A Man of Genius

by Janet Todd

  She was right about John Taylor. The sober man disliked chance meetings. Unluckily the day she’d chosen was both dismal and obscure, with a gentle snow thickening the fog. She’d have seemed an unwelcome spectre looming from the mist, reminding him of an old, best forgotten time. He proved as unforthcoming in the street as he’d been at home.

  ‘Look, Miss St Clair’ – he reverted to formality in this new art-free, wine-free life – ‘I knew Robert James less than Richard Perry and Fred Curran. He was a great and a good man and I am sorry, sincerely sorry, he is dead.’

  He was pulling on his grey gloves while looking down at his white hands; then with his gloved fingers he stroked his clean-shaven chin. Snow was settling on the brim of his black felt hat. He stared at her, then continued, ‘I cannot help you dig up a past he did not see fit to share with you.’ He hesitated a moment. A softer expression passed across his face. ‘It is perhaps not fair that the most brilliant mind should go first.’ His look hardened again. ‘Good day to you.’

  And with that scant courtesy the conversation was over. It was snowing more heavily now and he was quickly subsumed into the white fog.

  She wouldn’t see him again. The disintegrating of Robert’s circle which his defection stressed was a sad blow. She’d intended to go on to Henry Davies, but she wasn’t so sure she could take more rebuffs with equanimity, even to satisfy such burning curiosity.

  Yet a few days later she did pursue him. She discovered him in the Castle and Falcon, one of the taverns where Robert and his circle used to meet. When she spied him and even more when she accosted him – she’d been directed to a dark corner of the room or she wouldn’t have found him – she understood something of John Taylor’s transformation. It was perhaps not all due to Lydia and her need for marriage and money. For Henry Davies was so far gone into drink and drugs that there was no getting sense from him. But, when she told him her news, he understood at last. Then he wept like a baby.

  Only sleep could console him. She left him with his head on the bare wooden table beside an untouched plate of parsnips and salt cod, his tears soaking into some spilt froth and ale.

  She was disheartened. She would try to discover Frederick Curran and then move down other paths.

  For Curran, an Irish printer’s boy who worked for Mr Hughes proved useful. When they were all together she’d never much wondered what the men round Robert, including big Frederick Curran, lived on in London – who except John Taylor picked up the bills in the taverns when there was a rushed if lurching exit for the door as the candles were snuffed out? Curran was said to be writing something on political economy that no one knew about, but he couldn’t have been earning a living in this way. He’d always been the most eager to argue politics, the least impressed when his friend Robert soared upwards out of the grubby world. Now she learned he’d been receiving income from an Irish bank, Roche’s in County Cork. It had recently failed.

  She smiled, remembering how he castigated Venice for caring only about money. Perhaps Robert’s allowance had come from the same source.

  The collapse had hit Frederick Curran hard. He’d gone back to Dublin, then Cork, where it was reported he’d fallen foul of the government through inflammatory talk of masters and greedy bankers feeding off victims and workers. Some said he’d used his bulk against a smaller functionary, but accounts were vague and may have been based on the look of him. Now his whereabouts were unknown, said the printer’s boy with a wink.

  Once she’d taunted Fred Curran when he spoke of Ireland: that he was homesick for it. He had said seriously, ‘I and Robert both.’

  So she’d tried all the main friends in London and no one, not even Richard Perry, had pursued her further to find out about Robert’s final days. Didn’t they care? Robert hadn’t wasted thoughts on them; perhaps in the end, despite their admiration, almost adulation, they’d waste no more of their puny ones on him.

  Aksel, Aksel. She once called his Christian name out loud in her room, then chuckled to herself. It was as well he’d not come back: she might have addressed him as ‘Father’ and flown to his arms.

  Yet there was a haunting. No kin perhaps, but something. So much remained obscure.

  Why had he taken such pains to flee Venice with her? He warned her she was in extreme peril. He was right of course, Robert’s very blood on her clothes.

