The Optickal Illusion Page 13

  constant de massoul,

  A Treatise on the Art of Painting and the Composition of Colours, 1797

  Ann Jemima is walking, stumbling, trying to hold her chin firm, intent on not losing her composure. Hobnailed boots of self-reproach stamp through her mind, but she cannot dwell on such thoughts for long, she must keep her head up, up, look at the buildings around her, chart her route across London before she is stopped. Her chance to leave the palace came at seven thirty this morning after Provis left to prepare the chapel for the eight o’clock communion. The lock clacked shut behind him, and she slipped into a grey cape, making a ghost’s escape ten minutes later. She is furious at West’s deception, smarts with the humiliation of it. Cosway’s words reverberate. ‘Go about this the wrong way, and it will rebound badly.’

  The best I can do is be gone, she thinks with fury.

  Her anger blows her up to Piccadilly, past the Bath Hotel and Fortnum and Mason’s, past the silent booksellers and after-the-night-before taverns, to Piccadilly Circus. She has never walked this far outside the palace without an escort, she knows already that to be on the streets alone raises questions about her virtue, her social status, her marriageability. All around her the polished windows stare. Yet the recklessness of what she is doing helps to lift her spirits, and on she blows, through the gardens of Leicester Square with the statue of George I rising up in the centre, through Charing Cross, and on to Covent Garden. There the prostitutes linger in doorways, singing raucous songs and calling out to passers by. Their painted faces like masks, their thoughts part of London’s great untold story. Ann Jemima looks towards them, pulls the hood of her grey cape over her head and continues.

  She has put on kid-leather half boots in preparation for her long walk, but already the leather is splattered with dirt and beginning to tear. She frets that her entire wardrobe has been designed as if by captors who anticipated that one day she was going to make this escape – her skirts and petticoats hinder her speed and two or three more miles will destroy her boots. She does not dare to hail a Hackney carriage – it will provoke too many questions, and will also create a witness to her flight. Instead she threads her way up the alleyways and to Holborn. In her head, past, present and future collide.

  She had thought she was getting the sense of West. He had seemed different – because he was an American he seemed like an outsider, just as being a woman made her an outsider. Somehow this connected them, though if asked how neither of them would have been able to articulate it. Where Cosway patronised and played sexual games, West had revealed himself as his antithesis. He was socially awkward at first, which had made him seem cold and uncomfortable inside his own body, almost as if nature had bestowed on him a physique too large for his confidence. But in subsequent encounters he became generous, unpredatory, effusive about both the mistakes and discoveries that had made him who he was. When he flattered about her painting it did not put her on her guard, ‘fool that I was,’ she whispers angrily to herself.

  She had prided herself that she was playing the game skilfully. Even though she trusted West, she had been assiduous in calculating exactly how much of the method she should let him see to whet his appetite, without letting him walk away with it for no money. Each time he had returned for a further demonstration it had seemed to vindicate her approach, at the same time as it trumped Mrs Tullett’s doubts and eroded any lingering scepticism on the part of Provis. She saw the way she started to change in each individual’s eyes. After surviving the fire of cynicism from all sides, she had risen like a phoenix as a force to be reckoned with. The worst that had been predicted – that her interpretation was wrong, and that West would ridicule her and Provis to the King – had not happened. At the same time as Provis had started worrying about their debt to Cosway, she had become euphoric about her daring.

  And now it was all proved to be for nothing. Since she had discovered West’s deception, she realised she had convinced him of the method’s value precisely at the point at which she had most feared he was going to walk away from their negotiations. The image she had taken away in her mind of that meeting had to be revisited and reinterpreted. Something subtle had changed in his behaviour on the last afternoon when they had worked on the Venus and Cupid. But when she was in the room she had seen it as the birth of scepticism rather than of conviction.

  The theme for the painting was of a mother comforting her son who had been stung by a bee. When Ann Jemima realised this, she felt a spasm of grief for a mother she could hardly remember, yet she did not talk of this to the President. No pictures in her mind, just a twisting inside, and a sense of a fury she could not articulate. As ever she concealed this by playing the role she knew was expected of her. Calculated that by doing so, she and West might finally reach an agreement by the end of that day.

  Late autumn sun streamed through the window of the studio as they worked together on the painting. After lunch West was suddenly called away unexpectedly for an hour. Engrossed in what they were doing, Ann Jemima had taken it upon herself to fill in the details of Cupid’s face, and the white silk of his mother’s dress on which his hand rested. In the glazing and layering of paint she applied all that she had learned of the way Titian captured light. And as she stood back she saw how what she had done brought to life not simply a mother and child, but the sense of an infant thriving on the love it received. In the flush of the child’s face she could see how it had been upset and now was calmed, how its hand had rested on its mother not just as a sense of comfort but as a life source. Upset, for reasons she couldn’t understand, she started to shake. Then, to her shock, she realised that West had re-entered the room, and quickly recomposed herself.

