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The Man Who Liked Kissing Women

Ludo Abernathy looked at himself in the mirror – objectively, analytically – and, by and large, liked what he saw.

‘You handsome devil,’ he said out loud, noting dispassionately that his hair – his full head of hair – was greying very fast for a forty-seven-year-old man. Should he take steps, he wondered? But men who dyed their hair were sad, he thought. Everyone noticed; it was impossible to hide, and even though he happily admitted to a degree of personal vanity he didn’t want anyone to see that he was vain. No, grow old gracefully was the maxim to adhere to. Anyway, it wasn’t as if he was ‘on the pull’ any more.

As he walked down the stairs to the ground floor of his large house in Kensington a tune came into his head, and with it a line from the song: ‘You have to hurt, to understand.’ Where was that from? And who sang it? And what did it mean, exactly? So many questions. Tina Turner. Yes. No. Country and Western? … James Taylor. No, it was a woman’s voice, that much he remembered. Probably from some shop or coffee bar he’d been in. Funny how craftily these songs insinuated themselves into the myriad of impressions that flashed constantly through your brain. ‘Ear-worms’, that was what they were called.

As he turned into the kitchen he almost collided with his wife, Irmgard. She was in tennis whites and rummaging through the bowl that contained their various keys.

‘Who’re you playing?’ he asked.

‘Beate.’

Beate, Beate … Yes, he’d kissed her – he remembered now. Thin, blonde, like most of the women he’d kissed.

‘Are you sure you should be playing tennis in your condition, darling?’ He patted the bump of her tummy. She was nearly five months pregnant. Pregnant with twins.

‘We just knock about.’

‘Knock up. Run about,’ he corrected her instinctively. Irmgard was Austrian and her English was almost perfect, grammatically. She still had quite a strong accent. ‘Are you lunching with Beate?’

‘Yes. I suspect so.’ She found the keys to her 4x4 and pecked him on the cheek. ‘See you later.’

‘Wiedersehen.’

As he drank his coffee he realized that the annoying ear-worm had returned on its incessant loop. ‘You have to hurt –’ He sang a few lines from ‘The Fool on the Hill’ in an attempt to disperse it and was distracted by the sight of his assistant, Arabella, going down the side stairway to the basement office. Ah, yes, work.

After Arkady Lemko and his wife left – Ludo assumed the young woman was his wife, but you should never assume with these types, he knew – he lifted the small Lucio Fontana off the viewing stool and took it back to the strongroom, wondering again, as he slid the painting back into its rack, why anyone in their right mind would spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a Lucio Fontana. Disloyal thought, he was aware, as Lucio Fontana had been very good to him over the last few years. In fact, you could argue that he owed his entire success as a dealer to Lucio Fontana. Those four he’d bought, right at the beginning, just after he’d married Irmgard – like winning the lottery. He had paid back Irmgard’s father, Heinz – old ‘57 Varieties’, as he referred to him – within six months. 57 Varieties had been very surprised: now he had no hold on his son-in-law. Ludo smiled. It had been good to look the gift horse in the mouth. Why should he worry if people wanted to hang Lucio Fontanas on their wall? Their money – their choice, however boringly predictable.

Lemko and his young woman had studied the painting – cobalt blue with four diagonal razor slashes – as if looking for a meaning.

‘Is a good one?’ Lemko had asked.

‘Very good,’ Ludo had said. ‘Nineteen fifty-nine, you know.’ Adding a date always worked wonders.

Lemko nodded, sagely, as if he’d known the date all the time, and spoke some words in Russian to his companion.

‘I give you seven fifty.’

‘Seven seven five. It’s nineteen fifty-nine, after all.’

He had sent them through to Arabella to sort out the tax and transfer details.

A good day’s work, Ludo thought, to clear a six-figure profit in half an hour. He locked the strongroom and sauntered back into the front office.

‘That all for today?’

‘No,’ Arabella said, consulting the appointment diary. ‘You’ve got a … a Riley Spacks at four.’

