The Brush-Off mw-1 Read online

  ‘Quite successfully too, judging by the government’s $300,000 contribution to your acquisition fund.’

  Eastlake looked at me sideways, crediting my homework, sensing criticism. ‘Good art costs money,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea how much government money the trustees of the National Gallery have got over the years? The nobs are never slow to stick their hands out, believe me. The old masters are more than happy for the public to pay for their Old Masters. Isn’t it time that someone else got a fair suck of the sausage? Newer artists. Or the forgotten ones the art establishment has written out of history?’

  He wasn’t going to get any argument from me on that point. He saw that and got down off his high horse.

  ‘I started off as a carpenter, you know.’ He slipped into an avuncular tone. ‘It’s a cliche, I know, but when I first began to succeed in business, I felt that people were contemptuous of me. Not that I particularly cared what they thought, but I didn’t want anyone thinking they had the edge on me just because of my background. I’d always had a bit of an interest in art, so I cultivated it. I started going to exhibitions, asking questions, buying pictures. Eventually, I got invited onto exhibition committees and boards of directors. Not the National Gallery, of course. I’m still a bit beneath its dignity. I don’t entirely flatter myself that it’s because my taste and judgment are held in high esteem. I know it’s partly because of my business and political connections. But nobody looks down his nose at me any more. Art is an even greater status symbol than having a chauffeur. Isn’t that right, Noel?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Eastlake.’ Spider was smarmily obliging, sharing a little private joke with the boss.

  I raised my eyes to the rearview mirror and found him observing me, stony faced. He tilted his head upwards and literally looked down his nose at me. Making a point. He’d recognised me all right, back in the garage, and knew that I’d recognised him. There was no mirth in the gesture. None whatsoever. I stared back into his mirrored eyes until he returned them to the road.

  ‘The thing to keep in mind’-Eastlake had resumed his briefing mode, oblivious-‘is that most arts practitioners, the creative people, are Labor supporters.’

  We passed the squat pyramid of the war memorial and turned down an elm-lined side road. The Mercedes cruised to a gentle stop outside a small white house standing by itself in the middle of the park, complete with a front veranda and an old-fashioned rose garden.

  ‘We’ve arrived,’ Spider announced. Eastlake opened the door and stepped out. As I made to follow, Spider slung his elbow casually onto the seat back. ‘Haven’t we?’ he said, pointedly. ‘Mate.’

  ‘Hello, Spider,’ I said.

  He didn’t like to be reminded. ‘Bit of a snob these days, Murray? You didn’t say hello this afternoon. And a bit of an art buff, too. Moving in all the best circles. Haven’t turned into a poofter, have you?’

  ‘Even if I had,’ I said, feet on the footpath, ‘you’d be safe.’

  The Centre for Modern Art looked more like the lawn cutter’s residence than the cutting edge of the avant-garde. Its function as an art gallery was betrayed only by a rather inconspicuous sign on the gate and people spilling out the front door with drinks in their hands. Clearly Labor voters to a person.

  Eastlake led me up the garden path, nodding hellos. He surged into a narrow hallway with a polished-wood floor, track-lighting, and white walls hung with pictures of dwarfs with enormous penises. Through archways opening on either side I could see people milling about, drinking, chatting and pretending to look at crucified teddy bears and scrap-iron dingoes. ‘I’m just the front man here,’ Eastlake was saying. ‘The real work is done by the our director, Fiona Lambert. You’ll like Fiona. Everyone does. Bright as a button. Darling.’

  Darling? Eastlake and I were getting on pretty well, but it seemed a little early in our relationship for this degree of affection.

  ‘Dahling!’ The word echoed back from the far end of the hall. A woman of export-quality glamour elbowed her way through the crowd towards us. She was somewhere in her late twenties. Her skin was extraordinarily pale, translucent almost, and lustrously moisturised. She was wearing a little black dress with spaghetti straps, its colour exactly matching her finely arched eyebrows and the precisely engineered bob of hair that framed her face. It was a face with too much character to be called pretty, but it was still well worth looking at. Her legs were bare and went all the way to the floor where they ended in a pair of low-heeled brilliantly shiny shoes, one black, one white. If it hadn’t been for the slash of postbox red at her mouth, she could have got a job as a pedestrian crossing. But not one I’d ever cross. She was so far out of my price range she might as well have been the Hope diamond. She offered Eastlake one of her cheeks.

