The Dark Clue

by James Wilson

  I can imagine. That is enough. I can see, and imagine.

  I must freeze this moment; I must stop time; I must hold my breath; and be as adroit as an acrobat with a pole.

  I laid two sovereigns on the table, and left without another word.

  XXVI

  Letter from Laura Hartright to Marian Halcombe,

  7th October, 185–

  Darling Marian,

  Walter has written me such a cold, angry letter. Why is he so cross with me? Do you know? I can think of nothing I have done, save to tell him that we miss him, and long for his return. That would never have made the old Walter angry. It would have brought him back to us. I know it would.

  I am so unhappy. This morning Florrie said, ‘Why are you not pretty any more, Mama?’ I could not tell her the answer: that I had lain awake half the night, crying about her father.

  Am I – I can barely write this – am I losing him? Has he changed? I pray to God not. But I am so far away – I cannot touch him, or see his dear face, or hear his voice.

  You are so much cleverer and wiser than I am. Please – is there anything you can do to make things well between us again?

  Your affectionate sister,

  Laura

  XXVII

  From the journal of Marian Halcombe, 9th October, 185-

  This cannot go on.

  God, is there to be nothing in life but gritting our teeth, and doing our duty?

  XXVIII

  Memorandum of a letter from Walter Hartright to

  Mr. Hawkesworth Fawkes, 10th October, 185–

  1. Am engaged on Life of Turner.

  2. Mr. Ruskin tells me you knew him well – would be able to give me invaluable information.

  3. Will be passing close to Farnley on Thursday, and wondered if might call upon you?

  4. Please forgive me for not giving you more warning. Will of course understand if unable to see me at such short notice.

  XXIX

  From the journal of Walter Hartright, 12th October, 185–

  It is as well

  It is as well I did not write ahead to tell her I was coming, for I shall not now be home tomorrow after all. What delayed me was a strange accident, into which I cannot but read some significance.

  Just before we reached Leeds, there was a tremendous bang from the front of the train, and we jerked and rocked and squealed to a halt. My neighbour, a florid, grey-haired man of about fifty, wearing a brown suit and no overcoat, as if his own internal furnace were enough to keep him warm, lowered the window and looked out.

  ‘Can you see what’s the matter?’ I said.

  ‘Burst boiler,’ he replied, turning back. ‘I’m afraid, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be here for a while. They’ll need to send another engine.’ And with that he leant out again, unfastened the door, and gingerly lowered himself to the ground.

  I was sure this must be against company regulations, but I heard no-one remonstrating with him, and after a minute or so I took out my sketch-pad and pencil and jumped down after him – partly out of curiosity, and partly to avoid the purgatory of having to exchange grumbling platitudes with my fellow-passengers for an hour or more.

  At first all I could see was a dense swirl of vapour and gritty smoke, which seemed to engulf the locomotive and half of the front carriage; but as I drew closer I could make out blurred figures hurrying about, or standing talking in little groups. Among them I saw my brown-suited companion, apparently deep in conversation with a bearded man in a round cap and white canvas trousers whom I took to be the driver. No-one seemed to have been hurt; and yet there was something undeniably awful about the scene: the flailing rods and pistons; the dreadful spouts of steam shrieking from the split boiler (it is only when they are wounded that you see the terrible power of these brutes); the ferocity of the still-raging coals, glowing red through the fog like the mouth of hell.

  Awful, but strangely beautiful, too. I took out my pencil, and started to draw.

  I was so engrossed in my labours that I did not notice the approach of the man in the brown suit, until he was standing at my shoulder.

  ‘You’re an artist?’ he said, after a moment.

  I nodded.

  ‘You put me in mind of Turner. He loved mists, and fires, and machines. You’re familiar with his work?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I admire it very much.’

  ‘I knew him, you know,’ he said. His voice sounded matter-of-fact enough, but he pushed his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet, as if his sense of self-importance, having been denied the outlet of words, must express itself in some other form. ‘I’m Elijah Nisbet.’

