The Brush-Off (29 page)

‘Are we keeping it, then?' said Red, incredulously watching me wrap the picture in an old beach towel.

‘Shuddup,' I muttered, throwing a left into Victoria Parade and stomping on the accelerator. What I needed was an art conservator with while-you-wait service.

Artemis Prints and Framing was just down the hill from Ethnic Affairs, at the Victoria Parade end of the Smith Street retail strip. Technically, being on the west side of the street, it was located in Fitzroy, a suburb well on the way to total gentrification. But Smith Street, both sides, was universally regarded as Collingwood, an address that could never successfully shed its more raffish working-class associations. As though clutched in the jaws of this ambiguity, Artemis was slotted between a health-food shop called the Tasty Tao and a second-hand electrical goods retailer whose refrigerators were chained together to discourage shoplifters.

It took me exactly seven minutes and fifteen seconds to get there, including parking time.

It was a quiet drive, despite near-misses when I ran the amber lights at two intersections. The boys were concentrating on perfecting their air of contrition and had kept recriminations to a minimum. I bustled them into the Tasty Tao with funds for soymilk ice-creams and instructions to wait at the table on the footpath out the front and stay out of trouble. ‘But what about our pizza…' Tark started, until he was silenced by a shot across the bow from Red. I took the towel-wrapped bundle of canvas and kindling out of the Charade and pushed open the door of Artemis Prints. A buzzer sounded out the back.

The exposed-brick walls were hung thick with decorator items for the local home-renovator market. Aluminium-framed posters from art museum blockbusters. Georgia O'Keeffe at the Guggenheim. Modern masters. Klimt and Klee. Rustic frames around labels from long-defunct brands of tinned fruit. On the rear wall, beside a curtained archway, hung a selection of sample frames, their inverted right-angles like downturned mouths. Claire, I was pleased to see, carried an extensive range.

She was behind the counter, even more voluptuous than I remembered, serving a teenage girl in skin-tight stonewashed denim jeans and a chemise that showed her navel. Definitely the Collingwood side of the street, probably the Housing Commission high-rise flats. More your Joan Jett fan than your Joan Miro aficionado. ‘How much for the non-reflective glass, but?' she was saying.

‘It's five dollars more,' said Claire. On the counter between them was a block-mounted poster of a cigar-smoking chimpanzee in a tartan waistcoat riding a unicycle, the glass repaired with tape. Hi-jinx in the high-rise. ‘But you get a much better result.'

Claire looked over the girl's shoulder and acknowledged my arrival. Her expression was bland, but her eyes twinkled, inviting me to share the joke. ‘I'll be with you in a moment,' she said. ‘Sir.'

The teenager gave the non-reflective glass a moment's lip-chewing consideration and decided to go the full distance.

‘I think you'll find it well worthwhile,' said Claire. ‘You get a clearer view. It'll be ready to pick up tomorrow.' She was, I sensed, doing it hard. All dressed up for the customers in a lick of make-up, pleated chinos and a sleeveless white blouse. Her chestnut hair, much more ravishing in the daylight, was piled high and held in place with combs.

‘So,' she said as the girl left, eyeing my towel-wrapped bundle like it was an unnecessary but not unwelcome pretext. ‘Don't say you want me to mount your street vendors too?'

Second thoughts had been assailing me from the moment I walked through the door. A few flirtatious glances over a bowl of tapenade were one thing. Bursting into the woman's shop with a filched artwork under my arm was another. Desperado dipstick and his defective Drysdale. I smiled helplessly and mustered my resolve.

‘This may seem a little presumptuous,' I started. ‘That is, this might not be the sort of thing you normally do. And even if it is, you might not be comfortable doing it in this particular instance. You really don't know me, I know, but it's sort of an emergency and, well, if you don't feel comfortable, I'll understand perfectly and perhaps you could refer me somewhere else…'

At this babble, Claire's lips curled with undisguised amusement. ‘An emergency!' She moved aside the cracked chimpanzee to clear the counter. ‘As you see, emergencies are our specialty.' If I felt the need to make a bit of a production number, she didn't mind playing along.

