‘Fairly. I didn’t see much.’
I considered telling Quick about the pamphlet I’d smuggled out in my handbag, but something stopped me. Maybe it was my reluctance to look like a thief, but there was also something about the way Quick constantly hovered over the issue of Lawrie and the painting that made me wary. Given her attitude towards him, she might jump on anything to use against him – although what a long--forgotten pamphlet might mean in all this was anyone’s guess. Lawrie and I may not have been quite on speaking terms, but I didn’t want Quick to make him even more defenceless in the face of any attack.
‘Come and have dinner with me tonight,’ she said. ‘Let’s have champagne.’
‘Champagne?’
‘I’m feeling victorious. I’ve got a -couple of lamb chops that need eating. And someone needs to give you a pat on the back.’
I hesitated. Being alone with Marjorie Quick was always a very intense experience, and after the last time in her garden, I didn’t know if I was up to it. But then I thought about another night in the empty flat, with only the crackle of the radio and my overly read books for company, and suddenly I didn’t want to be alone. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Shall we ask Pamela?’
‘She wouldn’t want to come. Besides, I’ve only got two chops.’
I felt I couldn’t insist, because it wasn’t my house, my dinner, my champagne. But I do remember thinking it would be no problem at all to pop to a butcher and buy Pamela an extra chop. Quick seemed keen to have me there alone.
‘Good,’ she said, taking my silence for assent. ‘That’s settled. See you later, Odelle. We can take a taxi home together. And well done again. I’m very proud.’
XI
When I went to find Quick in her office at the end of the day, her door was closed. Voices were coming through the wood – hers, and that of Edmund Reede, more angry than I’d ever heard.
‘We should use these discrepancies as opportunities,’ he was saying. ‘Why are you undermining me, Marjorie?’
‘Edmund—-’ she began, but he interrupted.
‘I’ve tolerated a great deal from you in the past, but your doggedness over this is ridiculous.’ There was a silence. Reede sighed. ‘You’ve seen the accounts, Marjorie. You’ve seen what’s happening to us. I just cannot fathom your reluctance. It’s a stunning painting. It has a story. It has a handsome young man on the end of it. Two, in fact, if you put owner and painter together. We’ll have a crowd; we might even have a sale. The Guggenheim are going to send me what they have, but there’s already so much here. The mystery of Robles – how did he die? Who ordered his death, and why?’
‘That’s got nothing to do with the painting, Edmund,’ Quick said.
‘I disagree. His personal tale reflects the international stage. It prefigures by less than a decade the vanishing of hundreds of artworks under Nazi rule, and, in many cases, their creators and families.’
‘But the art first, eh, Edmund?’
He ignored this reproof. ‘Robles is universal. When we tell the tale of this artist, we are telling the tale of war.’
I heard the flick of Quick’s lighter. ‘I’m surprised you of all -people want to tell the tale of war,’ she said. ‘I don’t see this painting as political at all.’
‘Look here, Marjorie, what’s the problem? We’ve always been frank with each other.’
‘Have we?’
‘Oh, come on. As frank as it was possible to be.’
Quick was silent for what seemed a long time. ‘There is no problem,’ she said. ‘It just isn’t political in the way you think it is. It’s not about war in the way you see it, Edmund. It’s not about the artist as a man. It’s about the canvas. Two girls facing down a lion.’
I was astonished at the way they were talking to each other, so fluid and intimate. Pamela said they had known each other for years, and it showed. It was almost fraternal, and he was talking to her much as he might talk to one of his friends at the club.
‘We’ll agree to disagree, Marjorie,’ Reede said. ‘As we have done for longer than I care to remember.’
I could hear Reede moving towards the door, so I ran back along the corridor to my own desk, waiting instead for Quick to come and find me. It seemed that Quick had capitulated – to what exactly, I was not sure. She was resistant to the idea of an exhibition – but the true focus of her reluctance, this wavering derision and fear, was still not clear to me. It seemed that she was placing herself in opposition to whatever Reede thought philosophically about the painting, more than she was against the idea of actually exhibiting it.
QUICK INDEED TURNED UP AT my desk shortly after, looking drawn and upset. ‘Ready?’ she said. ‘There’s a taxi downstairs.’
We walked past the reception desk together. I glanced at Pamela, and saw the confusion in her face. I was surprised to feel that I was betraying her, going off with Quick like this, when Pamela worked just as hard as me and had been here longer. But I couldn’t turn back. I was too drawn to Quick’s enigma, too determined to find out what was really going on.
?
After our dinner, Quick invited me into the sitting room at the front of the house. She lowered herself into a sleek grey armchair, its wooden arms carved like the strings of a harp. Everything she owned, apart from the gramophone, seemed stylish and modern. ‘Keeping an old woman company,’ she said. ‘I feel guilty.’
‘Hardly old,’ I replied. ‘I was very happy to come.’
We hadn’t talked of much over dinner; a little about Pamela, Reede and the donors he had to court, how he hated flirting with old marchionesses holed up in damp castles, where God knows what treasures were rotting in the lofts. ‘You’ve known Reede a long time?’ I asked.