Restoration (7 page)

I cleaned the thing as best I could with some warm water, moistened some linen with alcohol and laid this upon it. Minette whimpered in her sleep and then her body was suddenly wracked with terrible convulsions. Foam-flecked spittle appeared at the corners of her mouth. I held onto her and waited for the convulsions to subside. At my elbow, my servant, Will Gates, was sweating and pale.

"It's no good," I said to Will. "I don't trust my own knowledge. Where can I find Doctor Murdoch at this hour?"

"Doctor Murdoch is a quack, Sir, a regular empiric."

"Never mind. He's our best hope. Where is he to be found?"

"In one place and only one."

"Well?"

"At the Rushcutters, Sir."

Why did I not send Will to the inn? I did not send him because I thought a fast canter on Danseuse in the crisp November evening would help to rid me of some of the fear and anxiety by which I felt myself gripped. Shouting to my groom to saddle the horse, I carried Minette to my bedroom, laid her on my bed and told Will not to leave her side, on pain of immediate dismissal.

"What will I do if she rack and rigor again, Sir?"

"Hold her," I said, "try to hold her still."

I mounted Danseuse and was away through the park, sending the deer scurrying from our pathway. I pressed her to a fast gallop and, as I filled and refilled my lungs with the rich air, began to feel my terror depart a little.

I was sweating by the time I tied Danseuse to her post outside the Jovial Rushcutters and my face was aflame. I walked in, blowing like a whale. I cast around for the unmistakable sight of Doctor Murdoch, with his stooped shoulders and long clammy hands, but I couldn't see him. "Doctor Murdoch?" I asked one of the hobnailed peasants with his nose in his ale. "Was he here this evening? Does anyone know where he might be found?"

Through the malodorous crowd of pigmen, game-keepers and fowl-breeders came Meg Storey. In the dim candlelight of the tavern, her hair looked fiery. The dress and apron she wore were lilac. She bobbed a cheeky curtsey to me, then took my hand and led me without a word to the cool, dark stillroom where the barrels of beer were stacked and there reached up and placed a soft kiss upon my mouth. "That is to tell you," she said, and I caught the sour scent of beer on her breath, "I am sorry for what happened to your new vocation."

I let out a yelp of laughter, and, all hot and in a lather of body and brain, gathered Meg Storey into my arms. "Nature…" I murmured between kisses and caresses. "Let nature work upon Minette and upon me…" And in moments I had abandoned my poor dog to her fate and lay tumbling with Meg on the earthen floor.

An hour later, Doctor Murdoch came into the tavern, but so confused and excited was I by my amours with Meg Storey, that I no longer thought to find him there, but spent the rest of the night riding hither and thither in search of him, until Danseuse would gallop no more and we walked wearily home.

Will Gates was asleep on the floor of my bedchamber. Laid out on my bed, under a striped cloth I recognised as one of the large table napkins given to me by the King, was the dead body of Minette.

I knelt down and tried to think of a prayer, but found that, along with my all too insubstantial knowledge of disease, I had consigned to oblivion any number of the ancient words of God.

The morning after the death of Minette, Finn arrived to give me a painting lesson. Wearily, I put on my floppy hat and my smock. A chill rain, now driving against the panes of my studio window, had saturated Finn's rather threadbare outer garments and given him the look of a destitute. We were, in short, a miserable pair. And it occurred to me that, although the spur to creative endeavour may very often be melancholy, it relies in its execution on its opposing element, choleric fire, of which, that morning, I felt not the smallest flame.

"Go home," I said to Finn, unwisely as it turned out, for Finn at that time had none to go to, but had spent the previous night in one of Lord Bathurst's cowsheds. And so wet and woebegone did the poor artist feel, that he was emboldened to broach with me, not for the first nor the last time, the great subject of my influence with the King and the chance of my obtaining for him some position, however meagre – a fresco assistant, a designer of playing cards – at Court.

Now, the loss of Minette had not only saddened me, but had also made me afraid. My own deliberate act of forgetfulness had allowed her to die; King Charles, in his turn, I now saw, had consigned his onetime Fool to oblivion. I had my house and my title as recompense, but I was forgotten. Cleverer, wittier, less ignoble people had replaced me. I had served my purpose and was now cast from favour. Sick at heart as I was, however, I had no intention of revealing to Finn (himself so full of
hauteur
in his disdain of my painting talent) that I no longer had any influence at Whitehall.

