Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

  And, when they asked at the station for directions to Colston’s Yard, they were told to ‘head for the spire’ since that particular street lay behind St Mary Redcliffe. ‘Chatterton,’ Philip said as they walked towards the church. ‘He was born there.’

  From the station the spire seemed to rise above a group of small houses. ‘What lovely purlieus!’ Charles said, waving his hand in the general direction of that area. But as soon as they left the precinct of Bristol Temple Meads they became lost in a network of ring-roads and pedestrian ‘walk-ways’, which took them away from their destination. But Charles was not at all discomfited by this; he seemed positively to relish the distraction. ‘Have you noticed,’ he said, as they were trying to cross a large junction, ‘how many people in Bristol have red hair?’ A lorry passed a few inches from his face as the smoke and dust billowed around him. ‘Ah, there it is! I saw it between cars.’ He put out his hand and stepped into the middle of the traffic, looking neither to the left nor to the right as calmly he crossed the road; Philip followed close behind, nervously signalling and grimacing at the drivers who had only just managed to stop in time. When they reached the other side, and turned the corner, St Mary Redcliffe rose up in front of them.

  Far from being in the tranquil locale of Charles’s imagination, however, it was set back a little from another busy road. The two men said nothing to each other but made their way across the thoroughfare, and with slow steps walked up a narrow street which passed one of the church’s ornate porches. The outer door was surrounded by intricate carvings of saints, skulls, keys, indeterminate animals and small hunched devils; above the door itself the figure of a bearded man had one arm raised in greeting. ‘Colston’s Yard ahead!’ Charles shouted, ‘I knew I had a good sense of direction!’

  Bramble House itself was not difficult to find, since it was set back from the other houses in a Georgian terrace. There were some iron railings in front of it, from one of which hung a hand-painted sign, ‘Beware of the Bitch. She Bites.’ Philip stayed back as Charles approached the gate. ‘Church,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll meet you outside the church.’

  Charles waved airily, unfastened the gate and walked through. But the front door opened even before he had reached it. ‘Oh God,’ a voice said. ‘Who are you, violating my space?’ An old man came out, peering down the street in both directions and not looking at Charles. He was wearing a leopard-skin leotard with the top of a red track-suit hanging over it; he was bald, but from the traces of white stubble still clinging to his pate it seemed to Charles that he must have shaved his head quite recently. ‘Isn’t that what they say these days? Space?’

  ‘Mr Joynson? Hi, I’m Charles Wychwood.’ There was no response, but Charles continued easily, ‘I telephoned about the portrait.’

  The old man put one hand upon his hip. ‘She’s gone to think, she’s gone to seed, she’s gone to hell. So you needn’t talk about her.’ He paused. ‘Do you like my sign?’ He pointed towards ‘Beware of the Bitch’. ‘I thought of it last night. Oh, come in and let’s have a giggle.’ With this he beckoned Charles into the house. ‘I love a good giggle, I honestly do.’ He had a peculiar wheedling, intimate voice and his breath smelt of throat lozenges. ‘I hope you don’t smoke,’ he said, taking Charles affectionately by the arm and leading him into the hallway. ‘I’m on a strict training programme.’ He took one more look down both ends of the street before closing the door. ‘But you can call me Pat.’ And at this point he did, indeed, giggle. ‘Massage my neck, will you? I feel tense.’

  Charles did not particularly want to touch this old man’s flesh, so he put the tips of his fingers on the track-suit top and pressed lightly. ‘No, no,’ Pat said. ‘You’re too bony, you young people. Come into the kitchen.’ He hurried down the hallway with an old man’s blind, baffled energy.

  Charles followed and, as Pat opened a can of carrot juice, asked very casually, ‘I gather you sold the painting to Leno’s Antiques, Mr Joynson?’

