‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t think he made it through the war. We would surely have heard about him if he had. There was a lot of bombing in the south of Spain in those days. Say the rest of Robles’ paintings went up in flames. We could consider how the immolation of Robles’ body of work reflects the disappearance of the artist himself.’
Reede began to pace again, his hands behind his back, lost to us as he expounded his vision. ‘We could extend the metaphor, into the conflagration of the Iberian corpus, and the world war to come. The man is a symbol, as much as an individual. He was a vision of Spain’s future, which was annihilated.’
Lawrie crossed his legs, his voice hard. ‘But you don’t know his works went up in flames. You can’t build an exhibition on a rumour. They’ll laugh at me.’
‘They won’t laugh. -People love a rumour, Mr Scott. You can do more with rumour than you can with fact. And the fact is, we have a limited supply of paintings. Another fact: Harold Schloss did not have Rufina and the Lion when he went back to Paris. Where was it? That’s where you come in.’
‘Me?’ said Lawrie. Something in his tone of voice made me turn. I looked to Quick; she had clearly thought the same as Reede, for her eyes were on Lawrie, concentrating hard.
Reede came to sit opposite Lawrie, and spoke more gently. ‘I think that Harold Schloss realized it was untenable to remain in Spain, and in fleeing, the painting fell out of his possession, either through theft or carelessness. It is unusual for a dealer to confess so openly a loss, as he does in that letter. Normally they’re glib, smooth talkers. I think Harold Schloss came back to Paris with his feathers ruffled.’
‘And you think the painting was left behind in Spain?’ said Lawrie.
‘Well, Schloss doesn’t seem to have it. He’s got no reason to lie to his best collector. But I don’t know, Mr Scott. The next person to be attached to it was your mother. And apparently, we have no idea of she got hold of it.’
Lawrie gazed up at the painting, and down again, into the empty grate. ‘It’s always been on her walls,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t remember a time it wasn’t there.’
‘So you say,’ Reede sighed. ‘Well, we can play with the question mark. I don’t think we have a choice. The survival of an artwork through the Spanish Civil War and a world war to a house in Surrey is not without its romantic possibilities.’
‘What do you think happened to Isaac Robles, in the end?’ asked Lawrie.
‘Mr Reede,’ said Quick, her voice hard and clear across the room. ‘What is the timescale for this? When are you planning to open this exhibition?’
Reede turned to her. ‘A delegation from the Guggenheim is coming in two weeks with the paintings. And two weeks after that, I believe we can open.’
Quick looked down at her diary. ‘Four weeks from now? That’s ridiculous. That’s no time at all.’
‘I know, Marjorie. But it’s what I want.’
I watched as Quick marked the day of November 28th in her diary, a slight tremor in her hand, the pen drawing across the page in a thick black cross.
XIV
That evening, Lawrie and I took the commuter train to Surrey. He told me that he’d already sold the MG. ‘I just didn’t use it much,’ he said, but he sounded wistful. I considered that perhaps there was more pressure than I initially imagined to sell his mother’s painting.
As we pulled out of Waterloo, me with the Xeroxes from Reede on my lap, I looked at the four paintings of Rufina and Justa by the older Spanish artists. I loved the passive lion in the Goya, but my favourite overall was the Velázquez; a young girl with dark hair and an inscrutable gaze, holding two little bowls and a plate in one upturned palm, and a huge plume in the other. Velázquez, like Robles, had painted Rufina on her own too. I moved on to the copy of Harold Schloss’s letter. Schloss had written by hand, and had started it neatly enough, but in places it became barely legible. His rounded arcs and sweeping curves descended into crossings--out and ink blots everywhere. I did not think it was the letter of a happy man.
‘We’re here,’ said Lawrie.
We were not normal passengers getting off at Baldock’s Ridge; the normal passengers were men in their late forties, paunch incoming, signet ring, Telegraph under their arm, an embossed briefcase. Women, country--tweeded, middle--aged with distant faces, thoughts buried deep within their handbags, coming back from a day in town.
‘After you left the meeting, Reede said he could try and sell the painting for me,’ Lawrie said as he opened the door and helped me down. ‘For a commission.’
‘How much does he think it will fetch?’
‘It’s hard to say. “Art doesn’t always behave itself like other things you might put up for sale, Mr Scott”,’ Lawrie said, parroting the pomposity Reede could stray into when on home turf. ‘He said it isn’t like a late Van Gogh coming onto the market.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, apparently everyone would want one of those. But Rufina and the Lion is unique in a different way. Reede said he doesn’t want to underplay it, but neither does he want to over--egg the pudding. He said selling always has its risks.’
‘But he’s so enthusiastic about it.’
‘As a historian, maybe. As a personal preference, yes. But perhaps as an auctioneer he wants to manage my expectations. Not everyone’s going to like Isaac Robles.’
‘You could always donate it to a public institution.’