Accidental Collector by Guy Kennaway

Author:Guy Kennaway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mensch Publishing

23

Lily had tried to locate the real, art-owning John Burn, but had no success. Her friend, Laura, an intense, quiet woman who worked in a gallery beyond Hoxton and knew a lot of people in the art world, told Lily that he had a reputation for being a recluse. Laura had spoken to an artist who had worked at Krietman Stoop, who told her that Celia Somerton, who had witnessed the document Brother had signed with Herman Gerstch, had gone mad. A few months after Herman’s death, she had had to be led by a paramedic from the gallery to an ambulance, shouting, ‘Are you after Frieze tickets? Do you need a hotel in Miami? Herman’s not dead, he’s just caught in traffic.’

Lily hadn’t heard again from David Ashton, couldn’t locate Celia Somerton, and so let the matter drop. Brother told her to forget it. It was a storm in a teacup, one of life’s mysteries. Behind the scenes, Lily imagined, the art collection had, no doubt, been reunited with its rightful owner and Brother’s life was now bumbling along on its way back to overgrown obscurity.

Lily had completed a Data Protection training day at an office on Berkley Square. Her job was sometimes boring. She didn’t care; it paid. With her office shoes in her knapsack and her trainers on her feet she weaved, with bowed head, through the pedestrians on her way to the Tube.

On the corner of Hanover Square and Brook Street, Lily saw a crowd on the pavement pressing to get into the Rachel Baker Gallery. It looked like an opening. She crossed the road to see who was getting all the attention.

She looked through the windows and recognised the galvanized buckets, rope and sand which were Zac Manillo’s signature materials. When she saw the paintings, she admired how his work had progressed since his last show. Then, the strangest thing: just as Lily turned away to head towards Oxford Circus, she thought she saw Terry, Jan’s son from the yard, at the drinks table, stuffing tiny hamburgers in his pocket. The crowd closed in front of the little boy and Lily looked at the rest of the room. She took a breath: there was Callum Smith and Herb Waters. If they were at his opening, it was great for Zac; it meant he had pretty well made it. Those two barely went to their own openings, let alone anyone else’s.

Zac Manillo, Herb, Callum, and now Jane Tabor were all listening to a man who looked from behind a bit familiar. That was it: the tight tweed suit and walking boots reminded her of her stepdad. As the man threw his head back, laughing and slapping Herb Waters on the shoulder, Lily’s jaw slowly dropped open. It was Brother. And now Sir Benjamin Minto, the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Flint Galleries and basically the most important man in contemporary art in Britain, went up to shake Brother’s hand. Brother stood back, laughed, stretched out

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