In the Frame (21 page)

‘I’m going home soon. Before that, I think I’ll keep looking into things that aren’t my business.’

‘I don’t approve of that.’

I grinned at the telephone. ‘I don’t suppose you do, but if I’d stayed in England we wouldn’t have got this far. There’s one other thing… Can I reach you by telex if I want to get a message to you in a hurry?’

‘Telex? Wait a minute.’

I waited.

‘Yes, here you are.’ A number followed. I wrote it down. ‘Address any message to me personally and head it urgent.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘And could you get answers to three questions for me?’ He listened, and said he could. ‘Thank you very much,’ I said. ‘And goodnight.’

Sarah and Jik both looked heavy-eyed and languorous in the morning. A successful night, I judged.

We checked out of the motel, packed my suitcase into the boot of the car, and sat in the passenger seats to plan the day.

‘Can’t we please get our clothes from the Hilton?’ Sarah said, sounding depressed.

Jik and I said ‘No’ together.

‘I’ll ring them now,’ Jik said. ‘I’ll get them to pack all our things and keep them safe for us, and I’ll tell them I’ll send a cheque for the bill.’ He levered himself out of the car again and went off on the errand.

‘Buy what you need out of my winnings,’ I said to Sarah.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve got some money. It’s not that. It’s just… I wish all this was over.’

‘It will be, soon,’ I said neutrally. She sighed heavily. ‘What’s your idea of a perfect life?’ I asked.

‘Oh…’ she seemed surprised. ‘I suppose right now I just want to be with Jik on the boat and have fun, like before you came.’

‘And for ever?’

She looked at me broodingly. ‘You may think, Todd, that I don’t know Jik is a complicated character, but you’ve only got to look at his paintings… They make me shudder. They’re a side of Jik I don’t know because he hasn’t painted anything since we met. You may think that this world will be worse off if Jik is happy for a bit, but I’m no fool, I know that in the end whatever it is that drives him to paint like that will come back again… I think these first few months together are frantically precious… and it isn’t just the physical dangers you’ve dragged us into that I hate, but the feeling that I’ve lost the rest of that golden time… that you remind him of his painting, and that after you’ve gone he’ll go straight back to it… weeks and weeks before he might have done.’

‘Get him to go sailing,’ I said. ‘He’s always happy at sea.’

‘You don’t care, do you?’

I looked straight into her clouded brown eyes. ‘I care for you both, very much.’

‘Then God help the people you hate.’

And God help me, I thought, if I became any fonder of my oldest friend’s wife. I looked away from her, out of the window. Affection wouldn’t matter. Anything else would be a mess.

Jik came back with a satisfied air. ‘That’s all fixed.
They said there’s a letter for you, Todd, delivered by hand a few minutes ago. They asked me for a forwarding address.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said you’d call them yourself.’

‘Right… Well, let’s get going.’

‘Where to?’

‘New Zealand, don’t you think?’

‘That should be far enough,’ Jik said dryly.

He drove us to the airport, which was packed with people going home from the Cup.

‘If Wexford and Greene are looking for us,’ Sarah said, ‘They will surely be watching at the airport.’

If they weren’t, I thought, we’d have to lay a trail: but Jik, who knew that, didn’t tell her.

‘They can’t do much in public,’ he said comfortingly.

We bought tickets and found we could either fly to Auckland direct at lunchtime, or via Sydney leaving within half an hour.

‘Sydney,’ said Sarah positively, clearly drawing strength from the chance of putting her feet down on her own safe doorstep.

I shook my head. ‘Auckland direct. Let’s see if the restaurant’s still open for breakfast.’

We squeezed in under the waitresses’ pointed consultation of clocks and watches and ordered bacon and eggs lavishly.

‘Why are we going to New Zealand?’ Sarah said.

‘To see a man about a painting and advise him to take out extra insurance.’

‘Are you actually making sense?’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘yes.’

‘I don’t see why we have to go so far, when Jik said you found enough in the gallery to blow the whole thing wide open.’

‘Um…’ I said. ‘Because we don’t want to blow it wide open. Because we want to hand it to the police in full working order.’

She studied my face. ‘You are very devious.’

‘Not on canvas,’ Jik said.

