James Miranda Barry Read online

  Back in the parlour I draw up a stool, stretch out upon the settle and doze off. It is well after eight when I am awoken by an assiduous cockerel and the first hint of watery light, creeping down the bricks in the yard outside. The woman is nowhere to be seen, the candle has burnt out and the fire is a depressing pile of black embers. I stand up, every bone aching, and stagger down the smoky passage to the kitchen, where all the dramatis personae of the previous night are lying, fast asleep.

  I wake them all up by riddling the range, then we sit down round the table to eat mutton chops for breakfast. I try not to notice the ingrained filth, inches deep, coating every surface in the kitchen.

  * * *

  The first sign of London, as we approach across the fields from the south, is the smoke, as if there was a giant conflagration some way ahead. The air is so still that it is not dispersed. There is a white frost in the shelter of the hedgerows. I watch the crisp line retreating under the first touch of the sun. Here the primroses are well past their best and falter sadly on the muddy banks. But I can hear the chiffchaff in the woods. Yes, it must be the end of March if that tiny bird is raising such an echo all around us.

  A beggar appears carrying two dilapidated wooden buckets in a contraption round his neck which looks like the upper part of the stocks. One of the buckets is rotten and could hold nothing safely. He leans out and catches hold of my stirrup, begging for alms. The horse pulls back against the hedge, sinking a little into the overgrown ditch. The beggar and I stare at one another. He is foul, ragged and trembling. I realise that he is partially blind: one eye is glassy with mist. His speech is unintelligible, a sort of uhuhuhuhuhuhuh. Yet his outstretched open hand is a gesture with an unmistakable meaning. I steady the horse, which tramples near the beggar’s naked, filthy feet, and lean down to place a few coins in the leathery palm. One of his fingers is sliced off at the first joint, but the uneven stump closes with alacrity around the coppers. Suddenly, his speech clears.

  ‘God bless you, sir’ rings out in the early air and he bows so that the buckets touch the earth. I see that he is attached to this bizarre harness with a rope, as securely as if he were strung up upon a gibbet. Yet he turns away, the buckets swinging wildly out of the perpendicular, and strides off down the muddy lane, a free man, until I can see only the greasy crown of his hat disappearing beyond the hedgerows. We cross the turnpike just before the village from which the beggar had come, and find ourselves swallowed up in a river of pilgrims on foot and in carts, leading donkeys, pulling barrows, all making their way towards London.

  It is after midday when we arrive, dirty and exhausted, in Castle Street East, where my uncle’s house can at once be distinguished by the dirt upon the windows and the general air of decrepitude and neglect. I peer about for a point in the road that will not mean landing in a vile morass, churned up by carriage wheels. The rain, which spared us on the first part of our journey, now begins again. I slither down into the murky swamp and gain the pavement as quickly as possible. The messenger waits patiently to lead my horse away to the mews, two streets away. The house is a target for street urchins. The front is strewn with the dried and shrivelled corpses of various animals, waste paper, fragments of boys’ hoops and lost toys, some of which have doubtless been hurled at the windows. A black and white cat, recently dead, its fur matted and wet, lies upon the projecting sill of the parlour windows. Its unfortunate predecessors, some now reduced to skeletons, are lying at the bottom of the area steps. A smeared tract in my uncle’s writing is stuck there in place of the glass pane. I try to read it, but apart from the opening proclamation, which announces that the occupant is the victim of a general conspiracy, the words are illegible. I am immediately surrounded by a group of ragged boys.

  ‘Soldier! Look, soldier! A soldier’s come to arrest the Jew!’ They shriek and smirk, jubilant.

  ‘The man who lives here is a distinguished artist. He is not a Jew.’

  I mount the steps. The gang begins chanting, ‘Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew,’ and circles the entrance.

  ‘He’s a wizard. And a Jew.’ The tallest child contradicts me. Then they fly off down the street, shrieking.

  The door bursts open and there stands my mother, as slender and arrestingly beautiful as she has always been. She is wearing a filthy apron, headscarf and gloves. My heart turns over. She drags me over the threshold and embraces me with joy and relief.

  ‘My dearest child, come in; come in. Shut the door. The street is not safe. Those children have actually stoned me on the doorstep.’

  ‘Mary Ann, there is a dead cat lying on the sill outside the parlour window.’