"Finn," I said, whipping off my floppy hat and throwing it down on the stack of virgin canvases, "it is pointless to raise this matter with me, when it is manifestly clear that you have utterly failed to comprehend the way in which such transactions are carried out."

"What can you mean?" asked Finn, shifting his feet uncomfortably, so that I heard the squelch of his shoes.

"What I mean, Finn," I said acidly, "is that we live in commercial times. Take it or leave it, this is the world we inhabit. And he who takes no account of this is likely to die poor and unknown."

Finn's pretty mouth dropped open, giving him a childlike, idiotic look. "If I were rich," he said piteously, "I would of course give you gold to mention my talent to His Majesty, but, as you see, I barely make a living, and if I am to sacrifice the little you pay me for painting lessons…"

"
How
you set about the task of persuading me to use my influence in London is of no interest to me," I snapped. "I merely remind you that, although an Age of Philanthropy may one day catch our commercial English hearts unaware, the time is not now. And he who is not of the time risks the scorn of his peers and the grave of a pauper. Go home, or rather go back to Lord Bathurst's cowshed, or wherever you plan to lay your innocent head tonight, and think about what I have said."

I watched him walk out into the rain. Tall and thin, his retreating figure reminded me, as it never previously had, of my father, and I experienced a moment of regret, like a sudden wounding in my belly. I felt most extraordinarily alone. I would have mounted Danseuse and begun a mad-cap journey to London there and then, had I not promised the King to stay away from Court – "and neither at Celia's house at Kew, not in the corridors of Whitehall to show your face, Merivel," – unless invited there by him alone.

I sat down before my empty easel. I took off my wig and ran my hands furiously through my hog bristles. When I contemplated all that I had been given, I knew I had no right to feel that I had been betrayed, and yet I did. It had never occurred to me, you see, when I woke from my wedding night, alone and sickly in a dank forest, to see in the distance the King's coach moving off down Sir Joshua's drive, that I would never set eyes on him again. My future, I had believed, was now tied irrevocably to his. And without my foolishness to divert him from the cares of State, he would, I had convinced myself, surely grow grave and sorrowful and start to feel some need of me. But Minette's death now revealed to me that I had been wrong. It was now almost winter. In five months, despite frequent visits from some of the Court gallants, fond of the Norfolk air and games of croquet on my lawn with their pretty mistresses, I had had from the King no word, message or token of any kind. "Never fear," the Court wags had told me, "he will send for you, Merivel, when he's in the mood for farting!" And they had doubled up with laughter over their croquet mallets. I had, of course, joined in the general mirth. I was loved by these men for my willingness to ridicule myself. But I was not, as you can imagine, in the least comforted by their words.

I left my Studio and went to my Morning Room, where I sat down at my bureau and prepared to write the King a letter:

My Most Gracious Sovereign
, I began, and the image I had, as I wrote these words, of the King as a moving, shimmering body of celestial light was overwhelming.

Your loyal Fool, Merivel, salutes you
, I continued,
and prays this letter finds Your Majesty in excellent health and spirits, but – God forgive me – the latter yet no so entirely excellent that you would not, as the rememberance of my antics and my untidy person comes now to your mind, believe yourself contented by some small dose of my company. Let me hasten to say that, were you, Sir, for however brief a time and in whatever role your whim or disposition might dictate, desirous of seeing me, you have only to send word and the speed of my journey to London would be scarcely less than those swift-traveling thoughts which bring me so frequently, in my presumptuous mind, to Your Majesty's side
.

Honesty now forces me to relate a great sorrow that has befallen me here, in the midst of all my luxury and brocaded living, namely the death of my dog, your Minette, who was the small creature I most loved in all your Kingdom. I beg my Sovereign to believe I did all within my power towards the saving of her and to know that she was never in her in short life, no, not for one day or one hour, neglected by Her Master,

Your Servant,

R. Merivel

I read through my letter, without permitting the truth-telling inhabitant of my mind to comment upon the words written by the liar who also lodges there, preferring as I do that these two remain distant but courteous neighbours. I sealed it and gave it to Will Gates with instructions that it be sent post-haste to London.

