by Chris Curran
Alex shook his head. ‘No, I can’t believe that of David.’
‘He knew Stella at the time and if they did have an affair he could have been lying to Mum all these years as well as to me. Or maybe she decided to forgive and forget. Just glad to get a baby.’
‘Eve, this is ridiculous. It’s your parents we’re talking about.’
‘I wonder what he’ll say if I ask for a DNA test?’
‘You wouldn’t do that, would you?’
She suddenly felt enormously weary. ‘I don’t know.’ Alex was right that she needed to rest and she wanted to be alert when her mother came round tomorrow. She collected their dishes, tipped the remains in the bin and put the plates into the sink. ‘I think I will go up now.’ She kissed his hair, but stopped at the door. ‘You know, after what I’ve learned about my parents today I don’t feel I know them at all.’
She fell into a fitful sleep as soon as she was in bed. At one point, half-awake and not sure if she was dreaming, she thought she heard Alex talking to someone on the phone.
CHAPTER THREE
Stella
Stella had delivered two paintings to the Houghton Gallery. Holding them at arm’s length, as if they were grubby or possibly dangerous, the glamorous receptionist had put them into a cupboard behind her desk and said Mr Ballantyne would call when he’d had a chance to see them. It was clear she didn’t expect the news to be positive.
That was two days ago and, although Maggie told her she was stupid to be downcast, she kept expecting a request to remove her rubbish from the premises.
She had spent the morning at the Tate Gallery. She loved the place and at the moment they had a small exhibition of a group of artists who worked in the East End of London during the 1930s. One of them, George Grafton, was her favourite. Many of his paintings had been destroyed in the 1941 air raid in which he died: but some of his drawings had survived and she found copying them oddly soothing. She’d even started doing one or two of her own in his style. They were quite different from her usual stuff, but that was part of the pleasure. Made it more like playing than work.
It was a lovely afternoon and when she walked down the steps from the gallery there was the first hint of spring in the air. The Thames across the road glittered; each ripple sparkling as it caught the sunlight.
When she opened the front door, calling to Maggie as she did so, Ben waltzed out of the living room. Maggie was behind him looking furious, and Stella headed towards the stairs. Best to make herself scarce.
But Ben was looking at her with a broad smile. ‘Ah, just the girl I want to see.’
She stopped and glanced at Maggie, but she muttered something and went into the kitchen closing the door behind her.
Ben said, ‘David hasn’t stopped raving about your work for two days. Wants to make it the centre of the exhibition. If he has anything to do with it you’re going to be a star.’
Stella stopped halfway up the stairs. After what seemed an age she managed to say, ‘Thank you. That’s wonderful.’
Ben was rubbing his hands together. ‘Now, I’ve got the car outside and Maggie tells me you have more work complete. So what do you say we load the boot and take it to the gallery now?’ He bounded up past her, holding out his hand to take her drawing folder from her.
She hadn’t made her bed this morning and there were clothes scattered on the floor and dirty cups on the bedside table and the window ledge.
With her folder under his arm, Ben headed straight for the picture of her nan on the easel, touching it with a fingertip to check it was dry. ‘Right, we’ll take this one and …’ He turned to the canvases propped up by the wall. ‘This and this and, yes, this too.’
In less than ten minutes they had carried them out to his car.
As she left the house she called, ‘Goodbye,’ to Maggie. There was no reply.
Eve
As soon as Alex left in the morning Eve went onto the Internet looking for more information about Stella. There were several reports on the Baltic exhibition, talking of her talent and the tragedy of her early death. Only one gave any details about that and as Eve read she felt something cold clench deep inside.
Stella’s death was tragic. She had recently moved to Italy and was painting in a garden studio when it burned down. There were some suggestions that she was depressed at the time, but the Italian authorities eventually declared her death accidental.
Depressed at the time. Eve looked away from the screen and turned the phrase over in her mind. Where had those suggestions come from? The article was from The Guardian, so she found the contact details for the columnist and wrote a message.
I’m doing some research into the life and work of Stella Carr and wondered if you could tell me where the suggestions that she might have been depressed before her death came from.
She thought about it for a moment and added:
I’m working with Dr Alex Peyton and with David Ballantyne.
It was true, up to a point, and she hoped her own name, Eve Ballantyne, might help to give her enquiry more substance.
She couldn’t stop that phrase depressed at the time from echoing in her head. Was it code for suicidal? Eve knew about depression. Her first year teaching art in a tough London comprehensive had been difficult. She had been trying to make a go of her own painting; working late into the night after she’d completed everything for school. Alex had been supportive, but eventually she had a breakdown. It was a nightmare that went on for months and, just as she was beginning to come back to herself, her mother’s heart attack sent her back into turmoil. But that turned out for the best. They moved down to Hastings, she took a job in a local school and loved it. Nowadays she hardly painted.
What if she’d inherited a tendency to depression? She shook her head. Nothing good could come of thinking like that.
It didn’t help that when her mum arrived at the house later that morning her first words were, ‘Eve, you look exhausted.’
She forced herself not to say that it might be because of the shock she’d had yesterday. During her teenage years she had fought with Jill all the time and she still felt guilty about that.
