Love Song Read online

  Of course she could not say as much to him, and naturally, as soon as she followed him into his offices – cream walls, more paintings of the most beautiful kind – she felt inadequate.

  Not that Claire was down-at-heel by any means. Before she left Keeper’s she had gone to great trouble to see that all her clothes were mended and her shoes soled and heeled. And Mellie had been brilliant to her, giving her some truly ‘London’ clothes, things that Aunt Rosabel and Dads had brought back that day so long ago, which, Mellie said, she had no use for now, not really, since she was never out of jodhpurs. Nevertheless, in her plain-cut navy-blue jacket and skirt, as she stood in the high-ceilinged elegant room Claire felt that she knew just how some messenger boy from a postal service might feel in his serge clothes, with his biro at the ready for signing. Plain, ordinary, serviceable, and no part of this other life that she sensed around her. This life where every object had a value of its own. Where perhaps William Morris’s exhortation to surround yourself with something beautiful had been not absorbed, but inhaled. Here in this room not to be beautiful would be to stand out.

  In fact, Claire realized, as she shook hands and sat down – feet together, ankles not crossed – here in this world that Crawford Haye had created, everything was in reverse of everything that happened in real life. Out there in the street if you were beautiful people turned to stare, or lingered to look at you, not quite able to believe that you were real. Here everything was decorative and fascinating. Here – and at this realization Claire gave an inner sigh, the sigh that someone might give who had searched and searched for some kind of truth and at last had found it – here was perfection.

  Crawford, on the other hand, not knowing how Claire was feeling, could only stare in satisfaction at what he saw before him. His secretary, Marjorie Vickers, his adored right hand dogsbody, was away nursing her sick mother, and her stand-in, sent by some footling agency, had proved so unsuitable for his particular needs at that moment that it was laughable. He needed someone for a specific purpose, now.

  Not tomorrow, not the next day, but now.

  And here she was, and unbelievably she was not in the least like the last one they had sent, skinny-bodied, multi-ringed, with a satin tan and a tight little body in a microskirt, not to mention blond locks and a dazzling white-toothed smile – she was round-eyed, a tiny bit plump, bespectacled and wearing navy clothes such as nannies in parks wore.

  In short, Miss Claire Merriott was perfect for what he wanted, in every way. Not only in looks but in manner, her obvious out-of-town innocence contrasting delightfully with her direct look, a look that had a touching defiance.

  ‘I don’t want to know about your word processor proficiency, I don’t want to know if you know a Constable from a Miró, I only want to know if you can be trusted to be discreet, Miss Merriott,’ he told her, after the usual preliminaries. ‘That is what I need to know. Can I trust you?’

  Claire shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t say so,’ she confessed. ‘I find it terribly difficult to keep a secret, so if you want me to keep one, well I can’t. I always want to tell someone. I can’t help it. I think it comes of having sisters and always telling each other things.’

  Crawford stared at this young bespectacled girl in front of him. Was she really that trustworthy, was anyone? ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Well, so am I, actually. I really can’t stand anyone telling me a secret, so if you want to tell me one, please don’t. It makes me feel as if I’ve put on weight. I mean I go around feeling the weight of it all the time. I find myself waking up in the morning thinking, Oh my God, someone’s told me a secret! Supposing I forget it is a secret and tell someone I shouldn’t! No, I’m sorry, Mr Haye, I can tell a jolly good lie, as good a lie as the next person as a matter of fact, but I can’t lie about this. I can’t, simply can’t, keep a secret, so please don’t ask me to.’

  Crawford opened his mouth to say something, and then, frowning, closed it, only to open it again to laugh with genuine amusement.

  ‘Miss Claire Merriott, you must be the only person – besides my secretary Marjorie, that is – whom I find I may be able to trust!’

