Snatched by Bill James

try? Obvious. This could be an even nicer package – three times as nice. This adviser, he’ll know about the other painter for sure. Yes, you can bet he’ve heard of old El. OK, it’s not Monet and so not quite so tip-top, but Monet’s not the only big painter in the world. Art spreads itself all ways. This is the great thing re art. No limit.’
    â€˜Where is he, Wayne? What’s his name, your fence?’
    â€˜London way.’
    â€˜Yes, you said. But where, exactly?’
    â€˜Art is life to him,’ Passow replied. ‘I love to hear him talking about tints and palettes. An eye-opener.’
    â€˜What’s his name, Wayne? Look, we’re partners. There shouldn’t be secrets.’
    â€˜Although most artists have what’s called an easel to work on, Michael Angelo obviously wouldn’t of been able to use an easel when he was up there painting a chapel’s ceiling,’ Wayne said.

Thirteen
    Legs dangling, wearing her tangerine and blue gear today, Lady Butler-Minton was seated on a roof beam near the gymnasium ceiling, resting before her sauna, when she saw the door from the garden swing slowly open and Neville Falldew, once Palaeontology at the Hulliborn, stand for a second gazing in, then hesitantly enter. Penelope had been idling after a couple of climbs on the hanging rope, chatting to Lip again and explaining why she had decided after all to be fairly expansive in her first meeting with the Butler-Minton biog girl. ‘I can see what it is about Trudy that would activate your juices, Eric. Yet it only came late in your life, didn’t it, this taste for big chins?’ She stopped talking and watched Falldew. In the old days, when Eric was Director, Falldew and other Keepers and Curators would occasionally turn up, looking for him in the gym to discuss some urgent point of Hulliborn business. She recalled there was even an occasion when Falldew had been conscripted to join with her and Eric in carolling the Egyptian boatmen’s shanty.
    Falldew had obviously failed to notice her now. He did not look too good, she thought. Had he ever? That eternal, tatty Davy Crockett suede jerkin, with all the greasy, knotted, trailing bits and discoloured zips, plus a college scarf, regardless of weather. It wasn’t just his clothes. Penelope had always thought Neville’s face seemed to have been squeezed in a vice – the solitary vice, Lip used to allege, despite that long on-off affair with Ursula Wex, Urban Development. The narrowness of Falldew’s head made it appear only two dimensional, as though he’d just stepped out from a placard. At parties, Penelope had seen people meeting Nev for the first time actually walk around to the other side of him, checking he
had
another side and didn’t depend on
trompe l’oeil
,
as in sculpture shows she’d visited. When worried or sad he would lean forward, nursing his head in both hands, like someone carefully holding a rare LP. Recurrent anxieties seemed to have weakened muscles in key regions of the body, so he could often give the impression he might crumple and break up, the way a newspaper did in the bath, though she’d heard he could now and then force his long legs into quite a gallop. His moustache and beard were brave and well-intentioned but a terrible error: meagre, struggling, dark elements clinging to this angular surface, resembling Marmite on a kitchen knife.
    Today, he appeared abnormally bad, special worries digging shallow tracks in what there was of his cheeks: desperate plough marks on a stony field. For a while, he stared about, tugging convulsively at a couple of the rat-tails on his jacket, like a tumbling parachutist searching for the rip cord. He went forward and tapped on the door of the sauna. He waited, then knocked again, harder. Finally, he pulled it open and, crouching, peered in, speaking her name through the clouds of escaping steam. In a while, he gave