The Fraud (23 page)

And the fragrance of Angelica’s workroom: the scent of perfumes and potions and unguents and ointments: Jasmine drifting, and Musk: who could forget that? and sometimes there was an echo of the scent of Cloves, and I knew she had been putting small Cloves into the flame of a candle then marking her eyebrows to make the shape required; oh - the scents here were so different from the rest of the house where, everywhere, food-cooking and London and people brought all their own smells; sometimes, alone in Angelica’s room, I breathed in the Fragrances on the air and dreamed of other, bright cities where Tobias might be; I dreamed of the sea where Jasmine grew and where pumice lay upon the sand: the places Philip had travelled to on his Grand Tour, where he had seen the Old Masters, Old Masters like the small Rembrandt that hung quietly now in his Studio.

 

I stole the money and bought the paints and haunted my brother’s Studio and studied the Rembrandt painting in the night and copied it, and painted and painted in my sewing-room in the house in Pall Mall and I avoided Angelica’s
soirees
and one night as I was painting I found that I was singing my Father’s song,
If with me you’d fondly stray - over the hills and far away
. . .

Yet the only thing I, still, could not do was paint my Family: their faces slipped away from me no matter how I tried to recall them - then I stared in frustration at my empty, second-hand boards and canvases. (Once I woke in the dark with tears pouring down my face and I could not understand, then I caught at it as it disappeared, my dream: the Bristol quays and a spinning girl - only it was the dark shadowed alleys off the
piazza.
)

 

Angelica had saved me without knowing she did so and I painted her in my sewing-room, smiling in a gay hat that I had made for her, and my own real laughter came back as I painted her so beautiful and enchanting and I wished Angelica could see what I had done, how beautiful she looked, and sometimes at the table I laughed at something they said, I quite forgot I was Aunt Joy and I laughed, like myself.

I would so soon now be ready, if only I could go
now
, I wanted to leave
now
but still I had nothing, not one penny, I had to ask my brother if I required shoes; I could steal enough money from the weekly housekeeping allowance for paints and paper and brushes but he did not give me enough to do more, I could not make a little fund of my own ready - oh - I knew I could do without so many things in my new life I was planning, but I had to live somewhere and paint somewhere.—So I had, first,
to sell a Painting for Money -
yet I kept up my own spirits by myself because I believed implicitly that my work was getting better, that one day it would be good enough to sell, that if I worked all the time, every moment of my time -
only one more year
, I informed George the Greek statue one night, in another year I believed I could show a small body of work to someone - not Mr Burke of course, not my brother’s own Dealer, but someone like him, I would find someone like him, who might obtain for me real Patrons (for the street-people who were mostly my subjects could not pay for paintings!) and I would have, for better or for worse, my own life at last.—Now that it was so near,
only one more year
, I imagined myself living differently: I allowed myself to plan my Dream - I looked up at the big windows of houses in Compton-street , Meard-street, Leicester-lane, at tall windows where the best north light shone - my white-painted room would be large and light; there would be a cabinet for paints, there would be a bed in the corner, a small chair and table, a stove for the winter and for boiling water; I would buy wood for the stove from the
piazza
; I saw a hat stand in a corner for my clothes and my hats, for perhaps on dull days I would make a gay hat for myself also - paintings hung on all the walls - and in the middle of the room stood an easel and beside the easel lay a beautiful palette, holding all the colours in the world.

There were strange purveyors of Astrological Fortune to be found in the basements off the Covent Garden
piazza
: they would take people’s days of birth and cast their horoscopes by reading the stars. Angelica consulted the Astrologers, to know of her future; she was chided for visiting such charlatans but she would not be dissuaded. She said she did not know the exact day of her birth but what did it matter? She would visit the tellers of fortune and future and give them one birth date, or another, and ask them if she would always be beautiful and the fortune tellers looked at the stars and looked at Angelica and said,
You will always be beautiful.

And there it was still, upon the turn on the stairs in the elegant house in Pall Mall, that first wonderful portrait: the powdered hair, the extraordinary pale oval face, and the large dark eyes. Angelica: the most beautiful woman in London.

Roberto the parrot disappeared one day over St James’s Park but in the evening he found his way back, battered and bleeding; after that he was more timid, and more demanding of his family. It was Angelica he adored but she had other commitments. The painter’s sister, Francesca, learned to calm Roberto, stroked his feathers, but Roberto looked always for Angelica.

These were the painter’s golden years, when the carriages queued outside the door, bringing their noble ladies and gentlemen, and sometimes noble children, for their sittings with the Italian Portraitist. Filipo di Vecellio worked hard, there was nothing left of the strolling, bored Bristol boy: sometimes he was working on four or five different Portraits in one day and his boards and canvases lay all about his Studio. His assistants were occasionally busy till midnight with sleeves and folds of a gown and blue sky. They slept in the studio, their dreams full of the smell of paint, sometimes now the only time they saw the real sky was in their dreams.

And at the hospitable dinners Art was discussed, day after day after day. Inebriated painters would thump the table so that glasses tinkled against each other; some said Portrait Painting was the only real way to paint the human condition; others shouted that the real subjects for paintings were not insignificant human beings but Moral Questions: that Epic paintings were the only paintings that would live on; one particularly drunken young man, who nobody quite knew, kept insisting that the death of Caesar as a subject was more important than somebody’s wife.

‘We are the Arbiters of the Age!’ he cried, thumping the table again and tinkling the glasses.

