“Mr Rankin, there’s a story behind the painting. It’s my fault that it ended up in that shop. I was looking after it and my flatmate took it by mistake and gave it as a raffle prize and then . . .”
Ian Rankin stopped her. “So it’s still yours?”
“Mine,” said Matthew. “I have a gallery. She was looking after it for me.”
“What’s so special about it?” Ian Rankin asked. “Is it by somebody well known?”
Matthew looked at Pat. For a moment she thought he was going to say something, but he did not. So the decision is mine, she thought. Do I have to tell him what I think, or can I remain silent?
She closed her eyes; the sound of the whirlpool was quite loud now, and there was a seagull mewing somewhere. A child shouted out somewhere in a neighbouring garden. And for a moment, incon-sequentially, surprisingly, she thought of Bruce. He was smiling at her, enjoying her discomfort. Lie, he said. Don’t be a fool. Lie.
“I think that it may be by Samuel Peploe,” she said. “It looks very like his work. We haven’t taken a proper opinion yet, but that’s what we think.”
The corner of Matthew’s mouth turned down. She’s just destroyed our chances of getting it back, he thought. That’s it.
Ian Rankin raised an eyebrow. “Peploe?”
“Yes,” said Pat.
“In which case,” said Ian Rankin, “it’s worth a bob or two.
What would you say? It’s quite small, and so . . . forty thousand?
If it were bigger, then . . . eighty?”
“Exactly,” said Pat.
Ian Rankin looked at Matthew. “Would you agree with that?”
“I would,” said Matthew, adding glumly, “Not that I know much about it.”
“But you’re the dealer?”
“Yes,” said Matthew. “But there are dealers and dealers. I’m one of the latter.”
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“I’m just going to have to think about this for a moment,”
said Ian Rankin. “Give me a moment.”
And with that he took a deep breath and disappeared under the surface of the water. There were bubbles all about his head and the water seemed to take on a new turbulence.
Pat looked at Matthew. “I had to tell him,” she said. “I couldn’t lie. I just couldn’t.”
“I know,” said Matthew. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to lie.”
He wanted to say something else, but did not. He wanted to tell her that this was exactly what he liked about her, even admired
– her self-evident honesty. And he wanted to add that he felt strongly for her, that he had come to appreciate her company, her presence, but he could not, because she was in love with somebody else – just as he had feared – and he did not expect, anyway, that she would want to hear this from him.
Ian Rankin seemed to be under the water for some time, but at last his head emerged, dark hair plastered over his forehead, the keen, intelligent eyes seeming brighter than before.
“It’s in the kitchen,” he said. “But of course you can have it back. Go inside and I’ll join you in a moment. I’ll get it for you.”
Matthew began to thank him, but he brushed the thanks aside, as if embarrassed, and they made their way into the house.
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“I didn’t think he’d do that,” Matthew whispered. “Not after you said what it could be worth.”
“He’s a good man,” said Pat. “You can tell.”
Matthew knew that she was right. But it interested him nonetheless that a good man could write about the sort of things that he wrote about – murders, distress, human suffering: all the dark pathology of the human mind. What lay behind that? And if one thought of his readers – who were they? The previous year, on a trip to Rome, he had been waiting for a plane back to Edinburgh and had been queuing behind a group of young men.
He had observed their clothing, their hair cuts, their demeanour, and had concluded – quite rightly as their conversation later revealed – that they were priests in training. They had about them that air that priests have – the otherworldliness, the fastidiousness of the celibate. Matthew judged from their accents that they were English, the vowels of somewhere north – Manchester perhaps.
“Will you go straight home?” asked one.
“Yes,” his friend replied. “Straight home. Back to ordinary parish liturgy.”
The other looked at the book he was holding. “Is that any good?”
“Ian Rankin. Very. I read everything he writes. I like a murder.”
And then they had passed on to something else – a snippet of gossip about the English College and a monsignor. And Matthew had thought: Why would a priest like to read about murder?
Because good is dull, and evil more exciting? But was it? Perhaps the reason the good like to contemplate the deeds of the bad is that the good realise how easy it is to behave as the bad behave; so easy, so much a matter of chance, of fate, of what the philosophers call moral luck. But of course.
84. An Invitation
Immensely relieved at the recovery of the Peploe?, Matthew and Pat returned to the gallery in a taxi, the painting safely tucked An Invitation
237
away in a large plastic bag provided by Ian Rankin. Matthew’s earlier mood of self-pity had lifted: there were no further references to failure and Pat noticed that there was a jauntiness in the way he went up the gallery steps to unlock the door.
Perhaps the recovery of a possible forty thousand pounds meant more to Matthew than he was prepared to admit, even if the identity of the painting was still far from being established. In fact all they knew – as Pat reminded herself – was that she thought that it might be a Peploe, and who was she to express a view on such a matter? Her pass in Higher Art – admittedly with an A – hardly qualified her to make such pronouncements, and she was concerned at having raised everybody’s hopes prematurely.
“It’s probably worthless,” she had said to Matthew in the taxi.
“I don’t think Ian Rankin really believed that it was worth anything. That’s probably why he let us have it back.”
Matthew was not convinced. “He gave it back because he thought it was the right thing to do. I could tell that he thought it was a Peploe too. I’m pretty sure you’re right.”
“And what are we going to do with it now?” asked Pat. “I’m not sure if I should take it back to the flat again.”
Matthew laughed. “That’s all right. I’ll take it back to my place.
Or even to the old man’s place. He’s got a safe.” He paused.
“Shall we have a celebration? What are you doing this evening?”
Pat considered this for a moment. She had no plans for that evening, and there was every reason to celebrate, but she was not sure how Matthew would interpret an acceptance of his invitation. There had been a purpose behind his asking about her feelings for Bruce – she was convinced of that – and she did not want to encourage him. If he was falling for her, then that would be messy. He was her employer; he was some years her senior – almost thirty, was he not? – and there were was another major reason why it would not work. She felt nothing for him, or, rather, not very much. He was decent, he was kind; but there was no attraction beyond that. He would be perfect for somebody who wanted a reliable, undemanding boyfriend, for somebody in the crowd. Surely there must be a girl there who 238
An Invitation
would love Matthew to take an interest in her? They could go to the Dominion Cinema together and sit in the more expensive seats and then, on the way out, look at the kitchenware in the kitchenware shop on the corner of Morningside Road. Pat had seen young couples doing that – standing in front of that window and gazing at the stainless steel cafetières and the Le Creuset saucepans. What would it be like to stand there with somebody else – a man – and look at the pots and pans that seemed to be such potent symbols of future domestic bliss? What would it be like to stand there with Bruce . . .?