The House of the Wicked

The Cottage





The thickly wooded escarpments pressed ever more on either side of the crude road, looking curiously ominous in the dreary light; at their base were huddled a small number of mean cottages. Denning sat upright, glancing up at the dark palisade of trees. At length the road broadened out to form a narrow street framed on either side by more aged cottages wearing heavy canopies of miserable black thatch, or glistening with wet slate tiles. The horse’s hooves began to ring as they came into contact with smooth, rounded cobbles. Stretching down the hill Porthgarrow began proper, more cottages seemingly strewn thoughtlessly about, pressed tightly together and creeping, one above the other, up the precipitous hillsides, in some instances apparently clinging to little more than a toehold on the rocks, every inch of space taken advantage of. A jumble of lanes and alleys scored through them like crusty old veins.

As he might have expected, there was little correlation between what he’d been told to expect and actuality. It appeared such a dirty, dreary little place. It was good that he was immune to Wilkinson’s infectious zeal. It hadn’t always been so.

Denning once likened Wilkinson to a child seeing the stars splashed across a vast universe for the first time. He had always been given to frequent bursts of enthusiasm, bouncing from one beautiful idea to another like sunlight does off a crystal chandelier, his voracious mind forever on the move, searching, as if he needed a continual supply of new stimulations. Though Denning had long grown wary, even tired of him, he could not deny that he’d appeared like a breath of sweet scented air when first blown into his dusty young existence. He exuded life and he’d never met anyone quite like him.

They’d met in Paris, six years ago, both enrolled as hopeful and eager young men at the studio of Charles-Marc-Gabriel-Gleyre, a man whose sudden but fleeting fame was lodged in the 1860s when Denning and Wilkinson were still boys. Denning had no choice in the matter as to which studio he attended; he was in no position to contest his mother’s arrangements. She’d had the artist recommended by a respected old dame who’d once spent considerable time in Paris and had been entranced by both his ‘pretty pictures’ and his impeccably charming manners towards the fairer sex. It was an opportunity to learn more than colouring a canvas, she told her son.

For a number of months they worked at his studio to copy live models and boast, as the young so often do, of their superiority to their tutor and his old fashioned beliefs.

“The landscape is but a backdrop!” Wilkinson lamented in disbelief tinged with anger following a morning of criticism of them all by their tutor. “Can you believe it? He said it is unimportant! What an old fool! What fools we are for even gracing his studio with our presence!” And so it went.

Once their confidence grew, they broke free and rented and shared their own studio, though studio was being overly generous with the term. It was small, dark, damp and crowded, and situated above a part-time brothel off the Rue St Denis, “One of the better kind,” noted Wilkinson with some authority. The place was run by the enterprising Madame Charpentier, who dabbled in buying works of art, or taking them in part exchange for services rendered. Paris was a city bulging with artists struggling to make a name, painting many, selling few.

She once showed them a wall in her drawing room filled with paintings. “My wall of desperation, vanity and lust,” she called it. “I bought these six for a paltry sum,” she said, her arm gesturing grandly, “from the exhibition at Hotel Drouot last year. They may be monkeys with palettes,” she said, quoting the critic Wolff in the Figaro, “but see, with the rest of them they do a fine job of covering the cracks in my wall at a cost far less than quoted for fixing it. I do not always understand what it is they paint, but if I do not get a return on my investment from all these young pups then at least I have put them to good use!”

She was always accompanied by a silent, frail-looking young man of around twenty years called Frederick. “My plaything,” she would refer to him, even in his presence, and she would stroke his hair as if he were a dog. Frederick would often sit and watch Wilkinson and Denning at work, wistfully maintaining he would like to be able to paint but had not an ounce of skill, and repaid his time with them with stolen bottles of cognac or joints of pork from Madame Charpentier’s kitchen.

