By Death Possessed Read online

  Then why wasn’t I delighted, excited, panting to get home and share the joy of it?

  Two reasons. The first was that I felt robbed, in a strange way. I would have to part with it. And if it was not Grannie’s work, I’d lost that too, the proper pride of family worth. The painting had been a visual indication that there had been, if only in the past, some small artistic ability lurking in my blood. Don’t laugh. I was a photographer. What’s artistic in that? you say. I’ll think about it and let you know.

  The second reason for my lack of enthusiasm was that I was uncertain of my reception when I got home. With Evelyn, you could never be sure.

  My wife is a solicitor. She had just qualified when I first met her, and I admired her for the intellectual accomplishment which had brought it about. She was certainly not a beauty, but I saw something attractive in her puckered, mobile features, her huge blue eyes, and the flaming, hectic red hair she insisted was auburn. She laughed a lot in those days. Her face at such times achieved the most adorable shapes. I thought she had a sense of humour, but it was apparently only a reflection. I made a joke; she laughed. After a while I discovered she had no sense of humour at all. Or she deliberately acquired no sense of humour. After all, a solicitor is expected to be reasonably solemn. If a client said she wanted a divorce because her husband wore his jeans in bed, it would not be politic to burst into roars of laughter.

  So now, Evelyn finds nothing to laugh at. She has also become a little pedantic. The law doesn’t allow much freedom of deviation from specific meanings. Or tries not to. Evelyn began by allowing me no use of an incorrect word. Syntax was her god. After a while the area covered by the lack of freedom extended upwards and sideways, so that she came to expect no deviation from anything. Life was a pattern. A perfect and precise pattern. I was an extending stain that obliterated its complex line.

  Naturally, she earned good money, the sort that had an overflow allowing it to grow and mature. I earned very little. A professional photographer these days has to specialize. With the modern automatic cameras, anybody can run off a spool of perfect wedding photos. So I have to look for something with less facility involved, and for the past two years I’ve had to look deeper and further.

  This disparity in earning capacity, and thus in the provider stakes, has never been mentioned. But it has hung like a cloud around the house. I try to ignore it, laugh it away. But, as I’ve explained, my laughing is done alone.

  When I got home, Aleric’s motorcycle—her present to him on his last birthday—was propped in the drive. Its engine was bigger than the one in my Mini. I parked behind it. The house had no distinction: a detached residence in which we resided, with three bedrooms, living-room, dining-room, kitchen, and Evelyn’s study. She worked evenings. Loved it. Aleric had the front door open before I reached the porch. He gave a mock little bow to the man bearing a fortune, and a lop-sided smile that was ruined by the tail-end of a sneer. I marched on through. She was in the living-room, as I guessed she would be. I stood in the doorway.

  What impressed me was that she had nothing on her lap or in her hands. Always, she was reading something. Now I had her full attention. On the wall behind her there was a lighter patch on the Regency striped wallpaper where The Painting had lived. This was now under my arm.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, smiling her crumpled, encouraging smile, ‘you own a Frederick Ashe! How splendid for you.’

  I stood there. Aleric edged past me and went to stand by his mother’s chair. He was all attention.

  ‘It’s not a Frederick Ashe,’ I said. ‘It’s an Angelina Foote. There’s just a wild coincidence in the initials.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said briskly, reminding me of Margaret Dennis for one second, before I clamped down on the memory. ‘You’ve always been stupidly romantic. Your grandmother ... didn’t you tell me she came from a wealthy family? She was probably in Paris, you know the way they used to tour the Continent. Around 1912. She’d be about nineteen. I’ll bet she bought it somewhere along the left bank, for a hundred francs or so, precisely because of the initials. You have to be logical in these things, Tony.’

  ‘You seem to know all the details.’ I was playing for time.

  ‘Of course I do. Aleric’s told me every detail. Clever boy.’

  Did I say she has no sense of humour? It’s just that she doesn’t recognize a joke when she makes one.

