Restoration (19 page)

I found myself in the attic room at the Jovial Rushcutters sooner than I had intended: I lay there that very night.

The day of Finn's arrival passed most disagreeably and I was in such a lather of fury by suppertime that all I could think of was escaping from the house, so I shouted for my horse to be saddled and rode through the slush to the village. On my way, I chanced upon two poor people collecting sticks, of which I shall write more presently.

What so vexed me was Celia's treatment of Finn. Hearing from his thin lips that the King had commissioned him to paint her portrait, her eyes grew bright with joy. She summoned Farthingale and told her the merry tiding (the two of them reading into it excessive hopes for their imminent return to Kew) and they then began to fawn upon the artist, requesting to see his work and professing to find it most marvellous and brilliant and I know not what, and then bringing forth dresses and sashes and headdresses for him to choose from for the picture, the while utterly ignoring me and behaving as if I was of no account in the matter, which, alas, is true.

I observed Celia closely. Her beautiful smile, which I had seen so often given to the King, but scarcely ever to me, was almost constantly upon her lips, thus rendering her most infinitely pretty and sweet. Hers is the kind of sweetness which, once glimpsed, makes my heart tender – as if towards a child – and my manhood cruel – wanting to possess and abuse that very same childlike thing. I saw that Finn was utterly captivated by her. I saw also that Celia knew him to be captivated and did not mind, indeed allowed herself to flirt a little with him. And this last observation created in me a bitter yearning. Why – when she was my wife – could she not behave so charmingly to me?

I sat and watched her until I could endure it no longer, then went to the Music Room and played some foul blasts upon my oboe and kicked over my music stand, then threw the instrument down and went calling for my groom. On my way to the stables, I met Cattlebury who informed me that he had come by two dozen thrushes for supper. I told him curtly that I was not hungry but that he should serve up the wretched birds in a pie "for my wife and her new friend, Mr Finn". By the time they sat down to table (Celia's smile rendered all the more irresistible by the soft candlelight, no doubt) I had already consumed several flagons of ale and was conversing with a roofing man upon the abundance of rats to be found in thatch. "What if they are plague rats?" I asked. "Then death will come by the roof." And the old man nodded. "Widow Cartwright says the plague will come to Norfolk. Round and about springtime."

I went to Meg's bed very late and categorically drunk, after pissing in her fireplace and dousing what small warmth there was in the garrett. Once I held her in my arms, I went to sleep instantly, with my ugly head on her breasts.

When I woke, burdened as I knew I would be with an aching head and the smell of my own foul breath, I found myself alone, it being one of Meg's duties to rise early and sweep the floor of the tavern and air the place before the arrival of the first peasant for his cup of small beer. Ill as I knew myself to be, I rose immediately and went to the low window and looked out for, to my great chagrin, I now remembered that Danseuse had not been stabled the previous night and had spent it tied to a post under the cold stars. In what condition of cold and suffering I would find her, I did not know.

I could see almost nothing from the small window, except that a beastly drizzle was falling, dense like a mist. It is on such inhospitable mornings that the memory of midsummer causes my brain sudden suffering. My Merivel ancestors, haberdashers of Poitou, never endured an English winter. It is their blood, undoubtedly, that has made mine so susceptible to weather.

Meg found me kneeling at the window, and apparently thought I was at prayer, for she said, with a peevish coldness: "Prayer will not save you, Sir Robert."

"I am not praying, Meg," I said, "but scanning the environs in search of my horse."

"Your horse is in the stables," she said curtly, set down a pot of coffee and a dish of apple fritters on a table, and went out, each one of her words and gestures conveying intense displeasure. I remained kneeling, like a penitent. My life is a very muddled occurrence, I remarked to myself.

