The Dark Clue (29 page)

The Black Bull is a solid, welcoming, unpretentious kind of place – constructed, like every other building I have seen in Otley, of rough-hewn local stone smudged with grime from the nearby mills – which stands at the corner of the main square. As I entered, the last few stalls from the day's market were being dismantled by lantern-light, and a pack of small boys was scuffling among the trampled cabbage-leaves and broken turnips on the ground. For a moment I was put in mind of my first visit to Maiden Lane – though here the children's faces glowed with health and merriment, and the cold air was misty with their breath, and rang with the sound of their laughter – and found myself wondering whether Turner had ever seen such a scene in Otley, and been moved by it to the same thought? This notion gave me a sudden start: what images, what private memories and associations – which I could never now know – might then have flitted through his consciousness; and what old pains and needs and hungers might they have stirred? And should I find
any traces of this secret, inner Turner here – as I had, for an instant, in Twickenham and Farringdon; or was I fated merely to discover clues to his artistic life, and hear Mr. Fawkes reiterate what I have come to see as the official line:
a strange, eccentric little fellow, but no man could have been more tender-hearted, or a truer friend.

I was greeted in the flagged hall by a thickset, round-faced man, wearing a heavy apron, and collarless white shirt, with the sleeves rolled back to reveal a pair of massive forearms, and a sprig of grey hair showing at the unfastened throat. Through the half-open door to the right I glimpsed a trestle table lined with plainly dressed men and women, and heard the powerful thrum of twenty or thirty voices. Farmers and their wives, I thought, relaxing after market-day.

‘G'd evening, sir,' said the innkeeper. ‘Would you be looking for a room?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘If you have one.'

‘That's just about all we
do
have,' he said – not insolently, but with a kind of good-humoured relish. His eyes searched the row of hooks behind him, and at last lighted on a key.

‘You want to see it first, sir?' he said.

‘No, I'll take it,' I said hastily, suddenly realizing how tired I was, and how unprepared to trudge round the town looking for an alternative. ‘As long as there's a bed, and a table I can sit at, and write.'

‘That I think I can promise you,' he said with a smile.

Following him upstairs, I tried to guess his age. He was still hale and strong, but from the deep lines in his powerful neck, and the wisps of silvery hair about his ears, I supposed he must be about sixty. Walter Fawkes, I recalled from my researches, had died in 1825; and Turner had never again returned to Farnley, so his last visit here must have been around forty years ago. Unlikely, therefore – but not impossible. As we reached the landing, I said:

‘Do you by any chance remember Turner?'

‘Turner?' he said, surprised. ‘What, th'ironmonger?'

‘The painter.'

‘Painter! Nay. What, here in Otley, was he?'

‘Sometimes.'

He shook his head. ‘I never knew him. But see, I only come from Ilkley fifteen year ago, like,' He opened the door to my room, and carried my bags inside. ‘Here you are, sir. I'll just set the fire going for you.'

While he worked, I stood by the little casement and gazed out. The room overlooked a side-alley, but beyond it I could see the town stretching away – an irregular horizon of roofs and chimneys, oil-lamps winking in uncurtained windows, and strings of street-lights so feeble that they quickly petered out as they approached the foot of the Chevin, as if they knew they could not challenge its black looming bulk, and might as well give up altogether. Somewhere in that bewitching pattern of light and shade, I thought, there must be somebody who recalls Turner – somebody who knows something about him that will deepen my understanding of the man, and give me an advantage against Thornbury, who appears so far ahead of me in London. I had an empty evening before me; and there and then resolved to spend it trying to find this person, and learning what he – or she – could tell me.

My first thought was to join the farmers, and take my dinner with them; for among them there might well be one from the Farnley Estate, who, if he had not known Turner himself, could at least perhaps refer me to someone who had. When at last I descended again, however, and was about to enter the dining room, I found my way barred by the innkeeper.

‘If you care to step into the back parlour, sir, there's a table set for you there.'

