Maud thought of the heaped bills back in the house; of the various promises that had been made. She turned to Jimmy. He was standing very straight, wearing a pained wince. ‘Surely it can’t be that bad,’ she said, without much hope.
He began to polish his eyeglass on his lapel. ‘I am presently being sued,’ he told her, ‘by a cheesemonger.’
‘It will be a great joke,’ Owl said, ‘before very long. You’ll see, my friends. A colourman I know up in Bethnal Green agreed to give sixty quid for the Carlyle on the bloody spot, with the most reasonable terms. We’ll have the tin in under a week. You are fortunate, from this point of view, to have so many significant works at your disposal. Why, just imagine what could be raised by the notorious fireworks. Or one of those marvellous full-lengths of Maud here.’ There was a sly pause. ‘Just imagine what we could get for the Mother.’
Jimmy’s laugh was empty and irritated. ‘You are becoming predictable, mon vieux. How many times must I tell you? That picture has been damaged. It needs work.’
The portrait of old Mrs Whistler had appeared in their bedroom several weeks previously. There was no damage to it that Maud could see. She’d wondered as to its placement; it was not the most agreeable location for it, in all honesty. She saw now that it was being hidden.
‘Damp, I think,’ she volunteered. ‘The whole left side will have to be scraped.’
Owl hesitated. ‘I understand your reluctance. Your attachment. Why, if I were capable of producing such an image of minha querida mãe … All I can tell you is that it would be temporary. A month or two only. Until you have your damages from Ruskin, and other things besides – and then it would be back here so damned quickly, you wouldn’t even—’
‘No, Owl.’ Jimmy spoke with unusual firmness. ‘You are my friend. My only true friend, I think sometimes. But this I can’t allow.’
The Owl accepted Jimmy’s ruling with a shrug and a good-natured downturn of the lip. He retreated to the studio, out of the sun, and prised the lid off the crate in a manner that suggested he’d done it before. In a few minutes he had the Carlyle snug within it, packed with wads of oilskin. His bag, it turned out, also contained a hammer and nails; as he sealed the painting away, knocking each nail all the way in with just two or three long strokes, Maud turned again to Jimmy, thinking to ask a quiet question about the Mother.
‘Not now,’ he said.
His task complete, Owl picked up the crate, managing it perfectly well alone, and carried it past them to the lane. Maud saw the roof of a cab behind the wall. She realised that it must have been waiting there the whole time.
A few seconds later the Portuguese returned, a cigarette in his mouth, to reclaim his leather bag and bid them farewell. ‘Do consider the others, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘The Nocturnes and so forth. They could be out in the city, old man, earning you decent coin. Fairly soon I shall be in the position to buy a couple more myself, and it shall be my honour to do so. But I warn you that the remainder of the month could prove rather lean.’
Owl reached into his inside pocket with a businesslike air. Jimmy’s neck craned very slightly, as if in anticipation; Maud noticed a hint of distaste, of self-disgust, upon his face. Out came a worn leather pocket book, capable of holding much, but currently holding little. Owl produced a banknote from it, though, folded twice – how large Maud couldn’t tell, but the thing looked like it had passed through the hands of half of London. He extended it towards Jimmy, held between middle and forefinger. It was plucked away at once.
‘Get the roof on,’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘This house of yours. Get the roof on and there won’t be a damned thing those Board of Works men can do. If the two of you are living there – if you are receiving their wives for your breakfasts and lining them up to be painted in your magnificent dance hall of a studio, then any objection will be solidly after the fact. Impossible to take seriously.’
Maud directed a dubious glance at Jimmy – who was rolling his banknote into a tight tube and turning it over thoughtfully between his fingertips. Neither of them spoke.
‘The Board of Works is a rascally foe, but one must show the blighters no fear. This is essential. Take my own case.’
The Owl’s case. Maud had heard much about this from Rosa. It was a situation that could only befall this particular person. In recent months it had transpired that the Metropolitan District Railway needed to knock down Chaldon House, the Howell family’s residence in Putney, to clear a path for their westward line. A piece of the direst ill fortune, you might think, but the Owl had immediately scented opportunity. An offer had been made by the railway people, and a good one at that; but Owl, much to Rosa’s admiration, had rejected. This, he’d told them, was home. The home of his wife and baby daughter. And so it was to go to court.
