The Old Knowledge Page 10

  Janet is with her now, no doubt cooing in her grandmotherly way over the new pregnancy. Ingrid is adamant that she doesn’t want to see Peds. She just wants her baby. And although Peds will probably believe that she made an honest mistake with the herbs, it’s hard to predict how he will react to her attitude to him. Janet and I will stay and look after her, because she says that’s what she wants. She seems entirely rational and clear-headed now.

  But how will we keep Peds at bay once he finds out she’s pregnant?

  We may have to spirit her away.

  The Picture

  The picture hung at the far end of the junk shop, its quality shining as clear as a moonbeam through the detritus that surrounded it. Sadie thought at first that it must be a print, but closer inspection proved it to be indeed a drawing, as the label affixed to it claimed. In it, a dark haired, curiously androgynous figure, half-draped in a voluminous white garment, gazed adoringly, imploringly, in profile at some unseen entity above. His slender, long-fingered hands (Sadie decided it was a he, despite the shoulder length hair) were clasped together over his chest. She thought it was mid-Victorian, probably Continental, possibly French, and of a very high standard of draughtsmanship.

  The price was £65. She could hardly believe her luck. Bargains like this didn’t come her way every day, and she should be able to sell it for a lot more, especially if she could have a stab at identifying, or at least suggesting, the artist. Art wasn’t her area of expertise—she specialised in small silver items—but she had learnt that it was profitable to take opportunities when they presented themselves. She lifted the picture in its decrepit wooden frame from the hook and carried it to the desk at the front of the shop.

  ‘Young lady,’ said the elderly proprietor as he wrapped the picture in brown paper. ‘You have found our treasure.’ He looked up into her face, his eyes startlingly blue in the creased pink skin. ‘I hope you have a suitable place for it in your home?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ lied Sadie. ‘It’s great isn’t it. Where did it come from?’ It would be useful to get some provenance.

  The old man sighed. ‘I first sold this picture many years ago, but it came back to me. Perhaps it will stay away this time.

  Not a great deal of help, she thought. She paid with cash (after having negotiated a small discount) and left.

  Back at her flat, Sadie unwrapped the picture and propped it up on her bedroom chair. It really was very good. The eye in particular was both luminous and limpid. It was hard to determine whether the subject was in an ecstasy of adoration or religious fervour, or pleading with some invisible adversary for mercy. Each individual strand of hair had been delineated and the shading of the folds of the garment was really well done.

  Fetching a scalpel from her desk drawer, Sadie turned the picture over, carefully cut through the mouldy backing paper and removed it, revealing the rear of the cream coloured mounting card. Gingerly, she took out the picture in its mount and, turning it over, lifted the card away. The drawing was on artists’ paper grown fragile with age. There was a small tear at the bottom, normally hidden by the mount. There was no signature or notes concerning the subject matter on the back. Replacing the picture in its frame, Sadie taped up the rear with masking tape. She would keep it in the rather tatty ebony frame because it was probably the original, and, without any provenance or the artist’s identity, it would most likely sell to the sort of purchaser who thought they were spotting an unacknowledged masterpiece. To that kind of collector, a slightly scruffy, original presentation would only add to its appeal.

  But before she thought about pricing it, Sadie needed to do some research. She booted up her computer and spent a couple of hours surfing among her favourite auction results sites. Some of these had illustrations of works that had been sold, along with the prices they had realised. She looked at examples of the drawings of as many nineteenth-century European artists as she could find, but there was nothing sufficiently like the style of the picture. She remained convinced, however, that her initial impression of its age and origin were correct.

  Sadie found many of her small objects of desire in charity shops. She was also an habituée of car boot sales, village fêtes and junk shops. Most of her finds were sold on an internet auction site, or occasionally, for the more spectacular discoveries, she used one of the prestigious London auctioneers. She made a decent enough living at it, although she had to travel around a lot and it was very time consuming. Most of all, she enjoyed being her own boss, unbeholden to anyone. For this picture, she thought, an internet auction site might work best. She would take some photographs and cook up a description in the morning.

  That night, Sadie had trouble getting to sleep, and as she tossed and turned, the image of the picture flickered unbidden into her mind. That imploring eye seemed filled with the deepest agony, the clasping hands claw-like and strained. In the end, she sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. The picture was facing her on the chair, the subject’s perpetual position of supplication, the enigma of his expression, enhanced by the dim light. She got up, fetched a glass of milk, and turned the picture to the wall. Soon she was asleep and dreaming unremarkable dreams.

  In the morning, after breakfast, Sadie took some photographs of the picture with her digital camera and then sat down at the computer. She typed the description quickly:

  A fine nineteenth-century drawing in the style of Charles Gleyre (1806-1874), the Swiss academic painter and tutor of Monet and Renoir, amongst others, who was known for this type of detailed pencil and graphite portrait.

  She didn’t think the drawing was especially like Gleyre’s work, but he was of the right period and his work was sufficiently similar to merit the rather tenuous association.

  The subject is a particularly appealing one, being a young male figure in adoration of an unseen loved one. The detailing of the fabric and the facial features is exemplary. A must for collectors of High Victorian art. Starting bid £199.

