Black Hearts in Battersea Read online

  ‘I can paint a bit,’ said Simon. ‘That’s why I’ve come to London – to study painting.’

  ‘Proper all-rounder, ennee?’ said Mr Cobb, rolling his eyes in admiration.

  ‘You’d best take him on, Sam, then you’ll be able to retire,’ Dan remarked.

  ‘Well, I like a young ’un who has confidence in hisself. I like a bit o’ spunk. And dear knows there’s plenty of work. Tell you what, young ’un, you come round here this evening, fiveish, and I’ll see what you can do. Agreeable?’

  ‘Very, thank you, sir,’ Simon answered cheerfully. ‘And thank you, for setting me on my way,’ he said to Dan, who winked at him in a friendly manner.

  ‘Goodbye, young ’un. Now then, Dan,’ said Mr Cobb, ‘it’s early, to be sure, but there’s such a nip in the air these misty mornings; what do you say to a little drop of Organ-Grinder’s Oil?’

  Simon felt somewhat nervous as he approached the Academy, but was encouraged to find that, on a nearer view, it presented a less imposing aspect. Some ingenious spirit had hit on the notion of suspending clothes-lines between the Grecian columns supporting the roof, and from these dangled a great many socks, shirts, and other garments, while all round the marble fountain in front of the Academy knelt or squatted young persons of both sexes busily engaged in washing various articles of apparel.

  Simon approached a young man who was scrubbing a pair of red socks with a bar of yellow soap and said:

  ‘Can you tell me, please, where I shall find Dr Furnace?’

  The young man rinsed his socks, held them up, sniffed them, glanced at the sun, and said:

  ‘About ten o’clock, is it? He’ll be having breakfast. In his room on the first floor.’

  He sniffed his socks again, remarked that they still smelt of paint, and set to rubbing them once more.

  Simon walked on, wondering if the young man kept his paints in his socks. In the doorway a sudden recollection hit him. Paint! That was the smell that had seemed so familiar at the top front room at Mrs Twite’s. Of course, it was paint! Then – Simon stopped, assailed by suspicion – was that why Mrs Twite had been scrubbing with bath-brick? To remove the smell of paint? Why?

  Pondering this, Simon sat down on the first convenient object he found – a stone statue of a lion, half finished – to unravel the matter a little further.

  Dido said Dr Field had not been at the Twites’. But the rooms were as he had described them, the address was as he had given it, and the room smelt of paint, which suggested that he had occupied it.

  Perhaps, Simon thought, perhaps he had fallen out with the Twites – had had something stolen, or found the house too dirty, or objected to being woken at one in the morning by Hanoverian songs. He had complained, taken his leave, and moved away. The Twites, annoyed at losing a lodger, had contrived an elaborate pretence that no Dr Field had ever lived with them …

  Somehow Simon found it hard to believe this. For one thing, Dr Field was far from fussy, and, provided he was furnished with privacy and a good light for painting, was unlikely to object if his neighbours practised cannibalism or played the bass drum all day so long as they let him alone. And secondly, why should the Twites bother to make such a pretence about a trivial matter? Half a dozen people – neighbours, patients, local tradesmen – would be able to give their story the lie.

  Then it occurred to Simon that he had not yet heard what Mr or Mrs Twite had to say; he had only had Dido’s version. Perhaps the whole mystery was just her nonsense, and when he got back that night he would be handed a piece of paper with Dr Field’s address on it.

  Cheered by this reasonable notion, Simon stood up and crossed the entrance hall. A large double flight of marble stairs faced him, and between them stood a statue of a man in a huge wig, dressed in knee-breeches and a painter’s smock. He held a marble paintbrush and was engaged in painting a marble picture on a marble easel. The back of the easel bore an inscription:

  MARIUS RIVIÈRE

  1759–1819

  Founded this Academy

  Simon noticed, when he was high enough up the stairs to be able to look over the marble gentleman’s shoulder, that someone had painted a picture of a pink pig wearing a blue bow on the marble canvas.

  Opposite the top of the stairs he saw a door labelled ‘Principal’. Rather timidly he knocked on it, and an impatient voice shouted, ‘Alors – entrez!’

