"Well, then, use the telephone when you've finished or if you need me. Dial '1' for the study."
Clara returned to her work, locking them in the vault as she left. The master control for the vault's heating system was in the hall. A trick Clara had been told when it had gone wrong once before was to turn it off, let it reset itself and turn it back on fifteen minutes later. Ten minutes after that, the vault would be at its proper temperature. She began this procedure and meanwhile returned to the study to attend to Casper's London correspondence.
Charles knew his way around the collection. Paintings were stored on wheeled racks that pushed into one wall. Drawings, prints and miniatures were in chests of drawers that formed flat-topped islands along the centre of the vault. Some cabinets toward the far end of the vault contained coins, jewellery, small sculptures and ivories.
Also at the far end was a small lobby with a toilet and washbasin. Between the cabinets on the other wall were cushioned benches. There was no natural light in the subterranean vault.
Melanie's entertainment at the puzzle of Charles did not last long: she saw he was hopelessly in love with Clara. Only a man besotted with another woman (and such a beautiful one as Clara) could be quite so indifferent to Melanie's own dynamic charms as Charles appeared to be. She filed away this information for later consideration and began to take an interest in how Charles worked. She had rarely seen anyone appear so serious and yet so elated as he examined (or, rather, adored, she corrected herself) the paintings.
So Melanie followed Charles about like an inquisitive cat, studying each painting after he had moved on from it, saying loudly "pretty," "okay" or "I don't like it." Charles didn't mind her comments but he didn't take them seriously, either.
When Charles got to his favourite Dutch Masters, he went slower, scanning every part of each painting, looking closely and stepping back and forth, staring for minutes at a time.
Once Charles stared at a painting so long that Melanie thought he had gone into a trance. When he finally looked away, she asked:
"What did you see in that painting, Charlie, that you didn't see in the others?"
Although Charles thought Melanie was idly passing her time by asking this question, he answered honestly, his own passion for art driving him to try to explain what he had seen.
It was a country scene by Meindert Hobbema, in which a deeply-rutted track led beside a still river to a cottage in the woods; its subtle palette of greys, olives and browns under a diffused light reflected in the water inspired a wistful contentment in the viewer. Beside the beauty of the subject, Charles tried to make the technical accomplishments of the painter comprehensible to Melanie.
From then on, they looked at the paintings together, with Melanie asking pertinent questions and Charles explaining their beauties with enthusiasm. Neither had yet noticed that it had got colder and that Mildred had not brought them down any coffee.
There was a good reason for this neglect. Ten minutes after she returned to the study to become absorbed in her work, Clara had received a telephone call from Kelly to say that Casper had collapsed with a suspected heart attack and been rushed to hospital. He had briefly regained consciousness there and asked for Clara as well as his family. There was something urgent he wanted to say to her and to his solicitor. He was stable but asleep now. Would Clara come back soon?
Clara agreed to return immediately and in her rush and concern for her employer, completely forgot about Melanie and Charles. She also forgot to turn the vault's heating system back on. Clara telephoned the housekeeper's flat and asked Mildred to meet her at the front door and for Arnold to bring the car back around.
Leaving her paperwork on the desk, Clara grabbed her coat and bag. She rushed out of the mansion just as Mildred arrived. Clara quickly told Mildred the bad news and asked her to lock up. Arnold soon pulled up with the limousine. Clara jumped into the car and Arnold put his foot down. On the journey, she telephoned the estate to say she was on her way, asking which of Casper's children and grandchildren had yet been informed.
Elizabeth, the oldest daughter, and her husband, Robert Moreton, were on their way from Gloucestershire. Messages had been left for Diana, the second daughter, who lived in the south of France, and for Vernon, the son, who ran the business in America. While Arnold broke the speed limit, Clara successfully contacted Diana, Vernon and all the grandchildren. This task kept her mind off the couple locked in the vault.
Clara never did ask Mildred to make coffee for Charles and Melanie; nor did Mildred or Arnold know that anyone was in the vault. Needless to say, while they found themselves becoming good friends, Charles and Melanie were oblivious to all the activity above their heads.
Because Melanie seemed to understand what Charles saw in the paintings and felt the same emotions as him, he was forced to reject his original opinion of her as a pantomime nurse. He now saw her as a bright girl with natural good taste who was only ignorant of art. This was something he could easily change; and he would enjoy doing so.
Melanie was in fact genuinely pleased by art and often wandered around the Greenwood galleries in London and Oxfordshire to absorb the atmosphere, even though she did not understand the paintings or sculptures deeply. She judged them by their subjects: she liked a painting of a dog or a sunset because she liked dogs and sunsets. Melanie was a quick learner, though, and the passion of this curious art-loving tax-inspector had inspired her to discover her own latent talent.
It was a Hendrick Avercamp snow-scene that was the ignition point for Melanie.
There were ice-skaters on a frozen river in front of a pink castle, with trees in the left foreground and a fence on the right. The river stretched its winding course to the horizon. The whole scene was joyful, if somewhat sentimental.
Sharing the fun of the skaters and the charm of the castle made Melanie imagine she was really in the painting, feeling the cold air, smelling the smoke from the wood fires, hearing the cries of laughter from the children and sharing the relief of the mother whose child had fallen unhurt on his bottom. The weight of the pale-grey sky pressed on her head, relieved by the unlimited freedom offered by the open river, on which she imagined she could skate all the way to the sea.
Melanie stared at the painting for ten whole minutes, her eyes eagerly seeking every detail but always returning to the centre to follow the liberating river to the horizon. Charles had noticed its effect on her and kept silent to avoid breaking her trance.
Melanie shook her head when she came back into the world.
"You felt it, didn't you?" Charles softly asked.
"Fuck me!" she said.
"Crude but appropriate."
"Do you feel like that every time you look at a painting you like, Charlie?"
"Not every painting I like, but many of them, yes."
"Fuck me," she repeated. "It's like being in love, isn't it? All your normal emotions are, like, amplified. Everything is extra sensitive. Everything feels sharp and new. I almost cried because of these two."
She was pointing at a young couple, obviously courting. He was helping her learn to skate. Somehow you could feel his concern for her and the thrill he felt in holding her by the waist, while she trembled with every kind of emotion.
Melanie's ability to appreciate and be moved by art made Charles positively admire her.
"I saw you go into a trance," he said. "You felt yourself in the painting. Do you ever 'lose yourself' in music?"
"Yes, when I'm dancing."
"I don't dance but I regularly lose myself in classical music. There are moments when I feel the notes are exactly right, that they can't be any other notes. A single wrong note will break the spell but when it is all the right notes, you feel that the composer is talking directly to your soul. Sometimes I feel so much joy listening to Bach it is actually painful ..."
Charles paused, not sure if he should be embarrassed by this admission. The glow on Melanie's face and the sparkle in her eye proved she understood.
"It's the same with painting," he continued. "Look at that absurd tower. This is Holland: there are no pink fairy-tale castles. It was probably a windmill in real life; but Avercamp is playing with us, making us enter his imagined world; and we go along because it's exactly right. The boughs of this tree carry on the line from the roof of the tower, down to the leg of this skater, drawing the eye into the middle of the painting. The colours do the same: the pink tower matches the clothes on these skaters: her skirt, his pantaloons and the vegetables in that basket; even the horse by the barn is pink. The eye follows the line of pink objects, just as it follows the line of the frozen river to the horizon."
