XLIV
Memorandum of a letter from Walter Hartright to
Mr. Elijah Nisbet, 1st December, 185-
1. May remember we met when locomotive broke down near Leeds.
2. Very kindly suggested might call to see your Turners.
3. Shall be passing through Birmingham en route to London next week. May I accept invitation then?
XLV
Letter from Walter Hartright to Marian Halcombe,
1st December, 185-
Limmeridge,
Friday
My dear Marian,
You are a marvel! To have made such astonishing progress, in less than two months!
Unfortunately, I shall not be able to return in time for the proposed dinner on Monday. I realize this may place you in a difficult situation, and I am sorry for it; but since I had not heard from you for so long (please do not take this as a criticism – I can quite see that it would have been impossible to write, when you have been so occupied), I naturally had no idea of what, if anything, you had discovered, and no inkling that you might have made plans involving me. I have, in consequence, been pursuing my own independent research, which I fear obliges me to stop in Birmingham on my way back to town. Would it be possible, do you think, to postpone our engagement with the Eastlakes for a few days?
With love from your devoted brother,
Walter
Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,
4th December, 185–
Heaven knows where,
Monday
My dearest love,
See! I am being as good as my word! – though with some difficulty, I must confess – the train lurches from side to side like a ship at sea – can only put pen to paper in half-second when it is equidistant between the two. But now or never – for when we arrive at Willenhall (shortly) must go directly to the inn, and thence to Mr. Nisbet’s. So please forgive brief note. More tomorrow, I promise.
Meanwhile – don’t be anxious about me. I am well. I have forgotten nothing. I love you.
Walter
XLVII
From the journal of Walter Hartright, 4th December, 185-
The rest can wait for my letter, but this, I know, would upset her.
When he came in from seeing the poor fellow, Nisbet was clearly shocked – his face pale beneath the smudges of soot, his left hand grasping his right wrist, as if for support. He looked out of the window at the vision of hell beyond; and then steadied himself, and shrugged, and turned back towards me.
‘The price of Progress,’ he said. ‘Everything has its price.’ He nodded, as if this catechism had restored his faith. ‘Turner knew that. Now, will you take a glass of wine, Mr. Hartright?’
Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,
5th December, 185–
A little past Rugby,
Tuesday
My dearest love,
The North-Western Railway, thank God, is kinder to correspondents than the Birmingham and Derby. My writing-box stays on my knee (most of the time) of its own volition; the pen makes only occasional unauthorized forays across the paper; and my elbow even has the luxury of unimpeded movement, thanks to the seat next to mine being empty. All in all, in fact, aside from the cold, I’m almost as comfortable as I should be in my study at home. So here, at last, is a proper letter.
I had always supposed that the name ‘Black Country’ was a kind of poetical exaggeration, but it turns out to be as bald and literal a description as ‘Canal Street’ or ‘Station Road’. The ground is black with coal and cinders – the air with smoke – the very trees and blades of grass are black with soot, with just a flash of green here and there to remind you of their former state, like an old bright handkerchief glimpsed unexpectedly amidst the drabness of a workhouse. Mr. Nisbet, it transpires, is an iron-master; and while his house – a nightmare confection of gothic spires and Tudor windows, standing not half a mile from his works – is barely ten years old, it is already so caked with dust that you can only tell by the close-mesh pattern of the mortar that it is built of brick rather than stone.
The door was opened by a middle-aged woman, who led me into a large octagonal hall. The walls were bare, save only for a few sombre portraits, and a picture of Nisbet and his family on the monumental chimney-breast. In the centre of the room was a huge table that might have been intended for King Arthur and his knights, but otherwise it was sparingly furnished, with a few seats set against the sides, and three wing-chairs arranged in a semi-circle in front of the fire blazing in the great stone hearth. A smoky light filtered down from a ring of small windows in the tower above, giving the place a kind of airy solemnity, like the interior of a church.
‘I’ll tell the master you’re here,’ said the woman.
But she had not gone three paces before Nisbet himself entered, talking animatedly to another man who – from his heavy boots, and coal-stained brown suit – I took to be his agent. Nisbet was red-faced, and repeatedly shook a sheaf of papers in his hand for emphasis; while his companion listened gravely, head bowed, occasionally nodding, and all the time casting his eyes about the room, like an animal searching for some means of escape. In due course, they fell on me, and settled there; whereupon Nisbet paused, and glanced towards me to see what he was looking at.
‘Ah, Mr. Hartright,’ he said. ‘I shall be with you directly,’ He turned back to the man in the brown suit. Tell him to think of his wife, Harkness,’ he said. Tell him to ask her opinion. He must understand – they must all understand – I will not have it.’
Harkness flushed, and stared at his feet. I thought for a moment he was going to protest; but at length he nodded abruptly, and started towards the front door at such a pace that the woman had to scuttle behind him to keep up.
‘Now then,’ said Nisbet, giving my hand a perfunctory shake. ‘How are you?’ He did not meet my gaze, but merely looked about the hall, as if making an inventory of its contents. After a few seconds he sat down before the fire, indicating with a casual wave that I should do the same. ‘We’ll do well enough in here for the time being, I think,’ he said. ‘My father-in-law’s dozing in the library, and I don’t want to disturb him.’
His tone was pleasant enough, but there was no hint of apology, and he did not even pretend to consult my wishes, but simply assumed I should fall in with his. I was conscious, too, that he was looking at me in an odd way, staring at my legs and hands and at the back of my chair, with as little embarrassment as a farmer examining a horse he has been offered for sale. At length he sat back, with a faint air of puzzlement, and said:
‘So, did you work it up?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The locomotive?’
‘The loco-?’ I began. And then I recalled the circumstances of our last meeting, and realized that he must be talking about my drawing of the broken railway engine.
‘No,’ I said, without pausing to think. ‘I’ve been engaged in other things.’
‘Yes?’ he said impatiently. His eyes started to search the area round my chair again.
And all at once I knew: he was looking for a portfolio. He had assumed I was a professional artist, and I had not corrected him; and now he supposed that I had come here to try to sell him something. Hence his off-hand manner towards me – a manner which I had last experienced, it suddenly struck me, as a young man, when applying for the post of a drawing-master, and which implied that while I was something more than a tradesman, I was certainly less than a guest.
How to explain the truth, without embarrassment to us both? Matter-of-factly, making nothing of it? Humorously, with an easy laugh at such a foolish misunderstanding? I was still trying to decide when he went on:
‘Anything in the same vein? Engines? Machines?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at the moment.’
‘Have you then nothing to show me?’
I shook my head. ‘I simply came to see your Turners, since you were kind enough to invite me.’
I had not meant to sound reproachful, but perhaps I did; for he at once said:
‘Oh, of course! of course!’ He nodded and smiled. ‘Forgive me if I mistook your purpose, but men in your line of business seldom lose an opportunity to advertise their wares, I find.’
Perhaps, even now, I should have told him what my real purpose was, but having just disavowed one ulterior motive I felt I could not very easily admit to another; so I merely laughed, and said:
‘Even Turner?’
‘I knew him only as an old man,’ he replied. ‘When he had no need to play the salesman. But even then he liked his money.’ He frowned, and thrust out his lower lip, as if making some nice judgement, or recollecting some disagreeable memory. ‘If truth be told, he was something of a miser.’
‘Indeed?’ I said – as innocently, I like to think, as if the idea were entirely new to me.
He nodded. ‘He’d never part with a penny unless he had to, or spend sixpence to save a shilling. The–’ He stopped himself, reluctantly, I thought. ‘But there. You don’t want to hear about the man. You want to see the pictures.’
‘No, please,’ I said. ‘He is something of a hero of mine.’
He went on immediately, like a machine that needs only the smallest nudge to set it in motion again.
‘Well, the gallery in Queen Anne Street was a sight to behold. I have workmen keep their houses in better repair.’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘I was passing once when it came on to rain, and I thought I’d take shelter inside; but when I got upstairs it was so wet I had to keep my umbrella up. Water coming through the broken skylights – water in puddles on the floor – water streaming down the pictures. The wall-covering – some kind of red fabric – was coming off in handfuls. There was a painting of some great classical scene – Carthage, I think it was – and when I got close I saw the sky was all cracked like breaking ice, and in some places it was peeling away altogether. Another canvas was being used as a kind of door, covering a hole in the window, through which the cats would come and go.’
‘Cats!’
‘Oh, yes, they were everywhere. The place stank of them. They belonged to the housekeeper – a hag of a woman, to give you nightmares.’
‘What, Mrs. Booth, you mean?’
‘No, Danby, her name was. Hannah Danby.’ He mimed wrapping a bandage about his head. ‘Her face was so disfigured she had to keep it covered.’
It was all I could do not to laugh at such a relentless catalogue of gothic detail; but he seemed deadly serious as he went on:
‘The cats, I suppose, were the only creatures who could tolerate her company. And she rewarded them by letting them walk and sleep where they pleased, and sharpen their claws on the picture-frames, and harry visitors. While I was standing there one of them jumped without warning on my neck, making me drop my umbrella in surprise – and suddenly four or five more appeared, attracted by the noise, and began pressing themselves about my legs.’
He must at last have noticed my efforts to keep a straight face, for he smiled in response, and said: ‘And if it wasn’t the cats it’d be Turner himself, creeping out of his studio and taking you unawares.’
He chuckled, which I took as a licence finally to laugh myself; and we both guffawed, egging each other on, until we had half-forgotten the original cause of our merriment. After thirty seconds or so, however, he stopped abruptly and said:
‘But I shouldn’t make fun of him. I wouldn’t have lived as he did – but then I couldn’t have painted as he did, either. And for all his oddities, he was a pleasure to do business with. Always absolutely straight – you’d agree a price, or a date, and he’d stick to it without fail.’ He paused, and pondered a moment, and then acknowledged some new thought by raising his finger. ‘I’ll tell you something else. He was the only painter I ever met who could talk intelligently about my world. The uses of different kinds of coal for smelting. The design of a new pump-engine. He was always fascinated by those kinds of subjects. He had an unshakeable belief in the industrial progress of our nation. As you’ll see in -’
He suddenly stopped, and cocked his head. For a moment I could not imagine what had disturbed him. And then I heard it myself: a hubbub of cries and shouts and clanking metal, some way off but impossible to ignore, like the clamour of an approaching army.
Nisbet drew in his breath sharply, and jumped to his feet. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, barely audibly; and started to leave at a run. But after a few steps he made a visible effort to master himself, and slowed to a walk.
‘Come on,’ he said, turning to me with a grim smile. ‘Dad must be awake now anyway.’
He led me out of the hall and into a square room at the back of the house. It was plainly meant as a library; but it felt more like a small museum or gallery, for half the shelves were taken up not with books but with architectural and mechanical models, and there were pictures covering every scrap of wall. An elderly man in high boots and a plum-coloured riding coat sat before the fire, with the wide-eyed look of someone who has been startled awake.
‘What is it?’ he asked Nisbet.
Nisbet shook his head brusquely, and strode to the window. The curtains had already been drawn, but he threw them open again, and looked out.
Do you recall the picture of Pandemonium in my father’s copy of Paradise Lost? If not, find it in my study; for it will give you some idea of the scene that now confronted us. My immediate thought was that the earth itself must be on fire; for, beyond a line of bare trees at the end of the garden, I could at first see nothing but flames, and plumes of black smoke, and some heavier, yellowish vapour that curled this way and that across the ground, as if it were too lethargic to rise into the air. As my eyes grew more accustomed to the dusk, however, I could make out huge black mounds, as big as hills; and the silhouettes of tall chimneys, and engines with great wheels for winding up the coal, and clusters of sheds and cottages and stables – all strewn about as if they had been placed there with as little thought for order or beauty as pins stuck in a pin-cushion.
At the centre were three or four raging furnaces, surrounded by a tangle of tramways lined with laden trucks – which were probably carrying nothing more fearful than blocks of limestone, but might, from their appearance, have been conveying the souls of the damned to hell (an impression accentuated by the rhythmic thump of the engines, which sounded as solemn and ominous as a death march). As we watched, men seemed to be running towards them from every direction – yelling, dropping tools and buckets and gesticulating as they went – and gathering in an ever-bigger knot about something, or someone, on the ground.
I heard Nisbet mutter, under his breath, ‘Damn!’
‘Is it another accident?’ said the old man. He was still in his chair, twisting his head towards us, as if he was too frightened to see the truth for himself.
‘Looks like it,’ said Nisbet, flatly.
‘Oh, Eli!’ said the old man, shaking his head. He looked very pale. A strand of thin white hair fell into his eyes, but he did not try to remove it.
Nisbet looked down at his hands, flexing the fingers abstractedly; and then turned to me with a brittle smile and said, with a creditable attempt at normality:
‘You’ll see, Mr. Hartright, that I’ve not done a great deal for authors and booksellers.’ He waved towards the half-empty shelves, and then to the paintings crowded between them. ‘But your fraternity has no reason to complain of me.’
Looking around, I saw that there were perhaps thirty pictures altogether – oils and watercolours, prints and drawings, in almost every conceivable size and shape and manner. The only principle linking them seemed to be their subject matter: every one of them showed a machine, or an industrial process.
‘You see my taste,’ said Nisbet, trying to sound humorous. ‘It’s the taste of a man with an interest in two railways and a shipping company.’
‘Eli,’ said the old man, before I had time to reply. ‘Should you not go out there?’
‘I’m not going to faffle about like a woman,’ said Nisbet quietly. He narrowed his eyes, and looked out of the window again. ‘There’s a bridge-stocker there. There’s a manager. There’s Harkness. They know where to find me if I’m wanted.’ He returned to me, and, touching my elbow, moved me towards a picture over the fireplace. ‘There you are. There’s a Turner for you.’
It was a large marine scene: a turbulent grey sea, churned up by the wind, with an embattled steamer struggling against the storm. Everything was extraordinarily imprecise, even by Turner’s standards – the waves no more than a few thick, ridged swirls laid on a brilliant white ground – the ship a fuzzy black blur, of which the most clearly defined feature was the torrent of smoke streaming from its funnel. And yet the effect was somehow so vivid that you could feel the lurch of the deck under your feet, and the sting of the spray on your face, and smell the hot sour reek of coal-smoke, and hear the wheels thrashing and the engine throbbing in your ears.
‘What do you think?’ asked Nisbet.
‘It’s very fine.’
‘Is that an honest opinion?’
‘Yes,’ I said, somewhat taken aback by his bluntness.
‘Then you must fight the whole neighbourhood. Including my father-in-law.’ He turned to the old man. ‘This is Mr. Hartright, Dad. Mr. Hartright, Sam Bligh.’
‘How d’ye do?’ said the old man. His hand trembled as it took mine.
‘Mr. Hartright’s an artist, Dad,’ said Nisbet. He pointed towards the Turner. ‘Tell him what you think of that.’
Mr. Bligh attempted a smile. ‘It’s all froth and splutter,’ he said, like a child encouraged to repeat some amusing remark before visitors.
‘And you’d as soon …?’ prompted Nisbet.
‘I’d as soon sit in the laundry, and watch the bubbles on the copper.’
‘There,’ said Nisbet, laughing. ‘That is what I must contend with. And his daughter’s no better. She thinks -’
But I never discovered what Mrs. Nisbet thought; for at that moment the man in the brown suit entered without knocking. He was out of breath; his hair was wet and tousled, his red face blotched with dirt; and there were scorch-marks on his sleeves.
‘What is it?’ snapped Nisbet.
Harkness glanced covertly at me. ‘I think you should come, sir,’ he said softly.
‘What is it?’ roared Nisbet. He was white and shaking, and spat out the words so furiously that he had to wipe the spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand.
I struggled to hold my tongue; for poor Harkness had clearly been through some terrible ordeal, and Nisbet’s behaviour seemed akin to the Roman tyrant’s monstrous practice of killing the bearer of bad news. But Harkness himself appeared quite unmoved by it – as if, having bolted the doors and put up the shutters to protect himself against some great catastrophe, he was not now going to be intimidated by a mere show of temper.
‘Well, sir,’ he said, drawing himself up and looking his employer calmly in the eye, ‘I told him what you said. And he said, he was a free man, and if you wouldn’t have him there’s others as would. And he stormed off.’
‘Is that all?’ said Nisbet, his eyes lightening, like a condemned man who had suddenly glimpsed the possibility of reprieve.
Harkness shook his head. ‘There was a barrow by the filling-hole, barring his way. He couldn’t see it clearly, what with the dark, and him drunk. I suppose he must have thought it was full, for he seized it with all his might, to throw it clear. But it was empty, and gave way too easily, and the force of his own movement sent him into the furnace.’
‘Oh!’ whimpered the old man, turning away, and pressing his fingers anguishedly against his brow. Nisbet’s gaze did not waver; but his face paled and seemed to tighten, as if some unwelcome presence had insinuated itself beneath the skin.
‘Two of the other men pulled him out again, almost at once,’ said Harkness. ‘But he’s bad. Very bad.’
‘Has the doctor been called?’ asked Nisbet.
‘Of course,’ said Harkness. ‘But…’ He dropped his eyes, finally admitting defeat.
‘And what of his wife?’
Harkness shook his head.
‘Give her five pounds, and tell her I shall see her tomorrow,’ said Nisbet, shooing him towards the door. He started to follow, then stopped and turned to his father-in-law. ‘Dad, look after Mr. Hartright, will you?’
But, try as he might, poor Mr. Bligh had not the heart to play the host; and after enquiring where I had come from, and where I was going, and making two or three feeble observations about the pictures, he gave up altogether, and gravitated towards the window, where he stood with his hands clasped behind him, like an elderly Bonaparte surveying the field of Waterloo. Secretly relieved (for I did not feel much like making conversation myself), I lingered at the other end of the room, and tried to divert myself by looking at the remaining Turners. They were, undeniably, magnificent – the interior of a foundry, a dazzling contrast of dark and light; and a fiery railway train appearing through a curtain of smoke and rain – but even their drama seemed somehow flat and lifeless compared with the tragedy unfolding outside, and after a few minutes I found myself standing next to Mr. Bligh and looking out.
The commotion by the furnace seemed to have died down – the swarming throng had stabilized, and ordered itself into a long line, as dark and immobile as a wall. As we watched, it slowly parted, and four minuscule doll-figures emerged carrying what looked like an untidy heap of blankets on a gate. They moved at a regular, deliberate plod, without urgency, towards a horse and cart standing at the edge of the crowd. Clearly, the victim was either out of danger – or, as I feared, beyond help.
I looked away, but a pitying moan from my companion made me turn back immediately. It took me a moment to make out what he had seen: a woman, running and stumbling across the rough ground, who hurled herself down before the makeshift litter, forcing the men to stop. She hugged herself – then threw her arms in the air – then rose again, and did a strange distraught dance, stamping her feet, and flinging her head from side to side. We, of course, saw this only as a kind of dumb-show, for she was too far away for us to hear the accompanying wails and sobs – which (contrary to what you might suppose) actually made matters worse; for it heightened our feelings of powerlessness and detachment, while underscoring the awful solitariness of human suffering.
