Mrs Whistler

by Matthew Plampin

  Willie stood, clapping his hands on his thighs, putting an end to his brother’s squirming; then he bent down to retrieve his bag, brought with him from London, saying that it would be best for him to conduct his examination of their mother before luncheon.

  ‘Jamie and Miss Franklin might like to brave this uncertain weather and go for a stroll,’ he added. ‘For a quick birthday lesson, maybe, in theories of marine painting.’

  The doctor was teasing them, Maud saw, for the stilted little act they’d put on, and she coloured hard as she set about extracting herself from Mrs Whistler’s grasp. Jimmy, however, appeared to find the suggestion amusing. Hopping from his chair, he proffered his hand with ­elaborate courtesy.

  ‘What say you, Miss Franklin?’ he asked, an eyebrow twitching theatrically. ‘Shall we take the air?’

  *

  The hall at Lindsey Row was so filled with packing crates that the front door would only open halfway. It was some time after ten and the house was dark from top to bottom, John and Mrs Cossins having long since headed off to wherever it was they went. Willie had travelled back to London with Jimmy and Maud; it had been agreed that he would come in for a brandy, to restore him a fraction before he returned home to his wife. Jimmy coaxed a candle alight and led them through. Two crates were outside the dining room that hadn’t been there when they’d left that morning; nailed shut, they were the size, more or less, of paintings.

  The three of them settled in the parlour. The brothers lit cigarettes and poured liquor, lowering themselves into armchairs, while Maud, under a storm-cloud still, perched on a large box of crockery and crossed her arms. The rest of the day had proved trying. Her coastal walk with Jimmy had been curtailed by a downpour. The conversation at luncheon had mostly revolved around reminiscences of the brothers’ childhood in Russia, where their father had worked as an engineer on the railways. Mrs Whistler had contributed little, eating almost nothing, retreating into herself. After the meal, she’d granted Jimmy an hour to sketch her in drypoint, on a small copper tablet that he’d brought along in his jacket pocket. He’d promised to send her the first successful print that was pulled from it; to write to her the very next week; to visit again before the end of summer. And then they’d gone.

  Having availed themselves of claret at the luncheon table, the brothers had slept for a good stretch of the train journey. Maud had gazed out balefully at the rainy countryside, allowing thoughts she would normally suppress: the resentment of youth against age. Jimmy was forty-four. Exactly twice as old as her. When he’d stood at her point in life she’d been new-born, a babe in arms. She’d begun to watch him as he dozed, his head swaying with the carriage, seeing the deep lines around his eyes, the way the skin was starting to fold against his collar, the whitish grey that streaked his curls like paint.

  ‘Five years,’ said Willie now, staring at the candle. ‘That’s at the outside, mind you. It could well be less.’

  Jimmy took the hint. He re-crossed his legs, frowning at his cigarette. ‘See here, doc,’ he said. ‘I try, really I do, but things are damned hard at the moment. I put on a brave face for the Mother – but the show, mon frère, the show is most terribly afire. Time is at a premium. There simply aren’t enough hours in the blessed day.’

  ‘The show,’ Willie repeated, faintly mocking. ‘You speak of time, Jamie, of your time – but like I say, she has no more than five years remaining to her. You must exert yourself, brother. You must visit more frequently, and you must write. You really must. For your own sake, do you hear? Your remorse will be most bitter if you do not.’ The doctor took a drink. ‘She enjoyed this afternoon so very much. Meeting Miss Franklin again, and hearing of your efforts to school her. Seeing your clippings. Learning of your adventures.’

  ‘Well,’ Jimmy said, ‘one does like one’s Mommy to see that her first-born does not toil in complete obscurity …’

  ‘She knows that there’s trouble, though,’ his brother added. ‘She’s no fool, Jamie. Not the ins and outs of it all, perhaps, but she can tell that you struggle.’ Here he looked over at Maud – studying her, it seemed. She’d noticed him doing this before, earlier in the day. It made her uneasy. ‘She knows that there’s a want of money, whatever you might claim. That bills are going unpaid and yet more being run up.’

