By and by, Owl and Rosa came to call, arriving unannounced one morning. The Portuguese, Maud had gathered, was once more a near daily presence in Jimmy’s life. He’d tell her of how the fellow was proving little less than a saviour, in fact – familiar with the ins and outs of this bankruptcy plan they’d settled on, and quite selfless in his dedication to their requirements. And they were concerned for her, Owl and Miss Corder both – keen to see her well, to see her recovering, as she so surely was.
‘I can’t,’ Maud said, rolling over, pulling the sheets around her.
‘You mean you don’t wish to receive them right now, or—’
‘I just can’t.’
Jimmy hesitated, puffing on his cigarette; then he went downstairs and handled it for her. She was too fatigued, she heard him tell them. Too battered by it all. Understanding noises were made and they went on their way. He came straight back and sat on the edge of the bed, stroking her forearm. He didn’t ask her to explain, saying merely that he understood it. God knows he did. He knew how things could go; how one needed, at times, to hold one’s friends at a distance. In her gratitude, in this glimpse of their old union, Maud’s mind and heart swung about yet again. For a few minutes her dissatisfactions lifted. She let herself lean against him, closing her eyes – and felt better, in truth, than she had in a good long while.
Rosa Corder, however, was not noted for her lack of persistence. Three days later, around nightfall, she was back at the White House, laughing with Owl and Jimmy in the downstairs corridor. Maud was caught in the privy, where so much of her time seemed to be spent at present. Sitting there in the gloom, scarcely daring to breathe, she stared hard at the weight on the end of the chain – a cast-iron grasshopper about three inches long, bought from a dealer in Kensington for a sum so large Jimmy had refused to disclose it. After about ten minutes all was quiet. She opened the door a tiny fraction, looking for her chance to creep upstairs; and there was Rosa, standing silhouetted in the drawing-room doorway, still in her hat and cloak. Waiting.
Maud gritted her teeth and came out, aiming to cut past. The narrowness of the corridor meant that the two women were brought close, their skirts brushing together; Rosa’s had the crunch of satin and was a rich colour that might have been opal. She didn’t speak until they were level – at their nearest.
‘You are well. Thank God. You look well, I should say. When Jimmy told us how you had suffered – how you are suffering still – I thought I might go quite mad with worry.’
Maud avoided her eye. Since Rosa and Owl’s first visit, the Leyland locket had towered in her thoughts like the parliament clock. During a half-lucid moment, she’d even composed a theory as to how Rosa might have come to know about it. If she’d been on Southampton Row after all, on the day of the Albemarle, she might have seen Maud knocking and deliberately hung back, out of sight; followed her into High Holborn, keeping her distance; watched Mrs Leyland’s interception and the visit to the pawn shop that came soon afterwards; gone inside once Maud had started for Piccadilly and extracted the details from the broker. Maud had been distracted, hot and sick, full of urgency. She could have easily failed to notice that Rosa had been there.
But how likely was this, really? How could Rosa have learned that the locket had come from Mrs Leyland? And then there was the question of motive. Why would she do it? What could she hope to gain, or to learn? If she’d only approached, Maud would have told her everything. She would have welcomed the companionship.
The one certainty was that Rosa had known. Maud was well aware that there would be an answer, however – some slick account that she wouldn’t be capable of evaluating with any intelligence. Or Rosa would simply deny it, tell Maud she’d misremembered, and that such delusion was only to be expected in someone who’d gone through what she had. There was no evidence, after all. Only her recollection.
No, right then Maud wished merely to carry on upstairs. To be alone and away from Rosa Corder. At least until she was back to herself again. ‘I must go,’ she mumbled. ‘I need to sleep.’
‘Maud, please.’ Rosa spoke like an aunt, a concerned elder. ‘Stay with me just a minute. Come into the light, so I can see you.’
A hand found Maud’s elbow, the fingertips closing gently around the bone – the same hand that had directed her around the Grosvenor, the Royal Courts of Justice and many other places besides. She shook it off immediately and made for the stairs.
