The Fraud (22 page)

And as he spoke Mr Garrick was also smiling at Angelica as if he would expire from the delight of her beauty. ‘Signore di Vecellio,’ he said, ‘we must present to you our thanks for marrying such an Angel, a truly beautiful Woman, and bringing her into our Orbit. We owe you, dear sir, a debt of Gratitude.’ He was of course a man of much charm - he was an actor, after all - but Filipo di Vecellio and his wife smiled, knowing the world was theirs.

 

—and the greatest, hugest, gigantic debt of Gratitude
I
owed to Angelica was this: although she was the Mistress of the house in Pall Mall she was not interested in its Organisation in any way whatsoever - she expected me to be in charge - and she would no more have thought of going over the Accounts with me than telling her true age - and that meant that I was, for ever, free of the
piazza
and the dark alleys full of ghosts and men and shame and pain and the discarded sheep-guts with red, red ribbons lying there in the mud and the shit and the fish-heads: that was Angelica’s gift to me.—I was now in charge of the money that was needed for running the house in Pall Mall, well then, a few parcels of paint, sticks of charcoal, brushes, paper - they were as nothing at last, and Angelica could never, never know how much I owed her.

Angelica. We had our Deceptions, she had hers, so we understood one another - her Beauty and her Charm and her Determination had taken her to so many places she had only dreamed of across the Thames when she was growing up by the dye-factories; one day she told me she grew up in a room of ten people.

‘How did you learn to speak like a Lady?’ I asked her, for she did not sound like someone from across the river, and Angelica smiled her charming smile, told me one thing one day, and one thing another, sometimes stories half-told - Dukes, unwanted pregnancies dealt with, bad times, better times - I understood that as she rose in the firmament of the Courtesans she was taken up by one of the older ones, and taught many things, including how to speak in accents unlike those of her birthplace - just indeed as we had learned - and she enjoyed our Italian Deception, she even, as the years passed, very slightly, perhaps unconsciously, adapted her way of speaking to ours as she became so well known as
the beautiful Signora Angelica.

Angelica. She freed me - and then wailed at me.

‘You are nineteen years old, Francesca!’ she would cry at first. ‘It is not yet Old Age, you cannot always go to your room in the evenings, you have not lived! You must dress and dance and dine, just as I do,’ and I could not tell her of my Plan, that I would be gone so soon, and it was hard at first to refuse Angelica, she was so artful and yet also so artless, she wanted to find me a Husband more than anything else, for she thought I was not fulfilled - so although I literally
ached
to be in my attic sewing-room I at first had indeed sometimes found myself doing all the things a young unmarried girl of Fashion should do: the Theatre, the Opera, Balls, Vauxhall Gardens - until one night Angelica persuaded me to attend another of her
soirees
, for a lady singer was to sing songs of Mr Handel and she thought I should hear.—She had me sit beside her as the guests sat in little rows on little chairs in the drawing-room in Pall Mall and a rather shy plain girl with a beautiful voice, although not as beautiful as that of the madwoman in St Martin’s Lane, sang
and I felt a very peculiar feeling as if someone was watching me, finally I turned slightly - oh - never was I more glad of my spinster’s cap and my dark gown as that night, for I saw one of Angelica’s Gentlemen friends staring at me - I gave him a polite nod and he turned away and the girl went on singing
and my heart kept jumping and beating against my breast even as I turned and smiled at Angelica, who wanted everybody to be so happy - and I did not excuse myself at once, I did not run away, I allowed myself to listen for a long time to an old rich lady of Angelica’s acquaintance who spoke to me, lovingly, of her small dog, which sat there upon her knee. ‘He is called Jupiter,’ she kept saying to me, ‘Jupiter, little Darling,’ and she cuddled the dog to her breast - I could not have been more respectable as my legs literally trembled to hold me there; I think the Gentleman must have told himself he had made a mistake, for how
could
the famous Artist’s quiet sister in her dark clothes and spinster’s cap be the girl he had first seen in the shadows of the
piazza
whose Virtue he had so manfully undone? It was, literally, unthinkable.

