Bettina von Hase is an art advisor, journalist and writer. She founded her own company, Nine AM Ltd. (www.nineam.co.uk), which advises, and collaborates with, museums, artists, collectors, and companies worldwide. After Oxford, she worked at Reuters as a foreign correspondent in Vienna and Paris. She was a television producer for CBS News America and ARD German TV in New York. She advised Tate Modern on its founding strategy; and was Development Director at The National Gallery. Her journalism about culture and modern life has appeared in the FT newspaper and How To Spend It; The Telegraph Magazine; The Times; The Spectator; The New Statesman; Vogue UK; and the Italian magazine Panorama. She received a Masters in Modern History at Oxford (1978), and is now studying for a Masters in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, London.
This is the beginning of a novel in progress. It is called Spring Ranch.
Nora and Viviana forge a strong friendship when they meet in New York in their twenties. Subsequently, their lives take very different paths.
Email: bettina@nineam.co.uk
Website: www.nineam.co.uk
Spring Ranch
By Bettina von Hase
Chapter I
Every year, at the beginning of August, Nora made her way to Long Island. This was at the invitation of her oldest friend Viviana, who lived in a sprawling clapboard estate on Georgica Pond. Viv was Italian and had moved to New York as a teenager in the 1970s. She was married to Jim, a senior American publisher. Their partnership, to Nora, seemed larger-than-life. Their house, Swan Landing, epitomised this, with its quarter of a mile private waterfront and uninterrupted views of the Atlantic.
“When are you coming?” Viv asked Nora during a late-June phone call from Manhattan to London.
The list of people wanting to stay at Swan Landing was long and illustrious, a mêlée of creatives and business; artists, bankers, editors, writers and European friends of Viv’s, all getting their fix of an American summer.
Nora’s slot was usually for two weeks; others stayed less long.
“There is a proverb in Italian, “L’ospite è come il pesce, dopo tre giorni puzza” (after three days, guests, like fish, begin to smell)”, Viv told her one evening sitting out on the porch, laughing. Nora had taken note. But she needn’t have worried. Viv wanted her around, to have an old friend and ally amid a summer of comings and goings.
For Nora, it was the longest break she was able to take all year.
“Try to make it for my birthday in July this time,” Viv said. “Luke will be in East Hampton for 10 days. Quite unusual – he’s normally at Spring Ranch, his place in Utah”.
Ah, Luke.
Viv remembered that Nora had been interested, perhaps because she usually wasn’t. Nora Nicholson lived inside her head and for her work. An intellectual at heart, she had, somewhat to her own surprise, taken over the family business, the Nicholson art gallery. Her childhood dream had been to become a chief curator, after endless visits with her parents to museums. But during an internship at the gallery, she discovered that she had a head for figures and knew how to close a deal.
“ABC”, her father had taught her: “Always Be Closing.”
It helped that she was a woman. In her father’s time, most galleries were run by men, but now the art world had changed. Nora knew her sex was a great asset – more modern and seemingly less threatening. I can slip a deal past a man without him noticing, she thought. Nora was a born trader: she made competitors, clients and collectors feel safe. Her erudition and English understatement completed her USP. But in her personal life, Nora was secretly quite old-fashioned. She liked manly men with good manners. Rare as unicorns in her line of work. That is why she remembered Luke’s name, first mentioned at Swan Landing by one of Viv’s female tennis partners with a major crush on him. “He’s like Robert Redford”, Viv’s friend had whispered, “but in finance”. It hadn’t sounded that convincing until Nora saw him at a movie screening at the local cinema in East Hampton the previous year. There was something of Jay Gatsby about him: the way he moved swiftly through a crowd without really being connected to anyone. He’s a loner, Nora thought, and in that instant, red warning lights began to flash.
“You have a tendency to fall for the wrong guys”, Viv had told her after the screening that night, “or the right guys at the wrong time”. Nora was used to comments like that. “Not strictly true,” she countered. “Once you’re out of your twenties, the career comes first if you don’t take the marriage route.” Nicholson Gallery was her responsibility, and she couldn’t countenance failure. “The art world is full of workaholics,” she had said to Viv, “the job is 24/7.”
Nora’s mobile felt hot in her hand as Viv revealed the latest on Luke. “He was married, now going through a complicated divorce. The wife, Austrian I believe, had a break-down or something; there’s talk she’s mentally unstable.”
“Sounds creepy” Nora said. “Does he have children?”
“Two teenage daughters, Aspen and Rosa. Named after Utah trees, ‘Quaking Aspen’ and ‘Ponderosa’. Apparently, he’s very close to the older one, Aspen”.
