The Firebird (38 page)

‘There’s no way I could meet Wendy Van Hoek before then, is there?’

Yuri smiled. ‘She does not arrive until later tonight. But tomorrow we’re hanging the final few paintings, your Surikov among them, and she’s asked to watch. It would be a good time for you to meet her. I’ll arrange it, if you like.’

‘That would be perfect. Thank you.’ I glanced at him over the catalogue. ‘What is she like?’

‘Miss Van Hoek? Like her father,’ he said. ‘Did you meet him? No? Well, he was passionate, very obsessed with his paintings. He viewed them as part of his family. And she has this passion as well. But,’ he added, as he swivelled back in his own chair, ‘she also loves living well, travelling, and this needs money.’

‘So you think she might be willing to sell this one painting, then?’

‘To the right buyer, I think that she might be persuaded, yes.’ Yuri half-smiled. ‘Only not to Sebastian.’

‘I gathered that.’

‘Ah, so he told you?’

‘He didn’t give details,’ I said. ‘All he said was that Wendy Van Hoek didn’t like him much.’

‘Not much, no.’ Yuri’s smile was so broad now that I couldn’t help but be curious.

‘What did Sebastian do?’

‘He didn’t tell me, either. I was hoping you would know. From the first time I met them, they’ve been on the knives,’ he said, using the Russian expression for people who shared a dislike for each other. ‘It can happen with people, sometimes. Anyway, it was a wise thing he did, sending you.’

I wasn’t sure ‘wise’ was the word that applied here, so much as ‘convenient’ or even ‘self-serving’, but I never questioned my boss’s decisions in public. Instead, I replied with a vague nod and flipped the last catalogue pages to see, close up, what I was meant to be buying for Vasily.

It wasn’t an actual painting, a full composition, but rather a ‘study’ of one of the faces the artist intended to paint in a larger work, rendered with great care in oil on canvas the size of a magazine cover.

Yuri, watching my face, knew that I’d found the Surikov. ‘It is incredibly beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ My gaze didn’t lift from the face of the old bearded man on the page, his eyes downcast with dignity, and just the top edge of what I assumed was a scroll of some kind showing down at the bottom, as though he were reading from something. I said, ‘This is one of the bishops, then? From the mural he did of the … what was it, the First or Second Ecumenical Council?’

‘That one’s from the second, in the year 381,’ Yuri told me. ‘I’m impressed. You’ve done your homework.’

‘I do try.’ I smiled. ‘I like to know the history of a piece.’

I knew there’d been four murals painted by Surikov, back in the late 1870s, one for each of the four ancient councils at which the rules and creeds and shape of Christianity itself had been debated and decided by the Church’s leading clerics. Those murals had graced Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour for over half a century, until on Stalin’s orders the cathedral had been dynamited, totally destroyed.

There’d been no room in Stalin’s Russia for religion, or the art that was a part of it.

Only one mural had managed somehow to escape the destruction, along with the sketches in pencil on paper that Surikov had made to show those who’d hired him what he planned to paint.

From those sketches, we knew what the murals had probably looked like. Two of the sketches had come up at auction a few years ago. Yuri showed me a picture of one of them now, from a file he’d set out on his desk. ‘You can see here,’ he said, ‘this one bishop who’s standing and reading the scroll to the others – this is clearly the same man we see in the study in oils. I believe that it’s Gregory, Bishop of Constantinople, perhaps even reading his famous speech.’

There, he had lost me. I asked, ‘Famous speech?’

‘Yes, you don’t know this story? He made many enemies, Gregory did, and a lot of the bishops opposed him, and so he resigned, saying he was like Jonah the Prophet, who brought the great storm because he did not wish to deliver the bad news God sent him to carry, and that he was willing, like Jonah, to be cast out, sacrificed, if it was needed. But first, he delivered his finest oration. I think,’ Yuri said, ‘this is what we see here, in this mural.’

I studied the print of the sketch, and compared it again to the face in the work in the catalogue. ‘I think you’re right.’

‘He has good taste, this client of yours.’

I agreed. But it went beyond that for Vasily, I knew. He had personal reasons for wanting this painting, and when I explained them to Yuri he nodded with new understanding.

