The Painter

by Will Davenport

  Don got up from his box and went back to work. Every piece of panelling was being taken off now after careful labelling to make sure each went back in exactly the right place. He was easing out the pins that held the frames of the panels together, using long-nosed pliers like a surgical instrument to avoid damage, pretending not to listen.

  'I was really careful,' she replied. 'There's no harm done. I just wanted to show you it was possible, so you didn't cover it all up again.'

  'Careful?' Parrish said with an unexpected touch of sharpness in his voice. 'We had a plan for this room, young woman. It did not involve knocking half the wall down. We would have recorded what was there, then we would have put the panelling back over it and started researching the history a little more. Then and only then would we have made a proper decision about preservation. Do you understand?'

  'Yes,' said Amy meekly, understanding that this was his way of distracting himself.

  'I mean, it wasn't going anywhere, was it? There was no real urgency. Now what are we going to do? It certainly can't be left like that.'

  'Can't you get someone in to uncover the rest of it?'

  'Have you any idea how tight the budget is for all this?'

  'I'll pay for it if you like,' she said.

  His voice softened then. 'You have no idea how much work like that costs. I suppose we'll have to get some sort of conservation done. I know what you think, but it's not Rembrandt. You should get that out of your head. It's just a doodle,' he added. 'A very high-class doodle, I know. Some workman was enjoying himself.'

  'The limner,' said Don quietly.

  'Oh yes,' said Parrish, 'the mysterious limner. I grant you that. You're right, I looked it up. So, there was a portrait painter and maybe he did this, but that doesn't mean a great deal. Look, we have to go about all this a different way, do you understand? This is architectural detective work, a form of archaeology. That means we look for certainty, not wild theory. We carefully explore what is here and we only interfere with it when we're quite certain we're doing the right thing.'

  A voice came back into Amy's head: The Hawk will do his nut, so will old man Parrish. Dennis, alive, here, this morning. She closed her eyes and sighed.

  Parrish pursed his lips. 'Oh dear. I know I shouldn't add fuel to the flames but I did make a call to a friend on your behalf.'

  'What about?'

  'Wait a minute,' said Parrish, and he went to the door and looked out. 'Just checking for Mr Hawkins,' he said. 'He doesn't like me wasting your time, even though it is meant to be my time. I like to stay on the right side of the Hawk.' He had allowed complicity back in and Amy was deeply grateful.

  'Tell us,' she said.

  'I have a friend at the Victoria and Albert Museum,' he said. 'I asked him to look at the Vertue notebooks for me. After all, that's the main source on this whole business. It turns out it's a bit more complicated than I thought. Is this an absurd time to be discussing this?'

  'No. I think it's a very good time.' Don was still working but she knew he was listening.

  Parrish opened his case, brought out a sheet of paper and blinked over it. 'Now, there's the business of the date. Do you remember? Rembrandt is supposed to have dated one of his Yorkshire pictures 1662 stroke '61 according to Vertue. That's what really seems to make a nonsense of the whole thing. I told you, didn't I, 1662, fair enough. Rembrandt could have been anywhere in the first few months. There's no record. 1661 is a different kettle of fish. We know he was in Amsterdam pretty much all year. It doesn't add up. Or so everyone thought.'

  'What's changed?' asked Amy.

  'Well, I think I've been rather clever,' said Parrish. 'I've been reading my old favourite Samuel Pepys again. The whole diary, in full. A million words or more. Wonderful stuff. There's nothing like it. Well, I suppose you might say our own Amelia comes closest, but you know she never really lets her inner feelings out, does she? With Pepys, of course, he was writing in code, in shorthand, and when things got a bit steamy, he used all these Spanish and French words to cover his tracks on the rude stuff. Old Amelia was a bit too upright for that, eh?'

  Amy just nodded.

  'The point is I suddenly realized Pepys does his dates like that too. 1662 over '61, like a fraction, so I looked it up and guess what? It doesn't mean what everybody thinks.'

  'So what does it mean?'