“What do you mean, close?”
Viv adjusted her phone. Her voice was suddenly much clearer. “Well, you know, Americans have different ideas of parenting to Europeans. Helicopter-parenting, they call it. Hovering over their kids at all times, keeping them preternaturally close, monitoring them on their cell phones. They try to prevent them from making mistakes; instead, the kids often end up making big ones”.
“Sounds like trouble”, said Nora, who didn’t have children. She had made the decision long ago to keep well out of discussions of other people’s children. As a multiple aunt and godmother, she felt qualified on the subject, but had learnt the hard way that women who were mothers didn’t usually think she was entitled to give constructive criticism. Comments like ‘well, how would you know,’ came up once too often.
This topic was like a foreign country. She knew that you had to have a valid passport to gain entry. Even with Viv, she trod carefully.
“I’ll let you know if I can come late July and stay for a bit in August. I’ll confirm tomorrow. What are you planning for your birthday?”
“Oh, you know, the usual: lobster rolls and rosé on the beach at sunset”.
“Looking forward! Gotta go, work is on the line, bye-bye …”
It was Daisy, her assistant, calling about one of the Nicholson Gallery artists, Jeff Durham.
“Jeff’s arriving by plane tomorrow from New York. He will go straight to the gallery and start the hang. He doesn’t want to meet the collector until everything is up on the walls. I don’t blame him”.
Daisy was reliable, but too opinionated. She was a broadcaster. I bet she told Jeff he needn’t show up at that collector meeting, Nora thought; the last thing I need is for him to drop out. Unlike Daisy, she knew it was crucial for sales that potential buyers had the occasional chance to meet artists. This contact validated their purchases and made collectors feel clever and connected. It also spurred on the competition to spend ever larger amounts of money. Nora remembered a meeting where an auctioneer had once described two billionaires sitting on a shuttle at an art fair. One of them had just bought the first Picasso ever to pass the 100-million-dollar barrier. “You know the greatest thrill I get from that picture?” the buyer said to the other. “The fact that I own it and you don’t.”
Nora called Jeff to check the lie of the land. “Leonard Graham is flying in from Canada especially for you. He can’t stay for the opening, but he really wants to meet you and see ‘Night-Sky’.”
“You know how much I hate talking to collectors before everything’s hung.” His voice sounded grumpy. “The dynamic is missing, the dialogue between paintings. I’d rather have lunch with him at a restaurant near the gallery. Then you can show ‘Night-Sky’ to him in your viewing room.”
“Sure, even better”, Nora said, gritting her teeth. “Just keep well away from discussing prices, and I may join you for coffee”.
Jeff laughed and clicked off. Here it was again, she thought. Always the same with artists: volatile temperaments and childish behaviour. I am managing artists instead of having children. Jeff owed her big-time. His career was nowhere until she saw him in a group-show of a gallery in Chichester. One small painting of his had caught her eye. They met, they talked and out of that came his ‘rag’ paintings. Instead of the usual canvas, he worked oil and acrylic on super-imposed vintage materials, seven large-scale works which sold out within half an hour at the last Frieze art fair in London. Over six figures each, on Opening Day. There was now huge expectation about his next show for the Nicholson Gallery. Nora had already had many enquiries, none more so than from Leonard Graham, who had missed the Frieze frenzy and pestered her incessantly ever since.
Nora felt bad for cutting short her phone-call with Viv. But she knew that Viv understood her work pressures. She also knew that her solo life intrigued Viv, who was always trying to match-make her, but so far without success. There was the Time journalist, who had been attractive, but unreliable. He was a no-show at the 40th birthday party Viv had thrown for Nora in Manhattan five years ago, for 14 friends. He hadn’t even bothered to cancel. It had cast a shadow over Nora’s new decade; but for Viv, who had all kinds of Catholic superstitions, his non-appearance triggered a major crisis. “I can’t have 13 people at my table.” She threw salt over her left shoulder to ward off evil spirits and designated her dachshund Rosco to fill the 14th place. Then there was the venture capitalist widower, shopping for a second wife, whom Viv, on a whim, had invited for drinks on her East Hampton terrace. As Nora had crossed the lawn from the guesthouse to meet him, Viv made frantic thumbs-down gestures, indicating him as a non-starter.
Viv was on her third marriage. She was neither flighty nor unfaithful; indeed, she was a firm believer in the institution, not least due to her somewhat conservative Italian upbringing. The real reason for Viv’s serial matrimony was that, ever since her early twenties, three consecutive boyfriends had wanted to marry her. So, marry them she did, to please them, and most of all, to please her mother. Now happily in park position with Jim, husband No. 3, she had finally pleased herself.