But enough – I do not want to distress you, or myself. Suffice it to say that I felt I must avert my eyes, and yet knew that I must not. For a moment I was paralysed by this impasse; and then I suddenly saw that by drawing the dreadful scene before me I might somehow make it tolerable. I could not be of material aid to my fellow creatures; but it seemed to me that by bearing witness to their agony I might – in some tiny, mysterious way – share it with them, and give it meaning.
My notebook was too small to be serviceable; so I turned to Mr. Bligh and said:
‘Do you think I might have some paper?’
I think he, too, was glad to be doing something; for he at once went to the writing table in the corner, and brought me five or six sheets – and then, seeing the speed at which I worked, went back’for more, and stood attentively at my side, like the assistant who turns the pages for a musician, in case I should run out again.
I do not know how long I stood there, or how many drawings I made, but I was still labouring when Nisbet at length returned. He seemed shaken, but after a minute or two recovered somewhat, and, recalling his duties as a host, offered me a glass of wine – which I was only too happy to accept. As he handed it to me, his eye fell on my drawings, and he picked them up, and silently scrutinized them for a minute or more. At length he returned them to me, saying:
‘Send me a sketch of the finished painting when you’ve done it. The locomotive, too. I might be interested in buying.’
Heavens! We are almost there! My love to you always, and to the children.
Walter
XLIX
Letter from Laura Hartright to Walter Hartright,
7th December, 185–
Limmeridge,
Thursday
My darling boy,
Your letter quite frightened me. Such a horrible accident! That unfortunate man, and his poor wife! I scarce dare think about it.
Please, my darling, be careful.
Your loving wife,
Laura
L
From the journal of Walter Hartright, 10th December, 185–
Prepared the canvas today. Reviewed my drawings. Worked up two or three preliminary watercolour sketches.
But I cannot settle to it.
There is something disturbing about being back in London. Sometimes – most of the time – I still feel myself. But occasionally I seem to glimpse the world through the eyes of someone else entirely – someone I supposed I had cast off for ever, but who appears to have been waiting for me here, and to have gained strength from my return.
Perhaps I am just suffering from wounded pride. For I feel I have been ordered here like a performing animal, to go through my tricks before Lady Eastlake, and parrot Marian’s views as my own.
I must force myself back to the picture. If I can but make that work, I shall truly know more of Turner than they ever could.
From the journal of Marian Halcombe,
13th December, 185–
Thank God. My prayers have been answered.
How easily do we lose our sense of proportion. Twelve hours ago, had I been able to foresee the circumstances in which I write this, I should have been utterly distraught. But my heart, instead, is full of gratitude – for what I have lost, I can see, is as nothing compared with what I thought I had lost, and has been miraculously restored to me.
Now. I must be as good as my word, and set to work.
From this side of the abyss, it is hard to recognize the woman arriving in Fitzroy Square last night as myself. I observe her coldly (as a stranger would) being helped by Walter from the cab, and glancing expectantly towards the front door, and then devoting a full minute or more to smoothing her dress, settling her bonnet, and hoisting her skirts above the mire, as if a wrinkle or a stray hair or a muddy hem were the worst disaster that could befall her. There is something contemptible about such a petty display; and yet it moves me to pity, too – for I know what she in her blithe ignorance cannot even suspect: that her vanity is about to get its come-uppance.
I had supposed, from Elizabeth Eastlake’s invitation, that we should be dining with them alone; and I was therefore surprised to find, on entering the drawing room, that there were two other people already there. At first glance you might have supposed them to be an elderly couple; for both were grey-haired, and they shared a kind of plain, no-nonsense demeanour that marked them out as members of the high-minded, rather than the fashionable, portion of the Eastlakes’ acquaintance. Something in the way they stood, however – she talking animatedly, he stooping formally towards her, with the intent expression of someone who has difficulty hearing, but does not want to admit it – suggested that they were people who did not know each other well; and as they separated and turned towards us, preparing to be introduced, I saw that in fact she was a full twenty years older than he was. Her lively spirits, plainly, had enabled her to preserve the manner and appearance of a much younger woman; while he (by some strange law of complementarity), though still only in his fifties, seemed to be hurrying into old age as fast as his stiff limbs could carry him.
‘Mrs. Somerville,’ said Sir Charles. ‘I don’t believe you know Miss Halcombe?’
But of course I knew her name (it is impossible to spend ten minutes in the company of a blue-stocking like Elizabeth East-lake without hearing it mentioned at least once), and was keenly conscious, as we shook hands, that it was a great honour to meet her. And yet I could not but feel a spasm of disappointment, too, that the Eastlakes had not considered us worthy of an evening by ourselves, but had merely seen us as one more social duty that must somehow be accommodated with all the others.
‘Mrs. Somerville, Mr. Hartright,’ murmured Sir Charles. ‘Miss Halcombe, Mr. Cussons.’
The next moment, disappointment gave way to outright dismay; for, turning towards Mr. Cussons, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye another couple arriving. I could not, for an instant, believe my first impression of them; but a second glance confirmed it:
Mr. and Mrs. Kingsett.
I don’t know if Mr. Cussons noticed my shocked expression, for it was impossible to deduce anything from his face whatsoever. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man, with a high domed forehead fringed with feathery hair, and the alert unsmiling eyes of a bird of prey.
‘How do you do?’ I said.
‘How do you do?’
I was painfully aware of the approaching Kingsetts, and frantically wondering how I should conduct myself towards them; but realizing I could not break free from Mr. Cussons just yet without seeming rude, I lingered beside him, waiting for him to go on. He, however, seemed to feel under no compulsion to say anything more, and merely continued to stare – intently enough, but entirely without interest, so that you felt he wasn’t really looking at you at all, but merely keeping watch in case a mouse or a rabbit suddenly broke cover, and scuttled across the carpet. After fifteen seconds I felt I had earned my release – for surely a man must exercise his claim to a woman’s attention by speaking within a reasonable time, or else forfeit it altogether? – and, muttering an excuse, bowed to the inevitable, and turned to Lydia Kingsett.
I knew at once that matters had not improved since our last meeting. She looked more worn than ever, and her hands were deathly cold as she clasped mine – although she was, I think, genuinely glad to see me, and even managed a little smile as she said, with pathetic eagerness:
‘Miss Halcombe, Miss Halcombe, I’m so …’
But then she caught her husband’s eye, and stopped abruptly.
‘You’re what?’ I said, laughing, and trying to encourage her with a tone of easy familiarity. ‘Come on, tell me.’
She mumbled, shook her head, stared at the floor. I touched her wrist, and bent close to her, as you would to a troubled child.
‘Hmm?’
But still she said nothing. In the awkward lull that followed, I felt her husband’s gaze upon me, as palpable as heat from a fire, challenging me to turn and discover what had silenced her. I tried to resist, but after a few seconds curiosity got the better of me.
It was disagreeable enough just to see him again, like suddenly smelling some foul half-forgotten odour; but what made it worse was the leering way he was looking at me, which was so frankly insulting that I thought one of the other gentlemen must see it, and come to my defence. Mr. Cussons, however, was still surveying the world from his perch, and Walter and Sir Charles were engaged in conversations of their own; so I had no alternative but to try to deter Kingsett myself, by scowling imperiously at him.
For answer – to my amazement – he protruded his tongue an inch or two from his lips, and ran a finger unhurriedly along it, in a gesture of unmistakable depravity – all the while eyeing me with a shameless smirk. If anyone else observed it (and I pray they did not), they could not but have seen it as evidence of some past intimacy between us; and, although I knew myself to be guiltless, I could not help blushing furiously.
I was, for a moment, transfixed; and then, as I saw him starting to advance towards me, preparing to extend the hand he had just licked, I turned tail and fled. Elizabeth Eastlake was, mercifully, talking to Walter, and I felt no compunction in intruding on them and drawing her to one side.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Do not ask Mr. Kingsett to take me down to dinner.’
‘Why?’ she said, surprised, with a surreptitious glance in his direction.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ I whispered urgently – for already he had changed course, and was bearing down on us again.
She nodded, and – woman of the world that she is – promptly turned to intercept Kingsett, allowing me to make my escape. I don’t know what she said to him, but when, a few minutes later, she whispered something to Sir Charles, and then slipped quietly from the room (presumably to change the place-names on the dinner table) he made no attempt to approach me again.
I stood in a corner, silently congratulating myself. This was not what I had imagined it would be – it might turn out to be a dull and worthless evening – but at least I had averted the worst harm it could do me.
Or so I thought.
I was spared Mr. Kingsett; but in all other respects the dinner turned out every bit as gruesome as I had feared. The price I paid for my deliverance was to be seated next to Mr. Cussons, who for most of the meal showed as little inclination to talk as he had done before it. I did try to breach the silence with a trivial comment or two, but they were as futile as pebbles flung against a castle wall; for he seemed to regard human communication as an unnecessary distraction, and merely grunted and glowered at me when I spoke, as though I had interrupted an important business meeting between him and his soup.
Sir Charles sat to my right, and was pleasant enough; but he was largely taken up with rescuing Mrs. Somerville from Mr. Kingsett, who – under the revised arrangement – was now between her and Lady Eastlake. Kingsett was almost as silent as Mr. Cussons – though not, in his case, out of aloofness, but rather from a kind of sulky petulance. The conversation, when it caught fire at all, was about photography, and prisms, and optical effects; and knowing himself unqualified to contribute to it (it was, quite literally above his head; for Elizabeth Eastlake is at least three inches taller than he is), he did his best to extinguish it altogether. Whenever either of his neighbours said anything, he would sigh, and shift in his chair, and clatter his knife and fork; or gaze absently into space; or appear to listen, with a foolish, put-upon little smile that said: It’s all nonsense, and I won’t be taken in by it. But his principal occupation, which he resumed whenever there was a lull, was terrorizing his wife – staring at her with such undisguised loathing and contempt that the poor woman was almost paralysed with misery and fear, and could only respond to Walter’s repeated attempts to draw her out with a few stammered words. I cannot deny being relieved that it was she, and not I, who was the object of this relentless persecution; and yet it left me feeling desperately angry and frustrated, too – as if I were being forced to witness some dreadful unequal battle, while being quite powerless to help the victims.
I was also, I own, haunted by another, less worthy thought: how was I going to explain this disaster to Walter? From his easy, cheerful manner you would never have guessed that he felt there was anything wrong, or that he was less than delighted with the company in which he found himself; but once or twice I caught him looking at me curiously down the length of the table, as if to say: Why did you summon me back to London for this? To which I could not think of a reply – save to confess candidly that I had over-estimated both Lady Eastlake’s enthusiasm for my ideas, and her regard for me personally. Six months ago I might have made such an admission easily enough – indeed, I should have hastened to do so, knowing that he would reassure me, and soothe my bruised amour propre – but now the chasm between us seemed to make it impossible.
On only one occasion did the conversation veer in the direction I had hoped. Mrs. Somerville was reminiscing about Italy with Sir Charles when – suddenly observing that no-one had said a word to me for five minutes – she decided to take pity on me.
‘Do you know Italy, Miss Halcombe?’
‘Not well, I’m afraid.’
‘You should, you should. I am obliged to live there, for my husband’s health. But I cannot say it is a great sacrifice.’
She laughed, and Sir Charles smiled and nodded in agreement.
‘The buildings,’ she went on. ‘The landscape.’ She shook her head, as if such sublime beauty were altogether beyond her powers of description. ‘And the quality of the light. Truly remarkable.’
‘That, doubtless,’ I said, seizing my chance, ‘is why Turner was so drawn to it?’
‘Oh, indeed, indeed. I discussed it with him often.’
She paused, busying herself with something on her plate; and, before she could go on, Sir Charles said mildly:
‘And you, I think, are fond of Italy too, Mr. Cussons?’
Mr. Cussons glared – his eyebrows shot up – his head jerked to one side.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You are fond of Italy?’
Mr. Cussons sat back – looked about him – settled himself on his perch. He had seen his rabbit. He pounced.
‘Not fond!’ he boomed, in the over-loud voice of the deaf. ‘Filthy dirty. Corrupt. Squalid’s not the word for it.’
And then he embarked on a seemingly interminable anecdote about how he had been obliged to go to Naples on business (nothing less would have induced him to set foot in the place); how he had acquired there a Botticelli Virgin and Child, of whose true value the shifty peasant who sold it to him had not had the faintest conception; and how he intended to leave it to the National Gallery, together with the rest of his collection – the whole to be known as ‘The Cussons Bequest’.
This, at least, answered one question that had been perplexing me all evening: why the Eastlakes had invited such a morose and unsociable individual to dinner? But by the time he had finished, Turner had entirely disappeared from view.
Most hostesses, at the end of such a meal, would have either apologized sotto voce to the other ladies while they were withdrawing, or else tried brightly to pretend that nothing was amiss. Elizabeth Eastlake did neither; which surprised me (for I felt the ordeal we had passed through demanded some acknowledgement), until I saw that it arose not from thoughtlessness but from delicacy – for both courses, in this instance, would have only further compounded Mrs. Kingsett’s anguish: the first by criticizing her husband in front of other people, and the second by requiring her to affect normality and make polite small talk when she was clearly too upset to do so. Instead, Lady Eastlake calmly helped her friend upstairs (even then, Mrs. Kingsett was so close to collapse that she had to clutch the banister rail like an old woman), and settled her in a quiet corner in the boudoir before returning to Mrs. Somerville and myself in the drawing room.
‘My poor Marian,’ she said. ‘This is not at all what you imagined, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, no,’ I said, wondering at my own mendacity. ‘It’s been very pleasant.’
‘Don’t lie,’ she mouthed, tapping me in mock reproach (at which I heard Mrs. Somerville laughing softly at my side). ‘Did you bring your notes?’
‘Well…’
Her eye fell on my reticule; and she must have seen the bulge of my notebook, for she nodded.
‘Only because you asked me to …’ I began.
She pulled a rueful face. ‘I know I did.’
‘But it doesn’t matter. It can …’
‘I’m so sorry, my dear.’ She touched my elbow impulsively, then turned to Mrs. Somerville. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to leave you to your own devices.’ She glanced discreetly towards Mrs. Kingsett. ‘You do understand …’
‘Of course.’
She nodded gratefully, then started back towards the boudoir, with the quiet purposefulness of a doctor approaching his patient.
‘I dare say we shall manage, Miss Halcombe, don’t you?’ said Mrs. Somerville. She sat on the sofa, and patted the place beside her. ‘Come. Please. I fear nowadays I don’t hear very well.’
I sat next to her. She smiled conspiratorially.
‘Just think what the gentlemen are having to endure,’ she said – with a stress on gentlemen that clearly implied: At least we don’t have to suffer that.
I laughed, and sat next to her. Here at last, I thought, was an opportunity to retrieve something from the evening. I was about to raise the subject of Turner again when she spared me the trouble:
‘And what, may I ask, do your notes concern?’
The Eastlakes are always so busy,’ she said, in the gentle tone of someone trying to excuse a friend’s behaviour. They try heroically to attend to everything, they really do, but. . ’she shook her head … ‘but I should be delighted to hear your ideas, if you’d care to tell me.’
And with some trepidation, I took out my notebook.
I began with my (or rather, since I felt I must maintain the fiction that these views were Walter’s as well as my own, with ‘our’) earliest findings; and at first her response was very gratifying. When I spoke of Turner’s relations with the Regency art world, and why they might have made him careful about money, she nodded approvingly, and murmured, ‘Yes, yes, how true.’ My delineation of his character – his sensitivity to criticism; his shyness about his odd appearance and uncouth speech – seemed to please her even more; and she clapped her hands with delight when I concluded:
‘Small wonder, then, that he shrank from the eyes of the world; and was willing that people should think him a miser and a fool, if only they would leave him alone.’
‘Excellent, Miss Halcombe!’ she cried out. ‘May I ask – was that your phrase, or your brother’s?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘“Shrank from the eyes of the world”?’
‘Mine, I think,’ I said. ‘Though I fear it’s an unremarkable enough image.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Very apt. The watchful eye. The cold eye. The censorious eye.’
Perhaps I looked perplexed; for she smiled, and touched the corner of her own eye, as if to clarify the point. ‘That’s what he feared. But it’s also what fascinated him.’
I only half-saw her meaning; but the ghostly outline of one of Turner’s doll-figures suddenly entered my mind, like a bookmark placed in a page that may repay further attention.
‘And he was very knowledgeable about it. I have seldom known anyone – besides other scientists – with such a keen interest in optics, and in the theory of light and colour. Or with such a sound grasp of the principles. You’d see him at Rogers’, deep -’
‘Roger?’ I said; and then, before she had time to reply, realized
I had misheard her. ‘Oh, you mean Rogers’?’
She nodded.
‘The banker,’ I said, recalling that I had heard Lady Eastlake talk of him more than once.
‘I think he would have preferred to be remembered as a poet,’ she said, with a wistful smile. ‘At all events, we all regularly met at his house. My husband and myself; Herschel, Faraday, Babbage, Tom Moore, Campbell. And Turner could speak to any one of us on our own subjects, and with great authority.’
‘Indeed?’ I said, astonished; for this seemed entirely at odds with the impression I had gained from Lady Meesden’s papers.
She nodded. ‘Most of the great men I have known – and Turner was, indisputably, a great man – have possessed the same quality. Which leads me to wonder whether genius is not so much a highly developed aptitude for one thing, but rather a kind of general intellectual capacity, that may be more or less equally applied to any field. Certainly Turner might have been a successful scientist or engineer, had he chosen. Anyway -’
‘But what, then, of the people who said he was inarticulate?’
She shrugged. ‘He could be hard to understand when he spoke publicly. But not when he was relaxed, and among friends.’ She paused, struck by a sudden recollection. ‘The only complaints you ever heard then were from dullards, who could not soar to the same heights. I remember once we were at a conversazzione, and I had been snared by a gentleman who talked of nothing but the funds, and the price of corn. And Turner came up to me, and plucked from his pocket a yellow handkerchief. “Now, Mrs. Somerville,” he said’ – and here, to my surprise, she dropped into a gruff cockney voice that I took to be a fair imitation of Turner’s – ‘“what d’you say this is?”
‘“Why, a handkerchief, of course.”
‘He put it back in his pocket. “And where is it?”
‘“In your coat.”
‘“And what colour is it?”
‘“Yellow.”
‘“You’re sure?”
‘Naturally, I was laughing by this point – I had some idea what was in his mind – but I said: “Of course.”
‘He wagged a finger at me and shook his head. “A consciousness of the fallacy of our judgement is one of the most important consequences of the study of nature, which teaches us that no object is seen by us in its true place. And that colours are solely the effects of the action of matter upon light, and that light itself is not a real being/’
‘Well, needless to say, Miss Halcombe, my dull companion had been shifting from one foot to the other during this performance, and rolling his eyes; and now he could contain himself no longer.
‘“If you don’t mind my saying so,” he said, “that’s absolute gibberish.”
‘“Really?” said Turner. “Then perhaps you should read Mrs. Somerville’s book.’”
She laughed, with a complicit glint in her eye, as if I were in on the joke with her and Turner – rather than (as I had shamefully to admit to myself) in the same predicament as the gentleman who talked of funds and the price of corn.
‘I’m sorry . . .’I stumbled. ‘I –’
‘It was a quotation, almost word for word, from On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t quite understand …’ I said. ‘Could you perhaps explain. ..?’
