The Fraud (25 page)

 

Filipo di Vecellio had decided that his children were to be sent away to be educated: Claudio to a Private School for a proper education with particular emphasis on the Theory of Art, Isabella to a Finishing School for Young Ladies with much emphasis on Manners and Gloves and Deportment. The visit to the Theatre had been their last London adventure.

And so in the house in Pall Mall, without any warning for either the children or the aunt, there was silence.

 

—yes.

The Silence.

And the Time.

The ticking of clocks in empty hallways as loud as voices or so it seemed to me at first, but my word-pictures are useless.

That first day I slowly turned the old boards back to face the little sewing-room and looked at my Pictures.—Most had been destroyed over the years either by me or the children, only a few remained: one of Poppy, other street-girls in shadow; women at the theatre leaning from their boxes; John Palmer without his wig; Angelica in her gay hat; myself; myself—

—I picked up my brush and like some ghost of the past I began, at once, to paint - unstoppable again - that first day I actually sent word to Euphemia that I was ill and I stood at my easel and as if in a trance - in all the silence of the upstairs room I painted for hours and hours, nobody called
Zia Francesca! Aunt Fran!
the door did not burst open I did not eat I did not sleep I painted a girl, my long-ago imaginary friend Mary-Ann whose face suddenly appeared on the board, she was laughing at something: the shoulder of another woman just showed, half a fan, and Mary-Ann laughed, she was there again, caught, on my easel.

Next morning I was back on the streets of my city - my streets, my dear London streets - buying turbot and pies and potatoes; in Pall Mall lighting the candles as the afternoon drew down and the light faded: back there: the housekeeper: partly listening (I had thought, later, to catch a different likeness of Claudio for I saw always the connection to my brother Tobias); and they talked of Mr Thomas Gainsborough who had moved to Pall Mall and brought animals with him, they talked of Titian and of Michelangelo; and Miss Ffoulks had her own, other, enthusiasms: the on-going adventures of her distant but dear cousin, Captain James Cook.

‘Not content with discovering the New World,’ she exclaimed, ‘the dear Captain is now looking for the South-West Passage!’ Captain James Cook was always in all the newspapers now: thrilling journeys, new continents for Britain, beautiful wild birds and exquisite flowers and friendly natives and fish that could fly up into the air from the ocean.

‘Where will it end?’ cried Angelica. ‘Will the world grow more huge yet, before our eyes, in our Lifetime?’

‘I should have liked to have been on the
Endeavour
myself,’ mused John Palmer, ‘or the
Resolution.
I should have liked to be the Official Artist of such Discoveries.’

‘Why, the
Endeavour
had two Artists, Mr Palmer!’ cried Miss Ffoulks. ‘Although one suffered from fits and unfortunately died. Two Artists, and all the crew, and Mr Joseph Banks, in his own cabin of course, to collect specimens of exotic plants and flowers - and the ship no more than one hundred feet long! Oh - that I could have travelled like that, and seen the things that my dear Cousin has seen and done the things that he has done!’ and for just a moment I saw all the pent-up longing of the constraints of her Life: I - of course - was not the only one. ‘And they have found so many new continents and islands and claimed them all for King George!’—The world was bigger and brighter than we could imagine and Miss Ffoulks glowed at the enchantment she had often brought to our table by her consanguinity with such a Hero, and then the gentlemen left for their Clubs and Miss Ffoulks hurried to a Meeting about Slavery and Angelica prepared for the Opera and I went back up the stairs almost in a trance and Mary-Ann still sat there on the easel, laughing.—I placed her on my wall; now I would try Claudio, there was something about Claudio’s eyes when I tried to paint them - a shifty, uneasy look - but did not Tobias have shifty eyes too when he fought with his brother Ezekiel so wildly and they had no-one to warm them and watch over them?—I thought of the face of Claudio, or of Tobias, and I knew: we were a shifty family, the remnants of the Wiltshire Marshalls, all those years ago, and when the small, mysterious tap came on the door - this was long before Angelica found her way there in despair - for a moment it seemed to be the children, they had not gone away at all, they would come and jump on my painting and then I pulled myself together and closed the door of my sewing-room, occasionally the housemaid, Euphemia, grown older as I had grown older, knocked for something concerning the house: otherwise nobody ever came there, and if Euphemia knew more than anyone else she never spoke.

