James Miranda Barry

by Patricia Duncker

  I was discreetly trying out the sofa springs when the great clock, whose face was painted with sentimental pansies, suddenly gulped, whirred, breathed and struck eight o’clock. Beside the clock, on a shining table, under a thin glass dome, stood an authentic, once living fox, stuffed, dynamic, with its teeth bared. Beneath one triumphant paw, a dead rabbit lay stretched out, bloody and bizarre, its glass eye fixed on heaven. I gazed at this for a long time. It was very odd to see the natural world, murderous but frozen, presented as a decoration in a family drawing room. I pinned my nose to the thin dome of glass and watched it mist over slightly, as if the animals were breathing. Francisco did not have any curiosity cabinets or geological collections, only books. I peered into the dome, anxious to verify my suspicions that the moss and grass under the fox’s handsome lifted brush were in fact made of slit waxed ribbons.

  I never heard him come in. I simply felt his hand clamped to the back of my neck. I was twirled round like a marionette, my feet clear of the ground, and found myself eyeball to eyeball with James Barry.

  He hissed into my face, with a little spray of spit, ‘If you try to bite me again, I’ll knock all your teeth out.’

  There was a terrible pause. He put me down and whistled quietly for a moment, but he did not relinquish his grip on my collar, and he began to stare into my face with grim fixity. Close to, I could see that his teeth were yellow and rotten. His breath smelt of alcohol and tobacco. He crouched above me triumphantly, staring so hard that I became convinced he was counting my freckles. Gradually, I became less afraid and stared back. The old painter was masticating like a feeding beast. I watched the black hairs in his nostrils quivering as he chewed.

  ‘I’m sorry I bit you, sir,’ I said finally, and my voice came out firm, but one octave too high.

  ‘Never say that you’re sorry for the things you meant to do, child.’

  He paused and went on chewing and staring.

  ‘Come and visit my studio, before your eyeballs crack.’

  He put out his hand. It was perfectly clean, soft and white; the skin around the fingernails was cracked and scarred. I understood that this was a genuine gesture of friendship and so, without hesitating, I put my hand in his.

  James Barry’s studio was on the north side of the house, facing the hill and a huge mass of rhododendrons, which had finished flowering and now formed a darkening phalanx of thick and sultry green. The floor was of polished wood and around the two huge wooden scaffolds which supported his painting there was a mass of crumpled, stained canvas sheeting. His paints lay in disarray on a long table, with a variety of dishes and bowls. I saw a pestle and mortar made of marble, both stained with red. The room was vast and cold, and stank of varnish and turpentine.

  I didn’t look at the painting, but out of the great windows. In the rushing shadows and bright bars of sunlight crossing the gardens, I saw rabbits bouncing in the grass and above them, a roaring, seething mass of green.

  ‘Come and have a look from here.’ Barry gestured towards the painting. ‘You’re too close to see it by the window.’

  I stepped back. Parts of the stretched canvas were naked and raw. Across the grimy, unpainted spaces he had drawn careful lines in faint blue crayon: designs for faces, a horse’s arched neck and splayed mane, a staircase on which stood two large classical pots, decorated with grimacing satyrs, just like those on our wine glasses at home. They were partly blocked in with thin paint. I stared, but could not make sense of the fragments. The whole refused to appear. Barry pulled me a little further backwards and set me on a high stool. He was surprisingly strong. I was now on a level with the images before me. And then the action of the painting began to take place. It was Rome, built on the hills in the pale, diminishing background. In the foreground, a battle of sorts. Here were huge Roman figures with straight noses and reddened muscular thighs, flat swords, arms raised in slaughter, or embracing pale, gleaming mounds of naked female flesh. The blood, blond hair and undulating breasts surged and rippled into patterns. It was the scale of the painting that sickened me. Too large, too brutal and too close to my face. I stared. Then shut my eyes.

  ‘Well?’ Barry was unperturbed. He now stood very close to the painting with his back to me, peering into the layers of paint. ‘Well, child?’

  ‘What is it?’ I kept my eyes firmly shut. Tell me, I don’t want to look for myself.

