The Painter

by Will Davenport

  I knew to my cost how dedicated my fellow man can be to the coin that he keeps in his grasp. 'There was nobody in the town to help you?'

  'I don't wish to speak harshly of your fellow countrymen, but the women closed their doors to me, I did not then speak the language and could not make myself plain to them, but none of them was prepared to have me in their houses.'

  Well, I knew why of course. No Dutch dumpling in her right mind would have let her sleep under the same roof. There wasn't a red-blooded man on earth who, knowing Amelia lay alone nearby, would not have been driven by the hot itch to try his luck on a night-time visit.

  'Only one other person offered help and it seemed impossible for me to accept. He was a man by himself, another of your countrymen. He came from Dordrecht, He had a plantation. I could not go to his house alone even though he was the only man who seemed to want to help me.'

  'But in the end you did,' said I, with a sudden insight into the nature of this story.

  Amelia looked down at the floor and her voice dropped so that I had to crane towards her to hear it.

  'I spent all the money I had. I ate almost nothing and I lived in a foul room. I sold the few things I had to sell and then when I was in despair, he came and offered me the post of housekeeper and I thought it must be better than dying on the dockside.'

  'Was it?'

  'No, it was not.'

  'Tell me the end of the story then, if the middle is too hard.'

  'The end? After nearly one long year, he died.'

  'And how was that year?'

  She looked at me in a way I had never been looked at before and it was as much as I could do not to start to try to capture that look. It had sex and steel in it, fire and deep fatigue.

  'We came to a way of being in which the price he demanded was one that I was just prepared to pay.'

  'How did he die?'

  'He died of Batavia. Something bit him. Not me, though I had often considered it. The bite worsened, then he suffered an apoplexy and lay in his bed without the power to speak. I consigned his body to the garden-boy for burial, took my clothes and all the money I could find in the house, which I considered was at least what he owed me for the year-long insult – and I went again to the docks. There I found, perhaps by providence, Dahl and his ship, newly come to Batavia for the first time, loaded with cargo and now preparing to sail, I asked him for help, showed him the shine of my money and bought a passage back. He told me that Hull in England was his home port and it seemed infinitely close to home when compared to where I had been.'

  'And on the journey you turned from passenger to wife?'

  'We took the first step in that direction. I was wounded and scared and he was calm and kind. I told him an untruth because I had to, saying I had been very ill in Batavia, prostrated by a fever for weeks almost from the day of my arrival and therefore had no knowledge of the country worth speaking of. I had met no one and seen nothing, I said, save my room and its walls. There was another passenger on board and of course, he told the story at second hand, exaggerated almost out of recognition, of the strange foreign woman who had so scandalized all right-thinking society by her loose behaviour. Dahl asked me if I knew this woman and I repeated that I knew nothing of the country. By good fortune, the passenger did not know the name of this person whose story he magnified with such relish and yet I have to say that I still live in some anxiety in case one day someone may come here who knew of me then.'

  I looked at her in an entirely new light. She was not the innocent I had thought, not the ripe plum, heavy with inexperience, ready to fall into my hands.

  'You understand now why I cannot be seen to speak your language. The matter of how I came to learn it would be quite impossible to explain.'

  'Well yes, I understand.' There was a lot I did not understand still. For a start I no longer understood anything about the potential of the situation between us, of why she was in this room with me at all. I had thought it was me who was making up the rules of this game, but I now had an unnerving feeling it might have been her all the time.

  'I have to ask you,' I said. 'All these words I have spoken, these dangerous and foolish words which I believed were for myself alone, intended to fill the silence of the room. Will you tell me whether these words were unwelcome to you?'

  She looked straight at me again and I saw, to my enormous surprise, a look on her face of suppressed excitement.

  'There is not a woman born,' she said, 'who does not wish to know how men see her and the truth is very hard to discover by enquiry, when mere gallantry may explain everything. You have given me the rare chance to hear thoughts you would never have spoken otherwise. Here in Paull Holme, I am what I have to be, a demure and dutiful wife. Do not mistake me. Underneath that appearance, I am of Viking stock. Do you know what that means?'

  'That you'll hit me with an axe if I annoy you?'

  'Possibly. I recommend that you don't take that risk. It was Viking blood which took me half across the world after the man I loved. It was Viking blood which allowed me to survive all that followed. In a private world,' here she glanced around that old tower room of mine, 'in this private world which has no connection to what life may be in the rest of the house, I can speak and I can be as I truly am. I am an artist too in my heart. Does that surprise you?'

  'No. I can see it in this house. You have a painter's eye for colour and detail.'

  'Oh indeed,' she said sharply. 'If I start on that one, you may be dead of old age before I stop.' She frowned. 'I am a woman and women's art is not to 'be taken seriously, it seems. I would paint if I were allowed. I would write if that were thought a suitable activity. I would certainly write better than friend Marvell. I have to put all my art into my house because my husband has strong ideas on what is and is not proper. That is to be my achievement, it seems. Indeed it may be my only achievement if there is to be no family.' She seemed to remember herself then. 'In short, the answer to your question is this. What woman would not thrill to be so looked upon, so described by a man, who as he has told me, has made the most careful inspection of so many, many women?'