  He clearly expected me to be impressed, and I think my ‘Oh!’ contrived to suggest that I was, though in truth I had never heard his name before in my life.

  ‘I have some of his later paintings,’ Nisbet went on. He glanced at my drawing again, and then nodded approvingly. ‘It would be a pleasure to show them to you, if you’re ever near Birmingham. A professional like yourself might appreciate them better than my neighbours do.’

  ‘Thank you. I should like that very much.’

  ‘Let me give you my address.’ He took the pad, and scribbled on the back. ‘There,’ he said, returning it to me. ‘Now I must go and write a complaint.’ He cast a speculative look towards the crippled locomotive. ‘The driver’s to blame. He reported it “correct” last night, but there must have been some evidence of a flaw.’

  He did not explain how he came to speak with such authority, or why it was his business to complain; and I did not ask him, for fear it would reveal that I didn’t really know who he was.

  It was only after he had gone that I realized I hadn’t told him my business, either. Why had I been so secretive? Was it merely that he had connected me with Turner not as a biographer, but as a fellow-artist, and I had not wished to disabuse him?

  *

  The relief engine did not finally arrive for nearly two hours, with the result that I missed the train to Arthington, and arrived in Otley too late to see Mr. Fawkes. I therefore sent a note by the carrier to say that I should call on him in the morning, and have put up for the night at the Black Bull, where I write these words.

  It’s easy to see why Turner loved this place. If Lord Egremont’s Petworth – a Renaissance palace presided over by a Renaissance prince – appealed to the classical side of his nature, then Mr. Fawkes’s Farnley must have fed his hunger for the sublime. In the streets of Petworth you are aware, above everything, of the inescapable presence of the great house; in the streets of Otley – which must be approximately the same size – you are aware only of the presence of nature. The town is bounded on one side by the River Wharfe, with majestic moors rising gradually beyond it; and on the other by an enormous hill – called ‘the Chevin’, according to the driver from Arthington – that seems to blot out half the western sky. The sun was setting behind it as I arrived, and I took out my notebook and did a series of quick sketches, screwing up my eyes and craning my neck to see the clutter of craggy rocks on the summit, until at length it was too dark for me to work, and I approached the inn.

  The Black Bull is a solid, welcoming, unpretentious kind of place – constructed, like every other building I have seen in Otley, of rough-hewn local stone smudged with grime from the nearby mills – which stands at the corner of the main square. As I entered, the last few stalls from the day’s market were being dismantled by lantern-light, and a pack of small boys was scuffling among the trampled cabbage-leaves and broken turnips on the ground. For a moment I was put in mind of my first visit to Maiden Lane – though here the children’s faces glowed with health and merriment, and the cold air was misty with their breath, and rang with the sound of their laughter – and found myself wondering whether Turner had ever seen such a scene in Otley, and been moved by it to the same thought? This notion gave me a sudden start: what images, what private memories and associations – which I could never now know �
� might then have flitted through his consciousness; and what old pains and needs and hungers might they have stirred? And should I find any traces of this secret, inner Turner here – as I had, for an instant, in Twickenham and Farringdon; or was I fated merely to discover clues to his artistic life, and hear Mr. Fawkes reiterate what I have come to see as the official line: a strange, eccentric little fellow, but no man could have been more tender-hearted, or a truer friend.

  I was greeted in the flagged hall by a thickset, round-faced man, wearing a heavy apron, and collarless white shirt, with the sleeves rolled back to reveal a pair of massive forearms, and a sprig of grey hair showing at the unfastened throat. Through the half-open door to the right I glimpsed a trestle table lined with plainly dressed men and women, and heard the powerful thrum of twenty or thirty voices. Farmers and their wives, I thought, relaxing after market-day.

  ‘G’d evening, sir,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Would you be looking for a room?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If you have one.’