‘It belongs to friends,' I said, laying my bundle before her. The painting was, strictly speaking, stolen property. If unforeseen difficulties arose, I didn't want Claire implicated as an accessory to a crime. A little white lie seemed best. ‘Don't ask what happened.' I cast an accusing backward glance over my shoulder.

Claire followed it out her front window to where the boys sat flicking bits of ice-cream at each other over the pavement table. She gave me a comprehending nod. Detailed explanations weren't necessary. What was parenthood, after all, but a lifelong mopping-up operation?

‘And your friends don't know about it yet?' The way she said this suggested that such things were not unknown in her profession. ‘You'd like to get it back before they notice it's gone?'

‘Exactly.' I began to unfold the towel. She helped me. Her hands were neat and sturdy and when her fingers brushed mine, I felt myself blush. ‘The painting itself doesn't seem to be damaged,' I said, keeping my face down. ‘Just the frame. All it needs is a few staples, a bit of glue.'

The last flap of towel fell away, revealing what appeared to be the aftermath of a tropical cyclone. Drysdale's lonesome drover, if anything, looked even more despondent. Claire let out an appreciative whistle. ‘Is this what I think it is?'

‘I'm afraid so. A Russell Drysdale original. But, like I said, the picture itself doesn't seem to be damaged. A few staples, a nail or two…'

Under the counter was a black apron. Claire slipped it on, along with a pair of white cotton gloves. Minnie Mouse. ‘Interesting,' she said. ‘The only other Drysdales I've seen were on masonite board.' She began to separate the pieces of wood, wire and canvas. Ominous diagnostic noises came from the back of her throat.

‘Like I said, the picture itself doesn't seem to be damaged.' I smoothed at it uselessly, trying to be helpful. ‘A few staples…'

She smacked my hand away. ‘Let me be the judge of that,' she said. ‘There's quite a lot of work needed here.'

‘Um,' I said, moving my shoulders from side to side and shuffling from foot to foot. ‘The thing is…' I looked at my watch.

‘How long have I got?' she said, not looking up from probing the debris.

‘Half an hour.' I winced sheepishly.

‘You have got to be kidding.' But she was already gathering up the ends of the towel.

Through the arch at the back of the shop was a narrow workroom dominated by a long tool-strewn table. Racks of moulded framing occupied one wall. In the other was a window overlooking the side fence. Stairs ran to an upper floor. Clearing away a half-cut cardboard mount, Claire laid the battered picture face-down and snipped away the tangled hanging wire with a pair of pliers.

‘You don't know how much I appreciate this,' I said, Mr Sincere.

‘Let's just say it's a long time since I've had the chance to work with an artist of this stature.' She removed the stretched canvas from its frame and held it upright. Squeezing the opposing corners gingerly together, she forced the canvas to bulge a little. ‘Particularly when he's been hit by a bus.'

Out of its frame, the stretched canvas looked pathetically small, hardly much bigger than a couple of record covers. The edges, long concealed by the boxing of the frame, were a stark white contrast to the murky grey of the rest of the fabric. Claire wrinkled her nose. ‘Hmmm,' she said. ‘Had this long?'

I looked at my watch. ‘About seventeen and a half minutes.'

‘Your friends, how long have they had this?'

‘Six months or so, I think. Why?'

‘Just wondered.' She turned the painting face down and began rummaging through the racks of framing material.

‘Hello, Red's dad.' A child's voice came from somewhere behind me. It took me a moment to locate its source. Claire's little girl Grace was peering out shyly from behind the door of a cupboard built under the stairs. Delighted to have surprised me, she opened the cupboard door to reveal a tiny table spread with scrap paper and coloured pencils. ‘This is my play school,' she said. ‘Mummy made it for me.' Her eyes tracked me across the room as I accepted her invitation to take a closer look.

‘Your mummy's very clever,' I said, meaning every word of it. Taking this as a personal compliment, Gracie plumped herself down at the table and began drawing exuberantly with a felt-tipped pen.