  ‘Fiona, darling.’ He pecked the air beside her ear. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’ He meant me.

  Fiona Lambert inspected me with shrewd green eyes, and politely showed me some teeth that must have cost daddy a pretty penny. Her LBD was cut low to display a divine declivity, dusted with barely visible pale-yellow freckles. Not that I noticed.

  Eastlake was right, she was as bright as a button-as neat, as highly polished, and just as hard. He introduced us, explaining the change of ministers and embellishing my credentials somewhat. Ms Lambert smiled non-committally and extended her fingertips. The handshake was slight, barely making contact, but there was a firmness of muscle there that made me think of ballet points and horses. I felt like a politician’s yes-man in a cheap suit.

  Eastlake promptly bailed out. ‘Why don’t you induct Murray into the mysteries, Fiona darling, while I get us a drink.’ He merged into the throng, waving ineffectually at a disappearing waitress. More people were arriving. I felt conspicuously overdressed in my workaday collar and tie. The only other men in suits were very old and slightly bewildered. The rest of the crowd was haphazardly casual, the women with stylishly eccentric spectacles, the men meticulously louche.

  Fiona Lambert put her hand lightly on my elbow and steered me out of the hall. We went into a room hung with minimalist paintings so well executed I had to look twice to make sure they were really there. The room was filling and there was a slight crush of bodies. Fiona Lambert stood disconcertingly close. Sooner or later I would be asked my opinion of the stuff on the walls. There was bound to be some sort of formula, but I didn’t know what it was. A heavy bead of perspiration broke from under my arm and trickled down inside my shirt. ‘Lloyd was somewhat vague about the occasion,’ I said, groping for small talk.

  ‘Primarily, it’s an opportunity for some of the more promising newcomers to show what they can do.’ Fiona Lambert was nothing if not well-bred, and she knew her job. ‘More of a social thing, really. So our friends and supporters don’t forget us over the summer.’

  ‘You make it sound like the night football,’ I said. Might as well play the part.

  She forged a mechanical little smile. Her attention was elsewhere. A couple were walking through the door, making an entrance. He was well into his sixties, gnomically stocky and almost completely bald. His heavily lidded eyes and well-tanned skin made him appear simultaneously indolent and cunning. He was wearing a sixty-dollar white t-shirt under a nautical blazer. He looked like a cross between Aristotle Onassis and a walnut. She was fortyish, twice as tall and whipcord thin, with leathery skin and a helmet of red hair that had been worked on by experts. The man’s eyes scanned the room until they found Fiona Lambert.

  ‘Speaking of friends and supporters,’ she said, her fingers fastening around my elbow. ‘Come and meet the Karlins.’

  As we crossed the room, Lloyd Eastlake sailed into our orbit with a glass of champagne in each hand. He spotted our destination and arrived first, thrusting the drinks ahead of him. ‘Max and Becky Karlin.’ He smooched the air beside the woman’s earhole. ‘Meet Murray Whelan, trusty lieutenant to our new Arts Minister, Angelo Agnelli.’

  Karlin bent slightly forward at the waist and offered me
his hand. My fingers disappeared into an encompassing embrace of flesh and Karlin pumped them softly, as though gently but firmly extracting some essential oil. He fixed me with oyster eyes, my hand still encased in his paw. For a moment I thought he was going to ask me what size shoe I wore. ‘You tell your minister that this con man is robbing me blind.’

  ‘Con man? Robbing you?’ Eastlake reeled back in mock outrage. ‘Six hundred thousand is not what I’d call robbery.’

  Karlin let go of my hand and waggled a chubby finger in my face. ‘Don’t trust this fellow,’ he clucked dryly. ‘Do you know what he has done to me?’

  I made no attempt to reply. My job, I could see, was to play the straight man while these two went into a well-rehearsed double act.

  ‘What I have done,’ said Eastlake, ‘is agree to pay you one of the largest sums ever paid by a public collection for a work by a twentieth-century Australian painter.’

  Karlin flapped his jowls in dismay. ‘This talk of money, it insults the picture’s true value. Isn’t that right, Fiona?’

