Restoration Page 5

  Thus it was to Violet Bathurst, lying in my arms under the silver and turquoise canopy of my bed, that I confessed my misery at my failure with art. "Without this," I said, "and abandoned as I seem to be by the King, I am a man without a direction and I very much fear that I will lose myself in drunkenness and excesses of all kinds."

  Violet looked at me sharply. She was already a little jealous of my young wife and had made me swear on a copy of Thomas a Kempis that I had no carnal knowledge of Celia. The thought that I would fall into excessive behaviour clearly alarmed her a great deal.

  "You must not worry, Merivel," she said, leaning on a white elbow and caressing the moths of my stomach with an elegant finger. "I will organise some painting lessons. I know a talented young man, very eager to make the acquaintance of gentry, who will be only too keen to oblige. I commissioned a portrait of Bathurst from him, and, considering that Bathurst is not able to sit still for a second, the finished work was admirable. His name is Elias Finn – a Puritan, one rather suspects, but so keen for advancement and success that he cuts his coat according to the times. He is desperate, of course, to get to Court, and perhaps, if he proves a good teacher, you might be able to set him on the road?"

  "You forget, Violet," I said miserably, "that it is now three months since I had a word from the King."

  "Is it? Then perhaps you should go to London?"

  "I have no position at Court any more."

  "But surely, His Majesty would be overjoyed to see you?"

  "That I cannot know."

  "He used to give you kisses, Merivel."

  I smiled. "You and I both know, Violet," I said, "that kisses are as fleeting as pear blossom."

  The entry of Elias Finn into my life was, I suspect, of some importance.

  He describes himself as a portraitist, but leads, I discover, an almost mendicant life in the shires of England, going on foot from one great house to another, begging to paint its inhabitants. He is young, but his face is gaunt and grey and his wrists as thin as a cuttlefish. He has a shifting, uneasy glance. His lips, however, are sweetly curvaceous and feminine, giving evidence of some sensitivity. His voice is honeyed and polite. He is a paradox. On our first meeting, I didn't know what to make of him at all.

  I led him to my Studio and showed him my bacon and egg man and my unfinished portrait of Meg Storey. He stared at them in alarm, as if they frightened him, which indeed they probably did, so far do they seem from anything one could possibly admire.

  "Why do you wish to paint, Sir?" he said after a while.

  "Well…" I began, "as a kind of act of forgetting. My studies have been in anatomy and disease, but I wish, for reasons of my own, not to continue with medical work."

  "So you would be an artist instead?"

  "Yes."

  "Why, pray?"

  "Because… because I must do something! I have a very immoderate nature, Mr Finn. Look at me! Look at my house! Since the Restoration, I have become inflamed, full of riot! We're in a New Age and I am its perfect man, but I must channel myself into some endeavour, or be lost to idleness and despair. So please help me."

  He returned to my pictures. "To judge from these," he said, "you draw tolerably well, but have no sense of colour."

  No sense of colour! I was dumbfounded. "Colour," I began to say, "is what excites me more than anything on earth. I was married in purple and gold! At the King's coronation, I fainted almost at the sight of his crimson barge…" But then I stopped myself. "You are right, of course," I said. "I have a great love for colour, but a love for something is never enough. What I utterly lack is the skill to turn love into art."

  We began my painting lessons there and then. Finn had brought with him some of his own work, portraits mostly of fashionable women, which had presumably not been liked, in that they were still in his possession. I thought them admirable. "If, in time, I can execute one painting as good as any of these," I said, "I will be a happy man."

  He smiled pityingly. He began to discuss his technique with regard to background, which, he said, should always be classical – a Palladian garden with broken columns, a naval battle, or a merry hunting scene.

  "You mean," I asked, "that instead of drawing a window behind Meg Storey, I should have put in ships, or horsemen?"

  "Yes," said Finn. "Naturally."

