Jik could hardly bear it. ‘Sentimental tosh,’ he said.
Sarah looked downcast. ‘It may not be Art, but I like it.’
We found one with a flourishing signature; Harley Renbo. Large canvas, varnished, unframed.
‘Ah,’ I said appreciatively. ‘Yours.’
Harley Renbo inclined his head. Jik, Sarah and I gazed at his acknowledged work.
Derivative Stubbs-type. Elongated horses set in a Capability Brown landscape. Composition fair, anatomy poor, execution good, originality nil.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Where did you paint it?’
‘Oh... here.’
‘From memory?’ Sarah said admiringly. ‘How clever.’
Harley Renbo, at our urging, brought out two more examples of his work. Neither was better than the first, but one was a great deal smaller.
‘How much is this?’ I asked.
Jik glanced at me sharply, but kept quiet.
Harley Renbo mentioned a sum which had me shaking my head at once.
‘Awfully sorry,’ I said. ‘I like your work, but...’
The haggling continued politely for quite a long time, but we came to the usual conclusion, higher than the buyer wanted, lower than the painter hoped. Jik resignedly lent his credit card and we bore our trophy away.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jik exploded when we were safely out of earshot. ‘You could paint better than that when you were in your cradle. Why the hell did you want to buy that rubbish?’
‘Because,’ I said contentedly, ‘Harley Renbo is the copier.’
‘But this,’ Jik pointed to the parcel under my arm, ‘Is his own abysmal original work.’
‘Like fingerprints?’ Sarah said. ‘You can check other things he paints against this?’
‘Got brains, my wife,’ Jik said. ‘But that picture he wouldn’t sell was nothing like any Munnings I’ve ever seen.’
‘You never look at horse paintings if you can help it.’
‘I’ve seen more of your pathetic daubs than I care to.’
‘How about Raoul Millais?’ I said.
‘Jesus.’
We walked along the scorching street almost without feeling it.
‘I don’t know about you two,’ Sarah said. ‘But I’m going to buy a bikini and spend the rest of the day in the pool.’
We all bought swimming things, changed into them, splashed around for ages, and laid ourselves out on towels to dry. It was peaceful and quiet in the shady little garden. We were the only people there.
‘That picture of a pony and two boys, that you thought was nice,’ I said to Sarah.
‘Well, it was,’ she repeated defensively. ‘I liked it.’
‘It was a Munnings.’
She sat up abruptly on her towel.
‘Why ever didn’t you say so?’
‘I was waiting for our friend Renbo to tell us, but he didn’t.’
‘A real one?’ Sarah asked. ‘Or a copy?’
‘Real,’ Jik said, with his eyes shut against the sun dappling through palm leaves.
I nodded lazily. ‘I thought so, too,’ I said. ‘An old painting. Munnings had that grey pony for years when he was young, and painted it dozens of times. It’s the same one you saw in Sydney in “The Coming Storm’.”
‘You two do know a lot,’ Sarah said, sighing and lying down again.
‘Engineers know all about nuts and bolts,’ Jik said. ‘Do we get lunch in this place?’
I looked at my watch. Nearly two o’ clock. ‘I’ ll go and ask,’ I said.
I put shirt and trousers on over my sun-dried trunks and ambled from the outdoor heat into the refrigerated air of the lobby. No lunch, said the reception desk. We could buy lunch nearby at a takeaway and eat in the garden. Drink? Same thing. Buy your own at a bottle shop. There was an ice-making machine and plastic glasses just outside the door to the pool.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome.’
I looked at the ice-making machine on the way out. Beside it swung a neat notice: ‘We don’t swim in your toilet. Please don’t pee in our pool.’ I laughed across to Jik and Sarah and told them the food situation.
‘I’ ll go and get it,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’
Anything, they said.
‘And drink?’
‘Cinzano,’ Sarah said, and Jik nodded. ‘Dry white.’
‘O.K.’
I picked up my room key from the grass and set off to collect some cash for shopping. Walked along to the tree-shaded outside staircase, went up two storeys, and turned on to the blazing hot balcony.
There was a man walking along it towards me, about my own height, build and age; and I heard someone else coming up the stairs at my back.
Thought nothing of it. Motel guests like me. What else?
I was totally unprepared both for the attack itself, and for its ferocity.
10
They simply walked up to me, one from in front, one from behind.
They reached me together. They sprang into action like cats. They snatched the dangling room key out of my hand.
The struggle, if you could call it that, lasted less than five seconds. Between them, with Jik’s type of strength, they simply picked me up by my legs and armpits and threw me over the balcony.
It probably takes a very short time to fall two storeys. I found it long enough for thinking that my body, which was still whole, was going to be smashed. That disaster, not yet reached, was inevitable. Very odd, and very nasty.
What I actually hit first was one of the young trees growing round the staircase. Its boughs bent and broke and I crashed on through them to the hard driveway beneath.
The monstrous impact was like being wiped out. Like fusing electrical circuits. A flash into chaos. I lay in a semi-conscious daze, not knowing if I were alive or dead.
I felt warm. Simply a feeling, not a thought.
I wasn’t aware of anything else at all. I couldn’t move any muscle. Couldn’t remember I had muscles to move. I felt like pulp.
It was ten minutes, Jik told me later, before he came looking for me: and he came only because he wanted to ask me to buy a lemon to go with the Cinzano, if I had not gone already.
‘Jesus Christ Almighty,’ Jik’s voice, low and horrified, near my ear.
I heard him clearly. The words made sense.
I’m alive, I thought. I think, therefore I exist.
Eventually, I opened my eyes. The light was brilliant. Blinding. There was no one where Jik’s voice had been. Perhaps I’d imagined it. No I hadn’t. The world began coming back fast, very sharp and clear.
I knew also that I hadn’t imagined the fall. I knew, with increasing insistence, that I hadn’t broken my neck and hadn’t broken my back. Sensation, which had been crushed out, came flooding back with vigour from every insulted tissue. It wasn’t so much a matter of which bits of me hurt, as of finding out which didn’t. I remembered hitting the tree. Remembered the ripping of its branches. I felt both torn to shreds and pulverised. Frightfully jolly.
After a while I heard Jik’s voice returning. ‘He’s alive,’ he said, ‘and that’s about all.’
‘It’s impossible for anyone to fall off our balcony. It’s more than waist high.’ The voice of the reception desk, sharp with anger and anxiety. A bad business for motels, people falling off their balconies.
‘Don’t... panic,’ I said. It sounded a bit croaky.
‘Todd!’ Sarah appeared, kneeling on the ground and looking pale.
‘If you give me time...’ I said. ‘... I’ll fetch... the Cinzano.’ How much time? A million years should be enough.
‘You sod,’ Jik said, standing at my feet and staring down. ‘You gave us a shocking fright.’ He was holding a broken-off branch of tree.
‘Sorry.’
‘Get up, then.’