The Optickal Illusion

by Rachel Halliburton

  ‘Fear not, I am not weeping,’ he said, disposing of the tear dismissively with his silk handkerchief. ‘It appears I have contracted some infection of the eye. The fool doctor has given me some powder or another to treat it. I believe it will make little difference, but the infection is not severe and it will pass.’

  On the wall behind him hung a large copy of an early version of a Rubens nude. It was the 1636 Judgement of Paris, in which the goddesses Venus, Minerva and Juno had just disrobed on Mercury’s order so that Paris could judge which of the three was the most beautiful. In this version Paris sat fully clothed, his foot poking out nonchalantly as he surveyed the female flesh in front of him. Venus was fully exposed, holding her arms above her head to show off her breasts to their full advantage, while Minerva and Juno gazed confrontationally at Paris, with velvet drapes only partly preserving their modesty. From the very start, Ann Jemima had been uncomfortable being in the room with Cosway and this picture. In their first lesson he had asked her to talk about the composition of the work, and sat there in silence, running his finger across his lips as she did so. She had felt the catch in her stomach as she started talking – she could smell him, feel the sense of him waiting. ‘This is for educational purposes you understand,’ he had told Mrs Tullett, who sat in the corner watching them.

  Ann Jemima had experienced a small moment of malicious joy when she pointed out the detail in the picture of Juno’s peacock hissing angrily at Paris’s own dog, which crouched, terrified, between its master’s legs. Yet as Cosway had swiftly retaliated, Paris himself showed no such fear – he gazed coolly at the goddesses’ bodies, his right foot swinging nonchalantly over the peacock’s head. ‘He could crush that bird in one swift move,’ he had told her. ‘Look at how the curve of his foot perfectly mirrors the curve of its head and neck.’

  Often since coming to London Ann Jemima had remembered her childhood as if it had belonged to a separate person. But it never felt quite so far away as it did when she was with Cosway. If she reflected too much on the difference between these lessons and those with Septimus, she knew it would undo her, so she would fight down the memories and reapply herself to the present.

  Tonight was the first time that Ann Jemima and Cosway had been confined in the same space on their own since the lessons had started. It was a danger she had not anticipated – when she and Mr Provis came to see Mr Cosway before the meeting at the coffee house the arrangement was that the two men would go on to Wright’s together, while she returned to the palace. It came as a shock when Cosway announced he was going to see West one more time instead.

  ‘Why?’ she and Provis asked simultaneously.

  ‘My dears, do you not understand how clever you have been?’ he replied sibilantly. He walked over to Ann Jemima and did a circle round her.

  ‘Your persuasive skills have exceeded even my expectations. There is no end to your surprises. You have created an extraordinary situation. You now have more power than Benjamin West among the artists at the Academy.’ His words rang in the air as she and Provis looked at each other dubiously. ‘I think it would be the coup de grâce if he were now persuaded to ask for your forgiveness,’ he continued.

  ‘No, it is too risky,’ Provis hissed immediately. ‘We have an advantage we expected not – let us reap its rewards. The proof I now have of his misconduct is incontrovertible.’

  ‘I know this goes against all intuition. But please understand the wisdom of this. If West publicly acknowledges his crime, it will raise your powers of negotiation still further. It will also mean there will be no unpleasantness with the King, which there might be if one of his appointees is forced from such a prominent position.’

  ‘You are trying to make an already complex situation more complex. Does not my father’s recent visit prove we have given him enough chances?’ This from Ann Jemima.

  ‘Perhaps thankfully for all of us, we are not living in a morality tale,’ he replied caustically. ‘This is not about who has done right or wrong, this is about power. You have won a major battle, but I suspect it would be better for you both if you won the war. Sometimes in order to do this we must make allies of those we least want to. I am sure you would agree, my dear.’

  Mr Provis had agreed – with many grunts and begrudging glances – to leave her at Mr Cosway’s residence while he sped on to meet the other artists. ‘My housekeeper is just downstairs,’ Mr Cosway had said with dry amusement, watching his agitation. ‘So we have a chaperone. Now begone, man. You have important information to impart to the artists before the agreement is drawn up. Ann Jemima’s carriage will arrive any moment to take her back to the palace. And I will report back to you on my meeting with West.’