  I couldn't recall that Holbein's famous portraits had classical backgrounds, but I didn't mention this, because I knew I would be very grateful to Finn if he could teach me how to paint Doric columns or a battleship in full sail.

  "The background," he continued, "must flatter. More, it must lend permanence to the life of the sitter, no matter how brief his actual existence may turn out to be."

  For these considerations, I had of course taken no previous thought, but I could see some truth in what he was saying, and so our first morning passed in discussion of how a picture must be composed so that no part of it is "dead", so that, wherever the eye wanders, there is interest, whether it is in the detail on the hilt of a sword or a minutely rendered rowing boat on a distant Arcadian shore. We furthermore approached the question of distance and perspective: how hills, for instance, which are further away will seem paler and less well defined than those which are near, and how the sitter's nearness and vigour will be emphasised if he or she inhabits a pool of light.

  "When you are next at Whitehall," Finn concluded, "go and look at the Raphaels and the Titians the King reputedly has in his apartments and you will see some of the finest examples of everything I've talked about."

  So, Violet Bathurst had already informed Finn of my acquaintance with the King. I merely nodded. It was much too early for me to decide whether Finn was worthy of any favours, but I detected that his longing to go to Court was even greater than my longing to learn to paint and decided at once that I might be able to use this finely balanced inequality to some advantage.

  Towards the beginning of November, by which time, under Finn's tuition, I had painted a moderately bad picture of my Spaniel, Minette, asleep by an imaginary waterfall, my little dog became ill.

  A rampaging fear gripped my heart. I loved Minette. Her presence was a constant reminder to me that I had been -and still hoped to be again – the King's friend and Fool, and I was certain that her dying would be a terrible portent of derelictions yet to come.

  Very reluctantly, I got out my surgical instruments and my remedies, ointments and powders, but, having set them out next to Minette on the Dining Room table, found that I was at a loss to know what to do; in my desire to forget my former profession, I had succeeded in burying knowledge that was vital to me now.

  I thought of Lou-Lou and Fabricius's dictates about nature. Would I be able to cure Minette by a similar attack of idleness? I did not think so. She was vomiting almost constantly, poor thing, and on her belly was a large dribbling sore.

  I diluted a little laudanum with milk and spooned this down her throat, and after some minutes she entered a quiet sleep. I examined the sore. It was a foul and stinking thing. I imagined its poison entering her blood vessels and thus being carried to her heart. If only it had been a boil I could lance, but it was not, it was an open wound which, because it was on her belly, I had neglected to notice for several days, or even weeks.

  I cleaned the thing as best I could with some warm water, moistened some linen with alcohol and laid this upon it. Minette whimpered in her sleep and then her body was suddenly wracked with terrible convulsions. Foam-flecked spittle appeared at the corners of her mouth. I held onto her and waited for the convulsions to subside. At my elbow, my servant, Will Gates, was sweating and pale.

  "It's no good," I said to Will. "I don't trust my own knowledge. Where can I find Doctor Murdoch at this hour?"

  "Doctor Murdoch is a quack, Sir, a regular empiric."

  "Never mind. He's our best hope. Where is he to be found?"

  "In one place and only one."

  "Well?"

  "At the Rushcutters, Sir."

  Why d
id I not send Will to the inn? I did not send him because I thought a fast canter on Danseuse in the crisp November evening would help to rid me of some of the fear and anxiety by which I felt myself gripped. Shouting to my groom to saddle the horse, I carried Minette to my bedroom, laid her on my bed and told Will not to leave her side, on pain of immediate dismissal.

  "What will I do if she rack and rigor again, Sir?"

  "Hold her," I said, "try to hold her still."

  I mounted Danseuse and was away through the park, sending the deer scurrying from our pathway. I pressed her to a fast gallop and, as I filled and refilled my lungs with the rich air, began to feel my terror depart a little.