‘I’m going to pop out for a coffee,’ he said, thinking, not for the first time, that he hadn’t kissed Arabella, yet. She was pretty in a sulky sort of way. Still, not a good idea to kiss the help, he supposed – a bit too close to home.

‘Oh, yes, your son called.’

‘Which son?’

‘Xan.’

His eldest, twenty, from his first marriage.

‘He wants to stay the night next week,’ Arabella continued. ‘And can he bring a friend?’

‘I’ll get back to him.’

Ludo sighed. Irmgard didn’t like his children: not Xan, not Rory. She didn’t like them on principle, she had told him, because they were the children of his previous wives. Tiresome.

He pulled on a coat and strolled up to Kensington High Street, heading for Coffee O’Clock. He wondered if Sinead would be there.

Ludo kissed Sinead gently, his eyes closed, and pushed tentatively at her teeth with his tongue. Her tongue flickered back and Ludo registered the brief lurch in his gut and sensed his erection burgeoning satisfyingly. Now Sinead had a hand round the back of his head and grunted softly as she thrust her tongue deep into his mouth. Ludo sucked at her bottom lip and felt Sinead’s other hand going for his groin. He broke off. Sinead was aroused, he could see. She reached for him.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said.

‘I get off at six.’ Awf. He loved her Irish accent. ‘I know a place,’ she said. ‘I’ve a friend with a flat in Fulham.’

‘I can’t,’ he said. Beginning to realize he’d made a mistake. This was the third time he and Sinead had kissed. He should have stopped at two, as he usually did.

They were standing in a small storeroom near the Coffee O’Clock lavatories. Jute bags of coffee beans slumped on shelves. Shrink-wrapped stacks of milk cartons were piled against a wall.

Sinead straightened her clothes, frowned, touched the corners of her mouth with finger and thumb.

‘What’s the game, Ludo?’

He liked that. Game/Ludo. Did she realize?

‘I’m a married man,’ he said. ‘My wife’s pregnant.’

‘So why do you come round here and kiss me?’

‘Because I like kissing you.’

‘You’d like fucking me better.’

‘That would be a betrayal.’

She laughed.

‘Come on. What’s a kiss like that, then, if not a “betrayal”?’ She made the air-quotes with her fingers. She was a small, haunchy woman, in her thirties, he guessed, with dark, bruised eyes and dense auburn hair, cut short. She wasn’t married – she didn’t wear a wedding ring, anyway.

‘Everybody kisses,’ he said. ‘It’s not a betrayal.’

Ludo sat in his sombre, silent office, thinking, staring at the two lit, glowing Howard Hodgkins on the wall, waiting for this Riley Spacks to turn up. Thinking about Sinead. She had tried to slap him but he caught her hand, just in time. Three kisses, big mistake. He wouldn’t be going back to Coffee O’Clock for a while. Damn.

Arabella knocked on the door and showed a girl into the room. A second glance told him that she wasn’t a girl. She was a woman, a woman as small as a girl. Five feet tall, a little more. She wasn’t wearing heels. One of those petite waif-women, girl-women. A third glance made him estimate her age as early thirties. She had long dirty-blonde hair. She held out her hand. He shook it – firm grip, brief hold.

‘I’m Riley Spacks,’ she said. She had a slight American accent, he thought, or one of those mid-Atlantic European accents that sound American, most of the time. She was tiny and slim but full-breasted, he noticed unreflectingly, as he drew out a chair for her and ordered coffee – double espresso – from Arabella. There was something slightly grubby about her, also, he thought, as he sat down behind his desk again, as if she could do with a good scrub. The idea excited him and he immediately speculated about kissing her. Where, how, when?

‘Riley …’ he said, wanting to concentrate on the real world. ‘I was expecting a gentleman. Apologies if I looked a bit blank.’

‘You did look a bit blank, actually.’

‘Well, “Riley” isn’t a female name.’

‘Any name can be a female name, surely? I know a woman called James. I know a woman called Morgan.’

‘Right. Point taken.’

She had wide restless eyes, always on the move, flicking here and there, checking things out. She seemed nervous, on edge. He would bet serious money she was a smoker.

