Better Than the Real Thing

author

1

Art galleries. You might think they’re boring, but a quick visit to an art gallery one rainy morning started off a whole chain of events for me that encompassed sex, lies and (the modern digital equivalent of) videotape. As well as a wedding and a funeral that never happened, a dramatic reconstruction of one of the drier scenes of Titanic, a little kung fu and spoon-bending, and dancing to Barry Manilow in Basingstoke. All beginning with meeting a fictional man who’d been murdered and decapitated centuries previously.

Art galleries boring?

As if.

I hadn’t been inside the Tate Britain for years and I wouldn’t have gone there that day if there hadn’t been time to kill before the auction started. Eddy had dropped me off in central London on his way south of the river, and I’d taken the tube to Pimlico. Incredibly the London traffic and the tube had contrived to get me in the area over an hour before I needed to be there.

For a while I sat on a bench watching the Thames sliding along under Vauxhall Bridge. Sitting next to moving water is always therapeutic – not that I specially needed therapy, you understand, but a little relaxation is good for the soul. The weather, however, was not particularly conducive to relaxation. I could cope with the icy wind blowing off the river, could cope even with a little light rain, but when the rain began to fall in a more determined fashion, I looked around at the possibilities for shelter. It didn’t take much looking – there was a world-famous art gallery right behind me, and I joined the steady stream of people making their way inside.

I suppose because of my job – I’m an antique furniture restorer – I have some affinity with the visual arts, but as far as paintings are concerned I wouldn’t have said I was an expert or even that interested. Okay, you could even call me a bit of a philistine. My problem in art galleries had always been this: how long are you supposed to stand in front of each picture? How do you know when you’re finished with it? What makes some paintings  worth stopping at, and which ones should you glide past like you’re on a conveyor belt? On this visit, the problem was alleviated because there was a special exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelites and it was so crowded I was borne along at crowd speed.

The pictures were stunning. Jewel-bright colours, languid, flame-haired women in beautiful robes, landscapes rendered so perfectly they looked like photographs. Prettily-drawn feet. I recognised Ophelia being borne down the river clutching at a handful of bright flowers, famous portraits reproduced on a million calendars, men in tights (a fashion long since ripe for revival, in my opinion) and almost hallucinogenic detail and colour everywhere.

One picture stopped me dead with its strange beauty. It depicted quite possibly the most socially awkward dinner party since the occasion some time in the early 1980s when my ‘flighty’ Aunt Helen’s boyfriend du jour waited until the roast lamb was being carved before revealing his staunch vegetarianism. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go down well with my mother, who maintained a thorny silence throughout the meal. Her indignation briefly lifted while she served the jam roly-poly, but unfortunately, vegetarian boyfriend had to decline this treat, too, as it featured suet. He was never invited back, and Mother didn’t speak to ‘flighty’ Aunt Helen for several months.

In this painting, the vegetarian boyfriend role was apparently being taken by a striking young man in red sitting on the right hand side of the picture; there was a palpably frosty atmosphere among his fellow diners, with the three men opposite him looking particularly pissed off. One of them was behaving in a very mean fashion with a pair of nutcrackers and poking a dog with the toe of his tights at the same time. However, the man in red certainly didn’t look like a pallid vegetarian with an objection to suet. He looked like an utter sex god. Oblivious to the hostility around him, his attention was fixed totally on the woman by his side. Her eyes were cast demurely downwards, but his were fixed on her with such burning intensity that he looked about to explode with passion.

T the caption on the wall next to the picture said: Isabella by John Everett Millais.

I looked at the male figure. His soft red velvet robe clung to the lines of his body, revealing that, although he was quite ethereal looking, he had broad shoulders, a well-developed pair of pecs and was generally a bit of a hunk. He was quite beautiful, and such passion on his face, the way he was leaning towards the woman and creating a private space excluding everyone else present except the two of them, offering her an orange on a plate (bound to be symbolic of something deeply rude), all hinted that she wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night. No wonder the poor woman daren’t look up, she was probably trying not to pant.

The picture completely captivated me. It was such an odd painting; everyone apart from the young man in red was in profile and they looked like they’d been cut out from photographs and appliquéd rather than painted on. I was lost in looking at it for I don’t know how long.

Then I got the strongest feeling someone was looking at me, almost as though someone had said my name out loud. I turned and looked around. At first all I could see were people wandering from picture to picture - students, tourists, some talking and others listening to commentary on headphones. Then, at the far side of the room, I saw him.

