What Alice Knew

by T. A. Cotterell

  ‘You have children. You wouldn’t want Jack to see his mother treated like that.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. But children survive. They’re stronger than we give them credit for.’

  ‘Mine are still young.’

  ‘Sure, but they’re growing up, they’re becoming who they are. Teenagers are broadly formed. Their characters are set, their strengths and weaknesses. They’ve turned to their peers for influence. God knows, I of all people should understand that. The fashion industry lives off that insight.’

  Her voice was strong but there was a tint of melancholy, an emptiness that is a kind of loneliness. I felt a stab of pity. I was transported back to the dormitory, to the moment her lofty idealism was betrayed by grubby reality. I had always had options she never had. Her life might seem enviable now but I wouldn’t swap it for mine.

  ‘Do you miss Jack?’

  ‘Everyone misses their past.’

  ‘Is that why you wanted your portrait painted?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted my portrait painted.’

  ‘By me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now I’m infamous …’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘And I wanted to see you again. See how you’d turned out. My guess, call it my intuition, is that you probably don’t have any close friends, not properly close anyway. You never did at school, except me, and I always seemed an aberration, the result of my background and your admirable if somewhat ironic dislike of spoilt people. You’re not the type to get close to other people, it’s not hard to see where it comes from. As I said, I’ve never come across a family that sounded so disconnected. I suspect Ed is the same.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘In terms of friends. Thing is, I have always found that people marry to type at some subliminal level. They marry attitudes and ambitions they understand. I know his background is nearer mine than yours, but he’s an obstetrician and you’re a portrait painter. They’re vocations, not jobs. They take you into an enclosed world totally removed from your past. In fact, when I found out that’s what you had become I rather admired you for choosing it as a career. It’s exactly what I would have recommended if I had thought of it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I didn’t try to hide the sarcasm.

  ‘It seemed ideal for someone who had watched from behind the sofa as her family fell apart, yet emerged unhurt from the wreckage to go to Cambridge, marry the great doctor and build herself a successful career.’

  ‘Portraiture isn’t exactly fashionable. At least, not in oil.’

  Marianne gave a dry laugh.

  ‘But you’re doing what you want, and, more importantly, you believe in it. To that extent you’ve never changed. Because the Alice I knew always wanted – always needed to believe. So, when you blew up in the street that day I felt something was wrong: I didn’t know what it was, obviously, but I wanted to see you again, and I felt that now was the time.’

  ‘I’m touched.’

  ‘And I wanted to see whether my hunch was right.’

  ‘Your hunch?’

  Marianne paused, as if for a moment she was battling with herself, unsure whether to continue. We both knew she was posturing.

  ‘That you or Ed or both of you together really did have some connection to the death of that girl.’

  She watched me like a chemistry teacher waiting for a reaction to begin. I stared back, blank as an empty test tube, but Marianne simply arched an eyebrow. I shook my head at the absurdity of it.

  ‘That’s ridiculous! If there was any doubt the police wouldn’t have let us go.’

  Marianne cocked her head and looked at me sceptically. I had to move everything on.

  ‘Can we get on with the portrait?’

  For a moment I thought she hadn’t heard, but then she nodded graciously, said, ‘Of course’, and re-established her pose. She had a feline quality, mischievous and dangerous. Marianne had lit her fuse. I retreated behind the easel. When I did look up it was only to line her up with a heavy brush and to ask her to tilt her head slightly to the right. She tilted.

  We had a long period of silence. I tried not to think about Marianne’s accusation but it was impossible to divorce it from the character I was painting. I had to hope we could move on, but as the morning lengthened I realized I was exhausted, deep-down exhausted, cut adrift at sea, oar-less, unable to stop, unable to go on. Forward motion, time itself, seemed buried in the past. I desperately needed a break but was conscious I wasn’t as advanced as I needed to be, the result of that wasted afternoon, the first morning spent chatting and Marianne’s persistent absences. I thanked God there was no background beyond the orange abstract, which I could paint in my studio. It was simply a case of recreating the amazing orange. I re-cast her nose. It worked on its own with the eyes but in adding her mouth it seemed to have shifted, making her look crafty in a way she signally wasn’t. I was dabbing Naples yellow on to the underside of her bottom lip when she said,

  ‘What would you do if Ed had done it?’

  I smudged a fleck of umber on her left eyebrow with my finger.

  ‘He didn’t.’

  It was as if I hadn’t spoken.

  ‘If, I don’t know, something had happened between them?’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  I put my paintbrush to my mouth and held it horizontally between my teeth while I picked up another. It’s an old trick when you don’t want to answer. I raised an angled palm like a hairdresser, motioning her to turn her head slightly left.

  ‘After all, it wouldn’t be the first time.’

  I mumbled a couple of words, paintbrush-unintelligible, and touched a glimpse of terre verte to the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Middle-aged man meets young woman at a party. Is flattered by the attention. Gets drunk and stays the night.’

  I took the paintbrush out of my mouth and wiggled it in the jam jar of turps.

  ‘He only stayed because there were no cabs.’

  ‘Oldest story under the sun.’

  ‘He’s not that obvious.’

