What Alice Knew

by T. A. Cotterell

  Marianne Hever marched into the drawing room a minute after half past nine. I’d been there an hour, erecting my easel, sorting my paints, waiting. There was nothing to read and almost nothing to look at – a life-size wire sculpture of a grand piano in a corner, a glass coffee table, an olive and green abstract (think Ben Nicholson) that reminded me of maths prep. Two white four-seater sofas faced each other. They were almost parodic given the lack of conversation I’d had. It was pointless to mix paints or transfer any to my palette as I had no idea what clothes Marnie would be wearing or what colouring she would have. I had refused Johnson’s saturnine offer of ‘a full English’ as I sat alone at a dining-room table that could seat twenty. My stomach was unsettled as it was.

  ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’

  Despite the irony, Marnie’s tone was neutral. There was scarcely a trace of the drawn-out Mancunian vowels that had set her apart at a southern private school. She crossed the room briskly. The last time I had seen her she was being hauled out of the dormitory. It was hard to equate that girl with the sophisticated woman standing in front of me. Menthol cigarettes mingled with expensive perfume.

  I stood up. Marnie’s face looked as greedy for life as it had twenty years before. Her hair cascaded downwards from a centre parting like a theatre curtain framing a perfectly symmetrical stage set containing those radiant eyes, come-hither lips, that broad slash of a mouth. When she smiled the sun flooded in, as if we had been friends forever. It wasn’t hard to see how she had built a successful business. I momentarily wondered whether we should kiss or hug, but she coolly held out her hand. Her grip was firm.

  ‘Marnie!’ The moment I said it I knew I wasn’t ready to paint her and wished I hadn’t come. ‘How lovely to see you.’

  ‘It’s Marianne now.’

  I understood. In a single sentence I realized that, unlike almost everyone else at school, she’d never wanted or needed to do the ‘right thing’ – where she’d come from there was no ‘right thing’. She had always understood a possibility most people only grasp when it’s too late: her life was hers and she could do with it whatever she wanted. And she had done.

  ‘Marianne. How lovely to see you.’

  ‘It’s been a while.’

  There was no sarcasm, only the faintly ironic lilt I remembered, a kind of distance that held a mirror to the rest of us who thought we were so worldly-wise because we had stayed at country houses and summered on Paxos, or partied in SW3. I had been Marnie’s only friend and she’d been mine and, whatever she’d done wrong, I had failed her. I felt more than regret for the way I had behaved, the years I had missed. She sat down on one of the sofas and indicated the other for me.

  ‘You are happy to talk before we start?’

  ‘More than happy, it’s essential. I knew Marnie. I’ve got to paint Marianne.’

  ‘You think they’ll be different?’

  ‘I know they’ll be different.’

  She nodded thoughtfully as Johnson appeared with a tray. Cups and saucers and a pot of coffee. Petits fours. He was a small man, swarthy as a Spaniard, short-sleeved, frowning. A snake tattoo slithered out on to his forearm. Marianne waited until he had gone before saying,

  ‘Well, where do you want to start?’

  I had thought a lot about where I wanted to start. I wanted to start with an apology. The problem was it wasn’t my prerogative to raise the subject, that ghost at the feast.

  ‘Tell me about yourself. Everything that’s happened in the last twenty years.’

  I kept it as neutral as possible. She could start after school if she wanted, or the day it happened. I could go either way. In such a way does the portraitist proceed, withdrawing behind the easel, luring out the sitter like a rabbit from a hole.

  Marianne started after school. She touched on her brief marriage as a nineteen-year-old to a songwriter named Rob and its failure after he slept with his keyboardist. She spoke about being a single mother, how it had forced her to take any job, initially as the only girl in an M&S warehouse, a bracing world of wolf whistles and catcalls, next as a shop girl, later still a buyer. She told me how an older man, a supplier with whom she’d had a relationship, who believed in her, lent her the money to start on her own. ‘And the rest …’ She inclined her head mock-modestly, gesturing to the size of the room.