By the time she reached the bedroom door Maud was aching, positively aching for chloral. Every last part of her was demanding it in a low, insistent moan. She could see the bottle so clearly. The way the liquid bent the light. The sound of the stopper as you drew it out. She could feel the effects of it, almost – that delicious numbness spreading through your blood, flopping you onto the mattress, slipping you out of the window into the blue evening, off across the wide, misty river, beneath an endless expanse of stars.
There was a sound somewhere below. It was Rosa, Maud knew it, peering up after her, perhaps considering giving chase. She swerved away from the bedroom door and the bottle beyond, heading instead for the studio – not really thinking, wanting only to reach the furthest point of the house. Getting up there proved a stern challenge. She had to pause on the staircase, for breath and a steeling of the will; and the instant she’d succeeded she realised that it was in fact absolutely the wrong thing to have done. They’d be climbing to the studio themselves at any minute. Of course they would. To see what paintings were left to pawn, most probably.
Panting a little, Maud looked about her. It was strangely light up there, despite the advancing hour; the studio was like a glass-fronted observation deck, set atop a dark barge. Several canvases were out. Rosa’s portrait was off to one side, ready for that year’s Grosvenor. Scattered among the rest was a short history of Maud’s time with Jimmy. The one with the fur coat. The former portrait of Florence Leyland. The Three Girls. Several others, more recent, unfinished ones, at different stages of completion. Many hundreds of hours of labour.
By the table, though, was something new: a Nocturne, a still, spectral scene of boats and masts, set upon an icy shore. And by God it was beautiful. It held the deepest beauty that the river could provide. He hadn’t painted like this for years, for nearly as long as Maud had been with him. Yet here it was. Whistler had returned.
Footsteps mounted the stairs, candlelight breaking through the doorway. The studio was suddenly dark, the new Nocturne disappearing into shadow. Maud considered hiding, she considered it seriously – over there behind The Three Girls, crouching in the triangular space between the canvas and the wall. Then Jimmy appeared, candle in hand, telling her straight away that they were gone; that it had been a business call, a brief but vital stop on a matter related to the show.
‘More copyrights,’ he said, coming to her side. ‘The Mother. Miss Corder’s portrait. Enough to preserve our hides for a short while longer.’ His arm was around her hips; his moustache tickling the base of her neck. She had a keen sense of his concern for her. His need. ‘I do hope, you know, that you will feel able to join us again soon. That you will recover your taste for Miss Corder’s society. It would be good, would it not, to have things as they were? That day, do you remember, when we made those Thames prints? The four of us together?’
The prints, Maud thought, to which Owl helped himself. She didn’t answer. Jimmy moved away, towards the new Nocturne. He asked her opinion of it.
Maud dropped her stoicism. ‘It’s a fine one,’ she said. ‘It’s a fine one indeed. It’s – well—’ Looking at it now, lit by Jimmy’s candle, something occurred to her: this was a scene of bleakest winter. ‘When did you do it?’
‘Upon my return from Paris,’ he replied, rather rapidly. ‘I gathered it in the very same night and laid down the better part the day before you yourself came home. I had so little luck over there, you know. Such rotten weather. I could not find a single blessed subject. And then I discovered the offer from this dealer in Edinburgh,
so I went back to it. Back to the Nocturnes. It still has something, wouldn’t you agree?’
A problem had been encountered, however, common to all of the paintings still up there. The bailiffs, damn them, these men in possession, would certainly prevent any attempt at removal. Right then, it seemed likely that this new Nocturne would not go to Scotland, but wind up on the block in some grubby auction – an unfortunate consequence of the Owl’s bankruptcy strategy, and one of the numerous quandaries in which Jimmy’s affairs were mired.
Maud went to bed soon afterwards, leaving him to work. A dose of chloral was prepared, but she stopped the spoon just as it touched her lips – setting it unevenly on the floorboards, allowing the drug to drip out and dribble away. Her mind was stirring at last, shaking off its torpor like a layer of frost. Ideas were beginning to form.
