Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

  Yes, she did know: she suspected, at least, that Charles did not want to be told that the painting was quite worthless. But she restrained her impatience and bent down towards Edward so that he could fasten the clasp on the back of her pearl necklace; this was always the moment of the morning which her son anticipated and, as he ‘did her up’, he put his arms around her and smelt the perfume on her neck. She took his hands and kissed them, which always made him laugh. ‘And what are you going to do with your holiday, Eddie?’

  ‘I’m going out with Dad.’ He still had his face buried in her neck and hair, so that his voice was muffled. ‘He says it’s important.’

  Charles had finally managed to place the canvas on the wall, and he stepped back to look at it. ‘We’re going to investigate you,’ he said to the middle-aged man depicted there, with his right hand resting above his books. ‘We’re going to find your secrets.’

  Vivien gently disengaged herself from her son’s arms and stood up: she was about to say something to Charles but, when she saw the enthusiasm on Edward’s face, she decided not to. She turned to leave but, before she could reach the door, there was a sudden noise: the portrait came off the wall and fell, face down, upon the carpet.

  ‘Now he’s sick!’ Edward shouted. ‘Chatterton is sick!’

  ‘Will you stop it, Eddie? My head really does ache now.’ Then Charles saw the look of anxiety which had passed over Vivien’s face and he added, in a theatrical tone, ‘And a drowsy numbness pains my sense.’

  ‘I have to go,’ Vivien said. ‘I’m late. Take care of each other.’ But it was with a slight reluctance that she left them together.

  Later that morning they set off for the House above the Arch. As soon as he knew in which direction they were meant to go, Edward led the way and occasionally tugged impatiently at his father’s sleeve as Charles wandered behind him: whenever he was with his son, outside the house, he became abstracted and uncertain. They were about to turn into Dodd’s Gardens when Charles hesitated and then stopped. He looked up at a dusty elm which shuddered as the traffic passed it. ‘How many leaves,’ he asked his son, ‘would you say were on that tree?’

  ‘Seven thousand, four hundred and thirty two. And a half.’

  ‘And how long would it take for the wind to blow them all down?’

  But Edward was no longer listening. ‘Here we are, Dad.’

  ‘And how long has it been standing here?’

  Edward placed his hands against his father’s back and propelled him around the corner into the quiet street. They stopped for a moment and Charles pointed to the arch with the decaying stone house above it: ‘There it is!’ he said, ‘that’s where all the secrets are buried!’

  Edward took his hand; together they passed under the arch and into the small courtyard where now the sign read ‘Leno’s Antiques. La Crčme de la Crčme. Come and Taste It.’ As they climbed the narrow stairs they could hear a treble voice singing a hymn, or a dirge, and Edward started nervously to giggle.

  ‘Don’t laugh!’ His father was very stern with him as he knocked. There was a silence, a cough, the sound of a drawer being locked, and then the door was swung violently open.

  ‘Oh yes?’ Mr Leno was looking down at Edward, and seemed to be addressing the child. ‘Who is this?’

  Edward stared back up at him placidly, and they might have stood gazing at each other for some time if another voice had not called from within, ‘Advance their legions, let them see my eagles and my trumpets!’ At this moment Mr Leno stuck out his tongue at the boy, who indignantly returned the gesture before being ushered into the presence of Mrs Leno. ‘A sprig,’ she said. ‘Will he ever grow?’

  Edward put his hands into his pockets and scowled at her. ‘I’m three inches taller than last year.’

  Charles smiled benignly at both of them during this short exchange before turning to Mr Leno. ‘Hi, I’m Wychwood. I came here last week and gave you my books for a picture.’

  Mr Leno was looking gravely down at Edward. ‘I suppose he wants to return it now. What do you think?’

  ‘No,’ Charles said quickly, ‘I want to keep it. I just want some information.’

  Mrs Leno pointed at Edward. ‘Does he play an instrument, too, or does he just stand there?’ The boy was now blushing miserably and, in his embarrassment, he went over to a corner and peered into a large stone urn which had been placed on top of some old theatrical magazines.

