“Excuse me, madam, but the room is ready now. If the gentleman would like to see it.”
They both get to their feet, and Miss Clairmont gestures to the maid to take him up.
“I hope you will find the room is to your liking, Mr Mab. And that it proves suitable for a painter such as yourself.”
And if he had indeed been a painter, Charles is sure he would have found it eminently so. It’s clean and empty, with a small single bed and light streaming in from the window. The view, when he goes to look at it, is over the little back garden—a garden, he notices, that’s thick with dead black leaves and overrun with brambles.
When he goes back down to the sitting-room he finds Miss Clairmont standing at the fire, warming her hands. He contemplates her profile, struck again by the loveliness of her face and the voluptuousness of her figure. She’s beautiful now; how exquisite she must once have been. He already suspected the Shelleys of deceiving him, and now he is sure: This woman before him is transparently incapable of persecuting anyone, and certainly not in the persistent and vicious manner Sir Percy was alleging. But if that much is obvious, much else remains obscure. How did Claire Clairmont come by the Shelley papers she is said to own? And is it really possible—as Sam suggested—that she once went to Maddox with an allegation of murder, even though surely she couldn’t have been much more than a girl at the time?
“Ah, Mr Mab,” she says then, smiling up into his thoughts. “And what is your verdict?”
“It’s a charming room, Miss Clairmont. If it is convenient to you, I would be happy to move in at once. I believe you told my sister the rent would be three shillings a week?”
It’s at the top end of the market for such a room, in such a street, but Charles won’t be paying.
Miss Clairmont once again offers her hand. “We will expect you tomorrow. You will no doubt have all the trappings of your calling to bring along with you.”
Yet another thing Charles has overlooked, and he curses Nancy silently—if rather ungratefully: Why couldn’t she have said he was a writer, or a doctor, or something equally free from obvious professional baggage?
“I thought also—” he says, faux-tentative.
“Yes?”
“It seemed to me that your garden might benefit from a little attention. I would be delighted to spend a little of my leisure time putting things to rights.”
She smiles. “I do not own the house, and feel a similar degree of detachment from the garden. But if it would amuse you to dig about in the undergrowth, I for one will not prevent you.”
Back at Buckingham Street, Charles pens a hasty note to the Shelleys, indicating that he has found a way of coming by the information they require, and requesting an advance to cover his rent and incidentals. Talent may not have descended down the Godwin line, but it seems meanness may well have done, and Charles has no intention of incurring expenses that may never be recouped. He sends Billy with the note to Chester Square, and indulges in a dry smile as he imagines Lady Shelley’s outrage should she see such an unprepossessing youth polluting her exclusive enclave. He then looks in quickly on Maddox before turning back round again and going out in search of some basic supplies. He remembers seeing a sign for a Manufacturer of Materials for Artists in High Holborn, and sets off in that direction, though the weather has taken a turn for the worse and it’ll be no surprise to see snow by nightfall. By the time he gets to the shop he’s starting to lose the feeling in his feet, and just wants to get this over with. After all, he only needs an easel, a few sheets of paper, and some cheap paint. But when he pushes open the door and looks around the shelves crowded with stock from ceiling to floor, it’s clear it’s not going to be anything like as simple as that. There are sketchbooks of every size and shape stacked alongside blocks of tracing paper, transfer paper, black lead paper, vellum paper, and drawing boards; there are watercolours in shells, watercolours in boxes, tube and bladder oils, camel-hair and sable brushes, white Italian chalk, black French chalk, Swiss crayons, porte-crayons, Indian rubber pens, and last but not least a fine selection of stumps (use—to Charles at least—unknown).
There is also, though, to Charles’ relief, a solid and rather balding young man standing behind the counter, copying entries into a ledger. The sight of a paying customer so late in the day brings a happy flush to his sturdy cheeks, but it doesn’t last very long. Charles rapidly proves to be one of that irritating class of clients who insist that they want one thing, when it is patently obvious that what they really need is something altogether different. After five minutes attempting to explain the relative merits of colours in cakes as against colours in powders, the shine on the young man’s courtesy has worn off, and he’s starting to look a little fatigued.
