Will & Tom

by Matthew Plampin

  Tom stares back at him. ‘I have,’ he replies, slightly indignant, reaching into his tail-pocket. He takes out a painting kit – a roll of worn leather wrapped around a ceramic pallet the size of a saucer, and a small water flask – and nothing else. He checks the pocket again.

  Will has already unclasped the larger sketchbook. He retrieves a single sheet of Whatman paper, the very best, bought in York for his studies of the house. The price for quiet, he thinks, handing it over.

  Tom accepts the paper with a sigh. He clearly wants to expound further, to argue down the sun, but even in his present mood he can tell that his mule-like companion means to work and nothing else. For a while he gazes at the river, filling his pipe, smiling at a private recollection; then he unrolls his painting kit and selects a short-handled watercolour pencil with a well-chewed end.

  ‘So be it,’ he says.

  *

  The two artists separate soon after. Determined to capture everything, Will moves back from the river, then off to the east, setting down three good studies in as many hours. The last one is perhaps the finest of the day: a perfect triangle with the river as its base, the sunlit castle at its apex and the hayfield enclosed in its centre. After it is complete, Will feels his body flag. The afternoon is growing cool and overcast, the metallic taste of moisture seeping into the air; unexpectedly, he begins to hope that Tom might come over to propose a well-earned supper in the village tavern before his departure. He looks along the riverbank.

  Tom Girtin is nowhere to be seen. Will is both disappointed and peevishly unsurprised. The fellow has most probably returned to the house to seek some inane diversion with Beau Lascelles. Shrugging off his hunger and his fatigue, Will resolves to keep working. He glances skywards. The clouds are turning rapidly from white wool to wet slate; away to the south, several of the largest have sunk so close to the earth that they seem ready to land upon it. One more exterior view, he decides, looking uphill from the north east, and then a foray inside. Interior scenes of ancient ruins – shattered columns, cloisters littered with rubble, fragments of carvings or statuary – have an established appeal, particularly to patrons of an antiquarian bent. He reproaches himself for not thinking of this sooner.

  Five minutes later Will is back across the river, perched on a stile, commencing his sixth impression of the castle. He feels righteous and dutiful, yet also a touch disconsolate. He could draw this ruin from memory by now. Tom’s words return. A mound of old stones. A commonplace landscape. Ain’t you tired of it?

  The sketch is well advanced when a violent wind drives through the valley, sending the trees flailing this way and that, and whipping up a spiral of golden strands from the surface of the hayfield. Will holds down the page with his left hand, finishing off the gnarled trunk of an oak as the first raindrops tap on the brim of his sun hat. The umbrella is opened and propped against his shoulder; a number of Will’s best studies have been done beneath its black canopy. Within a minute, however, it has been knocked over and blown almost inside out. Will closes and clasps up the sketchbook, presses the hat onto his head and wrestles the umbrella towards the wind. Past the trees, a final sunbeam strikes through the approaching downpour, forming a trailing silver curtain that shimmers and billows across the hayfield. There are cries from the labourers as they scramble for cover, pulling shawls and jackets over their heads. The umbrella snaps into shape like a dislocated joint finding its socket. Awkwardly, Will scoops up the other sketchbook and fastens both beneath his coat. He swivels on the stile, facing the ruin. It’s time for that interior scene.

  After the turbulent valley, the inside of Harewood Castle has the gloomy calm of a coastal cave. Beyond the arch of the eastern doorway lies what must once have been a hall. The wind disappears; Will’s hold on the umbrella relaxes. No roof survives, but the remnants of the upper levels are keeping out most of the rain. A stale smell hangs about, as if creatures have died there and rotted into the rough earthen floor. Will positions himself on a ledge in the outer wall and sets to work. He’s careful to keep his study economic, detailing only one especially well-preserved alcove; afternoon is edging into evening, and he is not going to miss that mail coach. Squinting in the sepulchral murk, he starts to think of Milton, mentioned so dismissively by Tom, isolated phrases and half-remembered lines looming large in his mind. Before very long he’s uttering them aloud.

