I learnt CPR after a visit to the College of Surgeons’ Museum to see Daryl Lindsay’s watercolours. Painted in England between 1917 and 1921 when he was official medical artist at the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, Lindsay’s images document horrific war injuries and the hospital’s pioneering but often confronting facial reconstructions. The details were amazing, but the works also made me realise that I never wanted to be in a position where someone was hurt and I didn’t know what to do.

There is a moment of stillness when the paramedics leave, then Giles steps up to the abandoned painting. ‘Oh my God.’ His hand flies up to cover half his face. He groans. Suddenly the room bursts to life as we all converge on the packing table and stare down at the painting. It has a chisel in it. A chisel, at the end of a long, ragged gash that traces the path of Tommo’s collapse.

***

‘Well this is a fuck up of monumental proportions.’ Robert Swindon, director of the Melbourne International Museum of Art, stares down at the torn canvas. He’s already loosened his lavender tie and now he clasps his hands tightly behind his back, as though afraid any more contact will cause the painting to explode in a cloud of dust. John and I stand near one of the blank walls while Giles, the gaggle of curators, and Wayne, who I’ve now discovered is head of the packing and handling crew, cluster behind the director in a frozen tableau. The scene reminds me of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, where a surgeon probes the sinews of a corpse while black-clad devotees look on with varying degrees of horror and fascination. One of the curators even has the right beard and upturned moustache, and in the painting before them, the white-toned Arctic landscape seems to glow with the same otherworldly pallor of Rembrandt’s waxen-skinned cadaver.

‘It was an accident, Mr Swindon. Thomas went down like a ton of bricks. We tried to grab him.’ Wayne looks distraught.

‘Yes and of course our thoughts are with him. We’re all terribly concerned.’

His tone suggests all the concern is for the painting.

‘Giles, you and your people best write a report immediately. I’ll phone the director at – where did we borrow this from?’

One of the curatorial staff steps forward, a short-haired girl all mannishly tailored in navy trousers, brogues and a white shirt. ‘Royal Holloway College.’ She offers up her clipboard. ‘In London.’

The director quirks an eyebrow at this. ‘Did they send their own person?’

‘No.’