“Please.” I restrained him. “Phyllis would—”
“—be delighted, Lovejoy! You’re practically one of the family!” Forced, I conceded gracefully, working it out. I’d have to smuggle canvas, paints, brushes to the house.
Those cardboard cylinders, for carrying paper scrolls, might do. The Triad’s ubiquitous goons would assume they contained manuscripts for Surton. Nervously I arranged to use the roof room for a couple of hours most afternoons. There I would make a second version of my masterwork, in solitude. A fake of a fake. Labor of love.
The next public announcement was made simultaneously in all the media. I thought the newspapers went over the top, the headlines too splashy, but Marilyn translated the Chinese and said they were just right. The television gave a bald announcement that a major Impressionist masterwork had now been confirmed, and was in the possession of a respected local doctor, aha. Television caught Chao on the hoof outside one of his hotels at Sa Tin Heights. He smilingly deprecated his good fortune, admitting that, yes, he now did have personal knowledge of such a masterwork. It was under close guard at a secret place.
He would try to arrange a public exhibition very soon. Such fortune should be shared, ne?
Hai, I said in agreement. All well so far. Only three more moves and Fatty would get his comeuppance.
In quiet hours I drew up additional extracts of the mythical Song Ping’s life, snatches of his diaries, bits of hearsay. I became quite fascinated by his quirks and foibles, even though I was inventing them. I wrote out chunks of garble, letting him ramble on about Monet, Sisley, Renoir, not so much Pissarro, made him in awe of the staid Manet. For authenticity I included a place-name, mentioned the cafe the young Impressionists frequented, even gave details of a vaguely improbable row between Monet and poor Frederic de Pazille, who died in the Franco- Prussian War. Because so many of my materials came from East Anglia, I included a few taped readings—my voice, disguised over the phone. My best was a fragment of a crudely translated letter supposedly written by Song Ping from London in the 1870s. I made him speak disparagingly of Renoir’s “rainbow” palate.
After I’d finished I tried it all on Marilyn in celebration. She listened, perched on her studio stool. I acted out the bits, ran the tapes, mimicked Monet’s quarrelsomeness, showed her how the withdrawn Sisley’s taciturnity must have irritated, the lot.
“Well?” I said, exhausted. “Convincing?”
She was silent a moment. “These are people you knew?”
Women. “No, love. How many times have I to tell you? They were in France, over a century ago. It’s my plan, see?”
She nodded. “Very good.”
So that day I took all my made-up notes and concocted tapes to the university. The old man was delighted. I explained, sadly, that these were the very last fragments of everything I had been able to get from my firm about Song Ping, RIP.
“Some of it is disjointed. Most is in English or French, I’m afraid. Our firm’s phoned in a few fragments on these tapes. Other bits might turn up. We might get a Canton address where he first exhibited.”
“Excellent!” He handled my sheaf of scraps with so much care my heart went out to him. A real honest pro. We’re a dying breed. “No chronology, I see, Lovejoy?”
“No. There’s, er, a special chronology fee for putting them in what you think’s the right order.” I’d have to see that Sim authorized the fees directly from a London bank. Life’s all go.
He hugged himself. “Imagine it all in Chinese calligraphy of the period, authentic paper, proper typology! It shall be a truly realistic exhibition!” He rubbed his hands, cackling a merry don’s laugh. “Lovejoy,” he said, eyes misting. “Thank you for this task!”
“But it’s a mammoth—”
“Genuine learning, challenged by time’s decay, emerging triumphantly in mankind’s pursuit of—” He spouted this rapturous crap for some minutes.
“Great, Stephen.” I was moved in spite of myself.
Leaving the steep garden, I met Phyllis Surton just disembarking from the number 3
bus in Bonham Road. Her grayness seemed to blot all color from the surroundings as we enacted a dithery reunion. The racket from St. Paul’s school opposite made conversation difficult, so I turned back with her.
“I’m just taking some materials to Stephen, Lovejoy.” She carried folders and a box.
“Old inks, brushes.” She was like a sparrow, nervy and dithery. We uttered commonplaces: can I carry your stuff; aren’t the flowers nice. She made to sit on a stone seat. The least I could do was sit beside her.
“Do you notice the plants?” she asked.
“Plants?” We were in a garden, for God’s sake. “Aye. Great.”
“No. There.” She pointed.
“Grass?” It was low-lying frondy stuff.
“Look.” She smiled, touched a finger to a frond by the path. Instantly the greenery collapsed. Its falling movement touched others, and the whole green carpet cowered down.
I found myself standing in alarm. “It’s alive!”
“Not really that way, Lovejoy.” She was smiling. “Mimosa pudica, the sensitive plant.
Touch it and it, well, crumples.” She held my gaze as I returned uneasily. “It’s me, isn’t it?” Slowly the greenery was straightening, warily recovering. “I pretend to be like everyone else. But afraid of touch, encounter.”
“Me too.” I kept my feet off the ground. For all I knew this bloody grass had teeth.
“I know,” she said unexpectedly. “I sense it. I look, but can’t dare myself to…”
“Bloody cheek,” I said, stung. “I’m not scared of anything.”
She smiled at that. “Should I tell you something, Lovejoy? I know you won’t tell—