  Yet fifteen minutes later, the carriage had not arrived for Ann Jemima. The teacher and his pupil continued to sit opposite each other in the large well-lit studio where Ann Jemima had taken so many lessons. She was becoming increasingly sure that Cosway had lied to her father. The scrapes and thumps and occasional snatches of humming she normally associated with the housekeeper moving around downstairs were not there. With a slight tightening of the throat she realised they were entirely alone.

  ‘Do you believe matters are progressing well?’ asked Cosway, putting away his handkerchief. The whisper of a razor blade in his voice. ‘Who would have ever thought it could have ended up like this?’ he continued. ‘After such beginnings?’

  ‘It has involved much daring,’ Ann Jemima replied, feeling her heart speed up in response to the silence around them. She could sense the small hairs on her arm standing on end. ‘We have enjoyed the adventure of this,’ she continued, attempting not to look disconcerted, ‘and soon I will be in a position to pay you the money you asked for from Mr Provis. Then all debts will be settled.’

  ‘Mr Provis. Your fiercely protective father.’ He regarded her with sarcasm. ‘You will have noted that I did not reply to your letter. Do you really think I did this in the hope of getting money?’

  ‘No, I do not.’ She saw she had shocked him. His dry lips pursed.

  ‘You have done it to take revenge,’ she continued.

  ‘Revenge on whom, precisely.’

  ‘On the world. It gives you a great satisfaction to bring out the baser motivations in those around you.’ His eyes widened, but he did not speak. ‘You have greater contempt for Mr West than anybody, because he is deemed to be your superior, and now you have revealed him as a liar. By coincidence you have ended up profiting Mr Provis and myself. But if the game had worked better by not profiting us, I am sure you would not have hesitated to play it thus.’

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘What precisely are you hoping to gain by such observations?’ There was the grating of flint in his voice, but no spark.

  ‘At some point I believe the game must start to bore you. Would you not prefer the money?’

  ‘Oh I have a price. But I am not sure you would like to pay it.’

  Ann Jemima became suddenly aware of the smell of rabbit glue simmering in a pot on the hearth. In the centre of the room was a large easel and a small plaster model of a Venus de Milo, while canvases in various stages of preparation propped against the walls. Brushes made of hog’s bristle, badger’s bristle and mongoose hair stood in jars on a small table. Without entirely comprehending why, she realised she was looking at her surroundings as if for escape routes.

  Another memory suddenly assailed her. ‘Colours can be dangerous as well as beautiful,’ Cosway had declared during a lesson. ‘Yellow orpiment is potentially deadly because it is an arsenic sulphide. In the past warriors used it to tip their arrows with poison.’ He had stuck out his tongue towards the brush so it almost touched it, before retracting it, laughing loudly as she regarded him with disbelief.

  She studied his face, increasingly anxious about what trick he was going to play this time. When the veneer of society wit dropped from his expression, it was a shock, even though she had felt the moment coming. ‘Lift your skirt and petticoats.’
His voice sibilant, sinister. Repulsion slithered across her skin as, heart beating faster, she shook her head. ‘Lift them, I say,’ he said, his gaze intensifying.

  ‘Mr Cosway, I have told you in the past…’ she began, and then gasped in shock as he pulled his breeches down to reveal an erect cock. His breathing fast. He lurched forward and grabbed her hand to guide it so she could pleasure him. She snatched it away and turned to run for the door, only to realise that it was locked. ‘You cannot trap me like this,’ she shouted, turning to face him again.

  Fear mixed with contempt. As he came close to her she observed the bristle on his cheeks, the flecks of spit around his mouth. She looked around her frantically for some weapon with which she could defend herself. Her eye lit on one of the heavy granite mullers used to mix the paints. ‘No, that would kill him, and I would be punished even further,’ scudded across her mind. Next to it was a palette knife, and it was this that she grabbed. She was not remotely certain what she would do until the very last moment when she jabbed it in his thigh. The howl of a dog in pain filled the studio.