As usual Jill headed for the kitchen, opening the lid of the cake tin she was carrying. ‘I made a sponge.’
Eve had expected this and, although she was desperate to get down to talking about Stella, she had already percolated the coffee and put mugs and plates on the table. Her jaw tensed as she watched her mother cut the cake saying, ‘What do you think? I thought it looked a bit dry.’ Just like any normal day.
Eve nibbled at a few crumbs. ‘It’s fine. Lovely, as always. Now please, Mum, tell me everything.’
After what seemed an age Jill put her palms together and said, ‘We’re sorry for not being honest with you. We spent all last evening talking about it and your father seems to think the friend who let us know about Stella’s death was the girl with her in the painting from the article – Maggie. He vaguely remembers her from the time of the Houghton exhibition and has an idea that Stella was sharing a house with her.’
This was something. ‘What was her surname?’
‘He can’t remember. Only that she had some collages in the show. Apparently they weren’t very good. Ben chose them and he wasn’t the greatest judge of art.’
‘Gallery owner was a strange choice of career for him then.’
‘Dad says he liked the glamour of it. It actually belonged to his wife, Pamela. She had the money and was a bit of a socialite, enjoyed hosting openings and so on. Not something I was interested in. I hardly ever went there.’
Eve told herself to be patient. It wasn’t easy. ‘So you never met Stella?’
Her mother fitted the lid of the cake tin back on, pressing it carefully into place. Still smoothing her hands over it, she spoke without looking at Eve. ‘Actually she stayed with us for a while before you were born.’
‘What?’ Eve plonked her mug down so hard the coffee splashed on her hand. She rubbed it off with th
e sleeve of her jumper, struggling to get the words out. ‘Stella lived with you down here?’ She was, what was the word? Damn pregnancy for making her head so woolly. Astounded, that was it, she was astounded. She’d assumed her mother had only met Stella when they picked up the baby (it was impossible to think of that child as herself).
‘She didn’t have anywhere else to go, you see. No family and I think she had to move out of the place where she was living.’
‘With Maggie?’
‘I suppose so. Although …’
‘So it wasn’t just Dad? You knew my birth mother too and you never told me.’ It was little more than a gasp.
Jill moved back – away from her – and turned her mug round and round on the table looking at it with intense concentration. Her voice wobbled. ‘We never set out to keep anything from you.’
‘But you did. You knew her. You could have told me what she was like. You could have told me so many things. Even the fact that my mother was an artist might have made me try a bit harder with my own painting.’ A chill shivered through her. ‘Was she so horrible you thought it better I didn’t know?’
Jill grabbed her hand. ‘Of course she wasn’t. Like we always said, she was a young girl in an impossible situation. And giving you to us was her way of doing the best she could for you.’
Eve looked into the hazel eyes she knew so well. The eyes that had comforted her when she was a little girl crying over a scraped knee or a bust-up with her friends. Eve’s own eyes were a similar colour and she’d always been happy about that. It seemed to connect them.
‘Please, Mum, tell me everything. I mean how did Dad even find out about her pregnancy if he hardly knew her?’
Her mother shook her head and took in a shuddering breath. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but there was nothing between them. He would never have done that to me. He’s always been the kind of person people can talk to and she confided in him. She was alone and virtually penniless. She came to live here because she had nowhere else to go.’
This was unbelievable. ‘You must have got to know her then.’
‘Not really. She was very quiet and she wasn’t here long.’
‘And how did you first find out about her death?’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. Through people in the art world I suppose. The note came later and even that was just a few lines. The truth is, and I’m sorry if this makes us sound callous, we knew Stella for such a short time and we began, very early on, to think of you as our own. We loved you so much right from the start that we didn’t want to be reminded of how you came into our lives. But we’ve always been grateful to her.’
They didn’t speak for a long while. Eve told herself nothing had really changed. She’d had a wonderful childhood; couldn’t have chosen better parents. But why, oh why, hadn’t they told her the truth? ‘What about the note? Did you find it?’
Jill looked at her watch. She was always busy. If she wasn’t helping David in the gallery, she was involved with various local groups and charities. She began rooting in her bag for her car keys. ‘I’m sorry, no, but I’ll search for it tonight.’
‘What did it say about how she died?’
‘Just that there was a fire.’ The zip on her handbag seemed to be giving her trouble.
Eve took a breath. ‘Only I read that there were suggestions she was depressed. Which might mean it was suicide. And then there was the comment about it being mysterious. What does that mean? That the fire might not have been accidental?’
Jill stopped. She sat down again and gripped Eve’s hand. ‘Oh, don’t start thinking like that.’ Her voice quavered. ‘I promise I’ll find the note and we’ll answer as many of your questions as we can. But, darling, please concentrate on yourself and the baby for the moment. It’s all in the past. Your health is the most important thing. Alex said you were exhausted last night.’
‘You’ve spoken to him?’
‘Dad rang him when you were asleep. Just to check you were all right.’ Eve’s face must have shown what she was feeling because Jill touched her cheek. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve said something wrong.’