After we’d eaten we wandered around the airport shops, buying yet more toothbrushes and so on for Jik and Sarah, and another airline bag. There was no sign of Wexford or Greene or the boy or Beetle-brows or Renbo, or the tough who’d been on watch at Alice Springs. If they’d seen us without us seeing them, we couldn’t tell.

‘I think I’ll ring the Hilton,’ I said.

Jik nodded. I put the call through with him and Sarah sitting near, within sound and sight.

‘I called about a forwarding address…’ I told the reception desk. ‘I can’t really give you one. I’ll be in New Zealand. I’m flying to Auckland in an hour or two.’

They asked for instructions about the hand-delivered letter.

‘Er… Would you mind opening it, and reading it to me?’

Certainly, they said. Their pleasure. The letter was from Hudson Taylor saying he was sorry to have missed me at the races, and that if while I was in Australia I would like to see round a vineyard, he would be pleased to show me his.

Thanks, I said. Our pleasure, sir, they said. If anyone asked for me, I said, would they please mention where I’d gone. They would. Certainly. Their pleasure.

During the next hour Jik called the car-hire firm about settling their account and leaving the car in the airport carpark, and I checked my suitcase through with Air New Zealand. Passports were no problem: I had mine with me in any case, but for Jik and Sarah they were unnecessary, as passage between New Zealand and
Australia was as unrestricted as between England and Ireland.

Still no sign of Wexford or Greene. We sat in the departure bay thinking private thoughts.

It was again only when our flight was called that I spotted a spotter. The prickles rose again on my skin. I’d been blind, I thought. Dumb and blind.

Not Wexford, nor Greene, nor the boy, nor Renbo, nor any rough set of muscles. A neat day dress, neat hair, unremarkable handbag and shoes. A calm concentrated face. I saw her because she was staring at Sarah. She was standing outside the departure bay, looking in. The woman who had welcomed me into the Yarra River Fine Arts, and given me a catalogue, and let me out again afterwards.

As if she felt my eyes upon her she switched her gaze abruptly to my face. I looked away instantly, blankly, hoping she wouldn’t know I’d seen her, or wouldn’t know at least that I’d recognised her.

Jik, Sarah and I stood up and drifted with everyone else towards the departure doors. In their glass I could see the woman’s reflection: standing still, watching us go. I walked out towards the aircraft and didn’t look back.

Mrs. Norman Updike stood in her doorway, shook her head, and said that her husband would not be home until six.

She was thin and sharp-featured and talked with tight New Zealand vowels. If we wanted to speak to her husband, we would have to come back.

She looked us over; Jik with his rakish blond beard, Sarah in her slightly crumpled but still military cream dress, I with my arm in its sling under my shirt, and jacket loose over my shoulder. Hardly a trio one would easily forget. She watched us retreat down her front path with a sharply turned-down mouth.

‘Dear gentle soul,’ murmured Jik.

We drove away in the car we had hired at the airport.

‘Where now?’ Jik said.

‘Shops.’ Sarah was adamant. ‘I must have some clothes.’

The shops, it appeared, were in Queen Street, and still open for another half hour. Jik and I sat in the car, waiting and watching the world go by.

‘The dolly-birds fly out of their office cages about now,’ Jik said happily.

‘What of it?’

‘I sit and count the ones with no bras.’

‘And you a married man.’

‘Old habits die hard.’

We had counted eight definites and one doubtful by the time Sarah returned. She was wearing a light olive skirt with a pink shirt, and reminded me of pistachio ice cream.

‘That’s better,’ she said, tossing two well-filled carriers onto the back seat. ‘Off we go, then.’

The therapeutic value of the new clothes lasted all the time we spent in New Zealnd and totally amazed me. She seemed to feel safer if she looked fresh and clean, her spirits rising accordingly. Armourplated cotton, I thought. Drip-dry bullet-proofing. Security is a new pin.

We dawdled back to the hill overlooking the bay where Norman Updike’s house stood in a crowded suburban street. The Updike residence was large but squashed by neighbours, and it was not until one was inside that one realised that the jostling was due to the view. As many houses as could be crammed on to the land had been built to share it. The city itself seemed to sprawl endlessly round miles of indented coastline, but all the building plots looked tiny.

Norman Updike proved as expansive as his wife was closed in. He had a round shiny bald head on a round
short body, and he called his spouse Chuckles without apparently intending satire.