The next morning she told Jimmy of the tricks, well known in Kentish Town, that could be used against a writ of execution. Following this, the new winter Nocturne and a couple of the smaller portraits were taken from their supports and rolled up in rugs – which were then sold on the front doorstep, with much loud negotiation, to Eldon, to Willie, to Owl, with the modest sums raised being handed over directly to the nearest bailiff. Japanese teapots left inside toppers. Assorted cufflinks and tiepins were pushed into the lining of one of Maud’s more punishing corsets, which she couldn’t imagine that she’d ever need again. That grasshopper weight from the privy chain was slid into the toe of a dress shoe. This diffusion of their belongings had an unexpected pleasure to it, an element of the game. As Maud shed the worst of her debility, as she was released from her bed and steadily less of her was sapped away by the drug, she felt the glimmerings of a new, improbable harmony; the promise, almost, of something beyond. For Jimmy wanted her at his side, he really did – to drink down the last of the vintage, he said, as the cellar slowly flooded around them.
A Sunday breakfast was held in her honour, at Jimmy’s insistence, to mark her reinstatement at the Whistler table. He invited several people whom she liked, and who liked her; a couple of unknowns, eminently agreeable types, she was assured; and no Rosa or Owl. The Tuesday before, however, John informed his master that he was leaving, as a result of the continued lack of coin. He’d found a place as a steward on an Atlantic passenger steamer and was due to set sail at the week’s end. Maud was rather less affected by this news than Jimmy. They were now without help, though; there would be no one to wait at table. Jimmy said that he would do it himself, but with scant enthusiasm – for it meant labour in place of gossip and aphorising, and a definite departure from his preferred pose.
Then, on the very morning of the breakfast, Maud saw an angle. She approached Mr Donaldson and an associate of his who happened to be on the premises, and asked if they would be so very kind as to assist with the serving of the buckwheat cakes. She’d taken care to charm them, even as she and Jimmy had pulled the wool over their eyes. Some people waged war on men in possession, putting horrible things in their food, their beds and so forth, but she thought it far better to be friendly. It could do no harm; it might well lower their guard. Accordingly, these bailiffs had come to like her. They passed no judgement on the domestic arrangements of the White House. They knew, furthermore, that her health remained precarious, and so they agreed to her request more or less at once. Thus began the rumour that Whistler had his bailiffs playing waiter – that he was the master of his ruin, laughing even as the bills of sale went up and the creditors stood in line for their slice of his estate. It spread swiftly throughout fashionable society. Jimmy would come home from dinner in his last remaining suit of evening clothes, cackling as he opened the front door, calling out Maud’s name and announcing that she was, without any shadow of a doubt, an absolute goddamned genius.
Spring 1879
Jim was installed towards the rear of Lord Archie Campbell’s box at the Lyceum, gazing up at the ornate ceiling rose, pondering the many injustices of his life. The box was a good one, naturally, with a superior vantage; Archie and his friend Addington were at its front, leaning upon the upholstered ledge, spotting acquaintances out in the wide, shadowy shelf of the dress circle. Irving’s company were a quarter-hour into the first act of The Merchant of Venice when something was seen. Jim was waved forward; opera glasses were pressed into his hand, and his attention was directed to a box opposite, a tier below theirs.
‘No husband,’ Addington said. ‘Your chum’s elsewhere, Whistler.’
‘In the finest company, surely,’ murmured Lord Archie, ‘that money can procure.’
Each of the children was present, Freddie included. Next to Fanny was an uninteresting-looking fellow Jim took to be the fiancé. And behind them, tucked in a dark corner, was Frances Leyland, appearing for all the world as if she was trying to sleep.
Jim returned the glasses to Lord Archie. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I must leave the premises. For the lady’s sake. I must not risk embarrassing her, or giving the brute Leyland reason to strike at either of us. He’d never believe that it was chance. Not after everything that has transpired.’
His companions saw the sense in this, and were impressed, plainly, by Jim’s keen sense of honour. After a brief farewell he slipped out. The corridor was empty. It curved around the back of the auditorium, lit by fittings with smoked glass shades, turned down low for the performance. He did intend to depart, honestly he did; to head to the White House and to Maud, perhaps via the good doctor’s for a finger or two of brandy. But this was an opportunity, wasn’t it, in a way – unlooked for and unlikely to be repeated. And his presence there was wholly innocent, after all. So instead of taking the stairs directly to his right, he followed the corridor for a distance, descended one level and located the box containing the Leylands. Then he settled down to wait.