  ‘Yes, but why do you need to trust me? You mean because of all the valuable things here? I mean, if that is it, well, yes, you can trust me, because I am immensely reliable about things, especially beautiful things.’ She nodded at the mallows in their beautiful china bowls, at the small maquettes on tables, dotted about the room, at a collection of Chinese figures of infinite delicacy, at the lamps with their silk shades. ‘I have lived with beautiful things, just for a little while, in my great-great-aunt’s house, and so I am all right around them. But don’t tell me a secret, because I just can’t live with those.’

  Crawford noticed that once she had actually stopped talking she sat quite still, composed, and there again, the odd contrast between her obvious naivety and her ruthless honesty was suddenly strangely affecting.

  Encouraged by this, he crossed from behind the desk to sit down on her side, and he leaned back in his chair, amused and delighted by her, and once he was closer to her Claire could see that this was so, at which she blushed and hoped that he had not noticed, but of course he had, and it made him smile again, because Miss Claire Merriott was not only everything that he wanted for his particular purposes, she was more. She was perfect. Straight up from the country, clean and pressed appearance, polished shoes, her long hair held back by a tortoiseshell Alice band.

  ‘Now. Let’s see. We should begin at the beginning—’

  Knowing her Alice, Claire promptly murmured, ‘—and go on until we stop.’

  Crawford’s smile broadened. ‘Very good. I always think you can trust people who know their Alice.’

  ‘But not with a secret,’ Claire insisted.

  ‘We have, I think, established that,’ he agreed, and Claire saw at once that he was getting just a little tired of her insistence on her inability to keep a secret because his foot went up and down and he crossed his legs and tapped a small, smooth stone which was on the desk beside him a trifle impatiently.

  ‘Sorry. But I just don’t want to let you down.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  Claire stared at him. His eyes were of a grey-blue that she normally would not have really liked but, in contrast to his blue-grey hair, they were very attractive.

  ‘Here’s how it is. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but I have to trust you, because quite frankly I am desperate. Now if I tell you I am an art dealer, or that I deal in art, then I think it is very likely that you will probably instantly despise me, or lose respect for me anyway; but the point is, and it is a point, we are not all the same. And I have honourably distrusted my business life all my life. It just so happens that sometimes I – well, sometimes I find something, and thereby hangs my reputation. Sometimes, through completely fair means, I know that there is a painting which I must acquire, which, perhaps, I have always wanted to acquire, and which sometimes I acquire to keep, but – and here is the big but – such is my reputation, if I go to the auction, if I bid for it, or if my secretary Marjorie bids for it, since the rest of the art world knows myself, and Marjorie, we will lose it.’

  Claire stared at Crawford. This was more than a secret, it was a conspiracy and she thrilled to the very idea of it, most particularly because a conspiracy was something which, in her mind anyway, was somehow shored up against secrecy. You could not be even remotely tempted to give a conspiracy away, simply because whatever it was would not then happen. Quite different from a secret where it had already happened, and you simply must not let anyone else know that it had. She could not even be tempted to tell Mellie about a conspiracy, because it would be the end of it. Like telling someone you had fallen in love.

  ‘That is why I have to trust you, you see, Miss Merriott. I am so well known that the moment I wave my paddle the price will go rocketing, and …’ He paused, giving her a considering look, wondering whether or not to play this particular card. De
ciding that he would, he finished, ‘…and the painting will be lost to England for ever.’

  ‘That would be awful,’ Claire agreed diplomatically. ‘We must keep our art in England. Always.’

  ‘I think we must.’

  ‘Too much has been lost. Successive governments have ripped the art world apart, and it is time they were made to see they can’t!’ she added with a flourish.

  ‘Precisely my feelings. But I must come clean about this particular painting. I shall not be donating it to a museum quite yet. What I shall be doing, I am sorry to tell you, is a great deal less altruistic. If I manage to acquire it I shall be hanging it on the wall, over there, where I can see it and enjoy it.’

  ‘Which is what the artist would have wanted. Entertainment on walls is what pictures are, according to one of our leading painters.’