  Pat suddenly became angry, dribbling some of the carrot juice down his chin. ‘I’m not Mr Joynson! I told you, she’s not here. I can’t drink this.’ He put down the can. ‘I’m in shock. She has threatened me, she has attacked me, she has broken me. There have been guns, there have been knives, there have been explosions. How can I start my training with all that going on?’ Charles murmured something vaguely sympathetic and Pat gave him a quick, keen glance. ‘I don’t think young people ought to wear sweaters or jeans or plimsolls. It is sloppy. It is silly. It is ugly.’ Charles was wearing all three of these prohibited items, and looked merely puzzled as Pat went on, ‘You see some funny sights, don’t you?’ He scratched the edge of his leopard-skin leotard as Charles agreed rather more warmly with this. ‘Come on,’ Pat went on. ‘Let’s have a run. We can giggle as we go.’ He took four pills from the pocket of his track-suit and swallowed them greedily: Charles could see the Adam’s apple pulsating within his scrawny neck. Then they left the house, Pat once more affectionately hanging on to Charles’s arm. ‘I always jog around the church,’ he said. ‘She hates that.’

  The old man led the way as they ran towards the north end of St Mary Redcliffe: he kept his chin up and put his elbow close against his sides, making little puffing sounds as he exhaled between each burst of words. ‘She hates it. Cringes at it. Blushes at it. Fuck her.’

  Charles did not run but, rather, made a series of loping, crab-like motions as he tried to gain Pat’s attention. ‘But was it you who sold the picture?’

  Pat was exultant. ‘She doesn’t even.’ A pause for breath. ‘Know yet.’ They had passed the north porch and were now moving along a gravel path which curved towards the west end of the church and the Lady Chapel there. ‘Miss High and Mighty. She thinks she is. And all she wants. Is a black man.’

  ‘Of course.’ Charles had responded to this as if it were the most reasonable statement he had ever heard but, before Pat could begin another breathless tirade, he asked him quickly, ‘Where did you find it?’

  Pat put his hand against his left side, as if he had a stitch. ‘In. The. Attic.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Charles asked as innocently as he dared. He began to slow down the pace, and Pat gratefully followed his lead. ‘Who is it in the portrait?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I never question her. I never listen to her. I never understand her.’

  Charles kept his eyes on Pat’s face, and asked in the most natural possible manner. ‘Can I go up to the attic?’

  They were passing the south wall and, clutching at the leotard which was in some danger of falling loosely away from him, Pat elegantly picked his way through the stumps of old gravestones until they finally came back into Colston’s Yard. Charles repeated his question when they ran back into the kitchen, both of them still panting heavily. ‘Can I go up to the attic, Pat?’

  The use of his Christian name made the old man hesitate, and he said shyly, ‘What do you want to go up there for, when everything you need is down here?’ He paused again. ‘Are you after a man?’

  ‘Yes. The man in the painting.’

  ‘Oh, her.’ He giggled. ‘She’s probably just a female relative.’

  ‘I just want to see if there are any papers connected with her. Him. It’s important to me, Pat.’

  ‘Hold me for a moment while I stretch.’ Charles took hold of his left leg while the old man balanced against the sink and delicately performed an arabesque upon the kitchen floor. This seemed to calm him. ‘You can have her papers,’ he said quietly, ‘you can have her notes, you can have her diaries. She can suffer in ignorance.’

  ‘Shall I go up then?’ Charles was still very playful.

  ‘Go up what?’ Pat was equally playful.

  To get the papers.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that, you silly bitch. Pardon my French. Bitchette. I brought everything down. I didn’t want anything belonging to her above my head.’ He gave an expressive little shiver before executing a small pirouette and gracefully pointing his foot i
n the direction of two plastic bags. They had ‘Body Tech Health Foods’ written on the sides and, when Charles went to pick them up, he saw that they had been stuffed with papers and with manuscripts. ‘She’s been saying for years that she had some family treasures. The only treasure in your family, I said, is me. Well go on, she says, bury yourself in the garden and don’t bother to come up in the spring. Come up, I said. Come up? Why should I come up for an old bat like you? I’ve got better things to do with my time.’

  ‘So this is the treasure?’ Charles held the bags in front of him.