‘That's the sort of encouragement I like to hear when I'm working,' said Claire. ‘Keep it up.'

She withdrew a length of moulded framing from the rack on the wall and matched it with a section of the broken frame, holding the two together so I could compare them. Apart from a slightly deeper gilding on the old frame, they were nearly identical. ‘It'll be quicker to build a new frame than repair the damaged one. This moulding is a fairly common style, so it's highly unlikely your friends will ever notice the difference.' I couldn't see Bob Allroy spotting the switch.

‘But first I'll need to take the canvas off the stretcher, replace the broken struts, then re-attach the canvas.' With a definitive smash, she tossed the broken frame into a metal rubbish bin full of off-cut shards of glass.

‘Is all that possible in half an hour?' I was getting toey, nervously glancing at my watch, as useful as a scrub nurse at a triple by-pass.

Claire shrugged casually. ‘We'll soon find out.' She was enjoying this. Not just the professional challenge, either. She began extracting the tacks that held the canvas on the stretcher.

I paced. A compressor sat on the floor, its hose leading to a pneumatic guillotine on a side bench. Pricy items. Staple guns. Sheets of glass. Tools. Racks of unframed prints. Two metal folio cabinets, not cheap. Cardboard mounts. A whole wall of shaped timber. Add the rent, the rates, utility bills.

Claire, pulling tacks, read my mind. ‘Not exactly what I imagined when I left the National Gallery. I saw myself sitting in a trendy little gallery offering the works of interesting young contemporary printmakers to a discerning clientele. The trouble is, ten other places within half a mile had exactly the same idea.'

‘Is that why you left the National Gallery, to start this shop?'

‘Other way round,' she said.

Gracie tugged at my sleeve and handed me a piece of paper. Two blobby circles in felt-tipped pen, one circle with a hat and currant eyes.

‘That's me, isn't it?' The child nodded. Who else? ‘Why, thank you. It's lovely.'

Claire looked up, the table between us. ‘Sleazebag,' she muttered. In the nicest possible way. It was all I could do to stop myself vaulting the table and giving her a demonstration.

‘Other way round?'

‘I'd been at the gallery six years, ever since I graduated. That's where I met'—she flicked her eyes towards Gracie, back at her drawing—‘Gracie's father, Graham. He was an administrator. We were together for a couple of years and when Gracie was on the way I applied for maternity leave. No-one had ever done that before. Women who got pregnant were expected to quietly fade away. They said there was no provision, knocked me back.'

‘That's discrimination,' I said. Reviewing the National Gallery's employment practices would, I resolved, be my number one priority when I got back to the office. If changes hadn't already been made, they would be damned soon, if I had any influence on the proceedings. We'd see how soon they smartened up if their conduit was squeezed a little.

‘I wanted to make an issue of it, but Graham didn't like the idea. He thought it might adversely affect his career. He encouraged me to set up this business, put some money into it. After Grace was born, he got a job offer from overseas. Now he's Director of Human Resources at the Hong Kong Museum of Oriental Antiquities and I'm sticking nonreflecting glass over chimpanzees and framing other people's holiday photos.'

She wasn't bitter, just telling a story. She dropped her voice a register, whether for my benefit or the child's I couldn't tell. ‘We don't see him any more.'

‘Great,' I said. ‘Great progress you're making.' She only had about half the tacks out. Now that she was handling the painting proper, her technique was meticulous, painstakingly slow. The time was 12.58. My feet were inscribing an ever-decreasing circle on the workroom floor.

‘For Chrissake,' she said, moving around to my side of the table for no apparent other reason than to accidentally brush her rump against me. ‘Stop prowling around like a caged animal. You're making me nervous.'

Jesus, what did she have to be nervous about? I was the one with the crisis on my plate. Maybe, I thought, I should temporarily remove my twitchiness elsewhere. Make more efficient use of my time by taking Red and Tarquin around to Leo while Claire got on with the job, unencumbered by my stalking presence. ‘Go,' she said. ‘You're no use to me in your current state.'