‘Fiona, darling.’ He pecked the air beside her ear. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’ He meant me.
Fiona Lambert inspected me with shrewd green eyes, and politely showed me some teeth that must have cost daddy a pretty penny. Her LBD was cut low to display a divine declivity, dusted with barely visible pale-yellow freckles. Not that I noticed.
Eastlake was right, she was as bright as a button-as neat, as highly polished, and just as hard. He introduced us, explaining the change of ministers and embellishing my credentials somewhat. Ms Lambert smiled non-committally and extended her fingertips. The handshake was slight, barely making contact, but there was a firmness of muscle there that made me think of ballet points and horses. I felt like a politician’s yes-man in a cheap suit.
Eastlake promptly bailed out. ‘Why don’t you induct Murray into the mysteries, Fiona darling, while I get us a drink.’ He merged into the throng, waving ineffectually at a disappearing waitress. More people were arriving. I felt conspicuously overdressed in my workaday collar and tie. The only other men in suits were very old and slightly bewildered. The rest of the crowd was haphazardly casual, the women with stylishly eccentric spectacles, the men meticulously louche.
Fiona Lambert put her hand lightly on my elbow and steered me out of the hall. We went into a room hung with minimalist paintings so well executed I had to look twice to make sure they were really there. The room was filling and there was a slight crush of bodies. Fiona Lambert stood disconcertingly close. Sooner or later I would be asked my opinion of the stuff on the walls. There was bound to be some sort of formula, but I didn’t know what it was. A heavy bead of perspiration broke from under my arm and trickled down inside my shirt. ‘Lloyd was somewhat vague about the occasion,’ I said, groping for small talk.
‘Primarily, it’s an opportunity for some of the more promising newcomers to show what they can do.’ Fiona Lambert was nothing if not well-bred, and she knew her job. ‘More of a social thing, really. So our friends and supporters don’t forget us over the summer.’
‘You make it sound like the night football,’ I said. Might as well play the part.
She forged a mechanical little smile. Her attention was elsewhere. A couple were walking through the door, making an entrance. He was well into his sixties, gnomically stocky and almost completely bald. His heavily lidded eyes and well-tanned skin made him appear simultaneously indolent and cunning. He was wearing a sixty-dollar white t-shirt under a nautical blazer. He looked like a cross between Aristotle Onassis and a walnut. She was fortyish, twice as tall and whipcord thin, with leathery skin and a helmet of red hair that had been worked on by experts. The man’s eyes scanned the room until they found Fiona Lambert.
‘Speaking of friends and supporters,’ she said, her fingers fastening around my elbow. ‘Come and meet the Karlins.’
As we crossed the room, Lloyd Eastlake sailed into our orbit with a glass of champagne in each hand. He spotted our destination and arrived first, thrusting the drinks ahead of him. ‘Max and Becky Karlin.’ He smooched the air beside the woman’s earhole. ‘Meet Murray Whelan, trusty lieutenant to our new Arts Minister, Angelo Agnelli.’
Karlin bent slightly forward at the waist and offered me his hand. My fingers disappeared into an encompassing embrace of flesh and Karlin pumped them softly, as though gently but firmly extracting some essential oil. He fixed me with oyster eyes, my hand still encased in his paw. For a moment I thought he was going to ask me what size shoe I wore. ‘You tell your minister that this con man is robbing me blind.’
‘Con man? Robbing you?’ Eastlake reeled back in mock outrage. ‘Six hundred thousand is not what I’d call robbery.’
Karlin let go of my hand and waggled a chubby finger in my face. ‘Don’t trust this fellow,’ he clucked dryly. ‘Do you know what he has done to me?’
I made no attempt to reply. My job, I could see, was to play the straight man while these two went into a well-rehearsed double act.
‘What I have done,’ said Eastlake, ‘is agree to pay you one of the largest sums ever paid by a public collection for a work by a twentieth-century Australian painter.’
Karlin flapped his jowls in dismay. ‘This talk of money, it insults the picture’s true value. Isn’t that right, Fiona?’
Fiona Lambert gave every indication of having seen this little song and dance before, but she played along. ‘It’s a wonderful painting,’ she said.
‘Fiona,’ said Karlin in an aside for my benefit. ‘Fiona is our greatest living expert on the work of Victor Szabo. She was very close to him before his death.’
Fiona was suddenly very interested in the track-lighting. I’d get no help from her. The name Szabo meant nothing to me. I was out of my depth and sinking fast. Meanwhile, Eastlake and Karlin continued their Mo and Stiffy act.
‘Max here is cranky because his bluff has been called,’ Eastlake told me. ‘For years he’s had what is arguably Victor Szabo’s best work hanging in his office, a picture called Our Home. But Fiona realised its significance, identified it as the perfect cornerstone for our permanent collection here at the CMA. Max likes to be thought of as a philanthropist, so he couldn’t refuse outright to sell us the picture. He just asked a price so high he thought he’d scare us off.’
So, this Victor Szabo was a painter, evidently one big enough to warrant a six-figure price tag. Karlin was finding this all very entertaining, this story in which his taste and acumen were the starring characters. ‘I’m practically giving it away,’ he told me.
Eastlake was getting to the bit he liked. ‘But I called Max’s bluff. I told Gil Methven that a picture of this significance really ought to be in a public collection. He agreed that the Arts Ministry would provide half the funds if I could raise the other half. Which is exactly what I did. So Max had no option but to agree to the sale. Now all he does is bitch about how he’s being swindled.’
‘Bah,’ Karlin waved a thick finger in the air. ‘Money was never the issue. I love that picture. It’s like one of my children. Twenty years ago I bought it, long before most people had ever heard of Victor Szabo.’
Most people? ‘I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with Szabo’s work,’ I confessed. ‘Is the painting here?’
‘We take possession on Monday.’ Fiona Lambert made this a question, arching her eyebrows at Karlin.
He nodded confirmation. ‘Until then,’ he said, ‘it remains my private pleasure. At least until the formalities are completed.’
Eastlake explained. ‘Max is holding a little going-away event for the picture, brunch tomorrow. Gil Methven was going to do the honours but what with the Cabinet reshuffle, the short notice and so on…’
It was my turn to flash a little rank. ‘Oh, I think I can persuade Angelo to attend,’ I said. ‘He’s particularly keen to meet’-here I gave my attention entirely to Karlin-‘such a prominent supporter of the arts.’
Karlin merely smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, fine.’ Across the room Becky Karlin and another lizard-skinned bat were scrutinising what was either a visual discourse on the nature of post-industrial society or the wiring diagram for a juice extractor. Nodding a brisk farewell, Karlin took off towards them, a politely hunched Fiona Lambert on his arm.
‘You did well to wangle three hundred grand out of Gil Methven,’ I told Eastlake admiringly. I didn’t want the policy committee chairman taking my little exercise in one-upmanship amiss. ‘Spending the taxpayers’ money on modern art is not exactly a sure-fire vote-winner, you know.’