by James Wilson
Tonight a letter from Sir Charles, who, as good as his word, has found where Haste’s son lives (not far from Turner’s birthplace in Covent Garden, it seems) and written to him to say he may expect to hear from me. Before I go to bed I shall write to him myself.
Saturday
There are many doors closed to a woman that a man may pass through freely. That, as I recall, was how Lady Eastlake explained her reluctance to undertake this work herself; and if I have discovered nothing else today, I have learnt that on that score, at least, she was right. Walter could have accomplished what I did in half the time and with a quarter of the effort. I only hope that in the event the prize turns out to be worth the trouble of getting it.
Cawley Street is a narrow little street to the east of St. Martin’s Place, which – from the rigid regularity of the houses – looks as if it was intended to run in a straight line, but then had to be bent in order to fit the available space. The tall windows and delicate fanlights give the impression that it might once have been a fashionable address; but now the poverty is palpable. You can see it in the battered paintwork and rusting railings and dull windows – many of which, I noticed (either to keep the warmth in, or the prying gaze of passers-by out), were shuttered even in the early afternoon.
There was no bell at number 8, and the knocker was so arthritic I could barely lift it, with the result that, for all the noise I was able to make, I might as well have stood there clearing my throat. A young man in the street – from his peaked cap and neat brass-buttoned coat I took him for a railway guard – saw my predicament and stopped.
‘May I be of assistance, miss?’
Thank you.’
It was a struggle, even for him; but at last he managed to deliver two resounding knocks which shook the frail door. The echo from inside was so loud and vibrant that I assumed for a moment Sir Charles must have been mistaken, and the house was unoccupied; but then we heard distant footsteps descending an uncarpeted staircase.
My saviour took this as his signal to withdraw. I was on the point of offering him money, but the suave efficiency of his manner somehow conveyed the idea that he regarded helping me as no more than an extension of his official duty; and – remembering the prohibition on giving gratuities to railway staff – I thought I might offend him. Searching his face, I convinced myself that I was right, for what I saw there was not hope or disappointment but merely professional satisfaction at a job well done; but at that moment the door opened behind me, and his expression promptly changed to one of outright incredulity.
I turned, and saw a man of about fifty standing in the doorway. There was, unquestionably, something unusual and unsettling in his appearance. He was not above average height, but his body had a kind of thickset fleshiness that in other men might have suggested lethargy but which gave him an air of animal strength and menace – an impression accentuated by his moth-eaten black coat, which was far too tight and looked as if it was about to give up the long battle to contain him by bursting apart at the seams. His head was almost entirely bald, save for a close-cropped patch of silver bristles above each ear, and the veins on his throat and brow stood out so fiercely that you could see them throb. Blood, indeed, was the first thought that struck you when you looked at him – he seemed as full of it as a sated leech, and you could not help supposing that the smallest nick in his stretched skin might bring forth an unstoppable red torrent.
‘Mr. Haste?’ I said.
He did not reply, but merely scowled at me.
‘I am Marian Halcombe. Did you receive my letter?’
His look went past me. ‘Who’s that?’ His voice was loud and querulous and unexpectedly high.
I turned back. The young man was still waiting in the street – not, I am sure, for money, but only to see if I needed further help. And, indeed, I was far from confident that I didn’t; but I could not very well enter the house with a railway guard in attendance, so I nodded and said:
‘Thank you again.’
The young man hesitated a moment; then, raising his fingers to his cap, he said, ‘Very good, miss,’ and went on his way.
Haste still said nothing. He gazed at me with narrow, appraising eyes, tugging distractedly at a handkerchief clutched tightly across the knuckles of his left hand. Then, without a word, he abruptly stood aside and held the door for me.
I walked past him into a narrow hall in which there appeared to be no furniture at all. He closed the door behind me and started upstairs, the sole of one of his shoes – which had split from the upper – flapping noisily on the wooden steps.
‘This house isn’t fit for a lady,’ he said, as we reached the landing, looking over his shoulder at me. ‘It isn’t fit for a gentleman, either. It isn’t fit for a dog.’
He gestured roughly towards a room overlooking the street. For an instant I thought he meant me to enter; but then I realized that he had shown me merely to prove his point, for it was completely bare, and he was already on his way to the next floor.
I followed him with growing trepidation, for every step brought more evidence – the ghostly outline of a chest against the faded walls, a solitary hook abandoned on a picture rail – that the house was empty, and we were alone in it; and my unease turned into outright fear as we reached the very top and I saw before me a plain narrow door fastened with a staple and padlock. All at once – I could not stop it – I found myself thinking of the story of Bluebeard; and, while I did not imagine I should find the bodies of his previous wives inside, yet I could not help wondering why he had brought me here, or reflecting that if he meant to harm me I should be powerless to protect myself or to summon help. But I reasoned that it would be pointless to try to leave now: for if he intended anything untoward, he would certainly catch me before I made my escape; and if he did not I should miss my only certain chance of finding out more about Turner. And I took some courage, too, from his behaviour; for surely if there had been any grounds for my anxiety, he would have been aware of it, and at pains to reassure me – and yet as he absently took a key from his pocket, and unlocked the door, and threw it open, he barely seemed conscious of my presence, let alone of my feelings.
