The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger. David Nobbs
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but what else is one to sell if one needs to raise money? This, a Tintoretto, and a Monet. Our great institutions in this time of cuts cannot afford to buy everything, so the pictures will have to go to auction unless … unless a saviour can be found.’
A warm feeling crept over Sir Gordon. Saviour. He was a saviour. In moments like this he almost persuaded himself – perhaps occasionally did persuade himself – that this was why he had done it all, this had always been his purpose, to make money in order to use it more wisely than any government, in order to give something back to the nation he loved and, more important, the nation that loved him. He no longer felt uneasy in this house. He even felt a sense of triumph, and he longed to say, ‘I’ll buy all three.’ Why not? That would show just how successful he had been, and just how generous he was.
But that would have been vulgar, and, however weak his position, there was still something about the Earl that forbad vulgarity in his house. Besides, there came with Sir Gordon’s warm feeling a colder undercurrent, a trickle of sensitivity that marred his pleasure as he witnessed the unease of a man short of old money practically begging to be saved by new money.
Maybe Peregrine Thoresby could read his mind, and had sensed the danger. Certainly he leapt in pretty quickly.
‘Clearly, even if we wanted to, the collection couldn’t consider buying all three,’ he said. ‘There are limits even to our resources, and the publicity it would engender would create an excitement that we just would not be able to accommodate in the context of our other work and the rest of our collection and the inevitably finite resources of our building itself. So, Sir Gordon, I felt – and this is what I would strongly advise – that we should purchase the Turner. If all three go to auction, none of them is likely to remain in Britain. There simply isn’t the money here to rival what there is in other places. Well, if the nation loses the Tintoretto and the Monet, they weren’t ours in the first place. But to lose a Turner – even a relatively small work from someone so British, so quintessentially British, even, dare I say it, quintessentially English – would be a tragedy.’
Sir Gordon knew that the Earl and Peregrine would be capable of talking about the picture for at least an hour without being so vulgar as to actually mention money, so, however much he might regret it, however much it would suggest that his reactions and his motives were less spiritual than everyone else’s, he would have to be the first one to raise the subject.
‘So, what sort of sum are we talking about here?’ he asked.
‘I’ve taken the liberty of talking to the Earl about this, Sir Gordon,’ said Peregrine, ‘and we’ve arrived at a round figure, a very round figure, which we think is fair, in no way excessive, and which acknowledges that this is a relatively small work, and a watercolour, and his watercolours do not historically fetch as much as his oils.’
‘I would be prepared to sell this picture to you,’ said the Earl in his modulated tone, ‘for twenty million pounds.’
‘Fine,’ said Sir Gordon. ‘Consider the deal done.’
They shook hands. Sir Gordon was again bathed in the warm glow of the saviour. The Earl was relieved. Peregrine Thoresby was as excited as a child.
Sir Gordon felt happy as Kirkstall drove them speedily back to the Coppinger Tower. He was now the proud owner of Storm Approaching the Solway Firth. He was blissfully unaware that this was just the first of many storms that would approach, and that all the others would come a great deal nearer than the Solway Firth.
The entry in his diary read, ‘6.30. Dorchester. DDT (Kranjčar and Modrić)’. Using the names of real people gave him a tiny frisson of risk. It was unlikely that Her Grimaldiship would recognize Kranjčar and Modrić as Tottenham Hotspur players, but it was just possible, and that element of insecurity added salt to the stew of deception.
‘Well, Helen,’ he said as he reached her desk. ‘I’m off to see the Croatians.’
‘Give my love to the Dorchester.’
‘I will.’
Did other people have conversations as fatuous as that? he wondered. (Wondering again! What was going on with all this wondering? he wondered. And that was wondering again.)
‘May I ask what DDT stands for?’
‘Of course, Helen. You have every right to know.’
Their eyes met. A stab of desire caught him off guard. He was always vulnerable at the start of one of his naughty evenings.
Did she sense his sexuality? He thought she did. He thought he could see it in her eyes. He’d have to be careful. He ought to leave. A quickie with Helen was definitely not in the plan.
‘It’s the Dubrovnik Development Trust.’
‘And what’s that all about?’
‘Developing Dubrovnik.’
‘I’m sorry I asked.’
He lowered his voice.
‘This is very hush-hush, Helen, but I can trust you.’
Her square face softened. She really did believe he was going to the Dorchester to meet two Croatian businessmen. What an opportunity.
‘We’re planning to build a shopping mall inside the walled city. I’m helping to fund it – for a substantial return, of course.’
‘Inside the walled city. You can’t. It’d ruin it. Where inside the walled city?’
‘Near the harbour, at the end of that big long tiled main street.’
‘But that’s the best bit. You can’t do this. I love Dubrovnik.’
He knew that.
‘It’s ravishing.’
And once I ravished you. No!
‘Why? Why, Sir Gordon?’
‘To keep the cruise ships away. They have up to five huge ships a day, pouring people in – in their ghastly shorts with their hideous white veined legs and their paunches and their tattoos, filling the bars and the shops and the restaurants, making life for the natives utterly intolerable. They have to make it ugly to survive.’
God, it was just believable.
He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and noticed that she had the faint beginnings of a moustache. That really turned him on. He hurried away from the danger.
As he strode through the open-plan office, a few people were still at their desks. It was five to six.
‘Well done,’ he called out. ‘Your diligence has not gone unnoticed.’
Kirkstall drove him to the Dorchester, dropped him off and went to park. As soon as his chauffeur was safely out of the way, Sir Gordon went outside and hailed a taxi. In the taxi he thought about the evening ahead. He was never at his best in taxis. Rich though he was, and even though he had just offered to buy a painting for £20 million, he hated the way the meter clicked up, up, up. He tried to ignore it, but found his eyes drawn back to it. ‘That’s one pound, twenty just for waiting at these lights,’ he would say. Christina had once pointed out that he resented spending on taxis but paid a fortune to gardeners. ‘They don’t have meters on their foreheads,’ he had said.
So now, in the taxi, it was natural that his thoughts should veer towards the negative.
Barely thirty-six hours had passed since that disturbing awakening, when he’d decided that he must end it with Mandy. But then he’d thought of that as a sign that he was going soft.
Should he end it? Were people becoming alerted to his sexploits, as the tabloids would no doubt call them? Insidious doubts began to assail him. Was he still invulnerable? Would his