But after that I did not want to attend further
soirees -
what if the Gentleman came from whom I stole so much money, what if he too was a friend of Angelica? Slowly, although her face fell, I persuaded her that I was truly content in my other role as the housekeeper, slowly I stopped the jaunty trips to Vauxhall or yet another Ball - I did not want to take more risks like that, certainly , but most of all I needed to be in my Studio:
I wanted to paint -
and now (smiling at Angelica so that she could see I was not unhappy, she always wanted everybody to be happy) I would sometimes paint almost all night, then hurry out to buy the food and then hurry back to my room and I began to understand very well that my portraits of the people I saw over London - the market-men, the painted women, the wild children - were better and better, my use of the colours and the oil and the way I had begun to paint real shadow and light were sometimes beautiful - but that sometimes in the faces I painted from my memory the eyes were still cold. Cold eyes.

One day I found myself at Mr Valiant’s Auction rooms in Poland-street: there was to be an Auction, some Old Masters (a Raphael someone whispered), crowds were inspecting (I heard an English Painter muttering,
When will they crowd like this about English painting?
) and I found a small portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn - it sounds ridiculous but again I had the feeling that I could not breathe, as when I had seen Mr Reynolds’ painting by Rembrandt because I recognised the light and the shadows - this one was simply titled,
Portrait of a Young Woman.

The woman sat, not looking at the Painter but at one small, pink flower in her hand, in light and in shadows; she wore a simple but rich-looking gown with wonderfully-painted sleeves - this Painting was not as beautiful - or so it seemed to me - as the bathing woman, and it was clearly not the same woman, but it had the same - I tried to find the word in my mind - the same
soul
as the one owned by Mr Reynolds - and most importantly to me in my learning he used
the same dark light
as in the other picture: with Rembrandt van Rijn I had found someone who painted the light and the shadows in a way I had begun to really understand. —I stayed by the Painting in the Auction rooms of Mr Valiant in Poland-street for a long time; I went away and then I came back again - I sat beside my easel that night trying to capture that Painting in case I never saw it again - all night I saw the face in my head, she was not exactly smiling but she was
thinking
, it felt as if she was thinking something over, and light shone across the painting , it was alive, the face was
alive
, I could not sleep, I went back early the next morning, terrified that someone would have bought it before it was auctioned, taken it away.

‘How much is it?’ I asked Mr Valiant who knew me of course and presumed I was enquiring for my brother.

‘Rembrandt van Rijn is not so fashionable as Titian, say, but interest in him is growing and Prices are rising fast; these days I expect thirty-five Guineas at least in Auction,’ he said, watching my face.

I told Mr Valiant that it would be bought that very morning, begged him to take it down for an hour, out of the Auction, and I ran: I took the short-cut along Broadwick-street, past Orange Street, past the statue at Charing Cross and along Pall Mall, it was raining that day I remember and the bottom of my gown was splattered with more mud than usual but what did I care about rain? - my hair was falling down as I barged into my brother’s forbidden Studio and begged him,
begged
him to come with me, to buy this Painting to add to his collection. ‘You said you wanted a Rembrandt,’ I said, trying to catch my breath.

He looked at me oddly.

‘Why are you so interested?’ he said and something flashed between us then; almost four years had passed but it flashed between us, the memory of what had damaged us so but of course he could not guess -
fool
- but I knew I had to risk all this: I could not let that Painting go.—The dull light that day was preventing his own work, he came with me back to Poland Street in his elegant carriage, the horses blocked the street as we alighted and the rain poured down, he stood for a long time, in front of the Painting.

‘It is very small,’ he said, ‘it is smaller than the picture of Mr Reynolds. And who knows if it is a Fake? And Rembrandt - he is not really the fashion, whatever Reynolds thinks - thirty-five guineas is far too much money for a Rembrandt, Reynolds paid less than twenty.’—Yet I saw that he too was caught by the simplicity of the expression and the beauty, the colour of the gown, the folds of lightness and darkness in the sleeve - he could not find Mr Hartley Pond to ask his valued opinion but by great good fortune James Burke came upon our carriage and enquired for us and Mr Burke nodded, staring at the Painting - finally Mr Valiant was somehow persuaded not to wait for the Auction, finally Philip was somehow persuaded to pay to Mr Valiant the thirty-five guineas (although grumbling very much) and he took the Painting home that very day, under his arm, in the carriage, as the grey day drew down and I heard the horses’ hooves on the cobbles and the rain on the carriage roof and my heart sang.