  With descriptions of works like these, she reasoned, less is more. Besides, the picture would speak for itself. She uploaded the photographs and set up the item for a five day auction.

  When she looked at the picture again, as she stored it in her wardrobe, the subject seemed more sorrowful than anything. His eye appeared to be brimming with moisture, his full bottom lip trembling with soon to be overwhelming emotion.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find you a nice new home,’ she found herself saying as she closed the wardrobe door.

  Sadie spent the rest of the day on a hunt around the charity shops of a neighbouring town. In the Help the Aged store, she was delighted to find a very dirty early twentieth-century silver vesta case, hallmarked for Birmingham and nicely engraved with ivy leaves, for a few pounds. Cleaned up, it would look quite impressive and should sell to a collector for over fifty pounds. In a junk shop, she found a small Doulton vase and an Art Deco clock. Oxfam yielded a 1960s smoking jacket, a Japanese cloisonné bowl and five 1970s Beano annuals in very good condition. This was her stock-in-trade.

  She bought sandwiches from a bakery for lunch and then trawled through the last few charity shops. In the Scope shop she had a real piece of luck, picking up a beautiful, if tarnished, eighteenth century patch box—a real find and one that would be keenly fought over by collectors. On a high, she headed back to her flat, spending the early part of the afternoon cleaning the artefacts she had purchased and taking photographs of them. Then she went on-line to check the items that were already up for auction. She found that she had three messages asking questions about items; two of them concerned the picture. The first was more of an essay than a question.

  From carazon

  You say that he is in adoration of an unseen loved one, but are you quite sure this is a romantic picture? I’d say we have here a religious subject, one of the saints, or Judas, perhaps, repenting. Anyway, a very fine picture but not for me. I’d rather keep religious emotionalism out of my home! And anyway, he’s a bit creepy. No restraint at all!

/>   The second was downright peculiar.

  From fallen angel

  This is a warning. You are meddling with something you do not understand. The picture must be returned from whence it came, otherwise you will be held responsible. It should not be displayed. HEED THIS WARNING OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

  Sadie let out a little laugh. She had learnt that there were many strange people populating the internet. There were no bids on the picture yet, but some of her other items were doing very well, in particular a silver gilt, enamelled matchbox cover by David Anderson of Norway that she had found at a car boot sale and which was currently yielding £110. She rose from her desk and retrieved the picture from the wardrobe. The subject wasn’t particularly handsome, she decided, but rather, sensitive. Indeed, as she was looking at him now, his expression appeared almost reproachful, as if he was harbouring some hurt or wrong done to him. All the cares of the world seemed to weigh on his slender, sloping shoulders. It really was the most extraordinary drawing. Sadie found herself hoping that it would be bought by someone who really appreciated it, a sentiment she had long since lost over most of her auctioned items.

  Over the next three days, bidding on the picture began in earnest. Two customers in particular were vying with each other, not being prepared to wait until the last day of the auction. The result was that the purchase price rose steadily. Sadie kept the picture on her bedroom chair and had taken to talking to it from time to time, commenting on her day and her feelings about her journalist boyfriend Sam, away on an extended work trip to Rwanda, had stopped phoning so often. The man in the picture seemed to understand.

  During those three days she had several more incredible pieces of luck. A church fête in Stevendon yielded a beautifully delicate Meissen figurine of a shepherdess with attendant sheep. In St Albans she was offered a silver gilt Georgian snuff box with cruciform decoration for a twentieth of its retail value; and, most spectacularly of all, in a Mind shop in Tring, she found, hidden in a cardboard box of brass candlesticks, a small Fabergé gold ornament with purple guilloche enamelling, a diamond encrusted rim and a raised cartouche on two sides, one decorated with tiny gold angels, the other with devils. The angels had ruby eyes, the devils emerald. It was a most unusual piece, almost overblown, and, beneath the accumulated dirt, of the most astounding quality. It was something she had always dreamed of finding. This might set her up for years to come—she would, at the very least, be able to afford a mortgage on a house with a garden. Her thoughts raced ahead, planning for the future for her and Sam. Sadie took the ornament to the sales desk with a couple of the candlesticks as camouflage, trembling lest the sales assistant should recognise it for what it was. But the bored-looking middle-aged woman at the till simply gave it the most cursory glance before shoving it in a carrier bag with the candlesticks and ringing up the paltry sum due.

  Her big find took place on the final day of the auction of the picture, and the same evening Sadie received another message from ‘fallen angel’:

  WHY WON’T YOU LISTEN? Surely you know by now what the picture brings with it? Do as I say: withdraw it from the auction and take it back to where you found it.

  ‘Nutter!’ said Sadie to the picture. She was in a very buoyant mood, and had not yet come down from the excitement of her Fabergé find. ‘You seem to have brought me nothing but good luck.’ The youth looked adoringly at his invisible object. ‘I’ll be sad to see you go.’