‘I was talking about the constraints of the scientific method,’ she replied. ‘Which Turner, I think, found disturbing. Despite making light of it.’
‘Because …? Because .. .?’I said, hoping to tempt her into saying something more before I had to.
‘Because thought - the exercise of reason – will only take us so far,’ she said at length. ‘And then we reach the limit of its competence. For my part, I am content to leave it to faith – the grace and cohesion of what we do know, through mathematics, are enough to convince me of . . . of . . .’ she hesitated, carefully formulating the right words … ‘of the unity and omniscience of the Deity. But Turner, I suspect, didn’t have that consolation.’
‘He was not a believer?’
‘We did not discuss it,’ she said shortly. ‘But I think he saw the chaos and destruction in Nature before he saw the beauty – or rather I think he saw them together, as expressions of the same awful power. And our incapacity to grasp it, to understand it, was humiliating confirmation of our fundamental impotence.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ I said. And I immediately started to explain my conjectures about Turner’s childhood – his mother’s madness; his terror of storms, both natural and human – which seemed to accord precisely with what she had just told me. To my surprise and disappointment, however, she regarded me with an expression of growing distaste; and, when I had finished, said:
‘Forgive me if I am being old-fashioned, Miss Halcombe, but I think a biographer should confine himself to ascertainable facts, and to the recollections of those who knew his subject,’ Her tone was measured, but two little angry spots on her cheeks betrayed her. ‘This, it appears to me, is neither; but merely unfounded speculation.’
I was about to try to defend myself; but before I could do so the gentlemen entered.
I am unclear exactly what happened next, and in what order; for this (or so it seems, looking back) is the moment when the waking world suddenly gave way to nightmare, and from now on everything has the jumbled logic of a dream. I recall Mr. Kingsett, very drunk, stumbling on a rug by the fire; I remember Lady Eastlake reappearing from the boudoir, and saying, ‘I hope, gentlemen, you’re going to entertain us; for we’ve been a bit sombre’; I remember Mrs. Kingsett standing like a spectre in the doorway behind her.
And then we are all sitting, and one of the gentlemen is saying something about a new American medium called Mrs. Mast, who has been doing a brisk trade among fashionable ladies in London – ‘for she doesn’t use rapping or table-turning like the others, but talks in the voices of the dead themselves’. Lady Eastlake laughs – ‘People are so gullible’ – but Sir Charles mentions a Mrs. Somebody-or-other who swears she heard her dead son speaking to her. ‘What’s the harm’, he says, ‘if it gives her comfort?’
Lady Eastlake snorts.
Mr. Kingsett looks at his wife, and says:
‘We could employ Mrs. Mast permanently, my dear, could we not? To communicate with your mother. Might improve your spirits, to hear her complaining about me.’
Then confusion: sharp intakes of breath; Mrs. Kingsett crying; Mr. Kingsett saying she is unwell, and must go home; Walter and me both, simultaneously, offering to go with them (for the thought of their being incarcerated alone in a cab together is unbearable); Mr. Kingsett saying it is quite unnecessary; Lady Eastlake thanking us, and insisting on our behalf.
The street outside: helping Mrs. Kingsett into the Eastlakes’ carriage. And then her husband – as if he had not insulted me enough already – suddenly putting his arm about my waist, and saying (why?),’ Please, Miss Halcombe, we shall do perfectly well by ourselves.’
And then, as I have recovered myself, and put one foot on the step, it happens: a figure appears from nowhere – I am conscious only of a warm, dark bulk too close to me, and the stench of gin and dirty clothes – and there is a tremendous tug on my wrist, and my reticule is gone.
Running footsteps. Two sets of running footsteps. Walter crying ‘Stop, thief!’, and disappearing after him round the corner of the square.
I wept. I shook. I could not help myself. Elizabeth Eastlake was very kind, and sat up with me, and said I might stay the night; but when Walter had still not returned after an hour, I thanked her and returned to Brompton Grove, thinking I might find him there.
I didn’t.
I could not sleep. I sat at my writing table, waiting – as I had on the night of our visit to Sandycombe Lodge – for the sound of his key in the door.
It never came.
I tried not to imagine what might have happened to him, but I could not keep his image from my mind – injured, or murdered, or broken in some dreadful accident; nor the awful reflection that in some way this was my doing.
If only I had been more alert. Taken more care. Never introduced him to Elizabeth Eastlake.
I knew I should distract myself by writing my diary, but I could not do it.
I prayed: Return him to me, and I will be good. Make normal life possible again, and I will embrace it – joyfully; and never again complain of drudgery, or duty, or the ache of disappointment.
*
A little before dawn I must have drifted off to sleep. I was woken by a sound from the garden. I looked out and saw a light in the window of his studio.
It did not even occur to me it might be an intruder. I ran downstairs, and outside, and flung open the door.
Walter stood before a huge canvas smeared with black and red. He was unshaven, his cheek bruised, his hair tousled, his eyes bloodshot and unnaturally bright. For a moment he seemed not to know me. Then he said quietly:
‘You should be asleep.’
‘How could I sleep! I didn’t know where you were!’
I cried, and took him in my arms. He set down his palette, and stroked my hair like a child’s.
‘I have your reticule,’ he said. ‘There. On the table.’
‘Never mind that! What happened to you?’
‘I got lost, that’s all,’ he said gently ‘I’ll tell you about it later. Now. Please. Go and rest.’
I could not speak what I felt. I left and returned to my room.
LII
From the private notebook of Walter Hartright,
13th December, 185–
I have crossed the bar. Today. 13th December. A little after 1.00 a.m.
We think we are our own masters, but something drives us or draws us to our destiny.
I thought I was pursuing a common thief. I followed him out of the square, down Carburton Street, across Portland Place. What was in my mind? Nothing – save that I was doing what I must do.
And that luck, or God, was on my side. For every time I seemed to have lost the fellow, I saw him again.
We ran the length of Queen Anne Street, and then my quarry (pilot?) vanished into a small dimly lit court at the end. I went after him, but could not immediately see him, and – since there was no way out but the narrow alley by which we had gone in – assumed he must have entered one of the tenements, where I had no chance of finding him. But then I heard an urgent clacking sound, and, looking towards it, was just able to make out his figure in the shadows. He was desperately rattling at a latch, as if he were intending to escape inside but found the door locked. He glanced over his shoulder as I sprang towards him, and turned to face me.
I should have seen the warning in his eyes. They were not frightened, as they should have been, but satisfied – almost triumphant.
But I had not time to heed it. I pushed him roughly against the wall, seized the reticule, and – fearing he might try to snatch it back – thrust it into my pocket.
Then I heard the door opening, and steps, and hoarse, rapid breathing. I tried to turn, but was jostled off balance. Before I could recover myself, someone was tying my hands behind me. And then someone else slipped a hood over my head, and whispered:
‘Come along, sir.’
There was a man on either side of me, and a third behind. They edged me back towards the street, rearranging themselves into single file in order to pass through the alley. When we emerged they stopped for a second or two. I heard the stamp and snuffle of a stationary horse, and murmured voices, and a door opening; and then I felt myself being lifted and bundled into a cab.
Only one man, I felt fairly certain, got in with me; but in my present helpless state I could not hope to tackle even one, so as we moved off I forced myself to stay calm, and await a more favourable opportunity to get away. It was not easy, not only because I was naturally confused and disoriented, but also because my pinioned arms prevented me from sitting back in my seat, so making me prey to every lurch and bump in the road. But I determined not to protest – or indeed to speak at all, unless my captor spoke first; for to do so would have been to throw away the only weapon I had.
I think he must have seen things in the same light; for several times I heard him drawing in his breath, or clicking his tongue, as if he were on the point of saying something – but in the event he always appeared to think better of it, and kept his peace. From which I deduced, first, that he was hoping by remaining silent to break my nerve; and, second, that his own nerve was far from steady – both of which only stiffened my resolve.
I thus had ample time to reflect on who he might be, and why he had gone to such lengths to abduct me. The most obvious motive was robbery – but surely he and his friends might easily enough have accomplished that in the little court? I could think of no-one who might have a reason to murder me – and, in any case, for that, too, the cab was a quite unnecessary contrivance. I could only conclude that he had taken me for someone else, and that in due course – if I had not managed to get away first – his mistake would be discovered.
We had been going, I should guess, about ten minutes, when a particularly savage jolt flung me to the floor, knocking my face (for of course I could not put up my hands to protect it), and wrenching my shoulder. At this, my companion’s firmness finally deserted him, and he cried out:
‘Oh! Are you ‘urt, sir?’
Hurt and dazed as I was, I was conscious of a certain exhilaration at having won the battle of wills between us. I did not reply, which made him still more anxious.
“Ere,’ he said, helping me back to my seat. His hands were trembling, and his breath was rancid with gin. He laid two fingers against my throat. I felt something hard and sharp protruding between them.
‘This ‘ere’s a spike,’ he said. ‘You understand?’
I nodded. Perhaps the hood prevented him seeing, for he gave me a small jab and repeated:
‘You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well, then. Now, I’m going to undo your ‘ands, and tie ‘em again in front of you, so’s you can sit straight. But you tries any dodges, and I swear as you’ll get this’ – another prick – ‘in ‘ere. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
But for all the bravado of his words, he spoke them with a tremulousness that suggested he was far from confident, and which tempted me, for a moment, to take advantage of my freed hands to try to overpower him. Then I reflected that he could see, and I could not; and that even a drunk and irresolute man might have plucked up the courage to stab me before I had been able to tear off the hood. I therefore decided to bide my time, and meekly let him go about his business – which he conducted with surprising deftness, loosening the rope in a moment, and fixing it again in a moment more, with such assurance that I could only suppose he was, or had been, a sailor. When he had finished, he sat back, and said:
‘I’m sorry, sir, but there was no other way to make you see ‘er.’
His voice was quite different now: sad, and almost gentle.
‘See who?’
‘My wife, sir. As ‘as something to say to you. She called at your ‘ouse, but was turned away.’
‘My house!’ I exclaimed, suddenly seeing a chance to demonstrate that I was not the man he thought. ‘And where is that?’
‘Brompton Grove, sir. That’s what she told me.’
I was dumbfounded. I had no recollection of sending anybody away. And I could not think of any woman who might have sought me out in this manner. The prostitute I had met at the Marston Rooms? True – I had left her abruptly – but not before paying her, so she had no cause for complaint – unless she had been as consumed with lust as I had been, an idea which I immediately saw was absurd. And how, anyway, could she have known where to find me?
Then I remembered the pawnbroker in Maiden Lane. I might unwittingly have left some evidence of my address in the pocket of my coat. But why might she want to see me? And why had she waited so long?
Finally, at a loss for any plausible explanation, and with a growing feeling of alarm, I said:
‘Why does your wife want to see me?’
‘She’ll tell you that ‘erself, sir.’
To have pressed him further would have been to betray my fear, so I held my tongue. I did not speak to him again.
I had long since lost any sense of direction; and without my eyes to help me, had to rely on hearing alone for clues as to where we were going. Once or twice I made out the steady beat and splash of steam-boats, from which I knew we were close to the river; but none of the other sounds I could pick out – the rumble of passing vehicles, a drunken bellow, a barking dog – was specific enough to tell me anything useful, save that we were still in the city. I was, however, conscious of a gradual change in the quality of what I heard; for everything – even the thrum of our own wheels, and the clatter of the horse’s hooves – seemed by degrees to become softer, as if we were being slowly wrapped in a blanket, and so cut off from everything around us. At the same time, the air grew stiller and colder, numbing my bound hands, and making me long for the gloves and the little flask of brandy in my pocket (though I would not demean myself by asking for them) – from all of which I guessed it must be snowing.
And I was right; for when we at length arrived – after heaven knows how long – I could smell it through the fabric of the hood, and feel it underfoot when my captor helped me down. I heard him mutter something to the driver, and then he took my arm and began to guide me across some rough cobbles, taking care to prevent me slipping. Behind us I heard the cab driving away, at which my heart sank – for with it went any hope that this might only be a short interview, and that they intended I should be taken home immediately afterwards.
We appeared to be approaching a public house, for from just ahead of us came the unmistakable sound of singing and raucous laughter; but we stopped before we reached it, and I heard the secretive patter of fingers knocking on a window, and then, after a few seconds, a door opening. A woman’s voice, so quiet that I could barely make out the words, said:
‘This the man?’
There was no reply that I could hear, but a moment later I was led into an uncarpeted hall, and thence into what seemed to be a parlour, for I could feel the welcome warmth of a fire. I heard the rustle of the woman’s dress as she came towards me, and then felt her fingers quickly squeeze mine – like a strange token of the handshake she would have given me if my wrists had not been bound, and this were merely a normal social occasion.
‘I’m the lady of the house,’ she said. She spoke softly, with the trace of an Irish accent; and I knew at once that I had never met her before in my life. ‘Mary’ll do for a name, if you want one. Please sit down.’
The man helped me into a comfortable chair close to the fire. I heard her settle herself opposite me.
‘I’m sorry I can’t take that off,’ she said. ‘But I cannot run the risk.’
I wanted to ask: Of what? - but I felt that to enter into conversation would be to suggest that I accepted this situation, and so somehow make it appear legitimate.
‘But I’ll not be making excuses,’ she continued. ‘You’re wanting something, and I’m going to help you to it.’ She paused a moment, for effect: ‘The truth about Turner, am I right?’
I still said nothing. She sighed, like a mother cajoling a sulky child – which instantly made me feel a little like one. Finally she repeated:
‘Am I right?’
‘What of it?’ I said, as carelessly as I could.
‘I knew him,’ she said. ‘He used to come here.’
‘And what is “here”?’
‘A lodging-house,’ she replied simply. ‘Most of the boarders is sailors’ women.’
‘And he presented himself as “Turner”?’ I said, instantly suspicious – for anyone who had really known him would have realized that such recklessness was quite out of character.
‘No. I’d no idea who he was, till the fellow who keeps the Ship and Bladebone saw him one day by chance, and said, “You’ll never guess who that is.’”
‘And how did he know?’
‘Turner was his landlord.’
‘What! You mean he owned the place?’ I cried; although – as I privately had to admit to myself – the very improbability of the idea gave it an odd sort of credibility, for it was the kind of detail no-one would think to invent.
‘That’s what Mr. Hodgson told me,’ she said defensively.
At that moment – as if the mention of a public house had put the notion in his head – the man suddenly mumbled:
‘I think I’ll just slip next door for a drop of somethin’ short.’
He had the shifty, off-hand manner of someone who fears he may be stopped, and thus hopes to escape attention; but the woman was having none of it. As he started to edge away, she said, lethally quiet:
‘What, are you still afeared?’
‘Don’t a man deserve a drink?’ wheedled my captor.
‘You take another one, you won’t be able to stand,’ she replied.
‘I brought ‘im ‘ere, didn’t I?’
‘Afterwards,’ she said, relenting slightly.
‘Oh, come on!’ he said. “E ain’t going to cut it now!’
‘In a minute. After he’s gone upstairs.’
My skin prickled with contradictory emotions: dread, and outrage, and excitement.
‘He had his own ways, Turner,’ she said. ‘His own tastes.’
‘What kind of tastes?’ I said.
‘You’ll be seeing one of his women shortly,’ she said. ‘She’ll show you.’
Show, not tell. My mouth was dry. I said: ‘May I have some water?’
‘Upstairs,’ she said. ‘In just a moment. But first I wants to tell you something about her. About poor Lucy. She’s not got a great head on her, and what she has’s been all but fuddled away, for she’s a terrible one for the crater. That’s why we keep her in, and I lay out her money for her, when her sailor-friend sends it; for she’d drink it all else, and then try to make away with herself after. But you can trust her. She won’t lie to you. You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come along, then.’
She went ahead of me, and the man came behind, pushing me out into the hall and up the stairs. When we reached the landing we paused for a moment, and I heard the woman unlocking a door and opening it.
‘Now, Lu,’ she said gently. ‘You know what is expected of you?’
There was no answer, as far as I could tell; but the woman must have been satisfied, for I was promptly thrust forward again. All at once, the light outside the hood seemed brighter. I was conscious of the smell of cheap scent and cheap coals – and then, suddenly, of a shrill squeal, half surprised and half amused, which made me fear for my safety – for there was something uncontrolled, even mad, about it.
‘We’ll come for you in a little while,’ whispered the woman, close to my ear. And then I heard the door closing behind me, and the key being turned again from the outside.
The squealing continued for a few moments, but all the time subsiding into giggles, like a pot going off the boil, until at length it had become no more than a kind of breathless, bubbling trill. Then I heard – or rather felt – her approaching; smelt the violet cachou on her breath, and the eau de Cologne on her skin, and beneath them both, like a half-buried secret, a rank hint of animal heat. She said nothing; but as she touched my icy fingers she winced, and put them to her lips, and rubbed them to restore the circulation, before finally turning her attention to untying them. As she fiddled clumsily with the knots, I could not but reflect that we had never met – never seen each other’s faces – never even heard each other speak; and yet that I was closer to her than I have been to any woman save Laura in my adult life.
She at last managed to free my hands, and then quickly plucked the hood from my head. I blinked; for even the light of the gas-lamp was enough to dazzle me after so long in darkness. She seemed to emerge, in consequence, through a kind of fuzzy mist: first a squat, rather full figure in a low-cut blue dress; then a wide, pale face, puffy from drink or tiredness; deep-set blue eyes and a bright red mouth; the thick brown ringlets untidily pinned up behind her head. She had one hand on the bed – which was not the mean object I should have expected, but a four-poster hung with a dirty chintz curtain. She caught me looking at it, and smiled with a quite uncoquettish frankness, and then shook her head and laughed, as if my presence there still bemused her.
‘You got anything to drink?’ she said. Her speech was slow and slurred.
I had, of course; but was unsure whether I should own to it. It seemed churlish to deny her; and yet had not the woman downstairs said she was a drunkard, and must be prevented from tippling? She must correctly have interpreted this hesitation as meaning ‘yes’; for she immediately said, ‘You ‘ave, ain’t you?’ and began rifling through my pockets with the frantic single-mindedness of a dog digging up a bone. When she plucked out Marian’s reticule she held it up for an instant like an exhibit in a court case, laughing ‘You’re a sly one, ain’t you?’; and then flung it to one side and resumed her search. Within a matter of seconds she had found the flask, unscrewed the cap and sucked it dry, running her tongue around the little nozzle to catch any stray drops that might have escaped her.
‘Nothing more?’ she said, before she had had time to catch her breath again.
‘That’s enough,’ I said, conscious even as I did so of a jarring note of priggishness in my voice.
She looked at me curiously, focusing her eyes with some difficulty.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Did they not tell you?’
She seemed surprised that I should ask, and shook her head emphatically – until it seemed to make her dizzy, and she stopped abruptly
‘Jenkinson,’ I said.
She drew in her breath sharply; and then her confused expression slowly cleared.
‘Ah, I gets it,’ she said. ‘You likes the same.’
She picked up the hood and the ropes from where she had dropped them on the floor, and dangled them before me. I could not begin to guess her meaning, and merely stared stupidly back at her.
“Ere you are, then,’ she said impatiently. ‘Take ‘em.’
