Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

  But as he watched that absolute white drying slowly on the canvas he could already see ‘Chatterton’ as a final union of light and shadow: the dawn sky at the top of the painting, softening down the light to a half-tint with the leaves of the rose plant upturned to reflect its grey and pink tones; the body of Chatterton in the middle of the painting, loaded with thicker colour to receive the impact of that light; and then a principal mass of darkness running below. Wallis already knew that he would be using Caput Mortuum or Mars Red for the coat of Chatterton, thrown across the chair, and that he would need Tyrian Purple for the strong colour of his breeches. But these powerful shades would stay in delicate contrast to the cool colours beside them – the grey blouse, the pale yellow stockings, the white of the flesh and the pinkish white of the sky. These cooler colours would then be revived by the warm brown of the floor and the darker brown of the shadows across it; and they, in turn, would be balanced by the subdued tints of the early morning light. So everything moved towards the centre, towards Thomas Chatterton. Here, at the still point of the composition, the rich glow of the poet’s clothes and the brightness of his hair would be the emblem of a soul that had not yet left the body; that had not yet fled, through the open window of the garret, into the cool distance of the painted sky.

  It was all of a piece and, in his recognition of the complete work, Wallis knew that it could never be as perfect upon the canvas as it now was in his understanding. He did not want to lose that perfect image, and yet he knew that it was only through its fall into the world that it would acquire any reality. He took up his palette and, with a quick intake of breath, he began.

  11

  WHEN HE woke up he was sitting beside an open window: he could see the rooftops gleaming after a sudden shower if rain and, curling above them, a large dome which was slowly turning into smoke. In the street beneath him, a blue horse stiffened and then collapsed. As Charles opened his lips to speak, with a roar the sunlight broke against the side of a white building; in front of it stood a young man smiling and pointing to a small book which he was carrying in his right hand. ‘Like the painting,’ he said and everything moved away. Charles turned his head in surprise, and realised that he was being carried forward on a bed or stretcher. There was a conversation going on to one side of him and he distinctly heard, ‘He was dressed in old clothes, like everyone else.’

  He opened his eyes and saw Edward standing at the foot of the bed. ‘Hello,’ he said but he could not hear his own voice. Then the left side of his son started to disintegrate, as if the boy were going through the stages of youth, age, death and decay in front of him. Charles tried to put up his hand, to shield himself against the sight, but he could not raise it. So he closed his eyes. But this could only have been for a moment because, when he looked up again, Edward was still standing there. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘he’s awake now.’

  Vivien was bending over him, but he could see her only indistinctly; it was as if the left hand side of his face had been plunged into shadow and he could only peer out hopefully. ‘The doctor has seen you,’ she was saying. ‘They found you a bed.’ Charles strained to hear the words: it seemed to him that several voices had whispered, ‘He was found in your bed’, and he looked up at her in horror.

  ‘Are you still in pain, love? They injected you.’ And as she spoke he understood how unique she was: it had taken the whole universe to spin her together, just as now it was spinning him apart. I tried, I tried to hold on. I didn’t know how easy it was to let go. But his mouth was very dry, and he had not spoken.

  ‘Here, Dad, I brought you your papers.’ Edward held out the pages on which he had seen him writing: he had brought them because he did not know how else to help him, and because he knew that they had been the most important thing in his father’s life.

  Vivien took them from him. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Not yet. He has to rest.’

  But they reminded Charles of something left unfinished. ‘Chatterton,’ he tried to say.

  ‘Your tongue, love? What’s wrong with your tongue?’

  ‘His mouth has gone all funny, Mum.’ Edward spoke very slowly, trying to control his panic at the sight of his father helpless upon the bed.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Vivien sounded very calm. ‘He’s going to be all right.’

  ‘He’s not, Mum.’

  She put her finger up to her lips, to silence him. ‘Help me put the screen around him now.’

  There is no past and no future, only this moment when I see them talking quietly together, my wife and my child, the number two can be used of them, they are called alive. ‘A light,’ he seemed to say.

  There was a window above his bed, and Vivien leaned forward to pull up the blinds; the dawn light stirred through the hospital ward.

  When Charles had murmured ‘I know you very well’ in the Kubla Khan restaurant, Harriet Scrope looked up for a moment and saw the outline of a young man who smiled and bowed towards him. She was so astonished by this that, in the confusion which followed Charles’s collapse, she snatched the bottle from the waiter’s hands and helped herself to two more large gins. Vivien was staring in horror at her fallen husband, but Philip got up at once and knelt beside him, feeling his pulse. All the activity of the restaurant was arrested and, in the sudden silence, Philip said to the waiter, ‘You had better call an ambulance.’

  ‘At once sir. Nine nine nine.’

  Vivien knelt down beside Charles now; she took her jacket and gently placed it beneath her husband’s head.

  Harriet was still staring at that spot where she thought she had seen the image of a young man and it was only when Charles was placed upon a stretcher, and carried out to the waiting ambulance, that the reality of the situation began to affect her. She put down her empty glass, and followed him out of the restaurant. The women should be with him,’ she said to Flint in a loud voice. ‘He needs a mother’s care!’ Besides, she had never been driven in an ambulance before and was curious to see its interior.

