The Fraud (38 page)

Euphemia the maid observed these changes with a blank face. Euphemia missed the old days, was sorry that Mr Burke came now so seldom to the house in Pall Mall: she had always had an eye for the handsome art dealer, and was not entirely certain that her mistress Signorina Francesca had not also enjoyed his company in earlier years. (Just once Euphemia had been most surprised to see him leave the
signorina
’s room, as dawn broke over London.) But Euphemia kept her thoughts about this event, and other things, to herself.

One morning Mr Burke did call: Euphemia opened the big front door welcomingly but Mr Burke only smiled at her and asked that she be sure that Signorina Francesca di Vecellio received a parcel. Euphemia (who knew very well how the
signorina
had painted alone in her room over many, many years) thought Mr Burke’s parcel looked very like a board, for painting, but as usual Euphemia said nothing as she smiled, made a small curtsey, and discreetly took the parcel upstairs.

 

The Artist’s sister left the house every day with her basket over her arm as she had always done: she visited the fishmongers and the costermongers and the butcher-man and chose the day’s food, and if she was seen at a Colourman’s premises it was of course assumed that she was buying materials for her brother. Under the bread she hid camel-hair brushes and, best of all, hog-hair brushes. She bought charcoal and pencils, and paper to sketch her ideas on. Each day these things were secreted calmly in her sewing-room and then she went about her business of preparing for guests, planning with the cook, going to the Strand with Isabella for another gown.

One wet grey morning she received a message to go at once to a certain part of St James’s Park, by Rosamund’s Pond. Respectable ladies did not walk by the pond; sometimes despairing bodies were found in the pond (and she remembered that was where she had last seen Poppy). But who would notice a respectable older lady with her cloak and her basket?

Who stopped there for a moment and seemed to meet briefly with a Jew in a cloak, or perhaps not, it was raining and hard to see.

They took shelter under a tree; rain dripped through branches but neither of them seemed to notice. He had brought her a transparent glaze and many small pudding-like parcels of paint, quite different from the ones in the colour shops. ‘Begin all with dull, warm Colours, even though the prepared board itself is dark, as you will have seen. Rembrandt’s greatness - part of his greatness - was his understanding of the effects of different Colours upon another.’ He showed her pouches of greys and blacks, and light and dark browns, hard to see clearly in the dim light as rain fell. ‘That was often how they began at that time. Then you can apply other Colour, but the dark will keep the basic tone as we need it to be. The glaze will allow you to find deeper and lighter shadows if you wish.’

‘Where have you obtained these?’ She held the pouches in her hand, felt the strange rubbery encasing.

He looked at her unwillingly. ‘We obtain them direct from the Colour-makers across the river in Southwark, the Dye-men. They make them for us, from our own Recipes.’ He looked at the rain: he was obviously not going to say more.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ she said demurely.

‘I am sure your Brother has his own secret Recipes too,
Signorina
.’

He handed her a glass bottle. ‘This Oil is especially prepared to mix with the Paint, it is something very like that which was used in earlier times. And I have given you old copper green and vegetable pigments, not the new, brighter yellows. Time is not kind to many Colours.’ She understood then how much she still did not know: understood this was a lesson from a Master, there in the rain near the pond, in St James’s Park.

‘Thank you,’ she said humbly, carefully placing the paints and the glaze and the oil in her basket under bread and oranges. He still stood there as the rain fell, seemed not to mind getting so wet.

‘Do you know what the late and most admirable Mr Hogarth said of Time?’ he asked her suddenly. ‘He called Time a Vandal -
a Vandal that disunites, untunes, blackens, and by degrees destroys
.’

The woman in the park seemed startled. ‘Was he speaking of Paint?’ she said. ‘Or Life?’

The Jew looked at her sharply and did not answer. She saw his face was full of many things, and pain, and wondered what his life had been.
I would like to paint that face
, she thought.

‘Thank you,’ she said again. She made to turn away, turned back. ‘I am sorry - I do not know your name.’

‘No harm there,’ he said briefly, and was gone across the grey park without further communication of any kind.

She walked quickly towards Pall Mall in the rain with her cloak about her, and her covered basket: she was carrying such precious things in her basket, they must not get wet, they must be safe in her sewing-room: she did not see him.