He might even call them heady days, Denning mused with a fondness that surprised him. He and Wilkinson were opposites in so many ways, not least emotionally. He staid and lacking in ambition and direction, Wilkinson a bull charging from one receptive cow to another. Their creative union had not been without its moments of artistic chest beating, angry words and flying paints and canvases; one moment they might be stormily divided by the value of Dutch painting then united over a bottle of wine by their admiration of Degas.

Back then the font of Wilkinson’s vast and infectious emotional and physical energy came from the inspiration he found in the seedy bars, cafes and brothels of the city. He obsessively followed the tramps and homeless drunkards, pursued them tirelessly and committed their world-weary state to canvas, one boozy face after the other, till their tiny space was overrun with scores of drying canvases. Denning wondered at one point whether opium lay at the heart of Wilkinson’s continued, if not escalating, mania, or perhaps he had taken a little too many absinthes in his quest to relate to his subjects. In attempting to get into their heads perhaps he’d almost stepped out of his.

Then, quite unexpectedly, at least to Denning, a not too happy Madame Charpentier, who had been more than accommodating to the two young men, gave them immediate notice on their makeshift studio and they were forced to leave. It was obvious from her anger that Wilkinson was behind Madame Charpentier’s change of heart, but neither broached the subject, Denning too polite and Wilkinson already forgetting the incident as soon as they were out on the streets with their trunks. As it happened both did not unduly care, for they had begun to grow tired of the place. It also coincided with the ateliers closing down for summer and Wilkinson said they ought to head for the northern coast where it was cooler. Paris had become too stifling, he moaned, looking back at Madame Charpentier’s establishment with something akin to loathing. Denning caught sight of Frederick’s sad white face hovering at the window, till Madame Charpentier commanded him go away with a peremptory flick of her hand.

Their mood quickly restored, they travelled to Pont Aven in Brittany, a small, picturesque market town that sat close to a tidal estuary and by the river Aven, where water mills almost outnumbered the fifteen or so houses. It was already awash with young artists from all over the world, drawn there as much by the cheapness of the place as by its beauty. Wilkinson and Denning rented rooms at the Hotel des Voyageurs run by the extremely popular and buxom Madame Julia Guillou.

Here they fell in with a group of young men studying at the Academie Julian in Paris, ardent followers of the artist Basten-Lepage, who advocated painting from nature, out in the open – plein air painting. Drawn into using these methods, their world became fresh again, this new direction giving them impetus and a desire both felt they had lost in Paris. They socialised most evenings, drank and ate too much, and spent hours arguing the merits and shortcomings of each others chosen artistic ideologies.

But Denning was too much a realist; Wilkinson called him a cynic. Yes, it was a pretty setting. Yes, it was inexpensive. But pretty soon Pont Aven began to fall out of favour with him. The locals, he felt, were dirty, uncouth, drunkards, and some of the scruffy little urchins that ran around attached themselves to you like leeches that you could not shake off. Then there was the difficulty of taking a canvas outside to paint the workers in their traditional costume, toiling in the fields or on the water under admittedly beautiful skies, which stretched his patience gossamer thin. The shadows moved, the light changed, the wind knocked his canvas or blew dirt into the oils. He wished he had but an ounce of Wilkinson’s unbounded energy, but he was soon flagging, both physically and in spirit.

Then that awful, unsettling incident with the street girl happened that changed everything.

It affected him in a way he couldn’t have guessed. Eventually he made his excuses to Wilkinson and left France for England. He hadn’t seen Wilkinson since. Not till he arrived unexpectedly at his London studio.

At first he was glad. As if all the good times they’d shared preceded him and enveloped Denning. He shook his hand warmly, welcomed him in, offered him a drink. But even then old memories settled on him like a piece of dark material and no sooner had Wilkinson taken off his coat than he wished him gone, from his studio, from his life forever.

“Don’t you see?” Wilkinson’s animated voice almost raised an octave in excitement. “You are not choosing what you paint, it chooses you.”

Denning put a finger to his ear. “Must I feel that bitter poison again?”

