Chatterton Read online

  To Harriet she seemed dangerously close to tears. ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ she said quickly. ‘Until we go for a little walk. It always works with me.’

  ‘I must just see…’

  Vivien hurried back into the office and asked Claire to take her place for a few minutes; when she returned Harriet grabbed her arm and together they walked along New Chester Street, across Piccadilly and down St James’s Street.

  ‘Whenever I see street signs,’ Harriet said confidentially, ‘I think of Moll Flanders, don’t you?’ She stopped suddenly beside an automatic cash dispenser. ‘Hang on. Miss Flanders needs some more silver.’ With practised gesture she punched in her PIN, as she had learnt to call it – she liked these machines, and she greatly enjoyed the idea of her money being guarded by numbers. A vagrant lurched past and she sheltered the five pound notes, even then emerging from the dispenser, with her body. ‘So near and yet so far,’ she murmured as she watched him pass down the street.

  ‘What was that?’ Vivien had been preoccupied with her own thoughts.

  ‘Nothing, dear. Nothing at all.’

  But something of their sudden intimacy had disappeared, and Vivien was not sure how to proceed. ‘Did you buy anything from the gallery?’

  ‘Oh no. I don’t believe in hastening to destruction.’ Harriet ran nimbly across St James’s Street, just avoiding a taxi which hooted at her. ‘I don’t believe,’ she explained when Vivien had caught up with her on the other side, ‘in impulse buying.’ They walked through the gates into the park, and a gentle breeze brought the fresh scent of lilac bushes towards them. Harriet sniffed the air. ‘Ah, jasmine. My favourite flower. I’d know it anywhere.’ They were on a path which descended towards the lake and Harriet again took Vivien’s arm, squeezing it perhaps a little too hard. ‘And so how is Charles?’

  ‘He doesn’t say much, as you know.’

  In fact he rarely stopped talking when he was with Harriet. ‘I know, dear. He’s a veritable sphinx.’

  ‘But I must do something.’ Vivien’s pace increased to keep up with the increasing urgency of her thoughts, and Harriet trotted beside her. ‘He’s been having these headaches for the last two months, and there are times when he looks so ill. Sometimes he just sits and waits for the pain to go. Then he carries on as if nothing had happened. He doesn’t seem to care. He saw a doctor once, but that was ages ago. But you know Charles. He never likes to hear bad news.’

  ‘Of course not.’ The path had taken them between some flower-beds, and the smell of freshly turned earth mingled with the scent of wallflowers and late hyacinths; a wind started up and shook the highest branches of the trees around them, and in the green protected light they walked forward. ‘So,’ Harriet said softly. ‘He is really ill.’ It was clear to her now that Vivien had been brooding on these matters for some time, and that this had been her first opportunity to express her anxieties. ‘His poetry is very important –’ she began.

  She was going to add ‘to him’ but Vivien interrupted her. ‘Oh yes! He’s a wonderful poet! I’m so glad you see that, too! If only –’

  The wind grew stronger, and some fallen leaves blew around their feet. Harriet kicked them away, happy that her opportunity had come so easily. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘we’re going to have to take charge of him. We’ll have to take him in hand.’ She squeezed Vivien’s arm again, as if they were already accomplices. ‘He must get plenty of rest.’ Vivien was not sure that ‘rest’ was enough under the circumstances, but she was too grateful for Harriet’s support to contradict her. ‘Of course he can write his poetry, but he really shouldn’t be doing more than that. Does he have anything else –’ she hesitated, and looked down at the path – ‘on his mind?’

  ‘There is this other business…’

  ‘What business is that?’ They had reached the end of the gardens and now stopped to look out at the lake; a fine mist was moving across the face of the water, and Harriet shivered. ‘Is it something important?’

  ‘Oh no. He has some theory about a poet who died.’ From her tone it was clear that Vivien disapproved of Charles’s preoccupation with the Chatterton manuscripts, and that she did not understand their significance. The mist came towards them; a duck moved behind some fern.

  ‘You mean, a friend who died?’

  Vivien tried to laugh, but could not manage it. ‘Have you heard of someone called Chattaway or Chatterton?’

