Chapter Twelve
They emerged into daylight with some relief after a highly educational couple of hours. “Luncheon,” Titus said firmly. “And then perhaps that ice?”
They lunched well at Saunders’ Oyster-rooms, taking a table by the first-floor window to watch the world walk down Piccadilly and make observations of varying charity about its appearance.
Titus enjoyed people very well when he was at a remove from them, Nico thought; his shoulders were visibly relaxed now.
Afterwards they strolled down to Berkeley Square to try Gunter’s famous strawberry ices, perfect in their cold, smooth sweetness.
Nico felt the chill of the ice sliding down his throat, and felt almost as much Titus’s gaze on his neck as he swallowed.
The ices fortified them for the Panorama, of which the Picture of London claimed that the illusion is so complete, that the spectator may imagine he is present at the display of the real scenery.
Nico had regarded that claim, like any other made in advertising literature, with extreme scepticism, but he found himself wrong: The experience was stunning.
They stood on a platform surrounded by immense paintings of Venice, its canals and houses stretching away in all directions, and stared their fill in silence.
At last Titus drew in a deep breath. “Good heavens. Good heavens. I have seen a couple of Canaletto paintings reproduced, but I did not imagine anything like this. Have you ever visited Venice? Or Italy?”
“Never, though I spent a great deal of time in Nice, in the south of France, which has a flavour of Italy about it.”
Titus inhaled rapturously. “Tell me.”
What Nico mostly remembered of Nice was hiding under a table in a tavern where the sawdust smelled of piss while three enraged men kicked the daylights out of his father. He cast about for slightly more inspiring memories, and recounted them as they headed on to the Strand and Pidcock’s Museum.
That had a less awe-inspiring exterior than the Egyptian Hall, being merely a set of rooms above Exeter ’Change, but the contents were of a nature to appeal to the schoolchild in every soul, and worth the extortionate half crown a head charged for admission, especially since Titus paid.
It held an astonishing selection of stuffed animals: lions, leopards, and a royal tyger from Bengal; hyenas and wolves; a baboon standing almost as tall as Nico himself, and a pair of ostriches that were even taller.
There was a boa constrictor that held them both in rapt horror at its monstrous size, and the promised kanguroos, which Nico contemplated for several increasingly outraged minutes.
“I don’t believe it,” he said at last. “Look at these things! A giant mouse with the shoes of a pantomime clown: It is a patent fraud. How would it walk?”
“It hops, sir,” the attendant said, and did a little bounce to illustrate, with his hands held up absurdly by his chest. Nico stared open-mouthed at this flagrant insult to his intelligence. Titus hid behind the baboon, shoulders shaking.
They finished their visit in the skin-crawling entomological collection, with spiders, scorpions, huge centipedes, and beetles of remarkable shades.
“They are probably all poisonous,” Titus remarked. “Or venomous. Or both.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s the bright colours. I read that bright colours are Nature’s warning sign. Like wasps, you know. Red or yellow stripes say, Watch out; I am dangerous; stay away from me.”
Nico happened to be wearing his particularly charming waistcoat of gold shot with flame. He tried not to glance down.
All in all, it was a glorious day. A day of friendship, companionship, interesting sights, and uncomplicated pleasures; a day in which a man could forget quite how much money he owed and what he was doing to get it.
“That was wonderful,” Titus said as they walked back. “It makes me think that I should like to see the real things. To visit Venice, or even Egypt, and see if kanguroos can possibly be like that, and—”
“Not the boa constrictor,” Nico said firmly. “We do not seek out snakes.”
“They aren’t venomous,” Titus pointed out. “Well, they wouldn’t have to be, at that size; they could just eat you whole.”
“That is not an improvement. As for kanguroos, one can quite easily secure a free passage to see them in Australia.”
“Not a comfortable one, though,” Titus said, grinning. “Would you not like to see them for yourself?”
“If only to believe it. So you would like to travel?”
“I don’t honestly know if I would like it,” Titus admitted. “I have never been anywhere. I should like to say, Of course I will go to Venice and Egypt and see kanguroos, but then, I thought I wanted to go into Society, and bit off far more than I could chew.”