We entered a long dingy room, as mean and functional as most attics, and yet not entirely devoid of comfort; for a frugal fire in the unadorned little grate took the edge off the cold, and a handsome old chair before it seemed to promise some respite from the prevailing atmosphere of drudgery and want. There were books, too, most with cracked spines and flaking gilt lettering – I quickly noted the plays of Shakespeare, and the Aeneid, and Wordsworth’s The Waggoner among a hundred more whose titles had rubbed clean away – all squeezed into a miniature bookcase ingeniously constructed to fit against the low sloping ceiling.
‘A man says you want to read my father’s diary,’ said Mr. Haste, staring at the dormer window.
‘A man! You mean Sir Charles Eastlake?’
He did not reply, but took what appeared to be a broken chair-leg from a box by the hearth, laid it on the fire and knelt down to blow the embers into life. He had not invited me to sit down, so – uncertain what I should say or do – I waited by the door and looked about me. For all its sparseness and poverty, the room had a surprising air of neatness and purpose which saved it from seeming squalid. The mattress that served as a bed was covered with a clean white counterpane, and the stacks of papers on the floor and on the small table had clearly been arranged according to some method – although what it was I could not have said. The only discordant note came from a huge unframed painting set at an awkward angle across the end of the room (it was too big to fit the wall flat), which seemed to belong to a different order of reality, and was as intrusive and out of place in this pinched world as a giant entering a hovel. It showed King Lear on the heath, hands raised, beard matted with rain, railing at the storm as a savage fork of lightning cracked the sky.
I felt Mr. Haste’s gaze upon me. ‘Is that your father’s?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘All t
he bailiffs left me. I secured it here and stood at the top of the stairs with the poker and told them if they tried to enter they should be sorry for it. That deterred them – they were pitiful little fellows – but I dare say they’ll be back.’
So that accounts for the padlock, I thought: he must always fasten it as a precaution before answering the front door. I felt a rush of relief, and an odd sense of gratitude to the picture for providing me with such a straightforward explanation, which made me suddenly absurdly determined to like it; but when I looked at it again I could not help feeling disappointed. Perhaps it was just the oddity of seeing it here, but something about it seemed not entirely right.
‘It’s very striking,’ I said.
If he had heard the equivocation in my voice he showed no sign of it. ‘My father was a genius,’ he said. ‘But to be a genius in England, of course, is not enough.’
‘Indeed?’
He shook his head. ‘If you want to get on you must learn to grovel, and fawn, and hold your tongue. Like that man.’
‘What man?’ I said – realizing, in the same instant, that he must mean Sir Charles. ‘Why will you not say his name?’
‘Come here,’ he said, moving to the window. ‘Do you know what that is?’
I craned my neck to see what he was pointing at; but it was at such a sharp angle I could not manage it without standing where he did. He saw my predicament, and promptly made way for me.
‘Large building. Stone,’ he said.
I could just make out a square grey rim above the rooftops. ‘The National Gallery?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘And the Royal Academy. Do you know what is behind it?’
I shook my head.
‘St. Martin’s workhouse. They could not say it plainer, if they carved it in stone above the door. That is what a man of genius may expect, if he fails to ingratiate himself What does he want you to do?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
He rounded on me suddenly. ‘That man! Why did he send you here?’
I felt my temper rising. I wanted to tell him that his misgivings were misplaced – that Sir Charles had no other motive than kindness to me – but I feared I should only make him angrier. And I knew that if it came to a contest between his anger and mine I should assuredly lose, so I edged back into the middle of the room and said mildly:
‘Did he not say in his letter?’
‘A biography?’
I nodded. ‘Of Turner.’
And I told him, as simply as I could, calculating that any hint of flattery or dishonesty would only inflame his suspicions more. And I think I was right; for, if he did not seem entirely convinced when I had finished, yet he did not immediately expostulate with me either, but lapsed into a pensive silence, pulling abstractedly at the handkerchief about his hand.
This, plainly, was not the moment to press him further; so I left him to his thoughts and looked about me again, discreetly searching for some clue that might help to explain his fury, and the sorry state in which he had been reduced to living. As I did so, my eye caught the papers on the table. They were of different sizes, and in different hands; and from the way they had been written and laid out it was evident that they formed the text of some magazine or journal, which in due course would be delivered to a printer. Several paragraphs bore headings – ‘An Honest Man’; ‘His Highness’ Magpie’ – in the manner of articles; and on the top sheet was written ‘The Eyeglass’, which I took to be the title of the publication, although I had never heard of it.
‘Two shillings a day,’ he said suddenly.
I could not imagine what he was talking about – unless perhaps it was the cost of the magazine, or the pittance he received for working on it. I turned towards him, with what I knew to be a foolish grin. He was clearly in the throes of some great inner turmoil, for his jaw worked, and he pulled so hard at the handkerchief that the skin about it turned white.
‘Rent,’ he said.
‘Rent!’
‘For the diary.’
