Snatched

  ‘You make my point,’ Youde answered, with an enormous, free-range laugh. ‘The market, in its coarse fashion, is interested only in names. It thinks in labels, reacts favourably only to labels, not to the intrinsic glories of the works.’

  ‘But aren’t museums interested in labels, too? Our pictures got labels. What we must ask is are them pictures worth the millions that you paid for them, Dr Youde, because that’s what you paid for them in the market? You, you yourself, liked them “El Grecos” all them million pounds worth so you paid it. And good luck to you. So, do we say they’re worth that much never mind who painted them? You get my drift, sir?’

  Youde, who was still turned half away from the wall to cope with Jervis, but had also resumed attacking the drawing pins, said: ‘Oh, sod it, I’ve torn my thumb.’

  ‘Don’t drop blood all over the place, Quent,’ Lepage said. ‘They can identify from it. Genetic finger printing. Or thumb.’

  ‘Identify? So? I’m dealing with some sort of message in my own gallery. Is that an offence?’ Youde went at the last drawing pin harder, to show entitlement. Blood flowed. ‘My God!’ he said. He had freed the envelope and opened it. ‘Cash! Sterling!’

  ‘Get away,’ Lepage replied.

  ‘But what does it signify?’ Youde cried.

  ‘Payment?’ Lepage suggested.

  ‘For what?’ Youde said.

  ‘Well, the envelope was in the Monet spot,’ Lepage replied.

  ‘And that indicates something?’ Youde began counting the fifties on the Raybould floor, smearing many notes.

  ‘Someone had second thoughts, maybe,’ Lepage said, ‘and wants to compensate for the crime.’

  ‘Compensate? But that’s mad,’ Youde yelled. ‘This is only chicken feed. Twenty grand! That’s all, damn it. May I remind you, we’re talking about a Monet, Director?’

  ‘What I was saying,’ Jervis replied.

  ‘What? What were you saying, Jervis? We long for your analysis,’ Youde said.

  ‘That it’s, like, priceless until somebody offers a price – say, twenty grand. Then an expert, such as yourself, Dr Youde, knows this is much, much too little.’

  ‘“Beauty is truth”, but beauty is also loot,’ Lepage said.

  ‘Oh, why don’t you piss off back to your door-keeping, Keith,’ Youde said. ‘Why should I have to listen to this drivel? I have a disaster on my hands.’

  ‘Oh, not that bad,’ Jervis said. ‘We’ll get a sticking plaster for it.’ Then, watching Youde do a recount of the money, Jervis said: ‘I got an idea.’

  ‘God, no,’ Youde said.

  ‘Maybe they have it wrong, hung it in the wrong empty space, being hurried,’ Jervis explained. ‘Maybe they heard me coming on my rounds. That money could be for the “El Grecos”, couldn’t it? They went, too.’

  For a second it looked as though Youde would strike him. He was still crouched down with the notes, but his body suddenly tensed, like a sprinter on the start blocks, and he appeared about to spring up and attack Jervis. Lines of pink formed in Youde’s doughy cheeks, reminding Lepage of sauce trails on a knickerbocker glory. ‘You’re saying the El Grecos are worth only this much – three works: that’s just over six thousand each!’

  ‘Well, if they are,’ Jervis said.

  ‘If they are what?’ Youde hissed.

  With a sad, diplomatic smile, Jervis said: ‘There’s been a bit of argument, you can’t deny, Dr Youde, re authenticity. Well, look, the “but on the other hand” and “maybe this, maybe that” stuff is still here.’ He pointed to the ambiguous, framed ‘El Greco’ caption fixed to the wall where the three paintings had been.

  ‘What the hell do you know about arguments, or about authenticity?’ Youde said. ‘You’re a freelance flunkey.’

  Jervis smiled with lovely tolerance at him. ‘You shouldn’t take it to heart so much, Doctor. I worry to see you – same with Dr Simberdy when he gets into a fret. You, you goes a bit blueish. Not attractive. A warning colour. Any bugger can make mistakes. And the bigger you are, the bigger the mistakes. Just think of Adolf going into Russia. Am I, Keith Jervis – as you say, a part-time, non-staff porter – ever going to get the chance of cocking things up to the cost of millions? Ha-fucking-ha! But you’re out there with the front runners, Dr Youde, and you’ve earned it. You got status.’ He brought his hand up smartly to his forehead in a US-style, hatless salute.

  ‘But who has done this, George?’ Youde asked.