‘Would you like a cigarette?’ he said. He opened a drawer where he kept a variety of packs for clients – Gauloises, Marlboro, Seven Stars, Dakota.

‘I don’t smoke,’ she said. ‘But, please, do smoke if you want. I’m not an anti-smoking fascist.’

‘I don’t smoke, either.’

She cocked her head and looked at him, strangely, as if seeing him properly for the first time.

‘What’s the …’ She paused. ‘We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, here.’

She had a small fine nose, with perfectly arched nostrils. Her lips were pale, no lipstick.

‘What can I do for you, Ms Spacks?’

‘I have a Lucian Freud. I want to sell it.’

Ludo sat in a small pub called the Captain Bligh in Pimlico waiting for Ross Haverley-Grant. Ross was over half an hour late but Ludo didn’t care, happy to enjoy the pub-mood: the harmless inertia and mild melancholy. It was a London pub from central casting, Ludo decided. A heavily patterned carpet and moulded maroon Anaglypta walls hung with etchings of the Bounty and other ships of the line. Two ancient men sat in a booth nursing half-pints of beer; semi-audible muzak pulsed faintly from little speakers and, parked in the corners, silent flashing gaming machines bulked in a minatory way, Ludo thought. Try me, try me. It was mid-afternoon. The barman, in his grey-white shirt, was absorbed by his fingers, biting and picking dry skin from around his fingernails. Ross liked pubs, Ludo remembered, and the more rebarbative they were, the better. Ludo had suggested lunch at his club, but Ross was barred from most London clubs so they settled for a pub.

Ludo sipped his fizzy water. Irmgard was at the gynaecologist having an ultrasound. She had asked if he’d wanted to know the sex of the twins and he had said he didn’t mind either way. Untypically, that made her cry, briefly. Why? Hormones, or had he been unintentionally cruel? Maybe it would be good to know – good to have two girls to match the two boys. He thought about his life and his offspring: three decades, three marriages, three sets of children from three different women. If he carried on like this, and managed to live until he was eighty, say, he might end up the father of eight children, assuming there were no more twins … That’s why he had taken up kissing. Adultery had always been exciting, more than exciting – sometimes he felt that life was hardly worth living if he wasn’t having an affair of some kind – but, at the same time, painful and costly. Xan’s mother, Edith, hadn’t talked to him since their divorce. His marriage to her best friend, Jessica, had only lasted long enough to produce Rory. And by then he had met Irmgard and had decided to give up his philandering ways. Now he only kissed women and refused to have affairs. Life was less exciting, true, but a little boredom had its particular rewards –

Ross Haverley-Grant stuck his head round the door, saw Ludo and sidled in. He was Ludo’s age – they’d both worked at Mulholland-Melhuish and had met there as young trainee auctioneers. Ross was an old acquaintance rather than a friend, Ludo decided, then realized, with something of a pang, that all he had in life amongst the men he knew were old acquaintances.

Ross was very bald with a patchy ginger beard, he was wearing an ochre-green, orange-checked tweed suit and a blue shirt with no tie. Ludo sampled the material of the lapel between fingers and thumb.

‘Never brown in town, Ross.’

‘Don’t be such a snob. I’ll have a large gin and tonic, if you please.’

Ludo fetched him his drink and sat down, taking the photograph of the Freud out of his pocket and passing it across the table.

‘Twelve inches by twelve inches,’ he said.

‘Late forties?’

‘Nineteen fifty, apparently.’

‘Is it “good”?’

‘I’m seeing it tomorrow. I’ll know instantly.’

‘Very nice,’ Ross said, and sipped his drink. ‘Very nice indeed.’

‘Know anyone?’

‘I can think of half a dozen. Maybe more.’

Ludo allowed himself to relax and feel some pleasure.

‘So,’ he said. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘Two million. Two and a half, possibly.’ Ross smiled broadly through his ginger beard. ‘I’d want ten per cent.’

‘Five.’

‘Dream on.’

‘Nice seeing you as always, Ross,’ Ludo said, standing up. ‘Take care. Give me a call one day.’

