Gwenny June's Tommy Crown Affair

  Chapter 2 – What Made Me Steal It

  While my hubby is in France writing the script for a little doco on the wines of Burgundy, I was stealing paintings from the Charleston Museum. One painting that is, not multiple. That’s not such a bad thing to do, is it? One little painting that was owned by my family in the early 1800s. A girl’s gotta do something when her husband’s away, right? Some girls have flings, which despite my teasing is not something I do, and others, well, steal things. Or, as I rationalized it to myself, reclaimed some long lost family property. And I was a little bored without Roger, me liking the wine with lunch and the apre lunch roll in the hay as much, or more, than him. But it was seeing the painting hanging in the museum with that little card pasted on the wall next to it that said, “Formerly in the collection of Manigault Bedgewood,” who was my great great great great great granddaddy, died in 1825. Bedgewood was my maiden name until Roger showed up, him being lucky as hell to meet me and have me grant him access to afternoon delights nonpareil. The Charleston Museum, being the oldest museum in the United States, founded in 1773, stole the painting from ole Manigault and made it the cornerstone of their collection of paintings. At least that’s my family lore, though whether the museum staff would agree is another matter.

  It was one of the first days after Roger left for France, and already I was bored. Ergo the trip to the museum. And there it was on the wall, all four feet by six feet of it, showing Manigault’s wife standing next to the fireplace in full flowing white dress with a crystal goblet wine glass in her elegant hand. Seeing the card was enough to rile my sense of injustice. Whenever Roger and I visit the museum and stand looking at the painting, he says, “That’s you, you know. She’s you; or you’re her. Same face, same body under the dress, same hands. Same wine lush of a personality,” and he’d smile at me with the last part. I don’t know if I love the painting because of what he says, or because the woman at the fireplace is quite beautiful, or if I love it because she represents the history of my Charleston family going way back, or if I love it because of the skill of the artist who painted it. I just know I love it, and now I can love it at home, rather than in the museum. Or, maybe, just between you and me, and not to put too fine a point on it, I love it because I stole it, and doing that was a lot of fun.