The Brush-Off (9 page)

I made no attempt to reply. My job, I could see, was to play the straight man while these two went into a well-rehearsed double act.

‘What I have done,' said Eastlake, ‘is agree to pay you one of the largest sums ever paid by a public collection for a work by a twentieth-century Australian painter.'

Karlin flapped his jowls in dismay. ‘This talk of money, it insults the picture's true value. Isn't that right, Fiona?'

Fiona Lambert gave every indication of having seen this little song and dance before, but she played along. ‘It's a wonderful painting,' she said.

‘Fiona,' said Karlin in an aside for my benefit. ‘Fiona is our greatest living expert on the work of Victor Szabo. She was very close to him before his death.'

Fiona was suddenly very interested in the track-lighting. I'd get no help from her. The name Szabo meant nothing to me. I was out of my depth and sinking fast. Meanwhile, Eastlake and Karlin continued their Mo and Stiffy act.

‘Max here is cranky because his bluff has been called,' Eastlake told me. ‘For years he's had what is arguably Victor Szabo's best work hanging in his office, a picture called
Our
Home
. But Fiona realised its significance, identified it as the perfect cornerstone for our permanent collection here at the CMA. Max likes to be thought of as a philanthropist, so he couldn't refuse outright to sell us the picture. He just asked a price so high he thought he'd scare us off.'

So, this Victor Szabo was a painter, evidently one big enough to warrant a six-figure price tag. Karlin was finding this all very entertaining, this story in which his taste and acumen were the starring characters. ‘I'm practically giving it away,' he told me.

Eastlake was getting to the bit he liked. ‘But I called Max's bluff. I told Gil Methven that a picture of this significance really ought to be in a public collection. He agreed that the Arts Ministry would provide half the funds if I could raise the other half. Which is exactly what I did. So Max had no option but to agree to the sale. Now all he does is bitch about how he's being swindled.'

‘Bah,' Karlin waved a thick finger in the air. ‘Money was never the issue. I love that picture. It's like one of my children. Twenty years ago I bought it, long before most people had ever heard of Victor Szabo.'

Most people? ‘I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with Szabo's work,' I confessed. ‘Is the painting here?'

‘We take possession on Monday.' Fiona Lambert made this a question, arching her eyebrows at Karlin.

He nodded confirmation. ‘Until then,' he said, ‘it remains my private pleasure. At least until the formalities are completed.'

Eastlake explained. ‘Max is holding a little going-away event for the picture, brunch tomorrow. Gil Methven was going to do the honours but what with the Cabinet reshuffle, the short notice and so on…'

It was my turn to flash a little rank. ‘Oh, I think I can persuade Angelo to attend,' I said. ‘He's particularly keen to meet'—here I gave my attention entirely to Karlin—‘such a prominent supporter of the arts.'

Karlin merely smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, fine.' Across the room Becky Karlin and another lizard-skinned bat were scrutinising what was either a visual discourse on the nature of post-industrial society or the wiring diagram for a juice extractor. Nodding a brisk farewell, Karlin took off towards them, a politely hunched Fiona Lambert on his arm.

‘You did well to wangle three hundred grand out of Gil Methven,' I told Eastlake admiringly. I didn't want the policy committee chairman taking my little exercise in one-upmanship amiss. ‘Spending the taxpayers' money on modern art is not exactly a sure-fire vote-winner, you know.'

‘Couldn't agree with you more,' he said with unruffled equanimity. ‘But wait until you see this particular picture. The public will love it. It'll become a national icon, just you wait. You think a hardhead like Gil Methven wouldn't have considered the political implications?'

‘Just as long as it's not twenty metres wide and made of bullock's blood and emu feathers,' I grudgingly allowed. ‘Angelo's in the hot seat now.'

‘Believe me.' Eastlake snaffled a couple of fresh glasses off a passing tray and thrust one into my hand. ‘Agnelli will love it. He'll think he's Lorenzo bloody Medici. And the public will lap it up.'