  I was sweating by the time I tied Danseuse to her post outside the Jovial Rushcutters and my face was aflame. I walked in, blowing like a whale. I cast around for the unmistakable sight of Doctor Murdoch, with his stooped shoulders and long clammy hands, but I couldn't see him. "Doctor Murdoch?" I asked one of the hobnailed peasants with his nose in his ale. "Was he here this evening? Does anyone know where he might be found?"

  Through the malodorous crowd of pigmen, game-keepers and fowl-breeders came Meg Storey. In the dim candlelight of the tavern, her hair looked fiery. The dress and apron she wore were lilac. She bobbed a cheeky curtsey to me, then took my hand and led me without a word to the cool, dark stillroom where the barrels of beer were stacked and there reached up and placed a soft kiss upon my mouth. "That is to tell you," she said, and I caught the sour scent of beer on her breath, "I am sorry for what happened to your new vocation."

  I let out a yelp of laughter, and, all hot and in a lather of body and brain, gathered Meg Storey into my arms. "Nature…" I murmured between kisses and caresses. "Let nature work upon Minette and upon me…" And in moments I had abandoned my poor dog to her fate and lay tumbling with Meg on the earthen floor.

  An hour later, Doctor Murdoch came into the tavern, but so confused and excited was I by my amours with Meg Storey, that I no longer thought to find him there, but spent the rest of the night riding hither and thither in search of him, until Danseuse would gallop no more and we walked wearily home.

  Will Gates was asleep on the floor of my bedchamber. Laid out on my bed, under a striped cloth I recognised as one of the large table napkins given to me by the King, was the dead body of Minette.

  I knelt down and tried to think of a prayer, but found that, along with my all too insubstantial knowledge of disease, I had consigned to oblivion any number of the ancient words of God.

  Chapter Four. An Indian Nightingale

  The morning after the death of Minette, Finn arrived to give me a painting lesson. Wearily, I put on my floppy hat and my smock. A chill rain, now driving against the panes of my studio window, had saturated Finn's rather threadbare outer garments and given him the look of a destitute. We were, in short, a miserable pair. And it occurred to me that, although the spur to creative endeavour may very often be melancholy, it relies in its execution on its opposing element, choleric fire, of which, that morning, I felt not the smallest flame.

  "Go home," I said to Finn, unwisely as it turned out, for Finn at that time had none to go to, but had spent the previous night in one of Lord Bathurst's cowsheds. And so wet and woebegone did the poor artist feel, that he was emboldened to broach with me, not for the first nor the last time, the great subject of my influence with the King and the chance of my obtaining for him some position, however meagre – a fresco assistant, a designer of playing cards – at Court.

  Now, the loss of Minette had not only saddened me, but had also made me afraid. My own deliberate act of forgetfulness had allowed her to die; King Charles, in his turn, I now saw, had consigned his onetime Fool to oblivion. I had my house and my title as recompense, but I was forgotten. Cleverer, wittier, less ignoble people had replaced me. I had served my purpose and was now cast from favour. Sick at heart as I was, however, I had no intention of revealing to Finn (himself so full of hauteur in his disdain of my painting talent) that I no longer had any influence at Whitehall.

  "Finn," I said, whipping off my floppy hat and throwing it down on the stack of virgin canvases, "it is pointless to raise this matter with me, when it is manifestly clear that you have utterly failed to comprehend the way in which such transactions are carried out."

  "What can you mean?" asked Finn, shifting his feet uncomfortably, so that I heard the squelch of his shoes.

  "What I mean, Finn," I said acidly, "is that we live in commercial times. Take it or leave it, this is the world we inhabit. And he who takes no account of this is likely to die poor and unknown."

  Finn's pretty mouth dropped open, giving him a childlike, idiotic look. "If I were rich," he said piteously, "I would of course give you gold to mention my talent to His Majesty, but, as you see, I barely make a living, and if I am to sacrifice the little you pay me for painting lessons…"

  "How you set about the task of persuading me to use my influence in London is of no interest to me," I snapped. "I merely remind you that, although an Age of Philanthropy may one day catch our commercial English hearts unaware, the time is not now. And he who is not of the time risks the scorn of his peers and the grave of a pauper. Go home, or rather go back to Lord Bathurst's cowshed, or wherever you plan to lay your innocent head tonight, and think about what I have said."

