Will & Tom (23 page)

Others are appearing, the rest of the family – Frances talking to the vicar, her children skipping on the gravel, Mary Ann peering here and there, seeking out Tom – and then their guests. Beau turns to propose a picnic by the boating lake, with angling for whoever would care for it. This meets with a favourable response. The party wanders down the path, the gentlemen laying bets about the giant fish they will bag. Tom hangs back, though, an arm wrapped around his chest; he’s far from recovered, despite the show he put on for Beau. Mary Ann starts to come over, but seems to change her mind, going after her brother and sister instead. Servants are leaving the church in a string of sullen knots, already being hectored by Mr Noakes about the duties awaiting them at the house and the multiple failings of the evening before. Tom pokes the pipe into his mouth and unfolds the charcloth along the top of a gravestone.

Will strides from the pines, out into the open. Mr Noakes pauses his recitation. Every eye is directed Will’s way, an inexplicable and rather unnerving level of scrutiny. He doesn’t slow or hesitate but lowers his head, obscuring his face with the brim of his sun hat.

At first Tom is pleased to see him, beginning to joke about the
prime view
there must be from down on the floor of the Crown Hotel; then he recognises Will’s manner and his amiability vanishes. ‘No,’ he says shortly, ‘not again. I ain’t going back to London with you. Wasn’t I plain enough at Plumpton?’ His expression becomes resentful. ‘You’ve a real taste for this, Will Turner. For upset. For dramatics.’

This accusation, coming from the man who not twelve hours previously danced with his aristocratic lover before an entire public ball, makes Will’s intended tone of urgent comradeship impossible to assume. He struggles, in fact, to locate any speech at all; and as his silence lengthens, he feels their last chance for escape begin to dwindle away.

‘She’s in on it,’ is the best he can manage. ‘Every man-jack of ’em’s in on—’

Mr Cope scythes the two painters apart. He collars Will with surprising strength, damn near lifting him off the ground. ‘This way, Mr Turner,’ he says, his voice straining very slightly, ‘if you please.’

*

Mr Cope’s technique is well practised: he shoves, lets Will stagger, grabs him, drags him a distance, then shoves again. The valet works through this cycle efficiently, without malice – without emotional display of any kind. They leave the woods, starting across the wide spread of lawn in front of the house. No one sees them; the servants are still on the church path and the Lascelles’ party has drifted off to the east, making for the boating lake. Kept in a state of constant motion, fighting to remain upright, Will cannot collect himself sufficiently to protest, to demand an explanation. Halfway over, he slips on the sun-warmed grass and the smaller sketchbook falls. To his dismay, Mr Cope claims it; and when he objects, with the
oi!
so commonly heard around Maiden Lane, the valet calmly plucks away the other one. Arms free, Will thinks that he can now offer some resistance. He stops and squares his shoulders – only to be clouted about the ear, felled nearly, the sun hat wheeling off in a long curve. Before he can fetch it he is pushed onwards, around the western end of the house.

They arrive at the stables, passing through a high, rounded archway into a colonnaded courtyard paved with grey brick. It is bright with morning sunlight, and quiet; the grooms, Will guesses, are among the churchgoers. One of the ivy green carriages is parked to the side, waiting to be checked and cleaned after its trip to Harrogate. A stable boy is sweeping up spilled straw; he looks over as they enter.

‘Out,’ says Mr Cope.

It has happened. The very worst has happened, and he is to discover for himself how this family deal with those who oppose them. He remembers the argument at the rocks – Tom’s dismissal of his talk of Neville.
Claptrap
, he’d said. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps there’s no danger here. No real danger. But Will can’t believe it. He looks around him, a palm against his throbbing ear; he senses the weight of finality in the stable’s shady arcades. One way or another, he is to be ended.

But by God it’s unfair. He has such soaring plans. Those two sketchbooks, right there under that valet’s arm, hold the foundations for paintings the likes of which England has never seen. Nature in her most astonishing, most soul-stirring forms: the Sublime, fully and properly expressed, equal to Mr Burke’s description. Mountains swathed in thunder clouds. Dusky crags and lonely ruins, and valleys cloaked in radiant mist. The coast, with waves savage against the rocks; and the
sea
, dear Christ, the glorious terror of the sea, the great subject he has barely touched. Would they come to pass, even? Would the Academy ever be shown what he’s capable of? Will’s chin dips. He imagines all these unpainted pictures, a huge long line of them, gold-framed oils every one; they flicker before his sight like the contents of a print-seller’s album. A lone tear squeezes out, a droplet of pure frustration, splashing to a black star on the brick below.