‘The word now is that I can expect to be awarded several times the original sum. Which means clover, old man. Clover for us all.’
Jimmy didn’t see it. ‘What is the parallel, Owl, precisely?’
‘Simply that you must never, never accept things at their first stage. It is a game, old chap, for these officials and legal types. Fortitude. Obstinacy. Nerve. These are the qualities that are rewarded.’
With that the Portuguese departed, dropping Maud a shallow bow, telling them both that he’d be round again in a couple of days; and then, while climbing into his hired carriage, he shouted ‘Get the roof on!’ over the wall.
Maud and Jimmy stayed on the lawn. She looked up at the sun. The hour of The World interview must be drawing close. Jimmy was shaking his head, slotting the banknote into his breast pocket. She asked if it was an advance on the pawn. The question annoyed him; he informed her that it was in actual fact a first instalment for the sale of the copyright on the Carlyle. Eighty pounds he was getting, along with a half dozen proofs.
‘You sold it to Owl?’
Jimmy glowered at her, catching the doubt in her voice. ‘What is copyright to a painter?’ he demanded. ‘It is a phantom, girl, a simple nothing. A speculation on a shadow. It will buy my supplies. It will cover our expenses. Beat back the creditors, for a while at least. Tell me, what else should I have done?’
He fell quiet, taking a long breath, a hand at his brow; then he came over, four steps across the grass, removing his boater and leaning against her, fitting his head into the crook of her neck. They both apologised, speaking over one another. She could feel the apprehension in him, and the fatigue – the absolute absence of desire. This was how it went with Jimmy. While soaring high, his every touch was tense with ardour; his every thought, when they were alone, aimed at bringing about her disrobement. And accordingly, when in the dumps, he was but a husk – a despondent child, a tired old man.
It didn’t last. He knew full well that the time was approaching; that the man from The World was at that moment most probably walking over from the Battersea Bridge pier. Pulling away, he gave his spirits a restorative shake, like a dog fresh from a river. The blue yachting jacket was straightened, the boater angled just so atop the black curls, the eyeglass slotted in. Then he tried out a couple of his favourites from the lines he’d prepared.
‘As music is the poetry of sound,’ he said, ‘so painting is the poetry of sight.’
The meaning here seemed a touch obscure. The poetry of sight? Maud wrinkled her nose; she gave him an ambiguous nod.
‘Art should be independent of all claptrap.’
That was more like it. The low mist dissolved, revealing a smile so very wily and pleased with itself that Maud couldn’t help returning it. Jimmy swivelled on the heel of those square-tipped shoes, towards the soot-streaked house and the open sky beyond, extending his arm in the style of a great orator.
‘Art,’ he announced, ‘should be independent of all claptrap!’
*
July 1878
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ said Jimmy, as the train juddered to a halt. ‘Mommy likes you, Maudie, very much. And s
he is the soundest judge of character that I know. Unaffected by spite or censure, or indeed any base sentiment whatsoever. I’ll simply tell her that you are now my pupil – that you have stepped down from the model table and are drawing for yourself. All above board. She won’t suspect for a second.’
He rose and left the compartment, battled briefly with their umbrella, then handed Maud out into the morning drizzle. The station at Hastings was triangular, built into a split in the line, its platforms bending apart with the track. Across its point lay the town, mud-brown and dull, half lost in fog. Beyond, the sea was a blurred grey band, almost the same tone as the sky. Maud hadn’t been to the coast since she was a child – a single excursion to Brighton at the age of ten. Jimmy, in contrast, was a veteran traveller; he’d sailed oceans and crossed continents, numerous times. Sight of the rainy Channel didn’t even register in his mind. Even now, after everything, Maud tried not to appear too callow – too curious about the view before them. She adjusted her hat, tilting it an inch, and asked how far it was to the boarding house.
‘Two miles,’ he replied, ‘or thereabouts. This way, this way.’
