Aunt Margaret's Lover

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Book: Aunt Margaret's Lover Read Online Free PDF
Author: Mavis Cheek
Tags: Novel
his hand gave life to. But they were self-indulgent things - the old theme of aged bull-men with thrusting pizzles and a bevy of lustful virgins (their blooming sexes so minutely detailed, so enlarged by the artist's horny stylo, that they were only good for cavorting; they could certainly never have walked anywhere with such endowments). I thought the pictures were private works - like a poet laureate's dirty doggerels - and rather bathetic. But Mrs Mortimer decided differently.
    It was the wheelchair that did it. It gave her a wild lack of judgement on that initial night. She signed her cheque with a flourish and spent a considerable amount of time once this was done in manoeuvring herself about like a child - into tight corners and out of them again - her pleasure apparent by the pinkening of her cheeks and the flash of wild blue in her eyes. And I didn't mind that. Not at all. Why shouldn't she do exactly what she liked? I quite enjoyed the idea of them all being shaken up with their 'Oh, it's Picasso, then we must go to it' attitude and their principles of accountancy, the flavour of the times. I actually heard someone say of the portfolio, 'Yes, but will it make a first-class investment?' and someone, else suggest they would keep theirs in the bank 'for safety'. I should like to think that Picasso, in his hey-day, would have walked through the show on hearing such things and torn everything up. A smart operator he may have been, but not so much that he would wish his pictures to sit, unseen, in the vaults of Messrs Coutts.
    'How would you frame them?' Mrs Mortimer asked as, later, we waited in Cork Street for her car to come.
    'Rather like they have,' I said, but without enthusiasm.
    'You think I have made a mistake, don't you? You don't think I should have bought them? Well, they will be an excellent investment.' She gave me a very wide-eyed stare, as if to defy any further comment. And I was silent. And oddly sad. For Mrs Mortimer had never before spoken of investment in her collection. Of course she bought good stuff, but that was always secondary to the first consideration - love, desire, inspiration. Her pictures were like her lovers, really, and I felt in this case she had been a careless and fickle amourette.
    'Well, Margaret?'
    'Brass,' I said flatly.
    'And do you think I have made a mistake?' 'I am sure they will go up and up in value.' 'That is not what I asked.'
    'Brass,' I said again, this time more lightly. 'Definitely brass. . .'
    She blinked. 'Well, I shall have a think about it before deciding. I quite like the brass, but perhaps . . . ah . . . here is the car. Goodbye, my dear ...
    And off she went, up the ramps, whirr, whirr, and with a small wave once ensconced in the back. We never talked of
    the etchings again and they never came to me for framing. I assumed that, piqued, she had gone elsewhere with them and that they perhaps hung in a part of the house to which I was not privy.
    The thrill of the electric wheelchair abated and, though energized by the freedom the extra power gave to her, much needed as she grew older and frailer, she never re-created in my presence that funny fairground night in Cork Street. Nor did she ever, to my knowledge, put investment potential above her critical eye again. The next things she bought, some months later, were two portrait drawings, with mysterious, unnerving, fish-eyed heads by the prolific and rather wild John Bellany. That made me feel a great deal better, for they were good and not at all the sort of thing the Coutts cognoscenti could get their pea-brains round, no matter how many catalogue introductions they pored over. I framed those in richly carved and gilded wood, for they had an ancient quality about them, and I knew I had done well when she hung them in the drawing-room, removing a good Dubuffet to make space. 1 was glad it was the Dubuffct and not the small Matisse head and told her so. She smiled as we viewed the two new additions. 'Oh no,' she
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