Significant Things. Helen McLean
had loosened, his passion had found another object that was infinitely, incomparably, more precious.
Just the same, the windows had better be locked properly, alarm systems notwithstanding. Somebody could be up a ladder and in and out with that irreplaceable French clock, for instance, long before the police got here. During his hurried walkabout Edward stumbled and cracked an ankle on a chair leg, hopped on one foot and grabbed what was to hand, which happened to be a heavy brass floor lamp. Man and lamp performed a short pas de deux before he set it back on its base and finished his meandering excursion. He sat down at the hall table, rubbed his ankle for a minute while he composed himself, and picked up the phone. Paulo answered on the second ring.
“Pronto.”
“Sono io, carissimo.”
“Ah, Eduardo. Come stai? Tutto va bene?”
“Si, si. Molto bene. Paulo, I have wonderful news. But how are things there? Is your father well?”
“He’s fine, Edward, Mamma too, grazie a Dio. Everything okay in Toronto?”
“Better than okay. I hardly know where to begin. I sold the little portraits, all nine of them. The man who bought them thought he deserved a better price because it was a multiple sale, but he finally got it through his head there weren’t going to be any bargains.”
“What portraits?”
“You know, the little heads you painted when you were here.”
“Of Mamma’s relatives? The ones I left upstairs in the studio?”
“Why, yes —”
“You sold them? I was going to give them to my cous —”
“— all at once! Got a wonderful price, too. But here’s the real surprise. You’re having a show in London.”
“What? When?”
“In ten days! Catch a flight to Heathrow as soon as you can and come straight to the hotel. Durrant’s, on George Street. I’ve booked us a suite. God, Paulo, I think I’ll go right out of my mind if I don’t see you soon. I’m leaving tonight myself; I’ll be at the gallery tomorrow afternoon to supervise the uncrating and hanging and whatnot. We can have a few wonderful days together before the —”
“Ten days! Edward, hold on! What are you talking about? You don’t have enough work for a show. I haven’t sent you anything new all year!”
Edward laughed. “Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my wits. I didn’t tell you at the time, but I bought a number of paintings from your show myself, twelve of them, to be exact, and they’ve all gone over for this little exhibition.”
“You bought my paintings? I don’t understand —”
“It was business, dearest. I wanted your show to be a sellout. Good for your career, good for the gallery. It’s a wrench parting with them, I couldn’t have brought myself to do it if I didn’t know there were going to be more. Gauthier, the man I’m dealing with in London, says we’ll price them about a third higher than we did in Toronto. Of course you’ll be getting the increase, Paulo, you know that.”
There was a silence.
“Paulo?”
“I’m still here. I don’t care about the money, Edward. I have new work, though, stuff I’d rather be showing in London. I wish you’d told me about this —”
“Carissimo, there’ll be lots more shows. The work’s already over there, the invitations have gone out, we’ve put announcements in the major papers. All you have to do is turn up. Oh, and the BBC wants to interview you at the opening. Gauthier arranged it, some series they’re doing on London galleries.”
“I appreciate what you do for me, Edward, but —”
“Did you write down the name of the hotel?”
“Si si, I’ve got it. What’s this gallery called?”
“Gauthier Fine Arts. On Cork Street, near Piccadilly. Come as soon as you can, love.”
“I’ve got some business to look after here first, Edward, I —”
“I miss you horribly —”
“— have to be in Rome for a day or two. I’ll call and let you know —”
“I want you, Paulo —”
“Ciao, Eduardo.”
“Buona notte, carissimo.”
Just as Edward set the phone down the doorbell rang. Christ, the taxi, he’d forgotten all about it. He grabbed his coat and the tickets and passport, picked up his suitcase, and hurried down the stairs.
2
It had begun two years earlier, in the spring of ’74. Edward had long been wanting to make a pilgrimage to the two small Greek temples at Paestum in southern Italy, and then to travel down through Sicily to visit the great archeological sites at Agrigento and Selinunte. The idea of those temples, and the remains of the cities around them, had always stirred his emotions, perhaps because he felt empathy with the men and women who had settled so far from home, in a kind of exile, and yet had managed to carry with them their aesthetic and religious philosophies and to express them so profoundly. That spring things were finally running smoothly enough in the gallery that he decided he could safely go away for a few weeks and leave his business in the hands of his assistants.
He began to cast his mind about for someone who might join him on the trip. At nearly forty-seven there was still no one special person or partner in his life. He’d been living in Toronto for eighteen years, the first ten of which he’d spent running the art department of Christopher’s Auctioneers; for the past eight he’d been out on his own as an independent dealer. He was not without friends, on the contrary he had many, couples mostly, since people tended to come in pairs. There had been lovers, discreet liaisons, some that lasted several years, others only a few months, and the odd one that began and ended in the space of a couple of weeks. If he were to believe what his mother had told him about the circumstances of his birth, and if events had unfolded differently, he would undoubtedly have gone down in the history books as Edward the Ambivalent, because had never been able to decide on which side of the fence, sexually speaking, he was at home. His lovers had been almost equally divided as to male or female, with a slight tipping of the balance toward the male, relationships that invariably ended without regret on Edward’s part. In each instance, when his lover turned out not, after all, to have been the one, and the relationship had begun sailing irreversibly onto the shoals, he would divert his attention to acquiring a wonderful painting or a rare piece of antique furniture or a priceless carpet, and become so absorbed with whatever it was that he would hardly even notice when the affair was actually over and he was on his own again.
He had an obsessive idea, one to which he would not have admitted, that there was one person out there who was bound sooner or later to appear, his perfect mate, the love of his life. They would meet, they would know, and they would open their arms and hearts to each other. He was more than a little ashamed of this infantile wistful yearning, even while he still hoped the miracle would happen. It was pathetic, a man of his age daydreaming like a moony-eyed teenager about finding his one true love, searching the eyes of every new person he encountered. The years were rolling past. One of these days he’d be searching the eyes of the embalmer.
He wondered now if Jack Turner might feel like taking a little holiday with him. Jack had retired from the auction business; he ought to have plenty of time on his hands. Edward had worked with Jack for many years at Christopher’s in London before he was offered the job in its Toronto branch. Back in London Jack had been first of all his immediate superior, then his mentor and friend, and during the last few years his lover. Edward wrote now, suggesting that if Jack would fly over and meet him in Rome they could travel together down through Italy by train,