“The poison is right there,” he returned, jabbing a finger to the portrait taking shape on the canvas. “That is what’s killing you, slowly, by degrees, and one day you will be totally lost.”

“I am not the one who is lost, Terrance. You are the one still searching. I’m sufficiently happy where I am. I have no need to go wandering to some godforsaken backwater to find something I patently have no need of.” Thoughts of Brittany were still fresh in his mind.

“You call this happiness?” He strode over to the large window of Denning’s studio, looked out tiredly onto the busy street below. The sunlight streamed in and framed Wilkinson’s head in a shimmering halo. A faint summer breeze lifted the curtains and he could smell the dust of the road. He looked older, wearier, than his years. “Yes, you rent a fine house, stock a fine cellar and probably have a fine servant or two...”

Denning joined him at the window. “All true. Your exact point being?”

“Are you to be simply a sum of all these facile parts, no more than that?” He tapped Denning’s chest. “There is more in there than those trifles. There is the wild, beating heart of an artist, dancing at the cage of your chest and desperate to be freed again!”

“I am quite satisfied with my lot,” he defended, but he knew inside he was telling a lie.

“The Cornish are so like the Bretons. Their culture, their landscape, so uncannily similar. That’s the magnet that draws the artists to Cornwall. But Porthgarrow is unique. Its way of life is like no other in all the fishing villages of Cornwall, its isolation being its saviour. But it cannot remain so. The world is shrinking. Soon we will all be the same, and worlds like this an echo in the distant past. But for a time it would be ours, and ours alone. So what do you think?” cried Wilkinson animatedly. “You and I, the fathers of the future of art!”

In spite of everything, Denning still envied Wilkinson his passion. He felt he had very little passion for anything, that all-consuming fire, that surety of focus, or that if it did strike he felt he didn’t have the energy to sustain it. Wilkinson had been very perceptive. It was the artist in him. He could see that everything in Denning’s life, his art included, was but a dull means to a dull end. He desired to experience, just once, what it must be like to give over one’s being completely to the single-minded pursuit of a burning, life-force-sapping objective.

But not with Wilkinson.

“I say let me sleep on it.” Denning turned away from the window, towards the bottle on the table. He paused at the woman’s portrait. She wasn’t as pretty as he would like to believe. She wasn’t as pretty as she thought she was. But she was a comfort.

“Bah! You will sleep yourself to death!” groaned Wilkinson.

But he was here all the same, in Porthgarrow. As if caught in a whirlpool of inevitability that pulled him in no matter how he struggled against it.

The smell caused him to wrinkle his unaccustomed nose, and he would have pulled out a handkerchief to stifle the odour but for the fact he might cause offence. The road was covered liberally in mud and horse manure, some of the dirt obviously washed down from the hillsides into the stone channels, yet he wasn’t sure if some of it was human excrement. But overriding all was the pungent smell of fish, fresh and rotted, which seemed to coat everything like a rancid varnish. The rain had dampened down the smell, but if it were so disagreeable on a wet day, what was it like in the heat of the sun?

The driver pulled the horse to a halt outside the low, squat door of one of the cottages. He turned stiffly to his passenger. “This is it, sir.”

Denning surveyed the house. It appeared very small, squeezed between cottages on both sides, with rivulets of water running down the stone wall from a low thatched roof that was green with moss. There were barrels, wooden boxes and the tattered remains of old nets stacked precariously against it, looking almost like it had been deposited there by the not insignificant river of rainwater that gurgled down a channel by the side of a crumbling, narrow, stone flag pathway. Glancing down the street he was aware that every house seemed to have its share of objects piled up outside. In the distance he saw the blurry shapes of people going about their business. A mangy old black dog was slumped opposite him, almost lost amongst the pile, its fur hanging from it in long, wet strands; its eyes looked sorrowfully at him. Curiously, there were many limpet shells cast around it, as well as what appeared to be small bones. Some of the shells were being washed away like tiny boats, floating down the gutter in the stream of rainwater.