  But she had read no news-sheet declaring her a wanted person, an outlaw from justice. Aksel had kept to himself the one she’d seen. To spare her feelings, of course. But still.

  Aksel Stamer: the man who inhabited the mystery at the centre of both her plots and who, in spite of all she could do to disentangle the two from each other and him from them, stayed resolutely in place, the only living being among so many ghosts.

  He had something to do with Robert James and a beloved woman – that was becoming clear. And if not the lost father, the substitute Gilbert, something to do with her and her murky origins? Perhaps.

  She was sure that Sarah and Charles knew more than they’d told her, even after Charles’s startling revelation.

  But how to ask them the questions that might just elicit the desired answers, the true, the uncomfortable answers? They were so guarded, so fearful of hurting a person they both saw as a lone, defenceless woman.

  Besides, there were by now so many characters in the plots it was difficult to put the right questions without revealing her own thoughts – and she’d been wrong so often that these were the last ones she could trust, or wished to communicate.

  She’d tried Moore & Stratton in the Strand but they were no help at all. They’d been the agents for some families in the west of England, in Shropshire and Herefordshire, but the old partner who’d handled these accounts originally was long dead; the money to be paid out now came through Coutts Bank and was sent to them for forwarding. Coutts were as tight as closed oysters with information.

  She did, however, manage to track down the young man, Mr William Holt, who’d sent the letter enclosing the note from Madame Renée. He admitted to relaying it from a client in Paris. He ventured the information that an allowance was still paid to this elderly English lady from a small and he feared diminishing Trust through Coutts. He would say no more; he’d felt important divulging news to this pleasantly eager lady, but there would be the devil to pay if one of the senior partners found out. So he bid her good day – without waiting for her to decide whether or not to inform him that the recipient of this declining Trust was now a French lady of stern face but tender heart.

  There was really no alternative to her cousins. She would try Charles first. But he was rarely at the Phoenix Street house when she called, and they were never alone. Perhaps he ensured that this was the case. He must have thought he’d done her a favour and had by that act fulfilled what he considered his duty.

  It was while turning off Gray’s Inn Road to head towards Somers Town with a bag of hothouse apricots for Sarah’s children that a ghastly thought struck her. She almost dropped her package, seeing in the instant the ripe fruit smash and smear the ground, trip passersby . . . But she held on.

  The thought was that nobody was telling her the truth and that Sarah was not her cousin.

  They didn’t look alike, and the resemblance Sarah had found between her and little Harry and Charlotte was part of the compliment mothers pay to single women to attach them to their children.

  Why had Charles spoken to her? Had it been a kind of warning?

  She arrived at the door clutching the apricots in a fluster of enquiry, only to find that Sarah’s friend Jane Lymington was there with her little boy. She should have deposited her gift and left but decided not to. She knew she failed to justify her presence by admiring the lad enough or even interacting with him when he lisped his pretty phrases. She’d be forgiven – it would be ascribed to her spinster state by pitying mothers.

  She sat in silence as they discussed everything – surely they were not actually talking of the price of eggs?

  Fina
lly Mrs Lymington and her little boy left, with a polite but cursory goodbye to Ann. Sarah looked quizzically at her cousin, knowing her usual impatience with social visits.

  ‘You are beginning to know me too well.’

  Sarah waited for her to go on.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Ann, then stopped and began again. ‘I need to ask you a bit more about Gilbert.’ She tried to swallow the word – how had it slipped from her mouth? She’d meant to say ‘My father’.

  Sarah looked anxious.

  Then Ann blurted out, ‘Are you really my cousin?’ She held back tears. Somewhere surely there must be flesh and blood that belonged to her.

  Sarah laughed with relief. ‘Of course, of course. Whatever put such a notion in your head? What have you been thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I have a craving to destroy everything in the past before I find it being destroyed for me.’

  ‘But it never will be, dearest Ann. Come, no morbid thoughts.’

  And that was that again. She got no further.