  Crawford frowned. He had never thought of art in precisely that way, but there was no reason not to think of it like that. After all, whether the picture be the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary or a bath scene by Bonnard, the ideas behind it – the love of life, devotion to Christianity, or in Bonnard’s case a woman – were all the same kinds of themes that filled cinemas, or theatres, or concert halls, and everyone always happily described those as ‘entertainment’.

  ‘You have thought a great deal about these things, haven’t you, Miss Merriott?’

  ‘It’s living in the country. All that time on your hands!’

  Claire started to pull on her gloves. Precious leather gloves that she had bought especially for the interview, knowing that they could give the right impression, that they would reassure, in case the rest of her should fail to do so.

  ‘Wiltshire?’ He glanced down at her CV and for a second Claire’s mind raced back to Keeper’s Cottage where Mellie was, and then to the Mill House where the ‘littles’ were, and from there to the County Hospital where Aunt Rosabel had died and where her mother now lay.

  They were all so spread out now, all of them in different parts of the country, and all waiting for something to happen to them. Mellie with the Grey Goose and Mums with her struggle for life, and Jack with Mums, and Rose in London, somewhere quite near probably, auditioning for drama schools – everyone, just waiting for something to happen.

  So when Mr Haye said that one word ‘Wiltshire’ it was no longer a county, it was a whole pattern of life. It was people. It was waiting.

  ‘Yes, the Marlborough Downs, Pewsey Vale, all that,’ Claire murmured while wondering if he could read her mind, or follow it, as helicopters followed cars from above, or trains whizzing down rails.

  If Mr Haye had been able to follow her train of thought, what would he have thought? He would not have thought Claire was some quite dull girl in navy-blue clothes, he would have thought of her as being complicated and highly strung, or as how Aunt Rosabel used sometimes to describe people – nervy.

  ‘So here’s how it is, Miss Merriott, because we had better get on with the business of the day. I want you, as you are, nothing changed, to go tomorrow and bid for a painting for me. It should not be very expensive. Perhaps at most five thousand pounds. But – and this is the catch – the five-thousand-pound painting might not be the painting we are buying. However, if you manage to acquire this quite cheap painting for me, I shall personally see that you are amply rewarded. The facilities between my bank and the auction house are all in place, so you need have no worries on that score. All you have to do is take your place, sit quiet and bid, but be sure not to throw yourself around. Don’t look at anyone, try not to attract any attention to yourself at all.’ He paused. ‘Now. Have you got all that? I mean have you followed me so far?’

  Claire nodded, and then, after a second during which she stared at him, holding her breath, not quite able to believe what he was asking her, a complete stranger, to do, she said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. The painting is number fifty-four in the catalogue, and will probably come up mid to late morning, which will be to our advantage. It is a genuine country house sale, held out of town, and there are a number of exquisite and very valuable Persian rugs at the start of the sale, and they will be attracting the most interest – in fact they will be attracting all the interest. The paintings are not considered to be much, but there is some very fine china, which always goes for a great deal if it is, as these pieces apparently are, in perfect condition. Try to sit somewhere in the middle of the room, about ten or twelve rows from the front. Do not come in too early in the bidding. Wait to see if there is any interest elsewhere in the room, or from telephone bids, but make sure that when you do bid, you catch the auctioneer’s eye. If the weather is bad, which it is forecasted to be, you may well acquire the painting for under five thousand. But if you don’t, don’t worry. Do not look too keen, do not overbid, do not take enormous leaps in the bidding and above all try to look casual, as if – take it or leave it, you don’t really mind whether it falls to you or not. But whatever you do, come home with it!’

  Armed with the catalogue, ten minutes later Claire found herself on the way back to her basement room in a house in Pimlico hardly able to believe what she had just been told she was going to do. She knew of course that genuine country house sales always attracted international interest, but once back in her bed-sitting room sight of the catalogue proved that this was more than an ordinary country house sale. Since the family that were selling off their effects, not to mention their house, had once been international financiers, this was less like a country house sale and more like the selling up of a small kingdom.

