Mrs Whistler. Matthew Plampin
‘It doesn’t go.’
*
December 1876
The front door opened, admitting a current of wintry wind; it nosed through the papers scattered across the dining-room floor, lifting the large mural cartoon like the airing of a bedsheet. Jim scowled atop his stepladder. Young Walter Greaves, dispatched on an errand an hour or so earlier, had been instructed most firmly not to use the main entrance. He was shouting out something to this effect when Maud hushed him. She’d been sitting in a corner, wearing her coat, reading one of the art papers; but now she was up, already on her way outside, making for the French doors behind the central set of shutters. He glanced down at her. Several months had now passed, yet he could detect no outward sign of her condition. Her face retained its striking angularity; her figure was as lissom as ever. A small part of him continued to hope that it was a false alarm.
‘Jimmy,’ she said. ‘That isn’t Walt.’
Jim cocked his head to listen. From the hall came not the assistant’s hob-nailed thuds but the sigh of fine fabric, dragging in folds across the bare stone. Maud left, closing the shutters silently behind her. Jim climbed from the stepladder and crept to the doorway. Mrs Leyland and Florence, the middle daughter, were standing in the unlit hall, little more than dark shapes against the marble. Dressed for travel, they were looking around them in a faintly expectant fashion. A male servant came in and summoned the caretaker from his downstairs parlour. There was a brief exchange, then all eyes turned towards the dining room. Jim pulled back; he considered quickly how he should be found.
The room, thankfully, was brilliant. It had been enriched past hope or prediction by Jim’s greatest change: the painting of those awkward leather panels with a deep, obliterating shade of Prussian blue. This had been a mighty feat indeed, demanding every last ounce of his strength and his vision. His hands and forearms were still stained a little, having a greenish, cadaverous hue; numerous aches hampered the movement of his shoulders, his elbows, his wrists. But none of this mattered. His satisfaction with the result was difficult to overstate. In certain sections – and particularly now, under gaslight – the effect was so smooth and intense that it quite confounded the notion of surface, the gilded shelves seeming to float before a field of pure colour. The whole thing was transformative. Entering the dining room changed your mood, the very feel of your skin.
And then there was the mural. Emblazoned across the southern wall – upon which Leyland had once talked of hanging one of Jim’s own canvases – this was the feature with which he was most pleased of all. He chose a spot beneath it and darted over, arranging himself next to the sideboard.
The two fine Leyland ladies stood speechless, blinking as people do when brought forward suddenly into the light. They looked remarkably similar at first: the compact luxury of their clothes, the corseted uniformity of their figures, the handsome solemnity of their faces. Leyland, however, was in the daughter as well – those dark, baleful eyes, that regrettably broad forehead – and seemed even to taint her aesthetic responses; for as her mother’s initial shock was replaced by a kind of incredulous regard, her own expression grew rather more negative.
‘It is every bit as bad,’ she announced, ‘as it sounded in that wretched newspaper. Father will be furious. He will be furious.’
Commendably direct, Jim thought. He’d never seen this in Florence before: how old was she, eighteen? It was hard to keep track. Over the past five or six years he’d painted nearly every member of this family, starting with Ma and Pa and working down from there. Florence’s portrait was the least complete of his Leyland pantheon, now stacked out of sight in a corner of the studio. She’d been a difficult subject, querulous and impatient and impossible to impress; and although wholly at leisure she’d granted him only four sittings, of a couple of hours each. Not at all how Jim liked to work. Luckily Maud had been on hand to stand in her place, just as she had done for the mother and elder sister – wearing the three different gowns, occupying the three different poses, with her usual ease.
‘My only wish, Miss Leyland,’ he said calmly, ‘was to give yourself and your family the most beautiful room that has ever been.’
‘Did you obtain my father’s permission for this? For any of it?’
‘I cannot apologise for inspiration, Miss, and the paths down which—’
‘What of the leather? Did you pause, even, before turning it all blue?’
Flippancy here became irresistible. ‘I did wonder for a moment if it would take the paint,’ Jim answered. ‘But it did, as you can see. Admirably.’
Florence’s right hand tightened its grip upon her left. ‘Mr Whistler, that leather was salvaged from a ship wrecked with the Spanish Armada. It cost my father a great deal.’
‘And it did not harmonise with the rest. There is really nothing more I can tell you, Miss Leyland. The colours, the patterns – they could not be made to work.’
This didn’t satisfy Florence, not in the least, but she would argue no further. She informed her mother that she was going to look around upstairs, then strode back through the doorway, calling tartly for a lamp. Mrs Leyland, walking the length of the room, made no reply. Jim sensed that the day’s journey had taken its toll upon family concord.
‘My husband is in London,’ she said, once Florence was out of earshot, ‘and will be arriving soon. He left us at the station. Apparently there was a call he had to make.’
‘I see.’
‘We are not staying here. Frederick has booked a suite at the Alexandra.’
‘My dear Mrs Leyland,’ said Jim, ‘I should hope you aren’t. Why, most of the furniture is still in crates.’
‘He has had a piano assembled, though, I assume?’
‘Bien sûr. The poor instrument is beaten to its knees each time he crosses the threshold.’
Mrs Leyland’s laugh was a shade too loud. ‘As I believe we have observed before, Mr Whistler,’ she said, ‘he plays just as he goes about everything else.’
Unlike her daughter, Frances Leyland had sat willingly for her portrait. She’d given her time generously – had been reluctant to leave, in fact, even as the day grew dim. It hadn’t taken much to prompt an unburdening. Perched on the studio chaise longue, wearing the loose flesh-pink gown in which Jim was painting her, she’d told him of the indifference and sullen silences, the dozens of petty abuses and betrayals – of a marriage warping into something intolerable. Jim had listened with sympathy and close interest, undeniably flattered by this sudden intimacy – yet also savouring the clandestine thrill of access to another man’s most private affairs. Naturally, he’d promised to tell no one, pledging himself to a bond of secrecy. An alliance had thus been forged, and was further strengthened as Mrs Leyland’s portrait had advanced almost to completion. Leyland had been unconcerned by this friendship, seeming to trust Jim as much as he trusted anyone. He had no inkling, needless to say, of its confidential depths.
Smiling still, Mrs Leyland laid a gloved hand upon her collarbone and looked around again at the absorbing richness of the blue, at the yards of lustrous feather-patterning, at the resplendent birds. ‘It is not at all how I expected. It is like walking inside a jewel box. A Japanese cabinet.’
‘My intention precisely,’ said Jim. ‘A Japanese cabinet. I am so glad, Mrs Leyland, that you at least can appreciate what I have done. Although, who knows – perhaps dear Florence is mistaken. Perhaps your husband will as well.’
The lady laughed again, at the improbability of this Jim supposed. The sound was caustic, and also strangely helpless. He was considering whether to express regret at how things had gone, or provide his justification, or simply to laugh himself, when he noticed that she was taking her first proper look at the mural behind him.
The two new peacocks faced each other across the expanse of painted leather, the gilt in which