The Fraud (8 page)

‘Oh Philip!’ she cried, ‘I am so, so glad to see you! I missed you so much, I was so lonely for so long, I thought you had forgotten to come back for me . . .’ And she stopped, overcome for a moment, and he felt quite moved himself. And then she said again, oddly painful, ‘I missed you very much.’ In the first gesture of real intimacy she had made to any person since he had sailed away all those years ago, she put her hand to his face at last, felt the warmth. And at that moment, her hand at her brother’s face, she felt an old, lost feeling: joy and laughter bubbling up somewhere inside her as it used to so easily, long ago.

‘There is just one more matter,’ said Philip, but he laid his hand tenderly upon her own, in a gesture of affection also.

‘What more can there be than this?’

‘Obviously you must become an Italian.’

She pulled her hand away: he saw her amazed face. ‘But Philip, I cannot, I have not travelled like you, I know nothing of Italians or Italy!’

‘But you have dark eyes like me,
bella!
You must learn - you cannot be my sister in public until you have grasped the essentials of Italian. You, of course, can be my shy Italian sister if you please—’

‘I am not shy!’

‘If you please, I said. But you
must
be Italian. And you must dress with -’ he paused, not wanting to be unkind, ‘- more Style than you have at present.’ (She put her scuffed shoes underneath her shabby skirt in embarrassment.) ‘I have told all my Acquaintances that my very beautiful sister - you are a little thin but I am sure that will change - my very beautiful sister is arriving from Florence.’ And again in the rattling coach he clapped his hands like a magician presenting magic: ‘
The Signorina Francesca di Vecellio
!’

‘
Francesca
?’ She said the name as if she was spitting and then she did laugh at last, at the ludicrousness of it all, at the excitement, and she laughed the way he remembered (startling him with a memory of a merry, urgent, spinning girl who had painted green daisies and been filled with mirth by the outrage of seagulls); her face suddenly became suffused with uncontrollable laughter and how should he know, so far away, how long it had been since she had laughed that way? ‘This is all absolutely
unbelievable
!’ she said, and her eyes were shining.

‘How much can you earn as a milliner?’

Still laughing: ‘I was receiving five guineas for a year, and my board.’ She did not say she had spent almost all of it on paper, and chalk, and pencils.

‘I already earn much, much more than that with one Portrait,
Francesca
! I earn more than the famous Mr Reynolds - he charges twelve guineas, but I charge thirteen.’

‘
Thirteen guineas
?’ She stared.
‘
For just one Portrait?

‘Thirteen, and I am sure I earn more than the Purveyor-of-English-Art, Mr Hogarth! I tell you we shall be rich - rich just as our Mother required!’ And at last they laughed together, like conspirators, there in the coach, although neither understood at all what the other was thinking.

Then his face became more serious. ‘But I mean it: you must learn to copy how I speak in every way, Signorina Francesca di Vecellio. You are the sister of an Italian Gentleman and noble blood courses through our veins! You must listen to me, and copy me. And there is an Italian Chapel in London where you must go and observe. You must watch the people going into the Chapel. They are Italian. You are Italian.’ He amended. ‘Of course, it is not a good idea to go
inside
the Church very often. We do not want people to think we are Popish: we are a branch of Italians who gave up the Pope long ago.’

She looked so bewildered at this that he laughed again. ‘There is much to learn,
Francesca mia
!’

‘But I want still to be myself, Philip. Let me be Grace!’ She spoke most stubbornly. ‘My name is Grace. Grace Marshall.’

‘No, I have told you.’ He looked at her. She looked at him. ‘Not Grace,’ he said firmly, ‘it is too solid and too English. You are Grace no longer. We hope that you will soon grow into a fine young woman from Italy:
Francesca
.
Signorina Francesca di Vecellio.
’

She tried the name again tentatively. ‘
Francesca
.’ Despite herself she felt something like excitement in her chest. ‘
Signorina Francesca di Vecellio.
’ And this time she rolled the words around her tongue.

