Her face broke open in a smile, and we turned shy. My emotion left me embarrassed – how I, a grown woman, could be so childish, so effervescent. My heart thumped in my ribs to be near her; I was giddy with her, my giddiness exacerbated by the fact she seemed to feel the same. We walked down under Admiralty Arch and into St James’s Park, finding a bench to sit. ‘Sherbets,’ Cynth said, opening her handbag, proffering me a paper sack of sweets. ‘You thin, Delly. What goin’ on?’
‘Pinin’ for you,’ I said, mocking myself, trying to show I still had grit. When she laughed aloud, the sound almost hurt. How good it always was to make her laugh.
‘Nah, come now,’ she said. ‘You not eat?’
SO I TOLD CYNTH EVERYTHING – about meeting Lawrie after the wedding, and our dates after that – the mother he lost and the painting she left – and how Quick’s attraction to the artwork seemed mingled with repulsion. I told her how the name ‘Isaac Robles’ came up, Edmund Reede convinced that this was a long--lost artwork by a forgotten genius, and how Quick was more doubtful about this, until her declaration last night that actually, the painting was nothing to do with Isaac Robles at all.
Cynth was much more interested in Lawrie, how it was going, and was it serious – but I tried to keep the focus on the conundrum of Quick, rather than of my own heart. ‘The worse of it, Cynth,’ I said, ‘is that she dyin’.’
‘Dyin’?’
‘Cancer. She tell me late stage. They didn’t catch. Pancreatic.’
‘Poor woman,’ said Cynth. ‘She sound scare about it, invitin’ you round. Why she worrying about paintings when she gon’ dead?’
‘That’s what bothering me. Because listen to this; she running out of time on something, I sure of it.’
‘What you sayin’?’
‘Reede find out that the person who first sell Lawrie’s painting in 1936 is an art dealer called Harold Schloss,’ I said. ‘The thing is, I find a letter in Quick’s house addressed to Olive Schloss, inviting her to study at the Slade School of Art.’
‘Delly, were you snoopin’ round a dyin’ woman house?’
I tutted. ‘No! It there in her telephone book she tell me to fetch. But listen – Quick also have telegram address to Harold Schloss, date of July of 1936.’
‘What, just lyin’ there in her telephone book, thirty year later?’
‘I know. I know. But – it like Quick want me to find it. It like she lef’ it out, because she dyin’ and don’t want the truth to die with her.’
‘Delly . . .’
‘Quick too interest in where Lawrie get the painting from. And then she tell me last night it isn’t Isaac Robles who paint it. Olive Schloss is key to this, I’m sure.’
‘But who this Olive Schloss?’
I exhaled, and my breath made condensation in the air. ‘That be the question, Cynthia. That is it. Clearly a body who could paint, otherwise they wouldn’t have been offered the Slade. Someone probably relate to Harold Schloss.’
‘His wife?’
‘Maybe. But if you going art school, you usually younger, a student.’
‘His daughter, then?’
‘That’s what I think. Olive Schloss was Harold Schloss’s daughter. And at the Skelton, there an old photograph of a man and woman standing by Lawrie’s painting. On the back someone written “O and I”. That stands for Olive and Isaac. Quick say Isaac Robles didn’t paint the pictures. Then who did, and how she know? I don’t think Quick who she say she is.’
‘Delly . . .’
‘It always bother me, how she never have any paintings on her wall. Why’s that? And the thing is, Quick go funny when I ask her about Olive Schloss. Shut door on me, lock me out. But it like she want me to know, to get closer to the truth of it, and at the same time – she can’t bear it.’
Cynthia appeared to be thinking, staring at the ducks gliding across the pond before us. Beyond the trees, the spindly brown turrets of Westminster poked up into the air. ‘I always thought Marjorie Quick was a funny name,’ she said.
We sat in silence for a moment. I loved my friend for believing, for not saying I was mad, for accompanying me as I moved to and fro over my narrative. It gave me permission to entertain seriously the possibility that Quick might once have gone by another name, lived another life, a life she was desperately trying to remember – and to tell me – before it was too late. I couldn’t imagine the pain of seeing someone else take credit for your work, whilst you languished forever unnoticed, uncelebrated, knowing death was so near.
‘The English mad,’ said Cynth. ‘So you goin’ to ask her about all this commesse?’
‘But what me goin’ to say?’ One couldn’t exactly confront Quick, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted the woman I knew to vanish further under scrutiny. I felt that if I could show her my support, this might coax her out of the corner, but I wasn’t sure of the best way to go about it. ‘Me think she keeping secrets for a reason,’ I added.
‘Shoe shop was never like this,’ Cynth sighed. ‘You put a shoe on woman foot and that be it.’
We laughed. ‘No, that is true,’ I said. ‘But you know what else? Quick help me publish a short story, so me in her debt.’
Cynth only heard the bit she wanted to hear, and her eyes lit up. ‘Oh now, published! Oh, that is good. What it called?’
‘ “The Toeless Woman”. Remember that woman who come in and have those blocks of feet?’
‘Oh, my God. Yes. I got to read this.’
Tingling with pleasure at her excitement, I told her it was in October’s London Review, but that if she liked I could send her a copy, I could send her ten. I told her how it had all unfolded, Quick sending the story personally to the magazine.
‘I think she like me,’ I said. ‘I think she trust me. I just don’t know exactly what she trustin’ me with.’
Cynth nudged me. ‘It take some white lady to get you to do it, eh, not me?’ I started to protest that I’d had no idea what Quick was planning, but Cynth put her hands up. ‘I jokin’, I jokin’,’ she said. ‘I just glad. It about time.’
‘How’s Sam?’ I asked, wanting to change the subject away from me, suddenly nervous that Cynth was going to read the dramatization of our joint life in that story about the toeless woman.