Jessie Burton - The Muse

‘Don’t see we have much choice. And it’s what she would have wanted.’

But half the problem, I thought, kicking off my shoes and sinking onto my bed still in my clothes, as Reede’s car revved off up the road, was that none of us had ever really known what Marjorie Quick had wanted.

The next evening, the exhibition opened, with Quick’s body still lying cold in the police morgue. I couldn’t marry these two facts easily; she, dead and alone, and here, so much noise and colour, milling bodies, excitement brewing at the discovery of the new Isaac Robles.

Julie Christie walked past me, her face too good to be true. The gallery was full. I recognized her, but who were these other people? Actors, critics, lords and bankers, gold buttons forged not from battles, but casts of power. Wine being drunk like it came from their own cellars. Jagger wasn’t there, much to Pamela’s chagrin. Rotund Cabinet ministers talked to haggard-looking old men of art as some optimist put on a blues record, the trumpet’s scattered notes whirling towards the ceiling. At the unleashed sound, two men in blazers swapped glances of disdain. Where were their deft van Dycks, their easy Gainsboroughs, their plump majestic Stubbesian horses? All they had here were modernist streaks of colour, women, holding heads, women, curled amidst their shattered pots, a poised lion, third wheel in a tragic game of Renaissance saints.

A snare drum snuck into the blues, a syncopation that only just nipped my bud of bitterness. I felt utterly disorientated without Quick. She should have been there; she was going to tell me the truth. At the end of the room, the photograph of Isaac Robles and Olive Schloss loomed, black and white and granular, the girl’s face locked in what I now felt was a misplaced expression of hope. It was almost an insult that the photograph was up there. I wanted the blues to be louder, for a pair of these wine-flushed stuffed shirts to break into a jive, whirling one old tanty round till she false teeth fly.

With an inward sigh, I moved on, my wine glass a weapon. Shuffling past the growing crowd, I neared Rufina and the Lion , protected now by a scarlet rope, two guards flanking its sides. Reede clearly knew the special touches to make things seem official.

I noticed a thin, grey-haired man in a suit, leaning over the rope to peer at one of the painting’s corners. He was very close, his nose inches from the minuscule crests of paint on the girl’s severed head. He was incredibly curious; he couldn’t stop looking. The left guard’s feet shifted, sensible shoes of menace. I felt a surging anxiety that something bad was going to happen; but then again, the worst already had.

‘It’s ghoulish, Frederick,’ said a woman, coming to join the man. ‘It’s painful.’

Behind me, the noise in the gallery lifted. As the temperature rose and the crowd grew, guests began looking through each other like open doors. A woman laughed above the swell, and it sounded like a cry for help. Why were these people here? They didn’t care about Isaac Robles. They didn’t care about Quick.

I felt a tug at my elbow; Pamela. ‘You all right?’ she said. ‘Look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I think I have.’

Pamela frowned. I hadn’t told her about Quick; Reede had said he wanted a lid on it until the exhibition was on its feet.

‘You read too much, Dell,’ Pamela said. ‘Ain’t no such thing as ghosts. Listen.’ She looked pained. ‘I broke up with Billy.’

‘Oh, Pamela. I’m sorry.’

A cloud passed across her face. ‘Turned out he didn’t want to marry me. I gave notice on my room and everything, and then the bugger broke it off. And another girl’s moving in.’

I wondered if she meant on Billy, or into her old room. I didn’t ask. Instead, I said the words I never thought I’d say. ‘Would you like to share with me?’

Her face opened into a smile. ‘That’d be good. That’d be really good.’

‘I’d like it too.’

Pamela went pink, giving me a hug before she turned away and melted into the crowd.

I found Lawrie, and stood close beside him. ‘My mother would never believe all this,’ he said, drawing his arm in an arc across the gallery. ‘She’d love it though. What a snowball. It’s just got bigger and bigger.’

‘Lawrie,’ I whispered. ‘I have to tell you. Quick’s — she’s dead.’

He turned to me. ‘What?’

‘I found her. Last night.’

‘Oh, Delly. I’m so sorry. Are you all right?’

‘Not really.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you later,’ I said — for how to explain, at the launch of his exhibition, that I didn’t think the paintings around this room were by Isaac Robles at all, that the real painter behind these works had died with her secret intact? Cynth had warned me to keep all my ideas about Olive Schloss and Marjorie Quick to myself, if I wanted harmony in my love life. But if this entire exhibition was predicated on a lie, that sat uneasily with my sense of creative integrity. I was struggling to work out which was more important — Lawrie’s feelings, or Quick’s artistic restitution. If it was me who’d painted these pictures, I’d bloody well want everyone to know.

Lawrie took my hand. ‘I know she meant a lot to you.’

I hadn’t thought of mine and Quick’s connection in that way before — in terms of affection, or quality. Nor did I think I’d ever communicated such a sentiment. Until now, I’d treated Quick as an interesting conundrum, a diversion, both a source of inspiration and an obstacle. But Lawrie was right. She did mean a lot to me. Despite her mercurial manner, Quick had welcomed me, helped me. I liked her. And it was too late to tell her so. There was still, at the back of my mind, some niggling thought that she had wanted me for something, but that now it was too late.

‘Dell, do you want to leave?’

‘No, of course not. I’ll be fine.’

‘All right. Listen, Gerry wants you to come over for dinner. He’s here, you know.’

‘Really? That’s good he’s out and about.’

‘Yes it is, I suppose. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. But he’s always asking after you. When he read your story in the London Review , he boasted to his friends he knew a writer. I think you’ve got a fan.’

‘I’m not a writer.’

‘Of course, I forgot. You’re a typist.’ The exasperation in his voice made me turn. ‘Well really, Odelle,’ he said. ‘Are you going to keep on like this? Do you know how many people would give their eye-teeth to be in the London Review ? I wouldn’t waste it.’

‘I’m not going to waste it,’ I said. I was tired, unable to keep the hurt out of my voice. ‘And it’s not up to you to tell me what I should or shouldn’t call myself.’

He put up his hands in surrender. ‘All right. I just — you must keep writing, you know.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘You sound like Cynthia. You sound like Quick. Everyone wants me to write, but they never try it themselves. If they tried it themselves they might shut up.’

He shrugged. ‘Quick did you an enormous favour. And I bet if she knew you were dragging your heels—’

The last few hours finally caught up with me. ‘I’m not dragging — don’t use her — she dead, Lawrie. She dead . I don’t — I can’t — we don’t all have paintings we can sell, you know. I have to do other work.’

‘You’re right. Of course. But sometimes I do think you need reminding how good you are.’

We stood in silence for a few minutes. I knew it was true that I had stalled again on my writing. For once, I was too caught up with actually living my life to stop and turn it into words. People like Lawrie — who never wrote a single line of prose, as far as I knew — seemed to want those who did to walk around with a pad and pencil hanging round their neck, jotting down the whole thing, turning it into a book for their own pleasure.