Black Hearts in Battersea Read online

  ‘Barges – regattas,’ Dr Furneaux grumbled. ‘A true painter does not sink of anysing but painting! Eh bien, be off, zen, if you muss, but bring me more drawings – more, more! – and better zan zese, next time you come.’

  Justin and Mr Buckle nipped quickly out of the room almost before Dr Furneaux had finished speaking. The little Principal sat down at his desk, sighing heavily like a grampus.

  Then the kitten, who had been investigating a dangling string of onions, managed to dislodge the whole lot and bring them crashing down on to himself. He bounded away, stiff-legged with fright. Simon burst out laughing.

  ‘Tiens!’ declared Dr Furneaux. ‘It is ze doctor’s boy. I had forgotten you, mon gars. Voyons, what have you been doing all zis time?’

  Simon scrambled up, dusting charcoal from his knees, and Dr Furneaux picked his way through the furniture until he could survey the whole drawing, which now occupied about seven foot square. Simon tried in vain to make out the Doctor’s reactions from his expression. Dr Furneaux looked at the picture carefully for about five minutes without saying a word; sometimes he scrutinized some detail with his whiskers almost touching the charcoal, sometimes he stepped back as far as possible to observe the picture from a distance.

  Simon had drawn several scenes, one in front of the other. In the foreground was Dido Twite, perched on the donkey; her pert sparrow’s looks contrasting with its sleepy expression as she urged it along Rose Alley. To the right lay Mr Cobb’s yard, full of broken coaches, with the beaming Mr Cobb leaning against a wheel, about to sip his mug of Organ-Grinder’s Oil, and his men hard at work behind him.

  ‘Wiss whom have you studied drawing before?’ Dr Furneaux asked sharply.

  ‘With no one, sir. Dr Field told me one or two things – that’s all …’

  Dr Furneaux continued to study the picture and now rapped out a series of fierce questions: why had Simon placed this object there, that figure here, why had he drawn the man’s leg like this, the steps thus, the donkey like that?

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Simon kept saying in bewilderment. ‘It seemed as if it ought to go that way.’

  He was beginning to be afraid that Dr Furneaux must be angry when the little man amazed him by suddenly giving him a tremendous hug. Bristly whiskers nearly smothered him and the smell of garlic was overpowering.

  ‘You are a good, good boy!’ the Doctor declared. ‘I am going to make a painter of you, but only if you work wiss every particle of yourself!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Simon said faintly. All at once he felt excessively tired and hungry, his head ached, his arms and legs were stiff, he seemed to have been drawing in the stuffy room for half his lifetime.

  ‘You will go now. You will come back tomorrow morning. Wiss you you will bring charcoal, brushes, oil-paints – here, I give you ziss list – and palette. Zese sings you buy at a shop and at one shop only; zat is Bonnetiers in the King’s Road.’

  ‘Yes, sir. How – how much will they cost?’ Simon asked, doing feverish sums in his head, wondering how soon Mr Cobb would pay him for his work, how much he would get, how late the paint shop stayed open.

  Dr Furneaux looked at him sharply and said:

  ‘For ziss time, you pay nossing. Here, I give you ziss note to Madame Bonnetier –’

  ‘Oh, thank you – thank you, sir! And my fees? How much –’

  ‘Never mind zat for ze moment. We shall see, later. Now, go, go! Do you sink ze Pr-r-rincipal of ze Académie has nossing to do but talk to you all day?’ Dr Furneaux plainly hated to be thanked. ‘Ah, bah, it is nossing. I, too, was once a poor ragged boy – I! Take ze little one, too.’

  He grabbed the kitten, which was on his desk again, and held it out. As he did so his eye fell on Justin’s drawings. He checked a moment, his mouth open, then shut. He stared at Simon as if about to ask something, then evidently changed his mind, sighed, and gestured him to go.

  ‘He knew,’ Simon said to himself. ‘He knew I’d been helping Justin. I wonder if he was angry?’