At the door stood James Burke, my brother’s friend and dealer.

‘I have been watching you for many years,’ he said without any preamble at all. ‘You have paint on your hand again. I have seen it there often but tonight you were distracted and it occurs to me that perhaps it is the children gone, perhaps you are a Lady
amateur
- but just perhaps you are not. Let me see what you have done.’

 

Afterwards - after he had seen my paintings: Angelica in that gay hat, Poppy, Mary-Ann laughing; afterwards when that unforgettable look of total shock came to his face (his face, that I quickly began to read so well, always betrayed him, always, he could not hide it) - afterwards when he had turned towards me in the way that he did as if he literally
could not help himself
- afterwards then, he told me he had been watching me for a long time; he had seen years ago, he said, that there was something, something unspoken, between my brother and myself; he said I had a way of looking at my brother when he was talking about his painting that betrayed me; he often saw paint on my hand or on my gown - perhaps a little too often for a lady
amateur
, although he had thought perhaps, lately, that I no longer painted, but tonight there was paint on my hand again, and a strand of my hair drifting out from under my cap, he said, was blue.

He stared at my Paintings that night without speaking and when he turned to me he said slowly in utter, utter astonishment, ‘These are beautiful, Francesca. Quite beautiful. You are a much, much better Painter than your Brother,’ and his arms reached out towards me as if he was a man in a Dream, who did not know what he did.

 

I loved James Burke, as the poets say, with my heart: with my whole, damaged heart.

How could I not? he saw that I could paint, and he affirmed me, my Talent, it could be said - anyway, my fierce, fierce passion for capturing, in my way, what I see. It was his shocked, amazed face that made me love him,
the first Affirmation of my Work I had ever
,
ever had
, and I was now over thirty years old, how then - seeing that he understood - how could I not give him myself? my heart, my soul, my body - and my painting. I was like an overflowing stream - no - I was like an over-flowing ocean: if the sea should ever flow over its shores and race upon the land
that
might describe the passion in me.

All my thoughts, all my ideas about painting, all I had tried to teach myself from watching and listening to my brother and his colleagues without seeming to over all the years: listening to Joshua Reynolds and Hartley Pond and John Palmer, Miss Ffoulks’ stories of Rome and Florence, haunting Print shops and Art Auctions, seeing the painting by Mr Joseph Wright of Derby, copying the Rembrandt over and over - all these things poured out of me - all the pent-up emotion of those years since the pestilence destroyed our family in Bristol and put me to hat-making and then my hope when Philip came for me, and his denial of my work, my imaginary friend Mary-Ann - out it poured into the hands of James Burke, art-dealer. - I gave him every single part of me, including my paintings. And he saw that my paintings were different: full of strange light and shade because I had always painted at night: my paintings were full of night and shadows and colours and secrets, and James saw and
understood
what I was doing, that is what James Burke gave to me.

And James Burke made me know that perhaps I did not have to be a solitary person: that I could be part of someone else, that someone else could be a part of me. I learned from James Burke how one could have another person as part of one’s heart; how one’s heart could actually race at the sound of a beloved voice; how one could share, at last,
at last
one’s innermost thoughts, and have no Secrets - oh to have no Secrets at last! - I who had had so many; when I met James Burke I had never ever opened my mind to another person and showed what lay there; I had had no real friend, or
confidante
- except my imaginary Mary-Ann who came to me sometimes when I could not carry my own loneliness; and I told him who I was: Grace Marshall, from Bristol. And, in return, James Burke loved me.

And so I understood at last something of how the Artists like Rembrandt van Rijn had painted: I had thought it was only matters like Form and Technique that I was lacking.—In Bristol on Christmas Steps how often had I seen couples in dark stinking corners? we heard the cries from our attic rooms - the other hat-girls whispered shocking words to each other, and sometimes we spoke the word:
love
: and then I had been there myself in the dark alleys behind Covent Garden and it was nothing in the world to do with
love
.

