Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

  Charles suddenly became attentive, and Philip looked down at his plate. ‘A novel,’ he added more cautiously.

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Mean Time.’ Philip did not know whether he should smile, and looked at Charles for guidance.

  ‘Oh, very fashionable. Very contemporary. Shall I say picturesque?’ Charles was imitating Andrew Flint’s rather sonorous rhythms; he knew them well, since he and Flint had been friends at university, when Flint’s combination of solemnity and facetiousness had in fact appealed to him. Now he went on to say, ‘It’s a pity he’s such a bad writer.’

  ‘Yes.’ Philip always deferred to Charles’s judgment in such matters, but he volunteered a small addition of his own. ‘I’m surprised he sells.’

  ‘Anything can sell, Philip. Anything can sell.’ Bored with this conversation, Vivien and Edward had taken the plates into the kitchen. It was growing dark, and in the sudden silence between the two men Charles Wychwood could hear the sound of plates being cleared away in other rooms, of voices and laughter in the flats close to his own. For a moment it seemed to him that all the inhabitants of this house were unwelcome intruders, like distorted images in someone else’s head. ‘I hate this place,’ he said to Philip. In the deepening twilight they were both now in shadow, and they could look at each other steadily. ‘But what am I supposed to do? Where else could we go? Where else could we afford to live?’ Vivien came back in the room and, as soon as she had turned on the light, Charles seemed cheerful once again. ‘Why don’t you put my book in your library?’ he was suddenly asking Philip. Then I could claim Public Lending Right.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Philip stirred the rhubarb which Vivien had given him. He knew that by ‘book’ Charles meant the series of poems which he and Vivien had xeroxed. They had stapled them together and then left them at several small booksellers where they had gathered dust on the shelves; as far as Philip knew, they were there still. Vivien sensed his discomfort and offered him some double clotted cream for his rhubarb, and they began to talk of other things. Although neither man ascribed to university any special qualities – quite the reverse – Vivien could not help but notice that, at least when they spoke to each other, their references to their lives after that time were more neutral and less enthusiastic. The years since then seemed to exist only as counters in some kind of game, lacking in real significance and sometimes even in interest. They spoke about recent events flippantly, in phrases or broken sentences, as if they did not deserve sustained attention. And all the time they were wondering, as they ate their rhubarb and cream, what had happened to their own lives.

  ‘Scrope,’ Philip eventually said in a low tone, looking deeply into his lap where a strand of rhubarb had fled. ‘What?’ Charles seemed distracted. ‘Do you ever see Harriet Scrope?’

  Vivien leaned towards her husband. ‘Now there’s someone who could help to get you published.’

  He was visibly annoyed. ‘I don’t want help!’ Then he added, ‘I am published.’ Harriet Scrope was the somewhat elderly novelist for whom Charles had briefly worked as a secretary; he had not been the tidiest or the most efficient of assistants and they had parted company, amicably enough, after six months; that had been four years ago, but still Charles spoke of her with affectionate familiarity – that is, when he remembered that she existed. And already his anger had gone. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘how the old girl is. I wonder… ‘ He was about to say something else when Edward, now dressed in his pyjamas, burst into the room and began dancing around his father’s chair. ‘Where’s my story?’ he shouted. ‘It’s getting late!’ Vivien was about to carry him away from the table when Charles put his hand upon her arm to stop her. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he must have his story. Everyone needs stories.’ So father and son, in single file, marched into the bedroom, leaving Philip and Vivien alone together. Philip cleared his throat; he moved his empty plate an inch to the right and then moved it back again; his eyes roved around the room, trying not to look at Vivien. And then he spotted the portrait which Charles had left by the desk. ‘I wonder,’ he said out loud, ‘I wonder who that is? May I?’ Quickly he rose from the table, and walked over to the painting. this is him Charles enjoyed telling stories to his son; as soon as he sat on the side of his narrow bed, the words seemed to come easily to him. Not like the words of his poetry, which were clear and precise, but different words, vivid, muddy, rich, extravagant; he called them his story words. And this evening he talked softly to Edward, creating a world where rabbits grew to an enormous size and rolled beneath a violet sky, a world where statues moved and water spoke, where stones yawned beneath gigantic trees. In this world children could live for hundreds of years without growing old, as long as they promised to forget the land of their birth… Edward was asleep now. But Charles remained there, sitting beside him, watching his vision slowly fade.

