Twelve Red Herrings (30 page)

It was an
extract from Sir Roger de Grey’s speech when he had presented Sally with the
Mary Rischgitz and the Henry Tonks Prizes at the Slade two years before.

Sally turned the
pages, seeing her works reproduced in colour for the first time. Simon’s
attention to detail and layout was evident on every page.

She looked back
towards the office, and saw that Simon was still on the phone. She decided to
go downstairs and check on the rest of her pictures, now that they had all been
framed. The lower gallery was a mass of colour, and the newly framed paintings
were so skilfully hung that even Sally saw them in a new light.

Once she had
circled the room Sally suppressed a smile of satisfaction before turning to
make her way back upstairs. As she passed a table in the centre of the gallery,
she noticed a folder with the initials “N.K.” printed on it. She idly lifted
the cover, to discover a pile of undistinguished watercolours.

As she leafed
through her rival’s never-to-be-exhibited efforts, Sally had to admit that the
nude self-portraits didn’t do Natasha justice. She was just about to close the
folder and join Simon upstairs when she came to a sudden halt.

Although it was
clumsily executed, there was no doubt
who
the man was
that the half-clad Natasha was clinging on to.

Sally felt sick.
She slammed the folder shut, walked quickly across the room and back up the
stairs to the ground floor. In the corner of the large gallery Simon was
chatting to a man who had several cameras slung over his shoulder.

“Sally,” he
said, coming towards her, ‘this is Mike...”
But
Sally
ignored them both, and started running towards the open door, tears flooding
down her cheeks. She turned right into St James’s, determined to get as far
away from the gallery as possible. But then she came to an abrupt halt. Tony
and Natasha were walking towards her, arm in arm.

Sally stepped
off the pavement and began to cross the road, hoping to reach the other side
before they spotted her.

The screech of
tyres and the sudden swerve of the van came just a moment too late, and she was
thrown headlong into the middle of the road.

When Sally came
to, she felt awful. She blinked her eyes, and thought she could hear voices.
She blinked again, but it was several moments before she was able to focus on
anything.

She was lying in
a bed, but it was not her own. Her right leg was covered in plaster, and was
raised high in the air, suspended from a pulley. Her other leg was under the
sheet, and it felt all right. She wiggled the toes of her left foot: yes, they
were fine.

Then she began
to try to move her arms. A nurse came up to the side of the bed.

“Welcome back to
the world, Sally.”

“How long have I
been like this?” she asked.

“A couple of
days,” said the nurse, checking Sally’s pulse. “But you’re making a remarkably
quick recovery. Before you ask, it’s only a broken leg, and the black eyes will
have gone long before we let you out. By the way,” she added, as she moved on
to the next patient, “I loved that picture of you in the morning papers.

And what about
those flattering remarks your friend made? So what’s it like to be famous?”
Sally wanted to ask what she was talking about, but the nurse was already
taking the pulse of the person in the next bed.

“Come back,”
Sally wanted to say, but a second nurse had appeared by her bedside with a mug
of orange juice, which she thrust into her hand.

“Let’s get you
started on this,” she said. Sally obeyed, and tried to suck the liquid through
a bent plastic straw.

“You’ve got a
visitor,” the nurse told her once she’d emptied the contents of the mug. “He’s
been waiting for some time. Do you think you’re up to seeing him?”

“Sure,” said Sally,
not particularly wanting to face Tony, but desperate to find out what had
happened.

She looked
towards the swing doors at the end of the ward, but had to wait for some time
before Simon came bouncing through them. He walked straight up to her bed, clutching
what might just about have been described as a bunch of flowers. He gave her
plaster cast a big kiss.

“I’m so sorry,
Simon,” Sally said, before he had even said hello.

“I know just how
much trouble and expense you’ve been to on my behalf. And now I’ve let you down
so badly.”

“You certainly
have,’ said Simon. “It’s always a let-down when you sell everything off the
walls on the first night. Then you haven’t got anything left for your old
customers, and they start grumbling.” Sally’s mouth opened wide.

“Mind you, it
was a rather good photo of Natasha, even if it was an awful one of you.”

“What are you
talking about, Simon?”

“Mike Sallis got
his exclusive, and you got your break,” he said, patting her suspended leg.
“When Natasha bent over your body in the street, Mike began clicking away for
dear life. And I couldn’t have scripted her quotes better myself: “The most
outstanding young artist of our generation.
If the world were
to lose such a talent...
“
‘ Sally
laughed at
Simon’s wicked imitation of Natasha’s Russian accent.

“You hit most of
the next morning’s front pages,” he continued.

^”“Brush with
Death” in the Mail; “Still Life in St James’s” in the Express. And you even
managed “Splat!” in the Sun. The punters flocked into the gallery that evening.
Natasha was wearing a black see-through dress and proceeded to give the press
soundbite after soundbite about your genius. Not that it made any difference.
We’d already sold every canvas long before their second editions hit the
street. But, more important, the serious critics in the broadsheets are already
acknowledging that you might actually have some talent.’

Sally smiled. “I
may have failed to have an affair with Prince Charles, but at least it seems I
got something right.”

“Well, not
exactly,” said Simon.

“What do you
mean?” asked Sally, suddenly anxious. “You said all the pictures have been
sold.”

“True, but if
you’d arranged to have the accident a few days earlier, I could have jacked up
the prices by at least fifty per cent.

Still, there’s
always next time.”

“Did Tony buy
“The Sleeping Cat that Never Moved
” ?”
Sally asked
quietly.

“No, he was late
as usual, I’m afraid. It was snapped up in the first half hour, by a serious
collector. Which reminds me,” Simon added, as Sally’s parents came through the
swing doors into the ward, “I’ll need another forty canvases if we’re going to
hold your second show in the spring. So you’d better get back to work right
away.”

