Restoring Grace (56 page)

The index boxes reminded Ellie of the school
library
system, before it had gone on to
computer. She loved
their old-fashioned woodenness. Very happy now, she
dumped her bag at her feet, and began to go
through
each card in the 'C' section, looking for artists with the
initial 'R'. She soon began to feel at home, resting her elbows on the open
drawers, searching through, feeling soothed by the atmosphere. The arched
window behind her looked out on to a huge rectangular space, which
might at one time have been a parade ground. Now
there
were fountains, and Ran had told her that sometimes in winter they flooded the
entire space and turned it into an ice rink.

Time passed slowly and quickly at the same time.
She
was absorbed in her task, recognising so
few of the names
she read, regretting her ignorance and yet inspired to
improve her knowledge of painting.

It was a good thing she'd
brought sandwiches; she was
starving before she'd got through
the first box. 'Remember people don't always use all their initials. Don't
disregard the middle initial,' Ran had told her. 'Or sometimes people are
called by their second initial, so if our artist
was in a
hurry, he might have used an initial which isn't
in his proper name at all.'

‘
You mean D. T. for
Dick Turpin, when usually he'd be
Richard Turpin,' said Ellie, taking
the point but feeling slightly patronised, all the same.

‘
You've got it.’

He had smiled at her, and
remembering the smile made
her feel warm and optimistic. Just
thinking about him working away in his studio was enough, sometimes. At other
times, it was tantalising.

At last she got a good
match, and went to hunt out the
file. There had been a couple of
matches which hadn't been the right date, but this one was of the period and
Ellie felt reasonably positive. There were several files: he was obviously a
very prolific painter but was Richard Coatbridge also the painter of the
panels?
Ellie was optimistic. His dates were
right, but when
she opened his file,
and saw the photographs of what
he'd painted, she realised the subject
matter was totally
different. This artist
painted portraits, landscapes, tasteful
subjects – nothing like the
rioting foliage, the profusion of animals and the erotic figures of the panels.
And yet his work did seem familiar.

Ellie spent some time searching through the
file of
images, wondering if she'd seen
other, more famous work
by this
artist, perhaps on a greetings card or something,
which is why it looked
familiar. Or possibly the panels were something he'd painted for a whim; not
commissioned, just for his pleasure and amusement.

She went outside and telephoned Ran. 'I've
found this artist, right initials, right period but he's done nothing else
remotely like the panels.'

‘Check all the other artists of the right
period with the
same initials, but don't
panic. They could still be by him.
I wonder if Grace has any written
provenance.'

‘
Considering she didn't know the panels existed,
it seems unlikely she'd know if she had. And there's very little stuff in that
house, considering how big it is.’

‘What about
the attics?'

‘I don't
know about them.'

‘
Go back and see if you can find another artist. If you
can't, make a note of the whereabouts of this
guy's most
prominent works. I could tell
a lot by looking at his other
stuff.’

Back went Ellie to her quiet, green-lined space
and continued her research, getting more and more excited by the prospect of
discovering the creator of the panels
that
had caused so much havoc and potentially so much
happiness for her, and
relief from anxiety for Grace.

It didn't matter personally
to Ellie if the panels were
old and valuable or not – through
them she'd not only met Ran, she'd also found something she might want to do
with her life. But it mattered to Grace that they were precious. She needed
them to be by an old master, or at
least a
painter of some repute, and although Ellie checked
all the other possibilities, none of the artists
gave her the
breath of hope that her first one had.

One of his paintings was in
the National Portrait
Gallery. A little look at her
A–Z
told
Ellie she could walk there easily.

She put back the file,
said thank you to the kind woman
in charge, who
now seemed like an old friend, and left
the
building, phoning Ran as she walked.

‘
There's
something at the National Portrait Gallery,' she
told him. 'I'm going there now to see if I can decide if
it's him
or not.'

‘
Are you sure you'll be able to tell?'

‘Well, are
you offering to come to London and look?’

‘
Don't get all worked up. I'm sure you'll manage
just fine.’

‘
You're so
patronising sometimes, Ran,' she said, and disconnected. But she was smiling.

 
Seeing an actual
painting, in its full, enormous, glowing
glory,
made Ellie gasp. The subject was of some great man
or other leaning up against the horse his wife
was sitting on, side-saddle. They were under an enormous tree, and
there
was an equally magnificent mansion in the back
ground.
The wife was looking down at her husband, who was looking into the middle
distance, possibly telling her
about
something she wasn't really interested in. The horse
was objecting to
the dog, which looked up at it, unsure
whether
to bark or run away. Obviously a commissioned
work, it was a beautiful
painting of real people, and real animals, even if it was unlikely they had
posed in the sylvan setting. She stared at it for some time, thinking she
should make more time to look at paintings – there was so much joy to be had
from it.