  Fiona Lambert gave every indication of having seen this little song and dance before, but she played along. ‘It’s a wonderful painting,’ she said.

  ‘Fiona,’ said Karlin in an aside for my benefit. ‘Fiona is our greatest living expert on the work of Victor Szabo. She was very close to him before his death.’

  Fiona was suddenly very interested in the track-lighting. I’d get no help from her. The name Szabo meant nothing to me. I was out of my depth and sinking fast. Meanwhile, Eastlake and Karlin continued their Mo and Stiffy act.

  ‘Max here is cranky because his bluff has been called,’ Eastlake told me. ‘For years he’s had what is arguably Victor Szabo’s best work hanging in his office, a picture called Our Home. But Fiona realised its significance, identified it as the perfect cornerstone for our permanent collection here at the CMA. Max likes to be thought of as a philanthropist, so he couldn’t refuse outright to sell us the picture. He just asked a price so high he thought he’d scare us off.’

  So, this Victor Szabo was a painter, evidently one big enough to warrant a six-figure price tag. Karlin was finding this all very entertaining, this story in which his taste and acumen were the starring characters. ‘I’m practically giving it away,’ he told me.

  Eastlake was getting to the bit he liked. ‘But I called Max’s bluff. I told Gil Methven that a picture of this significance really ought to be in a public collection. He agreed that the Arts Ministry would provide half the funds if I could raise the other half. Which is exactly what I did. So Max had no option but to agree to the sale. Now all he does is bitch about how he’s being swindled.’

  ‘Bah,’ Karlin waved a thick finger in the air. ‘Money was never the issue. I love that picture. It’s like one of my children. Twenty years ago I bought it, long before most people had ever heard of Victor Szabo.’

  Most people? ‘I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with Szabo’s work,’ I confessed. ‘Is the painting here?’

  ‘We take possession on Monday.’ Fiona Lambert made this a question, arching her eyebrows at Karlin.

  He nodded confirmation. ‘Until then,’ he said, ‘it remains my private pleasure. At least until the formalities are completed.’

  Eastlake explained. ‘Max is holding a little going-away event for the picture, brunch tomorrow. Gil Methven was going to do the honours but what with the Cabinet reshuffle, the short notice and so on…’

  It was my turn to flash a little rank. ‘Oh, I think I can persuade Angelo to attend,’ I said. ‘He’s particularly keen to meet’-here I gave my attention entirely to Karlin-‘such a prominent supporter of the arts.’

  Karlin merely smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, fine.’ Across the room Becky Karlin and another lizard-skinned bat were scrutinising what was either a visual discourse on the nature of post-industrial society or the wiring diagram for a juice extractor. Nodding a brisk farewell, Karlin took off towards them, a politely hunched Fiona Lambert on his arm.

  ‘You did well to wangle three hundred grand out of Gil Methven,’ I told Eastlake admiringly. I didn’t want the policy committee chairman taking my little exercise in one-upmanship amiss. ‘Spending the taxpayers’ money on modern art is not exactly a sure-fire vote-winner, you know.’

  ‘Couldn’t agree with you more,’ he said with unruffled equanimity. ‘But wait until you see this particular picture. The public will love it. It’ll become a national icon, just you wait. You think a hardhead like Gil Methven wouldn’t have considered the political implications?’

  ‘Just as long as it’s not twenty metres wide and made of bullock’s blood and emu feathers,’ I grudgingly allowed. ‘Angelo’s in the hot seat now.’

  ‘Believe me.’ Eastlake snaffled a couple of fresh glasses off a passing tray and thrust one into my hand. ‘Agnelli will love it. He’ll think he’s Lorenzo bloody Medici. And the public will lap it up.’

  Eastlake could afford to be optimistic about the judgment of the people. He’d never have to face it. I didn’t tell him that, though. Instead I let him wheel me around the room and introduce me to more names than I could hope to remember and more glasses of Veuve Clicquot than I could reasonably be expected to digest on an empty stomach.

  In due course, I found myself standing alone, contemplating one of the pictures. It was a portrait of the Queen constructed entirely out of different varieties of breakfast cereal. Corn Flake lips, Nutri-Grain ears, Coco Pops hair. I had, I decided, done my duty for the day. It was getting on for 8.30. Time to scout for an out.

