Carver's Quest (5 page)

* * * * *

In the Chelsea studio of his friend, Cosmo Jardine, Adam was able to relax. He and Jardine had known one another both at Shrewsbury, where they had shared a study, and at
Cambridge, where, although they had attended different colleges, they had met for dinner at least twice a week. Since Adam’s return to London, the two men had fallen into an easy habit of
association. Weeks might pass in which they saw nothing of one another but Adam knew that he was always welcome to call whenever he liked at the house in Old Church Street, which Jardine shared
with two other impecunious artists.

‘What is this masterpiece in the making?’ Adam asked, indicating a small canvas propped on an easel in one corner of the room.

Jardine, wearing a loose-fitting white smock over his everyday clothes and carrying palette in one hand and brush in the other, was looking more like a
Punch
caricature of an artist
than any real painter should.

‘An oil sketch for my grand Arthurian work:
King Pellinore and
the Questing Beast
.’

Jardine walked across his studio and joined Adam in front of the easel. The two men stood for a while side by side, staring at the helmeted head of a medieval knight.

‘It is all wrong,’ Jardine said at last. ‘I need a model. I have even been thinking of asking you to sit for Pellinore, Carver.’

‘My dear fellow, I would as soon be the Questing Beast. Although I wish you well in your chosen career and I would help if I could. Anyway, if you recall, I have already sat for my
portrait. And it provided you with your only success at last year’s Academy show.’

‘Even though it was skied and one needed the neck of a giraffe to see it. Clearly you bring me luck.’

‘However, I draw the line at impersonating an Arthurian warrior.’

‘Ah, well. It was just a thought.’

The two men stood a little longer in front of the canvas, each wrapped up in his own thoughts. Jardine was the first to break the silence.

‘I am to take tea with Mr Millais on Saturday.’ The young painter was unable to disguise the hint of smug delight in his voice. Adam laughed.

‘You are the most infernal name-dropper, Jardine. You speak as if this were some intimate tête-à-tête with Millais. Yet both you and I know that it is nothing but a
regular “at home”, and there will be a dozen aspiring artists at least dancing attendance on the great man.’

‘None the less, I spoke no more than the truth. I shall take tea with the “great man”, as you choose to call him.’

‘You will be lucky to exchange more than a greeting and a farewell with him.’ Adam looked across at his friend, noting the self-satisfied smile that had appeared on his face.
‘Besides, I do believe that you go to see Mrs Millais rather than her husband.’

‘And why not? She is a beautiful woman, Carver. Who would not want to feast his eyes upon her?’

‘She is married and she is fifteen years your senior, Jardine. I think perhaps your chances of a romance are limited.’

‘Ah, but she is a stunner none the less.’

‘I am pleased to hear that Mrs Millais is as lovely as rumour paints her,’ Adam said, taking a cigarette case from his pocket, then extracting a cigarette and lighting it. Smoke
drifted upwards, obscuring the image of King Pellinore on the canvas. ‘So many of these famous beauties are fabulous in the report but disappointing in person.’

‘Not necessarily the case, old man. I saw Skittles once riding in the park,’ Jardine said. ‘Several years ago now. She was quite as handsome as even her most besotted admirer
might claim.’

‘Ah, the legendary Miss Walters. The most practised of the capital’s courtesans. Or so I am told.’

‘I have often wondered about the origin of her sobriquet. Why Skittles? I have asked myself.’

‘She once worked in a bowling alley off Park Lane, I understand.’

‘The explanation is as simple as that, is it? Well, like Effie Millais, she was a stunner.’

Jardine moved suddenly away from his failed likeness of King Pellinore and began to pace around the small studio, as if measuring its dimensions.

‘By the by,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘while we are on the subject of feminine beauty, you must tell me more of the enigmatic charmer you mentioned the other day. The lady
who came calling upon you. The lady who vanished.’

‘There is no more to tell. She arrived unheralded and she departed as mysteriously as she arrived. I was away but a few moments to deal with Quint and his attempts to destroy my dark room.
When I returned, she was gone.’

‘You must have driven her away, Carver. A remark out of place. A breach of etiquette. You were ever a blunderer where the more ornamental sex is concerned.’