They found a cab on the street outside, an ageing four-wheeler. It skirted the town, making for a low hill on its western edge. The miserable weather lifted a little, a shaft of sunlight cutting through the banked cloud. Maud watched the colours change in the waters below and the white lines of the waves running up the wide beach. The cab lurched over the cobbles; the tip of her nose rubbed a mark on the dewy window.
‘It is really something, isn’t it,’ Jimmy declared, ‘to free oneself from London and its worries? Push it all out to arm’s length for a while.’
This was the reason – one of the reasons – for their expedition. Dr William Whistler’s suggestion was finally being acted upon, almost exactly a year after it had first been put to Jimmy. Maud was to be drawn from the doldrums into which she’d drifted around the time of Ione’s first birthday. The sorrow had settled upon her like a bad cold − like a physical ailment she couldn’t shake off. Once more, that which she thought she’d contained, that she’d managed to control, showed her that she’d done nothing of the sort. Jimmy had observed this slump in his Madame’s spirits – and a corresponding lull in her attention to his own vicissitudes – with concern. He’d recognised that something should be done to alleviate her woe, even if he did not seek to discuss the cause of it. So here they were in Hastings.
After a quarter hour’s travel the cab arrived at a smart boarding house. Jimmy ushered Maud inside, straight up a broad central staircase to his mother’s cluttered but scrupulously clean sitting room. They were greeted by a strong smell of lavender and beeswax, and the sight of Mrs Whistler rising from an armchair to receive them – assisted by Willie, who’d travelled down alone the previous evening.
Maud was not, of course, the principal attraction. It happened to be the 11th, Jimmy’s own birthday. He was forty-four years old, a fact which caused him acute distress. She was under strict instructions not to mention it or do anything to mark it. The date was kept secret from his circle, even from his closest friends. His mother and brother, however, were determined to celebrate. There was a gift, a tiepin in the shape of an American eagle, that Jimmy would never wear in a thousand years; a rich fruitcake of a kind he abhorred; and singing, a string of sweet little songs from their native land, delivered in the old lady’s whispery warble, underpinned by Willie’s flat, ironic baritone. Jimmy bore it with good humour; he grinned, and offered thanks, and managed to eat part of a slice of the cake. Looking at the three of them, at their expressions and the way they talked to each other, Maud could see something that ran back to the brothers’ beginnings, through a number of very different situations.
Jimmy, though, was still Jimmy. He’d brought along a sheaf of clippings from newspapers and magazines, which he presented to his mother with a flourish once the singing was finished. Her head dipping heavily upon her neck, she tried to follow his finger as it directed her towards the choicest features. There was the profile from The World, declared a triumph by everyone who mattered: a comprehensive statement of his position. And here was a cartoon – a comic sketch of her own son! – published in Vanity Fair, which had gone so far as to name Whistler as one of the ‘men of the day’. Jimmy was particularly proud of this cartoon. The artist, a fellow known only as Spy, had shown him in a light brown overcoat, his body a whippet-thin curve, with all his attributes in place: cigarette and cane, forelock and eyeglass, topped off with an arch twist of the lip. Maud had heard others call it grotesque, but to her it captured a certain side of him with an almost uncanny sharpness.
Setting the cartoon aside, Mrs Whistler listened patiently – or absently, Maud couldn’t quite tell – while her eldest son recounted an ideal version of his life, purged of all trouble and uncertainty. The Ruskin case was to be a public vindication, and a great advertisement to boot. The new house – the White House, he took pains to point out, like the presidential abode – was to be a marvel, the talk of London, and she must visit it as soon as could be arranged. Not a word was said of the mysterious delay that had prevented them from actually taking up residence there. Maud passed by this White House all the time; although still wrapped in sheets and scaffold, it looked fit for occupation, as far as she could tell, like a cake waiting only to be slipped from its tin. Nothing could be moved over, though, not yet, for reasons Jimmy was reluctant to discuss with her. She’d gathered that he’d overreached himself again – done things he shouldn’t have, been rebuked by the authorities and then ignored the amendments they’d required, leading to some kind of impasse.