  The old man put his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t tell her. She will kill me, she will hang me, she will butcher me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re her secret. But I went up there and got them.’ He pointed towards the attic. ‘I was covered with dust, like some dirty old queen. Do you know what an old queen is? We used to have them years ago.’

  ‘And you don’t need them now?’

  ‘What would I need with an old queen? I’ve forgotten more than they ever learned.’

  ‘I mean, you don’t need the papers?’

  They don’t bother me. They bore me. They disgust me. They sicken me. But they don’t bother me.’

  ‘So I can take them?’

  ‘Did you say your name was Charles?’ He nodded. ‘You can take anything you want, Charlie. Have you heard the song, Charlie is my darling? I heard that back in nineteen-never-mind.’ Pat giggled again. ‘You have to go now, Charlie. I need my beauty sleep. Don’t you?’ He went up and tweaked the bags which Charles was still holding in front of him. ‘Like udders, aren’t they? Udders from an old cow. Which is what she is.’ He led Charles towards the door. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘we never met. We never spoke. We never fell in love. Goodbye for now.’

  He watched Charles crossing the road and turning onto the path which led towards the south porch of the church; then, with a sigh, he sat cross-legged upon the floor and waited, despondently but defiantly, for Mr Joynson to return to him.

  Craving & devouring

  Philip Slack had eagerly sought the peace of St Mary Redcliffe. He was aware that both Vivien and Charles were troubled by something, but he was not at all sure what it might be. That was one of the reasons why he had agreed to accompany Charles on this journey: he had wanted to persuade him to speak more openly but, as he had expected, he had not succeeded. And yet over the last few weeks Charles’s insouciance had seemed forced and therefore unreal, just as Vivien’s customary calm had become over-deliberate; sometimes she seemed to quiver with the strain of remaining her ‘usual’ self. This distressed him: he thought of the Wychwoods as his family and, in truth, he had no other. But if something should happen… and what was this sickness which Charles had mentioned on the train? These were the considerations which now sent him towards the old church.

  As he walked down the north aisle of the nave his footsteps echoed in the spacious vaults beneath him: it sounded as if someone were walking close behind and with a sudden, child’s, fear he crossed the nave to the south transept. He was about to lean back when he touched something; he murmured ‘Sorry’ and, when he turned around, he saw that his leg had brushed against a reclining stone figure. It was a pilgrim, his hat still tied about his neck and his staff resting in his hand; the face of this pilgrim was in repose but it was impossible to tell, so worn and mottled was the stone, whether the eyes were open or closed.

  Philip walked quickly to the back of the church, and sat down upon one of the small wooden chairs placed near the baptistery. From here the worshipper or the casual visitor could look down the entire length of the nave, and Philip became calm once more as he gazed at the glowing blues, reds and yellows of the East Window. The brightness of these colours was such that the stained glass seemed to hover in mid-air, and its rich brocaded light soared across the vaultings of the high roof. And I am seeing again, Philip thought, what Thomas Chatterton himself once saw as a child.

  Footsteps broke his reverie, and he glanced at a small boy who was walking with deliberate pace up the narrow aisle which led to the south transept; his head was bowed and he seemed to be scrutinising the flagstones as he went across them. Then he disappeared behind a canopied tomb beside the nave and a few moments later a young man emerged from the other side; it was as if there had been a sudden transformation within this ancient church. Philip was about to rise from his seat in astonishment when he saw both the boy and the young man passing at the top of the nave; they walked by each other without any sign of greeting or recognition, and the light from the window behind them blurred their outlines as they crossed. Philip could see only shadows in front of him, and their footsteps made no noise.

  The small boy had gone behind an ironwork screen, and a few moments later some random organ notes echoed around the church: perhaps he had come here to practise, and after a while the stray notes slid into a reverberant low tone of which he seemed particularly fond. Then he launched into the steep harmonies of a hymn, playing it with such care and steadfastness that he must have learned it only recently; and, once again, the church was filled with old music. He had seemed too young to be drawn to so melancholy a pursuit but, when Philip stood up and walked past the ironwork screen, the boy’s face was so rapt that he might have been listening to the sounds of his own life echoing back to him. This church would enclose him, and he would play its music until he died. Philip looked away.

