‘Are you saying that this young artist boy was painting a Munnings he later intended to sell as the real thing?’
‘Er...’ I said.
Wyatt Minchless swept on. ‘Are you saying that the Munnings picture he told us we might be able to buy is itself a forgery?’
The others looked both horrified at the possibility and admiring of Wyatt L. for his perspicacity.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just thought I’d like to see it.’
‘You don’t want to buy a Munnings yourself? You are not acting as an agent for anyone else?’ Wyatt’s questions sounded severe and inquisitorial.
‘Absolutely not,’ I said.
‘Well, then.’ Wyatt looked round the other three, collected silent assents. ‘He told Ruthie and me there was a good Munnings racing picture at a very reasonable price in a little gallery not far away...’ He fished with forefinger and thumb into his outer breast pocket. ‘Yes, here we are. Yarra River Fine Arts. Third turning off Swanston Street, about twenty yards along.’
Mr and Mrs Petrovitch looked resigned. ‘He told us, exactly the same.’
‘He seemed such a nice young man,’ Mrs Petrovitch added sadly. ‘So interested in our trip. Asked us what we’d be betting on in the Cup.’
‘He asked where we would be going after Melbourne,’ Mr Petrovitch nodded. ‘We told him Adelaide and Alice Springs, and he said Alice Springs was a Mecca for artists and to be sure to visit the Yarra River gallery there. The same firm, he said. Always had good pictures.’
Mr Petrovitch would have misunderstood if I had leaned across and hugged him. I concentrated on my fancy coffee and kept my excitement to myself.
‘We’re going on to Sydney,’ pronounced Wyatt L. ‘He didn’t offer any suggestions for Sydney.’
The tall glasses were nearly empty. Wyatt looked at his watch and swallowed the last of his plain black.
‘You didn’t tell us,’ Mrs Petrovitch said, looking puzzled, ‘why your friend called the young man a criminal. I mean... I can see why the young man attacked your friend and ran away if he was a criminal, but why did your friend think he was?’
‘Just what I was about to ask,’ said Wyatt, nodding away heavily. Pompous liar, I thought.
‘My friend Jik,’ I said, ‘is an artist himself. He didn’t think much of the young man’s effort. He called it criminal. He might just as well have said lousy.’
‘Is that all?’ said Mrs Petrovitch, looking disappointed.
‘Well... the young man was painting with paints which won’t really mix. Jik’s a perfectionist. He can’t stand seeing paint misused.’
‘What do you mean, won’t mix?’
‘Paints are chemicals,’ I said apologetically. ‘Most of them don’t have any effect on each other, but you have to be careful.’
‘What happens if you aren’t?’ demanded Ruthie Minchless.
‘Um... nothing explodes,’ I said, smiling. ‘It’s just that... well, if you mix flake white, which is lead, with cadmium yellow, with contains sulphur, like the young man was doing, you get a nice pale colour to start with but the two minerals react against each other and in time darken and alter the picture.’
‘And your friend called this criminal?’ Wyatt said in disbelief. ‘It couldn’t possibly make that much difference.’
‘Er...’ I said. ‘Well, Van Gogh used a light bright new yellow made of chrome when he painted a picture of sunflowers. Cadmium yellow hadn’t been developed then. But chrome yellow has shown that over a couple of hundred years it decomposes and in the end turns greenish black, and the sunflowers are already an odd colour, and I don’t think anyone has found a way of stopping it.’
‘But the young man wasn’t painting for posterity,’ said Ruthie with irritation. ‘Unless he’s another Van Gogh, surely it doesn’t matter.’
I didn’t think they’d want to hear that Jik hoped for recognition in the twenty-third century. The permanence of colours had always been an obsession with him, and he’d dragged me along once to a course on their chemistry.
The Americans got up to go.
‘All very interesting,’ Wyatt said with a dismissive smile. ‘I guess I’ll keep my money in regular stocks.’
7
Jik had gone from the gents, gone from the whole Arts Centre. I found him back with Sarah in their hotel room, being attended by the Hilton’s attractive resident nurse. The door to the corridor stood open, ready for her to leave.
‘Try not to rub them, Mr Cassavetes,’ she was saying. ‘If you have any trouble, call the reception desk, and I’ll come back.’
She gave me a professional half-smile in the open doorway and walked briskly away, leaving me to go in.
‘How are the eyes?’ I said, advancing tentatively.
‘Ruddy awful.’ They were bright pink, but dry. Getting better.
Sarah said with tight lips, ‘This has all gone far enough. I know that this time Jik will be all right again in a day or two, but we are not taking any more risks.’
Jik said nothing and didn’t look at me.
It wasn’t exactly unexpected. I said, ‘O.K.... Well, have a nice week-end, and thanks anyway.’
‘Todd...’ Jik said.
Sarah leapt in fast. ‘No, Jik. It’s not our responsibility. Todd can think what he likes, but his cousin’s troubles are nothing to do with us. We are not getting involved any further. I’ve been against all this silly poking around all along, and this is where it stops.’
‘Todd will go on with it,’ Jik said.
‘Then he’s a fool.’ She was angry, scornful, biting.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Anyone who tries to right a wrong these days is a fool. Much better not to meddle, not to get involved, not to think it’s your responsibility. I really ought to be painting away safely in my attic at Heathrow, minding my own business and letting Donald rot. Much more sensible, I agree. The trouble is that I simply can’t do it. I see the hell he’s in. How can I just turn my back? Not when there’s a chance of getting him out. True enough, I may not manage it, but what I can’t face is not having tried.’
I came to a halt.
A blank pause.
‘Well,’ I said, raising a smile. ‘Here endeth the lesson according to the world’s foremost nit. Have fun at the races. I might go too, you never know.’
I sketched a farewell and eased myself out. Neither of them said a word. I shut the door quietly and took the lift up to my own room.
A pity about Sarah, I thought. She would have Jik in cottonwool and slippers if he didn’t look out; and he’d never paint those magnificent brooding pictures any more, because they sprang from a torment he would no longer be allowed. Security, to him, would be a sort of abdication; a sort of death.
I looked at my watch and decided the Yarra River Fine Arts set-up might still have its doors open. Worth trying.
I wondered, as I walked along Wellington Parade and up Swanston Street, whether the young turps-flinger would be there, and if he was, whether he would know me. I’d seen only glimpses of his face, as I’d mostly been standing behind him. All one could swear to was light-brown hair, acne on the chin, a round jaw-line and a full-lipped mouth. Under twenty. Perhaps not more than seventeen. Dressed in blue jeans, white tee-shirt, and tennis shoes. About five-foot-eight, a hundred and thirty pounds. Quick on his feet, and liable to panic. And no artist.
The gallery was open, brightly lit, with a horse painting on a gilt display easel in the centre of the window. Not a Munnings. A portrait picture of an Australian horse and jockey, every detail sharp-edged, emphatic, and, to my taste, overpainted. Beside it a notice, gold embossed on black, announced a special display of distinguished equine art; and beside that, less well-produced but with larger letters, stood a display card saying ‘Welcome to the Melbourne Cup’.