Maud herself was brought forward next, out from her place by the door. As she approached and took a chair by Mrs Whistler’s side, those dark, moist eyes grew bright and a look of genuine pleasure broke across that softly sagging face. It had been nearly five years since they’d last seen each another. Mrs Whistler’s first enquiries were about Maud’s father, seriously ill when last they’d met (through drink, although Maud hadn’t revealed that), and dead now for several years.
‘Forgive me,’ Mrs Whistler murmured when she was told; like Willie, her American accent was a good deal purer than Jimmy’s. ‘Do forgive me, my dear. I am so very sorry.’ She took Maud’s hand and gave it a bony squeeze, lowering her head and closing her eyes. ‘Lead me in thy truth,’ she said, her voice firmer. ‘Lead me in thy truth, and teach me.’
Maud glanced around. Willie sat stolid and inscrutable. Jimmy, leaning back in his chair with his legs crossed, gave her a wink.
‘Lead me in thy truth, and teach me,’ Mrs Whistler continued, ‘for thou art the God of my salvation. On thee do I wait all the day.’
The brothers said an ‘Amen’ – certainly the first time Maud had ever heard Jimmy use the word. She echoed it a second later.
‘You are an orphan then, Miss Franklin,’ Mrs Whistler continued, relentless in her sympathy. ‘You are reliant upon the Lord alone. Upon His holy guidance. As my boys will be, soon enough.’
No, they said, hush; you are well, all is well; you will be here a decade from now.
Mrs Whistler ignored them. ‘And you are so young still, Miss. At the outset of life, the – the threshold of womanhood. Is it enough, this painting Jamie says you do? Is there a living to be made? For a woman, I mean?’ Her grip on Maud’s hand tightened again. ‘Will it support you until you find a suitor, and are married? That will not be very long, I believe.’
Maud blinked; she almost laughed, but Mrs Whistler’s gentle earnestness kept her in check. The old woman really, truly did not know. She hadn’t the first clue.
Jimmy stepped in, holding forth for a while on Maud’s particular talents, and the broader changes of the age. There were more works by women on the walls of the Royal Academy every year, he told his mother, and at the Grosvenor Gallery too. Why, his own table had hosted a veritable procession of fine female painters. Lady Butler had been, as had Mrs Jopling … Here he ran out of exam
ples and returned to generalities.
As he talked on, a question rose in Maud’s mind – something that had been with her throughout the day, just beneath the surface, but now rapidly came to eclipse all else. What would Mrs Whistler make of Ione? Of the simple fact of Ione? How might she react if she discovered that she had a year-old granddaughter – a helpless, beautiful babe to be held and cherished and loved? The idea had an irresistible rawness to it. It was like something desperately sore that you are told not to touch, but touch anyway, and find yourself savouring the pain. Mrs Whistler as a grandmother. Why, she’d be perfect.
Except of course that she very much wouldn’t, at least not to poor Ione. For all her kindliness, the old woman could barely open her mouth without delivering a bloody great ream of scripture. An infant born out of wedlock would occasion only embarrassment. Suddenly Maud was angry, a tremor building behind her inane, aching grin. She longed to pull her hands from Mrs Whistler’s. To leave that suffocating room and head directly to the railway station.
Jimmy was still talking, winding back inevitably to himself. He’d picked up a small bronze bust of a bearded gentleman and was considering it idly as he spoke of society portraiture and the riches it would offer once he was installed on Tite Street.
His mother waited for him to finish – to round off a list of the aristocrats and celebrities whose custom he reckoned he could secure. ‘And then, perhaps,’ she said, ‘you might be loyal enough to take your genius back across the Atlantic.’ Her voice was surprisingly forceful. This was obviously a favourite idea of hers. ‘Back to our beloved native land. I shall not see it again in this life. This I know. The short time allotted to me on this earth shall be passed beneath this roof, where I am very comfortable and thankful to be cared for. But my heart would go with you, Jamie. My heart would go with you.’
Jimmy returned the bust to an incidental table with some discomfort, setting the bearded gentleman so that he faced the patterned wallpaper. ‘The arts in America are in their infancy still, Mommy. I have tried, you know, in the past, to interest sales agents over there, dealers and the rest, but the results were hardly encouraging. I could – well, I suppose further enquiries could be made. We could give the tree another shake.’
Mrs Whistler Page 14