  ‘It’s an historical subject. Naturally. As are all the greatest paintings. You know your history, don’t you? Can’t believe that Francisco hasn’t taught you about the rape of the Sabine women and the founding of Rome.’

  I opened my eyes. Once explained, the flesh looked less menacing. Barry ignored me and began working on one huge enfolding Roman arm. Reflected sunlight flickered for an instant on the studio walls. I could hear the faint chime of bells from the domestic quarters in the household. I gazed at the stony Roman profiles, the dimpled jaws, full cheeks and fixed grey eyes. It was oddly frozen, each figure embalmed in gleaming colour; even the tortured female forms seemed suspended, like scientific specimens floating in spirits. I gazed at the static canvas for a long time. And there the figures remained, monumental, immobile, and as lifeless as the volcanic bodies at Pompeii.

  ‘What’s rape?’ I asked finally. It was clearly slightly different from butchery.

  ‘It has two meanings, both of which are current here,’ said Barry, without looking round. ‘What does rapere mean in Latin? Answer quickly.’

  ‘To seize or to snatch.’

  ‘There you have it,’ Barry commented, beginning to scratch gently at one point of the painting with a tiny razor. ‘The Rape of the Sabines. But it also means to have carnal knowledge of a woman without her consent. I don’t think that the Romans were given to asking anything politely. Anyway, all societies are based on the seizure, slaughter and slavery of women, child. You ask your mother.’

  I reflected on this information for a while, but I had the fixed idea that carnal was something to do with meat and thus formed the opinion that the Sabines were obliged by the Romans to eat meat, after having been strictly vegetarian. Francisco had read Horace with me and so I was under the illusion that the Sabines all lived on farms.

  ‘Here she is. Your mother.’

  He stepped aside so that I could see the dark, luminous face of a woman in white, escaping from the painting. It was my Beloved, younger, but just as slender, quick and graceful, her hand half raised to protect her face, her dress torn, one breast exposed; she turned, mouth open, crying out, her curls falling loose down her back. But she was getting away from the Romans; a long, empty alley of cypresses stretched stiffly before her. The painting would soon no longer contain her. I smiled, and Barry understood my smile.

  ‘Ha. Yes. That’s Mary Ann. Always finds a way out, your mother does. Surprised she got caught pregnant with you, really. Or that she didn’t put paid to you with pointed twigs or by swallowing cockroaches. No morals, that woman. Just brains, plenty of brains . . .’

  Barry went on talking, but more to the painting than to me.

  ‘She’s beautiful now. When she’s not in a temper. But ten years ago she was very, very beautiful. You don’t look like her at all. More’s the pity for you . . .

  ‘She used to sit for me. When I couldn’t afford models. I put her in every painting. As Juno, Pandora, Cordelia, Eurydice . . . I painted her as Chastity, as Fertility, as Liberty, as Artemis, as Aphrodite, as the Angel or the Maenad. In The Education of Achilles you can just see her beyond the Centaur, a pale wraith, gazing back from the darkness, excluded and envious. She isn’t going to be taught by Centaurs. There’s an odd mixture of cunning and envy in Mary Ann. You can’t see her face, it’s her body I’ve painted . . .

  ‘I wrote to her, almost daily, during all the years I was in Rome. Why didn’t she wait for me? I’d have sent for her as soon as I was in a position to do so. I’ll never forgive her for that cretinous wretch Bulkeley. A waste, a waste . . . I sent her presents when I had the money
. Patterns, stuff, silk, the best lace I could buy from Cambrai. She wanted to travel too, of course. And Father wouldn’t let her. All the education she ever had was what I taught her. And what she taught herself. You’re a lucky little bugger to have Francisco to teach you. He’d take great pains with you. And he’s good to her. But it was through me that she met both Erskine and Miranda. Damn her. She’d never have been anything if it hadn’t been for me . . .

  ‘I made her what she is, child. But I never made her a whore. She did that all by herself. The woman survives by trickery. Disguises. Who is Mary Ann Barry? Mary Ann Bulkeley? Even her own child will never know. There she sits, nice as pie at the dinner table. Smiling at the men. Pretending to be up on society conversations. The woman wears every face I’ve ever painted . . .

