Picture This Read online

  About the Author

  Tobsha Learner is also known as TS Learner. Her genres include historical fiction, historical thriller and erotic fiction and she has bestsellers in all three genres. Her previous books include Sphinx, The Witch of Cologne and Quiver. For further information, please go to www.tslearner.co.uk and www.tobsha.com.

  Picture This

  Tobsha Learner

  Unbound

  London

  This edition first published in 2016

  Unbound

  6th Floor Mutual House, 70 Conduit Street, London W1S 2GF

  www.unbound.com

  All rights reserved

  © Tobsha Learner, 2016

  The right of Tobsha Learner to be identified as the author of this work

  has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be copied,

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form

  or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed

  on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-78352-985-8

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-78352-975-9

  Design by Mecob

  Cover images:

  © iStockphoto.com / coloroftime (eye)

  © Shutterstock.com / Belovodchenko Anton (figure)

  Contents

  About the Author

  Frontispiece

  Dear Reader

  Super Patrons

  Prelude

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Patrons

  Free Short Story

  With grateful thanks to

  Peggy Czyzak-Dannenbaum

  Dear Reader,

  The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound.

  Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

  This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). We’re just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. Here, at the back of this book, you’ll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

  Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

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  Thank you for your support,

  Dan, Justin and John

  Founders, Unbound

  Super Patrons

  Kevan Adsetts

  Ana Aguirregabiria

  Peter Allen

  Alexander Asher

  Jeremy Asher

  Robbie Baird

  Ian Beattie

  Yasmin Boland

  Catherine Beechinor

  Paul Beechinor

  Bihariji

  Kari Bloom

  Nigel Boardman

  Craig Burlinson

  Aine Campbell

  Kevin Caruth

  Robert Connolly

  Peggy Czyzak-Dannenbaum

  Kelly Davis

  Karen Jane Dawson

  Lisa Dethridge

  Ross Digby

  Ben Frankel

  Lisa Gersten

  Stephen Gilles

  Jonathan Goodman

  Lynda Gratton

  Lisa M. Harney

  Wendy & Maureen Hewlett-Beckles

  Dominic Houlder

  Anna Houssels

  Ernest Huntley

  Greg Kahn

  Dan Kieran

  Paul de Kruyf

  Carina Latham

  Christiane Laurence

  Eva Learner

  Nina Learner

  Frank & Eve Mahlab

  Puck Markham

  Simon Marks-Isaacs

  Aleksandra McNee

  John Mitchinson

  Bel Mooney

  Charina Oeser

  Erez Ofer

  Rosslynd Piggott

  Justin Pollard

  Harold Rubin

  Siobhan Ryan

  Fiona Sharp

  Neil Simmons

  Daphne Statham

  Elly Stone

  Julie Taylor

  Cara Usher

  Nicholas Waldemar Brown

  In memory of Anne Wall-Smith

  Karlie Weinert

  Anita Woolf

  Brendan Young

  Deborah Zipser

  Prelude

  Christie’s Auction Rooms, Rockefeller Plaza, NYC, 2005

  The sculpture was coming up; it was five lots away, about 15 minutes to go, Felix calculated, looking over at the tall, steel-haired auctioneer standing on the podium, the screen above him showing Lot 18 – a work by Gerhard Richter. The room was packed; everyone important in the art world seemed to be there, and the auctioneer’s Swiss-German accent resounded like a low French horn around the cavernous auction room. Felix’s bidder, a young arts graduate he’d trained for such events, sat in a prime position ten rows from the front. This was only the graduate’s second appearance at a high-profile auction and, judging from the curious sideways glances from the prominent collectors (all in their customary seats), no one had made the connection between the handsome young Chinese-American man dressed in a razor-sharp Savile Row suit (courtesy of Baum Galleries) and Felix Baum. No doubt they assumed the Asian student was a representative of the super-rich Chinese collectors, which had been the gallery director’s intention. The perfect foil, Felix thought, before being interrupted by his vibrating mobile. He glanced at the incoming number: Maxine. He checked his watch; as usual, her timing was impeccable. Rising to his feet, he pushed his way past the seated bidders. It was only when he reached the back of the hall, out of view of the auctioneer, that he bothere
d to put the phone to his ear.

  ‘So I climbed on top of the Brooklyn Bridge and I was going to throw myself off it but I decided I wouldn’t make it that easy for you.’ Maxine’s voice was broken and slow. Verbose and dramatic as usual – she really is an obsessive romantic as well as bipolar, Felix noted – wondering at the background sound whistling down the phone.