  3

  WHEN SIMON RETURNED to Rose Alley that evening it was late. He had been to the paint shop and bought beautiful new fat glistening tubes of paint, soft smooth brushes, and a glossy palette. Then he had returned to Mr Cobb’s yard where he was given about five jobs to do in quick succession – replacing a cracked panel in a barouche, mending a broken axle-tree, turning a new spoke and putting it in a chariot-wheel, shoeing a pony, and bending an iron wheel-tread. By the end of this gruelling stint he was nearly dead of fatigue, and ravenous, but it was worth it, for Mr Cobb, clapping him on the shoulder, pronounced him a prime all-rounder, paid him a guinea then and there, with the promise of as much work as he wanted, and invited him up for a dish of pigs’ pettitoes and onions with Mrs Cobb and young Miss Cobb, who lived in a neat little apartment up a flight of steps over the coach-house at the back of the yard.

  When he got home to Rose Alley he found Dido Twite swinging on the broken rails in front of the house.

  ‘Why’ve you bin such a long time?’ she greeted him.

  ‘Working,’ said Simon.

  ‘Watch me do a handstand. What you bin working at?’

  ‘All sorts of things.’ He was very weary and disinclined for the company of this fidget of a child, but she seemed so delighted to see him that he lingered a minute or two, kindly admiring her antics.

  ‘There’s a circus coming to Southwark Friday week. D’you think they’d take me as a tumbler?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Simon said cautiously. ‘Anyway you don’t want to leave home, do you?’

  ‘Don’t I jist? Will you take me to the circus?’

  ‘I may not be here still,’ said Simon, who had been offered lodgings at the Cobbs’, and was inclined to move nearer to Rivière’s Academy. Dido’s face fell and she gazed at him open-mouthed. ‘Where can I get a wash?’ he went on.

  ‘Washus at the back,’ Dido said automatically. ‘Hot water’s tuppence a bucket. Why won’t you be here?’

  ‘I may move to Chelsea. I’m going in now. Goodbye.’

  He ran whistling upstairs. From behind a closed door on the first floor came long, breathy, mournful notes. He heard Dido scurry up behind him and burst through the door crying, ‘Pa! Pa! Stop playing and listen.’

  Simon went on up to his own room, fed the kitten, and rummaged among the things in his pack for a small towel and a lump of soap he had made himself from wood-ash and goose-grease. Presently he ran downstairs again. As he neared the bottom a voice above him called, ‘Hey!’

  He looked up and saw Dido hanging upside-down over the stair-rail. She dropped a slice of bread-and-jam which landed jam-side downwards on his head.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done, you wretched brat!’ said Simon crossly. He made a grab for her through the rail, but she retreated, screeching with laughter and mock alarm.

  ‘Oo, you don’t half look a sight! Jellyboy, jellyboy!’

  ‘Just wait till I get you!’ Simon threatened.

  ‘What’s it matter, you’re going to wash anyway.’

  Simon reflected that this was true, and went out to the wash-house, which was in a lean-to at the back of the house. A fire burned under a large copper in a brick bunker; the water in the copper was steaming. In a corner behind a screen stood a tin bath, with a shower pan supported on iron legs above it. Simon poured hot water into the bath. He pulled the string of the shower and hot water sluiced down on him and washed the jam out of his hair. He was soaping himself enjoyably when the wash-house door opened.

  ‘Go away!’ Simon shouted apprehensively. ‘I’m in the bath.’

  Dido’s face came poking round the door. ‘It’s only me,’ she reassured him.

  Simon scowled over the top of the screen. ‘Well, be off! It’s not polite to come in when someone’s bathing.’

  She skipped across the room. ‘Shall I take your clothes? You would look a nut-case then!’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’

  ‘Well, will you give me a
ride tomorrow?’

  ‘All right.’

  She put his clothes down and retreated, turning in the doorway to say, ‘Pa says you’re to come and have a dish of tea when you’re ready.’

  Simon hurried out of the bath as soon as she had gone and put his clothes on again. While he was emptying the water in canfuls down a grated drain he heard voices apparently coming from the roof. This puzzled him until he realized that the chimney of the copper acted as a conductor for sound. What he could hear was the voices of Mr and Mrs Twite in their upstairs parlour.

  ‘… very annoying that he found his way here,’ Mrs Twite was saying irritably.

  Mr Twite replied in a rumble of which nothing could be heard but the words, ‘Dido … most unfortunate.’