  I sidled through the nearest door and found myself in an enclosed garden, a green rectangle of lawn bordered by high shrubs, a cool refuge from the clamour inside. A lavender-hued dusk was beginning its descent. The slightly overgrown grass was littered with dead marines and ravaged canape trays. Little clusters of people sprawled about languidly with their shoes kicked off. At the far end of the lawn, near a pile of rusty ironwork from the Turd of a Dog with a Square Arsehole school of sculpture, stood Salina Fleet, Veneer magazine’s spunky visual arts editor.

  The palm trees on her mu-mu swayed. Pom-poms brushed her bare thighs. A lipstick-smeared wineglass sat athwart her bosom. All up, she looked a damned sight more edible than the wilting sushi circulating inside. Unfortunately, she was not alone.

  Her companion was a male. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, with lank unkempt hair, heavy-rimmed Roy Orbison glasses and an attempt at sideburns. The sleeves were sheared off his western shirt and he was wearing grimy, paint-speckled jeans. A creative type, no doubt about it. And judging by the intense way he leaned into Selina when he talked-he was doing all the talking-more than a casual acquaintance. He was reading expressively from a tatty piece of paper, as though reciting a poem.

  Salina, I noted with some pleasure, didn’t appear to be buying it, whatever it was. My hopes soared. The guy was probably some mendicant artist, putting the hard word on her for a grant or a favourable review. But then she stepped closer and put her hand on his forearm. The gesture was so intimate, her demeanour so affectionate, that I mentally reached for the chalk to scratch myself from the race.

  The guy jerked his arm away as if stung. No soft soap for him. He spun on his heels and strode towards the doorway where I was standing. Salina watched his progress across the lawn, less than impressed. She shook her head ruefully and drained her drink.

  Here was my chance. The bar table was just through the door. I dived back inside and hit the waiter for a quick two glasses of shampoo. As he wrestled the wire off a fresh bottle, the artist-type came bustling up beside me, his eyes glinting through his spectacles with madcap determination. He slapped his hand down on my shoulder. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, his voice piping with emotion.

  Before I could respond, he pushed downwards. Using me for support, he hoicked himself up onto the bar. His tooled leather boots skidded on the wet surface. A loaded tray of empty glasses careened over the edge and hit the floor. They shattered with an almighty cr
ash. Every head in the room turned our way.

  ‘Shut up, everybody,’ declaimed the weedy cowboy. He brandished his piece of paper at the upturned faces like he was Lenin addressing the Congress of People’s Deputies. ‘And listen. You’re all being conned. This whole edifice is built on a lie.’

  He made a gesture so expansive he had trouble arresting its momentum. And when he took a steadying sideways step, it was immediately obvious that he was drunk. Not legless perhaps, but a good three sheets to the wind at the very minimum. His voice was pitched high with nervous exultation at his own boldness. ‘The people behind this place don’t care about art.’

  Backs turned dismissively, and the hubbub of conversation resumed. There’s one in every crowd, the murmur said. Just ignore him.

  Seeing his audience’s attention begin to slip away, the would-be Demosthenes raised his voice against the resumption of normality. He succeeded only in sounding hysterical. ‘Listen, everybody,’ he pleaded. ‘This is important.’

  I almost felt sorry for him, standing there in all his horrible vulnerability, flapping his skinny arms about, his pearls cast before swine, a teenage barman in a clip-on bow tie tugging at his trouser leg. Not sorry enough to forget my mission, though.

  Salina Fleet, drawn by the ruckus, was standing in the doorway observing the spectacle with wide-eyed alarm.

  Taking advantage of the waiter’s distraction, I filched the still-unopened champagne bottle, grabbed a couple of glasses and began in her direction. ‘You’ll see,’ the cowboy warned. ‘You can’t dismiss me so easily.’

  And, as if to prove his point, and to me in particular, he promptly staggered forward and toppled off the table. He landed on top of me.

  It isn’t every day I get strafed. I folded like a cheap banana lounge, flat on my backside, glassware skittering, dignity out the window. The demented speech-maker’s face pushed into mine, flushed with humiliation and too much to drink. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he mumbled, scrambling to his feet and rushing for the door. Salina Fleet, seeing him coming, pursed her mouth into a furious slit and folded her arms in an emphatic gesture of disavowal.