Ross grabbed his sleeve.

‘All right, all right. Mean bastard.’ He smiled. ‘Where’d you get it? Lucky mean bastard.’

‘The less you know the safer you are.’

The taxi headed north and soon they were in Hampstead. Ludo thought that Riley Spacks seemed a little nervous. She was wearing a grey trench coat buttoned to the neck and her long hair was wound up under a wide black beret. She looked like a French film star, he thought. They talked safely about nothing – the weather, London’s traffic, jet-lag cures – Riley had flown in from Bali, she told him. Then she turned and looked at him squarely.

‘I read somewhere,’ she said, ‘I can’t remember where – but this writer said that the art world was more corrupt than the Mafia.’

Ludo took this in and thought about his own skulduggeries over the years – and all the massive fraud and deceit he had witnessed and heard about.

‘That’s probably putting it mildly,’ he said.

She laughed, a low growling instinctive laugh. She was genuinely amused. Ludo knew then that he had to kiss her.

‘Why do you ask?’ he said.

‘It was a test. Kind of a test.’

‘And did I pass?’

‘With flying colours.’

The taxi pulled up in a crescent not far from the High Street, outside a Victorian brick villa, divided into flats. There were half a dozen assorted bell-pushes by the front door. Riley rang a bell several times and eventually the door buzzed open. They went into a dark hall with a table full of unopened mail and free magazines scattered over the floor. Dead houseplants lined the one windowsill. They tramped downstairs to the basement and Riley banged on the door, loudly, shouting, ‘Lily, Lily – it’s me! Lily, open the door.’

Ludo heard a key in the lock and the door opened to reveal a tiny ancient lady with thin dyed-black hair, wearing a sequinned evening dress and heavy make-up. She had a cigarette in one hand. She and Riley hugged strongly for a long time.

‘Darling, this is Ludo Abernathy – he’s come to look at the painting. Remember, I told you. Mr Abernathy, this is Lily Daubeny.’

Ludo shook her hand. Light, almost weightless, like something made out of paper. He smiled his welcoming, friendly smile.

‘How do you do,’ he said.

‘How dee-do-dee,’ she said in reply and gave a mad, bronchial chuckle.

They followed her into the ramshackle flat, furniture everywhere, as if it was being stored, photographs, books stacked, piles of yellowing newspapers and an overriding odour of carpet deodorant that failed to hide the tang of cat urine.

‘I used to have cats,’ Lily Daubeny said. ‘But I got rid of them all.’

‘Liar,’ Riley said.

Tea was offered and declined. Whisky was offered and accepted.

Riley went in search of the bottle. Ludo looked at the pictures on the walls. Nothing financially interesting, he thought. A big Mark Gertler, an awful Duncan Grant, a lot of Josef Herman. He spotted an Alan Reynolds and a couple of Keith Vaughans. Post-war English. Cultured, intelligent good taste – but nothing his clients would want.

‘Now what exactly are you doing here, Mr Aberdeen? I’m very busy.’

She lit another cigarette and Riley glanced over at him, as she came in with a bottle of whisky.

‘We want to see the portrait, darling. The one Lucian gave you.’

It was always strange being back at Mulholland-Melhuish, Ludo thought. To think I spent almost twenty years of my life here … Nothing had really changed. The discreet entrance off Dover Street and then the huge staircase, the vast emerald green rooms giving off each other – a kind of volumetric subterfuge, a spatial illusion. And below there were storerooms and packing rooms and accountancy services and, above, two floors of cramped offices. And all this produced an auction once or twice a month. How did they survive in the face of all the competition? Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonham’s and the others? He’d never really found out. ‘Old money’, was the best explanation he had received. Someone had said that the firm owned half of Derbyshire. Someone else had said the first Mr Mulholland made a fortune in Victorian coal mines. And yet here it was, unchanged, seemingly thriving. He looked at the smart, suited young men and women of Mulholland-Melhuish and he knew how little they earned, their tiny, meagre salaries. That’s what had driven him out, finally, after the divorce with Jessica. He was broke. And so he found independence in the arms of Irmgard and the generous line of credit from old 57 Varieties. Ludo Abernathy Ltd was born. Best deal you’ve ever done, Ross had said, enviously. He’d been sacked by then, anyway.

