Set in Stone (24 page)

Abruptly Marianne rose to her feet. ‘No! No more!’ She struggled away from the table, crashed into a chair, overturning it, and backed against a sideboard on the other side of the fireplace. At once Juliana was beside her: ‘Hush! Hush, Marianne, it is only make-believe – you must not take it to heart . . .’

Annette Duchêne was righting the toppled chair, and Mrs Greenlaw soothing the medium, who sat with eyes rolling, mouth open and panting, a hand clutched to her chest. ‘Quickly! Ring the bell,’ Mrs Greenlaw told me. ‘Summon Emily – bid her fetch smelling salts and camomile tea. It is harmful to break the thread – she is in shock.’

I did as she asked, though my concern was more for Marianne than for Mrs Sophocleous’s palpitations, which were, I had no doubt, part of the performance. Marianne’s distress was genuine: she continued to stare at the older woman as though unable to break some psychic grip. ‘Marianne!’ I told her sharply. ‘Come and sit down. Come, we shall drink tea.’

‘I cannot!’ Her hands were over her mouth; she spoke between spread fingers. ‘Oh, Charlotte, she knows! She knows more than she has said – she saw that I shall find the West Wind! But the danger – she is right, I know she is right, and I fear it! I cannot tell what is hidden in my own mind, and it terrifies me sometimes – she read that, so accurately—’

‘Come, come!’ Assisted by Juliana, I led her towards the chaise longue, where she slumped as though exhausted. ‘You must take no heed, dearest,’ I told her, ‘for it is only nonsense. Something lost,
something to be found? A million people would find their own truth in that. It is the merest chance—’

‘But the Wind! She spoke of the Wind!’ Marianne whispered.

‘She meant it metaphorically, I am sure,’ I told her. ‘Don’t upset yourself, dear. It is only a game.’

She looked at me, wide-eyed. ‘But you chose not to play. You were wise, Charlotte – for now what shall I do?’

Mrs Sophocleous had recovered sufficiently to rise regally to her feet, and was being escorted from the room by her hostess. She stopped by the chaise longue, and gave me a disdainful look. ‘I must warn you, madam, that your scepticism risks serious harm to the sensitive girl there in your charge. She needs guidance, she needs understanding, she needs a confidante in tune with her temperament. And
that
, I am afraid, she will not find in you. You believe I am a fraud, do you not – a mere entertainment, an after-dinner diversion? Yet you feared submitting to my power. And now you encourage this girl to deny what she feels, what she knows! It is dangerous; you are unaware how dangerous it is; but it is dangerous. If she suppresses these feelings, these urges, she will only harm herself.’ She gave me a curt nod, and laid a hand on Marianne’s head. ‘I have spoken. Now I must take my leave of you – for it has exhausted me, as it has exhausted her. Goodnight.’

With this, she swept out, Mrs Greenlaw scuttling in her wake. Annette Duchêne looked at me and raised one eyebrow; I found an unexpected ally there. ‘Well!’ she exclaimed in an undertone. ‘I should very much
like to see her on the Paris stage. Come, Miss Farrow – she was very flattering to you, was she not? Quite taken by your pretty looks! If I were you, I should remember that part of her verdict, and forget the rest.’

Marianne took no heed, but looked wildly about. ‘We must go. Take me home, Charlotte, please.’

‘Yes, it is quite late enough,’ I said, rising to my feet. ‘I shall summon Reynolds.’

As we wished Mrs Greenlaw goodnight, I had to curb my tongue, though my thanks for the entertainment were sharp-edged. I had arrived at The Glebe with one distraught girl on my hands; departing, I had two.

In good time for the appointed hour, I made my way to 4 North Walls. It was set in a terrace fronting a narrow street, a stone’s throw from the cathedral. My mood, as I approached, was very different from the fury of indignation that had brought me to Chichester. Now, bemused and curious, I hardly knew what I expected to find.

My knock on the door was answered not by Waring but by his companion, whose name, I soon learned, was Richard Hobday; he was Waring’s working partner. There was no female presence in evidence; neither of wife nor servant. I had hoped to find Gideon Waring alone; but Hobday was unobtrusive, for the most part silent, and, I soon learned, completely in Waring’s confidence.

