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  ‘Pay? You know what he paid, Fatman. You can work that out easy enough.’

  ‘Wayne, how the hell would I know? How much?’

  ‘One thing about Wayne Passow, he looks after his friends right. He splits fair with his partners. Wayne Passow is famed for this,’ Wayne Passow said. ‘So, you get twenty grand there for two of you. Ten each. And exactly similar for self.’

  ‘He paid you thirty thousand?’

  ‘Beautiful, yes? Surprise? But, like we was saying, this is a very special painting, and he thought the frame pretty good, also: so a bit of a bonus. That Monet, he’s what’s referred to in art circles as “much sought after”, meaning people collect him. He’s called an Impressionist because he sees things – usually lilies – and gets an impression from them, or that’s my impression, anyway. This kind of operation – paintings – is a long way up from nicking televisions and cars.’

  Simberdy covered the mouthpiece again and half sobbed to Olive: ‘He’s sold L’Isolement for thirty grand. It’s worth how many millions?’

  ‘And he’s ready to help further,’ Nothing Known said. ‘I’m real well in with this guy.’

  ‘Of course. It’s why you came back and took the “El Grecos”,’ Simberdy said.

  ‘There’ll be another nice little packet for you soon, Fatman. I reckon I have a duty to do what I can for you and Olive. Again I say it – this is a team. All for one and one for all, like. All right, I’m doing most of the actual work, but that don’t mean special treatment as regards my share. Straight split. Maybe next time it will be up to you, Vincent, and Olive, to do the selling. So, don’t you worry about it at all. Wayne’s going to handle the deal. Wayne got it under control. All right, I heard them three might be phoney. Only might. Worth a try? Obvious. This could be an even nicer package – three times as nice. This adviser, he’ll know about the other painter for sure. Yes, you can bet he’ve heard of old El. OK, it’s not Monet and so not quite so tip-top, but Monet’s not the only big painter in the world. Art spreads itself all ways. This is the great thing re art. No limit.’

  ‘Where is he, Wayne? What’s his name, your fence?’

  ‘London way.’

  ‘Yes, you said. But where, exactly?’

  ‘Art is life to him,’ Passow replied. ‘I love to hear him talking about tints and palettes. An eye-opener.’

  ‘What’s his name, Wayne? Look, we’re partners. There shouldn’t be secrets.’

  ‘Although most artists have what’s called an easel to work on, Michael Angelo obviously wouldn’t of been able to use an easel when he was up there painting a chapel’s ceiling,’ Wayne said.

  Thirteen

  Legs dangling, wearing her tangerine and blue gear today, Lady Butler-Minton was seated on a roof beam near the gymnasium ceiling, resting before her sauna, when she saw the door from the garden swing slowly open and Neville Falldew, once Palaeontology at the Hulliborn, stand for a second gazing in, then hesitantly enter. Penelope had been idling after a couple of climbs on the hanging rope, chatting to Lip again and explaining why she had decided after all to be fairly expansive in her first meeting with the Butler-Minton biog girl. ‘I can see what it is about Trudy that would activate your juices, Eric. Yet it only came late in your life, didn’t it, this taste for big chins?’ She stopped talking and watched Falldew. In the old days, when Eric was Director, Falldew and other Keepers and Curators would occasionally turn up, looking for him in the gym to discuss some urgent point of Hulliborn business. She recalled there was even an occasion when Falldew had been conscripted to join with her and Eric in carolling the Egyptian boatmen’s shanty.

  Falldew had obviously failed to notice her now. He did not look too good, she thought. Had he ever? That eternal, tatty Davy Crockett suede jerkin, with all the greasy, knotted, trailing bits and discoloured zips, plus a college scarf, regardless of weather. It wasn’t just his clothes. Penelope had always thought Neville’s face seemed to have been squeezed in a vice – the solitary vice, Lip used to allege, despite that long on-off affair with Ursula Wex, Urban Development. The narrowness of Falldew’s head made it appear only two dimensional, as though he’d just stepped out from a placard. At parties, Penelope had seen people meeting Nev for the first time actually walk around to the other side of him, checking he had another side and didn’t depend on trompe l’oeil, as in sculpture shows she’d visited. When worried or sad he would lean forward, nursing his head in both hands, like someone carefully holding a rare LP. Recurrent anxieties seemed to have weakened muscles in key regions of the body, so he could often give the impression he might crumple and break up, the way a newspaper did in the bath, though she’d heard he could now and then force his long legs into quite a gallop. His moustache and beard were brave and well-intentioned but a terrible error: meagre, struggling, dark elements clinging to this angular surface, resembling Marmite on a kitchen knife.