  'It's all about the New Year,' explained Parrish. He stopped for a moment as footsteps sounded in the corridor, but they passed by and went down the stairs. 'Until the middle of the seventeenth century, the New Year didn't start on January the first. It started on Lady Day, which is March the twenty-fifth. The year didn't change until then. Then they modernized it you see, so that the new year began in January. Of course it took a few years for everyone to get used to that, so just for a white they used this formula, like a fraction, '62 over '61. It doesn't mean two whole years. It means a very precise time period between January the first, 1662 and March the twenty-fourth of the same year. Now that removes one key objection because we have absolutely no evidence that Rembrandt was at home in Amsterdam during that time. It also means that if our friend did paint a picture in Yorkshire, then he painted it during a very particular period of less than twelve weeks.'

  'That's good,' said Amy.

  'Aha, it gets better yet. My friend at the V & A says there's something else that's interesting about the Rembrandt passage in Vertue. There were ten'George Vertue notebooks, you see, and they're all in his own handwriting. Except for the first one.'

  Parrish was growing more and more animated, striding backwards and forwards wagging his finger like the gifted amateur detective about to unmask the villain at the end of an old movie. He seemed to have forgotten everything else. Don had paused and was looking round at him.

  'It's the first notebook that has all the Rembrandt stuff in it, the story about Laroon and the detailed description of that Yorkshire painting. Now, apparently it's not always terribly clear in the notebooks whether Vertue has actually seen the pictures or whether somebody else has just told him about them, but in this case it's quite blindingly obvious.'

  He waited for them to ask why and when neither of them did he was forced to go on.

  'Something happened to the first notebook. Maybe it got wet or the mice attacked it, I don't know, but somebody else wrote it out all over again in different handwriting. My pal thinks it was probably one of Vertue's assistants. They tended to have young chaps around them doing the donkey work, these fellers. Wish it was still like that. Now quite clearly, this chap couldn't entirely be trusted because he made lots of mistakes, so poor old George had to go right through the whole shebang all over again, putting it right. By the time he got round to it, it was probably a year or two later, you see? By that time, he'd had a chance to go to see some of the pictures he'd only heard about before so he could update what he'd written. Anyway the end-product of this is that I think we'll carry on taking off the panelling for the time being and you, Amy, I want you to come down to London with me. Hello Mr Hawkins, how is it going?'

  The Hawk had come into the room halfway through the last sentence.

  'Didn't hear any work going on, Mr Parrish. Thought I'd better take a look under the circumstances. You going to London?'

  'Tomorrow, Just a day trip. We have to touch base with the people holding the purse strings, you know. There's a possibility of some charitable funding.'

  'I heard you say you were taking her.' The Hawk nodded towards Amy.

  'That's right. She has some work to do, checking similar designs and so forth. Room one seven, you know, the one with only the fragments left.'

  'Whatever you say. There's no overtime for travel.' The Hawk didn't look displeased at having Amy out of his hair for a day. He slipped out as abruptly as he had come in.

  'Oh dear,' said Parrish. 'I was meaning to ask you. Meant to talk to you yesterday. Now I've landed you in it. Do you mind?'

  'I'm a little bemused,' said Amy. 'Are you serious?'


  'Well, I'd like you to have a look at the records of contemporary decoration. We've got to come up with some good ideas in the other rooms. I'm driving down. Pick you up at six?'

  'Six? In the morning?'

  'My meeting's at nine thirty. I'll be finished by lunchtime.'

  Why not, she thought. Better than being here all day. 'All right then, but he's gone now. You can finish what you were saying.'

  'Oh yes, George Vertue. My friend says when you look at the way he's corrected the notebook, you just know he's been to see the pictures in the interim. There's a certainty that comes out of the handwriting.'

  'So are you saying he's changed the details of the Yorkshire picture?'

  'Yes, exactly that. There was all sorts of stuff about the signature and the date and what was painted on the frame and he's amended it all. He must have seen it and he must have believed it was genuine.'

  'So what exactly does it say?' asked Don.

  'Oh, I don't know. He didn't tell me that. Anyway, we can discuss it on the journey, Amelia.'

  'That's Amy.'

  'Oh yes, of course. Now Don, how's it going with the panelling?'