  He was about to leave when he noticed, on the wall beside the screen, a metal plaque insecurely fastened by rivets. It read: ‘In Memory of Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, who as a Boy worshipped in this Parish Church.’ There were four lines of decayed verse beneath this inscription, and Philip had to peer closely in order to decipher them: While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

  Someone tugged at his sleeve: he looked down in alarm, and an old man was staring up at him with bright eyes. ‘He ain’t buried here, he ain’t.’ The old man chuckled. ‘Oh no, not him. No one knows where he’s gone and buried himself. He’s a mystery, that one is.’

  Philip said only, ‘I suppose so.’

  That’s right. You’re quite right to suppose that. They never found that body. They looked all over, but they never found him.’ He took Philip’s arm and began leading him down the church, towards the north porch. ‘You won’t find a Chatterton in Brustil. They’re long gone, they are.’ Slowly they approached the baptistery. ‘He’s all written down, he is. Just you have a gander over here.’ And in the gently moving light, stained with the colours of the high windows, the old man pored through some pamphlets which had been left for sale beside a ‘World in Peril’ poster and a scale model of the church itself. ‘Here he is,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve found him.’ He held up a pamphlet with the title Thomas Chatterton: Son of Bristol. That’s all you need.’

  He put his head to one side and waited for Philip, who eventually enquired ‘How much?’

  ‘You give what you can. This is a church of God, this is.’

  Philip searched frantically in the pockets of his jeans, and eventually came out with a pound coin. ‘Is that enough?’

  ‘Yes, that will do, that will.’ The old man quickly took the coin and held it aloft in his right hand as he gave the pamphlet to Philip. Then, in a sudden access of confidence, he took his arm again and said, ‘Now that we’re all comfy, I’ll show you something.’ He took him over to the north porch, the light from the half-closed door illuminating the right-hand side of his body, his creased neck, his old overcoat, and his trembling hand with the coin still in it. ‘There,’ he said, opening the door and pointing out into the street beyond, There’s his house. But that’s just the frontage, that is.’ Philip looked in the direction to which he was pointing, and could see what looked like a painted surface raised up beside the main road. They’ve moved it twice, they have. That’s just a ruin now.’ He pu
t his head to one side again and squinted up at Philip. ‘Is there anything else you want to know, is there?’

  ‘No, nothing.’ Philip had become vaguely depressed. ‘I’ve seen enough.’

  Then you’ll be on your way, will you?’ He was still holding the coin in his right hand as he ushered Philip down the steps and into the forecourt. ‘Don’t forget,’ he said, as Philip walked away, ‘they’ll never find him, they won’t. He’s long gone.’ but my Eyes are always upon thee Some seagulls were making their usual noise overhead when Philip turned the corner of St Mary Redcliffe and found Charles already waiting for him: he was leaning against the wall of the south porch, his arms folded, whistling to himself. There were two plastic bags lying at his feet, and for a moment Philip wondered if he had been shopping. ‘Hello,’ he said in a sepulchral tone.

  Charles looked up, as if in surprise. ‘Well, hello there. Fancy meeting you here. Shall we be on our way?’ He kicked a loose stone with his foot, and sent it flying into the graveyard. He was in good spirits after his conversation with Pat, and whistled as he started walking down the path towards the main road.

  Philip hastened to catch up with him. ‘Food?’ he asked, looking thoughtfully at the two plastic bags which Charles was swinging into the air.

  ‘Food for thought. He gave them to me.’ He nodded in the direction of Bramble House.

  ‘You saw the owner of the picture?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think I saw, what is the word, his friend? I think he was a homosexual.’ Philip blushed, and Charles laughed out loud. ‘He gave me everything.’ He swung the bags even higher in the air as they crossed the main road. ‘He was dotty. Did you ever see the Ugly Sisters in pantomime?’

  Philip was not listening to him. ‘House.’

  ‘What?’

  That’s Chatterton’s house.’ Philip pointed at the façade which the old man had just shown him. ‘All that’s left of it, anyway.’