‘I suppose I’m just painfully aware that we won’t have the chance to make things up now.’
‘If it’s any comfort, I know Jacqueline’s pleased to be back in touch with you,’ he said. ‘She said she was sad when you parted ways.’ Shrugging back his cuff, he rather hammily acted surprise. ‘I’m afraid I have to go. I’ve got a meeting at twelve-thirty.’
‘Apologies again for having ambushed you.’
‘If it helped at all, I’m glad.’
Scrambling to think, she put on her jacket. Greenwood stepped aside to let her go first then reached forward to open the door. As casually as possible, she said, ‘Do you represent Michael Cory?’
‘Me? No. I wish I did but he’s with Saul Hander. Saul and I have a relationship – hence Marianne showing with him – and I had a small show of Cory’s photographs about eighteen months ago, but no, I don’t represent him.’
‘Marianne knew him.’ Blood boomed in her ears. So blunt, so unsubtle. ‘He was at the funeral.’
‘Yes.’ The door closed behind them, scooping the warmth and comforting hubbub back inside. A gust of wind ruffled Greenwood’s hair and his voice sounded colder as he asked, ‘Why?’
‘We talked about him a lot at the time of the Hanna Ferrara portrait,’ she said. ‘It intrigued us, the idea that a picture could have an effect like that in the real world – make things happen. Her nervous breakdown – the end of her career, essentially.’
‘That was never Michael’s intention.’
‘No, I’m sure.’
‘So . . . ?’
‘I just found it interesting that Marianne met – knew – someone we’d talked about as complete outsiders. I wonder whether she ever told him about it.’
Greenwood looked at her. ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘They were spending time together, talking a lot. Michael was painting her portrait.’
Thirteen
Last night, preparing for the London trip, she’d gone looking for Cory online. She’d been met with near-silence. Despite the hundreds of articles about him, there was almost nothing he had written himself or even said. She’d found three quotes in total, two of those about Picasso’s use of colour in the portraits of Dora Maar.
The third was included in archived copy about his second exhibition, portraits of young actors whom he’d met by going to auditions himself. The exhibition had been called Ambition. ‘What interests me about these people,’ he’d said, ‘is their confidence, hope, the will to do good work and succeed, but also, beneath the surface – not far beneath – their vanity, hubris, the fear of exposing themselves, failing publicly. Acting is intriguing because it’s an egotistical profession – at least it has that reputation – but to do it well is to erase oneself and become a human canvas for a portrait of someone else.’
He’d been twenty-six at the time, and after that, he’d apparently gone off the idea of explaining himself. Just before midnight, however, she’d come across a reference to a book called Stranger in the Mirror: Artists and the Art of Portraiture, published last September. To her amazement, Cory was a contributor.
She’d rung from the train to find out if Blackwell’s had a copy in stock and came directly from the station. As she walked through the door, she took a deep breath, filling herself up with the chemical smell of photographic paper as if it were the aroma of baking bread. Over the years, she and Marianne must have spent weeks here, looking at the posters and postcards on the lower level or up among the bookshelves on the narrow mezzanine.
For the price, she’d expected a beautifully produced hardback but when she located the book, it looked like a periodical, even a student anthology, with its flimsy paper cover and grainy image of a gilt-framed mirror. The interviews inside, printed verbatim in Courier and laid out as simple Q&As, were like transcripts of police interrogations. Nonetheless, the project clearly had cachet: the list of contents featured two other very well-known names.
The author, Elizabeth Rees-Hamilton, gave each artist a brief biographical introduction then interviewed him or her in depth about their process, how they selected subjects and conducted sittings, whether or not they worked from photographs, their influences and preoccupations. Most of the interviews covered twenty pages but a couple extended over thirty.