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.I must tell him now.He will know what to do.I sat up and lit another candle beside the bed before I spoke - I am glad I did for I saw his face, his face betrayed him yet again, man of the World though he was.‘Grace!’ he said.I could not believe it.He was pleased.James Burke, rich art Dealer, married to a beautiful woman, Man-about-Town, would be immersed in a huge scandale if this was known, and he was pleased ?‘Are you glad, Grace?’ he said to me.I stared at him.He took my hand in his warm, dry one and laid both hands upon me, where the child lay; and as his hand lay there, because I was so used to speaking to and acting towards this man with complete honesty (I - who had become so adept at dissembling - had not, with him, a prevaricating cell in my body except not telling him I had tried to paint him), I said, ‘James, James, you must help me at once!’‘Of course - of course I will help you!’ He was smiling and smiling and smiling.‘Did you think I would run away and leave you? It is our child.I have longed all my life to have a child, of course I will help you.You must go away very soon, far away from London, and have the child quietly somewhere, you must live somewhere else with the child.We will make plans.’ They were such strange, unexpected words that at first I could not understand that he did not understand: another child: another Life.He did not know but I knew, I knew what that meant: I saw the two bundles placed in my arms and my brother and Angelica already turned away, not again not again - and gone from my beloved city so that there would be no scandal? gone from my city? gone from London?‘James, you must help me to - to,’ - it was very hard to say the words but there was no question of anything else, ‘- lose it at once, you must help me, I cannot have a child, I am a Painter, I cannot have a child.’ Suddenly I was weeping great heaving gasps from somewhere deep inside me that I did not even understand.‘I must paint, James, please please understand, I must be free to paint at last, after all these years of hiding in a sewing-room, all my life here I have been looking after people, I have had, you could say, two children already and they have just left, just left - I cannot have a child - I do not want a child - I cannot wait any longer, I am a Painter.’ I heard my own voice rising in the room.‘I do not want another child!’It was as if he had been stung, or stabbed.He sat up at once, he stared at me then with a look of disbelief as if I was talking heresy.‘You cannot mean that.I will look after you, I will send you away, somewhere far away.’‘No,’ I said.I had not prepared anything of what I said then but it was my words that came tumbling out with the weeping, ‘I do not want to be sent far away, London is where I work! I have to be here, in London, my portraits are here!’ all my pent-up feelings were bursting their banks and somewhere Poppy’s words, Angelica’s words, it is all right if it has not quickened, ‘tomorrow! I want it over tomorrow, if I have a child I will never, never, never fulfil my Dream and I have waited for my Dream, I have given up everything - freedom, innocence, time, years, self-respect, for years and years until it is almost too late,’ and all the despair of all my life flooded into my words to the one person in the whole World who knew what I could do, I wept and wept as if I wept out my life; it was a long time before I could stop the deep, dark weeping.There was a long, long silence.The house in Pall Mall was completely silent.I believe I heard the beating of both our hearts.Finally James got up, slowly put his clothes upon him, buttoning slowly.I waited.‘Very well.There is a woman in Meard-street, off Covent Garden.Tomorrow,’ - he was thrusting now at his clothes, putting on his coat - ‘tomorrow I will arrange it and you will go there.I will send a message.’ And then he was gone.Of course I thought he would be there.Of course I thought he would come with me.But James did not come with me, he had paid money to the woman in Meard-street - twenty pounds I believe it was, so much money, more than a milliner could earn in years, more than Mr Reynolds paid for his Rembrandt painting; there were basements all over London for this sort of thing for a pound: everybody knew it: Angelica, Poppy, all women knew, it was part of the city - but the woman in the basement in Meard-street (Meard-street where I had thought to have my Studio) that woman, I came to understand, was the person the Nobility used: she was very Expensive and very successful, she knew she could command her Fee; he did not come to me, he sent me a message , where to go, he left me to deal with my decision alone - money, nothing else.I went to the door of the house as he instructed me in his note and in Meard-street, in the large basement with thick drawn satin curtains and a four-poster bed and two maids and - she may have been for the Nobility but it was the same process used all over London as I knew from Angelica and Poppy - and there was a thin copper stick that was thrust into me over and over, then I was served tea by one of the maids, then I was sent home in a small covered carriage, part of the twenty-pound service, I alighted at the corner of the Strand.It was after I walked back then to the house in Pall Mall with tell-tale blood still dripping (somehow I got to my room and sent word downstairs that I was, that day, unwell) that colours suddenly began to flash inside my head and I could not stop them: it was as if my head had turned mad and had fireworks exploding inside of it, great explosions of bright green and red and yellow inside my head, and nothing I could do to stop them - it was more terrifying than anything that had ever happened to me, all night over and over in my head churned the details of my life, my Work and my Love, they became muddled, the colours in my head were the colours of the body of James and arms and blood and canvas and shadows and James again and a child, the children, and always somewhere underneath it all Philip tearing my Drawings: the record of our Past that had been lost.The next morning I somehow, somehow, cleaned myself tidied myself and went downstairs - I had changed my life, yet I had only missed, as it were, a day.Philip was walking around the dining-room in a fury, could not speak for anger; Angelica was full of gossip and explained.In that one day that I had missed, in that day I had gone to the basement in Meard-street, Mr James Burke had sent my brother a brief note concluding their Partnership - and Mr James Burke, Art Dealer, and his wife Lydia, had suddenly left London for Europe.‘It will be because of Lydia!’ exclaimed Angelica.I stood very still.‘Because of Lydia
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