Camille-Corot

Camille-Corot

How did we meet? What does it matter how we met? You see us clearly a couple long and deep in love, our minds as much parallel as our hearts intersected, and, in a word, perfectly happy.

But because you insist on knowing, and because we are, certainly, far removed in distance and in time from the criminal act that introduced us to each other, I’ll acquiesce in the telling you of that which I’ve thought wise to forget, and gratify your curiosity.

I’ve said, then, that we are far removed from the occasion of our meeting, that smart piece of burglary. It was in the early eighties, before smartphones and smart watches that tell everyone about everything—when things required thinking through and rolling up one’s sleeves.

I wasn’t what I am now, a museum director, accomplished to the extent that I have the means to while away the holidays in southern France, but a restless and hungry young man, scarce getting by in a rough neighborhood in the North of England.

One evening in the middle of Summer, as Roger (my cousin and your uncle, two years my senior, who passed away some years before you were born) and I were deliberating over ways to make more money over a pint in the local pub, the television placed over the bar played an advertisement, and it caught my eye. It was the Tate Museum announcing a new exhibition of Impressionist paintings. That gave me an idea.

Now, two things. First, you must bear in mind that we were all struggling, economically above all. That was the case with my family, as well as the case with many of the families around us.

In short, your grandfather was out of a steady job, and, although my mother was something of a seamstress, she didn’t bring in a great deal; and those that were old enough to work, such as myself who worked as a mechanic, did so, sadly at the expense of our education.

Secondly, you may deduce how hard times and hard lives could be justification, in green and untravelled minds, for resorting at times to activities not entirely legal for additional sources of income. For me and Roger, this meant indulging occasionally in what may be called classic thievery.

But do not conflate thievery, in respect to our execution of it, with depravation.

We took only from those with plenty, and we never lay a hand on anyone. We leveraged only the energy and agility of our youth to pocket up enough to keep us from living in wretchedness. And the idea abovementioned that occurred to me, after watching the exhibition announcement, was, simply put, to steal a painting.

I communicated that to Roger, and he immediately jumped on board, adding that any of the grand, historic estates in the region could serve that end.

“Any of these ancient places,” I remember saying, “could be housing this very moment a work of art valued at tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

However simple and (truth be told) exciting the idea seemed to us, we also immediately recognized our perfect ignorance of a couple of things. First, we did not know which estate had such a painting at all. Then, we did not know how exactly one could enter the place without exposing oneself or exit it, handsome painting in hand, without detection.

We determined therefore to spend the next three months, each whenever he could, visiting whatever palaces, mansions, estates or castles were within a day’s drive to figure out those two particulars.

At the most fundamental level, moreover, and perhaps the key on which the success of our criminal act most depended was the issue of our knowledge of paintings. Neither Roger nor I had a jot of expertise in any kind of art. But being I the more creative and history-inclined type, I volunteered to head to the library and read up, so that whatever we succeeded in taking in the dead of night, would command an unequivocal sum worth the trouble.

Three months would turn into six, because, as I said, this was back when one had to actually roll up one’s sleeves, unlike today when computers do all the heavy lifting. I was also (and Roger knew of this only years later) pleasantly surprised and fascinated with the lives of painters and all the lengths they went to; to such an extent that, even when I knew all I needed to know, I continued studying art, predicting (wrongly, of course) that I should have no more occasion for scholarly endeavors after our successful act of theft.

Winter come, Roger and I found ourselves again in the pub, resolved to not leave it without having fixed a place and a painting.

“Which then?” Roger asked, his twenty-year-old face looking thirty on account of his large, ginger whiskers.

“A medium-sized picture, oil on canvas, depicting a pair of hills between which travel two villagers on a gravel path, one on foot and the other on a mule, by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, a French painter of the first half of the nineteenth century, housed, as we speak, at Ravenshaw Hall ten miles from Exeter. Given auction data of the past three years, it must fetch half a million pounds, especially in the hands of Japanese art dealers.”

Surely noting my lack of hesitation, accompanied by an exceptionally smug smile, Roger only nodded in reply.