  ‘Is this what you do to settle your debts?’ he cried, bending over double.

  ‘I do not owe you this,’ she shouted in reply, turning back to the door, her hand searching agitatedly for the key as she reached it. ‘You blackmailed my father so you could give me lessons, but all you wanted was to try to reduce me to nothing. That is not chivalry – that is the work of a devil.’

  He pulled the palette knife from his thigh. The blood trickled darkly down his leg. Next he took a rag from a nearby table and dabbed it over the wound, pulled his breeches up over his now flaccid cock.

  ‘After tonight you are going to be a very rich young lady,’ he said grimly. ‘As long as no one finds out the truth,’ he grimaced, ‘because of my help you will be able to pick and choose who you marry.’

  ‘Not if I’m carrying an old man’s bastard,’ she hissed. ‘I cannot believe you stooped to this.’

  He groped in his breeches, which despite the rag were starting to stain with blood, and pulled out an empty pig’s bladder. ‘There are other uses for this beside the storage of paint,’ he declared bitterly.

  Finally she found the key. Angrily she flung open the door. ‘If you try and tell people that I have assaulted you, I shall make sure you suffer as much as I do,’ she declared in a low voice. ‘The worse you can do for yourself is give me nothing to lose.’ She rushed headlong down the corridor, through the drawing room and into the entrance hall. As she looked briefly into the mirror hanging there her reflection screamed back at her – millstone eyes, the red riding angrily through her cheeks. She took a deep breath to assert her composure, then, after adjusting her hat, she opened the front door onto the street, where she saw, as if it were operating according to the cruel whimsical logic of a dream, that the carriage ordered by Thomas Provis earlier that evening was just drawing up to collect her.

  She was shuddering when she climbed out of the carriage at St James’s Palace. A mixture of disgust and exhaustion coursed through her body. If the meeting goes well at Wright’s Coffee House tonight, she thought to herself, we will receive the first instalment of the money within a month. ‘And then all this will be over,’ she said angrily, her voice paper-thin with exhaustion against the evening air.

  ‘What will be over?’

  She gasped. Put her hand to her mouth as if trying, too late, to catch the escaped words. She turned to see Josiah Darton. He saw the mounting horror on her face as she backed away from him as if fearing another attack.

  ‘Miss Provis, what ails you?’ he asked.

  She looked numbly at the parcel he was holding, at his face, at the sentry standing in the box behind them. The reality of what was before her speared through by the memory of what she had left behind.

  ‘Why did you stop me from fleeing?’ she cried angrily. ‘Why did you stop me? Everything I feared has come to pass.’

  His face became severe. ‘Miss Provis, what has happened?’

  She began to laugh, and found she could not stop. ‘Oh, Mr Darton,’ she said. ‘I have been…’ She felt the urge to vomit and swallowed once, twice.

  He grasped her by the shoulders.

  ‘Touch me not,’ she spat, pushing him away.

  She could see the panicked calculations on his face.

  ‘Miss Provis. Who has… who has?’

  ‘Mr Cosway,’ she whispered bitterly. ‘No matter what I do, he is always going to be there to drag me down.’

  ‘Cosway.’ She could hear the shock in his voice. ‘What has he done?’

  ‘Tonight should have been a night of triumph. But my father left me alone with him, and…’ Her head was swirling, and the full gravitational force of her exhaustion suddenly became apparent. ‘Mr Darton, I beseech you to let me go back to the apartment on my own.’

  He stared at her intently.

  ‘You need a physician.’

  ‘No, no, I will be better soon.’

  She hesitated a moment and put her hand to her forehead. She sensed Darton’s hand held out behind her, as if anticipating she was going to fall.

  ‘I am not going to faint.’

  Her glance cut into him, defensive, hostile.

  ‘Miss Provis, I know that you do not trust me on many matters.’ His voice was trying to steady her, she could sense his fear. ‘But my conduct towards you has always been honourable.’