‘Oh, please don't trouble yourself with that,' I said, thinking they must suppose it would be beneath my dignity to eat at the common board. ‘I'm happy to sit with everyone else.'

‘It's no trouble, sir,' he said – and I fancy my words had taken him aback, for he flushed, and his voice had a phlegmy edge as he went on: ‘Quite the other way about; for they're nearly done in there, and my wife wants it all sided and neat like afore the lasses go home.'

And so I found myself sitting all alone at a white-clothed table before a snug coal fire, in a comfortable little room at the rear of the house. I did not, however, forget my purpose, even when it turned out – to my disappointment – that I was to be waited on
by a spotty girl of fourteen or so, who would not only clearly not remember Turner herself, but whose mother had probably not even been born at the time of his last visit here.

Tell me,' I said, when she had taken my order (standing stock-still, and frowning and biting her lower lip with concentration). ‘Who is the oldest person you know in Otley?'

For some reason, this reduced her to uncontrollable giggles; and, quite unable to speak, she shook her head, and retreated to the kitchen. A couple of minutes later, however, as she reappeared with my soup and set it before me, she said:

‘Mrs. says to try Druggist Thompson.'

‘Why?' I said – unsure whether this was a belated answer to my question, or a reference to some other topic altogether. She froze like a frightened rabbit; so I coaxed her by saying:

‘Is he very old?'

She shook her head again, and left without another word; and it was only when she brought my steak pie (a full twenty minutes later) that she said:

‘Nay, but all the old folk go to him for their potions an' that. You won't have far to look. He's only out in th'market place.'

And so he was – or, rather, so his shop was; for by the time I had finished my meal, and retrieved my coat from my room, and ventured out again, ‘Thompson: Druggist' was firmly closed.

There seemed nothing to be gained by returning at once to the Black Bull, so I decided to take a walk. If nothing else, I should enjoy the childish pleasure I still find in exploring new places – observing the names of shops and taverns, and looking into the houses as I pass, and imagining what it must be like to live in them; and if I was lucky, some chance encounter might yet allow me to discover something of Turner. A raw wind was starting to blow in from the north-west, carrying – above the stench of a nearby tannery – a wild moorland smell that seemed to call out the spirit of adventure; and with a sudden spasm of exhilaration I turned up my collar, and set off down the narrow path at the side of the hotel.

I found myself – as soon as my eyes had adjusted to the darkness – in a maze of mean passages, that turned and twisted and doubled back so unrelentingly that after a few minutes I should, I think, have had difficulty retracing my steps. I was not concerned
about getting lost, however; for I knew I must come out somewhere, and that that somewhere could not be very far from the Black Bull, which I would be able to approach by way of the main streets. At every lighted window I peered inside, hoping to see some elderly person sitting alone before the fire – for surely Turner, if he knew of this knot of secret alleys, must have come here again and again, drawn by the opportunities it offered for being unseen and unknown? – and someone might remember him yet, if I could but describe him well enough. Beyond one white-bearded old patriarch regaling a group of younger men in an ale-house, however, I saw nothing but rooms full of children and their mothers (including, once – through gnarled little panes of glass grey with steam – a tin bathtub before the fire, and a baby splashing in it. Why, I cannot say – but this scene stabbed me so fiercely with the recollection of my own family, and the realization of how far they have been from my thoughts lately, that I had to bite my lip to stop myself weeping.).

At length, turning a corner, I felt the wind and a spatter of rain full on my face; and a few moments later emerged in an open yard at the edge of a street I did not recognize. The Chevin rose up directly before me, no more than a mile or so away; and for a moment I had the strange impression that it had grown since I'd last seen it, for its dark mass seemed to reach as far as the eye could see. Then I saw that what appeared to be the ‘top' was moving, and was in reality no more than a great black storm cloud rolling towards us at a fearful pace. I wished now that I had paid more attention to the way I had come; for it was clear that if I did not return to the hotel at once, I risked being soaked to the skin, and having to put on wet clothes in the morning.

