Chapter Six The Four Items #3
As for the locals, George knew most didn’t hold him in high regard. Some of that dated back to his father’s era, because old Mr Rook didn’t care who he cheated, double-crossed or lied to. The forgeries had been his father’s idea, too.
When George’s high school teacher asked his dad to come up to the school, they both thought he was in trouble.
But instead, Miss Mackay wanted to congratulate him on his son’s artistic skills.
‘This boy has real talent,’ she said, all dewy-eyed, as if she’d discovered a star in the gutter.
‘I think you should consider A levels and then art school for George.’
Miss Mackay thought she was doing George a favour, giving him a route out of Portheast to Falmouth, Bristol or London, where he could set the art world on fire. But, instead, her words gave old Mr Rook a different idea.
The next weekend, George’s dad beckoned him into the back room of the shop.
‘Got a present for you, lad,’ he said. It was an easel and a stack of fresh white canvases and George could hardly believe his luck.
‘For me, really?’ he said. Then his dad gave him the second part of his present: a big book called Great British Artists.
‘We’ll start with something easy,’ he said, breaking the spine and laying it open at a Ben Nicholson. ‘See how you get on.’
It only took George a few months to get the hang of Nicholson’s style with its chalky finish and deceptively simple geometric shapes. Composition, Portheast sold for a record sum to a private dealer and George’s future was sealed.
By the time Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin were making waves in London, George was turning out near-perfect versions of existing Great British Artists, from Lowry to Hockney.
Soon, he was in too deep, enmeshed in a network of dealers and buyers keen to hide their money in art.
The Portheast Antiques shop ticked over fine, but it was only the tip of a deep and rather grubby iceberg.
He’d seen a real Alfred Wallis once, when the new Tate in St Ives opened, and it had taken his breath away.
The way the man had painted each tiny window of the boat and captured the movement of the sea was marvellous.
But above all, his deceptively simple painting was full of emotion and at last George understood what all the fuss was about. Wallis had been a genius.
So when George found his own version hanging in Portheast’s museum, it was a sobering experience.
He gazed at it for a long time, seeing it for what it was: a lifeless fake.
He watched a few other people pause, look at it and move on and, after a while, a deeply troubling thought came into his head.
By advertising the painting on her poster, was Evelyn Silver sending him a message?
Was she trying to flush him out and expose his fakery?
He hadn’t stayed under the radar this long to be shopped by Evelyn Silver, so if she wanted to send him a message, he would send one back.
George watched Evelyn for a while, and when she’d finished talking to the sisters from the pub, he nipped in.
He just wanted to drop a hint, remind her that he too was familiar with the ‘provenance’ of some of the pieces in her museum, but Evelyn put on her respectable schoolmarm act and looked down her nose at him like she had no idea what he was talking about.
She was nothing like her father, Edwin Silver – a far more straightforward man.
George Rook left the museum fuming. Clearly it pleased neither of them, but he and Evelyn Silver had unfinished business.
Item 4: One piece of fine Cornish lace, handmade. Found attached to a baby’s blanket with a safety pin (now rusted), 3 December 1964.
I saw the drawing on the poster, but I had to be sure. It was the first time I’d been inside the museum and I’m glad I went because I found it quite moving, seeing that missing fragment of lace. I’ve kept the other half folded away, safe and sound.
Evelyn. It’s an unusual choice of name, isn’t it?
Quite formal. But that was the Silvers, I suppose.
I’d thought she might have been called Daisy, to match the chain of flowers worked into the lacework pattern.
Perhaps the Silvers didn’t notice the daisies, or they chose to ignore that small hint from her birth mother.
Anyway, Evelyn is a woman now, tall and a little stern, as if she’s grown into her name.
But that’s what we all do, isn’t it? Adapt our behaviour to the situation and make the best of it.
We face things we never thought we’d get over.
Days pass, they become months, which become years and finally you reach a point where it’s hard to imagine how things could have turned out.
Had circumstances been different, would Evelyn have become a different person? If she’d been called Daisy, for example. Or if she’d been able to stay with her birth family.
I see her walking on the beach and even when she’s alone she stands so stiffly, as if she’s holding something tightly inside herself. I’d like to say a comforting word or two, but it’s too late for that now. It would be too confusing.
But when I saw she’d put that piece of lace on the poster, it meant a lot. It was a sign that she recognised it for what it was: a token of a mother’s love.
She’s an educated woman – she must know about the foundling tradition.
When a baby was left, the mother tucked something into their blanket to identify them.
It might have been a scrap of cloth, a silver locket or half a sixpence.
Then, if the mother was ever able to return and claim her baby, she had proof it was hers.
The torn piece of fabric could be made whole; two halves of a coin could be joined together.
Of course, reuniting the two fragments of lace wasn’t possible.
But I hope she knows she was never forgotten.