The Property of a Gentleman: One House. Many secrets. Read online

  He touched the gem again on its cushion. ‘It sounds odd, but I think you’ll see the point. La Española wasn’t especially important to us. No one wore it – its value didn’t represent nearly as much as the land we owned at the time. No one thought too much of it until my father died, and it was assessed for death duties as part of the estate.’

  What he passed over in that slight pause was what I remembered Gerald had told me – the period in prison, the war, the decorations, the return to Thirlbeck, and his absence until barely a week ago.

  ‘I myself made only one attempt to sell it after that. It had come back to Thirlbeck, and it stayed here. The Manchester bank wasn’t anxious to have it again, and I – well, perhaps I hoped someone might take it from Thirlbeck and relieve me of all its responsibility. But no one did try. From time to time the newspapers would rake up its history in lurid detail, and people were frightened to make the attempt. But finally I negotiated a sale, and Tolson brought La Española to Milan. And that was where the Terpolini affair burst on the world. The publicity was too much – all the old stories of the curse were revived, and a few tacked on. The underworld, as well as those who buy diamonds as an investment, were scared off again.’

  ‘The Terpolini affair?’ I said. ‘What was that?’

  Askew looked at me. ‘I keep forgetting you’re so much younger. You’ve heard of Terpolini?’

  ‘The opera singer? She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  ‘Not dead, but she might as well be. She was at the height of a very sensational career. She had the gift of star quality, as well as a wonderful voice, and everything she did was news. She was the mistress of the oilman, Georgiadas. He was – still is – strongly superstitious, but it was his belief then that the gods looked with particular favour on him. His every endeavour was blessed with good fortune. In fact, he was the darling of the gods. Until, he encountered La Española. I sold it to him, you see – well, I had sold it to him subject to expert examination, which was why Tolson brought it to Milan. It was everything they had hoped for. It was to be cut, naturally, and everyone supposed that Constanzia Terpolini would have the biggest stone that came from the cut. But just to emphasise her triumph, her dominance of Georgiadas, who isn’t an easy man to dominate, she asked to wear it, just as it is, uncut, on its simple chain, when she opened the season at La Scala, in Turandot. The papers were full of the story, she was photographed in costume, wearing it. But the next day the papers all over the world were full of the story of her fall down that long flight of stairs in the last act. When it became clear to everyone in the opera house that she couldn’t rise, they brought down the curtain. She never saw another curtain go up. A fractured spine, which paralysed her from the neck down. On the same day, Georgiadas’s only son was lost in a sailing accident off Crete. That was the day the gods really turned their backs on Georgiadas. Terpolini still exists in a private sanatorium near Geneva. Georgiadas stopped visiting her a long time ago, though he still pays her bills. He is more superstitious than ever, only now he fears the gods – keeps looking over his shoulder. La Española was returned to me, the sale incomplete – and Tolson brought it back to Thirlbeck.’

  Once again Askew’s forefinger went out to touch the gem, that blue-perfect gem which seemed now to cry to me with the cries of that little Spanish girl in her last moments. I glanced quickly at his face, the lines in it appeared sharper now as the light from the top of the shade struck them. He did not regard the gem with bitterness or distaste, only a trifle ruefully.

  ‘What’s the capital gains tax now, Gerald – thirty per cent? I could still live quite a long time on what was left if I could sell it – if La Española were not a priceless, valueless piece of carbon drenched in superstition and greed. Myself, I don’t believe in the curse – but I’m a Birkett. Others do. And so my unfortunate heir will have to scratch about for the death duties on something he probably won’t be able to sell, or insure, either. It was quite a legacy she left us, the little Spanish Woman. I wonder if her spirit mocks us, now, when we have come to this?’

  Carlota spoke. ‘And you say you don’t believe, Roberto? I think you believe more than anyone else. If you had only the will to carry it to Amsterdam yourself and find someone to cut it, it could be sold and there would be no more money problems for you – and the Birketts would be rid of La Española at last. It is so simple ... no publicity, no auction, no more stories ...’ Her tone had grown fainter though, and I think we all had noticed that even as she spoke she had shivered.

  It wasn’t really cold, and we were all crowded close to the fire. But the gem on the velvet cushion seemed to radiate an influence both benign and malignant. It lay there, in its nearly matchless splendour, and purity, and for the hands of the Birketts only. “Who Seizes, Beware”. I moved back, closer to the fire.

  Askew gathered up the cushion, and ended one of La Española’s few moments of exposure to light and admiration, the thing that all great gems seem to exist for. It would shine alone in its dark sanctuary for how long more?

  ‘And will you drive to London in the car with me if I do that, Carlota? Will you fly in the plane to Amsterdam? And will you find the cutter who will touch it?’

  He snapped the panel shut. ‘I think we might just leave La Española in peace, Carlota – and ourselves. That is not all I have to sell.’ He turned back to us. ‘Gerald, what do you think?’

