The Square by Rosie Millard Read Free Book Online

no reason why we should not be formal, at times, with one another.”
    She loved him when he was like this, play-acting.
    “Go on, arsehole.”
    They also loved being rude to one another.
    He raises another bushy eyebrow and walks towards the studio, swishing his robe.
    Flick. The long row of halogen lights leaps into brilliance.
    The studio is white. White walls. White floor. White frosted window, so nobody can see in. Long white trestle tables are set out along the space, which is on the ground floor of the house. The rooms everyone else on the Square has as their formal sitting rooms, Philip uses as his studio. He likes that, feels it to be revolutionary.
    “Stupid arses,” he is wont to say. “With their fancy cushions and their bloody pianos. Whereas I have a workshop in my house. A workshop!”
    This is where Philip makes his sculptures.
    Philip Burrell makes simulacra of holes on famous golf courses around the world.
    “Everyone has their favourites,” he would tell people curious to know exactly what he is sculpting.
    “Everyone has their particular hole. Whether in Augusta, or Hoylake, or Wimbledon Park. They show me what it is. I look it up on the internet. Then I recreate it for them. Sometimes I put a box underneath it. Sometimes I put it in a frame. Once I had one on wheels.”
    Each golf hole is perfectly recreated in wood and clay and chicken wire. Each bump and hollow and bunker, built and painted with painstaking care, right down to the tiny pin in the middle bearing a minute triangular red flag. Sometimes there are tiny trees around the edge. Occasionally, a water feature. Philip is very glad that, firstly, he was so good at Lego as a child, and secondly, that golf is such a bloody global obsession. Oh my goodness, when the Chinese discovered the joys of golf, and came into money, that was a big moment for him. He made at least a million in one year, on the Chinese golf market alone. Alone!
    Along the trestle tables are golf holes of various degrees of complexity and in varying stages of completion. He has an assistant, a rough lad who comes in and helps him with the initial pieces, does the sawing and the sanding, but that is simply to help with the workload.
    Philip likes to think that he, Philip Burrell, is behind every single stage of this Wonderland recreation of the beauty of the links course. Or the suburban course, hell, he doesn’t mind too much where the bloody course is, although he is rather fond of the 18th at Dornoch up near Inverness. And he loves the 6th hole at Clonakilty, County Cork, because it goes over a bloody road. Typical Irish.
    Philip walks between the trestle tables, white robe flowing, like a priest preparing for some sacramental offering. He touches his small creations as he does, blessing them. They have propelled him into a life of comfort and pleasure. Cherry blossom is all very well, but for real hard cash you need a proper idea. And recreating famous golf holes for clients around the world who will pay upward of £50,000 per sculpture is it.
    And now he has a new idea, a rather wonderful one. He can’t wait to tell Magnus about it. He thinks it will propel him into a new stratosphere of wealth.
    The front door slams as Gilda leaves the house in search of the artisan bread.

Chapter Five Philip
    Magnus lounges on the doorstep, having rung the bell. Where the hell is Philip, he thinks. He checks his phone for the time, and waits. Magnus hates waiting. Hates it. Magnus is an important dealer with a roster of artists and a clutch of galleries in the UK and abroad. In turn, each gallery has its own roster of smaller dealers, and what used to be called a Rolodex, before it all went digital, of high net worth clients, to whom he sells directly. Then there are the Art Fairs. Magnus enjoys the Art Fairs. There’s Miami, and Basle. And Basle/ Miami, which is when the Basle lot come to Miami. Magnus does a lot of journeying between Basle and Miami. There’s also Frieze, which