Wings over Delft (11 page)

He opened the door on to the landing, where a night-light glowed. Pieter went out and started to tiptoe down the stairs. Father turned to Louise and held out his hands to her. She could feel his eyes searching her face, questing in the pale lamp-glow. There was no way that she could conceal her
delight
at the success of their evening. He took her hands in his and said in a low whisper. ‘Louise…are you sure?’ She looked at him in startled wonder. Could he really fathom her thoughts? Know what she was feeling? All she could see was the dark
glitter of his eyes. ‘Reynier – you know what I mean?’ She opened her mouth. He was asking her, she would have to reply. At that moment a manic scream of fury rang through the house.

‘How dare you! Call the watch! I knew you were up there. Viper! Snake! Antichrist.’ The words were punctuated by the sound of blows. Father leapt to the door.

‘Annie!’ he exclaimed. Louise could hear Pieter protesting in a low voice from the landing below. But Annie was on a rising crest, screaming of Sodom and Gomorrah. Louise heard
Father’s
voice, deep and urgent, join with Pieter’s.

‘You too!’ was Annie’s rejoinder and there followed a
resounding
whack, though whether it fell on Pieter or Father, she could not tell. At last she managed to move. The scene on the landing resembled a street fight. Annie, in night attire, had the two men at bay. Above her head swung the walking stick that she used when she wanted to appear frail. Both men were
trying
to protect themselves from the blows that she was aiming at them. Louise advanced cautiously, knowing that she would be the next target for Annie’s rage. At that moment Mother’s door opened, and there she stood in the doorway, a beautiful
spectre
momentarily restored to the woman she had once been. Her hair, tossed from restless sleep, seemed to Louise to be blowing in a wind remembered from their last walk together.

‘Mother!’ she whispered.

‘Annie! Enough!’ Mother commanded, and Annie stared at her, aghast. Her stick sank slowly to the floor. Mother turned with dignity, the door of her room closed behind her with a click.

In the stunned silence that followed, Louise steered
Annie
back into her room while the men retreated downstairs like chastised schoolboys.

‘Hussy… harlot,’ accused Annie as the steam of her
indignation
died away in short bursts. Gently but firmly, Louise helped her old nurse back into bed. But the sadness of
disillusion
settled over her as she did so. If Annie really had thought that Pieter was alone in her room, she had done nothing to protect her from his supposed evil ways. But Annie would never expose her to any real harm; therefore she
must
have known that Father was there too, looking
after
her. So why this outburst, why attack Father of all people? Whose interests was Annie protecting? Or was Annie the hand of God intervening at Louise’s moment of weakness. And she
had
been weakening. In another minute she would have sacrificed Father’s needs for her own. If Mother died, as surely she would, all Father would have would be his work. The potteries must merge. Mother must have the knowledge that his dreams would be fulfilled. The decision was hers, let this be her source of happiness.

Louise climbed wearily to her attic, closed the door, and pressed her back against it, blocking out the stolen joy of that evening. When she felt she had control of her feelings, she got ready for bed, moving stiffly, keeping herself in check, and fell into an uneasy sleep.

Louise woke with a scream on her lips.

She and Annie had gone to Hell. Annie was the guide,
like the pensioner who acted as a guide for visitors to the Prinsenhof and who took such relish in pointing out the bullet holes on the stairs, where Prince William the Silent had been shot.

‘This is the Roman Catholic room,’ she explained, as
Louise
put up an arm to shield her face from the heat of the
furnace
. ‘With the Inquisition it has become most economical. As you see, there are equal numbers of devils and sinners so they can run the place themselves.’ The scene was
certainly
crowded, but Louise was uneasy; a leering devil was watching her. He was part human, part beetle, and he held a bucket full of naked bodies. ‘Sinners,’ Annie whispered unnecessarily in her ear. From time to the devil would pick one up and throw it into the furnace, where it would sizzle and pop. Not surprisingly, the sinners were trying to
escape
, slipping and sliding over each other like frogs, trying desperately to get out of the bucket. She watched out of the corner of her eye while a woman slipped over the side of the bucket and ran for freedom. It was a futile attempt; a fox-headed gentleman, who Louise hadn’t noticed, neatly spiked her on a skewer, and ate her head.

‘I want to go!’ said Louise, turning away.

‘But they do it to each other!’ Annie sounded surprised. ‘Look, the gentleman devil has a present for you.’ Louise turned back. It was the beetle. He picked up the bucket of
sinners
and threw the whole wriggling mass into Louise’s face.