“It is not the same. For one thing, money will not buy you new friends or a place in the Ton, but it will buy you a comfortable journey and a competent guide.”
“True. But if one doesn’t speak the language—no, that is what a guide is for. I’m being cowardly. It’s just that travelling seems like such a … a large thing to do, so unpredictable, with so much that might go wrong. That must seem ridiculous to you.”
“Not at all. I have had some remarkable things go wrong when I travelled. Why do you not test the waters? Tour England first, for example, to see if you enjoy the process. Like…” Nico had no idea where one went to see English sights.
“The Lake District, and the Peak District,” Titus supplied. “They are meant to be very beautiful. Mr. Raven always buys—bought—my paints when he comes to London. A very highly regarded painter of the Peaks,” he added for Nico’s benefit.
“Those are in the north, yes?” Nico hazarded. “Perhaps, then, a trip to avoid the summer heat?”
“I could. Yes, I really could, couldn’t I? Goodness. This is what money actually buys.”
“Holiday?”
“Freedom. Freedom from needs, freedom to look around and take time, freedom to see the world, and expand one’s horizons, and do what you want, rather than what you’re obliged to. Which is marvellous, but also a little alarming. There is so much choice.”
“Have you ever watched a butterfly emerge from its cocoon?” Nico asked.
“As a boy. Why?”
“The wings always come out crumpled, mon ami. You will get used to it.”
“I suppose I will. And then I shall do the things I want to do, as soon as I find out what they are.”
“You are not used to pursuing what you want?”
“I wanted my shop,” Titus said thoughtfully. “Something all of my own that nobody could take from me felt like the most important thing in the world, and I worked very hard to get it. But it didn’t leave a great deal of time for pursuing anything else.”
“No love affairs?” Nico was compelled to ask.
Titus blushed delightfully. “Oh, well, one or two. Nothing terribly exciting, until—” He paused, then spoke with a touch of deliberation.
“And, you know, that did not prove to be something I wanted. Quite the reverse. That worries me a little because I thought I wanted—that person, just as I thought I wanted to mix in Society. It makes one a little unsure of one’s judgement. ”
Nico wasn’t sure he’d ever considered any decision as much as Titus considered all of them. “Well, you have no need to hurry into anything,” he said. “Money also buys time.”
Jacky Gaskin’s money had certainly put a lien on Eve’s time, and a clock on Nico’s.
He hated that. He wanted to be part of Titus’s holiday without other concerns, and he wanted to be the master of his own decisions again, speaking without fear of slipping, and not hesitating to make an approach to anyone he might have an increasing urge to kiss.
The next day, Titus felt like art, and decided to visit the Royal Academy Exhibition, Devonshire House, and perhaps Mr. Angerstein’s collection of paintings. Nico left him to it. That was more art than he cared to see by some way, and he had his own painting to deal with.
He took it to Mr. George Rankin, whose fascination and admiration were clear.
Nico repeated his lavish account of its provenance; his tragic, misguided, betrayed mother; and his fear of persecution under the restored French monarchy.
Rankin swallowed the lot, expressed his lascivious admiration of Marie Antoinette in a manner that made Nico feel slightly unwell, and offered him nine hundred pounds for it.
Nine hundred pounds. A fucking fortune, and not nearly enough.
Nico thought briefly of taking the money and making a payment on account, but there would only be more interest, more late fees.
Jacky Gaskin didn’t need any individual payment nearly so much as he needed people to be terrified of not paying him back.
So he didn’t take it, nor did he grab the man by the lapels and scream, Pay more!
He declined with a smile, explained with pleasant finality that he could not accept less than two thousand, observed that he had an appointment to visit Sir James Roud in Greenwich, and, he prayed, left the man with a sense of a prize snatched from his grasp.
He had over two and a half weeks left, and two possible buyers. He just had to hold his nerve and he’d win this.
And he even got some other results. When Titus returned, footsore, tired, and dizzy with artistic marvels, Nico was able to hand him a letter from the Astronomer Royal, enthusiastically inviting Mr. Pilcrow to see the Camera Obscura at his earliest convenience.