The Flanders Panel

“My company’s gratitude, of course. Now and in the future. As regards any immediate advantage, I won’t ask you how much you were hoping to earn for your work on the Van Huys, but I can guarantee you double that figure. As an advance on the two per cent of the final price The Game of Chess reaches at auction, of course. I’m also in a position to offer you a contract to head the restoration department at Claymore’s here in Madrid. How would you feel about that?”

“It’s very tempting. Are you really expecting to make that much on the painting?”

“There are already interested buyers in London and New York. With the right publicity, this could turn into the biggest event in the art world since Christie’s auctioned Tutankhamun’s treasures. Given the situation, as I’m sure you’ll understand, your friend’s wanting to go halves with us really is too much. All she’s done is find a restorer and offer us the picture. We do everything else.”

Julia considered what he’d said without the least show of surprise; what could and could not surprise her had changed a lot over the last few days. She looked at Montegrifo’s right hand, which lay on the tablecloth very close to hers, and she tried to calculate how far it had progressed in the last five minutes. Far enough to call an end to the supper.

“I’ll try,” she said, picking up her handbag. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”

Montegrifo stroked one eyebrow.

“Do try.” His brown eyes looked at her with liquid, velvety tenderness. “It will be to everyone’s advantage; I’m sure you’ll manage it.”

There wasn’t a trace of menace in his voice, only a tone of affectionate entreaty, so friendly, so perfect, it could almost have been sincere. He took Julia’s hand and planted a gentle kiss on it, barely brushing it with his lips.

“I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before,” he added in a low voice, “but you really are an extraordinarily beautiful woman.”

She asked him to drop her near Stephan’s and walked the rest of the way. After midnight the place opened its doors to a distinguished clientele whose level of distinction was regulated by the high prices and a rigorously applied admissions policy. Everyone who was anyone in the Madrid art world gathered there, from agents working for foreign auctioneers, who were just passing through on the lookout for a reredos or a private collection for sale, to gallery owners, researchers impresarios, specialist journalists and fashionable painters.

She left her coat in the cloakroom and, after saying hello to a few acquaintances, walked to the sofa at the far end where Cesar usually sat. And there he was, legs crossed, a glass in one hand, immersed in intimate conversation with a handsome, blond young man. Julia knew the special contempt Cesar felt for clubs popular exclusively with homosexuals. He considered it a simple matter of good taste not to frequent the claustrophobic, exhibitionist, often aggressive atmosphere of such places, where, as he would explain with a mocking look on his face, it was hard, my dear, not to feel like some old queen mincing around at a stud farm. Cesar was a lone hunter – ambiguity refined to its elegant essence – who was at ease in the world of heterosexuals, where he felt perfectly free to cultivate friendships and make conquests, usually of artistic young bloods whom he would guide towards a discovery of their true sensibility, which the divine young things did not, a priori, know. He enjoyed playing at being both Maecenas and Socrates to his exquisite boys. After suitable honeymoons that always had Venice, Marrakesh or Cairo as their backdrop, each affair would follow its natural and distinctive course. Cesar’s long and intense life had, Julia knew, been shaped by a succession of confusions, disappointments and betrayals, but also by fidelities which, in private moments, she’d heard him describe with great delicacy, in that ironic and somewhat distant tone in which, out of personal modesty, he tended to veil any expression of his intimate longings.

He smiled at her from afar. My favourite girl, his lips said, moving silently as, placing his glass on the table, he uncrossed his legs, stood, and held out his hands to her.

“How did the supper go, Princess? Ghastly, I imagine. Sabatini’s isn’t what it was.” He pursed his lips and there was a malicious gleam in his blue eyes. “All those executives and parvenu bankers with their credit cards and restaurant accounts chargeable to their companies will be the ruin of everything. By the way, have you met Sergio?”