The Fraud (2 page)

Into this household a last child, the sixth living child, had been, unexpectedly, born. Her mother called her, in her hearing, a ‘trial’. (They named her Grace, as if that would help.)

Grace did not know the meaning of the word ‘trial’.

‘What is a Trial, that I am?’ she asked her father, her three-year-old dark eyes wide with curiosity, but he hardly heard her: the smell of tobacco and rum and a half-smile from his
louche
, world-weary, alcohol-blurred eyes: that was all her answer.

Grace grew up a city girl, learning to avoid the drains and the pickpockets. Her mother half-heartedly tried to impose elegance and gloves but Grace was more likely to wave her hands about than put gloves upon them. To speak truthfully she generally ran wild about Bristol in a most unsuitable manner: as well as the Wiltshire Marshalls’ dark hair and big dark eyes she had small strong chubby legs and seemingly infinite energy. Grace was tough, much nosier about matters than was acceptable, and avid for everything: as soon as she could walk she looked in cupboards, down drains, round corners, under her sisters’ skirts until they slapped her.

‘She waves her hands about her like a Foreigner and looks like her Father - does she imagine herself to be an
Italian
?’ said her mother sourly (for she did not love Grace: Juno and Venus had inherited at least some of their mother’s fair prettiness). But Grace could not help her inheritance or her enthusiasms: words and questions and observations poured from her, almost from the time she could speak.

And Grace had a kind of gladness about her: she enjoyed everything that went on around her, wide dark eyes full of laughter and questions. She had a most unacceptable habit of grabbing people by both their arms and talking loudly, to get their attention: utterly unladylike, and no one caring enough to do anything about it. If her eldest brother Philip Marshall had not been so bored, if he had been permitted by his loving, clinging mother to join His Majesty’s Navy, then Grace Marshall would never ever have learned to read, would no doubt eventually have acquired the air of the un-literate Juno and Venus, her older sisters: petulance (which is what they thought of as sophistication). But because Grace was so curious and so bright, Philip, when she was only six years old, had a bet with his friends which he easily won: within six months he had taught Grace to read; within a year she stumblingly read aloud to anyone who would listen from the newspaper, the
Bristol Postboy
, including hard words like WEST INDIES and PROFIT. Philip taught her to write: the very first word she penned was GRACE, and by the time she was eight she had learned by heart a sonnet by a gentleman called Mr Shakespeare (for a few old volumes languished in dusty corners in the house in Bristol, a sign of Culture). The child had only a hazy understanding of that which she was emoting (the subject of Aging and Time not usually part of the experience of an eight-year-old), but she rattled out the words with gusto:
and then she would forget a bit, look confused, and then she remembered some more words and would start again loudly with even more gusto and enthusiasm:

‘Breed!’ cried Betty in outrage. ‘
Breed
? What rude Rubbish are you filling the Child’s head with, darling boy? I shan’t allow it! What does a Poet know? Let him come to Queen’s Square whoever he is, and I shall educate him!’ But Philip was going through a disconsolate phase and would not be criticised and Grace performed heroically if erratically when instructed, although in truth she would rather have been singing
Three Blind Mice, See how they Run
, a popular round that was all the rage; or playing in the back garden with Tobias and Ezekiel, who pinched their little sister’s chubby arms for their own amusement. She squealed like the piglet as she pinched them back and yelled ‘TimesScythe!’ at them without any idea of its meaning, and then they all three played noisy hopscotch beside the fake Greek statue, hopping and cheating and laughing.

 

Betty (who may have despised painting but considered herself an expert on the Etiquettes of Society) insisted that, as with all noble families, it was absolutely imperative that they be memorialised for posterity: that is, a Family Portrait must be acquired as a record of the Wiltshire Marshalls in Bristol, which would be passed down from generation to generation, ‘Until the World ends,’ said Betty. ‘That we shall always be remembered, and spoke of.’