  ‘We’ll put it up for auction,’ she decided. ‘Sotheby’s, I think.’ She had never taken any interest in it, but it had become ‘we’ when it was a question of parting with it. ‘Twenty thousand, possibly. You can get yourself a new car, and we’ll have the room re-papered. Some decent clothes for you. How you can hope to impress ...’

  I didn’t really take in the rest. My mind, prompted by that blank patch on the wall, was roaming the house. Now that there was a blank patch, it drew my attention to all the other things of mine that weren’t within those walls. The answer came back: pretty well everything wasn’t. Apart from a few clothes in the wash and a paperback or two, all I personally owned was either at my photo-lab in town or in the Mini. I’d been away for a few days at a factory in Maidstone, getting colour shots for a set of twenty-by-sixteens in the boardroom, to remind the board members that work was performed beyond those four walls. So the floppy bag containing a few spare items of clothing, and my camera equipment, were still in the car. Nothing of note was in that house. The house itself was Evelyn’s, in her name, bought with her own money. Considering the sneer on Aleric’s face and that weird nose, I began to wonder whether in fact he was mine. Why else had Evelyn married me? And why in such a hurry? Perhaps that was what she’d found worth laughing at in those days.

  Then suddenly my ambivalent thoughts about the painting flowed together and became one warm glow. It was mine. It was under my arm. It didn’t matter who had painted it, nor whether it was worth a lot of money. I derived pleasure from looking at it. That pleasure would not be enhanced by the thought that it was valuable, nor reduced if Grannie had painted it. Rather the reverse. So I wanted no discussion about what was to be done with it. I would keep it. But not there, on that barren wall, where unfeeling eyes would rob it of its worth to me, and unspoken thoughts blame me for not realizing its possible worth in spending-money.

  It was mine.

  I didn’t know whether she had finished her exposition on how the sale would be handled, and probably on the legal aspects of ownership. Perhaps I cut in without consideration. Certainly, I recall very clearly her startled expression and how very ugly it made her seem.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’ll be off, then.’

  And I walked out of there.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It said a lot for our marriage that Evelyn didn’t run after me and ask what the hell I thought I was doing. She knew very well, and she was not prepared to do anything about it. For too long we had been separate people, living under the same roof.

  I was aware that she stood at the dining-room window to watch me drive out of her life. Probably she would be wondering whether I might claim alimony from her, and what legal gambits she could toss beneath my flying feet. But that was where my artistic heritage came into play. I told you I’d think of something. My exit had a certain balanced pattern to it: it stated the truth in simple lines, it had design, it had composition. Until I reached the Mini, it also had dignity. Then once more the car let me down.

  Nothing. Not a whimper from the starter motor. I saw her pale, expressionless face at the window. Even at that moment she failed to smile. Then something happened that added the final touch to the picture, produced the colour and the tone, the chiaroscuro. A Volvo Estate drew up at the drive entrance, Dr Margaret Dennis got out, and she called: ‘Want any help?’

  I think she must have guessed exactly what had happened. The Mini’s door was open and the painting (now it was outside Evelyn’s house it did not need the support of capitals) was clearly visible. I had brought it home; I was taking it away again.


  ‘Want a lift?’ she asked.

  Clearly I could not sink to the indignity of crawling under the Mini with my magic spanner. I had only one choice.

  ‘I’d be much obliged, if you’d give me time to unload.’

  She not only gave it to me, she filled it in by helping. To Evelyn, the picture she was staring at must have changed. It crackled now, and sparkled with naked colour. I’d returned home to 5 Laurel Grove with the express intention of leaving again—and with a woman. At the window she made no move. She would be preparing the legal tangle with which she would bind me.

  We stripped the Mini of all my possessions, and loaded them into the back of the Volvo, where they assumed a shameful insignificance. We went round and climbed in the front.

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got a little place in town.’ Did my voice sound right? ‘A display window and my working lab. I thought I’d rig up a bed of sorts ...’

  ‘Sounds terrible.’

