Will & Tom

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The false smile drops away. Mrs Lamb shifts back from the table and plants a fist against her hip. ‘It were common courtesy, that’s all. I had a heavy burden and Mr Turner was good enough to offer me assistance. Few of your precious domestic servants would do the same.’

Mr Cope will not argue. He extends a long arm into the corridor. ‘Mr Turner.’

The valet’s manner, taking compliance utterly for granted, reminds Will of the music room, and the slighting way in which his terms were conveyed. He isn’t about to refuse, though, or chance a bold remark – not with the Brookes inside his larger sketchbook. In fact, he finds it easy to imagine that Mr Cope might be drawn to the print somehow; that he might sniff it out and run barking to his master. The best course is to go with him, peel away as soon as he can, pleading tiredness, and then burn the thing back in the casket chamber. He bids Mrs Lamb good evening, but gets no response. She is bent over her table, making a great fuss of laying out the red sea shells on their tray, and ignoring everything else.

‘Be careful, Mrs Lamb,’ says the valet, once Will is through the door. ‘Their tolerance is nearly at an end.’

The service floor has emptied. Many of the servants are upstairs, Will supposes, setting the banqueting table in the gallery. Valet and painter walk side by side. After a dozen yards or so Mr Cope says that he understands Will is not joining the company in the saloon; would he care for some supper in the servants’ hall instead? Will’s belly emits a joyful growl. He replies that he would, and despite his apprehension he is thankful, once again, for the valet’s effectiveness.

They separate, Mr Cope heading for the kitchens. Only when seated on a bench in the servants’ hall, the sketchbooks safely beside him, does Will properly consider what has happened. It is easy enough to work out how the fellow knew where he was – Mr Noakes must have told him when he went upstairs to marshal the dinner party. Why, though, had Mr Cope come at all? Why had he been so set on removing Will from the still room? What kind of a damn valet is this?

Mr Cope appears with a plate of food and a tin tankard. The few servants loitering in the hall disperse immediately. Will’s meal is set upon the table, roast pork and potatoes and a pint of treacle-coloured ale, along with a plain knife and fork. He bolts it, more or less. This has become a ritual of his tour: the sating of his hunger after a productive day outdoors, shutting out the world to go face down in the trough. The food itself is almost unimportant – fortunately, given some of the tavern fare he has endured – but this is good, really good, the meat tender and the ale smooth. He’s halfway through before he realises that Mr Cope is still there, at his shoulder, peering at him coolly like a stone saint up on a cathedral. Seeing that he has Will’s attention, the valet begins to speak; his voice is different, quieter, with the trace of a London accent.

‘Mrs Lamb isn’t your friend.’

Will lays down his fork. ‘Never thought she was, Mr Cope.’

‘It’s a game she plays. You must see this. She’s trying to get you on her side.’

Will thinks of the Brookes print, hidden not six inches from his thigh; Mrs Lamb’s rather flimsy explanation of how it came to be in his possession; her offer of more. ‘Beg pardon?’

The ghost of a smile crosses Mr Cope’s face. ‘Some advice, Mr Turner. Resist it.’

And with that he’s gone, departing the servants’ hall for the nearest staircase. Will looks blankly at the strands of pork still upon his plate. Ale gurgles inside him; he smothers a belch against his sleeve. Then he rocks forward on the bench, shovels in the remainder of the meal and scrambles to his feet. He’s at the casket chamber in less than two minutes, hunched over a tallow candle, feeding the Brookes print into the flame. The paper is dry and membrane-thin; it flares yellow, curling to a blackened wisp that floats up from his fingers, vanishing into the shadows overhead. Will slumps back on the bed. He is filled, more than anything, with a sense of monumental unfairness. Making drawings of an aristocratic estate is a simple enough proposition. It has been going on for centuries, and mostly without incident. Yet when he attempts it, bringing with him all of his assiduousness and ability, he is plunged into a dark farce – a mess of unwelcome complications. It truly defies belief.

Will rests a hand on his sketchbooks; a steadying breath becomes a yawn. He has to sleep. He has to keep to his schedule.

He has to get away from this place.

