Death and Mr. Pickwick (9 page)

‘I am Robert Seymour.'

‘Wait there until I have finished this room.' The window slammed shut.

After at least ten minutes the door opened, and there stood the bushy-haired woman in a pinafore.

‘You can come in but no one's here for you,' she said. In reply to his puzzled look, she added: ‘Mr Vaughan will be back when Mrs Vaughan is ready.'

He stepped into the hall, and everywhere were flashes of colour, pink being especially prevalent, manifested in vases, paint and drapes.

‘Mrs Vaughan decided to take the household away. An idea in her attic happens, and that's that. So husband, boys, staff, off they went – all except for one person. And that's me. Upstairs with you, now.'

The route upstairs gave further evidence that the Vaughans were well-to-do. The stair carpet showed no signs of wear; there were wall hangings and paintings; there was a porcelain statuette of a horse rearing up on an elegant landing table; there was a fragrance of eau de toilette.

‘You'll be sharing with Barton – a strange one, he is. You'll get your meal today at five. You may look round the house – but the best of the valuables are under key, and all the important rooms too, so don't get ideas. That's your room along there. Oh and this I am to give you.' She reached into her pinafore, and pulled out a key. ‘It's for the street door. Come and go as you want. Make the most of it until the Vaughans come back.'

*   *   *

Smithfield market, after dawn.

Whole sides of pigs hung from the hooks on the long sheds, and there was the smell of boiling meat. Stray dogs, driven wild with temptation, befriended the market workers, sniffing their aprons which were soiled green-brown with hay and grass, an animal's last meal before slaughter. There was the sound of sawing and steel being sharpened. On the tripe stalls, black beetles fought for territory with the flies. At the rear of a shed, a ragged collection of men and women queued to collect a pint of tripe broth, theirs for the flourish of a jug.

Robert Seymour sketched the tumbling of a pig's internal organs as they followed the path of a blade. There was still breath in the animal, and its limbs twitched. He watched the steam rise from the blood around the butcher's boots. Then he wandered inside a shed, towards a barrel into which a man emptied a bucket of white, bloodied brains. He glanced in other barrels nearby, which contained tongues, lungs and chitterlings. The workers here laughed and chirped. In an annexe, a mixture of blood, water and intestinal matter lay spread out across the floor. Seymour then walked to a shed where skinners separated hide from flesh, and snippers cut off hooves. He saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow-load of bones.

Having finished with these scenes, Robert Seymour took his sketchbook to the animal pens, where villainous-looking drovers made free use of the goad; for crushed into five acres of Smithfield were thousands of cows, sheep, horses and pigs. He saw a sheep that had reared up, and become wedged in that position by the other sheep in the pen. He watched its drover, a youth not much older than himself, swing a fist at the creature, and laugh as two bloody teeth fell out on to the filth. Dodging the dung and the pools of urine, Seymour then sat upon a bale of hay, to draw a salt-and-pepper mare with a twisted hind leg and a healed cut over one eye, and he made the twist in her leg unsettling to behold, and the eye blindly blank.

A public house nearby had stayed open throughout the night, and he sketched two ruddy men outside, who clapped hands as a deal was struck. ‘Down the red lane!' said one, as they lifted their tankards, and became another sketch.

He drew and walked in the surrounding streets for several hours, before returning to Duke Street at noon, for he had been assured of a lunch by the bushy-headed servant.

As soon as he inserted the door key, he heard a cry from upstairs which would not have a disgraced a parade-ground drill sergeant – except that the voice was female. ‘Robert Seymour! Come up here, if that is you. Upstairs, second door along.'

The servant entered the hall in a state of agitation. ‘Just sending him up, Mrs Vaughan!' She pointed at his shoes. ‘You've got the mud off those? All right. Up you go. And don't stare at her dress.'

‘Is Mr Vaughan back?'

‘No, she wants to get to you first. Up you go.'

At the top of the staircase, at an angle through the open door, he glimpsed a bird-patterned oriental vase on a piano. Suddenly a woman with a pinched and severe face planted herself in the centre of the landing. She wore a calico dress of stylised pink roses – unexceptional at first glance, but on second glance, made of panels of misprinted fabrics sewn together: flowers overlaid twice, or printed with a crease in the petals, or upside down, or smudged, or on which the colours had run.

‘You are staring at my dress! Stop it!'

‘I am sorry, ma'am. I meant no offence.'

‘Why waste perfectly good cloth? Go in with you, Robert Seymour.
Seymour
– a good name for a boy who stares!'

She motioned him into the pastel sitting room and closed the door.

‘Stop there.'

He had reached the middle of a pink circular rug, and she patrolled the tassels of the perimeter, looking him up and down, very deliberately lifting his jacket tails and inspecting his knees and elbows.

‘So,' she said, opposite and uncomfortably close to his face, ‘now I have stared at you. Tell me – is Seymour
also
the name of a boy who wishes to see more than we have to offer?'

‘I am not quite sure I understand, ma'am.'

‘If you are going to run, Robert Seymour, it is best you do it sooner rather than later. Your legs are athletic, and your face has enough of the hare in it.'

‘I know what is expected of me.'

‘Do you? Why are you apprenticed to us? What made your mother do it?'

‘She believes I have the ability to draw.'

‘Does she? I can see the outline of something inside your jacket. It looks like a book. What are you reading?'

‘It is a sketchbook.'

‘Showing off your ability with a pencil.'

‘Yes.'

‘Show it me.'

‘I would rather not, ma'am.'

‘The drawings are unchristian, are they?'

‘They are unfinished.'

‘What do you sketch?'

‘I have been at Smithfield market drawing animals.'

‘There are no animals in our designs. What else do you sketch?'

‘If you please, ma'am, does it matter?'

‘It
does
matter! My husband has to know the habits of your drawing hand – if only to know what he is struggling against. Show it me. Or do you
want
us to throw you out? Oh, perhaps that's it.' She walked around the perimeter of the rug again. ‘But consider, Robert Seymour – your mother is a widow. She could not have found it easy to pay our premium. The premium will
still
be legally ours, even if you are dismissed.'

‘Perhaps you would like to throw me out, ma'am.'

‘Are you implying we have taken your mother's money under false pretences?'

‘I was wondering whether a lot of apprentices come to Vaughan's and leave the first day.'

‘I don't like your wondering and I don't think I like you and I don't think you will like your mother's money spent on an outing and a lavish dinner for the other boys. So I suggest you show me the sketchbook.'

He put his hand in the pocket, and held up the sketchbook, and she snatched it away. She opened it at a random page.

The drawing she saw was a butcher sharpening his steel – the protruding lip, the large belly in the striped apron, and the laughter in his face were all completely captured.

Her expression changed in an instant.

‘But I
know
him,' she said. ‘I have seen him in the market.'

She turned further pages, and looked at the sorrowful cows, the frightened pigs, and the whimsy of a dog stealing a joint of lamb. She turned another page, and saw two crafty horse traders, whispering behind their hands, as an innocent-looking young fellow led a half-starved horse away.

There was a peculiar and uneasy cast to her face when she raised her eyes from the sketchbook. ‘This is unexpected. Let me look at this again. Do sit down.'

He took a seat in an armchair, covered in misprints of lilies. Mrs Vaughan took a similar chair, only with cherries, and she went through the sketchbook from start to finish. When she closed the cover she said: ‘Where did you learn to draw?'

‘I taught myself.'

It was as though the woman were softening before his eyes. A suggestion of a smile crossed her lips.

‘And yet your mother wishes you to draw silly flowers for calico! You may look at my dress. Stare at it, if you will. You would not be happy to design it. Speak honestly.'

‘I would not.'

‘It would be a waste,' she said. In a most soothing voice, she added: ‘I shall call for tea.'

She studied the sketchbook again, until the tea was brought. The servant gave Robert Seymour an uncomprehending glance as she entered, though Mrs Vaughan did not notice, for she was too absorbed in the drawings. When the door was closed, Mrs Vaughan said: ‘You have pulled on my reins, Robert Seymour.' She held up her hands to stop his question. ‘No, no,
no
! I do not want to send you away. I think there is Providence in your coming here.' There passed several moments when she simply looked at the boy with great concentration, but finally she said: ‘You should know, to begin with, that I had a son who was an artist.'

Young though he was, a look came to Robert Seymour's face which verged upon craftiness, as though he had taken on, momentarily, the spirit of the horse traders at Smithfield; fortunately it manifested itself only in the moment Mrs Vaughan looked away, recalling some memory of her son. When she next looked at Robert Seymour, he had tilted his head, and his eyes had much in common with the soft, sorrowful expression of the Smithfield cow.

‘My son was only twenty-seven when he died, ten years ago. I would
never
make him draw calico patterns. It would be against all logic. Against all feeling. I would not be a mother if I did it. I can see you wish to ask me something.'

‘Did Mr Vaughan want his son to design patterns?'

‘Bless you, Mr Vaughan was not his father. Mr Vaughan is my second husband. My previous married name was Girtin. My son was Thomas. Damp air killed him, they say. Another waste. You want to say something else.'

‘My mother said bad air killed my father.'

‘Damp air?'

‘It could be so.'

‘It is superficial to blame the air. It was
painting
that killed my son. He was out in all weathers watching storms and clouds, so as to turn them into pictures.
Always
he got soaked to the bone. He should have stayed in a tavern, snug before the fire, like any other Englishman! But I knew I could not stop him, and so did not try.' She looked away for a few moments, and then she said: ‘How much encouragement has your family given you?'

‘My aunt has given me a few sketchbooks. And a paintbox when I was small. She said I was a born artist.'

‘
Giffle gaffle
! No boy should
ever
be told that! My son
made
himself an artist. Years of practice and devoted study went into his works. He copied and he studied the masters. He was most certainly
not
born an artist. And neither were you.' She stood as she warmed to her own theme. ‘Art was not in my son's blood – his father made ropes and brushes and my family made glass. I shall tell you this – and you make sure you remember it. When Thomas was a child, other boys did drawings every bit as good as his. But they did not stick with it. The pencil was
never
out of his hand. It was part of his hand. What do you wish to say?'

‘My mother says that the pencil is my eleventh finger.'

‘Does she, indeed?'

She proceeded to reminisce about her son, memory following memory, and Robert Seymour would respond with a smile or a sadness, as suited the recollection; and if she paused, he said: ‘Please tell me more about your son.'

‘I would ask Thomas to fetch water, and he would refuse if he was drawing. Then he would say to me, “Could you fetch some, as I am thirsty.” I did it for him! Then our dog would nuzzle up to Thomas and try to play with him, and he would push the poor creature away. He had no duty but drawing. With such a boy it is pointless even to try to shift him from the path.' Then she chuckled, as a different memory came to her mind. ‘When Thomas was a boy, we lived at St Martin's le Grand. Regardless of what I said, he would go to the river and befriend the bargemen. And they would carry him up and down the Thames, and he would sketch the scenery all the time as they floated along. The fishermen's houses, the people on the shore, and the wherrymen – even in the pouring rain he'd be sketching, as though he had the fire of God within him to keep him warm and dry. His pencil wouldn't stop. No, no, Robert Seymour, you cannot be apprenticed to my husband. Not in the usual way. He will set you to draw with a ruler and compass. That is no good to you.'

She stood and paced the room, full of plans. ‘I watched Thomas become an artist. Here's a piece of advice. Remember this. Don't always use a sketchbook. Use cheap paper, any scraps you can find. Just like my son did. Because if the paper is costly you will fear spoiling the drawing, and your hand will lose its freedom. Go on, speak again.'

‘I have not been given many sketchbooks. I have used any paper I have found. I have drawn in the margins of letters.'

‘How wonderful! Now – a thought occurs to me. On the landing you passed a statuette of a horse. My husband bought it as a present for me. You can make better use of it. Go and fetch it now and put it on that table.'