Finding no forgiveness or yielding in Meg that morning, I had no choice but to set off for home, a little restored by the coffee and fritters and mighty glad that my horse had not perished by my neglect, but my spirits at one with the weather. The thought of returning to be met by Finn in his ludicrous wig was so distasteful to me that I considered riding directly to Bathurst Hall, but found that the memory of Violet's party and the jokes about my ignominious role as cuckold still pained me. Furthermore, I felt no desire whatsoever for Violet, her demeanour and her coarse language now striking me as intolerably vulgar. I could do little, therefore, but return home, planning as I rode to soothe my body with soap and hot water and then to persuade Celia to sing for me alone, contriving some laborious task (such as the stretching of canvases) for Finn and banishing Farthingale to her room.

It was at this moment that I found myself at the place where I had seen the poor people grovelling for kindling. I reined in Danseuse and sat looking about me. There was no stirring anywhere, only the silent rain and the dripping of the trees.

I dismounted and tied the mare to a spindly ash. On the right of the lane was a small wood, to the left common land where the cottars of Bidnold grazed their sheep and goats. I had some vague notion of searching for the two Paupers, not with the intention of asking anything from them or indeed endeavouring to place them with one of Justice Hogg's three categories, but merely of regarding them face to face and seeing what state of misery or despair I could determine in them. In the near darkness, one of them holding a small lantern on a pole, they had struck me as people in terrible need, their faces cadaverous, their eyes fearful. In their masses, I beheld, unmoved, such poor folk in London, yet the sight of these two, a man and his wife in rags, had troubled me sufficiently to send me wandering into the wood in search of the hovel in which I supposed them to live.

I found nothing. Indeed the air in the wood was so still, it was difficult to imagine it disturbed by any living breath. After tearing my stockings on some briars, I abandoned my search and returned to my horse. As I re-mounted, I told myself that, were I in a condition of wretchedness, I would not seek out the Overseers in their wigs and wanton finery, but rather be at pains to conceal myself from them by whatever means I could devise.

At Bidnold, just as I feared, I found Finn at work upon the infernal portrait.

Celia, in a dress of cream-coloured satin, had been seated upon an ottoman (removed without my permission from the Withdrawing Room and placed near the Studio window). She held a lute in her lap and by her side sat her trembling Spaniel, Isabelle.

"Finn," I said, "you have positioned my wife in a draught. See how the dog is shivering."

To my delight, the artist looked momentarily dismayed, but Celia, without moving one half inch from her pose, informed me brusquely that she was not in the least cold.

"Ah," I said, "but you will surely catch an ague if you sit long there. I suggest we adjourn to the Music Room, where a fire has been lit."

"What time is it?" said Celia.

"I beg your pardon?"

"What hour is it?"

"I have no idea. I could, if you wish, consult the handsome timepiece given to me by – "

"I believe my guest will arrive at mid-day."

"Your guest? What guest, pray?"

"Am I not allowed guests, Merivel?"

"Naturally. I only wished to enquire – "

"He is my music teacher. At my father's request, he has agreed to make the journey from London."

"Ah."

"Thus my days will not be as tedious as they were. I will have the pleasure of sitting for a fine artist and the pleasure of singing for an inspiring Musikmeister."

"I'm sorry you have found the days 'tedious'."

"It's not your fault, Merivel. I don't belong in such a life."

"Happily," interrupted Finn, "you will soon be back at Court."

"Yes," said Celia. "Once the portrait is done, you will have to let me go, Merivel. Though it has been difficult for me to practise my singing without an accompanist, that is now remedied, thanks to my father. I am thus doing as you suggested, trying to come to a clearer understanding of my destiny through song. Thus, you must report that I have done all that the King requested."

"We shall see, Celia…"

"No. We shall not see. If you will not make a good report of me to the King, I shall return to London nevertheless. For the portrait changes all."

"How does it change all?"

"You are obtuse, Merivel. Would the King commission a portrait of a woman he did not intend to see again?"

"Very possibly," I replied. "In remembrance of former times, now departed – as a mere
souvenir
."

Celia shook her head and glared at me coldly.

"No," she said, "I know the King. He would not do this."

