Aunt Margaret's Lover (11 page)

He snowed me some old photographs, including one of him holding me as a baby, with my mother smiling at us, which I had never seen. There was also one of you and him together -you are trying to balance a champagne bottle on your head and he is laughing. I am going to get a copy of it to bring back.

Of course I did go to the party, but in sombre clothes and with my antennae as withdrawn as they could possibly be, and not a fin in sight. Fisher, the valuer, was there, and he was a good buffer to stick with. Sharp-witted, amusing, quite uninterested in women and excellent at verbal Rowlandsons.

'See her?' he said discreetly from behind a canape.

I looked at a woman with blue hair. Not granny rinse though she was granny age, but a very determined cobalt. Her eyelids were a pulsating burgundy as were her lips. She had nails like talons and wore long, clinging black velvet. In what seemed an extraordinary mismatch, she was talking to Linda, who was wearing her pastel Betty Barclay tie-neck, with a look of sweet devotion and dewy-eyed gentility.

I nodded. 'Couldn't help seeing her,' I said behind my glass.

'Lucrezia Borgia minus the poisoned chalice,' he said. 'And
very
hard at work.'

'Hard work talking to Linda? That's a bit bitchy even for you.'

He shook his head. 'I mean negotiating. She's buying for the chap who bought up half of Wiltshire.'

I shrugged for it meant nothing to me.

He took my elbow, moving us out of earshot and further into the L of the room where it was less crowded. 'A rival to the Aga Khan,' he said into my ear. He raised his glass and indicated the wall in front of us. I looked.

'She wants that,' he said.

'Good taste,' I said, trying to be flippant. And then I dropped the pretence and added, 'So do
1.1
love it. Always have.' It was the Matisse head.

'It deserves to be loved,' he said softly. Then he drained his glass in unFisherlike abandon. 'She won't get it, I don't think,
La Borgia.''
He looked ruminative. 'Julius doesn't want to sell - at least, so he says
...'

'He told me the same thing.'

'But there is the question of what Linda wants, too
..
.'

'She wants a swimming-pool.'

He looked at me incredulously. 'A Hockney?'

I laughed. It is funny when people are so single-minded about their work. I mimed the breast-stroke. 'Not a painting of one. A real swimming-pool. You know - tiles, sunshades, blue water, expensive . ..'

He raised a scandalized eyebrow. 'A Matisse for a
swimming-pool?
He drained what little was left in his glass, brushed the sides of his hair with his hands - a curiously masculine gesture, and in this case gladiatorial I was sure -and walked with smooth determination towards the pair of conspirators.

I saw him greet them, smiling with the honeyed lips of one bent on smarm, then put a hand on each of their shoulders, drawing them towards him. I yearned to know what was said but Julius came up at that point. He filled my glass, said very curtly that he was glad I had come, and then went off again. I was cross, because I knew almost no one. He was punishing me by not introducing me, as a good host should, and certainly he knew how to be a good host if he chose. Not very nice of you, Julius, I thought. I looked about me and tapped my glass. At the furthest end of the room was the lone back view of a grey-haired man, quite tall, neatly besuited in dark grey. He was staring at a Victorian painting of a poor but honest cottager and his winsome wife, who in their turn were staring at a ewe and her new-born lamb with tender delight. I found the painting irritating since their cottage windows were significantly cleaner than mine, their fingernails spotless and her well-rounded apron considerably more than a dolly tub white. Oh, those wretched Pre-Raphaelites!

'The message is obvious,' I said to the back view. 'The ewe has had a lamb - symbol of the Redeemer who came to take away the sins of the world. The cottager's wife is heavily pregnant, so the painter is telling us that despite the naughty goings-on involved in her reaching that state, God will forgive . . .' The back view began to turn. I chuckled and added. 'So long as she didn't enjoy any of it, that is, and lay back praying for England throughout. . .'

He faced me and smiled a little cautiously - nervously even - and I realized that his suit was of that particular colour called clerical grey. I realized this because beneath his chin lay the neat white band of dog collar. Quite as Persil-white as the painted pinny.

'Charming,' he said. 'A very charming picture. You know about paintings?'

'Well,' I said, downcasting my eyes, meek before the Lord. 'I know what I like.'

Later Fisher returned and we went for a stroll in the garden. This was almost entirely made up of shrubs, landscaped lawn, espaliered fruit trees and conifers. Not a surprise in sight.

'A swimming-pool would be an improvement,' he said. 'Pity.' He looked smug.

'What have you been up to?' I asked.

'Oh, nothing out of line. Just muddying the waters a
little
.' He looked up at the cloudy sky. 'May rain later.'

I stopped walking. 'Oh, bugger the rain. Tell me.'

He smiled skywards. 'I have done nothing dishonourable so far as my profession is concerned. Besides, I am more or less retired nowadays.'

'I never suggested you'd been dishonourable. And
that's
the statement of a guilty man!'

'I told Ms Borgia that I had heard there were several Matisses coming on the market next year. That is all.'

'What does that prove?'

'It proves nothing. Only, as I said when Linda skipped off to get us our drinks,
they
will be top notch.' 'Meaning that Julius's one is not?'

'Only by implication. Any fool could see how good -
exceptionally
good - it is - but neither Lucrezia nor Linda has an eye. I have also advised Linda, who was somewhat hurt when the blue lady departed so rapidly, to wait and see what the market in general does. And that is wisdom, always.'

