It’s Worth How Much?

‘It’s worth how much?’

He repeated what he’d said before, the same number she thought she had heard but didn’t want to believe. A sick feeling hit the back of her throat – dry, hard to swallow, a tightening of her oesophagus, the sort of constriction that is a prelude to throwing up. She raised her chin and took small gulps of air. Calm yourself, calm yourself. She was conscious of a sweat that had broken out along her hairline, and especially at the back of her neck. She fished in her bag for a handkerchief and dabbed at her temples. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. This was happening.

‘Buy you out of the house at a low, or you take the heirloom,’ that’s what he’d said. From the day and hour they’d married, the heirloom had been his pride and joy. In three house moves he hadn’t allowed another person to touch it, he had always been the one to remove it from the wall, to wrap it in wool blankets, to courier it personally to the new house. Houses had been selected for the space in which it would hang; places she had loved had been dismissed in favour of homes that added miles and miles to her commute, all because of the orientation of the wall on which it would be hung. ‘North facing,’ he insisted, ‘not too much light.’

It was by a lesser-known artist from the pre-Raphaelite school, its subject nothing as obvious as Lady Godiva or Ophelia floating down the river. This one was much more beautiful than those. This girl, with her red hair flowing beyond her waist, stared coyly from the frame, beguiling anyone who stopped to look at her. And who could help themselves stop and look, admire, covet?

He came from old money, and there were other paintings, many of them – landscapes, still life, portraits of sad people, art she called ‘apologetic’ – all of them smaller than this. He claimed these smaller works were valuable too, but this one was their retirement plan, he said, this one would get them a decent small holding in Wales.

The sweat was running down her back now as she thought of the papers she’d signed giving the house over to him entirely. She saw finding it harder by the day to live with her sister, the same sister who had once called him an ‘untrustworthy bastard’, but that had been decades ago, way back when they’d been at university, when he did that thing. He’d grovelled, told her he was drunker than drunk, sorrier than sorry. They’d not been married so the transgression had been easy enough to forgive. But the sister had insisted, ‘once a cheater always a cheater.’

The auctioneer hadn’t lifted his eyes from the canvas. He continued to make contented clucking noises, as though immensely happy and satisfied with his lot. ‘Dame fine copy though. Paintings like this are dangerous. Could easily trick an amateur. Where did you say you got it?’

‘Car boot sale.’ The lie came to her without a second’s thought.

‘Hope you didn’t pay over the odds.’

‘God no,’ she flicked her sticky-with-sweat hair. ‘Think I gave him twenty quid. Can’t remember. It was years ago.’

‘Well, you didn’t do too badly,’ he said, nodding at the painting. ‘Savvy enough little investment. On a sunny day, at the right car boot sale – one with a good catchment, Cotswolds or somewhere like that – I think you might get a couple of hundred for it.’