The Fraud (37 page)

He turned away and then turned back. ‘As long as we have success in selling at Auction the girl with the letter, we will begin. We will sell at Mr Valiant’s in Poland-street. He is’ - and he searched for the right word - ‘he is understanding. And Grace, whatever we sell the girl with the letter for, I will not pay you more at this time, for it took a great deal of expense to age it. It is an Experiment we might say.’

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But I should like to be there when it is to happen.’

‘Very well,’ he said, echoing her.

Art Auctions in London, always popular, had become big social occasions. Dukes had always required Old Masters, now there were other bidders: successful painters themselves, well-known members of the theatre and the opera, rich tradesmen - they outbid each other, the prices went up. There were advertisements in the newspapers, and a notice in the window of the auction house.

Mr Thomas Evans, a well-known and rich and knowledgeable collector, had acquired over three hundred pictures from his recent travels in Europe: some were of lesser merit, but some were excellent examples from the Dutch and French schools. The jewel in the collection was a Titian which Mr Evans had bought some years ago in Venice and was now selling to finance further collecting activities. The auctioneer, Mr Valiant, knew there were wonders here - but that there would no doubt be an imitation or two among the paintings. Indeed he was never averse to adding one or two doubtful acquisitions of his own; he exhibited miniatures and drawings and bronzes with the paintings: as in all auctions there was treasure and there was dross. Mr James Burke came to see him as the paintings were being prepared along the walls, spoke to him about a recent French acquisition he was anxious to sell quickly, by the little-known French painter Henri Maraux. Mr Valiant admired it.

‘I like this.
La Lettre
.
Yes . . . I have not heard of the Painter but I like it, I believe I have seen something like it, yes.’ Mr Valiant pondered the painting, looked at the dealer. ‘Hmmm. I will certainly auction it with the big Collection, most certainly. Hmmm. Unusual. Its worth, I wonder, Mr Burke?’

‘Maraux,’ said Mr Burke thoughtfully. ‘Not a well-known Artist but a friend I believe of the Le Nairn brothers and painting at that time. A pretty thing, I think, I have sold several of his Paintings. Lovely old patina.’ And Mr Burke placed his fingers very gently at the bottom of the painting where the gold frame was blistered, so as not to touch the old painting itself. ‘Thirty guineas perhaps?’ And Mr Valiant nodded sagely, thinking of his percentage. Many of Mr Thomas Evans’ paintings from abroad were more in the ten- to fifteen-guinea line, except the French and Dutch examples - and of course the Titian, the pride of the collection: Mr Valiant expected the well-known collectors of London to be bidding for that one, he expected he might make a fortune from the Titian. Who knows what else he might sell?

 

The auction started at eleven in the morning, sharp. Over a hundred people crammed into the auction rooms. Some - ladies mostly in large hats and high hair - sat on the benches provided, the rest crowded against walls and windows. Nobody in particular noted Signorina Francesco di Vecellio, who stared for some time at the old French painting
La Lettre
on the wall with all the other paintings: the painting that she had worked on in loneliness, and confidence, in her sewing-room in the house in Pall Mall, when she came back from Bedlam. A girl stared out the window, you could not quite see her face but you understood her thoughts in the half-light: it was not a portrait in the true sense of that word but something caught, some sad, private pain - something, that caught the attention.

Mr Valiant started his familiar patter, started with the less valuable paintings which were sold in lots.

‘And what am I bid for six Flemish masterpieces of last century? Signed and authenticated as a genuine painting of the Flemish school.’

Paintings went for ten guineas, fifteen: up to twenty.

Several paintings from the Spanish school caused excitement, one reached forty-one guineas: a painting of soldiers playing cards. The auctioning, finally, of the Titian caused an immense wave of excitement in the by now hot and stuffy room. The masterpiece was brought forward, goddesses glowed and shimmered, and people sighed at the beauty. Mr Valiant had been hoping for perhaps four hundred and eighty guineas; the Duchess of Seldon (one of the ladies in the highest wigs of all) took it up to almost six hundred, and the smell of the excitement, and the odour of tightly packed bodies, rose on the air. One of the other ladies fainted and had to be carried out to recover in Golden Square. Her shoe fell off and was lost in the
mêlée
and was last seen somewhere down Broad-street being kicked in the mud and the muck by wild street-children.