  ‘Clichés are clichés for a reason.’

  I added a gob of cadmium yellow to the grey.

  ‘Marianne,’ I tried to sound as light-hearted as possible, ‘it didn’t happen. It’s not possible.’

  ‘Chronologically or temperamentally?’

  I dabbed Mars black on to her right ear to create greater weight on that side of her face. Tangerine to soften the black.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Because he was with you?’

  Rose madder for the ear. Only it sucked colour away from the eyes and Marianne shone in her eyes. If I messed them up I hadn’t got a portrait.

  ‘Because he was with me.’

  ‘How did I guess?’

  I ignored her intonation. Manganese blue for the eyes.

  ‘Hypothetically then.’

  ‘It’s not even possible hypothetically. It’s too out of character.’

  ‘Well, let’s just imagine he did. You’re the creative one. Out of character he gets drunk at the party. That’s not in dispute. Why? Because you’re not there? Because he’s knackered? Because a pretty girl hits on him?’

  The white disc of the sun blasted through the huge windows, burning the day. The lake shimmered in the haze. I forced myself to stay calm, allowing only the mildest indignation to creep into my voice.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Let’s imagine … So they go back to her flat.’

  ‘It wasn’t just him. That young guy who was arrested, he was there for a start. So were a whole lot of others.’

  Marianne gave a feathery grin.

  ‘OK, so he goes back there with an army. Then what happens? One by one the platoon disperses, falls in, falls out, falls asleep, falls in love, whatever, I don’t know, they’re young and single, there’s no law against it, until it’s just him and her, or maybe it’s not, but hey, who’s counting? No one knows him. You said the
y were all from London. And he’s already done one out-of-character thing that night by getting drunk, what’s to stop him doing another?’

  ‘That’s not his style.’

  ‘What? Ending up drunk in a flat with a lot of twenty- and thirty-year-olds is not his style?’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘Sounds like he was having a night off from his style.’

  ‘Marianne, you’re worse than the trolls!’

  She coolly brushed a forefinger against her temple as if it was a compliment. This was how she built her retail empire, pushing forward, never taking ‘no’ for an answer. How different it was to the tentative, questioning business of making art.

  ‘Put it this way: he went back to her flat; they were drunk; he stayed the night with the other guy; she’s dead; the other guy’s been released; the police think – or thought – Ed was involved in some way. They must have had some reason. It all stacks up.’

  I looked at the portrait on the easel. Was it even possible to capture her remorselessness? I had to treat it as if it was a joke. There was no alternative.

  ‘Now I know you’re bonkers!’

  ‘You don’t know anything.’

  What else could I say? That I was amazed and terrified by the ferocity of her intuition? No wonder she could predict what colours and styles everyone would want to be wearing the year after next. I dabbed a flash of viridian where her jacket caught the light. I had to hide behind my easel. Her portrait-eyes were on fire. They needed cooling down. They needed grey. I said firmly,

  ‘Actually I do know one thing. I know Ed. I know what I mean to him. I know what his children, who are not grown up and are not doing their own thing, mean to him. You may never have had a normal family life, but a family is irreducible in a way that’s impossible to describe. I’ve seen both sides too. I know Ed and I know he would never throw his family away.’ Marianne smirked triumphantly, so I added meanly,

  ‘A family can’t be replaced by a big house or a successful business. It only works with love. How do I know that? I just know.’

  I turned back to my palette, where I was running short of corn-yellow. She nodded, as if accepting the truth of my words, but then arched her back extravagantly and said,

  ‘Instinct is more powerful than knowledge.’

  I gritted my teeth. There was nothing I could say or do. I felt pinned to my stool. When she saw I wasn’t going to reply she said softly,

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’

  The answer was apparent but there was no point saying it.

  ‘I think he killed her.’

  It was as simple and brutal as that. She scanned my face for a reaction. I tried to look as if I’d never heard anything so ridiculous, but suddenly I didn’t trust myself to speak. How long can you defend the indefensible?

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling you a liar. I think you were probably with him whenever you said you were, but I also think he was with her when she died.’

  I didn’t want to listen. There was white noise in my ears. This was how it felt when your husband was charged with murder. I forced myself to meet her gaze, to give a disbelieving shake of the head, a false, sickly grin at the absurdity of the charge.

  ‘And, you know, I’m not saying he’s a murderer.’

  ‘Then what are you saying?’ My voice sounded hoarse. There was nowhere to escape in that baking white room.

  ‘I’m just saying that whatever actually happened, and whatever chain of events led to it, I think he is the man the police are looking for.’ She scanned my face cheerfully. I was rigid with fear. ‘I know people in Bristol, I’ve got a shop in Cabot’s, and I know people at Sotheby’s, I put business their way, and from what I can gather Araminta Lyall was one screwed-up lady with an eye for the older man. I think your husband got too close and then, I don’t know, there was a fight or perhaps an accident and he couldn’t own up or tell the truth because he couldn’t prove it wasn’t murder.’