What was required was a group portrait, known as a Conversation Piece, and nothing would satisfy Betty but that it was painted by a Frenchman she had heard of, ‘For Foreign Painters are descended from the Old Masters themselves,’ said Betty. (She had heard another lady say this, was not absolutely certain whom the Old Masters might be, but for once Marmaduke nodded sagely and co-operated.)

Somehow the Frenchman got the group of eight people posed (Aunt Joy was not included): Marmaduke and Betty were sitting upright and elegant on the remains of the Wiltshire Marshalls’ old family furniture; Juno and Venus leaned languorously behind; Philip to the side, tall and handsome; and the three younger children sitting at their parents’ feet in the foreground, with Beloved the poodle.

‘This Painting,’ said Marmaduke to his children, conscious for once of his heritage, ‘will be seen by your Children, and your Children’s Children, down through Time,’ and Grace declared loudly:
And nothing ’gainst Time’s Scythe can make defence, save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence
and Marmaduke, smelling strongly of West Indian rum, nodded morosely. Unfortunately he then fell asleep; Beloved bit Ezekiel; Grace laughed at this (in an unladylike manner); Venus got pins and needles from leaning languorously. Only Philip remained completely still. All the Marshalls watched the Frenchman: how he looked at them and drew, looked at them and drew. Grace observed his eyes and his pencil and his portable easel that he had set up in the small drawing-room; she fidgeted with interest, wanting all the time to see what he had done.

After some hot hours had passed the Artist announced himself content with the first sitting; the Marshall family crowded the easel and then professed disappointment: who were those stick-people? Where were the colours? The Frenchman explained that this was a preliminary sketch only, and that more sittings would be required.

Painting a picture of eight members of this family would have tried the patience of a saint; the Frenchman persevered, finally delivered a rather odd and stiff assemblage of faces and bodies, and a dog: Marmaduke and Philip both immediately stated that they could have done better. This acquisition was hung upon the wall of the drawing-room above Betty’s
chaise longue
and looked at with some confusion by various family members. ‘Which is me?’ said Ezekiel, and Venus pointed to the poodle: as she had never been known to make a joke in her life she may, indeed, have confused them. To be frank, it was a mediocre work.

It was when the fee was required (nine guineas) that difficulties began. The Artist sent several bills and then appeared in person requiring his money. Betty, with her best hauteur, replied it would be sent ‘in due course’. He went away empty-handed that time, but not the next: he arrived in a fine French rage and wrenched the painting from the wall saying, ‘It is fortuitous that I can scrape this ignoble Family off, and use the board again,
Madame
!’ and he walked out into Queen’s Square with the mediocre picture under his arm and nobody saw the Conversation Piece of the Bristol Marshalls ever again.

 

Time’s Scythe scythed; days passed, and months, and years. Marmaduke gambled away what money remained; Juno and Venus sighed and sulked and talked of Nobility and dreamed of Love; Ezekiel and Tobias stole from neighbouring houses; Betty’s cheeks became permanently Madeira-red.

Half-educated, bored with teaching a child, nowhere to use his energy, Philip would stroll the Bristol streets in a supercilious manner as the sons of gentlemen were wont to do, thinking of himself as a fashionable
flâneur
in the manner of the French (pretending his clothes were not becoming slightly shabby), and then suddenly, urgently, Grace would appear from nowhere, reminding him of a spinning top in her flurried hooped skirt, and then she would just as quickly settle to his pace and stroll beside him, chattering upwards.

‘Why?’ said Grace.

‘What is that?’ said Grace.

‘Can we read?’ said Grace.

‘Look, look, there is a Clock:
When I do count the clock that tells the Time
,’ said Grace.

Philip was aggravated by the girl’s persistence, again and again sent her home, obviously no stylish
flâneur
recognised a young child as a companion: she should stay in the house in Queen’s Square with her sisters and their mother. But over and over again, Grace spun out into the square in her little hooped gown, her bodice cut low - exactly like her mother ’s - and neatly laced over her embroidered stomacher: an exact replica of an adult, only small, and dragging her shawl behind her impatiently as if it slowed her down, as her lace cap bobbed above her dark, dark hair. Perhaps sometimes there was something endearing about a shadow, whose dark eyes were so large and bright, and some days Philip would point out the new houses on the Clifton hills, or the ships from far-off lands.

