Page 6 of The Blue Hour

I haven’t painted at all since the beginning of the year, thoughIhave been throwing a little – I found a studio in Oxford which I can use. I go almost every day, even when I am not working – anything to get out of the house.

I will be alone soon – Julian is going to Nairobi next week for some ‘travel venture’ he and Izzy are planning, then they go to Lamu. Celia Gray has rented a house there. Izzy tells me it is ‘just a fling’.

I’m not sure I care. No, I do care. Sometimes I care. Part of me wants him to go and never come back. Part of me wants to lock him in a room and never let him out.

5

At the end of the valley, Becker turns right, driving north-west towards the coast. The speedometer has barely touched sixty when an ambulance shrieks past, blue light flashing, and within a mile the road is blocked. It’s a bad one, the young policeman manning the roadblock grimaces. Motorcyclist. It’s going to be a while. You’re probably better off going the long way round.

Becker turns back, racing through the valley, his eye drawn to the clock on the dash. If he doesn’t get to Eris before 10.45 he’ll miss the tide, and it’s 9.12 now, so that means, hang on, what does that mean? He fiddles with the GPS,reroute, reroute, you stupid bloody thing, his foot heavy on the accelerator. As he takes the final, sharp corner at the head of the valley, he feels the back end of the car start to slide. He slams his foot on the brake, stomach lurching and heart pounding as the vehicle swings wildly across the double white line. In his mind he sees Grant Wood’sDeath on the Ridge Road, the black saloon seeming to cower in terror before the onrushing red lorry, he sees his own body, crushed between seat and wheel, he imagines Helena’s voice as she answers the call, wavering before it breaks.

Light-headed with adrenaline, he drives on, back down to forty miles an hour now, trying to lower his heart rate by focusingon the matter at hand. There’s an opportunity here, he needs to seize it, he needs to handle this business with Grace Haswell just right.

He’ll start withDivisionII. This disputed rib – that’s his way in. He’s assuming that Haswell won’t know anything – nothingdefinitive, in any case – about the origins of that bone, so he can then ask whether there were preparatory sketches or other notes about the piece, and from there, he can segue neatly on to the subject of Vanessa’s journals.

He has read a couple – they were sent along with the second shipment of paintings – but knows from interviews that she wrote in notebooks throughout her working life so there should be dozens. Letters, too, and photographs – all manner of invaluable material. But he’s going to have to handle things delicately if he’s going to get anywhere, to undo the damage that was done by Sebastian’s father and his lawyers.

The fact is – the fact no one acknowledges because of thecircumstances– this entire affair has been mishandled. That was partly understandable – the contents of Chapman’s will came as a shock to everyone in the art world. No one imagined that she would leave her entire artistic estate to Fairburn, the foundation established by Sebastian’s father, Douglas Lennox, Vanessa’s former gallerist and, for the last part of her life, her bitter enemy.

When the news became public, Douglas crowed. Vanessa Chapman had seen sense at last! The bequest represented, he claimed in interviews, a posthumous apology. It was an admission of the terrible wrong she had done him all those years ago; evidence that even after more than a decade of estrangement, Vanessa had not forgotten him or all that he had done for her. Their connection, deep and intimate as it was, had never been broken after all.

It took more than a year for probate to come through, butonce it had, the shipment of pieces to Fairburn began. That was when things began to go awry. Without providing evidence, Douglas claimed that paintings were missing. He wrote to Grace Haswell, Vanessa’s executor, accusing her of incompetence. Later, he all but accused her of theft. Lawyers were engaged on both sides.

It was into this mess that Becker arrived. Sebastian’s old college pal and a Vanessa Chapman expert, he was initially under strict instructions not to meddle in the Haswell affair – it was being handled by the lawyers. But then suddenly – tragically – Douglas died. Accidentally shot during a deer cull on the estate.

