‘Naturally. They are experts in moving works of art.’

‘Fine. Tuesday then.’

‘They will be there. The driver, M’sieur Hubert, knows the way quite well.’

‘Until then.’

‘I will not be able to get there. It is a very difficult time for me here, but Hubert is very capable, you will see.’

‘I’m sorry. Some other time then?’

‘Some other time. Goodbye.’ He hung up briskly.

And that’s how it was on Sunday evening.

Chapter 14

The beds arrived just before noon on Monday morning. I felt vague surprise. But there they were, standing nakedly in the two bare rooms, pillows in plastic envelopes, plus sheets. Blankets folded neatly on top.

The two elderly men who had carted everything upstairs joined me in the long room for a beer, and signatures on this and that, and idle conversation about the state of the olives (unpruned for too long), the roses (neglected and left to make bad wood), the vine (a ruin, all leaf and no blossom).

Their self-satisfied gloom and sourness permeated the air like an odour. When I asked if they knew of anyone who could come to help, for a reasonable fee, once or twice a week, they only said that labour was hard to come by and that every local man had his own olives, roses and vines. Their time was fully occupied, but if I went to a firm they would charge me a fortune. So?

When they left, I went up to the studio to check the canvases. It had occurred to me, during a night of fitful sleep, that I had not really looked through the things and I could have overlooked an odd one here and there, which might cause a certain amount of interest, or consternation, among the removers Aronovich was sending the next day. Something from James’s ‘darker subjects’ perhaps? There was, however, nothing. All was well, everything had been scrupulously arranged and covered with sheets of old Var-Matin and Le Monde. The abstract canvases of the cliffs and the ruins of Jericho hamlet were stacked at one end, the ‘peasant heads’ for which Florence had posed at the other, and apart from a neat pile of assorted empty frames, the rows of brushes in tidy order, the easel standing sentinel in the centre of the room, all was correct, safe for invading eyes. Nothing untoward. I still found the abstracts gloomy, and the ‘peasant heads’, with their suggestion of countryside backgrounds, pale and lifeless. Aronovich had made a poor deal.

Leaving the hotel that morning I had carted a large cardboard box full of junk down to the car. It is extraordinary how one can, so to speak, ‘magpie away’ a hoard of bits and pieces gathered together in a few weeks from market stalls and junk shops. There was a china swan with a chipped wing, a Victorian vase covered in blackberries and scarlet leaves, a tin alarm clock from Germany and a cheap Indian bedspread, a-glitter with chips of mirror, to throw over the sagging sofa in the long room. This stuff was intended to impose some kind of ‘life’ on neglected Jericho, and with this in mind, and a slew of paperbacks and magazines to scatter about, I began to ‘dress the set’. Giles was busy, crouched on the tiled floor, snarling at me from time to time with mild irritation when I stepped on him.