Mrs Whistler. Matthew Plampin

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СКАЧАТЬ like an oversized onion and patterned with oriental flowers. She went over to it and hooked a toe under one side. The thing was easily unseated, but rather heavier than she’d anticipated; too late she realised that it was half filled with water. It rolled away in a wobbling semicircle onto the rectangle of yellow matting laid in the middle of the room, disgorging its contents in irregular spurts. A white lily appeared, coasting off towards the skirting board, and then a pair of plump, back-flipping goldfish.

      This got Jimmy’s attention at least. The artistic pose was dropped. Maud stood by, flushed with annoyance and the faintest touch of guilt, as he rushed across the room, righted the vase and attempted to save the fish. The cigarette fell from his lips and hissed out in the spillage; his eyeglass swung at the end of its cord, flashing in the dusty sunlight. He was not, in truth, very well suited to tasks such as this. The fish were sluggish enough but he could only catch hold of one of them; the other squirmed off beneath the divan, beyond his capacity for rescue.

      ‘You shouldn’t,’ Maud told him. ‘Keep them in a china bowl, I mean. Down in the dark. How would you like it?’

      Jimmy shook water from his fingers. ‘Maudie,’ he said, ‘you’ve missed so much.’

      Maud crossed her arms; she looked around for something else to upset. This hardly needed saying. Six weeks earlier, as she’d taken her leave, he’d been claiming that victory was imminent – the Grosvenor had opened to fanfares and he was poised to recover, in a single swoop, every last penny of their missing fortunes. And yet he’d greeted her today not with news of guineas, of sales and fresh commissions, but of bailiffs. The very word knotted her insides. Jimmy, though, had said it matter-of-factly. There was no secretiveness in him; no particular shame either. Two men, he’d reported, had called early yesterday morning, appointed by the Sheriff of Middlesex. He couldn’t recall who’d sent them; there were papers in the hall. Although perfectly polite, and better bred than one might imagine, they’d departed only after he’d produced ten pounds in cash, a broken pocket watch and some opal earrings that had belonged to Maud’s mother.

      ‘You said we’d be set right. You bloody promised it, Jimmy. You said we’d be able to talk things through. Don’t you remember? Move the child a bit closer. Find a woman in Battersea, or – or—’

      The anger sputtered; Maud’s thoughts were straying in an unwelcome direction. The absence. The coldness in the crook of her arm. The sense of something very close at hand, something vitally and profoundly hers, that wasn’t being seen to. She’d been forewarned; she’d considered herself prepared. And it had beaten her to the floor. Five more days she’d remained at Edie’s after the foster mother had left – until her milk had ebbed almost to nothing, and the worst of the bleeding had seemed to be over. We’ll get you all cried out, Edie had said. Maud knew now, there in the drawing room at Lindsey Row, that five days hadn’t been nearly long enough. Jimmy would be sympathetic, of course he would. But only up to a point. They had an agreement – and with bailiffs at the door, any chance of amending it was gone.

      ‘We will be set right,’ Jimmy said, rising to his feet. ‘You’ll see, Maudie. I’ll buy you those earrings back.’

      He misses it, Maud thought. He misses it by a bloody mile. Immediately her anger was restored to its full, scalding strength. She found that she was glaring at his hair, so carefully oiled and arranged; she saw herself grasping that single white lock and ripping it out at the root. The urge was resisted, just about. Instead she began telling him exactly what he was, drawing on a reserve of the ripest London slurs; and even after all the years he’d lived in the city, and the many battles they’d fought, a couple of these left him wrinkling his nose in bafflement.

      The list ran on. Jimmy weathered it with the air of a man marking time, swivelling very slowly on his heel – then coming to a halt as he spied something outside. The drawing room was on the first floor, providing a broad view of the slow, brown Thames and the road that ran along its bank. Suddenly deaf to Maud’s invective, he went over to the right-hand window, dragged up the sash and leant out a few inches further than was safe, shouting a name with undisguised relief.

      Maud fell into a glowering silence. She’d missed the name and could make out little of what was being said now, but this was clearly a friend. She edged sideways to peer out of the other window. All she saw was hats, a grey topper and a curious affair in rose felt, heading underneath the sill towards their front door. It was not one person but a pair – a couple. And Jimmy had invited them up. He ducked back in, strolled to a sideboard and began rolling another cigarette.

      ‘Stay there,’ he said lightly. ‘Don’t worry – they’re really not the sort to object. They’re rather keen to meet you, in fact.’

      Any control Maud might have had was gone. She looked to the door, sorely tempted to ignore Jimmy and withdraw anyway. Fatigue was fast overwhelming her anger. Her bosom ached – Edie had laced the corset very forgivingly, yet still she seemed to strain against it – and further down, around the base of her belly, a sharper pain was stirring. She could go upstairs. Strip to her shift. Bury herself in their bed. But there were footfalls out on the landing – shapes blocking the line of light beneath the door. It was too late.

      The callers made an assured entrance, striding in across the yellow matting. Maud’s initial impression was of height and handsomeness, and well-made, slightly unusual clothes. The gentleman trailed cigarette smoke; his companion wore a dark blue jacket that accentuated how very slender and pale she was.

      ‘The Harmony in Amber and Black,’ declared the gentleman. ‘The Arrangement in Brown. By Jove, Rosie, she is before us. Before us completely.’

      They advanced towards Maud, regarding her with the close appreciation you might give a statue or a particularly interesting piece of furniture. Both were smiling. The drawing room felt dingier, smaller; Maud became aware of the rotten-egg smell of summer mud, oozing in through the open window.

      ‘I mean, it is uncanny,’ the gentleman continued, glancing over at Jimmy. He had a fine voice, warm and deep with the touch of an accent – Spanish, Maud thought. ‘Your portraits, dear fellow – they are more than likenesses. So much more. There’s a core to them, I’d say, a true artistic understanding. They get to the bottom of the matter. The essence.’

      Maud looked at Jimmy. He could be prickly with praise; she’d heard him dismiss it, dismiss it with real violence, if he thought it misguided or insensible to his aims. That afternoon, however, he simply nodded in acknowledgement, then screwed in the eyeglass and smiled – the kind of wide, unguarded grin you’d only see in the company of those he genuinely liked. Two cigarettes had been rolled: he lit both, passing one to this new arrival. The Spanish gentleman sucked a last lungful from the butt already lodged between his fingers, flicked it deftly out through the window and accepted the next with a murmur of thanks.

      ‘Miss Corder,’ said Jimmy, ‘may I be so frightfully unnecessary as to introduce Miss Maud Franklin.’ He puffed on his cigarette, making a back-and-forth gesture. ‘Miss Franklin – Miss Rosa Corder.’

      A hand was extended, in a glove the same pinkish colour as the felt hat. ‘Charmed, Miss Franklin, truly.’

      Miss Corder’s voice was difficult to get the measure of. Respectable, if not quite quality; confident but also unassuming, somehow; wholly in earnest, yet tinted with laughter. Maud had been eyeing her cagily during Jimmy’s introduction, thinking that she might well be a model. A substitute. She certainly had the figure for it. Now, though, such fears could be disregarded. Maud had never met a model who spoke like this.

      ‘We know you, of course, from the Grosvenor,’ Miss Corder explained. ‘The pictures were so very СКАЧАТЬ