“I think I was at school with you,” mused Guy Peploe. “You were much younger than I was, but I think I remember you.”
“No,” said Matthew. “Somebody else.”
Matthew glanced at her, almost reproachfully. “I don’t think
that it’s a real Peploe,” he said. “I’ve never thought that, actually.
It’s Pat who said it was.”
Pat felt irritated that he should seek to cover his embarrassment by blaming her, but she said nothing.
Guy Peploe was staring at the wrapping. “We’ll see,” he said.
“I take the view that the best way of authenticating a painting is to look at it. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s rather difficult to say anything unless you’ve got the painting in front of you.”
Matthew laughed nervously. “Yes, I find it very difficult when people phone me up and describe a painting that they have. They expect me to be able to value it over the phone.”
“People are funny,” said Guy Peploe. “But you can never turn down an opportunity to look at something. You never know. You remember that Cadell that turned up in a charity shop a few years ago. Remember that?”
“Yes,” said Matthew, who did not remember.
“So perhaps we should take a look at this one,” said Guy Peploe patiently. “Shall I unwrap it?”
Matthew reached for the painting. “I’ll do it,” he said.
He pulled off the sealing tape and slowly unfolded the wrapping paper. Pat watched him, noticing the slight trembling of his hands. It was, for her, a moment of intense human pity.
We are all vulnerable and afraid, she thought – in our different ways.
Matthew removed the last of the wrapping paper and silently handed the picture over to Guy Peploe. Then he glanced at Pat, and lowered his eyes. At the counter, Big Lou stood quite still, her cloth in her hand, her gaze fixed on the Peploe? and Peploe.
Guy Peploe looked at the painting. He held it away from himself for a few moments, narrowing his eyes. Then he turned it round and looked at the back of the canvas. Then he laid it down on the table.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a Peploe – this isn’t.”
Matthew and Pat had both been holding their breath; now they exhaled together, and it seemed to Pat as if Matthew would continue to lose air until he deflated completely, leaving just 278
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “You never really thought it was. It’s all my fault for raising your hopes.”
Guy Peploe looked at Matthew. “Yes,” he said. “I can well see how you could have thought it was by Peploe. You must have a good eye.”
This kind remark may have been meant, or it may not; Pat could not tell. She thought it likely that he was just being kind, and certainly it was a generous thing to say. It would have been easy for him to have dismissed their hopes out of hand, and thus belittled Matthew; but he had not done that. Instead, he had been courteous.
Guy Peploe now picked up the painting and touched it gently with his forefinger. “The paint’s all wrong, I’m afraid,” he said.
“My grandfather painted on absorbent surfaces. This meant that the linseed oil was drained out of the paint and as a result the surface has a lovely, scratchy texture to it. He worked on board, you know. He bought pieces of wood which he would then put in the top of his paint box and work on right there. Sometimes there are grains of sand in the paint because he would be painting on the beach.
“And then there’s the subject. This is Mull, of course, but it’s not quite the right angle for Peploe’s work. My grandfather used to go up to the northern part of Iona and paint Mull from there. There were one or two beaches that he liked in particular. All the paintings he did of Mull from Iona are from that perspective.” He paused, squinting at the painting before him. “Now that over there is definitely Ben More, but it’s Ben More from a rather strange angle. I’m not sure if this view is real at all. It’s almost as if somebody has taken bits of Mull and stuck them together. I’m sorry, but that’s what it seems like to me.”
“But what about the signature?” asked Pat. “That SP in the corner there.”
Guy Peploe smiled. “Signatures can be misleading. Some
artists never signed their work and yet signatures appear on them later on. That doesn’t mean that the picture in question is a forgery – it’s just that somebody has added a signature.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Matthew.
“Because they think that the painting’s genuine,” explained Guy Peploe. “And it may well be genuine. But then they think that the best way of shoring up their claim that it’s by the artist in question is to add a signature – just to add an extra bit of certainty!”
“And did Peploe sign?” asked Pat.
“Yes,” said Guy Peploe. “He signed works that he was particularly pleased with. He did not use SP, as far as I
