paid for it or not. I hope you found something in it to enjoy.

  Secondly, I would like to invite you to visit me at http://olivertidy.wordpress.com/ where you can find out more about other books I’ve written.

  Thirdly, if you enjoyed the book, please leave a comment to that effect on Amazon. That sort of thing is really important for an author-publisher. Readers’ comments are all we’ve got to go by. Alternatively, I would be genuinely pleased to receive any comments, corrections or suggestions regarding any aspect of this book and my writing at the web address above where I have made a page available for feedback.

  Once again, my thanks to Martin for his proofreading and editorial suggestions. Any mistakes in the text are entirely my responsibility, especially as I have a habit of changing things when he’s not looking.