‘Liv!’
She jumps as the man steps out from her
doorway. But it’s her father, a black beret rammed on his head, a rainbow scarf
around his neck, and his old tweed coat down to his knees. His face glows gold under the
sodium light. He holds open his arms to hug her, revealing a faded Sex Pistols T-shirt
underneath. ‘There you are! We didn’t hear back from you after the Great Hot
Date. I thought I’d pop by and see how it went!’
‘Would you like some
coffee?’
Liv glances up at the secretary.
‘Thank you.’ She sits very still in the plush leather seat, gazing unseeing
at the newspaper she has pretended to read for the last fifteen minutes.
She is wearing a suit, the only one she
owns. It is probably an unfashionable cut, but she needed to feel held in today;
structured. She has felt out of her depth since her first visit to the lawyers’
offices. Now she needs to feel that something more than her nerve is holding her up.
‘Henry’s gone down to wait for
them in Reception. Won’t be long now.’ With a professional smile, the woman
turns on her high heels and walks away.
It’s proper coffee. So it should be,
given the amount she’s paying per hour. There was no point in her fighting this
case, Sven had insisted, without the proper firepower. He had consulted his friends at
the auction houses, his contacts at the bar, as to who might best see off the
restitution claim. Unfortunately, he added, big guns cost big money. Whenever she looks
at Henry Phillips, at his good haircut, his beautiful handmade shoes, the
expensive-holiday sheen on his plump face, all she can think is,
You are rich
because of people like me.
She hears footsteps and voices outside the
lobby. She stands, straightening her skirt, composing her face. And
there he is, wearing the blue wool scarf, a folder under his arm, just visible behind
Henry, and two people she does not recognize. He catches her eye, and she turns away
swiftly, feeling the small hairs on her neck prickle.
‘Liv? We’re all here. Would you
like to come through to the boardroom? I’ll arrange for your coffee to be brought
in.’
She gazes fixedly at Henry, who passes her
and holds open the door for the other woman to enter. She feels Paul’s presence,
as if he actually gives off heat. He is there, beside her. He is wearing jeans, as if
this sort of meeting is of so little consequence to him that he might as well be out for
a walk.
‘Conned any other women out of their
valuables lately?’ she says quietly, so quietly that only he will hear it.
‘Nope. I’ve been too busy
stealing handbags and seducing the vulnerable.’
Her head shoots up and his eyes lock on
hers. He is, she sees with some shock, as furious as she is.
The boardroom is wood-panelled, its seats
heavy and covered with leather. One wall is lined with leather-bound books. It suggests
years of reasonable legal accommodation, is infused with stately wisdom. She follows
Henry, and within seconds they are seated, lined up on each side of the table. She looks
at her pad of paper, her hands, her coffee, anything but Paul.
‘So.’ Henry waits for coffee to
be poured, then places his fingertips together. ‘We are here to discuss, without
prejudice, the claim made against Mrs Halston through the organization TARP, and to try
to identify whether
there is any way we might reach some kind of
accommodation without recourse to legal measures.’
She gazes at the people sitting opposite.
The woman is in her mid-thirties. She has dark hair that falls in corkscrews around her
face and an intense expression. She is scribbling something on a notepad. The man beside
her is French and bears the heavy features of a middle-aged Serge Gainsbourg. Liv often
thought it was possible to tell the faces of different nationalities, even without
hearing them speak. This man is so Gallic he might as well have been smoking a Gauloise
and wearing a string of onions.
And then there is Paul.
‘I think it would be a good idea if
first we made some introductions. My name is Henry Phillips, and I’m acting for
Mrs Halston. This is Sean Flaherty, acting for TARP, Paul McCafferty and Janey
Dickinson, its directors. This is Monsieur André Lefèvre, of the Lefèvre
family, who is making the claim in conjunction with TARP. Mrs Halston, TARP is an
organization that specializes in the seeking out and recovery of –’
‘I know what it is,’ she
says.
Oh, but he’s so close to her. Directly
across the table, she can see the individual veins on his hands, the way his cuffs slide
from within his sleeves. He is wearing the shirt he wore the night they met. If she
stretched out her feet under the table, they would touch his. She folds them neatly
under her chair and reaches for her coffee.