The blood rose to my cheeks. Walter, I was certain, had never been expected to pay for information, and it had never occurred to me that I might be. Did Haste feel free to make such an insulting suggestion merely because I was a woman?
‘I did not suppose this to be a commercial arrangement,’ I said stiffly.
He started to tremble, though whether with fear or rage I could not tell. ‘If a man inherits his father’s house, no-one thinks ill of him for letting it.’
It was true – I could not deny it – and yet surely (I told myself indignantly) this was not quite the same? When I tried to identify the difference, however, I could not immediately do so, and ended by saying lamely:
‘A diary is not a house.’
‘It is all my father’s estate,’ said Mr. Haste. ‘That and’ – he gestured to the picture and the books – ‘what you see here. The duns have taken the rest. Am I not to get some profit from it?’
He drew himself up, and thrust out his chest; but I was more sorry for him than afraid, for his eyes were dull and despairing, and he could not stop his hands from shaking. He looked, indeed, more than anything like a large frightened dog that hopes to win the day by a show of aggression, but is all prepared to run if its opponent stands firm. He must have seen the pity in my face, for his voice suddenly became more urgent and appealing.
‘I have lost everything, Miss Halcombe. Even my family.’
‘Your family!’
He nodded. ‘My wife was not brought up to this, as I was. She tried, but she had no stomach for it; and at length was driven out, and took our girls to live with her sister in Surrey.’
‘Oh, how dreadful!’ I said, remembering the change that only a few weeks’ separation from Walter had wrought on Laura and her children – and that without any of the distress of poverty, or any doubt that he would one day be returning to them.
‘And there they must stay,’ said Mr. Haste. ‘Unless our fortunes mend.’
‘And is there any prospect of that?’ I asked, conscious, as I did so, that I was weakening my own bargaining position, but unable to harden my heart and affect complete indifference, as perhaps a man might have done.
‘Not if … certain men have their way,’ he said, with a grimace that was almost a smile, though a bleak and cheerless one. He waved towards the pile of papers on the table. ‘But they shall not take my hope, as they took my father’s.’
‘What is that?’ I said.
‘A new venture.’
‘A magazine?’
He nodded. ‘They will try to silence me, as they have before. But even if they succeed, it will not be for long. I shall merely start another. And then another, if necessary. And another.’
Was this madness, or the heroic fortitude of a wronged man? I could not tell; and was so curious that – fearful though I was that it might only provoke a torrent of imagined grievances and fantastical allegations – felt I must try to discover more.
‘What is the subject?’ I said cautiously.
‘Oh, my subject! My subject is always the same, Miss Halcombe. Folly and dishonesty and corruption.’ He gave a sharp barking laugh, more like a cry of pain than of merriment. ‘It is my destiny, it seems, to fight against them until I die.’
Mad he might be – and if, as seemed to be the case, he numbered Sir Charles Eastlake amongst his ‘foolish’ and ‘corrupt’ enemies, then mad he most undoubtedly was – and yet I could not but feel a certain admiration for his courage and determination in the face of adversity, as well as a natural sympathy for his unfortunate circumstances.
‘Very well,’ I said, smiling as graciously as I could. ‘I agree to your terms.’
His face immediately relaxed, and took on a quite different demeanour, in which relief and triumph seemed equally mixed.
‘Where is the diary?’ I asked.
He pointed to six uneven volumes on the top shelf of the bookcase. I calculated that it would take me about a day to read rapidly through each, an
d to place a mark where I found anything of interest; and then perhaps another two or three to transcribe the passages I had selected for Walter. To be charitable (and also, I confess, to avoid the embarrassment of asking for change) I took a sovereign from my reticule and held it out to him.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘I will take them for ten days.’
’Take!?’ he said, suddenly reverting to his bullying. ‘You cannot take them, Miss Halcombe. You must read them here.’
It was outrageous – unreasonable – out of the question; and yet I knew I had brought it on myself by being kind to him, and so encouraging him to think he could take further advantage of me. It was time, however apprehensive and reluctant I might feel, for me to stand firm.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Where would I work?’
‘I will find you a table and chair, and put them downstairs.’
‘You have scarce enough furniture for yourself,’ I said. ‘And what’ – I started to laugh, with a confidence I did not feel – ‘what if the bailiffs come?’
He shook his head, and made to protest; but before he could speak I went on:
‘Besides, how shall I keep warm?’
‘I’ll buy coals – you must give me extra for coals,’ he said; but the bluster in his voice was already being undermined by an edge of dreadful eagerness, which threatened at any moment to degenerate into outright pleading.
‘Mr. Haste,’ I said. ‘I am not going to work in this house. I came here today in good faith, and have made what I believe is a generous offer. I’m afraid you must take it or leave it.’
‘They are all I have!’ he said pitifully, snatching the handkerchief from his knuckles and winding and unwinding it frenetically around his index fingers in consternation. The back of his hand, I noticed, was covered in little scabs, as if he had scraped it with a brick.
‘What is it that concerns you?’ I said. ‘You think this is some ploy by Sir Charles to get hold of your father’s diary so that he may destroy it?’