by James Wilson
‘What?’ I said.
‘I knows ‘im,’ snivelled the boy, between sobs. ‘I seed ‘im!’
‘Where!?’
‘I can show yer!’
The constable caught hold of his ear and shook it. The boy squirmed and howled:
‘Leave off! Leave off!’
‘Please .. .’ I laid a hand on the man’s arm.
He shook his head, with the worn look of a man tired of having to explain the wicked ways of the world to innocents like me. ‘It’s just a dodge, miss.’
‘It ain’t, it ain’t!’ shrieked the boy. ‘I seed ‘im! ‘E’s stalled where I dossed last night! ‘E scared me!’
‘And where is that?’ said a deep, soothing voice. The legal-looking gentleman had got up without my noticing it, and was now standing at my elbow.
‘Tench Street crib,’ said the boy.
The gentleman nodded, and turned to me. ‘My name is May-hew, madam. And I shall be happy to show you the way.’ And with a small bow, first to the Night Inspector, and then to the boy, he ushered me towards the door.
We barely spoke in the cab. My companion – though I sensed he was curious about me, and would have liked to hear my story – was too delicate to question me; and I was too dazed, and too troubled by my own thoughts and feelings, to say anything at all. I dreaded discovering that the boy was wrong; and yet doubted whether I had the strength and energy to do what must be done if he was right – for if Walter was there, how should I act towards him? Could I marshal enough civility even to get him away from the place, and take him to where he could be safely delivered into other hands?
After about ten minutes we turned into a dark winding street and stopped at the entrance to a narrow court.
I remember walking through it, and out into an open yard cluttered with barrows and costermongers’ carts. I remember entering a huge, smoky kitchen, with soot-blackened beams, and a rude iron gas-jet in the ceiling, and haggard men lolling about on the benches and tables that ran around the walls. I remember one of them crying out: “Ere’s Mr. May’ew, gents!’ and a handful of the others breaking into a desultory cheer; and my companion smiling, as if this was no more than his due, and whispering in my ear:
‘I provided their Christmas dinner.’
I remember him speaking to the man who had greeted him. I remember the man nodding, and picking up a lamp, and giving it to me; and Mr. Mayhew murmuring, ‘Go on!’ and urging me on with a wave of his hand, as if he knew this were a quest I must undertake alone.
I remember a barn-like room lined – no, packed – crammed - with sleeping-stalls. I remember thinking: This is what the inside of a slave-ship must have looked like. I remember peering into the first three or four, and wondering if even a slave-ship could have afforded such images of want.
And then I remember nothing but Walter.
He was lying on his back on a leather cover. In the two days since I had seen him last he seemed to have shrunk, and beneath his unshaven beard his face was as white as parchment. His eyes were open, but he gave no sign of recognizing me. For a moment I feared he was dead; and then I saw him blink.
‘Walter?’ I said.
He made no response. I moved towards him. As I did so I felt a hand close on my wrist, and heard a voice say:
‘Leave it!’
I turned back. A small man with copper-coloured hair and a face marred by giant freckles was leaning out of the neighbouring booth.
‘Leave it,’ he said again. His nose was running, and he wiped it with the back of his hand. “E may want it later.’
I looked back at Walter, and noticed a tin plate lying next to him on the bed. All I could see on it were an uneaten potato and a slab of grey that might have been beef.
‘Do you mean the food?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘I won’t touch it,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to take him home.’
The man nodded again. “E’ll die else.’
‘How long has he been in this place?’ I said.
‘Since yesterday,’ said the man. ‘But ‘e won’t eat nothing.’
‘And how did he come here?’
‘I brung ‘im. I sees ‘im on the bridge, just starin’ down at the river. And – I’ll be honest with yer – ‘e’s looking so lost I thinks: There’s an easy one. Why don’t you do ‘is pocket? So I’m tryin’ to flare’ ‘is purse, but I can’t find it, and while I’m pokin’ and pattin’ ‘e notices me. But stead of shoutin’ at me, or tryin’ to stop me, ‘e just looks at me. There’s a namesclop the other side, ‘e could ‘ave ‘ad me just like that, but ‘e don’t do nothin’.
‘So I thinks: ’E must be pretty bad. And I says to ‘im: “You ain’t thinkin’ o’ doin’ it, are you? Not – doin’ away with yourself?”
‘But still ‘e don’t say nothin’. So I says: “You didn’t ought to do it, mate. You come with me, and I’ll give you twopence for a ticket, and things’ll look brighter in the mornin’, you see if they don’t.” And ‘e come along as meek as a lamb, as though ‘e didn’t care whether ‘e lived or died.’
He paused, and wiped his nose again; and then, with an almost tender glance at Walter, said:
‘And I don’t think you do much, do you, mate?’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
I took Walter’s hand, and pulled him up. He was quite unresisting, and did nothing either to assist us or impede us as the pickpocket and I helped him to his feet, and led him towards the kitchen.
I do not recall seeing Mr. Mayhew again on our way out. I do not recall seeing anyone, in fact, until we emerged from the court, and found the driver standing by his cab, stamping his feet and smacking his gloved hands against the cold. He made no comment when he saw us, but touched his cap, and said ‘Good evening, sir’, as we helped Walter inside – as if it was the most natural thing in the world for my brother to sleep in a Wapping lodging-house, and he had known all along that this was where we should find him.
On the way home, I at last found the words to say:
‘You are ill, Walter. I am going to arrange for you to go somewhere where you will get better. After that, we will return to Limmeridge, and resume our lives. You may talk to me of what happened between us if you will, but neither you nor I will ever mention it to Laura or to any other living soul, and it will never happen again.’