  Several items had already attracted press attention, and the following morning, having bought her daily paper from a local newsstand and walked home with it held in front of her face, absorbed by the importance of the sale and its prominence in the newspaper, she at once realized from the report that the house in question was in Hertfordshire and that it would take the car that Crawford Haye was sending for her quite a time to reach its destination.

  Not wishing to risk failure by so much as a misplaced hair, Claire dressed exactly as she had the day before. Navy-blue jacket, navy-blue skirt, white blouse, black shoes, leather gloves. The hire car called for her promptly.

  ‘Tell your sister I’m here for her, will you, dear?’

  Claire stared at the driver. ‘I am my sister,’ she said, just a little crossly.

  The driver stared. ‘You don’t look more than fourteen.’

  ‘That’s because I have not finished dressing. If you don’t mind waiting. I shall not be more than a few minutes.’

  That was a lesson in how she must look, all right! Claire bolted back into her bed-sitting room and flew to the drawer that held what little makeup she owned. Having applied it with as heavy a hand as was possible without looking clownish, and after only a couple of minutes’ concentrated work, she was able to stand back and stare at her image with some satisfaction. Now there stared from the cheap mirror someone who, there was little doubt, would undoubtedly be considered to be a much older person than she was. The brightness of the lipstick helped, of course, and the mascara. Satisfied that she looked more like a person who might be able to bid for a painting costing five thousand pounds, she then seized a charming and quite modish hat that had once, fleetingly, belonged to Aunt Rosabel, which Claire had brought up to London for no good reason except that she could not bear not to bring it with her, reminding her as it did of their summer at Hatcombe, and crammed it down on her head.

  The driver opened the door and having ushered her into the back he settled himself into the front of the old Rover and commented, ‘That’s a bit better. You look old enough to run for Prime Minister now. As a matter of fact, there’s a bit of a coincidence today. I went to the preview of this thing, a couple of days ago. There’s been so much talk in the press and that, and you know – what with all that stuff on TV I thought I’d have a butcher’s at what’s on offer. Some quite nice things, really, quite nice.’

  Remembering the secrecy that was so important to her m
ission for Mr Haye, Claire smiled as vaguely as possible.

  ‘Yes, some quite nice things,’ he went on. ‘I suppose since you work for that Crawford Haye, you know he’s on the telly sometimes? Talking about paintings, and that. Quite an expert. Course my firm, we’ve been driving him about quite a lot, to this and that, particularly lately. Quite a nice man, and knowledgeable of course. Very knowledgeable. Extremely knowledgeable, I’d say.’

  He paused and, since the traffic had come to a standstill, he glanced at Claire in the mirror and smiled. ‘I expect you’re bidding for something important, though, aren’t you? Not like me – just loo brushes and that, or Nanny’s old rocking chair!’

  ‘No, nothing very much, not really.’

  He grinned. ‘Oh, and keeping your trap shut too!’

  Claire smiled, embarrassed by his curiosity, and only too relieved when, the traffic having moved off, he turned up the radio and they listened to Classic FM all the way to the Mountfort Sale.

  The sale started late. The crowd was bigger than forecast, and the atmosphere, as at all genuine sales, excited and interested. Claire made sure to look at several pictures, but most of all she looked at Lot 54. It was so ordinary that it was almost breathtaking, just a dull-looking gentleman and his horse. So ordinary that she suddenly knew that behind this very ordinary painting there must be some work of great genius, some work that only Crawford Haye knew about, which he had sent her to acquire for him.

  As the men in their dark suits, and the women in their uniformly dark charcoal-grey suits with bands of pearls at the neck, or dark ribbons edging their lapels with velvet, took their place, as the crowd became one large impatient audience, waiting to make their bids, eyes down, catalogues in hand, paddles ready to wave, Claire realized that she was literally sick with nerves. She must not fail Crawford Haye. She must not let him down, and yet the divide between success and failure at an auction was notoriously slender. She might bid too early and send the price up, she might bid too late and lose it.