  She would give Sarah and Charles time to get used to her prying before trying them once more. She would fatten herself up in the way they approved and declare herself a cheery body who was walking with her two feet on the earth, someone who could take whatever was told to her without flinching. Then they would not need to be so cautious.

  She took up with a few acquaintances and went walking with them in the parks. She even contacted her old schoolfriend, Susan Bonnet from Putney, the girl who’d shared her secret novel-reading from the circulating library. But the friendship could not be rekindled. Susan was now a professional married woman with all the usual empty charm. If Ann scratched her skin and pushed into the flesh, would she reveal underneath the affectation that eager, awkward child? Of course not. As Mrs Jonas Loyn, née Susan Bonnet, she covered her old friend in layers of politeness, of compliment, of social flutter, and a new steely distaste. Ann saw there was no going back to grab at possibilities.

  With Mary Davies it was easier. Colleagues, partners in work, carried fewer expectations, and writing was as reliable a topic as the weather over the tea-table or in the print shop. But it remained hard to come close to those who’d stayed quietly in their snug routine while she’d careered over rocky ground in the rickety cart of life. Superiority of ‘experience’ impressed no one without it.

  As time passed and she delivered to Dean & Munday The Ladies of Zitelle; or, the Prisons of Venice, then Eleanora; or, the Black Tower (with an interpolated homily on the absolute need for chastity in females whether old or young) and began on The Mystery of the Dunes; or, the Dying Cavalier, she amused herself with taking tea out with some of her fellow gothic authors when they came to town – for she’d discovered through Mr Munday that a good number of them were maiden ladies from little rural schools or discontented governesses hoping one day to write so fast they could snub their employers and flick the dust of dependence off their shoes.

  ‘All right,’ said Sarah at last. ‘Charles has said to me that he told you about your mother some time ago. He should not have done so, it was not his place to tell. But he’s a good man and he saw your worry. He thought he did it for the best.’

  ‘Of course he did. It was kind of him. But he knew what he knew from you. So, dear cousin, perhaps you will now tell me more, tell me at last everything you know. My mother is long dead.’

  They were in Sarah’s drawing room, a tea-table between them. The children were out or in the nursery having lessons, all except the slow twin – Mary? – who was sitting in a corner on a little stool fastened to a tray, trying to fold coloured paper into squares and diamonds. She was very quiet. It was unusual to have a child in the drawing room rather than the parlour. Ann hoped she was all right but Sarah had said nothing, so her quietness was probably a response to a house of so many other children and their constant noise.

  Sarah looked uncomfortable, as Ann expected. She also looked sad.

  ‘Don’t you think, my cousin, there are things better not to know.’

  ‘I do. But we can’t rest till we winkle them out all the same. You must be a very sensible person indeed to be intentionally ignorant. And you know I am not so sane.’

  ‘You are very sane, Ann, no one saner.’

  A strange thing to say.

  They drank their tea in silence, hearing each other’s swallows as if they were their own. The little girl was now kneading the paper shapes like dough. She was still quiet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah at last, keeping her eyes down as she twisted the tight rings on her plump right hand. ‘I will tell you all I know. But Ann, it is not so comfortable a truth.’

  ‘Tell it, Sarah, my dearest, tell it. I have a right to know.’

  This made Sarah smile sadly. ‘Not a right, Ann. I think people speak so easily of rights they have no claim to. I am not sure there are such rights at all. But maybe, if it will not set your mind at rest, it will at least stop you imagining too much.’

  Ann was about to speak when Sarah raised her eyes to her cousin’s face and stopped her. ‘Oh, I know you do, Ann. It’s not possible with so much unknown to avoid speculating, and speculation can be wild. You deal in strange stories. Charles and I have looked at some.’

  ‘All right. Go on.’

  Another silence followed. Ann found it hard not to break it.

  Then Sarah spoke. ‘Before I say more, you must promise me that, after this talk, after you hear what I have to say, you will search no further in this, not seek anyone who doesn’t want to be sought, or go where there’s been a breach for so many years. I ask this for your own good, dear Ann – and I ask it seriously.’

