by Chris James
‘He’s talking to it,’ Mama said. ‘Having a conversation with a book, indeed. We done the right thing letting him have it, d’you think, Stanley?’
But Papa, hovering over my shoulder as I turned the pages, was equally smitten by the illustrations of witches and demons at work.
The following day I had a further treat in store, my first visit to the National Gallery. As we climbed the steps outside, Papa pointed to the bronze lions guarding the fountains in Trafalgar Square.
‘My father brought me here on my fifteenth birthday, the day they installed those lions. And a very special painting was on loan here before being taken to the Louvre, in Paris and exhibited there.’
I was fascinated by the huge canvasses on display as Papa led me inside and into a large hall where a crowd jostled around one particular painting, all others completely ignored.
‘Is it the same painting, Papa?’ I asked, pointing to a sign hanging from the ceiling.
‘On loan from The Louvre – Paris’.
‘We’ll have to wait and see, Jacob. I’m just as excited as you are,’ Papa said, holding a small bunch of cornflowers he had purchased from a vendor on the steps.
I questioned why people would wait for anything so long and it seemed an age before we finally got to the front. And then I knew why.
‘Tell me what you see, what you feel,’ Papa asked me, smiling at my gaping mouth.
‘I see the greatest painting of all time. By the greatest artist and scientist of all time. My master. My inspiration. I feel... I feel drawn to it. Like I’m part of it – it’s part of me. I have to touch it! I must!’
Papa laughed, his hand firmly on my shoulder.
‘You can’t. It’s a priceless treas–’
But I wriggled free and ducked under the rope barrier. I reached out, my fingers lightly touching the crackled varnish. Oblivious to the groans and gasps from the crowd, I was in a different place; the revered artist’s world, his kingdom. I trembled as something coursed through my whole being, and my hands and legs shook. The room about me turned dark with just a bright light emanating from the painting, drawing me in. I couldn’t breathe, my throat constricted. Her smile pulled me ever closer. As I touched her face, a bolt shot through my whole body.
She had me at her mercy.
‘You, boy!’
I heard it, but it came from outside that world. Suddenly, a sharp pain in my right ear. Twisting. Pulling me, dragging me back to my papa.
‘Stay behind the barrier,’ clearer now as the room illuminated once again. Papa spoke to the uniformed guard while I caught my breath.
‘She spoke to me, Papa.’
‘Jacob, what has got into you, boy? You’ll have us thrown out!’
‘She spoke to me, Papa. Did you hear her?’
‘Mona Lisa hasn’t spoken to anybody for nigh on four hundred years.’ He dragged me over to a bench, sat me down hard. ‘Stay there while I go and apologise. Move an inch and they’ll come and lock you up.’
The crowd gawping at me was almost as large as that gawping at the Mona Lisa behind them. I pulled a sketch pad from my satchel and some crayons, hoping they’d disappear. I always sketched quickly. As my hand flashed across the page most of the gawpers had made their way behind me to look at what I was drawing.
I found it amusing as whispers rustled through the small crowd until those whispering inched closer and began to block my light. A young lady carrying a blue-and-white-striped parasol sidled up to me.
‘Could I have it when it’s done, young sir? I’ll pay you.’
She was of rare beauty and not being accustomed to speaking to young ladies I was quite taken aback, too nervous to speak. She took a coin out of her purse, held it up to me.
‘Would a half-crown cover it?’
I stopped sketching and looked up into her lovely smiling face – just as she screamed. A wench in tattered clothes had her by her golden hair and wrestled her to the floor.
‘Out’ve it, you hag!’ the wench screamed, pulling her away from me across the tiled floor before snatching the girl’s half-crown, leaping over her, and squatting at my feet. She promptly ripped open her bodice, baring her breast. Ignoring my embarrassment, she grabbed my hand and thrust in on to her dark nipple, then pressed the stolen half-crown between my fingers. ‘Paint me, boy! Make me immortal!’ she yelled, breaking into raucous laughter.
A half-dozen women turned and fled, dragging their children along with them. The men seemed to find her performance intriguing and laughed along with her.