‘Thus speaks the Lothario of Old Church Street, I suppose. You would no doubt have me believe that you would have won her heart in a matter of moments.’ Adam was smiling at his
friend’s words as Jardine continued to walk restlessly around the room. ‘I had no chance to exercise any charms I may possess. She was gone before I could attempt it. However, I can
assure you that none of my remarks was out of place. And any breach of etiquette was entirely hers.’

The painter had returned once more to his canvas and was staring closely at it.

‘It is no good,’ he said, taking a step back from it. ‘It looks more like the
carte de visite
of a provincial solicitor than it does the portrait of a medieval
knight.’ The young artist made a gesture as if he was about wipe his canvas clean immediately. ‘Photography has caused much damage to the fine arts. Even I am not insusceptible to its
malign influence.’

‘You should be careful of remarks like that, Jardine. It is bad artists who belittle photography. They do so in the same way that stagecoach proprietors used to decry the dangers and
inconveniences of travelling by the railway.’

Jardine, his head cocked to one side, was examining his painting from a different angle.

‘Aha, we are embarking on that old argument again, are we?’ he said. ‘It threatens to become stale, Carver.’

‘I tell you, Jardine, photography is the art of the future. The easel and the palette belong to the past’

‘My dear fellow, we shall have to agree to disagree. As for me, I shall stick with my brushes and my oils.’

Adam turned his back on the painting of King Pellinore and made his way towards the small rosewood table in the corner of the studio where the painter kept a cut glass decanter of whisky.

‘Actually, I have no wish to argue with you. I have enough to puzzle my poor head at present. The lady who disappeared is not the only mystery I have encountered. I seem to have stumbled
into another of late.’

‘Well, waste no time in setting it before me, Carver. I have a devilish liking for mysteries. Especially those which involve beautiful young damsels in possible distress.’

‘Unfortunately, this one does not. Do you mind if I pour myself a drink?’

Jardine made a gesture to indicate that his friend should help himself to the contents of the decanter. Adam, splashing a generous measure of spirits into the glass, first raised it towards the
artist in a mock toast and then drank from it.

‘The circumstances surrounding it have been plaguing my mind for the last few days. It began with a gentleman, unknown to me, calling at my club more than a week ago.’

As Jardine nodded and made small noises of surprise or encouragement, Adam unfolded events at the Speke dinner and the story his odd neighbour at the table had told him. When he had finished,
the painter remained silent, stroking his beard like an actor playing the part of a man in deep thought.

‘I do believe I know this fellow Creech,’ he said at last.

Adam looked across at his friend in surprise.

‘Yes, I am almost certain it must be he who came calling upon me the other day in search of a painting to buy. He said he had been recommended to visit my humble studios by Burne-Jones.
This surprised me since I don’t suppose I have exchanged ten words with Burne-Jones in my entire life. It pains me to admit this but the name of Cosmo Jardine probably means as little to him
as the name of, let us say, Adam Carver.’

‘Your days of anonymity are doubtless numbered, Jardine. Your fame will soon spread beyond the boundaries of Chelsea.’

The artist bowed his head in ironic acknowledgement of the compliment.

‘However, I am about to deepen your little mystery rather than solve it. The man who came to me was exactly as you describe him. The telling detail of the crescent moon scar on the brow
surely proves it was he. And yet he was not calling himself Creech.’

‘He was not?’

‘No,’ Jardine said, ‘he introduced himself to me as a Dr Sinclair, recently returned to London after a long period spent healing the expatriate sick in Florence. I had no
reason to doubt him. Of course, he knew nothing of art. Even though he had lived in Florence, it was clear that he could not tell a Whistler from a Watteau. But then, few of my few patrons could.
In the event, he failed to join the select list of those who have acknowledged the genius of Cosmo Jardine with pounds, shillings and pence. He bought nothing.’

‘But why was he calling upon you at all?’

‘There is, I suppose, the smallest of possibilities that he was doing what he claimed to be doing. Looking to purchase a painting from one of London’s most promising
artists.’

‘While calling himself Dr Sinclair, the physician returned from Italian exile?’