The selling of the small French painting
La Lettre
by the artist Henri Maraux for the sum of thirty-one guineas was then something of an anticlimax, naturally - although it was the Duchess of Seldon who made the bid, almost as a small afterthought, after her Titian triumph.

Grace Marshall watched in amazement as the lady with the high hair took both the rather large Titian painting and the small painting of the girl with the letter to her bosom as her own, as if she would trust no other. When she made to enter her coach, which stood waiting, the Duchess had to bend her head completely sideways to get her flower- and fruit-bedecked wig inside. Grace Marshall’s last view of her benefactor was of her clutching the paintings to her while her head poked forward at an extremely odd angle inside the coach, because her wig was too tall to allow any other stance. She looked like a mad, exotic bird.

‘The first test is over. I will find a way to bring the prepared board,’ said James Burke quietly as she passed him on her way out into the grey light in Poland-street. ‘Then the paints.’

She nodded. Said nothing.
Thirty-one guineas for a Painting by me, Grace Marshall
.

 

On her way home, if she had not (still, unbelieving, seeing in her head her own painting and that of Mr Titian clutched together) taken the short route through Broad-street she would not have seen the noisy, illegal cock-fight down the dark alley where she had once long ago in her distress come herself and placed the bets on her life; would not have seen her nephew Claudio, jacketless and sweating in the chilly air, his hair tousled as he shouted in vain for his bird to win. The faces of the crowd of men were wild and concentrated and cruel; hot, dangerous violence in the air, feathers and blood and screams of the fighting cocks, and perhaps in the shadows she would not have seen the other face, if the man had not, at that moment, turned to look towards Broad-street.

For a split second she was certain it was her brother, Tobias.

She was so stunned that she said his name: not as a question but as a statement,
Tobias.
She moved forward instinctively into the
mêlée
but the man disappeared into the shadows; had she been mistaken? She stood stock-still in the noise but nothing happened: nobody came, nobody called
Gracie!
Only the shouting and the birds screeching and the slap of the bets going down.

When Claudio suddenly turned and saw his aunt, a dark blush spread over his face, he looked about him for some sort of escape although even then his eye was drawn back to the ring, but as the shrieks and shouts and feathers filled the air in the alley where blood ran, and guts of birds fell, his aunt turned away quickly and was gone.

 

She burst into her brother’s studio without knocking; a client bowed, just leaving.

‘
I saw Tobias
.’ She could hardly breathe.

He was handing brushes and paints to an assistant, washing the paint on his hands with a rag. He waved the assistant away. He kept washing methodically.

‘It was him. I am sure it was him. But he disappeared.’

‘Why do you tell me?’

She looked at him in astonishment. ‘It was
Tobias
. Our Brother.’

‘And so?’

‘But - we are all the Family he has.
He is our Brother!
’

‘Tell me, Francesca, what does that actually mean? What is a ‘Brother’ if you have not seen him for over twenty-five years? What have you in common now?’

And she knew the answer of course: it was the past that was shared. But Philip had changed their past, and created them again.

‘I am surprised he is not in Newgate Prison. And I told you long ago you would have to choose, and you have chosen. Do not mention him again.’

 

At the dinner that afternoon (skies darkening earlier as if to warn that winter was approaching: the painter’s sister lit the candles earlier than usual), Claudio and Isabella were present as usual, and Lady Dorothea Bray of course. Claudio looked evasively at his aunt, her face was blank; her nephew excused himself abruptly when dinner was over. There were several painters present and they talked of the Titian, some bitterly.

‘Still we wait for our own Acknowledgement,’ said one of them angrily. ‘When will an English Painter fetch six hundred guineas? Not even Sir Joshua Reynolds himself can sell for a quarter that, nor Thomas Gainsborough neither!’

‘Give it time, give it time,’ the others murmured filling their glasses, for they could hardly say ‘Down with all Foreign artists’ when they were drinking the fine wine of their Italian host.