  When eventually he came back into the front room, Philip was looking at the face on the canvas. ‘Chatterton,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry. I was miles away.’

  Philip turned to him, and his eyes were very bright. ‘It’s Thomas Chatterton.’

  Charles was still dreaming of that other country. Thou marvellous boy,’ he repeated automatically. ‘Who perished in his pride – ‘

  ‘Look at the high forehead and the eyes.’ Philip was unusually insistent. ‘Don’t you remember the picture I have?’

  Charles dimly recalled the reproduction of a portrait, of Chatterton as a young man, which hung in Philip’s small flat. ‘But didn’t he die when he was very small? I mean, when he was very young?’ He glanced at Vivien, almost apologetically, but she was reading the evening newspaper. ‘Didn’t he kill himself?’

  ‘Really?’ Philip looked mysteriously at his shoes.

  ‘If you don’t believe me.’ Charles walked quickly over to his bookcase, and took down a large volume. He found the reference he wanted, and read it out. Thomas Chatterton, the faker of medieval poetry and perhaps the greatest literary forger of all time. Born in 1752, died by his own hand in 1770.’ He closed the book with a flourish.

  ‘But it’s him.’

  ‘Oh, I say. Bloody marvellous.’ Both men had come from poor London families, and on occasions Charles amused Philip with his extravagant parodies of an ‘upper class’ accent.

  But Philip was not to be entertained this evening. ‘No, really. It is him.’

  Impressed by his friend’s earnestness, Charles looked at the portrait again and began seriously to consider this new possibility. ‘I did say it was familiar, didn’t I, Vivie?’ She merely nodded, not looking up from her newspaper. Charles’s scepticism was dissolving even as he spoke. ‘It might be him… who knows?’ And then he cried out, in mounting excitement, ‘Look at the books beside him! The books may tell us!’ Philip peered closely at them, as if by an act of will he could pierce through the patina of age and grime which obscured the canvas.

  At this point Vivien got up and took the last dishes into the kitchen, unnoticed by the two men. She knew that the picture afforded Charles yet another opportunity of neglecting his work, and this disturbed her since she believed in his poetry just as much as he did. When she had first met him, at a party some twelve years before, she knew at once how extraordinary he was; and that early recognition had never faded from her memory. Even then he had made her laugh but, as he joked and clowned in front of her, she saw how frail he was: when she married him, soon afterwards, it was really to defend him against the world. She closed the kitchen door behind her but she could still hear their excited voices; then Charles ran in, asking for some warm water and a cloth.

  When he came back into the front room, Philip had already placed the canvas in the middle of the floor. Now, slowly, Charles moved the damp cloth across the top of the picture: what had seemed to be a shadow, perhaps of some object outside the range of the artist’s vision, resolved itself into a cloud of grime and dust which he was able gently to remove; the colours in the curtains behind the seated figure b
ecame richer, and the outlines of its folds became more distinct. These fresh colours and contours seemed to issue from Charles’s hand, and it was as if he had become the painter – as if the portrait was only now being completed. ‘Just there.’ Philip was pointing to some darker letters which had become visible in the upper right-hand corner. ‘Can you read them now?’

  Charles put his face so close that his breath warmed the canvas, and murmured ‘Pinxit George Stead .1802.’ Eagerly he drew the cloth down over the rest of the canvas and scrutinised the four volumes which, in the unaccustomed brightness of the paint, seemed to him to be glowing now. And when the titles became visible he recited them to Philip: they were Kew Gardens, The Revenge, Aella and Vala.

  Philip rolled over on the floor, and stared at the ceiling; then he started rotating his legs in the air, as he were riding an imaginary bicycle upside down.

  ‘So?’ Charles was looking at him in astonishment.

  Those are the books,’ Philip said to the air.

  ‘What?’

  Those are Chatterton’s books.’ He was laughing, apparently at some amusing scene which was taking place on the ceiling.