  Bidding on the picture was still active, and the final price was an astounding £604. The buyer turned out to be a Mr David Swinton from North Yorkshire. He seemed from his emails to be very enthusiastic and pleased with his purchase. Sadie wrapped up the picture carefully in bubble wrap and cardboard, and took it to the post office, having first wished it well on its journey to its new home. Once it had gone, she got down to looking over and cleaning some of her recent purchasers and deciding where they were to be sold. The Fabergé ornament, she thought, as she burnished it with a soft cloth, would go to Christies. She was holding her future in her hands.

  **

  The valuer took his lens away from his eye and looked curiously at Sadie.

  ‘You do know what this is?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Sadie. ‘My grandmother left it to me, but I need some cash so I thought I would sell it.’

  ‘Well, its Fabergé, obviously, but perhaps you don’t know that its one of a group of three ornaments called, colloquially, The Holy Trinity. There are two more, one in the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the other in a private collection in Russia. This one has been missing for about eighty-five years—it was brought out of Russia by a White Russian family who emigrated to London after the Revolution of 1917. It disappeared from their house in mysterious circumstances in 1923. This is the main piece, the central ornament, designed to be flanked by the other two. If this was an ordinary piece of Fabergé, then I’d say it was worth around £4,000, but as it’s from The Holy Trinity, it is literally priceless.’

  Sadie could hardly keep a lid on her excitement. He looked at her over his spectacles and continued.

  ‘However, I think we’d have to ask some serious questions about its provenance. Where did your “grandmother”, for instance, get it from? It was probably stolen from the Pretovskis, so can we really say that it belongs to you? We’d have to weigh up these matters very carefully before proceeding with any sale.’

  Sadie grabbed the ornament and bolted.

  Over the next few days, things continued to take a more unpleasant turn. Sadie dropped the Meissen shepherdess figurine and it smashed into a thousand pieces on her kitchen floor. The Georgian snuff box turned out to be brass and a fake to boot, and, to cap it all, David Swinton returned the picture. He emailed to ask for his money back and wrote that, although he loved it, and had hung it in his bedroom, some odd things had been happening to him since he bought it. He had had two days of good luck—he had been given a longed for promotion, a premium bond had come up, some medical test results turned out to be negative—but then, things had begun to go wrong. His wife had taken against the picture, claiming that it was mawkish and unsettling, and had made him take it down. The promotion turned out to be a poisoned chalice, he was expected to work unreasonably long hours and his new boss was a Gorgon. The doctor had called him in for some more tests, and the premium bond money was soon eaten up in paying off a couple of loans his wife had taken out without telling him. What’s more, every time he looked at the picture, he seemed to see something different, and he had become tormented by not knowing what it was the subject was contemplating with such ecstasy. He was sorry, and could only apologise, but he really couldn’t live with it any more.

  Although she was sorry to pay back the money, Sadie was surprisingly pleased to have the picture again. She hung it in her small living room and there it looked completely at home—it achieved a sort of instant permanency.

  Good luck returned: Sam telephoned to say that he would be back within the fortnight, and she made a few interesting finds in her antiquing expeditions, though obviously nothing as good as the Fabergé ornament. She had decided to put that on the internet auction site on a short term listing and just trust that no one who knew what it was would be likely to spot it. She was reconciled to the fact that she could not expect to reap anywhere near its true value.

  She concocted a suitably vague description and put it up for auction. Later that evening ‘fallen angel’ sent her another message.

  The picture is responsible. Why wouldn’t you listen? Return it to where you found it. It is the only way.

  This was getting beyond a joke, but it was true that Sadie was beginning to find the picture a trifle unnerving. There was something about the man’s completely uninhibited abandonment to passion that was somehow distasteful. And he was starting to look reproachful again, as if expecting some response from her that she was unable to give. When Sam finally washed up on her doorstep, tired and hungry after his journey from Russia and Heathrow, he too
k an instant dislike to it, called it ‘an effete piece of Victorian melodrama’, and made her take it off the wall.

  ‘I was going to sell it, anyway,’ she said, swallowing the ‘again’. ‘I think he’s bored of being here. He needs a new challenge.’

  But what she did instead was to take it back to the shop where she found it. Inside, the junk was, as it had been before, piled in impossible, teetering heaps on every available surface. The proprietor’s pink, wrinkled little face fell when he saw Sadie.

  ‘So, you have returned, young lady. And so has the picture. Somehow I thought that you would.’

  He took the picture from her and shuffled to the back of the shop where he hung it on its original hook on the wall.

  **

  That evening, Sadie showed Sam the Fabergé ornament and explained where she had found it. She didn’t tell him what the Christies valuer had said. He looked at it in silence for a long time, and then turned to her.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to say something to you for a while about your way of earning a living, but this really takes the biscuit as far as I’m concerned. Have you any idea how much those charities need money to carry out their work? Think about how many children could be fed with the proceeds of this hideous, rich man’s bauble. I’ve seen some terrible things in Africa that have really opened my eyes. I’m sorry Sadie, but I think this whole business is immoral.’

  They had a furious row, which ended in Sam telling her that, as far as he was concerned, they were finished. He had been thinking about it for some time, he said. Sadie was distraught. She even abandoned herself so far as to get down on her knees and implore, plead with him not to go, her eyes gazing up at him in a focus of agony, her hands twisted together against her breast.

  Acknowledgements