Until the Colours Fade

by Tim Jeal

  Tom looked at Magnus sceptically.

  ‘Is this true?’

  ‘As holy writ,’ replied Magnus; his face a parody of injured innocence.

  Tom watched Magnus put his hands into the coal scuttle and gingerly start to rub coal dust onto his face, doing his best to avoid touching the scar on his forehead.

  ‘You,’ said Tom, with slow emphasis, ‘are a low, scheming, two-faced, devious …’ Magnus coughed apologetically as Tom searched vainly for the right word.

  ‘I knew you’d try to argue me out of it if I told you sooner.’

  ‘I’m not coming.’

  While Tom started to clear the supper table, Magnus put on the hat and pulled down the brim.

  ‘Please, yer worship,’ he croaked, extending a hand like a beggar.

  ‘No.’

  Magnus shuffled closer, stooping like a hunchback.

  ‘For mercy’s sake, sir, will you not give an old soldier a chance?’

  Magnus’s wheedling voice and blackened face under the drooping brim of his hat was too much for Tom. Laughing, in spite of his real irritation, he ripped open the parcel and started pulling out the clothes.

  ‘I once spent a night in a casual ward,’ he remarked grimly.

  ‘Excellent,’ returned Magnus, pretending not to notice his tone. ‘You’ll know what to say.’

  *

  By the time they reached the Kennington Road, the workhouse doors had been locked and Tom thought there was an even chance that they would be turned away. The walk had been bad enough in itself. Although Magnus had been amused that well-dressed passers-by had invariably stepped out of their way, Tom had found the experience humiliating. He had been too close to real poverty in the past to enjoy this demonstration of the disgust and alarm with which respectable people viewed the destitute.

  Magnus glanced speculatively at the large black knocker on the door.

  ‘Well?’

  Tom made a face and then looked down at the pavement.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut or they’ll know you’re a gentleman.’

  ‘Would they set on me?’

  ‘They might.’

  Magnus grinned at him.

  ‘How many supervisors will there be?’

  ‘The relieving officer and two or three porters.’

  Magnus laughed aloud.

  ‘Three unarmed men to control fifty tramps … they can’t be so very fierce.’

  Magnus grasped the knocker and banged hard. Several minutes later a porter let them in, grumbling that they were too late for their bread and gruel but would have to bath at once and then sleep in the shed. After a clerk had written down their fictitious names and trades – they had previously agreed to say that they were out-of-work engravers to explain the softness of their hands – they were asked which workhouse they had come from and where they intended to go the next day when they were turned out. Tom gave prepared answers to these questions and they were led along a corridor lit by naked gas jets and across an open yard to a small room containing three baths. The water was the colour of mutton broth; the air reeked of feet. They exchanged glances; Magnus apparently unmoved, Tom angry and nauseated.

  ‘Take yer clothes orf,’ snarled the porter.

  ‘I’ll wash my feet,’ muttered Tom.

  ‘No bath, no bed,’ announced the porter. He was a stocky red-faced man with a bulging neck squeezed into a starched collar stained with a yellow tidemark of sweat. Since entry to the casual ward was denied to those with even a single coin in their pockets, bribery was out of the question. Magnus shrugged his shoulders and undressed quickly; then without even momentary hesitation he climbed into one of the baths and lay back calmly. Tom followed his example sullenly.

  As soon as they were immersed, the porter tied up their clothes and threw down two numbered metal tickets.

  ‘Hand ’em over when yer call for yer clothes tomorro’. Put ’em under yer ’eads or they’ll get stole.’ Then he tossed down a couple of blankets and two striped blue nightshirts on the wet floor. ‘The shed’s over the yard.’

  When the porter had gone, they realised that they had not been given towels and would have to use their blankets to dry themselves.

  ‘There’s something strangely relaxing about being ordered about by fools,’ murmured Magnus, putting on his nightshirt.

  ‘Damn you,’ moaned Tom, whose nightshirt was soaking.