  Charles got up quickly and went back to the reference book which he had consulted a few minutes before, and he noticed how his hands were trembling as he read out loud: Thomas Chatterton completed the fake medieval poem, Vala, a few days before his suicide, although a burletta, The Revenge, has some claim to being his last work.’ He went over to Philip and gently lifted him up. ‘If he was born,’ he was saying, ‘I mean – if this is right. If he was born in 1752, and the portrait was painted in 1802, that would make him fifty years old.’ He looked at the middle-aged man depicted on the canvas.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Which would mean – which would mean – that Chatterton didn’t die.’ Charles paused, to put his confused thoughts in order. ‘He kept on writing.’

  Philip’s voice was very low again. ‘So what happened…?’

  He did not complete his question, but already Charles knew exactly what he meant. It was then that the truth came to him. ‘He faked his own death.’ At that moment the telephone rang, and both men clung to each other for a moment in panic. Then Charles laughed, and in his exhilaration picked up the receiver and crooned, ‘How do you do, sir? I’ve been waiting for you.’ But his enthusiasm was quickly checked and, when Vivien came in to discover who had called, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, ‘Harriet Scrope.’ As he talked to Harriet he performed a noiseless dance on the carpet, bending his knees slightly while going backwards and forwards with tiny steps. ‘She wants to see me,’ he said to Vivien as he put down the receiver.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She didn’t say, actually.’ And in fact he was not particularly interested; he had been distracted only for a moment and now all his exhilaration returned. He put his arm around Philip’s shoulder and together they looked into the eyes of Thomas Chatterton. ‘Oh yes,’ said Charles at last, ‘if this is real, this is him.’

  2

  HARRIET SCROPE was not happy. She shifted in her decaying wicker chair as small pieces of its material dug into her back and buttocks: it was uncomfortable but she was used to its particular kind of discomfort, and now even took pleasure in it. ‘Mother is not well,’ she said. She leant back and looked around the room with loathing – at the framed photographs on the mantelpiece, the two side-tables of dark oak, the sofa covered with blue silk, the set of Hogarth prints upon the wall, the deep-pile ultramarine carpet from Peter Jones, the Sony television set, the copy of Johnson’s Dictionary which was used as a base for the death mask of John Keats reproduced in a limited edition. When I die, she thought, when I die all this will be taken away – and she tried to imagine these objects existing in other houses when she was dead. And the more she considered this, the more it seemed to her that she was no longer in the room…

  On waking she looked across at her cat, curled up on the bottom shelf of her bookcase; at once it opened one eye in alarm. ‘Mother would like to piss on all this,’ she said, ‘and then she would like to burn it.’ It would be like burning her own life, watching the flames brighten the air.

  The door opened slightly, and Harriet stiffened. There was a hand, then a forehead, then two eyes and then a tiny voice. ‘Oh, Miss Scrope, I thought you were asleep, actually.’ This was Mary, Harriet’s new assistant.

  She rose from her wicker chair with great dignity. ‘I wasn’t snoring. I was talking to Mr Gaskell.’

  ‘I’m sorry –’

  Harriet crossed her hands upon her breast. ‘There’s no need to be sorry. I haven’t been raped and had a stocking stuffed in my mouth, have I darling?’

  Mary assumed that she was addressing the cat, and she smiled at it sympathetically as she came into the room. ‘Is there anything you would like, Harriet, actually?’

  Harriet winced: she had given this young woman permission to call her by her first name, but it was a decision she now regretted. The idea that in fact she would like to see her stripped to her undies, and then severely whipped, passed briefly through what remained of her consciousness; she smiled at her benevolently. ‘No thank you, dear. I’m perfectly dressed and I’m very happy.’ She bent down and fondled Mr Gaskell’s torn left ear. ‘Mother is perfect, isn’t she?’

  A sudden gust of air from the opened door sent Harriet’s nostrils quivering, and she turned in alarm to Mary: ‘Is there a smell in here?’ She dropped to her knees and began sniffing the carpet. Mary was momentarily surprised but, in a gesture of goodwill, she knelt down also and put her nose tentatively in the direction of several suspicious corners. She believed that she already understood her employer very well, and was determined not to be upset by anything she said or did. She had read all of her novels, which she described to her friends as ‘interesting, actually’, although secretly she was appalled by the peculiarities of Harriet’s imagination.

