The Dark Clue (20 page)

It was at that instant, I think, that I first became aware of the change in Walter – a change I should, perhaps, have noticed before, for the signs must have been there since his return from Sussex, and, once I was conscious of it, I found myself remarking it again and again. Instead of laughing, and replying in kind – as, assuredly, he would have done only a few weeks ago – he made no response at all, but continued looking out of the window, his brow slightly creased with the effort of pursuing some train of
thought I could not even guess at. It was not that he was cold or distant, exactly – only that our friendship, with its teasing and its affection, its rituals of mockery and self-deprecation – had been supplanted in his mind, at least for the time being, by something larger. For a few seconds, it is true (I could not help it then, and cannot deny it now), I felt wounded and bereft, like a child whose boon companion has entered the adult world, and left her behind; but, almost at once, this tincture of bitterness was swept away by a flood of joy – for had I not hoped and prayed that my dear brother would recover himself, and grow to manhood again? And was he not doing so, before my very eyes? And should we not then be truer, deeper friends yet?

‘Now, I think we are quite ready,' said Mrs. Bennett's voice behind us. We turned and saw her standing in the doorway, next to a stout old man in a thick black redingote. He was almost bald, but with heavy white whiskers – as if his hair had decided to migrate, like Mrs. Booth's balcony, but in the opposite direction, from the top of his head to his cheeks – which gave the odd impression that his face was wider than it was tall.

‘My dear, this is Miss Halcombe, and her brother, Mr. Hartright,' she went on. ‘But time enough for proper introductions later.'

She had already started back into the hall; but her husband stayed where he was, and held out his hand, and mumbled ‘How do you do?', staring at a point exactly mid-way between Walter and me with the dull milky eyes of a blind man.

Quite a spectacle we must have made, as we processed to the river: Mrs. Bennett, in a brilliant red cloak and carrying a small guitar, talking to Walter in the vanguard; then me, talking to no-one, but simply glorying in the sun that shone more brightly on us with every step; and finally the manservant, with Mr. Bennett hanging on to his elbow, and a basket of provisions and a stack of railway rugs in his arms. At length we entered a small untidy boatyard littered with planks and wood-shavings and coils of rope brittle with dried tar, where the servant vanished without a word. Mrs. Bennett was talking animatedly to Walter about cutters and skiffs and dories, her hand darting about like a frantic wren as she illustrated her argument with a mast here and a
thwart there; and her husband, though he stood a little apart, as immobile as a Buddha, and could presumably see nothing, seemed to be listening with keen interest; so I ventured by myself on to a rickety wharf to admire the view.

Even this far upstream the Thames was strewn with filth, which the current had thrown against the piles of the jetty and formed into little islands – with plains made from fallen leaves and waterlogged paper, and mountains from the necks of half-submerged bottles, and, in one instance, an entire hinterland created from a drowned cat, its sodden fur as sleek as a rat's. But the far shore was another world; for there, rearing up like an exotic temple, was the new Palm House at Kew Gardens, its billowing glass roof shot through with light, and the gorgeous red leaves of an American maple flaming beside it; and beyond that, towards Richmond, the tree-fringed slopes and hollows of the Old Deer Park, rising and falling and rising again with the sweet regularity of a calm sea, or of some gentle pastoral melody. The associations with Turner were not hard to see: indeed, this whole scene was a kind of mirror image of
London from Greenwich Park
, with the foreground dominated by the mighty Thames, the father of our greatness, now reduced to little more than a stinking cesspool by the greed and venality of the modern age; while, in the distance, an Elysian landscape, restored to glorious life by the unclouded sun, seemed to show us a vision of a happier time. Less explicably, I also found myself thinking of another painting I had seen at Marlborough House. There was no sea, and no figure that might remind me of Apollo or the Sibyl; there were no ruins; and – while its character was undoubtedly classical – this vista of beech and chestnut, of copse and meadow, had none of the parched brilliance of the Mediterranean, but seemed to glow with that deep-hued, temperate lushness you see only in England. Why, then, was I so forcefully put in mind of
The Bay of Baiae,
and of the vague, troubling sense of mystery that still seemed to hang about it in my recollection? The answer must be there before me; but, try as I might, I could not find it, and was still vainly searching when the manservant returned to announce that our boat was ready.