  ‘I can’t afford a hotel.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Her conversation was colourless. She was allowing me to take the lead. I was the custodian of a Frederick Ashe, and she had to keep an eye on me. Commission loomed. It was necessary to remain in touch. And yet ... there was something in her attitude that hadn’t been there at the Road Show, something more than the casting off of an official cloak. She was relaxed with me. There was a light intimacy in her voice.

  ‘I can do better than that,’ she said. ‘There’s a place ... it belongs to my firm. It’s used for entertaining wealthy clients. A cottage. You’d like it. You’ll be safe there.’

  Safe? There it was again, the implication of danger.

  ‘I can’t let you go to any trouble.’

  ‘I’m not allowing you out of my sight. I’ve got a proprietorial interest in you, my friend.’ Then she laughed, a free and unforced liquid sound. ‘There’s the smell of money around. It always makes me slightly hysterical.’

  ‘And practical.’

  ‘I’m extremely practical. The appreciation and assessment of art isn’t an art in itself. It’s a science. Very down-to-earth, I can assure you. We use scientific methods. It’s very depressing. Contrast the artist’s attitude to his work with ours! They’d weep if they knew. Sometimes I long to do wild things—forge a masterpiece, something like that. Wild, impulsive things.’

  I’d just done a wild and impulsive thing myself, and at that moment I couldn’t find anything in its favour. There was an emptiness, a choking feeling of irrevocable error. I couldn’t see any distance into the future, not with optimism.

  ‘Such as driving to Laurel Drive ...’

  ‘That! Exactly! It was an impulse. I wanted to see where the Frederick Ashe had hung.’

  ‘Whether the house justified the honour?’

  ‘Now you’re being sarcastic.’

  ‘This isn’t the way into town.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Where does your grandmother live?’

  I glanced at her, only then aware that she’d found time to change, and was now in jeans and a denim jacket. ‘Wiltshire.’

  ‘Excellent. It’s on the way.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The cottage I mentioned. Where we’re going. You said you intended to take the painting to your grandmother, and ask her about it. Now you haven’t even got transport. So I’ll have to take you. The cottage is in Worcestershire. As I said, on the way.’

  ‘Got it all worked out, haven’t you?’

  ‘I told you, I’m practical. I can even put it all down as business expenses.’

  ‘Hmm!’

  I was beginning to realize that leaving the Mini behind had been a mistake. Cranky and difficult though it was, it had given me independence. Now I was trapped. Talk about frying pans and fires! I’d become lumbered with another female of my wife’s species: dogmatic, efficient, autocratic. Professional women! It would have been better if I’d asked her to stop the car, got out, and started walking into the night.

  She was moving too fast for that to be a possibility. Her driving was a reflection of her personality, practical in that she pressed the correct things and turned the right ones, but there was an over-confidence in her expectations. Other vehicles were expected to do exactly what suited her. It seemed to work, though. We sliced the night apart, in the general direction of Worcestershire.

  ‘Keep your eyes open for a sign saying Kidderminster,’ she called out, racing through a crossroads.

  ‘If you slowed a bit, I might have time.’

  ‘So much to do. You can’t imagine.’

  Which was true; I had no idea of her intentions. All I wanted to do was settle somewhere, get something to eat, get some sleep, and think of some way I could find myself another car. I wasn’t wildly happy about visiting Grannie with Margaret Dennis in tow. The odds were she’d have me in tow by the time we got there.

  We took a corner too fast. She said: ‘You missed it. This is the way. Only a couple more miles.’ I sighed.

  I had expected something remote and desolate. Hadn’t she called it a cottage? Isolated it certainly was, but we drew up in front of a modern, semi-bungalow that later proved to be on two levels. When she’d parked, and we’d entered the building through a side door, we were on a wide balcony with an open stairway down to a large room that occupied the full width. She must have operated a switch inside the garage, because all the lights were on. A whole bank of curtains ran across the far wall, and I had to guess they covered a row of full-length windows.

  She led the way down. ‘Unload your stuff later,’ she said. ‘I’ll get some coffee going, then we’ll see what’s in the deep-freeze.’