He merely slumped in his seat, and gazed listlessly out of the window. Only when we were almost home did he turn towards me, and – shrinking into his corner, as if to prove he did not mean to touch me – whispered:
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You were right. Vacancy.’
‘What do you mean? What have I ever said of vacancy?’
‘My emptiness.’
Fearing he might be delirious, I affected not to hear, and said nothing.
Postscript
From the journal of Marian Halcombe, 15th July, 186-
A year to the day since Walter came back to us. The doctors warned us that progress would be slow, and so it has been – agonizingly slow. But week by week he is growing stronger – and so, I think, am I. He walks with greater purpose. The children no longer shrink from him in fear. Indeed, he has even begun to play with them again – though with a kind of solemn watchfulness, as if he has forgotten how it is done, and must learn all over again by observing them. And when, a few days since, we entered the nursery, and young Amy suddenly chortled at him, and pointed, and – for the first time – cried ‘Papa!’, he almost smiled.
As for Laura: she must wonder constantly at the dreadful change in him, and yet I have never heard her complain of it, or ask me its cause. Perhaps she is afraid to do so; or perhaps it is simply her nature to accept things as they are. I fear she is often still hurt and baffled; and yet several times over the last month or so I have also seen her flush with delight, as he forces himself to answer her gaze, or to accept the touch of her hand, or to compliment her with fumbling courtesy on her dress or her hair.
Life here will neve
r be normal again – if ‘normality’ is how we lived before. There will always be a pain between us. But with every day that passes it feels more like a shared pain, such as soldiers may feel who have endured a battle together. And like the bass notes of a piece of music, it seems to deepen as well as darken our experience. We think and talk less of the past and of the future, and more of the present. Yesterday I found Walter on the terrace, sniffing the smell of rain on earth; and when he saw I smelt it too, and rejoiced in it, we both found – strange the invisible threads that run between us, and the messages they convey! – that our eyes were full of tears.
This morning I heard from Lydia Kingsett. Her husband, it appears, is in prison, awaiting trial (she did not say for what; but how many women would have said even that?) and – for all the shame and embarrassment she must feel – she seems much happier for it. She enclosed with her letter a copy of the Quarterly Review, saying there was an article in it by Elizabeth Eastlake – ‘which, if you have not seen it already, I think you might find of interest’. I confess I could not bring myself to read it at once, and left it unopened where it lay.
And would, doubtless, have thought no more about it – but that this afternoon, as I was on my way to the garden, I heard a strange sound from the library. So strange that I had to stop, and think for a moment what it was.
It was Walter. Laughing.
I opened the door. He was sitting at the table, looking at the Quarterly. When he saw me, he got up, and handed it to me.
At first I could not see what had caught his attention. And then I found it: a review of The Life and Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner, by Walter Thornbury.
I tried to read it; but it was nothing but a blur of words.
Until Walter pointed me to the last paragraph:
It is even possible that, by requesting some competent friend to draw up a modest memoir of him, and furnishing the necessary information, Turner might have saved himself from the worst of his posthumous misfortunes – that of falling victim to such a biographer as Mr. Thornbury. Perhaps the appearance of this wretched book may be the means of calling forth some writer qualified, by knowledge of the man and of his art, to investigate the truth and to tell it as it ought to be told.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Diana Owen of the National Trust, for showing me parts of Petworth House normally closed to the public, and for her insights into life there in the nineteenth century; Philip and Pat Trower and Gavin and Venetia Young for their hospitality; Pat Hunt and Kate Armitage at Otley Museum for their assiduous research on my behalf; Mark Pomeroy, Archivist at the Royal Academy, for his advice; and Professor Harold Livermore for generously opening his house, Sandycombe Lodge, to visitors. I’m grateful to Dominic Power, Andrew Hilton and Peter Lord, all of whom discussed the book with me in its early stages and made helpful suggestions. And I owe a special debt to Nicholas Alfrey, of the University of Nottingham Department of Art History, who gave me the benefit not only of his immense knowledge of Turner and of his literary acumen, but also of his friendship – listening patiently as I tried to find my way through the complexities of Turner’s art and life, reading various versions of the text, and making incisive – and always encouraging – comments.
I am extraordinarily lucky in having both an exceptional editor, Jon Riley, who guided me with his usual flawless judgement and attention to detail through the writing and revision process, and an outstanding agent, Derek Johns, without whose perspicacity and unflagging encouragement The Dark Clue would never have been conceived, let alone written.
I also want to acknowledge the help of my family, who all, in different ways, made an enormous contribution to the book – Paula by her inspiration and support; Tom, by taking an informed interest that went far beyond the call of duty; Kit, by gamely tolerating my eccentric hours and preoccupations; and my mother, by putting at my disposal her encycolpaedic knowledge of social history, and working indefatigably as a researcher (so saving me at least six month’s work), critic and morale-booster.
And finally, of course – my thanks to Wilkie Collins and J. M. W. Turner.
A note on sources
This is, of course, a novel, not a work of non-fiction, and I do not intend to list all the many books I turned to in writing it. In view of the subject matter, however, I think I should point out that there have been (as far as I know) seven major biographies of Turner. I used of all of them to some extent, but am particularly indebted to the first, Walter Thornbury’s much reviled but hugely entertaining (and often, I think, very perceptive) Life and Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner; to Jack Lindsay’s J. M. W. Turner: a Critical Biography, whose psychological and political insights I found invaluable; and to James Hamilton’s Turner: A Life, which is illuminated by a good deal of more recent scholarship. I also drew heavily on John Gage’s virtuosic and inspiring J. M. W. Turner: a Wonderful Range of Mind, which – although not strictly a biography – is a superb introduction to the relationship between Turner’s work and the cultural and intellectual world in which he lived.