Writing it had eased my mind sufficiently for me to call for my coach and make the short journey through the continuing downpour to the Bathursts, having first powdered my armpits, put on a yellow coat and done what I could to make my person agreeable, in case I chanced on Violet alone and was able to bury my sorrows in her velvet bosom. Alas, I was not so lucky. Bathurst 's memory, so frequently a vessel given up for lost, had that morning bobbed briefly but jauntily to the surface, during which time it recognised Violet as the very woman he had long ago bedded in a frenzy of torn love-knots and snatched garters. He was, as her servant announced my arrival, in the act of tearing a marten cat's head and a couple of badgers' pelts off the wall and laying these trophies at his wife's feet.

The following Friday, Finn did not appear for my painting lesson.

It was an exceedingly splendid autumn morning, burnished by the sun, but my mind wouldn't rid itself of the sodden and bedraggled figure, with my father's long but awkward stride, I had sent off into the rain. Had the poor man died of damp and cold? Or had my Court-wisdom shocked him into abandoning the gentry and their corrupt ways – to paint pictures of the likes of Meg Storey, perhaps, in return for a pint of ale, or a quick favour on the stillroom floor?

The day was altogether too fair to waste on worry or remorse. Finn's fate was not mine to control. I put on my floppy hat and my smock and, with Will's help, carried my easel and my painting equipment to a far corner of my south lawn, from which I had a most magnificent perspective of the park – the purple and gold beeches, the russet elms, the fiery chestnuts and the soft sweep of brown beneath them that was the line of grazing deer.

I stared at this scene. I knew that to render the foliage of a tree in all its complexity was beyond my skills as a draughtsman, let alone as a painter in oils. What I could try to capture, however, were the colours. Thus, without sketching anything in charcoal on my canvas, I began furiously to mix my pigments and to lay the paint on in bold sweeps and flourishes, colour upon colour, a scrabble of white for a cloud, wavering lines of green and yellow for the rich grass, cascades of oranges, reds and golds for the chestnuts, a deep mass of purple and brown and black for the further beeches. I worked like a furnace-feeder, like a glass-blower, puffing and straining. My temperature rose and my heartbeat quickened. I was ablaze with my painting. I knew that it was as wild, as undisciplined, as excessive as my own character, but it perfectly expressed, all unskilled as it was, my
response
to that autumn day, and thus, to me, had a satisfactory logic to it. Furthermore, when it was at last finished and I stepped back from it a few paces and looked at it through half closed eyes, it did resemble to some degree the scene before me. It was, perhaps, as if a child had painted it. It was crude. The colours were too bright and too many. And yet it didn't lie (not even as much, Finn, I wanted to say, as your beautifully painted Greek columns or shepherdesses' picnics). It was, in some essential way, what I had seen. I walked round to the back of the canvas and scribbled a title on it in French:
Le Matin de Merivel, l'automne
.

It was then, as I looked up, that I saw Finn, dressed I noticed rather gayly in Lincoln Green, striding towards me across the lawn. I was glad he hadn't starved to death, even more glad when I read from the knowing half smile on his face that he had heeded my words and brought me some little inducement to carry out the favours of which he believed me capable. For I am extremely fond of receiving presents. Possessing, as I do now, an abundance of useless knick-knacks and
objets d'art
, has not diminished my enthusiasm for accepting more, and the gift, say, of a fine pewter tippling jug or even the head of a marten cat from old Bathurst can cause me an entire day's good spirits.

"Finn!" I called warmly. "You are not starving in some hovel like Poor Tom, as I imagined you to be!"

"What?" said Finn, checked in his stride.

"Oh, never mind my follies," I laughed. "Come and look at my painting."

Finn approached. The sun had now moved and was falling smack across my picture, causing the colours to seem even more gaudy than they actually were. The artist stared at my work. Across his face began to spread a look of recoil, as if, upon the clean waistcoat of this Robin Hood, his Maid Marian had thrown up her pudding. I saw him struggling with words, but they seemed to choke him and he turned away.