It taught the boys a certain amount of Latin and a little history and geography: it prepared them for no examination, and it no longer had any notion of their going any further; it took the boys in at any age their parents saw fit to send them and it kept them until they were thought wise enough, which was usually between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. The cleverest boys might come to read Cicero or Ovid with some degree of ease, though scarcely with enjoyment, but the dull boys would learn nothing but their copy-books and the majority went off with little more than the three Rs. However, this satisfied the town; and certainly the boys were a very decent lot, upon the whole. They were far more tolerant than the boys of Grafton, and they received him without any of the inquisition or ill-treatment that he had dreaded. They formed an almost classless society, in which parents’ status was accidental and of little importance; and in this society accent counted for nothing – some of the country boys spoke broad and some of the town boys spoke with a nasal whine, but it made no odds: after a week it was imperceptible.
In its way it was a very restful school. There were no games at all except those which the boys played by themselves for fun, and with scarcely a sigh Richard abandoned the tightly-organised ritual of cricket and football (as well as the more sophisticated delights of Grafton) and took to the ancient, common, childish games of marbles (called alleys here), conquerors and tops. He had never spun a top in his life before, but presently he learnt, being taught by a broad-faced, kind, hoarse boy, a love-child who was brought up with the son of the farm where the love-token had passed, and who looked exactly like a Flemish Boor.
Out of the vagueness of musing recollection, while he was trying to build up the brown planes of Jocelyn’s face there came a sudden precise detailed brilliant image of the market at Easton Colborough, of himself standing there with Jocelyn and the boy who shared his desk – Ham, the posthumous son of a turncock, a mother’s boy with a girlish nature and a sweet and gentle look. It was the half-holiday, and Richard was coming from Miss Theobald’s drawing-class through the market-place, where the week-long desert was cram-packed with sheep, pigs, cattle, poultry, bright red ploughs, blue harrows, pedlars, hucksters, bone-setters and respectable long-established stalls that sold harness, saddles, brasses, girths, curry-combs and plaited whips.
It was one of those days full of limpid air, when white clouds pass across the sky, and the light changes. They were standing on the north side of the market, between the part where the horses were and the outer range of stalls. On the right there was a flimsy trestle set out with cards of celluloid studs and cuff-links, brilliantly striped, penknives with many blades, patent glasscutters and frail inventions for slicing beans; and on the left, on the other side of the cobbled way, in a pen by himself stood an enormous horse, a bright bay Shire gelding with his mane and tail done up with scarlet ribbons, Jocelyn, the boor-like boy, stared with love and admiration at the horse; Ham and Richard, turning from the bean-slicers, looked at it without much understanding, and while they stood there the horse straddled and staled. It stared intently straight before it, and from its huge extruded mottled yard gushed a foaming jet of piss, inordinate in quantity. Jocelyn laughed, chuckled hoarsely: he was delighted. He said, ‘You ought to draw him. He would be worth drawing.’ Ham walked on, blushing; but Richard stared – he was amazed, not only by the particular grandeur of this horse, but also because he had never seen a gelding stale before, and because it was indeed worth drawing. Partly because of its size and its rigid, unaccustomed pose, partly because of its dangling penis (so startling) and partly because of some quality of the light he was suddenly seeing a horse for the first time – an intimation of the ideal horse.
They moved on, lingering past a man who wished to sell them a gold watch wrapped in a ten-shilling note for sixpence, providing they could tell the right packet from the packets full of chaff, and dawdled through the penetrating reek of swine to the herbalist’s, where a grave, attentive crowd looked at a picture of a transparent man, or rather of a partially transparent man, for where none of his vitals were concerned he was solid enough: only here and there his purple liver, his spleen and bowels showed through. His bearded face, however, with its serious and evangelical expression was scarcely one that could rightly belong to an undressed body, far less to a transparent one; it floated on another plane, surrounded by pinned-up shrivelled plants, a dusty halo; and there were other bunches round the body below, with ribbons leading from them to the parts they healed, and with a wand the herbalist pointed them out as he described the diseases. Rising of the lights; strangury; horseshoehead and head-mouldshot; dropsy, marthambles, the strong fives and the moon-pall; stone; gravel; pox. Some of the audience were willing to pay their money early on – there were shillings and half-crowns held up in the air – but the herbalist would not stop or spare them anything; in a high, unfriendly, didactic voice he went right on through cancer, consumption, bloody flux, the quinsy and worms. Jocelyn and Ham, shocked and fascinated, stayed on; but Richard was still amazed by his discovery of the horse and he was unreceptive; and as he also had a message to deliver he left them standing there.
He went up one of the steep lanes that led towards the High Street, and as he turned the corner the bawling of the calves, the squealing, baaing, roaring and shouting of the market place died to a mild composite hum: only by some freak of acoustics a single voice pursued him up the lane, calling out with passionate conviction, ‘Honest Bill Podpiece. Honest Bill Podpiece gives everyone a chance. Some has a watch, some has chaff. I will not deceive you, gents: pick the right one and you get a valuable prize. Come on, gents, a gold watch for a tanner – you only have to pick the right one, gents …’
He turned into the broad, mild splendour of the High Street and stood looking up and down it, for his message was to Mr Atherton, who would be painting there: on the left was the barbican, then the pink brick and white stone court-house with its curving flight of steps and the royal arms in its pediment, then a long row of bow-fronted shops; on the right the Harp and Crown with its enormous sign, the Palladian corn-exchange and the little Regency theatre, followed by a recessed line of the grander houses of the town, with white steps, green doors and brass knockers. The pavement in front of these houses was remarkably broad, wider than the street, and this allowed one to see round the ascending curve to the Norman towers of Saint John’s, which closed the vista. Mr Atherton’s easel was there, far off on the corner of Butter Lane, and the back of his canvas could be seen, a sudden white square against the soft, diversified background; from time to time little knots of people gathered behind it, to look with that invariable penetrating knowing glance from the canvas to the view and back again. But there were not many of them, and they did not stay – the town had known Mr Atherton, man and boy, for more than seventy years: he was an Academician, and they were proud of him; furthermore he had a way of lunging backwards and stabbing the air (and sometimes those who bored him) with a loaded brush.
It was to avoid this that Richard stepped forward and delivered his message: Miss Theobald was sure that Mr Atherton would not forget Mrs James at five o’clock.
‘Oh, it is you, is it? Thank you, thank you, Richard,’ he said. ‘I shall not forget her. What did you say her name was?’ He stared shrewdly at his picture, with both Richard and Mrs James receding from his mind: he could pin the floating tower by making the tree much more determined. He worked else to the easel for five minutes and then stood back again. ‘No. It was a mistake,’ he said, resuming the low monologue that always accompanied his painting, ‘a bloody error – should have left it alone – that silly green – vexed. Now I shall have to start again. Why did the old fool daub on the green?’
Richard gazed at the picture. The High Street itself did not move him – the High Street pure remained unseen: but the High Street on canvas, filtered through Mr Atherton, stirred him profoundly – once he had seen it in pictorial terms it acquired a new prestige. The picture seemed to him excellent: he could not see why Mr Atherton was unsatisfied. And indeed no one could deny that the picture was wonderfully accomplished, from the technical point of view: as for the Venetian light that bathed Easton Colborough’s corn-exchange, Richard thought it a great improvement. But whereas Richard at that time knew nothing about Guardi, Mr Atherton did, and he turned away from his easel with a sigh. ‘I shall not do any more today,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come back