  ‘Now still evening came on, and twilight grey had in her sober livery all things clad; silence accompanied, for bird and beast; all but—’

  The laugh is quiet, yet clearly audible over the rainfall outside. Will halts his recitation, lifting the porte-crayone smartly from the page. Someone, a woman, is listening in. His ears grow hot beneath his hat; he is sorely self-conscious about his poetry, both what he reads and the scraps he has begun to write. There is a second laugh, slightly harder, a smothered giggle. He realises that it comes from the far side of the ruin, a chamber beyond the area he occupies, too far from his ledge for him to have been overheard. This brings little comfort. It must be labourers, come in from the hayfield in search of shelter. The ruin would serve this purpose well. Are they about to pour in by the dozen, jostling and spitting, filling the castle with their incomprehensible conversation – spoiling his sanctuary completely and obliging him to flee?

  No others come. The laughter tails off into a moaning sigh. Will rolls the porte-crayone against his palm. It is lovers. The castle is a good place for this also, he supposes: secluded, a distance from the village, with many points of entry or escape. They’re no doubt taking advantage of the storm to slip away from their duties on the estate. He’s considering going back out, braving the rain to walk back up the ridge, when a man speaks, his voice low and light and tinged with hoarseness.

  ‘Did they warn you against that as well?’

  Tom Girtin.

  Will is amazed, then immediately annoyed by his amazement. It was obvious. The change in him earlier, that bullish swagger: here is the reason. He found himself a girl in the village or the fields while Will was making his first sketches of the castle. They arranged to meet after he’d paid a couple of hours’ perfunctory attention to his art. And now they are laughing together, the sound intimate and conspiratorial as they trade their caresses. Will is angered by Tom’s continued lack of seriousness, grudgingly impressed by the speed at which he has operated and achingly jealous of his success. That such a thing is even possible staggers him. He simply does not understand what a man must do to bring it about. His own sporadic, tentative attempts at courtship have met only with ridicule or chilling indifference. What knowledge he has gained thus far has been the result of transaction rather than skill, and he honestly can’t imagine any other way of accomplishing it.

  As soundlessly as he can, Will steps over his umbrella and bundle and sneaks forward. He must see her. He must see what Tom has achieved out here. Past the hall is a narrow corridor holding three dim doorways. Tom and his farm girl are through the furthermost, their murmurs amplified by the empty stone. The sketchbooks are still in Will’s hands, his left index finger marking his place in the smaller one. It occurs to him that he could take a study, should he remain undetected. The notion has a powerful, clandestine appeal that he can’t quite explain; and of course it would also be a fine joke, back in the taverns of Covent Garden. ‘Here’s how Tom occupied himself in Yorkshire …’

  Will spies a naked knee, creamy white in the surrounding dullness. Bathsheba, he thinks. Danae visited by Jupiter. Diana discovered by Acteon. It is smooth, pleasingly plump, hardly that of a milkmaid or field worker – and suddenly Will knows what awaits him. Unable to stop or retreat, he covers the last few feet to the doorway with rather less care than before.

  The lovers are lying in a wide fireplace, upon a bed made of Tom’s brown coat and a ladies’ riding habit. They are undressed, in part at least, various items of clothing removed or unfastened to enable their coupling. Will sees Tom’s buttocks, moving between her thighs; he sees her feet and ankles
snake across Tom’s long calves. They shift about, picking up their pace, Tom bracing himself against the edge of the fireplace; and there she is, Lord Harewood’s youngest daughter, staring off at the rain that hisses on the window sill, her pale skin reddening as she bites at the collar of Tom’s shirt.

  Will draws back from the doorway, as if dodging the swing of an axe. Mary Ann looks over, her eyes going directly to his. She shows no trace of alarm or shame. The connection lasts perhaps three seconds; then she releases Tom’s collar from her teeth and gathers him closer, hooking her arms around his shoulders, squeezing hard with her legs.

  ‘They did, Mr Girtin,’ she says, her voice tightening. ‘Exactly that.’

  *

  The sketchbooks are Will’s first concern. The umbrella is collapsed and tossed on the floor; the sodden bundle kicked beneath a chair; the sun hat prised off his damp, greasy head and set at a far corner of the table. Laying the leather-bound volumes side by side, he goes through every page, making a meticulous search for the creep of rainwater. There is nothing.