I was on the very verge of revealing to Celia what I had seen that strange night upon the river, the lights in her house, the revellers at the window. But I hesitated. Not only was I unwilling to hurt Celia so cruelly, but the night in question had taken on the colours and insubstantial quality of a dream in my mind, so that I could not now swear I had seen what I thought I had seen or merely dreamed it because I wanted it to be so. Likewise, on that early morning of the death of the Indian Nightingale, had Celia clung to me as she cried? Had she let me stroke her hair? Since then, she had been colder with me than before and I now foresaw a time when, surrounded by an entourage of Finn and the music master, she would forget me entirely.

I sighed and left the Studio, aware as I did so that there had been a strange sweetish smell in the room, most cloying and odious, which I knew must come from the powder adhering to Finn's wig.

Tired to my marrow, I feel. So tired, I feel the pain of exhaustion in my anus. But here I am at supper, attired in blue with a yellow bow on my lace collar, eating venison with Celia and her Musikmeister, whose name is Herr Hummel. His family is from Hanover and he dresses like a Puritan and complains of chilblains on his feet. "Musikmeister Hummel is a person of great refinement," Celia has informed me, but his refinement appears least in evidence at the table for a very slight paralysis of the lower lip has occasioned a tendency to dribble. I try to guess the man's age and deem it to be about fifty. His English is excellent, heavily accented but quite without fault. I find his presence moderately agreeable.

We are drinking a good claret. The pains of exhaustion fade somewhat. I am conversing with Herr Hummel on the subject of madrigal harmonies (about which I know very little but he a great deal, thus sparing me the effort of talking) when I suddenly remember my dream of the King on my roof and how, when asked how I was ever to master the art of oboe playing, he had advised me to "learn in secret". I interrupt Musikmeister Hummel to propose a toast to the King. We raise our glasses and I drink with great relish, aware that, though the arrival of Finn is most irritating to me, the arrival of Herr Hummel may prove most fortunate. For around his temporary habitation in my house I am now constructing a plan.

I glance at Celia. Warmed by the wine, she is smiling, but not at me, of course. I lower my gaze and for a few brief seconds allow myself to watch the rise and fall of her breasts.

My birthday is approaching. I was born under the constellation of Aquarius, the eleventh sign of the Zodiac, the sign of the water-butler, that humble but indispensable slave who fetches from wells and rivers the element so vital to the structure of human tissue. I imagine this Aquarius as an old, stooped man, his spine warped by the weight of a wooden yoke from which hang a pair of brimming pails. On he staggers, day after day, year after year, with his precious burden, but his strength is waning, he totters and stumbles and, as he moves through time, more and more water is spilled, thereby engendering in the bellies of the ancient gods an irritation stronger even than thirst. They long to give the slave's skinny buttocks a vengeful kick. They would, if they dared, send a rod of lightning to pierce his ragged neck. And yet they must not. Hopeless as he is, they cannot do without him.

Despite my birth date, the twenty-seventh of January, I have never, I think, held any notion of my own indispensability. As a child my mother looked at me lovingly and would no doubt have wept a while had I been eaten by a badger in the woods of Vauxhall. But this is all. She would not have died without my hand to hold. As a student of medicine, I prayed that my knowledge and skills might one day lie between a man and his death, but I cannot recall now that they ever did. In my brief delirious sojourn at Whitehall, I verily believed I was
becoming
indispensable to the King, but time has shown me that here I deceived myself utterly. More recently I have longed for Celia to esteem and value me and hold my life to be of prime importance, but much of the time she behaves towards me as if I was not there. Since the arrival of Finn with his commission for the portrait, she no longer regards me as her overseer. With her picture done, the King will, as she suspects, call her back and that will be the end of it. The duet of my imaginings will never be played. And yet I go on trying to please her. Her voice still moves me more than I can express. When seated near her, before the fire in the Withdrawing Room or at the supper table, I long to reach out and touch her. When she returns to Kew, I know that I shall mourn her loss. I may even write foolish letters to her, saying what I do not dare to say to her face. For I am a paradoxical thing: a dispensable Aquarius. I lie foolishly sprawled in the gutter of the
via della vita
. My pails, brimming not with water but with my own appetites and vain pleas, have toppled me; I have not been kicked.