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.—The paintings were still dark and shadowy but they were different because I was different: there was light in the eyes, and James, so free and easy in our house, spent more and more time in the upstairs room, looking at what I had done, encouraging me, holding me in the night, I had had no idea that one’s body could lift and lunge and love, I did not know that the skin and the smell and the soul of another person was what the poets and painters and Rembrandt knew.I changed: my face changed, my body changed.But because I had never caused notice to myself, who, as I quietly lit the candles, would notice anything different now?We made many plans, James and I: he was to sell my work at once but under the name of a man, ‘It would be too hard to sell your work under the name of a woman; the two Women Royal Academicians—’‘Two Women Royal Academicians? ’‘Yes, there are two - but they have important Patrons, that is quite, quite different.I will sell your Paintings under the name of Michel Grace,’ - I began laughing - ‘No, it is slightly Foreign, which will make them more saleable still,’ but he was laughing also, and holding me; he was so sure of selling my work that he had paid me more money in Advance.He had one word of warning about my work.‘All of the Women you paint are yourself, Grace, in some way, however small.If I am to sell them under another name at first, then you must learn to paint a Girl or a Woman who does not look like you at all or Sir Joshua Reynolds may pass by and recognise you! Indeed Miss Ffoulks would recognise you immediately!’ We laughed, and I thought how much I would like that.‘Indeed, your Brother himself would recognise you! I am serious, Grace, you must learn to clearly paint someone else.’‘But what do you suggest I do?’ I cried to him in frustration then.‘You know I cannot paint freely until I leave here! When I see the women from the Theatre or the streets and I want to paint them I have to carry a face in my mind, not like the real painters who have people in front of them - of course my paintings have something of my face because mine is the only face I have been able to study properly.’‘You have often painted your brother and Angelica and the children without them sitting to you.Look at that beautiful picture of Angelica: the wonderful hat, and the gaiety!’‘But I know them so well! I have seen them every day for years.’‘You told me you painted your Family from memory.’‘Yes but now I cannot! Since he destroyed them.It is as if I cannot paint them now!’‘Until you can have people sit to you, you must memorise faces, other faces.’‘It is so hard !’‘It is a hard life you have chosen, Grace, for a Woman,’ and his arms encircled me again.Day after day after day I studied people in the street, tried to bring the memory of them home again: I truly now longed to see Poppy again - how would she look, now, so many years later? would she still have her bright eye and her infectious laugh? and I painted James when he was away from me: the very direct grey eyes, the beloved face, half in shadow, half in light (and I remembered the night I had painted him in the late afternoon shadows, years before); I destroyed these paintings, these I did not show him, they were not good enough: how hard to paint Truth, how hard to paint love; how Rembrandt must have loved the woman he painted in the water, I thought, even as she was there before him, to make her, in the shadows and the light, so exact and so real; and the other Rembrandt woman in Philip’s study, I felt as if I knew them: both paintings were so - so accessible to me all these years later and to thousands of people like me, so recognisable and so real.One night in my room, in my small bed, James fell asleep - I crept out of the bed, I found my charcoal, I did not dare disturb the covers more but I drew him - it was the first real naked body of a man I had ever seen, it was the same and yet so different from George the Greek statue, of course I drew James, me naked with my charcoal and my paper, how could I help drawing him? I drew the long limbs and the way his hip turned and one thigh was uncovered , his beautiful thigh, his shoulder, was turned away, I drew the way his hair fell on his shoulder such a different shoulder than my own, and his long beautiful back, I drew so quickly I was shy as if I was spying but I saw only beauty, when he stirred and moved I thrust the paper and the charcoal away into a dark corner, and jumped into bed like a child - it was the only thing I did in all that time that I did not tell him, later I tried to paint what I had drawn but it was never right, never.And always I made it clear, crystal clear: I would sell my Paintings, through James, under a false name, a man’s name, only until I could make enough money at last to leave Pall Mall and find my Studio in Compton-street or Meard-street or Leicester-lane and set up on my own at last, and be myself.‘Are you sure, Grace? It will not be easy, no matter how much I can help you, I am not a Patron as Women Artists must have.’‘I do not care that it will not be easy! Nothing that I have done has been easy! I have been waiting for this moment since I was a child!’ My paintings - the paintings by Michel Grace - would sell, I would have money of my own for the first time in my life and finally I would have a proper Artist’s Studio like my brother at last, and at last - this portentous word, I know, still sounds naive but it is how I felt - fulfil my Destiny - I may have been over thirty then but there was still time, still time to become the thing I wanted more than anything, more than love itself: to paint freely and openly, to be a Painter, to capture all I see - it mattered to me then not one jot if my work must first be sold under the name of a man: I was sure enough now to believe that one day I could be Grace Marshall again, Grace Marshall of London.Over the months I saw - he saw - my painting got better and better.Happiness filled me.Within the shortest space of time imaginable I not only understood what the Poets and the Painters and Rembrandt van Rijn knew about love - the meaning and the magic of love and how it could permeate a painting - I was also pregnant with James Burke’s child.And mine.For the first weeks I could not believe it.A child.It was not possible.I had had validation of myself for the first time in my life and I was by then a middle-aged woman.—About a child I simply had no thoughts at all - but it was there, just under my hand: the child of our love, growing I supposed, beneath my hand.And I could not bear it not again my heart cried not again the children had not been gone six months
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