What Alice Knew

by T. A. Cotterell

  It was a photograph of a building – the building I was standing in front of at that very moment. More than that, the photo had been taken from almost exactly the spot across the road where I was leaning back against my car door.

  Why had Marianne sent me a photo of the Carriage Works? I hunted around the photo looking for a clue. There didn’t seem to be anything. It was a super-clear image of the building I was looking at, the photograph taken at night, presumably at 1.45 a.m. on an unspecified Saturday night/Sunday morning, with a powerful camera.

  It had to be to do with her flat. I expanded the image and homed in on the three arched windows on the third floor, staring at each in turn, but there was no mysterious figure looming out of the gloaming, no glint of steel, no mouth frozen in an unheard scream, no one retreating guiltily into the shadows. I scrolled down to the front door and scanned the foyer. It was also empty, brightly lit but clearly empty. What on earth was it she was trying to tell me? I cursed the fact I only had a mobile but there was no way I could drive home before I’d worked out her message. Marianne was not a person to do anything, let alone send a photograph to someone whose husband she had accused of murder-maybe-manslaughter and who had just walked out halfway through painting her portrait, without a reason.

  I contracted the image as far as it would go and scrolled from one end to the other. It was panoramic, stretching southwards from the junction of Stokes Croft and Picton Street past the Carriage Works towards the centre of town. Other than a few parked cars on the far side the street was as empty as a Sunday morning Edward Hopper. I scanned up and down the pavement and – hey! – there was a figure walking along the pavement, a silhouette passing in front of Café Kino where a Parisian brasserie-style globe lamp above the counter gave out barely enough light for definition. The figure, definitely a man, was leaning forward as if he was hurrying away from the Carriage Works in the direction of Picton Street.

  I homed in on the figure. What was the date of the photo? It didn’t say. It couldn’t have been taken on the date of the accident. That had happened in the early evening, not the early morning, a Wednesday not a Sunday, and there was no way Ed would have returned later that night to the scene of the crime. He would have told me if he had. It couldn’t have been the night of the party, as although he must have arrived around 1.45 a.m. he would have been with Araminta and Trumble, and he didn’t leave until the morning. Whoever’s account one believed, Ed wouldn’t have been the one sent out to buy drink or cigarettes as he was already too far gone. Besides, if they did need stuff, why wouldn’t they have stopped off on their way back in the cab to stock up?

  It was only after I had run through all these questions, scanned the real windows for a few moments trying to work out exactly what had happened in that dark flat over those two nights and looked back at the photo that I realized the figure on the pavement wasn’t Ed. Whoever he was, he was too short, a dash too stocky, and his hair was thicker on the top of his head. As I looked at him I realized he could never have been Ed. I had only assumed he was because there was no one else and I couldn’t think of any other reason why Marianne had sent the photo. She was playing games with me again, only this time with my perceptions and expectations. It was as if she was daring me, the portraitist who failed to paint her, the best friend who failed to trust her, to look properly, to see. I re-scanned the rest of the pavement, moving slowly left to right, to see if there was anyone else, anyone at all I might have missed, but the street was empty. There was no one else.

  And that’s when I got it. How could I have been so blind? The moment I focused on the cars parked in a row to the right of the Carriage Works, the nearest one less than ten yards away from the front door, I saw.

  The cars I had taken to be parked weren’t ordinary cars. They were taxis, and there were five of them. Marianne was showing me Ed could easily have found a taxi on the night he went back to Araminta’s after Pete’s party because there was a cab rank right outside her building and at 1.45 a.m. on a random Saturday night/Sunday morning it had five cabs on it. What’s more – I glanced at the time on my phone – even at 4.37 a.m. on a Wednesday night it had one cab on it. In other words, Marianne was telling me Ed went into Araminta’s flat after Pete’s party because he wanted to, not because he had to in order to call a cab. Two drunk men and one drunk girl who barely know each other is a different end to an evening than an older man reluctantly joining a group of friends.

  And suddenly, from nowhere, I remembered what Pete had said on the phone the day after the party when I called to ask if he knew where Ed was: ‘Last I saw he was talking to a girl who’s an art student down here, Araminta Lyall, and a man who’s a picture dealer in London. It all looked quite involved.’ It seemed a long way from Ed’s claim that he didn’t know who Johnny Trumble was and his line in the bathroom that he’d only spoken to her when he was ‘too drunk to remember anything’.

  My shoulders slumped back against the car. I was completely drained, the elation I had felt on leaving the police station entirely dissipated. If there was any positive to be drawn it was that she had said our secret was safe. But could I trust her? Marianne didn’t owe me anything. That she hadn’t gone to the police yet didn’t mean she might not go sometime. And what about Philips? Or Neil? In different ways and with varying levels of conviction they had all intuited the truth. There was nothing I could do about any of them. Marianne would do what she wanted. She always had. Maybe we’d been foolish to think we were ever going to get away with it. Someone always had to pay.