  'Slowly,' said Don. 'This one's come apart all right. I'm labelling them like you said. I'm taking them from the left, as you see, so I thought tomorrow, when they've been cleaned up, I'd start putting them back in from the right so there's never more than a couple of sections out at any one time.'

  'Very good, except that doesn't help us sort out what we're going to do with Amy's revelation here.' Parrish was looking at the legs painted on the wall. The light had changed during the time they had been talking and the top part of the picture was showing itself a little more clearly through the remaining paint.

  He bent down and looked at the next section, where Don had just taken the adjoining panel away. It too was covered in dust and cobwebs and he brushed it off with his hand.

  'Ah,' he said.

  'What is it?' Amy took a step towards him.

  'I almost hate to say it,' he said, 'but we appear to have another picture.'

  'Where?' Don had joined them like a terrier at a foxhole.

  'It's very small. Do you see?'

  There was a pale brown blob on the wall under the grime, not much more than an inch across.

  'It looks like a stain.'

  'It's not a stain, Amy,' said Parrish, staring at it. 'It's quite definitely a painting of a walnut and it's really rather good. Another little Paull Holme mystery to solve.' He turned to Don. 'Let's hold off putting any of the panelling back on, shall we? We'll take a decision later.' He looked at his watch. 'I must go,' he said. 'Six o'clock tomorrow, then?'

  Amy groaned.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Friday, January 24th, 1662

  I gallantly stood aside and ushered her up the steep staircase before me, then climbed up close behind her, catching a delightful glance of a shapely leg and hoping to see more. Sadly, having twenty-five years on me, she scampered up that staircase at double my speed and disappeared from my view. At the top of the first flight, the stairs opened on to an empty space, filling the whole tower, a space of spider-webs and rat droppings. I was used to it by now but I wondered if she had ever been here before. This pan of the house, so much older and harder than the rest, seemed entirely outside her world, but she did not hesitate for a moment and she was up the second stairs before I reached the top of the first.

  My room was ready. In preparation, I had pulled the coverings tidily over the palliasse which passed as my mattress and swept the worst of the dust out on to the landing. I caught up with her at the door, where she was quivering like a bird unsure whether to step into the trap.

  I gave her my most reassuring smile and a sweeping bow, which at least had the effect of making her laugh, and said, 'After you, madam. My superb studio is entirely at your disposal.'

  She inclined her head and stepped inside and my heart beat a little faster.

  I folded a pillow cloth into four and set it on a chair for her and she sat down carefully, looking all around her. It struck me again that it might be the first time she had seen it. What reason would she have had to come here before?

  Seeking to hide behind artistic purpose, I picked up the board I had prepared as backing to my paper and set to in charcoal. It isn't my preferred medium for sketching, being too prone to snap just at the moment when the passion starts driving the process and the fingers lose all reserve, but the alternative was a brush and some sort of pale ochre. That felt too restrictive. I knew I would not want to stop and charge up the brush, needing the freedom to prowl the room, searching for my quarry in hidden angles. Free to say anything I wanted, I put on my most neutral voice and said, 'The curve of your neck is designed for a man's lips. Did you know that? I'm sure you did. I hope Dahl's lips are as soft on your skin as you deserve.'

  She glanced at me as though to apologize for not understanding and, once again, I found in this complete incomprehension a thrilling range of possibilities.

  'I wish my lips could taste it. I know how to make a woman sigh with the pleasure of the caress that comes from just behind. You would bend your neck to open more of your sweet skin to me if I were to try that, my beauty.'

  My voice was having the same effect that my gaze and my brush had had on our previous encounter. I could see Amelia relaxing into the smooth flow of words, I could see the blood flow nearer to the surface of her skin as my words caressed her. I moved behind her and she turned her head sharply to see where I had gone but I motioned her back to her position.

  'Just another sketch,' I said, 'to capture the line of your shoulders. I need all aspects of you at their best, the entire contour of your body at the moment it is flushed with the full power of your female desire. Only then does your flesh fill and soften and take on that extreme degree of perfect beauty that I know you to possess. I would paint you as if you had just finished a long, sweet act of love, then all who look at your picture will feel a deep stirring in them as they linger on you.'

