The Girl You Left Behind, Page 22

  Mo gazes around her, as if looking for clues. 'You put your pictures of David away, right?'

  'Of course I did.'

  'And you didn't, like, say David's name at the crucial moment?'

  'No.' She remembers the way Paul had held her. 'I told him he had changed the way I felt about myself.'

  Mo shakes her head sadly. 'Aw Liv. Bad hand. You've just been dealt a Toxic Bachelor.'

  'What?'

  'He's the perfect man. He's straightforward, caring, attentive. He comes on super-strong until he realizes you like him too. And then he runs a mile. Kryptonite to a certain kind of needy, vulnerable woman. That would be you.' Mo frowns. 'You do surprise me, though. I honestly didn't think he was the type.'

  Liv glances down at her mug. Then she says, with just a hint of defensiveness, 'It's possible I might have talked about David a bit. When I was showing him the painting.'

  Mo's eyes widen, then lift to the heavens.

  'Well, I thought I could just be straightforward about everything. He knows where I'm coming from. I thought he was okay with it.'

  She can hear her voice: chippy. 'He said he was.'

  Mo stands and goes to the breadbin. She reaches in for a slice, folds it in half and takes a bite. 'Liv - you can't be straightforward about other men. No man wants to hear about how fantastic the one before was, even if he is dead. You might as well just do a whole spiel on Enormous Penises I Have Known.'

  'I can't pretend David isn't part of my past.'

  'No, but he doesn't have to be your whole present too.' As Liv glares at her, Mo says, 'Honestly? It's like you're on a loop. I feel like even when you're not talking about him you're thinking about talking about him.'

  That might have been true even a few weeks ago. But not now. Liv wants to move on. She had wanted to move on with Paul. 'Well. It doesn't really matter, does it? I blew it. I don't think he'll be coming back.' She sips her coffee. It burns her tongue. 'It was stupid of me to get my hopes up.'

  Mo puts a hand on her shoulder. 'Men are weird. It's not like it wasn't obvious that you were a mess. Oh, shit - the time. Look, you go out for one of your insane runs. I'll be back at three o'clock and I'll call in sick to the restaurant and we can swear a lot and think up medieval punishments for fuckwit men who blow hot and cold. I've got some modelling clay upstairs that I use for voodoo dolls. Can you get some cocktail sticks ready? Or some skewers? I'm all out.'

  Mo grabs the spare key, salutes her with the folded bread, and is gone before Liv can respond.

  In the previous five years TARP has returned more than two hundred and forty works of art to owners, or descendants of owners, who had believed they might never see them again. Paul has heard stories of wartime brutality more appalling than anything he encountered while working in the NYPD; they are repeated with a clarity of recall that suggests they might have happened yesterday, rather than sixty years ago. He has seen pain, borne like a precious inheritance through the ages and writ large on the faces of those left behind.

  He has held the hands of old women who have wept bittersweet tears at having been in the same room as a little portrait that was stolen from their murdered parents, the silent awe of younger members of a family seeing a long-missed painting for the first time. He has had stand-up arguments with the heads of major national art galleries, and bitten his lip when long-fought-over sculptures were returned to families, then immediately put up for sale. But for the most part this job, in the five years he has done it, has allowed him to feel he is on the side of some basic right. Hearing the stories of horror and betrayal, of families murdered and displaced by the Second World War, as if those crimes were committed yesterday, and knowing that those victims still lived with the injustices every day, he has relished being part of some small degree of recompense.

  He has never had to deal with anything like this.

  'Shit,' says Greg. 'That's tough.'

  They are out walking Greg's dogs, two hyperactive terriers. The morning is unseasonably cold and Paul wishes he had worn an extra jumper.

  'I couldn't believe it. The actual painting. Staring me in the face.'

  'What did you say?'

  Paul pulls his scarf up around his neck. 'I didn't say anything. I couldn't think what to say. I just ... left.'

  'You ran?'

  'I needed time to think about it.'

  Pirate, the smaller of Greg's dogs, has shot across the heath like a guided missile. The two men stop to watch, waiting to determine his eventual target.