  'Outside this room, there is your husband and he is a fellow to be reckoned with.'

  'My husband is a sailor, with all that entails,' she said dryly. There is an English expression,' she said the word for me, 'a fumbler? You have no word quite like it that I know.'

  'And it means?'

  'It means the sort of man who has no children even though he is married.'

  'We have a wide range of words for that,' I said, 'but it depends what it is that afflicts him. To choose the right word, I would have to know more. Like a play, it is a question of whether the performance is unable to reach its final scene, or whether it reaches that point but in so doing fails to inspire any reaction in its audience or perhaps even it may be a question of whether the leading actor collapses before making his entrance.'

  'Whatever it is,' she said, 'it is not the fault of the audience.'

  'I was certain of that. No normal man could fail to be stirred. When you reminded me that your husband is a sailor, did you perhaps mean that he prefers a male audience?'

  'Oh no,' she said, startled. Then she gave a little giggle, a delightful lapse into conspiracy. 'I simply meant he is all bustle and orders. There is never more than that. Normal men are in short supply in these parts.'

  'Marvell is a normal man. I detect that he pants after you,' I said, watching for her reaction.

  'Marvell is not in any way normal,' she said calmly. 'Marvell seeks to disguise his intentions always, cloaking all his actions in layers of mystery. Marvell is political and diplomatic and he finds any excuse to be in this house. Sometimes it is his lighthouse plan, sometimes it is his intrigue against his fellow parliamentarian. At the moment it is you, Mr van Rijn,' she said, looking at me as if she could hold sugar in her lips and never make it wet. 'The real prize in this contest of yours is not the fee for the painting.'

  'What is it then?'
r />   'It is here before your eyes. It is me.'

  'He hasn't told me that.'

  'No, of course not. He would certainly hope you might not realize the precise prize you could claim.'

  God's teeth. She looked at me while she was saying that as if she were discussing a flower show. The contest gives him an excuse to do something he could not otherwise do,' she continued. 'It gives him an excuse to write a love poem for me, about me, directed at me, without seeming improper. Do you understand?'

  'I'm starting to. He wants to woo you with a poem under cover of our wager. From what I've heard of his poetry so far, you're not in much danger.'

  'Danger?' she said mockingly. 'And am I in danger from you?'

  I had now entirely lost the day's initiative. The blind innocence which I had relied upon had dissipated, or rather it had never been there and I had finally come to realize that. A fresh sense of excitement now came over me. This was to be a contest under new and wild rules.

  'That depends on whether you accept that you are the prize. Perhaps I will let my painting decide that issue,' I said. 'After all, I believe that, if it is possible to compare these things, I am a far greater painter than he will ever be a poet.'

  'I shall be what I please, prize or not. Don't underestimate the power of his pen. From time to time he shows true talent, His pen against your brush, a duel of artists.'

  'A duel in which the winner takes you?'

  She smiled, a smile that was for herself not for me. 'There is my own artistry to consider, too. The winner must also rival my own skills to be considered a worthy victor.'

  'But the prize …'

  'No picture or poem shall blow me off the course I shall choose. That course, for the moment, is my business.'

  'The future is uncertain,' I said.

  'Yes,' she said, 'that is usually the best thing about it. Now, have you drawn enough?'

  'No,' I said. 'One favour and then we are done for the day and you can go back to being the demure mistress of Paull Holme. I want you to think about a proposition, to think hard and let me know your answer tomorrow. I think you are a woman who sees beyond all pretence and who understands the value of the pure portrait, the portrait which goes to the heart of everything. The pure portrait is bound to contain the truth of the painter and the painted. It cannot lie.'

  'So what do you want?'

  'I want you to let me paint you as you believe you really are.'

  TWENTY-THREE

  Friday, April 13th, 2001

  Amy had already been up for an hour before Peter Parrish collected her the following morning and she had used the time to search Dennis's room, moving as quietly as she could. It shouldn't have taken long because he had so few possessions but that didn't stop tears coming to her eyes at the sight of what he did have. There was a wedding photo of a much younger, dashing Dennis in Naval uniform, an unexpected prayer book and, in amongst the rubber ducks, a small stuffed teddy-bear. In his shabby bag she found a cardboard folder which had 'Vin Williams' written on it in felt-tip lettering. She opened it expectantly but all she found inside was a list of prison visiting times and a copy of the newspaper article about Don's award ceremony. Loose in the bottom of the bag, she found a small square of yellow paper with a paperclip still on it. 'Vin Williams. Statement made to Dennis Greener', was written neatly on it but there was no sign of the document to which it had once been clipped.

  It was only when she had sat on Dennis's chair for a while, looking around the room, that she realized something else was missing. There was no sign of Dennis's old wooden tray.

