Best Kept Secret

42





ALTHOUGH THE FIRST lot would not come under the hammer until seven that evening, the auction house was packed long before the appointed hour, as it always was on the opening night of a major Impressionist sale.

The three hundred seats were filled with gentlemen wearing dinner jackets, while many of the ladies were adorned in long gowns. They might have been attending an opening night at the opera, and indeed this promised to be as dramatic as anything on offer at Covent Garden. And although there was a script, it was always the audience who had the best lines.

The invited guests fell into several different categories. The serious bidders, who often turned up late because they had reserved seats, and might not be interested in the first few lots, which, like minor characters in a Shakespeare play, are simply there to warm up the audience. The dealers and the gallery owners, who preferred to stand at the back with their colleagues and share among themselves any scraps that fell from the rich man’s table, when a lot failed to reach its reserve price and had to be withdrawn. And then there were those who treated it as a social occasion. They had no interest in bidding, but enjoyed the spectacle of the super-rich taking up arms against each other.

And last, the more deadly of the species, with sub-categories of their own. The wives, who came to watch how much their husbands would spend on objects that they had no interest in, preferring to spend their money in other establishments in the same street. Then there were the girlfriends, who remained silent, because they were hoping to become wives. And finally, the simply beautiful, who had no other purpose in life than to remove the wives and girlfriends from the battlefield.

But, as with everything in life, there were exceptions to the rule. One such was Sir Alan Redmayne, who would be there to represent his country. He would be bidding for lot 29, but hadn’t yet decided how high he would go.

Sir Alan was not unfamiliar with the West End auction houses and their strange traditions. Over the years he had built up a small collection of eighteenth-century English water-colours, and he had also, on occasion, bid on behalf of the government, for a painting or sculpture his masters felt should not be allowed to leave the country. However, this was the first time in his career that he would be bidding for a major work in the hope of being outbid by someone from overseas.

The Times had predicted that morning that Rodin’s The Thinker could sell for £100,000 – a record for any piece by the French master. However, what The Times couldn’t know was that Sir Alan intended to take the bidding above £100,000, because not until then could he be certain that the only bidder left on the floor would be Don Pedro Martinez, who believed the statue’s true value to be over eight million pounds.

Giles had asked the cabinet secretary the one question he’d been trying to avoid answering: ‘If you were to end up outbidding Martinez, what would you do with the sculpture?’

‘It will be given a home in the National Gallery of Scotland,’ he had replied, ‘as part of the government’s arts acquisition policy. You will be able to write about it in your memoirs, but not until after I’m dead.’

‘And if you should prove to be right?’

‘Then it will warrant a whole chapter in my memoirs.’

When Sir Alan entered the auction house, he slipped into a seat in the back left-hand corner of the sale room. He had phoned Mr Wilson earlier to let him know he would be bidding on lot 29, and sitting in his usual place.

By the time Mr Wilson climbed the five steps to the rostrum, most of the major players had taken their seats. Standing on both sides of the auctioneer was a row of Sotheby’s employees. Most of them would be bidding for clients who were unable to attend in person, or who couldn’t trust themselves not to be carried away by the occasion and end up bidding far more than they had intended. On the left-hand side of the room stood a long table on a raised platform. Seated behind it were some of the auction house’s most experienced senior staff. On the table in front of them was a row of white telephones that would only be whispered into when the lot their client was interested in came up for sale.

From his seat at the back of the room, Sir Alan could see that almost every place was taken. However, there were still three empty chairs in the third row that must have been reserved for a major client. He wondered who would be seated on either side of Don Pedro Martinez. He flicked through the pages of his catalogue until he came to Rodin’s The Thinker, lot 29. There would be more than enough time for Martinez to make an entrance.

At 7 p.m. precisely, Mr Wilson gazed down at his clients and, like the Pope, smiled benignly. He tapped the microphone and said, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Sotheby’s Impressionist sale. Lot number one,’ he announced, glancing to his left to make sure the porter had placed the correct picture on the easel, ‘is a delightful Degas pastel, showing two ballerinas in rehearsal at the Trocadero. I’ll open the bidding at five thousand pounds. Six thousand. Seven thousand. Eight thousand . . .’

Sir Alan watched with interest as almost all of the early lots exceeded their estimates, proving, as The Times had suggested that morning, that there was a new breed of collectors who had made their fortunes since the war, and wished to show they had arrived by investing in art.

It was during the twelfth lot that Don Pedro Martinez entered the room, accompanied by two young men. Sir Alan recognized Martinez’s youngest son, Bruno, and assumed the other must be Sebastian Clifton. The presence of Sebastian convinced him that Martinez must be confident that the money was still inside the statue.