We said, Jik and I, that we were professional artists who would be intensely interested and grateful if we could briefly admire the noted picture he had just bought.

‘Did the gallery send you?’ he asked, beaming at the implied compliments to his taste and wealth.

‘Sort of,’ we said, and Jik added: ‘My friend here is well known in England for his painting of horses, and is represented in many top galleries, and has been hung often at the Royal Academy…’

I thought he was laying it on a bit too thick, but Norman Updike was impressed and pulled wide his door.

‘Come in then. Come in. The picture’s in the lounge. This way, lass, this way.’

He showed us into a large over-stuffed room with dark ankle-deep carpet, big dark cupboards, and the glorious view of sunlit water.

Chuckles, sitting solidly in front of a television busy with a moronic British comic show, gave us a sour look and no greeting.

‘Over here,’ Norman Updike beamed, threading his portly way round a battery of fat armchairs. ‘What do you think of that, eh?’ He waved his hand with proprietorial pride at the canvas on his wall.

A smallish painting, fourteen inches by eighteen. A black horse, with an elongated neck curving against a blue and white sky; a chopped-off tail; the grass in the foreground yellow; and the whole covered with an old-looking varnish.

‘Herring,’ I murmured reverently.

Norman Updike’s beam broadened. ‘I see you know your stuff. Worth a bit, that is.’

‘A good deal,’ I agreed.

‘I reckon I got a bargain. The gallery said I’d always make a profit if I wanted to sell.’

‘May I look at the brushwork?’ I asked politely.

‘Go right ahead.’

I looked closely. It was very good. It did look like Herring, dead since 1865. It also, indefinably, looked like the meticulous Renbo. One would need a microscope and chemical analysis, to make sure.

I stepped back and glanced round the rest of the room. There was nothing of obvious value, and the few other pictures were all prints.

‘Beautiful,’ I said admiringly, turning back to the Herring. ‘Unmistakable style. A real master.’

Updike beamed.

‘You’d better beware of burglars,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Chuckles, dear, do you hear what this young man says? He says we’d better beware of burglars!’

Chuckles’ eyes gave me two seconds’ sour attention and returned to the screen.

Updike patted Sarah on the shoulder. ‘Tell your friend not to worry about burglars.’

‘Why not?’ I said.

‘We’ve got alarms all over this house,’ he beamed. ‘Don’t you worry, a burglar wouldn’t get far.’

Jik and Sarah, as I had done, looked round the room and saw nothing much worth stealing. Nothing, certainly, worth alarms all over the house. Updike watched them looking and his beam grew wider.

‘Shall I show these young people our little treasures, Chuckles?’ he said.

Chuckles didn’t even reply. The television cackled with tinned laughter.

‘We’d be most interested,’ I said.

He smiled with the fat anticipatory smirk of one about to show what will certainly be admired. Two or three
steps took him to one of the big dark cupboards which seemed built into the walls, and he pulled open the double doors with a flourish.

Inside, there were about six deep shelves, each bearing several complicated pieces of carved jade. Pale pink, creamy white and pale green, smooth, polished, intricate, expensive; each piece standing upon its own heavy-looking black base-support. Jik, Sarah and I made appreciative noises and Norman Updike smiled ever wider.

‘Hong Kong, of course,’ he said. ‘I worked there for years, you know. Quite a nice little collection, eh?’ He walked along to the next dark cupboard and pulled open a duplicate set of doors. Inside, more shelves, more carvings, as before.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know much about jade,’ I said, apologetically. ‘Can’t appreciate your collection to the full.’

He told us a good deal more about the ornate goodies than we actually wanted to know. There were four cupboards full in the lounge and overflows in bedroom and hall.

‘You used to be able to pick them up very cheap in Hong Kong,’ he said. ‘I worked there more than twenty years, you know.’

Jik and I exchanged glances. I nodded slightly.

Jik immediately shook Norman Updike by the hand, put his arm round Sarah, and said we must be leaving. Updike looked enquiringly at Chuckles, who was still glued to the telly and still abdicating from the role of hostess. When she refused to look our way he shrugged good-humouredly and came with us to his front door. Jik and Sarah walked out as soon as he opened it, and left me alone with him in the hall.