  Her concern that she might have betrayed any kind of emotion to the American was quickly supplanted by her alarm at the way he seemed to react. When he saw the painting, he stopped dead. She suddenly feared he was angry – pushing her own emotions to the side, she apologised for having done so much while he was out of the room. He shook his head and walked closer to the painting. ‘Is this from the part of the method you have not allowed me to see?’ he asked. She was silent, not knowing exactly how to answer. ‘Or is it what you have deduced from what I have taught you?’ he continued.

  She found some words, unable herself truly to understand. ‘It was from the method,’ she replied firmly, ‘though…’ she continued as she saw the expression hardening in his eyes, ‘… you have taught me much. But it was the method that allowed me to do this.’

  He turned to scrutinise the painting again. She saw a sense of shock in his bearing, a return of the unease she had noted when they had first met. She feared she had overstepped the mark, that somehow she had broken some unspoken contract between them.

  ‘The method,’ he repeated. ‘That it lets you – if you’ll excuse me, my dear – that it lets you create this…’

  His voice went quiet.

  ‘Have I done something wrong?’ she asked.

  She looked towards the dark eyes stricken with doubt.

  ‘In truth, my dear, I cannot understand what you have done.’ He could not stop looking at the painting. And at that point, she thought with fear, he has turned against me. She could feel it as surely as if he had declared his hostility out loud, but she could not understand it. She thought back with anxiety on what she had said to him before he had left the room. She wondered if some careless word had pricked him, some thoughtless observation had put him on his guard. Then she looked towards the painting again.

  There is something wrong with it that I cannot see, she thought in faint desperation. He was happy to have me here and now he is not. Please God, tell me not that we have gone through so much to reach this stage, and now it is I who have ruined it.

  She could not say anything more to him beyond the polite formalities as she was ushered out to a carriage. Even as he smiled and bade her farewell, it was as if a wall had sprung up between them. How often had she chastised herself since then? How often had she wondered w
hat naïve mistake she had made, what unspoken code she had violated. Yet after Cosway’s visit she could see that the change in his attitude represented something that even she could never have dared imagine. ‘His loss of composure was because it was I and not he who created the full Titian effect,’ she whispers to herself. ‘When he said, “That it lets you create this…” it was not an expression of disdain, it was an expression of wonder.’

  In the Sub-Dean’s vestry at the Chapel Royal, Provis has no conception that Ann Jemima has fled. Round and round he paces, muttering in the incense-silenced air. Eventually, to calm himself, he sits down, picks up a communion chalice, and starts to polish it.

  Clicking heels on the chapel’s marble floor interrupt his solitude.

  ‘Provis?’ The Serjeant of the Vestry, Joseph Roe, is in the doorway. Small dark eyes blaze with the intensity of fire in a pale elongated face. ‘I need you to come and assist me with trimming the candles.’

  Provis opens a drawer in the cupboard next to him, removes a white linen cloth, and starts to fold it in preparation for laying it over the chalice.

  ‘If you will forgive me, Mr Roe, I desire to remain alone right now.’

  He refuses to meet his eye.

  ‘Mr Provis,’ Roe spits out in a whisper. ‘I know you believe you have been wronged, but that is no reason to be insolent with all around you.’

  ‘There have been many nights that I have not slept this year because I thought Benjamin West might be laughing at us.’ He looks at Roe through reddened eyes. ‘Now I discover I was right – but it is not because he attaches no value to the manuscript. It is because he attaches no value to myself and my daughter.’

  Roe sits down at the table to their right, and raps on it to indicate that Provis should sit on the other side.

  ‘I am concerned, Provis. Have you considered how serious the accusation is that you are making?’

  ‘This is the gamble he has taken. He knows that all will ask why a man as important as he would want to swindle people as lowly as we are. He knows that they will speculate that the money we were asking was too much, that the method was of little importance,’ he declares. It occurs to Provis as he speaks that his outrage is bestowing a lethal confidence – now he has no doubts at all about the sum they should receive. ‘Yet he would have no trouble paying us. Each time I have been to his house I have noticed something of value.’ His anger wrenches at him. ‘In his hallway he has a mirror with a frame carved by Grinling Gibbons. In his dining room he has a seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry that covers more than half one wall. To my mind he could sell just one small painting in his drawing room and have enough to pay us three times over. Why would he deny us £500?’

  Roe’s eyes narrow.

  ‘I am sure there is some reasonable explanation. You should calm down before doing anything, Mr Provis, your frame of mind helps no one, least of all yourself.’

  ‘You are sceptical, I see.’ Provis speaks more calmly now. ‘Well, so be it. But what is important here is that Mr West is not. Can you not see how West’s dishonesty is also a vouch of faith in what we have revealed to him? I fail to comprehend how the situation can be read otherwise.’

  Roe is silent for a moment. ‘What does your daughter say?’

  Provis takes a deep breath. ‘She was calling out in her sleep in the night, and she would not eat this morning. I pray that West’s insult is not compounded by her becoming ill.’

  ‘She is a most admirable young lady.’

  ‘Yet she has had to combat so much. Some will condemn her for being too ambitious. If that is enough to acquit West, then this is a world without justice.’

  ‘But this is a world with justice.’

  Provis regards his employer with withering irritation, marvels again at his unquestioning belief that his God is just, and that the English monarch is the prime instrument of God’s rule on earth.