I did so, and stood holding them helplessly. She turned towards the wall opposite me, where a round looking-glass in a rosewood frame hung above a small chair. Then slowly, without a word, she started to unhook her dress.
I could not move. I thought I should faint. And yet some part of me – the Walter Hartright that the world saw, and that until two months ago I had always supposed myself to be – would still not accept that this was desire, but clung doggedly to the notion that I was there for some perfectly respectable purpose – much as a shipwrecked sailor clings to some pitiful fragment of his smashed boat, in the hope that it will keep him from being swept away. I did not avert my eyes as she let the dress drop to the floor and stepped out of it – I could not; but I tried to persuade myself (God! what madness!) that I was looking simply in order to try to establish her age. From her broad plump hips and thighs, and the slight slackness of the skin on her arms, I guessed between thirty and thirty-five. Though I could barely speak, I said:
‘How old were you when Turner came here?’
She did not turn, but her eyes found my reflection in the glass.
“Oo?’
The other Mr. Jenkinson.’
‘Oh, must’ve be twelve or thirteen when ‘e first ‘ad me. ‘E come reg’lar after that.’
‘For how long?’
She shrugged. ‘Five, six years?’
‘And how old are you now?’
She giggled; and then unpinned her hair, and shook it free, so that it tumbled down her back. “Ere, you want to talk, or what?’
I tried to say something.
I could not.
She unlaced her corset and pulled it away, as a sculptor may remove a mould; and then drew her chemise over her head, and laid both on the chair. All she was wearing now was a pair of grubby stockings. She pulled at one of the garters.
‘On or off?’ When I did not reply she brusquely repeated the gesture. ‘Hm?’
‘What did …? What did he …?’
‘Oh, it were all one to ‘im. Weren’t my legs as fussed ‘im. On or off?’
‘Off.’
She bent down and took them off as matter-of-factly as if I had asked her to remove a tea tray.
‘There,’ she said, flinging them on the chair. As she did so I saw the bounce of her heavy breast, and glimpsed the thicket of darker hair beneath her belly. She appeared entirely unselfconscious, as if she felt no shame in her nakedness, and no pride either.
But to me …
To me it was a miracle.
I had never seen a woman undress before.
She threw herself on the bed and lay there, turning her head from side to side, gently rolling her hips so that her legs fell open.
‘Come on,’ she said.
And then I knew the depth of my own folly. The folly of thinking I might see another life – imagine another life – but not cross the threshold into living it.
The folly of denying my own fate.
For I had not chosen this. I had resisted, indeed, as I have been resisting for months. But fate had overruled me, and delivered me here.
No-one I knew had seen me.
This woman did not know my name.
I was free.
She watched me approach, but then, as I drew near, laid an arm across her face. I sat beside her, uncertain what to do.
Put it on, then,’ she said.
She removed her arm, but kept her eyes closed.
Put it on,’ she repeated.
I slipped the hood over her head. She stretched out her arms in a parody of crucifixion, blindly adjusting them until each wrist was lying against one of the bed-posts.
The meaning was plain enough. I tied one hand with the rope. She did not murmur. For the other I used one of her stockings.
I stared at her. She could not stare back. She had no eyes.
There was so much of her. Such an ocean of skin – as still now as cream, and as smooth, save where it was creased and printed with the stamp of her corset.
Not my wife. Not a woman I knew. Just woman.
I took off my clothes slowly, looking at her the whole time. Why hurry? I did not need to entice her, or persuade her, or ask her permission. She could not escape me. She was entirely within my power.
When I entered her she sighed, and yielded up a cry that seemed extorted from her against her will.
And when I had done she shuddered, and whispered:
‘You’re more of a man than ‘e was. You want to do it again? Or you going to untie me?’
I did not sleep when she did. I have never been more awake. I got up and listened at the door. I heard nothing, except a distant noise of snoring. My captor must have drunk too much at the public, and passed out in a stupor.
I went to the window. The cloud had cleared, and there was a moon. I could see a steep roof, with what appeared to be an outhouse or shed below it, from which – I thought – I could easily enough reach the ground. The snow lay thick everywhere. It would, I thought, break my fall, and muffle the sound of it.
I had no fear. I knew I must trust my fate.
I quietly dressed, put a sovereign on the pillow, and cracked open the casement. It was too small for me to get through fully clothed, so I had to remove my coat and drop it out before me. For a moment it snagged on a broken gutter, but then its own weight freed it and it fell on to the lower roof. And it was as well it did – for when I landed on it, I felt a sharp grazing pain, and found that beneath the snow the whole surface was covered with pieces of broken glass, which had doubtless been put there to stop boys climbing on it. The coat was badly torn, but the reticule and my flask were undamaged, and I sustained no more than a few scratches.
Trust your fate, and no harm will come to you.
I dropped down, and found myself in a little alley behind a row of houses. At the end I could see a line of rickety buildings thrown into silhouette by the moonlight. I made my way towards them, and emerged into a mean street of wharves and taverns and warehouses. I had no idea where I was, or which way I should take; but it seemed slightly lighter and more open towards the left, so I struck out in that direction. And once again fate rewarded me; for after a few minutes I came out in a main road, and almost immediately spied a cab.
The driver hesitated a moment when he saw the state of my clothes, but the sight of my purse soon convinced him.
‘What street is that?’ I asked him, pointing to the way I had just come.
‘New Gravel Lane, sir.’
So I have been in Wapping, where Turner went. I have known the freedom he knew. I have partaken of his power.
Letter from Laura Hartright to Walter Hartright,
14th December, 185–
Limmeridge,
Thursday
My darling Walter,
You bad boy! Did you not promise you would write every day? Or has dining with Sir Charles Eastlake quite turned your head, and made you forget your poor family altogether!
We are well, save that we miss you so much. Would it were Christmas already – for that will bring us the best present of all.
Your loving wife,
Laura
LIV
From the diary of Marian Halcombe, 14th December, 185-
An odd postscript to yesterday, which I was too tired and upset to note down before I went to bed:
I spent most of the day writing my journal, and resting. About six, having not heard Walter enter the house, I returned to his studio, to ask whether he would be coming in to dinner. I think I took him by surprise; for he was engrossed in writing himself, but stopped as soon as he heard me, and stood before the table, as if he were hiding something from my gaze. He was wilder-eyed and more dishevelled than ever, having plainly neither slept nor changed his clothes since the morning.
‘Are you unwell?’ I said.
He shook his head. As he did so, the light caught his cheek, and I saw that the bruise there had grown into an ugly swelling.
‘Oh, you are! You’re injured!’ I cried, moving towards him impulsively.
He shook his head again, and put out his hands to keep me from him. Perhaps he was merely being delicate, for he smelt vile, and might have been trying to spare me the stale fishy sweetness that clung to him like a fog, and still lingers in my nose as I write these words; but from the way he flinched, and the coldness in his eyes, it was difficult to avoid the impression that his motive was to protect not me, but himself.
Of course I was hurt. But worse – far worse: I suddenly caught myself calculating the distance between here and the house, and wondering whether Davidson would hear me if I cried out, and come to my aid. I have grown used, these last few months, to feeling I could not completely trust Walter, or guess what was in his mind. But never before have I doubted my own safety with him.
What did I fear he might be capable of doing?
I cannot bring myself to write – to think it, even.
My judgement must have been disordered by anxiety. And lack of sleep. And a night of terrible imaginings.
As I backed away he reached behind him and then moved quickly in front of the painting I had seen that morning. His aim, presumably, was to prevent me from seeing it; but he succeeded only in drawing my attention to it, for it was far too big for him to conceal. It was quite unlike anything I have known Walter attempt before, with none of his customary care and sweetness and faithful attention to detail. The paint seemed to have been flung against the canvas, where it hung in great pools and drips as thick as icicles – as if the artist’s job were merely to get it out of the pot, and he had no obligation to do anything with it once it was there. I can only assume he was trying for a Turnerish effect, for there was a jagged red smear in the middle, surrounded by black – but it entirely lacked Turner’s lucidity and brilliance. The red wasn’t red enough; the black wasn’t black enough; they bled into each other around the edges, and suggested no natural object or effect I have ever seen in my life.
But something about it reminded me of another picture. Not the style – not the subject-matter – but the grandiose scale. The not-qnite-rightness of it.
What was it?
And then I remembered. Poor Haste’s huge picture of Lear.
Perhaps Walter saw my reaction; for he snapped: ‘It’s not finished!’ and then, without giving me a chance to reply:
‘What do you want?’ From the tone of his voice you might have supposed I was a naughty child, who had been told that in no circumstances was Papa to be disturbed.
‘I forgot my reticule,’ I said hastily – which was true enough, though I had only that moment thought of it.
He nodded towards the table where it still lay. I picked it up, and knew at once that it was too light.
‘Where’s my notebook?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
I pulled it open, and looked inside. Nothing else was missing. I took out my purse. Two sovereigns and some change. Just as I remembered.
‘Could it have fallen out?’
He shook his head.
‘Are you sure?’
‘The thief had the string round his wrist.’ He rotated his own wrist impatiently for emphasis. I noticed that it was red and chafed, but knew better now than to ask why. ‘And after that it was in my pocket.’
‘What about when you took it back from him?’
He shook his head again. ‘You must have left it at the East-lakes’.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You must have!’ He seemed taken aback by his own vehemence, and made an effort to calm himself before going on, more reasonably:
‘It would have been easy enough to forget, wouldn’t it? In the circumstances.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, moving towards the door; for I could see there was no point in discussing it further. ‘I’ll write to Elizabeth East-lake about it.’
And I will. But I still find it difficult to believe that I would have left my notebook there, even in all the confusion – for usually, whether I am thinking consciously of it or not, I am as aware of its whereabouts as I am of my own hand.
Walter did not come in to dinner.
From the private notebook of Walter Hartright,
14th December, 185–
To live as Turner did you need a basement.
I did not think to provide myself with one when I designed the studio. As a result, Marian surprised me today when I was writing, and saw the Ironworks Accident before it was ready.
There is not a great deal I can do about the painting, save to deter further visits. But for this notebook there is a simple remedy. I shall go out tomorrow and get a box.
LVI
Letter from Lady Eastlake to Marian Halcombe,
15th December, 185-
7 Fitzroy Square,
Friday
My dear Marian,
Thank you for your note. I am so glad that your brother was able to retrieve your reticule, which has a little restored my faith in Fortune’s taste, if not in her morals – for had she deprived you of that, after heaping on us all the other disasters of the evening, I should have considered her guilty of vulgar excess, and avoided her society altogether. Did the wretch who tried to steal it escape, or was Mr. Hartright able to deliver him to the police?
No sign, I fear, of your notebook. I have made a fleeting search of the drawing room myself, and made enquiries of the servants, without success; but we shall keep looking, and if the fugitive is found will put it securely under lock and key, and return it to you under armed guard.
We must – we will – meet soon, and make good what we so signally failed to do on Tuesday; though it will not now, I am afraid, be until some time after Christmas.
In haste,
Yours very truly,
Eliz. Eastlake
From the private notebook of Walter Hartright,
15th December, 185-
I am like an engine. Pulled and pushed by so many conflicting pressures I fear the rivets will break, and I shall fly apart.
But if I can hold myself together this will be a great book. Not just the life of an artist, but – for the first time – his soul.
People will ask me how I know.
I shall say nothing.
They will see the answer in my painting. Chiaroscuro.
LVIII
Letter from Laura Hartright to Walter Hartright,
16th December, 185-
Limmeridge,
Saturday
My darling Walter,
Still nothing from you. Is something the matter?
I thought things were well between us again, but now I fear they are not.
Please write soon.
Your loving wife,
Laura
LIX
From the private notebook of Walter Hartright,
17th December, 185-
Sunday
A dreadful night. Dreamed of Laura. She was crying. She said: If that’s what you wanted, you had but to ask.
Another letter from her this morning. Did not open it. Have not opened the last one.
Tried to reassure myself with Nisbet’s words: ‘Everything has its price. Turner knew that.’
But what if the price is unbearable?
The worst of it is not being able to talk to anyone. This afternoon, in desperation, I called on Travis. He is a man of the world, I think. But his wife said he had gone to the Athenaeum. I was not dressed for the Athenaeum.
Spent the evening working on the Accident. It still would not come; and at length I could not bear to look at it any more, and retreated to my room. But I will not be defeated.
If I have learned anything, it is that victory or defeat is all a question of will. Tomorrow I shall return to it, and force it to express what is in my mind.
LX
Letter from Laura Hartright to Walter Hartright,
18 th December, 185–
Limmeridge,
Monday
My darling Walter,
Why do you not answer me? I can scarce see the paper for weeping.
Remember my condition.
Please.
Your loving wife,
Laura
LXI
From the private notebook of Walter Hartright,
18th—20th December, 185-
Monday
It is a monster, but I must face it.
Travis appeared about three o’clock. I was doing well enough until then.
‘Kate told me you called yesterday,’ he said. One raised eyebrow asked: Why?
I did not feel I could tell him at once. ‘Yes.’
He did not press me, but whistled under his breath, and looked about him at the studio, nodding approvingly. Then his eye fell on the Accident. He did not say anything, but gave a knowing smirk that galled me.
‘I’t isn’t finished,’ I said hotly. I am growing tired of having to explain it.
‘No,’ he drawled. He did not add: I can see that, but he might just as well have done. ‘So you are still pursuing Turner?’
‘Yes,’ I said, wiping my hands, and edging him away from the canvas. ‘I am writing his biography.’
‘Are you, indeed?’ He pursed his lips, and rolled the notion round in his mouth, as a man will savour a wine before pronouncing on its quality. ‘What a good idea,’ he said at last – in a manner that perfectly conveyed: Or better, at least, than trying to paint as he did.
His condescension was insufferable; but I managed to contain my rage, and even to give a fair impression of genial hospitality as I gestured him to a chair, and took one myself.
‘And what have you found out?’ he said.
‘A good deal. Did you, for instance, know that he used to patronize a brothel in Wapping? Where he tied the girls up, and made them hide their faces?’
His response astonished me. I had expected surprise – disbelief – a cry of Gracious, man! How do you know that? and then the glorious relief of telling him. Instead, he merely chuckled, and said:
‘Oh, yes! – I’ve heard those stories!’
‘You have?’
He nodded and smiled superciliously, like a schoolboy amused at the naïveté of one of his fellows.
‘And you do not believe them?’
He shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. And I don’t greatly care.’ He took a cigar-case from his pocket and opened it. ‘It’s not my taste at all. The wilder and freer the better, so far as I’m concerned.’ He laughed. ‘Smoke?’
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose. We’re all rather strange, aren’t we? And Turner was stranger than most.’ He lit our cigars, and then meditatively tapped the match until it went out. ‘But it’s equally possible there are people who want us to believe it.’
I almost choked.
‘Too strong for you?’ he said.
’ Who would want us to believe it?’
‘Oh, I could give you a hundred names. Many of them titled. Most of them powerful.’ He shrugged again, as if the point were too obvious to need further elucidation. ‘And what else?’
‘Wait!’ I held up my hand to silence him, while I struggled to order my thoughts. Which was no easy task: for suddenly a whole clamour of doubts and misgivings, which up until now I had successfully kept at bay, breached my defences, and broke in upon my conscious mind.
Had my captors really gone to all that risk and trouble merely in order that I should know the truth? Even the cost of the cab, surely, would have been prohibitive for them?
Was it not far more probable that someone else had paid them to do it?
And then I remembered Farrant. And the man I had met with him, Hargreaves. There’s a value now, to stories about Turner. There’s a gentleman as pays good money for them.
I said:
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Would they want…?’
‘Oh, because of the will, of course.’
‘Turner’s will, you mean?’
‘Well, certainly I don’t think mine would have roused their interest,’ he murmured. ‘And’ – here he looked about him, and smiled languorously – ‘forgive me, but I rather doubt whether yours would, either.’
I gritted my teeth. ‘And what of it?’
‘You don’t know?’ he said, as if it were the first thing a biographer should have discovered.
‘Well, naturally . . .’ I began, trying frantically to recall what Marian had told me of her conversation at the Eastlakes. ‘Naturally, I realize he made things difficult. By being too mean to pay a competent lawyer to draw it up.’
‘And who is your source for that?’ simpered Travis. ‘Sir Charles Eastlake?’
I could have hit him. ‘In part,’ I said. ‘Why? Is he not to be trusted?’
He shrugged. ‘He certainly has an interest in promoting that view,’ He hesitated; and then, as if he had finally decided he had played with me enough, stuck his cigar between his teeth, and leant forward purposefully.
‘Look,’ he said, picking up the cigar case. ‘Here is Turner’s fortune. Houses, money, and so on. Mm?’
I nodded. He took the matchbox in his other hand.
‘And here are his pictures. Some unfinished. Some unsold. But also many of his most famous works, which he’s painstakingly bought back over the years, often at excessive prices.’ He opened the box, and spilled matches on the table. ‘See. There are hundreds of them. Thousands, if you include the drawings. Now’ – tapping the cigar case – ‘this, apart from a few small legacies, he leaves to charity. To build alms-houses for decayed or unsuccessful artists. While these’ – sweeping the matches to one side – ‘he leaves to the nation. On condition that, within ten years of his death, a “Turner Gallery” is built to house them. Do you follow me?’
‘It’s an undeniable challenge, for a man of my limited powers. But I think I can keep up.’
I had landed a small blow. He smiled and nodded – and even, if I am not mistaken, blushed slightly.
‘But the family – a gaggle of cousins and what-not, whom Turner hadn’t seen for years – contest it. First they claim he was mad. When that fails, they take it to Chancery, saying the wording of the will is too unclear to be understood. After three years there’s a compromise. The charitable scheme is overturned on a technicality. So the family get this.’ He lifted the cigar case. ‘And the nation gets these.’ He drummed his fingers on the matches, scattering them across the table. ‘Only it doesn’t want to go to the trouble of fulfilling his condition.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Why do you suppose? Money. Only conceive the unspeakable suffering of one of Her Majesty’s ministers obliged to stand up in Parliament and propose spending £25,000 on art! But Eastlake’s determined to hold on to them nonetheless.’
‘I don’t see how he can.’
‘By resorting to the most bare-faced sophistry. His argument – he actually had the audacity to say this, can you believe it, to an ex-Lord Chancellor! – is that, since the will was overturned, the National Gallery can keep the collection without having to do anything at all.’
‘But surely – it was only because of the will that he got them in the first place!’
‘Exactly. As the ex-Lord Chancellor did not hesitate to point out. So Eastlake’s in a ticklish situation.’
I nodded. ‘But I don’t see how blackening Turner’s name would help him.’
‘Don’t you, indeed?’ He absently swept the sticks together again. ‘Well, now. Just imagine – for a moment – that it’s not Turner we’re talking about, but the Duke of Wellington. He has made a munificent bequest to the nation, but the government refuses to honour its terms. What would be the result?’
‘A public outcry.’
‘Yes. Questions in the House. A resignation or two. Articles in The Times. Disgrace. Stain on the national honour. An Englishman’s word…
‘Yes,’ I said; for it was undeniable. ‘Go on.’
‘Of course, Turner was only a painter, which any patriotic Englishman knows is a far lesser thing than a soldier. But still – he was, by common consent, our greatest painter. So what’s poor Eastlake to do? How does he walk the tightrope?’