One of the gates, shut by the departing stable boy, opens to admit Beau Lascelles. Leaving it ajar, he strolls over to his valet in a sore-headed approximation of his usual fashion.

‘Why, Jim,’ he says, ‘you’re bleeding.’

There is a small, deep cut on the back of Mr Cope’s right thumb. Will looks at his hands and sees that the scraping nail has been snapped to a point. It must have stabbed at the valet during the walk over from the church. The two men before him, the gimlet-sharp beanpole and the overstuffed rake, stand close together. Beau is studying the wound, cradling Mr Cope’s hand in his, dabbing away blood with a lace handkerchief. His manner is unmistakeable: he is tending to his darling. That this is done so openly increases Will’s disquiet. Does it no longer matter what he sees?

‘Nipped, you’ve been, by our little cockney rat.’ Beau releases Mr Cope and returns the handkerchief to his pocket. ‘You see how easily all this painter business is forgotten and the true London character comes out.’

Will rubs his stinging eyes on his sleeve. He decides upon defiance. ‘Liar,’ he says. ‘You’re a damn liar.’

Beau sighs, blandly bored. ‘
Omnis homo mendax
, Mr Turner, as David tells us in the Psalms.’ He bends a little to meet Will’s stare. ‘I presume that you are as familiar with scripture, young sir, as you are with the Greeks?’

‘You claim to be a friend to art, yet you use artists like beasts. You rate us no more than the man who brings your dinner.’

This charge wins Will an enquiring half-smile, inviting him to continue.

‘Tom and me—’
Do not weep
. ‘Tom and me, we sought only to make our living. We sought only—’

Now Beau Lascelles laughs, flinching straight after as if the volume of his own mirth has caused him pain. ‘Heavens above, Mr Turner, you speak as if I mean you both harm – as if you are afraid of me! You’re a peculiar sort, God knows, but I would no sooner see you hurt, for whatever reason, than I would take a chisel to Raffaelo’s
Stanze
. And as for Mr Girtin, well, he is almost a member of my family. Loved by us all. Loved dearly.’

Will’s ire is confused by relief and a dizzying, directionless gratitude. Those paintings may yet come to be. Then he realises what has occurred. He has given himself away – shown them exactly what he has learned. This was their purpose in bringing him here.

And sure enough, Beau has a question. ‘But it is most interesting to discover that you see so much menace at Harewood. And that you harbour such animosity towards
me
, who has offered you nothing but friendship and patronage.’ He casts an amused glance back at Mr Cope. ‘What could possibly justify these poisonous sentiments, I wonder – these bizarre accusations of abuse?’

Will bites at the remains of the scraping nail – peels it back to the quick in one go. The jagged triangle sits on his tongue like the scale of a fish. He resolves to say no more.

Beau shakes his head, assuming a reproving, regretful air. ‘I sought to make you a place here, Mr Turner, just as I have made a place for Mr Girtin. Yet you have rejected it. You have tossed it back at me with contempt, as if the hospitality of one of England’s great houses was repulsive to you – quite beneath your acceptance. You have shown yourself to be truculent and slovenly – and dashed ungracious, to be perfectly frank. So you will leave Harewood at once. Immediately. You will not be admitted beneath our roof again.’

Expulsion. It’s an end to all this, at least. Will spits the scraping nail onto the grey bricks. ‘My things,’ he says. ‘My clothes.’

Another shake of the head. ‘You will not be admitted.’

Will holds out his hand. ‘My books, then.’

Beau turns to Mr Cope, who passes him the sketchbooks. He starts to look through the larger one, taking his time; after a minute, feeling foolish, Will lowers his hand. Again, he gets an unwelcome sense of the direction of events. Beau remains impassive as he surveys the results of the northern tour – the sketches and studies that were to fuel Will’s next great run at the Academy. When every page has been examined, he moves on to the loose sheets at the back, the images of the Harewood commission. One makes him pause. He holds the place with his finger and looks up.

‘These,’ he says, ‘I think I will keep also.’

Will’s scowl clamps across his face, squeezing it purple. He considers barging forward, seizing the books and sprinting into the park. There is Mr Cope, though; there are the servants returning from church, grooms and groundsmen among them, no more than a shout away. He’d be caught and beaten stupid. They’d probably burn the books in front of him. Father’s voice sounds somewhere close, urging restraint, acceptance – that he place a limit on the damage done. He’d get out, wouldn’t he, with his limbs and his faculties intact? Why not cut his losses, return to London and resume his work?

