Gates of Paradise (4 page)

There were very few people about, only old Mrs Taylor who was standing by the gate of her white cottage, smoking a pipe and pondering, and Will Smith who was grooming a fine stallion in the stable yard alongside the inn. The Fox itself seemed to be deserted, but there was smoke rising from the cottage chimney and the wicket gate was ajar, so someone was at home. He pushed the gate open and walked through into the garden plot, noticing how overgrown it was, and noticing too that someone had been using the well, for the earth around its worn brick was dark with spilled water. Then as he could hear women's voices inside the cottage he stepped under the high thatch that shielded the door and thumped its thick oak with the side of his fist.

Feet approached, a latch clicked and the door was opened by a woman who was drying her hands on a Holland apron, rather a handsome woman, tall and
slender with dark eyes and a bold face under a plain white mobcap. Wife or servant? It was hard to tell, especially at first glance. She had the air of a wife but the clothes of a servant, her dark skirt patched and none too clean, her black stockings darned, her shoes scuffed and down at heel, but her day-gown was better quality – he saw that at once – made of linen and patterned in pink and white. ‘How may I help you?' she said and smiled at him.

He explained his errand.

‘He's in the work room,' she said, ‘unpacking. Go through. He'll not mind.' And she opened the door to her right and stood back to let him enter. ‘William, my dear, here's a messenger come.'

It was very dark inside the room, for the thatch over the window was extremely thick and very little light penetrated the straw. After a day in sunshine, it took a little while for Johnnie's eyes to adapt to the darkness. At first all he could see were amorphous suggestions, which gradually resolved themselves into a round oak table, a cottage chair and a stack of wooden boxes, but then a log shifted in the grate and the fire flickered into life and he caught the gleam of an eye and saw that there was a figure stooped over one of the boxes lifting something heavy from the sacking that enwrapped it, something heavy and gleaming like gold. A copper plate, catching the firelight as it rose.

‘You have a message,' the engraver said, setting the plate against the wall. And he held out his hand to receive it.

Johnnie watched as the newcomer broke the seal with a stained thumb, smoothed out the paper and lifted it to the firelight so that he could read it. Not a rich man by any means, he thought. Mr Grinder's wrong about that. The man stooped before the fire was a labourer, his clothes and hands stained by his trade, and the room full of his tools, the table loaded with papers, ink bottles, a pot full of brushes, a tumble of paint-smeared rags. There were canvases propped against the whitewashed walls, two with strange pictures painted on them, all swirling blues and greys and long white figures like statues; there was a pile of books in one corner and a box full of papers in another; and standing at the back of the room, where the ceiling was high enough to accommodate it, a huge wooden structure like a cider press or – and his heart contracted at the thought – one of them newfangled instruments the Frenchies called a guillotine. My stars! Here's a man with a difference and no mistake.

The paper was read and put on the table next to the brushes. ‘Tell your master,' the engraver said, ‘that I will call upon him at my very first convenience and will be happy to undertake his commission. Explain to him that I am unpacking as speedily as may be.' And he strode to the door, calling to his wife. ‘Catherine, my dear, we have our first commission. Did I not tell you we should do well here?'

So she
is
his wife, Johnnie thought, as he strolled
back to Turret House, despite her poor clothes. My stars, I shall have some tales to tell in The Fox tonight.

Evening in The Fox was the high spot of the village working day, when the men left their labour in the fields and farms and big houses and gathered to slake the thirst of the day, to smoke a calming pipe and to enjoy the gossip. The church might think itself the centre of the village and so it was on a Sunday morning or when it came to weddings and christenings and burials, but the inn was the place for news. The old men had their allotted places in the chimney corners, the young found space on the settles, there was a fire of sea-coal, no less, and beers and ales aplenty, for Mr Grinder was a provident landlord, and barely an evening went by without plenty to comment on and exclaim about.

‘So you been in to see the new engraver feller, then,' old Reuben Jones said, as Johnnie and Mr Hosier walked in that evening. ‘Mr Sparkes was a-tellin' me this afternoon. Ol' Mrs Taylor seen you go in, so he say. So come on then boy, what did he say? D'you reckon he's a-goin' ter stay here?'

