James Miranda Barry

by Patricia Duncker

  The afternoons in late July beat all previous records for burning airlessness. The lawns turned brown. The wood in the window frames dried, shrank and split, the paint peeled away. The kitchen yard bricks stayed warm under our bare feet till far into the night. The cattle dozed in the stream, their tails constantly flicking at the flies; even the chickens clustered idly in the shade. Alice was confined to the dairy by her mother, in case she got sunstroke, and put to scouring out buckets. Beloved suddenly remembered my existence and ordered a daily siesta. The clocks talked to themselves in the silent still household. Only James Barry went on painting day after day, despite the climatic excesses. My room was high up, under the eaves, and by four o’clock the dark air inside the shutters was intolerable. I went out into the glazed white light.

  I scuttled, sweating, through the green mass of rhododendrons on the north side of the house. There was an overgrown avenue which was always in the shade and eventually led back to the great studio where James Barry worked. I got out my opera glasses to spy upon him. He was there, half turned towards the windows, brows drawn together, hardly moving before his colossal canvas. I watched his slight movements, the muscles of his face twitching. The sweat from my forehead blurred my sight. Gradually I realised, from his shifting glance, that there was someone with him in the studio. His eyes always returned to the same place, just out of my sight. He was copying someone onto the canvas. He gave commands. His lips moved. I watched the mystery enacted in dumb show. Whoever it was remained hidden by the rhododendrons and was outside the reach of my glass. I persevered, fascinated. Barry made a large gesture, raising his right hand, wiping the sweat from his face. A shadow moved slowly on the far wall of the studio. Then, into the double blur of my opera glasses, majestic as any diva, rose the figure of a naked woman. Her loose curls were tied up above her bare shoulders. She yawned, stretched, her breasts rising as she did so. Then, unclothed, but perfectly at ease, as graceful as if she were entering a ballroom, the woman walked across the floor and stood beside James Barry. She leaned against his shoulder. And there they were, grotesquely unmatched, Polyphemus and Galatea, both peering at the canvas.

  It was my mother.

  I started to crawl closer, keeping the glasses fixed to my sweating slippery nose. I had never seen her naked. She only had a bath once a week. And I had usually been scrubbed in the first bath and put to bed. I had never been able to imagine her like this, naked, but standing there, talking to someone who was fully clothed. Her backside was perfect, two pearl ovals, like gigantic eggs. Barry hardly glanced at her. He was pointing to something in the canvas. She stepped back, folding her arms over her stomach, rubbing one foot against the other. James Barry leaned into the canvas as if the huge structure was a sail, and he was now ready to put about. My mother stood behind him, listening, yawning, stretching from time to time. Barry made a curt gesture with his palette knife, and then, frowning, irritated – I knew that expression so well – she moved back to her original position, outside the two blurred, inflated circles of my glass. I buried my face in dead leaves and warm, moist earth.

  From time to time I looked up. Barry went on painting. I knew that she was there from the ferocity of his glance. He looked at the painting, and then he looked at her, unhesitating, unforgiving, without pity. She was becoming one of his forms, awash with pigments. I sniffled into the leaves. I hated her. I hated him. I was bitterly jealous. I wished that I knew how to paint like James Barry.

  A line of ants moved across the leaves. Two or three ran counter to the flow, greeting every third or fourth ant in a flurry of nodding segments. Do they have names? I asked Francisco. Ants aren’t individuals, he had said, they’re a system. Then he had paused thoughtfully and added, Actually, human beings are a system too. We are governed by invisible natural laws and whether you can see this or not depends on your perspective.

  But I felt myself to be outside every system.

  And then I fell asleep, my nose deep in the dead leaves of the rhododendrons, my sleeve traversed by ants, the opera glasses clutched tight in my damp hand.

  * * *

  A black padded foot and a bare white ankle turned me over with a shove, as if I were a dead animal. Someone in fine black silk with a yellow face leaned into the overgrown shrubbery, grasped me by the shoulder and gave me a vicious shake. Too close to mine was the still, unlined, unpowdered face of the serpent. The same wry smile with which she had so disconcerted me was fixed across her jaws. She picked up the opera glasses and stared at me for a moment, unblinking.

