The Messenger

researching the provenance of one Sarah Bancroft. A drinking companion on the faculty of the Courtauld described her as “a meteor.” The same companion learned from an acquaintance at Harvard that her dissertation was considered required reading for anyone serious about the German Expressionists. Dimbleby then dialed up an old chum who cleaned paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and asked him to poke around the Phillips for clues about her departure. It was a squabble over money, reported the chum. Two days later he called Dimbleby back and said it had something to do with an office love affair gone bad. A third call brought the news that Sarah Bancroft had parted company with the Phillips Collection on good terms and that the motive for her departure was nothing more than a desire to spread her wings. As for her personal life, meaning her marital status, she was described as single and unavailable.
    Which left but one unanswered question: Why was Isherwood suddenly taking on a partner? Jeremy Crabbe heard he was ill. Roddy Hutchinson heard he had a tumor in his abdomen the size of a honeydew melon. Penelope, the girl from Isherwood’s wine bar, heard he was in love with a wealthy Greek divorcee and was planning to spend his remaining days in blessed fornication on a beach in Mykonos. Dimbleby, though he found the lavish rumors entertaining, suspected that the truth was far more prosaic. Julian was getting on. Julian was tired. Julian had just pulled off a coup. Why not bring someone on board to help lighten the load?
    His suspicions were confirmed, three days later, when a small item appeared at the bottom of the Times arts page, announcing that Sarah Bancroft, formerly of the Phillips Collection in Washington, would be joining Isherwood Fine Arts as its first associate director. “I’ve been at this for forty years,” Isherwood told The Times . “I needed someone to help shoulder the burden, and the angels sent me Sarah.”

    S HE ARRIVED the following week, on the Monday. By coincidence Oliver Dimbleby was waddling along Duke Street at the precise moment she turned through the passageway into Mason’s Yard, wearing a Burberry trench coat, her blond hair swept back so that it hung between her shoulder blades like a satin cape. Dimbleby did not realize then who she was, but Oliver being Oliver, he poked his head through the passageway for a look-see at her backside. To his surprise she was making a beeline toward Isherwood’s gallery in the far corner of the quadrangle. She rang the bell that first day and had to wait two very long minutes for Tanya, Isherwood’s lethargic secretary, to buzz her up. It was Tanya’s initiation of the new girl, thought Dimbleby. Tanya, he suspected, would be gone by Friday.
    Her impact was instantaneous. Sarah was a whirlwind. Sarah was a much-needed breath of fresh air. Sarah was all things Isherwood was not: prompt, regimented, disciplined, and, of course, very American. She started arriving at the gallery at eight each morning. Isherwood, who was used to strolling into work at the Italianate hour of ten, was forced to trim his sails accordingly. She put his disgraceful books in order and spruced up the large common office they shared. She replaced the missing letters on the intercom and the soiled brown carpeting on the stairs. She began the painful process of liquidating Isherwood’s vast pile of dead stock and entered into quiet negotiations to take over the adjacent office space currently occupied by Miss Archer’s dreary little travel agency. “She’s an American,” said Dimbleby. “She’s expansionist by nature. She’ll conquer your country and afterwards tell you it’s for your own good.”
    Tanya, as it turned out, did not survive till Friday and was last seen leaving the gallery on the Wednesday evening. Her departure was handled by Sarah and was therefore accomplished with a smoothness not usually seen at Isherwood Fine Arts. The generous severance package—“Very generous from what I hear,” said Dimbleby—permitted her to take a long, well-deserved winter holiday in Morocco. By the next Monday there was a new girl on duty in Isherwood’s anteroom, a tall olive-skinned Italian woman with riotous dark hair and eyes the color of caramel named Elena Farnese. An informal straw poll, conducted by Roddy Hutchinson, found that among the men of St. James’s she was regarded as even more beautiful than the fetching Sarah. The name