  ‘Oh, don’t state the obvious. It’s been there a week. What do you expect me to do? Throw it down into the area with the others? Listen, I have had a cot bed delivered from home. He has no furniture, just a bedstead. The kitchen was unspeakable. He won’t be moved. He tries to get out of bed and go on working on his canvases, if he’s not watched. Louisa has been wonderful. One of her women, Mrs Harris, has tried to make something of the range so that we have hot water and fires in at least two of the rooms. Francisco won’t let me stay overnight, as you might imagine. Mrs Harris sits up beside him. That was her husband who came to find you.’

  ‘Where is Alice Jones?’

  ‘Alice? Oh, God, Alice! She ran off seven weeks ago. And not empty-handed either.’

  ‘Ran away? Where is she?’

  ‘Gone to a street corner in the Haymarket for all I care. She took a box of precious stones your uncle brought back from Italy. The box itself was inlaid with gold and pearl and worth at least ten guineas. Mind you, it was his fault. He had precious little left for her to steal.’

  ‘Alice was never a thief. Or at least she never stole valuable things.’ I remember a pair of white silk stockings.

  Mary Ann shrugs, dismissing Alice to the oblivion of the city, and leads the way downstairs. The floorboards are bare; piles of rubbish stir in the corners. We feel our way downwards, into the dark, through the murky air. The kitchen door no longer has a handle, only layers of string threaded back through the keyhole, to prevent the door from closing forever. A smell of damp and rot pervades the kitchen, but it is at least swept and I catch the odour of washed, clean sheets floating on the dryer above us. This is the first fresh thing I have encountered amongst the detritus of abandonment and calculated degeneration. Mrs Harris sits by the back door on a stool. Her hands are worn, but clean. Behind her the back garden presents a jungle of brambles, punctuated by wrecked furniture. I see the remains of a washstand poking up through fresh nettles.

  ‘He flung it all out. Months ago.’ Mary Ann’s energy is suddenly retreating like the Thames tide. ‘Oh, James, it’s all so wretched. Nothing I do makes any difference. He just abuses me. Calls me a whore, then demands to see Francisco, and when Francisco does come he demands to see you. He pisses in the bed on purpose. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it.’

  She bursts into tears. Mrs Harris pumps more water into one of the pots, shaking her head. Her eyes are faded and tired.

  I take my mother in my arms. ‘Don’t cry. I’ll deal with him.’

  James Barry is dying as he has always lived, unreasonably, and without the slightest concern for anybody else.

  I drink a bowl of bitter black tea. Then I pull off my boots. The messenger appears out of an invisible path through the nettles, carrying my small bags and my medical chest. He stands at the door. Mary Ann stares, puzzled, as if she has never seen him before. I whisk her away.

  ‘Come, let’s go and see the patient.’

  I pad up the stairs behind her. On the first landing the doors are open and I see canvases stacked against the wall, the great wooden frames stretched like scaffolding beneath them. The back windows are blacked out with rough woollen blankets. Even in the gloom the paint stains across the floor are clearly visible. A small assembly of plaster-cast classical statues huddle in the drawing room. A discus thrower, Venus, with neither head nor arms, a reduced versio
n of the Laocoön, with some segments of the serpents lost forever. They stand stark white, vulnerable and naked, frozen in the dusty light. There is a single sofa still there, broken down on one side so that wood and horsehair protrude, like intestines from a ripped belly. Outside, it is raining heavily.

  Mary Ann waits for me on the stair.

  ‘It’s all like this. Filthy. Empty.’

  The partitions have been removed in the upper storey. In the front room a huge canvas stands covered with a ragged sheet. I recognise Minerva, noble at the centre of the painting, surrounded by angels. I can see her helmet through a rent in the cloth. But a low growl catches my attention. Behind me, buried in an iron bedstead which supports his shrivelled body, lies what already looks like the remains of my uncle, the painter James Barry. His face is yellow and grizzled. He has not been shaved for many days. His hair is grey and lank, the hacked locks stuck to his temples. The broad fleshy face and mouth are now pinched and tight, the eyes sunken beneath the dark hoods, pulled close like blinds. His face is already in mourning. I imagined that he had heard our steps, but he is asleep, his breaths coming in a series of laboured grunts and mutters.