  'Please don't let it be a cat, please don't let it be a cat. Oh, it's okay. It's Ginger.' In the far distance Pirate hurls himself joyously at a springer spaniel and the two dogs chase each other manically in ever-widening circles in the long grass. 'And this was when? Last night?'

  'Two nights ago. I know I should ring her. I just can't work out what I'm going to say.'

  'I guess "Give me your damn painting" isn't your best line.' Greg calls his older dog to heel, and lifts his hand to his brow, trying to track Pirate's progress. 'Bro, I think you may have to accept that Fate has just blown this particular date out of the water.'

  Paul shoves his hands deep in his pockets. 'I liked her.'

  Greg glances sideways at him. 'What? As in really liked her?'

  'Yeah. She ... she got under my skin.'

  His brother studies his face. 'Okay. Well, this has just gotten interesting ... Pirate. Here! Oh, man. There's the Vizsla. I hate that dog. Did you speak to your boss about it?'

  'Yeah. Because Janey would definitely want to talk to me about some other woman. No. I just checked with our lawyer about the strength of the case. He seems to think we would win.'

  There's no time bar on these cases, Paul, Sean had said, barely looking up from his papers. You know that.

  'So what are you going to do?' Greg clips his dog back on to the lead and stands there, waiting.

  'Not a lot I can do. The picture has to go back to its rightful owners. I'm not sure how well she's going to take that.'

  'She might be okay. You never know.' Greg strides over the grass towards where Pirate is running around, yapping dementedly at the sky, warning it to come no closer. 'Hey, if she's broke and there's proper money involved, you may actually be doing her a favour.' He starts to run and his last words fly over his shoulder on the breeze. 'And she might feel the same way about you and just not give a shit about anything else. You've got to keep in mind, bro, that ultimately, it's just a painting.'

  Paul stares at his brother's back. It's never just a painting, he thinks.

  Jake is at a friend's house. Paul arrives to pick him up at three thirty, as arranged, and Jake slopes out of the friend's front door, his hair mussed, his jacket hanging over his shoulders in apparent preparation for his adolescent years. It never ceases to shock him, the familiar jolt, the umbilical nature, of parental love. Some days he struggles not to embarrass his son with the depth of his love for him. He wraps an elbow around the boy's neck, hooks him towards him and drops a casual kiss on his head as they set off for the tube station. 'Hey, fella.'

  'Hi, Dad.'

  Jake is cheerful, pointing out the various permutations of a new electronic game. Paul nods and smiles in the right places, but even as he does so, he finds he's conducting a parallel argument in his head. He keeps working it over silently. What should he say to her? Should he tell her the truth? Will she understand if he explains it to her? Should he just steer clear? The job is everything, after all. He learned that a long time ago.

  But as he sits beside his son, watching his thumbs flicking on the controls, his total absorption in the pixelated game, his mind drifts. He feels Liv, soft and yielding against him afterwards, sees the drowsy way she lifted her eyes to his, as if she were dazed by the depth of her feelings.

  'Did you get a new house yet?'

  'Nope. Not yet.'

  I can't stop thinking about you.

  'Can we go for a pizza tonight?'

  'Sure.'

  'Really?'<
br />
  'Mm.' He nods. The hurt on her face as he had turned to leave. She was so transparent, every emotion registering on her face as if, like her house, she had never known what she should conceal.

  'And ice cream?'

  'Sure.'

  I'm terrified. But in a good way.

  And he had run. Without a word of explanation.

  'Will you buy me Super Mario Smash Bros for my Nintendo?'

  'Don't push your luck,' he says.

  The weekend stretches, is weighed down by silence. Mo comes and goes. Her new verdict on Paul: 'Divorced Toxic Bachelor. Worst variety of species.' She makes Liv a little clay model of him, and urges her to stick things in it.

  Liv has to admit that Mini Paul's hair is alarmingly accurate. 'You think this will give him stomach ache?'

  'I can't guarantee it. But it'll make you feel better.'