Thursday (#ulink_40a7dca7-43ff-57c4-8c61-26a6c04372b0)

It is well past noon when Tom appears. Will is sat against a fin of mossy rock; he lifts his porte-crayone from the paper and watches the other painter approach. Tom wears a faded travelling coat the colour of builder’s clay, long riding trousers rather than breeches and a pair of scuffed boots. He is bare-headed and carries nothing: no umbrella, sketchbook or drawing board. That easy stride of his, that expression somehow light-hearted yet unyielding, causes Will to remember the last time he’d seen him in London, several weeks before the opening of the Academy Exhibition. There had been a pack of them, installed in a tavern after a day painting scenery at the Sans Souci. Full of punch and lively defiance, Tom had climbed atop a chair, set on defying the gagging acts by reciting a passage from one of his radicals. ‘My own mind is my church!’ he’d cried, swatting at Georgie Samuel as he tried to pull him back down. An unthinking grin curls the corner of Will’s mouth.

Tom flops beside the rock. He gives Will’s thigh a good-natured pat before stretching himself out, crossing his legs at the ankle and covering his eyes with his arm. Will says nothing. He’s back in his sketch, the first of the long views, tracing a knotted thicket and the small farm building half hidden within. After a few minutes he realises that Tom has fallen asleep.

An hour or so goes by. Will completes his view and places it in the larger sketchbook. He sits for a while, chewing on a piece of bread given to him by the kitchen maids. It has been a dull day thus far, overcast, the sky flat and featureless. Now, though, a single coin of sunlight falls onto the sloping lawn that runs from Harewood’s southern front to the boating pond in the middle of the valley. It expands, grows stronger, tinting the grass with shimmering yellow; and the clouds begin to ease apart, revealing pure blue above.

Tom stirs, sitting up, fumbling with his tail-pocket. Instead of a roll of paper, however, or a porte-crayone of his own, he takes out a pipe and tinderbox.

‘You didn’t wait,’ he says.

‘Couldn’t.’ Will swallows some bread. ‘Work to do.’

‘Suppose you did retire early. Why, it was barely dark.’

‘And I’ll wager you was up till it was close to light again.’

This is no wager. Will was woken in the early dawn by singing and ragged, drunken laughter, issuing from the flower garden, among which Tom’s voice was plainly heard. He’d clamped his pillow over his head and made an unsuccessful attempt to swear himself back to sleep.

‘Man must live, Will. Seize what he can.’

‘That’s living, is it, Tom? Prancing about with the Lascelles and their crowd?’

Tom grins. ‘It does have its shortcomings,’ he admits. ‘These noble gentlemen are testing at times. Remove the carriages and the costly clothes and there’s nearly always a dolt beneath.’

‘Does your chum Beau number among the dolts, I wonder?’

Untroubled by Will’s irritability, Tom opens the tinderbox and prepares the charcloth. ‘You know full well what that was, Will, as you must do it yourself.’ He fits his fingers in the D-shaped firesteel and strikes it against the flint. The sound is piercing, fractured; Will winces to hear it. ‘God knows, they’re easy enough to please. All a fellow really has to do is laugh at their damn jokes. It was Nelson last night. “Albion’s foes will discover that although now armless, he remains far from harmless.” From their mirth you’d think it was the sharpest line ever uttered.’ Tom strikes the flint again. ‘You heard of this, off on your tour?’

The news had arrived on Will’s last day in York: a furious battle against the Spanish at Tenerife, a decisive defeat, England’s great hero so gravely wounded. Patrons had wept openly in the snug bar of the Black Horse. Will’s thoughts, as always, were of painting. It would surely make for a fine narrative subject, a scene both affecting and rousing – the enormous frigates; the perfect disc of the moon; the injured Admiral refusing all aid as he marched himself to the surgeon. But he doesn’t want to discuss this now.

‘What terms did he give you?’

At the third strike a minute spark flits from the flint and smoulders on a fold in the charcloth. Tom is ready with a taper, which he then pokes into the pipe’s bowl, sucking on the stem as he does so. ‘For my chest,’ he murmurs, sucking again. ‘Monro’s recommendation. Damn nuisance, to tell the truth.’

Will repeats his question.

The tobacco catches, and for a minute Tom’s coughing prevents all speech. Will finishes off the bread; he watches the sun spread through the valley, casting a sheet of blazing white across the pond.

‘None as such,’ Tom says at last, dabbing at his eyes with his coat cuff. ‘Beau’s idea simply seems to be that I live in the household. Spend my days out here in the park.’ Sitting next to Will, his back against the rock, Tom tries the pipe again. This time is easier; he puffs twice, then exhales a coil of smoke. ‘But I have to say, Will, it’s a damn strange place to be. All of it is fake, from these woods here to the very hills they are rooted upon. It ain’t nature as I know her, that’s for sure.’ He leans forward, gesturing with his pipe. ‘And the house. Look at it. There’s a hundred exactly like it elsewhere in England, damn near identical in all but size. There’s no art in its construction. No history in its stones. It speaks of nothing but money.’