  Harriet looked puzzled, and put a forefinger up to her cheek in pensive mood. ‘Wasn’t there a very minor poet with a name like that? Some kind of forger?’

  ‘That’s the one! Charles has some theory that he faked his own death –’

  Harriet seemed astonished at this news. ‘What on earth would be the point of that, dear?’ The mist passed across them, and for a moment she thought she tasted the brackish salt of the sea.

  ‘Don’t ask me. But it’s all he ever talks about.’

  Their voices seemed to echo across the surface of the dead water, and Harriet led her back into the gardens. ‘You see, Vivien.’ She took her arm again. ‘May I call you Vivien? I feel as if I’ve known you for years – you see, it could be that all this Chatterton nonsense is affecting his health. He might be obsessed with it.’ She paused. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’ Vivien’s look of surprise momentarily unnerved her. ‘But don’t tell Charles. Not yet.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Vivien looked down at the ground, reflecting on what Harriet had said. ‘You could be right,’ she said. ‘Charles has certainly got worse since –’

  Harriet pressed home her advantage. ‘And I suppose that it’s been keeping him from his poetry?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Well.’ Harriet stopped upon the path, apparently prevented from moving forward by the force of a sudden idea. ‘Why don’t you and I take these papers away from him, without him suspecting anything?’

  It was clear from Vivien’s expression that she approved of this idea. ‘But how?’

  ‘Leave all that to me, Vivien darling.’ In her enthusiasm she had become effusive. ‘If you look after Charles, I’ll take care of the manuscripts. Papers.’ She gave a little jump in the air. ‘Won’t it be fun working together? Oh shit!’ She had felt a familiar pressure beneath her foot as she landed and, lifting it up, peered at some dog excrement smeared across the sole of her right shoe. ‘I might have gone blind if that had gone in my eye,’ she shouted. ‘It might have flown up at me!’ She sat down, very gingerly, upon the low green railings which surrounded the flower-beds. ‘Hand me that leaf, will you?’ Painstakingly she wiped off the mess, as Vivien passed her a number of wet leaves. Eventually she rose to her feet and glanced accusingly at her shoes. They should be shot,’ she said. ‘Shot and then buried in unmarked graves.’ For a moment Vivien thought that she was planning the fate of her own footwear, but then Harriet pointed towards a small black poodle. They’re nothing but animals!’ The dog barked back at her, and this seemed to restore her high spirits. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘how do we get out of this hell hole?’

  They began walking across the short grass and Harriet, in her new role as a confidential friend, was almost girlish. ‘I didn’t like that Seymour painting, after all,’ she was saying. ‘It was too, you know, bright for my taste. Too ghastly.’

  Vivien was still thinking about Charles, and was not really listening. ‘Oh they’ve been talking about Seymour all morning. They think those paintings might be fakes.’ Then she realised what she had said. ‘Forget I mentioned that. It might just have been a rumour.’

  ‘But I love rumours!’ She saw the alarm on Vivien’s face and added, ‘Although of course I never believe them.’ But now she understood why Cumberland had seemed so unwilling to sell that painting; and why both men had blushed at the phrase ‘partners in crime’. They walked in silence for a few moments, until they came to the edge of the park. ‘Don’t worry,’ she told Vivien, thinking of her indiscretion about the paintings.

  ‘I’m much less worried now.’ She
smiled at Harriet. ‘I’m glad that you’re his friend.’

  ‘So am I.’ Harriet allowed herself to be kissed on the cheek before adjusting her hat and exclaiming, ‘I go that way!’ Vivien, thinking of Charles once again, slowly went back to the gallery.

  Harriet was exhausted, too. ‘Mother’s fucked!’ she said out loud, to the amusement of a flower-seller whose stall was on the corner of Jermyn Street. She smiled graciously at him. ‘It’s a dog’s life, isn’t it?’

  It was beginning to rain and, as she proceeded up Piccadilly, she ducked beneath an awning to protect the small bird pinned to her hat. In fact she had taken shelter beside a cinema entrance and, as she peered inside, she could see a poster with the legend ‘Swiss Maids in a Row’. She had not visited a cinema for some years and, seized with a sudden curiosity, she walked across to the small booth. ‘One please,’ she said to the old man who was sitting there disconsolately. She put up her finger. ‘A single, s’il vous plaît.’ He turned back to his newspaper while she rummaged in her bag for the proper sum.

