by Andy Conway
He could see it changing. The paint was being applied more thickly, in a more cavalier fashion. It wasn’t about the light anymore, it was about the form, the expression. Such boldness and excitement. And it all felt so utterly right.
And yet even the Impressionist revolution was still regarded as slightly scandalous and ‘modern’ here in this city, this college. And ‘modern’ was exactly the opposite of what great art should be. Great art was classical, formal, old, timeless. Great art was boring. Modern art was akin to throwing a bucket of paint in the public’s face.
He saw the depressing evidence of it all around him: the obsession with classicism, with nature, and the worship of the Pre-Raphaelite movement — with the exception of their earlier, more controversial work. The Pre-Raphaelites had been the daring new innovators once, the revolutionaries. They had been scandalous, mocked, derided, thought outrageous. But slowly they had become accepted, slowly they had become the establishment, slowly they had become boring and predictable and safe. And now Millais’s dreadful Bubbles had been acquired by Pears’ Soap to be used in their advertisements, and the Head had proclaimed it a beauteous meeting of art and commerce.
Later that afternoon, he collected his derby and put on his jacket and trudged out of the building. That was all they wanted him to do: teach them how to become illustrators, draughtsmen, craftsmen (always men, even though they accepted the fee-paying women onto the courses), and discouraging the thought of art for its own sake.
He trudged down Colmore Row, allowing the sour mood to dissipate in the afternoon sun, looking forward to meeting Arthur off the next train from London. The pavement was already thick with human traffic and he moved to avoid a street hawker selling pencils.
“Mr Pearce! Sir!”
He turned at the voice calling him. Louisa running, a card portfolio under one arm, her free hand holding her skirts up, a straw hat with the red ribbon reflecting the dazzling summer light.
“Miss Gill,” he said, surprised.
She stopped, panting and said, “I just wanted to say thank you.”
“For what?”
“For defending me. No man will stand up for a woman’s rights,” she said. “You are the only man I know who does so.”
“Surely your father supports your artistic ambitions?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, frowning. “But I rather fear he won’t when he hears I’m going to Paris.”
Daniel laughed. “Well, let that wait till you have some learning behind you.”
She lunged forward suddenly, catching him off guard, and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you!”
He stood frozen in shock, pulled out his red handkerchief and brushed his cheek. She had no lipstick but he felt that his face was stained. That anyone might see that kiss writ large on his face.
She turned and approached the street hawker, buying pencils from him.
Daniel glanced around in panic and his eyes met Sidney’s.
“Evening, sir!” Sidney grinned, brushing past and on down the street.
He had seen it. He would tell everyone: the female student had been seen kissing the teacher.
Daniel clenched the red handkerchief in his fist and balled it into his breast pocket.
Louisa bought her pencils and walked across the road to St. Phillip’s Square, swallowed by the shadow of the gothic church.
Daniel watched her, then he saw that the street hawker was watching her too. The hawker turned and glared with vacant eyes that pierced Daniel’s soul. Repulsion seared his flesh, a sudden queasiness, a sense of dread, and for a moment Daniel saw reflected in the hawker’s dead eyes the end of everything.
7
HIS MOOD WAS SOLEMN as he bought a platform ticket and let the might of Snow Hill Station swallow him.
Standing on a train platform, pointing a pistol at a clock, fading from sight.
And there was Arthur, walking through a cloud of steam in a linen suit and straw boater, a bushy moustache framing his bright smile.
“Daniel!” he called, trotting forth, dropping his suitcase and holding out his hand.
“Arthur! You look well. Marriage agrees with you.”
Arthur patted his paunch. “Rather too much, I’m afraid. It will soon take that pinched hungry artist look from your cheeks.”
They walked down the platform and out through the arches and Arthur stopped, looking the place up and down with approval. “Birmingham’s growing,” he said.
“It will be a city next year, they think. The Queen very much approves of the place.”
“And so she should,” Arthur chuckled.