  ‘That’s just about all we do have,’ he said – not insolently, but with a kind of good-humoured relish. His eyes searched the row of hooks behind him, and at last lighted on a key.

  ‘You want to see it first, sir?’ he said.

  ‘No, I’ll take it,’ I said hastily, suddenly realizing how tired I was, and how unprepared to trudge round the town looking for an alternative. ‘As long as there’s a bed, and a table I can sit at, and write.’

  ‘That I think I can promise you,’ he said with a smile.

  Following him upstairs, I tried to guess his age. He was still hale and strong, but from the deep lines in his powerful neck, and the wisps of silvery hair about his ears, I supposed he must be about sixty. Walter Fawkes, I recalled from my researches, had died in 1825; and Turner had never again returned to Farnley, so his last visit here must have been around forty years ago. Unlikely, therefore – but not impossible. As we reached the landing, I said:

  ‘Do you by any chance remember Turner?’

  ‘Turner?’ he said, surprised. ‘What, th’ironmonger?’

  ‘The painter.’

  ‘Painter! Nay. What, here in Otley, was he?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  He shook his head. ‘I never knew him. But see, I only come from Ilkley fifteen year ago, like,’ He opened the door to my room, and carried my bags inside. ‘Here you are, sir. I’ll just set the fire going for you.’

  While he worked, I stood by the little casement and gazed out. The room overlooked a side-alley, but beyond it I could see the town stretching away – an irregular horizon of roofs and chimneys, oil-lamps winking in uncurtained windows, and strings of street-lights so feeble that they quickly petered out as they approached the foot of the Chevin, as if they knew they could not challenge its black looming bulk, and might as well give up altogether. Somewhere in that bewitching pattern of light and shade, I thought, there must be somebody who recalls Turner – somebody who knows something about him that will deepen my understanding of the man, and give me an advantage against Thornbury, who appears so far ahead of me in London. I had an empty evening before me; and there and then resolved to spend it trying to find this person, and learning what he – or she – could tell me.

  My first thought was to join the farmers, and take my dinner with them; for among them there might well be one from the Farnley Estate, who, if he had not known Turner himself, could at least perhaps refer me to someone who had. When at last I descended again, however, and was about to enter the dining room, I found my way barred by the innkeeper.

  ‘If you care to step into the back parlour, sir, there’s a table set for you there.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t trouble yourself with that,’ I said, thinking they must suppose it would be beneath my dignity to eat at the common board. ‘I’m happy to sit with everyone else.’

  ‘It’s no trouble, sir,’ he said – and I fancy my words had taken him aback, for he flushed, and his voice had a phlegmy edge as he went on: ‘Quite the other way about; for they’re nearly done in there, and my wife wants it all sided and neat like afore the lasses go home.’

  And so I found myself sitting all alone at a white-clothed table before a snug coal fire, in a comfortable little room at the rear of the house. I did not, however, forget my purpose, even when it turned out – to my disappointment – that I was to be waited on by a spotty girl of fourteen or so, who would not only clearly not remember Turner herself, but whose mother had probably not even been born at the time of his last visit here.

  Tell me,’ I said, when she had taken my order (standing stock-still, and frowning and biting her lower lip with concentration). ‘Who is the oldest person you know in Otley?’

  For some reason, this reduced her to uncontrollable giggles; and, quite unable to speak, she shook her head, and retreated to the kitchen. A couple of minutes later, however, as she reappeared with my soup and set it before me, she said:

  ‘Mrs. says to try Druggist Thompson.’

  ‘Why?’ I said – unsure whether this was a belated answer to my question, or a reference to some other topic altogether. She froze like a frightened rabbit; so I coaxed her by saying:

  ‘Is he very old?’

  She shook her head again, and left without another word; and it was only when she brought my steak pie (a full twenty minutes later) that she said:

  ‘Nay, but all the old folk go to him for their potions an’ that. You won’t have far to look. He’s only out in th’market place.’

