The Fraud (43 page)

A small voice. ‘Like Mr Bounds?’

Her aunt sighed. Mr Bounds of the overly-coiffeured hair, Mr Bounds the frame-maker’s son, whom Philip would find so unsuitable. ‘Perhaps like Mr Bounds. He seemed - fond.’

The small voice answered. ‘But he says I have changed.’

‘Then perhaps it is not to be Mr Bounds. But it must be someone who loves you and respects you. It may be somebody that you have never met yet.’

‘Oh.’ A small, disappointed sound.

Just the swish, swish of the brush.

And the aunt said, ‘It is a strange word,
love
.’ And still brushing the hair of her niece she suddenly, as if she had not meant to quite, spoke the words she had learned from the red-veined vicar in Bristol so many years ago:

‘I should not
cut up
someone I loved,’ said Isabella most sensibly, ‘and I would want the person I love to be alive, not dead!’ And her aunt laughed and then Isabella laughed somewhat grumpily and said, ‘If dead people become stars, then I shall prefer
misty
stars from now on, I do not want anybody else to die like Mamma,’ and for a moment the aunt held the girl and rocked her like a child:
misty stars, we prefer misty stars
they chanted together, half-laughing, perhaps half-crying
misty stars, misty stars
like children with a rhyme and finally the aunt kissed her niece on the forehead, and left her.

In her sewing-room she stared and stared at the painting on the easel. The girl’s eyes seemed to sparkle.

She opened the mahogany drawer to take some money.

Five of the ten guineas that James Burke had paid her were gone: she gasped, and then she immediately saw Claudio -
left outside her closed door as she hurried away to Frith Street.
It seemed a lifetime ago but it was only yesterday morning.

 

Isabella was at the dinner-table as the gloomy afternoon drew down, but most unusually her father had turned all guests away for he could not find his son. He had been back to St Martin’s Lane, he had even been to Broad-street where the cock-fighting men arranged matches in alleys.

‘Has he spoken to you, Isabella?’

‘No, Father.’

‘Do you know anything at all about his - troubles?’

Isabella was determined not to be caught in this. Everybody knew: if her father had eyes he would have seen long ago. ‘No, Father.’ She kept her eyes lowered.

Filipo di Vecellio stared at his sister. ‘You should have told me earlier.’

And his sister stared back at him. ‘London is a dangerous city. It is a great deal of money that he owes and I surmise they would rather have him alive than dead and I imagine he will have kept well away from them. It is my belief that Claudio knows how to look after himself - in most ways. If I were you Filipo, I believe I would go to Sussex.’

‘To
Sussex
?’ His surprised face.

‘It seems possible to me that he has gone back to a farm near his School. He told me he worked there when it was - inconvenient - for him to come home.’

‘That is ridiculous. Why would he go back there?’

‘Because I believe he wishes to become a Farmer not a Painter.’

‘A
Farmer
?’ Now he looked horrified, unbelieving.

‘He comes from farming stock,’ she murmured as she got up to light the candles. And out of the corner of her eye she watched her brother.

 

Next morning, early, Signore Filipo di Vecellio left in his carriage, with his daughter the Signorina Isabella who had no choice in the matter and was sulking, to travel to Sussex.

As soon as the carriage had left, Signorina Francesca di Vecellio quickly sent a message to Mr James Burke, Art Dealer.

James Burke was uneasy; you might almost say (although such a thing was unimaginable) that James Burke was anxious. He wondered if he had been foolish, too ambitious. He urgently needed money but they could have sold many of her paintings for more reasonable sums and all made money. She was good, certainly (he made himself think of her as
she
and blanked out the soul of Grace, the essence of Grace, that is Grace herself, from his calculations) at what she did, better than good, she was outstanding. But Rembrandt van Rijn? They had been greedy perhaps. The message they were all waiting for, that the painting was finished, had taken so long in coming; the men in the attic in the alley off the
piazza
had become impatient, ugly even, as he insisted they must wait until she was ready. All the interminable grey days of waiting pressed upon him as his carriage finally took him to the house in Pall Mall whence he had been summoned. As he alighted he saw the horses’ breath in the dank air, told the driver to wait.