  What should I do about it? That was the question she was posing. Forgetting Araminta for a moment – ‘forgetting everything that happened afterwards’ – Marianne was asking me what I was going to do about a husband I had been through fire for but who had never told me the whole truth and so I could no longer trust. Was I going to confront him? Was I going to walk out on Ed as she had Rob and I had her on that long-ago afternoon? Should I go back to the police and tell the whole truth to punish him for his dishonesty? Did I have the energy to go back and re-open all the questions and put my finger in the livid wound? Would he tell the truth anyway and how would I know if he didn’t? Did it even matter what he was thinking when he was drunk? He was unlikely to get himself into that state again for a while. Or was I going to take the view that whatever he may have been thinking when he accepted the invitation to go back to Araminta’s he hadn’t done anything wrong and there is as yet, fortunately, no such thing as thoughtcrime in our country, and if every man who drank too much at a party and fancied another woman but did nothing about it was booted out there wouldn’t be many marriages left?

  Did it matter if the distinction was between ‘fancied’ and ‘fancied and wanted’ and ‘fancied and wanted and would have had if he hadn’t keeled over’? It was impossible to tell and, as nothing had happened, was there even any real difference between them?

  Did the fact he had lied about his motives on the first occasion he went to her flat mean he had lied about what had really happened the second time he went there? Did it mean he had lied about other things I wasn’t even thinking about?

  Did he do charity work in the Third World or jet-set to conferences in the First?

  Had he gone back because he secretly fancied Trumble?

  Was I going crazy or did I know anything about him at all?

  Could I believe in him without knowing?

  Could I remain married to him or ever work again without believing in him?

  I was leaning against my car contemplating the building and Marianne’s email and my options when a gauzy rain, so thin and warm and soft it seemed unconnected to the pitiless heatwave or peals of thunder that had rolled across the city, began to fall. It fell lightly on my forehead, my bare arms, and when I ran a hand through my hair there was a gossamer film, damp to the touch. And it was while I was standing there on Stokes Croft, looking at the Carriage Works, thinking about everything that had happened, everything I had thought and believed, everything
I thought I had known or understood, thinking about questions that couldn’t be answered, thinking about the way the truth changed according to one’s perspective, and about how things leak into things, how they shift and fluctuate, that I finally glimpsed the choice Marianne was showing me.

  The studio was washed by the first light of a grey dawn. For a long time I stood in the doorway surveying the mess of paints and brushes and palettes as if seeing it for the first time. The canvas on the easel was primed but bare. I’d been unable to paint since I got back from Marianne’s. I couldn’t bring myself to analyse a physical object, much less any human being.

  A stack of canvases leant against the wall. The one facing into the room was a maroon and purple abstract, imagined moorland, unnerving and indistinct. Beyond, Marianne’s abandoned portrait stood alone, facing the wall. I hadn’t known what to do with it. I couldn’t bear to look at it and I couldn’t live with it forever, but equally I hadn’t been able to summon the nerve to throw it out. That would have been the final admission of failure, not only of that portrait but of everything in which I had invested so much. I wasn’t quite ready to take that step, though on more than one occasion I’d almost picked it up, determined to haul it out and drive straight to the dump. Yet each time I’d paused, as if it – she – had cast a spell. Letting it go would have been the end of me as an artist, a rejection of everything I’d always believed. I was trying to get my head around that.

  I looked at the back of the beige canvas tamped to the wooden frame, the horizontal crossbar with its tiny nails and knotted grain. When I was ready, I picked up the painting and carried it over to the table where I left work I wanted to study or assess or live with or simply look at from a different perspective. I turned the portrait round so it faced outwards and leant it against the wall. I fetched the wooden chair and pushed it across the floor until it was directly in front of the table and sat down. Then and only then, sitting directly under the single harsh spotlight, not knowing what to expect, I raised my eyes to Marianne.

  She stared down at me, her cool, detached look emphasizing the scale of my defeat. In her self-confidence I saw the shape of her triumph and my failure, our history, my weakness, her strength. Whichever way I looked, there could be no doubt Marianne had remained beyond my grasp. I hadn’t been able to put my arms around her. I didn’t know her. I wanted to turn away but I forced myself to look at it and to think about Marianne the way I had outside the Carriage Works when I had the first inkling of the choice I faced, and eventually I understood.

  Instinct is more powerful than knowledge.

  Don’t paint what you see, paint how you feel.

  I thought back to that afternoon in the dormitory. Dust dancing in shards of light. A misperception unchecked, a question unasked. It had taken more than twenty years for Marianne to force me to take responsibility for what I had done, and to show me I had been wrong about absolutely everything I thought I knew. It had taken her three days (and one email) to undermine fifteen years of trust.