I prayed he would hang it upon the stairs next to his beautiful painting of Angelica and the Canaletto - but he finally hung
Portrait of a Young Woman
in his Studio, although this day we all crowded about it in the dining-room: Mr Hartley Pond when he came looked at it for a very long time.

‘It is very, very lovely,’ he said. ‘Look at that gown. No-one can paint the richness the way he does.’ And after another long time, ‘The face. Yes. The shadow and the light. Yes. I am sure. It is genuine. ’

I heard my brother, often, boasting to colleagues and guests, of his Acquisition. ‘I have a Rembrandt,’ he would say. ‘Like Mr Reynolds,’ and my heart sang
I have a Rembrandt
,
like Mr Reynolds.

It meant I still must haunt my brother’s Studio after all but I was safe now in the night-time, my time the night-time: he had long been dismissed, the dangerous assistant, and it was a long time since I had had to look in dark corners with my heart beating.—My brother and Angelica were always out and when I heard the assistants go out also, their boots clattering on the wooden staircase, I went and gazed at that Rembrandt picture to my heart’s content, saying hello to George the Greek statue in passing; in the light of my candle I copied it over and over, over and over, never bored, trying to understand how the light in his painting refracted and reflected, trying to understand the thickness of paint in some parts -
impasto
they called it - almost as if he put it on with his fingers not with a brush, or so it seemed to me; night after night after night I copied the painting, breathed the Rembrandt picture inside myself; I was never, never satisfied, never getting it right at all, not understanding then that the great painter Rembrandt van Rijn had painted not just with paint, but with love.

 

Angelica, be-gowned and beautified and ready, wanted to sit with me: Angelica, ready for the dinner guests, fashionably prepared for them, time suspended until the next entertainment happened. Occasionally then she asked me about Bristol; very occasionally spoke to me of her own past across the river: after her mother died her father had made her, Angelica, pregnant, she was not much more than fourteen, had left that side of the river, come to London City, she had come on her own.

‘Did you - have a child?’

‘It had not quickened, there was no problem to lose it, copper wire is best, I have used it many times,’ and I remembered that is what Poppy had said.

‘Was it dangerous?’

She shrugged. ‘No more than any other thing in this world - my Sister died of the copper wire it is true when she left it too late, but my Mother died of the plague. So it is all the same, when they die.’ And I saw that she quickly pulled herself up out of her dark place. ‘When they cure the plague they will cure the copper wire I expect,’ and I saw that she meant it, that she hoped it would be so - and then we would hear the knocker and her face would shine bright.

And I found Angelica’s workroom almost as fascinating as that of my brother - for were they not both painting, in their own Styles?—Sometimes out of curiosity I used to go in when they were out about the Town, my languishing older sisters had had nothing of this: the big table by the window where Angelica worked, covered with the most extraordinary array of receptacles and glass bottles and little pots; the candle-lamps to give her extra light, and the mirrors, and the false hair
-
I loved the way shadows fell and light shone upon her wooden workspace and the glass of the bottles, I loved the different colours of the bottles with their blue or green or golden contents of oils and essences from France and Turkey, and the Ivory Combs, and the soft white rabbits’ feet she used, to put the colours and powders on her face, and grey pumice stones, and red cerises and vermilions from the Indies, and the many pots and jars of the white Venetian Ceruse that she smoothed over her face and down to her bosom, to make her skin so white.—One night in Pall Mall I
joined
the arts of my brother and Angelica: the connection in what they were doing delighted me in some odd way and I couldn’t help my old laughter as I took a little pot of the vermilion rouge from Angelica’s table and I went into my brother’s empty studio in the night, I found there drying a Portrait of a particular Duke whom I disliked (he had brushed past me in my white cap almost knocking me down with his sword-stick as I welcomed him to my brother’s house), I saw that the vermilion from Angelica’s pot would blend into his cheeks, that it would actually make the Portrait more like the sitter, like his red-veined cheeks that my brother had slightly disguised - I held my candle close to the Face and very carefully and with great glee, with my thumb, I blended a little of Angelica’s rouge into the cheeks of the Duke knowing it would remain there now under the varnish the apprentices would soon be applying to the painting.