Nora first met Viv 20 years ago, at a cocktail-party thrown in Manhattan by a colourful German banker. It was the early 1980s, and it was Nora’s first invitation since her arrival in New York as an assistant producer for CBS on a one-year exchange programme. Her bosses at the bureau in London had sent her over to the mother ship, as they called it, to learn the ropes of the CBS Evening News in real time. Real time meant 6.30 pm in New York, 11.30 pm in London. When Nora had a piece which she was co-producing on the schedule from London, she had to wait until the transmission ended, at midnight. Then there was a debrief about what had gone right or wrong. Often, Nora had staggered home at 1.30 am, with a curling sandwich for supper. The timing of her work in New York was more civilised. By 7.00 pm, her day was over, and she could dive into the city’s frenetic social life.
That evening, Nora teetered on high heels in a Thierry Mugler dress with broad shoulders, the amazon silhouette designed to make up for her lack of confidence. She nervously scanned the room of the German banker’s Park Avenue apartment. A pre-Raphaelite beauty was leaning on a purple veined calacatta marble chimney piece, next to a Swede Nora vaguely remembered from London. She walked over and introduced herself.
Viv smiled that enigmatic smile of hers. And that was that. “I am so excited to meet you,” she said. “You’ve come just at the right time. My best friend has moved back to Switzerland, and I am lonely”. They talked all evening, went out for dinner with the Swede and his friend, but really, it was the Nora and Viv show, the two men irrelevant.
Daisy folded her umbrella and stepped into the Nicholson Gallery. Leaving a trail of puddles on her way to the main exhibition area, she waved at Nora who was back on her mobile to Viv: “I’ll be with you July 19th,” Nora said over the loudspeaker.
“Jeff, great to see you.” She turned to a wiry, black-clothed figure at reception. He shook off the excess rain and hugged her.
“Have you met Leonard yet?”, she asked. He nodded.
“I just had lunch with him at Brown’s Hotel. He’s keen. Started quizzing me about my practice, the ‘trajectory of my prices’, as he called it.”
“God, I hate it when they say that”, Nora replied: “Only interested in value. He’s not normally like that, but he’s beside himself that he didn’t get a rag painting”
“‘Night Sky’ is his favourite”, Jeff said, “but if you need to hold it back for a more important collector, I’m pretty sure he’d buy another one.”
Nora asked Daisy to book her a return flight with BA to New York, out on July 19 and back on August 9. Club class, because Nora always combined pleasure with business, mostly to feel less guilty about taking a vacation. Americans tended to do business when they were on vacation, particularly on Long Island, where many of her clients, including Leonard Graham, summered. Southampton, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Montauk, Sag Harbour, all picturesque hamlets and villages overflowing with people who had too much money and too little time to spend it. This was a problem she helped them with.
Chapter II
Nora’s Long Island vacation was fast approaching. It would, as usual, be preceded by a few days of taking meetings in Manhattan with gallerists and artists. To justify the price of her ticket, she had to be fresh, not hideously jet-lagged. Out of the plane at JFK and into the galleries straight after her arrival, this was the way to make her visits count. As the yellow cab trailed slowly in late-afternoon traffic on the misnamed Van Wyck Expressway towards Manhattan, Nora reflected on what she had built. It had been three years since she had taken over from her father, who had launched Nicholson in the 1960s. She felt proud. Her programme of showing neo-expressionist European painting of established secondary artists ran alongside a small, but increasingly lucrative, contemporary roster of those who were influenced by what she called painters of the past. This included Jeff, her most recent addition.
For now, Nora represented him globally. But she was under no illusion that, as his prices climbed higher, he would seek separate deals in different territories, and she would have to share him with other galleries. The notion of loyalty and long-standing relationships in the art world was increasingly considered outdated, especially by an ambitious younger generation hungry for immediate success. The YBAs [Young British Artists], such as Damian Hirst and friends, had exploded onto the scene in London in the early 90s, and were showing the art world, in particular galleries, what they could do without representation. The YBAs mounted their own exhibitions while still students at Goldsmiths College; they found their own buyers, attracted their own press attention, and created an artistic brand for themselves. After that, there was no turning back. Galleries were forced to collaborate or die. Collaboration was what Nora Nicholson was good at. She hit the sweet spot of a new contemporary gallery golden age.
