Aunt Margaret's Lover (38 page)

He began to dress. 'Well,' I said, watching him for the last time. 'It doesn't seem to have done anybody any harm.'

A dip in a pillow, two used glasses and two nearly empty bottles of champagne. The residue. 'Bye,' I whispered, as his cab turned the corner.

It was about midnight. I sat on my bed, mopped at the tears, and wondered what to do. Sassy was coming home in a week. If I was going to make any reparations, it was better that I did so while she was still there. But not yet, I thought, not before I'd had a good stiff drink. Despite the solemn and dreadful warning of Verity, I needed a good stiff shot of something and went downstairs to get it.

Chapter Eight

Fisher was holding a large catalogue up to his face and above it his very blue eyes creased in mock fear. He backed away as I came into the room, feigning supplication. 'Are you going to hit me?' he said. 'You might like it.'

'Tut, tut.' He laughed and put the catalogue down on his desk. 'People have a strange view of my sexual orientation. I don't like to be
hurt, not at all.'

'Neither do I.'

'Neither does anybody, Margaret.' He sat down opposite me, gesturing to one of the chairs.

'It's all right,' I said. 'I've spoken to Saskia. So long as I don't have to put him up when he's over I can tolerate it.' I sat down, crossed my legs, and gave him what I fancied was a penetrating look. 'It'll be quite a coup for you, won't it? Bringing Dickie back to London for his first show in however many years?'

Fisher looked at his nails. 'It will,' he agreed, with great satisfaction.

'And a father and daughter show will pull in the press and the punters.'

'Most certainly. But Saskia is a good painter. Early days, but she is undoubtedly worthy of an exhibition with her father. His work is very fine. She sent me some slides.'

'Did she, now?'

'She's been very professional in her approach. And determined. Especially determine
d that he should come back here
to show again. If it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else. The bait was too strong. London is stagnant, longing for revivals, look at the sixties show. It will be good to put on something that looks back as well as forward.'

He got up, went to a chest at the side of the room, and took out a file. 'Do you want to look at them?'

'No,' I said.

He removed a sheet of slides and held them up to the window. 'They are very good. Figures, quite monumental. They have something of Nash and Moore about them - but not derivative. The torso as hero - or heroine.' He gazed a bit longer. 'Quite, quite exceptional.' He held up another sheet. 'And these are landscapes - or rather snowscapes, done very recently, and some heads - Saskia, I think. Beautiful. Beautiful form, real feeling. The earlier ones, a series of heads
..
. female . . . were not so good.' I could tell that he was genuinely caught up by them, no longer playing around. 'And these' - he held up another series - 'are Saskia's. She's begun by working from photographs, I think. Deadish. But then she's thrown out the snapshots and worked more freely - mostly drawings and gouache. Quite simple but very effective. Talented.'

'We knew that before she went.'

'Have a look?' he said.

I crossed to the window and held them up. They were from photographs I knew very well - me, Lorna, Dickie, Sassy as a baby. Fisher was right: the initial ones were woodenly graphic, but most were very fine. I had to smile. 'Chip off the old block,' I said grudgingly. 'He was precocious, too.'

Fisher drew his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. 'Julius will be here soon. And this time' - he raised a finger at me -'I want you to say nothing whatsoever. Especially nothing about the beauties of the masterly phallus. I don't think Linda will ever recover from that.' He chuckled. 'I'm not sure I will either. Just look cool. Unimpressed even.'

'I always am unimpressed with Julius.'

Fisher was an acute man. 'Did he make a pass? Tut, tut.' 'His wife didn't understand him.'

Fisher laughed. He was pouring sherry and stopped to give me a look. 'She'll get her swimming-pool - and without touching a hair on the Mortimer collection's head. Well, not so's you'd notice.'

I wandered around the room, sipping my sherry, leafing through old catalogues - Derain, Frink, Medieval Ivories, the Barron Collection. Even Fisher's catalogues were a collectable item nowadays. Part of me was still angry about Dickie, but part of me was curious.

'Where will the show be?'

'Ah!' he said, pulling something out of his antique plan chest. A real poseur in some respects, Fisher. 'West End. Cork Street, as a matter of fact. Oddly enough - and this was pure coincidence - we got the old Blake Gallery. Which is where, of course, this was shown.' And he heaved my Picasso portfolio on to his desk.

'I remember it well,' I said wryly. 'Mrs M. gave her own private view there, with her electric wheelchair. It was chaos.'

'Quite a girl,' he said. 'And quite an eye. Remember that Matisse head?'

'Of course. The tender line.'

He nodded. 'Indeed. The tender line. The girl was one of the Stein grand-daughters - patrons of his from the early years. Some say he was a dirty old man with her. Sherry?'

Julius arrived, pink and flustered, having been - he said -caught in traffic. Since he had a smear of lipstick on his chin, and since it didn't seem to be his colour, I had a feeling he had been caught in something more than that. 'Oh, isn't Linda with you?' I said brightly. He said no, she was away with the boys. 'Ah,' I said, 'I .expect that makes you feel lonely. You've got jam' - I peered - 'or is it lipstick on your face?'

He looked at me shiftily as he rubbed the mark away. My hearty kiss on both cheeks made him look only more uncomfortable. He gave Fisher a flat, square package done up in brown paper. Fisher took it and unwrapped it carefully. Inside, beneath two stout pieces of cardboard, was the framed drawing I had coveted, the Matisse
Head of a Girl.
I waited for him to expostulate, to sigh, to make one of his genuinely rapturous remarks, but bore in mind that I must not follow suit. In the event there was just a calm nodding and an offer to Julius of sherry and a chair. I longed to look at the head more closely, to see it the right way up, but stayed put.