  Will closes the books, stacks them by his elbow and gazes at the table. The wood is crisp, unstained; a new table in a new tavern, built at the crossroads in the middle of Harewood village. Farm hands pack the bar, released early by the storm, but the three other chairs at Will’s table remain empty. He looks up, into the room. Several heads promptly turn away.

  Supper arrives: a gristly, overcooked chop and a pile of boiled beans, shaken from a pan somewhere out back. Will hasn’t eaten all day, yet he doesn’t now. Thoughts crowd his head; fear knots his guts and numbs his muscles.

  Catastrophe has struck.

  This isn’t a daring, misguided adventure, or an unfortunate scrape, or a regrettable lapse in judgement. This is a catastrophe. Tom Girtin is a child, a mere child in his understanding. Because he has no respect for the boundaries of rank and wealth, he believes that they do not apply to him. The woman with whom he was frolicking so unrestrainedly is a nobleman’s daughter. A nobleman’s unmarried daughter. Far from immaculate, of course – Will briefly recalls her arranged there on the hearth and experiences a flicker of envious desire – but the baron has thirty thousand a year, and a seat in the Lords, and ambitions to rise still further. There would be a plan in place for Mary Ann.

  Will gives the chop a distracted prod with his knife. Any reprisal is bound to be severe. Stories are told among the artists and fine craftsmen of London regarding the vengeance of patrons – the dire punishments visited upon those deemed guilty of transgressions like this one. All know of Daniel Lofthouse, for instance, a master carver who returned from Sedley with his right arm badly broken, following a mysterious incident said to have involved the teenage countess; of the gilder Carr, who would neither speak of his engagement at Wedderburn Hall nor show the wound he received there, and who died penniless not long after; and most notoriously of Anthony Neville, noted architectural draughtsman and rogue, who seven years earlier had vanished, vanished entirely, while executing a commission at Groombridge. These estates are fiefdoms, in essence, under absolute rule. There’s no town watch out here, no magistrate or officers of the court. Only the baron’s men.

  For discovery is inevitable. Will hasn’t the slightest doubt of this. Tom is unable to be secretive. It is simply not in his nature. Anyone could have come across them as Will did – anyone at all. Hadn’t he thought that the ruin was well suited to sheltering labourers from the rain? They could easily have had a damn audience as they panted there in that fireplace.

  And the taint of it, the blame for it, would surely extend to Will. Of this he is also quite convinced. Beau Lascelles knows that his association with Tom goes back to their childhood. He’d assume that Will is an accessory, acting as a lookout perhaps; it could reasonably be claimed that he’d been standing guard that afternoon, in fact, over at the castle. Even if they were spared a beating, or a more enduring mishap somewhere in the grounds, Beau would see them both blacklisted. They would be branded, in effect: Girtin and Turner, depraved corrupters devoid of decency, not to be trusted for a second by any conscientious gentleman. All patronage would cease. They would be finished.

  Will rubs a patch clear on the misted window and looks at the rainy lane outside. Villagers dash from cottage to cottage, hopping across the puddles in the rutted road; a gang of children crouch beneath a haywain; and there, before a short parade of shops, is the mail coach, its lamps lit and crimson panels gleaming. This is a difficult sight – a route out of Harewood that he can no longer use. How could he possibly take flight now and leave his fate in the unsteady hands of Tom Girtin? His course is plain: he must return to the house, locate Tom and convince him to end this affair right away. They’d depart together at dawn, on the first coach to anywhere. A proper explanation could be spun for Beau at a later date – a collaborative project maybe, inspired by Harewood, that had compelled immediate action. It would just have to be hoped that Mary Ann was fond enough of Tom, and had enough understanding of their situation, to stay silent.

  Ignoring his lack of appetite, Will applies himself ill-temperedly to his supper. It is a fragile, unsatisfactory scheme, liable to all kinds of upset. Should it work, should they actually manage to escape this place, he vows to pluck that pipe from Tom’s idiot lips and stamp on it.

  The chop and beans are soon gone. Will rises, takes three pennies from his waistcoat pocket and lines them up next to the tin plate. As he gathers his possessions a path opens through the busy tavern, running from his table to the front door. He stands for a second, thoroughly confounded. I am no damn lord, he wants to say: look at me, for God’s sake! Nothing to be mindful of here! But every face avoids his; bodies shuffle further aside, urging him on his way.