  Liv picks up a cocktail stick and tentatively gives Mini Paul a belly button, then feels immediately guilty and smoothes it over with her thumb. She can't quite reconcile this version of Paul with what she knows, but she is smart enough to grasp that some things are not worth dwelling on, so she has taken Mo's advice and run until she has given herself shin splints. She has cleaned the Glass House from top to bottom. She has binned the shoes with butterflies. She has checked her phone four times, then turned it off, hating herself for caring.

  'That's feeble. You haven't even broken his toes. You want me to have a go for you?' says Mo, inspecting the little model on Monday morning.

  'No. It's fine. Really.'

  'You're too soft. Tell you what, when I get home we'll ball him up and turn him into an ashtray.' When Liv returns to the kitchen Mo has stuck fifteen matches into the top of his head.

  Two pieces of work come in on Monday. One, some catalogue copy for a direct-marketing company, is littered with grammatical and spelling errors. By six o'clock Liv has altered so much of it that she has pretty much written the whole thing. The word rate is terrible. She doesn't care. She is so relieved to be working instead of thinking that she might well write Forbex Solutions a whole extra catalogue for free.

  The doorbell rings. Mo will have left her keys at work. She unfolds herself from the desk, stretches, and heads for the entryphone.

  'You left them on the side.'

  'It's Paul.'

  She freezes. 'Oh. Hi.'

  'Can I come up?'

  'You really don't have to. I -'

  'Please? We need to talk.'

  There is no time to check her face or brush her hair. She stands, one finger on the door button, hesitating. She depresses it, then moves back, like someone bracing themselves for an explosion.

  The lift rattles its way up, and she feels her stomach constrict as the sound grows louder. And then there he is, gazing straight at her through the railings of the lift. He is wearing a soft brown jacket and his eyes are uncharacteristically wary. He looks exhausted.

  'Hey.'

  He steps out of the lift, and waits in the hallway. She stands, her arms folded defensively.

  'Hello.'

  'Can I ... come in?'

  She steps back. 'Do you want a drink? I mean ... are you stopping?'

  He catches the edge in her voice. 'That would be great, thank you.'

  She walks through the house to the kitchen, her back rigid, and he follows. As she makes two mugs of tea, she is conscious of his eyes on her. When she hands one to him he is rubbing meditatively at his temple. When he catches her eye he seems almost apologetic. 'Headache.'

  Liv glances up at the little modelling-clay figure on the fridge and flushes with guilt. As she passes she deliberately knocks it down the back of the fridge.

  Paul places his mug on the table. 'Okay. This is really difficult. I would have come over sooner but I had my son and I needed to think what I was going to do. Look, I'm just going to come out and explain the whole thing. But I think maybe you should sit down first.'

  She stares at him. 'Oh, God. You're married.'

  'I'm not married. That would ... almost be simpler. Please, Liv. Just sit.'

  She remains standing. He pulls a letter from his jacket and hands it to her.

  'What's this?'

  'Just read it. And then I'll do my best to explain.'

  TARP

  Suite 6, 115 Grantham Street

  London W1

  15 October 2006

  Dear Mrs Halston

  We act for an organization called the Trace and Return Partnership, created to return works of art to those who suffered losses due to looting or the forced sale of personal artefacts during wartime.

  We understand that you are the owner of a painting by the French artist Edouard Lefevre, entitled The Girl You Left Behind. We have received written confirmation from descendants of Mr Lefevre that this was a work in the personal possession of the artist's wife and the subject of a forced or coercive sale. The claimants, who are also of French nationality, wish to have the work returned to the artist's family, and under the Geneva Convention and the terms of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, we wish to inform you that we will be pursuing such a claim on their behalf.

  In many cases such works can be restored to their rightful owners with the minimum legal intervention. We therefore invite you to contact us to arrange a meeting between yourselves and representatives of the Lefevre family in order that we may commence this process.

  We appreciate that such notice may come as something of a shock. But we would remind you that there is a strong legal precedent for the return of works of art obtained as the result of wartime transgressions, and I would add that there may also be some discretionary funding to compensate for your loss.