“How was your journey?”
“More comfortable than my year on a whaler, so I can’t complain. The Great Western is a fine journey. Started out from Netley this morning.”
“Then you must be famished. I always eat in Birmingham. There are no restaurants in Moseley.”
They had already passed the Arcade restaurant but Daniel walked on, eager to find a better place with which to impress his old friend. He looked this way and that, his mind’s eye scanning the city for suitable places to dine.
As they emerged on Temple Street, he saw a familiar figure, recognizing the practised slouch and shabby genteel demeanour immediately. From his brown felt trilby right down to his check trousers, half way between gentleman and labourer: a practised artisan look that meant he could just about mix in both high and low circles with ease. He was older than Daniel and Arthur, a good twenty years older, and wore the same kind of box jacket Daniel had seen many artists in Paris wearing, with a patterned waistcoat, open necked shirt and bright red silk cravat. It was the look of an artist.
“Tom? Thomas Conway!”
The man turned and stared and seemed dumbfounded for an instant, caught out, then smiled forcedly and came over, hand held out in greeting.
“Daniel Pearce!”
“This is bizarre,” said Daniel. “Here I come to meet my friend on the London train, and here you are too. What brings you here from London?”
Tom Conway grinned and curled his oiled moustache. “I had heard that a certain old friend of mine was getting married this week.”
“I thought you couldn’t make it. This is wonderful!”
Tom Conway shrugged and avoided Daniel’s eyes. “Well, I couldn’t leave my old friend alone at the altar.”
Daniel caught Arthur’s shrewd gaze, looking Tom up and down, observing his lie, trying to deduce the truth behind it.
“Tom, this is my friend and best man, Doctor Doyle.”
“Arthur, please.”
Tom reached out a hand and shook Arthur’s warmly. “Honoured to make your acquaintance.”
“I had thought we’d lost you to London forever, Tom.”
“I know I wrote that I couldn’t make it. But here I am. My sister is looking after the children. I’m at your service in your final days as a noble bachelor.”
Arthur chuckled. “Noble bachelor. I like that phrase.”
Daniel looked Tom up and down. “Have you just arrived?”
“Not more than an hour ago.”
“You didn’t bring luggage?”
“Came up from Euston on the London North West. Left my bag at the station. Wanted to walk around the old town for a while.”
There was something he wasn’t saying, Daniel knew. It didn’t make sense that he had arrived without giving advance word. He was giving off the impression of a man who’d been in Birmingham for a day or two.
“Arthur and I are going to have dinner somewhere. Will you join us? If you have nothing to do?”
“A fine idea,” said Tom.
“It is my intention,” said Arthur, “to get our noble bachelor roaring drunk tonight, so we shall need some ballast.”
“Here,” said Daniel, pointing to Redpaths. “This pub does a fine meal.”
Tom Conway frowned and his cheeks coloured as he looked at the floor.
“What is it, Tom?” Daniel asked.
�
��Please don’t think me awkward,” said Tom. “I have come here to be of service to you and to see you off in fine style. But... you see, I no longer drink. In fact, I avoid drinking establishments like the plague.”
Daniel and Arthur exchanged an embarrassed glance. Tom looked up and met their gaze with sudden naked honesty.
“I’m no Bible-bashing Puritan. It is not a question of morality with me.”
“Our Lord liked a bit of wine,” said Arthur. “Positively insisted on it if I remember rightly.”
“That is true,” said Tom. “And no doubt he did not have the self-destructive tendencies that I am cursed with. The drink was not good to me, nor to my wife, and I have taken a personal pledge to avoid that particular devil on my shoulder.”
Daniel clapped him on the shoulder, as if squashing that devil. “We understand. Will you not step foot inside a drinking establishment at all?”
Tom smiled. “I couldn’t see my old friend see out his bachelor days without a good drink. And tonight, if you will be of support to me, I will walk into any pub you choose. For your sake only. If you promise to let no drop of alcohol pass my lips.”