  ‘I’ve made love to that woman in oils, child, year after year, and she’s always hated me for it . . .’

  Suddenly he swung round and glared at me, jabbing the air between us with his brush. The Romans looked out of the painting, swords raised.

  ‘What does she say about me? Mind you speak the truth.’

  There was another terrible pause. I spoke perfect truth.

  ‘She never mentions your name to me, sir. And when I ask anything about you, she changes the subject.’

  ‘Ha!’

  Barry growled at the Romans, thrusting his nose into a pile of turpentine rags. He said no more. After some minutes had passed in silence and gentle scratching, I climbed carefully and silently down from the stool and crept away into the bowels of the house, closing his studio door behind me.

  * * *

  The house belonged to the servants in the early mornings. Some of the scullery maids and kitchen boys were my age or only slightly older. I looked at them all with haughty curiosity, spied upon them from cracks and knots in the pantry doors, the tops of garden walls, from behind the dresser. I was desperate with loneliness. Sometimes they giggled and pointed. But mostly, they carried on working or laughing amongst themselves and ignored me. By mid-morning neither my Beloved nor Francisco had appeared and my misery was complete. I had prowled through the stables, cackled at the chickens, eaten a cucumber from the greenhouse and broken one flowerpot. No one wanted to play with me or to be my friend. In fact, I had no idea how to approach the kitchen boys. In London I was used to living with four self-preoccupied adults, but they always had time for me. Francisco gave up part of every day to teach me. I invented my own worlds when I was alone. I knew no other children. Now I was marooned in a mansion of possible acquaintances, none of whom I had managed to meet. I sat down on top of the ha-ha in a pool of gloom, gazing at the distant purple hills of Wales.

  Then I saw something white rustling in the long grass beneath me. Hastily, I assumed battle stations, took aim with my stick and prepared to defend my position.

  ‘Halt! Who goes there?’

  A small, dark-headed girl with a dimple in her smile and a gold gypsy ring in her left ear came out of the grass with her hands up.

  ‘Drop your weapons,’ I commanded.

  ‘Haven’t got any,’ she said, but she was carrying a ball of white in her left hand.

  ‘Give me that.’ I still had her covered.

  ‘Catch.’ She flung up the bundle and swarmed up the sheer face of the ha-ha with rapid agility. Her knees and her apron were covered in grass stains. She worked in the kitchens. I had seen her very early that morning, scouring carrots. She sat down beside me as I laid aside my rifle and undid the bundle. It contained two pairs of white silk stockings.

  ‘Just trying them on,’ she explained, ‘but they’re too big yet. I’ll keep them till I’m grown.’

  ‘Whose were they?’ I already knew they were stolen. The dimpled smile was unabashed.

  ‘Who’d you think? They belonged to the Missus. I’d never lay my hands on your mother’s stockings. Hers don’t have darns. But Lady Elizabeth won’t miss them. She’s got dozens. They’re ever so rich.’

  She pulled at my short curls in several different places and gazed at me anxiously.

  ‘Is it really true you’re Mr Barry’s natural son?’

  I flushed bright red with embarrassment and shouted, ‘It’s not true. My father’s dead. He died before you or I were born. And now we live with the General and I’m not a son.’

  I hesitated. I had never been dressed as daughters usually were and was therefore swaying in limbo between the safe worlds of either sweet ribbons or breeches.

  ‘No offence meant,’ said the kitchen girl amiably. ‘My mum’s no more married than yours is. Are you really a girl? Prove it.’

  I couldn’t think how to prove it.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she giggled, ‘show us your prick. If you’re a boy you’ve got a prick and if you’re a girl you’ve got a hole. Like skittles. Look.’ And she pulled up her apron and skirts to reveal two plump dirty thighs and a blossoming triangle of soft dark hair. She looked proudly down upon the display. It was more difficult for me to remove my breeches, but I began undoing all the buttons. I fumbled with nervousness and fright. She twitched impatiently at this lengthy operation and before they were half undone she pushed my muddling fingers aside and thrust her hand down my pants. It was a most perturbing sensation. For a second she looked at me, puzzled and amazed, her fingers moving on an exploratory voyage between my legs. Then she burst out laughing, withdrew her hand and kissed me.