  ‘Are you there, Felix? Because I’ve got something on you, you bastard. Brushstrokes can tell everything historically about a painting, as can paint.’

  Now he wanted her gone; closing his eyes, he imagined her falling, hair tumbling over and over, slender legs flailing uselessly in the empty air, a vaguely erotic vision. He stayed silent; his breath was a wind against the howl of the phone call. Nothing mattered. She would fall either way; he’d made sure of that.

  From the other side of the room a collector and one of his major clients – Felicity Kocak, in her fifties, clad from top to pedicured toe in a pale-orange Chanel suit – glanced in his direction. Hoping she would not corner him after the auction, Felix smiled discreetly back. They were in the middle of negotiating an early Edward Hopper work – Girl in a Yellow Square of Light – and the greater part of the negotiation had involved an outrageous amount of flirtation on Felix’s part. As far as he was concerned it was not unlike walking a tightrope; he found the woman repellent, both physically and intellectually. But Felicity, the English widow of a Turkish shipping magnate, was immensely rich and easily influenced. What was she planning to bid for here? Felix wondered.

  Panicked at the thought that someone else might be advising her, he looked to see who her companion was. To his relief, he recognised the thin, elegant woman beside her as a minor player – an art buyer who worked with several of the top interior designers. The two women were obviously hoping to pick up insignificant works to decorate Felicity’s new mansion in the Hamptons. Nevertheless, irritated at the gauche interruption, Felix decided he would put the price of his Hopper up by a half a million.

  A hiss sounded from his mobile. Tentatively he placed his ear against it. The noise at the other end intensified into a high-pitched vibration. Did the Brooklyn Bridge really hum like that, a cacophony of wires vibrating in the high winds?

  ‘… Are you there, Felix? Watch while I nail the memory of me to the back of your brain.’ The sound of a man’s voice in the distance now cut in; Felix pressed his ear closer to the phone.

  ‘Go away, I’m okay… Don’t touch me!’ Maxine shouted before falling silent, and the phone cut out. Moments later the text he was expecting from another number came through:

  Your porcelain doll hesitated, but now she’s floating

  The gallery director’s only betrayal of emotion was a slight tremor of the hand holding his phone; even so, the reality of Maxine’s death was a shock. Steadying himself against the wall, he carefully began dissecting his emotional response; after all, she’d been one of his lovers. A moment passed before he concluded that, beyond a kind of sadness, his overriding sentiment was one of relief intermingled with a growing adrenalin rush he recognised as opportunity.

  His reverie was interrupted by the auctioneer calling out Maxine’s name. Looking up, Felix saw that the screen above the podium now displayed a bronze sculpture of a massive reclining black woman with Maxine’s customary totem – a winged serpent, which she always used as her signature – engraved on the ankle.

  ‘Lot 23, a large bronze sculpture entitled Latisha Dormant by the young British sculptor Maxine Doubleday. Do I have fifty thousand?’

  As he’d instructed, the Asian student immediately put up his baton to bid. Felix relaxed; it would take at least a day for the news of Maxine’s death to spread, giving him time to buy all of her work at reserve price before the announcement caused the value to soar. There were four pieces in this auction alone and he knew of several others that would be coming up for sale across the world in the next twelve hours. He had bidders at all the auctions: New York, London, Zurich, St Petersburg and Shanghai. Maxine Doubleday may have failed as an artist in life, but Felix Baum would make sure her work received the acclaim it merited in death. He would mythologise her. It was what he excelled at: a stratagem he had executed before and would do so again. There wasn’t any greater aphrodisiac.

  *

  It had been another long grey London day without Maxine, her absence a niggling void at the edge of everything Susie thought or did, impossible to dismiss. Even now, as she stood at her framers, the two of them staring down at a series of preliminary sketches of a work-in-progress that Tate Modern had purchased, Susie found it difficult not to think about what time it was in New York, and what Maxine was doing. Was she happy? Was she lying naked beside someone else, using the same words she’d used with her? Emotions, gestures, the vernacular of lovers Susie had never doubted was exclusively theirs, until she’d found her gone.

  The framer, a thin rake of a man whose shoulder-length white hair gave him the air of a dishevelled bohemian, murmured something about gilding and Susie forced herself to concentrate. As she followed him past walls hung with Renaissance-style frames, she felt herself being pulled further and further away until she had the sense she was floating far above the wooden angels and glistening picture frames. Suddenly a wave of dread rushed through her, causing her to stumble. The framer, catching her, helped her on to a chair.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, his bony fingers sharp against her arm.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  A second later her phone pinged: it was a text message from a journalist friend in New York. Even before she read it, she knew what it would say.