He gave me a moment to answer; but my mind was in such tumult I could not order my thoughts.
‘What view of Turner best serves his purpose?’ he prompted.
And then I saw it.
‘The flawed genius!’
He nodded. ‘If not a genius, then why go to the trouble of keeping his collection? But if not flawed, then how can we justify disregarding his will? Sir Charles, after all, as everybody knows, is a gentleman, and would never do anything dishonourable. So the fault must lie in Turner.’
‘The problem, you mean,’ I burst out, ‘is not our meanness, but hisV
‘Precisely. And not just meanness, either. The man was depraved’ – here he dropped for a moment into a melodramatic whisper – ‘or even mad. So it’s quite legitimate for us to flout his wishes. Indeed, seen aright, it is surely our duty to do so, in the interests of public morality?’
He sounded so cruelly like Sir Charles – had captured so perfectly the gentle melancholy, the tone of pious, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger pain at the folly of the world – that I could not help laughing. But even as I did so I felt myself starting to fall – as if a wall that I had assumed to be quite solid had suddenly given way before my weight.
’Ergo,’ said Travis, ‘Sir Charles, and his trustees, and the government all have a material interest in what you say in your book. If you present Turner -’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said.
He sat back with a self-satisfied smile, and a little flourish of the hand: VoilÀ.
I could barely speak. It was impossible to think while he was still there. I sat mute while he told me about Sir William Butteridge’s rapture at his swooning damsel; and Lady Emery’s commission for a fresco; and the favourable reviews of his work, by which, of course, he sets no store at all – could I imagine anything sillier than being called ‘the English Botticelli’? Eventually, having exhausted the catalogue of his triumphs, and drawn nothing from me in return but the occasional nod or ‘well done, I’m delighted for you’, he gave up, and left.
Since when
Since when I have been a battlefield.
At first it seemed irrefutable. I had allowed myself to be comprehensively duped. Even my own picture testified against me. It seemed to glower down on me, reproaching my foolishness and pride. In my self-loathing, I could not take my eyes from it.
But then, as I hesitated on the brink of complete despair, doubts began to set in. They started with Farrant. I had not naively accepted his word: I had tested him, quite ingeniously, and found him honest. I was certain I had not been deceived about that.
And then the prostitute’s story: it was unsubstantiated – but quite credible, surely, nonetheless? Did it not square with Hargreaves’ claim that Turner had wallowed in sailors’houses? Had not Gudgeon said that Turner sometimes used the name ‘Jenkinson’? And did not the use of the hood seem fitting for a man so anxious not to be seen, and so incapable of painting others?
And what if someone else had encouraged, or even paid, the informants? That did not necessarily make what they had told me untrue.
For two hours or more I debated – struggled – fought with myself. First one side, then the other, gained the upper hand; until at length my mind seemed to have been trampled into mud, and I could make out nothing distinctly in it at all.
But I must know.
Tuesday
This is a monster.
So I wrote yesterday.
But then I had only glimpsed the head. I had not penetrated the darkness, and made out the dreadful bulk of the body.
But which monster is it?
This morning I tried to work on the Accident, but could not concentrate. No sooner had I composed a figure, or attempted yet another new technique to make the furnace glow, than some word or phrase of Travis’s erupted in my head, and I would suddenly find myself again wrestling with the conundrum he had set me. I knew it was hopeless – that I could not resolve it without further information – and yet I could not leave it alone. Finally I saw that I was simply wasting my time, and, bowing to the inevitable, gave up the pretence of painting altogether, and turned my full attention to Turner.
But what could I do? There was no point in returning to the woman in Wapping (assuming, that is, that I could even find her), or to Farrant. They would not say who, if anyone, had paid them. In any case, if it were someone of Sir Charles’s stature, they almost wouldn’t know themselves, since it was inconceivable that he would have failed to protect himself by using intermediaries.
What I needed, above all, was an accomplice: someone I could confide in – who would tell me if my doubts and suspicions appeared reasonable – who would help me to form and execute a plan of campaign. The obvious choice, of course, was Marian; and for one lunatic moment it did occur to me that I might tell her everything, and throw myself on her mercy. But a half-second’s reflection told me that it was impossible, and that – however painful it may be – I must accept that our easy relations are gone for ever, and I must act without her – for the events of the last few days have created a barrier between us that can never be penetrated.
Travis again? No – he would only take it as another occasion to demonstrate his superiority. And besides, I could not trust him to resist the temptation of gossiping to his friends at the Athenaeum about it.
Ruskin? For a minute or so I did seriously think of it. But it would be humiliating to have to confirm his low opinion of me by admitting that I needed his help. And would a man so maddeningly vague and discursive be willing, or able, to give me a straight answer?
In the end I concluded there was but one course of action I could take. After luncheon I must go and see Lady Eastlake.
Despite the cold, and the treacherous patches of packed, filthy snow underfoot, I decided to walk. The conventions of polite society, which had always seemed entirely natural to me, now appeared cumbersome and artificial, as if in the space of less than a week I had become a foreigner. I needed time to think myself into them again, and to rehearse what I was going to say. Even in the best of circumstances – and these were very far from the best – it would have been a difficult interview, requiring great tact and perception and mental agility. Somehow I must contrive to hint at the possible existence of a conspiracy, without either revealing my grounds for suspecting it, or naming its probable instigator. I made a little store of phrases: Delicate matter – you will appreciate – questions of confidence – felt I must apprise you. Undoubtedly, she would respond no more directly; but from her manner and appearance as she did so (angry or dismissive? blushing or turning pale?) I should be able to gauge whether or not she thought it likely there was a plot – and whether, if so, she believed her husband might be involved in it.
In the event, these preparations were in vain. Lady Eastlake was not at home. I was already halfway down the steps again, when a sudden thought struck me:
‘Stokes,’ I said, turning back. ‘Did my sister by any chance leave her notebook here last week? It’s small – about so big – red morocco cover?’
He pondered for a second. ‘I don’t know, sir, but I think I may have seen it. If you would just wait a moment?’
He was back in half a minute.
‘Is this the one, sir?’
In his hand was Marian’s notebook.
‘Oh, thank you, Stokes! Miss Halcombe will be relieved. Where was it?’
For a second he forgot his footmanly duty. Smiling, he said:
‘Where most things are in Lady Eastlake’s boudoir. Beneath a pile of papers.’
Beneath a pile of papers.
All the way back to Brompton Grove I wondered what it meant.
Perhaps there was an innocent enough explanation. Lady East-lake had found it in the drawing room – taken it to the boudoir for safe-keeping – put something on top, and forgotten it. It was, after all, a small thing, and she was a busy woman.
But then, when Marian had written, surely she would have remembered?
Very well. It was a servant who had found it and taken it to the boudoir, on the reasonable assumption that it was Lady Eastlake’s. It at once became part of the undifferentiated clutter on the table, and in due course was covered up. Lady Eastlake did not even know it was there.
It was possible.
But at least equally possible, surely, that she did know it was there. In which case, why had she not returned it to Marian? Had even, perhaps, gone to the trouble of hiding it – if not very successfully?
I could not immediately think of an answer, so when I got home I wedged the studio door shut with a chair, and then sat down and opened the notebook.
At first I was as baffled as ever. It seemed to contain nothing but Marian’s jottings about Turner – what people had told her, or facts she had gleaned from diaries and letters. But then, towards the end, I found a long summary of her conclusions. It was so full of false starts and crossings-out that in places it was barely legible, but I could make out enough to recognize the bare bones of the character sketch of Turner that she had sent to me in Cumberland. Eight words, in particular, caught my attention:
Poor Turner.
His poor mother.
Good Mrs. Booth.
Poor Turner. Good Mrs. Booth. If Travis was right, these were not judgements that would please Sir Charles. Too much sympathy. Too much understanding.
And then, suddenly, a whole torrent of thoughts, each more monstrous than the last, squealed and tumbled into my mind like rats loosed from a cage.
What if Lady Eastlake is not ignorant of the plot, but party to it?
What if she is the instigator? What if, knowing how principled her husband is, she resolved to do what his scruples would not permit him to do himself? She is, after all, famously devoted to him, is she not – and jealously protective of his interests?
When she hears Marian’s views, then (which she naturally supposes to be mine as well), she is thoroughly alarmed by them. So that when fate presents her with the notebook, she decides to keep it, in order to see the evidence on which they are based, and so be able the more effectively to counter them.
Or perhaps, if she was that determined, she hadn’t left it to fate. Until now, I had assumed that Marian’s reticule had been snatched merely as a decoy, to lure me to a place where I could be safely captured. But perhaps it had served a double purpose. Marian has always insisted that she would not have left the notebook behind; and certainly there were several occasions when the thief was lost to my view, and he would have had the opportunity to pass it to an accomplice.
At this point, the clamour of the rats abated for a moment; for I had seen an objection. Neither Lady Eastlake nor any of her intimates could possibly have known my abductor or his wife, or any of their intimates; and while it was easy enough to imagine Sir Charles using his power and connections to discover them, and buy their compliance, it was hard to see how she could have done so without running the risk of exposure. Whom could she rely on to act on her behalf, who …?
And then another rat appeared:
What if it were Mr. Kingsett?
Perhaps that is why he and his wife were there; and why Lady Eastlake tolerated his appalling behaviour.
Perhaps that is why he touched Marian, and said Please, Miss Halcombe, the moment before the thief appeared – so that he should know which reticule to take.
I am giddy. I had hoped for resolution. All I have got is more perplexity.
Davidson has just brought me another letter from Laura. I have put it with all the others. I cannot face it.
These distractions are my enemies. They keep me from my work. I must drive them from my mind, and take up my brush.
Wednesday
Perhaps the monster is what I see when I look in the glass.
Two hours last night I tried to paint, but to no avail.
I went to bed, but could not sleep. I felt myself hemmed in on every side. Disarmed. The will and energy draining from me.
I thought: You must act, to regain your power.
So I got dressed again, and went out. I assumed I was entirely alone and unnoticed, but from what came later I wonder now if I was observed.
There was no wind, but the cold took my breath away. It paid no heed to coat and skin and flesh, but straightway touched my bones, as if they were already in the grave, and it were merely claiming its own.
But death at least is certain. Better to walk with death inside you than nothing.
My first thoughts were of the Mars ton Rooms. I should find my musky whore, and get what I had paid for.
But as I neared the lights and crowds of the Haymarket I began to falter. It wasn’t so much the fear of being seen that deterred me -I didn’t think anyone would know me in my present state, and no longer cared greatly if they did – but a horror of the dreadful charade of artifice and politeness. She wouldn’t say: Fuck me for five bob - not in Piccadilly. In Piccadilly there would still have to be preambles: sly glances, giggles, arch comments, drinks and waiters, an exchange of names, a pretence of personal interest. The very thought of it filled me with weariness, and something close to disgust.
Without pausing to consider, I turned south again, and then east into Trafalgar Square. The great blank facade of the National Gallery and the Royal Academy looked as grim as a mausoleum, and as unlikely to yield up its secrets. I raised my hat in passing to Sir Charles, and crossed into Duncannon Street. Ten minutes later I was entering Maiden Lane.
It was impossible to be sure, for the two or three half-hearted gas-lamps did no more than fray the edges of the darkness, but so far as I could tell it was completely deserted. Slowly, slowly, I picked my way over the piles of frozen detritus, looking left and right for any sign of life: a movement, a crack of light in a shuttered window.
Nothing. The gate to Hand Court was shut. The pawnbroker’s locked and unlighted.
More slowly, then. More slowly. Give fate time to meet you.
There was a sudden noise behind me. My heart was battering in my ears so loudly I could not tell what it was. I looked back, but there was nothing to be seen. A cat or a rat, probably, I decided, scuttling for safety.
I continued on my way. And then – unmistakably – heard footsteps hurrying after me; and, as I turned, a young, half-whispered voice:
‘You lookin’ for somethin’?’
I can’t be certain it was the same girl, but I think it was. She was dressed as a woman now, and her lips were reddened; but I caught the glitter of her large brown eyes, and her cheeks were still as white and unblemished as a china doll’s.
‘What you after, darlin’?’
She did not seem to recognize me, but that is no surprise: the light was poor, and the intervening weeks have changed me as much as they have her. I said nothing, but held out five shillings.
She had to move and squint to see it; but when she did so, and realized how much it was, she gave a little laugh of pleasure.
‘All right,’ She took the money and slipped it into a pocket. Then she moved close and put her arms round me – impetuously, inexpertly, like a child thanking her uncle for a present.
‘What’s your name?’
She must have felt me stiffen and pull away; for she said:
‘What’s the matter?’
I shook my head. She looked into my eyes, with a little frown of concentration, trying to see what I wanted.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘You don’t ‘ave to say nothin’.’ She glanced about her, to see we were not watched, and then lifted her skirt and placed my hand against her quim, wincing despite herself at the cold touch of my fingers. Then, without speaking, she turned and led me back down the street, and through the side-entrance by the pawnbroker’s into a little court, and thence into an unlit room on the ground floor.
I could see nothing; and, even if I had, I should not remember it. I remember only the Babel of voices in my head:
How can you do this?
Is she not a whore, like the other?
She is a child, and you sought her out.
There is a price for everything.
Why should she pay it?
She is as eager as I am. Having come so far, I will only distress her more if I withdraw now. And what difference will one man more or less make to her?
What difference to you?
I must be free. Is it not natural – merely one piece of flesh enfolding another? Besides, is it not what Turner did?
Is it?
I feared this ceaseless attrition would sap me, and make me incapable at the last; and so indeed it might have done, had she made any response, or reminded me, by even the faintest gesture, that we were two people, and not merely the impersonal, mechanical conjunction of complementary organs.
But she was quick to learn, and had already understood what she must do. She stood with her back to me, and bent forward, and braced herself against the wall, with barely a movement or a murmur or a sigh. And when I was done, she guided me to the door without a word, and gently pushed me outside, locking the door behind me.
The voices were silent on my way home. I was conscious of nothing, not even the cold. Death itself had forsaken me.
Until I turned into Brompton Grove. For a moment I sensed only an animal apprehension that something was different and unexpected. Then I saw it: standing in front of the house was a black carriage. The windows were curtained, as if for a funeral. A squat coachman in a tall hat sat with his back towards me, so swaddled in blankets that he looked as improvised and immobile as a snowman. The horses themselves were invisible in the gloom, but I could see the haze of their breath on the still air.
I instantly thought of Laura – of the children – of Marian. Somehow, by my faithlessness, I had killed one of them, or made them ill. The horror of the idea stopped me dead, and I had to fight the urge to run away. But then I steadied myself. That was the voice of weakness and superstition. Dr. Hampson would have come by cab. And if someone had died, there would have been a telegram, not a carriage at the door in the middle of the night.
I started walking again, trying to convince myself that for some reason the man had simply decided to rest his horses in Brompton Grove, and that it was nothing to do with me. And had almost succeeded when, as I drew alongside, the carriage door opened abruptly in front of me, barring my path.
‘Mr. Hartright?’
It was a high, frail, man’s voice that I didn’t recognize. I peered into the interior, but could see nothing.
‘Mr. Hartright, get in, please. I have something to tell you.’
‘Can you not tell me out here?’
There was a small, dry sound that might equally have been a cough or a laugh.
‘I should die of the cold.’ He paused, as if his supply of breath were exhausted, and must be replenished before he could continue. ‘You’ll come to no harm, I promise. What could I do, even if I were minded? A brute like you would snuff me out as easily as a candle.’
I hesitated, but only for a moment. If he meant to abduct me, why did he not simply take me by force, as my previous attackers had done? And even if that were his intention, might I not still learn something of value? A few hours’ loss of liberty would be a small price to pay, if it helped to end my uncertainty.
‘Very well,’ I said, pulling myself up.
In the glimmer of light from the street I half-saw a bundle of rugs and wraps and muffs huddled in the corner. I should not have known it was a man, save for the eyes, which appeared for a moment in the narrow gap between fur hat and upturned collar, and immediately flickered away again. They were more shadow than substance, so sunken that they seemed to be trying to retreat inside his skull; and somehow managed to convey, in the brief instant I glimpsed them, an impression of infinite weariness.
‘Sit down, please, and close the door.’
I did so. It was now completely dark.
‘Thank you.’ He had to pause again. I heard the pitiful whistle and splutter of his chest as he struggled for breath. ‘I wish to speak to you, Mr. Hartright,’ he went on at last, ‘on the matter of genius. You are writing, I believe, a life of Turner?’
I did not reply, but waited for him to reveal more of his hand before I showed my own.
‘Please, Mr. Hartright,’ he wheezed. ‘You must assist me. I am a sick man. Every word is a battle. I cannot afford to throw them away.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Very well. I was privileged to see something of him. Something, I think, you will learn from no-one else.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Who are you?’
‘You may call me Simpson. That will do for now.’
‘It is not your real name?’
‘Why should a name I choose for myself be less real than the one given me by my parents?’
True, I thought. Is Jenkinson not as real as Hartright?
’That I had to abandon a long time ago,’ he continued, ‘when an indiscretion obliged me to leave England. Since then I have been living in Venice, and whenever I have returned it has always been under a nom de voyage.’ He sucked in breath, slowly, so as not to provoke a fit of coughing. When he spoke again, it was in a whisper.
‘Can you still hear me, Mr. Hartright?’
‘Just.’
‘It’s better for me to talk like this, if that is agreeable to you. Less taxing. Shan’t have to stop so often.’
‘Very well.’
‘Well, then,’ he whispered. ‘You will appreciate that a man in my situation must always be careful. Make it his business to learn everything he can of his travelling companions, while giving away nothing about himself. There may be spies. Agents. Hm?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, once I was crossing the Alps by Mount Cenis, and there was a small fellow in the carriage with me who at once roused my suspicions. Never said anything, unless someone spoke to him first, and then only brusquely. Never answered questions directly. Spent most of his time looking out of the window, and making sketches, as if he were preparing for a military campaign.’
He had to pause again. I was puzzled. Why was he going to the trouble of telling me this? Did he suppose I had not already heard countless stories of Turner’s solitariness and eccentricity?
‘Well, it took me a day or two,’ he went on, ‘but I found him out, little by little. The initials “J. M. W. T.” on his valise. A letter interleaved with his sketchbook. A few fragments of conversation, in which he unwittingly let slip that he knew Lord Egremont, and most of the Royal Academy.
‘We travelled together several times after that. I never said anything, of course, and he never recognized me – it would have mortified him to know that I had uncovered his secret, when he had failed to penetrate mine.’
‘Scarcely a secret,’ I said. ‘At least in his case.’
His voice was so attenuated that the reply came out as no more than a kind of ghostly sigh:
‘Oh, yes! A great secret, Mr. Hartright. The secret of genius.’
My skin prickled, despite the cold.
‘I saw him often in Venice. Sometimes when he thought himself completely unobserved. And I can testify that he was a remarkable man. Peep out of your window at dawn, and there he’d be, drawing away. Take a gondola for your evening cigar, and damn me if you wouldn’t see him there still, scribbling till the last crack of the sun had gone. And then – then he needs must be away, to make sure that it rose again the next day.’