Filipo had finally, requiring to be paid the sum of four hundred guineas for his kindness, taken on a young apprentice as well as his usual assistants: a young painter named Saul Swallow who would learn from the great Master and finally prosper by his association. Already Mr Swallow was painting whole storms and mountains in the background of portraits (such was the fashion just at the moment) and he ate with the family most days as part of his apprenticeship bargain. This particular day the young Mr Saul Swallow leant across the table to the old sister, to Signorina Francesca di Vecellio. ‘Have you heard,
Signorina
, that I am keen to write a Biography of your Illustrious Brother? I am taking notes already - a Boswell, you might indeed call me.’

‘That will be a very interesting Enterprise, Mr Swallow,’ murmured the
signorina
, passing fruit across the table as the meal came towards its end.

‘I hope’, said Saul Swallow, ‘that you will speak to me freely.’

She looked at him, startled. ‘About what exactly?’

‘About your Childhood. About your Family. About Florence. About - all sorts of things. Your memories. Perhaps the day when you realised your Brother’s great Talent.’

Francesca looked across the table at her brother. ‘I do remember the day,’ she said. ‘I remember it very well, today especially,’
for today I sold a Painting by me for thirty-one guineas.

‘You remember the Actual Day,’ cried Mr Swallow.

Suddenly, and most unusually, the whole table turned to the quiet sister in her grey gown, including her brother Filipo with an infinitesimal warning look in his eyes. And then there was a tiny silence at the dining-table in the house in Pall Mall. And then the sister spoke. ‘He used my Chalks,’ said Francesca di Vecellio.

‘
Your
Chalks,
Signorina
?’ The apprentice’s voice was puzzled. She was, after all, only the housekeeper.

And into the silence the sister spoke. ‘My brother will tell you that I was a great failure at Drawing, although I did try!’ she said, smiling. ‘Our brother Tobias’ (she saw his look but took no notice) ‘would find Colours for me around the city. And indeed the Chalks were given to me also, for my Ninth Birthday, but our Parents were exasperated with my efforts, it was not I who had the Talent!’
and what would you all say if I told you that today I sold a Painting for thirty-one guineas?
And she smiled again and said, ‘And so, Mr Swallow - that very day of my Ninth Birthday as I laboured so unsuccessfully, my brother simply took up the Chalks and drew the faces of our Family as if he was born to it!’ And the guests around the table cheered the story, and Lady Dorothea Bray’s laugh tinkled, and everybody turned to Filipo di Vecellio in admiration and the two thoughts hammered over and over in his sister’s head,
I have sold a painting for thirty-one guineas. But was that Tobias?

‘But - I did not know you had a Brother,
Signore
,’ said Mr Swallow from his end of the table, puzzled, holding his notebook.

‘She speaks of long ago,’ said Filipo di Vecellio, pouring more wine. ‘The rest of our Family are dead.’

And now the type of guests at the afternoon dinner-table changed, for Lady Dorothea Bray had more hand in the invitations: other ladies about town, and men of more noble birth than their host, who were pleased to while away the afternoon with his food and his fine wine, pleased too to associate with what they thought of as the rather raffish company of artists and writers.

The conversations became more spiced: louder; different kinds of stories; royalty, dubious exploits; one young man could be heard saying it was common knowledge that Queen Charlotte had a pet zebra, and wondered to what use it was exactly put, he swore he had seen it that very afternoon as he had been making his way to his host’s house. Mr Hartley Pond, revelling in this new sophisticated company, now often joined in even if the stories were not about Art at all, took great delight in reciting one afternoon a story his father had told him: of noble young blades, who had had a good dinner, roving about the
piazza
in Covent Garden until they came upon a particularly unattractive older woman whom they proceeded to bundle into an empty wooden barrel which they then, singing noisily, rolled along the streets - this activity becoming one of their favourite modes of entertainment. One of Lady Dorothea’s friends hooted with laughter and suggested they all go and try such sport. The afternoons became very much louder and lasted very much longer, and perhaps Miss Ann Ffoulks was not seen quite so much as previously.