‘Copy me:
Buongiorno Signore
,’ he said very carefully.

‘
Buongiorno Signore.
What does it mean?’

‘It is how you greet a Gentleman. It is really the only thing you must be certain of immediately. Oh, and “thank you”:
Grazie
.’

‘
Grazie
.’

‘
Arrivederci.
That is goodbye. If anything gets too difficult, you merely just say
arrivederci
and curtsey and disappear. You will be charming.’

It was easy. ‘
Grazie, Signore. Arrivederci.
’ Her eyes sparkled at him and then she suddenly clapped her hands together also and gave a little bow, as if she too was a magic person.

‘Yes!’ he said, pleased with her already, remembering again how quickly she could learn. ‘Yes! We will manage. We will manage easily. And Grace, the whole thing is -
I have done it!
’

‘Done what?’

‘I am a famous Artist!’ he crowed.

And I will be an Artist too
, she thought, and her huge dark eyes gleamed like bright stars in the carriage evening.

 

They spent the night at a rollicking inn outside Swindon: the best rooms, and roasted duck, and a bottle of French wine which Grace sipped gingerly. She lay awake for most of the night; around and around her head spun all the things that had happened since the foreigner knocked on the door of Mrs Falls that morning, mixing in her head with the unaccustomed wine and the light from the full moon that he had promised shining directly in at her window. She got up finally from the tall wide bed in the large room, so unlike the room at the top of Christmas Steps; she unrolled her precious drawings in charcoal: their father, their mother, their brothers, their sisters - all dead but Tobias, but caught in memory, there with her in the moonlight.
But I will think how to leave a message in Bristol for Tobias, if Tobias comes back he must not be left alone.
And a painting of Philip himself, the handsome brother she thought she had lost, and something there of the devil in his eye that she had always remembered. But - there was something else there now. Something different.
A stone in his eyes.
She stared for a long time at her drawings, in the moonlight.

Underneath all her portraits was the drawing:
Grace. Fourteen years. Bristol
.
And the extraordinary signature.
Wm Hogarth.

 

She kept waiting, as they bowled next day towards the big city of London, for a moment to unroll the pictures again, now, in the carriage, but Philip spoke on and on, still like an unleashed dam. He explained again, over and over in delight: his adventures, his life, his success, his plans. By the time they reached the outskirts of the metropolis - the roads more crowded now, more carriages and coaches on their way into London - he was asleep: alone she saw the balloon of smoke that heralded the city. Then she saw the city itself emerge through the smoke from the seacoal: the houses, the churches, the palaces, the rubbish, the river, the people; at Tyburn, at dusk, she saw gallows and crowds: she could not speak, she clutched her small bag.

And her brother’s song danced round her head.
and she clasped her thin hands together and smiled at her sleeping brother and she hoped most fervently that she might get a little plumper as he desired, and learn to be witty also, as she became an Artist.

The Signorina Francesca di Vecellio (that is, Grace Marshall), so recently arrived in London, was absolutely terrified to open her mouth, in case someone shouted, ‘Fraud! You come from Bristol!’ and all her brother’s careful artifice lost.

He took her at once to a Ladies’ Outfitters in the busy, bustling, exciting Strand, where decorated shop-windows and colourful swinging shop-signs advertised their wares; She was to have three gowns: a grey working one for her duties as a housekeeper but the one for best was made of pale cream embroidered silk, and a beautiful silk fan to match. Side hoops were fashionable still but much smaller and more malleable now, so that petticoats rustled prettily beneath; still the embroidered stomacher and the tight, low-cut bodice, and the lace cap upon her long, coiled, hair.

‘You will be in charge of the house and the servants,’ said Philip. ‘You will learn to buy the food—’

‘But Philip, I do not know how!’

‘I know how. I will teach you,’ (she looked at this new Philip in amazement) ‘and you and the cook will decide each day what to feed the guests I shall begin to invite here.’ Her face showed bafflement and trepidation: surely he knew she was not a housekeeper? Nor had she any desire to learn that art. But everything was so new, so different, so strange; still stunned at the change suddenly to her life she was, for the moment, inarticulate.

