Free Trust by Kate Veitch Page A

employees were now filing into the office. A cup of coffee sat fragrantly steaming on Gerry’s desk; he turned to Marcus, on the other side of the glass wall, to give him a thumbs up of thanks. Marcus nodded and held up his super-size calculator to show that he was preoccupied with budgets.
    Gerry waved acknowledgement. All right, so Marcus didn’t want to hear about the High Plains project right now. No problem. He called Alberto in to his office and explained, not unkindly, the total concept change for the visitors’ centre. Firing off one rapid sketch after another, Gerry took him through the new vision and its iteration of the principles of interstitial envelopment. ‘High Plains Eyrie, we’ll call it,’ he said, and was well pleased by the way Alberto nodded eagerly. Gerry liked this mentoring aspect of his work. Watching Alberto walking quickly back to his desk, he thought, This little project’s going to punch well above its weight, I just know it.
    Visser Kanaley would weather the economic downturn. Marco would crunch numbers endlessly – look at him, the big old teddy bear, stabbing away at his calculator, all frazzled concentration – while Gerry had the vision. Theirs was the best of partnerships; it worked , it always had and it always would.
    With this swelling sense of wellbeing and optimisim, so pleasantly familiar, Gerry turned to his computer and opened his email. Well, look at this: the organisers of the New York conference had sent the schedule through. He ran his eye quickly down the list of speakers: excellent, none of the big names who’d been touted as attending had dropped out. And Gerald Visser was up there with ’em.
    As was Marianne Zavos . Gerry’s attention snapped back to that name. He smiled. He hadn’t seen the lovely and talented Ms Zavos since Prague – what, two years ago? Three? So, her career must be moving right along, if she too was to be a speaker at this conference. Maybe he’d send her a brief email: light, congratulatory – with the subtlest hint of anticipation.
    Gerry’s eyes slid to the drawer of the small filing cabinet, with its locked upper drawer, that stood tucked in under his desk. He liked anticipation; it was part of the pleasure. But only part.

SEVEN
    ‘It’s an interesting idea, in its way,’ Belinda said, flicking the pages of Susanna’s proposal with her thumbnail. The kindness of her tone, along with the qualifier, made Susanna’s heart sink. ‘But I don’t think it’s worth pursuing for publication. For one thing, it seems to me that the relative lack of images of women at work in contemporary art simply reflects the decline of figurative representation in general. And for another, I’m afraid these issues are perceived, rightly or wrongly, to have been addressed back in the seventies.’ Belinda leaned forward and said gently but firmly, ‘No one’s hungry for this topic. It’s not sexy.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Susanna faintly. She liked her boss, a hard-working woman in her mid-thirties who struggled tirelessly to maintain staff numbers and conditions in an area that the university increasingly regarded as peripheral. She trusted Belinda’s judgement. ‘It was just a passing thought,’ she said, embarrassed, reaching across the desk to retrieve her failure. ‘Sorry.’
    ‘Wait up,’ Belinda said. She held the proposal higher, like evidence. ‘It also strikes me that this could make an excellent theme for your exhibition next year. All sorts of rich allusions. Consider Vermeer, for a start. Visually, I think this could really work.’
    ‘You do?’ said Susanna, lifting her head, attentive and hopeful as a dog whose owner has just picked up the lead.
    ‘Certainly. Especially in a conservative venue like the Booradalla gallery. Our annual staff and student exhibition is probably the most radical thing they mount each year, and you know how careful we are not to put in anything too challenging. Drawings and paintings of women engaged