The Fraud (15 page)

And then dinner was over and Miss Ffoulks went off to one of her many Educational Meetings and my brother and Mr Joshua Reynolds and the others, still arguing loudly, all left the house together to go to one of the coffee houses to talk further of Art, and Euphemia cleared the table and I sat in the empty dining room as if I had been turned to stone, and no-one would have known what ideas exploded:
I could listen to them all in the day time and I could work in my brother’s Studio in the night - for nobody ever noticed Aunt Joy.

Later, I heard my brother return: he went straight to his own room, crashing against the walls.

 

All the next day I walked and walked around London, faster and faster, making my plans, planning my life, everything so intense in my thoughts, I was fuelled with such an angry energy that should anyone have attacked me or stole from me I believe I might have pulled their wigs off and kicked them; I walked towards the
piazza
, I slipped on fish-heads and shit, picked myself up again, everyone slipped in the London streets, and I could smell the filthy stinking gutters and rubbish heaps and then, just round a corner, down towards the Strand, I was assailed by a woman’s perfume that was so overpowering, a kind of metallic rosewater and lamp-oil and onions and lavender and sweat, that I was no longer sure which was worse, the gutters or the woman, and that made me laugh, and I passed two small boys with pink eyes and no eyelashes and white hair who played flutes really badly and I kept walking; I passed men pissing in corners, one man lay on his side on the ground and pissed a fountain that he watched proudly, and women in rags squatted and shit poured in gutters, past all the stalls with their medicines and sweetmeats and cabbages, and coaches rattling through it all; all the wild noise, and all the shouting and laughing and screaming and singing of the crowds and me part of it all, and everywhere the brash, dirty street-girls - the girls with nothing: their youth and their age and their brave laughter (so it seemed to me) and the swellings on their faces that they tried to cover with paint - here was my other future Philip said, in the dim alleys - and if I closed my eyes for even a moment I saw it again: the look on his face as he stared at my Drawings, and then the way he pushed me away and tore the Drawings into tiny pieces
he destroyed my Pictures but he can never
,
never destroy me
, and I kept on walking, I kept on walking and in my rage I fell almost upon a cock-fight across an alley in Broad-street, I did not know then that it was a notorious and dangerous place: screeching, squawking fighting birds, blood and feathers and birdshit and the sweating wild cries of the gambling men in the shadows like the gambling men in Bristol, their cruel, wily faces, throwing their money down, calling their Bets and the screaming birds and I thought,
I will call mine, my Bets against my brother: I have the Gambling Blood.

 

And at three o’clock there I was lighting the candles and the dinner was served as usual.

They were talking of a Titian painting that had been auctioned lately, talked of its worth. ‘Absolutely remarkable,’ said Mr Hartley Pond, ‘the most glorious Colours, a velvet, gorgeous Painting. I should have died right there as I studied it in the Auction Room, it went finally for almost fifty guineas!’ and there was a gasp about the table and I kept my gambling head down demurely and made not a sound and thought again of the beautiful print on the wall of the Bristol library, the first Old Master I ever saw.

They were talking of this new place: America. ‘Full of Revolutionaries and Republicans, mark my words,’ said Mr Hartley Pond, ‘good Riddance to them,’ leaning back with his wine-glass and smiling with his thin lips and I thought,
one day
,
when I have learned
,
I will do anything I like! I could go to America!

They were talking of madmen and the lunatic asylum of Bedlam where you could go and watch the Lunatics. ‘They say you may see them without Clothes,’ said Mr Hartley Pond, ‘but I doubt we would see such Figures as those of the Greeks.’ And again the thin smile and I thought,
I will never
,
never be mad and seen without my Clothes.

And then they went back again to Painting.

Miss Ffoulks made an excuse to stay a little longer after dinner that grey, gambling afternoon when the gentlemen left for their Clubs - she did not ask me any difficult questions but that day we sat together in the drawing room of the empty house, and - bending her head over some embroidery she always carried with her, ‘I cannot bear to waste time, my dear,’ Miss Ffoulks just began talking , talking about Art: she spoke as if the Old Masters were Artists of her acquaintance, not born hundreds of years ago - that afternoon she spoke of her visit with her brother to Rome and all the wonderful old Statues on every corner and I listened like a starving person, and then she told me about going to the Pope’s palace, the Vatican, and about Michelangelo painting the ceiling of that Sistine Chapel there, lying on his back.