Inside, the place was simply furnished: a single room with a kitchen area behind; a fireplace with two wooden chairs facing it; a deal table and bench; a rag rug. A meal of bread, cheese and sausage was set on the table, with a jug of ale, and knives and mats for three. Much to my surprise, in view of Waring’s guardedness
earlier, I was urged to share the meal: ‘Please join us. It is only a simple supper – not what you are accustomed to at Fourwinds – but you are welcome. Please, sit.’

His manner seemed changed; I wondered why. Maybe he had decided that I was not, after all, a spy sent by Mr Farrow. By now, indeed, I was so confused that I could not have explained what my motive was – only that I wanted to hear what he had to say, and to find out, if I could, what business Richard Hobday had had at Fourwinds. And it occurred to me now that Waring’s reason for inviting me to eat could only be to find out what he could from
me
. I must be on my guard. Yet, whatever secrets he was guarding, he was the creator of the Winds I so admired – could I revere the sculptor, and despise the man? I did not think it possible.

While we began to eat, Gideon Waring asked me whether I had found lodgings for the night, and I replied that I had, in Eastgate Square; then I mentioned something that had struck me earlier. ‘Mr Waring, when we spoke by the cathedral, you referred to yourself as a craftsman. I should rather call you an artist. Do you not think of yourself as such?’

A glance passed between him and Hobday – this happened often, I subsequently noticed, this fleeting, wordless communication – before he replied:

‘I make no distinction, Mr Godwin. A craftsman is an artist, an artist a craftsman. The world may make a distinction; I do not. I am a carver of letters and embellishments by trade, a sculptor by inclination. I
am paid for one, often not for the other – that is the only difference. Maybe, when I was younger, I had aspirations of finding recognition as a sculptor. But working as I do, following in the long tradition of masonry, working in the same places, handling the very same stone that has been handled by generations of masons, stretching back to medieval times – I find that humbling. To call myself an artist would be to set myself apart, to draw attention to myself. I do not require that. The work is enough. I do not put my name to it, for it needs no name. I am prolonging the achievement of others, preserving the spirit of the place. Their names are not known – only those of the master masons, and they were men of near genius – why should I wish for mine to be? It is of no matter.’

‘But your carvings – the Winds,’ I objected. ‘What I so admire is the individual stamp you put on them – your own style, clear and distinctive. You were not simply following there, where others have been before.’

‘But of course I follow. What else? How otherwise do we learn? Every sculpture I have admired, every carved figure, whether of wood or stone or marble, guides my hand. How have you learned to paint, Mr Godwin? I should say, how are you continuing to learn? For of course one never stops. Surely, by distinguishing between what you admire and what you do not; by experimenting and combining, by selecting and eliminating; that is how you develop what you call your own style. But it is all borrowed.’

That I could see in myself; for I suspected that I
could only ever be a skilled imitator, never a maker. ‘But your work!’ I persisted. ‘I find inspiration in it, even if you do not.’

‘That is not what I said,’ he replied, with a patience that concealed impatience. ‘My inspiration is in continuity. I am carrying on for a little while; when I am gone, others will continue. It is my one claim to immortality. I have no children, but the letters I cut yesterday will endure for centuries.’

I have no children
.

He had said it quite guilelessly; unless he was as skilled an actor as he was mason, there was no intention to deceive. Could he be unaware?

Might I ask?

Hobday got up to refill my tankard with ale, and his own. Gideon Waring was drinking little. He finished eating a morsel of cheese from his plate, then went to the tiny kitchen and returned with a bowl of cherries, which he placed in the exact centre of the table. He was punctilious, I saw, in everything he did.

‘Now, Mr Godwin. What of you?’ he asked. ‘What makes you paint? What do you aim to do, when you paint?’

No one had ever asked me this before, in quite these words. Only a short while beforehand, I should have replied that I wanted to make my mark, to achieve something unique, to win awe and recognition. After a few moments’ thought, I said: ‘I want to paint what I see. I want to show that objects are objects, and that light is light. That seems enough.’

It seemed inadequate, and I expected him to
challenge me; but he nodded, considering, and reached for a pair of cherries.

‘Yes. Yes,’ he said. ‘That is good.’