  ‘There are schemes afoot,’ Jimmy said, a little defensively, ‘a number of them sure to yield cash in abundance. You’ve met Howell, Willie. You’ve learned what kind of fellow he is. He has the measure of the situation.’

  The doctor hesitated. ‘My feeling is that you must rely upon your own self before all others. Even friends like this Mr Howell. You’re selling something, aren’t you brother, in the end. You’re asking people to buy your productions. To pay a good deal for them.’

  Maud could guess where Willie was heading. It was a well-trodden path, and a futile one at that. Jimmy made no comment; he looked away, smoking his cigarette.

  ‘So I’ve got to ask: where’s the harm in giving them some of what they want? You said it yourself in The World – about that painting in the Grosvenor Gallery, the tavern in the snow …’

  ‘The Nocturne in Grey and Gold.’

  ‘Yes. That’s the one. This is what I wonder, though – would it really be so difficult for you to paint in another figure or two? Provide a small tale perhaps, unfolding there on the pavement? Your skill is beyond dispute, Jamie, so why not profit from it? Just to sell a few paintings. Just to kill off a few of these debts.’

  Jimmy turned back to him, his expression quite blank. ‘A spot of Dickens – is that the sort of thing you mean? Trotty Veck and his rosy-cheeked Meg, clasping hands before a Nocturne? How’s that sound?’

  Willie, already regretful, set down his glass. ‘It was a suggestion only. I am tired. God knows, I surely wouldn’t have spoken otherwise.’

  ‘Willie,’ Jimmy said. Maud thought that he might leap onto his chair – he’d done this numerous times in the past – but he stayed put, teasing up the white lock, his eyeglass glinting scornfully in the firelight. ‘I care nothing for the tavern. Not a red cent, d’you hear? Not for the figures who may be coming or going, or pissing in the alleyway behind, or fighting over a girl, or any damned thing. All I know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of the picture. That is its core and its one aim. To pretend otherwise would be indecent, a vulgar trick. The picture must not depend upon a story, or a moral, or some point of local interest. What was it I said to The World? You told me you’d read the article.’

  ‘Jamie—’

  ‘Art,’ Jimmy very nearly shouted, ‘should be independent of all claptrap. It should stand alone, quite alone, and not confound the artistic sense with notions of pity, or patriotism, or love, or—’

  ‘I know, brother,’ Willie broke in, rising from his chair. ‘I know. Christ alive. We’ve been through this already today. I just don’t see why—’

  But Jimmy would hear no more. He bounded off upstairs without another word. Maud and the doctor looked at one another. Willie was unperturbed; he was well used to Jimmy’s displays and knew how swiftly the tempest would disperse. Not knowing what else to do, Maud showed him rather awkwardly to the door; and in the hall, as she reached for the latch, Willie laid a hand against her upper arm.

  ‘My dear girl,’ he said softly, glancing behind to check that Jimmy really was gone, ‘is all well?’

  This query was expected, sort of, but it knocked Maud off-guard nonetheless. She mumbled her affirmatives, a couple of halting sentences, wondering how much Willie had been told about her recent sadness. He nodded, plainly unsatisfied, but he let her be. Fitting the hat on his head, he touched a forefinger to the brim and headed out to the embankment.

  Jimmy was in their room, at the top of the house. His mother’s portrait was propped atop the chest of drawers opposite the bed, an oil lamp sputtering close by, in hiding from the Owl and his pawn-shop crates. The painting was large, four feet by three at least, and strangely, strikingly com
posed. Mrs Whistler was in the drawing room, as it had been when Maud first arrived: the walls grey and the curtains black, patterned with silver. She was shown from the side, seated on one of the dining chairs with her feet upon a low stool, her sweet old puss set in hard profile like the face on a coin. Maud sat on the end of the bed; her hands, planted behind her upon the counterpane, slid an inch or two across the green satin. Jimmy was over by the window, his eyes on the picture, and for a minute they considered it together. Having bade the sitter farewell only a few hours earlier, Maud noticed now the extraordinary care that had been taken with the likeness, which was unusual for Jimmy: the effortful painting of her lace cap and the way it trailed across her black-clad shoulders, the great tenderness of it all.