  Gradually, as she talked about her son who had just started university, her therapeutic sculpting, and played down her success, Marianne became Marnie, enthusiastic and loquacious, hungry to hear about Ed and Nell and Arthur, Bristol, the people I’d painted. When she’d been answering and asking questions for almost an hour, school unmentioned, and it was probably time to start, I said,

  ‘One thing: I ran into Lucy Rennell the other day and she said she’d bumped into you in London a couple of years ago and you said we still saw each other. I was wondering, why did you say that?’

  Marianne’s face creased as if I’d told a joke.

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘No reason?’

  ‘We shared a taxi. She was being so boring about all her do-gooding and school, saying how she saw all these people I couldn’t even remember, so I said I saw you.’ She shrugged. ‘It was no big deal.’

  ‘Oh, OK. I just wondered.’

  ‘And can I ask you a question before we begin?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘That thing that happened the other day: why did the police pick you and your husband up for the girl’s murder?’

  I should have known Marnie would never stick to the script. I rapidly pulled myself together and, hugging the party line, explained about Ed’s exhaustion and out-of-character drunkenness at Pete’s party, how he went back to Stokes Croft with Araminta and several others from London, how he’d thought better of it but there were no cabs and he’d forgotten his mobile, which meant he had to go up to the flat to call one, how he’d had another drink and crashed out and fixed her plumbing before leaving, and how the flowers had been enough to set the police hares running.

  ‘Had she called a plumber before?’

  In all the time I knew her, Marnie had never asked a stupid question. It was a timely reminder. Marianne Hever didn’t owe me any loyalty. Marnie Latham certainly didn’t. Chrissie Wright had rung the morning after I had been on the news. I suddenly realized that probably wasn’t a coincidence.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Because if she had and for whatever reason he hadn’t turned up then Ed would be totally in the clear. Isn’t that worth checking?’

  She crossed her legs, her elegant calves. I licked dry lips. This was not terrain on which I wanted to find myself. I tried to sound relaxed.

  ‘Yes, it is. Good idea.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t done that?’

  There was incredulity in her voice. I shook my head.

  ‘But surely that was the first thing to do?’

  ‘Maybe the police have. I haven’t. I trust Ed.’

  ‘I trusted Rob.’

  By the time I had primed the canvas I understood exactly how the infectious Marnie had become the poised Marianne. I also realized I had a compositional problem. How could I paint Marianne Hever in her own home without reference to the singular spatial geometry of the house she told me she had self-designed? Yet how could any geometric construct do justice to the wit, perceptiveness, common sense, determination, vivacity, curiosity, sensitivity and intelligence of the woman I had been talking to? The brutal logic of mathematics denies the exceptionalism of the individual (how many times have I told Ed that?) and rarely had I met anyone as exceptional as Marianne. She had slept and fought and manipulated and charmed and worked and thought her way from pretty much the absolute bottom to pretty much the very top, and she’d done it with no benefit from the scholarship she’d won to a southern boarding school.

  While we talked I assembled the pose. She would stand. Her energy and engagement with the world outside demanded it. Julie had sat on her throne because she was queen of all she su
rveyed, but it was purely ceremonial and didn’t extend beyond Ray’s four walls. Standing is tiring but Marianne would cope. She’s a tough cookie, her history told you that. I would sit, perched on my stool, palette and paint trolley to hand, looking up literally and metaphorically, acknowledging a woman in control of her destiny. I decided to use the orange abstract in the hall as the only colour in an otherwise all-white background, unanchored, off-centre, sans fireplace. The sitter needs a point of reference, and what could be better than that circular painting? The nod to geometry was essential. Not just because of the house but because mathematics is part of who Marianne is. You didn’t become as successful as she had in business without a Euclidean feel for figures and spreadsheets, all that stuff I’ve never understood and never wanted to understand. At the same time I would have to undermine the geometry if I was going to capture her humanity. She needed to be floating in space, cut off from her roots, yet still be the source of the painting’s energy. Marianne must be enhanced, not outshone, by that sunburst of orange. That would serve as an oblique contrast, a mathematical motif, a painting within the painting.

