The Fraud (19 page)

‘
Kindness
!’ she said and she laughed her laugh and tossed her head but I saw I had hurt her, for she thought she had found a good partner and she had taken a risk and trusted me and shared some of her secrets. ‘Bugger off, Miss Goddam Grace,’ she said. ‘Little Madonna,’ she said, and she said it like an insult. ‘But don’t forget I know yore Secret, Grace, whoever you are, and I’ll always know yore Secret, you’re a street-girl, you, just like us!’ and she turned away.

I watched her in silence: shame, embarrassment, anxiety.—I thought of the small, diminishing pile of money left. ‘Poppy!’ I called to her retreating back, I thought she would not heed but she slowed a little and I ran to her, took her arm.

‘Let me come tonight,’ I said.

She looked at me in silence for such a long time. ‘You’ll have to pay me ninepence a time,’ she said at last.

So: I replenished my store of money regularly - what did I care? What did it matter? - as long as I got paint and paper and charcoal; and the more I achieved the more I wanted, most of all, I needed an easel, like my brother, and one day I would have a real palette for colours, and I wanted canvas of my own, to become very familiar with the difference between painting on board and painting on canvas and that meant I somehow had to make stretchers in the small bed-room, to nail the canvas upon, I would have to make the stretchers myself, I could never afford the services of a frame-maker like my brother so I would have to become a carpenter: I needed a hammer and nails - all these things cost money.
I needed all these things for my work
, what did I care how I paid for them?—I always carried the small notebook and a pencil, to write down what money of Philip’s I spent and sometimes I would see a person in the street who took my attention: I would, surreptitiously , quickly sketch what I saw into the back of the accounts notebook, taking care to remove it so he would not see - I still remembered Mr Hogarth’s advice but my thumbnail was so small. —Then using every precious second when I was not being my brother’s housekeeper or a street-girl, I went on painting, late into the night, in my bed-room my own Studio; trying to make the quick drawing turn into something more: failing often, succeeding sometimes, but I could not draw arms and legs, the fall of a shoulder - would I have to be stuck with just a face for ever and ever? night after night I puzzled over my painting—

—and in the evenings in the dark alleys afterwards, Poppy and me as I paid her, ninepence a time, and we jingled our money, we used to talk sometimes (we would thrust away any thoughts of what we had just been doing, we did not speak of the things we had to do, to earn our money: the rakes and the soldiers and the businessmen and the sad men and the vicars and the drunk men and the bad men who tried to cheat us), we would swallow some gin and talk of ourselves: Poppy told me bits and pieces about her life on the streets - growing up in the Rookeries, ‘I tried to better meself but I never found one place where I wasn’t treated bad.’ Learning the street-girls’ trade was easy though she ended up in Newgate Prison once when she was caught in her thieving. ‘I seen things there made me sure I ain’t goin’ to get caught again, they whip women in Newgate, Grace, and I heard the cries of men being pressed!’

‘What do you mean,
pressed
?’

‘
Pressed
! They said he was a spy so they pressed him, to make him talk. Between slabs. They turned a handle and splattered him.’ I looked at her in horror. ‘I ain’t goin’ back. I’ll kill myself before I go back there again.’ She told me she lived in warm rooms if gentlemen took to her - for weeks and weeks sometimes; getting rid of babies with pieces of copper stuck up her, and - still - she was only seventeen years.—I did not have such adventures to relate but one night I told Poppy the truth: that I needed the money to buy paints, that I was a Painter.

‘A
Painter
?’ She could not believe me.

‘More than anything in the world I want to paint.’

She looked at me as if I had said something that was completely insane. ‘What d’you paint?’

‘Faces. I paint faces.’

‘You’re doing all this because you want to
paint faces
? You’re mad! Where d’you live?’

I told her. I told her I lived with my brother until I could become a Painter.

‘Why don’t yore brother give you money?’