  I watched him walk out into the rain. Tall and thin, his retreating figure reminded me, as it never previously had, of my father, and I experienced a moment of regret, like a sudden wounding in my belly. I felt most extraordinarily alone. I would have mounted Danseuse and begun a mad-cap journey to London there and then, had I not promised the King to stay away from Court – "and neither at Celia's house at Kew, not in the corridors of Whitehall to show your face, Merivel," – unless invited there by him alone.

  I sat down before my empty easel. I took off my wig and ran my hands furiously through my hog bristles. When I contemplated all that I had been given, I knew I had no right to feel that I had been betrayed, and yet I did. It had never occurred to me, you see, when I woke from my wedding night, alone and sickly in a dank forest, to see in the distance the King's coach moving off down Sir Joshua's drive, that I would never set eyes on him again. My future, I had believed, was now tied irrevocably to his. And without my foolishness to divert him from the cares of State, he would, I had convinced myself, surely grow grave and sorrowful and start to feel some need of me. But Minette's death now revealed to me that I had been wrong. It was now almost winter. In five months, despite frequent visits from some of the Court gallants, fond of the Norfolk air and games of croquet on my lawn with their pretty mistresses, I had had from the King no word, message or token of any kind. "Never fear," the Court wags had told me, "he will send for you, Merivel, when he's in the mood for farting!" And they had doubled up with laughter over their croquet mallets. I had, of course, joined in the general mirth. I was loved by these men for my willingness to ridicule myself. But I was not, as you can imagine, in the least comforted by their words.

  I left my Studio and went to my Morning Room, where I sat down at my bureau and prepared to write the King a letter:

  My Most Gracious Sovereign, I began, and the image I had, as I wrote these words, of the King as a moving, shimmering body of celestial light was overwhelming.

  Your loyal Fool, Merivel, salutes you, I continued, and prays this letter finds Your Majesty in excellent health and spirits, but – God forgive me – the latter yet no so entirely excellent that you would not, as the rememberance of my antics and my untidy person comes now to your mind, believe yourself contented by some small dose of my company. Let me hasten to say that, were you, Sir, for however brief a time and in whatever role your whim or disposition might dictate, desirous of seeing me, you have only to send word and the speed of my journey to London would be scarcely less than those swift-traveling thoughts which bring me so frequently, in my presumptuous mind, to Your Majesty's side.

  Honesty now forces me to relate a great sorrow that h
as befallen me here, in the midst of all my luxury and brocaded living, namely the death of my dog, your Minette, who was the small creature I most loved in all your Kingdom. I beg my Sovereign to believe I did all within my power towards the saving of her and to know that she was never in her in short life, no, not for one day or one hour, neglected by Her Master,

  Your Servant,

  R. Merivel

  I read through my letter, without permitting the truth-telling inhabitant of my mind to comment upon the words written by the liar who also lodges there, preferring as I do that these two remain distant but courteous neighbours. I sealed it and gave it to Will Gates with instructions that it be sent post-haste to London.

  Writing it had eased my mind sufficiently for me to call for my coach and make the short journey through the continuing downpour to the Bathursts, having first powdered my armpits, put on a yellow coat and done what I could to make my person agreeable, in case I chanced on Violet alone and was able to bury my sorrows in her velvet bosom. Alas, I was not so lucky. Bathurst 's memory, so frequently a vessel given up for lost, had that morning bobbed briefly but jauntily to the surface, during which time it recognised Violet as the very woman he had long ago bedded in a frenzy of torn love-knots and snatched garters. He was, as her servant announced my arrival, in the act of tearing a marten cat's head and a couple of badgers' pelts off the wall and laying these trophies at his wife's feet.

  The following Friday, Finn did not appear for my painting lesson.