  ‘I was wondering…’ Charles began again, and at once the Lenos became very still. ‘I was wondering if you did know anything else about that picture?’

  ‘Does she know anything about it?’ Mr Leno addressed the question towards Edward’s back.

  And for some reason the boy turned around and cried, ‘Yes, she does!’

  Mrs Leno accelerated backwards in her chair and retreated up the ramp into the room beside the shop. ‘She likes you,’ her husband said to Edward, who tried to conceal his satisfaction at this news by playing with two ancient puppets he had found propped up against the urn. ‘Be careful with my babies,’ Mr Leno added, ‘they might bite.’ And he bared his teeth at Edward.

  Now his wife rolled back into the room as abruptly as she had left it, holding out a red ledger in front of her as if it were a warning light of some kind. Then she placed it upon her lap, and folded her hands across it.

  ‘Well?’ she asked. Tell me about this so-called picture.’

  ‘It was of Chatterton.’ Charles was suddenly distracted by Edward, who had dropped one of the puppets into the stone vessel and was vainly trying to reach it. ‘I mean it was of a middle-aged man. It was lying over there.’

  Mrs Leno opened the ledger with a flourish and began minutely to examine it. ‘Portrait of an Unknown Man,’ she said at last. ‘Early nineteenth century. A party by the name of Joynson. Colston’s Yard, Bristol, Somerset. Or is it called Avon now?’

  ‘Is that the name of the man in the picture?’ Charles sounded dismayed.

  ‘No, that was the vendor.’

  He relaxed a little. ‘So he sold it to you?’

  ‘You are a poet. Naturally you own a thesaurus. Vendor. Seller. Death of a salesman.’

  ‘And you said the name was…?’

  ‘J as in jabber, o as in orifice, y as in yours truly, n as in nostril, and then son.’ She glanced tenderly in Edward’s direction, but he had almost completely disappeared inside the stone urn. ‘As in unruly son.’

  ‘And did you say Colston’s Yard, Bristol?’

  ‘Where else?’ Slowly she began to retreat backwards and, murmuring ‘Busy old fool’, disappeared once more into the adjoining room.

  ‘Help! Dad!’ Edward’s voice came from within the urn, where he now found himself trapped after his vain attempt to retrieve the puppet.

  Mr Leno turned to Charles. ‘May I touch him?’ Charles nodded, and with a grim smile the proprietor of the House above the Arch walked over to the urn and grabbed Edward’s legs before hauling him out. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘that they might bite.’

  ‘That thing smells!’ Edward was a little shaken.

  ‘Of course it smells. It’s a funereal monument.’ He gravely shook hands with the boy and Edward gave a little bow in return as his father, taking his shoulder, steered him towards the door.

  As they descended the stone steps, they heard once again the sound of high-pitched singing or wailing. Edward gave a little yodel, and Charles stopped him. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s rude to imitate people.’ real or unreal There was only one Joynson listed in the Bristol directory, a Cuthbert Joynson of Bramble House, Colston’s Yard. And it sounded to Charles as if an elderly man answered when he telephoned and asked for the person of that name.

  ‘She’s not here. I don’t enquire where she is. I don’t know where she is. I don’t care where she is.’

  Charles merely assumed that the old gentleman had misheard him and was talking about his wife, Mrs Joynson.

  ‘No, it was you I wanted. It was about the portrait
.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about portraits. I don’t know anything about pictures. I don’t know anything about art.’

  ‘I think you sold one to Leno’s Antiques.’

  ‘Oh never mind about that now.’ There was a pause, and Charles thought he heard a rustling sound. ‘Did you say you wanted me?’ The old gentleman sounded a little more accommodating. ‘Come here.’ He spoke as if Charles were in the next room.

  ‘I’m in London.’

  ‘A cockney boy, are you? I hope you haven’t got any tattoos.’ Charles confirmed that he had none. ‘Oh well, never mind. Come down anyway.’ And he replaced the receiver before Charles had any opportunity to arrange a time for this prospective meeting. Far from finding this conversation unsatisfactory or even unusual, however, he considered it to be a triumph of persuasion and tact: he was already looking forward to his journey to Bristol, when he might resolve the secret of Chatterton’s portrait with the help of this sympathetic old gentleman. At least this was how he described it that evening to Philip, who was at once eager to join him.

