“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “You never really thought it was. It’s all my fault for raising your hopes.”
Guy Peploe looked at Matthew. “Yes,” he said. “I can well see how you could have thought it was by Peploe. You must have a good eye.”
This kind remark may have been meant, or it may not; Pat could not tell. She thought it likely that he was just being kind, and certainly it was a generous thing to say. It would have been easy for him to have dismissed their hopes out of hand, and thus belittled Matthew; but he had not done that. Instead, he had been courteous.
Guy Peploe now picked up the painting and touched it gently with his forefinger. “The paint’s all wrong, I’m afraid,” he said.
“My grandfather painted on absorbent surfaces. This meant that the linseed oil was drained out of the paint and as a result the surface has a lovely, scratchy texture to it. He worked on board, you know. He bought pieces of wood which he would then put in the top of his paint box and work on right there. Sometimes there are grains of sand in the paint because he would be painting on the beach.
“And then there’s the subject. This is Mull, of course, but it’s not quite the right angle for Peploe’s work. My grandfather used to go up to the northern part of Iona and paint Mull from there. There were one or two beaches that he liked in particular. All the paintings he did of Mull from Iona are from that perspective.” He paused, squinting at the painting before him. “Now that over there is definitely Ben More, but it’s Ben More from a rather strange angle. I’m not sure if this view is real at all. It’s almost as if somebody has taken bits of Mull and stuck them together. I’m sorry, but that’s what it seems like to me.”
“But what about the signature?” asked Pat. “That SP in the corner there.”
Guy Peploe smiled. “Signatures can be misleading. Some
Mr Peploe Sees Something Interesting 279
artists never signed their work and yet signatures appear on them later on. That doesn’t mean that the picture in question is a forgery – it’s just that somebody has added a signature.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Matthew.
“Because they think that the painting’s genuine,” explained Guy Peploe. “And it may well be genuine. But then they think that the best way of shoring up their claim that it’s by the artist in question is to add a signature – just to add an extra bit of certainty!”
“And did Peploe sign?” asked Pat.
“Yes,” said Guy Peploe. “He signed works that he was particularly pleased with. He did not use SP, as far as I know.”
As he spoke, Guy Peploe suddenly leaned forward and examined the painting closely. “You know, there’s something rather interesting here,” he muttered. “Yes, look. I’m pretty sure that this is an overpainting. I think that there’s another painting underneath.” He held the painting up so that the light fell upon it from a different angle. “Yes, look at that. Look just above Ben More there. Can you see the shape of . . . yes, the shape of an umbrella?”
They looked, and yes, at a certain angle, there appeared to be the shape of an umbrella. But what would an umbrella be doing above Ben More? The West did indeed get a lot of rain –
but not that much.
97. More about Bertie
Irene and Bertie always arrived punctually for Bertie’s session of psychotherapy with Dr Fairbairn, and the famous analyst, author of that seminal study on Wee Fraser, was always ready for them.
They saw him jointly, which Dr Fairbairn explained was the best way of dealing with an issue in which two parties were involved.
“I could ask you about Bertie, and Bertie about you,” he said.
“And in each case I would get a very different story, quite sincerely put. But if I speak to both of you at the same time, then we shall get closer to the truth.” For a moment he looked doubtful, and added: “That is, if there is such a thing as the truth.”
This last comment puzzled Bertie. Of course there was such a thing as the truth, and it seemed inexplicable that an adult, particularly an adult like Dr Fairbairn, should doubt its existence. There were fibs and then there was the truth. Could Dr Fairbairn not tell the difference between the two? Was Dr Fairbairn perhaps a fibber?
“I fully understand,” said Irene. She was pleased that Dr Fairbairn had invited her to sit in on the therapy sessions, as she enjoyed listening to the sound of his voice, and she delighted in his subtle, perceptive questioning. His manner was suggestive, she had decided; not suggestive in any pejorative sense, but suggestive in the sense that he could elicit responses that revealed something important.
That morning, as Dr Fairbairn ushered them into his consulting room, she noticed that there was a new copy of the International Bulletin of Dynamic Psychoanalysis lying on the top of his desk. The sight thrilled her, and she tried, by craning her neck, to make out the titles listed on the cover. Mother as Stalin, she read, A New Analysis. That looked interesting, even if the title was slightly opaque. It must have been all about the need that boys are said to feel to get away from the influence of their mothers. Yes, she supposed that this was true: there were boys who needed to get away from their mothers, but that was certainly not Bertie’s problem. She had a perfectly good relationship with More about Bertie
281
Bertie, as Dr Fairbairn was no doubt in the process of discovering. Bertie’s problem was . . . well, she was not sure what Bertie’s problem was. Again, this was something that Dr Fairbairn would illuminate over the weeks and months to come. It was, no doubt, his anxieties over the good breast and what she had always referred to as Bertie’s additional part. Boys tended to be anxious about their additional parts, which was strange, as she would have imagined an additional part was something to which one might reasonably be quite indifferent, in the same way one was indifferent to other appendices, such as one’s appendix.
And then there was another, quite fascinating article: Marian Apparitions in Immediate Post War Italy: Popular Hysteria and the Virgin as Christian Democrat. That looked very interesting indeed; perhaps she could ask Dr Fairbairn whether she could borrow that once he had read it. The Virgin tended to appear in all sorts of places and at all sorts of times, but there was sometimes a question mark over those who saw her. Rome urged caution in such cases, as did Vienna . . .
Bertie sat down next to Dr Fairbairn’s desk while Irene sat on a chair against the wall, where Bertie could not see her while he was talking to the psychotherapist.
“How do you feel today, Bertie?” asked Dr Fairbairn. “Are you feeling happy? Are you feeling angry?”
Bertie stared at Dr Fairbairn. He noticed that the tie he was wearing had a small teddy-bear motif woven into it. Why, he wondered, would Dr Fairbairn wear a teddy-bear tie? Did he still play with teddy-bears? Bertie had noticed that some adults were strange that way; they hung on to their teddy bears. He had a teddy bear, but he was no longer playing with him. It was not that he was punishing him, nor that his teddy bear, curiously, had no additional part; it was just that he no longer liked his bear, who smelled slightly of sick after an unfortunate incident some months previously. That was all there was to it – nothing more.
“Do you like teddy bears, Dr Fairbairn?” asked Bertie. “You have teddy bears on your tie.”
Dr Fairbairn smiled. “You’re very observant, Bertie. Yes, this is a rather amusing tie, isn’t it? And do I like teddy bears? Well, 282
More about Bertie