‘He does not wish me to be a Painter, I am his housekeeper.’ I am not sure if she ever quite believed me but she knew brothers were trouble, she had plenty of her own, tolerated me now if I appeared with my hair tumbling down my shoulders as long as I paid her; she knew I would not come often, but every week I would come - because I had to. I had to paint: that was all.

And from the time I painted my ugly Lilies my poor, clever, foolish brother felt safe, but he should have taken note of the dangerous green Daisy, he should have remembered his little sister Grace Marshall better than that.

 

‘Your Brother is a funny Fellow,’ said Poppy one night.

Everything fell: I could feel my heart, falling - this had been the risk, this would put an end to everything, all my plans, all my Work.

‘I had so hoped he would not - oh, this will - have you seen him?’

‘I have. I seen him last night. He looks something like you.’ She said nothing more, watched my face.

‘
Goddam Poppy!
’

‘Don’t be silly, course I never said nothing, stupid girl! Because he had the look of you I just asked him casually after, if he had any sisters.’

‘What did he say? Was he surprised you said it?’

‘Nah, I was just making conversation while we walked back after, I talk to them, just sometimes. Oh well, we are obliged only to lift our skirts for the money but they’re only lads some of them, they want someone to talk to, you can tell - he said he had a sister called Grace, that’s only how I knew for sure he was your Brother and he looked quite sad, said he’s lost you. That’s not what you told me is it, Miss?’

I stood like a stone -
Tobias
- and then I whirled and held both her arms, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’

‘I dunno!’ She shrugged. Poppy had lots of brothers and sisters and she never saw any of them. ‘He’s a sailor ain’t he? And you told me lies, you said he lived in St Martin’s Lane—’

‘I’ve got
two
brothers!’ I actually shook her.

‘—all right then, all right, anyway he said he was going back to the Indies, but I tell you what, I didn’t trust him quite - excuse
me
, Grace!’ and she disengaged herself from my arms for I still had hold of her, ‘I knew to hold on to my money, you know, how you do. I talked to him a bit, but I left him quite soon.’

Tobias. Tobias in London.

And I thought how it would be if Tobias found us, looking like Philip and me; I tried to see him at the table with Mr Reynolds and Mr Hartley Pond, sounding as if he came from Bristol and even stealing their watches and then, like Poppy, I shrugged. I had to choose, Philip had said.

 

I told you: he unbalanced our sky, and created monsters.

 

And then one evening at dusk, Poppy was not there at the side of the
piazza
. I waited and waited, but she did not come as the dusk drew down.—I asked the other girls: they shrugged.

‘A man came,’ one of them said. But whether to destroy her or to save her I did not know, for they could not tell me, and I understood at that instant as I stood there on the
piazza
how much I needed her, how I had come to rely on her, how much I needed the money; I had wanted more than anything an Easel to put my paintings on; I was still saving up, for an Easel.

It was now very dark. A gentleman approached me - suddenly, without Poppy, I was frightened, I made myself concentrate on an
Easel
, I saw the Easel in my mind as I smiled. ‘You’ll have a good time with me,’ I said, as we always said. ‘I’m Daisy.’

He showed me his red ribbon.

I took him down an alley, and while he was about his business and all in a state and crying to God like they did, I took seven gold coins from his pocket - I must have been insane to do that - I was gone in a moment, back to the safety of St Martin’s Lane, before he could properly recover and ascertain his large loss - I knew I had been too greedy - how could I ever go back to the
piazza
again? they would be looking for me, girls were often taken away by the King’s Men for stealing, I’d seen it, and hadn’t Poppy herself once been taken away? I would be whipped in Newgate Prison she said, or pressed with slabs and wheels; I would have to make that stolen money last and last for I could never go back for months and months.

I got my Easel.

That is how I got my precious Easel.

