“The usual answer. Parents are terribly niminy-piminy about telling their children these things. Ah, well; I shall just have to count backward and make an approximation. But anyhow—when were you baptized and christened?”
“Oh, I can tell you that, right enough. It was about three weeks later; September 30, actually, at roughly four o’clock in the afternoon. Church of England rite. Oh, and now I come to think of it, I was baptized again, years later, Catholic, that time. I’m sure I can remember the date if I try. But how does that come in?”
“When you were begotten is obviously important. As you seem to be a healthy chap I presume you were a full-term baby, so I can get the date fairly near. Date of entry upon the stage in the Great Theatre of the World is important, and that is the only one the commoner sort of astrologers bother with. But the date when you were formally received into what your community looked upon as the world of the spirit, and were given your own name, is important because it supplies a few shades to your central chart. And to be baptized twice!—spiritual dandyism, I’d call it. You let me have all that on a piece of paper at breakfast, and I’ll get to work. Meanwhile, just one more teensy cognac before we retire to our blameless couches.”
Days alone in the shell-grotto and nights with Ruth Nibsmith were doing much to restore Francis’s battered self-esteem. Getting away from England had been a bruising experience. There was all the trouble of explaining to Ismay’s parents what had happened, and putting up with their obvious, though unexpressed, opinion that it must have been his fault. Then there was the trouble of making arrangements about the child Charlotte—Little Charlie as everybody but Francis insisted on calling her, slurring the “Ch” so it sounded like “Sharlie”—because the Glassons wanted to have control over her, but did not particularly want to be bothered with her. Their days of bringing up children were, they said reasonably, in the past. Were they now to take on a baby, who needed care every hour of the day? They worried, understandably, about Ismay, who was God knows where with God knows who in a country on the brink of civil war. The girl, they admitted, was a fool, but that did not seem to lessen their conviction that Francis was to blame for everything that had happened. When he was pushed at last to the point of telling them that Little Charlie was not his child, Aunt Prudence wept and Uncle Roderick swore, but they were no more sympathetic toward Francis. Cuckolds are fated to play ignominious and usually comic roles.
Never had Francis felt so low as when at last he came to an arrangement with the Glassons; in addition to the money already promised to keep the estate afloat, he agreed to pay all the costs of maintaining Little Charlie, which were substantial, because the child must have a first-rate nanny, and money for whatever a child needs—and the Glassons were not prepared to stint their granddaughter—and also a sum indefinitely allocated but definitely estimated for unforeseen costs. It was all reasonable enough, but Francis had the feeling that he was being exploited, and when his honour and his affections were under ruinous attack, he was astonished to find how greatly the assault on his bank-account affected him also. It was ignoble, under the circumstances, to think so much about money, but think about it he did. What did he care about Little Charlie, at present a dribbling, squalling, slumbrous lump?
In the circumstances, it was not surprising that he had jumped at Uncle Jack’s offer of something to do, some place to go, a necessary task to undertake. But that had resolved itself into three months of grubby devilling for Tancred Saraceni, who had kept him grinding away with mortar and pestle, boiling up the smelly muck that went into the “black oil” the painter needed for his work, and generally acting as chore-boy and sorcerer’s apprentice.
What was the sorcerer up to? Faking pictures, or at least improving existing worthless pictures. Could the great Saraceni really be sunk in this worst sort of artistic sin? Certainly that was what it looked like.
Well, if this was the game, if this was what he had been dragged into, he might as well play it to the hilt. He would show Saraceni that he could daub in the sixteenth-century German manner as well as anyone. He was to paint a picture that would agree in quality and style with the panels that had been completed and that now sat all around the shell-grotto, staring at him with the speculative eyes of the unknown dead. As Francis sat down to plan his picture he laughed for the first time in several months.
He did many preliminary drawings, and just to show what a conscientious faker he was, he did them on some of the expensive old paper culled from old books and artists’ leavings he had from his Oxford days, coating it with an umber base, and making his careful preliminaries (for they were not sketches in the modern sense) with a silver-point. Yes, it was coming quite well. Yes, that was what he wanted and what would surprise the Meister. Rapidly and surely, he began to paint on his miserable old panel, in the Meister’s own careful mode, with unexceptionable, authentic colours, and every stroke mixed with the magical formula of phenol and formaldehyde.
He realized with surprise that he was happy. And in his happiness, he sang.
Many painters have sung at their work, as a form of incantation, an evocative spell. What they sing may not impress an outsider as having much to do with their painting. What Francis sang was an Oxford student song to the tune of the Austrian national anthem of an earlier and happier time, “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser”:
On and on he moaned, happy at his work. The Happy Faker, he thought. As I do this, no one can touch me.
“Are you happy? I am.” Ruth Nibsmith turned her head on the pillow to look at Francis. She was not a beautiful woman, or a pretty woman, but she was well-formed and she was incontestably a jolly woman. Jolly was the only possible word. A fresh, high-spirited, merry, and, it proved, an amorous woman, who had in no way set out to lure Francis into her bed, but had cheerfully agreed to his suggestion that they advance their friendship in this direction.
“Yes, I am happy. And it’s nice of you to say that you are. I haven’t had much luck making anyone happy in this way.”
“Oh, but it’s good sport, isn’t it? How would you rank our performance, in university terms?”
“I’d give us a B+.”
“An excellent second class. Well, I dunno—I’d call it an A-. That’s modest, and keeps us well below the Romeo and Juliet level. Anyhow, I’ve enjoyed it immensely these last few days.”
“You speak as if it were over.”
“It is over. The Countess brings Amalie back from Munich tomorrow, and I must take to my role as the model of behaviour and discretion. Which I do without regret, or not too much regret. One has to play fair with one’s employers, you know; the Countess trusts me, and so I can’t be having it off with another of the upper servants in the Castle when I am watching over Amalie. Oh, if Amalie could see us now she’d be green with envy!”
“What? That kid?”
“Kid my foot! Amalie’s fourteen, and warm as one of those porcelain stoves. She adores you, you know.”
“I’ve hardly spoken to her.”
“Of course. You are distant, unattainable, darkly melancholy. Do you know what she calls you? Le Beau Ténébreux. She’s eating her heart out for you. It would plunge her into despair to think you were content with her governess.”
“Oh, shut up about the governess! And about upper servants; I’m nobody’s servant.”
“Balls, my boy! One’s lucky if that’s all one is. The Countess isn’t a servant; she’s a slave to this place, and to her determination to restore the family fortunes. You and I are just paid hands, able to leave whenever we please. I like being an upper servant. Lots of my betters have been upper servants. If it wasn’t too much for Haydn to wear the livery of the Esterhazys, who am I to complain? There’s a lot to be said for knowing one’s place.”