  ‘Honourable?! It is you who trapped me. You who brought me back to the wreckage.’ As she cried out the words it seemed that something collapsed in her. Tears threatened again. Quickly Darton nodded at the sentrymen standing at the side-entrance to the palace, their expressions characteristically impassive, and escorted her through it.

  As they walked into Green Cloth Court, he was struck by how slight Ann Jemima suddenly seemed to be. He wanted to ask her further questions, but it was as if she were trapped in another, uglier world in which he could not reach her. Normally, Darton reflected, whenever he’d seen Ann Jemima, the overwhelming sense was of her observing everyone else – coolly gauging her surroundings with her pale blue gaze. Then he looked down and saw the blood on her hand.

  He was about to comment on it, but slamming footsteps accompanied by laughter were heard. A young dark-haired seamstress rushed across the court, closely pursued by a young man with a beard. The seamstress, suddenly aware that there were other people there, flipped her gaze over towards Darton and Ann Jemima. She stifled her laughter for a moment, then with a quick glance towards her suitor hurried into Great Court.

  Darton looked back towards Ann Jemima. ‘You have been hurt,’ he said quietly.

  She did not reply, it was as if she were in a trance.

  ‘I had assumed you would be in France again by now, Mr Darton,’ she said. Her words floated across the cold evening air like ghosts.

  ‘It is better for me to be in England right now,’ he replied evenly.

  He realised his main concern was to get her to the apartment before she passed out. Slowly, steadily, he walked alongside her. Finally the small green door appeared in front of them.

  Before he could knock on it, the door was snatched open. Mrs Tullett seemed to fill the doorway, her eyes malignant, her features scored with suspicion.

  ‘What is she doing with you, Mr Darton?’ Her voice a vulgar stripe of colour against the dusk.

  ‘Miss Provis is unwell,’ he replied.

  Mrs Tullett’s face had assumed a porcine grimace – it dissolved as she looked at Ann Jemima.

  ‘My dear, what has happened to you?’

  Ann Jemima said nothing.

  ‘Has this man upset you?’

  ‘He has not.’ The words came out faintly.

  ‘Ann Jemima.’ Mrs Tullett’s concern gushed out messily – she grabbed the girl as if she were a rag doll and dragged her into the apartment. Darton followed. ‘I will wait just here, Mrs Tullett,’ he said, sitting in an armchair by the fire. Mrs Tullett shook Ann Jemima hysterically. Dart
on wondered for a moment if Ann Jemima’s greatest danger was her protector. But he knew he could not intervene, so he stood by as she bundled her through the door and into her bedroom.

  Yaps of concern filtered through the wall.

  When Mrs Tullett came back her suspicion still seemed to snip at the air. ‘I warned her that it would come to this. I knew no good could come of persisting with her plans.’

  She looked defiantly at Darton.

  ‘She was delirious when I met her at the gate,’ he replied. ‘And she has blood on her hand. Did you see it?’

  Mrs Tullett nodded, frowning.

  ‘Is it her blood?’

  Her shake of the head was almost imperceptible.

  ‘Cosway’s?’ he whispered.

  Mrs Tullett clasped and unclasped her hands.

  ‘She said she could control him, but he has been an animal waiting to pounce these many months.’

  Darton leant forward alarmed.

  ‘If the blood is Cosway’s, does one of us need to go there to check…?’

  Mrs Tullett eyes darted. She was silent, but he could see the desire to talk bubbling up inside her.

  ‘Mrs Tullett, it may be that we do not have time to lose. Shall I go to Mr Cosway’s to check that there is nothing we need to conceal?’

  ‘She has not killed him.’ Her words smack out bluntly.

  ‘Are you certain there has been no accident?’

  ‘She was forced to defend herself.’ Her chin trembles. ‘But that much I did get from her. She still has her virtue…’ Her voice shakes with outrage. ‘And he is only wounded, the coward…’

  He hesitated.

  ‘It is known that Cosway has a large collection of pornographic literature,’ he said finally. ‘I have heard he is frequently to be seen in bookshops off the Strand. He considers himself a connoisseur of French works in particular.’ He grimaced.