‘Paul, perhaps you would like to
explain to Mrs Halston how this claim has come about.’
‘Yes,’ she says, and her voice
is icy. ‘I’d like to hear.’
She slowly lifts her face, and Paul is
looking straight at
her. She wonders if he can detect how hard she is
vibrating. She feels it must be obvious to everyone; her every breath betrays her.
‘Well … I’d like to
start with an apology,’ he says. ‘I am conscious that this will have come as
a shock. That is unfortunate. The sad fact is that there is no way of going about these
things nicely.’
He is looking directly at her. She can feel
him waiting for her to acknowledge him, some sign. Under the desk, she grips her knees,
digging her fingernails into the skin to give her something to focus on.
‘Nobody wants to take something that
legitimately belongs to someone else. And that is not what we’re about. But the
fact exists that, way back during wartime, a wrong was done. A painting,
The Girl
You Left Behind
, by Édouard Lefèvre, owned and loved by his wife, was
taken and passed into German possession.’
‘You don’t know that,’ she
says.
‘Liv.’ Henry’s voice
contains a warning.
‘We have obtained documentary
evidence, a diary owned by a neighbour of Madame Lefèvre, that suggests a portrait
of the artist’s wife was stolen or obtained coercively by a German
Kommandant
living in the area at the time. Now, this case is unusual in
that most of the work we do is based on losses suffered in the Second World War, and we
believe the initial theft took place during the First World War. But the Hague
Convention still applies.’
‘So why now?’ she says.
‘Nearly a hundred years after you say it was stolen. Convenient that Monsieur
Lefèvre just happens to be worth a whole lot more money now, wouldn’t you
say?’
‘The value is immaterial.’
‘Fine. if the value is immaterial,
I’ll compensate you. Right now. You want me to give you what we paid for it?
Because I still have the receipt. Will you take that amount and leave me
alone?’
The room falls silent.
Henry reaches across and touches her arm.
Her knuckles are white where they clutch her pen. ‘If I may interject,’ he
says smoothly. ‘The purpose of this meeting is to offer a number of solutions to
the issue, and see whether any of them may be acceptable.’
Janey Dickinson exchanges a few whispered
words with André Lefèvre. She wears the studied calm of the primary-school
teacher. ‘I have to say here that as far as the Lefèvre family are concerned,
the only thing that would be acceptable is the return of their painting,’ she
says.
‘Except it’s not their
painting,’ says Liv.
‘Under the Hague Convention it
is,’ she says calmly.
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘It’s the law.’
Liv glances up and Paul is staring at her.
His expression doesn’t change, but in his eyes there is the hint of an apology.
For what? This yelling across a varnished mahogany table? A stolen night? A stolen
painting? She is not sure.
Don’t look at me
, she tells him silently.
‘Perhaps …’ Sean Flaherty
says. ‘Perhaps, as Henry says, we could at least outline some of the possible
solutions.’
‘Oh, you can outline them,’ says
Liv.
‘There are a number of precedents in
such cases. One is that Mrs Halston is free to extinguish the claim. This
means, Mrs Halston, that you would pay the Lefèvre family the
value of the painting and retain it.’
Janey Dickinson doesn’t look up from
her pad. ‘As I have already stated, the family is not interested in money. They
want the painting.’
‘Oh, right,’ says Liv.
‘You think I’ve never negotiated anything before? That I don’t know an
opening salvo?’
‘Liv,’ Henry says again,
‘if we could …’
‘I know what’s going on here.
“Oh, no, we don’t want money.” Until we reach a figure that equals a
lottery win. Then, somehow, everyone manages to get over their hurt feelings.’
‘Liv …’ Henry says,
quietly.
She lets out a breath. Under the table her
hands are shaking.
‘There are occasions on which an
agreement has been reached to share the painting. In the case of what we call
indivisible assets, such as this, it is, admittedly, complicated. But there have been
cases where parties have agreed to, if you like, timeshare a work of art, or have agreed
that they will own it jointly but allow it to be shown in a major gallery. This would,
of course, be accompanied by notices informing visitors both of its looted past and the
generosity of its previous owners.’