  She had chosen an expensive black business suit, ‘not from one of my shops’. The skirt revealed a glimmer of thigh. Her legs are good. I never make suggestions about what my sitters should wear and refuse if they ask for advice. It is their choice and one way they reveal themselves. Tyrants invariably turn up in jeans and a T-shirt, self-delusion being an essential characteristic of the tyrannical. Marianne’s suit was the first chink in her armour. It told me she wanted to be respected, maybe even needed to be respected. Maybe she needed to be respected by me? I would try to capture that hint of doubt.

  I squeezed gouts of colour from tubes, alizarin crimson, ultramarine and flake white for her skin, raw umber to temper her mine-black suit, before sketching her outline in pencil. I needed a sense of the whole before starting, like Hansel dropping his pebbles. By the end of the session I was making progress.

  The second day did not start well. Marianne had worked through dinner, leaving me to eat on my own again, missed breakfast and didn’t reappear until ten, an hour and a half after we were supposed to start. She didn’t apologize. I didn’t say anything. We both knew we only had four days. If we didn’t finish I could add the final touches in my studio, though given it was west-facing there were obvious implications for colour and tone. It wouldn’t be the first time. More than once a problem I’d wrestled with interminably in front of the sitter had been solved as soon as I was home alone and liberated from his or her desire to shape the outcome. Those moments of sudden resolution are ones you chase, when the clouds part and the sun breaks through. Almost in spite of her, the painting gained weight and strength.

  At lunchtime she excused herself again, citing business. Did she ever eat? I sat alone in her dining room and picked at chicken chasseur, scented with cumin, and broad beans from the kitchen garden. Johnson was an excellent cook but I wasn’t hungry. I rarely am when I’m working. Yet I knew it was more than that. Although the portrait was progressing, I had a feeling I was not in control. It was as if Marianne was undermining me in some way. Nibbling on the chicken, I couldn’t work out whether the feeling related to her or her portrait.

  Half an hour after we should have restarted Chrissie bustled in wearing her heatwave outfit of red cords, Puffa jacket and pearls. She said Marianne had had to go into work. There was no apology. I was becoming irritated. I wanted to work. I wanted to spend time with Marianne. I wanted to eat with her. I wanted to immerse myself in her. I didn’t have to be her friend again but I only had four days and I wanted to squeeze them dry. It was her portrait, my career. Sitting in that bright shell of a drawing room, it was hard not to feel there was movement behind the story, some purpose about which only I was unaware.

  Chrissie was full of useless suggestions. Was there anything I wanted to do? Everything could be arranged. Would I like to explore the park? Go riding? Boating? Go into Manchester? A driver was available.

  ‘I’ll work on the background, thanks.’

  She disappeared through an invisible door in what I had previously assumed was bare wall, leaving me in the empty room. Almost every door here was concealed in a wall. I looked around wondering if there were any others I had missed, or anything else. In the top corner of the room there was a small silver ball I hadn’t noticed. Smoke alarm? CCTV? It was impossible to know. Was I being watched by Chrissie, or Johnson, or even Marianne? How did I know she had gone into Manchester? I hadn’t seen or heard her car leave. For all I knew she was still in Bow House watching me. Standing there in that stark white room, every corner lit by a bullying sun, I felt as exposed as a Sunday kiss-and-tell. And suddenly I wondered if the whole project was designed to be some sort of career-destroying revenge for what had happened in the dormitory all those years ago.

  Don’t be ridiculous! She hadn’t even mentioned the dormitory. Marianne Hever ran a multimillion-pound company. She made a thousand decisions every day. Of course some would require her to be at her desk, not standing at home having her portrait painted.

