The Art of the Matter

‘Just forty-four, Seb,’ replied the young man. He used the familiar first name that Mortlake insisted on to create the friendly spirit he valued in his ‘team’. Even secretaries used first names; only porters, though addressed by their first names, called him ‘guv’.

‘Anything of interest?’

‘Not really. None with attribution, period, age, school or provenance.’

‘In other words, family amateurs. Are you coming in tomorrow?’

‘Aye, Seb, I thought I would. Tidy up a bit.’

‘Good lad, Benny. Well, I’m off to the Directors’ Lunch and then down to my place in the country. Just handle them for me, would you? You know the score. A nice polite letter, a token valuation, have Deirdre knock them out on the processor and they can all go in the last batch of mail.’

And with a cheery ‘Happy Christmas boys and girls’ he was off. Minutes later his two assistants at the viewing sessions had done the same. Benny saw to it that the last batch of paintings just viewed (and rejected) were taken back to the store and the last forty-four brought up to the much better lit viewing room. He would look at some that afternoon and the final batch the next day before departing for Christmas. Then he fished some lunch vouchers from his pocket and headed for the staff canteen.

He managed thirty of the remaining ‘off the street’ hand-ins that afternoon and then went home to his flat in the northern, that is, cheaper, end of Ladbroke Grove.

The presence of Benny Evans, aged twenty-five, at the House of Darcy was in itself a triumph of tenacity over prospects. The front-office staff, those who actually met the public and sashayed through the viewing galleries, were beautifully suited and languid-voiced exquisites. The distaff side was made up of young and very presentable female equivalents.

Among them moved the uniformed commissionaires and ushers, and the overalled porters, they who lifted and carried, hefted and trolleyed, brought and removed.

Behind the arras were the experts, and the aristocracy of these were the valuers, without whose forensic skills the whole edifice would collapse. Theirs were the sharp eyes and retentive memories that could tell at a glance the good from the ordinary, the real from the phoney, the worthless from the mother lode.

Among the senior hierarchs the Sebastian Mortlakes were minor monarchs and were permitted their several eccentricities because of all that knowledge gained by thirty years in the business. Benny Evans was different and the deceptively shrewd Mortlake had spotted why, and this explained Benny’s presence.

He did not look the part, and playing the part is integral and indispensable in the London art world. He had no degree, he had no polish. His hair emerged from his head in untidy tufts that no Jermyn Street stylist could have done much to improve even if he had ever been to one.

When he arrived in Knightsbridge the broken nosepiece of his plastic National Health spectacles had been mended with Elastoplast. He did not need to dress down on Fridays; that was the way he always dressed. He spoke with a broad Lancashire accent. At the interview Sebastian Mortlake had gazed in fascination. It was only when he tested the lad on his knowledge of Renaissance art that he took him on, despite appearances and the rib-digs of his colleagues.

Benny Evans came from a small terraced house in a back street of Bootle, the son of a mill-worker. He did not shine at primary school, achieved some modest GCSEs and never took advanced level at all. But at the age of seven something happened that made it all unnecessary. His art teacher showed him a book.

It had coloured pictures and for some reason the child gazed at them in wonderment. There were pictures of young women, each holding a small baby, with winged angels hovering behind. The little boy from Bootle had just seen his first Madonna and Child by a Florentine Master. After that his appetite became insatiable.

He spent days in the public library staring at the works of Giotto, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Tintoretto and Tiepolo. The works of the giants Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci he consumed as his mates devoured cheap hamburgers.

In his teens he washed cars, delivered papers and walked dogs, and with the savings hitch-hiked across Europe to see the Uffizi and the Pitti. After the Italians he studied the Spaniards, hitching to Toledo to spend two days in the cathedral and the church of Santo Tomé staring at El Greco. Then he soaked up the German, Dutch and Flemish schools. By twenty-two he was still broke, but a walking encyclopedia of classical art. That was what Sebastian Mortlake had seen as he led the young applicant for a job through the galleries off the main hall. But even the foppish and clever Mortlake had missed something. Gut instinct: you either have it, or you do not. The scruffy boy from the back streets of Bootle had it, and no-one knew, not even he.

With fourteen hand-ins left to examine, he came in to work the next day in an almost empty building. Technically it was still open; the commissionaire was at the door but he had few to greet.

Benny Evans went back to the viewing room and began to look at the last of the hand-ins. They came in various sizes and an assortment of wrappings. Third from last was one wrapped in hessian sacking. He noted idly that it was D 1601. When he saw it he was shocked at its condition, the layers of grime that covered the original images beneath. It was hard to make out what they had once been.

He turned it over. Wood, a panel. Odd. Even odder, it was not oak. The Northern Europeans, if they painted on wood, used mainly oak. The Italian landscape had no oak. Could this be poplar?

He took the small painting to a lectern and trained a bright light on it, straining to see through the gloom of the patina caused by over a century of cigar and coal smoke. There was a seated woman, but no child. A man was bending over her, and she was looking up at him. A small, even tiny, rosebud of a mouth, and the man had a round, bombé forehead.

His eyes hurt from the light. He altered the angle of its beam and studied the figure of the man. Something jogged a faint chord of memory: the posture, the body language . . . The man was saying something, gesturing with his hands, and the woman was transfixed, listening with rapt attention.

Something about the way the fingers curled. Had he not seen fingers curl like that before? But the clincher was the face. Another small pursed mouth, and three tiny vertical crease lines above the eyes. Where had he seen small vertical, not horizontal, lines on a forehead before? He was sure he had, but could not recall where or when. He glanced at the hand-in sheet. A Mr T. Gore. No phone. Damn. He dismissed the last two pictures as worthless rubbish, took the sheaf of forms and went to see Deirdre, the last remaining secretary in the department. He dictated a general letter of regret and gave her the forms. On each was the valuation price of the submitted but rejected picture, as was also the name and address of the owner.

Although there were forty-three of them, the word processor would get every name and valuation different, yet the rest of the text identical. Benny watched for a while in admiration. He had the sketchiest knowledge of computers. He could just about set one up and peck at the keys but the finer points eluded him. After ten minutes Deirdre was doing the envelopes, fingers flying. Benny wished her a merry Christmas and left. As usual he took the bus to the top end of Ladbroke Grove. There was a hint of sleet in the air.

The clock by his bedside told him it was two in the morning when he woke. He could feel the sexy warmth of Suzie beside him. They had made love before sleeping and that usually guaranteed a dreamless night. And yet he was awake, mind spinning as if some deep-buried thought process had kicked him out of slumber. He tried to think what had been on his mind, apart from Suzie, as he drifted into sleep three hours earlier. The image of the hessian-wrapped picture came into his thoughts.

His head shot off the pillow. Suzie grunted in sleepy annoyance. He sat up and delivered three words into the surrounding blackness.

‘Bloody, fooking ’ell.’

He went back to the House of Darcy the next morning, 23 December, and this time it really was closed. He let himself in by a service entrance.

The Old Masters library was what he needed. The access was by an electronic keypad and he knew the number. He was an hour in there, and emerged with three reference books. These he took to the viewing room. The hessian-wrapped package was still on the high shelf where he had left it.