The Goldenacre Episode 12

He just wants this deal done, so he can hang the painting for a summer exhibition. It’s all straightforward

Melcombe made his point about the report firmly, as if it was a new plan. But it had long been agreed that Tallis would confirm the provenance of The Goldenacre within the week, sign the requisite documents and return to London.

Tallis felt an irritation rising in him. It crawled across the nerves of his shoulders. A thin, wispy sense, like the legs of a fly dragged across his flesh.

“Fine,” he said. “That is fine.”

“How is Carver? Has he been helpful?” “He just wants this deal done, so he can hang the painting for a summer exhibition. It’s all straightforward. The family lawyer was there today. Carver is chilly. He doesn’t give much away.”

“He doesn’t need to; he’s in charge.”

“So I gather.”

The call ended. Tallis threw his phone into his bag.

“Dick,” he said.

An electronic bell tringed and the bus came to a stop. Tallis slumped down the stairs and entered the outside world. He walked slowly to the house of Aunt Zed.

Aunt Zed was his mother’s sister. She looked like his mother, and sometimes sounded like her too.

His mother was long gone. Zed was a living echo of her. She had her eyes, the curl of her nose. A facsimile.

-oThe sea silently ate the shore.

It had been a long day.

He was weary. As the bus lurched away around a corner, he wondered if loss could run in families. A strain of mortal pain. His father, widowed; his grandfather, widowed too. And now he was losing Astrella. Now he had lost her.

His chest tightened as he thought of Ray and the life the boy had to come.

What loss would scar it, what shadows? He would be there for him, though. Holding his hand, until it slipped away.

As he walked, his mind turned over the meeting that morning, with Carver and Ms Peters.

It had been abrupt.

By the time he arrived in Carver’s large office, Peters was almost on her way out. She had left papers on the table.

She had shaken his hand with a firm grip, her dark glasses still on, her hat on.

Then she had left, her hands in her pockets.

Carver and Tallis had sat in silence for a time before discussing the documents.

He had been relieved to work. To consider the matter at hand: The Goldenacre.

It was a large, strange work, regarded as one of Mackintosh’s most beautiful creations. It had been in the hands of the Lords of Melrose and Roxburgh since the family had bought it from Mackintosh in 1927.

It was the product of a departure. Mackintosh is now, in these times, renowned for his architecture, for the elegance of his designs. There is a famous picture of the young Scot: resplendent in silk, with a sturdy moustache and intense gaze.

But for most of his life, Mackintosh was not that man. Not that adored visionary.

In his own time, his architectural practice, based in Glasgow, had foundered, driven deep into a sand of indifference. He mysteriously left his job.

He and his wife, Margaret Macdonald, a childless couple, moved to Suffolk. And then, in 1923, to another stage: Port Vendres, in southern France.

There, Mackintosh regained something. Or discovered it. A new and gentler vision of his life.

He painted many lovely watercolours under cloudless Mediterranean skies. Little villages in white hills. Striated rock above turquoise seas. Winding paths in chalk.

But, then, another departure: a savage illness, cancer in his mouth, which brought him and Margaret back to London.

After a brief improvement in his condition there, he seems to have returned to Scotland.

But not to Glasgow, where his School of

Art building stood.

He instead apparently visited Edinburgh, and, working at some height above the Queensferry Road in the north of the city – within sight of the sea – painted the fields and buildings in the area known in the city as Goldenacre.

He died in 1928.

Tallis had read the Public Gallery’s submission on the painting:

The Goldenacre (1927, watercolour on paper, board) has been in the family of the

Lords of Melrose and Roxburgh since 1927, when the thirteenth Lord Melrose – John Felix Farquharson – bought it directly from the artist.

He presented the painting to his wife, Lady Anne, and thus it was formally owned by Lady Melrose.

It has been in the family seat, Denholm House (“The House”) ever since. Traditionally it hung in the bedchamber of the Ladies Melrose (“The Green Room”) overlooking the eastern Sunken Garden (disused water features in a contrived landscape of architectural follies) of the Denholm Estate.

A fire in 1961 damaged a part of the property, since renovated, and the painting suffered smoke damage. It was saved and reframed.

The frame, according to the 14th Lord Melrose – William John Felix Farquharson – had been destroyed after it fell from the wall. The work itself (120cm x 120cm) was unaffected. The painting was, however, removed from its board and “rolled” for a short time.

It suffered little damage.

And, at its conclusion, the heart of the matter:

. . . as agreed by the Minister for Culture, and the relevant committee of the Department of Culture and Heritage, the Acceptance Instead of Tax Panel, The Goldenacre is to be transferred to the collections of the Public Gallery instead of inheritance tax. The acceptance of this artwork will generate a tax deduction of more than £12 million.

After an inspection of provenance (IP) by Department officers, it will be moved from Denholm House to the Public Gallery, in Edinburgh, once particulars have been agreed.

More tomorrow.

Philip Miller lives in Edinburgh. An awardwinning journalist for 20 years, he is now a civil servant. The Goldenacre, published by Birlinn, follows his previous novels, The Blue Horse and All The Galaxies. His latest novel, The Hollow Tree, is to be a sequel to The Goldenacre.