  ‘Oh what, my dear Robert? Of course there are many things here that we would be happy to handle for you ... without publicity, if you wished it that way. It would be a pleasure ... I don’t know how a house like this and a family like yours, which has not been known as collectors, has come by such pieces; but most of them are first-class. Yes, first-class. It would make a beautiful and exciting sale, Robert.’

  ‘What – the furniture?’ He seemed surprised. ‘Yes ... well, I wasn’t thinking so much about that.’ He sounded rather disinterested, as if he didn’t know or care much about the value of what was under his roof.

  ‘I have just one thing that could stand beside La Española in importance and value. Possibly it’s much more important. If it went to a great museum instead of a private collector it would be seen, in time, by millions of people. Beside it, even La Española becomes relatively lifeless and unimportant. What would you say to a Rembrandt, Gerald?’

  ‘A Rembrandt?’ As quickly as his tone had changed, Gerald looked across at me, as if to warn me to stay quiet. A kind of charge of excitement ran between us, excitement and – yes, it was fear, almost. I felt my mouth go dry. It was not that we had discovered something, Gerald and I. It was being discovered for us. And even in that second I thought again of Vanessa, and wondered if she had known of this also.

  ‘A legacy which has come to us in a perfectly honest, ordinary fashion, Gerald. I don’t know if you ever knew that my grandfather was only a cousin to the fifteenth Earl. He never expected to inherit – there was a son and a brother before him. They both died. The Birketts often seem to be unfortunate in losing their direct descendants. Twice the title almost died out because there seemed no obvious male heir, even though the country hereabouts is studded with Birketts. Well, my grandfather was a prosperous farmer, with an interest in some small mines, and he ran a few coasters out of Whitehaven. He liked to travel with them himself – often went over to the Continent, and most often to Rotterdam – and even more after he had met Margeretha van Huygens. She was the daughter of one of the burgomasters of Rotterdam, an only child, and they didn’t think the match to an obscure English farmer was nearly good enough for her – she seems to have been pretty as well as rich. They thought of it rather differently when he rather suddenly became Lord Askew. In any case, the marriage took place, and like any good Dutch housewife, she brought furnishings to her marriage home, as well as money. And naturally she inherited everything on the death of her parents. All the French furniture came from the van Huygens – things they’d picked up quite inexpensively after the French Revolution. And with the furniture
came a collection of Dutch pictures – most of them pretty dull, I think. I’m perfectly certain, though, that my Dutch grandmother preferred her scenes of cows and windmills over the one great treasure of the collection. I can remember her, my grandmother, living on to a great age, long after her husband had died, still speaking pretty bad English, and continuing to live at Thirlbeck with her son and his Scottish wife. Both of them were rather afraid of her. I remember I was. She was full of all the characteristics we think are Dutch – thrift, good management, a rather phlegmatic temperament. It just wasn’t in her nature to admire the self-portrait of a man in his old age, dressed in nondescript clothes. She judged a man by what money he had accumulated, and she despised those, like Rembrandt, who having had money, wasted it and ended in bankruptcy ... even if he was Rembrandt. I suppose at the time she was growing up, Rembrandt wasn’t even in fashion. We don’t know how the van Huygens came into possession of the picture. To my grandmother it was just one of the many she brought over, and in her day it hung in a dark passage because she didn’t care to see the face of old age looking back at her. She never, that I know of, paid any attention to the picture, never talked about it. We just knew it was there …’

  I had crept closer to the fire as he had talked, but still the chill persisted, a cold excitement twisting in my stomach, the kind of moment in which one either laughs hysterically, or clamps one’s lips tight against their tendency to tremble and go out of control. Now that La Española no longer engaged our attention, we had both of us, Gerald and I, begun to look in the direction that Askew faced. It was a long room, as long as the dining-room across the hall. In the darkness of that panelling we could see only the dull brown outline of the frame of the picture that hung on the farthest wall. Its subject was totally lost.

  ‘It is possible, isn’t it, Gerald, that a Rembrandt could exist that has never been catalogued? Something overlooked by its owners because they were too familiar with it?’

  ‘It’s entirely possible, Robert. The art world, while running to fluctuations and prices that every year begin more and more to resemble the stock exchange, is in almost total chaos. There is no central registry of works of art, who owns them, when they are sold, and to whom, who has them locked in a bank vault because they are stolen and they’re too hot to display until the statute of limitations has expired. Even the museums don’t have to tell us what they buy and sell. And, above all, they don’t have to tell what they pay. You can’t look up the price of your Old Master in the daily newspapers. That’s why record sales of any art object at auction make such news. In America it’s no-holds-barred in the scramble to get the best. It’s a state of anarchy which would send the normal businessman mad. And yet we live with it, because there is a general unwillingness to admit that art is big business. And because in the scramble and rush to acquire, there is always the hope, the possibility, that in someone’s country house, hung in a dark corridor, there may be a Rembrandt. We actually expect several Vermeers to turn up. A Rembrandt – one that had always been in the hands of a private family, never sold or exhibited – yes, entirely possible ...’