  ‘Looks like she’s waiting for something,’ she said.

  There was an exasperated exclamation and a bang, as if Jimmy had just stamped his foot. ‘You too, eh? Hang it all, Maudie, I spoke of this in The World as well – of this picture, this exact matter! You listened to me practise the blasted words, girl! It is an arrangement in grey and black. That is what it is. All it is. Bon Dieu, I am surrounded by incomprehension, from the fools in the Grosvenor to my very closest allies.’ He strode between Maud and the Mother, lunging out onto the dark landing and dropping from sight, thundering back down the stairs. ‘I am damn well buried in it!’

  *

  The front door was dirty, mud and soot streaking panels that might once have been a soapy grey. Maud shielded her eyes against the sun and looked again at the ‘93’ stencilled on the pane of glass above it. This was the right address. She knocked again and peered in through the street-facing window. Pictures stood about – the corner of something set upon an easel, others propped against a wall – but Rosa Corder didn’t appear to be at home. Maud leant heavily against the door, Southampton Row rattling on around her. Streets like this one made Chelsea feel like the open countryside, and swank too; it was so very crowded, jam-packed with aggravation, everybody spoiling for a chance to sink their teeth into somebody else. She couldn’t think why Rosa chose to live there.

  The telegram had arrived at eleven, from the office on the King’s Road. Mrs Cossins, answering the door, had reported disbelievingly that the message was for Maud, and that she was required to sign for it and hand over thruppence for the delivery. She’d been amazed herself, in truth. Her sister and aunts always wrote. Why would they do this instead, and spend the extra pennies? The answer had come to her the next instant. It must be Ione – Edie was wiring to tell her of an emergency with Ione. The child was dying, or dead already. She’d been laid low by disease. She’d fallen down the stairs. She’d wandered into the road and been trampled by a horse.

  Maud had scrambled through the house to take the message. The relief had been a shock, a cold, unbalancing blast of wind that had sent her reeling into the doorframe, followed perversely by a single second’s disappointment. The telegram was from Jimmy, and had nothing whatsoever to do with her family up in Kentish Town or the daughter they’d given away.

  Read almost as an afterthought, this telegram had drawn her into a crisis quite unlike the ones she’d imagined. Early that morning Jimmy had left for the Albemarle, a swell hotel on St James’s, to finish off a two-day commission from Vanity Fair. The editor had thrown him a scrap of work on the back of this much-trumpeted ‘man of the day’ business, to help see him through to the trial – which, like the move to the White House, was always imminent, always at the point of arrival, but never actually there. It was an etching, a street view taken from the hotel’s elevated terrace to accompany an article on fashionable London. Jimmy had been full of talk of its excellence the previous night, and how it would mark the beginning of a most profitable connection – Vanity Fair being like an orchard, in effect, through which he merely had to stroll, plucking fruit from the branches.

  This telegram, however, had struck a rather different note. Tin needed at Albemarle, it had read. Quid Plus. See Owl – Eldon – Cole – Watts. Urgent.

  Maud hadn’t the first idea where to look for Eldon or Watts; indeed, she barely knew who Watts was. The one address she had was that of Alan Cole, a cripplingly shy fellow who worked at the South Kensington Museum – a post he only held, according to Jimmy, because his father had set the place up. She’d learned where he lived a month or so before, when Jimmy had proposed that she accompany him over there one evening to dine.

  ‘Won’t he mind?’ Maud had asked.

  ‘What, Cole? No, of course not. I’ll send a note ahead, but there’s really no need to worry. He knows you, Maudie. He knows you are my pupil, and everything is perfectly decent.’

  It had quickly turned out that mousey little Alan Cole had minded. He’d minded very much indeed. Jimmy’s note had received an immediate reply, prohibiting Maud’s attendance in the strongest terms. He’d gone anyway, and there was no indication of any awkwardness between the men regarding the matter; but if he honestly thought that Maud was going to present herself at the fellow’s door and ask him for money – no matter how much or for what purpose – he’d have to think again.

