Short Stories & Tall Tales

ART AND ARTIFICE

Jennifer Brice was alone in her two bedroom flat on the edge of Oxford. By the window she let her mind wander over the bucolic landscape and the huddle of low rooved houses between her and the gentle rise of the fields and trees beyond. The air was thickening as the night drew in and her thoughts drifted like smoke over the remains of the day. In her early forties she had never really left the academic ferment of this old Saxon city. The promise of another life, held little allure, compromising as it would her love of freedom over her love of love. Educated and then employed here she was in every sense, at home. She would always be alone; she was that kind of woman.

But the news had snapped the thin thread connecting her tenuously to the world outside her flat. The call had come through on her landline. It had excited her. When you are waiting for the Literary Agent's verdict you are on tender hooks. And when the female voice announced herself as Connie Carroll of Carroll Associates, specialists in popular art books her heart had skipped a beat. But the message could not have been more disappointing and damning!

"Miss Brice?"

"Yes."

"I'm calling about your submission Modern Art: Its always Been Here."

"Okay."

"Miss Brice, the trade takes a very dim view of any sort of plagiarism. You have lifted word for word an entire book already on its way to the publishers. Even the title. Now I know it's a world of instant gratification and entitlement at any cost, but this is audacious...."

Jennifer had been unable to find the words to interrupt. Connie Carroll went on.

"...audacious and illegal Miss Brice. Take this as a friendly warning that we have you on our radar. We will let this slide but I advise you Miss Brice be very careful in future....."

"But who....who has published my...this...."

"I think you know as well as I do Miss Brice...you work with him!"

The line had gone dead and she had somehow placed the receiver in the cradle. Her entire year's work, her opus magnus as Harry had put it, shot down in flames. Plagiarism? She had written every word herself in this very room. As she had tried to make sense of the severe Miss Carroll's words, the hurtful truth had begun to burn along a short fuse, a series of events that led in only one direction. Very slowly the sense of betrayal had grown like something rising from the depths of a deep dark ocean. It was always the same! Every time she let her guard down, ventured beyond the protective gates of her compartmentalised mind she would catch herself trapped by the barbed wire of the real world. And this time the cuts were so deep she could not stem the bleeding. She had sleep walked into her bedroom and had perched on the end of her bed all afternoon, letting the awful truth consume her.

Horatio P Bloom. She ran the name through her head a few times as if it might make him materialise in front of her. How long had she known him, worked with him, crossed the country, stood by his side to view some of the greatest art in the country? He had been nothing short of a mentor. As assistant to his Head Curator at the Ashmolean Museum they had done some great work together. World class exhibitions had been researched, negotiated and organised. National and international renown had kept them in the eye of the storm. Horatio had cultivated a unique role for a man with his unique personality and by proxy she had attracted her share of reflected glory.

Jennifer adjusted her large spectacles and set her thin face to the wall, twisting her greying black hair, a habitual sign of distress. She cut a slight figure at the best of times but now she felt she was fading away like a light being dimmed. She could feel the twin wolves of anxiety and fury competing for dominance in her fevered fractured brain, locked in a frenetic embrace preventing anything approaching rational thought.