They spoke briefly, politely, in the drawing-room, the art dealer and the sister of the painter; he commiserated with her, as Euphemia brought tea, on the worry regarding her nephew. And then she took him further upstairs, as if perhaps to her brother’s studio. Further then: she heard his breathing. She opened her door.

The painting still stood on the easel in the sewing-room. The grey dull day gave a little light but she had lit candles, ready; their flames flickered slightly as the room was entered.

Francesca did not look at the painting now: she looked at the face of James Burke, Art Dealer. He tried to hide his reaction but he could not for his face went very red, almost as if he was to be taken with an apoplexy. For just a moment his guard - his ability now never to speak to her in a personal manner - dropped.

‘
Grace
.’ He stared and stared at the painting, rooted to one spot; she thought he might weep. It was all he said, just her name. But she knew from his face that she had succeeded.

It took some time for him to compose himself.

He kept staring at the picture, almost in fascination, went up close, moved away. When, at last, he spoke to her he spoke in a business-like manner about the transportation of the picture. When had she finished it? Was the paint dry enough for him to carry it by coach to Covent Garden?

‘It is not yet completely dry,’ she said. He peered at the paint.

‘I am very used to this.’ He had brought with him a parcel of thin board; he covered the picture carefully so that the board did not touch the paint; carefully he carried it downstairs, holding it upright from the bottom, past the drawing-room, past Euphemia polishing, past the picture of Angelica on the wall and the Canaletto painting of Venice, down to the street where the carriage was waiting. At the door of the carriage he stopped for just a moment, glanced at her with an unfathomable look on his face. ‘Amazing Grace,’ he said softly, and climbed in with his parcel.

She reached up to the window. ‘I think it would be - fitting, James,’ she said quietly, ‘if my brother acquired the Painting.’ And then she stepped back as the horses trotted away.

Almost with a pang, she saw the painting disappear. And then she shook herself slightly. For she understood that her new life had been set in motion, unstoppable.

 

And then she went back to the mahogany drawer and took three of the five guineas that were left. Once again she wrapped her cloak about her. She went to the alley: she heard the sounds before she got there, she entered the dark circle with her cloak about her face, insinuating herself into the shadows where men yelled and sweated with wild eyes, banging coins on to a rail while birds attacked each other. The smell of blood and sweat was so strong that day that she retched; blood and feathers and terrible cries, the birds or the men, it was all one and her eyes looked away from the fight, looked at the faces of the men, the gambling men, looked for Tobias: he was there: he had already seen her. She was shocked at his appearance: he looked dirty and drawn. He looked old,
but we are all old now
. She indicated to him to follow her, she walked away. He followed her along Broad-street, they merged with the crowds near Leicester Fields. Her cloak still hid her face; the day was cold and she saw his own threadbare jacket.

‘I saw Philip yesterday,’ he said. ‘He came to the cock-fighting.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘I made sure that he did not, you say he would not make me welcome, ’ and he gave one of his nervous laughs.

‘He is looking for Claudio, who is greatly in debt. He seems to have run away.’

‘I have heard them talking of the boy. They think he is rich and they are angry, Gracie. You don’t want to anger those men, they are dangerous. You must tell him. You must give him my message. He must keep away from there.’

‘I think he is too scared to come anywhere near!’

‘He is right to be scared, Gracie.’

‘Where are you living?’

The same answer. ‘Here and there.’

She grabbed both his arms. ‘Tobias,’ she said urgently, ‘I am trying - I am hoping to receive a large sum of money.’
I cannot tell him it is a painting
. . .
I do not know if I can trust him
. . . ‘It may take some months, but if I am successful I will help you, I will find a room for you - do not’, she half-laughed but she remembered Poppy’s stories, ‘get taken to Newgate where they press people to death I have heard. I will help you, I promise Tobias, but I cannot do more till - till all is arranged.’ And then she thrust the three guineas into his hands. She did not say
use it wisely
. She could hardly look at his face.

