Mick Finlay - Arrowood

He quickly pocketed his rag.

‘Can I send for someone?’ he asked.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed, covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t need your help.’

He tapped his stick against his boots and nodded, a look of sadness on his face. He didn’t seem to know what to do.

‘Come along, sir,’ I said, taking his arm. ‘Cabman’ll sort her out.’

Eric stood in the window of the studio, watching the crowd. As we pushed open the door he stepped quickly behind his counter. He wore a spotted cravat and a high-collared shirt of some yellow fabric. He recognized the guvnor immediately.

‘Ah, sir, you’ve come to make an appointment for your portrait. I’m so pleased. I’d absolutely relish the opportunity to record your noble features for posterity. You’ve precisely the profile that I’m in this business for.’

‘Well, yes, indeed,’ burbled the guvnor, blown off course by this rare flattery. I’d never heard anyone describe his great potato head in such a way before. Never before.

‘When did you have in mind?’ asked Fontaine. ‘Mmm?’

He had opened his appointments book and taken up his quill.

‘But first, we’d appreciate a short meeting with Miss Cousture, sir,’ said the guvnor. ‘If that’s not too much trouble. Only a brief meeting.’

Fontaine’s firm lips drooped, revealing two front teeth that overhung his bottom lip like a hare.

‘She isn’t here. She went out for soup several hours ago and didn’t return. And if you see her you can tell her I’m very close to finding another assistant. You know, sir, I hired a woman because I believe in the emancipation of the female species.’

‘My sister, also,’ said the guvnor firmly.

‘Well, this is how I am treated.’

He had got irked, just for a moment, and it was then his accent slipped. I could distinctly hear a flavour of Irish in his vowels. The guvnor shot me a glance.

‘It certainly does you credit, sir,’ replied the guvnor. ‘How long did you say she’s been working here?’

Fontaine sighed and raised his quill.

‘You said an appointment?’

The guvnor nodded and looked around the portraits on the wall. ‘You have a very fine eye,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘I see such spirit in these people.’

‘That is my goal as an artist,’ replied Fontaine seriously. He pointed to a portrait of a soldier that hung behind the counter. ‘This one is my finest.’

‘Ah! It is indeed a work of art,’ declared the guvnor.

Fontaine gazed at it for some time.

‘You have a good eye yourself, sir,’ he said, turning to the guvnor.

‘I wonder if perhaps you might have time now for my portrait?’

‘Why, yes! I believe I do. Just enough time before my next sitting, I believe. Come, come.’ He gestured for the guvnor to go through the black curtain. ‘Enter! A man like yourself should absolutely have a representation of his fine visage for his hallway, or his drawing room, or perhaps his library – absolutely!’

He was still talking as he disappeared behind the heavy curtain. I waited a moment or two before taking the opportunity to explore the drawers of his counter. They were full of screws and plates and bulbs. In the bottom drawer, I found his accounts book, from which I learned that he’d begun to pay Miss Cousture in January of this year – not four months previous. I hunted for an address and eventually found it written on the back leaf of a small notebook.

The guvnor appeared twenty minutes later, his side-hair combed and greased down, his whiskers trimmed, his cravat tied neatly at his neck.

‘Yes, sir,’ Fontaine was saying. ‘One week. And your address?’

‘Fifty-nine Coin Street. Behind the shop.’

‘I’ll put a small frame around it, the same one as around the soldier’s portrait. Your sister will be most taken with the picture, I assure you.’ He held open the door. ‘No doubt at all, sir.’

‘Well, that was interesting, Barnett,’ said the guvnor as we turned the corner at the end of the street. ‘It would appear that our client was not introduced by her uncle the art dealer as she says. According to Mr Fontaine, it was a minister of the church who approached him – last Christmas, if you will. The minister offered the lady at half the wage Fontaine would have to pay anyone else. She knew nothing about the art of photography, it seems. Nothing at all. But, you know, a pretty face and the soft persuasion of the Church can make up for much.’

‘And the cheap labour.’

‘Indeed.’

‘He only began to pay her in January,’ said I. ‘Least that’s what his account book says.’

‘I see you’ve been busy too. And something else: Miss Cousture has turned down Mr Fontaine’s intimate advances, and yet he will not give up the possibility of bedding her.’

I laughed.

‘I’m amazed what people’ll tell you, sir.’

‘Oh, he didn’t tell me. I read it in him.’

‘You read it in him?’

‘Yes, Barnett. It seems that her disappearances are quite regular and unexpected. He told me as much. More regular than one would tolerate from an employee. Yet still he doesn’t dismiss her, despite his obvious anger. Why? As Mr Darwin tells us, we need look no further than man’s essential animal nature. It is because she’s beautiful and he yearns to find himself between her thighs, as I’m sure many men do. No doubt, given his position, he believes it’s his right. It isn’t his fault. It is the lion’s right to take the females of his pride, and Mr Fontaine is his own little lion. I’ve no doubt many shopkeepers on this street bed their assistants. The city is awash with little lions. It must stick in his craw that she doesn’t offer herself. It’s as if he’s purchased a beautiful cake, which sits all day on his counter. Yet he cannot eat it.’

‘Perhaps he’s married.’

‘Oh, Barnett, you’re quite sweet sometimes.’

‘How can you be so sure he desires her?’

‘Because she’s beautiful. I desired her. You desired her.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You did, my friend. I saw you lose your usual brute composure in my room. Despite your commitment to the formidable Mrs Barnett, even you were taken by her.’

We had to stop as a costermonger pushed a wide cart piled with coats across the pavement and into an alley.

‘Your deductions are more like Sherlock Holmes than you think,’ I said when we were walking again.

‘No, Barnett. I decipher people. He deciphers secret codes and flowerbeds. That man and I are not alike, and frankly I’m getting tired of your jibes about him.’

I laughed to myself as we walked.

‘Why did she lie to us?’ I asked as we passed under the railway bridge.

‘I don’t know. And since Mr Fontaine wouldn’t agree to tell me where she lives, we’re going to have to wait until she reappears to find out. Another job for you, Barnett, tomorrow. Pray the rain doesn’t return.’

I held out the scrap of paper on which I’d scribbled the address.

‘Lucky I found this, then, sir.’

A smile broke over his ruddy face. He clapped me on the back.

‘Excellent, Barnett. Let’s hope she’s in.’

I noticed the fellow as we turned into Broad Wall. He wouldn’t have been a noticeable man ordinarily except he had a piece of torn, brown paper stuck to his trouser leg. I’d seen it earlier in the coffeehouse, and wondered as I drank my brew if it was stuck on there by a smear of treacle or somesuch. And there it was again, attached to the same man who was walking along the other side of the road looking up at the high windows.

‘Shall we turn down this alley, sir?’ I asked as we approached a narrow lane on our right.

‘But why?’