“Would sir not be better advised to consider something more adapted to, shall we say, his current level of experience? We have a number of very nice watercolour sets ideally suited to—ahem—a beginner.”
Charles glares at him. “How many more times—I don’t want the sort of stuff a beginner would use.”
“Well if sir is intent on wasting his money—”
“Sir is quite happy to waste other people’s money, in this instance. So just put together whatever it is I need, and have it sent round to Buckingham Street before the day is out. Do I make myself clear?”
“Admirably, sir,” says the young man, who is now rather pink about the ears. “One more thing sir may wish to consider,” he adds quietly, as Charles reaches the door. “If—theoretically speaking—I was advising a client who wished, for reasons of his own, to pass himself off as a painter, I would probably recommend he obtained samples of his supposed work. It being natural that someone might wish to see it.”
Charles turns. “And where, theoretically speaking, might you recommend he should obtain them?”
The young man drops his eyes once more to his ledger. “I would suggest he tried Ackerman’s. Of the Strand.”
Charles knows it, of course, it being so close to home, and something of a London institution, even if it’s now long past its Regency heyday. By the time he gets there the gas has been lit in the windows and he can see a number of people browsing the racks of prints, and several well-chaperoned young ladies taking tea at the counter as they leaf through books of plates. Charles is interested in neither prints nor plates, of course, but it seems original works are just as easy to come by, and when he leaves the shop into heavy snow half an hour later he has a roll of paper under his arm and a small but suitable collection of maritime scenes ready for display.
The snow is falling, too, in Chester Square, whirling into eddies about the doorstep of number 24, and collecting on the area steps, where the pigeons know better than to dare to venture. Two floors above, Lady Shelley is sitting by the fire in her private drawing-room, Charles’ letter in her hand. There are two spots of colour on her cheeks, and a thinly triumphant smile on her lips.
“You see,” she says to her husband, who seems from his stance to have entered the room only a few moments ago, “it is all as I told you it would be. We had only to wait, and an opportunity would present itself. And so it has. So it has.”
It’s not yet eight when Charles returns to St John’s Wood the following morning, an easel under his arm and a knapsack over one shoulder. As well as yesterday’s purchases, the latter includes a few changes of clothes and another volume from his collection of Shelley. The maid seems surprised to see him so early, but Charles wants to give himself plenty of time to arrange his new belongings before Miss Clairmont is likely to be up and about: He’s already developed an extremely healthy respect for his new landlady’s powers of discernment, and cannot afford any more faux pas. There are a few false starts, but within an hour or so the portfolio of drawings is lying as if nonchalantly against the chest of drawers, two or three shirts are hanging on the picture rail, and an unfinished (and therefore extremely cheap) scene of the cobb at Lyme Regis is mounted carefully on his new easel. He stands back with his hands on
his hips, assessing the effect. It’s getting there, there’s no doubt of that, but something still doesn’t quite ring true. It’s all just a bit too—new. But that’s a problem easily remedied. It’s the work of a few minutes to sacrifice one of the shirts to a smeared and spattered authenticity, scuff the easel with a couple of well-aimed kicks, and dig out some of the cakes of watercolours into pools of rather muddy paint. So, what now? The morning may have been an amusing distraction, but Charles has not lost sight of the real reason for his presence in this house. He closes the door carefully behind him and makes his way downstairs. There’s a smell of cooking wafting up from the kitchen in the basement, and through the half-closed door he can see a small table laid in the dining-room. But it is set only for one. Charles is clearly neither expected, nor welcome. He has no right to feel it as a snub, but after the warmth of his welcome yesterday it feels like one. He loiters for a few minutes in the hall, but when no-one appears there is nothing to be done but retire to his room and resume his steady if rather ponderous progress through his volume of Shelley. The maid brings him dinner on a tray, and eventually, past midnight, he gets up to undress. And it’s then that he hears it. Music coming from downstairs. Just a few bars—nothing more, and he wonders at first if he’s imagined it. He opens his door and goes out onto the landing, his ears straining against the silence. And there it is again. It is a woman’s voice, and it is quite beautiful. Haunting, lingering, rising and falling, like a pure swell of unendurable grief. And when the sound sinks and dies for the last time, he can hear the sound of weeping. Weeping in the darkness, alone.