Johnnie laughed as he walked to the bar. ‘You can't sneeze in this village without everybody knowin',' he said. ‘Yes, I did see him,
an
' his wife,
an
' I went in the cottage. What you want to know?'

‘We been at sixes an' sevens all day,' Mr Hosier complained. ‘A-runnin' errands, here there an' everywhere. He got another bee in his bonnet, that's
the size of it, an' we've all to be turned topsy-turvy to satisfy. Errands all day, I ask you. How's he s'ppose we're to grow vegetables if we're runnin' about all day long. Pint please, Mr Grinder.'

‘I didn't see you do much runnin',' Johnnie grinned. ‘The one what was runnin' was me.'

‘'Tis all the same, you or me,' the gardener said, holding out his hand for the beer. ‘It all takes good time from the garden, which he can ill afford, onny he don' seem to know it. You don't get vegetables grow'd if you're forever runnin' about.'

‘But you spoke to him, Johnnie,' Reuben said, pushing the conversation back in the direction he wanted. ‘You been in the cottage an' spoke to him. D'you reckon he's goin' ter stay?'

‘You've the right of it there, Mr Jones,' Johnnie said, feeling important. ‘I been in the cottage an' I've spoke to him.'

There was a rush of cold air and his father came clomping through the door in his muddy boots. ‘Oi've spoke to him an' all,' he said, winking at his son. ‘You aren't the only one, so there's no cause for you to go a-givin' yourself airs. Evenin' Reuben. How's the pigs?'

‘Comin' along lovely, Hiram,' Reuben said. It was his job to look after the piggery on Outerwyke farm and he took it very seriously.

‘An' how's the foot?'

‘Mendin' tolerable,' Reuben said, glancing at his bandaged foot. ‘Oi don't complain. So is he goin' ter stay, this engraver feller? We needs ter know.'

‘More to the point,' Will Smith said, looking up from where he was lounging on the settle, ‘could he have written this?' And he pulled the leaflet from the pocket of his breeches and held it up for Johnnie to see.

Johnnie took a swig of his beer and read it carefully. ‘Tha's from Lunnon,' he said. ‘They been handin' 'em out all over, accordin' to
The Times
. I read it this mornin'. Stuck to the Monument an' all sorts. There's riots there, so they say, on account of there's no bread. How d'you come by it?'

So the tale was told, in the usual happy length, and then Reuben and the potboys joined in to exaggerate the weight of the boxes they'd had to carry, and Hiram described how he saw the engraver step out of the gate and head off to the beach. ‘Lunnoners are all the same.'

‘He
is
a Lunnoner then,' Reuben said. ‘I thought so last night.'

‘Oh, yes,' Johnnie agreed. ‘He's a Lunnoner all right. Tell you one thing, though. He aren't a rich one. You wait till you see his clothes.'

Reuben had reached the surly stage of his evening's drinking. ‘Rich or poor,' he said, ‘foreigners are all the same an' we don't want 'em hanging round here. Oi told 'ee we was in for trouble when ol' Dot-an'-Carry first come here, onny none of 'ee listened. An' what happen? First 'ee build that ol' wall ten foot tall for to keep us all out and then dang me if he don't go an' build that great tower. An' what for, Oi ask 'ee. Blamed if Oi
know. 'Tis allus the same with strangers. You let 'em in they takes liberties. They turn things contrariwise. This ol' engraver feller'll be just the same. You see if Oi ent right.'

Outside in the cold night air, the stars were sharp as frost and the moon hung above the village, whey-faced and waiting. A faint yellow candlelight warmed the windows of Mr Blake's cottage and from time to time a wisp of grey smoke rose from the kitchen chimney. It drifted in the still air, propelled by its own heat, thinning and dispersing until it was nothing but a ghostly shadow across the moon.

Having given his word, Mr Blake walked up the lane to Turret House as soon as he'd breakfasted the next morning. It was a short walk and a pleasant one, for after the crush and noise of the London streets this small dusty village seemed like a kingdom of peace. He felt he was at home there and it pleased him that he could recognise some of his neighbours. He saw the ploughman and his little lad as soon as he stepped out of the cottage, and was warmed when they waved to him, and as he passed The Fox, there was Mr Grinder in his blue apron, standing by the door talking to an old man with a bandaged foot and Mr Grinder was all welcoming smiles.