Looking straight at me was the double of the man in the painting – his hair, his cheekbones and particularly those huge, intense eyes. He was staring at me with the same concentration, and like Isabella I couldn’t meet his gaze, but had to look away, like a cat does when another cat stares at it. I felt a surge of butterflies in my stomach and my finger ends started to tingle. I was about to walk away, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him move, and suddenly he was standing next to me. He was tall and slender, with pale skin and slightly curling hair to about chin level. ‘This is weird, isn’t it?’ he said. He had a very faint accent which I couldn’t for the moment place.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, I always think Lorenzo looks a bit like me, or I look a bit like him, anyway,’ he said. ‘And now there you are, looking exactly like Isabella.’ I glanced back at the woman in the picture. Her face was in profile, so it was hard to tell what she looked like: pale, straight nose, long, mahogany-coloured hair tied back. That was how I wore my hair for work, although it was currently hanging loose. The man suddenly reached forward and gathered my hair in his hands. His skin was cool and his hands were as bony and light as two birds. He pulled my hair gently into a pony tail, all the while his eyes never leaving mine. ‘See?’ he said softly, brushing a strand of hair gently from my forehead. ‘You’re her.’ I realised his accent was faintly Liverpudlian: he pronounced ‘her’ in the Liverpool way, like ‘hair.’ ‘Your hair.’

He let my hair fall around my shoulders again. He wasn’t looking at me any more, he was looking at the painting. I wondered if it might be a good idea to creep away while his attention was distracted – although he was beautiful he was quite probably mad – but before I could move he spoke again.

‘Do you like the picture?’

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

‘Maybe I ought to steal it for you,’ he said. ‘As a gift.’

‘What? You can’t!’ He was mad. I glanced quickly around for a security guard, but at that minute there were none to be seen.

‘Come on: what’s to stop me stealing it?’ he asked.

‘Well... it’s illegal.’

He’d thrown me into such a flap I almost didn’t notice the amusement in his eyes. ‘I had you going there, didn’t I, posh girl? You probably think, Typical Scouser, he’d nick anything that wasn’t screwed down.’

He was just teasing, after all. I attempted to enter into the spirit. ‘But it is screwed down, look.’

He peered at the picture frame. ‘Too bad. Looks like I’ll have to cut it out of the frame.’ He produced a small Swiss Army knife.

‘Not on my account, you don’t,’ I said quickly. I’d relaxed too soon, and tried to humour him. ‘I like it fine where it is, on the wall.’

He laughed, so loudly it attracted the attention of several people who turned our way to see what the joke was. ‘Okay, posh girl,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep my thieving fingers off it for now.’ The knife, which I belatedly realised was nothing more threatening than a keyring, was returned to his pocket.

I was relieved when an American couple paused to look at the painting, the man leaning right across me to read the information panel. ‘Millais,’ he read loudly. ‘French.’

‘English, actually,’ my companion said. ‘Jersey, anyway.’

‘Hey, are you a guide?’ the American man asked and the strange man said he would be happy to answer any questions they had about the painting.

So he was nothing more harmful than a tour guide. I surprised myself by feeling a pang of disappointment: there had been something rather thrilling about meeting a person who might have stepped out of a painting, who was so wildly attractive and attractively reckless that he would offer to steal it for you.

He knew his stuff, though. The Americans were entranced by his explanation of the symbolism in the painting, particularly as the story was rather a lurid one. Lorenzo and Isabella were, as was apparent even to me, in love. The problem was that he was an employee of Isabella’s family and therefore deemed to be not worthy of her. Isabella’s brothers, outraged by the relationship, murdered Lorenzo and buried his body. In a dream Isabella had a vision of where the body was buried and went to try and dig it up. Not being strong enough to carry the body of her dead lover, she cut off his head, which she buried in a pot of basil. Unfortunately the brothers denied her even that comfort and took it from her. In her grief, Isabella killed herself. Millais had filled the painting with details and clues about the story - plants, the food on the table, the bird sitting on a chair back, everything had a symbolic function. There was even a phallic-looking shadow cast by the nutcracker one of the brothers was holding.

‘That’s not an accident,’ explained the guide. ‘Millais did not paint accidentally. Everything in this picture is exactly where he wanted it to be and meant what he wanted it to mean.’

I was so engrossed I lost track of time, till I realised I was now ten minutes late for the auction. While he was still talking, I  gradually made my way to the door and left, never expecting to see ‘Lorenzo’ again.

2

‘Where’ve you been all afternoon, scrotum?’

‘I love you too, Don,’ I said, hanging my coat up.

‘I wasn’t talking to you, Lia, I was talking to him.’ Don stabbed a finger in the direction of Eddy, who’d wandered in right after me.