  ‘Look after Edward,’ Vivien called out to Philip before she, too, entered the waiting vehicle.

  As soon as they came to St Stephen’s Hospital, Charles was wheeled away. Like a dessert trolley, Harriet thought. I wonder what they had for pudding in that ghastly restaurant? ‘Follow him,’ she said to Vivien, who was in fact already hurrying away after her husband. ‘I’ll guard the fort.’ And with a certain melancholy stateliness she settled herself in an almost empty waiting room. She started to leaf through an old copy of Woman’s Realm, left on the seat next to hers, with an increasingly grim expression.

  ‘What are you here for?’ She was startled by the question, and looked around to see an elderly woman sitting in the row of seats behind her. ‘Drink, is it?’ She sniffed the air around Harriet.

  ‘Certainly not. I only allow myself the occasional glass of sherry.’ She leaned forward. ‘Actually, I’m here for a sex change.’

  She was about to add something else when Vivien came running over to her. ‘He’s having a brain scan,’ she said desperately.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘They don’t know. They think it might be a stroke.’

  ‘A stroke?’ Harriet had a sudden image of the way her cat arched its back when she ran her hand through its fur. ‘How could he have a stroke?’

  A child was crying somewhere down a corridor, and Vivien put her hands up to her face for a few seconds. ‘I think Edward should be here,’ was all she said when she looked again, wide-eyed, at Harriet.

  ‘He always waits up for them,’ Philip whispered to Flint as they climbed the last stairs and turned towards the Wychwoods’ apartment. They had come straight from the restaurant. They’re never late. Usually.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Edward must have been standing by the closed door when Philip knocked.

  ‘It’s Philip.’ He cleared his throat, uncertain how to conduct the forthcoming interview.

  Edward opened the door a little and, after peering curiously for a momen
t at Flint, asked ‘Where’s Dad?’

  Philip made a determined effort to sound cheerful. ‘He was feeling a little sick, so Mum has taken him to the hospital.’

  And Flint added, ‘He should be back soon.’

  Edward looked at them suspiciously and then, opening the door wide to let them enter, he went back into his room without saying anything else; he had been watching television and Flint could see an open mouth, and then an arm, passing across the screen. With only mild curiosity he examined the rest of the apartment, and was reminded at once of Charles’s rooms at university. The posters on the walls, the cheap pine table, the sagging sofa with an Indian rug draped across it – all of these things depressed him still. Then he saw the portrait, propped up against Charles’s desk, and something about its face intrigued him. ‘Who is this?’

  Philip was slumped on the sofa, looking towards Edward’s room. ‘It’s Chatterton,’ he answered without turning around. ‘He can’t be. He’s far too old.’

  Philip suddenly felt weary. ‘That was the point. You see, Charles found some papers –’

  At this moment Edward came back into the room. His face was very pale. ‘What time did Dad say he would be coming home?’ He scratched the side of his leg.

  ‘He didn’t say exactly.’ Philip cleared his throat again. ‘But Mum said that she wouldn’t be very long.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Not too long.’

  Flint, paralysed by the look of distress on the boy’s face, was holding the portrait awkwardly in front of him. ‘It’s him!’ Edward was pointing towards Flint. ‘He started it!’

  ‘What, me?’ Flint’s voice went up half a register in alarm.

  ‘No. Not you. Him in the picture.’ Flint looked astonished at this, and Edward appealed to Philip for confirmation. ‘We saw him in the gallery, too. Didn’t Dad tell you?’ Edward stepped forward and grabbed the canvas from Flint. He was about to fling it into a corner when Philip got up to stop him.

  ‘No don’t, Eddie. Don’t do that. Your Dad will need it.’

  ‘So he’s not very sick?’

  ‘No.’

  Edward smiled in triumph at having extracted this admission from him. ‘I knew it!’ he said. It was then that Vivien telephoned from the hospital.

  Charles reached down with his right hand and touched the bare wooden floor; he could feel the grain of the wood, and with his fingers he traced the contours of the boards. His knuckles brushed against something, something light like the skeleton of a mouse or a dead bird, something gathering dust, but then he realised that; was a piece of the rough writing paper he had been using. There was another piece beside it, and another; these were the torn fragments of the poem which he had been writing. In that poem he had been trying to describe how time is nothing other than the pattern of deaths which succeed one another, forming an outline of light upon a dry, enormous plain; but other voices and other poems kept on interfering, kept on entering his head.

  He had torn up the poem and allowed the pieces to drift across the floor where now, with his outstretched hand, he could touch them… and, when the pain returned, he wept. His face was turned to the wall but, with difficulty, he moved it so that he might look at his last room on earth: and he could see it all, the garret window open, the dying roseplant upon the sill, the purple coat thrown across a chair, the extinguished candle upon the small mahogany table. And he was seized with terror as the others stood around him: ‘No!’ he shouted. He was ready to plead with them. ‘This should not be happening. This is not real. I am not meant to be here. I have seen this before, and it is an illusion!’

  ‘His eyelids moved, Mum.’