‘Then I think you may have an excellent chance of convincing Miss Van Hoek to sell you this piece. She is also very sentimental.’

‘We can hope.’ I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. Yuri was polite enough to sit here talking with me half the day, but I knew that he kept a busy schedule, so I closed my catalogue and stood. ‘This was so kind of you, Yuri Stepanovich. I really do appreciate it.’

With a very Russian shrug he said, ‘It was my pleasure. Have you somewhere you must go at once, or would you like to visit your young man?’

I know I stared at him a moment, wondering how on earth he knew I’d come with Rob, and why he’d mention it. And then the penny dropped, and I remembered who he meant.

I grinned. ‘Yes, please. I’d love to.’

My ‘young man’ was not a person but a painting of a person, hanging on a wall below us in a room on the first floor. It was my favourite of the Russian paintings here, not as important as the larger and more celebrated canvases that easily commanded their own walls and had been lighted so that people could admire them, but this modest portrait did for me what all the best art did: it drew me in, and held me captivated.

Yuri said, ‘It’s too bad we don’t have a copy of this in our gift shop, since you’re fond of it.’

Flattered he’d remembered just how fond of it I was, from my last trip here, I replied, ‘I really don’t mind coming here to visit him. And anyway, it wouldn’t be the same. A print would never have this kind of depth.’ Even though I was with Yuri, I could feel the keen eyes of the woman supervisor seated in the corner settle on me out of habit as I leant a little closer to the portrait. ‘I always wonder,’ I told Yuri, ‘who he was, and how he lived, and what it was about him that caught Briullov’s eye.’

‘You see, for me it is the people who have owned the painting,’ Yuri said, ‘that always make me wonder. What their lives were like, and how they came to have this. Why they let it go.’ As though inspired by my own fascination with the portrait, he looked closer, too. ‘A painting like this would have witnessed a great many things. It’s a pity we can’t see what it has seen, over the years.’

I could tell him, I knew. I could touch it and tell him who’d owned it, and give him a glimpse of their lives. What surprised me was not that I realised the fact, but how much I was actually tempted to do it. My hand almost lifted and I had to catch myself, not wanting to alarm the woman supervisor.

Even after Yuri had excused himself and gone back to his work, I lingered a while longer in my study of the portrait, and the urge to touch it was a thing that took some effort to control.

Only a week ago, I’d been half-dreading holding the Firebird carving a second time, and it rattled me now that the wanting to touch and to learn was becoming a kind of compulsion.

That feeling didn’t lessen when I left the painting and the room and wound my way back through the crowded galleries.
Come find me,
Rob had said, and yet my mind was too distracted to allow for focused searching, so I didn’t try.

I slowed my steps in the Pavilion Hall, a soaring bright space with a high open gallery running around it, supported by rows of white columns and graceful vaults patterned with gleaming gold leaf. From the intricate pale parquet floors to the light-coloured marble and elegant high-arched French windows that looked out across the broad Neva, this was a space that spoke to me of privilege and of royalty. I felt the pull of other voices speaking, too, and trying to be heard.

The other tourists here were mostly clustered round the great gold clock shaped like a peacock, housed in its own cage of glass, or standing to admire the large mosaic set into the floor.

Beneath a giant crystal chandelier, I knelt as though to readjust the heel strap of my shoe, rested one hand on the parquet floor to brace myself, and for a moment, closed my eyes.

The images began to rise, to form into their filmstrip, running backwards in a blur. I tried remembering what Rob had taught me – concentrating hard, I stopped the film and tried to run it forwards, frame by frame. It nearly worked, but then I lost it and the images began to blur again, and—

‘Miss?’ A man’s voice interrupted, wrenched me back. ‘Are you OK?’ He was American, an older man, his face and voice concerned. ‘Do you need help?’

A woman I assumed must be his wife had stopped as well, and others from their group had turned to look. Flushed with embarrassment, I shook my head and stood, assuring him that I was fine. ‘My shoe …’ I offered, as an explanation, and he gave a friendly nod and, when I’d thanked him once again, moved on, allowing me a clear view of the doorway at the far end of the hall, and of the man who stood within it.

Rob, in contrast to the other tourists here, looked fully capable of walking round all day. If he was bothered by the heat, he didn’t show it. But I caught his edge of restlessness.