  Chapter One

  Four months later, Baum Gallery #1, Upper West Side, 2006.

  Felix stared down at the catalogue. Primordial, disturbing and profoundly erotic, the image was a photographical depiction of Rati, the Hindu goddess of sex and carnal desire. Susie Thomas, her skin covered in blue paint, sat naked in a lotus position. A smaller, younger woman straddled her, back to the camera, her slim legs wrapped around the artist. In stark contrast to the defiant gaze of the artist, this woman’s face was in profile and totally covered by a mask of a cow’s head. Standing on either side of the entwined women were two men dressed in the uniforms of traditional sixteenth-century Hindu warriors, one obviously Indian, the other Caucasian – both boasting beautiful sculptured physiques. The fingers of the artist’s hands, which were stretched out to the left and right, encircled the erect penises of the two men. Again, both men’s faces were concealed by full head-masks – one wore an elephant head, the other a horse’s head. The only unmasked figure in the photograph was the artist herself, staring out at her audience – a direct gaze that was perturbing, seductive and terrifyingly confrontational.

  Felix’s eyes shifted to the half-naked men; he wanted to be them, to be one of them, embodied in such a powerful artwork, forever immortalised. He might be one of the most famous gallery owners in New York right then but he needed to be embedded in history, he needed to be gazed upon in 50 years, in a hundred years; his soul demanded it.

  ‘Chloe, I’m out to everyone,’ he instructed. Then, still absorbed by the open catalogue, he started to walk towards his office at the back of the gallery. Just then the phone on the desk rang.

  ‘Good morning, Felix Baum Gallery… yes, Mr Weiss… ’ The gallerina glanced over; Felix stood frozen midway to the door. He gestured, indicating he couldn’t take the call. ‘No, I’m afraid he’s out, even to you, Mr Weiss… ’ She grimaced in response to Felix. ‘Sure, it’s a great show, he really is a superb young artist, you know. Frieze are doing a profile next month? He’s right on the crest… of course we can stay open an extra half-hour for you… And I’ll let Mr Baum know that you are in town… ’

  Escaping, Felix slipped into his office. Once inside the hermetically sealed box of marble and polished steel, the background hum of Manhattan fell away. He set down the catalogue on his gleaming walnut desk, which rolled out like an unfurling scroll. The image o
f the staged orgy was even more startling on closer inspection, the artist’s labia and clitoris apparently painted in gold. Without realising it, Felix licked his lips. Cow, horse, elephant, goddess: the motif had resonance – a perverse Noah’s Ark or Old MacDonald’s Farm. The way the masks were sculpted was hyperreal. It was if a Minotaur, a centaur and a cow maiden had somehow found themselves bewildered and trapped in a compromising scenario not of their making. Anima /animus out of control, Felix thought, as his mind began to spin its own psychological analysis.

  He’d been searching for an astounding artist to open his next gallery, Baum #2. To secure the doyenne of the new British art scene would be a huge coup. He studied the image again. This is good; this is hot, very hot. Like a rush of pleasure, the internal patter exploded like fireworks somewhere around his solar plexus. I have to have her; I want that body, that mind.

  Bending his tall, lanky frame, he peered down at the photograph. There was something familiar about the girl with her back to the camera. She looked young, no more than twenty; it was impossible to see her face, but the pale skin, tiny waist and full arse tugged at his memory. Dismissing the niggling recollection as projection, he turned the page to read the essay, written by a well-known English art critic and philosopher with a doubled-barrelled name.

  ‘Desire as Myth’ is Susie Thomas’s first solo show… A reclaiming of the erotic by challenging the thin line between pornography and erotica… Susie Thomas is arguably the foremost female figure of the rising pack of Young British Artists. Fascinated by the psychology and construct of sexual desire (as perceived through a European/Western prism), she creates a whole mythology around the actual process leading up to both the installation and capturing of the final image – a tantalising ’manufactured’ rumour that she and the participants engage in real orgiastic rituals in the build-up to the click of the camera’s shutter. This is a comment, a media manipulation and a deconstruction of the porn industry; Thomas herself having written extensively on the subject (Artforum, Issue 457: ‘The P in Porn’ by S. Thomas). The artist also insists that all who work with her sign a confidentiality clause, so the authenticity of the process – ‘Is the orgy real?’ – can never be verified. ‘Feeding the tease’, as Thomas calls it, is a deliberate referencing of the projection the porn addict imposes on his/her pornography of choice – the idea that the pleasure/ing is authentic and that there is a narrative or backstory behind the finished product.