  Gerald’s words trailed off as he began to walk down that long room. Askew said, ‘I’ve had Tolson bring it out and hang it. It can’t have seen the light of day since Tolson shut it away at the beginning of the war.’

  I thought Gerald walked with a kind of stiffness, as if the same cramping excitement had gripped him also. If what Askew had said was true, then this remote country house would suddenly witness the coming and going of the experts to authenticate the picture, photos of the whole painting and details would appear on the desks of museum directors all over the world, it would arrive at last in the special rooms on the top floor of Hardy’s which were used to house with greater security the special treasures which came for auction there. The television lights would go on in the great saleroom, and the world’s Press would gather. And if the buyer was foreign, there would be the usual appeal for a fund to save it for the nation, and one more man, in this case Robert Birkett, would be condemned for selling away a national treasure. There would be questions in the House of Commons about refusing an export licence. No wonder Gerald walked warily.

  He stopped. ‘I can’t see it, Robert,’ he said. ‘Aren’t there some lights?’

  ‘Lights? Oh, yes.’ Askew crossed to the switches by the door, pressed one, but that only activated the modern extension arm lamp perched on the top of the roll-top desk. The sconces on the wall remained dark. ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘There’s never been enough places for lights in this house. Well, I was stupid to let Tolson hang it there – I forgot about light. Perhaps we could plug Tolson’s lamp into one of the outlets down there. Just a minute, Gerald.’

  I moved ahead of Gerald. ‘There aren’t any outlets close enough, Lord Askew. And the lamp’s on a very short flex – perhaps we could tilt it – ’

  ‘No,’ Gerald said. ‘No, don’t. I don’t want my first sight of it spoiled. We’ll look at it tomorrow morning, Robert. We can put it on a chair facing the window ... Yes, tomorrow morning would be better.’ His tone was curiously flat.

  Suddenly the excitement was gone. I was more than ever conscious that I was tired and chilled, and as I looked across at Gerald he carefully avoided my glance. The rosy glow he usually wore had faded completely. He seemed now what he was, an ageing man who had had too long a day. We said good night to the Condesa and Askew at the bottom of the stairs, and I could feel them staring after us as we went up. When we reached the gallery Askew said something, and the Condesa’s voice rose in sharp protest. As I glanced down she had already started up, but at the landing she turned to take the other arm of the staircase leading to the opposite wing of the house. By the time we reached Gerald’s door she had vanished in the shadows of the corridor.

  ‘Can I come in for a moment, Gerald?’

  He nodded, as if he had known I would say that.

  V

  He shook his head wearily. ‘I just don’t know, Jo. It’s no use asking. I don’t know why Vanessa never said anything. As ignorant as she was then, she must have known these were good pieces. She can’t have forgotten, even if it is a long time ago. For some reason she chose to say nothing. It must have been a very good reason, but we’ll never know what it was – not now.’ He pulled on his cigarette wearily, his eyelids drooping. I felt I was forcing him when he didn’t want to talk, but I had to go on.

  ‘Perhaps he asked her not to. Yes, that would be it. The Birketts all seem a bit touched to me – at least, he is. All that business about staying a private during the war, and winning every medal in sight. That’s cracked – that, and all this secrecy about the house, not letting anyone in, keeping a Rembrandt hidden away where no one would ever see it. Do you suppose Vanessa saw that?’

  ‘Jo,’ he answered with exaggerated patience, ‘I don’t know what to suppose. I agree that Robert is an oddity – but what does it matter? There will be a sale – one of the most splendid sales we’ve ever had, whether that is a Rembrandt or not. Robert needs money, and he’s not going to stay on at Thirlbeck.’

  ‘Do you doubt it is a Rembrandt?’

  ‘My dear Jo, don’t jump on me. I haven’t seen it, have I? There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be – the van Huygenses could have been of the same family of Constantijn Huygens who wrote about Rembrandt in his autobiography. This is how these things happen. Pictures and furniture are passed on, all taken for granted by the family, until some new headline about soaring art prices makes them take a second thought about what’s in the attic. Robert needs money ...’ He sat, half hidden behind the haze of cigarette smoke. ‘A Rembrandt ... I wonder ...’

  I couldn’t help the words coming out. ‘I don’t much like Lord Askew, Gerald – or at least I keep changing my opinion of him. He hates this place, doesn’t he? He doesn’t care if it falls down. The bulldozer or the weather, he doesn’t care which gets to it first. I almost felt he could sell his own grandmother – after all, it was her furnitu
re and pictures.’