  I was on edge, my nerves jumpy. For the whole of that evening I’d been in no position to control my own life. Even now there was uncertainty. I roamed the room. Paintings covered all available space on the three walls downstairs, and along the head of the stairs. Genuine oils and watercolours, I could see that, and even I was able to detect they were copies. The original Constables, Turners and Monets, etc., were in National art galleries.

  Above the clattering in the kitchen, I called through the open door: ‘The paintings? Fakes, are they?’

  ‘Copies. All of them.’

  ‘Who did them?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘The lot?’

  She came in smiling, carrying a tray. ‘I’ve put something in the oven. It’ll keep us going. Yes, they’re all mine.’

  I sat on a padded stool, facing the low table. ‘White, please,’ I said. ‘It’s not a company house, is it? It’s yours.’

  ‘True.’ Her eyes were dark with amusement. ‘There isn’t any company. I work on my own.’

  ‘You lied to me.’ I don’t know why I’d assumed I could trust her, but the remark emerged with a tone of disappointment.

  ‘Sorry about that.’ She glanced away. ‘I had to get you here.’

  ‘The painting, not me.’

  ‘You.’

  ‘They come together,’ I told her. ‘One package.’

  ‘I wanted both.’

  We sipped her coffee. I produced my pipe, and gestured around. ‘From what you said ... I suppose you’d rather I didn’t ...’ I indicated the paintings.

  ‘Oh, those! Smoke by all means. They’re rubbish. It’s all I was ever capable of, when I was at art school. Copying. Any fool can copy.’

  To me, that seemed to be a somewhat sweeping statement. I’d had enough time to realize the copies were excellent work. But I’m no expert, and felt I had no right to offer praise. I shrugged, which seemed to annoy her.

  ‘Not fakes,’ she said intensely, ‘not forgeries. Copies.’

  ‘It matters?’

  She banged down her empty cup and got to her feet. ‘Of course it damn well matters, Mr Tony Hine. You’re not that blasted ignorant, I hope.’

  But I was. Beyond her, where she stood with her feet straddled, her jet hair untidy and her high cheeks flushed, there was a copy of Monet’s Cart
In The Snow, which I recognized. I would have loved to own it, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me that the brush had not been held in Monet’s fingers. It would simply have been a constant pleasure to look at.

  ‘I am, you know. Dead ignorant.’ Then I lit my pipe. There’s a time when you know you’ve touched flame to a fuse, and I sat and waited for the explosion. I needed information, you must have realized. There was a question of whether my painting was a Frederick Ashe or an Angelina Foote. I needed to understand why it ought to matter to me, and why its value could fluctuate from around £20,000 to nil on the answer.

  She began quietly enough, after a long stare at me to decide whether I was serious.

  ‘Tony,’ she said at last, ‘I’m calling you Tony because this is going to be personal. I’ve never told anybody this before, because in the art world I’ve never met anyone so ignorant. But of course, you’re a photographer.’ She jutted her lower lip. It was a challenge.

  ‘Take me to the original with my camera ...’ I was pointing at the Monet.

  ‘It’s in the Jeu de Paume in Paris.’

  ‘... and I’ll produce a colour print, same size, that’s as good as that one on the wall.’

  ‘Yes?’ she demanded. ‘Yes? Then listen to me, friend Tony. I’ve been involved with painting for thirty years. Yes, since I was eight. My father ... well, never mind that. I started with copying. Every student does, and of course I went to art school. Three art schools: London, Paris and Prague. We copied. Until of course we progressed to our own work in our own styles. All except me. I went on copying. Don’t think I haven’t thought about this, over and over. Maybe I started copying too young. But the basic fact was that I couldn’t paint for myself. There wasn’t anything I didn’t know about colours, techniques, composition ... but I couldn’t do it. No artistic ability, you see. No flair and no imagination. I’d copied for too long. I had to look at a fixed picture, not at a scene or a model or a still life. As an artist I was a failure. Every art school rejected me.’