I thought: I should like to paint this table, set for our supper. The brown plates, a crust of bread, the tankards, the fall of light from a high window; the vermilion of the cherries, shiny as lacquer. The thingness of things, their essence, their textures, the way they occupy space: that is what I want to paint, and so far I have not succeeded; the techniques I have so painstakingly learned, obstruct my vision. I did not say this, but he saw me looking, and seemed to read my thought; he nodded and, for the first time, smiled. I felt that I had passed some kind of test.

Against all my preconceptions, I was forming a strong liking for this man. I liked his precise movements, and the careful consideration he gave to every remark. I knew that even without painting the table-setting, I should hold it in my mind for ever; and the memory of what we ate, and what we talked about. Quite unlike the more obviously charismatic character I had imagined, he was a modest man, quietly wise, content with little, thoughtful, contemplative; a man to inspire devotion. I looked at Richard Hobday, who seemed to occupy the role of disciple to master, and to regard Gideon with silent respect. I rather envied him: I could, I felt, have happily trundled wheel-barrows and hewn stone under Waring’s direction, gradually learning to make my own mark, unassuming but timeless, on the vast edifice of the cathedral.

I thought of my father; thought of his disappointment
in me; knew that to be the son he wanted would be to deny an essential part of my self. For the first time I began to feel a sense of freedom from the bonds my father had imposed on me; to feel that accidental encounters may have as much power to shape our preferences and guide our lives, as those traits sown in us by heredity.

‘Pardon me,’ I said abruptly to Hobday, who sat with one ankle resting on the other knee, eating cherries and arranging their stones in a ring on his plate; ‘but I believe I saw you at Fourwinds, early one morning. Is that not so?’

‘You did,’ he replied, in his unhurried way; ‘you were swimming in the lake.’ He smiled at me pleasantly.

‘Might I ask what your business was there? And why you hurried away when you saw me, instead of identifying yourself?’

He glanced at Gideon Waring from under his eyebrows, as if seeking permission to answer; Waring sat forward, clasped both hands on the table, and said, ‘I think the time has come to be frank with you, Mr Godwin. Samuel, if I may? We have each other’s confidence, do we not?’

I have told you that I care very little for worldly fame. This has not always been my view. For a while, recognition was what I craved; I believed my work was nothing if it was not sought out, exhibited and admired. I was resentful towards rivals, and jealous of any praise given to anyone other than myself. That, Samuel, is a state to be avoided, for no small success can be enough, every achievement of others is felt as a personal slight, and what really matters, the integrity of the work, takes secondary importance. The world’s regard is fickle and deluding. It flickers from one subject to another, barely pausing before flitting off in some new direction.

I was given the opportunity to work as apprentice to a fashionable sculptor, and my ambition was first to follow and then to surpass him. After several years of this, working on elaborate statuary for rich patrons, many of them with more money than appreciation, I took what many would regard as a backward step, and became instead a stonemason, cutting letters for gravestones, sometimes memorial tablets, heraldic work and
the like. To handle stone is to handle the stuff of life and death, and of time and change, and the mysteries of the Earth itself; there is something humbling and moving and immensely satisfying in it. And thus I preferred to earn my living. It was while I was working on a memorial tablet, commissioned by a gentleman in Guildford whose son had been killed in India, that Mr Farrow approached me. He flattered me, and admired my work; he was a man of very decided tastes. He was interested enough to return to view the tablet when it was complete and fixed in position on the church wall. After the service, he spoke to me in private, and offered me considerable enticements to produce the relief panels you are acquainted with, the Four Winds. His house was nearing completion, and my carvings – with a few other small pieces – were to be its final touches. In conversation he discovered my personal circumstances: that I am a single man, I have few material needs, and that above all I need solitude and seclusion. He offered me Yew Tree Cottage, in his grounds, for as long as I required it, and an outbuilding for my workshop.

Very gladly, I took up the challenge. I have since had cause to regret most bitterly the day I sold myself to him; but at that time, I saw only the good. Everything seemed to suit me perfectly. I installed myself, and spent many hours walking around the grounds, feeling the spirit of place, inspecting the house from every angle, considering how my Winds should look. They would be united in style, yet each should have its own character – well, you have seen
three of them, and have been kind enough to say that you think I have succeeded, for which I thank you. I sketched all four before commencing, and obtained Mr Farrow’s approval. After discussion with him, I ordered my Portland stone from Dorset. It is the finest limestone to work with: pure and true. Only the best materials are good enough for Mr Ernest Farrow; he was prepared to pay.