You ready?

With a nod, I went to meet him.

How’d your meeting go?

Fine.

As we walked down the great Jordan staircase, he watched me instead of admiring the opulence.
Are you OK?

Yes, I’m fine. Why is everyone asking me that?

He responded with silence, and striving for something more normal I asked him aloud, ‘What did you find to look at, while I was away?’

‘Oh, a lot of things. I spent most of my time coveting Nicholas II’s library. Have you seen it?’

I had. An English Gothic haven, rich with walnut shelves and leather, with a staircase and a fireplace, it appealed to me as well.

Rob carried on, ‘And there were rooms not far from that with some of Peter the Great’s own things in them. I found those fair interesting. Not only his swords, but a few of his nautical instruments, tools for his woodworking, and his old lathes. I had no idea,’ he said, ‘that he was such a regular guy.’

‘That he liked making things with his own hands, you mean? Oh yes, Peter was famous for that. He’d go down to the shipyards and roll up his sleeves and start building the ships right along with the workmen. And it wasn’t only big things. Did you see the ivory chandelier he partly carved himself from walrus tusks? It’s really something.’

‘Next time,’ was his promise. He fell quiet for a minute more, and then, as we were passing by the gift shop on our way towards the exit, he asked, ‘Was it something interesting you saw?’ To my deliberately blank face, he said, to clarify, ‘Upstairs. Just now.’

I couldn’t lie. ‘I couldn’t do it properly. I didn’t have you there to help.’

‘You did it fine last night.’

Last night I’d touched the wall myself, perhaps, but Rob had still been holding me, and amplifying what I did. ‘Last night you helped as well.’

‘Not much.’

‘That’s your opinion. Anyway, it hardly matters, does it?’

Rob, not fooled, returned the question. ‘Does it?’

Not at all, I wanted to reply. Because it shouldn’t have. For all that I might envy Rob the things that he could do, they had no place in my own life. My normal life.

I sidestepped round it. ‘Not for what we’re doing now. There’s nothing left of General Lacy’s house that I can touch, is there? It’s all on your shoulders.’

‘For now.’ With a shrug of those shoulders he followed me out through the exit and into the bustle and flow of the Neva Embankment. His hands in his pockets, he looked to the west, past the dome of the Admiralty. I sensed he was keen to go back, to pick up where we’d left Anna earlier, but as though he had tapped into my own vague frustrations and wanted to give me some time to recover myself, to find balance, he brought his gaze patiently back to mine, lifting an eyebrow. ‘What time does the pie shop start serving lunch?’

Anna felt more like herself when she came down for dinner at noon. More composed. She had tamed her hair under its small black lace pinner and wore the black paduasoy gown and petticoat that had been given to her by the vice admiral’s late wife. ‘It no longer fits me as well as it did,’ Mrs Gordon had told her while running her hand down the black corded silk, ‘but the paduasoy is from Spain and will last a good while yet. A black gown can be of a great many uses.’

Her words had been sadly prophetic, for not three months later the vice admiral’s wife had been dead of her illness and Anna had worn the black paduasoy gown while standing with Jane at the funeral. She’d worn it while mourning, and worn it for Jane’s funeral too, but the gown, far from carrying sadness, instead gave her comfort, as if she’d been given not only the gown but the kindness and grace of the woman who’d worn it.

And now, as she entered the dining room, she tried to show that same grace as she greeted the Lacys. The general escorted her round to her chair at the table, then saw his wife seated and took his own chair at the opposite end. Mrs Lacy looked paler than she had the night before. Anna had seen women suffer the first months of being with child, and she knew that the suffering lasted sometimes till the child had quickened. She hoped it would not be that way for the general’s wife.

As if aware of her thoughts, Mrs Lacy smiled. ‘I have endured this a great many times, Mistress Jamieson. ’Tis but a small price to pay for so rich a reward,’ she remarked in her beautifully accented English. ‘I gather you did meet my children, earlier this morning?’

‘Yes, I did. They were most charming.’

‘And most secretive,’ she said, ‘about the details of your meeting, but I see you have emerged unscathed.’

The general asked, ‘You met them all at once? Brave girl.’