My pal Charlie inherited a car and a ride-on mower from an old pal. He kept the mower and the next time he saw me in the pub he offered me the car. He’d driven down in it, he said, and it was out in the pub car park. ‘This car is bombproof,’ said Charlie handing over the key. ‘Even you couldn’t wreck this one.’
I asked how much. He wanted paying not in cash but in art, he said. He’d seen this painting for sale on a French restaurant wall and now that he was back in England he wished he’d bought it. I was returning to France in a fortnight. I knew the restaurant. There were about a dozen works hung on the wall, all of them efflorescences of the same confident genius. Charlie showed me a photo of the object of his desire on his phone. It was a painting of an outdoor flower stall under a parasol with a faceless woman browsing.
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