The dealers and gallery owners began to discuss among themselves if Martinez was likely to be more interested in lot 28, A Corner of the Garden at St Paul’s Hospital at St Rémy by Van Gogh, or lot 29, Rodin’s The Thinker.

Sir Alan had always considered himself to be a calm and collected man under pressure, but at that moment he felt his heart rate rising beat by beat as each new lot was placed on the easel. When the bidding opened at £80,000 for A Corner of the Garden at St Paul’s Hospital at St Rémy, and the hammer finally came down at £140,000, a record for a Van Gogh, he took out his handkerchief and dabbed his forehead.

He turned the page of his catalogue to look at the masterpiece he admired, but for which, ironically, he still hoped to end up as the under-bidder.

‘Lot number twenty-nine, Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker,’ said Mr Wilson. ‘If you look in your catalogue you will see that this is a lifetime cast by Alexis Rudier. The work is on display at the entrance to the sale room,’ the auctioneer added. Several heads turned to admire the massive bronze sculpture. ‘Considerable interest has been shown in this piece, so I shall open the bidding at forty thousand pounds. Thank you, sir,’ said the auctioneer, pointing to a gentleman sitting directly in front of him on the centre aisle. Several more heads turned, this time in the hope of identifying who the bidder might be.

Sir Alan responded with a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

‘Fifty thousand,’ declared the auctioneer, his attention returning to the man seated on the aisle, who raised his hand again. ‘I have sixty thousand.’ With no more than a glance in Sir Alan’s direction, Mr Wilson received the same slight nod, turned back to the man on the centre aisle and suggested £80,000, but was greeted with a frown of disappointment, followed by a firm shake of the head.

‘I have seventy thousand pounds,’ he said, looking back at Sir Alan, who felt a creeping doubt entering his mind. But then Mr Wilson looked to his left and said, ‘Eighty thousand. I have a bid on the telephone at eighty thousand.’ He immediately switched his attention back to Sir Alan. ‘Ninety thousand?’ he purred.

Sir Alan nodded.

Wilson looked back towards the phone, where a hand was raised a few seconds later. ‘One hundred thousand. One hundred and ten thousand?’ he asked, looking once again at Sir Alan and giving him his best Cheshire cat smile.

Could he risk it? For the first time in his life, the cabinet secretary took a gamble. He nodded.

‘I have one hundred and ten thousand pounds,’ said Wilson, looking directly at the Sotheby’s employee who was holding the phone to his ear and awaiting his instructions.

Martinez turned around to see if he could identify who was bidding against him.

The whispered phone conversation continued for some time. Sir Alan became more nervous with each passing second. He tried not to consider the possibility that Martinez had double-crossed him and had somehow managed to smuggle £8 million into the country while the SAS had set fire to counterfeits of counterfeits. What felt like an hour to him turned out to be less than twenty seconds. And then without warning, the man on the phone raised his hand.

‘I have a bid of one hundred and twenty thousand on the phone,’ said Wilson, trying not to sound triumphant. He switched his attention back to Sir Alan, who didn’t move a muscle. ‘I have a bid of one hundred and twenty thousand on the telephone,’ he repeated. ‘I am letting the piece go at a hundred and twenty thousand, this is your last chance,’ he said, looking directly at Sir Alan, but the cabinet secretary had reverted to his more natural role of mandarin, displaying no expression.

‘Sold, for one hundred and twenty thousand pounds,’ said Wilson, bringing the hammer down with a thud as he transferred his smile to the bidder on the telephone.

Sir Alan breathed a sigh of relief, and was particularly pleased to see the self-satisfied grin on Martinez’s face that convinced him that the Argentinian believed he’d repurchased his own statue, containing £8 million pounds, for a mere £120,000. And tomorrow, no doubt, he intended to exchange old lamps for new.

A couple of lots later, Martinez rose from his place in the third row and barged along the line of people without the slightest concern that they might still be following the auction. Once he’d reached the aisle, he marched back down, a look of satisfaction on his face, and disappeared out of the room. The two young men who followed in his wake had the grace to look embarrassed.

Sir Alan waited for half a dozen more lots to find new owners before he slipped out. When he stepped on to Bond Street, it was such a pleasant evening that he decided to walk to his club in Pall Mall and treat himself to half a dozen oysters and a glass of champagne. He would have given a month’s salary to see Martinez’s face when he discovered that his victory had turned out to be hollow.