The next day fortunately being a Sunday allowing public admission, we drove up to Ravenshaw Hall to see it ostensibly as tourists, but truly as burglars. We were inwardly overjoyed to find the following: Two eldery men, one terribly plump, and the other with a terrible cough, for security guards, half a dozen cameras placed chiefly on the ground floor; and what locks there were, were the most simple and traditional.

And there hanging, in the northeastern wing of the second floor, between a bust of Pallas and a small landscape by Canaletto, was our target, the Corot. I gasped in front of it, so beautiful it appeared to me.

I was entertaining the whim of holding onto it in perpetuity when Roger tapped me on the shoulder.

“There,” he remarked, casting his index finger at a window in the corner of the room we were in. He knew he needed not to bother with any more words. I instinctively knew that, because below this very window outside was the small, low roof over a side door, it was without a doubt the best means of breaking into the estate. Either we were to shatter the glass, or, much less imprudently, get it unlocked from inside first.

We were thinking of this aloud on the drive home, when Roger made me a sound, critical proposition: “We have to confess that our faces have now been recorded on camera, and that whosoever of the staff has talented memory could recognize us upon our return. So I say we involve a third person, someone who goes to the hall the evening before, and will open the window instead of either of us.”

“Who can you get that we can trust, that will be extremely discreet?”

“I think I know who. Let me work on it. I’ll pick you up at two in the morning.”

“Very well,” I said. “And we’ll be able to trust this person? My going to prison would be the end of my mother.”

“I’m aware of the stakes, cous’,” he said calmly. “You’ve done your part; now let me finish mine.” I acquiesced. We then agreed on carrying out our plan next Sunday at two in the morning, and made no more mention of it.

The night of our crime was cool, the moon half-full, and the wind in a soft ebb and flow. Propitious weather, I saw, sitting underneath the shadow of a small tree, as I waited for Roger’s old green Rover to turn the corner.

Two in the morning came round, and he hadn’t shown up. Once it was ten past two, some misgivings entered my mind, because Roger’s greatest virtue was punctuality. His father having served in the War, Roger was raised in a home that hated being late.

But I trusted Roger deeply: We had gotten into, and out of, a thousand scraps growing up. So, even when it was twenty minutes past, I remained composed. I was counting stars when the sound of squeaky wheels alerted me to said corner, which Roger was just coming around.

“What was the hold-up?” I muttered as I slid into the passenger seat.

“Apologies. I could not find her place for the life of me,” he said.

“Her place? Whose do you mean?”

“Mine,” said a sharp voice behind me, so much to my surprise that I started. My thoughts had been so centered on the action to follow, and my nerves probably so uneasy on that account, that I never noticed the young woman, clad all in black, sitting right behind Roger.

“I’m Mary,” she added, and Roger immediately threw in: “She opened the window a couple of hours ago. I took her there.”

“So we’re good?” I asked, turning to one and then the other, looking for a clear vote of confidence. Mary nodded, and Roger, within a nervous laugh, said, “So, art thieves now, ain’t we?”

“Yes, we are,” I said, bobbing my head with increasing self-assurance.

Having traversed miles of countryside, we arrived at the estate at half past three. Roger then drove off the road and along the wall, partly brick, partly stone, enclosing the grounds until he found a spot to park in perfectly shrouded in shadow by a pair of large oak trees.

As Roger and Mary looked on, who would wait for me, I scaled the wall and disappeared over it. After walking straight for fifteen minutes, Ravenshaw Hall fell into view. Under the cover of night and among the shadows afforded by foilage or certain structures, I crept carefully to the window.

A smile slid onto my face when, having easily climbed onto the small roof, I could clamber through the unlocked window. Some moments later, I stood before Corot’s landscape.

I could not help admiring the beautifully wrought gilded frame in which the canvas was stretched, so, despite initially intending to cut the painting out for the sake of haste, I resolved rather on carrying the whole art piece out as soon as I had found that the window was large enough for it, and that I could squeeze in an extra minute or two.

I gently lifted up the art piece, lumbered back to the window with it, and would have certainly carried it outside with success, had I not been startled by what I met with peering at me from outside the window.

It was Mary herself! and before I could muster any words about her unplanned appearance, she displayed exceptional gymnastic abilities by slipping inside without the least difficulty or any noise.