‘Thank you, Jonathan,' said Mrs. Bennett. She led the way through the yard (to my surprise, she seemed to know all the
workmen personally, and greeted them by name, receiving in return a grimy thumb and forefinger raised to a frayed cap, or a muttered ‘Good afternoon, ma'am') and down a flight of stone steps. At the bottom, a broad little skiff, neatly furnished with rugs and cushions, with the basket set squarely amidships and a pair of oars resting in the rowlocks, bobbed and shivered at the end of its rope. She held it steady while Jonathan handed her husband in, and settled him in the bows; then she climbed nimbly into the stern herself, helped me to the seat beside her, and smiling up at Walter said:

‘Very well, Mr. Hartright, if you please.'

And so began six wonderful hours. Walter took his place amidships; and then Jonathan cast us off, and stood watching and waving from the steps (truly, he seemed more like the Bennett's son than their servant) as we glided into midstream and turned to go upriver. There was no space for a tiller, but steering expertly with a piece of ribbon attached to the rudder, and calling instructions to Walter – ‘A little harder with your left, Mr. Hartright,' or ‘We should not, I fear, come well out of a fight with
that.
Why don't you take a well-earned rest for a moment, and let it go?' – Mrs. Bennett brought us safely past a string of barges, and astern of a clanking collier that set us bouncing and rocking in its wake. For a moment we seemed lost in the pall of black smoke that gushed from its funnel and hung threateningly over the water, blotting out the sky and dimming the sun to no more than a pallid silver disc; but then it was gone, as miraculously as the morning's fog, and we emerged into that sunlit other world I had seen from the boatyard.

We could not, of course, entirely put the ugliness of modern life behind us: it was there in the ceaseless traffic of the river, and the broken cigar-box that slapped against the side of the boat, and the streets of mean, anonymous little houses sprawling along the north bank. But it ceased, from that moment, I think, to be the dominant reality. Lulled by the rhythmic dip and groan of the oars, delighted by the sight of a wild tangle of roots here, or the gothic ruin of some old coots' nest there, we drifted along in a kind of enchantment – saying nothing, and each of us thinking his own thoughts, of which the only outward sign was the dreamy smile on every face. I think, indeed, I must have really
fallen asleep, though I have no idea for how long; for one moment I was watching Mr. Bennett put his hand over the side of the boat, with a look of beatific pleasure, as if by trailing his fingers in the water he might
feel
the colours that he could not see; and the next we had stopped with a jolt, and Walter was making us fast to an overhanging branch; and Mrs. Bennett was opening the basket, and saying:

‘I hope you care for cold veal pie, Miss Halcombe?'

‘Yes,' I mumbled. ‘Yes, indeed.'

She took out a white cloth, and laid it, still folded (for there was not space to spread it out) in a narrow strip at our feet. ‘I have chosen the bill of fare on purpose, Mr. Hartright,' she said. ‘If you cannot share a picnic with Turner, you shall at least know what it would have tasted like. A pie' – here she started removing the dishes as she named them, and setting them before us – ‘Beef. A chicken. A lettuce, cut this morning, if you will believe me, from our own glasshouse. Pull-bread. A cranberry tart.
Then
it would have been
strawberry
tart, but, alas, the autumn is upon us.' There was a gravity and wistfulness in her voice, as she said this, which I had not heard before, and which made me suppose she was thinking:
And not merely the autumn of the year, but the autumn of life, too.

‘I like cranberry just as well,' said Walter.

She made no response, save a shake of the head; and realizing that he would not coax her from her melancholy by making light of it, he took another approach, and tried to distract her with a simple, direct question:

‘How was it that you came to know Turner?'

