Will & Tom (18 page)

‘Mr Lascelles has a request.’

By which, of course, he means an order. Instead of fear, Will feels a prickling, insolent anger. What is Mr Cope actually doing there at the Crown Hotel? Is it
usual
for gentlemen to take their valets out dancing with them? These bold questions go unuttered; he shifts about warily, stepping away from the window.

‘What is it, then?’

A very slight depression appears at the edge of Mr Cope’s mouth. ‘Supper will soon begin,’ he says. ‘When it is concluded, and the music resumes, he would have you ask Miss Lascelles for the first dance.’

*

Will ventures onto the floor with all the ease and confidence of a man atop an icy pond, who suspects that it might not support his weight. His right hand is joined with Mary Ann’s left, at a shade below shoulder height. He looks to her and she turns away immediately; if this really was ice they trod upon, the baron’s daughter would gladly see him fall through it.

The dance is called, a French name that sounds to Will like
boo-launcher
– he can no more speak French than he can dance – but those around him are smiling in recognition and making knowledgeable comments. They form into large circles, five in total, along the length of the floor. Will and Mary Ann are accepted into the central circle. There are none of the scandalised stares and grave shakes of the head that greeted her previous dance. Everyone is aware that Will is a second Harewood painter, in the employ of the Lascelles. This is generally considered impressive, an aristocratic attribute akin to their vast mansion or fleet of carriages: a rich man may have one artist draw his house, but this noble family has
two
, brought up from London especially. Nevertheless, a number greet their pairing with amusement, the half-hidden smirks and titters to which Will is almost becoming accustomed: ‘The princess and the tar,’ he hears someone say, to stifled giggles.

A change in the music announces that the dance is about to begin. The fact of this ordeal dawns on Will anew. He ate copiously at supper, unthinkingly, spurred on by nervousness; his stomach, as a result, is painfully full, an aching ball strapped to his midriff. The taste of the soup – an odd, creamy concoction, redolent of almonds and lemon – still seems to coat his mouth. Furthermore, he is quite abominably hot. His clothes, the clothes of all at the Crown Hotel, are growing dark with perspiration, the folds and flaps of fabric wilting like dying flowers. Perfumes, although applied in prodigious quantities, are beginning to give out, allowing more animal smells to prevail. Even the light seems to be muddying, melting somehow, colours and their shadows mixing together into a grubby, brownish mid-tone.

Will looks again at Mary Ann. Her curtsey is perfunctory, to say the least. His request was met with a combination of contempt and resignation; she’d been prepared for it and instructed to accept, however reluctant she might be. It is a countermeasure, this
boo-launcher
, intended to show the loose-lipped company that if Miss Lascelles would dance with one painter, she would happily dance with the other as well, it being no particular sign of favour.

Tom Girtin is at the fringes now, standing between Beau and John Douglas, recounting some tale or other with every appearance of levity. Another part of the display, Will thinks. They are stressing the blamelessness of Tom’s dance – that it was done at their instigation and caused not even the slightest offence. The two painters were seated near to each another at supper, in amongst the rest of the Harewood party – who sought to shield the Lascelles from any further mutterings by conversing as vociferously as they could on any topic that came to mind. Once again, therefore, it was impossible for them to talk. Will caught Tom’s eye several times and tried a range of significant looks on him. None elicited anything but puzzlement.

The dance advances into its opening figures. Those in Will’s circle adopt various peculiar poses, which he does his best to imitate; and then they are off, rotating in a clockwise direction. Will falls in, half a step behind, only to be caught out when they suddenly reverse course, colliding with the gentleman to his right. This happens twice more, before arms are raised and everyone spins about, bobbing up and down. Will is lost, hopelessly hesitant, like a country visitor trying to pick his way across a busy London street. Mary Ann grips his elbow, quite savagely, to halt him in the middle of a superfluous turn. She drags him forward, taking his slippery hands in hers, and they stand there motionless while the dance skips on around them. Her features remain composed, more or less, but her cheeks, neck and breast are all roaring red; strands of powdered hair are sticking to her face and her grey eyes are staring at him as if he’d just dropped his breeches and bared himself to the room.