The following morning he wakes to hard winter sunlight and high clouds skidding across a blanched white sky. The sodden garden is suddenly dazzling and etch-edged with frost, and Charles is seized by an impulse to spend the morning outside, in the air, away from this cramped little room and the intricate density of Shelley’s words. He dresses quickly then goes down into the kitchen, where the maid is scrubbing the floor. She smiles at him, first shyly, and then with undisguised amusement, when he says he wants to work in the garden, but she gives him the key to a small out-building where he will find mattocks and hoes and whatever else the previous tenants left behind. The air outside is freezing, and for the first hour or so he can barely feel his fingers, but by the time he has raked one border, and piled the rotting stems and leaves into a heap by the far wall, he’s worked up enough of a sweat to take his jacket off. He’s just hanging it on the back of the bench when he turns to see the maid beckoning him from the house.
“Miss Clairmont was wondering if you’d like to join her for luncheon, sir.”
“Good Lord, is it that time already?” says Charles with a grin, running his hand through his hair and smearing a good deal of mud on his forehead in the process. “I would be delighted. Please tell her I will wash my hands and then join her in a few moments.”
The table has been set again in the dining-room, but this time, it is for two. The fire is lit, and a basin of soup stands ready on the sideboard, but of Miss Clairmont there is no sign. It’s the first time he has been into this room and he looks round, taking the measure of the place. More books in crates and pictures stacked against the walls, but also a piano, a piano-stool draped in rich green brocade, and a mahogany sideboard. A sideboard that (as Charles quickly ascertains) conceals only what any such piece of furniture would be expected to hold. Having achieved that much, Charles goes over to look at the music propped open on the piano-stand, wondering if this was the song he heard the night before. It’s a Mozart aria, the pages yellowing now, and annotated here and there in a rounded, flowing hand. And on the front cover, the faded inscription, To C____. He’s just turning the pages back to where he found them when the paper slips from his fingers and slides down onto the floor and under the piano. He curses under his breath and drops quickly to his knees, wondering what sort of figure he will cut if his landlady finds him poking about on all fours. He has to move the stool out of the way to reach the pages, and he can’t understand at first why he’s unable to shift it, but then he lifts the green brocade and sees his mistake. Or rather Miss Clairmont’s subterfuge. Wedged between the stool’s four legs is a small wooden trunk. A travelling-trunk.
His heart is beating fast as he puts stool and music back carefully as he found them, and by the time his hostess comes through the door he is where he should be, behind his chair. Miss Clairmont’s long black hair is down, and she’s wearing a midnight-blue gown that clings to her body and cannot possibly have been either made or bought in England. She comes towards him in a rustle of silk on silk, and he can smell a dark musky scent on her skin.
“I thought you deserved some recompense for your pains,” she says with a smile. “That poor garden has indeed been brutally neglected.”
Charles is about to say how much he enjoyed the exercise (which is, in fact, true) but Miss Clairmont seems not to have expected a reply.
“And is it satisfactory, your garret?” she continues. “Annie and I heard so much banging and scraping yesterday that we were quite sure you had embarked on a major renovation.”
Charles blushes. “Well, I needed to get the best light. The right angle. You know how it is.”
