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  As predicted, the bidding for the rugs and the china was intense and exhausting, such was their known value, and telephone bids for them were particularly intense. However, again as predicted by Crawford, the paintings came up just before lunch, which was to their advantage quite simply because the call of the bar was stronger than the attraction of various small paintings attributed to minor artists. Indeed, as the auctioneer ripped through the sale of small painting after small painting, time, having hung heavy, started to break into a gallop, so that by the time Claire heard the words ‘Lot number fifty-four, a small eighteenth-century portrait believed to be attributed to John Coleshill the younger, Mr Jennings and Bashful’ it seemed to her that this was no longer the painting she had been sent to acquire, but a dream, and that she was sitting back listening to other people’s bids and somehow the whole thing was nothing to do with her. It was just like waiting to come into a room where you knew there were people who did not like you in the least, but it had to be done. And now!

  ‘Three thousand pounds, am I bid three thousand pounds?’

  Claire caught the auctioneer’s eye and up went her paddle.

  ‘The lady in the seat in front of me in the straw hat is bidding three thousand pounds. Three thousand pounds, am I bid three thousand five hundred pounds? I am bid three thousand five hundred pounds by the gentleman in the back row.’

  Claire just knew that he must be a professional, some hard-headed art dealer hiding away in the back row, but she did not care or dare to look round, judging it to be better if he did not see her face, remembering the driver saying, Tell your sister I’m here for her, will you, dear?

  In her head, the bidding seemed to have assumed the same noise as her train waiting to pull out of the station only a week earlier, when she had left Mellie – waiting to pull away from her, to leave her behind. And there would never be enough time to put her suitcase into the luggage place or say goodbye properly, or do any of those things which were so necessary, four thousand pounds, four thousand five hundred pounds.

  What would she do if it went up to six thousand or seven thousand? Crawford Haye would be so disappointed. But she might have to go well beyond six or seven thousand, she might have to go to ten thousand, and he would never trust her again. She would never trust herself again.

  ‘Five thousand pounds, I am bid five thousand pounds by this lady here, and five thousand five hundred pounds, and six thousand pounds from the lady in the middle here, six thousand pounds. Six thousand pounds. Any more bids for this fine little portrait of Mr Jennings and Bashful? Very well, going, going, gone. Gone to the lady in the middle. Thank you, madam. Now my next lot is a small painting entitled Pug with Ducklings by a well-known Victorian dog painter, Yarwood St John. Four hundred pounds, I shall begin the bidding at four hundred pounds—’

  Claire rose to her feet. Her head was pounding, her mouth was dry, and her legs felt as if they were going to give way under her. She edged her way out of the row in which she had been seated and made towards the exit, anxious only to be away, to collect the painting and go, worried too that it had cost so much more than Mr Haye had wanted her to pay for it.

  But as she started to hurry up the side of the auction room the man in the back row, the man she knew had been bidding against her, straightened up, stood up, and followed her. When she saw who it was, Claire’s plans to leave with the painting changed immediately, and she quickly made sure that he lost her in the crowd struggling towards the luncheon tent.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There – it sat beside her on the taxi seat, carefully wrapped and put into a cardboard box. A not very large painting, medium-sized in fact, meant to be eighteenth-century, attributed to John Coleshill the younger, and yet Claire already felt that it was something else, not just an ordinary portrait of this Mr Jennings and his mare Bashful but something really out of the ordinary. And as the taxi drew away from the station, weaving its way slowly in and out of the traffic, and she watched small children walking home from school, and the street lights coming on, and the other thousand things that spring in town seems to herald – awnings being pushed up, dustbins put out, café chairs and tables with tourists bravely seated at them – Claire continued to turn over in her mind the possible provenance of the picture.

  The whole experience of the day had left her with feelings that were at once ridiculously euphoric and strangely fearful. As soon as she had realized that the man she had bid against, who it would seem had lost the painting to her, appeared to be following her, Claire decided to take no risks, and instead of taking the hire car back to Knightsbridge as she should have done she had escaped to a payphone and ordered a station taxi to collect her from the back drive of the house. Finally, taking delivery of the painting and clutching a plain cardboard box with it carefully wrapped inside, she had found herself hiding from the hire car driver, realizing that due to the tensions of the day she had most likely become totally paranoid, seeing the most respectable people as potential thieves.

  But before slipping off to meet the taxi she had forced herself to ring Mr Haye and give him the bad news that she had spent a thousand pounds more than he wanted her to spend.

  There was a long silence, and then he laughed. ‘Miss Merriott, just get home in one piece, that’s all. I shouldn’t have cared had you spent three thousand more. You’re sure it’s number fifty-four?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s number fifty-four all right,’ Claire agreed, and she wondered whether to tell him that she was not coming back by the hire car, but thinking that he might worry at the idea of his precious work of art travelling on public transport she said nothing.

  She had barely had time to say her name into the entry phone when the buzzer clicked and the door swung open.

  ‘Come up! Come up! And make sure to shut the door behind you!’