He wandered around, looking at the art on the walls. Important Modern European Paintings, the catalogue in his hand said. Where was the obligatory Fontana? – ah, yes, there it hung. And the Vasarely. Check. The Yves Klein. Yes. Serge Poliakoff, Valenti, that fraud Blancmain. And the prices! How could there be a market for this stuff? He knew the answer – because of people like you, mate, he said to himself. You and your ilk keep this whole tawdry show on the road.

To distract himself he thought of Riley Spacks and the afternoon they had spent with Lily Daubeny. The Freud had been brought out for his inspection and he knew within five seconds that it was genuine. Genuine early-phase Freud. Flat paint, the mannerism, the immaculate detailing, the careful distortion. A portrait head of a young woman, bare-shouldered, overlarge almond-shaped green eyes, with a pearl necklace, about nine inches square in a flaking white wooden frame. Signed. He had turned it over. There was a scrawl on the brown canvas: ‘Hampstead, June 1950’. He had held it in his hands, thinking. £2 million. Play this one right and I’ll never need to sell another painting again –

‘Ludo, I don’t believe it!’

He turned. It was Suki Goodman. Big and brazen in cherry silk, jewels flashing, a wave of ash-blonde hair. They kissed – les bises – and he smelt the musk of her perfume. Had he kissed Suki? Yes, he had. Two years ago, he thought, he remembered, outside some other vernissage in a shop doorway in Bond Street. They talked platitudes – Irmgard, the impending twins, skiing, New York, more skiing. He picked a glass of champagne off a passing tray and offered it to her. He thought of Riley Spacks and suddenly wanted to kiss her. Suki would have to do.

They went and stood in front of a Tàpies. He let his arm touch hers.

‘You’re looking fabulous, Suki,’ he said, quietly.

‘Thank you, darling. You’re not looking so shabby yourself.’

‘Have I ever told you that I think you’re a stunningly attractive woman?’

She turned her knowing brown eyes on him.

‘You have, actually. Many times.’

‘I’d love to kiss you. Properly, I mean.’

It nearly always worked. It was a simple wish expressed – heartfelt, genuine – and one hard to be offended by. It was a compliment, of sorts, though risqué. Sometimes the women said, ‘Well, thank you, but no thanks.’ Or else, ‘Not here, not now.’ Sometimes they looked at him, smiled, said nothing, and moved away. But, mostly, they were intrigued, and soon, after a while, after some more conversation, they found a way and a location and a time where the kiss could take place.

‘You’ve already kissed me,’ Suki said, sardonically. ‘If I recall.’

‘That’s why I want to kiss you again.’

‘Peter’s picking me up in half an hour.’

‘You see that door …’ Ludo knew it led to a stairway, down to a floor of offices, and a kind of glassed-in counter where payments were made. ‘I’ll go through it. You follow in a minute.’ He smiled. ‘If you want.’

In the semi-darkness downstairs they kissed, for quite a long time, and almost tenderly, holding each other close, her breasts flattening against his chest, Ludo’s lips on her neck, tasting the sourness of her perfume on his tongue, feeling her hands roving his back, squeezing his buttocks. She broke it off, saying that Peter would be looking for her.

As she reapplied her lipstick she said, ‘We have a little flat, you know, in Chelsea. It’s empty most of the time.’

‘Wonderful,’ Ludo said, unexpected tears in his eyes. ‘I’ll call you.’

‘So, what’s your best estimate?’ Riley Spacks said.

‘I think I could get you eight hundred thousand, easily. Possibly eight fifty.’

‘I was thinking a million.’

‘That might be harder.’

‘Someone said that at auction I might get even more.’

‘At auction it’s public. You’re in the public domain. Everybody knows the figures.’

She thought about this.

‘What’s in it for you?’ she asked.

‘Ten per cent.’

‘So you’d do better if I got a million.’