'It sounds a bit skulduggery to me.'

'Oh, not at all. Look at that blackbird- up there. He's warning us to turn back now, I think. Um, what were we saying? No, no, not at all. The point is that the best value in any sale is usually achieved with collections. Mrs Mortimer's St Ives group, her Pop Art collection - thematic, chronological. People like stories. The Matisse sticks out above all the rest - a rogue, a beautiful rogue.'
He gave me a sideways glance. We
were nearly back at the house. 'Easier, perhaps, to sell the Picasso suite . . He opened the door for me. 'Ah, dear, but as Linda said acidly,
she -
meaning
you -
has that

'I'm putting it up for auction very soon.' 'Do you need the money badly?'

'Not yet,' I said. 'I just don't like the thing. And, anyway,
1
was
told
to sell it.'

'Withdraw it. At least for the time being,' he said, as Linda bore down on us. 'That's my advice. A
Vollard Suite
went recently and not for as much as it should have. And yours is only photogravure and not good images at all.'

'I know. I wish you'd tell Linda that,' I muttered, stamping a smile in readiness.

He chuckled. 'Say nothing for the moment.'

And before I could be inveigled back into the spider's web, I made my excuses, thanked Linda and Julius, and left, flaying the spotted laurel with my wing mirrors and spraying up gravel in my desire to be speedily free.

There is something altogether irritating about a past lover finding immediate solace in the arms of another. Even if you don't want him. Quite why this is so is one of the mysteries of our human nature. Well might Rousseau argue that man - and woman? He does not say - is by nature good, and politically so he may be. But in the areas of love and emotion I suspect we will always be wanting. A dog-in-the-manger attitude seems to have a universally high profile among separated lovers, and, though I certainly did not wish to eat hay with Roger any more, neither was I truthful when I told him I was glad he had found someone new to root around the byre with.

He came to collect his encyclopaedia of music, overlooked in the general settling up, and
whistle
d in the hall. Roger was not one to
whistle
. He was also wearing a rather dashing black roll-neck jumper under his old tweedy jacket, which gave him a fashionable air. It transformed the paleness of his face and his rimless spectacles into a kind of casual aesthetic, which the whistling compounded. He called around noon, and after he had taken the book from the shelf and was cradling it lovingly in his arms, I suggested, with what I felt was conciliatory largesse, that he might like to stay and share my lunch time soup.

'I can't,' he said happily. 'I'm meeting Emma for lunch.' He was near the front door now. 'But thanks for asking.'

'Emma?' I said sweetly. 'A student?'

He smiled. And maybe it was that smile which made my vascular ducts freeze, for it was pointedly
complacent.

'No,' he said. And nothing else.

Short of realizing the delightful vision of twisting his jug ears off, I smiled too. 'A girlfriend? I
am
glad.'

He smiled. That smile again. And I stuck my hands in my pocket for fear of committing the double van Gogh.

'Yes,' he said. 'Well - lover, actually.'

'Blimey,' I said, restraint fleeing at the sonorous beauty of the word on his hitherto dusty lips. 'That was quick.'

'Would you like to see a photograph?' he said eagerly, and handed me the book while he delved in his breast (perhaps heart is more appropriate?) pocket. He held it up for me. It was a gummy black-and-white shot, head and shoulders only, of a not at all bad looker. More to the point, a not at all bad looker who had probably been in nappies when I took the eleven-plus.

'Gosh,' I said.

'Mmm.' He turned the photograph and looked at it fondly. 'You can't see here,' he said, even more eagerly, 'but she has black hair and blue eyes and a very lovely nature.'

'Well done.' I tried to sound joyous. 'What does she do?'

'Plays the oboe.'

'I mean for a living.'

He looked at me pityingly. 'Plays the oboe.' 'Oh. Ah. Well, that's just up your street. How did you meet?'

Only then did he look a bit shifty.

Part of this dog-in-a-manger attitude is that it can get even nastier: when you spot a weakness you press it home. And much against my better judgement, minestrone spurned, I pressed more firmly. Why should he look shifty if there was no savour to be had in the truth? 'Come on, tell me. After all, it's quite hard to meet new people. Especially' - I nodded at the photograph - 'ravishing young women like her . ..' I would, I knew, be forgiven for overweening. Ravishing she was not, but she was certainly, confound it, more than just presentable.

'Well,' he said, backing a little, holding up the photograph as one might hold crossed sticks at a vampire. 'She sent me this. With a letter.'

'Out of the blue?!'

'Not exa
ctly
.'

I waited.

He then took a deep breath, almost visibly threw caution to the winds, and said, 'I put an advertisement in
Music Week.'

'An advertisement?' I imagined a full-page colour spread. 'Saying what?'

'Oh, I can't remember exactly.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, she answered it and we met and
...
well, that's it, really.'

'What sort of advert? I mean - well, what an extraordinary thing to do.' I was also thinking that it had
worked.
'Was it expensive? Advertising is usually an arm and a leg. At least when I did one for those pine frames years ago, it cost me at least a couple of hundred.'

'No, no .
..'
He relaxed, smiled. 'Not a big ad. One in the lonely hearts column. Eight lines for thirty quid or something. I forget.'

I looked at the photograph. My expectation of lonely hearts was that all the advertisers must be - in the new sensitive parlance - extremely cosmetically disadvantaged.

'I got nine replies,' he said proudly, 'and Emma was the best. There
was
another contender . . .'