  It was evening, but no longer bright. The air had changed. It was as if we were looking at one another inside a bell jar, like stuffed animals in a vacuum. The light behind her black outline was lurid, orange and purple, like a painted apocalypse on a church wall.

  ‘Were you spying on your uncle and your mother?’

  Just in case the end of the world, when all lies would be exposed and added up, was close at hand, I spoke the truth.

  ‘Yes.’

  She smiled again and slowly extended one long and sinuous hand. She wore no rings. She was not really female. She was not natural. I decided that I would look her up in Francisco’s gigantic illustrated volume: Miraculous Encounters with Creatures of the Occult and the Cabbala in Exotic Lands, or The Further Adventures of Lemuel Gulliver in The Vales of Faerie.

  ‘Don’t judge her. She does it for you. She does it all for you.’

  I took the woman’s hand. The heat around us held its breath. She dragged me through the bushes, pulling the branches away from my face. I only reached her elbow. She was uncannily tall.

  ‘Are you a widow?’ I was not being impertinent, only attempting to account for the black, which no one else was wearing.

  ‘Goodness me, no. I never married. I’m in mourning for my father, who died three months ago.’

  ‘I never had a father.’

  ‘Oh yes you did, you just don’t remember him.’

  ‘That’s what my mother says.’

  The serpent smiled again, ironically. I looked up at her.

  ‘Do you know who my father was?’

  I asked as if I was only half interested and trailed after her, dragging a stick. If she thought I didn’t much care she might tell me something. But she said nothing. Twigs snapped beneath her feet, deafening in the stillness. The heat swayed, suspended in the peculiar light. We came out onto the lawns and saw that the sky had gathered itself up into a concentrated purple darkness. I heard the horses stamping in the stables, and caught sight of a man rushing away with an armful of rugs. Then a long jagged arrow of yellow flame, accompanied by a deafening crack and a rush of wind, descended into the kitchen garden, slicing through the ruthless rows of strawberries and lettuce. I clamped my hand more firmly into the serpent’s scaly grasp. She never quickened her step.

  ‘We’ve all been sent out looking for you, child. One of the kitchen girls said you were lost.’

  The light became fantastical and horrifying. The house loomed before us. I pulled at her hand.

  ‘Let’s run.’

  ‘No need.’

  And her timing was perfect. Just as we reached the terrace the first huge drops struck my shoulders. I saw my Beloved, now fully dressed and jewelled, rushing across the drawing room to fling open the French windows and welcome us home, as if we had returned from the wars.

  ‘Don’t say anything to her. Ever,’ hissed the serpent, bending down towards me. ‘Promise.’ This was an order, not a request.

  ‘All right.’

  The rain exploded on the terrace.

  * * *

  Alice always knew what went on in the house. At first, I was too proud to admit that I had no information. Opera glasses were poor substitutes for valets, chambermaids and kitchen talk. Servants in the house passed through the corridors like ghosts, with breathtaking impunity. They could be dismissed at any time. Yet they were the keepers of incredible secrets. This was all that I had in common with Alice Jones: forbidden knowledge
and powerlessness. ‘But now, in this Valley of Humiliation, poor Christian was hard put to it; for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid . . .’

  ‘A-F-R-A-I-D,’ Alice spelt out the word. Now she easily recognised the words that came again and again. But she was still blocked by combinations of letters that she had never seen. Sometimes she got so frustrated that she attacked the book. Bunyan had developed a dent on his spine from her pummelling. We were sitting on an empty wagon in the farmyard. Once we were facing Apollyon, I asked about the black serpent.

  ‘Tell me about the black silk woman who looks like a snake.’

  ‘Louisa Erskine. And she does look like a snake. I’ll tell Cook.’

  ‘But who is she?’