‘Think of him!’ she exclaimed, ‘Painting the frescoes while lying upon a Contrivance made to hold him up there, all the colours falling into his hair perhaps as he painted each piece of damp plaster! ’ and she made me see him: the dark-haired young man Michelangelo (I had no idea if he was dark-haired but was he not Italian?) lying on his back and painting his pictures, piece by piece.

‘I have heard, my dear,’ said Miss Ffoulks, ‘that Michelangelo quarrelled with the Pope who had commissioned the Ceiling. And that very Pope climbed right up, in his robes, and - right up there on the scaffolding that had been erected - His Holiness and Michelangelo punched each other about the ears!’ and she looked at me slyly as I laughed as if to say,
I’ve made you laugh at last
,
as you usually do.
—Miss Ffoulks never once asked me what had happened between my brother and myself but I understood, that day, that this was her proud, spinsterish, kind way of comforting me because she saw I was in some way distressed.

‘What happened to your Brother, Miss Ffoulks?’

She said very briskly, ‘You are lucky to have a Brother, my dear. My own Brother died of the Fever,’ and of course I wanted to say,
like our family in Bristol
- but all I could do was put my hand for just a moment on her arm and she nodded, as if to say thank you - and then we spoke again about Mr Titian and Michelangelo and later that night in my own room I went over everything that had happened and I vowed:
I made my own bet at the cock-fight and I will win against my brother
, and I thought about kind Miss Ffoulks, who had lost her brother but had looked after my own: Miss Ffoulks had no money it was clear, she let rooms and her gown was patched, and her gloves, but Miss Ffoulks had something , some fortitude inside herself so that people like Mr Hartley Pond could not make her feel slighted - some strength of intellect inside - but -
of course
: like the gentlemen, Miss Ffoulks had Learning - and had I not observed often how the gentlemen did tease her, sometimes kindly and sometimes not, for this Accomplishment? and I understood at last:
Miss Ffoulks was the first woman with Education that I had ever met.

That is what I had to acquire - I not only knew almost nothing about Art, I knew nothing about anything, no wonder my brother thought me impudent - I was lucky that I could read and write, and that was only because of him - I had never read a proper book, all I knew from books was two pieces of Poems by that man Mr Shakespeare:
When I do count the clock that tells the Time
. . .
take him and cut him out in little stars
. . . and what use were those to me? that was hardly Education - the Father of Miss Ffoulks had been a curate she had told me, and had made sure that his daughter was educated by books, as well as his son, and then she had been on the Grand Tour with her brother, and so Miss Ffoulks had that inner thing that I hardly knew how to put into words inside my head, that confidence that came from Knowledge, and I was sixteen years old and I had no Knowledge at all and I understood clearly:
I will not succeed if I do not acquire Learning
, but I knew I could acquire real Learning at my brother’s dinner-table, and then I could paint my learning in his Studio in the night, while he was out in the Town talking of Art.

I had decided to take my Gamble.

I planned coldly. My brother took five years to become a Painter: that was as long as I had spent on Christmas Steps.

Very well.

I could bear that.

Five years.

And then I would leave him.

 

‘Filipo,’ I said to my brother next morning.

‘I have been waiting for your answer,’ said Philip coldly: he saw me with my shopping basket. ‘Pack up your belongings today if it is your decision to leave, for I shall require another housekeeper to take your place.’

‘Thank you, Filipo,’ I said, my head bowed. ‘
Grazie
,
mille grazie.
You have been very kind, I have thought of everything you said to me and I will do my best to please you. As your housekeeper.’

There was a small silence. I kept my head bowed so that he could not see my eyes.

‘Well.’ Another silence. ‘Good. That is settled then,’ said my brother, Philip. ‘You have the makings of a good housekeeper, as long as you keep to your part of the house and your duties, and then we shall manage perfectly. And all shall be well - as we know it can - and our life shall be gay, Francesca, as I promised you: I will take you to the Theatre, you will see the very fashionable ladies. But,’ my head was still lowered but I heard his change of tone, ‘I forbid you to enter my Studio again. I will not have it, under any circumstances.’ And then suddenly he laughed most charmingly - as if all between us was as it had been, and he was pleased.

