‘That’s the guy. S’all right for some, huh?’
Inside, the Frick was sumptuous. Beautiful wooden floors, long drapes with stiff pelmets and floor-to-ceiling panelling, all created specifically to house Frick’s collection of art. Amy tried to imagine it as a private house, with maids and butlers buzzing around tending to their master.
‘It must have been magical to live here,’ she said.
‘I’m sure it was. Considering.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Considering Frick claimed that he only built it to make Carnegie’s house look like a miner’s shack.’
‘Rich people are competitive, aren’t they?’ said Amy, struggling to imagine what it would be like to be so rich.
Georgia nodded.
‘I suppose that’s why they are rich.’
Amy wandered over to pick up a headset for a commentary on the collection, but Georgia held up a hand, taking a guidebook instead. Once again Amy felt she had made a mistake; the feeling obviously showed on her face, because Georgia touched her arm.
‘Force of habit,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent a lifetime around books, so I always go there first.’
Amy nodded, put on her headphones, and began to listen to the commentary about the museum. As she took in the history of the great house, she realised how little she knew not just about art but about New York’s heritage. She’d passed the enormous buildings along Museum Mile a million times but she’d had little idea that most of them had once been the private houses of the city’s greatest industrialists. Her lack of knowledge embarrassed her but did not surprise her. Dancing had always been the priority in her life. From the age of four when her mom had first taken her to Miss Josephine’s dance academy, nothing more than a room above a laundromat, Amy had chanelled any spare time she had into dancing, training and dancing some more. It wasn’t that she was stupid – in fact she had graduated from Kelsey High with a 2.1 grade point average. Not terrible considering that she had spent most of her school life in ballet shoes. But she was self-aware enough to know that there were holes in her learning. Holes that had been particularly exposed when she had been out for dinner with Daniel and his Oxbridge friends and they had started talking about politics, literature or world events.
She pulled off her earphones and walked over to Georgia, who was standing in front of a portrait of a man in a spotty fur coat.
‘Quite a collection of Old Masters, isn’t it?’ said Georgia, glancing at Amy before returning her gaze to the picture.
Amy eyed it dubiously. To her, it looked just like a rather dark painting of a gay nobleman long dead, but she wasn’t about to say so. She looked at the label. ‘Titian, c.1488–1576
.’ Should I have heard of him? she wondered.
‘So when does a New Master become an Old Master?’ she asked, deciding that she needed to enter into the spirit of things.
Georgia smiled.
‘Officially, an Old Master is a European painter who worked before 1800 – Vermeer, Fragonard, Albrecht Dürer. After that, it’s considered the modern era. Henry Frick was by all accounts a difficult individual, but at least he should be congratulated on his taste and his vision. This collection is quite splendid.’
She looked at Amy, who had fallen quiet.
‘You don’t agree?’
‘It’s not really my taste,’ she said diplomatically. ‘It’s a bit old-fashioned.’
Georgia nodded and touched her arm.
‘Come this way,’ she said, walking across to another painting, this time of a rather grumpy-looking man with a big chain around his neck.
‘Hans Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More. Now ignore all the velvet for a moment,’ she said. ‘Just look at the face and the hands.’
Amy peered closer. She couldn’t deny that it was an amazing bit of painting. The skin seemed to glow with life; the man even seemed to have stubble.
‘Now imagine he’s wearing a suit and tie. Or a baseball cap if you prefer. Can you picture him as an actor or a folk singer, someone you might see on TV?’
‘Yes, I mean, it’s like a photograph really,’ said Amy. ‘Only more real, somehow.’
‘This painting is almost five hundred years old, but even so, you somehow get the feel of the man.’
‘Yeah, he looks really ticked off,’ laughed Amy.