‘Oh, his uncle was a butcher at New Brentford,' she said – and I knew instantly that Walter had judged right, for there was a renewed liveliness in her voice that told you this was a subject close to her heart, and that it was a relief to her to speak about it. ‘Mr. Marshall.' She shook her head and smiled. ‘I still remember him. Turner stayed with him as a child, I believe, and later continued to visit him. We lived nearby – my father was a clergyman' – here she nodded and smiled at Mr. Bennett, who, as if he mysteriously sensed it (or perhaps merely because he anticipated her next words), nodded also – ‘like my husband; and a fine amateur artist. He met Turner one day when they were both sketching by
the river, and saw immediately that he had genius, but that he stood in need of friends.'

‘Because he was poor, you mean?' said Walter.

‘Yes,' She hesitated. ‘Well, I don't know about
poor
, exactly. He was, I believe, quite successful, even then. But -'

‘Forgive me,' said Walter, ‘but when was this?

‘Oh, I don't know exactly. Some time in the middle or late ‘nineties, I suppose.

Walter nodded encouragingly; and, drawing a notebook from his pocket, started to write. ‘So Turner was still a young man?'

‘Yes. Little more than twenty, I should say. But he had started exhibiting at the Royal Academy by then – just watercolours, you know, but still . . . And working for Dr. Monro, and . . .' She smiled at some sudden recollection, and paused to grasp it before it vanished back into the abyss. ‘I remember him telling me once,' she went on, ‘the doctor had a great collection of pictures, and employed him and Thomas Girtin to make copies of them, for two-and-sixpence or three-and-sixpence an evening, and a bowl of oysters.'

I laughed. ‘I'm sorry to seem so ignorant, but who was Thomas Girtin?'

‘You would have heard of him had he lived,' said Walter quickly, without taking his eyes from Mrs. Bennett. ‘Another young artist, as gifted as Turner himself, supposedly. But Dr. Monro .. .?'

‘Oh, he was a famous mad-doctor,' said Mrs. Bennett, with an edge of pride in her voice, as if Monro's professional eminence somehow redounded to Turner's credit. ‘He helped to treat the late king.'

I could not help smiling, for there had been two ‘late kings' since the one who had required the services of a mad-doctor. The strange petrifying process that had arrested her idea of fashion, and fixed it for ever about 1830, had clearly had the same effect on her notion of history.

‘And he was already travelling a good deal, as well,' she went on.

‘Travelling where?'

‘Oh, I don't know. He couldn't go to the continent, of course, for we were still at war. But all about England and Wales – wherever
there were picturesque views to be found of lakes and mountains, or ruined abbeys, or old castles,' She laughed. ‘Places where you might imagine a skeleton in a crumbling tower, or a maiden locked in a dungeon beneath the black waters of a moat. Those sorts of subjects were very popular at the time. He did not want for commissions.'

‘Why then did your father think he needed friends?' said Walter. ‘If he was already so successful?'

She did not answer at once, but suddenly busied herself with taking plates and glasses from the basket, as if she had only just remembered that they were there, and must attend to them at once. At length she muttered, ‘I believe there were domestic difficulties'; and then, before Walter had time to reply, handed him a wine bottle and a corkscrew, and said: ‘Come, Mr. Hartright, we mustn't let your sister starve. Would you be so good as to open this?'

‘Of course,' said Walter. But if she had hoped thus to deter him, she must have been disappointed, for as he set to work he went on: ‘What sort of domestic difficulties?'

She seemed entirely absorbed in cutting a loaf of bread, and a casual observer might have supposed that she had not heard him at all. But she was a poor actress, and could not prevent her throat working uncomfortably, or her tongue darting out to moisten her lips.

‘Do you mean, perhaps, he had differences with his parents?' said Walter, gently, but with absolute determination. When she still did not reply he continued:

‘You can imagine, I am sure, Mrs. Bennett, how difficult it has been to find anyone with reliable information about his early life. So anything you can tell me …'

‘I really know very little,' she said, reddening, her eyes cast down. ‘But. . . but – by all accounts – his mother had an uncontrollable temper.'

Walter's gaze suddenly lost its focus, and drifted past her. ‘Like a gale,' he murmured.

‘I beg your pardon?' said Mrs. Bennett. I knew Walter well enough to see that her words had recalled to his mind something he had heard or thought before, but she seemed uncertain whether or not he was joking, and half-smiled at him tentatively.

‘Like a gale,' he said more loudly, returning her smile.