‘My apologies, miss,’ says Will. ‘I ain’t no dancer.’

‘That much is obvious.’

‘This weren’t my idea.’

‘Nor mine.’

Provoked by this lack of fellow feeling, Will decides to speak plainly. He’s still too angry, in truth, for any consideration of delicacy or tact, and there’s enough commotion on the dance floor to confine his words to his partner alone. ‘Yet you do it anyway,’ he says. ‘You do what’s asked of you.’

Her stare intensifies. ‘Explain yourself.’

‘I heard you. In the garden, with your sister.’

Now Mary Ann looks ready to bite out his throat. ‘You heard nothing whatsoever.’

‘About Tom, was it? What I saw in the castle yesterday?’

‘You are babbling, Mr Turner. Drunk, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Did they tell you to do it?’ Will pauses. ‘Why in heaven would they
tell
you to do it?’

At this Mary Ann lets out a revolted gasp, casting Will’s hands away from her; then, unexpectedly, she comes right up close, her embroidered hem swishing over his evening shoes as her feet interlock with his. Confused by her nearness, by the sharpness of her sweat, he realises too late that she means to trip him. A discreet, well-placed shove and he’s falling free, his left arm flailing, the gleaming brass bulb of a ballroom chandelier listing across his vision.

All of Will, his entire person, seems to connect with the floor at the same instant. A hard light flashes through everything, then fades quickly through a succession of humming colours. His breath is gone, his bones and organs horribly jarred; his supper, that cloying white soup, threatens to make a dramatic reappearance. As he struggles to recover he sees her towering over him, a hand on her hip, contriving a loud remonstration.

‘Honestly, is this how the painters of Covent Garden choose to deport themselves? By taking so much wine with their supper that they cannot even remain
upright
afterwards?’

Will rolls over, wanting to protest, but he has neither the words nor the air to utter them. The dance has stopped, and the music too, he thinks; and there, off in the corners, the laughter is beginning.

‘It is an impertinence, a blessed impertinence! If you are capable of shame, you … you
oaf
, I believe you should feel it now!’

The baron’s daughter turns, her skirts whipping against Will’s cheek, and marches from the ballroom. Flopping onto his back, panting raggedly, he finds that he is indisposed to move any further. It isn’t so unpleasant down there; rather cooler, in fact. Overhead, the chandelier holds a reflection of his prone self and the curious dozens who encircle him. Compacted and tinted in the polished brass, the scene has a distinct feeling of remoteness, as if the splayed form at its heart belongs to somebody else altogether. It looks like a death, Will decides – like a dancer has keeled over mid-step and lies waiting upon the floorboards for the undertaker. This thought brings him a strange satisfaction.

*

Mr Purkiss’s voice blares out over the Yorkshire fields. Liquor elongates his vowels, clips off his consonants and at times frustrates his meaning; it’s made very plain, however, that this worthy gentleman’s evening at the Crown Hotel, although less eventful than Will’s, has been no more gratifying. He reviles the people and the clothes they wore, the wretched food, the dismal music; not a single aspect of the occasion seems to have met his exacting metropolitan standards. Below them, one of the carriage windows is shut with a force that makes the lanterns swing on their hinges. Purkiss doesn’t notice. Well settled in his diatribe, and indifferent as to who hears it, he moves on to their host.

‘And of course, the whole business transforms old Beau into the most miserable bore. I’ve said this to him, to his face. Poor devil don’t even realise when it’s happening. Those long years among the outliers, awaiting the inheritance – they take their toll. I know it. Dear God, I know it.’

Purkiss falls silent. Half a minute passes. Will wonders if he’s gone to sleep. He chances a sidelong look – and the man next to him abruptly reanimates.

‘But he’s up among the gilded now, is Beau Lascelles, among the
elect
, and he wishes to revel in it. Play lord of the town. Have these simple-minded provincials plant kiss after smacking kiss upon his puckered arsehole. I understand the temptation, but by Jove it is
dull
.’

Purkiss lifts a buttock and squeezes out a voluptuous fart. Its repulsive heat coats the upper part of Will’s thigh, the thick, meaty odour reaching his nostrils a few moments later. He inches queasily to the left, across the leather upholstery – towards Mr Cope, who sits gazing off into the night, appearing to ignore them both.