Eve tried to smile. ‘No, it’s fine.’
But it wasn’t fine. Alex hadn’t mentioned the call, and she didn’t like the idea of them all discussing her behind her back. She followed Jill to the door and after they’d hugged she went into the front room, standing away from the window so she couldn’t be seen, and watched her mother heading along the street to her car.
At the car door Jill turned to stare back at the house, her knuckles pressed against her lips. And the chill that had settled in Eve’s stomach turned to ice.
Stella
Houghton’s was closed, but Ben let them in through a side door. David appeared and helped take the pictures inside. He leaned one against the reception desk and spread the others out along the pale wall. For a few silent minutes he stood, arms folded, looking at them. Then said one word, ‘Superb.’ And finally Stella was able to breathe.
‘Thank you,’ was all she could say, and it seemed to make David aware of her for the first time.
He shook his head at her. ‘No, thank you, Stella. These are beautiful. Fresh, original and so full of life. Just what we need as the centrepiece of the exhibition.’
Ben had disappeared into the office and came back with a bottle of champagne and three glasses. Stella stood in a daze as he popped the cork and poured the foaming wine into her glass. They clinked and Ben and David both kissed her on the cheek.
David raised his glass to her. ‘Here’s to our new star.’ He laughed. ‘I love the signature by the way.’
Stella grinned, too shocked to say anything. Her nan had always called her a little star and that’s why she used the shooting star as her signature. Ben had obviously not noticed it because he bent down to study the bottom of one of the pictures. ‘Ha!’ His laugh was loud in the big empty space. ‘A star for a star. Very clever. And I predict you will soon be stellar, Stella.’ Another booming laugh.
Stella glanced at David, not sure why she felt embarrassed, but he just swallowed the last of his champagne and said, ‘Well, I must get home, lots to do tomorrow. It’s times like this when I wonder if we were right to move down to the coast.’
Ben laughed and slapped his back as he walked away. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ but David gave a cheery wave.
Stella finished her wine, coughing slightly because it was so bubbly, and Ben went to fill her glass again. ‘Thank you, but I’d better get away too. I’m going out tonight.’ It wasn’t true, but she knew she wouldn’t feel comfortable alone in this big space with him. Silly really because he could obviously have his choice of women, so would hardly be bothered with an ordinary girl like her.
‘I dragged you over here, so you must let me take you back. Anyway I want to talk to Maggie.’ He rubbed her shoulder. ‘Think I annoyed her this afternoon.’
Stella had been so nervous on the way that she hadn’t noticed how fast he drove, but in the car going back he obviously guessed she was worried and put his hand on her knee.
‘Relax, it’s quite safe.’ She must have tensed because he gave her a little pat and said, ‘I’ll slow down.’
He began talking about her work. Full of enthusiasm. ‘I’ve never seen David so excited. We see a big future for you, Stella. And we want to feature your picture on the cover of the catalogue.’
It was all so amazing she just sat staring out of the window seeing nothing but a blur. Finally she realized he was waiting for her to say something and she blurted out, ‘Which picture?’ flushing because that sounded stupid.
Another of his loud laughs, making her feel idiotic again. ‘No, I mean your photograph. You’ll be the perfect poster girl.’ Another pat to her thigh. ‘I’ll be honest with you, we were going to use Maggie, but you’re much the better artist.’
His large hand was still on her knee as they drew up outside the house and it was impossible to move without seeming rud
e. Still tongue-tied she could only manage a strangled, ‘Thank you.’ She put her hand on the door.
‘And of course …’ he gave her thigh a little squeeze as he opened his own door, ‘you just about beat Maggie in the looks stakes, too.’
Before she could get out he was round her side taking her hand to help her. She moved quickly away, planning to run straight up to her room with the excuse that she had to change for her imaginary night out.
But as she reached the gate he said, ‘On second thought, I won’t come in just now. Let her ladyship cool down.’
Then, before she could move, his hand was behind her head and he was kissing her hard on the lips. It only lasted a second then he turned away, heading back to the car as if nothing had happened.
In the driver’s seat he rolled down the window and said, ‘We need to do those photos ASAP. So I’ll collect you in the morning and take you to the studio. Eight sharp.’ That loud laugh again, echoing down the quiet evening street.
When he roared away Stella stood one hand still on the gate the other pressed to her lips. She was almost afraid to let go of the gate because her legs felt like jelly. What had just happened? And was it really true that her work was set to be a success? She couldn’t think and told herself the only thing to do about that kiss was to pretend it had never happened.
But as she gave herself a little shake and opened the gate, she realized the curtain in Maggie’s bedroom was pulled back and Maggie, her face a frozen white mask, was standing there staring down at her.
Eve
When Alex got home Eve was checking the cod roasting in the oven. It took her a while to straighten up nowadays and Alex laughed and came behind her to haul her upright. Then he lifted her hair and kissed the back of her neck. ‘Sorry I’m late. They cancelled my usual train and the next one was a packed.’ He opened the fridge and poured himself some milk, holding up the carton. ‘Want some?’
She shook her head determined to get it out right away. ‘You didn’t tell me about Dad’s call last night.’