  Walking in, Simon found himself in a medium-sized room that was overpoweringly warm and smelt strongly of garlic and coffee and turpentine. The warmth came from two braziers full of glowing charcoal, on one of which a kettle steamed briskly. The room was so untidy – littered with stacks of canvases, baskets of fruit, wood-carvings, strings of onions hanging from the ceiling, easels with pictures on them, statues – that at first Simon did not see the little man who had told him to come in. But after a moment the same irascible voice said:

  ‘Eh bien! Shut the door, if you please, and declare yourself!’

  ‘Are – are you Dr Furnace, please, sir?’ Simon said hesitantly.

  ‘Furrneaux, if you please, Furrneaux – I cannot endure the English pronunciation.’

  Dr Furnace or Furneaux was hardly more than three feet six inches high, and extraordinarily whiskery. As he rose up from behind his desk he reminded Simon irresistibly of a prawn. His whiskers waved, his hands waved, a pair of snapping black eyes took in every inch of Simon from his dusty shoes to the kitten’s face poking inquisitively out of his jacket.

  ‘And so, and so?’ Dr Furneaux said impatiently. ‘Who may you be?’

  ‘If you please, sir, my name is Simon, and I believe Dr Field spoke about me –’

  ‘Ah, yes, Gabriel Field. A boy named Simon. Attendez –’

  Dr Furneaux waved his antennae imperatively, darted over to a cupboard, returned with a coffee-pot, tipped coffee into it from a blue paper bag, poured in hot water, produced cups from a tea-chest and sugar from another blue bag.

  ‘Now we wait a moment. A boy named Simon, yes. Gabriel Field mentioned you, yes. In a moment I shall see what you can do. You are hungry?’ he said, looking sternly at Simon. ‘Take the bread off that brazier – zere, blockhead! – and find some plates and some butter. In ze brown jar, of course!’ as Simon, bewildered, looked uncertainly about him. The brown earthenware jar resembled something from the Arabian Nights and could easily have held Ali Baba and a couple of thieves.

  ‘So, now we eat,’ said Dr Furneaux, breaking eight inches off a loaf shaped like a rolling-pin and handing it to Simon.

  ‘I will pour ze coffee in a moment. Tell me about my good friend Dr Gabriel Field – how is it wiss him?’

  ‘Dr Field?’ Simon stammered, absently taking a large bite of the crisp bread which flew into crumbs all round him, ‘but h-haven’t you seen him? I thought he would be here.’

  ‘Not since my jour de fête in July,’ said Dr Furneaux, carefully pouring coffee into two cups and handing one to Simon.

  ‘But then, but –’

  ‘He said you were to live wiss him. Are you not, then?’

  ‘He seems to have moved. He is not at the address he sent –’

  ‘Chose assez étonnante,’ Dr Furneaux muttered to himself. ‘Can Dr Field be in debt? Escaping his creditors? Or in prison? He would have told me …’

  ‘He wrote inviting me to come and live with him, sir,’ Simon said. ‘He would have said if he was planning to move –’

  ‘Well, no doubt he has been called away on ze private affairs. He will return. One sing is certain, he will come back here. Now, you have eaten? Ze little one, he has eaten too?’ Dr Furneaux nodded benevolently at the kitten which was licking up some crumbs of bread and butter from the dusty floor. ‘It is well. To work, zen! I wish to see you draw.’ He handed Simon a stick of charcoal.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Simon took the charcoal with a trembling hand. ‘Wh-where shall I draw?’

  Dr Furneaux’s whiskered gaze roved round the room. There was not a clean canvas nor an empty space i
n it. ‘Draw on zat wall,’ the Doctor said, waving at the wall to his right, which was invitingly bare and white.

  ‘All over it, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What shall I draw?’

  ‘Oh – anysing you have seen in ze last few days.’

  As usual when Simon started drawing, he was carried away into a world of his own. People knocked and entered and consulted Dr Furneaux, waited for assistance, went away again; some of them stared at Simon, others took no notice. Dr Furneaux himself came and went, darting out to conduct a class, or back to criticize the efforts of a private pupil. At intervals he made more coffee, and from time to time offered a cup of it – or a piece of bread, apple, grape, or sausage – to Simon. He ignored Simon’s work, preferring, apparently, to wait till it was finished.

  Towards noon a boy a little younger than Simon came in escorted by a tall, thin man.

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ Dr Furneaux groaned to himself at sight of them. Then he stood up and waved them forward.