’Rose again?’
He could not reply at once. I had to clench my fists to prevent myself trying to shake the words from him. Slowly, painstakingly, he drew the air into his lungs.
‘You know what sun-worshippers are. Their god must be satisfied with blood, else he will grow angry, and return no more.’
‘Blood!’
‘I’m talking about girls, Mr. Hartright. It was common knowledge in less conventional circles. I saw them taking one out of the canal myself. There were rope marks on her wrists and ankles, a sack over her face. She’d been held under till she drowned.’
For a moment I could not speak. I could not move. Then I heard myself whispering:
‘Why are you telling me this?’
There was no answer. I waited. After perhaps fifteen seconds I felt something brush gropingly against my knee. I put my hand down and found his fingers. They were as cold as stone. The instant I touched them, they started to flutter towards my wrist.
I pulled away, and opened the door, and dropped to the ground.
I did not dream it. There is horse-shit on the ground where the carriage stood.
Can it be true?
Can it possibly be true?
Who is Simpson?
Could Kingsett have sent him?
Could it have been Kingsett?
Letter from Laura Hartright to Walter Hartright,
20th December, 185–
Wednesday
I dreamed last night you met a clever woman, who talked to you of all the things I cannot, and took you from me.
Dreams are often true, are they not?
Laura
LXIII
From the private notebook of Walter Hartright,
21st—22nd December, 185-
Thursday
Record. I must record.
Stamp order on the chaos.
Today I went to see a medium.
As I waited in her drawing room, I could scarce believe I found myself there. I looked down from the window at the press of people milling along Brook Street and thought how easily, even now, I might run outside again and lose myself among them.
But then the maid reappeared. ‘Mrs. Mast will see you now, sir.’
She led me into a small parlour at the rear of the house. The curtains were already drawn, and the gas-lamps lit. The fire had burned low, and there was a marked chill in the air.
Two women sat at a round table in the middle of the room. One was thin and elderly, long-faced and big-nosed, so grey and angular she might have been made out of iron. The other plump and matronly, perhaps thirty years younger, with pink cheeks and bright eyes.
‘Mr. Hartright, ma’am,’ said the maid.
‘How d’ye do, Mr. Hartright?’ said the younger woman, thrusting her hand out as forthrightly as a man. ‘I’m Euphemia Mast.’
‘How do you do?’
‘How do you do?’
‘She will assist me,’ said Mrs. Mast. ‘Please sit down.’ Her voice was brisk and businesslike, with a hard nasal American twang she made no attempt to soften. As I drew up my chair she asked:
‘Have you attended a consultation before, Mr. Hartright?’
‘Not of this kind.’
‘And why, may I ask, did you come to me?’
‘I wish’ – was I really saying it? – ‘to speak – to make contact with a dead man.’
I bit my tongue. I had resolved to disclose nothing about my purpose; for if – as I still more than half-believed – she were no more than a skilful conjuror, who had grown rich by preying on the gullible, she might well be able to construct a convincing ‘spirit’ simply from what I unwittingly let slip about him. But then I relaxed a little: for, surely, to know only his sex would be a small enough advantage for even the most accomplished fraud?
‘We do not call them “dead”,’ she said, as matter-of-factly as if she were an engineer correcting me for saying ‘piston’ rather than ‘valve’, ‘but “passed over”. Is he someone you have lost?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘Well, I shall do what I can, Mr. Hartright, but I hope you understand that I can guarantee nothing. I am no more than the channel. Some spirits find it impossible to communicate from the other side. Some do not wish to.’ She was suddenly grave and earnest. ‘It’s most important that you realize that, before we begin.’
I nodded.
‘You are a sensitive man, Mr. Hartright’ – from the way she said it, you would have thought it was as evident and incontrovertible as the colour of my eyes – ‘and sensitive people are sometimes alarmed by what happens when I enter the trance state. So let me explain. My physical body will still be here, but someone else will be controlling it. Most probably it will be one of my guides from the Other Side – Running Deer, or Mops. Just talk to her as you would to a friend. You may find it strange at first, but to her it will seem perfectly normal, I promise you. And as for me: whatever you see or hear, I shall not even be aware of it – so don’t imagine that something is amiss, and I need help. Just allow things to take their course, and at the right moment I shall return.’
She waited for me to respond. I hesitated; and then – realizing that there was no point in being here at all if I did not at least pretend to assent to the reality of the spiritual world – nodded again.
‘Very well. Have you brought anything with you that belonged to him, or is connected with him in any way? That sometimes helps.’
I knew this to be a usual request; and had anticipated it by slipping the old paintbrush Gudgeon had given me into my pocket before setting out. But now I hesitated. It was a clue – a large clue. Should I risk giving so much away?
She must have noticed my uncertainty; for she said: ‘Please give it to me.’
I handed it to her, vowing to reveal nothing more.
‘Thank you.’
She held it in both hands, gently running her fingers over the shaft. After a few moments, as if to concentrate better, she shut her eyes. The older woman, I noticed, was watching her closely, occasionally casting a warning glance in my direction that said: Say nothing. After a minute or more Mrs. Mast began to slump and nod, like a traveller falling asleep on a train. As if this were a signal, her mother got up, and, moving so quietly I could scarcely hear her, turned off the lamps and sat down again next to her daughter. The only light now came from the dying embers in the grate, and from where I was sitting the two women were no more than a blotchy silhouette.
Almost at once Mrs. Mast started to babble. To begin with it was just a torrent of groans and nonsense words, as if she were talking in her sleep; but then she began to twitch quite violently, and I heard snippets of two female voices which – though they indisputably came from her mouth – were nothing like hers at all.
You-
My-
The Turk -
I help -
Not her -
And then Mrs. Mast’s head dropped suddenly against her mother’s shoulder. And one of the voices said, quite clearly:
‘There. ’Er’s gone. ’Er didn’t even know what tha wants. I knows.’
It sounded like a girl, eleven or twelve perhaps. Not American. From the north somewhere, I thought – Yorkshire or Lancashire, maybe – though some of the words had a kind of guttural thickness that seemed slightly foreign. The effect was so strange that I shivered despite myself.
‘Go on, then,’ whispered the old woman. ‘Ask her something.’
Why could I not speak? What was I afraid of?
‘Go on,’ hissed the old woman.
‘Who are you?’ I said.
‘Mops,’ replied the voice.
‘And why are you talking to me?’
‘I goes. For ‘er.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Tha knows. Mrs. Wosser. Wossername. Mast. I goes and finds ‘em for ‘er. She thinks it’s ’er, or one o’ t’others, but it’s awlus me.’
‘Find the spirits, you mean?’
‘Ay, tha’s it.’ Her tone was surprised, as if she’d supposed it was too obvious to need pointing out.
Tha. ‘Er. Awlus. Where had I heard those words recently?
‘Why are you there?’
‘Wha’, this side?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ay ay I drownded.’
Drownded.
That was it. The mad old woman in Otley, talking about her childhood friend.
I was drenched and cold with sweat. I said:
‘What happened to you? Did someone -?’
‘Drownded.’ She sounded impatient, as if the subject were distasteful to her. ‘I drownded.’
‘Is Mops your real name?’ I could not remember what the friend was called, but thought I should know it if I heard it.
‘Mops. Mobs. Meg.’
Meg. And now it came to me: the friend had been Mary. Close – so close it was hard to believe it was mere coincidence – but not the same.
‘Meg?’ I said, in case I had mistaken her.
‘I’m a good lass, I am,’ she said, as if she hadn’t understood. ‘I can ‘elp tha. I know what tha wants.’
It was maddening, but there was no point pursuing it. I gritted my teeth. ‘What do I want?’
‘Tha wants ‘e.’
This sounded like a ploy to draw me out further, so – remembering my resolution – I said nothing, but waited for her to continue.
‘I sees . . . canvas,’ she said uncertainly, at length. ‘I sees paint…’
And so would anyone, I thought, who had first seen a brush.
‘I sees a name … the beginnin’ of a name … I think i’s a “T”.’
I started; but then told myself it was not such a wonder – ‘T’ is a common enough letter, and there is a reasonable chance that at least one part of an English name will start with it.
‘I’ that right?’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘Or is i’… is i’… “J”? Ay, I think tha’s i’! “J”. An’ then “O”. No, “E”.’
I started again; and this time could not stop myself blurting out: ‘Jenkinson!’
‘Ay,’ she said (though what ‘she’ was, exactly, I still could not say), ‘“Jen” summat, all right. Oh, but ‘old ‘ard.’
‘What is it?’
‘Sssh!’ A pause; then, puzzled: T tha’ tha, or ‘e?’
‘What?’
‘That “Jen”? Tha name, or ‘is?’
I could not answer. After a moment she said:
‘I’m a’ felted.’
And then I seemed again to be half-hearing a distant conversation between her and somebody else. But this time the other voice was a man’s, gruff and short.
Eerily, I have to confess, as I imagine Turner’s.
I forced myself not to reflect on where I was, or what I was doing; but merely to hear and remember what they were saying, like a scientist or a reporter, without judging it. But try as I might, I could still only pick out fragments:
Slippin’
Why won’t -?
Appre’end
‘O?
Windsor Usurp
Aloud (allowed?)
A moment’s hesitation. Then the girl’s voice:
‘There’s no call for tha’.’
I could hear her clearly enough now, but the indignant tone suggested she was still talking to somebody else.
‘Ask him,’ I said. ‘Ask him -’
‘Wha’?’ she snapped irritably.
‘Ask him his occupation.’
A pause. Then:
‘P … p … pain …’
Painter. But again, of course, the brush had effectively told her that.
‘In what medium?’
‘Mrs. Mrs. Wosser -’
I shook with frustration. ‘What kind of paint?’
‘Oi.. . oi.. .’
‘Is that all?’ Silence.
‘Ask him to name one of his pictures.’
‘See … see …’
‘See what?’
‘No! See!’
‘Oh, seal Waves, you mean? Water?’
‘Ay … ay … war. Wa’er. Wa’ercolour.’
I saw I must take another approach, or risk losing my mind altogether. I said:
‘Lu.’
She seemed to wait for me to continue. When I didn’t, she said:
‘Wha tha mean?’
‘Did he know a woman called Lu?’
‘Mm.’ There was a kind of frowning puzzlement in her voice, as if she were struggling to make sense of something – an impression strangely belied by the placid vacancy of Mrs. Mast’s face. ‘By t’river?’
‘Yes.’
There was a murmur I couldn’t make out, and then a giggle.
‘What is it?’ I said.
“E says Wa’erloo.’
She laughed again. It took me a second to see why. Then an odd spasm – half fear, half exaltation – passed through me: for surely there was something unmistakably Turnerish about this reply? It could just be coincidence, of course; or it could be that Mrs. Mast was an exceptionally gifted fraud, who had guessed whom I was trying to contact, and had sufficient knowledge of him to make his ‘spirit’ speak in Napoleonic puns, and refer repeatedly to water – but at that instant, for the first time, I believed I really might be communicating with him.
The thought of it – the hope of it – made me reckless.
‘Is it true – is it true,’ I said – for a moment forgetting entirely about Mrs. Mast and her mother – ‘that he bound her, and placed a hood over her head?’
Silence.
‘What does he say?’
“E don’ say nowt.’
I wanted to beg. I wanted to plead for my sanity. Only by a great effort of will did I stop myself.
‘What of Sandycombe Lodge, then?’ I said. ‘Why did he design the basement so?’
Silence. I took a deep breath.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘One question. One question only. What does he know of a man who calls himself Simpson?’
There was no response. I waited, resolving to say nothing more. As I did so, an image drifted into my mind, so suddenly and powerfully that it was as if someone had placed it there directly.
A Turner picture. Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus.
But I was not merely watching the scene, I was a part of it. Everything moved before me – the jeering figures on the ship, the horses bearing the sun into the sky, the giant clutching his eyeless face in agony.
I whispered: ‘Are you there?’
Still nothing. Just an unbroken silence, that seemed to grow deeper and more final by the second.
Remembering Mrs. Mast’s injunction at the beginning, I did not move or interfere. But as the minutes passed I could not help wondering if this were entirely normal. And when at length the old woman – who up until now had remained calm and still – suddenly shifted in her chair, and looked (or so it appeared in the darkness) into her daughter’s face, I concluded that something must be wrong.
And then, without warning, it happened. From less than a foot in front of me, the man’s voice spoke again. No more than a whisper, this time, and only three words – but they were absolutely clear:
’Leave me be!’
I somehow found the strength to sit there quietly as Mrs. Mast returned to consciousness, grunting and muttering as before, and her mother relit the lamps, and the familiar shapes and colours of this world once again formed before my eyes. I contrived to answer politely when she asked if the seance had been helpful, and to offer to pay, and to find two guineas when she told me she did not charge, but would accept a contribution from those she had assisted, in order that she might be able to further her work, and bring consolation to those who mourned.
But once outside I began to weep – to sob and quake and wail uncontrollably, so that people looked strangely at me, and stepped off the pavement to avoid me.
I have no pride left. Tomorrow I shall go to see Ruskin.
Friday
Record.
Just record.
I take a cab to Denmark Hill. ‘Young Mr. Ruskin is not at home. You will find him working at the National Gallery.’
Another cab, to Trafalgar Square. A half-deaf functionary, who at first affects not to understand me. Then he sees murder in my eyes, and conducts me to the basement.
It is dark and humid and close. The walls are lined with boxes, piled two or three high. In the feeble glow of the two gas-lights I can see that behind them the plaster is stained with mould and moisture.
Ruskin sits at a table, working by the light of a single oil-lamp. Before him are stacks of notebooks, hundreds of them – mildewed, tattered, frayed into holes, eaten away by damp and mice. He is painstakingly unbinding one of them, and does not pay us any attention as we enter.
‘Mr. Hartright,’ grumbles the functionary.
Ruskin raises his head. The blue eyes are as brilliant as ever, but he is pale with tiredness. He stares into my face for a moment – fails to recognize it – looks at the functionary for an explanation.
But the functionary is already leaving. Closing the door.
The biography of Turner,’ I say. T came to see you about it, a few months ago.’
‘Ah, yes, yes, of course.’ He half-rises, leans across the table, touches my hand. ‘How are you?’
I say nothing, and he does not press me. He slumps back in his seat, his eyes already returning to his work.
‘You said I might talk to you again, when I had gone further.’
He nods without looking at me. He lifts a page from the open notebook, carefully blows the dust from it, and lays it on a sheet of clean writing-paper. I can see nothing of it but a disc of radiant orange dissolving in darkness, but it is enough to jolt me. To shame me.
‘Why are you not at home, preparing for Christmas, like the rest of the world?’ he says, taking out another page and peering at it.
I have not the energy to ask him the same question. ‘I am desperate.’
He sighs. ‘I cannot say I am entirely surprised.’
‘No. You warned me.’
‘Did I?’
There are two other chairs. I clutch the back of one of them, hoping he will invite me to sit down.
’Sometimes,’ I say, ‘we may deceive ourselves into thinking we are capable of some great task which is beyond us.’
‘Is that what I said? Dear me.’ He waves a hand at the laden table, and tugs his misshapen mouth into a smile. ‘If hypocrisy were a capital offence, my prospects would be poor indeed.’
‘It was beyond me. I need your help.’
At last he looks at me. That is a sad state for any man to find himself in,’ he says slowly. ‘And if it is the case I am truly sorry for it.’
‘What is the truth about him?’
‘Ah, the truth!’ He shakes his head morosely. ‘How do you find the truth about a man who eschewed the literal, and spoke in riddles? It will end by making you mad.’
‘I fear it already has.’
He stares deep into my eyes, and then nods. ‘The truth about Turner’, he says, ‘is never direct. Always oblique. There are hints of it in the pictures, of course, but you can never fully comprehend it. It cannot be reduced to its component parts, or to any simple proposition. There will always be something beyond, that defies our attempts to imprison it in words.’
I feel I am about to faint. I drop on to the chair. He appears not to notice.
‘Perhaps the same might be said of all of us. I certainly hope it may be said of me. But most of us may be represented by a kind of tapestry, in which the principal elements – honesty, dishonesty, intelligence, stupidity – are clearly visible. In Turner, by contrast, the cloth is twisted and folded and wound in on itself. When you glimpse a thread you never know whether it is a part of the subject, or a chance trick of the weaver’s art, or a false trail deliberately woven into the fabric to puzzle or mislead.’ He pauses. Examines his own fingers. Fastidiously blows the chalk dust from them. ‘You are familiar, of course, with the fallacies of hope?’
An odd expression, but the meaning is plain enough. ‘If I wasn’t before, the last five months have made me so.’
He cannot resist a smile. ‘I was not referring to your own experiences, Mr. Hartright, but to Turner’s poetic magnum opus.’
’The Fallacies of Hope?’
He nods. ‘You have not heard of it?’
‘No.’
He raises one shaggy eyebrow. I have fallen still further in his estimation, if such a thing is possible. He shuts his eyes, in the effort of remembering, and declaims:
‘Craft, treachery, and fraud – Salassian force,
Hung on the fainting rear! – then Plunder seiz’d
The victor and the captive, – Saguntum’s spoils
Alike, became their prey …
That was the start of it. The caption to Hannibal Crossing the Alps in 1812. He’d used verses as captions to his pictures before, of course, but they were always taken from other poets, though often garbled or misquoted. The attribution here was: MS. Fallacies of Hope. Thereafter, it appeared on his paintings again and again, each time with a different verse. So what does everyone naturally assume?’
It is too remote from my thoughts for me to grasp it immediately.
He prompts me: ‘What is the implication?’
‘That. . . that… he has – or has written – a poem. An unpublished poem. And is extracting pertinent passages from it, to serve as captions.’
‘Exactly. And he must have known that was the impression he was giving. But it wasn’t true.’
‘It didn’t exist?’
‘Not in its entirety. He merely composed lines, or adapted them from other writers, when he needed them. It’s a false trail, you see?’ He lifts his finger, and traces its progress on an imaginary tapestry. ‘A flash of colour here – a flash there – you think they belong to the same continuous strand, but they don’t. It’s an illusion.’
I can barely muster the strength to ask:
‘Can we then trust nothing?’
He shrugs, and looks at me curiously, as if he were seeing me for the first time. At length he says:
‘What is troubling you, Mr. Hartright?’
And I tell him. I tell him about Farrant and Hargreaves – about our dinner at Fitzroy Square, and my abduction afterwards – about Lucy, and the hood and the ropes. I tell him about Travis, and Marian’s notebook, and my growing suspicion of the Eastlakes (at which he cannot suppress a wintry smile). And about my meeting with Simpson, and my uncertainty as to whether or not it was a dream, and the seance with Mrs. Mast. I tell him I don’t know what to believe.
But I do not tell him I fucked two whores, thinking it would make me a genius.
He does not even seem surprised. He nods, and then stares at me in silence.
And I am conscious only of the relief of having said so much, and not being vilified or rejected or laughed at for it. And of the intolerable burden of what I have not said, which sits in my belly like a small hot coal.
O, God, to be rid of that too! To have said it all – to have revealed those things in myself so dark and terrible that even I had not suspected their existence, and to find myself still accepted – that would be a kind of redemption. The only kind I can now conceive.
