What the catalogue doesn't tell
(A companion story to Careful what you ask for)
Robert MacAllister studied the catalogue with meticulous interest, every now and then taking a sip from his glass of finest ruby port. It was to be the biggest sale of erotic art for years and he had his eye on several items. He had been an avid collector of erotica for many years. His wife, Amanda, now often joked that it was to compensate for the fact that he could no longer manage the real thing. But ribald humour was one of the things that had cemented their marriage for nearly 40 years and he would simply blow a large smoke ring from his huge cigar. His self-satisfied smile making it clear to everyone that, as far as he was concerned, nothing more needed to be said.
He was particularly interested in a group of three statues depicting naked Greek or Roman youths, one standing, one kneeling and one reclining. What had instantly attracted him to them was the fact that they all had anatomically correct erect phalluses. This had given him the idea of placing them on their plinth in a secluded wooded part of his estate in order to give guests a surprise when he showed them around his domain.
He had bought Courtfield Manor several years ago on his retirement from a successful career as a City financier that had culminated in his chairmanship of a leading merchant bank. He had bought the elegant Georgian mansion with its 1000 acres of prime Home Counties real estate on the strength of its somewhat salacious history. The builder of the house was a classic English aristocratic eccentric who was fascinated by pagan rituals and, so the stories said, would invite similarly minded friends to enact whatever orgiastic rites they could discover or invent. His desire to be able to indulge his hobby in the open air and in secret led him to create a wooded glade, complete with sacred lake and waterfall and a Doric temple and altar on a grassy mound, and surround it with a massive brick wall to keep out prying eyes. The wood had been planted with small clearings here and there, presumably to allow for more intimate assignations and activities, and Robert planned to place the group of statues in one of these clearings. He read the catalogue entry again,
"Lot 327. A group of three naked youths or young men in classical Greek or Roman style by Eduard Durand (1819-1871), a minor French artist painting in impressionist style and producing the occasional sculpture in classical style. The similarity between the figures suggests that they are studies of the same person, whose identity is not known. The artist spent most of his adult life a semi-recluse in a remote hamlet in the Vendee region. It is a mystery why he produced this work at the very end of his life, as it bears little relationship to any other surviving work of his, which are mostly rural landscapes and studies of local people."
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The news from Paris that filtered through to the tiny rural hamlet deep in the Vendee continued to go from bad to worse as the Prussian armies tightened their grip around the City and spread like a blue plague across Northern France. Louis Napoleon had fled, the latest victim to fall before Bismarck's boundless ambition. But even such epochal events, taking place as they were many miles and a different world away, were of virtually no consequence to the inhabitants of the hamlet and none at all to Eduard Durand.
He had come there, ironically in view of current events, soon after Louis Napoleon had come to power during the great revolutionary wave that had swept across Europe in that year. Ever since he had seen his first art exhibition in Paris as a youth he had been determined to become an artist and had steadfastly resisted all his father's attempts to make him follow the family profession and become a lawyer. In the end, he had been disinherited and had decided to leave Paris for good. His mother had continued to support him in secret in spite of the threat of her husband's ire if discovered, but she had died, again ironically, in the year that Louis Napoleon proclaimed the Second Empire. With her support gone, he had eked out a precarious living, managing to sell a picture every now and then and getting the occasional commission from the local worthies. For much of the time he survived on the charity of the villagers, who accepted him and his eccentricities without question or comment, at least in his presence, and left him undisturbed for the most part. In return he would quickly sketch a portrait of his benefactor in pencil or crayon on any odd scrap of paper he had to hand.
His favourite spot for landscape painting was along the open banks of the stream that ran through fields near the edge of the hamlet. The fields on the far bank led up to wooded hills and he delighted in capturing the scene over and over again as the light and the shadows and the seasons changed moment by moment and day by day and year by year. He was there in his accustomed spot, preparing a fresh canvas for the first brush strokes to sketch in the scene that only his mind's eye could see, when he saw the three youths for the first time. They sat by the waters' edge, each with a short fishing pole watching the line intently. They waved an enthusiastic greeting when they saw him and he raised his paintbrush in his customarily restrained response to any human contact.
Alain, a youth of 18 and his twin brothers Hercule and Artur, younger by two years, had come with their mother as refugees from the chaos of Paris, having secured safe passage out of the city thanks to the good offices of a distant cousin of hers serving on the staff of the Prussian commander-in-chief. They were staying in a ramshackle villa, with few of the comforts they were used to, which belonged to her aunt. It was a short walk from the stream and the boys came there each day to bathe and swim and frolic without a care for the circumstances that had brought them here. They soon became used to seeing Eduard sitting at his easel and Eduard accepted them as part of the changing landscape and began to incorporate them into his paintings and sketches. Their mother, in spite of their straitened circumstances and in the spirit of noblesse oblige, commissioned a painting of her and her sons, which brought him some much-needed income.
A few days after completing the portrait, Eduard was trying out a new viewpoint close to the water's edge. All was tranquil and he was fully absorbed in his task when suddenly a figure shot up from under the water.
"I'm so sorry I startled you Monsieur," exclaimed Alain when he had finished spluttering and rubbing his eyes clear.
"It was nothing," replied Eduard awkwardly as he retrieved his brush and replaced his hat, "You had to surface somewhere."
Having regained his composure he took a long look at Alain. The youth stood up to his waste in the shallows while water continued to run in rivulets down his shining skin from his abundant hair hanging in tight, dark ringlets around his intelligent and very attractive face. His body was tanned and muscular from plenty of outdoor exercise. As he continued to look at him, he couldn't help thinking that he was seeing the living embodiment of the classical statues he had studied in his youth. And Alain was altogether different from the half-starved specimens that Eduard had depicted during life-painting classes. Alain smiled at him and something in his smile touched something buried deep inside the older man.
"Why don't you come in for a bathe?" asked Alain in a manner that was subtly enticing, "The water is lovely and it's so good to feel fresh and clean."
Eduard demurred for a moment and then an idea came to him.
