know what. The fair sex. Give them up. I have. It’s such a relief. All those desperate seductions. All that time wasted meditating on death to keep yourself from coming too soon. I tell you, it’s like a burden gone from my shoulders.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Age has got fuck-all to do with it. I gave up women because they were breaking my heart.’
‘What heart’s that?’
‘I might ask you the same thing. Yes, you whine and you wring your hands, but then you go back and make the same mistakes. It’s tedious. They’re tedious.’
‘So save me.’
‘Oh, now here it comes.’
‘I don’t have any money.
‘Neither do I.’
‘So we’ll make some together. Then I won’t have to be a kept man. I’m going back to live in the studio, Klein. I’ll paint whatever you need.’
‘The Bastard Boy speaks.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’
‘It’s what you are. You haven’t changed in eight years. The world grows old but the Bastard Boy keeps his perfection. Speaking of which —’
‘Employ me.’
Don’t interrupt me when I’m gossiping. Speaking of which, I saw Clem the Sunday before last. He asked after you. He’s put on a lot of weight. And his love-life’s almost as disastrous as yours. Taylor’s sick with the plague. I tell you, Gentle, celibacy’s the thing.’
‘So employ me.’
‘It’s not as easy as that. The market’s soft at the moment. And, well, let me be brutal, I have a new Wunderkind.’ He got up. ‘Let me show you.’ He led Gentle through the house to the study. ‘The fellow’s twenty-two, and I swear if he had an idea in his head he’d be a great painter. But he’s like you, he’s got the talent but nothing to say.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gentle sourly.
‘You know it’s true.’ Klein switched on the light. There were three canvases, all unframed, in the room. One, a nude woman after the style of Modigliani. Beside it, a small landscape after Corot. But the third, and largest of the three, was the coup. It was a pastoral scene, depicting classically garbed shepherds standing, in awe, before a tree in the trunk of which a human face was visible.
‘Would you know it from a real Poussin?’
‘Is it still wet?’ Gentle asked.
‘Such a wit.’
Gentle went to give the painting a more intimate examination. This period was not one he was particularly expert in, but he knew enough to be impressed by the handiwork. The canvas was a close weave, the paint laid upon it in careful regular strokes, the tones built up, it seemed, in glazes.
‘Meticulous, eh?’ said Klein.
To the point of being mechanical.’
‘Now, now, no sour grapes.’
‘I mean it. It’s just too perfect for words. You put this in the market and the game’s up. Now, the Modigliani’s another matter -’
That was a technical exercise,’ Klein said. ‘I can’t sell that. The man only painted a dozen pictures. It’s the Poussin I’m betting on.’
‘Don’t. You’ll get stung. Mind if I get another drink?’
Gentle headed back through the house to the lounge, Klein following, muttering to himself.
‘You’ve got a good eye, Gentle,’ he said. ‘But you’re unreliable. You’ll find another woman and off you’ll go.’
‘Not this time.’
‘And I wasn’t kidding about the market. There’s no room for bullshit.’
‘Did you ever have any problem with a piece I painted?’
Klein mused on this. ‘No,’ he admitted.
‘I’ve got a Gauguin in New York. Those Fuseli sketches I did-’
‘Berlin. Oh yes, you’ve made your little mark.’
‘Nobody’s ever going to know it, of course.’
‘They will. In a hundred years’ time your Fuselis will look as old as they are, not as old as they should be. People will start to investigate, and you, my Bastard Boy, will be discovered. And so will Kenny Soames, and Gideon; all my deceivers.’
‘And you’ll be vilified for bribing us. Denying the twentieth century all that originality.’
‘Originality shit. It’s an overrated commodity, you know that. You can be a visionary painting Virgins.’
‘That’s what I’ll do then. Virgins in any style. I’ll be celibate, and I’ll paint Madonnas all day. With child. Without child. Weeping. Blissful. I’ll work my balls off, Kleiny, which’ll be fine because I won’t need them.’
‘Forget the Virgins. They’re out of fashion.’
‘They’re forgotten.’
‘Decadence is your strongest suit.’
‘Whatever you want. Say the word.’
‘But don’t fuck with me. If I find a client, and promise something to him, then it’s down to you to produce it.’
‘I’m going back to the studio tonight. I’m starting over. Just do one thing for me?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Burn the Poussin.’
He had visited the studio on and off through his time with Vanessa - he’d even met Martine there on two occasions when her husband had cancelled a Luxembourg trip and she’d been too heated to miss a liaison - but it was charmless and cheerless, and he’d returned happily to the house in Wimpole Mews. Now, however, he welcomed the studio’s austerity. He turned on the little electric fire, made himself a cup of fake coffee with fake milk, and under its influence thought about deception.
The last six years of his life - since Judith, in fact - had been a series of duplicities. This was not of itself disastrous - after tonight it would once more be his profession - but whereas painting had a tangible end result (two, if he included the recompense), pursuit and seduction always left him naked and empty-handed. An end to that, tonight. He made a vow, toasted in bad coffee, to the God of Forgers, whoever He was, to become great. If duplicity was his genius why waste it on deceiving husbands and mistresses? He should turn it to a profounder end, producing masterpieces in another man’s name. Time would validate him, the way Klein had said it would; uncover his many works, and show him, at last, as the visionary he was about to become. And if it didn’t