  I was shaking my head all the while she was speaking and yet I was rooted to my stool in terror. Marianne had been checking the story, understanding that woman, burrowing through her past, probing her motivation. I had no choice. I had to stop her. I said,

  ‘Marianne, that might all sound plausible but it simply doesn’t stand up on the timings. There’s not a shred of evidence for any of it. In fact, everything points the other way, that he couldn’t have done it.’

  ‘You know, I’m always wary of people who talk about “facts”. “Facts” don’t exist. Interpretations exist. Perspectives exist. Motive exists. Weakness exists. More than that, from where I’m sitting – and assuming the police are right and Mr Trumble didn’t do it – then it seems the obvious explanation, maybe even the only explanation. That’s why the police came on to you that day.’

  ‘I don’t get “obvious”.’

  ‘Because you know as well as I do that if you put a drunk forty-five-year-old in a room late at night with a bunch of drunk thirty-year-olds and something goes badly wrong, the wise money will always be on the odd one out.’

  I sighed melodramatically, playing for time, but I was going under. She had every angle covered. Marianne was powering on:

  ‘I think he did it for two reasons – circumstantial, I admit, but all the more powerful to my mind for that.’ She surveyed me for any sign of weakness. I stared back numbly, incapable of speech. ‘First, because everything I’ve read about Ed and everything you’ve told me makes it clear he’s a gentleman in the old sense. That being the case, there’s no way he wouldn’t have said something after you were swamped in the road that afternoon. He would have defended you, if not at that exact moment because he wasn’t there, then afterwards. He would have taken the pressure off you and diverted attention to himself. He wouldn’t have left you hung out to dry, not when anyone could see you were in a really bad place.’

  She paused, taunting me, but my heart had exploded because I had a chance to tell the truth and to puncture her self-satisfaction. I almost shouted with triumph,

  ‘He did offer! He did, I swear, exactly that, he offered to speak out, but I refused. I said it would only fan the flames. You’re completely wrong about that!’

  For a moment Marianne seemed almost conciliatory, but as soon as the look appeared it was gone.

  ‘Then why did you refuse?’

  ‘Because …’

  ‘Exactly. Why would anyone refuse after what you’d been through? Unless …’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless you had something to hide.’

  I stared at her. My mouth may have dropped open.

  ‘And the second reason …’

  She allowed the silence to build for so long that for a moment I thought she’d forgotten what she was going to say. She must have heard my heart pumping. At that moment I would have preferred to be anything – a pillar of salt, a bar of soap – than trapped in the floodlit glare of Marianne’s stare. The easel had spun 180 degrees. She was the hunter, I was the prey.

  ‘… Is you.’

  I was determined not to be drawn but I couldn’t help blurting out,

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You. On the first day here you said you wanted to chat before starting because you had to get to know me again because you knew Marnie, not Marianne. But you were wrong, weren’t you? I haven’t changed, not fundamentally, and judging by the stuff I’ve read about you, nor have you. Everything I’ve read tells me that when you’re not being trolled by the press or helping the police with their inquiries you’re the same self-possessed and confident Alice Tenterden you were at school, just as sure in your opinions of other people and artists, and of yourself and your work and your place in the world as you ever were. Only you’re not suddenly, are you? Not now, not here. So what’s changed, that’s what I asked myself. What’s happened since you were profiled in Tatler or Harper’s or wherever it was and you were sounding off about the “poverty” – I think that was the word you used – of so much cont
emporary art and proclaiming your own combination of figurative and abstract, your own brand of realism and truth? That Alice was exactly the Alice I remembered from school, the one who knew her own mind and wasn’t afraid to speak it, the one who didn’t buy into any bullshit. For God’s sake, that’s why we were friends! But the Alice painting me is suddenly tongue-tied when it comes to the subject of her husband and some girl. The Alice painting me is relying on “facts” and “times”, and mistaking “facts” for truth in a way she would never have done at school, at least not when we were friends.’ Her voice dropped into a cartoon whisper, as if she was letting me into a secret. ‘The Alice I knew at school always believed in some larger truth; the one painting me can’t even muster any self-belief.’

  I gave her a look which tried to make out she simply didn’t realize how wrong she was. But Marianne had started. And when she started she kept going until she finished. She always had done.

  ‘And you know what? It makes me think maybe I’m not being ridiculous after all. It makes me think this Alice is frightened of something, and maybe what she is frightened of is the truth. I don’t know, of course, I can’t ever know, but put it all together and it seems pretty conclusive. To me, anyway.’ She gave a stagey wink. I shook my head and offered a contemptuous laugh but it fell short and hollow. ‘But don’t worry, darlin’, I won’t tell the other girls. Your secret is safe with me.’

  I stared at her in what I hope conveyed disbelief, but I knew I only had one line left. I had to use it to maximum effect. So I spoke slowly, gaining purpose as the sentences tumbled out,

  ‘Ah, I see, I get it, so that’s what this is about. I suppose I guessed we’d get here in the end.’ Marianne shifted out of her pose, glinting dangerously, but said nothing. ‘You deliberately asked me up here to make ridiculous accusations about Ed, and to try to screw me up as a painter or fuck up my reputation to get back at me for what happened at school. That’s the truth, isn’t it?’