  The. quest begins on Saturday,’ Charles said excitedly. ‘Oh do not ask what is it. Let us go and make our visit!’ walk through the gate When he woke up, on the following morning, he was alone. He was about to call out ‘What time is it?’ but something had been stuffed in his mouth, and he choked. It was his tongue and it was not his tongue: someone else was forcing it down his throat. He tried to rise from the bed but his head just lay there and watched, its dull eyes contracting in the glare of the unfamiliar room. There was an odd disturbance beneath his scalp as if it, too, were rearing itself upward to speak. He tried to say Vivien, but the word had grown too long in his mouth and he heard himself calling ‘Geranium!’ He closed his eyes before the bright knives could reach them.

  When he woke up, on the following morning, he was alone. Vivien had left for her work, and Edward was already at school. He knew this and still he needed to call out to them; but his throat ached, as if he had been shouting all night, and it was only with an effort that he was able to part his lips. He was crouched sideways on the bed, the sheets flung off him, and when he rolled out of the position in which he had slept, he saw that the sheet beneath him was dank with someone’s brown sweat. It smelt of metal, a sharp inhuman smell. His left eye would not look at this stain; its lid kept on rolling downward, and it was only when Charles put his hand up to his head that he was able to calm it.

  And, as he touched his face with trembling fingers, he could feel the warmth of its continual decay.

  He was in the bathroom, retching into the sink. He dared not comb his hair because it was not his hair. He had dressed. He had left the house. He had entered a cafe, on account of his thirst, and he noticed with delight how bright all the food seemed upon the tables there. He looked around to share his excitement, and he noticed how everyone was feeding off small piles of chemicals: violet, yellow, green and black. Charles was drinking from a cup of tea: the left side of it was cold, and the right side was hot. The world was filled with stripes like brass bands. When he stood up he toppled over, and he was helped out of the cafe. He walked down the right line, not the left one. Someone stopped him on the street: he had never seen this face before but as he watched the eyebrows, the nose, the lines upon the forehead, the mouth, the pale skin, the side of the neck, the hair, all of it seemed so strange that he broke down and wept.

  A blue car passed, and then a red one, their bright colours also bringing sickness into the world. He looked at the houses and the people in the houses, their light merging and becoming a parabola which crept towards the sky. How many faces were there? There were no souls, only faces. And what was this water on his face? The name for it was rain, or cry, or crake. It was a gift. And now all these people, yes they were people, were opening their mouths and making noises to each other. They were wearing clothes of different colours, and they moved from one place to the next. Nothing was still. Everything was touching everything else, and Charles watched as the sun moved across the left-hand corner. The world was too bright. I am in prison, he thought, and the brightness is guarding me until I am led out singing. He went into an alley and retched again.

  He was sitting beside a small fountain, leaning his back against its round basin. Like a marble oh, he said, and in that moment of inattention he heard the sound of hammers, of drilling, of workmen calling to each other. A building was being erected in the street beyond the small public garden in which he sat, and he considered the plight of the solitary brick. Perhaps it had been taken from the rubble of an older building and was now being used again, and Charles could see all the houses of the world rising and falling with the pressure of his own breathing. Or perhaps the brick had only recently been made, moulded and baked one morning when the happiness of the brick-maker had entered his material. And so, brick by brick, the mood of the new house was formed.

  The noises would not leave his head, and in his pain he leant towards the ground. A wind started up in the tops of the trees and their branches swayed above him, sending their brown leaves drifting to the earth…

  When he awoke he noticed that the leaves had been swept away, and a young man was standing beside him. He had red hair, brushed back. He was gazing intently at Charles, and he placed his hand upon his arm as if he were restraining him.

  One said, ‘And so you are sick?’

  The other replied, ‘I know that I am.’

  He was about to rise. ‘Not now. Not now. I will come to see you again. Not now.’