‘Hello, Gracie,’ he said.

He was a dark, middle-aged man and he looked ill and he was wet with rain.

‘Come under a tree, Tobias,’ she said, her Italian accent quite gone, in shock, from her.

At first they did not speak: Tobias kept smiling nervously, his sister stared at the man she had seen at the cock-fighting. He was still thin and dark, he had his hair tied back like the sailors, but he looked ragged and unkempt and although he was dark, as she was, he looked somehow pale and (as he kept smiling) she saw that he had lost some of his front teeth.

There was a bench beneath the big tree, it was wet with the rain but half-sheltered: in some sort of silent consent they sat down.

‘Did you become a Pirate?’ she said at last. And he laughed, still nervous.

‘Sort of,’ he answered and his eyes flicked away. And then he said, ‘Do you still paint pictures, Gracie?’

And she could not help but half-laugh also: indicated the paint and the oil under the bread and oranges in her basket that lay between them now on the bench. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Philip is the Famous Painter, but I still paint my Pictures.’

‘Philip? Oh.’ He sounded almost disappointed. ‘You were the Painter, Gracie!’ And her heart seemed to contract with this acknowledgment of the past.

From some pocket about him he felt for something: finally drew out a small, battered blue stone. ‘I got this for you a long time ago,’ he said almost shyly, ‘in case I ever saw you. I’ve been carrying it about for years. I got it in Arabia, they said it could be ground to make the most famous Blue Colour of all. Well, that’s what they said,’ he added uncertainly as she held the blue stone in her hands. ‘It was a long time ago.’

She rubbed hard at the old, rough stone for a moment, scratched it with her nail, and finally a thin blue mark appeared on her fingers. It was
lapis lazuli
, the most beautiful, the most expensive blue in all the world. She sat staring at the blueness where she had rubbed it, and the beauty.

‘And where is the Gold? You said you would bring me Gold!’ She said it lightly, meaning to make a joke: he had promised her colours and gold as he sailed away. But it did not come out right, there in the rain under the tree, for her voice broke and she suddenly rubbed quickly at her face.

‘I don’t have any Gold, Gracie. I haven’t got anything now.’ And she at once remembered Philip’s old words,
You would have to choose. Between me and Tobias.

Rain dropped through the trees, on to their hair.

She did not know if she wanted to know the answer to her next question. ‘How did you find me?’

‘I got your Letter once, I went to where they said you worked in Bristol - funny old lady she was, Gracie - but that was years ago. I got robbed once and your Letter was gone. But I always looked for you, when I came to London, but I was always away soon again and I never saw you.’ He paused. ‘Now I’ve just come back to London again. This is strange, Gracie, isn’t it? Talking, I mean, after all the years.’ And it seemed to her that perhaps he rubbed his own face also. ‘When I saw you pass at the cock-fighting I followed you of course, I’ve been watching the house.’ She felt odd, uneasy, past and present colliding: Tobias hiding under the long tablecloth, appearing in dim corners; she worried about her precious parcels of paint and the oils, which should be safely in her sewing-room not under a tree in the rain in St James’s Park. ‘I’ve seen Philip.’ He flicked her his odd, shifty look. ‘He’s a rich man, Philip, I can tell. He’s done well for himself then, if he’s a Painter.’

‘He will not - help you, Tobias. You must not expect it. He pretends he has no other Family, he has made himself into - someone else.’ Still the blue on her hand, wet with rain now, staining her fingers. ‘Are you still a Sailor?’

He made a shuffling, embarrassed movement, knocked her basket with its precious paints and oils - she gasped, he moved very quickly to pick everything up, put the paints back carefully, covered them carefully, a rolling orange retrieved: she held her blue stone. ‘Not much sailing now,’ he said, in answer to her question, ‘unless they’re desperate. The ships go without me now Gracie, they like young men.’ And she wondered if also they liked honest men, and the rain fell upon them.

‘I’m on the run,’ he said finally.

‘Who from?’

‘A lot of people. I’ve only just got to London. It’s bigger here, and safer.’ She tried to take it in:
on the run
, what did that mean?