'Nice day for April,' I said to Julius. He grunted. 'Give your wife my love, won't you?' He crossed his legs and flicked some imaginary fluff from his knee. I wondered why he was here and why he had brought the Matisse. Art lives beyond the tawdry human ways from which it springs? Fisher and I agreed
that
often enough over a glass or two when the braying interior designers had gone home. Otherwise we could never walk through a cathedral, nor wonder at the Colosseum or St Mark's, for being conscious of where the loot to build it came from and how many died in producing the dream.

Some papers were signed, first by Julius, then by Fisher, and then by me. At last I realized what was happening -and he had asked me to remain
impassive?
From the moment the blotting paper descended and the ink was dry I became the owner of the Matisse, and Julius and Linda Mortimer became the owners of the Picasso portfolio. Like swapping tinsel for gold - you can't eat either but you know which you prefer.

'Hmm,' I said, looking at my new possession impassively, critically even. 'It'll go very well in the hall by the potpourri.'

Fisher had the grace to turn away for a moment and affect a cough. Julius noticed nothing. He left the portfolio where it was and turned to leave.

'Aren't you going to take it with you?' I asked.

He shook his head. Why did he look so smug when the smugness belonged to me? 'It will be safe here,' he said, 'until the right time to sell.'

'What about Linda's swimming-pool? Be simply awful for her if we get a good summer again.'

'Work has already begun,' he said shordy, and escorted by Fisher, still in his Grand Consultant mode, he left.

I ran my finger around the glass of the frame, following the line. Whatever else Matisse had done, this was pure enough to be holy.

Fisher was not the man for kisses and hugs, so lunch seemed the best alternative. With champagne, of course, and with the drawing propped up on the chair next to us - the third guest, the most honourable. I wondered how he had persuaded them to part with it, for I knew very well that it was worth much more. He would not discuss the matter. Everything was perfectly in order, he assured me, the paperwork was quite legal, and neither the Mortimers nor Aunt Margaret had been dishonoured. It was only then that I realized he had made up the difference himself - which was why the swimming-pool was being built.

He continued to refuse an explanation despite my questioning, so I vowed to ask Julius, at which point he got quite huffy and made to leave the table. I had to back down to keep his company. We looked at the girl, who looked back at us in innocence, with her infinitely tender, tender line.

'Worth it,' said Fisher suddenly. 'Wouldn't you say? Despite any possible iniquity surrounding it?'

I nodded. 'Worth it.' We chinked our glasses. I could not resist trying again. 'How much did you pay on top, Fisher?'

He looked at me, sipping from his glass, the periwinkle eyes all impish again above its rim. 'Have you any idea,' he said, 'how much commission I stand to make when the sale of everything goes through eventually? And have you any idea how much I
intend
to make out of Dickie and Saskia's exhibition?'

'I thought you had retired.'

He winked. 'No, not quite. But I will after that lot. And handsomely. Now I suggest we change the subject. How is that chap of yours?'

I told him.

He was not very impressed. 'You don't seem at all good at keeping your men. Dickie was your lover once, I think? Before Lorna swiped him.'

A direct hit. I don't think anyone else would have dared. I just stared at him as if he had smacked me.

He tapped the picture. 'Life goes on, Margaret,' he said. 'As does great art.'

As if that wasn't enough, the next day I received a card posted from Heathrow - a picture of Concorde - which said:

These are the lines that follow on from yours:

Be yourself.

Especially do not feign affection Neither be cynical about love

In the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is perennial as the grass .
..

Unnecessary. I had already spoken to Saskia. And, though briefly, to Dickie.

Perhaps for Elizabeth also the masque, the games, the glory were unsatisfactory? Yes, she might strut out bejewelled to applause, but the pearls she wore were once the famed possessions of her cousin Mary. Avaricious disregard, or the tender link,
memento mori?
She signed the paper, certainly, but she also wept copiously when the news came from Fotheringay. Did she weep for the loss of a queen or for the death of a woman? Both, probably. And her mother was a third. Did she understand
then
why her father had also signed such a piece of paper? Or if not understand, did she forgive, if only a little? She did not keep Mary's crucifixes, although they too were beautiful and precious. Those she emphatically did not want; only the pearls. Poor Elizabeth, vain virgin of the baroque: the masque had to continue for she could not afford it to stop.

Epilogue

Rivers move on.

Mark ditched Verity as soon as she had sold her script. No man, not even one so down on his luck, could sustain his honour under such punishing limelight. Verity said that my meeting Oxford had given her hope, which was crushed when he left me. Mark seemed an angel by comparison. What could I say?

Jill came to stay and Verity said afterwards that she was undoubtedly haying a very unhappy affair. Verity, I thought, you drink too much, but Jill confirmed that it was true. She said Oxford and I had just looked so romantic and she had wanted a little piece of heaven too. What could I say?

Joan and Reg married. When I asked Joan how she dared risk something for ever when she used to reckon a year was too long, she merely said that he was where she could keep an eye on him. 'Only one?' I nearly said, but forbore and handed her a rubber band instead.

Oxford wrote a few times and I replied. But my heart wasn't in it. And neither, it seems, was his. We'll exchange Christmas cards, and then one day those will cease. He will be free of the reeds, and that will be the last of Aunt Margaret's Lover. At least, the last of
that
one.

'Si latet ars, prodest,'
says Ovid. 'Art is a lie that makes us see the truth,' says Picasso, two thousand years on. 'Look at me,' says the Matisse, as it hangs in its constancy on my wall.