  And so he was – or, rather, so his shop was; for by the time I had finished my meal, and retrieved my coat from my room, and ventured out again, ‘Thompson: Druggist’ was firmly closed.

  There seemed nothing to be gained by returning at once to the Black Bull, so I decided to take a walk. If nothing else, I should enjoy the childish pleasure I still find in exploring new places – observing the names of shops and taverns, and looking into the houses as I pass, and imagining what it must be like to live in them; and if I was lucky, some chance encounter might yet allow me to discover something of Turner. A raw wind was starting to blow in from the north-west, carrying – above the stench of a nearby tannery – a wild moorland smell that seemed to call out the spirit of adventure; and with a sudden spasm of exhilaration I turned up my collar, and set off down the narrow path at the side of the hotel.

  I found myself – as soon as my eyes had adjusted to the darkness – in a maze of mean passages, that turned and twisted and doubled back so unrelentingly that after a few minutes I should, I think, have had difficulty retracing my steps. I was not concerned about getting lost, however; for I knew I must come out somewhere, and that that somewhere could not be very far from the Black Bull, which I would be able to approach by way of the main streets. At every lighted window I peered inside, hoping to see some elderly person sitting alone before the fire – for surely Turner, if he knew of this knot of secret alleys, must have come here again and again, drawn by the opportunities it offered for being unseen and unknown? – and someone might remember him yet, if I could but describe him well enough. Beyond one white-bearded old patriarch regaling a group of younger men in an ale-house, however, I saw nothing but rooms full of children and their mothers (including, once – through gnarled little panes of glass grey with steam – a tin bathtub before the fire, and a baby splashing in it. Why, I cannot say – but this scene stabbed me so fiercely with the recollection of my own family, and the realization of how far they have been from my thoughts lately, that I had to bite my lip to stop myself weeping.).

  At length, turning a corner, I felt the wind and a spatter of rain full on my face; and a few moments later emerged in an open yard at the edge of a street I did not recognize. The Chevin rose up directly before me, no more than a mile or so away; and for a moment I had the strange impression that it had grown since I’d last seen it, for its dark mass seemed to reach as far as the eye could see. Then I saw that what appeared to be the ‘top’ was moving, and was in rea
lity no more than a great black storm cloud rolling towards us at a fearful pace. I wished now that I had paid more attention to the way I had come; for it was clear that if I did not return to the hotel at once, I risked being soaked to the skin, and having to put on wet clothes in the morning.

  From somewhere to my left, I heard the strains of music, and thinking there might be a hall or an assembly room nearby, where I might turn my predicament to advantage by sheltering pleasantly until the storm was past, and perhaps falling into conversation with an elderly doorkeeper, I set out briskly in that direction. After no more than two hundred yards or so, I came to a brightly lit, plain stone building which looked as if it had once been a chapel, but which now boldly announced itself to the world – by means of a large painted board above the door – as ‘Otley Mechanics’ Institute’. The music came from a room on the first floor; and as I drew nearer I was conscious that there was something strange about it, though for a moment I could not have said what it was. The melody was familiar – a piece by Mendelssohn, I think; the playing more than competent, for such an out-of-the-way place; and yet…

  And then it struck me: I could identify the first two instruments easily enough – a violin and a piano – but what in heaven’s name was the third? A piccolo? Too deep. A flute? Too rich and deep.

  I was still wrestling with this conundrum – heedless of the rain that was now hammering the top of my head – when the door opened, and a tall, slender man peered out, and grimaced up at the sky. He held an umbrella, which he started to unfurl; but as soon as he felt the wind catch it he closed it again, and set off with no other precaution than a violent shrug to lift his coat higher about his neck and shoulders. He had gone no more than five paces when he saw me. The puzzlement must have shown on my face, for his expression promptly changed from hawkish severity to a broad smile, and he said:

  ‘You know what that is?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Come and see.’