Miss Clairmont takes her seat at the table, and rings a little silver bell. “Well, I can imagine, certainly. I had my own portrait painted once, but I do not consider it a success. I’m sure the artist meant well, but she left me looking as if I had a raging toothache.”
“It can’t have been easy to capture your likeness.”
Miss Clairmont laughs, a bright, delicious open-mouthed laugh; he can see her white teeth, and her red throat. “I will take that as a compliment, Mr Mab, even if you did not intend it so!” she says as she unfolds her napkin. “Pray have the gallantry not to disillusion me—it’s a very long time since I have received such flattery from so charming a young man.”
The maid comes in to serve the soup—and save Charles, incidentally, from any further reckless praise. The broth, as it turns out, is rather too watery, and the cutlets that follow rather too tough, but Charles is far too captivated by his companion to notice. It is, indeed—and despite the food—quite the most enjoyable meal he’s had in a long time. Miss Clairmont is enchanting company—well read, well travelled, and well informed, moving easily from an animated discussion on British politics, to diverting and self-deprecating tales of life in her ‘ice cave.’
“You would not believe the chaos and confusion that reigns in even the most aristocratic Russian households, Mr Mab,” she tells him, as the maid collects the dishes and places a coffee-pot and cups in the centre of the table. “I once counted some twenty children running about in the same house, and all of them more or less under my care. I cannot quite be sure of the number, because frankly you never could be certain who was actually in residence from one hour to the next. What with the legitimate offspring, the foundlings and orphans, and the ramshackle tribe of cousins, half cousins, old maids, and idiot aunts, you can picture to yourself the constant racket and quarrelling I had to contend with. Truly, Mr Mab, it was like living in an everlasting state of Saturnalia.”
“It must have taken courage to journey to such a far-off place on your own.”
A shadow crosses her face. “I believed I had no alternative. I thought that in Russia I might be able to forget all the disasters that had blighted my youth—all the misery I met with in Italy. But the more I fled the more they haunted me, and the wounds have now carved themselves so deep in my heart I do not think I will ever be free of them.”
She is being—he suspects—deliberately mysterious, though an unkinder word might be manipulative: Charles defies anyone to hear such an intriguing overture without wishing to know the rest, but he’s prepared to bet that all such questions will be met only with silence and withdrawal. But he’s willing to play that game, if she is. After all, he has enquiries of his own to pursue.
“I am sorry to hear that you were unhappy in Italy. That a country
we both love should have caused you such pain.”
“I do not blame the landscape, Mr Mab,” she says sullenly.
“Speaking for myself, I always found the Italians most hospitable—somewhat wily, yes, and not the cleanest—”
Her face hardens, but she does not reply.
“I’m sorry,” says Charles, after a pause. “I should not have pressed you.”
She nods quickly, then lifts her cup and takes a sip. The silence spreads and softens, and a sudden wave of her scent sifts oddly with the bitter aroma of the thick black coffee, so unlike any Charles has ever tasted. He wonders if he should take his leave—if he has offended her—but just as he is on the point of rising she begins to speak again, though her voice is so low, and her eyes so distant, that her words seem for herself alone.
“I lingered in Italy for almost five years, always hoping for some change for the better, but none ever came. On the day I left it seemed the very skies shared my grief as the coach ploughed on in the pouring rain, and I could scarce even bring myself to look out of the window at the trees and mountains I had once so loved. Every hill we came to, I made myself get out and wade up through the mud and the mist, in a desperate attempt to numb my heart by fatiguing my body. When I wrote my journal that night—stiff in a chair in a dire hovel—I swore I would never take up my pen again, if it was only to record such desolate, impossible misery.”
The maid comes in and replaces the empty coffee-pot with another, then stirs the fire, bobs to her unseeing mistress, and closes the door.
“Many times since I have wondered,” Miss Clairmont continues softly, “how my life might have been different had I chosen another path. But I have always been a hopeless idealist when it comes to love. Tutto, o niente.”
A Fatal Likeness Page 7