But it is impossible. Even as I write these words I know
O God
Write. Write. Record.
At length he gets up. He surveys the wall of boxes, finds the one he is looking for, and carefully removes it. Then he brings it to the table and – reaching in his pocket for a key – unlocks it.
‘He was, unquestionably, a man of deep, strange errors and failures,’ he says. ‘And I find myself more and more helpless to explain them. Save that they all arose from his faithlessness, or despair. For this is the century of despair; and it has corroded the greatest minds as perniciously as it has the lowest.’
He opens the box, takes out another notebook, and turns to the last few pages. Sketch after sketch of men and women in bed together. Nothing is complete – a pair of buttocks here, a raised leg there, a hand clutching a bare shoulder – and the faces cannot be seen at all; but it is plain enough to what they refer. Pictures not of people – not even of entire bodies – but merely of an act.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s ugly. But is there any evidence that he – that he could have been capable of… of …?’
‘I am an art critic, Mr. Hartright, not a detective. I can only tell you – as I told you before – that there is a dark clue running through Turner’s art, and it is the darkness of death. There is another running through his life, and it is the darkness of England.’ He pauses, and shakes his head sorrowfully. ‘What he might have done for us had he received help and love, I can hardly trust myself to imagine. But we disdained him. For seventy-six grinding years we tortured his spirit, as we torture the spirits of all our brightest children. And we are torturing it still, now that he is dead.’
‘Because of the will, you mean?’
‘Ah, yes, the will. We say it is the will, because a will concerns money and the law, and those are things we can comprehend. They are all we can comprehend. But Turner stirred something deeper in this blind, tormented country – something of which, with our bluff good sense, we are barely aware in ourselves. Turner foresaw our end, which few of us can face. Worse still, he dared to love the light – something without a price on it, which could not be defined and contained in the dreary little counting-house of our minds. And we punished him for it. Whatever he was guilty of, it is we who drove him to it.’
I struggle for breath. I have to whisper it:
’But what do you believe?’
‘One thing one moment, another thing the next, like most men. Only I accept it, with as much grace as I can. To contradict yourself is no more than to acknowledge the complexity of life.’ He gets up again. ‘Let me show you something.’
He picks up the lamp, leads me out into the stairwell and into a room on the other side. It is absolutely dark, save for the soft glow of burning oil. Leaning against the wall is a stack of unframed canvases, five or six deep.
‘These are his last works,’ says Ruskin in a hushed voice, as if we have entered a church. ‘The last works of our greatest genius. See how we value them.’ He runs a finger down one and then turns it towards me. It is glistening with water. ‘See what they tell us about ourselves.’
He hands me the lamp, and slowly pulls the canvases away, one at a time, to let me view them.
I have never seen
Write
Nothing. Swirls of nothing. Smear
Whirlpools. Pulling you into nothing.
Whirl
Nothing
Whirl
From the diary of Marian Halcombe,
23rd-26th December, 185-
Saturday
I shall not kill myself.
But I know now why people do.
Nothing rational keeps me from it.
Today we were meant to be travelling to Cumberland, to join Laura and the family for Christmas.
Instead
Some time in the night I was woken by the sound of my door opening. There was a little light left from the fire. The figure of a man crossed before it and then stopped and looked at me. No more than a dim silhouette, but I knew him at once – though to see him there, and at such a time, was as strange as looking in the glass and finding another face where my own should have been.
‘Walter?’ I said.
He did not answer. I thought perhaps I was dreaming, and reached for the box of matches to light the lamp. Immediately he lunged towards me and put his hand over mine.
‘No.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Walter, what are you doing?’
He said nothing, but sat on the bed, with his face turned away from me. After a few moments his shoulders hunched and his neck arched and he started to sob.
‘What’s the matter?’
He dropped forward, his head in his hands, crying almost silently.
‘What is it?’
He tried to speak, but could not catch his breath. I stroked his back.
‘Tell me!’
After perhaps half a minute he said:
‘Futile.’
‘What is?’
‘Life.’
‘Ev-’ he began; and then had to gulp for air, and broke off abruptly.
There! You’ve given yourself hiccups,’ I said, in the smiling voice I have heard Walter himself use, to cajole his children from tears. But instead of soothing him, I succeeded only in provoking a renewed outburst of sobs.
‘It’s not futile,’ I said, hastily changing tack, ‘it’s not!’ – though since I had no idea what ‘it’ was, I felt as foolish as a doctor trying to treat a wound he could not see.
Walter did not respond at first; but then suddenly turned, and laid his face on my breast.
As a child must on his mother. A man must on his wife.
And like a mother and a wife I comforted him. Without reflecting. I held his head against my cheek. I fondled his hair. I whispered: ‘Ssh. There. There.’
He grew quieter. I thought perhaps he had fallen asleep; but then I was conscious that his arms had tightened about me, and he was starting to caress me, as I have never been caressed.
Dear God, what did I think? That he was incapable of harming me? That it was normal for a brother to touch his sister so?
The truth is I did not think anything. I merely obeyed some impulse in me that must have lain slumbering all my life, and now awoke, and told me what to do. I caressed him too, as I have never caressed anyone. There was no beginning to it, and no clear notion in my head of any end. We seemed suspended – as if someone had abstracted us from the world, and set us down in a strange place where we could act without consequences.
Until Walter began pulling at my covers.
‘No,’ I whispered.
But he did not stop.
‘No!’ I said more loudly, trying to push him away.
But he was too strong for me. In a moment the blankets were gone, and he was tearing at my nightgown.
‘Walt-!’ I began; but he drew the nightgown over my eyes and mouth, forcing the word back between my lips, and held it there.
‘Do you not love me?’ he whispered.
I heard his boots clatter to the floor; and then he was struggling to remove his own clothes. But with only one hand he was slow and clumsy, and at length, in his frenzy, he forgot himself for a moment, and uncovered my face.
All these years I have called him my brother.
He is not my brother. He is -
He was staring at me. Staring at what no man has ever seen. But not like a man. His mouth was wet. He was panting. I thought of a cat about to eat.
I could have cried out again, but what then? The only help at hand was Davidson. How could he intervene between Walter and me?
I tried to appeal: ‘Walter. Please.’
He dragged my hair across my face, pressing it down so tightly I could barely breathe.
I did not try to speak again. I feared he would hurt me.
I had not known before what the gospels mean by possession. I had thought it perhaps no more than a primitive word for madness.
But Walter was possessed. A demon had subdued his true nature, and taken control of his faculties and his will. A demon that was not content to destroy innocence and trust and hope, but must enter every cranny, and turn what it found there to evil.
Not only in Walter, but in myself.
For was not this the hellish parody of something that – despite myself – I had thought of? Had I not sometimes dreamed about it, even; and for a moment after I’d woken fancied I felt him beside me?
I had pitied myself for it, and cursed my own folly – but not hated myself, for by bearing it alone I was, in my own small way, heeding our Saviour’s injunction to take up my cross and follow him. As He had died to save the world, so by my own inward death I might keep those I loved from harm.
But even this consolation was taken from me. For mixed with the horror and the pain – I cannot deny it – there was throb of pleasure too. A mockery – an inversion, like a Black Mass – of the joy I had imagined.
So it was not enough that Walter should betray me, his wife, his children, himself.
I must betray them all, too.
He gave a cry. It was not even his voice, but the desolate yelp of a beast. And then he lay there, so rigid that I thought the demon had fled, leaving him insensible or dead.
I was weeping too much to speak or shout for help, but at length I found the strength to move, and try to push him from me.
At once, without a word, he got up, and left the room.
My sense of time is awry. My sense of everything.
A moment ago Mrs. D. knocked.
‘Pardon me, miss, but we were just wondering …?’
Wondering what?
I looked at my clock and saw that it was past eleven.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not well,’ I said.
‘Oh, dear. Can I get you anything, miss?’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘Shall I call Dr. Hampson?’
‘I think I’ll just rest.’
‘Very good.’ Footsteps receding, then returning. ‘Did Mr. Hartright say he was going out early, miss?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Only he didn’t come down to breakfast this morning. And Davidson says he isn’t in his bedroom, or in the studio.’
I have washed. And washed and washed. But I cannot look at myself in the glass.
Cannot even pray.
Later
It is after four-thirty. Mrs. D. again. Was I sure she could not bring me anything? Yes. Was there anything else? Yes – could they please telegraph my sister, to tell her we have been delayed? Very good.
A pause. Then: Mr. Hartright has still not returned. Did I think he would be requiring dinner? I could not say.
I hope not.
Let him go hungry. Let him know he can never enter this house again. Let him understand that what he did has put him for ever beyond the protection of society, the comfort of home, the love of family, the respect of friends.
Later still
Just midnight. He is still not back.
I feel as if I have just passed two sleepless nights without an intervening day. And now am beginning yet another.
Each has its own mood. The first: horror. The second: rage. The third:
What?
I am standing at the edge of a great ocean, that stretches as far as the eye can see. If I lived for a thousand years, I should not be able to pass to the other side.
Sadness.
Is he out there somewhere, cold and wretched and at his wits’ end? Aghast at what he has done, and utterly at a loss to know what he should do now?
Is he dead, even?
Six hours ago I should have been happy enough to think so. Six hours ago I should have been glad to kill him myself, had I had the means to do so.
To know that he had been punished. That I should never have the anguish of seeing him or talking to him again. That my power, in the end, had turned out to be greater than his.
But now I cannot help remembering him, not as he was last night, but as the Walter I knew before. Or rather, the many Walters – for over the past ten years he has been to me teacher, friend, confidant, colleague and brother. And in every one of those characters I would have trusted him – more completely than any man I have ever met – with my honour and my life.
What drove him then to act as he did?
Am I in some part to blame?
Sunday
I can scarce hold the pen.
I have never known such fury or such shame.
He did not return during the night. At nine o’clock this morning I forced myself down to his studio, thinking he might have let himself in by the garden gate and gone there rather than to the house.
But he hadn’t. The air was cold and stale. The great murky picture was still on its easel, and looked no more finished than before. When I touched it the paint was not quite dry, but a skin had started to form on the surface.
It was as I turned away from it that my foot struck something heavy beneath the painting table. I could not tell what it was, for it was hidden behind the old sheet Walter uses as a cover. I bent down and lifted the cloth.
There, jammed against the leg, was a small locked deed-box.
I drew it out. It was shiny and unblemished, and so light that at first I thought it was empty. Perhaps Walter had only just bought it, and not had a chance to use it yet. Or removed the contents, and taken them with him.
But as I set it down again, I heard something slither along the bottom, and knock against the end.
Not loose papers. Too solid for that.
A diary?
I scoured the room for a key. I opened drawers, peered into the chipped jug he uses as a brush-holder, looked under rags. Nothing.
I carried the box into the house and ordered Davidson to break it open. At first he was reluctant; but when I said, ‘Mr. Hartright’s life may depend on it,’ he immediately went and fetched a poker, and set to with something like enthusiasm – for he is now desperately anxious about Walter, though he is at pains not to show it, and was clearly relieved to feel he might at last do something to help him. When he was done, I took it to my room, and locked the door behind me.
Inside was nothing but a plain notebook. I opened it at random. The first lines I saw were:
Others may read a journal. No-one must read this.
I felt a small bitter shudder of revenge.
I told myself I should try to be dispassionate, like a doctor examining a patient, with but one end in view: to diagnose the disease that had changed him so dreadfully.
But I could not do it. I would master myself for a few pages, and then come upon something that suddenly swept away my puny defences, and made me weep and tremble. When I reached his account of what happened after my reticule was stolen, I was sick in the wash-bowl.
I still cannot bring myself to set down the details of what I read.
But I think I can now at least partially understand why he acted as he did.
And I know I must accept some responosibil
When I had finished I went down again to the studio. I found the scalpel he uses to sharpen pencils, and stood before that vile picture, and slashed it until it was no more than a tangle of stained threads.
Then I steeled myself, and wrote to Laura:
Walter is not well.
Must remain in London for the time being.
Return as soon as it is safe to do so.
My poor sister.
Later
After an early luncheon (no more than a plate of soup and some bread; but enough to fortify me, and to persuade Mrs. Davidson that I was strong enough to go out) I returned to my room, and put on a mourning dress. My greatest horror was of people brushing against me, for my skin felt so sensitive that I feared even the slightest contact would make me sick. Wearing black, I thought, would protect me, since people shrink instinctively from grief; and if without warning I suddenly started to weep – as I have done often over the last two days – the veil would both account for, and partially conceal, my tears. I waited on the landing until I heard the Davidsons going into the kitchen (for to explain my appearance to them in the present circumstances would have been quite beyond my power) and then crept downstairs and out into the street.
I had no definite plan: only the certainty that to take action of some kind – however fruitless it might turn out to be – would be preferable to staying passively in my room, with nothing but Walter’s notebook and my own tortured reflections to occupy me. I had thought of walking through the park, and hoping some inspiration would strike me; but as soon as I stepped outside I realized that it was too cold, and too slippery underfoot. I went only as far as the end of the road, therefore (where I knew I should not be visible from the house), and looked about me for a cab.
But there was not a cab to be seen. Or, rather, there were hundreds to be seen, but none to be had; for they were all taken. I watched them pass in an almost unbroken stream: men going about their business; mothers returning from the shops with presents for their children; servants sent out at the last minute to get a bottle of sherry or some more glasses or another side of beef for tomorrow.
All that purpose. All those places to go. What should mine be?
I pondered the question for perhaps a quarter of an hour as I stood there, stamping my feet and rubbing my hands together inside my muff. I had almost given up all hope of finding either a destination or a vehicle to get me there when a hansom drew up on the other side of the street and a woman laden with parcels got out. And all at once I seemed to have the answer.
I struggled across the road and called to the cabman: ‘Are you free?’
He nodded. ‘Where to, miss?’
‘Fitzroy Square. And then to wherever I tell you.’
He looked at me curiously for a moment, and then nodded again.
‘Long as you got the money,’ he said, with the off-handed assurance of a man who knew he could find another customer more easily than I could find another cab. ‘Get in.’
I had, of course, no intention of calling on Elizabeth Eastlake. Wherever else Walter was, he would not be with her. And in my present state she would succeed in prising my secrets from me in ten minutes, whereas I had no prospect of learning her secrets at all.
But 7 Fitzroy Square was where this quest began, and I felt a sudden urge to see it again – to see again all the places to which the search for Turner had taken us. Partly, I think (though I was barely conscious of it) because of a primitive belief in coincidence, which made me suppose I was more likely to find him again where I had seen him before – as a child will seek his dead mother in the rooms and haunts he associates with her in life. But partly also because, after being trapped for so long in the confusion of my own inner world, I felt that seeing the outer world again – the solid, incontrovertible world of stones and bricks, of streets and crowds – would help to clarify my mind, and perhaps offer me a clue to Walter’s own thinking, and to his probable whereabouts now. And I think – I hope – I was right.
The last few days have made me a stranger to myself. Before, when setting out to revisit some familiar place, I have generally known what response it was likely to evoke in my breast – elation or gloom, relief or regret. Now, though the register of my emotions is pitifully shrunk, I can no longer predict with any certainty which part of it will be touched. I had supposed that seeing 7 Fitzroy Square again would make me anxious, or depressed, or even weaken my resolve, and tempt me to confide in Elizabeth Eastlake after all; but I had not imagined it would make me angry.
Everything – the imperious windows; the well-swept steps; the wide front door – looked exactly the same, as if it were altogether too grand and self-satisfied even to notice the cataclysm that had struck me in the two weeks since I had seen it last. And I was scandalized by it. I wanted to break the glass – splinter the wood – mar the perfect paintwork.
But I did not get out. After glowering at it for a few moments, with something like hatred in my heart, I told the driver to take me to Queen Anne Street. Turner’s house was still there, though (unlike the Eastlakes’) it seemed to have borne its share of the world’s suffering. It looked careworn and dilapidated, and the windows were covered with a fine dust, which gave them the dull opacity of a blind man’s eyes. I wondered whether the gallery still stood behind it – the gallery where Calcott and Beaumont and Caro Bibby had once marvelled and debated. I could not help picturing them there; and thinking how those passionate lives, which but forty years ago had burned so hotly, and felt the causes they espoused so fiercely, were already cold and forgotten – as if a man is of no greater moment than a match, that gives a second’s brilliance, and is spent. Somehow, their stories, and Turner’s story, and our story, worked themselves together into a kind of melancholy thread, and I began to follow it, like Theseus – though with no thought or hope of slaying the monster when I reached the end.
I followed it across the sluggish tide of traffic in Oxford Street; and down New Bond Street, where the brightly lit shops were decked with sprigs of holly and ivy, and seemed to taunt me with their promise of innocence and merriment. I followed it into Piccadilly, where I saw the Marston Rooms, and thought for a moment of the woman Walter had met there, and of how even now she must be dressing, and putting on her musk in preparation for her night’s work; and then down St. James’s and into Pall Mall, and so past Marlborough House, where we had first glimpsed the unimaginable beauty of Turner’s work, and its dreadful power.
I followed it into Trafalgar Square, where it wound into the National Gallery and the Royal Academy, and became more complex yet – twisting into itself the machinations of Sir Charles, and the furious martyrdom of Ruskin, and the despair of Haste; and so by a natural progression to Haste’s house in Cawley Street, where I stopped the cab. The lower windows were all boarded up, and it struck me with a jolt (the force of my own feelings again took me by surprise; for the thought of it made me cry) that Haste’s son must have finally lost his long battle against the bailiffs. But then I glanced up, and saw a defiant glimmer from the attic casement, and felt suddenly quite unreasonably cheered.
I descended from the cab, and gazed up at the tiny flickering light (no gas here; not even a lamp; only a candle) as a storm-lashed sailor must gaze at a distant beacon. Here was a man who had been robbed of almost everything that most people consider essential to human existence, and yet who still had the spirit to fight on. For a moment I wanted to rush inside and join him. Since our last encounter, life had reduced me almost to his level – or beneath it, even, since no-one, at least, had deprived him of his honour; and now, I suddenly thought, we might make common cause. Leading a life of monastic simplicity – labouring together in some great enterprise – might not that become my cross, and restore to me my self-regard?
The cabman must have heard my sobs, and observed my efforts to stem my tears.
‘Something the matter, miss?’ he said.
I shook my head, and turned to climb back into the hansom.
‘Take me to Twickenham,’ I managed to say.
He stared at me. I took out my purse and shook it like a rattle.
‘That weren’t what I were thinking, miss,’ he said finally; and resumed his place.
And so we followed the thread again: edging our way along the north side of the park – only a stone’s throw from the house where Mr. Kingsett had insulted me, and was doubtless still torturing his wife – and into Hammersmith, where Turner had once lived, and where the roads were now clogged with people trudging home to their one holiday of the year, and knots of excited children stood before the brilliantly lit fruiterers, gawping at their displays of oranges and apples and bowls of gold and silver fish, spilling out on to the pavement. And thence through Chiswick to Brentford, and past Amelia Bennett’s house (it was quite dark, which startled me, until I remembered that her husband’s health required them to spend the winters by the sea); and at length to Twickenham.
