Mrs Whistler. Matthew Plampin
contradicted Leyland’s wishes, slathering valuable antique leather in bucket-loads of blue paint. And of course – perhaps most seriously of all for these blasted English – it was claimed that he’d made a gentleman’s home into an exhibition hall, with press nights, newspaper reviews and an unending procession of visitors. It had seemed entirely possible that Mrs Leyland might want nothing whatsoever to do with him.
But no. The connection forged during the painting of her portrait had survived. Her smile had been dry, faintly teasing; it held a memory of jokes, subtly shared, at the expense of those around them.
‘Should I strive for rapprochement, madam?’ he’d asked. ‘Is there hope?’
‘It will be hard,’ she’d replied, ‘most certainly. You know what Frederick is like. But there is always hope, Mr Whistler.’
A fortnight later they’d taken a drive in the Leyland carriage. It had been extremely pleasant, with much gossip and laughter, like old times almost – but only Mrs Leyland had been there. Jim had the sense that the rest of them might be avoiding him, or even unaware that the meeting was taking place. As he’d left, however, she’d mentioned this fixture at Lord’s: two Cambridge colleges, one of them her son Freddie’s, meeting during the summer recess to play for the relief of a pauper school in Maida Vale. The whole family would be present, she’d added. He’d understood her at once.
In the days afterwards, Jim had convinced himself that it was in fact a very natural progression towards the restoration of goodwill, somehow both rapid and agreeably unhurried; and when the envelope had arrived bearing the orderly, sloping hand of Frederick Leyland, his immediate thought had been that the wife had spoken with the husband. That she’d brought him round. That their rift was to be mended and the philistine tamed right there and then. That the value of the Peacock Room had been recognised even, and the Leyland commissions might conceivably resume.
The letter inside had been short, a dozen lines or so – headed with a ‘Sir’, finished off with a ‘yours truly’, both clear signals of war – and it had stopped Jim like a clock. The two of them, Leyland had written, were publicly known to be in a state of absolute and enduring opposition. In riding out with his wife, Jim had taken advantage of the weakness of a woman – yes, those really were his words – and had placed her in what he termed a false position before the world. Any further contact had been prohibited.
For a week Jim had stewed, occupied by Maud’s return from her confinement, and nagged by a most unwelcome sense of having been outmanoeuvred – of the Peacock Room being gone for good. Then, while out at the Café Royal the previous evening, he’d consulted with the Owl, whom he’d been keeping apprised of the situation. As usual, the Portuguese had been able to see in an instant that which eluded less nimble minds. His advice had been unequivocal.
‘Why, my dear chap, you must attend the cricket ground. Mrs Leyland is a tactician. One would have to be, with a husband like that. She has engineered a final opportunity for you to say your piece. The perfect opportunity, I might say. No, no, Jimmy – you must attend. You must go before him. It is the only way.’
So there Jim was, clad in white cotton duck and a straw boater, ready to patrol. His plan was to remain at a distance for a while, assessing the Leylands’ mood and selecting the optimum moment for his approach – perhaps just after Freddie had scored a wicket or whatever they were called. There would be a great cheer; he would stroll up, applauding with hands raised, calling out ‘bravo!’, and as one the family would turn towards him. Mrs Leyland would beam and beckon for him to approach. Her husband would be rather less pleased; Jim was confident that his wife would have worked on him a little, though, upbraiding him for that outrageous letter and laying out the situation in a manner so reasonable and objective that even the British businessman would heed it. He’d be flushed, furthermore, with his son’s sporting success – the son who’d always held Jim in such amity and regard. The fellow would have to give Jim a chance. A decent hearing, out there on wholly neutral ground. Yes, Owl was right. It really was ideal.
But a problem soon arose. This confounded game took up an unreasonable amount of room, two or three acres by Jim’s estimation, obliging the spectators – of whom there were a good number, a few hundred at least – to cluster thickly around the edges. It made the careful scouting he had in mind completely impossible. He was in amongst them from the start, these wealthy families and crowds of well-to-do youths, stuck beneath a shifting lily pond of parasols, unable to see more than a few yards in any direction. He might stumble across the Leylands entirely by accident – the timing of their reunion, and the climate of his reception, determined only by the whim of the gods.
Fortune, however, was on Jim’s side. Halfway around the cricket ground’s circumference, between caps and boaters and a variety of summer hats, he spotted the Leyland girls, perched atop a mustard yellow landau to get a better view of the proceedings. There was Florence, looking characteristically truculent; she would have seen the Amber and Black, he supposed, on the wall of the Grosvenor. Some appeasement would be required there – an explanation, somewhat disingenuous, of the artistic necessity of the change. Fanny, the eldest, was next to her, in a cream gown with a dark stripe. A woman of twenty now, she was out in society, being touted around for the purposes of marriage. And on the end, closest to him, was Elinor – Baby, they all called her – the youngest, but along with the others looking noticeably older to Jim’s eye – about fifteen, he guessed. She had been his most devoted companion of the three, always making him gifts of flowers and hopeless scraps of needlework, and he had applied himself to her portrait with special dedication. The child had been taken in blue, like Gainsborough’s boy, with a result almost equal to his painting of her mother.
The sisters had arranged themselves upon the open-topped carriage in a charmingly jejune attempt at elegance. Their attention was very much on the game and their elder brother’s performance in it – and rather pointedly not upon the gaggle of students who stood nearby, talking loudly and larking about, doing all they could to draw the young ladies’ notice. Jim smiled, recognising both roles; and then Baby – whose display was a touch less committed than that of Florence or Fanny – noticed him standing there. Her indifferent expression screwed up into an antagonistic little pout.
It was a spear, quite frankly, driven into Jim’s heart – yet another wound to an organ pretty much riddled with perforations already. He wanted to appeal to her somehow, to launch into an old jest perhaps, or recite a favourite rhyme. The girl was nudging her sisters, though, alerting them; and Florence was shuddering, yes, actually shuddering at the thought. Neither would so much as turn in his direction. Very well. So this would be difficult. It was foolish, really, to have thought otherwise. Jim carried on towards the landau, inserting the eyeglass. His cheery hail went unacknowledged.
Mrs Leyland was at the carriage’s near end, standing alone between its back wheels. Her fine, fashionable clothes – a light grey gown trimmed with delicate ruffles, tied behind with a bow of cerise satin – contrasted with her apprehensive bearing and the hard lines beneath her eyes. But she at least was pleased to see Jim, noticing his arrival with a sudden, unguarded smile. Relief, he thought.
‘Well, how about this,’ he declared, looking around him and wondering where Leyland was – watching at the front maybe, at the border of the pitch? Perhaps a well-timed approach was still feasible. ‘All these years in London, in England, and never once did I dare to imagine the, ah – the sheer glory of this game.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ she said.
‘My dear Mrs Leyland, how on earth could I not?’ Jim glanced up at the girls; they continued to ignore him, to ignore them both, acting as if completely absorbed in the match. He lowered his voice. ‘Did you happen to hear that your husband wrote me the most astonishing letter, after our excursion the other day?’
Mrs Leyland maintained her smile; her eyes spoke of something else altogether. ‘He informed me of it,’ she said. ‘And took no little pleasure in the revelation.’
‘Such a heinous misunderstanding. I confess that it left me bewildered.’
‘I told