  ‘She’s the master’s younger sister and the mistress’s special friend. They all grew up together. She’s here sometimes six months together. She used to come with her father. He used to be the master. But he went all peculiar and gabbled and raved. When he was old and sick she looked after him. Then he died.’

  ‘She said he died . . .’

  ‘She’s not bad. Last year she combed all the lice out of my hair. It hurt something terrible. And she can be a bit frightening. She caught me stealing some Turkish Delight from the drawing room last Christmas. And she beat me black and blue. Don’t do anything that drives her to hit you. But she never told anyone. Not Harold, nor my mother. I thought she’d tell. I was dead scared. I went on tiptoe for at least a week. She never told. I’d already prepared a long speech for Mum if I got dismissed.’

  ‘But everybody steals . . .’

  ‘Yes. But there’s a sort of stealing allowance that you can’t go over. And you must never get caught doing it.’

  ‘Salvatore stole some wine from Francisco once to pay his gambling debts.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Francisco threatened to kill him. Not dismiss him. Kill him. For personal betrayal. Then he got given a second chance and Francisco paid all his debts.’

  Alice laughed.

  ‘My mum says your General’s a gentleman. Here. Go on. Next bit.’

  ‘You’ll like the next bit. There’s a battle.

  ‘So he went on and Apollyon met him. Now the monster was hideous to behold; he was clothed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride); he had wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke; and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion . . .’

  ‘Wonderful,’ cried Alice, ‘F-I-S-H. I’ve seen that on the Menus. F-I-S-H. Fish. Teach me the rest. Why’s he called Apollyon and what does it mean?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘See. You don’t know everything.’

  ‘I never told you I did. Francisco says Apollyon rules the Kingdom of This World.’

  ‘I’ve never wanted any other, for all that Mum sings about the Blessed Other Land in chapel.’ She looked down at the words, as if she could see the monster in the book, and stretched out her toes so that they passed over the hard line of shelter in the shade and emerged into the sun.

  * * *

  Dinner began at four. There were dreadful delays between courses. I was eating up my pile of vegetables and potatoes, on Francisco’s orders. The sun was still on the lawns, but by then it was almost six o’clock and the heat was beginning to ebb. David Erskine remarked not only my existence at the dinner table, but my activities in the house. I almost choked.

  ‘Francisco, did you know that this child is brewing rebellions in my kitchens?’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘He’s teaching the scullery maids how to read.’

  Everyone laughed. I turned appallingly, guiltily red.

  ‘Isn’t that so, young chap?’ enquired David Erskine encouragingly.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I gulped, almost inaudible. Caught.

  ‘What are you teaching them, sweetheart?’ demanded my Beloved, a little angry and defensive.

  ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’

  Everyone laughed again. The still black eyes of Louisa Erskine were fixed upon me. I was being devoured.

  ‘Pilgrim’s Progress won’t lead to revolution, David,’ laughed Francisco, ‘more’s the pity.’

  ‘Mark my words. It’ll be The Rights of Man next and don’t tell me that he hasn’t already got every word off by heart.’

  Now they were laughing at Francisco. I was let off the hook. Only Louisa was still looking at me. She smiled slightly. She said nothing. When the ladies rose to leave for coffee in the drawing room I rose with them, clutching the edge of my mother’s shawl. But as I passed him David Erskine leaned out and caught my hand. Close to, his face was deep red, full of white hairs, holes and black spots.

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear. You teach the girls to read. I’m all for it.’

  His breath stank of rotting teeth and old food. I slunk away up the staircase, embarrassed and furious.

  * * *

  August stretched out before us: a march-past of blazing days and late-afternoon thunderstorms. David Erskine, in smock and peasant trousers, convincingly dirty, departed into the fields, to direct the harvest himself. Only his mouldy wig differentiated him from his tenants. The adults sometimes went out to watch, but always gave up early in the day, and trailed home complaining of exhaustion, sunstroke, nettle rash, brambles and stomach ache. Alice and I worked side by side in the vegetable garden. We fed the rabbits, ducks and chickens. The other children, whether older or younger than Alice, never disputed her exclusive right to my attention. One afternoon, her mother marched up from the village to look at me. She was nursing yet another squalling baby. I backed away from the bundle. So she handed it over with the announcement, ‘Alice is the third of nine. Five living. Praise the Lord!’