  Today, he appeared abnormally bad, special worries digging shallow tracks in what there was of his cheeks: desperate plough marks on a stony field. For a while, he stared about, tugging convulsively at a couple of the rat-tails on his jacket, like a tumbling parachutist searching for the rip cord. He went forward and tapped on the door of the sauna. He waited, then knocked again, harder. Finally, he pulled it open and, crouching, peered in, speaking her name through the clouds of escaping steam. In a while, he gave up and let the door swing shut. Penelope was about to descend on the rope when he seemed to change his mind and, turning back, violently pulled the sauna door open again. Squinting in, he this time began to call not Penelope but Butler-Minton himself, in a low, intense, suddenly joy-filled whisper that only just reached her on the beam. She had begun to shiver a little, partly on account of cooling, but also a reaction to the eeriness of what was happening. All the same, she decided now she must stay and observe.

  ‘Sir Eric? It’s Neville. Neville Falldew, Palaeontology. All right, you were a glistening bastard, but a Hulliborn glistening bastard. That’s what counts. I’ve always known as a certainty you weren’t gone for ever. Wonderful to see you there in the Folk the other night, nearly starkers on the floor and in beautifully traditional form. Thank heavens I’d hung on to my museum keys, although thrown out. I’d recognize you anywhere, even from behind, as it were, even in the half dark and wearing those little navy socks. Well, didn’t I have that earlier similar occasion as a prompt – the one in the icons room?

  ‘But the other night in the Folk! Oh, for me such an encounter is a kind of revelation, indeed, an epiphany. And those two people with you, splendidly tumultuous in the straw, so close and chummy. I think I knew them, too – people from their very different centuries, yet so mystically fused, thanks to you, Sir Eric. This was a brilliant demonstration of what museums are for: that fusing of apparently, and only apparently, discrete areas of Time. I have to tell you that there have been long hours since the Hulliborn spurned me when I felt sickened, almost deranged by anger, and the need for revenge. Yes, madness came very, very close: a man craves his work, and a museum man craves his contact with the fruitful past. These were torn away from me. But now I know all will be fine, because you are with us still. And stay with us, Sir Eric, please.’

  It was a supplication, yet spoken in a voice alight with happiness and confidence. Above all, confidence. Nev grew silent for a minute or two, continuing to look into the sauna. Then he said: ‘Ah, old boatman, still plying your humble but noble trade, I see. Still singing in honour of simple labour and the beauties of creation.’ He paused, as though listening – listening and revelling in what he heard. ‘“All together in the chorus,” you jovially command. So be it.’ Falldew leant against the sauna doorframe and instantly began at full volume a classic, tuneless, meandering, gobbledegook lyric in would-be Arabic, beating monstrously irrelevant time with one hand and smiling barmily.

  It lasted for seven or eight minutes and, at the end, he waved slowly and supremely meaningfully into the sauna with large, sweeping movements, as though across a
great spread of water, and closed the door. ‘We shall meet again, venerable harbour person,’ he said. Then, after one more glance around the gym, he readjusted his scarf with a considerable flourish and left, his steps now more positive, his body strangely stronger looking.

  Lady Butler-Minton slid down the rope, pulled on her Mr Universe sweatshirt, and did some undemanding weights work until the sauna heated up again. ‘Well, Lip, I accept you were a “bastard”, but a “glistening bastard”? Nev was always a bit purple, wasn’t he, and now he’s flipped. So, what the hell does he think he saw in the Folk? And who was it?’