  ‘Five pounds and a membership fee does seem rather a lot,’ she was saying. ‘Even for modern life.’ She patted her bag. ‘But never mind. At least I’ve brought my own chocolates.’

  When she entered the tiny auditorium the film had already started and in the darkness she stumbled over a man standing at the back. ‘Excusez-moi,’ she said. This is like the war.’ She found a row and, groping her way to the middle, with a sigh fell into an empty seat. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was issuing from loudspeakers on either side of the screen, and Harriet watched fascinated as two young women tossed a beach-ball to each other. She slipped off her shoes, took the chocolates from her bag, and stretched out. When a middle-aged man left his own seat and came to sit beside her, she was not at all alarmed: she assumed that modern cinemas had somehow acquired a party-like atmosphere, in which she was only too happy to join. ‘You know,’ she said companionably, ‘I haven’t been to the pictures since the Fifties. Would you like a choc?’ She held out the box. They’re lovely and bitter.’ He gave her a wild look and at once moved away.

  Somewhat surprised by his rudeness, she watched him for a few moments and then turned her attention back to the screen, just in time to see the setting change from the beach to a bedroom. The two girls were lying naked together, and Harriet was reminded of the picture which she had just seen in the exhibition of Art Brut: how one girl had been touching the shoulder of her double, before floating away. There was a sudden cut, and a man came in; he was wearing a traffic warden’s uniform, and he began taking off his peaked cap and black jacket as soon as he entered the room. Harriet started to laugh but, when she saw all three on the bed together, they looked so tired and helpless that she shook her head in disbelief. Now she regretted not having seen the beginning of the film, since she wanted to know what had brought them to this point: the sex did not interest her, but the plot did. Even these couplings were the consequence of a story and, as far as she was concerned, that was the most interesting part. After all, everyone needed a story.

  The scene had changed once again, and now the two girls were dancing together at a party. Harriet watched them for a while, but then her attention was drawn to the people around them. She saw a face which reminded her of a friend long dead, and then another, and another. They were all there together, all of her dead friends, as she had once known them; they had fallen back from the dancers and were now standing together silently, looking out at Harriet from the screen. She wanted to get up and talk to them, but a sudden terror kept her in her seat. That is why people go mad, she thought, they go mad from the fear of death. But she could sense the tears running down her face, and in bewilderment she put her hand up to her cheek.

  The film was over. Dim lights came on above her head, and she looked around at the dirty room in which she had been sitting: there were cigarette butts and empty plastic cartons on the floor, the red carpet was frayed, the seats torn and stained. And over it all hovered the familiar, sharp smell of dust and cigarette ash. The same man was still standing at the back and, as he looked at her, he moved his hand in his pocket. She gathered up her bag and walked slowly towards him; he took out his hand and stood there sheepishly. She noticed how thin and white his fingers were but she only said, apologetically, ‘I like a good cry before I go to bed.’ Then she added, before hurrying out into the street, ‘It’s not real, you know. It’s only a film.’

  9

  CHARLES WYCHWOOD was trying to read a copy of Meyerstein’s Life of Chatterton but there was a patch of darkness on the left hand page, as if someone were standing over him and casting a shadow across the words. He closed the book and, fighting back his panic, called out, ‘Edward!’ There was no answer, only the sound of the television. ‘Edward the Unfriendly!’ He rose unsteadily to his feet and crept into the bedroom, where his son was at that moment trying to balance upon his head. ‘Don’t!’ Charles said. ‘Don’t do that!’ And with sudden anger he pushed him onto the floor. ‘You could kill yourself like that!’

  Edward was astonished. ‘How?’

  ‘You could injure your brain.’ Charles pointed at his own head. ‘You could shake it out of place.’

  ‘But I like to see things upside down.’ He glanced sullenly at the television screen. ‘Everything looks better like that.’

  ‘But the world isn’t upside down, is it, Edward the Unrepentant?’

  ‘How would you know?’

  Charles grabbed him and, to his son’s embarrassment, started rocking him on his knees. ‘Have you been to the toilet today?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Big jobs?’