  She did not like me talking to her from behind. She fidgeted.

  I moved closer to her and looked down on her from just behind her head. The clothes she wore, I don't know what you would call the upper half, a bodice perhaps, were loosened by her posture and to my delight, I found that from my high position, I could see down the gap between cloth and flesh and there, in that private place, were her breasts, pushing out, open to my gaze almost to their very tips where the cloth clung to them and hung sheer.

  'On my soul's ease,' I said, 'what a wonderful sight. I must paint you naked to paint you as you truly are. If your nipples are half as delicious as the rest of your breasts then I think you take the prize for any woman I have ever painted. You are truly glorious.'

  Then, without turning round, she pulled her bodice tighter around her as if I had suddenly gone too far. She hunched forward away from my gaze, while a pink blush spread across the cheek that I could see.

  A horrible certainty spread through me.

  'You have understood every word I have said,'I muttered, and my voice trembled.

  'Yes, I regret to tell you that I have,' she answered in Dutch, perfect Dutch, coarsely accented like a sailor but undeniably the Dutch of someone who had spoken the language in everyday life.

  Everything I had been saying to her in the sure knowledge that she did not understand exploded in my ears.

  'I would not have … everyone told me … I mean, I had no idea you spoke my language.'

  'It is a secret I am entrusting to you as a hostage for the secrets you have been unwittingly entrusting to me,' she said. Now that was a stern speech to hear at such a moment.

  I walked slowly round in front of her and met her gaze. With her colour heightened, she was even more lovely.

  'My husband has no idea that I speak your language and he must have no idea or the consequences will be dreadful. The same goes for Marvell. He will only use the fact to his advantage as he uses all facts that come his way.'
>
  Pressing her on this secret seemed altogether safer than having to revisit all I had said before.

  'You will have to tell me why. A blind man may stumble into holes others would easily avoid.'

  'I don't have to tell you anything but I will tell you enough to stop you asking more.'

  I sat down on the other chair, astonished, intrigued and unusually for me, quite deeply embarrassed.

  'I met my husband on his ship,' she said, 'in Batavia and returning from it. Have you been to Batavia?'

  'I have never been anywhere,' I said, 'not until I came here.'

  'But you know of it?'

  'Our Spice Islands? Most certainly. Down at the docks there is always talk of the latest cargo to arrive, the latest passengers to leave, the latest lists of those whom disease and hazard have killed there. I have never had the slightest desire to go.'

  'They are the jewel of your empire,' she said, 'more beautiful than you can know if you have only seen this muddy river and its Dutch cousin. The sea there is not brown, it is a turquoise necklace on the sand's white neck. All the wonders of nature are to be found there.'

  'You liked it there?'

  'I hated it,' she said with vehemence.

  'Why?'

  She hesitated. 'I am putting my whole life in your hands by even hinting at this.'

  'I seem to have put my life in yours by accident. We are safe with one another if we hold a pistol to each other's head.'

  'I was a year in Batavia, a whole terrible year, stranded. I learnt my Dutch there and I wish I had not.'

  'How did you come to that?'

  'I took ship to marry the man I had loved since we played together at twelve years old. My parents were both dead. I had some money but no great dowry and he sent for me to come to him. Between my ship leaving the cold north and its arriving in the warm south, a fever took him and instead of his face waiting eagerly for me on the quay, there was a cold letter to freeze my heart. I was in a place stranger than any I had ever imagined, prepared in no way whatsoever for life alone there and knowing nobody. I was desolate. He had been a month dead before I came and he was already entirely forgotten. Having intended to make my life there, I had no money for a passage home. The captain of the ship which brought me was ready enough to take me back but there had been,' she paused a moment, 'some difficulties on the passage out which made me reluctant to accept. On the way out, at least I had the protection of a husband known to be waiting for me. On the way back, alone, I would have been at great risk. Only three ships came in the next few weeks and though I haunted the docks, visiting each captain in turn, I found nobody kind enough to take me on trust.'