  ‘There’s been no break-in tonight. We can only guess. Obviously, someone who was involved somehow in the theft of the pictures – but the identity is a mystery. The Fatman, so-called? As I suggested, conscience money?’

  From the Central Hall came the prolonged din of a fanfare by the band. Youde quickly gathered up the money, replaced it in the envelope and stood. ‘It’s the raffle. One ought to be present. Laura’s put admirable work into it, totally unstinting, finding worthwhile prizes, persuading notable people to donate. Well, Eve Chape, for instance, a wonderful bronze. Yes, this is something of an occasion, and Lady Butler-Minton herself is making the draw. I promised I’d be there.’

  ‘Which one?’ Lepage asked.

  ‘Which one what?’

  ‘Which one did you promise?’ Lepage replied.

  Youde looked at the bloodied envelope. ‘They’re deriding us,’ he replied. ‘And, of course, they don’t offer to pay for the El Grecos, which are the real, massive loss. Anyway, what’s to be done with this measly token?’ He waved the envelope. ‘Director, I think you should put it in your safe.’

  Youde left for the raffle. Jervis said he would tour the Raybould looking for any other signs of malpractice. Lepage went first to his office and, while putting the money away, heard someone come into the room behind him. Turning, he saw Neville Falldew, who smiled with undoubted fondness. Lepage locked the safe. ‘Nev,’ he said, ‘you’re looking so smart and well. But I thought you were with Ursula.’

  ‘I knew I should find you here, Director.’ He nodded a couple of times with solemnity. ‘For this is where you talk to Sir Eric, isn’t it? I read about it in the newspaper: the dear platypus.’ He stroked the exhibit. ‘It’s very moving.’

  ‘That was Press garbage, Neville.’ God, Nev must be in a bad way to start sentences with ‘For’. He poured them a couple of brandies.

  ‘He’s such a presence still,’ Falldew remarked.

  ‘Flounce? We don’t need him.’

  ‘I expect you’ve heard.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I believe I saw Sir Eric very recently.’ Falldew sat down and gazed about, as if terrified. ‘Look, George, is that conceivable, or am I going—’

  ‘We all enjoyed your words from the balcony just now.’

  ‘I meant to speak of Sir Eric there. An affirmation.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Not meaning to be rude, George, but with Sir Eric, the Hulliborn has a future.’

  ‘Well, a past, anyway.’

  ‘But in a museum who can distinguish?’ Falldew replied, wagging his head like a slack, pale flag in a tiny breeze.

  ‘Me, now and then,’ Lepage said.

  ‘Ah – “now”, “then” – you see, so hard to separate. After all, Director, what is Time?’

  ‘Ask the band.’

  Lepage’s door was thrust open, and Julia, entering at almost a run, said: ‘George, I hoped you’d be here. You should come at once. Quent Youde and Vincent Simberdy are openly brawling. And the shouts!’

  ‘Are the Japanese still here? And the media?’ he replied.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Hell. Fighting about what?’ He gave Julia a drink.

  ‘Simberdy won first prize in the raffle and kissed Penny Butler-Minton rather would-be meaningfully when she presented it – his fingers busying away at her behind. Quent was sure to object.’

  ‘Penelope will never get over the loss of Sir Eric,’ Falldew said. ‘How could she? Such a unique leader. Still no reflection, George.’
br />   ‘Sod Butler-Minton,’ Lepage said.

  ‘His return!’ Falldew replied. ‘She will be transformed by joy.’

  ‘You mean those two were actually fighting on the platform after the presentation, Jule?’ Lepage said.

  ‘With the mike on – terms like “slob”, “crud”, “twat”, “mini-cock”.’

  ‘Itagaki will know them,’ Lepage said.

  ‘Amplified everywhere,’ Julia replied. ‘Vince using the raffle prize to defend himself – a charming statuette of Seamus Heaney by Eve Pike Chape. The unique, unjangly sound of sculpture on skull.’

  There was a knock on the door, and Ursula came in. ‘Well, here you are, Neville.’ She wore a racy, green silk trouser suit and diamanté white shoes. Urban Development was not the label for her tonight.

  ‘I thought we might have a threesome,’ Falldew said.

  ‘You bloody what?’ Julia replied.

  ‘In any case, there are four of us now,’ Ursula said, brightening.

  ‘I mean I came for a three-sided conversation: the Director and myself talking to … well, talking to the sort of abiding presence, the memory of Sir Eric,’ Falldew remarked.

