Catalogue Raisonne (39 page)

Second and third place got warmer receptions, if only because the crowd needed to signal that these, at least, would have been tolerable first choices.

“I hope this isn't just a pity trip,” Claudia, back from the stage, said in my ear.

“It isn't. Walter knows what he's looking at. It's the one thing I'm sure of in this place.”

“He seems to have missed a few things lately.”

“Sometimes
getting
him to look at things is a problem.”

This exchange was conducted under cover of applause, but I felt a hot spot between my shoulders, and turned my head to see the silk-screen artist still glaring. Then I remembered: “Monarch and Mourning Cloak” had hung beside Claudia's picture in the show. The butterflies perfectly and cleanly printed, just like his signs.

Now, at last, Barbara did get up. She put the box on a little table in front of her. I wondered why she hadn't put it there before. Angela liked to keep big purses on her lap, especially when feeling “chubby”, but Barbara had never shown the slightest inclination to hide. As she crossed the stage her white knitted dress clung daringly – very daringly, for a forty-year-old – and completely winningly to her breasts and hips, outlining each thigh as she stepped forward.
No, beauty
, I thought. This time it was Claudia who was underestimating.

Barbara looked out over the waiting audience with a serious expression that, just for a second, made my stomach lurch. But then, with an ordinarily dazzling smile, she said, “I think this is very, very special.” And proceeded to list some of the ways in which it was special, and some of the “too many people” owed thanks for making it so. It was classic Barbara. Winning and graceful, its warmth not easily disputable unless you were grinding an axe.

Still. Something about the performance nagged at me. A subdued, a slightly diminished, quality I detected in the smiles and hand
flourishes. Usually Barbara was in top form at the CHOP awards, which, followed by the luncheon tomorrow, marked the end of her major initiatives until September. Her docents could handle what remained of the school tours in June, and the donors that needed approaching would be, like herself, away at cottages for much of the summer. She might have
been
in top form today; if there was a tarnish on her lustre, it was a subtle one. It could have been my awareness of a ticking bomb, of course. That changed how you looked at anybody.
ATC: Afflict the comfortable.
But why then, watching her, was it I who felt uncomfortable, troubled by a sense of disproportion? Almost, at certain moments, of panic. What if carelessness had been the main force operating here? Not reason, not justice, though these might fumble – sometimes successfully – in its shadow. But mainly carelessness. Carelessness all around, by all concerned, my own carelessness near or at the top. Like Boris Karloff in full-bolt mode, swinging inadvertent arms to smash walls and people. It was an unpleasant view of myself, and I dealt with it severely. Though in its wake bubbled panic sensations. I had an odd impulse to rush the stage. To do what I couldn't imagine.

“I'll now call on my two assistants to tabulate the final results of our poll,” Barbara said.

Cleo Carlsson and another pretty young docent walked up onto the stage and joined Barbara at the little table with the box on it. Some of the bugs of the “People's Choice Award” had been worked out over the years, though not all of them. Ballot-stuffing had been curbed by keeping the ballot box behind the front desk and taping up Bud's memo to “make every effort to remember faces...in view of past irregularities,” so that not only the attendant but the voter could see it. Also good was the shortlist idea, avoiding the embarrassment of forty-five or so small piles of paper, which only underlined the fact that almost everybody had a few friends and relatives, except for those few who did not. But the four piles of paper that remained, rising at roughly equal rates as the women's arms crossed each other to add to them, still gave the unfortunate impression of a lottery. A recount was necessary, then another. The crowd shifted restlessly, making disgruntled sounds, even though its own will was about to be heard.

“Good old HAG,” I said in Claudia's ear.

“What?”

“Never mind,” I said. She hadn't grown up here either.

Finally, Barbara leaned into the microphone and announced, “And the 1984 CHOP People's Choice Award goes . . . to our own Angela, for her painting ‘Bruce Trail Near Dundas'.” She straightened, then, as if remembering something, bent with a sly smile – a very sexy smile, to my eyes – to the microphone: “Angela, as some of you may already know, is an employee of the gallery. So let me just remind you: on this one we just did the counting!”

This got a good laugh. Looking around me at the faces, I seemed to be the only one who found it tacky and awkward. Even Angela was grinning on her way to the stage. Again I had that fleeting sense of a diminishment. Of aplomb just starting to slip. Despite the body and the beauty, Barbara looked diluted somehow, almost as if
she
were the secretary as she handed the envelope to Angela, who appeared to be glowing, lit up with a soft radiance like a La Tour woman. I felt the sadness of not being able to share this happy moment with her, of having to watch it from a distance. We'd been through some low and struggling times, and now, when she at least gave signs of breaking free of them, we couldn't share a smile and a sigh of satisfaction.

I raised my face from the scene on the stage to the railing on the second floor, over which Sean was leaning, his lips twitching as usual. But this time the movements of his mouth looked slower and more distinct, as if he were trying to mouth something at me. But whatever it was, I couldn't make it out. I looked away.

During and after Walter's closing remarks – a few last thank-you's followed by details about the retrieval of paintings – the crowd thinned rapidly. The most unhappy banged straight out the front doors. A smaller number dispersed in muttering knots towards the back galleries and the stairs, no doubt to confirm what other mistakes the gallery had made recently. Angela's painting had been one of the first to acquire a red dot indicating it had been sold. Now she had a small crowd of well-dressed people around her, perhaps congratulating her, perhaps commissioning other views.

I looked carefully around the high-ceilinged room, studying it as if
committing it to memory for the last time. Which was hardly necessary, since I'd be back pacing it in my Sears suit tomorrow.

Claudia, perhaps misunderstanding the meaning of my frown, said, “You're forgetting the three laws of profitable painting.”

I looked sideways at her. She had a twinkle in her grey eyes. “Which are?”

“Landscape, landscape, landscape.”

She slipped her hand in mine, and together we left the gallery.

Typeset in Adobe Garamond by Dennis Priebe,
printed offset on Rolland Zephyr Laid paper and Smyth-sewn
at Coach House Printing in an edition of 750 copies.
An additional 25 copies case-bound by Daniel Wells.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIBLIOASIS
WINDSOR, ONTARIO

Copyright © Mike Barnes, 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Although set in the real city of Hamilton, Ontario, and borrowing (loosely) the physical layout of the Art Gallery of Hamilton
circa
1984, this novel is a work of fiction, and no correspondence between its characters and events and real people and events is intended or should be inferred.

 

 

 

 

 

Barnes, Mike, 1955-
Catalogue raisonné / Mike Barnes.

 

Text in English.

eISBN : 978-1-926-84566-1

0-9738184-0-9 (HAND-CASED)

0-9735971-9-4 (PBK.)

 

I. Title.

PS8553.A7633C37 2005

C813'.54

C2005-906000-X

 

 

 

HEATHER R. SIMCOE

JOHN METCALF

 

 

 

 

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