  Five minutes later Claire was sitting in a small old leather-covered armchair with a fresh cup of coffee while Crawford Haye stood by the window carefully examining the painting she had just bought on his behalf. Even though she hardly knew him Claire could see that he could hardly believe his good fortune.

  ‘Good,’ he said, finally, and he shook his head. ‘Very good. Now tell me what happened.’

  Claire had always found that when she told stories to some people they just did not understand, not deep down, why something was funny, or something else was strange, or why you had felt something at a particular moment. And with that realization, try as you might, you petered out, unable to interest yourself, let alone them; such was not the case with Crawford Haye.

  She began at the beginning and she went through right until she stopped, and he was quite silent all the time she was talking, seeming, or so it appeared to Claire, to be appreciating everything, her nerves, the crowded tent, waiting for fifty-four to come up, waiting to pay for the painting, waiting for the station taxi.

  ‘You didn’t come back in the car?’

  Claire shook her head. She might as well be honest. ‘No, Mr Haye. I expect you’re going to go bananas, but I took a taxi to the station and came back on the train. I am sorry, but you see, I had this idea. Don’t laugh. Although I don’t blame you if you do. I had this idea that the driver was after the painting. I don’t know why, but I just had this idea, because of all the publicity and you being who you are – you know, the man with the X-ray eyes who can see the original painting behind a fake – I thought, supposing – well, just supposing someone knows that I’m bidding for you, they might follow me, or something. And the thing was—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The driver did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The driver did try to follow me.’

  She had his full attention so it was quite fun to make him wait to hear what had happened.

  ‘And you know what, Mr Haye? That driver – he was also the man who bid against me!’ She paused, and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Probably just being cheeky, I expect.’

  Claire took a taxi back to Pimlico,
by way of a sort of posh gesture to herself. At the end of this day which she knew she could never forget, she felt as if she had done something particular. Better than that, perhaps – that she had been something which she had never thought she could be. She had been brave. Hitherto she had always suspected herself of lacking courage, not being horsy like Mel, or balletic like Rose, not being anything but a bit of a bookworm, really. But now she felt she had almost done something physically brave, going to an auction and bidding on behalf of the famous Crawford Haye.

  She let out a sigh of such loud satisfaction that she was surprised that the taxi driver did not hear. Because, quite apart from the painting being whatever it was, it was such a great story. And as soon as the painting was cleaned, which would probably take months, she would be able to find out the end of that story, the whole marvellous history of the painting would come to light, and that would be a story in itself.

  Inevitably she found herself watching everything from the window of the taxi through a mist of appreciation.

  Yesterday, before the auction, she had felt like a child, perhaps even thought like a child, but now all her childhood seemed to have vanished, to have become sorted and set into images, as photographs are sorted and carefully pasted into an album. Images of apples in a store, the blue and white china that her mother used to collect and set out on their dresser back in West Dean, the dew on the spiders’ webs which draped the bushes at Hatcombe in early morning, lit by the slowly waking sunlight. Mellie galloping past her on Goosey. Rose dancing in the barn to make her laugh and cheer them all. Letty staring into James’s face sucking on two fingers as Claire gave him his bottle. They were all there in her album, never to be forgotten.

  But now too she knew that they were shut away in her private album, to be replaced by cosmopolitan images. Bustling strangers, red buses, tree-lined avenues, smart shops, galleries and clamour, and the drone of the traffic thrumming endlessly past everything, the fumes on the early evening air still rising, people outside the windows of the cab still walking, but this time away from their offices, back to the homes they had made in the honeycomb of the city. Somewhere their rooms too would be filled with their pasts, their hopes, and their futures. And she was part of it all at last. All around her the noise and thrust of a life of which she had, in the past few hours, become quite suddenly a part, because Crawford Haye had offered her a job.

  An hour later, changed and brushed, Claire was back in Cheshire Street with her new employer and waiting in the upper studio for him to choose a tie.

  ‘I hate ties, but since we are going out of town to celebrate this marvellous buy of yours …’

  Claire smiled. It was hardly hers.

  She had pressed the bell and as usual he had called to her through the intercom, but this time it was to come up to the ‘top room’. Doing as she was bid she had climbed the stairs, up and up, and up again until suddenly she had found herself standing in an immensely light room with a curving conservatory roof up to which stretched indoor trees and exotic tropical plants, tracing beautiful patterns against the walls, and towards the shining glass above them.

  Off this room was a dressing room in which Claire could now see her host and employer, standing fully dressed except for a tie.

  ‘You choose,’ he ordered her, holding up two ties in front of him for Claire to inspect. ‘I am hopeless at choosing ties. Marjorie usually does it for me.’

  Claire stared at the two ties, which to her seemed identical, before looking at her employer’s shirt and suit, his face, the colour of his eyes and the tone of his skin.

  ‘I suppose it is being a bit obvious, but I should say that the bluish one would set off your eyes,’ she murmured, because in some ways she had only just noticed that Crawford Haye was handsome, slender of face, and tall and slim with an athletic figure set off by expensive tailoring.

