William Boyd - Stars and bars

She replaced her sunglasses. “I was going to be married,” she said in a quiet, solemn voice. “Three days before the ceremony my fiancé was killed in a car crash. I came back home. That was six months ago.”

“Oh. I’m really sorry.” He felt very sad, all of a sudden. “I didn’t realize…”

“Actually, that’s not true.”

“Really.” He felt angry, all of a sudden. What was true in this family?

“I was at medical school. After a while I just couldn’t see the point. All those illnesses, you know. Not just the big heavy ones; it was the horrible little ones; the ‘syndromes’, the ‘diseases’, the ones named after people. Too many of those to cope with.”

There was a pause.

“Duane seems to be back,” Henderson said. “Will he have fixed my car or is that too much to hope for?”

“See you later, Mr Dores.”

♦

That afternoon Henderson took polaroid snapshots of all the paintings. Going round clockwise from the door, he measured each painting, took it off the wall to check the back, made a brief description and noted the title, if it was signed — recorded the position — and dated. Back in New York he would consult the catalogue raisonee of each artist but he felt instinctively that all the paintings were ‘right’.

He broke off for dinner. His saliva glands squirted into action when Alma-May entered with a large steaming casserole dish containing what she described as ‘spaghetti bongaleeze’. It turned out to be a vegetarian version, however, with various types of nut substituted for the meat. It was reasonably tasty, though, and Henderson ate his modest portion with some enthusiasm — mixed with vague qualms about whether one could actually overdose on vegetable fibre. His bowels seemed to have shut down entirely: the drains were well and truly blocked.

Pudding turned out to be apple pie, cooked in a roasting tin with inch-thick wholemeal pastry. Alma-May had halved the apples but this was the only concession she had made to fruit preparation. In his portion Henderson found a twig with a few leaves on it. Perhaps Alma-May simply lined her roasting tin with pastry, set it on the ground in the orchard and shook the trees till the fruit fell in…

Bryant seemed quite content and after dinner went back upstairs to rejoin Duane and his music. Henderson caught her alone for a moment and asked her if she were enjoying herself.

“Sure. It’s OK.”

“You’re absolutely positive you don’t want to go home?”

“Yes. I’ll stay.”

“Did you have a good day in Atlanta?”

“It was all right.”

“Tell me, what’s Duane like?”

“He’s OK.”

♦

He sat and watched television with Gage and Beckman until about eleven o’clock and then went to bed. He undressed and looked at his naked body in the mirror. His belly was as hard and distended as a gourd. He looked at his hairless shanks and collapsing buttocks and was not well pleased with what he saw. He made a half-hearted resolve to exercise. Perhaps he should take up jogging? But then he remembered he did exercise: he fenced. He did a few zencing drills, up on his toes and lunging until his calves ached. Then he climbed into bed.

He thought for a while about his coming reunion with Irene. It was, he thought, a little uncharacteristic of her to relent so quickly. Perhaps she had missed him? Perhaps, he speculated, she had fallen in love with him? This, however, proved beyond the powers of his imagination.

He settled down on his back waiting for the night to pass. From time to time there were ominous rumblings and pingings from his hard bloated stomach. What he needed was some stodge: some cholesterol, carcinogens and red meat. Alma-May’s regime was too harsh: more suited to an animal, some robust herbivore, a camel or a giraffe; some beast with a mouth full of flat grinding molars, and whose idea of a delicacy was to strip the bark from a sapling. His model of late twentieth-century man just wasn’t designed for such rigours. If he didn’t have some monosodium glutamate within the next twenty-four hours he’d start getting the shakes.

He heard Duane’s music stop and the night noises were left to themselves. He worried vaguely for a while about the population explosion, the disappearing rain forests and the destruction of the ionosphere by aerosol sprays and at some point in the small hours consciousness left him.

The next morning Henderson completed his rough catalogue and showed it to Gage.

“All that remains to be settled now, Mr Gage, are the prices and the date of the auction.” He handed over his estimate of the paintings’ value.

Reserve

Estimate

Sisley

Le Verger a Voisins

$500,000;

550,000–650,000

Sisley

Les Toits de Marly

$500,000

600,000–700,000

Derain

La Belandre Verte

$300,000

400,000–500,000

Van Dongen

Still Life

$100,000

100,000–150,000

Van Dongen

Still Life

$100,000

125,000–200,000

Braque

A l’Atelier

$280,000

350,000–500,000

Utrillo

Montmagny en hiver

$200,000

250,000–300,000

Vuillard

Petit Dejeuner

$200,000

225,000–300,000

Vuillard

$150,000

Interieur Bleu

200,000–250,000

§

“You’ll see that the reserve column totals $2,330,000,” he said. “That’s the minimum for which we will allow them to be sold. Needless to say that price is kept strictly confidential. I’ve based it on current sale-room performance, but, for example, I think Vuillard is grossly undervalued at the moment, but there you are. Anyway, absolutely no problem about meeting the reserve, I’m sure. Lots of them will go much higher as well. The Braque, the Sisleys…”

“Two million three,” Gage pondered. “Where do you guys make your money?”

“We charge the buyers a ten per cent commission on top of the sale price. We normally charge the seller a rate too, but in this case we are happy to waive it.”

“Nice business. What about the landscapes?”

“I don’t think we’re likely to clear more than another, oh, $100,000 if we’re lucky.”

“I see.”

“Well, it’s been a pleasure—”

“You mean you’re finished?”

“Well, me personally. There’s the insurance, packing, transportation, catalogues, exhibition and advertising to be taken care of, but that will be in the hands of our very capable staff. If you’re happy with these reserve figures, then there’s nothing more for you to worry about.”

“Oh.” Gage seemed disgruntled.

“Is there anything wrong?”

“I guess I didn’t figure you’d be through so fast.”

“I am just the valuer and assessor,” Henderson explained. “My job is really quite straightforward. And I have,” he added gently, “been here since Sunday — five days. I’m usually no longer than an afternoon.”

Gage appeared to be deep in perplexed thought. “I see. I suppose you’ll be going soon.”

“I thought tomorrow.”

“Mmm.”

Henderson left him and went to check on his car. He wondered what was bothering the old man. He had put up with the bizarre household purely because of the importance and magnitude of the sale. Us valuers, he told himself a little smugly, don’t like to linger. Pruitt Halfacre rarely took more than an hour.

He walked down the front steps. It was another clear hot day. His car had already acquired its coating of dust and its metal sides were hot to the touch. He walked round it and saw with irritation that the wheel still had not been replaced. Bloody Duane, he thought. There was nothing for it. He took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He had last changed the wheel on a car some time in the 1960 son a motoring tour of the Loire valley, but all he could remember of the exercise was some hideous complication with the jack and subsequent acrimonious row with his then girlfriend.