I feigned concentration with the drawing in progress, taking an occasional glimpse at the young lady with the parasol as she was helped to her feet and straightened her clothes. Fortunately, the wench lost interest and moved off with two grinning soldiers, leaving room for others to see my work.
‘Talented boy you have, sir,’ a gentleman said to my papa. When I stood to greet Papa, holding up the painting, my private audience broke into applause. Papa seemed to put my disgrace aside and suggested I took a bow. No sooner than I did so and people thrust coins at me, begging me to sell them my sketch.
‘Miss!’ I called out to the parasol as it made its way out. I caught up with her, tore the picture from my sketch pad and presented it to her with a bow. ‘I’d like you to have this.’
The smile she gave me as she looked directly into my eyes was worth a hundred times more than anything offered thus far.
‘The Mona Lisa,’ she said. ‘My very own copy. Thank you. I shall treasure it.’
‘My sincere apologies,’ I began, offering back her half-crown, ‘for the way–’
She shook her head, gave me another beautiful smile. ‘No, no. You earned it. It’s a fair exchange. Besides, this may be worth far more when you’re famous.’ She turned to walk away, then looked back, ‘You’ll most probably be used to women fighting over you by then.’
And with that she was gone.
Papa took me through numerous other rooms in the gallery and it was as we stood in front of the giant masterpiece, William Sadler’s Battle of Waterloo, that I learned the purpose of the blue cornflowers Papa had purchased. Papa nodded to the uniformed guard we had confronted earlier and handed me the small bunch of flowers. The guard lifted the satin rope barrier, and stood smartly to attention.
‘You may enter, Master Silver,’ the guard snapped, talking to a spot on the wall way above my head.
‘In the front, attending the wounded soldier in Prussian blue, Captain Herschil Silberstein. Your great grandfather,’ Papa said quietly, a tear in his eye. ‘The wounded man, his brother Abel. The last man to die at Waterloo, on the eighteenth of June, 1815.’ Tears welled in Papa’s eyes. I was humbled. After Papa explained the cornflower was the national flower of Prussia I took the posy and laid it beneath the painting, bowed solemnly and returned beyond the barrier. The guard stood proudly to attention and saluted the painting, before replacing the satin rope. I had never seen Papa in such sorrow.
‘We can always come back another day, Papa. You will see them again.’
But that was not to be.
This, the seventieth anniversary, would be his final day of remembrance of Great Uncle Abel and Napoleon’s defeat.
Outside on the gallery steps the boisterous wench managed one last taunt exposing her bare thigh to me and ensuring I noted the absence of any drawers. But it was the far prettier young woman walking away with her parasol who held my attention – an aura about her head positively glowing.
‘What did you feel when you touched the Mona Lisa?’ Papa asked me. ‘You seemed to come over all funny.’
‘Dizzy. Something seemed to dive down inside me, choke me. I can’t explain. Did the lights go out? I was in a tunnel.’
As we walked on past the fountains Papa added, ‘Some believe they used trickery, you know. Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Isaac Newton, all messed with alchemy. Newton said that the gravitational pull their works possessed was far greater than anything he measured in the universe.
It’s like they concocted potions to draw people to their paintings.’
‘Sorcery?’
‘Some such wizardry. Take Da Vinci, that crowd in there. Made himself immortal through his art. Did he find a way to provoke people’s emotions, perhaps, mix them with the paint?’
‘Put something in jars, Papa?’
‘Might have. Imagine bottling that? Sell like hot cakes over our counter.’ He laughed. ‘Tuppence to cry. A tanner to smile.’
‘And what price happiness, Papa?’
He hugged me, kissed my head. ‘Priceless, son. Priceless.’
A last glance over my shoulder and there was the striped parasol heading off around a corner.
‘What emotion is it when you look at someone and you can’t look away; seeing them makes you feel all warm inside?’
‘Best ask your mother,’ he said, laughing.
‘Could I do what the old masters did?’
‘I doubt you’d ever need to, Jacob. People everywhere will desire your paintings. Never forget that.’