  Fourteen

  It was George Lepage’s first Founder’s Day ball as Director, and, standing in the minstrels’ gallery, looking down a bit tensely at the dancers, he wished he could have avoided inviting Neville Falldew. There were others he would willingly have done without, too, but Neville effortlessly claimed top spot as potential supreme master of aggro. His presence meant a chillingly heightened chance of messy public crisis. Lepage dearly wanted to dodge anything of that sort, especially as he had also felt obliged to ask Dr Itagaki and Dr Kanda from the Japanese Arts and Culture Council, as well as the chairman of the local authority, two newspaper editors and several important broadcasting people. Any Hulliborn catastrophe tonight was sure of a good show.

  Itagaki and Kanda stood with him now, also gazing down. ‘Here is harmony, here is vibrancy!’ Kanda delightedly cried. ‘Could it be surpassed, could it even be paralleled in any other museum? One substantially doubts it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, one substantially does,’ Itagaki said. Her big, blue-framed spectacles twinkled life-lovingly under the revolving coloured lights, brought in for the Ball. ‘Among the Hulliborn’s precious artefacts we see cheerful concord and general amity.’

  Maybe. The trouble was, revered tradition dictated that, along with all current staff, retired Keepers and Curators should be sent Ball tickets, to commemorate Lord Hulliborn of Nadle-and-Colm, creator of the museum in the nineteenth century. Since nothing had actually been proved against Nev, he could not be excluded. Naturally, an unpleasant debate had erupted about this at a Hebdomadal Conclave, with Angus Beresford, Entomology, sounding off so threateningly and coarsely, plus graphic stiff-arm mime, about Falldew’s alleged indiscretion in the Folk. Eventually, a request by Lepage for tolerance and customary Hulliborn saneness of outlook, made entirely against his better judgement, helped get Beresford’s case rejected. Ursula had willingly undertaken to police Neville from start to finish. Ursula was resourceful and tough, but could she really manage it?

  George had to hope so. As he watched the two of them now dancing together with full, funky energy in the marble surrounds of the Hulliborn Central Hall, he felt for several minutes that things might just turn out OK. Possibly, that warmth between Ursula and Nev would pick up yet again and provide him with some theme to life once more: a healthy and fruitful link with the Hulliborn, not that vile, crazed enmity. It had to be a heartening sign that Nev seemed to have taken the trouble to rent a reasonable tuxedo and mauve cummerbund. Studying Nev’s scant face, George Lepage could read no hint of planned mischief and violence against the museum. Perhaps Nev had come to realize that although he might have a grievance, it was not against the Hulliborn but against the philistine political view that the only organizations entitled to helpful treatment were those contributing in a measurable, concrete way to the country’s Gross Domestic Product. That was why the Hulliborn had to reduce expenditure. That was why Nev had been flung out of his job early.

  George waved and smiled to Nev in a way he hoped said that Hulliborn friendship still meant a bucketful. Falldew ignored this, as though too deeply immersed in private reverie or in the grisly music. Lepage took no offence and would have settled for nothing but private reverie from Nev all night, just as he would settle for the tuxedo and cummerbund, although the occasion was always white tie.

  ‘I see below Lady Butler-Minton, I think,’ Itagaki said, ‘unceasingly elegant and goodly.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Lepage replied. ‘All those with distinguished links to the Hulliborn are welcome on Founder’s Day.’

  ‘We are greatly honoured to be in such a category, having, so far at least, not earned that accolade,’ Kanda said. ‘This is British generosity, this is politesse.’

  ‘Dear Lady Butler-Minton,’ Itagaki said. ‘And are D.Q. Youde, Art, and James Pirie, Museum Secretary, still stoking her boiler turn and turn about, as during Sir Eric’s lifetime, and squabbling over her so feverishly, so wonderfully waspishly?’ She gave a little excited tremor and her black gown, trimmed with gold, rustled ungovernably.

  ‘We understand this rivalry d’amour was always an inspiration to witness, a stirring matter,’ Kanda said. ‘Such deeply competitive devotion. Here something more was involved – and maybe still is – than mere leg-over. Was she not earnestly searching for consolation, in view of so many stresses in her life?’

  ‘Penelope has recovered from her husband’s passing very well,’ Lepage replied.