  The shed was a large room open at one end, the gap being hung with a mildewed canvas curtain. The shock of seeing so many cadaverous half-starved men in so small a place affected Tom far less than the suffocating stench which filled his nostrils: tobacco smoke, rancid sweat and excrement, laced with a faint tinge of decay, sweet and pervasive. The walls were furred with damp and the floor was so dirty that Tom at first thought it was earth, until he saw the line between two flagstones. In the half-darkness he could make out the recumbent figures of between fifty and sixty men and boys lying jammed up against each other on narrow sacking bags scantily stuffed with hay and straw. A drunk was singing in a corner and several men were smoking pipes which they had somehow smuggled past the porter. A furious argument was raging near the centre of the room, ignored by everybody except the participants, both apparently in their sixties or seventies. Half the inmates seemed unbelievably to be asleep. Looking around him Tom felt no emotion; pity, compassion, even anger, all obliterated by the smell. When the arguing and talking died down, Tom noticed an extraordinary variety of coughs, ranging from short dry barks to prolonged bubbling wheezes. Magnus had dragged two of the straw-filled bags over to the open side of the shed, where Tom sank down beside him. Without moving, Magnus murmured:

  ‘D’you think our piece will make any difference?’

  ‘You saw how people looked at us in the street.’

  Magnus nodded and then sighed.

  ‘You’re right … and I laughed about it.’

  But though the memory disturbed them both, neither was able to maintain a consistent mood for long. Almost as Magnus finished speaking, a massive stevedore, one of the only healthy-looking men in the room, jumped up roaring because somebody had stolen his tobacco tin while he had been asleep. Two boys were tossing it to each other, leaping out of reach as he rushed at them, falling over sleeping men, who woke cursing. Eventually the tin was returned and the shed settled again, until the next outburst. The scene was sad but at times disconcertingly funny. As a church clock struck eleven, Tom realised that they were going to have to spend the next seven hours in the shed. He looked at Magnus despairingly and sank back onto his sacking. After a few moments, Magnus propped himself on an elbow.

  ‘Want to know what I did in Portsmouth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I went on your behalf.’ Tom shut his eyes. ‘I saw my father before he sailed. Filial devotion you may think.’ Magnus smiled to himself. ‘He’s going to marry Helen Goodchild.’ Tom sat up abruptly, several bits of straw sticking in his hair. ‘Good God, you’re actually listening.’ Magnus’s eyes were shining. ‘I persuaded him to commission you to paint her portrait.’

  ‘Thank you,’ breathed Tom in a stifled whisper.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Yes … yes. It’s what I wanted … you know that.’

  A drunk had started to sing what he could remember of a music-hall song: ‘I’d like to be a swell a-roaming down Pall Mall.’ Tom faced Magnus.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he asked after a pause.

  ‘Mind him marrying?’

  ‘She’s only your age.’

  ‘Oh that.’ Magnus pursed his lips and stared up at the discoloured ceiling. ‘It’s just a transaction, Tom. She gets relief from Goodchild’s debts, father gets her, and I get nothing.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘You’re not surprised, are you? Women sell themselves every day – from duchesses to whores only the price differs.’

  The drunk’s voice quavered on punctuated by fits of coughing. Tom knew that he had no reason to admire Lady Goodchild, she had t
reated him badly, and her dignity on the night of her husband’s death now appeared to have owed more to indifference than courage; and yet he could not deny an oppressive feeling of disillusion. He remembered her receiving him in the Red Drawing Room and could hardly, in his present surroundings, believe that their meeting had been real. Her beauty too – no more than a facade concealing emptiness. Her grace, poise and wit, merely the servants of self-interest. But why should that concern me? he asked himself savagely. He would be well paid. Even so, the memories he had of her on that election evening still pained him. The thought that she should be marrying again solely for security, when even the contents of a single small room at Hanley Park would have kept her a world removed from the poverty of the men around him, seemed an outrage. From duchesses to whores. He turned and suddenly took in how disheartened Magnus was at his reaction. Tom felt ashamed. The man had gone to Portsmouth for him, probably without any personal desire to see his father; had succeeded in getting him a commission he had dearly wanted. But had he thanked him warmly? Expressed real gratitude? Nothing of the sort. Instead he had wallowed in self-indulgent revulsion that beautiful women could be as selfish and unscrupulous as any other people, and as prone to waste their lives for no good reason. He touched Magnus’s shoulder gently.

