be showing us?” asked James.
William shrugged. “I don’t know. It looks old—or it looks old to me. But I suppose that somebody could paint something today and make it look old.”
“Of course they could,” said James. “They’d have to make their own paints, of course—you can’t get modern paints to do the trick. Everything painted with modern paints—paint out of a tube—looks far too chalky and white. You need to mix pigments with varnishes and a drop of oil. That enables you to get the light effect that you find in Old Masters. You put on layer after layer and the light shines through.”
“James knows how to do it,” said Caroline. “James could have been a great painter if he had wanted.”
James blushed. “You’re really flattering me tonight, Caroline. I couldn’t.”
As they spoke, Marcia looked on, bemused. She was wondering about the nature of the relationship between the two students—were they just friends or was there something more between them? It was difficult to tell. He was obviously the sensitive type, which meant that he might not be interested, but one could never tell. It was quite wrong to assume that just because a man tucked his legs underneath him, as James was doing on the sofa next to her, and lowered his eyelids when he spoke—it was wrong to assume just because he did those things that he would not be interested in Caroline. And even if he was not interested in her, it was clear to Marcia that Caroline was interested in James. Any woman could tell that.
For his part, William was wondering what Caroline saw in James. That was a very peculiar way to perch on the sofa, but then everybody was so peculiar these days, in William’s view, one could not read anything into anything. Caroline was really very attractive, but William wondered whether James was even aware of it. He rather thought James was not, and he felt a momentary pang of regret. Here was an attractive, physical girl, obviously in desperate need of a boyfriend, and here was he, William—too old even to be considered by her—while this boy seemed to take her completely for granted. It was all very depressing. He thought of Eliot’s poem, and of wearing the bottoms of one’s trousers rolled. Prufrock, was it? Am I Mr. Prufrock in the flat above? Is that what I am to her?
“Shall I get the painting?” he said.
James clapped his hands together. “Yes, let’s see it. I can’t wait. Ooh!”
William smiled at the ooh.
“Before you get it,” said Caroline, “tell us where you found it.”
“In a wardrobe,” said Marcia.
The two students looked at her in astonishment, while William went out of the room to fetch the painting from his study. When he came back, he held it turned away from them. “Close your eyes,” he said.
They did, and he turned the painting round. They’ll say something disparaging, he thought; a cheap nineteenth-century souvenir of the Grand Tour—something like that.
“Open your eyes now.”
James let out a gasp. Then he muttered, “Caspita!”
“Who was he?”
James looked up at William. “Sorry. He wasn’t an artist—caspita is an Italian exclamation. It expresses how I feel looking at … looking at this painting.”
And you? thought William, turning to gauge Caroline’s reaction.
Caroline said nothing at first. Then, glancing at James, she frowned. A shadow came over her and it was as obvious to William as a thundercloud in the sky. He looked again at James, who had reached out to take the small painting from William’s hands and was holding it out in front of him. There was no shadow there—just astonishment, and unmistakable, spontaneous delight.
85. A Poussin in Pimlico
WILLIAM GAZED INTENTLY at James as he studied the painting in front of him. Marcia watched him too, and even Freddie de la Hay, his disgrace forgotten, looked on with interest.
“First impressions,” said James, “are so important. You look at a good painting and bang, it’s there. You just feel it.”
“It’s the same with wine,” William said. “You know when you first experience it when it’s a great wine. It can change in the glass, of course, but that first encounter leaves you in no doubt. I tasted a 1961 Médoc the other day. The balance!” He paused. “But I’m distracting you.”
James looked up and smiled. “Not at all. I like talking about wine too. It all involves aesthetics. And isn’t it amazing how things survive? There’s your wine, in its fragile bottle, surviving almost fifty years, and here’s this painting,