Page 33

According to the letters, from 1936 to 1941 she had been living in the Lawn Road Flats, now known as the Isokon Building.

This in itself was fascinating. I remembered going to see the building when I was studying the Bauhaus movement.

The movement’s founder, Walter Gropius, lived there after escaping from Nazi Germany.

It had been a haven for leftist thinking, and I seemed to recall something also about Soviet spies.

The likes of Henry Moore, Naum Gabo, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth had frequented the Isobar in the building’s ground floor.

Sheba had lived in the heart of an artistic colony.

Maybe this was where she did the painting of the roses all those years ago. The area was filled with refugees, and they were very aware of the storm that was threatening Europe and the world. What a life she had lived.

I worked my way through a pile of these letters to Sheba from her grandfather, touched by the close relationship they seemed to have enjoyed.

The next few were from a gallery in London.

These were important. The history of the sale of her work would help to build up interest and create a better picture of the course of her career.

Picking up a notebook, I saw that inside it was inscribed with Sheba’s name, the date 1934 and Venice. It was filled with mostly sketches, but on some pages there were short paragraphs, as though she was talking to someone.

I can only think of you. My hunger for your company is haunting everything I do.

My heart stopped when I saw sketches of a woman.

It was the woman in the painting. Page after page was filled with images of her.

I leaned back in my chair. So Sheba clearly knew the woman in the painting, and that alone might explain why she had it.

It looked nothing like her work. I studied each page, but none of them were preliminaries of the portrait.

There were quite a few sketches of a priest, a good-looking one. Under one of them, she had written, Father Keeney intrigues me.

Keeney was not an Italian name . . . Irish possibly.

I typed his name and the year into the search engine.

Father Terence Keeney. Catholic priest, Irish American, spy.

Born in Boston in 1897, died in London in 1939.

Interesting. But it was a rabbit hole I didn’t need to go down.

I sat back and recalled the photo of Sheba.

TK . He could have been the photographer.

I closed my laptop and looked at the last sketch in the notebook. It was of a scene in Harry’s Bar and done in watercolour. The work was loose, fast and evocative. I was there in the moment, feeling a little bit tipsy. Underneath she had written, Venice has seduced me but my heart belongs to you.

Who had her heart? Was it the woman in the painting? It must be. Putting the sketchbook down, I opened another. It was also from 1934. But no longer Venice. The notes in it were sad.

Everywhere despite the sun is grey. Without you there is no joy.

The work was technically good but lacked the vibrancy of the Venice sketches.

I am empty.

Her work changed again when she went to the Slade, and was less inward-looking during this period.

There was mention of Martha and Jason and assignments.

This must be the Martha who came to Cornwall with Viv.

A newspaper cutting was slipped into the last pages.

It was a picture of Sheba standing next to the painting that was now in her bedroom.

It was entitled My Love , and she’d won first prize at the Slade with it that year.

According to the article, the painting had been started in Venice, and she told the journalist that her trip to Paris and Venice had been the beginning of her journey to find her style.

I scrolled through the photos on my phone, switching between the one she won the prize for and the portrait. But try as I might, I couldn’t see Sheba’s hand in the painting of the woman. But the thought wouldn’t leave me.

I flipped through another notebook. There I found one of Forster’s poems written out in Sheba’s handwriting. But it wasn’t the version I knew. It began differently.

Your eyes

Seeing what is not visible

Your fingers

Capturing the illusive

Your heart

Holding

Me

Then the words were familiar until the end

I am unmade

Love has disassembled me

To my parts

Only you

Can make me whole

Underneath it was another sketch of the woman from the painting. She was in profile and there was a fur collar about her neck. It was dated 1938. Above the year was the initial K.

I opened my photos again. K’s face stared out from my phone screen. Sheba was in love with her, of that I was certain. But it was nothing like Sheba’s work. The painting called My Love couldn’t be of Viv, because they didn’t meet until after the war. I believed it was Sheba’s portrait of K.

I was on to something. But it would have to wait. Finding these answers would be meaningless if I couldn’t save the business.