Liv shakes her head mutely.
‘There is the possibility of sale and
division, where we –’
‘No,’ say Liv and Lefèvre
in unison.
‘Ms Halston.’
‘Mrs Halston,’ she says.
‘Mrs Halston.’ Paul’s tone
has hardened. ‘I am obliged to inform you that our case is very strong. We have a
good deal
of evidence supporting restitution, and a body of precedent
that lends weight to our cause. In your own interests, I suggest you think quite
carefully about the issue of settlement.’
The room falls silent. ‘Is that meant
to frighten me?’ Liv asks.
‘No,’ he says slowly. ‘But
it is, I would remind you, in everyone’s best interests for this to be settled
amicably. It’s not going to go away. I – we are not going to go away.’
She sees him suddenly, his arm slung across
her naked waist, his mop of brown hair resting against her left breast. She sees his
eyes, smiling, in the half-light.
She lifts her chin a little.
‘She’s not yours to take,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you in
court.’
They are in Henry’s office. She has
drunk a large whisky. She has never in her life drunk whisky in daytime, but Henry has
poured her one, as if it is totally expected. He waits a few minutes as she takes a
couple of sips.
‘I should warn you, it will be an
expensive case,’ he says, leaning back in his chair.
‘How expensive?’
‘Well, in many cases the artwork has
had to be sold after the case simply to pay the legal fees. There was a claimant in
Connecticut recently who recovered stolen works worth twenty-two million dollars. But
they owed more than ten million in legal fees to one lawyer alone. We will need to pay
experts, especially French legal experts, given the painting’s history. And these
cases can drag on, Liv.’
‘But they have to pay our costs if we
win, yes?’
‘Not necessarily.’
She digests this. ‘Well, what are we
talking – five figures?’
‘I would bank on six. It depends on
their firepower. But they do have precedent on their side.’ Henry shrugs.
‘We can prove that you have good title. But there do seem to be gaps in this
painting’s history, as it stands, and if they have evidence that it was removed in
wartime, then …’
‘Six figures?’ she says,
standing and pacing around the room. ‘I can’t believe this. I can’t
believe someone can just walk into my life and demand to take something that belongs to
me. Something I’ve owned for ever.’
‘Their case is far from watertight.
But I have to point out that the political climate is in favour of claimants at the
moment. Sotheby’s sold thirty-eight such works last year. It sold none a decade
earlier.’
She feels electrified, her nerve endings
still jangling from the encounter. ‘He’s – they’re not having
her,’ she says.
‘But the money. You implied you were
stretched already.’
‘I’ll remortgage,’ she
says. ‘Is there anything I can do to keep the costs down?’
Henry leans over his desk. ‘If you
choose to fight this, there’s a lot you can do. Most importantly, the more you can
find out about the painting’s provenance, the stronger position we’ll be in.
Otherwise I have to put someone here on to it, and charge you an hourly rate, and
that’s without the cost of expert witnesses once we go to court. I suggest that if
you can do that we’ll see where we are and I’ll look into instructing a
barrister.’
‘I’ll start the
search.’
She keeps hearing the certainty of their
voices.
Our case is very strong. We have a body of precedent that lends weight to
our cause.
She sees Paul’s face, his fake concern:
It is in
everybody’s interests for this to be settled amicably.
She sips the whisky, and deflates a little.
She feels suddenly very alone. ‘Henry, what would you do? If it were you, I
mean.’
He presses his fingertips together and rests
them against his nose. ‘I think this is a terribly unfair situation. But, Liv, I
would personally be cautious about proceeding to court. These cases can
get … ugly. It might be worth your while just thinking further about whether
there is any way you could settle.’
She keeps seeing Paul’s face.
‘No,’ she says baldly. ‘He is not having her.’
‘Even if –’
‘No.’
She feels his eyes on her as she gathers up
her things and leaves the room.
Paul dials the number for the fourth time,
rests his finger above the
dial
button, then changes his mind and sticks his
telephone in his back pocket. Across the road a man in a suit is arguing with a traffic
warden, gesticulating wildly as the warden gazes at him impassively.