The Fraud (26 page)

He took me to the houses of noble people to whom he sold paintings, who had many Old Masters on their walls - showed me, showed me, showed me, taught me, taught me.—He took me to Gerrard Street, to the art shop of Mr Newman: there I saw the fine, expensive, wonderful hog-hair brushes, I had never owned one, and the best black-lead pencils, and the colours I knew so well and some that I did not, no adulterated paint here: the small bags of prepared colour that I loved so much, all ground, tied up in pig’s bladders and he bought them: brown ochre, Naples yellow, Prussian blue, vermilions, lakes - all the small bags of beautiful colours that I wanted to
eat
I wanted them so much, all ready to be mixed with oil.—Green had always been difficult he said, made from copper: he told me to use the new, synthetic greens that did not fade, or to mix my own greens from other colours; he showed me the best oil, the best boards and canvases, he pointed to the more exotic colours also which I had never dreamed to buy, and he purchased for me my very first tiny bag of the exquisite ultramarine from the beautiful blue stone, from the
lapis lazuli
of Afghanistan: I felt as if I would swoon in delight, I wanted to clasp my purchases to me and spin back to my sewing-room and pick up my new brushes and dip them into my new paint and we passed the corner of St Martin’s Lane and the madwoman with the beautiful voice sang:
and I was there, always, quietly in the dining-room, lighting the candles as James Burke sat there as he had sat for so many years; it was the same but not the same, for there I was in my disguise -
but now somebody at the dining-table knew
- the dull spinster’s gown, the small cap, the keys - only now someone
knew;
and now also I had some other, wonderful energy as I listened, and learned, and painted - as if something had been released inside me and slowly my paintings became the same but different, a new warmth, a subtlety that had not been there before - I saw it, he saw it.—The paintings were still dark and shadowy but they were different because I was different: there was light in the eyes, and James, so free and easy in our house, spent more and more time in the upstairs room, looking at what I had done, encouraging me, holding me in the night, I had had no idea that one’s body could lift and lunge and
love
, I did not know that the skin and the smell and the soul of another person was what the poets and painters and Rembrandt
knew
. I changed: my face changed, my body changed.

But because I had never caused notice to myself, who, as I quietly lit the candles, would notice anything different now?

 

We made many plans, James and I: he was to sell my work at once but under the name of a man, ‘It would be too hard to sell your work under the name of a woman; the two Women Royal Academicians—’

‘
Two Women Royal Academicians?
’

‘Yes, there are two - but they have important Patrons, that is quite, quite different. I will sell your Paintings under the name of Michel Grace,’ - I began laughing - ‘No, it is slightly Foreign, which will make them more saleable still,’ but he was laughing also, and holding me; he was so sure of selling my work that he had paid me more money
in Advance.

He had one word of warning about my work. ‘All of the Women you paint are yourself, Grace, in some way, however small. If I am to sell them under another name at first, then you must learn to paint a Girl or a Woman who does not look like you at all or Sir Joshua Reynolds may pass by and recognise you! Indeed Miss Ffoulks would recognise you immediately!’ We laughed, and I thought how much I would like that. ‘Indeed, your Brother himself would recognise you! I am serious, Grace, you must learn to clearly paint someone else.’

‘But what do you suggest I do?’ I cried to him in frustration then. ‘You know I cannot paint freely until I leave here! When I see the women from the Theatre or the streets and I want to paint them I have to carry a face
in my mind
, not like the real painters who have people in front of them - of course my paintings have something of my face because mine is the only face I have been able to study properly.’

‘You have often painted your brother and Angelica and the children without them sitting to you. Look at that beautiful picture of Angelica: the wonderful hat, and the gaiety!’

‘But I know them so well! I have seen them every day for years.’

‘You told me you painted your Family from memory.’

‘Yes but now I cannot! Since he destroyed them. It is as if I cannot paint them now!’

‘Until you can have people sit to you, you must memorise faces, other faces.’

‘It is so
hard
!’

‘It is a hard life you have chosen, Grace, for a Woman,’ and his arms encircled me again.