  Lepage sped down the spiral staircase. The music had resumed with old-fashioned waltzes, perhaps as a way of lightening the mood; or a reminder to Vince and Quent that their age group might be no longer at fighting peak. They had moved, or been moved, from the platform, and now hit out at each other sporadically in a corner of the dancing area, while people did the Veleta skilfully around them. Neither appeared hurt, except for Youde’s thumb. As the two men lumbered about, Laura Youde, Olive Simberdy and Penny Butler-Minton tried to stop the violence by pleas and occasional tugs at the sleeves of a tail coat, like quality controllers on a production line removing faulty items. Simberdy’s bulk put dashing footwork beyond him, and he sidled about slowly, now and then swinging a huge fist or the literary sculpture in great, imperfect arcs.

  Youde crouched forward in something marginally like a boxer’s stance, and threw energetic jabs at Simberdy’s gut, the effort bringing Quentin’s dark hair down over his ashen features, really mucking up the resemblance to Degas if it existed, and putting Lepage in mind of a drowning man’s face just under the surface. Reaching the group, Lepage waited for a moment, seeking a chance to get between the two scrappers when Simberdy had the Seamus Heaney down at this side between shots.

  It occurred suddenly to Lepage that the only other time he could recall a fight at the Founder’s was five years ago when Flounce and the then Lord Mayor’s chaplain fell out badly over something to do with Ovid or Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and Flounce had taken a fearful hammering, including several kicks in the groin and ribs from the chaplain when Flounce was down and virtually out, though admittedly only with dancing pumps.

  Keith Jervis must have followed Lepage and now shouted above the music and bad language, ‘Art, Asiatics, you fight like a couple of Tinkerbell’s fairies. It makes me ashamed.’ He stepped forward and, taking a handful of shirt-front on both, jammed them hard into wallflower chairs – Simberdy with difficulty because of his width – and then stood near, defying either to get up again. The band continued the Veleta – a triple-time waltz – and Itagaki and Kanda glided near with total proficiency, as if this style of dance had been a core subject at their schools back home. They broke off now and approached Lepage and the others. Itagaki’s eyes throbbed with pleasure behind the big glasses. ‘The Hulliborn is nothing but a clutch of rousing surprises,’ she cried appreciatively. ‘One imagines, all too foolishly, that one has it, as it were, deftly categorized, and then wham-bang where are we? An opening moment, delightful good fellowship, social serenity, the next, bunches of fives. This is like life itself, surely. A marvellous variability. Each mode equally valid, each contributing to the pageantry of change.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Simberdy replied. The statuette shone notably under a layer of sweat from his hand and arm. Lepage could see no fragments of Youde on it, nor blood.

  ‘You, you particularly, Dr Simberdy, have the makings of a Japanese wrestler,’ Kanda said. ‘The presence. The neck. The dignity.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vince Simberdy said.

  ‘But we must not leave out Dr D.Q. Youde,’ Itagaki immediately stated, touching Youde’s hand in encouraging, international fashion. ‘You, too, fought the good fight, to borrow a locution from St Paul. As Keeper of Art you deal with matters of sensitivity and taste, but what that obviously does not preclude you from having is balls.’ She turned to Lepage. ‘You must be very gratified, Director, to have two such all-round personnel on your staff. The day of the complete, Renaissance man has not gone.’

  ‘True,’ Lepage said.

  ‘In those damned corny public school yarns, people always went to the gym when a fight impended, and did the thing under all the tedious paraphernalia of rules and fair play and big, soft gloves,’ Itagaki sneered. ‘To the devil with all that bourgeois shit, eh? Eh? A fight is hot. It’s savage. It is of the people. It happens, but is not a mere “happening”– not theatre.’

  Kanda said: ‘We come back again and again to that same word: it is life.’

  ‘My God, dot the Is and cross the Ts, won’t you?’ Itagaki said.

  Simberdy leaned forward a little and began to throw up ostentatiously near his highly polished black patent shoes. He groaned once or twice.

  Kanda’s tone became extremely kind and gentle: ‘Nobody says you are in tip-top condition, Dr Simberdy. How could you be – the enforced sedentary life? But these things are easily corrected. It would be alarmist in the extreme to suppose internal damage.’