Above the door lintel was a stone block, which at one time bore a carved name, though the letters had been chipped away, almost hacked off, till all that survived were the barely discernable letters ‘C’ and ‘N’.

“Are you certain?” he asked.

“Never more so, sir,” he said, springing from the cart like a man half his age. “I’ll get your luggage.”

The door swung open as Denning eased himself down. A small, rounded woman filled the aperture. She wore a beaten straw bonnet, tied under her chin with blue ribbon; a time-worn, blue woollen checked shawl was draped over her shoulders from which her short, brown arms protruded; an apron was strapped around her ample waist, and a pair of old leather boots, long and almost pointed, poked from beneath her full skirt. Her face looked as craggy as the weather-hewn cliffs, red and aged by years of exposure to the seasons and salt air. When she smiled at Denning he was reminded of a deep empty cave. She beckoned Denning come in with a swift flapping of her hand.

“Come! Come!” she said. “You’ll catch your death!” Her voice rose and fell, as if she were almost singing the words.

“Such a weight for such a slender fellow,” said the driver, lugging a heavy trunk to the floor. It hit the ground with a thud.

“Please be careful with those!” said Denning, turning and following the woman who’d scuttled back inside. He narrowly avoided cracking his skull on the low lintel, ducking just in time. He felt the heat hit him, and compared to the chill outside it was almost overpowering.

“I’ve made you up a fire,” she said, pointing to a small black iron range, coal burning brightly in the grate. “It’s turned chillier earlier than usual,” she said. “More like winter. Strange times.” She bustled over to a table in the centre of the room. “I’ve also prepared you a cold supper, thinking you’d be hungry after your long journey from London.” She pulled back a cloth to reveal a plate of ham, eggs, fish and bread. “As arranged with Mr Wilkinson,” she said. He muttered thank you but she had already left him to give the fire an energetic poke with the fire iron.

The room was small, the ceiling pressing down low so that he felt he must hunch over, though there was enough room to stand erect. One tiny window framed by flimsy curtains did its best to throw in a little light, the glass distorted and grimy, beneath which had been installed a small stone sink. The walls had more than their fair share of old wooden cupboards, and Denning was reminded of being inside the cabin of an old boat. A chest of drawers in sombre oak, battered, scuffed and scarred, on which stood a jug and bowl and a bible, sat close to the sink. Beside this, its back pressed firmly against the wall, was a thin-railed pine rocking chair. The walls had been lime washed recently, their only decoration being a small, crudely framed print of The Light of the World. The fireplace was constructed of bare brick, its maw taken up by the black range at which the woman was still rattling her fire iron, the mantle above a roughly hewn lump of timber that probably had its origins in some boat or other. A small oil lamp burnt on the mantle, though it struggled to produce much of a glow. He walked to the table. His boots tapped on dark stone flags; the only floor covering was a small rug beneath the fire. A curtain, wide and from ceiling to floor, was hung at the far end of the room and drew his attention.

“There, that’s them all,” panted the driver, depositing the last of the trunks inside the door. “Such a weight!” he said.

“Thank you,” said Denning hesitantly, fishing in his pocket and handing the man his money.

The driver touched his forehead in a gesture so fast it could have been mistaken for a wave. He went to the door. “Bye sister,” he said. He looked eager to be out of the place.

“Bye Tunny,” she returned.

“Actually,” said Denning, could you possibly take them upstairs before you leave?” He took a little more money out of his pocket. “I’m rather tired.”

“I can’t do that, sir,” he said.

“And why ever not?”

“Why, there aren’t any stairs!” He laughed lightly and went out of the door, closing it behind him.

“Presumably you are Mrs Carbis?” Denning asked.

“Oh yes, that’s me,” she chimed. “Or one of them, as there is many here that go by that name.”

“There is no upper floor? What of my bed?”