  Their bottoms knocked against each other as they waded in tandem across the carpet, and Harriet glanced at her sharply. ‘What are you doing with my bum? I’m the only one who’s allowed down here.’ Mary rose awkwardly, still managing to smile at Harriet who was now experimentally licking a stray tuft from the carpet. She would keep the smile in place until Harriet rose and saw it, because she wanted to impress upon her how much she liked and admired her. And at last Harriet stood up, muttering ‘I must have imagined it. I imagine so much these days.’

  She turned to Mary in relief. ‘Shall we listen to a little music?’ She winked at her. ‘You young people know all about the food of love, don’t you?’ She pushed the button on her Grundig Party Boy portable radio, and at once the sound of pop music filled the room. ‘Mr Gaskell!’ she said gently in reproof, as if it had mischievously altered the channel, and with outstretched arms she made a lunge for the cat which, with a shriek, fled from the room. Fuck you!’ she shouted as it ran around the door. Then, rather ostentatiously, she changed the setting on the dial to that of a classical radio station and they sat in silence for a while listening to one of Schumann’s song cycles. Despite the winningly Romantic music, the words of which had something to do with a missing parrot, Harriet’s face assumed a more and more stony expression. Absent-mindedly she put out her hand to stroke the cat, and patted the air instead. But this seemed to console her just as well. ‘What is Mother going to do?’ she murmured to the vacant space. ‘What is she supposed to do?’

  Mary, always eager to respond, decided that for once Harriet was addressing her. ‘About the smell, as it were?’

  Harriet seemed not to hear this, and turned off the radio with a flourish just as the parrot was about to reappear with a child’s shoe in its beak. ‘Did you type out the notes, dear?’

  At last Mary knew what Harriet was talking about, and immediately she became enthusiastic. ‘Yes, of course. And it seems to me that –’ Each day for the last month Mary Wilson had sat with a tape-recorder perched demurely if precariously upon her knees (she had for an instant tried to
give the impression that she knew nothing of technical or mechanical matters, but one look from Harriet was enough to dispel the impression that this would endear her to her employer), while Harriet reminisced in a loud if on occasions hesitant voice about her literary past. Whether these memories would comprise the autobiography which her publisher, in a moment of desperation, had suggested to her, or whether they would be incorporated into some form of diary, Harriet had yet to decide. If, that is, the question of a decision ever arose.

  ‘And it seems to me that –’

  ‘Oh yes? Exactly how does it seem to you?’

  Mary did not notice Harriet’s tone. She had just finished a course in English Literature at Oxford University, and was eager to display the knowledge she had acquired in tutorials. ‘It seems to me that they have seriously misinterpreted Modernism.’

  ‘And who are they exactly, dear?’ Harriet always pounced upon the pronoun, which in this usage she regularly denounced as being ‘as common as muck’.

  Mary faltered. ‘The academics, as it were, who falsified…’

  She did not really know what she was trying to say, and Harriet stopped her.

  ‘So you know what is true and what is false, do you?’ Mary coloured slightly, and Harriet relented. She put on her cockney landlady voice, which had been her standard ‘funny’ turn since the Fifties. ‘You really tike the biscuit and neow mistike! Ooh ‘allo, what you up ter?’ This last remark was addressed to Mr Gaskell, who had charged into the room and suddenly stopped short in front of Harriet’s chair. ‘Wot’s bovering you then? Ooh, I know. I know.’ Still reciting this litany to herself Harriet got up and walked towards a small alcove in the corner of the room, where a row of bottles could dimly be seen. She poured herself a gin, but not before asking Mary, ‘Anyfink for you, petal?’ Mary demurred, very gratefully. That’s a good girl, then.’ She returned with her gin and, settling herself once more in the uncomfortable wicker chair, took a silver teaspoon which was lying on a side-table. Then she began sipping the gin from the spoon; it was her belief that the alcohol’s contact with the metal, combined with the small (if numerous) doses required, prevented her from becoming drunk. This theory had not yet been scientifically verified, however, and there were times when Mary had heard her crooning the words of some popular lyric during the quiet hour when she insisted she was ‘putting her feet up’. She was looking at Mary over the rim of her spoon. ‘So now that you’ve typed them, I expect you want to put them together.’