Her scream and her dream died as she sat up, staring about the room in terror, wiping at her face with her sheet. It was an old dream. Years ago the family had gone for a
trip to The Hague. Mother and Father had business with a lawyer there, so Annie had taken Louise to an old church that had once been Catholic. Louise had recently been
challenging
Annie’s views; asking her what was really so wrong with the Catholics. After much muttering, the caretaker of the church agreed to let them into a room where statues, carvings and paintings that had been taken out of the church were stored.

‘There, that’s what the Catholics are really like,’ Annie had whispered, pointing at a large painting. Later, when Louise questioned Father about the picture with the devils, beetles, naked sinners and fox-headed gentlemen in it, he had seemed unaccountably angry and asked her where she had seen it. All he would say was that it was a great piece of art by Hieronimus Bosch; he then went off to talk to Annie. Louise decided to call him
Horribilis Bosch
, and she also made up her mind that she would never, ever, have anything to do with Catholics. Now she sat shivering in bed, too numb and tired to wonder what had triggered that dream tonight. Was it
something
Annie had said? She looked over towards the window, where the telescope, on its tripod, still searched the sky where Saturn had been a few hours before. It had all been so
wonderful
then. Her eyes began to prick. She lay back and in a
little
time fell asleep, crying for what might have been. She dreamed again, this time it was a dream of star music, but she didn’t remember it.

A day or two later, Louise noticed a packet on the hall table
addressed to ‘The Agent of Cornelis DeVries in Le Havre’. She presumed that this was from Father – part of his on-going negotiations with Reynier’s father. But then she looked again. Surely that was Annie’s hand?

Father had not asked her about Reynier since that night; perhaps he felt he had said enough. He had brought Louise up to think and speak for herself. But at breakfast he
mentioned
, as if in passing, that Reynier’s ship was not expected until the end of October as it would be held in Le Havre for cargo.

‘Cornelis says that Reynier has done a splendid job, by the way,’ he added.

Job?, thought Louise indignantly, he wasn’t doing a job, he was swanning about the Mediterranean, even if it was for the best of motives. But she couldn’t help doing a quick calculation. She had six weeks. A lot could be packed into six weeks.

To Louise’s surprise, Annie seemed to wash her hands of her after the outburst on the stairs. Perhaps Mother had had a quiet word with her. Whenever she was near, Annie would sniff, and when she and Father were together, the sniff included them both. Father and Louise exchanged glances like two truants. One day, when doing a message down by the potteries, Louise was surprised to see Annie, walking along close to the wall of the DeVries works, deeply bonneted, and leaning on her stick. It was only a momentary glimpse, and in a second she had disappeared. Where could she be going, and why was her manner so furtive?

A tinge of gold appeared in the trees overhanging the
canals
and the treetops danced as the first of the autumn gales swept in across the Low Countries. Kathenka took Louise’s cloak from her and closed the door against the blast. There was a smell of burning when Louise entered the studio, but her attention was drawn to her portrait. It was nearly
finished
now. The startling blue of the lapis underlay on her dress was turning to a brilliant, translucent green. The
Master
had at last begun to apply his secret yellow. She
watched for a while as he delicately laid it on, layer by layer. She regretted the loss of the pure jewelled blue, but as she watched him work, she could see all the dimpled subtleties of the green Chinese silk emerging.

‘I can almost feel it,’ she whispered as she stood beside him. ‘I have never
felt
with my eyes before!’ He looked up at her, his own eyes red from the taxing work. Then he took her hand and kissed the back of it.

‘One day, three hundred years from now, more perhaps, people will see this canvas, and you and I, Louise, we will live again in the minds of others. And if, by some
mischance
, the painting is lost and we are both forgotten, what matter! We live now, and you and I have done something great together.’ He straightened his back with difficulty. ‘The light is poor today and I feel winter in my bones; a hot toddy calls me from Kathenka’s kitchen. But before I go, just look at this.’ He drew Louise down by the hand so that she was kneeling beside him. ‘Look at the painting of that carpet. That is Pieter’s work, you know. Beautiful…
beautiful
, painterly work. One day I’ll have to tell him how good he is, but not now. I have to keep him on his toes. He wants the secret of my yellow,’ he chuckled. Louise kissed the old painter on his cheek, before helping him to his feet. He winked at her. Then he put his head back and yelled:

‘I don’t know what you are doing, Pieter. You have
forgotten
to order the lapis we need to finish Louise’s dress; you haven’t milked the white cow in weeks, and all your saints in heaven will not make cinnabar red for you without you doing some work.’

‘There,’ he said, ‘that’ll keep him sharp.’ Louise helped him off with his gown. Pieter’s answer came to them from the far end of the studio.

‘I am ready for the cinnabar now, if Miss Louise wants to watch.’