  ‘Eustace says’ – her voice came clearer, as if she had stepped towards the chimney-piece – ‘best stay here under our eye for the time being.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t care,’ her husband replied rather shrilly. ‘It’s only my house, after all. It’s all one to me if Eustace and his ideas land us in the –’

  ‘Quiet, Abednego! It’s only for six weeks or so, in any case. Only till we can dispose of him by means of the dark dew. And you may be sure that we’ll be handsomely rewarded when the Cause triumphs.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said sourly. ‘We haven’t had any reward for our other trouble yet, have we? I’m put upon, that’s what it is. I’m put upon! All I want is to follow art and play my hoboy, but what happens?’ He must have been walking across the room, for his words became fainter and Simon could hear nothing but a distant mumble in which the word ‘paint’ was alone distinguishable.

  He returned to his room with all his suspicions aroused once more. What – or who – was the cause of the ‘other trouble’? And was he himself the object of the Twites’ conversation? And who was Eustace? And, even more mysterious, what was the dark dew by means of which somebody was to be disposed of? Poison? The Twites looked a shifty, havey-cavey lot, but he found it hard to believe they were poisoners.

  The mournful music had begun again, but it stopped when he tapped at the Twites’ door.

  ‘Come in, come in, my dear young feller,’ boomed Mr Twite, who in daylight proved to be a scraggy individual, thin and bony, with a wisp of hair and a wisp of beard and curiously wandering eyes that never stayed in one position very long. ‘Settling, are you?’ he went on. ‘Capital, capital. All one happy family here, aren’t we, Penny? Aren’t we, Dido? Aren’t we, Ella, my dear?’

  The young lady addressed as Penny replied listlessly, ‘Yes, Pa,’ and did not lift her eyes from a copy of the Gentlewoman’s Magazine which she was studying. Dido, toasting bread at the fire, caught Simon’s eye and pulled a face. Mrs Twite, pouring hot water into a teapot, snapped, ‘Hold your hush, Abednego, and fetch the cordial.’

  Mr Twite meekly laid down the large wooden instrument on which he had been playing – Simon guessed it to be his hoboy – and took a dusty black bottle out of a cupboard.

  Mrs Twite turned to Simon, all smiles. ‘Sit down, Mr Thingummy, sit down. Don’t stand on ceremony here. Dido – move! You’ll take a dish of tea, I hope?’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Simon had already done very well at the Cobbs’, but in order to be polite he accepted tea and toast.

  ‘And a dash of mountain dew in it?’ said Mr Twite with the black bottle.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Simon said firmly. He wondered if this could be the dark dew, but decided it was not after Mr Twite had administered a large dram to himself and his lady, and a small one to Penelope. After a few sips of tea Mr Twite, who had been looking rather gloomy, cheered up amazingly and began singing:

  ‘Oh, it’s dabbling in the dew that makes the barmaids fair,

  With their dewy, dewy eyes and their brassy, brassy hair!’

  ‘Now, my dear boy,’ Mrs Twite said to Simon, ‘we want to hear all about you.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Twite, putting down the dewbottle, we want to hear all about you!’

  ‘All about you,’ murmured Penelope, without raising her eyes fron the magazine, and even Dido piped up, ‘All about you,’ and dropped a fistful of toast crumbs down Simon’s neck.

  ‘Oh, there’s not much to tell –’ Simon began, but Mrs Twite would have none of this.

  ‘Dear boy, there must be. Where have you come from? Who do you know? What are you going to do all day long in London?’

  Question by question she drew from Simon all there was to know about him. At the age of three he had been found wandering in the village of Loose Chippings in Yorkshire. Nobody claimed him and, mysteriously, he could not speak a word of English, so he was sent to the Poor Farm, where unlucky orphans were starved and neglected by the overseer, Gloober, whose only interest was in the half-crown per head per week he was paid by the parish. Here Simon survived as best he could for five years – he would not have endured it for so long, he said, had he not made a friend there whom he was reluctant to leave – until at the age of eight he decided to run away and live by himself in the woods.

  ‘And that has been my life ever since,’ he concluded, ‘until last year I met Dr Field and he said I should learn to paint, which I have long wanted to do.’

  ‘But what a romantic tale!’ exclaimed Mrs Twite, casting her eyes up. ‘Is it not, Abednego? And did you never hear what happened to your friend?’

  ‘Oh, she’s in London too,’ Simon said happily. ‘I had the good luck to see her today. But about Dr Field – I wrote to him, to this address, saying when I should arrive. Was my letter not delivered here?’

  ‘Never, dear boy.’

  ‘And Dr Field has not been here?’