  ‘Well in that case,’ he replies with barely disguised irony, ‘I shall simply wait till all is resolved favourably.’

  ‘The King and Pitt are with us for communion this morning.’ The Serjeant of the Vestry rises. ‘We shall talk on this later.’

  A chorus of croaks and jeers distracts Ann Jemima from her thoughts. The bell tolls in a small church to her left – ahead of her a crowd is gathering. Horses trip and stumble as they pull the carts of revellers down uneven streets. When she looks up at the windows, men, women and children are pressed against them. Despite the early hour and coldness of the morning, people are standing outside taverns drinking.

  ‘What is happening?’ she asks an old man with hollow cheeks and disappointment scarred beneath his eyes. He surveys the passers by over his tankard. ‘What is the celebration?’

  ‘Execution,’ he replies shortly.

  ‘An execution?’ she repeats with shock.

  ‘We have not had one like it at Newgate for a while,’ he replies. ‘Five ’angings including a woman.’

  ‘What is their crime?’

  ‘They counterfeited coins. For men the punishment’s always been ’anging, but the woman is lucky.’ She looks at him, incredulous.

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘Six years ago they would’ve burnt ’er at the stake.’ He surveys her impassively. ‘Women counterfeiters was punished more ’arshly – the crime was considered a greater perversion of their nature. But some bleeding ’earts got the law changed. As I said, she is lucky she is just being ’anged.’

  His mouth opens to become a cave stinking of beer. She takes her leave swiftly and walks on. All around she sees the faces darkened with anticipation, smells the hunger for death, hears the ribald denunciations. She imagines the condemned men and the woman in their cells. Wonders if they are terrified or defiant, resigned to their fate or raging against its injustice.

  She moves further down the street. In the distance she can see where the gibbets have been set up. She walks over to a boy who is selling pamphlets.

  ‘Tale of Eleanor ’arris and ’er gang,’ the boy intones, dull-eyed, holding out one of them. ‘Cost you a farthin’.’

  ‘Is she the woman being executed?’

  ‘The very one.’

  ‘How did she commit her forgery?’

  ‘She did what many have done before ’er. Clipped the edges off coins, and melted the metal for counterfeit moulds.’

  ‘And for this people must die…’

  ‘She and ’er ’usband and ’is friends. Yes they must die. Can’t show disrespect to the King’s image in these times and get away with it.’

  Ann Jemima looks around her again. ‘Move along, missy,’ shouts an old man. Now she feels herself being shifted along the ground – all around her she can see open mouths, raised hands, hears the shouting get ever louder. She cannot quite comprehend the surge of energy around her, the vibration of sound that invades her body and skull. She wants to scream for it all to stop, to call out that it is a madness. Every atom in her body is driving her to flee from here, and yet at the same time she feels that she must stay, be one person in the crowd who is not jeering, screeching, vomiting contempt.

  She realises there is a low wall to her right, and with a little effort climbs up onto it. A cart is rattling from the other direction down the street. As it passes her she sees it is carrying three women in rags smiling happily with children – the youngest seems little more than six. She looks beyond them and sees that in the distance animal carcasses are being loaded onto carts before setting off towards Smithfield. All around her, the crowd swirls and eddies – the surging waves of excitement, the rhythmic pulse of baying sound. Kisses are blown back and forth, the voices of hawkers tout food and pamphlets, stray dogs bark from surrounding alleyways.

  And in the middle of this all, five gibbets standing in a row. Death among the living, silence amid the noise. The sun catches the gibbets, paints their loops in shadow on the ground. In the prison cells, the condemned are waiting.

  As the Serjeant of the Vestry is taking his leave, the door gap
es open again. There stands Darton, his eyes swiftly reading the situation.

  ‘I see we are in serious debate, gentlemen,’ Darton says. ‘Shall I return at a later point?’

  ‘We talk of West,’ says Provis grimly.

  Darton studies him for a moment.

  ‘Mrs Tullett told me. I was sorry to hear it. From what Ann Jemima said to me when we last met, the signs were hopeful.’

  Roe indicates that he should step to one side, so he can leave the vestry.

  ‘I must prepare the altar for today’s service,’ he says. ‘I hope to see you in the chapel shortly, Mr Provis.’

  At his departure, the atmosphere in the vestry changes – as if molecules have arranged themselves in orderly lines on his entry, and with the force of his exit have been sent rolling around like billiard balls. Darton shifts his frame to the seat opposite Provis. He looks hard at the face that even in good humour seems blighted by misfortune: shadows like bruises under the eyes, the misshapen nose, the heavy mouth. ‘What do you intend to do to take revenge?’ he asks quietly.

  ‘I have not calculated it in detail, but revenge I will take.’

  ‘Will you have him attacked?’ Darton looks around him quickly. ‘I could arrange it.’

  Provis grimaces. ‘I intend something slightly more subtle.’ He stares. ‘Something that will leave its stamp on his reputation for a long time.’

  Darton is quiet for a moment.

  ‘Provis, if you’ll forgive me, I have come here to see you on another matter. You seem to have been avoiding me of late.’