‘You’re happy enough to stay here,’ Will observes, not mentioning his own similar thoughts. ‘And not for the first time neither.’

Tom smokes in contemplation. ‘Naturally I’m happy,’ he says. ‘London is hellish at present. The war goes badly still. Soldiers are everywhere. Friends of liberty, of any species of liberty, must be constantly on their guard. They’ll throw you in Newgate merely for speaking out of turn – and they’ll keep you in there, without charge, for as long as they damn well please. That villain Pitt wants us cowed, Will, and it’s working. Why, it feels sometimes as if every decent person has fled the city.’

This picture is exaggerated. Tom has always been the sort who relishes a drama, preferably with himself playing a central part. Will pushes his sun hat to the back of his head. He waits for the other painter to continue.

‘Up here, though, all that noise goes quiet. A man can rest. Order his thoughts.’ Tom becomes confiding. ‘And there’s other advantages. This I learned well last year. Beneath the baron’s roof, and toiling in the baron’s farms, are many young women – and every last one of them, Will, is bored senseless.’ He draws on his pipe. ‘I mean, think of their lives. Their labours. How bleak and unending it must be. It don’t take much, at any rate, to win their favour. Most of them will clutch at a chance for diversion with all they’ve got.’

Will smiles in dour amazement. Beside him is a raging radical prepared to bed down with arch-Tory aristocrats; a notable young artist content to travel two hundred miles and make no art; an urbane London professional eager to chase after Yorkshire chambermaids. ‘You’re adaptable, Tom Girtin,’ he says. ‘That I’ll allow.’

Tom chuckles. ‘Surely you can savour some of what’s on offer here. Especially after the travellers’ inns. What a moment it is, for one resigned to lice-ridden straw, to lie upon a goose-feather mattress! And dear God, the peace. No need for your cork pellets at Harewood, or a bolt on your door. Or a call for the watch.’

Will’s smile disappears. This is his tour no longer. This is Maiden Lane. ‘Beg pardon?’

For a short while Tom does not respond; realising his error, he fiddles with the pipe, tamping its bowl with a corner of the firesteel. ‘It must be difficult,’ he says. ‘That’s all I meant, Will. I heard about the fight, the last one, over on Southampton Street. How she broke that barrow boy’s jaw. It’s a damn miracle, frankly, that you’re still able to work as you do.’

And then Will sees it. Tom Girtin is attempting to unnerve him, to throw off his concentration and disrupt his schedule, and thus give himself a chance to catch up. Will has managed to bar this business from his mind for the better part of six weeks – as Father had ordered him to do, in the plainest language – and he rears from it like a horse before a fire. Without speaking, without even looking Tom’s way, he gathers his gear, gets up and walks west.

But now it’s there, eclipsing everything, the memory louder and brighter than life. Mother at the height of her frenzy, spitting at Father and Will as they edge closer, trying to grab hold of her. The howl of the victim, blood spotting fast between the broken bottles. The feel of her pressed to his chest, so bony and fierce, kicking backwards at his shins as Father addresses the crowd, promising grand sums if only the incident can be kept from the magistrate.

This is no use. This will accomplish nothing. Don’t you grant her a single thought, Father had said. The work must come first. Will passes through a screen of slender trees, swinging at some tangled bracken with his umbrella. He rubs his brow on his sleeve, then breathes deeply and wipes the matter away. He gulps; he blinks. It’s gone.

Beyond the trees is a long expanse of pasture, distant sheep drifting over its lower reaches like flecks of foam. Will strides uphill, towards an old tree-stump. The valley lies open before him, bruised by the shadows of clouds. A south-western prospect would have been best, but straight south will do. Time is growing short. He sits and prepares his materials; then he squints at the house, pulls the sun hat forward and slips gratefully into the blankness of work.

Not ten minutes have passed when a whistle makes him look up. A shepherd is moving the sheep off, funnelling them through a gate – and there, perhaps forty yards to the right, is Tom Girtin, propped against a dry-stone wall. A warm breeze sways the trees; the clouds roll back and brilliant sunlight surges across the pasture, breaking over them both, reducing Tom’s face to no more than a pale blot atop his coat.

Will returns to the sketch, his resolve to complete his task and leave Harewood fortified yet further; and a detail from Tom’s talk strikes him as stunningly as a pebble hurled from a sling, jogging his line by a clear half-inch.

A goose-feather mattress.

