Henry Buxford couldn’t be cruel enough to punish Margaret and the boys for what he’d done if he were already dead. And her father was already paying their school fees and would make sure they had everything they needed.
The thought of the pain that would rip through him as his body hit the ground was enough to send Toby two paces back from the window. It was humiliating to find that he was too much of a coward even to take the most obvious way out.
Upstairs in the private flat that came with his job, his wife was talking to someone. The sound of her soft American voice buzzed through the floorboards, even though he couldn’t distinguish the words. There’d be no help from her either. If he went up now, she’d only ask why he was so jumpy, and he couldn’t tell her, any more than he could tell Jo or Henry. He was alone, just as he’d always been, except for the three years at Cambridge, when he and Peter had been inseparable.
Toby had once hated the sloppiness of people who talked about getting their heads round things, but now he understood what they’d meant. Somehow he had to get his head round what Peter had done to him.
They’d met in their second term. The first had been hell, as
he’d struggled with the unfamiliar work and his inability to find anyone who wanted to have anything to do with him. He’d tried clubs and pubs and university societies, and he’d always got it wrong, making jokes when everyone else was serious or taking literally what turned out to be hysterically funny anarchic humour. Then Peter – rich, good-looking and wildly popular – had whisked him up and, almost overnight, turned him into a different being.
Toby had learned how to talk to girls then and to ask them out. Pretty soon he’d even taken one successfully to bed. He’d learned to drink in vast quantities and make other men laugh. And later, when he and Peter had started to talk about things that mattered, Toby had also learned that being unhappy was neither unique nor any kind of failure.
That was how it had started, with their shared confession of growing up in a welter of misery. Then they had begun to trust each other. And later, when they had worked out their great money-making plan together, it had never occurred to Toby that trusting Peter might be stupid.
It had all started as a kind of a game. Toby couldn’t now remember whose idea it had been in the first place, but it didn’t matter. At that point it had all been ‘what if?’ What if we faked an old master drawing and took it to one of the big salerooms in all innocence to ask them what it was? What if they decided it was genuine – or near enough to get past their usual punters’ scrutiny? What if it was put into auction and raised a lot of money? Wouldn’t that be a gas?
Then they’d started to work out how they could do it. Neither belonged to the sort of family with grand attics full of ancestral rubbish that might yield valuable art, so they’d had to think up another way. Bit by bit the plan had become more and more elaborate until one day they’d had to try. They’d picked François Clouet because Toby could already draw in his style, and his figures were so lacking in personality and
emotion that they seemed easier to copy than anything more interesting.
The scam had worked so easily that neither of them could believe it. At every stage they’d been ready to give up and admit it was just a rag, but there had been no need.
Peter had laid out the money to buy four big sixteenth-century books with blank flyleaves they could cut out, and Toby had prepared and prepared until he was confident that he could draw exactly like François Clouet. He’d done all the necessary research to ensure the hats and doublets he was going to include were accurate. Even he had been impressed with the finished product.
He had dirtied the drawings up a bit and framed them in crappy cheap gilt frames under low-grade cracked glass, before flogging them as
The thought of the pain that would rip through him as his body hit the ground was enough to send Toby two paces back from the window. It was humiliating to find that he was too much of a coward even to take the most obvious way out.
Upstairs in the private flat that came with his job, his wife was talking to someone. The sound of her soft American voice buzzed through the floorboards, even though he couldn’t distinguish the words. There’d be no help from her either. If he went up now, she’d only ask why he was so jumpy, and he couldn’t tell her, any more than he could tell Jo or Henry. He was alone, just as he’d always been, except for the three years at Cambridge, when he and Peter had been inseparable.
Toby had once hated the sloppiness of people who talked about getting their heads round things, but now he understood what they’d meant. Somehow he had to get his head round what Peter had done to him.
They’d met in their second term. The first had been hell, as
he’d struggled with the unfamiliar work and his inability to find anyone who wanted to have anything to do with him. He’d tried clubs and pubs and university societies, and he’d always got it wrong, making jokes when everyone else was serious or taking literally what turned out to be hysterically funny anarchic humour. Then Peter – rich, good-looking and wildly popular – had whisked him up and, almost overnight, turned him into a different being.
Toby had learned how to talk to girls then and to ask them out. Pretty soon he’d even taken one successfully to bed. He’d learned to drink in vast quantities and make other men laugh. And later, when he and Peter had started to talk about things that mattered, Toby had also learned that being unhappy was neither unique nor any kind of failure.
That was how it had started, with their shared confession of growing up in a welter of misery. Then they had begun to trust each other. And later, when they had worked out their great money-making plan together, it had never occurred to Toby that trusting Peter might be stupid.
It had all started as a kind of a game. Toby couldn’t now remember whose idea it had been in the first place, but it didn’t matter. At that point it had all been ‘what if?’ What if we faked an old master drawing and took it to one of the big salerooms in all innocence to ask them what it was? What if they decided it was genuine – or near enough to get past their usual punters’ scrutiny? What if it was put into auction and raised a lot of money? Wouldn’t that be a gas?
Then they’d started to work out how they could do it. Neither belonged to the sort of family with grand attics full of ancestral rubbish that might yield valuable art, so they’d had to think up another way. Bit by bit the plan had become more and more elaborate until one day they’d had to try. They’d picked François Clouet because Toby could already draw in his style, and his figures were so lacking in personality and
emotion that they seemed easier to copy than anything more interesting.
The scam had worked so easily that neither of them could believe it. At every stage they’d been ready to give up and admit it was just a rag, but there had been no need.
Peter had laid out the money to buy four big sixteenth-century books with blank flyleaves they could cut out, and Toby had prepared and prepared until he was confident that he could draw exactly like François Clouet. He’d done all the necessary research to ensure the hats and doublets he was going to include were accurate. Even he had been impressed with the finished product.
He had dirtied the drawings up a bit and framed them in crappy cheap gilt frames under low-grade cracked glass, before flogging them as
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