From somewhere to my left, I heard the strains of music, and thinking there might be a hall or an assembly room nearby, where I might turn my predicament to advantage by sheltering pleasantly until the storm was past, and perhaps falling into conversation with an elderly doorkeeper, I set out briskly in that direction. After no more than two hundred yards or so, I came to a brightly lit, plain stone building which looked as if it had once been a chapel, but which now boldly announced itself to the world – by means of a large painted board above the door – as ‘Otley Mechanics' Institute'. The music came from a room on the first
floor; and as I drew nearer I was conscious that there was something strange about it, though for a moment I could not have said what it was. The melody was familiar – a piece by Mendelssohn, I think; the playing more than competent, for such an out-of-the-way place; and yet…

And then it struck me: I could identify the first two instruments easily enough – a violin and a piano – but what in heaven's name was the third? A piccolo? Too deep. A flute? Too rich and deep.

I was still wrestling with this conundrum – heedless of the rain that was now hammering the top of my head – when the door opened, and a tall, slender man peered out, and grimaced up at the sky. He held an umbrella, which he started to unfurl; but as soon as he felt the wind catch it he closed it again, and set off with no other precaution than a violent shrug to lift his coat higher about his neck and shoulders. He had gone no more than five paces when he saw me. The puzzlement must have shown on my face, for his expression promptly changed from hawkish severity to a broad smile, and he said:

‘You know what that is?'

I shook my head.

‘Come and see.'

There was a kind of boyish eagerness in his manner that suggested he welcomed the excuse to delay his departure – either because he feared a wetting, or because he was less than enthusiastic about his next engagement; and, before I had a chance to reply, he turned abruptly and led the way back into the Institute. The ground floor was chill and gloomy, with dark-painted doors marked ‘Library', ‘Reading room' and ‘Classroom'; but a cheerful brightness fell on the stairs, as if they rose from this world to the next. And indeed, as we ascended towards the gas-lit landing, we heard – more loudly with every step – the breath-catching tones of a tender
adagio
– which, if not quite an angelic choir, yet seemed heavenly enough in contrast to the sullen drumming of rain on roof and windows.

Directly before us, as we reached the top, was a pair of heavy panelled doors. My guide opened one, and wedged it ajar with his body so that I might see past him. A few people just inside, hearing our arrival – or else feeling the sudden blast of cold air
against their necks – turned towards us, greeting me with a stare that
was
neither hostile nor friendly, but merely curious; and then nodding and smiling as soon as they saw my companion, who smiled and nodded back.

I found myself looking into a long room running the entire length of the building, and set out as a lecture hall, with tightly packed rows of chairs – every one, so far as I could tell, occupied – and, at the far end, four or five men sitting behind a baize-covered table on a raised dais. The musicians were clustered round the piano at one side of the stage; and one glance was enough to tell me why my guide had brought me here, and why his eyes were even now searching my face, in anticipation of some evidence of astonishment. The piano-player and the violinist were just such a young woman and a young man as you might expect to see appearing in the public hall of any small provincial town; but the third performer was something else entirely. He was no more than eighteen or nineteen, with close-set eyes, dark ringlets and a hook nose. He stood before a music stand, following a score like the others – but his only instrument was his own lips, which he was using to
whistle
his part, with a range, and a depth of feeling, that I should not – had I not seen him – believed possible.

My guide laid a finger on my arm and whispered in my ear:

There. That's Whistling Albert.'

‘Whistling Albert?
'

‘Printer Walker's boy.'

‘Ah,' I said, trying to give the impression that I knew who Printer Walker was, and realized that he was an adequate explanation of the miraculous whistler. I was evidently unsuccessful, however; for my companion said:

‘You haven't heard of the Printer?'

I shook my head.

‘I thought maybe you'd come to see him,' he said. He backed out on to the landing, leaving just his foot in the door, and continued in a louder voice: ‘We don't get many visitors in Otley, and most of them are for him. Or Dawson and Payne.'