  ‘My dear young Justin – my dearest friend’s grandson! And the sage Mr Buckle. Enchanté de vous voir. Mr Buckle – do yourself ze kindness to sit down. Let us see what you have been working at ziss week, my dear Justin.’

  The boy did not speak, but hunched his shoulders and looked depressed, while the man addressed as Mr Buckle – a sandy-haired, pale-eyed individual dressed in rusty black – laid a small pile of drawings on the desk.

  Neither the man nor the boy took any notice of Simon, who observed that the boy looked positively ill with apprehension as Dr Furneaux examined his work. He was a sickly-looking lad, very richly dressed, but the olive-green velvet of his jacket went badly with his pale, spotty cheeks, and the plumed hat which he had taken off revealed lank, stringy hair.

  It was plain that he wished himself a thousand miles away.

  Dr Furneaux looked slowly and carefully through the pile of drawings. Once or twice he seemed about to burst out with some remark, but restrained himself; when he reached the last, however, his feelings became too much for him and he exploded with rage.

  ‘How can you, how can you bring such stuff to show to me, Jean-Jacques Furneaux, Principal of ze Rivière Académie? Ziz, zis is what I sink of zese abominable drawings!’

  With considerable difficulty he tore the whole batch across and across, scattering pieces of paper all about him, his whiskers quivering, his eyes snapping with rage. Although so small, he was a formidable spectacle. The boy, Justin, seemed ready to melt into the ground with terror as bits of paper flew like autumn leaves. Simon watched with awe and apprehension. If Dr Furneaux was so severe with a familiar pupil, grandson of an old friend, what was his own reception likely to be?

  The only person who thoroughly enjoyed the scene was the kitten, who darted out and chased the fluttering scraps of paper round Dr Furneaux’s feet. The sight of him appeared to calm the fiery little Principal. He stopped hissing and stamping, stared at the kitten, snapped his fingers, took several deep breaths, and walked briskly two or three times up and down the room, neatly avoiding all the obstacles. At last he said:

  ‘I have been too harsh. I do not mean to alarm you, my dear boy. No, no, I hope I treat my best friend’s grandson better zan zat. But zere must, zere must be a painter hidden in ze grandson of Marius Rivière. We shall wr-rrench him out, n’est-ce-pas? Now – you shall draw somesing simple –’

  His eye roamed about the room and alighted on the kitten. ‘You shall draw zat cat! Of the most simple, no? Here –’ He swept everything – plates, bread, papers, and ink – off his desk in disorder, found a stack of clean paper, and beckoned to Justin. ‘Here, my dear boy. Here is charcoal, here is crayon. Now – draw! I shall return in two hours’ time. Come, my dear Mr Buckle. Justin will be easier if we leave him alone.’

  He took the arm of Mr Buckle who moved reluctantly towards the door. ‘Who is that?’ he asked sourly, pointing to the legs of Simon, who was lying on his stomach behind the Arabian Nights jar, drawing cobblestones.

  ‘Zat?’ Dr Furneaux shrugged. ‘Nobody. A boy from nowhere. He will not disturb Justin – his mind is engrrossed in drawing.’

  The door closed behind them.

  Simon felt sorry for Justin – it seemed unreasonable to expect the boy to be a painter just because his grandfather had been one and founded the Academy. People, surely, did not always take after their grandfathers? Perhaps I’m lucky, Simon thought for the first time, not to know who my parents or grandparents were.

  After working diligently for another half-hour, he stood up and stretched to rest his cramped muscles. The kitten greeted him with a loud squeak of pleasure and ran up his leg. But the boy, Justin, took no notice – he was sitting at the desk, slumped forward with his face in his hands, the picture of dejection. He had not even started to draw.

  ‘I say, cheer up,’ Simon said sympathetically. ‘It can’t be as bad as that, surely?’

  Justin hunched one shoulder away from him.

  ‘Oh, you’re all right,’ he said with the rudeness of misery. ‘Nobody cares how you draw. But just because my grandfather was a painter and started this place, everyone expects me to be wonderful. Why should I learn to paint? I’m going to be a duke. Dukes don’t paint.’

  ‘I say, are you though?’ Simon said with interest. ‘I’ve never met a duke.’

