Mrs Whistler. Matthew Plampin

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      Florence’s right hand tightened its grip upon her left. ‘Mr Whistler, that leather was salvaged from a ship wrecked with the Spanish Armada. It cost my father a great deal.’

      ‘And it did not harmonise with the rest. There is really nothing more I can tell you, Miss Leyland. The colours, the patterns – they could not be made to work.’

      This didn’t satisfy Florence, not in the least, but she would argue no further. She informed her mother that she was going to look around upstairs, then strode back through the doorway, calling tartly for a lamp. Mrs Leyland, walking the length of the room, made no reply. Jim sensed that the day’s journey had taken its toll upon family concord.

      ‘My husband is in London,’ she said, once Florence was out of earshot, ‘and will be arriving soon. He left us at the station. Apparently there was a call he had to make.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘We are not staying here. Frederick has booked a suite at the Alexandra.’

      ‘My dear Mrs Leyland,’ said Jim, ‘I should hope you aren’t. Why, most of the furniture is still in crates.’

      ‘He has had a piano assembled, though, I assume?’

      ‘Bien sûr. The poor instrument is beaten to its knees each time he crosses the threshold.’

      Mrs Leyland’s laugh was a shade too loud. ‘As I believe we have observed before, Mr Whistler,’ she said, ‘he plays just as he goes about everything else.’

      Unlike her daughter, Frances Leyland had sat willingly for her portrait. She’d given her time generously – had been reluctant to leave, in fact, even as the day grew dim. It hadn’t taken much to prompt an unburdening. Perched on the studio chaise longue, wearing the loose flesh-pink gown in which Jim was painting her, she’d told him of the indifference and sullen silences, the dozens of petty abuses and betrayals – of a marriage warping into something intolerable. Jim had listened with sympathy and close interest, undeniably flattered by this sudden intimacy – yet also savouring the clandestine thrill of access to another man’s most private affairs. Naturally, he’d promised to tell no one, pledging himself to a bond of secrecy. An alliance had thus been forged, and was further strengthened as Mrs Leyland’s portrait had advanced almost to completion. Leyland had been unconcerned by this friendship, seeming to trust Jim as much as he trusted anyone. He had no inkling, needless to say, of its confidential depths.

      Smiling still, Mrs Leyland laid a gloved hand upon her collarbone and looked around again at the absorbing richness of the blue, at the yards of lustrous feather-patterning, at the resplendent birds. ‘It is not at all how I expected. It is like walking inside a jewel box. A Japanese cabinet.’

      ‘My intention precisely,’ said Jim. ‘A Japanese cabinet. I am so glad, Mrs Leyland, that you at least can appreciate what I have done. Although, who knows – perhaps dear Florence is mistaken. Perhaps your husband will as well.’

      The lady laughed again, at the improbability of this Jim supposed. The sound was caustic, and also strangely helpless. He was considering whether to express regret at how things had gone, or provide his justification, or simply to laugh himself, when he noticed that she was taking her first proper look at the mural behind him.

      The two new peacocks faced each other across the expanse of painted leather, the gilt in which they’d been depicted built up to a low relief. Their bodies were tense, their heads in hard profile; for despite their grace, and the sweeps of ornate plumage that framed them, these creatures were locked in confrontation.

      Wonder had wiped everything else from Mrs Leyland’s features. ‘What is—?’

      Jim stepped leftwards to improve her view. ‘It is entitled The Rich Peacock and the Poor Peacock.’

      ‘They are fighting.’

      ‘The rich peacock would fight, yes. Certainly he would. See the angle of his wing, how he points with it so haught­­ily – how he puffs up that great tail of his. How his beak opens to squawk his commands and the eye flashes a murderous red.’ Jim glanced up: the eye-bead, twisted that same morning from the band of one of Maud’s more flamboyant hats, was pleasingly ruby-like. ‘In contrast, the poor peacock meets this unwarranted aggression with firmness, but also with a noble resignation. With pride of a different type – a deserved pride. He steps back, Mrs Leyland. He will not fight.’ He paused again, regarding this bird’s as yet empty socket. ‘That eye will be green. The green of peace and reason. Once a suitable stone has been located.’

      ‘Are those – are those coins? Around the rich one’s feet – in its feathers?’

      ‘Shillings, madam,’ Jim stated. ‘They are shillings. Shorn, one might speculate, from guineas, leaving but neutered pounds behind. That the rich bird denies, in its meanness, despite the fact that they literally spill from it. That they are nothing to it.’

      Mrs Leyland continued to stare at the painting, the reference lost on her. This was a detail her husband had omitted to share. Hardly surprising.

      ‘You may note that these shillings are rendered in silver, as are various other details.’ Jim pointed with his mahlstick. ‘See the throat of the rich bird, for instance, and the fronds that frill along it so very modishly. And the poor bird – upon his head there …’

      Whereas the rich peacock sported a golden comb, the poor one had a single plume of whitish silver, jutting out like a unicorn’s horn – a forelock of Whistlerian prominence. What the image lacked in nuance, Jim felt, it compensated for in sheer poetic exquisiteness. Every time Leyland used the dining room, every time he threw a napkin over his frill and subjected a table of guests to his leaden conversation, he would see it. Everyone would see it. The mere fact of its existence made him want to seize hold of Mrs Leyland and waltz out into the hall.

      ‘Some may claim to detect meaning in this scene,’ Jim continued, ‘an allegory, one might say. On this I could not possibly—’

      ‘Mr Whistler.’ Mrs Leyland’s eyes were still fixed on the mural. The joke did not delight her – far from it. ‘Mr Whistler, do you realise what you have done?’

      

      July 1877

      The force of Maud’s anger caught her unawares. At first, lost for words, she went stamping from room to room, taking it out on the house – on Jimmy’s precise and oh-so-original decorations. She knocked pictures askew and kicked up rugs, she heaved wickerwork armchairs out of their places, she shoved down a Japanese screen. He followed behind, correcting what he could, making vague attempts at placation, as if even then the greater part of his mind was elsewhere. After a few minutes of this they reached the drawing room.

      Maud turned abruptly to face him. ‘How could it have got so bad? Why d’you open the bloody door to them? Don’t you know anything?’

      Jimmy didn’t answer. He’d lit a cigarette and was leaning back on his right foot, stroking his moustache thoughtfully, angling himself towards the two tall windows. This was a familiar ploy of his when he wished to stage a retreat. The artist is unexpectedly inspired, said the pose. Shhh! Don’t disturb!

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