‘Off to Turret House, Mr Blake?' he said and it was more a statement than a question.

‘There's work to be done,' Mr Blake told him happily.

‘You've a good day for it,' the publican said. And the bandaged man nodded and grinned, showing his two remaining teeth.

It was an unusual sensation to be walking on trodden earth instead of paving stones and a luxury to have the lane to himself instead of sharing it with crowds and carriages and horses. After a few yards, when he'd passed a long barn to his right and a
cottage standing in a very well-tended garden to his left, greeted a skinny old woman standing by her wicket gate, and a shabbily dressed young one brushing the dust from her doorstep, he realised that although his new neighbours were undoubtedly poor, too poor to be warmly dressed at any event, they were not starving as the poor in London had been these past twelve months and more. There was a strong smell of baking bread emanating from both cottages, the garden was growing vegetables and even ran to a fruit tree, hens were clucking somewhere nearby and he could smell a brew house as well as the various privies. He remembered the very different smell of Lambeth, the stink of unwashed bodies and filthy clothes, the haggard faces and rank breath of starvation, the ragged children waiting patiently in line outside the Dog and Duck for a bowl of thin soup and bread made from potato flour, and his old familiar anger rose in him and he grieved that innocent children should be starving when profiteers were making a fortune from the very bread they needed so much and couldn't afford. And he thought of dear Thomas Butts who'd bought his engravings all through these dreadful famine years and was humbly grateful to him, knowing that without his open-handed patronage he and Catherine would have starved along with all the rest. He was grateful to Mr Flaxman too, who'd been another good friend to them and had arranged for him to come here to Felpham to work for Mr Hayley. There was, he decided, much for him to be thankful
for, and thankful he
would
be, he was determined on it. His short walk was over. He had reached the gates of Turret House. We shall do very well here, he promised himself.

Mr Hayley's fine house looked prosperous and important, standing in its wide gardens, at the end of a long covered walkway, with its tall windows catching the sun and its high tower dominating the grounds. This is what it is like to be a celebrated poet, Blake thought, as he followed the path to the front door, and although the knowledge saddened him a little, he shrugged it away at once, jealousy being an altogether ignoble and harmful sentiment.

‘My dear friend,' Mr Hayley said as his visitor was ushered into the library. ‘You have come at the most opportune moment. But quite the most opportune. I have this very second completed the ballad and it is a fine work. I will read it to you.' His long handsome face was bright with enthusiasm as he took up a pose and began to intone.

It was a truly dreadful poem, dripping with false sentiments and warped by the need to find a rhyme. ‘
Angels could not thee save/ when low beneath the wave/ you lost your innocent life/ cut by the ocean's knife
.' But Blake kept a straight face, listened to it humbly and, when the reading was finished, agreed that it was a fine work and that he would be happy to illustrate it and print it.

‘Two engravings would suffice, don't you think,' the celebrated poet said. ‘One of the widow leaving her cottage to seek her sick husband, looking back
wistfully perhaps, with her son rocking the cradle inside the house of course, and the other of the boy aloft on the shrouds in the midst of the storm, almost at the moment of death, with the spirit of his father holding out his arms to him from the storm clouds. It must all be noble and in proportion, you understand, and fitting to the quality of the verse. I shall need several copies for I shall sell it to all my friends. How soon could it be done? We must help this poor woman with all speed. With all speed. Her loss is intolerable. As soon as I read her story… My dear friend Counsellor Rose wrote to tell me of it. Did I tell you that? No? No matter. As soon as I read it I knew she
must
be saved and that I was the one to do it. We poets have a duty to our society. We shirk it at our peril.'

He is right about that, Blake thought, if about nothing else. A true poet must write no matter what it may cost him. He'd always known that, for poetry came to him unbidden and with a terrible urgency. Lines were forming in his head at that very moment, swift bitter lines forged in anger at the cruelty and indignity of poverty, lines that swelled and pulsed to be written, as he sat quietly in Mr Hayley's elegant chair looking up at Mr Hayley's learned books.