‘I meant bottle emotions. Could I do it?’
A hackney carriage pulled up, the horse all skin and bone, and we climbed aboard. As it pulled away, ‘If anyone could, you would surely be the one, Jacob,’ Papa said, laughing.
‘Then I will. And I won’t give up till I perfect it. I’ll start with a giggle. That’ll be worth a bob or two.’
It was only a couple of days after that wonderful birthday that my life changed for ever – and I would dwell in a black hole, from which I feared climbing out of might take an eternity.
I had gone to my room early, content to sketch from the Da Vinci posters Papa brought back from the gallery. A little after midnight, mother shook me and urged me follow her with her lantern into their bedroom. Papa was struggling for breath, his forehead burning up. I sent Mama for the doctor and dashed downstairs, returning with a stethoscope, applying it all over his chest and back. Congestion was very apparent and unaware of when the doctor would appear I applied hot towels to Papa’s chest, bringing him some relief. Mother returned but only with instructions from the doctor who had declined a personal attendance. It must have been four in the morning when, after everything the doctor had recommended failed to improve his breathing, I decided to consult Alchemy, searching through the numerous languages for a solution. I quickly made up a concoction and together we sat Papa up and poured it into him. Assuming my Latin was sufficient, Alchemy claimed it would clear the stuffed pipes in many an organ. And so it did. Within minutes Papa was chatting and laughing and thanking us for saving his life. It was a wonderful experience and I went back to bed satisfied that, with my wonderful book, I had within my grasp the makings of magical cures for every illness under the sun.
Tragically, I soon learned this was not to be.
At eight, as Mama was attending to the first customers banging on our door for prescriptions, I found poor Papa in bed in a far worse condition than the night before. I called out to Mama who came rushing up the stairs. Papa pulled me close, whispered in my ear.
‘It’s over, Jacob. My–’
‘No, Papa. You’ll get better. I’ll make you better. I’ll pray for you.’
He ignored me, his voice just a faint whisper. ‘Find the secret. Make yourself... immort–’
‘I will, Papa, I promise. Stay a while longer. Just a while.’ His eyes remained still and glazed. I held up a sixpence. ‘A tanner for one last smile, Papa.’ I placed it on his lips but Mama shook her head solemnly and brushed his eyes closed.
We both stared at him, tears rolling off both our faces. The knocking downstairs rose to a crescendo by the time Mama pried my hands free from Papa’s.
‘How we going to manage now, Jacob?’
I cried myself to sleep for two nights after losing dear Papa, but our very survival took my mind off grief. I had overhead Mama dismissing the housekeeper and imagined that was one of the sacrifices needed now the breadwinner was no longer with us. But it was some time later when I realised the housekeeper’s removal was part of a grand plan – and the removal of witnesses.
A neighbour’s child was sent with a note to my school claiming I needed some time off to recover – from our recent loss, I presumed. I then had the task of hanging a notice on the front gate informing customers The apothecary is indisposed, and – more mysteriously – will return shortly.
At the back of the laboratory mother had me clear a space where we set down a tin bath retrieved from the garden shed. Then I was instructed to meet the wholesaler’s dray out the front and help him unload fifteen carboys, large glass bottles of formaldehyde, standing them next to the tin bath.
Exhausted after unloading, I sat down to catch my breath in the downstairs parlour. That was when I heard the thump, thump, thump, coming from the stairs. Looking up from the bottom of the stairs I could not believe my eyes.
‘You’d better give me a hand, Jacob. Might drop him else.’
Mama was dragging and bumping poor Papa’s deathly-white body down the stairs. Believing the intention was a pauper’s burial, and the price of transportation perhaps out of our reach, I duly assisted. But instead of turning right at the bottom of the stairs and passing out through the front door, we went straight on – and all the way to the laboratory in the basement.
Being assured all would be explained later, I helped strip Papa’s body, lift him into the tin bath, and pour in the formaldehyde with an equal measure of water. Finally, a heavy canvas sheet was pulled over the top, giving poor Papa a modicum of dignity.
The explanation was forthcoming after I had cried myself completely dry and was in no state to argue.