  ‘Oh, Dad.’ Over the last few days Charles had become obsessed with his son’s health, which had the effect only of irritating him.

  ‘And you do eat all your meals at school, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Edward turned away to make a secret grimace, but then his father leant across him and began picking over his hair as if he were looking for lice or fleas. ‘Leave me alone, Dad.’ Edward rolled away, and ended up on his stomach.

  ‘You know I worry about you.’

  ‘Your breath smells. You’re sick.’

  ‘I am not sick.’ Charles was enraged but he could think of nothing else to say. There isn’t anything the matter with me.’ He got up, with some difficulty, and left the room.

  Edward muttered, ‘Well, I’m sick of you.’ But he was looking at his father anxiously.

  Without thinking, Charles went over to the telephone and called Philip at the library; when his friend came to talk to him, however, he could not remember what it was he meant to say. ‘Hi, it’s me, Wychwood. Charles.’

  A vagrant in the reference section was shouting, ‘It wouldn’t take more than a couple of puffs to blow you out of the water!’ and Philip could not hear what Charles was saying. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said Chatterton’s going fine. And you know what, we ought to halibut. Celebrate. We ought to arrange a dinner.’

  It sounded to Philip as if Charles had been drinking, so slurred and uncertain were his words. That’s good.’

  ‘Is that all you can say, that’s good!’ Then Charles realised he had raised his voice. ‘No. I’m sorry. Listen. I’ll invite Andrew Flint. I’ll invite Harriet. And then I’ll read them my bare face.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Preface. I’ll read them my preface. It’s all in my head.’ Charles licked his lips, which had suddenly become very dry. ‘All I have to do is write it up. Down. Chatterton.’ Edward was standing in the doorway and noticed that, as his father talked, he was moving his head very slowly from side to side. ‘Look, Philip. I have to go now. Thanks for calling.’ He put down the telephone, and stared out of the window. He still had his back turned to Edward, but the child could see his head swaying and dipping. Then he picked up the receiver and dialled another number. ‘Andrew? This is me. Your Chaucer expert. Chatterton.’ As Charles talked, he was forming his left hand into a fist a
nd beating it against the side of his leg. ‘Did we mention dinner? That’s right. Let’s make it next week. My day. Friday. I know, we shouldn’t lose touch…’ When eventually he put down the receiver he unclenched his fist and, with bowed head, stood in the middle of the room. Eventually he turned and looked towards his son, but for a moment he seemed not to know who he was. Edward said nothing, but gave a low whistle and went back to the television.

  Charles had in fact hardly noticed his son’s presence and now, with sudden urgency, he went over to his desk and began writing on the first piece of paper which he found there: Thomas Chatterton believed that he could explain the entire material and spiritual world in terms of imitation and forgery, and so sure was he of his own genius that he allowed it to flourish under other names. The documents which have recently been discovered show that he wrote in the guise of Thomas Gray, William Blake, William Cowper and many others; as a result, our whole understanding of eighteenth century poetry will have to be revised. Chatterton kept his own account of his labours in a box from which he would not be parted, and which remained concealed until his death. The sad pilgrimage of his life…’ Charles stopped, uncertain how to continue with the preface. He could not now remember whether all this information came from the documents themselves, or from the biographies which Philip had lent him. In any case he noticed that each biography described a quite different poet: even the simplest observation by one was contradicted by another, so that nothing seemed certain. He felt that he knew the biographers well, but that he still understood very little about Chatterton. At first Charles had been annoyed by these discrepancies but then he was exhilarated by them: for it meant that anything became possible. If there were no truths, everything was true.

  Charles went back to his preface but, when he read ‘The sad pilgrimage of his life’, he stared at the words with incomprehension. Where had they come from? He closed his eyes for a moment, as a shadow passed across him, and then almost at once he started writing furiously again. The biro he was using had run out of ink, but he was so eager to continue with his thoughts that he merely pressed deeper into the paper in order to print the outlines of his words. All at once he saw the entire pattern of Chatterton’s life, and with redoubled pressure he wrote it down with his empty pen. He had just completed the last sentence when the telephone rang and, in his enthusiasm, he answered it with a loud ‘Hello! Hello!’, in the manner of a music-hall comedian.