“We swear it,” said Arthur. “You have my word.”
“Thank you. But if we are to eat, let’s eat in a place where no drink is served. I believe Corbett’s Temperance Hotel is around the corner?”
“I’m afraid they’re knocking it down, Tom, to build a post office. But there’s another, on New Street. The Trevalyan. We can eat there.”
“Capital idea,” said Arthur.
Relieved laughter broke out between them and as they set off down Temple Street Daniel quite forgot his bad mood and the potential catastrophe of Louisa Gill’s kiss. He wiped his cheek once more, and forgot about it.
The Trevalyan’s restaurant, although cramped, had a refined air and a well-stocked library, and Arthur immediately pronounced it a respectable establishment befitting any literary gentleman.
They ordered from their selection of puddings, lark and kidney, oyster and steak, and plain rump steak pudding, with all the vegetables, an awkward silence and a jug of Montserrat Limetta between them.
“How strange,” said Arthur, “that our story comes to this point. You are to marry Arabella the day after tomorrow, who was but a little girl the day you...’ he faltered, unsure of the right words.
Daniel’s eyes fell and his stomach turned, remembering the horror of the morning. “I’ve come to call it my awakening. But in truth, I feel anything but awake.”
“I do apologize, Daniel,” said Arthur. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Let us look to the future, eh?”
“But how can I look to the future, if I don’t have a past, Arthur?”
“I’m sure your memories will come. The past can be unlocked.”
“Can you unlock it for me, Arthur? Can your medicine do that for me?”
Arthur blushed and shrugged.
“Because the day after tomorrow, I have to face my new wife, and face her as half a man.”
Tom looked up from the preoccupied cloud that consumed him — what was wrong with him? Something had spooked him. “Forget the past,” he said, gruffly. “A new life. That’s what matters.”
“Do you think, Tom?”
“Make new memories. Make a future.”
Arthur smiled brightly, perking himself up. “Capital advice! And let’s not forget that you have a past. You have a past with Arabella. You saved her life. That’s the part of the story I like.”
“It was nothing,” said Daniel.
“Nonsense! She would have died if it weren’t for you! What was it? Only three years after you arrived?”
“Yes. I was her tutor. Such a sweet little girl she was. She was choking on an apple. It was lodged in her windpipe.”
Arthur looked at Tom now, telling him the story. “And Daniel here came up with some novel way to dislodge it. Not hitting her on the back or taking her by the ankles and holding her upside down. No. He stepped behind her and put his arms around her and gave her a fierce hug, and out it came, like a bullet.”
Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know why. It felt the right thing to do.”
“You should patent it. It could be called the Pearce Manoeuvre.”
Daniel caught Tom’s dark look. Did he disapprove? There was something in his look that cast a shadow over the table. He thought hard, eager to establish some sort of common ground between Arthur and Tom. And then it came to him. Of course!
“You know, I’d entirely forgotten that you both share a passion for the written word. Arthur here has just had a story published.”
“Novel, actually,” said Arthur.
“I do apologize,” said Daniel. “It’s to be a novel now?”
“Ward Locke will release it as such this very month,” said Arthur.
“Arthur! That’s great news!”
Arthur smiled and nodded and shrugged, seeming less excited.
Daniel turned to Tom, aware that he was talking too much to fill the awkward silence. “I read it in Beeton’s Christmas Annual last year.”
Tom stared hard at Arthur and said, “But you’re a doctor, yes?”
“I write stories on the side.”
“And do you make any money by it?” said Tom.
Arthur wiped his mouth and avoided Tom’s gaze, as if he found the subject distasteful. “Not as much as I would like,” he said. “But you are a writer also, Tom?”
Tom held out his arms to present himself. “Thomas Conway, writer and publisher of lives of the famous and gallows ballads, sir.”
“Gallows ballads?” asked Arthur, a glint of amusement in his voice.
“And what kind of story is your novel?”
