Mrs Whistler. Matthew Plampin
his teeth, he’d set about groping through the seaweed-coated timbers – braving the snapping jaws of monstrous eels, the tentacles of octopi and heaven knows what else – returning to the surface only when his fishing net was filled with gold doubloons.
‘On occasion, in the Barbosa’s innermost crevices, I would encounter these gigantic lobsters. These turquoise leviathans, like creatures from dreams or the paintings of madmen. I see you laughing there, Jimmy Whistler, but you wouldn’t have laughed if you’d been in the water beside me. You’d have spat out your air tube and screamed like a horse.’
Jimmy was rolling a cigarette and smirking so hard he dislodged his eyeglass.
‘I swear the blasted things were two feet long,’ Owl continued. ‘The size of a small dog, and deuced lively with it. Spines like you wouldn’t believe. Claws the size of coconuts. I’d wrestle them up from the wreck, through the surf, to the beach where my mother and sisters would be waiting. Often we’d make a fire in the sand and roast the beast in its shell. Feast on it before the sunset. This,’ – he held up a forkful of pinkish flesh, the last of Maud’s pie – ‘can’t really compare.’
‘We should go,’ said Miss Corder. Her eyes were dark with love; she reached between the dishes for Owl’s hand. ‘You should take us – the three of us. We could find a house on a cliff-top, overlooking the ocean. The wild Atlantic. Think of it, Carlos. Think of what Jimmy could paint.’
The Owl – Carlos – agreed. ‘A fellow’s shilling goes far over there,’ he said. ‘Damned far. Why, we could take a castle. Live like royalty.’
Right then, with a newly refilled glass raised to her lips, this struck Maud as a truly brilliant idea. Why on earth shouldn’t they? Venice had been the plan, the promise, but elsewhere could surely be as good, especially in such enlivening company. The land of Carlos the Owl. She very much liked the sound of it. She glanced at Jimmy. Eyeglass reinserted, cigarette lit, he was studying the Portuguese with wry affection.
‘We’ll be expecting lobster every night, Owl, you know,’ he said. ‘You’d better bring along your bathing suit.’
They toasted their expedition, several times over and with much laughter. The last traces of formality fell away: Miss Corder and Miss Franklin were shown the door, with Rosa and Maud taking their place. Various far-fetched arrangements were made. Goals were set, both artistic and gastronomic. A warm camaraderie enfolded the table.
Shortly afterwards, as the dishes were removed, an unspoken communication passed between the men. They excused themselves and rose, disappearing into the rear of the restaurant.
‘Cigars, most probably,’ said Rosa, looking over her shoulder, out at the street.
Maud emptied her glass. She was feeling pretty damned tight, in truth, having drunk a good deal and eaten next to nothing. She fell to staring at Rosa’s hair. It was tied up in a plait, the coil as elaborate and perfect as a carving in a church. Until then it had simply seemed a yellowish shade of brown. Now, though, in the candlelight, Maud could see something much paler in it – a lustre that was almost metallic.
Abruptly, Rosa turned back to the table. Her eyelids lowered a fraction; she gave Maud a look of fond assessment. ‘You are brave,’ she said.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘To have done what you did. What was needed. All by yourself. And to be here again, at his side. It is very brave.’
Maud saw her meaning now, and her woozy happiness – all the pleasure she’d been taking in this place and this singular couple, so convivial and ambitious and full of spirit – went in an instant, vanishing as if it had never been, leaving her with the cold and simple fact that she was sitting there in a swell restaurant, pickling herself in sparkling wine like she hadn’t a care in the whole bloody world, while her child, her baby, was away several miles to the north in the care of a woman who could be anybody, who could be anything, who could be about to bake the infant alive in an oven and there would be nothing, absolutely nothing, that she could do about it. She put down her glass. She felt panic rising. It quivered inside her, urgent and hopeless. It bolted her to the spot.
‘You mean with my daughter,’ she said. ‘You mean with Ione.’
The smallest crack ran through Rosa’s self-possession. She’d plainly thought they would discuss Jimmy – the importance of loyalty or something. Not this. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘your daughter.’
‘I chose the name. Ione Edith Whistler. On my own. While I was – just after. I had to tell it to Jimmy. He hadn’t—’
Maud was going to say that he hadn’t asked what the name might be, that she’d given him three days to do it and he hadn’t, so she’d snapped and simply told him, shouted it at him in fact; but recounting this, trying to untangle it all for the first time, proved too much. She slumped forward onto the table, pressing her cheek hard against the marble. A slick of liquid – tears or wine, she couldn’t tell which – made her head slip an inch to the left.
‘I thought I could just leave her. I thought it wouldn’t matter. I—’
Rosa eased her back upright, wiped her face with the cuff of her silver-grey jacket, and proposed that they take some air – walk down to Piccadilly, perhaps. Maud was signalling her assent when the men came back into view on the other side of the room. They were speaking loudly in French to the head waiter, talking over each another with much gesticulation. Maud followed their approach with a prickle of resentment.
Jimmy noticed at once that something was wrong. ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘An excess of cheer?’
‘She’s tired,’ Rosa told him, ‘that’s all. A little weak still.’
Sliding his wiry frame onto the seat beside her, Jimmy plucked Maud’s hand from her lap and squeezed it between his. ‘Is everything well, Maudie?’ he asked, gently as you like. ‘What’s the difficulty here?’
Maud reclaimed her hand. ‘Nothing,’ she sniffed. ‘Honest.’
July 1877
Lord’s Cricket Ground, Jim swiftly decided, was a charmless spot on which to pass a fine summer’s afternoon. It was little more than a broad, dull lawn, a few streets away from Regent’s Park, hemmed in by depressing terraces and withered nursery gardens. There was something, perhaps, in the contrast between the luminescence of the sportsmen’s white costumes and the smooth green carpet upon which they played, but brief observation of the game itself – much milling about, punctuated by sudden thwacks and shouts, and frantic, inexplicable rearrangements – demonstrated to Jim that he would never understand or care for cricket, even if he lived to be a hundred years old.
He was there, of course, for a very particular reason, wholly unrelated to sport. By the day’s end he was determined that Whistler would be reinstated as the cher ami of the Leyland family. He would be the confidante of the wife, of the children, and of the husband too. Once again there would be dinner invitations, and visits to the opera, and trips up to Speke Hall, the Leyland country pile. And he would be allowed access to his Peacock Room, for the first time in half a year. He would be able to make a full and proper photographic record of what he’d done there, and expunge this corrosive suggestion of imposture once and for all.
The first encounter, nearly a month earlier, had genuinely been one of chance. Mrs Leyland had been seen across a drawing room, in a dress of powder blue, listening with the slightly pained attentiveness of a polite person enduring a tedious conversation; yet looking, it had to be said, tremendously well nonetheless. Indeed, the intelligence in her face, its beautiful tenderness, had made Jim’s breath catch very slightly in his throat. There had been a certain caution in him as they’d spoken. The saga of the Peacock Room was still much discussed in society. Many, he understood, were inclined to view him as a vulgar, self-promoting