‘Look, Grace, look!’ he would say. ‘Listen, Grace, listen to me! These ships,’ and they would gaze at all the graceful, shabby vessels that came and went from another world, the tall masts like thin bare trees in lines along the quay-side, ‘these ships travel the World, they carry Diamonds and Rubies and Rum - and real Gold,’ and unexpectedly he smashed his swordstick violently against a wall in that raging way he sometimes had, ‘Where is
my
Gold!’ and Grace knew well to lag behind now, so that he would not take out his anger upon her. But she knew what gold was: she could picture the colour of gold in her head, her father’s old crystal decanters contained liquid made of dark gold, the colour caught the candlelight in the dark family house, where nothing much else shone. While Philip brooded Grace stared, wrapt, fascinated, at the ships with their furled white sails, all the bustle and calling and unloading and loading; she smelled the tar and the filthy river port and, somewhere there - beside them, behind them - exotic spices on the air. She saw how the light changed as it fell across the water: observed an old sailor and a young one, their heads together as they talked. The grey Bristol light caught the bones of the old sailor so that his shadowed face looked to her like a skull, a skull that was smoking a pipe.

‘Look, Philip, look!’ she called, and she caught up with him again. ‘Look at the sailors!’ There was no breeze, the smoke from the pipe rose straight up, a cloud of blue mist rising above the heads of the two men, there beside the coils of rope and the big heavy boxes and a seagull, black and white, crying at the lowering sky, and Grace wondered if her father could paint such a picture instead of horses: the blue smoke and the grey sky and the bird and the eerie weather-beaten old face. The old sailor spat and somehow the seagull was looking the other way and the gob fell upon its folded wings, it squawked in outrage and shook its feathers and flew away screeching. And young Grace Marshall could be seen in her hooped skirt and her tight bodice and her shawl laughing uncontrollably at the bird’s indignation along the wharfside in the city of Bristol; her dark eyes sparkled up at her beautiful brother who could not help laughing either, as much at his sister ’s merriment as at the affront of the bird from the sea.

Philip Marshall was so bored with life in general that once he even took his sister to the Bristol Library in King Street. There, up an old oak staircase, they found the librarian in a room full of books with a startling, wonderful picture on the wall: a picture of a fine, elegant gentleman in a beautiful coloured robe. The librarian however was neither elegant nor fine; he was a vicar in a somewhat shabby waistcoat: Grace and Philip observed he had red veins on his cheeks which gave him the look rather of a cross person but he was not cross at all, simply bored and rum-soaked. They understood at once that the rum was hidden behind the books - well, they were used to all that. Philip charmed the vicar as he charmed all others, and the vicar showed them, as requested, the library’s copy of
Wm Shakespeare’s Collected Works
.

‘Not at all to today’s Taste,’ said the vicar, ‘nobody has asked for this Volume for many a moon. You will see that a large number of the pages are stained, for our previous premises leaked badly. We thought not to keep this, as it is so damaged and hardly anybody ever asks for it, but my Father was fond of Mr Shakespeare.’

Philip leafed through the delicate pages, found part of
Henry the Fifth
, unstained, and suddenly cried out heroically, holding the volume aloft:

 

Cry ‘God for Harry! England and St George!’

 

But although Grace and the vicar applauded appreciatively, the words quite took away Philip’s good humour and he longed again to be fighting the French, to be serving in His Majesty’s Navy in a bright blue uniform, not languishing around Bristol with an eight-year-old, and he dragged his little sister back out to King Street, marched into one of the new coffee houses where he would find other bored young men like himself, and Grace was brusquely sent home. It was dusk, pink clouds drifted there above the cobbled streets and the lines of masts. And unhappy Queen’s Square with its dreams of fading glory. And a lone child, dragging a shawl.