She tottered over to the curtain and whipped it back enthusiastically. Behind it stood a small, cast iron bed. “All made up, clean and comfortable, as arranged with Mr Wilkinson.”

“There is but this single room?” he said, somewhat taken aback. “There must be some mistake.”

“Oh no, everything is in order, as arranged with Mr Wilkinson!” she sang. She let the curtain fall back. “It is thick and will keep out the draughts,” she demonstrated, tapping the flat of her hand against the weighty material.

“And my water closet?”

It was the woman’s turn to look puzzled. The realisation flashed across her face. “Outside, down the alley. Shared, mind, but very clean. Emptied regularly.” She lifted the curtain, pointed under the bed politely to a barely visible chamber pot. “And I’ll see to this for you, collect your laundry, fetch water from the well, prepare your meals and make up your fire when you need it. As arranged with Mr Wilkinson.” She went to the door. “Right, sir, if that’s all I’ll be off and leave you to unpack and settle in. Plenty of lockers for you to stow away your things.” She rapped a cupboard by the door with her knuckles. “It’s so nice to see the place with life in it again, after standing these many long years empty.”

“I will not need to unpack as I will not be staying,” he returned shortly. “I will find somewhere bigger. More appropriate.” This was Wilkinson’s idea of a joke. He would soon settle that score with the man, he thought. He knew he liked his comforts. It had been one of his gripes in both Paris and Port Aven, and Wilkinson had loved to tease him over it.

Mrs Carbis appeared stung by the words, looking about her as if what he’d said reflected on her good work. “It’s the season, sir. Porthgarrow is full to the brim. There’s scarce a room to be had anywhere.”

Her face was quite downcast. He felt guilty for bringing it up. Why must he always feel guilty? It was a weakness of his, he thought. “Oh. Then perhaps I shall bide here, for a while,” he conceded.

She gave a satisfied smile in return, turned and walked briskly to the door.

“And what of Mr Wilkinson?” he asked, following her.

“He said I was to let him know you’re here and he’ll be along presently.”

“Mrs Carbis…” he said, but happened to glance down at the door handle. He interrupted her eager goodbyes. “One moment, another thing. I do not see a key in the lock.”

She followed his gaze to the handle. “That’s true,” she said, looking back at him.

“Do you have one?”

A podgy finger tapped her lips and her entire face became pinched in thought. “We had one, yes.”

“Is it about?” he sighed. “Can you fetch it? I have valuables.” His hand swept out to the trunks and her attention was drawn with it.

“In truth, I’ve not seen it in many a year, Mr Denning,” she answered with an almost chastened bend to her head. “You see, there was a birthing here and to ease it we made sure all the locks were unfastened and all the keys removed.” She shrugged helplessly. “I’ve not seen it since.”

“But I have my paints, my brushes, all my materials and clothes…”

At this she smiled broadly. “And you had me thinking you carried bags of gold and silver in there!” She hit him softly on the arm with the back of her hand. “You shouldn’t tease a woman so! I’ll let Mr Wilkinson know you’re here!” She went out onto the street, giggling. “Gold and silver!” he heard her say, her boots pounding quickly on the cobbles.

He stuck his head round the doorframe. “But, Mrs Carbis, where exactly does Mr Wilkinson live?” he called after her.

“Up Cliff!” she replied as she carried on her way.

Silly woman, he thought, none the wiser, leaving the door ajar to let out some of the heat. He strode over to the curtains, swiping them back and lifting a trunk onto the bed. He opened it, studied the clothes folded neatly within. As he began to unpack he mused on why the house had remained empty for so long, given that every year the village swelled in number and apparently little room was to be had.

The soft sound of the door creaking open caused him to look around.

There, settling before the fire, was the black dog that he’d seen outside, its fur dripping wet, puddles marking its path to the fire.

Denning went over to it. “Shoo!” he said, waving his hands. “Get outside, you brute!”

It raised its matted head, bared yellowed teeth and gave a hearty growl. Denning backed away.



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