Mrs Whistler. Matthew Plampin
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window. All she saw was hats, a grey topper and a curious affair in rose felt, heading underneath the sill towards their front door. It was not one person but a pair – a couple. And Jimmy had invited them up. He ducked back in, strolled to a sideboard and began rolling another cigarette.
‘Stay there,’ he said lightly. ‘Don’t worry – they’re really not the sort to object. They’re rather keen to meet you, in fact.’
Any control Maud might have had was gone. She looked to the door, sorely tempted to ignore Jimmy and withdraw anyway. Fatigue was fast overwhelming her anger. Her bosom ached – Edie had laced the corset very forgivingly, yet still she seemed to strain against it – and further down, around the base of her belly, a sharper pain was stirring. She could go upstairs. Strip to her shift. Bury herself in their bed. But there were footfalls out on the landing – shapes blocking the line of light beneath the door. It was too late.
The callers made an assured entrance, striding in across the yellow matting. Maud’s initial impression was of height and handsomeness, and well-made, slightly unusual clothes. The gentleman trailed cigarette smoke; his companion wore a dark blue jacket that accentuated how very slender and pale she was.
‘The Harmony in Amber and Black,’ declared the gentleman. ‘The Arrangement in Brown. By Jove, Rosie, she is before us. Before us completely.’
They advanced towards Maud, regarding her with the close appreciation you might give a statue or a particularly interesting piece of furniture. Both were smiling. The drawing room felt dingier, smaller; Maud became aware of the rotten-egg smell of summer mud, oozing in through the open window.
‘I mean, it is uncanny,’ the gentleman continued, glancing over at Jimmy. He had a fine voice, warm and deep with the touch of an accent – Spanish, Maud thought. ‘Your portraits, dear fellow – they are more than likenesses. So much more. There’s a core to them, I’d say, a true artistic understanding. They get to the bottom of the matter. The essence.’
Maud looked at Jimmy. He could be prickly with praise; she’d heard him dismiss it, dismiss it with real violence, if he thought it misguided or insensible to his aims. That afternoon, however, he simply nodded in acknowledgement, then screwed in the eyeglass and smiled – the kind of wide, unguarded grin you’d only see in the company of those he genuinely liked. Two cigarettes had been rolled: he lit both, passing one to this new arrival. The Spanish gentleman sucked a last lungful from the butt already lodged between his fingers, flicked it deftly out through the window and accepted the next with a murmur of thanks.
‘Miss Corder,’ said Jimmy, ‘may I be so frightfully unnecessary as to introduce Miss Maud Franklin.’ He puffed on his cigarette, making a back-and-forth gesture. ‘Miss Franklin – Miss Rosa Corder.’
A hand was extended, in a glove the same pinkish colour as the felt hat. ‘Charmed, Miss Franklin, truly.’
Miss Corder’s voice was difficult to get the measure of. Respectable, if not quite quality; confident but also unassuming, somehow; wholly in earnest, yet tinted with laughter. Maud had been eyeing her cagily during Jimmy’s introduction, thinking that she might well be a model. A substitute. She certainly had the figure for it. Now, though, such fears could be disregarded. Maud had never met a model who spoke like this.
‘We know you, of course, from the Grosvenor,’ Miss Corder explained. ‘The pictures were so very beautiful. Do forgive us if we stare a little.’
Normally Maud would respond to a comment like this with self-effacement – perhaps something like, ‘Really I just stood there, that’s all’ – which would lead to discussion of her stamina, her patience and fortitude and so on, in the face of Jimmy’s famously gruelling requirements. That afternoon in the drawing room, however, she managed only a non-committal mumble. She was painfully conscious of their gaze upon her; of her swollen, ill-clad, exhausted body; of her complexion, drawn by stress and sorrow. She took Miss Corder’s offered hand. There was a strength in the long fingers that reminded her oddly of Jimmy’s.
‘I am glad you are back safely,’ Miss Corder added, more quietly. ‘I hope we will be friends.’
I’m glad you are back safely. Maud met her eye. She saw nothing there but good intentions – a slightly insistent kindliness. This strange pair obviously knew far more about things at Lindsey Row than Jimmy was supposed to have revealed to anyone. They’d been primed, Maud realised, and this amiable little scene arranged in advance. They knew what their arrival had interrupted. They were there specifically to deliver Jimmy from the trouble that was sure to attend upon her return, without their daughter, to news of bailiffs. This was another of his favourite stratagems – to seek refuge in company, drowning any difficulty in the bottomless pool of his acquaintance.
‘And this creature here, Maudie—’ Jimmy paused for effect, twisting the left point of his moustache, ‘is the splendid and most illustrious Owl.’
The Spanish gentleman made no comment on this peculiar introduction. He gave a shallow bow, smoke winding from his nostrils. ‘May I simply say, Miss Franklin, that in your presence one feels most clearly the intense and singular charge of inspiration. The Muse’s aura hangs heavy in the air. You are part of an exceptional group, Miss – an eternal being akin to Rembrandt’s Hendrickje, or Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, or the Bourbon princesses of our great god Velázquez.’
Maud laughed, she couldn’t help it – a hard, sceptical snort. This Owl was definitely one of Jimmy’s people. Beyond that, though, he wasn’t easy to classify. His manner was too smooth for a poet or a painter; his looming, leonine person too neat, too well tended for the stage. He lacked the careless superiority of a man of leisure, and a couple of unconventional details in his dress – the spare cut of his dove-grey suit, that red ribbon pinned to his lapel like some kind of military decoration – seemed to disqualify him from the law or most branches of business. There was the foreign aspect as well, the hint of elsewhere – could he be a diplomat? A journalist? Maud honestly couldn’t tell.
Plainly thinking he’d slipped the hook, and enjoying himself immensely, Jimmy sauntered to the door and called downstairs for John. Maud’s hackles rose anew. This low little trick mustn’t be allowed to pass unchallenged.
‘Do you reside here in Chelsea, then, Mr Owl?’ Saying the name felt ridiculous, childish; she gave it a mocking emphasis. ‘Or did you just happen to be passing by?’
‘Putney,’ Owl replied pleasantly. He drew a card from his waistcoat pocket and presented it to her. ‘We often come this way when travelling to Miss Corder’s lodgings in the city. Rosie likes to walk beside the river.’
The card lay face down in Maud’s palm. She turned it over and read: Charles Augustus Howell, Esq., Chaldon House, Putney. There it was. ‘Owl’ would be a common pronunciation of this surname in London. It was a very English handle, though, for a rather unEnglish person. No profession was given, she noticed, and no house number or street either; the suggestion was of a squire in his manor. She considered what he’d told her. Their guests were a gentleman and his mistress, with her installed at his convenience in an apartment closer to town – an arrangement almost disappointing in its ordinariness.
John appeared in the doorway. He noted Owl’s presence with wary recognition. The servant obviously hadn’t let this couple in or shown them up, as might have been assumed. The Owl at least had been to Lindsey Row before and knew his way around. Maud’s brow furrowed – hadn’t the front door been locked? Did he have a key?
‘Sherry,’ said Jimmy, ‘and the last of the buckwheat cakes. In the studio, if you please.’
‘No sherry left.’
‘A bottle of the Muscadet, then.’
John shook his head.
‘The Scharzhofberger? Surely we still have some of that?’
The servant hesitated; he gave a quick nod and made to turn away. Remembering the onion-shaped vase, Maud bent down and gripped it by the lip. A muscle in her midriff contracted; the pain was