(When, later, I met a man who painted with words instead of with paints he said to me,
You were not the only person in the world who put your love in a place or a thing: look about you
. And I have seen them now: they who lay their very passion that all of us have upon books, or caged birds, or money, or a small animal, or a glass of something that comforts them, as I did upon London, because another human being is not there.)

It was James Burke who affirmed my painting, and it was James Burke who made me understand about love.

 

I cannot say I knew nothing of a wife, of course I knew Lydia Burke, Lydia of the speculative eyes and the gently-moving fan; it was the only subject of which he would not speak:
Please Grace
, he said,
do not speak of her
so I did not.

—I showed him the drawing of me by Mr Hogarth and he looked at it in amazement. ‘You might sell this for a sum,’ he said, shocking me, ‘for his prices have gone up since he died.’ And he held me, and he listened to my story of meeting Mr Hogarth in the church in Bristol and why I could never sell my drawing, and he held me, and he told me what Mr Hogarth had said,
It seems to be universally admitted that there is such a thing as Beauty
,
and that the highest degree of it is Grace
. ‘Amazing Grace,’ James Burke said to me, and he held me.

 

Poor James, I might say! poor James, what he unleashed by that unbelieving look when he stared at my paintings, when he turned to me then and took me into his arms as if he could not help himself - and I believe he could not: when he took off my disguise, my spinster’s cap, and let down my long dark hidden hair with the streak of blue he did not know what he was doing, I had not been held in anybody’s arms since the days of my childhood and not even then that I can remember - perhaps Aunt Joy had held me as part of her duties - I was like a starving person who had never had food - so one might say, perhaps, poor James - and later, when I met the man who painted with words, as I painted with paints, he said to me,
Love is about the self
,
as much as it is about the person whom one loves
, but I did not yet know such philosophies.

I hid nothing from James Burke. I, my real self, Grace Marshall, told him how I had disguised myself in the middle of the shifting, twisting, malicious world of London that went on around me: the quiet Italian sister, the housekeeper, the keeper of the two young children, whose Paintings in her sewing-room were turned to the wall. And finally I told him how I had first earned my own money to buy paints and brushes.

He listened to me, in disbelief almost, but because he saw my Paintings he understood that I spoke truthfully. And he held me.

That night then, that unbelievable night:
take him and cut him out in little stars
,
and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night
- then I understood,
then
I understood.

And that night James Burke, when he finally left me, almost at dawn before the servants rose, left my room and my paintings and my heart and my body - my newly-born body - when he left as the stars went out he took the small painting of Mary-Ann laughing and gave me six guineas
.

‘It is a painting of you, of course,’ he said.

It is impossible to describe how - how - unbelievable that was to me - I who had sold my own body and stolen pennies and guineas for more years than I cared to remember, had at last
sold a painting
- at last it was true as I had dreamed all the years; somebody else had validated me: somebody had cared for one of my paintings enough to pay money for it.

At last then:
at last
it was really true.

I was an Artist.

 

When James made me understand that it was true, I could hardly bear to leave my Studio; I worked furiously, all night if necessary, to paint what I saw in my head; day after day James looked at my work, praised me, made suggestions,
Grace
, he would say (my real name at last, over and over),
Grace
.—He made me find another mirror to watch carefully still the turn of a neck, the way a hand lay, to paint them still, over and over; he took me to auction rooms if Old Masters were to be auctioned, he took me to shops that had books and books of beautiful Paintings; he told me of the artists of Venice and Rome and Amsterdam and Paris, he told me that one day, one day - as I had, it seemed, been mystically born in Florence - he would take me to Florence and to the Uffizi Palace where great Art was shown, and we would stand on the old bridge, the
Ponte Vecchio
, and see the sun set across the city and across the water, I saw it, I saw it in my head and in my heart, the old bridge in Florence and the dusk. ‘They have
cafés
with roofs made of lemon trees entwining ,’ he said. ‘You will smell the lemons on the warm night air.’