  Charles was uncertain what to say, and when he looked up again the young man was no longer there. The wind had dropped and, as he listened to the water running from the fountain behind him, he realised that the pain had gone. He stretched out, yawning, and in that movement it was as if the clay had fallen away from his limbs; the strangeness had left him. He stood up quickly, rubbed his eyes, and then scooped some water from the fountain; he did not want to drink it, he just wanted to feel it trembling in his cupped hands. Then he splashed it over his face and hair.

  ‘It’s closing time.’ The voice came from behind him and Charles turned, hoping to see the same young man who had just woken him. But it was the park attendant, holding open the iron gate which led out into the busy street; he was grinning. ‘You shouldn’t be talking to yourself,’ he said. ‘It’s the first sign.’

  Charles laughed at this. ‘A sign of weakness or a sign of woe?’ He had come through his illness, even though it had shaken him violently, and in his relief he no longer cared whether the young man had been real or unreal. ‘I was sick once,’ he said, ‘but I’m better now.’ Then he walked through the gate.

  4

  OH, LOOK,’ Charles said. ‘A Victorian. Doesn’t he look sweet?’ Philip Slack glanced briefly at the bronze figure of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, with his stove-pipe hat upon his lap. Immediately above his head was an illuminated sign with the words ‘Meeting Point’ above it, and beside him was the smaller figure of Paddington Bear holding a donation box for the Association of Homeless Families. ‘Eighteen hundred and five to eighteen hundred and fifty-one.’ Charles was reading the inscription in front of the seated figure. ‘He died young, I see.’ And they strolled beneath the vaulted glass and iron roof of Paddington towards their platform, the sounds of the old building echoing around them.

  By the time Charles had settled himself comfortably in the carriage, spreading out on the table in front of him a bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate, his ticket, two apples and a paperback edition of Great Expectations, the 9.15 from London to Bristol was already moving out of the station. Philip stroked his small beard and stared gloomily through the sealed window, while his companion wrote his initials in the dust which already obscured the view. ‘Royal Oak,’ Charles said. ‘What a nice name.’

  ‘Forest once.’ Philip looked at the bright red brick offices they were passing, and the ribbon of the motorway curved eastward.

  ‘Westbourne Park?’ Charles was very cheerful. />
  ‘Fields. In the past.’ They were travelling through a canyon of council house flats, which gleamed in the morning light. An old power-station, belching white smoke and debris into the low cloud, flashed by; a lorry passed over a bridge.

  ‘Happy Valley?’ Philip looked at him in surprise. ‘I made that one up.’ Now Charles sat back, visibly enjoying the warmth of the carriage. ‘Isn’t it nice,’ he went on, ‘that we’re all travelling together to our appointed destination?’ He looked around with satisfaction at the other people in the carriage, then he tore a small piece from a page of Great Expectations, rolled it into a ball and popped it into his mouth. This was an old habit of his: he could not resist eating books.

  Philip still seemed very melancholy as he watched the city and the suburbs of the city rushing past. ‘I wish Vivien had come,’ he said at last. ‘She needs a break.’

  ‘Everyone needs a break, old thing.’ Charles had rolled another strip from the paperback, and was already consuming it. ‘Would you like some? It’s delicious.’ He offered the book to Philip, who gracefully declined. ‘At least she’s not stuck in that flat all day!’ Charles suddenly seemed eager to justify himself to his friend. ‘I’m the one who looks after Edward, aren’t I? And you know how difficult he can be sometimes. Besides…’ he swallowed the most recent piece of Great Expectations. ‘Now that I’m working for Harriet, I’ll be making some money.’

  Philip took the book from his hands. ‘It’s bad for you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not the kind of life I wanted. But I don’t see what I can do. What can I do? You know how sick I was –’ In fact he had not mentioned his illness to Philip and, seeing his friend’s startled expression, he smiled. ‘But that’s all over now. Why are you looking so gloomy, old dear, when we’re on our pilgrimage?’ He looked across at two people on the opposite side of the compartment. They were playing Scrabble, and he examined the board. ‘Occluded,’ he said as the train moved on the metal rails towards Bristol Temple Meads.