The Firebird

Rather too real, I thought. Bishop Gregory, reading his famous oration at Constantinople, in front of the people who’d shunned what he had to say. Bishop Gregory, who’d told the council, when he had resigned, that he would gladly be another Jonah, bringing news that nobody was keen to hear, like Jonah in the Bible – the unlucky prophet who had chosen not to give the message God had sent him with, because it was too difficult to tell. And who had suffered for his choice.

I heard Rob telling me in anger, ‘It’s a choice. We choose most things in life …’

And standing here right now in all my misery, I knew I’d made the wrong one.

Breaking into Yuri’s speech before I could think better of it, I said, ‘It’s a forgery.’

You could have heard a pin drop. If I’d never felt a fool before in all my life, I felt one now. But still I pushed ahead, with all eyes on me, and continued, ‘It was never done by Surikov. A forger made it, sometime in the 1960s, I would say.’

Beside me, Wendy turned and arched an eyebrow, looking not at all impressed. ‘My father had this piece authenticated.’

‘Then he was misled.’

‘And how,’ she asked me, ‘would you know a thing like that, when all you’ve done is look at it?’

I drew a breath, and said, ‘Because I touched it.’

‘And?’

‘I see things about objects, when I touch them.’

I heard the French guests speaking low to one another, no doubt trying to translate my words, and then I heard a laugh.

‘What, like a psychic?’ Wendy asked me.

I could see what she was thinking, but it struck me at that moment, as I stood there, that it didn’t matter all that much what anybody thought about me any more. I’d lost the only person whose opinion truly mattered. So I told her, ‘Yes, exactly like a psychic. It’s a kind of ESP that’s called “psychometry”.’

Wendy stared. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’

Yuri, who through all of this appeared to be assuming that he must have heard me wrong, asked me in Russian to repeat it, which I did, and then he stared at me as well as though I were a sideshow oddity.

I said, ‘I know it sounds a little strange …’

‘A little strange?’ asked Wendy.

‘But,’ I finished, ‘it’s the truth.’

Her eyes were searching on my face. ‘You touch an object, and you see things?’

‘Yes.’

A moment passed. I really could have used another glass of wine, but then again, my face was already so flushed from the effects of both embarrassment and alcohol that likely it was just as well I didn’t have a second drink.

‘All right, then.’ Wendy pointed out another painting hanging nearly opposite the Surikov. ‘Touch that one. Tell me what you see.’

This was a larger canvas, done by Ivan Shishkin, of a quiet forest path with fallen trees. I went across to it, aware I had become the party’s entertainment, seeing all the guests shift round to watch me, most amused. I closed my mind to them, and closed my eyes, and touched the canvas.

Thanks to Rob, and what he’d shown me how to do these past few days, and how he’d pushed me to do more, I didn’t only see a narrow scene this time, I was immersed in it, as I had been whenever I’d watched Anna.

I stayed there like that for several minutes, then I stepped away again, and turned to Wendy. ‘You won’t ever sell this one,’ I said.

‘And why is that?’

‘Because you bought this painting with your father at the first auction he ever took you to,’ I told her plainly, ‘in New York. It was November; you were maybe about eight. You wore a dress with pink stripes on the skirt, and you had a small butterfly pin here, just at the neckline.’ With a hand to my own collarbone, I showed her where. ‘It had a yellow stone in it. Your father gave you that, as well. He let you hold the auction paddle, told you when to bid, and you were so excited …’ I could see I’d said enough from how her eyes had changed, and so I gave a shrug and tried to smile and summed up with, ‘You’ll never sell this painting, it’s too special.’

Wendy stared at me in disbelief. ‘My God. There is no way … I mean no way at all that you could possibly have known …’ She blinked, and looked at me more closely and, incredibly, returned my smile. ‘That really is amazing.’

The mood had shifted in the room. The French guests murmured once again, and nodded, and looked on with newer interest now as Wendy moved towards the Surikov.

She looked at it, and then at me. ‘So tell me what you saw, when you touched this one.’

When I came out of the palace at the end of the reception, I was still a little wobbly from the wine. It was just six o’clock, still light, not really evening yet, but with the bank of clouds that had moved in to block the sun and raise the wind it felt as though the day had ended. I was glad my frock had sleeves, and that I’d thought to bring a coat. I hugged it round me now and started walking up the pavement to the bridge.

I nearly passed him.

He was standing close against the hedge that ran along the pavement here, his back set squarely to the wind, his head up. Waiting for me.

I stopped walking. Faced him with a mix of hope and hesitation. Hi. I was … I’ve just been …

Aye. I ken what you’ve been up to. He crossed the space between us with what seemed a single motion, strong and sure, and caught me hard within his arms and held me there, the cold wind a forgotten thing that could no longer touch me as he kissed my hair, my neck, my face.