  In the car, Parrish tried, in an awkward way, to say the right things about Dennis but he clearly had hardly known him at all. Amy knew there was something else he wanted to say to her but couldn't quite bring himself to utter. Instead, all the way to London, he gave her a long lecture on vernacular architecture in East Yorkshire. Parts of this, the human parts, were fascinating but that left a great deal that wasn't. Parrish drove fast and surprisingly well. Amy would have had him down as a nice old ditherer but he carved through the traffic quite ruthlessly, the result of which was that they were in the middle of London by nine o'clock.

  'What exactly do you want me to do?' asked Amy.

  'I'll drop you at the V & A. You go through the museum to the National Art Library, Ask for Tony Jones. He knows you're coming. He'll fix you up with a temporary reader's card and he's got some stuff together for you to have a look at. Shouldn't take too long. It's just drawings and pictures.'

  'Of what?'

  'Oh, you know. Interiors. Other decorated ceilings of the period. I want you to get the general idea of how they looked. He'll copy a few of them, so choose the ones you think come closest to the style we've got. I'll come and pick you up when I've finished. About half past one?'

  Tony Jones proved to be a man out of the same mould as Peter Parrish, though rather better groomed and, gratifyingly, he knew all about her. The Art Library had a lofty air of studious elegance and she was glad to be a welcomed insider. Otherwise, she thought, it might have felt like a very exclusive club. Arcane knowledge was needed. Each desk was fitted with a hinged piece of wood which folded down. Amy fiddled with one surreptitiously but could find no apparent purpose for it and when she looked around at the intent art students who surrounded her, she couldn't see anyone else using them. She felt out of place as if someone might denounce her for no clear reason. However intimidating, it was certainly a beautiful library. The desks were of polished wood and black leather with old-fashioned numbers for each seat and a bronze reading lamp with a green shade. A strip of carpet up the middle of the room helped to hush the footfalls of any who might dare to walk noisily. There was a high balcony above and an arcade of arched windows looking out into a garden. She looked assiduously through the material Tony Jones brought out for her, a little disturbed by the responsibility she'd suddenly been given for the future decoration of Paull Holme Manor. At twelve o'clock, she gave a selection of designs to him for photocopying. When she put them down on the desk, he said, 'By the way, Peter mentioned you also wanted to see this,' and handed her a book.

  She took it back to her desk, a little annoyed because she thought she had finished and she had been hoping for time to look round the museum before Peter Parrish returned. It had a grey cover bearing a white label which said, 'Walpole Society Volume 18 1929/30'. Inside it was all text and no pictures and her heart sank, then she remembered where she had heard about the Walpole Society before and a strange thrill passed right through her. A note inside the cover confirmed her memory, saying that the Walpole Society had been instituted in 1911 and one of the main obligations laid upon it had been the publication of the manuscript notebooks of George Vertue. A slip of paper had been inserted into the pages. She opened the book at the place and found she was looking at a page of irregular printing, interspersed with footnote numbers. She scanned down it and there it was.

  Renbrant van Rhine was in England liv'd at Hull in Yorkshire (reported by old Laroon who in his youth knew Renbrant at York) where he painted several Gentlemen and sea faring mens pictures. One of them was in the possession of … Then she stopped reading and stared at the page until her vision focused entirely on the words that followed and the rest of the page dissolved into a white whirlpool.

  When Peter Parrish arrived an hour later, she was still sitting staring at the book but now she was more composed and a pageful of notes showed she had been busy.

  'We finished early, thank the Lord,' he whispered, bending over her. 'How about you? Shall we go and have lunch?'

  'Come and sit down for a minute,' she said. There's something here you really have to look at.'

  He pulled his glasses out of his breast pocket, put them on and immediately adopted that head-tilted-back look of the person who is about to study something. 'Is that the Vertue notebooks you've got there?' he whispered. 'Oh good. I rather hoped you'd be finished in time to have a look. Did you find them interesting?'

 
; 'Yes, I did,' she answered, 'So will you. As you said, this is a later copy which Vertue corrected. It's all about this one particular portrait.' She looked at him. 'You have to concentrate on this.'

  'Oh, I am,' he replied quickly, though he looked a little mystified.

  'As it first appeared in the notebook,' she explained, 'it said this portrait was in the possession of a sea-captain with the gentleman's name on the frame together with Rembrandt's name, except he spelt it Renbrant with an "n". Then there's all the business about the date and the place and that funny way the year's written. Vertue's corrections aren't the most interesting part except you really do get the feeling he's seen the picture since he first wrote about it. He says it doesn't say "York" on the frame after all.'

  'Jolly good,' whispered Parrish, 'but that's rather a shame from the point of view of your theory, isn't it?'

  Amy looked at him, savouring the moment. 'I've left out the best bit,' she said quietly.

  'What's that?'

  'The name of the sea-captain.'

  'Someone we know?'

  'Oh yes. Take a look.'

  Amy pointed at the page and Peter Parrish craned over her to look, then, in his amazement, he spoke the name out loud, the name 'Dahl', and everybody in the library turned round in indignation as if that were the worst four-letter word they had ever heard.

  Lunch, by mutual consent, was a sandwich because they both wanted to get back on the road north.