*

Things are now urgent. Will heads out onto a dandelion-spotted meadow, his boot-steps jarring his spine as he trots down the gradient towards the boating pond. He has enough for the second long view, just barely, but the afternoon is well on the wane. There are perhaps four hours of decent daylight remaining, and two more sketches to be done, of subjects he has yet to determine. The part of the commission he was least concerned by, to which he has given no real thought, suddenly looks like it may be his undoing.

All is not lost. Yesterday, while crossing a bridge in the western part of the estate, Will heard the whisper of a waterfall. He didn’t pay it any mind at the time, but if there are rocks, or a picturesque arrangement of trees, it could serve his purpose. Another twenty minutes walking, a half-hour to judge the views, an hour on each sketch – he might yet make the evening mail coach.

Following the pond’s bank westwards brings Will to a walled garden. He goes to the nearest door, a navy blue rectangle set into the red brick, thinking to save a few minutes by cutting through. It opens easily, revealing a grid of gravel paths laid out around plots of vegetables. Will steps inside. The air is still, heavy, scented with herbs; the only sound is the soft hum of bumblebees. Almost instantly, a gardener rises from behind a line of lettuces, a man of about his age with a downy beard and a narrow, unfriendly face. Will halts, recognising the situation: trespasser meets warden. He glances back to the doorway, wondering if he should remonstrate or simply accept ejection.

Without speaking, the gardener retreats to a nearby shed, wiping a trowel on the end of his muddy apron. Will walks on, past carrot-tops and thyme bushes; and he notices other gardeners packing up and moving away as well. He looks around him in perplexity.

Tom Girtin is strolling in through the garden door. Will considers evasion, hiding amid the beds, but sees that this would be futile. He stands in place, picking at his teeth with the scraping nail, and eyes the other painter with wary annoyance. Is there to be a discussion of their earlier rupture? Is there to be contrition, an embrace, a pledge of brotherhood?

The answer is no, thankfully, on every count. Tom appears to have excised all unpleasantness from his mind; and indeed, as he draws near, his talk is not of Maiden Lane but a herd of young deer that have wandered from the woods on the southern side of the valley.

‘You should’ve sketched them,’ Will tells him. ‘Put them in a view. Just the sort of detail they like.’

Tom laughs. ‘I ain’t got the skill for that, Will. I didn’t attend the Academy schools, if you recollect.’

No, thinks Will, you were rejected – and immediately feels guilty. This is unjust. He knows very well what Tom can do. He says nothing.

‘Besides, I ain’t brought any blessed paper.’ Tom is looking now at the sketchbooks; his voice grows teasing. ‘I ain’t so magnificently prepared as you. D’you really need both books out here? Scared a maid might run off with them, are you, if they was left back at the house?’

Will ignores this. ‘I’ve two more studies to take, Tom, afore the post leaves from the village. I’ve got to get on.’

At once Tom is serious. ‘What are you thinking?’

The question – direct, practical, genuinely interested – comes from a simpler time; from expeditions made together into the countryside around London, perhaps, when Will could stand the barber’s shop no longer and Tom was truanting from the studio of Edward Dayes. Walking out to Lambeth or Putney, or the fields of Highgate, they would set themselves various artistic challenges, and deliver frank verdicts on each other’s work; then talk a little of their plans, their frustrations, their common aims. It’s been three years since they last did this. Three years at least.

‘The waterfall. Over by that bridge.’

Tom’s expression suggests approval. He offers to show Will the fastest route through the gardens. Of course – he’s familiar with this place. Will looks up at the sky, at the full tones of late afternoon, and attempts to quash his aggravation. He accepts.

Another blue door admits them to a different section of the enclosure, given over in large part to a vineyard. These voracious plants are taller than a man, their tendrils reaching out across the avenues, leaves blocking the sun to such a degree that Will has an impression of being under canvas – of proceeding through a low, yellow-green marquee, with purple grape-clusters in place of sconces and chandeliers. At first, this area appears to be similarly deserted. As they approach the end of the vine plot, however, Will glimpses white up ahead – the hard white of starched cotton. A greenhouse has been built against the far wall, seventy feet in length, its roof angled to trap as much light as possible. Before it, at a trestle table, Mrs Lamb is trimming pineapples with a clasp knife. Will slows, recalling the warmth with which she’d treated him and how welcome it had been; and also Mr Cope’s blunt warning in the servants’ hall. He decides it would be best to slip by unnoticed.

Tom lopes past, breaking cover, and bids the still-room maid a blithe good afternoon. Will stops and curses; then he trails out after Tom, scanning the greenhouse and the paths around it for the nearest blue door. Mrs Lamb turns towards them, performing a subtle swivel that lifts her chest very slightly. Her sun-browned cheeks are stippled with perspiration; her eyes lost in the shade beneath her bonnet brim. With one hand, she folds up her clasp knife and puts it into the pocket of her apron.