Unfortunately, this stately masterpiece was so
unlike
the panels she felt it was unlikely
to be by the same artist.
She
glanced at her watch; it was time to go for her train,
but something
drew her back to the painting. She could not stop looking at it. The colours
were all as light and
vivid as a
colour-slide; she felt she could climb into it and
walk through the trees, scattering the birds and
animals
as she did so.

Then she spotted it: a
tiny rabbit, so small it was hardly noticeable among the painted grasses. But
she recognised
it! She definitely
recognised it. There was one very similar
on the
panels. And once she'd spotted the rabbit, she
realised there were birds which, if not identical, were very
similar
to those which frolicked by the feet of Adam and Eve.

She got the photographs
out of her pocket to check, but,
frustratingly,
they were nowhere near good enough to be
of any
help. She looked back to the painting before her.
Now she'd spotted the rabbit it seemed obvious it was
the same artist. It was in the detail of the
landscape behind
the figures, in his use of light – things you'd never
pick
up from a photograph. This was their
artist, she was sure.

She rushed back out into
the bustle of London and tele
phoned Ran again. 'It's him, it's
him, I'm sure it is! The panels must be worth a fortune!'

‘Calm down,' he murmured, but she could hear a
definite note of excitement beneath his caution. 'You could easily be wrong.'

‘
I am an
artist, you know! And I'm not a complete fool!
I can recognise
brushstrokes, colours, stuff like that.'

‘OK, OK, I'm sure you're very clever, but don't
get too worked up. You may be doomed to disappointment.' He
was maddeningly sensible. At any moment he would
warn
her about 'tears before bedtime'.

‘
Would you
like to come up here and tell me I'm
wrong?'
she raged. 'If you won't take my word for it,
that's what you'll have to do! There's an identical rabbit!'

‘
It is
hard to tell one rabbit from another you know. They're all brown with white
tails.' He was teasing her now.

Ellie just stopped herself calling him
something very
rude. 'Not in art, they're
not!' she said, not daring to open
her jaws again in case something more
escaped.

‘
No need to
get all worked up. I'll see if there's some of his work nearer here. In the
meantime, you need to
get on to Grace to see if there's the remotest
possibility she's got any papers. Richard Coatbridge is a famous artist. If
she's to get full value for the paintings, we need to be a hundred and ten per
cent sure it is him.’

She sighed deeply, disappointed that he didn't
share her optimism. 'OK. But I'm coming home now. I'm exhausted.’

On the tube journey to the
station Ellie lost some of
her
enthusiasm. It was so crowded for one thing, and she
found herself nervously protecting her stomach from her
fellow
commuters. Supposing she'd just thought the rabbits were the same because she
wanted them to be? Perhaps she'd transferred what she saw in the portrait
into her memory of the panels, because she wanted
them
to be by the same artist? Perhaps it was all a figment of her
pregnant, addled-by-lust imagination? By the time
she slumped into her seat on the train at Paddington, she
had
lost all hope, and was not at all pleased when the ticket inspector told her
that her cheap ticket was not valid on that train. Fortunately it had already
moved off
and, perhaps seeing her fatigue,
he didn't make too much
fuss, just made her pay the excess.

‘
It's an
omen!' she thought. 'Having the wrong ticket
is an omen. They're not by
him, after all!’

But before she closed her
eyes she decided that the fact
that she hadn't been forced out of
the train at Reading meant it was a
good
omen,
and slept soundly for nearly the entire journey.

Her mobile phone battery lasted just long
enough for
her to tell Ran which train she
was on, which was another
good omen.
As the train pulled into the station she asked herself why it was so important
to her that it was Richard
Coatbridge who had painted those panels. She
put it down to omens again.

‘I think being pregnant has made me terribly
superstitious,' she said to Ran, kissing him on the cheek and
ignoring the fact that this greeting came as a
surprise to
him. 'I was wondering why
I care who the artist is —
they'll be valuable, whatever. But somehow I
do care. If the baby's a boy, I'm going to call it Richard.'

‘It's terribly unlikely it is him, you know. I
mean, he's very famous.'

‘I haven't heard of him.'

‘As I said, he's very famous, or he wouldn't
have work in the National Portrait Gallery.'

‘
There were loads of
artists in there I'd never heard of.’

‘
Doesn't mean a
thing. I don't want you to get your hopes up.'

‘
But I'm completely
certain it is him. I can feel it in my
water. Which, as you may have
noticed, is very free flowing at the moment.'

‘
I'm afraid that doesn't
mean a thing either.' He unlocked
the car and she got in. 'Did you get me a
Standard?’

‘
Yup.'

‘
Now that is good news.'

‘
Ooh,' said
Ellie suddenly, just before Ran switched on
the ignition. 'I think the
baby moved!' She stared at him in wonderment, trying to connect the fluttering
in her stomach with all that had gone before that moment; she was not just
pregnant, she was having a baby.

Ran didn't speak, he just returned her solemn
gaze. Then he lightly kissed her slightly open mouth.