  Anxieties extra to those about Falldew nagged George. It had been at a Founder’s Day Ball that Sam Vaux, the Arts Minister, and his party, were fed the vol-au-vents accidentally smeared with flecks of Stain-Out! True, Butler-Minton’s knighthood had come through afterwards, regardless, but this year neither the current Arts Minister nor any of his senior officials had accepted an invitation. Lepage was unnerved by this. It seemed the kind of blatant snub Itagaki and Kanda would undoubtedly notice and make their possibly harmful deductions about. Lepage did not blame himself for any aspect of the vol-au-vent untidiness, though. It had been a different regime, a different period. In any case, he knew as fact that nobody suffered serious illness or disability through the slip-up. Butler-Minton had maintained that museum vol-au-vents were so bland that they needed something like Stain-Out! to perk them up.

  And then came what was probably his chief worry. It concerned lovely Kate Avis from Kidderminster. He felt an abiding tenderness for her and had tried to help her eliminate bad memories of the Hulliborn by providing wholehearted affection. She surely deserved it. But there had been tearful arguments about the Ball right up until yesterday. When Lepage had first mentioned it to her a while ago she seemed to recognize there could be no question of her attending, what with Falldew certain to be present and likely to recognize her, and what, also, with Julia present and watchful. As the event grew nearer, though, Kate had begun to question this thinking, saying she ought to be close to George on one of the most important occasions in his calendar. Given what had happened between them, and was still regularly happening, she believed she possessed rights. And Lepage had to accept some of this, damn it. She stated that she felt a complex bond with the Hulliborn, one which should take in its glamorous, festive moments, such as a Founder’s Ball, as well as the impertinent flash in Folk, plus, of course, those subsequent sessions on the mock straw with George, benignly, comfortingly audienced by dummy yokels. She said she’d bought a new turquoise, silver and white gown. She had some savings from a legacy.

  Kate had obviously come to feel that some indication of the way Lepage rated her was involved. And he would hate her to think it only something casual to him. Surely, it wasn’t, was it? But the Founder’s Ball? Tricky. Kate did grudgingly admit that Julia probably had the prime claim on him, and she promised that, if she came, she would remain among the crowd of guests and make no approach to George, content merely to be on museum premises and able to see him on such a special evening. If he somehow signalled that he wanted something more than that, she would respond. As cover, she would hire a male escort from an agency. Lepage didn’t like the sound of this and, in any case, thought the whole plan foolishly risky. For a long time he resisted.

  Finally, though, worried at the extent of her distress, and unwilling to hurt her by a curt, absolute refusal, he had given Kate two tickets, but pleaded with her to use them only if she found it intolerable not to be present. Now, looking down from the gallery on the
horde of dancers, he searched for a turquoise, silver and white gown, but didn’t find one. He allowed himself to think thank God, though he realized that this could be regarded as cruel and cowardly. Kate’s tempers were sometimes a high-flying pain, yet had, too, a childlike charm about them, something Lepage didn’t see much of these days.

  ‘Are there any indications about Hulliborn’s chances of the exhibition?’ he asked the two Japanese. ‘It’s so important for us, perhaps even the difference between life and death for the Hulliborn.’

  ‘Shop!’ Itagaki said. ‘It must not be talked, you know, not on such a social occasion.’

  ‘We love the Hulliborn,’ Kanda said. ‘The fine intimacies it achieves with the local community and further afield, too. There will certainly be a decision in good time, rest assured.’ He laughed a little. ‘We can’t have those anatomical tools with no settled destination, adrift for ever, endlessly roaming the world, like the Wandering Jew or The Flying Dutchman.’

  ‘I adore whimsy,’ Itagaki replied.

  ‘Which museums beside the Hulliborn are you looking at?’ Lepage said. ‘What’s the opposition? The Victoria and Albert? Others? Well, of course.’

  ‘Tokyo always does its sad little nut to build what’s called “a good field”,’ Itagaki said. ‘A nice long shortlist! Those bigwigs get a feeling of power from that – so many organizations waiting on their word. Pathetic, really; the result of much self-doubt, since we have no Eton or Winchester. Those frowsty idiots back home derive as much of a kick out of telling someone “No” as in saying who has won. This is so unBritish that I fear you might not comprehend it.’

  Hurriedly, Kanda said: ‘But please do not conclude from this that the Hulliborn is to be told “No”. All remains totally indeterminate. Totally.’

  ‘A veritable fucking melting pot,’ Itagaki said.