All bets were off. The lawyers were stood down while Sebastian and his mother grieved. Sebastian’s forthcoming wedding to Helena Fitzgerald was postponed. The family’s business interests were restructured, the Highlands estate sold. Sebastian took over the running of the business. Then the pandemic hit, muddying the waters further, delaying any possibility of direct action.

This new development, however – this thing about the bone used inDivisionII– has presented Becker with an opportunity to take a fresh approach to the situation.

The mistake that Douglas and Sebastian and their lawyers have made all along, Becker believes, has been to treat Grace Haswell as Chapman’s executor. Sheis, of course, but she was also Chapman’s friend, her companion for almost twenty years, her carer towards the end of her life. There are rumours that they might have been lovers.

For Becker, the opportunity to meet this woman is tantalizing: there can be no one better placed to offer an insight into the real Vanessa Chapman. She is a contact to be cultivated, not ostracized, surely?

Who knows what she might have to give them? What insights she could offer? What stories she has to tell?

Vanessa Chapman’s diary

In the post today, I received a clipping – no note, just a clipping – from the property section of The Times.

An island for sale. An entire island! Containing a house – small, dilapidated, an old farm I think, or a fisherman’s cottage – plus outbuildings. Two barns. One ruined, probably beyond repair. The other with ‘potential for conversion’. There is an auction at the end of the month.

If I can’t have it, I’m not sure my heart will take it.

6

Above Eris harbour sits a little row of whitewashed cottages and, in front of them, a small car park into which Becker’s Prius gently rolls at 11.23. The pale stone of the causeway is visible beneath a lime-wash of shallow sea; the water looks to be wading depth, but the noticeboard to the left of his car bonnet warns of dire consequences for the poor fool who tries his luck against an incoming tide.

Becker sits, hunched over the wheel, glowering across the narrow channel to the dark wedge of grey and green that is Eris Island. On its south-eastern tip he can make out a splodge of white: Vanessa’s house, so close and yet unreachable. The next low tide is at eight o’clock this evening; he will not be able to cross before five. He is tempted to turn around and drive home, but Sebastian will be annoyed and he will feel an idiot. And it’s not as though he has nothing to do: he has his laptop – he can work, and he has plenty to read. He’ll find somewhere for lunch, go over his notes.

First, though, he decides to stretch his legs. He climbs out of the car, kicking out his limbs to loosen them after the drive. Buffeted by a chilly wind blowing in off the sea, he shrugs on hiscoat and pockets his phone, heading north through the car park, past the cottages and along a well-trodden coastal path. About a quarter of a mile from the village, the path begins to climb, marking a perilous border between emerald grazing land and a sheer drop into the sea.

The sky up ahead is a soft, washed-out blue, so it is not until Becker turns his face into the wind that he sees the massed ranks of anthracite clouds closing in from the west. He hesitates. Perhaps the storm will pass overhead? He strides on hopefully, but he’s not walked more than a hundred feet when the first drops of rain ping, pellet-like, against his shoulders. He turns back, moving as quickly as he can, eyes narrowed and shoulders hunched against the downpour. As soon as he reaches safer ground he starts to run, sprinting back towards the car park, skidding in the mud. As he reaches the row of cottages he slows, ducking his head to the left and wiping the water from his face. In the window of the house at the end of the row he glimpses a face – anguished, pressed against the glass. He starts, stumbles, comes to a sliding halt. When he looks back, there is no one there, just a pot on the sill.

Back in the car, heart pounding, he turns the heat up full blast. He wriggles out of his damp coat and tosses it on to the back seat. Casts about for his phone, which is, of course, still in the pocket of the coat. He twists around to retrieve it and, wiping condensation from his glasses with the hem of his shirt, is relieved to discover a bar or two’s worth of signal. Enough to access the articles he’s saved to Dropbox, his virtual clippings file of press articles. Profiles of Vanessa, reviews of exhibitions, obituaries and a few news pieces published once the estate had been settled, and the contents of Vanessa’s will made public.

THE TIMES

4 March 2017

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