  Owl had his place in Putney – Chaldon House, the doomed, sprawling pile that, due to the legal screws he was applying to the Metropolitan District Railway, was going to enrich him beyond measure. Maud reckoned it would be easy enough to find. The odds were even of catching a gentleman at home on a Saturday morning, especially a married gentleman with an infant daughter. This was the Owl, though. He was seldom where you expected him to be. And Putney was a good few miles in the wrong direction.

  Then Maud had thought of Rosa. Owl might well be with her, but even if he wasn’t, Jimmy’s devoted disciple would surely do whatever she could to aid him. Maud knew the address. They’d been talking for many months of her visiting, of her working there for an afternoon or longer, although nothing had yet been arranged. She’d pulled on her jacket and started for the omnibus.

  It was becoming plain, however, that Rosa wasn’t in. Maud didn’t have time to wait; she undid a couple of her jacket’s small ivory buttons, wracking her brain for other possible sources of emergency cash. There were those two printers, she supposed, the father and son, with their premises beside the Lyceum Theatre. Jimmy had approached them the previous autumn, asking for their assistance and tutelage – and now they too were his followers, acquired in that effortless way of his, devoted both to his art and his example. This matter here, though, was as delicate as it was urgent. It needed to be kept contained. Should these people learn of it, their view of Jimmy would be affected – diminished perhaps. And word might get out. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  Maud returned to the pavement. The journey into town had been especially cramped and stifling. Her shift clung wetly to her skin. She was famished, sluggish, her head starting to throb. But this had to be dealt with. She followed Southampton Row to its end, turning right onto High Holborn. The change of street – wider and busier, festooned with advertising boards – for some reason brought the name of Anderson Reeve to her mind. That could be it. The lawyer would help them, and in absolute confidence. He often saw Jimmy on Saturdays, at his offices down on the Strand. She’d posted many letters bearing the address. She could very nearly remember it. Three digits, there were. Maybe four.

  The crowds on High Holborn were dense and noisy. Smells clogged the air – ordure and axle-grease, rotten vegetables, the ripest, thickest sweat. Maud couldn’t concentrate; she could scarcely breathe. She swerved into a narrow alleyway, out of the current. This brought her to a blind court, no more than fifteen feet square and half filled with barrels; rising up in the distance was a wing of the British Museum, another block or so away, hazed by a bank of sunlit dust. She leant against a wall, feeling the cold of the bricks, their slight dampness, through her clothes. The reek of the streets furred her mouth, making it hard to swallow. She pressed a hand to her breastbone and something bubbled inside, deeper down, squeezing between her innards. There was a ghastly sense of suspension, of immi
nence; then the first prickle of nausea.

  It passed. Maud gasped and coughed, and cast a furtive look around her. Am I going soft? she wondered. Have the years in Chelsea with Jimmy Whistler been washing the city out of me?

  A smart young gentleman had stopped at the lane’s mouth. Clad in a grey top hat and pale grey coat, he was attempting to look casual, as if merely passing the time, but it was clear enough that he’d been following her. He was gravely out of place, dressed for a garden party or a ride in the park; there were a couple of daintily wrapped parcels beneath his arm, for goodness sake, as if he’d been out shopping for trifles. Then he peered to the side, along the street – and Maud saw that this was Freddie Leyland, son and heir to Jimmy’s great foe. Maud had met Freddie once at Lindsey Row, very briefly, when he’d come by to fetch Jimmy for a night in town with Eldon and a couple of others. The fellow had been another paid-up acolyte, positively basking in Jimmy’s company, and had treated her with careful respect, as one close to the great man. Yet he’d cut Jimmy along with the rest of them, cut him dead, and showed no inclination to speak to her or even glance her way. His whiskers were threadbare, she noticed, still those of a youth; his brow was creased with consternation.

  A woman walked into the alley. The gown was a different style – dark blue, closely fitted and understated to the point of severity – but there could be no mistaking that this was Mrs Leyland, the lady from the portrait. Freddie’s mother. She approached without ceremony, and little of the grace with which Jimmy had imbued her. Maud stood up, away from the wall. You look older, she thought. You look like you could use a good night’s sleep.