‘
Sorridere
, Francesca
bella
!’ said my brother to me that morning. Smile.

And so.

And so I lifted my head, and I smiled at my brother.

 

Everywhere I walked in London I saw faces, they crowded into my head over and over, but now I thought,
I will learn
,
and I will paint them -
I looked at the rich men and the tough market women and the angry thin children whose faces would suddenly break into a smile as they went sliding through piles of horse dung,
I will paint them
, and the dark, chattering Italians in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I called out
Buongiorno
as I passed and a group of young men by the chapel called back
Buongiorno Signorina bella
and I wanted to paint all the faces I saw, capture them forever, I would learn how; I walked and walked and I heard a girl singing as she washed clothes in an open basement and I walked along the River with its masts and its coal-barges and London smoke drifted in the wind and I saw a body of a woman being hauled to the bank nearby with a hook on a long pole
not me
,
never me! they will never haul me out of the Thames!
and I walked to the Parliament where the laws were made and I walked to the Abbey of Westminster where all the Nobles had drunk and waved chicken bones at the Coronation, and I saw religious-men in long black cassocks buffeting together down Whitehall in a wild wind, and one afternoon as I returned to St Martin’s Lane the madwoman sang:

and I put one of Philip’s precious pennies in her bowl, glad that she was not chained even if she was mad, and she smiled at me as she went on singing and her voice so high and sweet -
I know he first love me -
and I understood then what had happened to me - oh - oh what I am trying to say, but I do not have Mr Shakespeare’s word-pictures, what I am trying to explain is that
London saved me
.

I mean that I believe to this day that I became firm about my Decision and about my Future and calmed my wild raging thoughts by walking the streets of London.—I fell in love with London you understand, all the bits of London: the wild streets and the old lady with her grapevines and the extravagant noise and energy and the Italians by the Chapel and the sumptuous shops on the Strand with their swinging signs and the river and the madwoman whose voice haunted St Martin’s Lane and the cock-fighting men and the pink-eyed flute-players and the street-girls in the shadows: I fell in love with London, for my love - and I had loved my brother so much - had to go somewhere.

London saved me.

And my brother? I was sixteen years old. I hated my brother.

 

—and then

and then, having made my bold plan, I had to be strong enough to carry it out.

Oh - at first it was slow and it was painful (it was so painful not to be
me
) to be what I was not -
five years
I whispered fiercely to keep my spirits up,
only five years
,
only the time I made hats
,
and then I will be free
but I was sixteen and ebullient and of course I could not
really
be like our Aunt Joy but how I tried, how I tried to learn to be the quiet sister, the Signorina Francesca di Vecellio, from Florence, Italy; the unobtrusive housekeeper, the indispensable woman in the background - like those ones who are running households all over London - me, Grace, become the lady in the dull gown and the white cap who lit candles as the grey evenings came down.—I learned the art of listening, I bit my tongue, stopping myself when a question seemed almost to pop out of my mouth, looking down as I listened, so that nobody could see the flashing and questioning and planning in my eyes
only five years
, Grace Marshall of Bristol: that wild, cunning girl . . .

. . . for my time was the night-time - my time had always been the night-time - had I not done my best drawing in the attic on Christmas Steps when the other hat-girls were asleep?—My brother was always out and about now in the evenings with his fashionable friends and the new assistants had to finish eventually, they slept in the Studio but they required Entertainment and food, I would hear them finish up, go out (one was a young man, a boy almost, he had a bright open expression and a cheeky smile, looking for life; the other was much older, already a disappointed artist, you could see the look in his eye, of failure and anger, mixed) - they very often came in late, laughing and unsteady.—So at night, when I heard the assistants leave, I lit two large bright candles and I slipped back to the empty forbidden Studio and began studying the colours, the oils - now I learned properly to name the colours absolutely: the different yellows and reds and greens and blues - and in the light of my candle I stared at the thickness of the paint on my brother’s unfinished Portraits, touching it, feeling the textures with my fingers, guessing his paint mixtures from all that I had learned when I had been privy to his Secrets.