  ‘Neither hide nor hair of him,’ declared Mr Twite. ‘Now is not that a curious thing? But of course there are many, many Rose Alleys in London and I daresay we shall find that your Dr Field is living at one of the others and, when you discover which one, then you will be happily reunited. Depend upon it, that is the explanation. Do you not agree, my dove?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ agreeed Mrs Twite. ‘But in the meantime, my dear Mr Thingummy, you mustn’t think of moving away. We’ve begun to look on you as one of us, haven’t we, girls?’

  ‘Yes,’ yawned Penelope, bored, looking at a picture of a lady’s dolman with bugled ruching.

  ‘Besides, if you moved away and Dr Field should chance to make his way here, think what a misfortune if you missed one another!’

  ‘Then you are expecting him?’ Simon said hopefully.

  ‘Never heard of him till today, dear boy. But if you are looking for him, it stands to reason that he must be looking for you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Simon said doubtfully. He glanced about, half hoping for some trace of Dr Field’s presence. The room was large and extremely shabby; it contained several down-at-bottom armchairs, a table covered with dingy red plush, a potted palm in a brass pot, and a pianoforte with several of its yellowed keys missing.

  ‘You play?’ said Mr Twite, following the direction of Simon’s eyes to the piano. ‘You are a follower of Terpsy-core?’

  ‘No,’ said Simon, without the least notion as to who Terpsy-core could be.

  ‘All my family sing and play. My dear wife, the triangle. My sister-in-law, the violoncello. Dido, the hoboy like myself. Penelope and my father-in-law, the pianoforte. Penelope, my dear, you shall play and sing for us, to welcome our young friend into our circle.’

  ‘No I shan’t, Pa,’ said Penelope shortly, and returned to her reading. Simon thought her a disagreeable girl. She was pale and, like Dido, had straw-coloured hair which was elaborately dressed in ringlets. She wore a showy gown adorned with floss and spangles. She caught Simon’s eye, gave him a scornful glance, yawned again, and said, ‘Isn’t anyone coming in tonight?’

  Simon excused himself, explaining that he had to be up early.

  ‘Now you won’t think of moving, dear boy, will you?’ Mrs Twite gave him a toothy smile. ‘We might even – even – see our way to lowe
ring your rent.’ She thought this over and added, ‘Washing water reduced to three-halfpence a bucket.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Simon wondered why the Twites, last night not at all keen to have a lodger, were now so anxious to persuade him to stay.

  He was at the door, about to say good night, when it opened smartly in his face and a woman walked in carrying a violoncello. She was looking behind her as she walked, and she called to somebody behind her, ‘Put them in the kitchen, Tod, do. Mind you don’t drop the cabbages.’ She turned to Mrs Twite and added, ‘There’s cabbages, Ella, and as nice a basket of potatoes as you’ll find this side of the Garden.’

  ‘Thank you, Tinty,’ Mrs Twite said, looking a little flustered. ‘This is our new lodger, Mr Thingummy. My sister Mrs Grotch.’

  ‘Good evening,’ Simon said. Mrs Grotch, too, appeared disconcerted, but nodded stiffly. On his way up to bed Simon glanced down the stairs and saw the boy, Tod, stagger into the Twites’ kitchen with a heavy load of mixed vegetables. Simon’s suspicions were confirmed. For Tod was the boy who had snatched his letter on Southwark Bridge and Mrs Grotch, or Aunt Tinty, was the little woman who had misdirected him. A slow plodding step was now audible coming up the stairs from the front door. Simon lingered, waiting to see if his last guess was right, and was rewarded. For the old man who came into view, pulling himself up laboriously by the handrail and pausing to take a long quavering breath on each step, was the same white-bearded elder whom he had last seen on Southwark Bridge talking about his youth in the forest of Epping.

  4

  WHEN SIMON WOKE next day he heard the rain beating against his window. He opened the casement and a wild gust of wind surged about the room, so he shut it again hastily. As on the previous day, when he went downstairs, the Twite family seemed wrapped in slumber. However, his arrival at the front door coincided with the postman’s knock, and a cascade of letters shot through the slot. Miss Penelope Twite instantly darted out of a near-by door, snatched up the letters, yawning, and gave Simon a hostile glance. She was wearing a faded gingham wrapper, her hair was in curl-papers, and she seemed in a very irritable humour. As she retired again Simon heard her say snappishly: