Authors: Matthew Plampin
‘Mr Cope might tell yet. Tell on us both.’
‘He won’t. Most he’ll ever say is that we was getting back your books. None of them would ever honestly think we wanted the china, Will.’
‘What if Mr Lascelles asks for the books?’
This question leaves Tom amazed. ‘That won’t happen. Not in a hundred years. Ain’t you been paying attention at all?’
Will’s jaw clenches; he drops the sodden remains of the ice packet onto the ground. ‘An answer for everything,’ he says. ‘How about
you
then, Tom Girtin? What I told you is the truth. You talk of tall tales, but you see it. I know you do. They’re using you like a – like a
beast
. Don’t that trouble you none? Your girl does what she does only because her brother and sister would have her do it. Are you just going to keep playing along?’
‘Mary Ann—’ Tom lowers his head. ‘If there’s something to what you say – if there really is trickery here, this scheme for marriage – it won’t be of her devising. I can’t believe that. She obeys them, Will, because she ain’t got a choice. They care nothing for her happiness or her wellbeing.’ He gazes sadly at the lake. ‘I won’t leave her to them. Not like this.’
Will pictures the young noblewoman lounging in Tom’s bed; he hears the sarcastic drawl of her voice. ‘Touching,’ he growls. ‘Such loyalty. Such disinterested friendship. Your Miss Lascelles ain’t about to extend the same to me, though, is she? She got a proper look at me up in your room, and at the sack too. She could give me over to them whenever the fancy takes her.’
Tom returns to the passage, his patience finally failing, opening the cloak to free his arms. Will thinks that he’s to be pummelled and dragged off to the nearest coach stand; but Tom leans across him, reaching for the goddess instead.
‘I ain’t so foolish as to expect gratitude from you,’ he says, ‘or respect, or even good manners, but you might credit me with a scrap of insight. I know Mary Ann. Regardless of what she might feel for me, she truly despises her eldest brother. If she thinks that her silence will bring him discomfort – before the world, before their father, or just before his bedroom mirror – then she’ll keep it. She’ll keep it gladly.’ He hefts the goddess in his hands. ‘Besides, everything here is about to change. You must’ve heard this, during your adventures. Lord Harewood is expected today. The other brother, Henry, will arrive within the week, with his wife and two infant sons. Beau will lose his place at the table’s head. He’ll most probably decide that these losses of his are best left unmentioned.’
Lord Harewood. Will feels fear’s fingers creep onto his collar once again and give his pigtail a slow twist. ‘What time exactly,’ he asks, ‘will the baron be here?’
Tom doesn’t reply. He walks from the ice house and winds back his right shoulder, the black cloak swinging around him. A heave and a grunt, and the goddess is gone. Will scrabbles into the doorway and spots a last spark of white before she lands, close to the shadowy rushes that fringe the far bank. The splash is small, the dark water gulping the porcelain under; but its ripples roll out to the lake’s furthest corners, catching the colours of the early morning sky.
*
Piggyback, reflects Will bitterly, has to be the very least dignified of all the undignified ways that one man can be carried by another. You must cling to your mount like a babe, with feet dangling apart; you must have your head close to his and your tackle pressed against his spine; you must be slipping, constantly slipping, and being grabbed at anew. Tom suggested it as an easier arrangement for them both, but their progress from the valley is proving a good deal more arduous and meandering than the initial escape from the house. As they near the crest of the ridge, he swerves into the blue gloom beneath an oak. Planting a hand upon a skull-sized knot in the bark, he leans over to cough – to really
cough
– in the manner that he must, dredging thick fluid from his lungs and spitting it into a cluster of wild flowers.
Stretched out on his back, Will can feel every strain and spasm. He struggles up a few inches, firming his hold on the sketchbooks and glances about. Farm workers are crossing an adjacent field, tramping through the purple mud. They don’t seem to notice the piggybacking painters, or to hear Tom’s coughs. Heaven knows what they’d think if they did.
‘Tom,’ he says, ‘Tom, set me down. I’ll walk from here.’
Recovered to a degree, panting slightly, Tom gives his head a determined shake; and they’re away again, out from under the oak, weaving beside a hedgerow, sending a pair of starlings careering off into the dew-damp air. There’s a gate ahead and a gap in the hedge beside it. Will is coming loose once more, sliding between Tom’s shoulder blades, his rear drawn ineluctably earthwards, as if weighted with lead. Tom picks up speed, reaching the hurried, tilting pace of someone about to fall, or let a heavy load drop to the ground. The gap is a foot too narrow. They crash on through it regardless, pushing past twigs and leaves and tiny snagging thorns, and collapse onto a strip of grass.
Will is dumped on his side. The grass is deep, soft; he’s overcome by a need to rest, his eyelids dipping. Then a dewy blade licks his earlobe and he’s scrambling upright, yanking the sketchbooks across his lap, conducting an anxious check for moisture. But all is well. He exhales, frowning; and discovers that they are at the edge of a country road, a shallow, rutted channel that runs along the valley’s eastern summit. And laid before them, soaring above them, is the heart-stopping fullness of the dawn. Sunlight rakes over a mountainous array of clouds. The giant forms are clear and crisp, tinted with silvery pinks and bordered with a line of burnished copper. Beyond is a mighty sweep of colour, ranging from deep indigo and vermillion through to a celestial yellow-white, the transition impossibly smooth. The effect is one of inestimable distance, of unfathomable scale: of
infinity
, so awful and elating. It would fit a scene of the highest dramatic import. A scene of true Sublime poetry. A great biblical exodus. A tremendous battle, immortalised by history. The conclusion of a heroic voyage. Will is studying it, fixing every element in place, when Tom starts to talk of Wilson – of how this is a Wilson sky through and through, in its breadth, its grandeur, et cetera. Will knows Wilson. He’s filled a book with sketches taken from the dead man’s pictures. He knows very well which of their qualities he’ll be adapting for use in his own work. And he knows that he can, that one day he surely
will
, surpass them completely. He says none of this to Tom.
The painters sit together in the wet grass – Tom eulogising, Will wordlessly recording – until a clanging noise makes them look to the left, along the road. Will spies a roof and part of a gable; a trail of hearth-smoke wafting over the hedgerows. They are near Harewood village, nearer than he’d realised. This spot was carefully chosen.
Tom stands. ‘Just cattle,’ he reports. ‘Telegraph will be here soon, though. And I’ll get you on board so damn quick nobody’ll have the chance to wonder at it.’
‘Go back,’ says Will. ‘Don’t wait.’
‘That knee’s sprained, Will, more than likely. You shouldn’t walk on it, not for a week at least.’
‘It ain’t so bad.’ This is debatable, but Will now wants quite desperately to be alone, and reliant on others no longer. ‘I’ll manage.’
Tom isn’t persuaded. ‘If that’s how you wish it,’ he says; then he cranes his neck, peering into the village, and maps out Will’s route. ‘Telegraph to Wetherby. Stage to Stamford. Why, you could be in Maiden Lane by noon tomorrow.’
Will nods. He doesn’t intend to return to Covent Garden much before the end of the month. He has his books and his painting kit, and three shillings ninepence in his waistcoat pocket, so he’s going to finish off the northern tour. This decision was made in the greenhouse; and the injury, although painful, doesn’t warrant a change of plan. There are minsters still to see, and a couple of Lincolnshire market towns; and an invitation from the Earl of Yarborough to draw his mausoleum at Brocklesby. Money wasn’t mentioned, of course, but an agreement would be reached. The fact of it is that Will’s mind has begun to twitch most aggravatingly – to jog about like a restless limb. His terms are struck out. No one else would want drawings of Harewood House or its environs. Even the castle is not, in all honesty, a first-rate subject. There’s dead time to make up for. He has to gather in everything he can.
‘How long will you stay?’
Tom is scanning the horizon. ‘A week. Perhaps longer. Beau wants me to meet his father, for some reason.’
Had the intention been to provoke, this offhand reply could scarcely have been better phrased or delivered. We’ve been familiar for years, me and him, Will thinks; we’ve spent many hours together. Yet we understand each other not a single damn jot. He wants to ask Tom what he imagines will come of his little alliance with Mary Ann Lascelles – how it might end, exactly, and how soon – but he knows it’s pointless. Tom won’t have considered any of it.
‘Ain’t you got work to do?’
‘A drawing or two,’ Tom answers with a shrug. ‘No more than usual.’
Will’s irritation increases. ‘Why d’you do that?’ he snaps. ‘Why the devil d’you pretend to be of such confined ambition? I
saw them
, Tom. Back in your room. The drawings of the city. I can see where you’re headed.’
Tom steps from the verge into the middle of the road; moving, briefly, before the rising sun. ‘Will,’ he says. ‘Dear Will.’
‘London on a fearsome scale. Ain’t that it?
The London Sublime
. A single canvas, a six-footer – or a series of them? Am I right?’
Will swallows. His heart, he can tell, is squatting right there on his sleeve, throbbing with all its jealous malignancy. Tom seems amused, though, more than anything; and as Will starts up again, asking about the Academy and how he thinks it’ll be received, and what he’ll do if they offer him membership, the other painter cuts him short with a single word.
‘Panorama.’
To his chagrin, and despite his self-acquired fluency with classical legend, Will can’t actually speak any Greek or Latin, beyond a handful of commonplace axioms. There was no room in his draughtsman’s education for such rarefied attainments. But neither was there in Tom’s. His first thought is that the fellow is trying to bamboozle him.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Come now. Don’t act like you’ve forgotten. Henry Barker and his father. The rotunda in Leicester Fields. They’re making money hand over fist.’
The memory reappears. Barker was an acquaintance of Will’s, back in the Academy schools. His artist father had brought them both down from Scotland to realise an unusual idea: the display of a complete view, taken in three hundred and sixty degrees – every element, every detail of a particular spot on earth, painted and displayed to make you swear that you were really there. Panorama, Will recalls, was the term the Scotsmen coined for these spectacles. He’s been to see a couple – views of Edinburgh and of London – and thought them impressive enough as feats; but lifeless, topographical only, devoid of art. The method of presentation, furthermore, was unmistakeable: a huge wooden cylinder, temporary in appearance, festooned with hoardings promising
sheer disbelief
–
a vista that will truly amaze
–
an illusion the eye will refuse to credit
.
‘But that’s an entertainment,’ he says. ‘That’s a show.’
Tom explains. His aim is to join his experiences as a landscape painter, as a painter of weather and atmosphere, with practical knowledge gained on the stage sets of Drury Lane. This panorama of his will have artistic merit, he claims, far in advance of any other that has been put on display. It will be modern, also, indisputably modern: the English capital, rendered
as it is
, summoning both recognition and awe. And most importantly it will be
democratic
, open to all London, in a way that Somerset House simply is not. It’s a mighty undertaking, though, far more complicated and demanding than pictures, and subject to a great long list of mundane delays. Credit for materials. A place of sufficient size to work in. The patent on the term, on the format – still held by the Barkers and not set to expire until the beginning of the new century. But Tom is resolute. That much is plain. He sees a future here.
Will is left mystified; rather dazzled by the scope of it; and goaded somehow, as if an oblique challenge has been made. He cannot, at any rate, merely give his approval.
‘It’s against the Academy,’ he says.
‘More room for others. More room for you.’
This notion, for some reason, does not appease Will at all. ‘They won’t ever let you in, Tom, if you do this. It’s a—’ He stops. ‘You’ll be reduced, in their eyes. A showman. A hack.’
‘Will,’ Tom says, ‘they won’t anyway. I ain’t made for that whole business. The endless politicking. Begging those old mutts for favour. I ain’t got your appetite for it.’
‘Wilson wouldn’t have done it.’
Tom’s equanimity slips. ‘Wilson
starved
. Died destitute. And your beloved Academy let it happen.’ He kicks at the rutted road. ‘You know how I live. Stuck with John in Mother’s back room. Three shirts to my damn name. There’s got to be a way past this, what we’re doing here. This wretched toadying.’
‘We chase them that would buy,’ Will says. ‘We get ourselves known and then they start to seek us out. That’s how it works.’
Tom’s kick has stirred up a cloud of pale dust. He steps back, coughing into a fold of the cloak, and sits heavily on the opposite verge. Another fit seems to be beginning, but he stifles it, holding his breath until his skin reddens. He’s shaking his head.
‘It
works
, Tom. Look at these people. How they are with you.’ Will’s jealousy returns. ‘Why, if you was to go to Beau Lascelles and tell him of your difficulties, he’d give you terms to last out your whole life.’
The black cloak drops. Tom pants for a while. He spits on the road. ‘Beau Lascelles,’ he states, ‘is a damn fool. I believe I’ll find my terms elsewhere.’