Day after day after day I studied people in the street, tried to bring the memory of them home again: I truly now longed to see Poppy again - how would she look, now, so many years later? would she still have her bright eye and her infectious laugh? and I painted James when he was away from me: the very direct grey eyes, the beloved face, half in shadow, half in light (and I remembered the night I had painted him in the late afternoon shadows, years before); I destroyed these paintings, these I did not show him, they were not good enough: how hard to paint Truth, how hard to paint
love
; how Rembrandt must have loved the woman he painted in the water, I thought, even as she was there before him, to make her, in the shadows and the light, so exact and so real; and the other Rembrandt woman in Philip’s study, I felt as if I knew them: both paintings were so - so accessible to me all these years later and to thousands of people like me, so recognisable and so real.

One night in my room, in my small bed, James fell asleep - I crept out of the bed, I found my charcoal, I did not dare disturb the covers more but I drew him - it was the first real naked body of a man I had ever seen, it was the same and yet so different from George the Greek statue, of course I drew James, me naked with my charcoal and my paper, how could I help drawing him? I drew the long limbs and the way his hip turned and one thigh was uncovered , his beautiful thigh, his shoulder, was turned away, I drew the way his hair fell on his shoulder such a different shoulder than my own, and his long beautiful back, I drew so quickly I was shy as if I was spying but I saw only beauty, when he stirred and moved I thrust the paper and the charcoal away into a dark corner, and jumped into bed like a child - it was the only thing I did in all that time that I did not tell him, later I tried to paint what I had drawn but it was never right, never.

And always I made it clear, crystal clear: I would sell my Paintings, through James, under a false name, a man’s name, only until I could make enough money at last to leave Pall Mall and find my Studio in Compton-street or Meard-street or Leicester-lane and set up on my own at last, and be myself.

‘Are you sure, Grace? It will not be easy, no matter how much I can help you, I am not a Patron as Women Artists must have.’

‘I do not care that it will not be easy! Nothing that I have done has been easy! I have been waiting for this moment since I was a child!’ My paintings - the paintings by Michel Grace - would sell, I would have money of my own for the first time in my life and finally I would have a proper Artist’s Studio like my brother at last, and at last - this portentous word, I know, still sounds naive but it is how I felt - fulfil my
Destiny
- I may have been over thirty then but there was still time, still time to become the thing I wanted more than anything, more than love itself: to paint freely and openly, to be a Painter, to capture all I see - it mattered to me then not one jot if my work must first be sold under the name of a man: I was sure enough now to believe that one day I could be Grace Marshall again, Grace Marshall of London.

Over the months I saw - he saw - my painting got better and better. Happiness filled me.

 

Within the shortest space of time imaginable I not only understood what the Poets and the Painters and Rembrandt van Rijn knew about love - the meaning and the magic of love and how it could permeate a painting - I was also pregnant with James Burke’s child. And mine.

For the first weeks I could not believe it.
A child.
It was not possible. I had had validation of myself for the first time in my life and I was by then a middle-aged woman.—About a
child
I simply had no thoughts at all - but it was there, just under my hand: the child of our love, growing I supposed, beneath my hand.

And I could not bear it
not again my heart cried not again
the children had not been gone six months.

I told James as soon as I was certain, one evening as we lay there; from my room you could see the stars over the city,
take him and cut him out in little stars and he will make the face of heaven so fine
, of
course
I understood those words now, James had told me a telescope was invented to look at stars, but we did not need a telescope , it was autumn, a clear bright night, the shutters open and the stars shining so bright, and our breath made small patterns in the candlelight and his arms were warm about me and I thought:
now. I must tell him now. He will know what to do.

I sat up and lit another candle beside the bed before I spoke - I am glad I did for I saw his face, his face betrayed him yet again, man of the World though he was.

‘Grace!’ he said.

I could not believe it.
He was pleased.
James Burke, rich art Dealer, married to a beautiful woman, Man-about-Town, would be immersed in a huge
scandale
if this was known, and he was
pleased
?

