‘My daughter,’ she began and then stopped. She’d brought nothing with her, no notes, but her eyes were down and she held on to the stand as if a rip tide were running round her feet. Rowan felt the tension in the room, the sudden collective alarm that they were about to see Jacqueline Glass fall apart. Come on, she willed her. Come on.
Inhaling sharply, as if drawing strength from the air, Jacqueline pulled herself upright. ‘My daughter. How proud I am to be able to stand here and say those words, my darling.’ She looked at the coffin and gave a small nod: yes. ‘No one could be prouder of a daughter than I am – and always will be – of you.’
She dipped her head momentarily but then raised it again and looked squarely ahead: See my face. I am not ashamed.
‘What can I say about Marianne? She was wonderful – absolutely wonderful. I know you’re not supposed to say these things about your own children, not if you’re English, but I’m going to: she was wonderful. Which is not to say she was perfect . . . of course not, far from it . . . but she was full of spirit.’ Jacqueline’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat once and then again. ‘She was a creature of contradictions: fiery sometimes but kind, very kind, spiky sometimes and bloody stubborn but tremendously loyal. If she loved you, she loved you – she’d forgive you anything, walk on hot coals to help you. She could be a loner at times – she needed to be alone to think and work, that was essential to her – but she was also very funny and she had many, many friends and people who loved her in return.’ She looked around the packed room and smiled.
‘If Marianne is remembered, though – and I think you will be, darling – it won’t be as a daughter or a sister or a friend or a partner,’ Jacqueline’s eyes lighted on James Greenwood for a moment, full of pity, ‘but as an artist. That she achieved so much in so short a time – thirty-two years – is incredible. Talent, yes, she had that in spades, but talent is nothing without work. Marianne was a worker. Even as a child she worked at her painting with a fury. It was all she ever wanted to do, and she did it.
‘As most of you will know, she did her degree at the Slade, finishing with a show that earned her a top first, and she sold two paintings from that show to Dorotea Perling. For those people not in the art world – there are three or four of you here,’ a painful attempt at a laugh, ‘Dorotea is considered to be building one of the finest collections of contemporary painting in the world. She bought a work from Marianne’s first solo exhibition, too, and so did Tate Modern and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma. Her work’s been shown in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Israel. One of her life’s ambitions . . .’ Here Jacqueline seemed to lose focus. There were several seconds’ silence and the room held its breath but then the microphone picked up the sound of a hard swallow. ‘One of her life’s ambitions was to have a solo exhibition of her work in America. That’s about to happen, at the Saul Hander gallery in New York.’
Jacqueline turned to look at the casket again as if she, too, had to keep reminding herself that it was real. She was shaking, it was visible even to Rowan in the penultimate row, but when she resumed speaking her voice was strong. ‘I have a thousand memories of Marianne as a child, of course,’ she said, ‘some of my favourite memories of all, but one in particular captures her for me. When she was seven, she fell in love with a huge book of paintings that we – her father, Seb, and I – had bought at the Louvre. For months and months Marianne was inseparable from it. She carried it everywhere – she could barely lift it – she wouldn’t go to sleep unless it was open by her bed, refused to eat unless she could have it at the table. So for her birthday, as a surprise, we decided to take her there. When we told her – God, forget Christmas or presents, I’ve never seen excitement like it.
‘To cut a long story short, we lost her. The Louvre – it’s so huge, of course, and so busy, and the moment we turned our back for a split second, she was gone. It was one of the worst half-hours of my life – Seb and I running through the museum trying to find our newly eight-year-old daughter, imagining all the horrors that might have befallen her. I found her in the end. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor – completely hidden, of course, by the people standing behind her – in front of Rembrandt’s Saint Matthew and the Angel. Eight years old – you’d have thought she’d like Degas’ ballet dancers or Dürer’s animals – but no, there she was in front of a Rembrandt, and a religious one at that. I shouted at her, I’m sorry to say, I’d been so terrified I couldn’t help it, but it didn’t matter because she was in another world. “But look, Mummy,” she said, as if I were missing the whole point. “Look at the book. Look how he painted the book.”’
Another long pause. ‘That was one of the worst half-hours of my life until I heard, my darling. Since then, it’s been one worst half-hour after another. Goodbye, Marianne, and thank you for all the passion and brilliance and love and light you brought into our lives. Sleep well.’
Four