‘You’re a good girl, Gracie,’ and she did, finally, look up and smile.

‘I am not a good girl, Tobias. But I have a dream, and perhaps I can be good again, if my dream comes true.’ And she did what she knew she should have done long ago: she reached up and kissed the man who she hardly knew but who used to be her wild brother, who had brought her colours.

Claudio was returned to London with his father and his sister.

It was clear to everyone, including all of the servants, that he was absolutely terrified: that he did not wish to take one step outside the door of the house in Pall Mall by himself for fear the cock-fighting men would be waiting for him.

‘Nonsense,’ said his father. ‘They would have no knowledge of how to find you, they are thieves and street-men, all of them,’ he flicked a glance at his sister, ‘they know only shadows. You will accompany me to my Club where you will meet other Artists and make valuable Connections.’ In truth Filipo di Vecellio seized this chance to have his son by him at all times: he insisted that Claudio must work at home, in the Studio, making himself useful by painting clouds and arms on the bigger portraits - an insult to the boy of course who was long past clouds and arms. After dinner they would sally forth and Claudio had to become - unwilling, nervous - party to at least part of his father’s business and social life, having failed so dismally at his own.

The boy’s hang-dog appearance at the dining-table did not exactly add to the gaiety of dining occasions and he sent many uncypherable looks to his aunt. She tried to ignore him, knew that he felt she had betrayed him by guessing his whereabouts, she felt her own betrayal: the five, precious guineas. The actual five hundred guineas that Claudio owed was not going to be paid: Filipo refused to accept there was any danger. Claudio was too scared to go outside the door.

‘You do not understand what they are capable of,’ he shouted wildly.

‘I paid your Debts once, I told you I would not pay again!’

‘I think - I think it - Broad-street is an unsafe place for Claudio,’ said the aunt.

‘Indeed!’ said his father. ‘I hope he knows it!’ The boy became paler and kept a great deal to his room. A stalemate sat about the house like a depressing fog which reminded Grace somehow of the gloom that eventually fell upon the house in Bristol as Marmaduke gambled away everything they owned. If her brother made the connection he did not share it with her; Grace waited only for her own wild gamble: a message from James Burke.

 

Lady Dorothea had now assumed, as if by right, Angelica’s place at the dinner-table: her assured laughter echoed. Sometimes now she asked the housekeeper to show her what money she had spent on food and wine. Sometimes Roberto the parrot appeared from nowhere and squawked loudly. Miss Ffoulks no longer attended and John Palmer looked bleakly into his glass. Putting on his shabby, worn cloak one day to walk back to Spitalfields he spoke darkly to Francesca di Vecellio at the front door.

‘She has designs on your Brother, she will try to raise him higher.’ And the sister whispered back to him, smiling at him, ‘The days are much changed, I know, but you must not leave me alone to dine with these perverse people, John Palmer! You must keep coming here!’ But she saw his morose face in the light by the door. It was almost dark - nobody walked alone in the dark - yet John Palmer, without a link-boy to guide him, lit the oil of his old lantern from the candle she was holding and disappeared into the gloom. She thought, as he left, she saw a shadow. She stood on the step, waited there. Nobody came.

 

A rumour took hold of the art world and of the world of noble collectors, even - it was said - coming to the attention of His Majesty who had a large collection of Old Masters that he kept to himself. There was a Rembrandt, they said, an early Rembrandt that had been privately owned; Mr James Burke, one of the foremost art dealers had been approached they said; it was possibly to be put on the market. But nobody saw it, and Mr Burke himself was vague: ‘I have heard tell of it,’ he said, ‘but I have not yet been granted a view.’

More weeks passed. There were crocuses dotting the green of the park as the days became longer, and at last the air warmer, and the candles no longer had to be lit long before dinner was over. Mr Gainsborough’s pigs had piglets in the back garden in Pall Mall and it was said that Mrs Gainsborough was furious, and would not speak to her husband, instead sent him notes tied to the collar of her pet dog. Many of the Nobility left Town, for London stank in the summer.