She made her way down the studio, past the dejected knight, to the area behind the junk where the furnace was set up. Here, everything was spotless and ordered. There was a stone-topped table and swept flagstones on the floor. Pieter had his back to her and was tending a charcoal
brazier
on the stone bench. She could feel a warm glow from it. He heard her arrive, and said over his shoulder.

‘I’m going to fire the cinnabar. Do you want to watch?’

‘I wondered what was on fire when I came in,’ Louise said, and Pieter shuddered.

‘Don’t even think about something going on fire. That’s why I’m down here, well away from our paints. Just about everything in paint is flammable.’ He blew a little of the ash from the surface of the charcoal in the brazier and revealed the glowing coals beneath. She moved up behind him, thinking of Father’s descriptions of the alchemist’s
laboratories
he had seen.

Pieter explained what he was doing. ‘Fabritius told me to melt the sulphur and quicksilver together and then crush the cake. I’ve done that. Now we have to fire them together; it’s really too hot for the glass, but I have to stir it.’

‘If we were alchemists,’ Louise suggested helpfully, ‘we would add base-lead to the mixture and it would turn into gold. An incantation if you please, Mr Kunst.’ Pieter smiled
but he was preoccupied.

‘I haven’t done this before, and it’s quite poisonous enough without your adding lead to it.’ He put a lid on the beaker. ‘You must stand back now because of the fumes.’ She watched as he waved the glass beaker back and forth over the bed of charcoal so that the shock of sudden heat would not shatter the glass. She crept forward. As the beaker heated, steam and smoke began to swirl inside it. A wisp of red appeared.

‘Look!’ she whispered.

‘Now, I must stir.’ Pieter gently lowered the beaker on the coals. The wisps of red were combining and
precipitating
through the swirling vapour. He inserted a glass rod through a hole in the lid and began to stir.

‘It is like the fires of hell,’ Louise said.

‘Don’t tempt fortune, Miss Louise.’ Pieter breathed.
Perhaps
he lost concentration, but at that moment there was a sharp snap, the beaker broke and a wedge of glass fell from its side. A cloud of red vapour, heavy with mercury, poured towards them. Louise stared at it, unable to move. Then she felt herself being lifted up and carried away out of danger. The viscous vapour cascaded over the edge of the bench and on to the flagstones, where it spread, lost momentum, and sank, settling as a red carpet on the floor. Pieter’s arms were tight around her, crushing her. But she didn’t mind.

‘Did you breathe any of it, are you all right?’ he asked anxiously.

‘No, I’m fine. If I did, you have squeezed it all out of me,’ she laughed. He let go of her hurriedly then, and lifted the
beaker off the heat. ‘Can we save it?’ she asked as he shook his head over the broken beaker. She bent down and poked the flagstones. ‘Look, it’s a powder,’ she said. ‘Come on, we can gather it up.’

Using old paintbrushes, they swept the powder into a pile and then onto pieces of parchment, finally funnelling it into a small jar. With what was left in the beaker, the jar was nearly full. Enough for twenty carpets, she was assured.

They walked back down the studio and found it empty.

‘Where’s the Master?’ Pieter asked.

‘He said the light was too bad.’

‘The rogue. Look, the sun’s out. I can’t take my eyes off him for a moment. Now what should I do?’

‘Milk the white cow,’ she reminded him. ’Poor beast, not milked in weeks.’ Louise was pleasantly aware of the pain in her ribs where Pieter had crushed her after the beaker had burst.

‘Good idea.’ Pieter agreed. ‘Mistress Kathenka,’ he called as they passed through the bar, ‘Miss Louise and I are going to milk the white cow.’

‘You can’t take her there, it’s a dung heap!’

‘She says she wants to come. And it’s near her home.’

‘Take some more vinegar,’ the Master’s voice interjected from the kitchen, ‘it’s under the counter.’ There was much clinking, and then Pieter found the flask. Louise took the flat flan dish he had been carrying and they walked out into the Markt Square.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked. ‘Where do you graze this unfortunate cow of yours, and why the vinegar?’

‘It’s in the allotments, beyond your place. If you don’t want to come, I can leave you at your door. The vinegar
reacts
with the lead.’ The wind had dropped and the late sun glowed amber on the red bricks of the new houses.

‘It’s a lovely evening now,’ Louise said, ‘and if making white lead is as exciting as making cinnabar I wouldn’t miss it for anything!’

It was a quiet time, early evening, with not many people about. They walked past Louise’s house towards the
allotments
. At one stage Louise had a feeling of being watched, but when she looked back there was only one person in sight – a youth who seemed more interested in the clouds than in her. A grassy path led down beside a narrow
irrigation
canal.

