Mrs Whistler. Matthew Plampin

slotted the eyeglass into his breast pocket, scooped his bag from the floor and took her hand. Together they started through the house. Even now, moving at speed, her head muddled by sleep and sickness, and that terrible music grinding out in the background – Beethoven was it meant to be? – the pair of them seemed to sweep across the expanse of the landing; to descend the staircase, lent majesty by that grand marble curve; to proceed into the swank hallway below. It was borrowed, of course, wholly counterfeit, but it felt good nevertheless.

      They swerved right, towards the dining room. This was Jimmy’s realm, where he’d spent much of the summer. He’d been brought in to finish off the original, rather dull decorative scheme – left incomplete, Maud understood, after its designer fell ill – and had decided instead to transform it into something truly astonishing. She hadn’t been in there for a day or two, which refreshed the effect – so much so that she slowed to a halt upon the paint-spattered floorboards, her hat momentarily forgotten. It was like entering a pavilion at a great international fair. The woodwork, the many yards of intricate spindle shelving, had been coated with gleaming gold. Much of the wainscot, cornice and ceiling was now gold also, and was being overlaid with a pattern of Prussian blue peacock feathers. And there, on the inside of the shutters, were the birds themselves. The central set had been closed, as if to show them off to a caller. A pair of peacocks perched at the top of the tall panels, their magnificent tails arranged beneath them in a cascade of fronds and scales and glistening discs. They were Japanese in character, ancient-looking and otherworldly. The low light in the dining room didn’t place them at the least disadvantage; the gilded wood positively blazed in the gloom, while the blues appeared a rich, fluid black.

      That Maud was at Jimmy’s side, that she was helping him to do this – his finest achievement yet, sure to open up a whole new territory – made her so extraordinarily proud it brought tears to her eyes. There was bitterness in her too, though, just a hint; for already, before its completion, this splendid thing had become tainted. A week or so earlier, Jimmy had returned home to Chelsea in a state of fizzing agitation, talking of a development; of how the philistines were everywhere, absolutely everywhere, even lurking within those one had previously thought enlightened, with whom one had considered oneself friends. Eventually, after much shouting and cursing, the full story had been extracted. Frederick Richards Leyland, the house’s millionaire owner, had made an unannounced visit from his base of operations in Liverpool. His reaction to Jimmy’s efforts – undertaken without prior consultation, as a marvellous surprise, a gift to the entire Leyland family – had been, well, a touch disappointing.

      ‘He didn’t ask for it. That was his response. He didn’t ask for it and he didn’t want it. Not the gold, not the peacocks. Not even your flowers, Maudie.’

      Under the original scheme, the dining-room walls had been covered with antique leather, brownish yellow in tone and patterned with spiralling ribbons of summer flowers. When Jimmy had taken over he’d decided that a number of these blooms had to be retouched, with their colours switched from red to blue – and that this task should be entrusted to Maud, in her occasional role as his pupil. It had been monotonous work in truth, with several hundred little flowers to be repainted exactly the same, but she’d done it with enormous care. Learning that it had merely added to the patron’s discontent hadn’t been pleasant.

      ‘It was like having a lead ingot tied around my neck,’ Jimmy had continued, ‘and being tipped into the goddamned river. Nine years, Maud. Nine years I have been cultivating that unappealing fellow. Much indeed has passed between us, oh yes, well beyond the scope of artistic patronage. And yet throughout all of this, throughout all of my attempts to school him in art, Leyland has understood, truly understood, not a single goddamned jot. All that discourse, all that forbearance, all that blasted time – squandered!’

      The room, however, had to be finished. Of this Jimmy had been quite certain. He wanted London society to see precisely what this shipbroker from Liverpool had chosen to reject. Leyland had gone north again, to attend to his business, and so the slighted artist had embarked upon a last surge of industry. He’d moved to Kensington, living in the vacant, half-furnished house, enduring the scrutiny of an increasingly suspicious caretaker and applying himself entirely to his labour. Maud had come to see him that morning, with food and a couple of clean shirts. It had been her first visit, on account of this lingering weakness in her stomach. She’d hoped it was gone, more or less, but the jolting of the omnibus had left her so wracked with cramps that she’d been obliged to head directly upstairs, to the room Jimmy had been using, where she could rest without disturbance.

      But now disturbance had found her out. The piano hit a crescendo, like a crate of bottles cast onto the ground, then, with barely a pause, lurched into another piece. Maud looked towards the hall, wondering how fast they could get away. ‘What happened between you two?’

      Jimmy released her hand. He’d thought of a few things of his own that he wanted to take with him, and began a rapid survey of the tools and materials that lay about, picking out this and that, tucking brushes and knives and pencils into his jacket pockets. ‘A new friend had stopped by. The Marquess of Westminster.’

      ‘Oh, the marquess, was it?’

      ‘What can I say? His lordship wished to be shown the room. Word is going around, Maudie, of what has been done here. Everyone wishes to see it, from society and the press. And everyone who comes is quite awed.’ Jimmy looked up at the majestic, mystical birds arrayed across the shutters, a trace of reflected gold colouring the whiteness of his throat. ‘But then, honestly, how the devil could they be otherwise?’

      Maud’s stomach groaned; she swallowed, her amusement fading. The smells in the dining room seemed especially pungent that afternoon, the cloying, heady odour of varnish mixing disagreeably with the metallic tang of the Dutch metal.

      ‘Our marquess, however, is not one merely to admire – no, my girl, he wanted it for himself. He’s taken to me, I think. Told me he liked Americans, and Southerners in particular. Something to do with mental independence. At any rate, he was soon talking of how he would have me let loose on a wing of Eaton Hall. He was ready to make terms, right there and then.’ Jimmy frowned; he gave his feathery white forelock a twist. ‘But then Leyland showed himself. Fresh from a railway carriage and ready to kill, in that dead-eyed way of his. The marquess’s compliments were thrown back in his face. The room, and by extension its creator, were maligned most viciously. And this nobleman, this fine person of taste and manners, was all but ejected from the premises.’ He snatched his cane – a length of bamboo, rather longer than was usual – from the corner in which it had been left and marched back to the door. ‘I really cannot stay here another moment. We must go, Maud. Now.’

      Maud’s hat was hanging on the back of a wooden chair, beneath an empty stretch of patterned leather on the south wall. It was straw, tied around with black taffeta; as she put it on, an uneasy sensation tightening around her midriff, she spotted a tin basin on the seat of the chair, used for thinning pigment but presently empty. Best to be safe, she thought, and tucked it under her arm.

      Jimmy was beckoning, reaching out for her hand, starting them towards the front door as if they were running for a steamer. It was too much. After only a half dozen steps the basin slipped free, crashing against the marble floor. The lopsided sonata belting up from below broke off abruptly. Jimmy hissed a curse; and leaving the basin where it had landed, they hurried out into the street.

      Leyland caught them thirty yards from the house. Jimmy was trying to flag down a hansom, which was proving rather difficult; he’d acquired a reputation among the cabmen of Prince’s Gate for pennilessness, for partially paid fares and absent tips, and the first few that went by ignored his hails completely. Maud watched Leyland approach, pulling a little nervously on Jimmy’s sleeve, but he affected not to notice until the shipbroker was directly beside them.

      ‘Whistler,’ said Leyland, ‘you will finish the room.’

      Jimmy stood back from the kerb. ‘But why on earth would you want that, mon cher,’ he said, squinting at the dreary sky, ‘when you consider it such a calamity? Surely it would be best to start anew, with an artist