“It’s a detective story,” said Arthur.
“Then we are both purveyors of cheap fiction, are we not?”
“Tom, please...’ began Daniel.
“It’s fine, Daniel,” said Arthur. “He’s right. As a part-time scribbler of detective fiction I have a very short nose with which to look down on any other writer. But tell me, Tom, is there much money in gallows ballads?”
“My chapbooks have kept me accustomed to the luxurious life in which you see me.”
They all laughed and the tension defused somewhat. Tom took a great gulp of Limetta.
“To be honest, there are no public hangings now. It used to be a fine trade, feeding off a hanging crowd. Now the pickings are slimmer, visiting nearby taverns and hoping for local legend status. But a fair crowd still turns up outside every prison just to hear the moment the trapdoor opens.”
“And who’s your publisher?” Arthur asked.
“I prefer to be beholden to no man,” said Tom. “I am the master of my own fate. The one creator of my craft, and its chief beneficiary.”
“You publish these chapbooks yourself?” said Arthur, astonished.
“Indeed I do.”
“Oh, I see,” said Arthur, as if his lark and kidney pudding had gone off.
Tom grinned and said, “Tell me, Arthur, how much is this publisher paying you for your novel?”
Arthur smiled and nodded, as if caught out. “On this question, Tom, you will find me far from smug.”
“Why so?” asked Daniel.
“They have paid me very little money,” said Arthur. “The terms are unconscionable, if I’m to be honest. I fear I shall be a doctor for a very long time.”
Arthur looked up and seemed to expect gloating from Tom, but he was surprised to find him nodding sagely, sympathetically.
“Well,” said Tom. “I have never met a bigger set of brigands and swindlers than the gentlemen of the publishing profession in all my days. And I’ve seen a great many wrongdoers at the end of a rope in my time.”
Arthur laughed heartily and Daniel and Tom joined him.
“I’ll drink to that,” said Arthur, raising his glass.
They toasted it and laughed more, all enmity between them now drowned.
“Still,” said Daniel, “I hope
to buy your novel when it appears. It must be exciting.”
Arthur waved it aside. “I have much better news than that,” he said. He took another draught of Limetta and sat back. “We are expecting a much more important arrival. Mary Louise and I.”
“Why, Arthur!” cried Daniel. “Do you mean?”
“It’s only three months but, God willing, we can expect our first child in the new year.”
Daniel leapt up and shook Arthur’s hand vigorously. Tom too offered his congratulations and they drank a toast to the new arrival.
“You too are married, Tom?” Arthur asked.
“The least said about my marriage, the better,” he snorted. “We don’t want to put off this good man. He’s about to marry a sweet girl and all.”
They laughed and drank to marriage. The Montserrat Limetta was finished and so was the meal.
“Well, it seems to me,” said Tom, “that we have a noble bachelor to send off and a baby’s head to wet. I suggest we repair to Moseley and its finest hostelries.”
“Hear, hear,” said Arthur. “And my promise still stands. I will see you come to no harm.”
They paid the bill and spilled out into the warm evening sun.
Daniel looked up the street towards the oppressive, looming presence of Christ Church which glowered over them and for some reason he found himself thinking of Louisa Gill’s kiss that still stained his cheek, and the unsettling, intense look that the pencil selling vagrant had given him.
“Shocking murder,” said Arthur.
“What’s that?” Daniel saw that Arthur had his rolled up copy of the Gazette.
“In Highgate. Young girl called Lily Moore.”
“Perhaps you could catch this murderer?” said Tom. “You being the writer of detective fiction and all?”
Arthur looked up from the paper to check if Tom were making fun of him. “Damn it, I bet I could. All I would need is a good look at the crime scene. From that it would be a simple matter of logical deduction till the killer was tracked down.”
“In a city this size?” said Tom, waving a hand to the throng of traffic bustling all around them on New Street. “Just look at the masses of people all around. A killer can disappear easily in a place like this.”