Eddy shrugged. ‘I’ve been stuck behind a broken-down frozen foods container on the North Circular for the past two hours.’

It was clear from Don’s face that he didn’t believe him for a second. ‘You’re a fucking skiver, that’s what you are,’ he said. ‘I’m seriously thinking of putting you on performance-related pay, then we’ll see how many times you get stuck on the North fucking Circular.’ Don stamped off to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

Eddy muttered, ‘He’ll be eating his words when I don’t invite him to my premier at the Sundance Festival.’

‘Ooh, can I come?’ I said, knowing I had a greater chance of a free ride on the next flight to Mars than ever seeing one of Eddy’s films being premiered. While it was his ambition to be the next Quentin Tarantino, he appeared to have the talent and vision of, well, a van driver.

Don returned. ‘You still here?’ he roared at Eddy. ‘You’re meant to be half way to Harlow by now.’

‘Don’t I get a cup of coffee first?’

‘Move it!’ Eddy moved it. Don handed me a mug of coffee. ‘North Circular my arse. He’s probably been out scouting locations for the Next Great British Movie,’ he said.

‘One day when he’s as famous as Steven Spielberg you’ll be only too quick to claim association with him.’

‘It’s not going to happen, though, is it?’ he said. ‘You know what the pillock’s latest idea is? Two male trainee patisserie chefs compete for a major pastry award and the affections of their gorgeous female tutor. He’s going to call it Top Bun.’

‘Is he being witty and ironic?’

‘What do you think?’ He gulped down his coffee while mine was still too hot to touch. Don had a heat-proof throat, all the better to get his caffeine fix without delay. ‘Did you get much stuff at the auction, then?’ he asked me.

I blew on my coffee to cool it. I’d already wasted enough of the day and wanted to get back to work. ‘Quite a bit. Some lovely bits of rosewood, a big oak chest going for a song that hardly needs anything doing to it, and a gorgeous walnut card table that was a bit more than I was going to pay but I couldn’t resist it. It needs relining but it should be straightforward.’

‘No pine?’ he said, disappointed.

I rented workshop space from Don. We had a small shop area at the front where we sold the contemporary furniture he designed and built, and a few antique pieces I’d restored. At the back of the shop was a large workshop room which was always noisy with machinery or with planing and chiselling, or Don swearing. The air was always full of the smell of wood and strong coffee, two of the three props of Don’s world, the other (and most important) being his wife Chrissie.

I’d liked Don on sight when I met him five years earlier. After finishing my Masters degree in Furniture Restoration I was looking for some workshop space. I wanted to be in north London, but it had to be fairly inexpensive. With cost in mind I’d considered renting a corner from an anarcho-socialist printing collective who’d set up shop underneath some railway arches. The collective, who all had names like Spiv and Bog and lovely rainbow-coloured dreadlocks, were welcoming enough, which was more than could be said for their premises, which were damp, mouse-infested, cold and dark. The anarcho-socialists believed central heating was a bourgeois concept. After a bit of a think they decided that furniture, being property, was theft. We realised we were ideologically unsuited to each other and I carried on looking.

There were no such difficulties with Don. Here was a man who knew and loved timber. It was absolute heaven to exchange the cold horror of the anarchist railway arches for the air-conditioned splendour that was pine2pine4. The name of the shop was Don’s idea: he thought it had a very twenty-first century feel to it. Also he was mad about pine; it was his favourite wood. ‘It might go out of fashion but it’ll never go out of style,’ he always said, which was a bit dodgy as a corporate motto in my opinion. Don loved pine so much I always thought he’d have a pine overcoat if he could. Actually, he’d had it written into his will that when he’s buried he has to have a pine coffin: he’d find any other wood unacceptably gloomy.

He even looked a bit piney – tall, solid, with sandy brown hair and a complexion deeply tanned and lined from innumerable Mediterranean holidays with Chrissie. He’d taught me more about cabinet making than all my tutors at college put together. He was solid and dependable and I loved him to bits: though at forty two he was only fifteen years older than me, I often joked that he was the father I never had.

Don and I were a great team, united in our love of working with wood and listening to sixties music. Don put Pet Sounds on the CD player and we worked happily for the rest of the morning.

I forgot all about the madly attractive weirdo in the Tate.

3

Anyone peering out of the window of the flats opposite would have been forgiven for thinking I was loitering with intent. I wouldn’t have blamed them if they’d phoned Crimestoppers, even, but I knew nobody would: it wasn’t that sort of neighbourhood. You could have bled to death in the street and have no attention paid to you other than to get sued if someone tripped over you on their way to work.