‘That’s true.’

‘What about more than a million?’

‘Then I’d want twenty per cent.’

‘A million,’ she said. ‘Deal?’

Irmgard was playing patience. She loved card games, but he didn’t and so, she would rebuke him teasingly, she was thrown back on patience – some consolation for the solitary card player. The gender of the twins was still a secret, Irmgard had said, having elected not to be told. Healthy babies, happy mother, that’s all I want, Ludo had said, smiling, considerate. All was well.

Ludo thought about his kiss with Suki Goodman and wondered how he could contrive to kiss Riley Spacks. He felt his chest fill with excitement as he sat with his wife and pondered this recent little infidelity and this new, putative one. That was his flaw, he knew. Dalliance. He fooled around, he ‘played away from home’, as they said, because it made life more interesting. He didn’t excuse it or condone it – he was just being honest. Without that current in his life he became bored and the world and its ways lost its allure.

He stood up, went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine. But, whatever the attractions of dalliance, he was going to stay married to Irmgard, come what may. Three wives were more than enough for one man’s lifetime, he reckoned – that’s why he was never going to have an affair again. Never again. All his infidelities would be stolen kisses. When he had made that decision, on marrying Irmgard, he wasn’t sure if it would work, but it had, and here they were, five years on, babies impending, and he hadn’t slept with anyone apart from his wife. He had kissed forty-two women in the past five years, however, according to the running tally that he kept. And, paradoxically, those kisses had kept him faithful, had saved his marriage. In the old days, when he was married to Edith and then to Jessica, he had slept around compulsively, to make himself feel alive – and had duly been caught out and had paid the price, emotionally and financially. No, he was a happier and wiser man now.

He wandered back into the drawing room and sat on the arm of Irmgard’s chair as she studied her cards. He kissed the top of her head and she squeezed his thigh. They were a funny thing, kisses – his kisses – he thought. As intimate, in their way, as lovemaking. An act of oral fornication. The touching of lips against lips, the softness of the contact, mouth to mouth, the penetration of tongues, the conjoining of tongues, the yielding, the feelings provoked, the messages that were sent in that illicit coming-together … He strolled back into the kitchen and texted Riley Spacks.

They were at the rooftop bar of his club and it was very quiet, half a dozen hardened smokers huddled under the glowing heaters around the wintering pool. They were sat at the bar, their cocktails just placed in front of them, marvelling.

‘Did you ever smoke?’ he asked.

‘No. Did you?’

‘No, funnily enough.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve found your buyer. One million.’

He sensed the relief surge through her. Like an invisible blush. What problems had been solved by this announcement, he wondered? What new doors opened for her now?

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Excellent. Thank you.’

‘Everything is fine with Mrs Daubeny, I trust,’ he added carefully.

‘She’s left the painting to me. In her will. It’s mine.’

‘Good.’ He gave her the necessary instructions. She was to bring the painting to his house at a specific time. While she was there she would be able to verify the money transfer to her stipulated bank account. Then she could leave and he would deliver the painting to its new owner.

‘As simple as that,’ she said. ‘Who’s buying it?’

‘The buyer wishes to remain anonymous.’

Ludo called for another drink. Ross Haverley-Grant had found a buyer prepared to pay £2.2 million. He wouldn’t tell Ludo who it was, but Ludo suspected the buyer was another dealer, known to Ross, the conspiracy multiplying. More profits would be made down the line as the Freud was sold on but they wouldn’t equal his profit. He did the sums quickly: five per cent to Ross; his own ten per cent finder’s ‘commission’ from Riley, and then the hidden extra – his own secret over-£1 million profit. £1,190,000, to be precise.

‘What made you come to me?’ he asked.

‘I did my researches. I was told you were very good, very reliable.’

He felt a little shiver of bad conscience but then he told himself: caveat venditor. Riley had wanted a million and she had it, thanks to him. Whatever understanding, or not, that existed between her and Lily Daubeny was her business. It was a transaction and everyone was entitled to their profit. He’d have to do a little sleight-of-hand accounting himself – pay some tax, certainly – but it was, without doubt, the sale of his dealing life. In fact it might mark the end of his dealing life – that would be a relief. He looked at Riley as she stirred the olive in her martini, thoughtfully. Yes, she was a very beautiful young woman. She raised her glass and they toasted each other.