No. Impossible. He cannot allow himself to be defeated so absolutely. He advances on the precipice. He fills his lungs, wavering for a single second. Then he steps off.

‘I’ll tell. Damn you, I’ll tell every detail of this scheme of yours. Everything I’ve seen.’

Beau has rotated the sketchbooks, as if to inspect the binding. ‘And what might that be?’

‘How you’re using Tom Girtin as your – as your stud. How you plan to pass the child off as that Prince’s. How you brought us here to—’

The nobleman is frowning in an affectation of offence, his hooded eyes dark with amusement. ‘Mr Turner, please! Good Lord, man! This is slander of the very blackest variety – sufficient, I daresay, for my family to have you summoned to a court of law. What basis can there be for such claims, beyond your own fervid conjecture?’

Not the reaction Will expected. The word
stud
, he thought, would land among them like a cannonball, changing the landscape completely, but instead he feels things turn yet more cruelly against him. He blinks, wiping his palms on the blue coat. Off to the side, out of sight, a horse snorts in its stall.

‘I am aware of how it can be for men of your background,’ Beau continues, ‘welcomed into houses of the aristocracy and exposed to a degree of female refinement and beauty for which your lives have left you wholly unprepared. That your desire, the tormenting hopelessness of it, can overcome your good sense and lead to all sorts of confabulation and fantasy. But to
insult us
, to malign our young ladies in this dreadful way, casts you in an unfavourable light indeed. It cannot be excused.’

Will recovers himself. ‘I saw them. Tom and your sister. Off in—’

‘What you forget, Mr Turner,’ Beau interrupts, ‘is that I
know you
. Your reputation, at any rate. Such temper, such imagination, such fire! A sure formula for self-deceit.’ His pleasure becomes open, a smirk stretching those mottled jowls. ‘Consider yourself for a moment, as the rest of the world might. Really, sir, do it. The only living issue of a back-alley wig-maker and a violent lunatic, grown into a bona-fide oddity. Abrasive company at the best of times. Distinctly curious in both appearance and behaviour. Prone to falling in lakes; to falling over in the midst of dances. A common
thief
, furthermore, who has taken beeswax candles from the butler’s pantry and who knows what else. Madame de Pompadour’s chocolate cup, perhaps?’

Again Will is caught unprepared. He sees ruin, a miserable cell, the gallows at Newgate; or more likely in some bleak square in York or Leeds, before a baying northern crowd. Desperation hones a memory, perceives a connection, and the words blurt out of him.

‘Mr Purkiss. There’s your thief. He – he damn near spoke of it last night, up on the carriage. Of the money that china would fetch. Ask your man there. He heard it too.’

Beau glances once more at Mr Cope, seeming to weigh this; it is obvious, however, that the actual question of guilt is of no interest to him. ‘Poor Purkiss. Such a sad descent. He has spent his last night at Harewood too, I think. But the fact remains that a penniless cockney painter, staying in the house for a few days only, is a rather better fit for the crime. If an accusation were made, most would believe it, our local magistrates included. It would be the word of one against that of many. That of people of rank.’ He hesitates. ‘And there is the other thing, of course. The matter of the pamphlet.’

Behind him, the valet produces a sheet of thin, folded paper: the scene from the
Zong
. Will’s toes bunch hard inside his boots. He’d tucked the print in his bundle, between a spare pair of outdoor breeches and the rolled stockings; and then he’d gone forth to Harewood Castle, discovered Tom and Mary Ann and forgotten it completely.

‘
Abolitionist literature
,’ Beau proclaims. ‘The ingratitude of it. The shameless discourtesy. Were you thinking to infect our staff, I wonder, with your hare-brained London ideas? Foster radicalism on the service floor? Is this how you sought to reward my disinterested patronage – my benevolence and encouragement?’ His satisfaction mounting, the nobleman opens the larger sketchbook, at the place marked by his finger. ‘Is this why, despite all the learned, the genteel, the eminently respectable souls that have gathered at Harewood over this past week – including a fellow artist, an old friend of yours no less – I am informed that your closest association has been with a troublesome servant? A woman known for impudence and brawling, and disdain for her betters?’ A loose leaf of Whatman is drawn out in a single movement, flashing in the sun like a white flag. ‘You’ll forgive me, Mr Turner, but this has the look of a very close association indeed.’