I’d been hovering in the bus shelter outside my flat for quite a while, ignoring the various buses that came and went. I wasn’t waiting for a bus; I was waiting until the shop beneath my flat was full of customers. One customer wouldn’t do; it would have to be at least five, I reckoned. My landlord, Mr Garcia, proprietor of Garcia’s First for News and known to us as El Nombre, would no doubt be waiting for his rent, and the only way I could get inside the flat without him pouncing on me was to wait until he was distracted. Normally I paid the rent more or less on time, but this month I was a bit short of cash, and I hadn’t managed to get Aidan’s share from him yet either.

Finally the shop looked sufficiently busy and El Nombre’s attention was distracted by a number of customers, any one of which might be a potential shoplifter and in need of close supervision. I dashed past the window, unlocked the door to the flat and sprinted upstairs.

Aidan was sprawled on the sofa, his long legs stretched out, his arms tucked comfily behind his head. There were two half-full coffee cups on the table in front of him. Oh, marvellous: that meant he must be entertaining another in his seemingly inexhaustible supply of gorgeous women, which meant I would be spending most of the evening in my bedroom with a glass of wine and Furniture Restoration Monthly for company.

‘Hi,’ he grinned. I attributed most of his success with women to that smile, which had a totally disarming cheekiness about it. ‘Nice day?’ he asked.

‘The usual.’

He sat up. ‘Well, prepare yourself for a surprise.’ The only surprise I was in any kind of mood for involved chocolate, but then I heard the loo flush, I heard the bathroom door open, and a woman appeared in the doorway.

Not just any woman. It was my sister, Jane.

‘Ta –da!’ she sang.

I hadn’t spoken to my older sister in years (or to be more precise, she hadn’t spoken to me), and now here she was, larger than life and twice as made-up, standing in my flat.

She blinked eyelids heavy with mascara at me. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ All I could think of was that she hadn’t changed. She was still wearing far too much makeup.

‘Well, now you’re back, I’d best be going,’ Aidan said, bouncing out of his seat like a greyhound fresh out of the trap. ‘I’ve got a date tonight.’ He disappeared to get ready. I was doubly confused, having assumed that somehow Jane was Aidan’s arm-candy for the evening.

She perched on the sofa. ‘He’s a bit of a yum-pot,’ she said. Yum-pot? ‘So what’s the deal with him?’

‘Deal?’ I repeated. ‘As in buy one, get one free?’ 

She tutted. ‘I mean, how come I find you living with a man?’

She made it sound as if I’d never managed to attract a member of the opposite sex before. Though obviously, in Aidan’s case, I hadn’t. ‘We’re just flatmates,’ I said.

‘Pull the other one.’ This was typical Jane, not to be able to understand that a man and a woman could live together and be nothing more than friends. Although Aidan and I weren’t even that, not yet.

‘I inherited him from my former flatmate,’ I said. ‘They used to go out together, then she moved to Wales, and he happened to be looking for somewhere to live. It saved me advertising.’

‘And what does he do?’

‘He’s a landscape gardener.’

‘That’s nice.’ The subject of Aidan thus exhausted, I wondered what Jane was doing here in the first place. She, meanwhile, was looking around as if she was mentally calculating how much everything in the flat was worth, which is what she probably was doing.

We sat in an awkward silence for a while. I looked at her and tried to find a similarity between us. Maybe the nose and chin, but apart from that I couldn’t see anything. Her face was the sun bed colour of someone on a holiday show on TV, her eyebrows were plucked within a millimetre of their lives, and her hair was scraped back so tightly into a bun that she looked in a constant state of surprise. That all sounds horribly bitchy of me, I know, but it wasn’t meant to be: it was that all this grooming was so much the opposite of me. I’d never, even under Jane’s careful, and increasingly exasperated, tutoring when we were younger, got the hang of makeup, and my face was as bare as hers was adorned. We looked like members of two quite different tribes, rather than the last offshoots of this particular corner of the Bailey clan.

‘I’ve got some news,’ she said finally, and I belatedly realised she’d been faffing about with her hair, her empty coffee cup and anything else with her left hand, to try and draw attention to a ring with a diamond the size of a piece of sweetcorn.

‘You’re engaged?’ I guessed, and she smiled widely, her scalp straining at the moorings of hair, and fluttered the ring under my nose. ‘It’s lovely,’ I said, because she wanted me to, although diamonds have never particularly been my best friends. ‘So who’s the lucky man?’

‘His name’s Paul Salter,’ she said. ‘And he’s the most gorgeous thing you ever met. And you will meet him. Soon.’ This didn’t seem that likely, given that Jane and I had been barely on speaking terms for years, but apparently that’s why she’d come. ‘We