‘Ah, but who will
buy
the Death of Julius Caesar?’ shouted the host. ‘They would many times rather spend such money on their own Portrait!’

‘There can be Moral Force even in a Portrait!’ cried John Palmer and the glasses and bottles clinked and the voices shouted and fought and laughed and the quiet sister listened to everything they said.

And always, as darkness fell, John Palmer would place his old wig back on his head and put on his shabby cloak and light his small lantern to walk back to Spitalfields. Sometimes James Burke the art dealer left at the same time and would walk with him. Once when the Signorina Francesca di Vecellio saw them to the door she stayed and watched them go, caught by their unlikely shadow: the tall Mr James Burke and the rotund Mr John Palmer, disappearing into the night.

These then were the special years of Filipo di Vecellio’s greatest success and his greatest wealth, the years before Mr Joshua Reynolds and Mr Thomas Gainsborough became so very much more sought after than he. He was immensely rich and happily married. He had acquired Old Masters, was known to own an exquisite small painting by Rembrandt. And success and happiness attended the great house in Pall Mall.

The golden years.

 

 

Twins were born -
Lucky
, people said,
twins are good luck
, people said. A boy and a girl, to complete the happiness of the golden years.

‘—so here are the babies, Francesca,’ Angelica said to me from her bed and she handed both the small squalling bundles to me. I stared down in real horror -
she could not mean that I was to look after them
.

‘No,’ I said.

‘The boy shall be called Claudio,’ said my brother firmly.

‘No,’ I said.
No!

‘What is wrong with Claudio,
cara mia
?’ asked my brother, smiling his charming smile at his bewildered sister as I stood there (perhaps he thought I wanted to call his son Marmaduke or Tobias or Ezekiel, or his daughter Betty).

‘No!’ I cried and the babies placed into my arms cried also (as well they might).

‘And Isabella,’ said my brother.

‘You will manage them better than I,’ said Angelica weakly, ‘you are so calm and efficient,’ and already she looked to her mirrors and her paints, as I stood there looking in disbelief at what I held and thinking of my own paints, of my Studio, of my precious hours, of my Plan, my Plan for the rest of my Life - there was a wet-nurse, and the maids of course, but the moment they were born Claudio and Isabella were given over to me as if it was the most natural thing in the world that they were my personal Responsibility: that I should look after them and be accountable for their welfare, for my brother and his wife were busier and busier with Life and all I had to do was run the house.

I had never dealt with any baby in my life - I
was
the baby - but much, much more than this, I was so very nearly ready: six months more I needed, I had just stopped using my precious boards over and over, for the first time I had kept two Paintings, one was Angelica in her gay hat, I thought to have six paintings and then show what it was that I could do but Angelica left the small bundles in my arms,
in my arms
, and turned away even as I cried, ‘I cannot do this!’ and I stood there holding two babies and my plan for my Future was torn to pieces, as my Drawings had been torn to pieces years before.

Claudio looked like our brother, Tobias.

 

I stood in shock and disbelief with the small bundles - they were not even crying now, just small fists clenching and unclenching - with all my heart and soul I wanted to leave them: I wanted to
leave them right there
, put them down somewhere, anywhere, on the dining-room table, and seize up my two Paintings and run even with no money with no paints with no lodgings with no Poppy,
I am not a cruel bad person but I do not want them I do not want them
, I had to get out of here this prison to run to get away get out of here - but Claudio and Isabella were here, and I was holding them, and my brother and his wife already moving away, moving on—

 

 

and over my head I felt it: a dark trapdoor smashing closed upon me and the echo went on and on and on.

Miss Ann Ffoulks was very fond of Filipo di Vecellio and his beautiful wife, Angelica, but wondered that they did not have nurses and governesses for their two small children rather than leave them almost entirely in the care of Francesca
,
who became so pale and strained and distracted. Miss Ffoulks of course would no more have dreamed of commenting on this situation than flying with angel’s wings (not that Miss Ffoulks believed in such things as angels, she was thinking metaphorically).

The children lived upstairs in a room by their aunt (the cook whose room it had been was sent to sleep in a room off the kitchen), so that the rest of the busy house in Pall Mall would not be in any way disturbed by this addition to the household. And more and more visitors came to the hospitable, somewhat hurly-burlyed dinners over which the beautiful Angelica presided like a bright, shining angel, Roberto the parrot perched on her shoulder or very near, and the artistic and social life in the house went on quite unchanged. Very occasionally the growing children were allowed into the magic place that was their mother’s dressing-room. There they were presented to the most beautiful woman in London, who was their mother, and they felt as bereft as Roberto the parrot when they were left again. Scents and perfumes assailed them; they saw mirrors and draped gowns and shawls; their mother smiled and held out her hands. They must not touch her high, pomaded, powdered hair that was becoming more and more fashionable, or the pots of white paste that made her skin so white (the famous Venetian Ceruse), or the blocks of crimson, or the brushes and the black tablets of kohl. Their small, round eyes took in the unguents and the toilet waters; when they had learned to read and write, tutored by their aunt, they spelled out a special large bottle always there in front of their mother: it said, SOLIMAN’S WATER. FOR A PERFECT SKIN. When they were called into the room, the grey-white hair already sat perfected on their mother’s head, always; Roberto perched nearby, preening. And, always, her perfume caught them - musk or jasmine, they could not name it - the perfume enfolded them. Then gently, so as not to disarray, they were embraced by their beautiful mother.