  ‘And then Dr D.Q. Youde,’ Itagaki said. ‘Remarkably unflustered, scarcely even breathing fast.’ She stood back and put a finger to her lips coyly. ‘I feel sure I’m not the only one to have noticed this, but you have a remarkable resemblance to a self-portrait by Degas. It is obvious to me, despite recent stresses in your face.’

  ‘Really?’ Youde replied. He obviously wanted to smile in thanks for such a compliment, but resisted this in case showing his famously comical teeth ruptured the moment.

  ‘Has this never been pointed out before?’ Dr Itagaki asked.

  ‘I think, perhaps, I have heard something of the sort. One forgets these things,’ Quent Youde replied, ‘flattered as one might be. Occasionally also Byron, but in profile only.’

  Lepage moved around the group to be nearer Simberdy and make sure he was all right. He heard Olive hiss something at her husband, not all of it clear, but along the lines of: ‘You brought this on yourself. Grossness. Tonguing Penny and buttock-fondling her. Oh, you freight-train-load of miserable, pastiche lech. Don’t ever forget we have secrets together. I could finish you.’

  Dexterously holding up the skirt of her black gown as she and Kanda passed Simberdy and his indisposition on their way back to the dancing, Itagaki called: ‘Oh, no, I’m afraid that in Japanese museums these stimulating, untimetabled events are just not bloody on. Such a dreary crew over there, folks. We’ve got more rectitude than Toyotas.’

  ‘So, finally, why museums, ladies and gentlemen? Why, indeed, the Hulliborn?’ Lepage was concluding his speech, standing at the microphone on the platform where Youde and Simberdy had recently started their conflict. People were packed around, listening. Looking out, he could see at their various spots in the crowd, Ursula, Nev, the archbishop and his wife, a couple of the editors and their wives or partners, Angus Beresford, Pirie the Museum Secretary, Pinnevar, Itagaki and Kanda, the BBC contingent, and Kate and her hired man, Adrian – he would be required by the agency to enjoy whatever she enjoyed, which would cover a fair range. Lepage thought they all looked passably interested. ‘After all,’ he continued, ‘we live in a period which sets much store on modernity, and rightly sets much store on being up-to-date and at the forefront of development and knowledge. This, we are told, and are frequently told, are the prerequisites of survival. One would find it difficult to argue.’ He strengthened his voice, go
t it into rebuttal state. ‘And yet one has to ask, is there no place in this gospel for recognition of the wonders of the past – indeed, for cherishing, for learning from such wonders?’

  ‘Yes,’ Falldew cried, giving a kind of Black Power salute without the power or the blackness. It might have been an error for Nev to pinpoint himself like that. Lepage saw Angus Beresford home in on Falldew and begin to move purposefully through the audience, his face contorted by fury, towards where Neville and Ursula stood.

  ‘There is a living spirit in the Hulliborn,’ Lepage continued.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ Falldew cried. ‘I bear witness to that. Gladly bear witness, gratefully bear witness.’

  Lepage said: ‘Myself, I see the Hulliborn – as I see all this country’s good museums, and, indeed, as I see the arts and humanities faculties in our universities (grand word that, “humanities”) – all these I regard not as mere repositories of relics and dust-shrouded works and learning, but inspirational points of confluence, where the glories of man’s history meet the equally glorious prospects for his future, in a rich union that offers fruitfulness, improvement and satisfaction. Do they, does the Hulliborn, deserve to be under governmental threat because they offer nothing measurable, graphable, visible towards Britain’s gross domestic product?’

  ‘Never!’ cried Falldew.

  ‘No, I think not,’ Lepage said.

  Lady Butler-Minton and Olive Simberdy were tending to Vince. He had stood up, looking very white and doddery, and both women held an arm and were bent forward to speak encouragement to each other around his great belly. Youde, still seated, watched his exit triumphantly. It might irritate him, though, that Penny Butler-Minton should help an enemy, sick or not.

  Lepage continued: ‘And so, ladies and gentlemen, as we have assembled happily here tonight to honour our great Founder, let us resolve to safeguard the fine traditions of the Hulliborn.’ Beresford had reached Nev, but to Lepage’s relief did not attack him, at least not yet. Instead, he stood close behind Falldew in the press of people, and seemed content to listen to Lepage’s concluding words. Perhaps, after all, things were beginning to come right, and the best really could be brought out of people with patience. ‘It is my task, and perhaps the task of all of us, to convince sceptics and doubters outside, at whatever level, that, in fact, far from being moribund, or even already extinct, the Hulliborn is alive with promising activity, and has its own positive, throbbing vigour.’