Chris Curran - All the Little Lies

What he had said to her yesterday – what he had done – had obviously just been to make Maggie jealous. And it turned out that the photo session was for all the artists. The four others were men. Stella knew one of them, Baz, from college and the rest were all a similar age to her and Maggie. The photographer wasn’t much older and he encouraged everyone to clown around as he took lots of snaps very quickly.

A few paintings had already been hung, and he was photographing one of the men in front of his work, when Maggie came and sat next to Stella on a black sofa.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘I’ve got over it, so no need to avoid me. I know Ben only kissed you to annoy me.’ She held up her wrist to show Stella a lovely gold bracelet he’d given her. The phone call the night before had been from him and he’d come back to take Maggie to dinner and a hotel for the night. ‘We’ve been making plans,’ she said with a secret smile.

Before Stella could ask anymore David Ballantyne arrived with sandwiches and bottles of beer, and they all went out into the courtyard. One of the men, James Stone, who had dark floppy hair and a silver earring, came to sit on the stone bench next to Stella. She liked him and as they ate and drank in the sunshine she felt as happy as she had ever been. A thought came into her head. This is when my real life begins.

When he stood to leave James nudged Stella with his knee. ‘Coming?’ But Maggie called out. ‘Don’t go, I need to talk to you.’ So James waved and said, ‘See you around then.’

Stella sighed and followed Maggie back into the gallery. She whispered, ‘Don’t you want to be alone with Ben?’

Maggie laughed. ‘And miss the best bit. Look.’ She was holding a small bag and pulled out the two dresses they had worn to the preview. ‘Ben wanted a photo of me in something a bit more glamorous and we thought it might be nice to have one of the two of us together.’

When they’d changed, the photographer asked them to come back into the courtyard where he took several pictures. Then Ben appeared and said, ‘Now a few of Maggie on her own, I think.’

Maggie was trying out various poses, some sexy, some sedate and some comical, and she and the photographer were soon laughing together, so Stella wandered back into the gallery. She was looking at a picture by James and was so absorbed that she gasped when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

It was David Ballantyne. ‘Sorry. I thought you heard me,’ he said. He gestured with his head and they moved over to a beautifully lit corner of the gallery where six canvases were leaning against the wall. Although only their backs were showing, Stella recognized them as hers.

‘What do you think?’ he said, and when she looked blank he smiled and added, ‘I mean how’s this corner for your work?’ He gestured towards the rest of the room. ‘It’s visible from pretty much everywhere and people will be drawn over as soon as they come in.’

It was difficult to speak. ‘It’s wonderful. The light …’ she couldn’t go on. There was a pain in her throat as she struggled not to cry at the thought of her pictures on display in such a beautiful spot.

‘You’ll be the star of the show. No doubt about that.’

All she could say was, ‘Thank you.’

He was looking away from her and fiddling with the frame of one of the canvases. ‘I want you to know I think you’re a rare talent and I’m very proud to have you in the exhibition.’

Stella was glad he left her then, muttering something about work and busy , because she had to move close to the wall to hide her tears. She was so thrilled that her heart seemed to throb. Was it possible to die of happiness?

She turned one of her pictures around. It was the first she’d done in London when she was feeling lost and homesick and was a fantasy version of the Tyne Bridge. She’d removed all the other bridges around it and painted it as if it was in the middle of jungle rather than in Newcastle. Was it really as good as David said?

‘Put that back the way you found it, young lady.’ Ben Houghton’s voice boomed out, and she automatically did as she was told. He clapped her on the back and gave his huge laugh. ‘Only joking, my darling. If anyone’s entitled to handle it, I’d say it’s you. Now will you step into my office for a moment?’ He smiled down at her, raising one eyebrow.

Alex had emailed the Baltic to say he was researching a book and wanted to include some details about Stella Carr. He had kept it as vague as possible.

They arrived with an hour to spare. It was cold and drizzly but, despite the gloom outside, the gallery was full of light and space. When they left the glass elevator on the third floor, Alex wandered straight into the exhibition. Eve stood at the entrance reading the information on the partition.

The Baltic is especially glad to welcome the works of Stella Carr because she was born in Newcastle in 1966. The Tyne Bridge is clearly recognizable in one of her earliest paintings.

Nothing is known about her father, and her mother, Karen, died when Stella was only nine years old. From then on she lived with her grandmother. She attended Newcastle’s Bath Lane College of Art until she won a scholarship to St Martins in London.

Eve looked over towards Alex. So Stella was actually from Newcastle. Alex was a student here during the Eighties and later taught at the university. She wondered if anyone he knew from that time had ever come across Stella.

She read on:

The painting, Nana, shows Stella’s grandmother when she was in a nursing home suffering from dementia.

Stella’s only exhibition during her lifetime was at the Houghton Gallery in 1986. Five of her paintings were sold, but Stella refused to part with Nana. She moved to Italy the following year and was tragically killed when a fire destroyed her studio. Some of the paintings in our exhibition are from the original London show, but a number were produced during her final weeks in Italy. These have never been shown before. They survived because the studio was too small to store her finished works and they were kept in the main house.

So the studio was separate from the house. Surely that would have made it easier to escape from. She wondered what it was like. Needed to find out.

She walked into the exhibition space, her breath caught, and she couldn’t move. It was like being inside a kaleidoscope, not just because the colours were so vivid, but because she felt as if they were whirling around her as she tried, and failed, to focus on any single painting.

She walked to the glass case in the middle of the room where the catalogue for the Houghton exhibition was displayed. The photo of Stella that she’d seen on the Internet was on the front cover. A second copy of the catalogue was open at a two-page spread. On one side was Stella with another small and slender young woman. It was obviously the photograph that had inspired the painting of Maggie and Me that Eve had seen in the original article. They were wearing the green and blue dresses in what looked like a courtyard with white walls. The caption under the photograph read:

Stella Carr and Maggie de Santis.

So this was the friend she had lived with.

On the opposite page were four smaller pictures of the other artists: all young men. Eve took out her notebook and wrote down their names. Then began to walk around the room. The first painting was Nana and Eve looked into the lined face trying to see something of herself in the woman who was her great-grandmother. The old lady’s short neat hair was completely white, so if she had been a redhead it was impossible to tell. Above all Eve could detect love in every brushstroke. Stella had loved her nana very much.