He presented her to the house in St Martin’s Lane, of which, he said, alarming her immensely, she was to be in charge: a pleasant house of four storeys, attic rooms at the back of the house for servants, and a room facing the Lane, also at the top of the house, just for her. There was a large dining-room, and a drawing-room. There was a kitchen in the basement. Philip employed a kitchen-maid, a housemaid, a manservant and a cook: in embarrassment the Italian sister spoke hardly a word, her eyes showed her panic: what had she ever learned of housekeeping in Bristol? The housemaid, Euphemia, was about her own age and the two young girls observed each other warily: Grace so thin and dark in her demure grey working-dress and her white lace lady’s cap, the maid plump and fair with her mob cap on her unruly hair, and prone to giggling.

 

And then Grace entered a magical, enchanted fairyland: her brother’s studio.

It took up almost the whole of one of the floors of the house. Her brother could not help but laugh at her, at the way her nose twitched almost like a terrier: smelling the paints, and the oils, and the Turpentine (for these were smells of memory to her: her father’s little studio room downstairs in Queen’s Square). Large and small portraits on all the walls, some by her brother she at once understood, but other paintings in different styles. Piles of canvases and bare boards were stacked in corners. There were colours in cabinets, wrapped in little parcels. There were large and smaller brushes on trays on a big bench, bottles of oil: walnut, linseed. There were rags and towels and pitchers of water and bottles of Turpentine. He showed her packets of something he named
size
, a kind of flour, that was mixed with water to paint over the new canvases so that paint would not leak through. And in the middle of the studio with its big windows facing the best light, there stood a large wooden easel. A canvas was stretched over a frame made of wood, ‘That frame is a
stretcher
,’ said Philip, and the stretched canvas on the frame stood on the easel. And there on the canvas was a half-finished portrait of a man who seemed to be - from his clothes, from the way he looked - a nobleman: an unfinished nobleman. Beside the easel lay a wooden plate of colours with a hole for his thumb - he showed her how he held it - the plate was called a
palette
. A palette and a small palette knife beside: many wondrous colours lay there like an exuberant rainbow, mixed, un-mixed, bright, dark: thrilling.

‘It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my whole, whole life,’ she whispered so that he may or may not have heard her; her fifteen-year-old face was suffused with wonder. For the first time she was seeing a real artist’s studio: it was everything she had dreamed of. Her heart was beating so fast she could not say anything else. And a new thought came:

She stared at the painting on the easel
. I know nothing about paint and colours. I seem to be able to draw a face but I have only used charcoal.
She looked about her brother’s studio in awe.
I need to first understand how little I know. There is very, very much for me to learn.

Not for one single moment however did she doubt her path and her calling: her hands tingled to hold one of the brushes. She looked around the studio, breathed the scents and the smells into her very soul, and knew: this was to be her life.

 

At night, from the window at the top of the house, she looked out on this new city, saw London flickering and dancing down St Martin’s Lane. Swirling dark mists came down often, yet some nights stars shone like small lamps above her. Once she quietly took out her paper and her charcoal and in the light of her candle quickly drew the servants as she remembered them: the maid Euphemia’s face was upturned and smiling. Every new night, with her precious small bag beside her, she lay in her new bed in her new room and heard the night-watchmen calling the hour as they made their slow way about the London streets: ‘Three of the morning, ’ they would call, and, ‘All’s well.’ And she thought to herself,
yes, yes all is well. I shall learn, I shall learn everything from my brother, and then, at last, I shall be an Artist, just as he is, the two of us, together, shining just as I said
, and new happiness almost overwhelmed her.

 

She curtseyed to the handsome gentleman her brother introduced her to, her cheeks flushed. ‘
Buongiorno
, Signore Burke,’ she said, and he bent to her hand and smiled.