  ‘I am pleased … it’s this place, don’t you see? Thinking of a house like that here …’ Tom felt guilt and affection when he saw the way Magnus immediately brightened at his words. A moment later he turned to Tom, his old self again.

  ‘I hope,’ he drawled in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘your illustrations will be worthy of their text.’

  Tom aimed an ineffectual punch at him and then lay back smiling, amazed that he had forgiven Magnus for putting him in a position where he had had to wash in water that had made the river in Rigton Bridge seem clean by comparison; amazed too that he had even come in the first place.

  PART THREE

  The Portrait

  24

  Before his departure for Turkey Sir James had summoned Catherine and broken the news of his intention to marry Helen Goodchild. Catherine, who had always found Helen scathing and imperious, had done her best to conceal the shock and dismay she felt at the prospect of subordination to a step-mother less than ten years her senior. Because of the recentness of Helen’s bereavement, Catherine had rightly supposed that the marriage itself would not take place for a year; but her assumption that her life would remain unchanged in the meantime had proved over-optimistic. Since Magnus had gone and Charles seemed likely to remain in the south while his ship was being converted and fitted out, Sir James had asked his daughter whether she thought it reasonable for him to be burdened with the expense of keeping up a large country house for her alone, especially while an excellent alternative was open to her. While he was away Helen would need companionship, and who better to provide it than her future husband’s daughter? Since Catherine had known that her father was set on this course, she had not argued.

  *

  Almost from the day of Catherine’s arrival at Hanley Park a veiled animosity had grown-up between the two women. If Catherine thought Helen imperious, Helen thought Catherine secretive and self-righteous. From the beginning Helen had disliked having the girl at Hanley Park, but since Sir James, as well as providing Helen with fifteen hundred a year, had also promised her the benefit of any money saved by the virtual closure of Leaholme Hall, she had hardly felt able to refuse to accommodate Catherine. But financial advantages notwithstanding, Catherine’s presence continually irked her. She talked so little and her habitual expression, it seemed to Helen, was a martyred smile; whether she was dispensing tea, or arranging flowers, or playing the piano – there it was, that faint insipid smile: full of tolerance and sweet resignation but not, Helen felt, without a definite hint of reproach. Her position, it was true, was a difficult one; from being virtual mistress of one house, she was now little more than an unwanted guest in another and, realising this, Helen did her best to be friendly. But she always felt uneasy with Catherine and knew that the feeling was reciprocated. Both seemed to fear any intimacy in case it should lead to indiscretions which might reach Sir James. Helen was certain that Catherine believed she was marrying her father purely for convenience; and at times when she saw Catherine’s deep blue eyes – so strikingly like her father’s – following her across a room, Helen thought of the girl as a spy and her presence at Hanley Park Sir James’s means of ensuring that his wife-to-be remained well-behaved. As a rule she quickly laughed at herself for such ideas, but laughter or no laughter, Helen’s relations with Catherine, although they grew no worse, did not improve.

  Catherine imagined herself living for years in a house which she hated; an unwanted stranger condemned to wander through tall classical rooms with Aubusson carpets and silk upholstered Empire chairs and sofas, forever banished from the homelier low-ceilinged rooms of Leaholme Hall with their irregular mullioned windows, panelled walls and solid Jacobean furniture: an inconvenient and unimposing house when set beside the formal grace of Hanley Park, but one where she had felt that she belonged. Her father had never been there long enough to feel the same and now, according to Helen, he was no longer thinking of a temporary closure but of finding a tenant. The day she had discovered this, Catherine had known that there would be no limit to her time as Helen’s guest. Therefore when she heard shortly afterwards that Magnus had persuaded her father to commission Tom Strickland to paint Helen’s portrait, Catherine looked forward to his coming as an oasis in a desert.

  Although both her previous meetings with Strickland had been in unfavourable circumstances, he had still impressed her, not just for his striking looks, but for a directness of manner which, far from being abrasive, had combined gentleness of speech and a refusal to be angered with an unmistakable inner pride. Almost all the men she had met during her London seasons had talked down to her when airing their views or expressing opinions. Strickland by contrast had appeared modest even when speaking with conviction. Apart from her admiration for artistic talent, the fact that Magnus, usually so critical of everyone, had formed a close friendship with Tom, also weighed heavily with Catherine.

