Barbara Taylor Bradford - Playing the Game

He took the book from her, and found one of the pages he wanted. ‘Let me read this to you … In your arms was still delight, quiet as a street at night; and thoughts of you, I do remember, were green leaves in a darkened chamber, were dark clouds in a moonless sky.’ He paused, then murmured, ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. It’s part of a Rupert Brooke poem called “Retrospect". But it doesn’t refer to a painting.’

‘It does, actually. Below those lines he wrote this … Oh my poor Cézanne. Lost to me. My lovely darkened chamber. Ruined. Gone forever. Damn that bloody soot. I should have had the chimneys cleaned … Could it be soot on the Cézanne, Annette?’

‘Most probably.’ She sat up straighter. ‘You know, I thought it was years of grime on it, but it is soot.’ She grimaced. ‘I hope it can be cleaned off …’ Her voice trailed away; worry clouded her light blue eyes.

‘So do I. We can go and look at it. I have it in one of the sitting rooms I emptied of furniture. I turned it into a storage room.’

‘When did you find the notebook, Chris?’

‘About a week or two ago. Why?’

He should have told her before. Careless not to. Didn’t the art matter to him?

Clearing her throat, she said, with a shrug, ‘I just wondered. That’s all. I’d like to see the Cézanne again, and I want you to bring it up to London early next week. I’ll ring you on Monday and give you the address of the restorer to whom you must take it. I hope he’s available: he’s the most brilliant in the business. His name is Carlton Fraser.’

‘I’ll do that. Annette?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you upset about something?’

‘No, why do you ask?’

‘You’ve got an odd look on your face.’

‘Have I?’ Another shrug of her shoulders. ‘I was thinking about your uncle, and how eloquently he described the Cézanne, at least the way he saw it … all those dark greens that the artist favoured. Most appropriate.’

‘He was an interesting man. Here’s something else he wrote.’ Christopher flipped the pages again, and went on, ‘Just a few words, which baffled me at first. So listen to this. My poor little girl, gone from me. The beautiful girl, beautiful no more. I must bury her … That’s all there is. But I found her.’

‘Oh, my God! Is he referring to a child?’ Her hand came up to her mouth and she shook her head. ‘Did he bury a child?’ She shuddered involuntarily, aghast.

‘No, no. Don’t look so alarmed. It’s not a human child. What I found was a rather disreputable-looking statue. Do you want to see it?’

‘Immediately.’ She stood up. Her face was white. ‘I’m sorry I frightened you,’ he apologized, lightly touching her arm.

No, not you, she thought. There’s something about this house that chills me to the bone, and for a reason I don’t understand. Taking a deep breath, Annette said, ‘I’m fine, I was just startled. The way you presented it to me was … well, I thought he’d buried a dead child.’

Annette followed Christopher across the enormous hall, with its high-flung vaulted ceiling, polished oak floor and huge chandelier. She glanced around, shivered. There was something creepy about this place. Why had she not noticed it last year? It had been summer. Warm weather and sunshine, of course. On this cold March day it had acquired bleak aspects.

She was glad she had worn a grey flannel trouser suit and cashmere sweater, and that she had told Laurie to do the same. Even though Knowle Court was centrally heated and fires burned in almost every room, a damp coldness seemed to permeate the whole place.

As they walked towards the sitting room where he was storing pieces of art, Annette asked, ‘How did you manage to find the statue?’

‘There are quite a lot of trunks and boxes stored in the attics, and I went through them all. It was fortunate that my uncle had scrawled my beautiful girl on one side of a large cardboard box, and when I opened it I discovered the sculpture.’

‘That was lucky. The box is in the room where the Cézanne is stored?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve put some other artworks in there, since you said you might want to have more than one piece in the next auction.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘Here we are.’ Christopher opened a door, ushered Annette inside. ‘Do you want to look at the Cézanne first? It’s over there on the trestle table.’

She hurried across the floor, anxious to view the painting again, apprehension trickling through her as she thought of the damage the soot could have caused to the canvas.

Christopher, moving ahead, whipped the cotton sheet off the trestle table, and stood waiting for her, the painting revealed.

When she looked down at the Cézanne, she saw immediately that the painting looked a bit darker in parts than it had last August when she had first seen it. But that day was sunny. Perhaps it was something to do with the dreary light today. Soot didn’t run or spread. It was composed of carbon deposits from burning coal, and she was certain it was difficult to remove from anything.

Oh, God, she thought, leaning closer, peering at the canvas. However will Carlton bring this back to life? He was most probably the only man who could, if that was at all possible.

Christopher, hovering next to her, was suddenly nervous. ‘You seem worried.’

‘I am,’ Annette responded. ‘However, Carlton Fraser is a genius, and I’m not going to give in to anticipatory despair. The painting is full of those wonderful dark, dark greens Cézanne loved to use, and so perhaps it looks worse than it really is. Now, where’s the statue?’

‘It’s here.’ As he spoke, Christopher pulled a large cardboard box across the floor and opened the top flaps.

Annette looked inside. What she saw gave her quite a start; instantly, she pulled back, the breath knocked out of her, then she knelt down, opened the flaps wider for a better view. She stared for a long time at the object lying on the bottom of the box, hardly able to accept what she was seeing. A little surge of excitement ran through her, and she prayed she was correct about the statue. Putting her hand in the box, she touched it tentatively and closed her eyes.

After a moment she stared at Christopher. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘You have had it out of the box, haven’t you?’ ‘Yes, I have, but I wasn’t very impressed with it, so I put it back.’

‘Would you lift it out, so that I can look at it properly please, Chris?’

‘Of course I will.’ He did as she asked. ‘Where do you want me to put it?’

‘I think over there, on the round table near the window, please.’ To think she could have seen this two weeks ago if only he had had the sense to phone her. She was beginning to have her doubts about him.

Once it was on the table, Annette walked in a circle, viewing the piece from every angle. Her heart was pounding. She could hardly contain herself, her excitement growing. Suddenly she experienced that wonderful surge of joyousness that came over her when she looked at a great Impressionist painting, most especially a Renoir. It was a kind of momentary ecstasy, and thrilling.

He said, ‘It looks so grubby, surely it’s not anything of importance? Why are you so interested in it?’

For a moment Annette could not bear to answer him, and she certainly couldn’t look at him. She was afraid he would see the irritation on her face.

Finally, she said, ‘The last time I saw something very similar to this at auction, the hammer came down on it for eleven million dollars. And that was ten years ago.’