Eastlake could afford to be optimistic about the judgment of the people. He'd never have to face it. I didn't tell him that, though. Instead I let him wheel me around the room and introduce me to more names than I could hope to remember and more glasses of Veuve Clicquot than I could reasonably be expected to digest on an empty stomach.

In due course, I found myself standing alone, contemplating one of the pictures. It was a portrait of the Queen constructed entirely out of different varieties of breakfast cereal. Corn Flake lips, Nutri-Grain ears, Coco Pops hair. I had, I decided, done my duty for the day. It was getting on for 8.30. Time to scout for an out.

I sidled through the nearest door and found myself in an enclosed garden, a green rectangle of lawn bordered by high shrubs, a cool refuge from the clamour inside. A lavender-hued dusk was beginning its descent. The slightly overgrown grass was littered with dead marines and ravaged canape trays. Little clusters of people sprawled about languidly with their shoes kicked off. At the far end of the lawn, near a pile of rusty ironwork from the Turd of a Dog with a Square Arsehole school of sculpture, stood Salina Fleet,
Veneer
magazine's spunky visual arts editor.

The palm trees on her mu-mu swayed. Pom-poms brushed her bare thighs. A lipstick-smeared wineglass sat athwart her bosom. All up, she looked a damned sight more edible than the wilting sushi circulating inside. Unfortunately, she was not alone.

Her companion was a male. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, with lank unkempt hair, heavy-rimmed Roy Orbison glasses and an attempt at sideburns. The sleeves were sheared off his western shirt and he was wearing grimy, paint-speckled jeans. A creative type, no doubt about it. And judging by the intense way he leaned into Selina when he talked—he was doing all the talking—more than a casual acquaintance. He was reading expressively from a tatty piece of paper, as though reciting a poem.

Salina, I noted with some pleasure, didn't appear to be buying it, whatever it was. My hopes soared. The guy was probably some mendicant artist, putting the hard word on her for a grant or a favourable review. But then she stepped closer and put her hand on his forearm. The gesture was so intimate, her demeanour so affectionate, that I mentally reached for the chalk to scratch myself from the race.

The guy jerked his arm away as if stung. No soft soap for him. He spun on his heels and strode towards the doorway where I was standing. Salina watched his progress across the lawn, less than impressed. She shook her head ruefully and drained her drink.

Here was my chance. The bar table was just through the door. I dived back inside and hit the waiter for a quick two glasses of shampoo. As he wrestled the wire off a fresh bottle, the artist-type came bustling up beside me, his eyes glinting through his spectacles with madcap determination. He slapped his hand down on my shoulder. ‘Excuse me,' he said, his voice piping with emotion.

Before I could respond, he pushed downwards. Using me for support, he hoicked himself up onto the bar. His tooled leather boots skidded on the wet surface. A loaded tray of empty glasses careened over the edge and hit the floor. They shattered with an almighty crash. Every head in the room turned our way.

‘Shut up, everybody,' declaimed the weedy cowboy. He brandished his piece of paper at the upturned faces like he was Lenin addressing the Congress of People's Deputies. ‘And listen. You're all being conned. This whole edifice is built on a lie.'

He made a gesture so expansive he had trouble arresting its momentum. And when he took a steadying sideways step, it was immediately obvious that he was drunk. Not legless perhaps, but a good three sheets to the wind at the very minimum. His voice was pitched high with nervous exultation at his own boldness. ‘The people behind this place don't care about art.'

Backs turned dismissively, and the hubbub of conversation resumed. There's one in every crowd, the murmur said. Just ignore him.

Seeing his audience's attention begin to slip away, the would-be Demosthenes raised his voice against the resumption of normality. He succeeded only in sounding hysterical. ‘Listen, everybody,' he pleaded. ‘This is important.'

I almost felt sorry for him, standing there in all his horrible vulnerability, flapping his skinny arms about, his pearls cast before swine, a teenage barman in a clip-on bow tie tugging at his trouser leg. Not sorry enough to forget my mission, though.

Salina Fleet, drawn by the ruckus, was standing in the doorway observing the spectacle with wide-eyed alarm.

