The Flanders Panel Read Free Page A

artistic and literary references and openly mocking the rather select world in which she conducted her professional life. She boasted about all this with the same frankness with which she had once claimed to have experienced the best orgasm of her life masturbating in front of a catalogued and numbered reproduction of Donatello’s
David,
an anecdote that Cesar, with his refined, almost feminine brand of cruelty, always cited as the only example of genuine good taste that Menchu Roch had ever shown in her life.
    “So what shall we do about the Van Huys?” asked Julia.
    Menchu looked again at the X-ray photos lying on the table between her glass and her friend’s coffee cup. She was wearing blue eye shadow and a blue dress that was much too short for her. Julia thought, quite without malice, that twenty years ago Menchu must have looked really pretty in blue.
    “I’m not sure yet,” said Menchu. “Claymore’s have undertaken to auction the painting exactly as it stands… We’ll have to see what effect the inscription has on its value.”
    “Just think what that could mean.”
    “I love it. You’ve hit the jackpot and you don’t even realise it.”
    “Ask the owner what he wants to do.”
    Menchu put the prints back in the envelope and crossed her legs. Two young men drinking aperitifs at the next table cast furtive, interested glances at her bronzed thighs. Julia fidgeted, a touch irritated. She was usually amused by the blatant way Menchu contrived special effects for the benefit of her male audience, but sometimes the display struck her as unnecessary. She looked at the square-faced Omega watch she wore on the inside of her left wrist. It was much too early to be showing off one’s best underwear.
    “The owner’s no problem,” Menchu explained. “He’s a delightful old chap in a wheelchair. And if the discovery of the inscription increases his profits, he’ll be only too pleased… His niece and her husband are a pair of real bloodsuckers.”
    Max was still chatting at the bar but, ever-conscious of his duties, he turned round occasionally to bestow a dazzling smile on Julia and Menchu. Speaking of bloodsuckers, Julia said to herself, but decided against putting the thought into words. Not that Menchu would have minded - she showed an admirable cynicism when it came to men — but Julia had a strong sense of the proprieties which always stopped her from going too far.
    Ignoring Max, she said: “It’s only two months till the auction. That’s not nearly enough time if I have to remove the varnish, uncover the inscription and then revarnish again. Besides, getting together the documentation on the painting and the people in it
and
writing a report will take time. It would be a good idea to get the owner’s permission as soon as possible.”
    Menchu agreed. Her frivolity did not extend to her professional life, in which she moved with all the cunning of a trained rat. She was acting as intermediary in the transaction because the owner of the Van Huys knew nothing of the workings of the art market. It was she who had handled the negotiations for the auction with the Madrid branch of Claymore’s.
    “I’ll phone him tomorrow. His name is Don Manuel Belmonte, he’s seventy years old, and he’s delighted, as he puts it, to be dealing with a pretty young woman with such a splendid head for business.”
    There was something else, Julia pointed out. If the uncovered inscription could be linked to the story of the people in the painting, Claymore’s would be sure to play on that to up the asking price.
    “Have you managed to get hold of any more useful documentation?”
    “Very little,” Menchu said, pursing her lips in her effort to remember. “I gave you all I had along with the painting. So you’re going to have to find out for yourself.”
    Julia opened her handbag and took longer than necessary to find her cigarettes. At last, she slowly took one out and looked at her friend.
    “We could ask