  I sat there a long time, staring at the portrait, absorbing Marianne into me, contemplating the reality of my failure and the fork in the road ahead. When there was nothing more to take I reached forward and laid the portrait flat on the table, its face up. A distant boom of thunder rumbled through the dawn and rain began to fall, fat silver tears on the windowpane. I crossed the studio and from an old Campbell’s tomato soup can (my nod to Andy) picked out a black marker pen and a large pair of specialist-sharp artist’s scissors. In the middle drawer of the filing cabinet there was a wad of thick brown paper and a roll of bubble-wrap, a stray postcard perched on top (Matisse, one of his cut-outs, vibrant, ultramarine). I brushed the master of colour aside and took the paper and bubble-wrap and, from the bookcase, a postcard with our address printed on it, industrial-strength tape and a ball of string. I carried my booty over to the table and laid it out beside the portrait.

  The painting was so large I had to wrap it in three sections. First, Marianne’s slender legs disappeared into the bubbles and paper, along with a cursory outline of the base of the orange abstract, that never-painted emotion. Next, I wrapped her torso, from the top of her thighs to the bottom of her neck, admiring her slim figure in its smart black suit, her lithe posture, the resilience and confidence that had taken her all the way. All that remained was her head. As I cut the final sheaf of bubbles I looked into her eyes, diamond-black holes I would never comprehend. They sailed on unknown seas, marched to a private music. I had not known Marianne or understood her or captured her in paint. My failure was the sense I had of her, and that alone was true.

  After the portrait was wrapped and addressed – Marianne Hever, Bow House, Ashton under Lyne, OL6 – and neatly tied with string, I reached for the postcard, which lay face-down on the table and squared it in front of me. I picked up the marker pen and without a pause for thought I wrote: ‘It’s finished.’ There was no kiss. No cross to bear.

  When everything was done I parcelled the portrait and left it on the landing before I slipped quietly downstairs. I deliberately didn’t look in on Ed in case he woke up and we had to go through another futile argument. I knew I was betraying him but there was no other way. We couldn’t live and work and trust each other against the backdrop of an infinite lie. Nell and Arthur might not see it like that but that was the chance I had to take. At least as adults they would never be able to say to me, as I had said to my mother: ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Even if I had failed them in everything else, even if my work had taken precedence and I had refused to trust their father, I wouldn’t fail them in that. As I said to Ed in my studio the day after I was hounded by the press, I would always know I shot for the sun.

  The route was familiar. Soggy Clifton backstreets, student terraces, Queen’s Road and the Union. The RWA. The last clubbers stumbling home from the Triangle. Wills Tower and the university buildings, a reminder of the money that built Bristol, tobacco fields, slaves, port wine. Park Row rolled downhill topographically and socio-economically, past the BRI with its coloured hoops, the atmosphere increasingly transient, law courts and bus station, Subway, Tesco Express, every side-street tempting me to reconsider, every set of traffic lights offering a pause for thought.

  My hands were steady on the wheel. The James Barton roundabout was washed in a silent moment of dawn. I could have turned left towards the Carriage Works and shimmied in amongst the row of idling cabs. Instead I swung right at Cabot Circus towards Temple Meads before gliding up the ramp beside the underpass, following signs to Kingswood. Biscuit-coloured buildings. The glint of fresh rain. A town exhausted in the pale light.

  The reception area of the police station was empty, except for Ned, of course. He stared down glumly from his wall, surprised to see me back so soon. For a split-second I was tempted to bolt, but the feeling evaporated as quickly as it arrived. This was the only way forward. There was no way out. Marianne knew, Neil knew, Philips knew. The dam was cracked. It would break eventually. This was the only way I could take control and do justice to everything that had happened and everyone it had happened to and to ensure that one day as a family we could begin again. The lino squeaked under my feet. I was about to press the bell for attention when Inspector Sladden appeared from a door behind the counter. He was wearing a knee-length leather overcoat and a black trilby. When he saw me he frowned.

  ‘What is it now?’

  He didn’t try to conceal the irritation in his voice.

  ‘Um …’ My voice sounded simultaneously frail and huge in the silent reception. ‘… I need to tell you something.’

  Sladden sighed and leant back against the wall. He had the look of a man who couldn’t wait to get home to a place where things were what they seemed to be and people behaved as they were supposed to.

  ‘Can’t it wait? It’s five-o’-fucking clock and I’ve been here all night.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  He clicked his teeth irritably.

  ‘You know we charg
e people for wasting police time?’

  I nodded. Still he didn’t move, just surveyed me sceptically from beneath his hat. I nodded towards the door to the interview rooms but he shook his head.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Here.’

  I understood. Who wouldn’t want to go home? I had used up my goodwill. There were no offers of coffee or cones of water, no Big Mac with a tiny pen in a giant fist to watch over us, bringing a slice of beefy humanism to proceedings. Sladden shoved his hands into his pockets. He watched me carefully across the foyer. He didn’t take his hat off or show any sense he expected to be there for more than a minute. I felt exposed, standing in the middle of the floor under the harsh lights with no chair or table for a prop, but for once it didn’t worry me. I wanted exposure. He flipped open a pack of gum and popped a pillow-shaped piece in his mouth. I didn’t expect him to offer me one and he didn’t.

  ‘You remember when I was here earlier and I said, “My husband slept with Araminta Lyall on the Saturday before she died and then …”?’

  I waited for him to reply but he simply nodded.