The conversation that follows is excruciatingly trivial: the fine weather, the subsequent heat in the greenhouses, the splendour of the park. Mrs Lamb responds to Tom’s queries with readiness and some wit. There’s a distance to her, though, a near-imperceptible detachment; Tom no doubt imagines that he’s charming yet another of Harewood’s denizens, but it’s plain to Will that it’s he who is being handled. The still-room maid seems to recognise Will’s impatience, his uncertainty, and apprehend its meaning. She looks in his direction.

‘There’s a rumour, Mr Turner, that you’re leaving us today. Can it be true, after a stay of only two nights’ duration?’

Will shifts about, feeling hot and desperately callow; his left boot sinks an inch into the gravel, briefly unbalancing him. ‘I must get on, madam.’

Tom intervenes. ‘Will is an object lesson to all painters, Mrs Lamb. He’s forever working, forever moving. Whereas I am an idle creature, liable to sit in one place until cobwebs span my back and mice have made their nests in my pockets.’

Mrs Lamb doesn’t comment on this. Instead, regarding Will evenly, she offers a farewell, voicing her sincere regret that his stay at Harewood was so short. ‘You never got that reward, neither,’ she adds, hefting the largest pineapple from the table. ‘For your kind assistance last night.’

‘No need, madam,’ says Will, ‘no need at all. And farewell to you also.’

Beset by awkwardness, he bows, tips the sun hat, almost drops the umbrella; then he’s off through a door at the far end of the greenhouse, thinking that it must surely lead from the garden. Beyond it, however, is another huge partition – vegetable plots, fruit trees and greenhouses, and four more blue doors to choose between. He’s attempting to orientate himself when Tom’s boot-steps come crunching across the stones behind him.

‘A reward, Will Turner? For your kind assistance last night?’

Will tries not to react. ‘Which way is the damn waterfall?’

‘And you played it so very coy up on the hill. Mrs Lamb ain’t an entirely prudent choice, it has to be said, but I know how these things can be.’

‘Damn your eyes, Tom, which way?’ Will says, more loudly. Then he pauses. ‘Prudent?’

Tom grins; he pulls open his collar and nods towards one of the doors. ‘A woman with enemies can be interesting. Out here, though, I honestly believe it’s more likely to bite you than otherwise.’

Will thinks again of Mr Cope’s warning; and of Mr Noakes, on that first afternoon, the way he’d spoken to her. ‘What the devil are you on about?’

This last door opens onto a grove of oak and beech. Tom walks out in front. ‘You must’ve seen how she is. She riles them something awful – all the senior ones, and a number of the juniors too. Too much sauce. Too much nerve. The truth of it is she’s just not fitted for a house like this. There was an ally – the housekeeper, Mrs Linley – a protector, if you like; but she took her leave in the spring. You’ve noticed that they ain’t got a replacement yet?’

Will hadn’t. ‘What of the husband?’

‘D’you really not know?’ asks Tom. He laughs at Will’s discomfort. ‘You can be at ease there. She was widowed, the others think, some time afore she came to Harewood.’

They emerge from the trees. In front of them is the boating pond, its surface aglow in the early evening light. Skating insects etch wide circles upon this golden film, while wild ducks dip among the reeds at its edge, their webbed feet batting the air. Away to the left is the wooden bridge that leads back to the house. Will can hear the waterfall, hidden in the undergrowth, whispering beneath the birdsong and the shifting of leaves.

‘She’s good,’ Tom continues. ‘Without equal, they’ll tell you, in the domain of preserves, pickles and suchlike. It’s the only thing that’s kept her here. But it won’t save her. A new housekeeper will be appointed before the summer’s end, and rooting the unruly Irishwoman from the still room will be close to the top of her list.’

Will frowns. ‘She’s a gypsy, ain’t she? Like them up on the moors?’

‘Irish is what I was told. Travelling stock – came over in childhood. Started off in the kitchens of Leeds.’ Tom takes out his pipe. ‘And she’ll be back in them soon enough.’

The frown deepens; then Will shakes his head, as if to be rid of a bothersome fly. None of this is his concern. He’s been at Harewood for two days only, and in a few hours he’ll be gone, off to another part of the country altogether, following his proper course. He passes the bridge, climbs down a bank thick with ivy and turns to survey the waterfall.

It is a mere trickle, fifteen feet tall at most, buried in the shadow of the bridge and the surrounding trees. Mystery and majesty are completely absent, and the picturesque also: it is mundane