Читать книгу Significant Things - Helen McLean - Страница 6

Toronto, 1976

Edward glanced at the eighteenth-century Boulle clock on the mantelpiece and then checked its none-too-reliable time against his watch, just to be sure. Five-thirty, half past eleven in Italy. The restaurant tables would long since have been cleared away, the family would have finished the late dinner at the big table in the kitchen. Edward could almost smell the aromas that filled the air of that kitchen, just thinking about it. Paulo would be out in his studio among the cypresses, putting in an hour or two at his easel before he went up to the loft and stretched out on that big bed under the skylight. Edward hadn’t felt such a yearning to see and touch another human being since they’d sent him away to boarding school as a small boy and his loneliness for his mother had been a constant anguish, a sickness. He went into the hall and picked up the telephone, started to dial, put it down again. Not yet. He would prolong the anticipation of pleasure a little longer, do a last check around the place and then call and spring his surprise. Paulo was going to be over the moon.

His Burberry raincoat lay neatly folded over the back of the hall chair, ready to go. When had he put that there? Was there a pair of gloves in the pocket? Probably wouldn’t need gloves anyway; the weather would be mild, almost spring in London. He looked at his watch again. Half an hour before the airport limo would be here. His suitcase was packed and standing in the middle of the hall with his plane ticket and passport lying on top. He reached into his trouser pocket to make sure the little silver penknife was attached to his key ring; he wouldn’t step out the door without that, the plane might go down, God knows what would happen. He patted the breast pocket of his jacket — probably for the third or fourth time — to feel the reassuring bulge of his billfold stuffed with credit cards and twenty-pound notes. He’d already crossed off every detail on the list he’d made the day before. He knew he was dithering, but to hell with it, it didn’t matter as long as he didn’t end up at the customs desk slapping himself all over in blind panic and suddenly remembering he’d left his wallet on the dresser in his bedroom. Some remnant of the man he used to be sat in a corner of his mind watching these antics, arms folded across his chest, eyebrows raised in amusement. What had happened to the meticulous unflappable fellow who couldn’t have lost track of the time or forgotten his passport if he’d tried?

He began a tour of his second-storey living quarters in the tall, narrow house that was both his place of business and his home, making sure all the window latches were caught, checking the bolt on the door to the balcony off the kitchen. These rooms were becoming more and more of an obstacle course with all the furniture and objets d’art he’d managed to cram into them, to say nothing of the overflow of framed drawings and prints propped in stacks against door jambs and baseboards. He’d long since used up all the wall space; if he could have found a way to hang pictures on the ceiling he probably would have done it. He walked through the ever-narrowing channels between settees and armoires and breakfronts, tables and commodes, wondering wryly if the stuff was surreptitiously increasing and multiplying while he slept. Never mind, he was in the process of buying another house a few streets away, one built on simple Georgian lines some fifteen years before the turn of the century — old, by this city’s reckoning. The new place had large rooms and high ceilings and tall windows, French doors that opened onto a paved terrace and a walled garden at the back, even a small east-facing solarium where he and Paulo would eat breakfast on winter mornings.

When he moved into the new house the stock-in-trade of the gallery could spread itself all over this place — large paintings and sculpture downstairs, smaller ones and works on paper on the second floor, and he’d fit what had been a little makeshift attic studio for Paulo with racks and shelves for storage. Living upstairs over his business had been fine while he was getting the gallery underway, but his life had changed. It could be a year or more before Paulo would be able to leave his family for good; the transition might even be gradual, a few months back in Sicily, a few in Toronto. However long it took, Edward would be waiting.

Before Paulo came into his life all these possessions of his — the works of art, the antique furniture, the silver and crystal, the various small collections — had been everything to him, his world. He would have run into a burning building to rescue any of them — and maybe he still would — but he no longer felt about them as if they were family, practically his flesh and blood. Oh, he still loved them, he found his treasures no less beautiful than before, but they didn’t absorb him in the way they once had. His attachment to mere things had loosened, his passion had found another object that was infinitely, incomparably, more precious.

Just the same, the windows had better be locked properly, alarm systems notwithstanding. Somebody could be up a ladder and in and out with that irreplaceable French clock, for instance, long before the police got here. During his hurried walkabout Edward stumbled and cracked an ankle on a chair leg, hopped on one foot and grabbed what was to hand, which happened to be a heavy brass floor lamp. Man and lamp performed a short pas de deux before he set it back on its base and finished his meandering excursion. He sat down at the hall table, rubbed his ankle for a minute while he composed himself, and picked up the phone. Paulo answered on the second ring.

“Pronto.”

“Sono io, carissimo.”

“Ah, Eduardo. Come stai? Tutto va bene?”

“Si, si. Molto bene. Paulo, I have wonderful news. But how are things there? Is your father well?”

“He’s fine, Edward, Mamma too, grazie a Dio. Everything okay in Toronto?”

“Better than okay. I hardly know where to begin. I sold the little portraits, all nine of them. The man who bought them thought he deserved a better price because it was a multiple sale, but he finally got it through his head there weren’t going to be any bargains.”

“What portraits?”

“You know, the little heads you painted when you were here.”

“Of Mamma’s relatives? The ones I left upstairs in the studio?”

“Why, yes —”

“You sold them? I was going to give them to my cous —”

“— all at once! Got a wonderful price, too. But here’s the real surprise. You’re having a show in London.”

“What? When?”

“In ten days! Catch a flight to Heathrow as soon as you can and come straight to the hotel. Durrant’s, on George Street. I’ve booked us a suite. God, Paulo, I think I’ll go right out of my mind if I don’t see you soon. I’m leaving tonight myself; I’ll be at the gallery tomorrow afternoon to supervise the uncrating and hanging and whatnot. We can have a few wonderful days together before the —”

“Ten days! Edward, hold on! What are you talking about? You don’t have enough work for a show. I haven’t sent you anything new all year!”

Edward laughed. “Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my wits. I didn’t tell you at the time, but I bought a number of paintings from your show myself, twelve of them, to be exact, and they’ve all gone over for this little exhibition.”

“You bought my paintings? I don’t understand —”

“It was business, dearest. I wanted your show to be a sellout. Good for your career, good for the gallery. It’s a wrench parting with them, I couldn’t have brought myself to do it if I didn’t know there were going to be more. Gauthier, the man I’m dealing with in London, says we’ll price them about a third higher than we did in Toronto. Of course you’ll be getting the increase, Paulo, you know that.”

There was a silence.

“Paulo?”

“I’m still here. I don’t care about the money, Edward. I have new work, though, stuff I’d rather be showing in London. I wish you’d told me about this —”

“Carissimo, there’ll be lots more shows. The work’s already over there, the invitations have gone out, we’ve put announcements in the major papers. All you have to do is turn up. Oh, and the BBC wants to interview you at the opening. Gauthier arranged it, some series they’re doing on London galleries.”

“I appreciate what you do for me, Edward, but —”

“Did you write down the name of the hotel?”

“Si si, I’ve got it. What’s this gallery called?”

“Gauthier Fine Arts. On Cork Street, near Piccadilly. Come as soon as you can, love.”

“I’ve got some business to look after here first, Edward, I —”

“I miss you horribly —”

“— have to be in Rome for a day or two. I’ll call and let you know —”

“I want you, Paulo —”

“Ciao, Eduardo.”

“Buona notte, carissimo.”

Just as Edward set the phone down the doorbell rang. Christ, the taxi, he’d forgotten all about it. He grabbed his coat and the tickets and passport, picked up his suitcase, and hurried down the stairs.