Picture You Dead

1

Thursday, 15 October 2015

Charlie Porteous was fond of quoting Auden’s poem, about the hare that was happy in the morning because it was unable to read the hunter’s waking thoughts. But as he left home on this drizzling autumnal morning, he had no way of knowing that today, he was that hare. And that he wouldn’t be making it back to his bed tonight. Or ever.

To all who knew him, and indeed to any casual stranger who happened to glance at him, the good-humoured sixty-two-year-old, who would always stop to drop a banknote on a busker’s mat, appeared to be a man without a care in the world. With his confident gait, well-lunched face and stout frame, in his Savile Row three-piece chalk-striped suit, handmade shirt and salmon-pink-and-green-striped Garrick Club tie, he exuded the very image of old money and all the confidence that came with it.

But the much-liked – despite his mercurial temper – proprietor of the eponymously named Porteous Fine Arts Gallery was, right now, properly, badly and seriously in need of a big deal. Preferably cash. A lot of the stuff. The private bank which had once considered him an undoubted client, and for years had fawned over him, was now threatening foreclosure on a loan, on an amount which would bring his entire comfortable edifice crashing down.

But in his position he could not let his predicament show either to his staff or to any of his clientele in the rarefied circle in which he appeared the very model of respectability and trustworthiness. Not to his recently retired wife, Susan, who revelled in her role as a major charitable benefactor in their home city, and not to his son, Oliver, who had spent the past decade working in the fine arts department of Sotheby’s New York, to gain experience before joining him, and eventually taking the reins, allowing Porteous, like his own father before him, to take life easier and enjoy a very comfortable dotage.

He felt particularly upset about Oliver, who knew nothing of his problems yet, that he had let him down badly. Let all his family and staff down. For months now he’d had constant sleepless nights and had ended up taking antidepressants.

But finally it looked like Lady Luck had crapped on his head. Actually, in his right eye to be precise. It had happened as he’d looked up at the bird, a black crow, a few weeks ago. He remembered as a kid, when a magpie had dumped its load on his head, his deeply superstitious mother had told him it would bring him luck, and she had been right – that month he’d won £25 on his Premium Bonds. Result!

Grasping at straws, he wondered, was his luck about to turn now? Then, amazingly, it seemed it was.