Will & Tom (7 page)

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 beings 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

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.