“But look at me,
you silly man,” Sally said, laughing. “How do you expect me to -’ “Don’t be so
feeble,” said Simon, tapping her plaster cast. “It’s your leg that’s out of
action, not your arm.’

Sally grinned
and looked up to see her parents standing at the end of the bed.

“Is this Tony?”
her mother asked.

“Good heavens
no, Mother,” laughed Sally. “This is Simon.

He’s far more
important. Mind you,” she confessed, “I made the same mistake the first time I
met him.’

ARNOLD BACON WOULD HAVE MADE A FORTUNE
if he hadn’t taken his father’s advice.

Arnold’s
occupation, as described in his passport, was ‘banker’.

For those of you
who are pedantic about such matters, he was the branch manager of Barclays Bank
in St Albans, Hertfordshire, which in banking circles is about the equivalent
of being a captain in the Royal Army Pay Corps.

His passport
also stated that he was born in 2937, was five feet nine inches tall, with
sandy hair and no distinguishing marks although in fact he had several lines on
his forehead, which served only to prove that he frowned a great deal.

He was a member of
the local Rotary Club (Hon. Treasurer), the Conservative Party (Branch
Vice-Chairman), and was a past Secretary of the St Albans Festival. He had also
played rugby for the Old Albanians 2nd XV in the 96os and cricket for St Albans
C.C. in the t97os. His only exercise for the past two decades, however, had
been the occasional round of golf with his opposite number from the National
Westminster. Arnold did not boast a handicap.

During these
excursions round the golf course Arnold would often browbeat his opponent with
his conviction that he should never have been a banker in the first place.
After years of handing out loans to customers who wanted to start up their own
businesses, he had become painfully aware that he himself was... really one of
nature’s born entrepreneurs. If only he hadn’t listened to his father’s advice
and followed him into the bank, heaven knows what heights he might have reached
by now.

His colleague
nodded wearily,
then
holed a seven-foot putt, ensuring
that the drinks would not be on him.

“How’s Deirdre?”
he asked as the two men strolled towards the clubhouse.

“Wants to buy a
new dinner service,” said Arnold, which slightly puzzled his companion. “Not
that I can see what’s wrong with our old Coronation set.” When they reached the
bar, Arnold checked his watch before ordering half a pint of lager for himself
and a gin and tonic for the victor, as Deirdre wouldn’t be expecting him back
for at least an hour. He stopped pontificating only when another member began
telling them the latest rumours about the club captain’s wife.

Deirdre Bacon,
Arnold’s long-suffering wife, had come to accept that her husband was now too
set in his ways for her to hope for any improvement. Although she had her own
opinions on what would have happened to Arnold if he hadn’t followed his
father’s advice, she no longer voiced them. At the time of their engagement she
had considered Arnold Bacon ‘quite a catch’. But as the years passed, she had
become more realistic about her expectations, and after two children, one of
each sex, she had settled into the life of a housewife and mother – not that
anything else had ever been seriously contemplated.

The children had
now grown up, Justin to become a solidtor’s clerk in Chelmsford, and Virginia
to marry a local boy whom Arnold described as an official with British Rail.
Deirdre, more accurately, told her friends at the hairdresser’s that Keith was
a train driver.

For the first
ten years of their marriage, the Bacons had holidayed in Bournemouth, because
Arnold’s parents had always done so.

They only
graduated to the Costa del Sol after Arnold read in the Daily Telegraph’s “Sun
Supplement’ that that was where most bank managers were to be found during the
month of August.

For many years
Arnold had promised his wife that they would do ^”something special’ when it
came to celebrating their twentyfifth wedding anniversary, though he had never
actually committed himself to defining what ‘special’ meant.

It was only when
he read in the bank’s quarterly staff magazine that Andrew Buxton, the Chairman
of Barclays, would be spending his summer sailing around the Greek islands on a
private yacht that Arnold began writing off to numerous cruise companies and
travel agents, requesting copies of their brochures. After having studied hundreds
of glossy pages, he settled on a seven-day cruise aboard the Princess Corina,
starting out from Piraeus to sail around the Greek islands, ending up at
Mykonos. Deirdre’s bnly contribution to the discussion was that she would
rather go back to the Costa del Sol, and spend the money they saved on a new
dinner service. She was delighted, however, to read in one of the brochures
that the Greeks were famous for their pottery.

By the time they
boarded the coach to Heathrow, Arnold’s junior staff, fellow members of the
Rotary Club, and even a few of his more select customers were becoming tired of
being reminded of how Arnold would be spending his summer break.

“I shall be
sailing around the Greek islands on a liner,” he would tell them. “Not unlike
the bank’s Chairman, Andrew Buxton, you know.’

If anyone asked
Deirdre what she and Arnold were doing for their holidays, she said that they
were going on a seven-day package tour, and that the one thing she hoped to
come home with was a new dinner service.

The old “Coronation’
service that had been given to them by Deirdre’s parents as a wedding gift some
twenty-five years before was now sadly depleted. Several of the plates were
chipped or broken, while the pattern of crowns and sceptres on the pieces that
were still serviceable had almost faded away.

“I can’t see
what’s wrong with it
myself
,” said Arnold when his
wife raised the subject once more as they waited in the departure lounge at
Heathrow. Deirdre made no effort to list its defects again.

Arnold spent
most of the flight to Athens complaining that the aircraft was full of Greeks.
Deirdre didn’t feel it was worth pointing out to him that, if one booked a
passage with Olympic
Airways, that
was likely to be
the outcome. She also knew his reply would be, “But it saved us twenty-four
pounds.” Once they had landed at Hellenikon International Airport, the two
holidaymakers climbed aboard a bus.