PIKE Oh my God. But this is … Oh my God. There’s never been one, not a real portrait.

MRS SWAN That’s true. Apart from the Paris portrait; but that was on canvas, too.

PIKE The Paris portrait … ?

MRS SWAN Yes, Flora’s first time in Paris, she was driving an ambulance, officially, in the last year of the ‘14–’18 war … so she was twenty-three, I suppose, when she met Modigliani.

PIKE Modigliani?!

MRS SWAN Oh, Flora met everybody. Not that Modigliani was anybody at the time.

PIKE A portrait by Modigliani?

MRS SWAN I was nine at the Armistice, so that was, my goodness, sixty-six years ago! I’m coming up to seventy-five, you know.

PIKE Eleanor … I can hardly believe my ears.

MRS SWAN I’m afraid so. I was born in 1909. But thank you, Eldon. Have another slice of cake.

PIKE No—thank you—I—excuse me: a painting of Flora by Modigli—

MRS SWAN Yes. A nude.

PIKE (Reverently) A nude!

MRS SWAN I never saw it myself. I was at school, of course, and then, it was too late.

PIKE Too late?

MRS SWAN Yes, isn’t that bad luck? The Technicolor Flora like a cork in a storm, washed up on top of a wardrobe in a bungalow in Shepperton, and the Modigliani, which would have paid for the bungalow several times over, burned to ashes in a bathtub in the Ritz.

By now she has assembled the tea-tray and she leaves with it.

PIKE Could you run that by me again?

Pike totters after her.

Flora, in her blue dress, is at the table on the verandah, writing in her notebook with a fountain pen. She pauses, thinking, sitting quite still. Her feet are bare and her shoes are placed neatly to one side. Das is painting her portrait.

FLORA (Recorded) ‘Yes I am in heat like a bride in a bath,

without secrets, soaked in heated air
that liquifies to the touch and floods,
shortening the breath, yes
I am discovered, heat has found me out,
a stain that stops at nothing,
not the squeezed gates or soft gutters,
it slicks into the press
that prints me to the sheet
yes, think of a woman in a house of net
that strains the oxygen out of the air
thickening the night to Indian ink
or think if you prefer—’

Flora has unconsciously crossed her legs, which brings Das’s work to a halt. He waits, patiently. She notices that Das has stopped.

Oh …

DAS No, please be comfortable.

FLORA I’m sorry! (She puts her feet side-by-side.) There. Is that how I was?

DAS You are patient with me. I think your nature is very kind.

FLORA Do you think so, Mr Das?

DAS I am sure of it. May I ask you a personal question?

FLORA That is a personal question.

DAS Oh my goodness, is it?

FLORA I always think so. It always feels like one. Carte blanche is what you’re asking, Mr Das. Am I to lay myself bare before you?