‘Have we time to sit for a moment?’ Louise asked. They left the flask and dish in the long grass and walked to the water to where a single board-bridge crossed the ditch. There was a seat there and a rotten trellis held up by a mass of honeysuckle. In summertime the scent of the
honeysuckle
would have been overpowering. Now it was as thin and sweet as the slender song of the resident robin that had decided they needed entertainment. Autumn was breathing over them, a gentle reminder of the passage of time.

‘So it’s nearly finished?’ she said sadly, almost to herself.

‘The portrait?’ Pieter asked.

So much more than the portrait, Louise thought, but she nodded.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked him. Pieter smiled, but he did not reply. Louise thought about all that had happened
during this summer. ‘I’ve loved watching you both painting, the whole science of the art, seeing how you work together; the preparation, and all the work. I had no idea how much work, but …’ the word hung between them. ‘But soon it will be over, won’t it? The picture will be finished. Louise Eeden will become a moment in time then, captured and preserved like something in a bottle. I will be
The Girl in the Green Dress
, who seems to be about to say something, but never speaks, who seems to be about to get up, but never rises. Pieter, I’m no good at just being; I want to
do
things too. In the studio just now the Master said that in hundreds of years from now, we would live again through the
portrait
. You too; he thinks your work is wonderful, by the way. People will see your brushstrokes, but what about me?’ She watched a small shoal of fish that hung and darted in the shallow water of the canal. She was sorry she had started on this; Pieter could never understand. Her impulse was to put her hand on his, but she kept it to herself and
examined
him instead. At first she thought he had forgotten all about her, but then she noticed that his eyes were half closed, and she remembered that first time on the walls, when he told her how he had drawn an empty glass. She smiled when he absently applied a stroke or two of paint to the air in front of him. ‘Thinking?’ she asked. He grinned, clasped a knee and turned to her.

‘You’ve seen the Master when he’s behaving like a bear, stamping and raging. Not many clients have seen that. Sometimes he bangs his head against the wall; sometimes he just sulks, but the worst time of all is when he has just
finished a painting, particularly a good one. We’re not at that stage yet, but it will come.’ Pieter paused to think. ‘It’s as if there are two bears inside him: one bear knows it is time to stop, the other bear wants to add just that final brushstroke that the first bear knows will ruin the whole canvas. My job is to stop bear number two from spoiling everything. You remember the beggar?’

‘Of course! I remember the beggar, and his picture, too.’

‘I was inexperienced in those days. The picture was as you see it now, but the Master kept wanting to add things and change things. I realised that I had to stop him but I didn’t know how. I was more frightened of him then than I am now. In the end I just said: “so the beggar is finished at last.” Oh Miss Louise, it was as though I had got between his two fighting bears. He’s shorter than I am but he grabbed me by the shoulders.

‘“Fool!
Pieter
Kunst
, have I taught you nothing? You numbskull, you thick-headed bundle of skin and bone. Nothing!” He was shaking me as you would shake a sieve. “
No masterpiece –and this is a masterpiece – is ever
finished
.
” He turned to the picture; I could see that he had spotted something that he wanted to change.

‘“Master, please,” I urged. “What do you mean by
never finished
, I don’t understand?” That did the trick. He backed away from the painting, growling. Then he melted; you know the way he does. When he talked next it was as if he was talking to the picture.

‘“Look you … you beggar. What are you, eh? Canvas, size, paint? You may be the work of the finest painter in
Delft,” he bowed towards the painting. “But, turn you to the wall and you will be
nothing
. Do you hear me, Pieter? It is not you, or me, or Mr bloody Rembrandt – as he likes to call himself these days – that makes a work of art. No, it is the person who looks at it, the ignorant buyer, the wretched hoi polloi. It is the people who look on my canvas that make it a work of art.” Now he was shouting again; “That’s what
galls
me, Pieter. Don’t you see? I’ve lost control; every damned person who looks at the old beggar will see him differently. It is
they
who will finish my picture – not you, not me, not the beggar; we will be dead and buried. That’s why I hate to give him up, why I hate to see the old bastard go.”

‘We both stood there looking at the portrait. Then the Master began to scratch. “Which reminds me, Pieter, we must burn sulphur, to get rid of his fleas.” Then he put his arm around my shoulder and said, “But there will be those, far down the river of time, perhaps, who will bring the old boy back to life for us. Who knows but that someone may even hear him sing.”’

Louise wanted to put her arms around Pieter. She felt jealous of the Master, who was able to do what she couldn’t. They were both so vulnerable, master and
apprentice
, giving so much and having to trust other people to finish their work. At that moment a sharp whistle rang out over the allotments. Pieter looked up, puzzled, and Louise noticed that the sun had dipped behind the houses to the west.

‘We’d better be getting along,’ Pieter said. ‘I need light to milk the cow.’