  ‘I think he’s waking up now.’ Vivien was watching the face of her husband, and put out her arm to hold onto Edward. Charles opened his eyes and stared at her; and his eyes were of such an intense blue that, for a moment, she was frightened.

  He could see her outline as she bent over him, and she was encircled by light; the boy burned brightly also and, as Charles’s soul left the world, their souls were shining in farewell. At that instant of recognition he smiled: nothing was really lost and yet this was the last time he would ever see them, the last time, the last time, the last time, the last time. Vivien. Edward. I met them on a journey somewhere. We were travelling together.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ he tried to say; but his lips had not moved. Charles died, and in the library Philip was writing ‘Yes’ on a memorandum; Charles died, and Flint was sitting with bowed head over a paperback copy of Confessions of an English Opium Eater; Charles died, and Harriet was holding up her cat in triumph; Charles died, and Pat was jogging around St Mary Redcliffe; Charles died, and Mr Leno was whistling while dusting a brass figurine of Don Quixote astride Rosinante. His right arm fell away and his hand trailed upon the ground, the fingers clenched tightly together; his head slumped to the right also, so that it was about to slide off the hospital bed. His body arched once in a final spasm, quivered, and then became still.

  What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligence at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text.

  Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun.

  (Modern Love. Sonnet 30. George Meredith.)

  ‘Chatterton’ was finished. He took a sable brush and, dipping it into a small pool of ivory black, wrote ‘H. Wallis .1856’ in the lower right-hand corner of the picture. And there was a resurgence of power at the moment of its completion, at least this was the sensation that Wallis had: the painting became very bright in one last effort towards life, and seemed to glow before assuming the solemn quietness of its natural state. And Wallis knew then that it had indeed been infused with the soul of Chatterton – a soul not trapped but joyful at its commemoration, lingering here among the colours and forms before escaping through the window which Wallis had left open for it. When it had fled – and he knew that it would be gone as soon as others came to look at it – this work would take on a different life as another painting in a world of painted objects. And it was with a kind of pity that Wallis looked at the face of Meredith, which had become the face of Chatterton in death – not pity for himself at finishing the work, but pity for the thing he had created. This garret he had painted had become an emblem of the world – a world of darkness, the papers scattered across the floor its literature, the dying flower its perfume, the extinguished candle its source of light and heat. He had not realised until now that this was his true vision. But then he laughed out loud at his own sorrow: this was his triumph, after all. This was his unique creation. Neither he nor Chatterton could now wholly die. He looked once again at the face which he had depicted, and then quickly began to cover the canvas with copal varnish.

  And at this moment George Meredith was examining with curiosity the effigy of Punch, with its miniature beadle’s hat and red coat, the white cravat tucked beneath its chin. The puppet was singing: ‘My wife is surely an ass, sirs, To think me as brittle as glass, sirs, But I only fell down on the grass, sirs, And my hurt – it is all my eye.’

  Meredith touched his wife’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Do you think I could learn to write poetry like that?’

  ‘No. There is too much feeling in it.’ Mary looked straight ahead at the stage as she answered him; she was preoccupied with the performance as Judy reappeared and Punch savagely swung his stick at her.

  ‘How do you like my teaching, Judy dear?’

  Meredith whispered to her again. ‘But I have feelings, too.’ She seemed to shake him off, moving a few steps closer to the booth as Judy slid from one side of it to the other.

  ‘Oh pray Mr Punch. No more!’ The high voice of the puppet squeaked in mock fear.

  ‘Yes, one more little lesson. There! There! There!’ Judy fell across the stage, her head over the front of it, and as Punch continued to hit her she put up one limp arm to protect her head. ‘Any more, dear wife?’

  The small crowd laughed at this, and then laughed even
louder as Judy lifted up her head and in her miserable voice pleaded, ‘No, no, no more.’

  Meredith walked up to Mary. ‘She is a model wife, is she not?’

  And Punch added, ‘I thought I should soon make you satisfied!’

  Mary suddenly turned away and her husband, with one last look at the little wooden stage, followed her. They were in Houndsditch. It was a cold Saturday morning in February and, with nothing to occupy them at home, they had decided to visit Rag Fair – or, rather, they had been so eager to leave their house that they had no real destination, and it was only when they saw the omnibus to Bishopsgate that they had boarded it and travelled here. And, as Punch crowed in triumph over the prostrate body of Judy, Mary entered the small court which led to the Fair itself. Some cheap carpets and hearthrugs were hanging here on a dirty rope, and Mary stopped to look at them, taking a piece of grimy fabric between her fingers. Meredith resisted the temptation to caution her about the filth ingrained in it. ‘Can you imagine,’ he said, ‘how many Punch and Judies have walked across this?’

  She was about to reply when the owner of the carpet stall came up to her; he was a tall man but his voice was unusually soft. ‘Madame –’ he lengthened the word, so that it sounded like a sibilant. ‘I’m the only party breathing that’s got these goods.’ He put his hand close to hers, and she drew back.

  Meredith, muttering ‘We have no hearth for the hearthrug’, took her arm and led her out of the courtyard.