  On a plain stool beside the bed stand a candle, a cup and a saucer, a glass of water and a book with the pages doubled back, as if someone has just ceased reading to him. It is a volume of Walter Scott’s Poems. I stroke his forehead gently. It is damp, but not hot. The fever is not upon him. The room is bare, but I smell nothing, apart from the faint scent of turpentine which masks the odour of urine. This is odd, for the smell of death is unmistakable. My master is not here. But he is coming. We must make ready for his approach. I examine the sheets and blankets, both of which are scrupulously clean. I peer into his chamberpot. There are no traces of blood in his thick acrid deposits. Old people’s urine has a far stonger smell than that of the young. The old painter’s offering is malodorous, but normal. A doctor learns to read the body’s effluvia: sweat, excrement, phlegm, slime, these are the hieroglyphics I am learning to decode. James Barry is dying of bad temper and old age.

  ‘Shall I bring up your medicine chest?’ Mary Ann whispers.

  ‘Yes. Do.’

  I know that she wants to get out of the room. Even in his sleep my uncle bullies and intimidates her. She slips away, leaving me alone with the dying man and his last work. It will be Mary Ann who inherits his estate. Such as it is. This sketchbook, this painting. I pick up the open sketchbook, which is leaning against the wall. The fire stutters. My uncle’s face, shadowed and melancholy, one hand raised to his temple, stares back. His lined, sad cheeks and fixed frown are roughly drawn. He leans upon the same volume of Scott’s Poems that lies beside his bed. Where is the mirror? This is drawn from life. For a moment I am much moved by the artist’s poignant witness to his own disillusionment. But straight away I suspect him. This is Barry’s vision of himself, victim of all the world’s conspiracies. He has enemies everywhere, all desiring his downfall and working, insidiously, passionately, to destroy his life, his work, his reputation. Why, the last time I was here he declared that he could not go out because the Academicians were planning to murder him. But at least he still had some furniture. No doubt he had conclusive evidence that all the chairs were impregnated with some kind of malfeasance, a concoction invented by his rivals, and therefore hurled the chairs into the garden. We must call a priest and give him the last rites. The old bugger must have a very multitude of sins to confess.

  I step softly over to the great painting, which blocks out all the light from the street, and begin to pull back the ripped sheets. Something that looks suspiciously like blood stains one side. I breathe in the scent of fresh oil, with an odd gust of relief. This smell of art will always be more powerful than the smell of death. This is peculiar, but comforting. I hear screeching from below and then the sound of water being poured over the front steps. Someone is doing battle with the street boys, who were probably trying to add another corpse to the one on the window sill.

  I study the mighty torso of the God of Fire. Here, next to Minerva, is Hymen with his torch, to the far left Apollo and Bacchus, fat-stomached, wreathed in vine leaves. And this heroic chest, hairless, shimmering, must belong to the King of the Gods. The pose is suitable. I step back to judge the scale. The painting is enormous, around ten by eighteen feet. I suddenly know what this painting means. My uncle’s handwriting, crabbed and mad, swims before me.

  I have been shut up at home with a cough. However, thanks be to God, the time has hitherto not been totally lost: the Pandora is finished and also I have, just before the cold weather set in, finished very much to my satisfaction a very large print of it, and a written account of the subject, which is also finished, tho’ not yet copied out for the press . . .

  This was the last letter which he sent to me. The Pandora, my last best work. The Pandora is finished. A beautiful curved stomach and warm thigh shimmer fleshy in the gloom. This is The Birth of Pandora. I now remember that a journalist, who has had a glimpse of this picture, described her as the most perfect female form that pencil ever produced. I stare suspiciously at perfection. She is nearly naked, tended by the Graces, one of whom ties her sandal. Her head is thrown back, revealing the long line of her jaw. I recognise the classical chair, here inlaid with gold, upon which she sits. The original is now lying upside down in the back garden with a bramble growing through the seat. With a quiver of horror I realise that I know the woman too. He has exactly drawn the curve of her breasts, the gentle heaviness of her thighs and the fine length of her leg. Her face is turned away, gazing up at the sombre austerity of Minerva. But I have no doubt. This is a painting of Alice Jones.

  For a terrible moment I stand transfixed by the figure and its implications. She was never his housemaid. She was his model. And what else was she to him? Was that why she stole the box of precious stones? She had not been fully paid for whatever she did, and so she helped herself.