Taking advantage of the waiter's distraction, I filched the still-unopened champagne bottle, grabbed a couple of glasses and began in her direction. ‘You'll see,' the cowboy warned. ‘You can't dismiss me so easily.'

And, as if to prove his point, and to me in particular, he promptly staggered forward and toppled off the table. He landed on top of me.

It isn't every day I get strafed. I folded like a cheap banana lounge, flat on my backside, glassware skittering, dignity out the window. The demented speech-maker's face pushed into mine, flushed with humiliation and too much to drink. ‘Sorry, mate,' he mumbled, scrambling to his feet and rushing for the door. Salina Fleet, seeing him coming, pursed her mouth into a furious slit and folded her arms in an emphatic gesture of disavowal.

The hands of solicitous strangers dragged me to my feet. ‘Watch out!' squealed someone. ‘Blood!'

My new-found friends all jumped backwards as if jet-propelled. The offending bodily fluid was mine. The stem of a broken wineglass had nicked my forefinger. The cut was small and there wasn't a lot of blood, but that wasn't the point. Who knows what fatal contagion I may have been harbouring?

Whipping a cocktail napkin from my pocket, I hermetically sealed the offending digit. The traumatised bystanders cast me nervously apologetic looks. Fiona Lambert arrived, the scandalised hostess. ‘How ghastly,' she clucked. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Fine,' I said, bravely displaying my ruby-tinged bandage. ‘Who was that guy, anyway?'

‘Nobody important,' sniffed Fiona, dismissively. ‘These would-be artists, they're always complaining about something. Are you sure you're all right?'

Lloyd Eastlake closed from the other side, trapping me in a social pincer. ‘You okay?'

Nothing was damaged but my prospects. Salina Fleet was nowhere in sight.

‘Let's get out of here,' said Eastlake keenly, clamping my biceps. He was quite shaken, a lot more disturbed by the amateur dramatics than I was. He scanned the room as though my inadvertent assailant might be about to launch another attack from the cover of the crowd. ‘People are going across to the Botanical,' he said.

I'd read about the Botanical Hotel. It was a chichi watering hole and noshery on Domain Road, not far away. Before Fiona Lambert could object, he clamped her arm, too, and marched us out the front door.

Night had fallen over the parkland, filling it with the drone of cicadas and the heady fragrance of damp lawn. A straggling gaggle of exhibition-goers meandered through the trees ahead of us, blending into the twilight in the general direction of Domain Road. To my relief, I could make out the bird-like silhouette of Salina Fleet among them. The tormented artist was nowhere in sight. Perhaps my prospects were salvageable.

Eastlake noticed the way I was gripping my forefinger in the roll of my fist. ‘Wounded in action,' he said. ‘You need a Band-aid on that. Doesn't he, Fiona?'

A Band-aid would be useful, I admitted. The cut was small but it was bleeding profusely. I couldn't walk around all night clutching a bloody cocktail napkin. ‘Fiona's place is practically on the way,' insisted Eastlake. ‘You've got a first-aid kit, haven't you, Fiona?'

Fiona looked like she'd prefer to save her medicaments for a worthier cause. ‘Only if it's no trouble,' I said.

Domain Road delineated Melbourne's social divide. It was the point where the public parkland ran out and the private money began. Marking the border were the playing fields of Melbourne Grammar, a school for children with problem parents. Beyond, were the high-rent suburbs of Toorak and South Yarra. Toffsville.

We crossed the road and walked half a block, turning into the entrance of a pink stucco block of flats. A dog-faced dowager with a miniature schnauzer under her arm was coming out. Eastlake held the door open for her, and the old duck nodded regally but didn't say thanks. It was that sort of a neighbourhood, I guessed.

We climbed a flight of steps to the second floor, where two doors with little brass knockers faced each other across a small landing. One of them had a Chinese ceramic planter beside it, sprouting miniature bamboo. Fiona began to rummage in her handbag, searching for her keys. The bag was an elaborate leather thing with more pockets than a three-piece suit. After she'd been rummaging for what seemed like an eternity, Eastlake said something about dying of thirst, tilted the Chinese pot, slid a key from beneath it and unlocked the door.