‘Perhaps he really is Sinclair. Perhaps it is Creech that is the assumed name.’

‘No,’ Adam said, ‘there is not the slightest of chances that he could become a member of the Marco Polo under a false name. It is difficult enough for a man to gain admittance
under his real one.’

‘Well, the problem has me floored.’ Jardine was losing interest in the question of his caller’s identity, his eyes returning to the picture propped on his easel. ‘I would
not have minded him calling himself the Earl of Derby or Giuseppe Garibaldi or even the Daring Young Man on his Flying Trapeze if only he had bought one of my paintings.’

‘Things are bad?’

‘Atrocious. I am suffering from a chronic atrophy of the purse. Ruin stares me in the face. If I don’t find someone soon who is prepared to invest in my work and thus bring in the
lucre, I will be forced to give up art altogether.’

‘And what a loss that would be!’

‘You may mock, Carver, but I am entirely serious. I shall be driven to such a desperate act by want of money.’

‘What on earth would you take up in its place?’

Jardine shrugged. He picked up a brush, dipped it in one of the paints on his palette and dabbed at his canvas.

‘Who knows? Journalism, perhaps? I could work as a penny-a-liner for the papers. I have an uncle who knows Sala on the
Telegraph
. Perhaps he can help me.’

‘The job would destroy your soul in weeks, old man.’

‘Then I shall be obliged to sail down under and skin sheep in New South Wales for a living.’

‘The climate would not suit you. And the society there would not meet your exacting standards.’

‘Very probably not. In which case, I must marry a woman with money.’

‘Do you know any women with money?’

‘Nary a one. But I am willing to devote time to winning the acquaintance of some.’

Adam continued to watch as Jardine moved back and forth in front of his work, occasionally putting paint to canvas.

‘Was he making enquiries about me?’ he asked after a moment’s silence.

‘What’s that, old man?’ The artist’s attention had returned almost entirely to King Pellinore.

‘Did Creech ask you anything about me?’

‘Not that I can recall. Why should we have been talking about you, old chap? Your egotism grows intolerable. There are other subjects for conversation besides your good self, you know. We
spoke of art. Or, rather, I did, and Sinclair-Creech had the manners and sense to listen.’

The two men fell silent. Jardine was mixing colours on his palette and Adam was raising his glass occasionally to his lips. After a few minutes, the painter heaved a great sigh of exasperation
and threw his palette to the floor. He watched as it skittered towards the corner of his studio, depositing further splashes of colour on the already paint-stained boards.

‘Damn this wretch Pellinore! He continues to look far more suburban than he does medieval.’ Jardine wiped his hands on his smock. ‘I have been imprisoned in this place long
enough. I must break my bonds and seek out new entertainments. You will join me in a debauch this evening?’

‘What kind of a debauch had you in mind?’ Adam asked.

‘Let us go and watch the mutton walk in the Alhambra.’

‘It is a Tuesday. It will be a poor night to visit.’

‘Gammon and spinach! Any night of the week, there are dozens of beauties in silks and satins trotting through its gallery.’

‘The kind of beauties that can be bought.’

‘Of course they can be bought. And sold. What else do you expect? Don’t be such a damned prig, Adam.’

‘I must confess to finding it a dispiriting spectacle these days, Cosmo. The women half-dressed and the men half-drunk.’

‘Ah, well, if you are not in the mood… You have to be in the mood for the mutton walk. That I will allow.’ The young painter changed the subject. ‘Do you ever meet any
men from college these days?’ he asked.

‘Hardly a one. Since I returned from Salonika, I have lived a quiet and retiring life chez Gaffery. Mellor and Hickling must have learned of my presence in town. Lord knows how. But they
left their cards at Doughty Street. I am ashamed to admit that I made no effort to see them. How about you?’

‘I dine with Watkins and a few others at my club from time to time. And I ran across Chevenix the other day.’

‘Chevenix? That was that wretched little tuft-hunter, wasn’t it? Forever sucking up to any man with a title to his name?’

‘That’s the man.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Nothing. He was merely loitering about at the Strand end of the Lowther Arcade when I chanced to be walking that way. Waiting for an earl or a marquess to emerge possibly. We exchanged a
few words.’