In Manhattan, Nora usually stayed at Viv’s brownstone town house on 72nd, between Madison and 5th. She had tried staying in hotels, not wishing to impose, but Viv had insisted: “I’m not there all summer, and it’s good for the house if someone stays there. You’ll be doing me a favour.” This pattern persisted. Staying at Viv’s gave Nora a sense of normality. After meetings all day and perhaps a gallery opening or two downtown, she would take the subway to 72nd Street, and walk home. In the kitchen, Nora would find freshly squeezed orange juice in the fridge and hot soup on the stove.
On the day before Viv’s birthday, Nora took the Jitney bus to Easthampton, sinking into a comfortable aisle seat. Next to her, by the window, sat a sliver of a girl, 14 or 15 years old at most, with dark-brown eyes and auburn hair. She was spooling a strand onto her index finger while reading a book on Botticelli. They set off from 70th street. After about half an hour Nora started to eat her packed lunch.
“Would you like some?” she asked, opening a tupper-ware of crayfish and lemon mayo sandwiches. She was intrigued by her youth and reading matter.
“I wouldn’t mind,” the girl said, “thank you. I didn’t have breakfast.”
“Why Botticelli?” Nora asked, curious.
“Oh, I love ‘The Birth of Venus’,” said the girl. “I wished my hair would grow that long. I am doing a course on the early Italian Renaissance at my school. I love looking at pictures. My father takes me to museums whenever he can”.
“Mine did, too. I have a gallery, and I can tell you, it’s fun learning about art. I’m very impressed you are enjoying this at your age.”
“Perhaps I’ll study history of art later, after school. It’s my dream to go to Italy and see Botticelli’s pictures for real at the Uffizi, in Florence”.
“You must. I went there for the first time when I was 16 – about your age. It was a revelation. Have you heard of the Vasari corridor?”
The girl looked up. Her pupils had thin yellow rings around them. She reminded Nora of a damselfly, long slender body with huge eyes set wide apart.
“I haven’t,” the girl said, her voice clearly curious.
“It’s a secret corridor, a kilometre long. It was built in the sixteenth century by someone called Giorgio Vasari, have you heard of him?”
“Who was he?” asked damselfly.
“He was amazing, a painter, an architect, an engineer. Also the first art historian in the Renaissance. The corridor is filled with self-portraits; you start on the ground floor of the Uffizi, then continue over the Ponte Vecchio and finally you reach the Boboli Gardens and Pitti Palace, beyond the Arno River.”
“Cool”, said damselfly. “Boboli; Vecchio; Pitti: they sound like candies”.
“It was built in just five months, for the Medici family, the local rulers, so they could move easily between their home and the seat of government.”
“I’d like to go there, but I don’t speak Italian.”
“You don’t need Italian to visit Florence”, Nora smiled. “Most people speak English. My life was changed by that first visit”.
“I wished my life would change”, said damselfly. She avoided Nora’s gaze and rummaged in her embroidered cloth bag to take out a notebook. ‘Vasari corridor’ she wrote down in capital letters.
Nora suddenly felt sleepy. The fog of jet-lag was descending. She closed her eyes, and before she knew it, damselfly was shaking her awake. The bus had come to a halt in the village of East Hampton.
“I need to get out please…my father will be waiting for me,” she said, her body language suggesting she was ready to hop over Nora’s knees in her anxiety to leave.
“It was lovely to meet you”, said Nora, as she got up to let her out.
“What’s your name?”
“Aspen”, said the girl.
Nora looked out and saw Viv standing at the stop, talking to a man she did not recognise. Then he turned round to face the bus, and Nora saw that it was Luke. Aspen grabbed her small suitcase and disembarked. Luke looked at his daughter, stepped forward and enveloped her in a huge bear hug. As he turned round, he caught Nora’s eye. She tilted her head, and he smiled, although he did not know her. She stepped on the pavement and kissed Viv on both cheeks. “Welcome to East Hampton”, Viv said, “you remember Luke, don’t you?”
She pointed to him, and he extended his hand.
“We haven’t met”, Nora replied, wishing she had looked in her compact mirror during the journey and put on some make-up.
“We have people coming for dinner next week”, Viv said to Luke, “can you come?”
“I would like that,” Luke said, bustling Aspen into his vintage dark-blue Jaguar convertible.
“Can you believe it?” Nora said to Viv, as they were making their way to Swan Landing. “Here you are, trying to get the two of us together, and meanwhile I’ve made best friends with his daughter on the Jitney!”
She looked at Viv. “We bonded over Botticelli”.
“You would be an inspiration for her,” Viv said. “I’ve heard she’s lonely since the divorce.”
“And Luke’s helicoptering? What has happened to that?”
“I don’t really know him well enough. Quite honestly, I invited him next week because you liked the look of him last year.”