After that night I walked every day as usual with my basket and my very respectable grey dress and cap but nowhere,
nowhere
near the
piazza
.—I did not buy food there, I told my brother there had been a Murder - what would he know or care? there were always Murders, the street-patterers sang about Murders every day - HIS REAL LIVE PEARL WAS A REAL STREET-GIRL, IN THEIR BED HE SMASHED HER HEAD - and whenever I saw the King’s Men trotting by I quickly looked away, turned a corner with my heart beating in such a horrible way: for many months I was trepidatious because of my stupidity and my greed, always I thought someone might shout, the gentleman himself might shout,
There she is! The thieving street-girl!
I made the money stretch and stretch, I would not think what I would do when it was gone.

One night Philip insisted we go to the Theatre in his new carriage and the horses took us past Covent Garden, past alleys I had walked, and I sat back in the safe shadows of the coach in my demure gown and I smiled at my brother in my new way - in fact I laughed - and I watched everything at the Theatre, my first visit to the Theatre: the audience was more interesting to me than the play which seemed tedious (and badly-spoken Philip told me).—But the
audience
: the excitement, the smiling eyes, the money, the shadows thrown by the hundreds of candle-lamps - I watched everything with my cold damaged heart - I saw the way ladies leant forward from the red and gold boxes knowing they showed themselves at their most alluring, the exquisite fans and the plumped up lead-white bosoms and the deadly nightshade making eyes sparkle and the lips that trembled with rashness, I heard whispered Assignations in the box beside us where candle-lamps flickered and cast such shadows of desire, and I thought,
it is about transactions
,
like the dark alleys: it is all the same
,
in the end
- I watched everything, and then in my bed-room I tried to paint the faces of the women in the audience, and the dark girls outside loitering for a shilling or sixpence or tuppence and over and over I found I thought of Poppy and her rough kindness - had she found another way also? what had happened to her? what would I do when my money was spent? and when I painted the street-girls almost always they had the face of Poppy - that is, often, the face of me.—Oh, what I am trying to say is that my Paintings were better and better - and they were also cold and clever and angry, because that is what I had become in the loneliness of my sewing-room with all my Deceptions: angry, ambitious, very cold, and very clever. And watching everything was my Painting of the Lilies, and my insane green Daisy.

One day I took a long mirror from a downstairs room. I, after all, was responsible for such things as mirrors: I was the housekeeper.

I looked carefully, deliberately, into the glass.

I was the same, yet different.

I was a very young version of Aunt Joy, but different, and, like Poppy, I laughed my new, cold, harsh laugh in my room, and staring at myself I remembered the thought that had flown into my mind as I had watched the charming cold eyes of my brother Philip and the jovial, cold face of Mr Reynolds,
Perhaps
,
to succeed
,
great Artists must lose some other part of themselves
, and I knew: I was not yet an Artist. But I had lost some part of myself already.

I took off all my clothes; I was shaking slightly and I told myself not to be so foolish and I looked into the mirror, at my naked Body, never in my Life had I looked at it in a mirror before and I could hardly bear to look at it now for the dirt and shame of what it had seen and what it had done - but it had arms and legs like the statue in Philip’s Studio, and it was the Body of a Woman.

I took a deep breath, I picked up a piece of charcoal, and I began drawing myself.

 

That
:
that is what happened between my brother and me.

It was imperative that the successful portraitist Signore Filipo di Vecellio of Florence (that is to say Philip Marshall of Bristol) make every effort to move up the English social scale. He understood that it was imperative. A good marriage was part of his plan: for his daring masquerade to succeed even further he needed to marry a woman of quality, he understood that and was looking as carefully as his mother Betty had used to do. But, in truth, he should have known better. He should have known that even his Wiltshire Marshall antecedents would never have got him far, socially, in London; he was foolish to think that a Painter (who after all was a man of trade even if he was also an Italian Nobleman) would ever be part of
le beau monde
. He could aspire to be
fashionable
, but he could never be noble. His matrimonial ambitions received several rebuffs.

Sometimes his old, perhaps more disreputable (certainly less successful) friend John Palmer looked at him speculatively across the dinner-table.

Among the sitters who flocked to the charming, successful, young foreign painter, finally there came ‘the most beautiful woman in London’, a young lady recently arrived in the Metropolis (there was some confusion as from where).