  She hesitated. It was difficult to promise not to do something, not to be curious when she’d lived with curiosity so long. Could it be given up?

  ‘Yes, Sarah, I promise.’

  ‘Good, I ask it for your benefit. I see you will tire yourself out by trying to discover what need not be discovered and you will only do yourself harm, my poor cousin.’

  Sarah poured out another dish of tea. It was cold but Ann drank it eagerly for her mouth was dry. Her throat tensed as she swallowed. ‘You make me alarmed with this talk. But go on. Just go on, Sarah, I beg of you.’

  Sarah glanced at the little girl and found that she’d fallen asleep, her head on the coloured paper. She walked over and moved her so that her curly head lay on a cushion from the sofa, then returned to her seat. She spoke without looking Ann in the eye.

  ‘Caroline, your mother, was not a usual daughter. She was much older than my mother, a bit – I don’t know, really – perhaps a bit rebellious. Our grandfather had only a small income and if the girls didn’t marry they had to do something to keep themselves. But your mother didn’t learn enough to be a governess in a gentleman’s family like Aunt Louisa, and she didn’t marry when she should. She was unhappy at home – I don’t know why. She quarrelled with our grandfather and left his house.

  ‘I know nothing of the next years. But later she was a sort of companion – in a Scottish family settled in Shropshire.’ Sarah looked up at her cousin. ‘But truly, Ann, I do not know where it was.’

  ‘Don’t be so anxious. I’ve promised and will keep my word.’ She hoped she would. Thank God she’d not shared her suspicions of Aksel Stamer with her cousins. They’d have judged her demented.

  Sarah saw Ann’s emotion but she’d begun and must go on. She put her hand across the table and touched her cousin’s arm. They exchanged looks. Ann remained silent.

  ‘I really know very little. But there was in this family a son, a not-well son, I believe a simpleton, somebody not quite usual. He was kept at home, the mother was devoted to the boy. He should have been sent away to where he could have been cared for properly but he was her only son and she wouldn’t have it. And it was at home that, despite his baby ways and lack of speech, he grew to be a man – in size and needs. The person there – she was called the housekeeper – was really his carer. She was supposed to keep him
from harm and harming others. The husband could not bear to see him.’

  As she spoke, Sarah’s usually placid face grew strained and flushed; her lips trembled.

  ‘This boy, this man, this mad creature . . .?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Sarah, ‘he had fits, something had happened at birth. I heard his mother blamed herself, cruelly blamed herself.’

  ‘All right. So this idiot did what?’

  ‘Ann, I don’t know.’

  By now Sarah was in agonies, twisting the lace on her cuff round and round as if wringing water from it.

  Ann’s anxiety gave way to anger. She would explode if Sarah didn’t vomit out the truth. All of it. ‘Are you saying I am the daughter of this idiot? Is that it?’

  Tears started in Sarah’s pale eyes. They rolled down her burning cheek. She brushed them aside with the back of her hand as she let go the twisted lace.

  ‘Oh, Ann, I shouldn’t have said anything. Charles warned me. Why did you push me so?’

  ‘Oh, don’t blame me. You’ve known this all along and never told me.’ She felt so savage she could gladly have hit the weeping woman and smashed her china against her prettily papered walls.

  ‘The mother was at fault. He’d grown to be a man with a man’s desire, and the housekeeper was not always close at hand.’

  Ann got up abruptly and walked round the room, stared at the sleeping child, then sat down. She looked coldly at Sarah, who could no longer control her sobs. Though she was so miserable now, Ann thought bitterly, she was usually so complacent in her tranquil love, her tranquil life.

  At last anger subsided. She felt empty. ‘Go on, Sarah, please, just go on. I am calm. I cannot be left in any more ignorance. It is not fair.’

  Sarah pulled out her handkerchief, wiped her hot face and swallowed hard. She’d never done anything so difficult in her life. Why hadn’t she waited for Charles or asked him to do this? But he wouldn’t have let it happen. In any case he didn’t know it all.