  She must have been several years younger than my mother, but she looked older, fatter and ferociously healthy. She went to chapel, not to church, but insisted that the vicar baptise all her children for their father’s sake, and attended all the major festivals, much against her minister’s advice. The church services were sometimes attended by Papists, whom David Erskine most unwisely tolerated as visitors in his household. Close proximity might well lead to a lifelong contamination. Alice’s mother had strong views on the rights of women. She thought they ought to be allowed to preach in chapel. On these and other issues she was often at variance with the elders, who nevertheless persisted with their dear and erring sister. Why she persisted with them was less clear.

  Alice and I stood side by side in the stable yard for the presentation. Cook came outside to watch.

  ‘So this is Mrs Bulkeley’s famous tomboy daughter we hear so much about,’ said Mrs Jones, after a long look. The new baby began to grizzle pathetically. She handed it over to Cook.

  ‘You should wear a hat, child, with your complexion. Look at her, Cook. She’s one enormous freckle. Alice, get a hat from the dairy.’

  Alice always obeyed her mother. She rushed off. Mrs Jones pinched my cheek. I objected, but decided that I liked her.

  ‘I hear you’re teaching my eldest to read,’ she announced at last.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I admitted cautiously.

  ‘Well, I’m grateful to you. I can’t read myself, though my husband can. But girls should be taught properly. When she can read I want you to go on helping her. Can you lend her books?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I agreed. Books were very expensive. Francisco never allowed any of his books to be taken past the library door. My mother had her own small collection on a shelf in her boudoir. Volumes weren’t allowed to stray from one collection to another. I wasn’t sure how I was going to steal the books for Alice, but I was sure it could be done.

  ‘Thank you, child, and I hope that your stepfather intends to continue your own education.’

  ‘I think so. I haven’t asked him.’

  Suddenly she blazed up and spoke very sharply. ‘Your mother must insist upon it. You’re dressed
up like his son, not his daughter. You can claim a son’s privilege.’

  She spoke with the same passion, the same gestures Alice had used when she had asked me to teach her to read. Alice returned with a large straw hat and clamped it onto my head. The baby began wailing. Mrs Jones sighed and took the child from Cook.

  ‘Off you go, children.’ We were dismissed. She kissed us both goodbye and we rushed away. I noticed that she smelt of fresh grass and warm hay, much cleaner than the adults in the house.

  ‘That’s my mum,’ said Alice proudly.

  * * *

  There was a summer ball at the house every year, held on the last Saturday in August, to celebrate Lady Elizabeth’s birthday. It was a jolly, unsophisticated affair to which all the local families were invited. The Erskines were not snobbish and invited absolutely everybody, so that the social confusion was considered slightly shocking. Alice described the last one with zest. She could remember who had drunk too much and been sick, whose stockings had descended, whose stays had had to be loosened, who had danced all night, and with whom, who had fallen asleep in the library, only to be discovered next morning with their head in a fruit dish, which of the glasses had been broken, and what they had had to eat in the kitchens. The children were not only allowed to watch, we were allowed to dance. I solemnly asked Alice Jones for the first dance. She said that she would have to consult her little book. We spent the rest of the afternoon stitching one together, so that she could consult it.

  My Beloved’s exotic plant catalogues had arrived from London and she was busy choosing new specimens for her conservatory. I boasted that I had asked Alice to dance, and been accepted as her principal dancing partner. My mother looked at me thoughtfully.

  ‘You ought to wear a dress for the ball, dear. People do talk.’

  I had never worn a dress before.

  ‘I can’t ask Alice if I don’t wear trousers,’ I protested. ‘We’d be two girls.’

  My mother was baffled.