“You need help with that?” she asked, rather amused. The painting rested still in my grasp.

“Mary, I don’t, and I didn’t,” I remonstrated in something of a loud whisper, dreading that she might introduce, or might have introduced already, variables into our scheme that neither Roger nor I had foreseen, and therefore jeopardize it. I was perfectly unfamiliar with how her mind worked.

“Look,” she began saying, noticing my alarm, “I understand this is a most risky operation, but one in which I’m confident we will succeed. I have wondered at the minimal security here. But if success is at hand, ripe for the taking, why can we not take two paintings instead of one, thus doubling our profit?”

I was too conscious of the present need for urgency to have any presence of mind for providing counterarguments to what she had said, so after a moment of vacillation, I only whispered in reply: “Hurry!”

As I went to extract myself and my prize at the window, Mary raced to find a suitable one of her own. Once my body was entirely outside, standing on the low roof, I looked back in and saw her coming towards me with, in fact, the Canaletto itself. I was inwardly much pleased with her selection. But here things took a nasty turn.

At the far end of the room, the chief entrance to it, a large wooden door, began to rattle. Both Mary and I immediately knew what that meant, and our brows jumped up in unison. The door opened, and looking at us with ever larger eyes was a security guard, who much to our misfortune, was an individual neither plump nor old, neither slow nor infirm, but a half-boy, half-man, about our own age. And he looked fit.

Swiftly making sense of what was happening directly before him, he yelled at us to stop and pulled out a pistol. I yelled in turn at Mary to hurry and grab my hand so I could pull her out.

Perhaps out of fear of committing murder, or out of lack of expertise with a firearm, the guard only pointed his weapon at us. He would not yet shoot, though there was no obstruction between us and him, ordering us in a loud but trembling voice to stop. Whoever he was, I have always been grateful to him for not shooting. He could have fatally hurt either of us.

But in his moments of fear or hesitation, Mary jumped through the window with such speed, and I pulled her up with such force, that we both slid through the window, falling on the hard gravel ground a couple of feet below us.

I hit my head hard, but rose onto my feet shortly; Mary fell on her right arm, fracturing it. Rolling round in great pain, she screamed. Adrenaline furnishing me with strength and resolution, I picked her up in my arms, and we disappeared into the wood, leaving behind the Canaletto inside the room on the floor and the Corot outside on the ground.

Roger had had no notice of what happened, so he was perfectly alarmed when he heard me begging for help aloud on the other side of the estate’s border wall. He climbed over the wall to help me with Mary, and after some frantic heaving, we found ourselves speeding through the countryside in the old, green Rover. Mary cried. Roger swore. I panted, assuring Roger and Mary that everything would be alright.

We were homebound, but Roger growing thoughtful of the situation drove past our town, and continued for hours until we arrived at a small Scottish hospital he luckily knew of, so Mary could be duly treated.

As we waited in the car for her to be released, Roger explained to me that that was his half-sister, two years his junior. She was of another mother (so no kin of mine because Roger’s mother was my blood-relation), and introduced to him when Mary’s mother passed away a couple of months ago, and he, brought by their father, attended the funeral.

He could trust her, she was clever, the first in her class at school, and she liked art, as far as he knew.

So frightening had the whole art-stealing experience turned out, and obliged as we were at any rate to keep a low profile indefinitely, we gave up the thievery business completely, glad to work our plain, hard jobs as long as we escaped prison, bullets and broken arms.

Although I would meet with Roger regularly at the pub, I mostly lost track of Mary.

But one Sunday I took advantage of a day off to head to Exeter and visit whatever art museums the city offered. I remained ardently curious as ever about painters and paintings, which I would still go to the library on occasion to read on.

And at the very first one, I noticed a young woman admiring a large painting by Titian. It was Mary herself! whom I recognized as beautiful when we met, but there was that day a singular preoccupation of course that did not allow me to concern myself with anything else. It had been over a year since our common misadventure.

“How’s the arm?” I asked, having walked up to her, and she laughed. She was happy to report it was all healed. We then had a most pleasant conversation, and, as they say, the rest is history.