“I’ll offer you as good a price as you can reasonably expect,” she said. “Above the estimate. And I know what that figure is, as it happens.”
He seemed confused. “I don’t know …”
Now she made the offer that she had been thinking about as they spoke. She wanted to put a hand on his shoulder; she wanted to embrace this dignified, courteous man in his pride. “And there’s something else. I’d be quite happy for you to enjoy this picture for, let’s say, the next five years. You can keep it. I’ll buy it, but you can keep it here. I’m quite happy to wait five years, and it’ll give me pleasure to know that you’re enjoying it.”
He stared at her. “Are you serious?”
“Very,” she said.
“But why? Why should you do this astonishingly generous thing for me?” He paused. “Which I can hardly accept, of course.”
She was dismayed by his rejection. “But why not? We are, after all, related.” She smiled. “If only very slightly. But a gift between relatives …”
He shook his head. “You make too much of that.”
“No, I don’t. But may I tell you something? Would you mind?”
He frowned. “If you wish.”
“Doing this will give me pleasure. It will also suit me. I will get a painting I want, and you will have the advantage of being able to keep it for a while. You’re giving me something, and I’m giving something to you. I know I don’t have to. I could go and buy it at the same price at the auction, but I would like you to keep this painting for a time. Please allow me to do it.”
He was listening carefully, his expression grave. She thought: It sounds as if I’m giving him a lecture. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to lecture you.”
He raised a hand. “No, I’m the one who should apologise. You offered me a gift, and I immediately said that I could not accept it. That is churlishness—sheer churlishness.”
“So you accept?”
He shook his head, as if to clear his growing confusion. “This is really rather strange. You telephoned me and asked to speak to me about Chris’s accident. I said yes, although I couldn’t imagine what I would have to say about it that would be of interest to you. And then you turn up and claim to be a relative and offer to buy my Raeburn but not really buy it …”
She agreed that it all sounded rather odd. “But life is like that, Mr. Alexander. It really is. Odd things— unexpected things—occur all the time. I think we should let them happen.” She crossed the room. He was still seated, and she reached down and took his hand. He was surprised, but allowed her to hold it, and there was created a sudden moment of intimacy between them. It was not embarrassing in any way; it was reassuring.
“I take it that you had a valuation from Christie’s?”
He nodded. “Yes. They gave me a figure.”
“I shall give you that,” she said. “Withdraw it from the auction. You can explain, quite truthfully, that you want it to remain in the family.”
“The auctioneers might not like it,” he objected. “They may ask for their premium. They do that, you know, if you sell it privately to somebody who’s seen it in their catalogue.”
She was not bothered by this. “Fair enough. I’ll pay their premium. They won’t lose anything.”
Iain seemed to be having difficulty in grasping what was on offer. “And so the painting really will stay here? But you’ll be the owner?”
“Yes. But there will be what my father—he was a lawyer—used to call a back letter. It will say that the painting is to remain in your possession for the next five years. Would that be all right with you?”
He laughed. “How could I possibly object?” Then he added: “This really is unbelievable.”
Isabel grinned back at him. “I suppose that it’s not the sort of offer you could refuse.”
“You aren’t the Mafia?” he asked in mock alarm.
“I don’t think they allow women,” said Isabel. “And that’s another reason for closing them down.”
He stood up. “I know it’s rather early, but I always have a small sherry before lunch. May I tempt you, or would you prefer something soft? Lime cordial?”
“That would suit me very well,” said Isabel. “You have your sherry and I’ll have a glass of lime. And then, perhaps we could …”
“Talk, yes, I know that’s what you want to do. We can talk about Chris.”
He left the room and Isabel went to stand once more in front of the Raeburn. Mrs. Alexander, her forebear, looked down on her from the other end of almost two centuries, her look one of complete approbation; not that Isabel saw this. Modesty would have prevented her from thinking in such a self-congratulatory way. She had simply done what was right; in most circumstances this is not expensive—the right thing is easily and cheaply done. Sometimes, though, it can be costly, and this was one such an occasion. But it was still the right thing to do, and when Iain returned to the room, Isabel showed no regret at all. An Edith Piaf moment, she thought.
THEY SAT NEAR THE WINDOW. Outside, the sky was light, with only thin streaks of cloud striated across the cold, empty blue. He said: “I never liked Chris’s mountaineering, but I knew that it was hopeless trying to stop him from doing the one thing that he wanted above all else to do. It was more important to him even than his rugby. Did you know he played for Scotland? Even as a small boy he was always climbing up things, you know. We had to get him down off the roof on more than one occasion, and when we went to Jura one summer he shot up one of the Paps without telling us. He was twelve at the time, or thereabouts. We thought that he had gone off to see a friend who was also staying on the island, but he hadn’t. He’d gone climbing.”