Florence, Elinor and Freddie all left the box at a trot, while the applause for the first act was still sounding, heading out for refreshments. Avoiding their attention was a simple matter of positioning: stand six feet upstream, into the curve, and even with a bamboo cane, a crimson-lined cape and a chalk-white forelock, you were invisible. Fanny and her fiancé emerged a minute or so later, at the more stately pace of adulthood. Jim had painted the eldest daughter right at the outset of their connection. Aged fourteen, she’d been a restless, good-natured child, happiest on a horse she’d told him – she’d even chosen to be shown in a riding habit. He thought he saw discomfort in her, there in the Lyceum corridor; a chafing, perhaps, at the fashionable gown she wore. A last remnant of the girl he’d once known. She quickly overcame it, at any rate, taking the arm of the stolid gentleman who’d been selected for her and following after the others.
The mother was left alone, as Jim had predicted. This had been her preference back when he’d shared their box with them, rather than viewing it from across the theatre: the auditorium as it emptied, the rows of vacant seats, seemed for her to hold some mysterious appeal.
Mrs Leyland turned as he entered. Nearly two years had gone by since he’d last stood this close to her. He tried to hide his dismay at the pain and fatigue that marred her lovely face. His mind was knocked quite empty; he bowed, unsure now of what it was he’d come over to say. An avowal of sympathy for her plight and his continued loyalty? But what use was that? What help was he in a position to offer? An explanation of his bankruptcy, stressing that it was not defeat – how he was still fighting, and would win, the declaration being in actual fact the cornerstone of a devilishly clever plan? This seemed misplaced, even to Jim.
She spoke first, hushed and very fast, like someone running out of air. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘go.’
‘I am so glad – so very glad to see you.’
‘Go,’ she repeated. ‘Now.’
‘Mrs Leyland, I—’
Her voice was lowered. There was anger in it, he realised, anger at his recklessness. ‘The locket. He found out, Mr Whistler. Last Christmas. He found out and he wields it against me.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘The locket I used that day, as my excuse. For speaking with your – your friend. Freddie was made to confess. Poor boy, he had to. And of course Frederick knew at once what my intention had been. He regards it as a betrayal surpassing any of his own.’
Jim was frowning. Was this some ancient secret, shared at Speke, unwittingly jettisoned from his memory? Or was she confused – left half-crazed by the abuses she had endured? He wondered how best to ask her to explain.
Mrs Leyland’s head dipped. Her dark auburn hair was plaited and wound up tightly; even in the dimness of the box Jim could see the grey in it. She was flagging, losing resolve, and yet at the same time finding a sort of nervous, confessional energy.
‘And so now I am being punished. Oh, how he flaunts it. The days of disguise are past, Mr Whistler. He has these women of his ride about in our carriage. He has them wait in it – wait in the street, outside our door. Every day seems to bring evidence of more … offspring. Of payments made, enormous sums. Apartments kept. He invites my humiliation before all London.’
The old sense of alliance had returned to Jim, along with a compassion so acute that it brought an aching lump to his throat – and a deep hopelessness, for there was nothing to be done here, not really. Nothing more to be said. He tried, of course.
‘I’ll call him out. I’ll do it. The demon cannot be allowed to do these things without consequence. I’ll call him out on Prince’s Gate and I’ll beat him black and blue. You see if I don’t.’
It was unclear if this was of any comfort. ‘I have Fanny’s wedding in July,’ Mrs Leyland said, ‘and then I will be gone. He won’t divorce me, but I no longer care. Let him settle whatever terms on me he chooses. I can stand no more of it.’
A loud, mirthless laugh was heard, away somewhere in the cavern of the theatre. It sounded rather like Lord Archie; it occurred to Jim that those fellows may well have spied him through their opera glasses and were now conveying a warning. Sure enough, the first few people were filing back into the stalls below. The Leyland children would not be far behind. Jim was preparing to go, attempting to compose a halfway satisfactory farewell, when Mrs Leyland grasped hold of his sleeve.
Mrs Whistler Page 26