‘As long as you’re not cheating me,’ she said with a smile, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. ‘Are you?’

‘Nobody’s cheating anybody,’ he said, with maximum sincerity. ‘It’s a simple transaction.’ He changed the subject. ‘So Lily Daubeny is your aunt.’

‘She says she’s my aunt but I think she’s my mother. That’s why she’s leaving me the painting. I think she “gave” me to her sister when I was born. She was in her early forties … I was a bit inconvenient. I’ve no idea who my real father was.’

Ludo felt a little shocked at this revelation, these dark family histories, fleetingly revealed. He didn’t want to know any more about how Lily Daubeny begot the daughter who became Riley Spacks.

‘Do you mind if I say something to you?’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Something personal.’

‘No.’

‘I find you exceptionally attractive. Exceptionally. You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.’

She didn’t seem perturbed by his statement.

‘Thank you.’

‘I’d very much like to kiss you. May I?’

She looked at him, cocking her head in that way as if she was focussing on him anew.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to kiss you. Not at all.’

It all went smoothly enough. All the arrangements were made. Riley came to the office with the painting, wrapped in brown paper. Ludo called Ross. Ross transferred the £2.2 million to Ludo’s Channel Island account. Once the money had arrived Ludo transferred £900,000 to Riley’s account in Djakarta. Riley called her bank there who confirmed the deposit had been made. Ludo took the Freud, wrapped it in a sheet and locked it in the big safe in the strongroom, then called Ross who said he would come and collect it personally the next day.

They stood outside in the gathering dusk on the gravelled forecourt of his house between the 4x4 and the Bentley and shook hands. She was wearing boots with high heels and he found it odd, her being four inches taller than usual.

‘Are you sure I can’t call you a taxi?’ he asked.

‘No, I’d like to walk for a bit,’ she said. ‘Come to terms with it all. What it all means.’

‘Of course. All the ramifications.’

‘Exactly. All the various ramifications.’

He smiled at her.

‘Great day,’ he said. ‘Congratulations.’

‘I’m staying at the Oberon Hotel in Mayfair,’ she said. ‘Room 231.’

‘Room 231. I know the Oberon.’

‘Would you like to join me there at eight?’ she said. ‘In my room. I think we need a real celebration of some sort.’

Ludo lay in bed, naked, spent, in room 231 at the Oberon Hotel listening to Riley taking a shower. He felt increasingly strange and was aware of an unfamiliar and deep uneasiness building inside him. Of course, he hadn’t slept with another woman in over five years. He’d forgotten what it was like, the feelings and sensations it released … He looked at his watch – nearly midnight. Jesus. He’d been cavorting naked in bed with an equally naked Riley Spacks for almost four hours. He checked his phone. Irmgard had texted: ‘When are you coming home?’ Was he insane? He sat up, rolled out of bed and began to put on his clothes.

Riley came out of the bathroom, in a dressing gown, as he was searching for his tie.

‘Leaving so soon?’ she said.

‘Ha-ha. I was meant to be at a gallery opening,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to think of some elaborate excuse.’

‘I bet you’re good at that.’

He slipped on his jacket and she stood at the door, opening it for him, just an inch or two. He kissed her gently. Their tongues touched.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘See, you got to kiss me. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’

‘We’ve done more than kissed, my sweet.’

‘No, but the point is, the thing to remember is, that a kiss isn’t ever enough.’

‘Riley, I wanted to say –’

‘I’m here for another week,’ she said. ‘Before I have to leave. Will you come and see me again?’

He thought for a second. No. Bad idea. He rubbed his eyes. Very bad idea. Breaking all his rules tonight.

‘Of course. When?’

‘I’ll text you.’

‘Good idea. Send me a text.’

She opened the door wider so he could leave.

‘Thank you, Ludo. Be good.’