‘We continue dispensing. Anyone asks, Papa’s unwell. Who’s ever going to know? Once you get your sustificates, you can carry on in your father’s footsteps.’
Warned it was this way or the workhouse, I concurred and took up studying the apothecary’s bible, the pharmacopeia, until all hours. I was also enrolled for classes once a week at Apothecaries Hall, for almost six months. Those sustificates, as Mama called them, did seem a long way off.
Having imagined a three-month initiation would enable me to cope with only minor ailments it did come as quite a bolt from the blue when, only four days after Papa’s demise, Mama insisted we open for business as usual.
Passing me Papa’s apron, she gave me a couple of prescriptions to prepare and, before I had deciphered the handwriting on those, she went off and attended to frenzied knocking at the serving hatch. Word travelled fast. Before lunch I had two dozen remedies on the boil with only a fifty per cent expectation that those were in fact the remedies prescribed.
One particular doctor’s writing left too many unknowns and I was forced to ask Mama for advice on what to do next.
‘Can’t go and ask the doctor, Jacob, your father knew everything he prescribed. He’d know something was up.’ It wasn’t long before Mama recalled an old apothecary’s rhyme. ‘Papa used to sing it to you, remember?’
I didn’t.
‘Line up the likely remedies, then eliminate.’ She started off, ‘Eeny meeny, topsy turvy.’
It flooded back to me. ‘Take some... No. Take these pills to stop the scurvy.’ We finished it together.
‘If he hollers let him rest, take a powder to digest.’
Although we laughed and danced round the laboratory with a few more renditions until only one medicine remained, I felt I had to spoil her gaiety.
‘But it wasn’t serious, Mama. Papa only sang it to cheer me.’
‘Can be as serious as we need it to be,’ she said sternly.
And so it was. Customers flocked to our door, despite our dubious professionalism. New customers, too. It was a while before I realised I had not been accounting for bottles and overheads in pricing the items we dispensed. Not wishing to worry Mama, I simply increased the prices to ensure the next lot were fully paid for – business slacking off sufficiently so that at least I could return to school and attend Apothecaries Hall to s
tudy for the examination. But I rarely got to bed before midnight.
It was six months before Mama asked me to try on a fake moustache she’d made from cat hair and gelatine and go sit my first examinations. I couldn’t summon the courage to tell her the moustache fell off until after she opened the results.
‘Your first sustificate,’ she said, hugging me. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
But her pride was short-lived.
A veiled Mrs Blenkensop, head-to-toe in black and beside herself with grief, was brought into the parlour where she showed Mama medicines that had apparently failed. I could hear Mama comforting the woman, offering condolences and then saw her glaring at the labels before showing Mrs B out.
‘Two drops a day. Not two spoonfuls! You killed the poor bugger!’ Mama yelled at me, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
I felt awful and my eyes welled with tears for poor Mr Blenkensop. Mother soon comforted me, but only after she destroyed the offending label.
‘To be expected, I s’pose. Can't make a soufflé without breaking a few eggs.’
My confidence renewed, I returned to the bench and compiled concoctions with gusto – checking every label three times over from that day on.
It was only a day or two after that incident that the rabbi called, seeking a donation from Papa, his yapping Jack Russell straining on a leash. He complained to me that Papa had not attended the synagogue of late, while Mama went off upstairs.
‘We’ve been so busy,’ I said, making excuses for Papa. Nothing was more truthful.
So grateful was he for the five shillings Mama produced, from the man upstairs she told him, that the rabbi dropped the leash and the dog darted off through the laboratory. Pursuing the dog, the rabbi discovered him worrying a canvas sheet in the back. And that was when he found the lost sheep from his flock, submerged in the tin bath. Papa resembled a bleached prune.
Despite my protesting Mama’s innocence and being prepared to face the consequences myself, the police would not listen, claiming they had a full confession. Mama claimed she had prepared every prescription herself; a temporary measure until I was fully qualified. She was in tears the whole time she appeared in the dock, the public gallery full of customers of ours hurling abuse.