  She knew that he would not feel able to make himself pleasant to her, unless she first showed that she enjoyed his company, and with this in mind, Catherine decided from the beginning to encourage him. Where this might lead, she had deliberately left vague in her own mind; certain at least that she deserved a brief interlude of happiness in her imprisonment. What in any case could words like ‘shameless’ or ‘flirtatious’ matter to a ‘lady’ with less freedom than the youngest chamber-maid in the house? Servants could at least chatter and laugh with grooms and footmen, and walk in the lanes with whom they chose on their afternoons off.

  So on the hot and dusty July day on which Tom was expected, Catherine dressed with special care, forcing her maid to spend far longer than usual with her hair; and while the girl brushed and combed and curled, her mistress stared at her reflection, noting the effect of certain expressions and swearing to herself that she would not allow coyness or reserve to check her excitement and high spirits. By treating Strickland as a friend and equal rather than an inferior guest, she would be sure to annoy Helen, but this thought pleased rather than disturbed her. Because of his friendship with Magnus, Tom would take her part if Helen decided to be scathing at her expense. For the first time since her arrival at Hanley Park, Catherine joyfully anticipated an end to her loneliness.

  *

  Tom Strickland had not been many hours at Hanley Park before he sensed the tension between Lady Goodchild and Miss Crawford, but though he realised that his hostess was perplexed by Catherine’s gaiety – an aspect of her character which he himself had never seen before – he still felt grateful for the relaxed way in which she talked to him, especially since during dinner her ladyship hardly spoke at all.

  While answering Catherine’s animated questions about Magnus and their life in London, Tom occasionally glanced at Helen, mor
e to acquaint himself with the difficulties he would encounter painting her than because impelled to do so. Her face seemed paler than he remembered. Her cheeks were slightly sunken, not marring her looks but emphasising the perfection of her bone-structure and the intensity of her dark almond-shaped eyes.

  After dinner he gave Catherine a bowdlerised account of his night with Magnus in the Lambeth Workhouse and was surprised that she did not seem at all shocked by anything he said. Later Catherine told him that she had not always confined her visiting to poor villagers, but had occasionally taken food and money to families in Rigton Bridge where she had heard plenty about the local workhouse. All the time Tom was acutely aware of certain differences between the two women: Catherine’s fresh complexion and rounded cheeks, Helen’s pallor and smouldering eyes; her beauty made more poignant by faint traces of haggardness; the face of a woman who had lived and suffered and found no repose. Looking at her troubled eyes, Tom was stung by the memory of the easy way in which he had condemned her on first hearing that she had consented to marry Sir James.

  Catherine’s behaviour since Strickland’s arrival was a revelation to Helen, and the girl’s open smiles and unforced laughter seemed to reproach her for having been the sole cause of her former lassitude. The idea that Catherine might wish to captivate Strickland for any reason other than to discomfort her did not at first occur to Helen; although later, her awareness that the artist with his dark curls and slender figure was by no means unattractive, did make her change her view of Catherine’s motives. Nor did Lady Goodchild understand or approve of Catherine’s evident interest in Strickland’s excursions into low life. While not averse to indirect charity, Helen suspected that many urban lady bountifuls gained a twisted pleasure from visiting squalid rookeries and courts to dispense soup and blankets. Then, like Strickland, they would return to warm clean sitting-rooms to tell their travellers’ tales, as if they had been to Africa rather than to Seven Dials. Helen was no more callous than others of her class and would have preferred a world without poverty – provided of course there were still servants – but since the poor were always likely to be there, and were openly in evidence to all who used their eyes, she saw no point in discussing them. In truth they bored her. Idealism of all kinds had always irritated her, smacking too much of worthy low-churchmen and chapels with absurd names like Shiloh and Ebenezer; and perhaps because she had so little herself, she thought those professing to be actuated by ideal motives, self-deluded men and women trying desperately to hide their selfishness, not least from themselves. In her view the strong had always taken advantage of the weak, and short of a dramatic change in human nature, to expect them to do otherwise was naïve wishful thinking. The idea that Catherine might be guilty of this offence did not endear her to Helen, who was already starting to think her deceitful for having concealed so much of herself.