  We hope very much that, as with other works of this nature, the satisfaction of knowing a work is finally being returned to its rightful owners will grant those affected some additional satisfaction.

  Please do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to discuss this further.

  Paul McCafferty

  Janey Dickinson

  Directors, TARP

  She stares at the name at the bottom of the page and the room recedes. She re-reads the words, thinking this must be a joke. No, this is another Paul McCafferty, an entirely different Paul McCafferty. There must be hundreds of them. It's a common enough name. And then she remembers the peculiar way he had looked at the painting three days earlier, the way he had been unable to meet her eye afterwards. She sits down heavily in her chair.

  'Is this some kind of a joke?'

  'I wish it was.'

  'What the hell is TARP?'

  'We trace missing works of art and oversee their restoration to their original owners.'

  'We?' She stares at the letter. 'What ... what does this have to do with me?'

  'The Girl You Left Behind is the subject of a restitution request. The painting is by an artist called Edouard Lefevre. His family want it back.'

  'But ... this is ridiculous. I've had it for years. Years. The best part of a decade.'

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out another letter, with a photocopied image. 'This came to the office a couple of weeks ago. It was sitting in my in-tray. I was busy with other stuff so I didn't put the two things together. Then, when you invited me up the other night, I recognized it immediately.'

  She scans it, glances at the photocopied page. Her own painting stares back at her from the coloured page, its colours muddied through reproduction. 'The Architectural Digest.'

  'Yeah. I think that was it.'

  'They came here to do a piece on the Glass House when we were first married.' Her hand lifts to her mouth. 'David thought it would be good publicity for his practice.'

  'The Lefevre family have been conducting an audit into all Edouard Lefevre's works, and during the course of it they discovered several were missing. One is The Girl You Left Behind. There is no documented history for it after 1917. Can you tell me where you got it?'

  'This is crazy.
It was ... David bought it from an American woman. In Barcelona.'

  'A gallery owner? Have you got a receipt for it?'

  'Of sorts. But it's not worth anything. She was going to throw it away. It was out on the street.'

  Paul runs a hand over his face. 'Do you know who this woman was?'

  Liv shakes her head. 'It was years ago.'

  'Liv, you have to remember. This is important.'

  She explodes: 'I can't remember! You can't come in here and tell me I have to justify ownership of my own painting just because someone somewhere has decided it once belonged to them a million years ago! I mean, what is this?' She walks around the kitchen table. 'I - I can't get my head round it.'

  Paul rests his face in his hands. He lifts his head and looks at her. 'Liv, I'm really sorry. This is the worst case I've ever dealt with.'

  'Case?'

  'This is what I do. I look for stolen works of art and I return them to their owners.'

  She hears the strange implacability in his voice. 'But this isn't stolen. David bought it, fair and square. And then he gave it to me. It's mine.'

  'It was stolen, Liv. Nearly a hundred years ago, yes, but it was stolen. Look, the good news is that they're willing to offer some financial compensation.'

  'Compensation? You think this is about money?'

  'I'm just saying -'

  She stands, lifts her hand to her brow. 'You know what, Paul? I think you'd better leave.'

  'I know the painting means a lot to you but you have to understand -'

  'Really. I'd like you to go now.'

  They stare at each other. She feels radioactive. She is not sure she has ever been so angry.

  'Look, I'll try to think of a way we can settle this to suit -'

  'Goodbye, Paul.'

  She follows him out. When she slams the door behind him it reverberates so loudly that she can feel the whole warehouse shake below her.

  18

  Their honeymoon. A honeymoon of sorts. David had been working on a new conference centre in Barcelona, a monolithic thing, built to reflect the blue skies, the shimmering seas. She remembers her faint surprise at his fluent Spanish and being awed both by the things he knew and by the things she did not yet know about him. Each afternoon they would lie in bed in their hotel, then stroll the medieval streets of the Gothic Quarter and Born, seeking refuge in the shade, stopping to drink mojitos and rest lazily against each other, their skin sticking in the heat. She still remembers how his hand looked resting on her thigh. He had a craftsman's hands. He would rest them slightly splayed, as if they were always holding down invisible plans.