He was early that morning – normally he opened at ten o’clock, as it was unheard of to sell a painting before ten, or even eleven.
He believed that the best time to make a sale was just before lunch, on a Saturday, to a client who had accepted a glass of sherry. Of course, private views were even better than that, because crowd behaviour then entered into the equation and red spots could proliferate like measles. That, at least, was what he had been told when he had taken over the gallery a few weeks previously. But he could not be sure, as he had so far sold nothing. Not one painting; not one print; nothing at all had been bought by any of the people who had drifted in, looked about them, and then, almost regretfully in some cases, almost apologetically in others, had walked back out of the front door.
Matthew flung the advertisements into the wastepaper bin and walked into the back of the gallery to deal with the alarm, which had picked up his presence and was giving its first warning pips.
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The code keyed in, he flicked the light switches, bringing to life the spotlights that were trained on the larger paintings on the walls.
He enjoyed doing this because it seemed to transform the room so entirely, from a cold, rather gloomy place, inadequately lit by natural light from the front window, into a place of warmth and colour.
It was not a large gallery. The main room, or
Halfway down one side of this room there was a desk, which faced outwards, with a telephone and a discreet computer terminal.
Beside the desk there was a revolving bookcase in which twenty or thirty books were stacked; a
Matthew had acquired the gallery on impulse, not an impulse of his, but that of his father, who owned the building and who had repossessed it from the tenant. Matthew’s father, who was normally unbending in his business deals, had been an uncharacteristically tolerant landlord to the gallery. He had allowed unpaid rent to mount up to the point where the tenant had been quite incapable of paying. Even then, rather than claim what had been owing for more than two years, he had accepted gallery stock in settlement of the debt and had paid rather generously for the rest.
Matthew’s father, despaired of his son ever amounting to much in the world of business. He had started Matthew off in a variety of enterprises, all of which had failed. Finally, after two near-bankrupt stores, there had been a travel agency, a business with a promising turnover, but which under Matthew’s management had rapidly lost customers. His father had been puzzled by this, and had eventually realised that the problem was not laziness on his son’s part, but a complete inability to organise and moti-vate staff. He simply could not give directions. He was a completely incompetent manager. This was a bitter conclusion for a father who had dreamed of a son who would turn a small Scottish business empire, the result of decades of hard work,
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into something even bigger. So he had decided that he might as well accept his son’s limitations and set him up in a business where he would have virtually no staff to deal with and where there was very little business to be done anyway – a sinecure, in other words. A gallery was perfect. Matthew could sit there all day and would therefore technically be working – something which he believed to be very important. He would make no money, but then money appeared not to interest him. It was all very perplexing.
But he’s my son, thought Matthew’s father. He may not be good for very much, but he’s honest, he treats his parents with consideration, and he’s my own flesh and blood. And it could be much worse: there were sons who caused their fathers much greater pain than that. He’s a failure, he thought; but he’s a good failure and he’s
And for Matthew’s part, he knew that he was no businessman.
He would have liked to have succeeded in the ventures that his father had planned for him, because he liked his father. My father may have the soul of a Rotarian, thought Matthew, but he’s
It was not Pat’s first job, of course. There had been that disastrous first gap year, with all the varying jobs that
She had worked for the person she could now only think of as
This was clearly going to be very different. To start with, there was nothing objectionable about Matthew. He had been offhand at the interview, quite casual, in fact, but he had not been rude 16
to her. Now, as she reported for work on that first Tuesday, she noticed that when she came into the room Matthew stood up to greet her, holding out his hand in a welcoming way. The standing up was something that her mother would have noticed and approved of; if a man stands up, she had said, you know that he’s going to respect you. Watch your father – when anybody comes into the room he stands up, no matter who they are. That’s because he’s a . . . She had hesitated, looking at her daughter.
No, she could not bring herself to say it.
“Because he’s a what?” Pat had challenged. It was always gratifying to expose parents as hopelessly old- fashioned. She was going to say
“Because he’s a psychiatrist,” her mother had said quickly.
There! She would find out soon enough, the difference between the types of men, if she did not already know it. And I will not be patronised by her, just because she’s twenty and I’ve reached the age of . . . My God! Have I?