  There’s no time to ponder this. Will crosses the tavern, opens his umbrella and pushes out into the rain.

  *

  Halfway up the drive the deluge eases to a drizzle, pattering against the umbrella and the leaves of the surrounding trees. The storm winds have subsided; the air smarts a little against the skin, as it does after a hot bath. Grey-blue mists blend together woods and pasture, horizon and sky, sinking Harewood into premature night. Will walks quickly, but he is afraid – disturbed by an unfamiliar sense of vulnerability, even of insignificance. Artistic prowess no longer seems important. Tom and himself are humble men, of neither breeding nor means, and they are trapped in the lap of one of England’s most powerful families. As usual, he shores up his courage with consideration of method, carefully mapping out the steps that must be taken to reach the necessary end.

  Three problems lie before him.

  First, and most imperative, is the state of things within the house. Part of Will is certain that they’ll already have been exposed; that someone else will have found Tom and Mary Ann in the castle, or noticed them leave it, and run directly to the baron’s son. He strides off the drive, circling the spot where he made his first close study two days earlier, and stops to survey the northern façade. The library windows are shining with beeswax candlelight. Will moves closer, his boots splashing through the waterlogged grass; Beau Lascelles can clearly be seen, playing at billiards with a handful of other gentlemen. As Will watches they all laugh together, most heartily – not what you’d expect had the household just been shaken by disgrace. Somewhat reassured, he cuts across the wide lawn towards the eastern entrance.

  Second is the note, written that morning in Will’s best hand and propped on the ledge outside Mr Noakes’s office. It explained how pressing business had obliged his departure; how he was grateful for Mr Lascelles’ hospitality, the kind opportunity et cetera, and how he would be delivering the six watercolour drawings to Hanover Square as agreed. And yet here he is, back at Harewood House that same day. Having gained entrance – a footman recognises him and opens the service door – Will goes straight to the steward. Noakes isn’t required to supervise dinner tonight; he’s at his desk, scowling over account papers, the tie-wig on its stand. He doesn’t look up as Will
enters.

  ‘You left us, Mr Turner.’

  His tone is flat, uninterested; Will knows at once that there will be no trouble here. ‘An error, Mr Noakes. I find that I’ve more to do. Mr Lascelles will understand.’

  The diminutive steward strikes something through with his quill. ‘Instruct a maid to bring you fresh bed sheets.’

  The third problem, and definitely the thorniest, is that of Tom Girtin himself. Will leaves his belongings in the casket chamber and heads upstairs, hoping to find Tom’s bedroom before he comes down to dine. It’s too late for this, though; as he enters the hall, a dinner party emerges from the library, on its way to the table. Will is not fit to be seen. His hair is grease-spiked and wild, his face is unwashed and his outdoor clothes are in high odour – a mixture of sweat, tobacco smoke from the tavern and the earthy smell of the castle. He has no wish, furthermore, to talk to Beau, whose questions about his decision to stay will certainly be more probing than those of Mr Noakes; so he hides behind the bronze Minerva.

  The party is discussing an entertainment, a last-minute affair being urged upon the Lascelles by their guests – two couples, well if rather loudly dressed, who may or may not have been at the riotous banquet two days earlier. Beau and Frances are arm-in-arm, their animosity forgotten; or suspended, perhaps, for the sake of polite company.

  ‘Maxwell, you hound,’ Beau declares, ‘our intention was a quiet interlude. How can you be so cruel as to tempt my sisters with your talk of the cotillion?’

  This meets with a genteel laugh. ‘My dear Mr Lascelles,’ someone says, ‘ladies of such distinction should always heed the call of Terpsichore.’

  Will peers past the Minerva’s elbow. Mary Ann, her privileges apparently restored, is clad in a gown of pale rose. Paired with her brother-in-law, she is behaving tonight, her bearing almost demure as she moves across the polished stone. Despite everything, Will’s admiration is revived. A living Juno, he thinks, gliding among the antique bronzes; then she lifts her chin and he detects a faint gloss of irony, as if she considers all of this a rather sorry charade.