I told the driver to stop before Sandycombe Lodge. I looked at the dolls’-house door, and the dolls’-house windows – one of them bright with gaslight; and the plain white dolls’-house walls, and the dark bushes pressing upon them from every side. And I thought of what I could not see: the basement where Walter’s madness had begun; its barred window, which had recalled to me The Bay of Baiae, and led me (I still believe) to the recesses of Turner’s mind; and my stumbling discovery of my own love.
The pain of it took everything from me: speech, tears, movement. And yet as I sat there paralysed, I realized there was worse still to be faced, if I were to follow the trail all the way to the Minotaur. Like a child that can put its finger anywhere but the place that truly hurts, I had gone round the problem without touching its heart.
And in that moment I thought I knew where I should find Walter.
We came back along the river and through Chelsea – past Mrs. Booth’s cottage (dear God! had I really supposed that Walter was too delicate to be told of Turner’s life there?) and so home. As I paid him, the cabman nodded towards my mourning dress and said:
‘I couldn’t help noticing, miss. I’m sorry. I lost my own girl a few month back.’
On a sudden impulse, I said:
‘Are you working tomorrow?’
He shook his head.
‘Got to ‘ave dinner, miss, with the missus and the young ‘uns. I promised ‘em that.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But after that?’
‘Well,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I suppose I could come out for a bit.’
‘Would you call for me here? As early as you are able?’
‘Very good, miss.’ He turned, and then looked back. ‘A Merry Christmas to you.’
I managed to slip in without the Davidsons seeing me; but they must have heard me, for a few minutes later there was a knock on my door.
‘Do you require anything, miss?’
‘No, thank you, Mrs. Davidson.’
A pause. Then:
‘Is there any news of Mr. Hartright, miss?’
Her voice was tight, choked with the anxieties she dared not put into words.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But I hope I may have some tomorrow.’
Please God I may.
Monday
I have a photograph of him, taken a year ago. From the openness of the expression, you’d suppose it was a different man. But the features are still recognizable.
I wrapped it in a shawl, to take with me. Then, while I waited, I looked through yesterday’s Times. Two bodies found in the river. I raced through the descriptions: a pregnant woman, and an old man dressed as a seaman. A relief, of course. And yet I could not help feeling something akin to disappointment, too. Death is at least final. It spares you the need to trouble yourself further.
At last, at four, there was a knock at the door. I went outside. It was already dark, and a heavy fog was hanging in the street. The driver peered at me in the lamplight, and grinned.
“Ow do, miss,’ he said, in a mock-pompous voice, touching his cap. ‘Compliments of the season.’
I could not laugh. I could not even smile. ‘Was it a good dinner?’ I said.
He nodded and patted his stomach. ‘Very satisfactory, thank you.’ He gave a burlesque bow, and gestured towards the cab. ‘Where to now, miss?’
I could smell the beer on his breath.
‘Maiden Lane.’
The pawnbroker’s shop was closed, but a tired-looking woman was just going in by the side-door. I called to her, and showed her the picture.
‘Have you seen this man?’
She narrowed her eyes. After a moment she nodded.
‘Yesterday. Early. I think it was the same feller. I remembers ‘im, on account of ‘im bein’ so, well, queer.’
‘Why, what did he do?’
‘I don’t mean ‘is manner. ‘E were a gentleman, there’s no denyin’ that. But that’s what’s so funny about it. ‘E says: “I wants a new suit o’ clothes, cheap as you got.” An’ ‘e takes a worn velveteen tog, and an old shirt, and a pair of kerseymere kicksies.’
‘Perhaps he had no money?’
‘I don’t think that’s it. You should ‘a’ seen the stuff ‘e was wearin’ when ‘e come in. Very serious. Must ‘a’ cost’ – she shook her head – ‘I don’t know what.’
‘Did he leave it here?’ I said.
She nodded.
‘A shilling if you’ll show it to me.’
She unlocked the door.
There was no question. Walter’s hat. Walter’s suit. Walter’s shirt, with one of the buttons missing where he had torn it off in his frenzy.
I paid her, and turned back to the cabman.
‘New Gravel Lane, Wapping,’ I said.
It was a relentless journey, taking us by slow degrees from the power and splendour of the Strand to a world of such abject squalor and despair that even Maiden Lane seemed prosperous and hopeful beside it.
And with every yard I became more convinced that it was the journey Walter had taken.
For what he had done to me was an act of despair.
As we made our way down Fleet Street and Cannon Street and Eastcheap, and past the Tower, and into the teeming rat-cage beyond, I could hear his voice in my head:
That is where I thought I had met my fate.
Nothing will do but to go back there, and meet my fate again, and abandon myself to it.
I should find him there, I knew that now.
But whether living or dead, I could not guess.
After perhaps forty minutes we suddenly stopped. I looked out of the window, but could see nothing but fog and the blur of distant lights.
‘Where are we?’ I said.
‘Ratcliffe ‘Ighway. The New Gravel’s just over there.’ He cleared his hoarse throat. ‘What is it you want there, miss?’
‘I’m looking for my brother.’
He whistled softly. “E must’ve done something bad.’
‘Yes,’ I said, getting out. ‘Find somewhere you can rest the horse, and have some refreshment yourself.’ I gave him a sovereign, thinking that if some accident befell me I might not have another chance to pay him. ‘And meet me here again in an hour.’
‘You can’t go there alone, miss!’ he protested.
But he took the money anyway. And when he called after me, it was not to urge me to think again, or to offer his assistance, but merely to say:
‘Thank you, miss!’
What had I imagined?
Murky, ill-lit streets, half deserted. For today, of all days, surely, anyone who had a family and a home must have returned to them, leaving none but the wretched dregs among whom I thought to discover Walter.
But the desolation I found was of another sort. The people of New Gravel Lane were wretched indeed – but rather than shrinking into the shadows to suffer their misery in isolation, they seemed to have gathered in a great throng to proclaim it in public. I could hear their hubbub even before I could clearly see them: shouts and cries; snatches of song; the squeals of a tormented cat; a bullish roar that erupted suddenly out of the mist and then subsided in uneasy laughter. The beer-houses and taverns were open, and a constant stream of drunken men and women spilled out of them, and staggered bellicosely into the jeering crowd, as loudly and heedlessly as if this were just another raucous Saturday night. Save that some of the shops were closed, in fact, and that the merrymaking had a kind of heightened, feverish, desperate edge to it, there was nothing to suggest that it was Christmas Day at all.
Perhaps this is how they keep Christmas in Hell.
I had feared that I should be conspicuous; but no-one paid me the slightest heed as I entered the press. My first difficulty, indeed, I soon saw, would be to attract anyone’s attention for long enough to ask a question; for everyone seemed entirely occupied with bawling and singing and swaggering his own way to ruin. A dizzying procession of faces – sunken and bloated, pale and drink-reddened, scabbed and scarred – propelled themselves towards me out of the fog, and were gone again in an instant. Even had I succeeded in stopping one of them for a moment, the swell of people would have parted us before I had had time to explain my purpose.
At length, I saw a dim forest of masts and spars looming through the mist, and realized I must be nearing the river. The crowd here was slightly less dense, and I saw a knot of capless and bonnetless women talking together at the mouth of the Thames tunnel, like crows waiting for carrion. One of them turned and looked idly towards me as I approached. I raised a hand to detain her.
‘I am looking for a man,’ I said.
‘Ain’t we all of us, darlin’?’ she said.
The others laughed, and I felt myself blushing behind my veil.
‘Here is a picture of him,’ I said, unwrapping the photograph.
The woman took it, tilted it to catch the light from the street-lamp, and let out a long whistling sigh.
‘I’d be lookin’ for ‘im, if I ‘ad one like that,’ she said. She smiled ruefully – and seemed in that moment to age twenty years, for I suddenly saw that she had no teeth.
‘Let’s cool ‘im, Lizzie,’ said one of her companions, moving to her side. She stared at the photograph for a moment, and then glanced oddly at me.
‘You sure you lost ‘im ‘ere?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I ain’t seed ‘im. I’d ‘a’ remembered if I ‘ad.’
The others gathered round, and the picture was slowly passed from hand to hand. Most of the women merely shook their heads; but one – a squat, dark-haired sloven in a torn dress – held on to it for so long, and looked at it so intently, that Lizzie at last burst out:
‘What is it, Lu? ‘E the one promised to marry yer?’
Lu! Was not that the name …?
‘Which one?’ cried one of the others: and they all laughed.
But Lu continued staring at the photograph, and I at her. She might have been the woman in the hood, I thought; but the light was so poor, and my mind had suppressed the details of Walter’s description so successfully, that I could not be even reasonably sure. I craned forward, trying to make out her features.
‘Watch out, Lu, she’ll ‘ave yer ears off!’ Lizzie called out, half jokingly. For a moment I was puzzled; and then – with a shock that made me giddy – I understood: she supposed that I saw Lu as a rival, and was about to fling myself on her in a jealous rage. I tried to dismiss the idea as entirely ludicrous, and found to my horror that I could not do so – for the last few months have broken down the impenetrable wall that I had always supposed separated me from such women. Of course, my relations with Walter were of a different order; and yet had we not both known him in the same bestial, illicit way? And did that not intimately connect us, and give us – at the basest level – a similar claim upon him?
‘Give it back, please,’ I said coldly, holding out my hand with as much authority as I could muster.
But she glared at me instead, and folded the picture to her breast.
‘Come on, Lu,’ said Lizzie. ‘Give it ‘er. She ain’t got nothing else.’
Lu still made no response; but at that moment fate intervened, for there was a sudden cry of ‘Stop! Thief!’ and a second later a boy burst in among us, darting between boots and skirts as he looked frantically over his shoulder. I glimpsed a mat of dirty hair – a pinched face, entirely white save for a great purple sore on one cheek – and then a pair of worn soles as he disappeared into the tunnel.
Lizzie took advantage of the commotion to snatch the picture and thrust it into my hands.
‘There you are, darlin’,’ she muttered hurriedly. ‘Off you go, smartish. And good luck to you.’
I did not hesitate, but set off immediately back the way I had come. Behind me, I heard Lu swearing and protesting; but before she could give chase a Jew in a black coat sped past in pursuit of the boy, scattering the women again like startled chickens, and allowing me to make my escape.
I have only vague and disconnected recollections of my adventures during the next half an hour. A black sailor in a fur cap who shook his head sorrowfully as he looked at the picture, and said: ‘I have no money’ – as if he had supposed I was trying to sell it to him, and would have liked to buy it if he could. Three tars who refused to looked at it at all, and jostled me aside, with oaths and yelps of derision. A little girl, who said she was sure her aunt knew the gentleman; and then led me to a bare room above a shoe-shop, where the air was thick with some sickly sweetness, and a lascar dozed on the floor, and a woman rocked back and forth on her heels, so stupefied that she could not focus her eyes on the photograph, or answer my questions.
At length I was forced to admit that I was wasting my time, and found my way back to Ratcliffe Highway. Whether I had been gone more or less than an hour I could not say; but the cab was waiting. The driver was squinting anxiously into the fog, and seemed relieved when he saw me.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘But you ain’t ‘urt or nothin’?’
I shook my head.
‘Where now, then? ‘Ome again, ‘ome again?’
‘No. The nearest police station.’
Of course, I had thought of it before – indeed, it had been almost my first thought – but I had been deterred by fear. What if I should walk in, and see a bill proclaiming the discovery of a body that could only be Walter’s? What if some gruff sergeant took one look at the photograph and said: ‘Oh, yes, miss! We brought him in not an hour since. But he don’t look like that no more. Twenty-four hours in the river changes a man wonderful.’ To learn it there, in the bright lights of a public place, and under the indifferent gaze of a tired official!
But now I saw I had no choice. I must know, one way or the other.
I must know. As I write those words, I am struck by the irony – for did not Walter use them too, when speaking of his predicament? But at the time I was too exhausted and upset even to remark it.
We drove back along the north side of the dock, and then turned south and east again. The streets seemed emptier here, and I could see little beyond the fog until we drew up before the brilliant lamp of the police station. I got out, and opened the wicket gate.
The entrance was lined with the descriptions of people lost and corpses found, but I decided not to torture myself by reading them. Instead, I went straight into the office – a plain, white-walled room that seemed almost impossibly bright and warm after the freezing gloom outside.
Before the desk stood a constable, and two figures I recognized immediately: the boy with the sore on his face, who was cowering and trembling with fear, and his black-coated pursuer. Behind it sat the Night Inspector: a lean, balding man with ginger whiskers, who was writing in a ledger. He looked up as I approached, and said wearily:
‘Yes, miss?’
‘I am looking for my brother.’
He nodded. From somewhere to my right I heard a soft cough and the creak of a chair. I turned slightly, and out of the corner of my eye saw another man, whom I had not observed before. He was thickset, with a high domed forehead and a fringe of spiky dark hair about each ear. From his neat, sober dress and the open notebook on his knee, you might have supposed him to be a successful lawyer. But he did not seem to be connected with the boy or his accuser; and, indeed, it was difficult to believe that either of them would have been able to command the services of such a man. He watched with a kind of detached curiosity as I set down the picture on the counter – although it was too far away and too high up for him to see it from where he was sitting.
The Night Inspector drew the photograph towards him without a word, and stared at it for so long that I felt certain he must recognize it, and was thinking how best to tell me the dreadful news. But at length he shook his head, and slid it back to me.
I had begun to wrap it again when the young thief suddenly blurted out:
‘I knows ‘im!’ He tried to lunge towards me, but the constable grabbed his shoulder and gave him a cuff that made him squawk with pain.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I knows ‘im,’ snivelled the boy, between sobs. ‘I seed ‘im!’
‘Where!?’
‘I can show yer!’
The constable caught hold of his ear and shook it. The boy squirmed and howled:
‘Leave off! Leave off!’
‘Please .. .’ I laid a hand on the man’s arm.
He shook his head, with the worn look of a man tired of having to explain the wicked ways of the world to innocents like me. ‘It’s just a dodge, miss.’
‘It ain’t, it ain’t!’ shrieked the boy. ‘I seed ‘im! ‘E’s stalled where I dossed last night! ‘E scared me!’
‘And where is that?’ said a deep, soothing voice. The legal-looking gentleman had got up without my noticing it, and was now standing at my elbow.
‘Tench Street crib,’ said the boy.
The gentleman nodded, and turned to me. ‘My name is May-hew, madam. And I shall be happy to show you the way.’ And with a small bow, first to the Night Inspector, and then to the boy, he ushered me towards the door.
We barely spoke in the cab. My companion – though I sensed he was curious about me, and would have liked to hear my story – was too delicate to question me; and I was too dazed, and too troubled by my own thoughts and feelings, to say anything at all. I dreaded discovering that the boy was wrong; and yet doubted whether I had the strength and energy to do what must be done if he was right – for if Walter was there, how should I act towards him? Could I marshal enough civility even to get him away from the place, and take him to where he could be safely delivered into other hands?
After about ten minutes we turned into a dark winding street and stopped at the entrance to a narrow court.
I remember walking through it, and out into an open yard cluttered with barrows and costermongers’ carts. I remember entering a huge, smoky kitchen, with soot-blackened beams, and a rude iron gas-jet in the ceiling, and haggard men lolling about on the benches and tables that ran around the walls. I remember one of them crying out: “Ere’s Mr. May’ew, gents!’ and a handful of the others breaking into a desultory cheer; and my companion smiling, as if this was no more than his due, and whispering in my ear:
‘I provided their Christmas dinner.’
I remember him speaking to the man who had greeted him. I remember the man nodding, and picking up a lamp, and giving it to me; and Mr. Mayhew murmuring, ‘Go on!’ and urging me on with a wave of his hand, as if he knew this were a quest I must undertake alone.
I remember a barn-like room lined – no, packed – crammed - with sleeping-stalls. I remember thinking: This is what the inside of a slave-ship must have looked like. I remember peering into the first three or four, and wondering if even a slave-ship could have afforded such images of want.
And then I remember nothing but Walter.
He was lying on his back on a leather cover. In the two days since I had seen him last he seemed to have shrunk, and beneath his unshaven beard his face was as white as parchment. His eyes were open, but he gave no sign of recognizing me. For a moment I feared he was dead; and then I saw him blink.
‘Walter?’ I said.
He made no response. I moved towards him. As I did so I felt a hand close on my wrist, and heard a voice say:
‘Leave it!’
I turned back. A small man with copper-coloured hair and a face marred by giant freckles was leaning out of the neighbouring booth.
‘Leave it,’ he said again. His nose was running, and he wiped it with the back of his hand. “E may want it later.’
I looked back at Walter, and noticed a tin plate lying next to him on the bed. All I could see on it were an uneaten potato and a slab of grey that might have been beef.
‘Do you mean the food?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘I won’t touch it,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to take him home.’
The man nodded again. “E’ll die else.’
‘How long has he been in this place?’ I said.
‘Since yesterday,’ said the man. ‘But ‘e won’t eat nothing.’
‘And how did he come here?’
‘I brung ‘im. I sees ‘im on the bridge, just starin’ down at the river. And – I’ll be honest with yer – ‘e’s looking so lost I thinks: There’s an easy one. Why don’t you do ‘is pocket? So I’m tryin’ to flare’ ‘is purse, but I can’t find it, and while I’m pokin’ and pattin’ ‘e notices me. But stead of shoutin’ at me, or tryin’ to stop me, ‘e just looks at me. There’s a namesclop the other side, ‘e could ‘ave ‘ad me just like that, but ‘e don’t do nothin’.
‘So I thinks: ’E must be pretty bad. And I says to ‘im: “You ain’t thinkin’ o’ doin’ it, are you? Not – doin’ away with yourself?”
‘But still ‘e don’t say nothin’. So I says: “You didn’t ought to do it, mate. You come with me, and I’ll give you twopence for a ticket, and things’ll look brighter in the mornin’, you see if they don’t.” And ‘e come along as meek as a lamb, as though ‘e didn’t care whether ‘e lived or died.’
He paused, and wiped his nose again; and then, with an almost tender glance at Walter, said:
‘And I don’t think you do much, do you, mate?’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
I took Walter’s hand, and pulled him up. He was quite unresisting, and did nothing either to assist us or impede us as the pickpocket and I helped him to his feet, and led him towards the kitchen.
I do not recall seeing Mr. Mayhew again on our way out. I do not recall seeing anyone, in fact, until we emerged from the court, and found the driver standing by his cab, stamping his feet and smacking his gloved hands against the cold. He made no comment when he saw us, but touched his cap, and said ‘Good evening, sir’, as we helped Walter inside – as if it was the most natural thing in the world for my brother to sleep in a Wapping lodging-house, and he had known all along that this was where we should find him.
On the way home, I at last found the words to say:
‘You are ill, Walter. I am going to arrange for you to go somewhere where you will get better. After that, we will return to Limmeridge, and resume our lives. You may talk to me of what happened between us if you will, but neither you nor I will ever mention it to Laura or to any other living soul, and it will never happen again.’
He merely slumped in his seat, and gazed listlessly out of the window. Only when we were almost home did he turn towards me, and – shrinking into his corner, as if to prove he did not mean to touch me – whispered:
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You were right. Vacancy.’
‘What do you mean? What have I ever said of vacancy?’
‘My emptiness.’
Fearing he might be delirious, I affected not to hear, and said nothing.