As always when he felt deserted, he went to see Chester Klein, patron of the arts by diverse hands, a man who claimed to have been excised by fretful lawyers from more biographies than any other man since Byron. He lived in Notting Hill Gate, in a house he’d bought cheaply in the late fifties, which he now seldom left, touched as he was by agoraphobia, or, as he preferred it, ‘a perfectly rational fear of anyone I can’t blackmail’.
From this small dukedom he managed to prosper, employed as he was in a business which required a few choice contacts, a nose for the changing taste of his market, and an ability to conceal his pleasure at his achievements. In short, he dealt in fakes, and it was this latter quality he was most deficient in. There were those amongst his small circle of intimates who said it would be his undoing, but they or their predecessors had been prophesying the same for three decades, and Klein had out-prospered every one of them. The luminaries he’d entertained over the decades - the defecting dancers and minor spies, the addicted debutantes, the rock stars with Messianic leanings and the bishops who made idols of barrow-boys - they’d all had their moments of glory, then fallen. But Klein went on to tell the tale. And when, on occasion, his name did creep into a scandal-sheet or a confessional biography, he was invariably painted as the patron saint of lost souls.
It wasn’t only the knowledge that, being such a soul, Gentle would be welcomed at the Klein residence, that took him there. He’d never known a time when Klein didn’t need money for some gambit or other, and that meant he needed painters. There was more than comfort to be found in the house at Ladbroke Grove; there was employment. It had been eleven months since he’d seen or spoken to Chester, but he was greeted as effusively as ever, and ushered in.
‘Quickly! Quickly!’ Klein said. ‘Gloriana’s in heat again!’ He managed to slam the door before the obese Gloriana, one of his five cats, escaped in search of a mate. ‘Too slow, sweetie!’ he told her. She yowled at him in complaint. ‘I keep her fat so she’s slow,’ he said. ‘And I don’t feel so piggy myself.’
He patted a paunch that had swelled considerably since Gentle had last seen him, and was testing the seams of his shirt, which, like him, was florid and had seen better years. He still wore his hair in a pony-tail, complete with ribbon, and wore an ankh on a chain around his neck, but beneath the veneer of a harmless flower-child gone to seed he was as acquisitive as a bower-bird. Even the vestibule in which they embraced was overflowing with collectables: a wooden dog, plastic roses in psychedelic profusion, sugar skulls on plates.
‘My God you’re cold,’ he said to Gentle, ‘and you look wretched. Who’s been beating you about the head?’
‘Nobody.’
‘You’re bruised.’
‘I’m tired, that’s all.’
Gentle took off his heavy coat, and laid it on the chair by the door, knowing when he returned it would be warm and covered with cat hairs. Klein was already in the living room, pouring wine. Always red.
‘Don’t mind the television,’ he said. ‘I never turn it off these days. The trick is not to turn up the sound. It’s much more entertaining mute.’
This was a new habit, and a distracting one. Gentle accepted the wine, and sat down in the corner of the ill-sprung couch, where it was easiest to ignore the demands of the screen. Even there, he was tempted.
‘So now, my Bastard Boy,’ Klein said, ‘to what disaster do I owe the honour?’
‘It’s not really a disaster. I’ve just had a bad time. I wanted some cheery company.’
‘Give them up, Gentle,’ Klein said.
‘Give what up?’
‘You know what. The fair sex. Give them up. I have. It’s such a relief. All those desperate seductions. All that time wasted meditating on death to keep yourself from coming too soon. I tell you, it’s like a burden gone from my shoulders.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Age has got fuck-all to do with it. I gave up women because they were breaking my heart.’
‘What heart’s that?’
‘I might ask you the same thing. Yes, you whine and you wring your hands, but then you go back and make the same mistakes. It’s tedious. They’re tedious.’
‘So save me.’
‘Oh, now here it comes.’
‘I don’t have any money.
‘Neither do I.’
‘So we’ll make some together. Then I won’t have to be a kept man. I’m going back to live in the studio, Klein. I’ll paint whatever you need.’
‘The Bastard Boy speaks.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’
‘It’s what you are. You haven’t changed in eight years. The world grows old but the Bastard Boy keeps his perfection. Speaking of which —’
‘Employ me.’
Don’t interrupt me when I’m gossiping. Speaking of which, I saw Clem the Sunday before last. He asked after you. He’s put on a lot of weight. And his love-life’s almost as disastrous as yours. Taylor’s sick with the plague. I tell you, Gentle, celibacy’s the thing.’
‘So employ me.’
‘It’s not as easy as that. The market’s soft at the moment. And, well, let me be brutal, I have a new Wunderkind.’ He got up. ‘Let me show you.’ He led Gentle through the house to the study. ‘The fellow’s twenty-two, and I swear if he had an idea in his head he’d be a great painter. But he’s like you, he’s got the talent but nothing to say.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gentle sourly.
‘You know it’s true.’ Klein switched on the light. There were three canvases, all unframed, in the room. One, a nude woman after the style of Modigliani. Beside it, a small landscape after Corot. But the third, and largest of the three, was the coup. It was a pastoral scene, depicting classically garbed shepherds standing, in awe, before a tree in the trunk of which a human face was visible.
‘Would you know it from a real Poussin?’
‘Is it still wet?’ Gentle asked.
‘Such a wit.’
Gentle went to give the painting a more intimate examination. This period was not one he was particularly expert in, but he knew enough to be impressed by the handiwork. The canvas was a close weave, the paint laid upon it in careful regular strokes, the tones built up, it seemed, in glazes.
‘Meticulous, eh?’ said Klein.
To the point of being mechanical.’
‘Now, now, no sour grapes.’
‘I mean it. It’s just too perfect for words. You put this in the market and the game’s up. Now, the Modigliani’s another matter -’
That was a technical exercise,’ Klein said. ‘I can’t sell that. The man only painted a dozen pictures. It’s the Poussin I’m betting on.’
‘Don’t. You’ll get stung. Mind if I get another drink?’
Gentle headed back through the house to the lounge, Klein following,