When Irmgard confronted him with the texts, the dates, the actual hotel, the precise contents of the brief messages he and Riley had exchanged, he didn’t bother to deny anything. Riley Spacks had gone by then, gone by a few days. Back to Bali, she had said. She’d be in touch – he should visit, she’d said. But he knew it was over.

Except it wasn’t over. He apologized to Irmgard and admitted his guilt in full. Then he apologized to her coldly furious father – Heinz. Ludo Abernathy hung his head and accepted the vituperation, the assassination of his character, as the financial consequences of his adultery and the ensuing divorce were made very plain to him by old 57 Varieties. At least he had plenty of money stashed away in Jersey, he thought. At least he had the money from the Freud – at least he could pay for the damage.

The old saw, the old cliché – that the whole thing seemed as if it were happening to somebody else – appeared never more true, never more apt, he felt. One afternoon, returning in a taxi from his lawyers, in a fiscal daze of figures and demands and counter-demands, iron-clad guarantees and swingeing penalties, he saw they were driving through Pimlico and he recognized the Captain Bligh as they motored past. He told the driver to stop, paid him off and went in. It was early evening and he was glad to see more clients than the last time he had been there. As long as Ross Haverley-Grant doesn’t suddenly appear, he thought, as he ordered a large whisky and water and found a seat as far away from the gaming machines as possible.

He sat there for a while sipping his whisky, indulging in the familiar pub-mood: the inertia, the melancholy – the melancholy tinged with some deserved self-pity, he thought. The whisky was helping as he contemplated the meandering rocky road that was his future. The twins – when would he see them? How would he get to know them properly? There was already talk of Irmgard’s return to Vienna for the parturition … What if she stayed in Austria? … Bloody hell. He was aware of something intruding into his muddled speculations. That song again, the ear-worm, plaintively yodelling through the pub’s ceiling-high speakers. ‘You have to hurt, to understand.’ What was that singer’s name again? A woman, he’d been right about that. Nice voice.

Yes, he was hurting – but did he understand? Some truth was out there, lurking in the darkness, beyond the firelight of his intelligence – but it was too dim for him to see, just too far off for his intellect to grasp it. Something Riley had said to him … ‘A kiss is never enough’. What cryptic message was she sending? Was that it? But there were other things she had said to him, as he thought further about the times they had spent together, that seemed to resonate more significantly now. The idea struck him, and he almost instantly dismissed it, that – possibly, conceivably – it was Riley who had betrayed him to Irmgard … No. Madness! There had been something between them, that night, and those subsequent nights when they met in the Oberon … A closeness, something truly special. But, then, Irmgard had all the dates, the times, testimony of the staff … It was the texts – the texts had done for him. But why had Irmgard looked at his phone, anyway? She never did that … He frowned, thinking of Riley. Riley couldn’t have known, couldn’t have guessed at the secret profit he’d made, could she? He’d been very careful but what was it she’d said to him? … The art world was more corrupt than the Mafia. Why had she said that? And they’d only just met. Was it a warning? She’d said it was a ‘test’. No, fantasy. Paranoia. It was just rotten luck, filthy rotten luck.

He went to the bar to order another whisky and decided to sit there. The barmaid delivered up his golden whisky and a small jug of water. He thanked her. She was a black girl, with many strands of thinly plaited blonde hair. He noted also that she had a small silver ring implanted at the left corner of her upper lip. Pretty girl, slim, blue beads attached to the ends of her plaits. She smiled at him and asked him if he wanted some ice. London accent. Oice. Whisky is best drunk warm, he said.

She laughed, turned to serve another customer and Ludo looked at her from the rear. Blue jeans, torn everywhere, heavy mountaineer’s boots. Pretty girl, though. I wonder, he thought – tentatively, tenderly – I wonder what it would be like to kiss a girl with a ring through her lip? That would be a first.

By the same author

NOVELS

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

PLAYS

NON-FICTION

William Boyd

THE DREAMS OF BETHANY MELLMOTH

VIKING

Part I

The Man Who Liked Kissing Women