Pictures of Perfection

CHAPTER TEN

‘I thought the body was unfamiliar,’ said Justin Halavant. ‘And now I recognize the face, I see why.’

He was peering at the Crucifixion. The naked woman now had a head. It was unmistakably Fran Harding’s. And it was wearing a policeman’s helmet.

‘Oh hello, Justin,’ said Caddy, turning from her easel. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think,’ he said, scanning the triptych judiciously, ‘that perhaps like most good ideas, it has outlived its usefulness.’

‘Scrap it, you mean?’

‘One does not scrap a scrapbook,’ he reported. ‘These are working notes. Trying things out here has taught you invaluable things. Light has been easy since the Impressionists but you have learnt to master darkness. The head, though, is merely jocular. Worse, it is perhaps confessional.’

‘I know you’re right,’ she said rather sadly. ‘I just needed you to tell me. It’s over. I hoped for a masterpiece, but you always knew it was just a doodle. Shit.’

‘Don’t be too hot for perfection, Caddy,’ said Halavant. ‘It is in human terms a form of stasis, the inevitable precursor of decay. Wherefore resist it, distrust it, if necessary destroy it. My God. How dare I preach to you! I turn my back for a moment and you make a leap forward like this!’

He was looking at the Wield portrait.

‘It’s OK, you think?’

‘It’s magnificent,’ said Halavant simply. ‘They’ll mark the start of your first truly mature period from this.’

‘I don’t know if I like the thought of being truly mature,’ said Caddy, looking directly at him for the first time. ‘How are your balls, by the way?’

‘No permanent damage,’ he said. ‘But they are not the motivation of my visit. This is.’

He unwrapped an oval parcel he had placed by the door on entry to reveal the forged portrait of the first Frances Guillemard.

‘Oh dear. I’m afraid I can’t change it for the real one, I haven’t got it.’

‘Don’t be silly. I don’t want it changed, I want it signed. Painted from memory of, what — half a dozen viewings? It’s a splendid piece of work.’

‘But not good enough to fool you?’

‘Oh yes. At least for some time, if that nice policeman, the almost normal one, hadn’t drawn my attention to it. Once I looked closely and caught that hint of a mocking wink, I knew!’

‘Made you mad, did it?’ she said, grinning.

‘A little,’ he admitted. ‘I worked out what had happened and went round to Corpse Cottage to try and retrieve the original. Like many of my moves lately, it rapidly degenerated into farce.’

‘Why not just tell the police?’

‘Because it was quite clear to me who had painted this and I had no desire to involve the country’s best young artist in a forgery scandal at the outset of her career.’

She regarded him sceptically.

‘But now they know.’

‘They worked it out for themselves. One should never underestimate the pedestrian mind. It’s walking slowly that gives you the best view of the countryside. However, merely sign your name to this and it (a) ceases to be a forgery and (b) increases its potential value to me.’

‘But what about the original? Don’t you want it back?’

‘No. It’s Fran’s by right. She should have had it last year when Daddy died. Was that someone downstairs?’

Caddy went to the door and called, ‘Hello?’

There was no answer and she said, ‘No, just the boards warming up in this sunshine.’

‘Yes, it does ease old joints rather, doesn’t it? Where’s Kee? She wasn’t downstairs, so I came straight up.’

‘She went up to the vicarage.’

‘Really? Interesting but worrying. To embrace religion is a definite step on the path to spinsterhood.’

‘I don’t think it’s religion she’s after embracing,’ said Caddy with her wicked grin.

‘What? You mean his reverence? I got the impression from Mrs Bayle, the Hecate of Enscombe who gathers weekly reports from all the weird sisterhood, that Larry, our pastoral lamb, was bleating after you.’

‘He’ll get over it,’ she said with the confidence of one not unfamiliar with the recuperative powers of suitors brought to the edge of death by her indifference. ‘Kee’s far better at that sort of thing than me.’

‘And she’s told you that she loves him?’

‘Of course not. Kee never tells me anything she thinks might make me worry about the future.’

‘And would her marrying the Vicar make you worry?’

‘Not really. I’m sure they’d come up with some ingenious scheme for letting me paint in the vestry. But it would cause Kee a lot of problems. She may not know it, but she’s the kind who’d like a houseful of kids. That she might feel she’s got to give up because looking after me is a full-time maternal job.’

‘But why not tell her you can look after yourself?’

She laughed joyously.

‘Come on, Justin! After Kee, you know me better than anyone. In fact, artistically speaking, you know me best of all. So you know that after six months of looking after myself I’d have either died of food poisoning or been arrested for non-payment of bills. No, I’ll need to be taken into care if Kee is going to have any chance of the life she deserves.’

She was looking at him expectantly.

He said, ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at …’

‘Last time we met I was pretty sure what you were getting at.’

‘Caddy, yes, that was an aberration, compounded I fear by my egotistical reaction …’

‘Hold on. Are you saying you really didn’t want to screw me?’

‘No, I mean, yes, of course, but no, not so brutally …’

‘You mean that really, deep down, you respect me?’ she mocked.

‘Yes. In fact, I do.’

‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘That’s always been what’s made you bearable under the crap, Justin. You know what I’m about, sometimes you’re way ahead of me. But that doesn’t stop my tits from turning you horny. Look, you have to understand, that stuff doesn’t mean all that much to me. Maybe some day, but not yet. Which doesn’t mean to say that I simply lie back and think of England. But this would always come first. Any time and every time. Are you with me?’

She made a gesture which took in her studio and all that was in it.

‘I think so,’ he said cautiously. ‘You’d like me to act as, er, your patron …?’

‘Patron? Hell, no. I don’t want patronized. I want to be cosseted, comforted, guided, encouraged. Could you manage that, Justin?’

‘I believe so,’ he said. He looked again at the portrait of Wield. ‘In fact it would be a privilege.’

‘And one privilege deserves another,’ said Caddy.

She crossed her hands on the bottom hem of her long, loose smock and in a single swift movement pulled it over her head to leave herself naked from the waist up. The zip on her jeans seemed to fly open of its own volition and she peeled them easily off her strong brown legs.

Halavant’s mouth fell open and he did a little involuntary skip backwards.

‘No time for dancing, Justin,’ she said. ‘This is a workshop, not a preview. If Kee doesn’t have her wicked way with the Vicar, she could be back any moment.’

For a moment Halavant hesitated, but only for a moment. There is a tide, and his was so close to neaping, there was no time to waste. Rapidly he stripped off his elegant clothes. There was of course nowhere to hang them so, trying to miss the more obviously damp patches, he dropped them on the floor. From here on in, life, he guessed, would be full of such sacrifices. But full too of, oh, such rewards!

‘You look almost ready to start without me?’ she mocked. ‘Will it be all right here, or do you have a thing about doing it on the stairs?’

She flung open the door as she spoke.

Jason Toke, crouched on the narrow landing, leapt to his feet like a beast of the forest startled by the beater’s drums. For a moment he stared at the naked figures before him, then with a cry so high-pitched as to be almost inaudible, he fled down the stairs and out of the Gallery. On the landing floor lay the Renoir catalogue.

‘What the hell did he want?’ cried Halavant.

‘Nothing,’ said Caddy. ‘Just to give me a present. I don’t think he’ll be back.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ said Caddy Scudamore.