  Maybe she had only worn the business suit so she could slip off to work at a moment’s notice? But if that was the case, then she wasn’t wearing it because she ‘needed’ to be respected or, specifically, ‘needed’ to be respected ‘by me’. That would change the dynamic of the portrait. But how to reflect it? The question prompted a second: had I jumped to too many easy conclusions? My stomach gave an answer I didn’t wish to acknowledge. That had never been a problem before. It couldn’t only be the result of the lack of time I spent with her before the sitting because, if rare, that wasn’t unique. So if I had, there could only be one reason for it.

  I stared at the portrait helplessly. I had been planning to work up the left side of Marianne’s face in the afternoon, but now I wasn’t so sure. I stood and moved back from my stool to gain a wider perspective. It didn’t feel right. I looked hard. I had to understand what I needed to do to create the balance that would enable me to start on her left side. Maybe her forehead needed more definition? Was her collarbone too pronounced, her neck too slim? Or did the problem lie in the brushwork? Was it too hot and heavy for someone as cool as Marianne? The canvas sat unhelpfully on its easel. Marianne offered no clues. I sat down again. And for the first time in my career I didn’t know what to do next.

  ‘Do you think you were screwed up by your upbringing?’

  Marianne’s opening gambit on the third morning. I was so surprised all I could manage was a grunted ‘No.’ I turned away and mixed a gob of cadmium red into some grey on my palette, making clear it wasn’t a line of conversation I wanted to pursue. The portraitist should never become the subject or a work is guaranteed to fail. Marianne’s teeth were as sharp as a rodent’s, but her voice was soft.

  ‘All roads lead to Highlands.’

  I looked at my palette knife. The cerulean was streaked with titanium white and alizarin crimson for her eyes. The silence grew. I said, perhaps too haughtily,

  ‘I’m surprised you remember Highlands. I didn’t think you ever went there.’

  ‘I didn’t. But it sounded so weird I’ve never forgotten it. The mum who never showed any love. The dad who died but who never came home even when he was alive. The brother who was so out of it he thought going to Oxford was a jail sentence. The sister who buried herself in books and never engaged with real life. Then again, I’m not sure any of your family ever engaged with the outside world, except for you. You were their only link to it. Otherwise it sounded like five people living separate lives under the same roof. I always thought the mad house on the moor that you described was the perfect metaphor for isolation.’

  I put my palette down on the trolley. In spite of their faults I was protective of my family – there had been times when it felt as if I was the only one trying to keep the show on the road – and I knew I couldn’t let Marianne get under my skin. Was she really trying to goad me or was I being paranoid? I glanced at the portrait
. The painted Marianne stared down at me, superiority (and contempt?) in her eyes. It was impossible to know. It was as if everything – Marianne in the dormitory, my life, Ed, that woman, Philips, this portrait, our family – had morphed into a single painted accusation. I had to move the conversation on.

  ‘Why did you ask me to come here and paint you?’

  Marianne’s mouth twitched humorously.

  ‘Because I wanted my portrait painted and you have a reputation.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘And because I wanted to see you again.’

  ‘You could have called. We could have had lunch.’

  ‘Because I wanted you to paint my portrait. I wanted to spend some proper time with you.’

  I was tempted to say she had spent as little time as humanly possible with me, but instead I said,

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Because you were never a “why not?” sort of person.’

  Marianne inclined her head and her nose flared like a fox sniffing for scent.

  ‘OK, here’s why: I always planned to get in touch again, I just didn’t know when. I always assumed there would be a time when it would feel right. It was never about showing you how successful I was – I could have done that years ago. Besides, I know that’s not what you’re about. Then I saw you on the news the other day, losing your cool with that journalist, and I knew now was the moment.’ She relaxed her pose. ‘I was intrigued. Because the Alice Tenterden I remembered was far too self-possessed to explode like that. And that set me wondering. Stress works on different people in different ways. I see it all the time in business. I wondered what the stress that was affecting you might be.’