‘Do you know Claudio?’ He looked blank. ‘The boy in the cock-pit. ’

‘Oh,’ and his face quite lit up, ‘the boy who looks like me? I’d just come there for the first time. I saw him see you, it felt - strange, to see his face. He looks like me, doesn’t he, Gracie - and he has plenty of money, I see. Is he your son or Philip’s son?’

‘He is Philip’s son - and you must not encourage him to gamble, Tobias, for Pity’s sake, he has lost a lot of my brother’s money.’

‘I see him most days now. Now that I know him. But I haven’t let him see me, till I found - how things are.’ He stared at Grace and swallowed. ‘He looks like me.’ He said it again wonderingly, almost wistfully. She could not bear it. This was her brother but he was from another world, a world that was gone,
Time is a Vandal
Mr Hogarth had said. She stood quickly from the bench; he stood reluctantly.

‘Wouldn’t the boy like - a Relation? We didn’t have Relations did we? But - I got tales to tell, Gracie,’ and in her head she saw Claudio, listening in fascination to his Uncle Tobias and running away to sea.

‘Oh God, you must keep away from him, Tobias. Claudio thinks - he does not know our past, he knows nothing at all about us.’ She saw again the wistful face, something twisted in her heart. ‘Where do you live?’ She could not bear this, she could not bear what she might hear.

‘Here and there,’ he said, jauntily, as if it did not matter. ‘I’ll see you around then, Gracie, you can find me round the cock-fighting,’ and she saw that he cast a quick look at the bread. She knew she had let him down; she knew he had hoped for help. Still she held the blue stone.

‘Oh Tobias!’ She suddenly grabbed both his arms. ‘Tobias, I am so sorry but I cannot - I cannot help you, not yet - I do not have anything of my own, not yet - everything is too difficult and too complicated, maybe one day I’ll be able to help you but - not yet. I am - I am - so sorry.’ And she thrust the bread into his arms, and the oranges, and she was gone across the Park in the rain with her precious basket, she was almost running,
I did not even thank him, he kept the stone for me all the years
, she clutched it in her hand; and worse thoughts battered at her:
you could have given him the guineas from the sale of your Picture, he is your brother
, rain on her face
.

When she had unpacked her basket in her room, the old colours from the Jew-man and the old oils safe at last in the bottom of the mahogany wardrobe, she found that the pouch of money, of Philip’s money that she carried with her to buy the food, was gone.

‘I was robbed in the
piazza
,’ she told her brother and if Mr Minnow, his dealer, had not been there Philip would have been even more angry at her carelessness but they both saw her white, shocked face.

The old blue stone lay beside her easel.

I cannot think of Tobias now
.

But she half-laughed. At least he had one pound, fourteen shillings and ninepence, the exact amount in Philip’s purse.

 

Nevertheless that night a woman almost hidden in a dark cloak might have been seen on the peripheries of a noisy cock-fight in Broad-street, shadowed and still, watching as the feathers and the blood flew and the men shouted: in the recesses of her cloak a pouch held five guineas, half her money, looking for a dark man, a sailor; she waited for a long time inside the savage shouting, her cloak about her face, but he was not there, he did not come.

She began the painting.

Every single night she worked. Candles surrounded her easel, the lights flickered, shadows danced across the blank, dark, warm board so carefully prepared for her by experts in attic rooms down dark alleys; dark, glowing, velvet and dancing dreams haunted her night and day,
I can see it, almost, the light and the dark, I can feel it.
She did not, yet, touch the prepared board, she was trying to find the picture first on paper, then on other boards. But at last, at last: she picked up her charcoal to begin properly, to at least sketch in the picture she saw in her mind. She would start, and then rub out with her fingers and start again. There was a figure of a girl. She wore a beautiful gown. There was a chair and a window. After many days she at last picked up her new, prized hog-hair brush to begin actual painting. She would start, her head full of ideas, and she would stop. She kept in mind that at first she must paint in the darker, warmer colours though she longed to begin more brightly: to begin with life. When at last she felt brighter colour could be used in parts of the painting, she many times mixed her colours and her oils and then, dissatisfied with the exact colour she had made, mixed again.