  ‘Ah, right, so this is your first choice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know what they say about first choices.’ He expertly flicked his collar up and started to tie her choice while walking back to his dressing room.

  ‘No, I don’t know what they say about first choices.’

  She waited for a put-down. And as she did so, for no reason, she could hear her father’s voice coming to her from long ago. Really, Kipper, you are so slow on the uptake. Really, Claire, you should know your own mind! Poor old four-eyes, never knows what she likes!

  ‘No,’ Crawford called cheerfully back, ‘neither do I!’

  They drank one glass of what seemed, to Claire at any rate, to be perfect white wine from expensive flute glasses before he rang down to the basement to tell his housekeeper that they were leaving. They walked through a small garden planted with shrubs set about in pale aquamarine-painted boxes so that Crawford could collect his car from his garage. He instructed Claire to wait in the alley for him, and there was a sound which, to Claire, was more reminiscent of a jungle animal than a motor car. A moment later Claire found herself being called to ‘climb in’ to a Ferrari.

  ‘My indulgence!’ He looked suddenly boyish and conspiratorial, smiling at her as if he had kept his car a secret from everyone except her. ‘It’s a Daytona Ferrari. I’ve always wanted one. And, well. We only pass this way once, don’t we? Know anything about cars?’

  ‘About as much as I do about nuclear science.’

  This was a remark that Jack sometimes made, but the first time Claire had tried it out on anyone. The results were gratifying, because Crawford laughed. ‘Never mind, anyway, this is an experience you will always remember. Second only to driving a Daytona is being driven in one.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere very special. Such a celebration. New car, new acquisition – which by the way is starting to be cleaned tomorrow – thanks to you, the race is on. So. We must celebrate, and somewhere very special.’

  Wherever this somewhere was, it was miles out of London, a destination to which Crawford drove Claire not like a boy racer, but in the manner in which she was slowly coming to realize he did everything, elegantly and expertly.

  It was a journey that Claire knew was always going to be memorable. It just had that feeling. Not just because she had landed a job, or bought the picture, not even because the great Italian car seemed to have a life of its own, but because Crawford Haye turned out to be the most delightful companion, seeming to have a story for everywhere they passed, until at last they reached the Cotswold countryside, leaving the main Banbury Road, and finally turning into the small courtyard of a beautiful old country house built on a bend of the River Windrush.

  ‘This,’ Crawford said, looking around and smiling at everything as if it was all familiar, ‘is not just the best restaurant in England, it is one of the greatest restaurants you will find anywhere.’

  He was greeted as an old friend, which perhaps he was, Claire thought, glancing round, and then instantly turning back as she saw another couple arriving.

  ‘Something the matter?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. At least, yes. Are we going straight in?’

  She must have looked tense, because Crawford answered quickly, ‘Of course,’ ignoring the fact that he had just asked someone to bring them a bottle of champagne. ‘Don’t let’s bother with champagne now, we’ll have it with the pudding,’ he went on easily, following her into the well-lit restaurant with its views over the river. ‘And shall I ask the waiter to put whoever it is you’re trying to avoid in the next room?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Claire had shot ahead of him, and now, having seen her seated, he left her, and ‘had a word’. She stared at the river outside. Of all the worst luck, on an evening like this to see those two, of all the luck.

  But happily Crawford was too well known not to have influence with the staff, and so the room remained serenely unoccupied by any but themselves and an elderly couple celebrating their golden wedding, and they were able to eat crab done in some way that was light and delicious, and t
hen sole, equally light and delicious, and after that little tranches of lamb on a bed of vegetables, without Claire once feeling that she was being watched, or that she could not carry on as if that wretched couple were not dining under the same roof.

  During one of the pauses Crawford said, ‘You don’t have to call me “Mr Haye”, you know.’

  Claire smiled and then wondered if it was not a little early to first-name an employer, and a second later she heard Aunt Rosabel’s voice intoning, Once you have been invited to first-name, you take it up, and not before, that is the rule, Claire dear. Everyone has the right to be called what they wish, even if it is Fishface, not what someone else wishes.

  But despite this comforting memory of her old relative and although she dropped saying Mr Haye she could not bring herself to call him Crawford. She probably would, in time, but at that moment it seemed strange, just not quite right, somehow.

  ‘Tell me about the painting.’ She found she had lowered her voice, as if anyone hearing might know immediately to go to Cheshire Street and find it. ‘Why do you think – know – that there is this other one underneath it? Why are you so certain that it’s been over-painted?’

  They were pausing before cheese and a pudding. Crawford smiled at her serenely, not only a man well dined and wined but a man who had accomplished something at a time when he most needed so to do.

  ‘I mean, I know you have the reputation of having X-ray eyes—’

  ‘Oh, that rumour! Mind you, I have no intention of discouraging it. It drives my competitors mad, I promise you.’

  ‘It must,’ Claire agreed, but she was too curious to leave the matter alone. ‘So how do you know about this other one? I mean, obviously you can tell it’s over-painted by textures and things, but how do you know that it might be this one that is hiding beneath?’