Headlong by Michael Frayn Read Free Book Online Page B

in a voice which even manages a hint of impatience in its hypocrisy. ‘They’re all interesting pictures.’
    ‘Hasn’t even got a signature,’ says Tony. No, there’s no signature. If there were, he wouldn’t have his hand on the picture like that, because the alarms would have gone off and the security guards would have come running.
    Laura bends down to look at the back of it. ‘There’s a label,’ she says hopefully.
    I hadn’t even thought to look. I can scarcely bear to now; I don’t want to know what it says. I shrink from seeing this sacred object insulted by misattribution. I shrink even more sharply from the hideous possibility that my great flash of intuition has been anticipated. It’s not a possibility, of course. Not even these two clowns would be using it to stop the soot falling into the breakfast-room if they had the faintest inkling of what it was.
    But I suppose I have to know what the label’s telling the world.
    ‘Martin,’ says Kate, with the suggestion of an exclamation mark, as I squat concessively down to look. This is about as overtly reproachful as she ever gets; I realize how urgently she longs to be out of this terrible house.
    The label’s a piece of yellowing paper, almost as dirty as the picture itself. The only thing on it is a single typed line, followed by a handwritten parenthesis.
    ‘ Vrancz: Pretmakers in een Berglandschap (um 1600 gemalt) .’
    Wrong! Wonderfully wrong! Painter and date, certainly. Whether the title’s wrong as well it’s impossible to say, since no one knows what its title is.
    ‘Double Dutch to me,’ says Tony.
    Yes. Pretmakers in a mountain landscape … What are pretmakers ?
    ‘1600,’ he says. ‘Bit closer to your period?’
    ‘Still about a century out.’
    ‘Very difficult to please you chaps. So you don’t know anything about Mr Vrancz?’
    ‘Not much.’
    ‘Though if it doesn’t say “ Charlie Vrancz” …’
    ‘Sebastian, I think.’
    ‘… it’s not by him anyway.’
    ‘Unlikely, I agree,’ I say regretfully. But truthfully, becauseit is unlikely – the probability of its being by Sebastian Vrancz is about the same as for the green cheese theory of lunar geology. My truthful reply’s part of an outline policy that’s already begun to form in my head. I’m thinking: I’m not going to lie, but I’m not going to tell any unnecessary truths … Mustn’t think, though, mustn’t think! But I am thinking, of course. In another long instant – long enough for the dogs to have got to their feet, and for all of us to have followed Kate and Tilda out into the hall at last – I’ve replanned my entire life.
    I’m going to have the picture off him. This is my great project. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but do it I shall. On that central point I’m already absolutely clear.
    ‘Another Rembrandt, perhaps,’ says Laura, as she fetches my coat.
    ‘Hope you didn’t mind us showing you the family snaps,’ says Tony, as he helps me into it.
    ‘Not at all. Most intriguing. I only wish we could have been more helpful.’
    ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like’, he says, ‘trying to sell something when you know bugger all about it. All you know is that every man’s hand’s against you. You’re the loneliest soul on earth.’
    He opens the great front door, and the dogs go bounding and barking away into the night. I look at him as we turn on the doorstep to make our farewells, and I suddenly feel sorry for him. There’s a note of defeat in his voice. The water’s still trickling softly from the broken gutter overhead, and the white paint on the door has been worn back to the bare oak over the years by the scratchings of the dogs. The wife beside him is in spirit away off into the night already, like the dogs. His world’s disintegrating around him, beyond recall or understanding.
    ‘He thought you might know someone,’ says Laura. ‘Some expert on Giordano. Or even someone who might want to buy it