  ‘Well, you’re a sort of a girl, I suppose. But definitely not like me. Perhaps you’re a girl dressed up as a boy? Or a boy that’s got enough girl for it not to matter too much either way. Well, I’ll tell everybody that you’re not Mr Barry’s son after all.’

  ‘Yes, tell them,’ I said tearfully, floundering in a pool of ambiguity.

  ‘Don’t cry. Boys don’t cry. And anyway, it’s not sad. He’s an awkward old bugger and I wouldn’t want him for a father. But it is funny that you look just like him.’

  ‘That’s because he’s my uncle. You can look like your uncle, can’t you?’

  ‘Then that’ll do as an explanation.’ She gave me another hug and wiped my eyes with the hem of her apron.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Alice Jones.’

  She never asked me mine.

  ‘Come on,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll show you the new kitchens.’

  The rain had begun. We ran all the way.

  Through the dining room, down the back passage, left by the pantry, down one flight of stone steps, behold a cream door with a large hatch and a little shelf to lean on, too high for either of us, stop, listen, turn the knob, slide in.

  David Erskine had invested in a new range with a boiler at the back to supply both the kitchens and the scullery with hot water and steam for the warm closet and steam table. There was a tap at the front and a kettle beneath. The kitchen itself was a furnace of good smells. A very large, handsome woman was extracting a currant cake from its hoop. The solid, rich black mass descended with a thud onto the scrubbed wooden table and the cook prodded it expectantly. Alice clung to the end of the table and peered at the cake. There was a boy I’d never seen before snoring in the corner.

  I stared at the mass of new pots and the dripping pan, all larger and more lavish than anything we had at home. There was an old iron skillet with which the cook had clearly refused to part, but it was redundant beside the handsome copper stew pans hanging on the wall in descending sizes, all with their own polished lids. My hunger had reached starvation levels. Apart from the two bread rolls, I had eaten nothing since seven o’clock on the previous evening.

  ‘Any chance of a small pie each?’ asked Alice.

  Cook didn’t look at her. ‘Get the grater and prepare the nutmeg. Then we’ll see.’

  No promises.

  Alice knew where everything was kept. She pushed me onto a stool by the table, then climbed up to reach a tin on the dresser. The tin was not marked. The one next to it said curry powder and next to that was a large bottle of anchovy essence. David Ersk
ine liked foreign foods. So did Francisco. I was quite sure I wouldn’t.

  Alice washed her hands before energetically settling down to grate fingernails and nutmeg into a fine dust.

  I looked around. Two plucked ducks and a goose were hanging naked over the sink, their limp necks a spectacle of tragedy. Cook saw me looking.

  ‘You’ll be happy enough when you eat a bit of those tonight,’ she snapped. ‘And they’re a lot cheaper than what your master pays in London. We only eat our own. That foreigner you’ve brought with you, who’s so brown you’d think he was born in a desert or in Africa, says that a good goose in town costs five shillings. He says his name means Saviour. Blasphemous, if you ask me. I shouldn’t be surprised if he was a French spy.’

  ‘Everybody thinks that,’ I admitted.

  ‘Then it must be true,’ cried the cook triumphantly. She began her elaborate decorations on the cake.

  I was beginning to understand the force of general opinion.

  ‘Pies, please,’ said Alice, handing over a little dish of grated nutmeg.

  Cook extracted two small meat pies from the pantry and we sat on the back porch, just out of the chilly rain, munching our spoils.

  ‘Are you older than me?’ I asked doubtfully. I rather thought that she was.

  ‘Yes. Lots. I’m four years older than you. You’re ten. We asked the man from Africa. But I’m small for my age. I know my birthday. It’s written down in the parish register and the rector put on his spectacles and read it out to me. Mum says he’s a good man. He writes down all the children in the parish whether their mum is married or not. So everyone is officially born and no sermons or questions. There’s some people who don’t like it that we’re in the same book as them. People round here think that they’re as good as Londoners . . .’ Now she looked at me, impressed, suddenly remembering that I lived in London.