‘Duller even, I daresay, than a discourse on his damned china. You’ve seen something of this, Mr Turnbull, I take it?’ Purkiss snorts in scornful amazement. ‘The money he has spent already in that quarter, and in that quarter alone … why, it would be enough,
comfortably
enough, to rescue the fortunes of a dozen who – a dozen lesser – men to whom—’

Will glances over. The gentleman is lolling somewhat, mouthing words he’s clearly thought better of uttering aloud, even in his present condition. Then he sucks in a great sniff, rubs at his pock-marked chin and resumes.

‘One specimen, I’ve heard tell, is worth three hundred guineas. A damned
table centrepiece
. Christ alive. Once we threw such things from windows, Beau and I, right through the damned glass.’

Purkiss mimes the action with his arm, making a smashing noise that flecks the air before him with spittle. The sleeve of his lemon-curd coat, the same one he wore on the evening of Will’s arrival, is faintly luminous in the moonlight. The front now bears a large stain, left by a splash of wine or sauce; his wardrobe is not nearly so bottomless as that of his noble friend.

Recollection of their past, of their happily destructive youth, causes Purkiss to turn on Mr Cope, suddenly and viciously, lurching through a litany of grievances. The foremost involves a London gaming club called the Four-in-Hand, where Beau and Purkiss meet on the fifth of each month, a long-standing appointment which the latter regards as sacrosanct – but which the former, of late, has begun to skip. There’s no doubt in Purkiss’s mind as to the reason for this.

‘What tricks do you perform, you black-leg rogue? What is it that you whisper about – about his
blood
, and his
money
, and his damned
name
– that makes him dodge me in this wretchedly shabby fashion? What
wires
have you strung him with? What foul passageways do you draw him down, eh? With what manner of
beast
, precisely, d’you have him frolic?’

The valet does not react, knowing that he has only to weather this tirade for a certain period; and indeed, Purkiss is soon winding down like a clockwork automaton, retreating into muttering, then embittered silence, then sleep. He starts to lean outwards, head tilting to the side, a glittering pendulum of drool swinging from his lower lip. Spotting this, Mr Cope reaches over Will to adjust the insensible gentleman’s pose and ensure that he’s in no danger of toppling off. Will shrinks down upon the bench, trying to avoid any contact. After the many stinks of the evening – that of Purkiss’s expulsion still lurks around them – Mr Cope’s odour is slight, fresh, something like clean linen. He has none of Purkiss’s dishevelled mass; his weight, his presence, seems to be only that of his clothes, which remain in inexplicably perfect order. They pass the pale cottages of a small farm; several dogs bark behind a wall. Beau Lascelles’ man sits back – a single, disciplined movement. The fingers of his right hand, the one beside Will, drum upon his knee.

It was Mr Cope, of course, who salvaged Will from the dance floor and brought him out to the square before the hotel, instructing him to remain there until the Lascelles’ departure. Will disobeyed at once, re-entering barely six yards behind the valet. Stares and sniping remarks followed after him, the cockney boor who shamed himself with poor Miss Lascelles, as he skirted the main hall and slipped into a corridor. He didn’t heed any of it. His sole concern was locating Tom. This latest intelligence would be shared and a new plan formulated. Will couldn’t quite imagine what it might be, not right at that moment, but he knew that something drastic was required.

Tom eluded him completely. The Crown Hotel was not so very large, yet an entire hour ran past without result. He was searching the uppermost floor when Mr Cope claimed him again. There was no recrimination, but the young painter was led directly to his place on the roof of this carriage – a last-minute hire from the look of it, found somewhere in the town and already filled with the Lascelles’ other guests. The Harewood party was taking its leave, the family itself having gone twenty minutes earlier. Will heard Mr Cope telling someone inside that Mrs Douglas had fallen ill after supper; although why this unfortunate occurrence had called for all three of their carriages wasn’t explained. Of Tom Girtin he could still find no sign.

‘A marvellous night.’

At first Will doesn’t understand – surely the night had been a disaster? – then he sees that Mr Cope is referring to the view, to the nocturnal world around them, rather than the ball at the Crown Hotel.