  Inevitably, my eye is drawn to the crowned Fates, who are preparing the box of evils with which the gods will send her forth into the world, armed to inflict wretchedness and perdition on all mankind. But our own Pandora has already departed from Olympus, clutching the box.

  ‘Cover it. Cover it. I can’t stand to see it. I shall never paint again.’

  The voice comes from the mattress-grave as James Barry levers himself up onto his elbow. His face changes colour, from yellow to white. As he cackles out this frail command, Mary Ann and Mrs Harris appear in the doorway, carrying a dish of warm water and my medicine chest. Barry is transformed into a savage corpse, Lazarus risen in a fury.

  ‘Get out, you old hags! Get out! You want me dead. You stinking Erinyes, crawling up stairs and crouching in corners. Get out, you Irish slut.’

  He spits venomously at Mary Ann. The gobbet falls on the floor at her feet, and she stops short, furious, terrified.

  ‘Lie down, uncle. You’re working yourself up to a stroke.’

  I lay the dying man carefully back upon his pillows and indicate to the women that they should put down their burdens and go. Barry growls as they scuttle away onto the landing and down the bare staircase; then he closes his eyes. I sit beside him on the bed. Now I can smell his body. His old flesh is rancid. The stench of putrefaction is upon him. I take his hand gently.

  ‘They are trying to kill me,’ he murmurs, clutching my hand in his terrible claw, ‘trying to kill me. Ungrateful bitch. When I gave her everything I had . . .’

  So far as I know James Barry has never given Mary Ann a penny. I wonder if he is referring to Alice.

  I do not believe in bleeding fevers. In any case, Barry is not at present feverish, although his breathing is laboured and rasping. We might try an effusion. It would be no bad thing for him to sit up. He closes his eyes once more and I sit patiently beside him, waiting until his savage grip upon my hand relaxes.

  The English do not take kindly to intimate physical examinations. For my part I would never let a doctor touch me. Yet intense observation
of the suffering body will yield more material for an accurate diagnosis and an effective remedy than any other method. Most patients are either hopelessly inarticulate or irritatingly garrulous. They cannot describe their symptoms in any detail or indeed sensibly. So often I have been confronted with old women or young soldiers who complain of indeterminate internal pains, are absolutely certain that they have an enlarged spleen or a floating womb, and demand treatment accordingly. I am reduced to the most bizarre subterfuges to determine what is actually wrong with them. In the case of the wealthy whom I sometimes have the misfortune to advise, it is almost always overeating and lack of exercise.

  I quietly procure a strange series of wooden tubes from my medical chest. Barry must not see this. If he does he will probably fall victim to an immediate cardiac crisis. When I have screwed all the parts together it is a simple wooden cylinder, around nine inches long. Stealthy as a burglar, I pull back the sheet and lift the fouled edge of Barry’s nightshirt. His skin is wrinkled and grey, his genitals pitiful as a shrivelled seahorse. The priest must be sent for. His death cannot be many days off. I apply the larger end of the cylinder gently to his heart and the other end to my ear. The effect is magical. I can hear the rapid clatter of his heart with far greater clarity and distinctness than I could ever have done by applying my ear alone. But it is as I had feared. The pulse is uneven, flickering, unstable. I wait for twenty minutes, then lift him gently onto his side. Even so diminished, his unconscious limbs are heavy and awkward to shift. He groans terribly, but remains insensible. I listen carefully to his lungs, or at least to what remains of them. They are filling up with fluid. It is as I feared. He almost certainly has pneumonia.

  I call Mrs Harris and ask her to build up the fire and to change my uncle’s shirt. We must keep the room quiet, warm and clean. As the woman gently strips the old painter, I notice that he wears a small phylactery round his neck, no doubt containing a word from the scriptures, after the fashion of the Jews, or a holy relic. My uncle is, after all, a very private man. Whatever he thought of God, he certainly never raised the matter with me, either in intimate company or in public. Yet he was pious in his observance at St Peter and St Paul. I am now relieved that I was never obliged to make candid agnostic statements, which would clearly have disturbed him. Yet if ever there was a candidate for hell-fire it must have been James Barry. I tell Mrs Harris to send for the priest. She whispers to me that the General has passed by and taken Mrs Bulkeley away. Her husband is fetching provisions. We are alone in the house. I tell her to go straight to the church. Then I sit down again beside my uncle in the bare rooms and failing light, exhausted.