‘No.’
Quick sipped her gin. ‘The image of Mr Scott’s painting fits the story perfectly. Rufina lived in Seville in the second century. She was a Chris-tian potter, who wouldn’t kow--tow to the authorities’ rules when they told her to make pagan icons, so they chucked her in an arena with a lion. The lion wouldn’t touch her, so they cut off her head. And with this mention of a “companion piece”, Reede believes he’s found a connection between Mr Scott’s painting and the more famous Women in the Wheatfield, which might change the way we look at Robles entirely.’
I gazed at her, feeling determined, ready to enter into a battle of wills. ‘But you told me that Isaac Robles didn’t paint it.’
Quick slugged back another painkiller. ‘And yet, we have a certified telegram from a world--class art collector, stating that it was intended as a companion piece to one of the most important paintings to come out of Spain this century, currently in the Guggenheim collection in Venice.’
‘Yes, but there was someone else in that photograph too. A young woman.’
I waited for Quick to speak, but she did not, so I carried on. ‘I think she was called Olive Schloss. In that letter at your house, it appears she won a place at the Slade School of Art around the time that Isaac Robles was painting. I think she painted Women in the Wheatfield.’
‘I see.’ Quick’s face was impassive, and my frustration grew.
‘Did you think she made it, Quick?’
‘Made what?’ Her expression turned hard.
‘Do you think Olive ever made it to the Slade?’
Quick closed her eyes. Her shoulders sagged, and I waited for her to reveal herself, to release the truth that had been broiling in her ever since seeing Lawrie’s painting in the hallway of the Skelton. Here it came, the moment of confession – why she was in possession of the telegram from Peggy Guggenheim and the letter from the Slade – how it was her own father who had bought Isaac Robles’s painting, a piece of art she had created herself.
Quick was so still in her chair, I thought that she’d expired. She flicked her eyes open. ‘I’m going to hear what Mr Reede is saying,’ she said. ‘I think you should come too.’
I followed her down the corridor, disappointed. I was getting nearer, I was sure. Why didn’t she just speak?
WE KNOCKED ON REEDE’S DOOR and were told to come in. Lawrie and he were sitting facing each other in the armchairs. ‘Can I help you?’ Reede said.
‘Miss Bastien and I will be the ones on the front line once this exhibition gets underway,’ said Quick. I saw how tightly she was gripping the door frame. She was torturing herself. ‘It might be wise if we were to sit and take notes, to understand what you’re proposing.’
‘Very well,’ said Reede. ‘You can sit over there, ladies.’
We looked to where he was gesturing; two hard wooden chairs in the corner. Either Quick was being punished, or Reede was blind to how frail she was. Lawrie caught my eye as I sat down; he looked excited, alive with the possibilities of his painting. Rufina and the Lion was propped up on the mantelpiece, and I was no less overwhelmed by its power than the first time I saw it, by how much that girl and the severed head she held in her hands had already changed my life. If Lawrie hadn’t used it to try and take me on a date, would any of us even be sitting here today – would Quick be unravelling like this, despite her insistence on blaming the cancer and its painkillers?
Directly above Reede’s head sat the lion, imperial and implacable as so many lions are in paintings. Yet in this instance, it looked so curiously tamed. I gazed at the white house in the distant hills; its painted red windows, how tiny it was compared to the vast, multicoloured patchwork of fields which surrounded it. Rufina and her second head stood looking back at me, at all of us. Thirty years ago, Isaac Robles and a girl I was sure was Olive Schloss stood before this very picture, for a photograph. What had Isaac and Olive been to one another?
Inevitably, I looked to Quick. She seemed to have gathered herself from her earlier distress; sitting straight now, notebook on her lap, eyes on the painting. Whatever the truth was, it seemed to me that she was going to let this exhibition go ahead with no sabotage on her part, and I felt confounded by her capitulation.
‘As I was saying, Mr Scott,’ Reede went on, ‘three years ago, Peggy Guggenheim’s entire Venetian collection came to the Tate on temporary loan. Whilst Women in the Wheatfield was here on the Tate’s public walls, your own Robles painting was hiding in the shadows. It’s extraordinary to think we could have matched them then, had we known. There was so much to--ing and fro--ing over that exhibition, between the British government and the Italian authorities,’ he said. ‘Tax issues, mainly. But that was for a hundred and eighty--odd pieces, and I’ve only asked for three. So the good news is, they’re letting us borrow their Isaac Robles pieces.’
‘That is good news,’ said Lawrie.
‘It’s wonderful. It’ll really bolster the exhibition. I hope the news pages will give us coverage as well as the arts sections. We’re getting Women in the Wheatfield, a landscape called The Orchard, and rather brilliantly, something I wasn’t aware of – his Self--Portrait in Green. And what will be exciting about the reunion of Women in the Wheatfield with Rufina and the Lion is that it could change the way we view Isaac Robles generally.’
‘Why?’
‘Rufina was one of a pair of sisters,’ Reede said. ‘Justa was the name of the other.’