“And of course I already know who you are.”Īllan was in his late 40s and, as he put it, “expensively divorced,” with two teenage sons and a daughter in her 20s. “Allan Cruikshank,” Allan said, shaking Mike’s hand. Mike had mistaken Allan for the curator, and they’d struck up a conversation. First Caly employed its own curator, whose job was to discover new talent, sell when the price was right and replenish the collection. Large Fairburn abstracts flanked the entrance lobby, with a Coulton triptych behind the reception desk. The First Caledonian Bank - “First Caly,” as it was more usually called - owned an impressive corporate art collection. The two first met at a party at the bank’s headquarters on George Street. He had eclectic tastes, so that Cubism sat alongside pastoral, portraiture beside collage. ”Īs a result, the walls of Mike’s apartment were replete with art from the 19th and 20th centuries - most of it Scottish. “You’re saying I shouldn’t buy anything?” “Worst case, they’re put in a vault, no more meaning to their buyer than compound interest.” Those paintings, he’d told Mike, might disappear from public view for a generation or more. But he had a good eye and would become wistful on the day of an auction as he watched paintings he liked being bought by people he didn’t know. Not that he could afford much - not on a banking salary. As his friend Allan told him afterward, Mike had paid about three grand too much for a Bossun still life because a dealer had been toying with him, edging the price upward, certain that the arm at the front of the room would be hoisted again.Īllan was somewhere in the room right now, sale catalog open as he perused potential purchases. Of course, he soon learned the reason - those at the back had a clear view of all the bidders and could revise their own bids accordingly. So instead, he had gone his own way, attending his first sale and finding a seat right at the front - surprised that a few chairs were still vacant while people seemed content to stand in a crush at the back of the room. He’d then gone on to suggest the name of a broker who would ensure that Mike bought wisely.īut Mike learned that this would mean buying paintings he didn’t necessarily like by feted artists whose coffers he didn’t really feel like filling. Art, one of Mike’s advisers had advised, was a canny investment. Instead, guests would fix their attention to the paintings. Old magazines and newspapers sat in piles on either side of the fireplace, and there was little evidence that the vast flat-screen TV with its surround-sound speakers ever got much use. But occasional visitors could tell that Mike hadn’t made much of an effort to fit his life to his new surroundings: the sofa was the same one he brought from his previous home ditto the dining table and chairs. His penthouse apartment was featured in a style magazine, much being made of its view - the Edinburgh skyline, all chimney pots and church spires until you reached the volcanic outcrop atop which sat Edinburgh Castle. He’d grown tired of supercars (the Lamborghini lasted barely a fortnight, the Aston Martin not much longer), tired of jet travel, five-star hotels, gadgets and gizmos. well, the money had come flooding in, bringing with it lawyers, accountants, advisers, assistants, diary secretaries, media interest, social invites from bankers and portfolio managers and not much else. Building the business had been exciting ironing the final glitches out of his best-known software application had given him a supreme buzz. Rumor had it that he was a burnout, and maybe he was. He had sold his company outright to a venture-capital firm. According to the business pages of various newspapers, he remained a “self-made software mogul,” except that he was no longer a mogul of anything. But he knew he was wrong: it was saying nothing about the actual artworks on display, and everything about him. It said a lot about the quality of the paintings, Mike thought, that he was paying more attention to a pair of doors. One door would swing open, and the other would slowly close. As each liveried waiter brought trays of canapés into the room, the effect was the same. One of them seemed to be permanently ajar by about an inch, except when someone pushed at its neighbor. Chapter 1: As one door opens, another one closes.
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