  ‘And I daresay you never will,’ Justin said listlessly. Just at that moment the kitten climbed across from Simon’s leg to the desk and began playing with a ball of charcoal eraser. Justin made a rather hopeless attempt at sketching it, but it would not oblige him by staying still, and, after jabbing a few crude scrawls, he exclaimed furiously, ‘Oh, curse and confound the little brute!’ and hurled the charcoal across the room. The kitten sat down at once and stared at him with large reproving eyes.

  ‘Quick, now’s your chance while he’s still,’ Simon urged encouragingly. ‘Try again.’

  ‘I can’t draw live things!’ snapped Justin. ‘A kitten hasn’t any shape – it’s all fuzzy!’ He angrily scribbled a matchstick cat – four legs, two ears, and a tail – then rubbed it out with his fist and drew the same fist over his eyes, leaving a damp, charcoaly smear on his cheek.

  ‘No,’ said Simon patiently, ‘look at the kitten. Look at its shape and then draw that – never mind if what you draw doesn’t look like a cat. Here –’ He picked up another bit of charcoal and, without taking the tip off the paper, quickly drew an outline – quite carelessly, it seemed, but Justin gasped as the shape of the kitten fairly leaped out of the paper. ‘I could never do that,’ he said with grudging admiration.

  ‘Yes you could – try!’

  Advising, coaxing, half guiding Justin’s hand, Simon made him produce a rough, free drawing which was certainly a great deal better than his previous work.

  ‘You ought to feel the kitten all over,’ Simon suggested. ‘Feel the way its bones go. It looks fluffy, but it’s not like a wig – it has a hard shape under the fur.’

  ‘I shall never be able to draw,’ Justin said pettishly. ‘Why should I? It’s not my nature. Besides, it’s not the occupation of a gentleman.’

  Simon opened his eyes wide.

  ‘But drawing is one of the best things in the world! I can’t think how you can live in London and not want to draw! Everything is so beautiful and so interesting I could be drawing for ever. And it is so useful; it helps you to remember what you have seen.’

  He glanced towards his own picture on the wall and Justin’s eyes followed listlessly. Not much was visible from where they stood, but a face could be seen, and Justin said at once:

  ‘Why, that’s Dido Twite.’

  ‘Do you know her?’ Simon was a little surprised that a future duke should be acquainted with such a guttersnipe.

  ‘Buckle, my tutor, used to lodge with her family and we called there once,’ Justin said indifferently. ‘I thought her a vilely impertinent brat.’

  ‘I lodge there now,’ Simon explained.

  ‘Wil
l you help me some more?’ Justin said. ‘I expect old Fur-nose may come back soon.’

  The kitten had settled again, and Simon helped Justin with more sketches.

  ‘Don’t rely on how you think it ought to look,’ he repeated patiently, over and over. ‘Ask your eyes and make them tell your hand – Look, his legs bend this way, not the way you have them –’ And, as Justin rubbed out his line and obediently redrew it, he asked, ‘Why did your tutor leave the Twite house? Where is he living now?’

  ‘With me, at Battersea Castle,’ Justin said, bored. ‘My uncle – he’s my guardian; my parents are dead – he arranged it. I’d been doing lessons with Buckle in the mornings, but now he lives in and works as my uncle’s steward too, and I have him on top of me all day long prosing and preaching about my duty as a future duke, and I hate it, hate it, hate it!’

  He jabbed his charcoal angrily at the paper and it snapped. Simon was disappointed. He had hoped the reason why Buckle left the Twite household might give him some clue as to Dr Field’s departure. He was about to put a further question when they heard voices outside. With a hasty gesture Justin waved him back to his corner behind the big jar and laid a finger on his lips. The door opened and Dr Furneaux burst in briskly, whiskers waving.

  ‘Eh bien, well, let us see how you have been getting on,’ he demanded, bustling round the desk to look at Justin’s drawings.

  ‘Pas mal!’ he declared. ‘Pas mal du tout! You see – when you work wiss your head and do not merely s-scamp through ze drawing, all comes different! Ziss here, and ziss –’ he poked the sketches – ‘is a r-rreal artist’s line. Here, not so good.’ Justin met his eyes nervously. ‘I am please wiss you my boy, very please. Now I wish you to do some painting.’

  Justin turned pale at the idea, but Mr Buckle, who had followed Dr Furneaux into the room, interposed hastily, ‘I am afraid that won’t be possible today, Dr Furneaux. His Grace the Duke is expecting Lord Bakerloo to meet him at three on His Grace’s barge to view the Chelsea Regatta.’