‘Are you glad, Grace?’ he said to me.

I stared at him.

He took my hand in his warm, dry one and laid both hands upon me, where the child lay; and as his hand lay there, because I was so used to speaking to and acting towards this man with complete honesty (I - who had become so adept at dissembling - had not, with him, a prevaricating cell in my body except not telling him I had tried to paint him), I said, ‘James, James, you must help me at once!’

‘Of course - of course I will help you!’ He was smiling and smiling and smiling. ‘Did you think I would run away and leave you? It is our child. I have longed all my life to have a child, of course I will help you. You must go away very soon, far away from London, and have the child quietly somewhere, you must live somewhere else with the child. We will make plans.’ They were such strange, unexpected words that at first I could not understand that he did not understand:
another child: another Life. He did not know but I knew
,
I knew what that meant: I saw the two bundles placed in my arms and my brother and Angelica already turned away
,
not again not again - and gone from my beloved city so that there would be no scandal? gone from my city? gone from London?

‘James, you must help me to - to,’ - it was very hard to say the words but there was no question of anything else, ‘- lose it at once, you must help me, I cannot have a child, I am a Painter, I cannot have a child.’ Suddenly I was weeping great heaving gasps from somewhere deep inside me that I did not even understand. ‘I must paint, James, please
please
understand, I must be free to paint at last, after all these years of hiding in a sewing-room, all my life here I have been looking after people, I have had, you could say, two children already and they have just left,
just left
- I cannot have a child - I do not want a child - I cannot wait any longer, I am a Painter.’ I heard my own voice rising in the room. ‘I do not want another child!’

It was as if he had been stung, or stabbed. He sat up at once, he stared at me then with a look of disbelief as if I was talking heresy. ‘You cannot mean that. I will look after you, I will send you away, somewhere far away.’

‘No,’ I said. I had not prepared anything of what I said then but it was my words that came tumbling out with the weeping, ‘I do not want to be sent far away, London is where I work! I have to be here, in London, my portraits are here!’ all my pent-up feelings were bursting their banks and somewhere Poppy’s words, Angelica’s words,
it is all right if it has not quickened
, ‘tomorrow! I want it over tomorrow, if I have a child I will never, never, never fulfil my Dream and I have waited for my Dream, I have given up everything - freedom, innocence, time, years, self-respect, for years and years until it is
almost too late
,’ and all the despair of all my life flooded into my words to the one person in the whole World who knew what I could do, I wept and wept as if I wept out my life; it was a long time before I could stop the deep, dark weeping.

There was a long, long silence.

The house in Pall Mall was completely silent.

I believe I heard the beating of both our hearts.

Finally James got up, slowly put his clothes upon him, buttoning slowly. I waited. ‘Very well. There is a woman in Meard-street, off Covent Garden. Tomorrow,’ - he was thrusting now at his clothes, putting on his coat - ‘tomorrow I will arrange it and you will go there. I will send a message.’ And then he was gone.

 

Of course I thought he would be there. Of course I thought he would come with me. But James did not come with me, he had paid money to the woman in Meard-street - twenty pounds I believe it was, so much money, more than a milliner could earn in years, more than Mr Reynolds paid for his Rembrandt painting; there were basements all over London for this sort of thing for a pound: everybody knew it: Angelica, Poppy, all women knew, it was part of the city - but the woman in the basement in Meard-street (
Meard-street where I had thought to have my Studio
) that woman, I came to understand, was the person the Nobility used: she was very Expensive and very successful, she knew she could command her Fee; he did not come to me, he sent me a message , where to go, he left me to deal with my decision alone - money, nothing else. I went to the door of the house as he instructed me in his note and in Meard-street, in the large basement with thick drawn satin curtains and a four-poster bed and two maids and - she may have been for the Nobility but it was the same process used all over London as I knew from Angelica and Poppy - and there was a thin copper stick that was thrust into me over and over, then I was served tea by one of the maids, then I was sent home in a small covered carriage, part of the twenty-pound service, I alighted at the corner of the Strand.