The dinner table at Swan Landing was set outside on the porch, from where guests could see the glory of Georgica Pond. At its edge, a strip of pale-yellow sanded beach, the dark-blue Atlantic extending infinitely beyond. A long narrow slab of oak was covered in pristine French linen, surrounded by 30 bamboo chairs, and dotted with small translucent vases filled with pink peonies. There was something surreal about the sunset scene; violent pinks and purples growing more intense as the fireball sun dropped into the ocean. The crowd mostly wore white, often with cotton sweaters draped over shoulders to protect against the evening’s cool. Faces, necks, and arms were tanned, lending the guests an air of invincibility in a world where everything seemed possible. Nora wandered around the lawn, saying hello here and there, drinking in the scene. Having helped Viv with the table plan, she knew she was sitting next to Luke at dinner and made sure not to bump into him beforehand. The mojitos were delicious, but Nora paced herself. Finally, the gong for dinner rang, and Nora was in her seat, flagged by a flat white stone with her name written in black Sharpie. A classic hostess trick of the Hamptons, where your name was either inscribed on a shell or a pebble, rarely ever on anything as workaday as paper. Nora saw Luke looking for his place but was not about to help him. She was amused to watch him scan both sides of the table before appearing at her side.
“That took forever, I’m sorry”, he said. “I’m not used to these fancy European dinners.
“Where are you staying?”
“I have a place on the beach; three fishermen’s cottages joined together, right by the ocean. You can hear the crashing of waves at night.”
“Is Aspen there with you? I sat next to her on the Jitney last week. She is enchanting. We talked about Italian art”.
At the mention of Aspen’s name, Luke’s face softened. He looked at Nora with sudden interest.
“I saw you at the bus-stop, have we met before?”
“No, we haven’t. But you know what it’s like. The Hamptons in the summer. Faces blurring into each other.”
“I have a good visual memory. I know I’ve seen you but can’t recall where”.
It didn’t take long for the conversation to run away, from her gallery to life in London, to holidays in Europe, and to his fruit ranch in Utah. Three glasses of Sancerre later, they were finishing each other’s sentences, cheerfully ignoring their dinner partners to left and right.
“Why is your ranch called ‘Spring Ranch’?” asked Nora.
“Spring is my surname,” Luke said. “It’s optimistic. Hope springs eternal, and all that.”
“Tell me about Aspen.”
He hesitated at first, but she knew he would go on.
“It’s been difficult”, he started. “I was married to an Austrian, Katharina. I was smitten when we met, unusual for me.” He looked down at his hands. “But she couldn’t cope with life on the ranch. Didn’t take easily to motherhood either; she plunged into a deep depression. I couldn’t help her.”
“Why not?”
“I had to take care of the girls. She went back to Vienna for long stretches, to see her psychiatrist and for various stays in hospital. It was hell. Her doctor spoke out against her getting custody. Kat fought me every step of the way, but in the end I won. Bringing up two small girls on my own, I was not prepared for it.”
He turned towards her and leant his arm on her chair.
“Rosa, the younger one, seemed to take it in her stride. But Aspen was very affected by it. She continues to think it was her fault we split.”
“How can you tell?”
He looked at Nora. “She hardly sleeps. She has no friends if you don’t count the imaginary ones. She talks to herself. To be honest, I don’t know what to do. She’s in therapy now, but I’m not sure it’s doing her any good”.
The main course was over, and they turned to talk to their other sides. Nora felt a slight sense of relief. The intensity between them had become palpable, almost uncomfortable. What was it that Jeff had said about Americans? That they ‘overshared’, that’s what. A series of desserts were placed on another table on the lawn, along with tea and coffee, signalling to guests it was time to mingle. Nora went up to Viv and complimented her on a successful evening; Luke walked in their direction to say good-bye. ‘My girls are waiting for me’ was the excuse for his early departure. He took Nora’s arm. His hand felt cool and confident on her bare skin.
He walked her towards the drive where various cars were parked.
“How long are you staying?”
“A week”, Nora said. “I might have to go into town tomorrow…” she trailed off. She felt the familiar conundrum. She didn’t want to make it easy. But this was what she had hoped for. She had thought about Luke for over a year. No point in prevaricating. But it might not work.
Luke looked at her as if he was reading her thoughts. “I’d like to see you again, that’s all.”
“Sure,” Nora said.
“Great. I’ll call you tomorrow with a plan.” He rummaged in his jacket and produced a felt-tip pen. Nora took it and wrote her number on his wrist. Luke smiled. “My girls are going to ask me about this tattoo,” he said and opened the door to his pick-up truck. “Don’t disappear on me. I’ve only just found you,” he said, waving as he drove off.