looms in the shop. Six of them, placed in double rows, were flat, and had pedals, rather like so many grand pianos. The seventh stood at the far end and was of a completely different pattern, standing upright, and braced to the wall and the nearby beams. All of them were covered with dust-sheets.
‘Voila!’ Brass struck a pose humorously reminiscent of a gentleman in an eighteenth-century engraving. ‘Napoleon visited the Gobelins — why shouldn’t a chief inspector of the Yard visit the holy place of Merely?’
Gently shrugged agreeably and allowed himself to be ushered to the first of the machines.
‘This is Hugh’s outfit.’ Brass threw back the dust-sheet. ‘That’s off his own cartoon — you can see the original sitting there under the web.’
Gravely Gently examined the unfinished tapestry, part of which was taken up on a roller. It was obviously the piece on which Johnson had been working when Earle had first made his appearance — a majestic but subdued composition depicting the great Snowdon cone pressing through wispy cloud, with Crib Goch and the Lliwedd Cliffs flanking it. Brass poked the warp open with a sensitive finger, and beneath it Gently saw the original watercolour drawing from which the Welshman was weaving.
‘In more straightforward work we sketch the design on the warp, but Taffy is an artist and won’t put up with such newfangled techniques. He interprets his cartoon like the great men of old.’
‘The others work from your cartoons?’
‘Yes — Hugh and I are the only artists here. And a damn good job too, or we should never make things pay. In these hard welfare times it’s absolutely essential to produce a lot and produce it quick. I learned that from Lurcat at Aubusson. I’ve adopted his coarse warp method, and developed a cartoon vernacular that cuts out intermediary tones and gets its effects with twenty-four standard colours… In addition I use a high degree of stylization and simplification in the units of design, which makes for simple weaving and also uses the coarse warp to the best advantage. As a result of these techniques we are very much a commercial proposition. We produce striking and original tapestry — modesty in a bourgeois failing — in a comparatively short time and at a comparatively low price, while the use of pure tones makes our work about as fade-proof as it comes. I don’t say that the commercial possibilities weren’t part of the attraction, for Earle’ — Brass shook his head sadly — ‘we’ve already sounded the American market, and it looks like being a big thing. My trip over there in the autumn was going to be largely a business trip.’
They moved to the next machine, which was Peacock’s. A tapestry was in progress on it very different to Johnson’s sombre design. This one was splendid and blazing with breathtaking primaries; it was bold and simple and executed in a sort of facile short-hand.
‘See what I mean? This sort of thing takes only a week or two. That way of handling flowers and foliage cuts out all the fiddling intermediary work… Peacock can weave one of those nasturtiums in an hour, and at a short distance it gives the same effect as one laboriously copied with a hundred or so tones. Not quite, of course — but then, it isn’t meant to. The design calls for stylization, as you can see…’
Hands in pockets, Gently followed him round. Loom after loom was unveiled, and the work examined and dwelt upon. One could not be bored with Brass. His perpetual zest conquered the marble atmosphere, the reek of dyed wool and the overtone of tragedy that haunted the workshop. One could understand the reverence of his little company, the wistful homage of Somerhayes. Here in truth was a creator, a builder, a dynamic original of a man. His self-confidence was infectious. One felt that no obstacle could impede him. He dreamed his dreams, projected his plans, and wrestled his intent out of a reluctant world. His very name sounded a challenge in the galleries of polite and bred-out Feverells, lost and execrated Lords of Somerhayes. To what other altar could the last of a failing line take his worship, where else sacrifice the diminished booty of his race?
‘And this other loom… I suppose that’s what it is?’
Brass clapped him on the back. ‘Now you’re going to see the work of the maestro. I’m a damned snob, Gently — let’s face facts. I learned my trade at Aubusson, but I’m a Gobelins man at heart. At Gobelins they’ve done high-warp weaving since the beginning of tapestry, and sheer, snivelling, miserable snobbery has driven me to fit a high-warp loom here for my own personal use.’
‘It’s a superior method?’ hazarded Gently.
‘Not on your life — just slower and more back-aching. But all through the centuries the Gobelins factory was turning out class tapestry on high-warps, and a sort of legend has grown round this type of loom. So when Brass sets up, blast his feeble-mindedness, he has to have a high-warp to satisfy his ego…’
Energetically the artist whipped off the dust-sheet. The high-warp loom, simple, massive, was provided for a far larger web than the horizontal machines with their treadles. And such a web was spread across it, awesome in its complexity, an irregular third of it woven in and beginning to be taken up on the lower roller. Here was obviously something different from anything they had seen before. The weaving was so infinitely fine and close, the colours so subtly graduated, that one had to look at it closely to establish that it was a shuttle and not a brush that had achieved such effects.
‘Recognize it?’
Brass was quizzing Gently in his sardonic way.
‘There’s something vaguely familiar…’
‘It’s Rubens’ Rape, my son, done in the best Gobelins style. I made the cartoon a year ago, and that’s how far I’ve got, working off and on.’
‘You mean that’s taken you a year?’
‘With my other jobs — designing, dyeing, overlooking and what have you.’
‘And when will it be finished?’
‘In eighteen months, perhaps… It makes you think, doesn’t it? On an economic basis I should have to ask at least a couple of thou for it, and that’s mere sweated labour.’
They stood together silently looking at it, glorious but monstrous in its witness of unbelievable effort. Only a Brass could have set his hand to such a crushing burden of labour, only a man galvanized with prodigious and unquenchable self-confidence! ‘And do you think it’s worth it?’
‘Of course not, you bloody bourgeois.’
‘At the best, it’s only a copy…’
‘You don’t know the worst, sonny. In twenty years four hundred of the tints I’m using there will have faded or darkened. I give that piece ten years after I take it down.’
‘Then what’s the object in doing it?’
Brass shrugged his shoulders. ‘Christ, a man has got his ego. There’s nobody else in this country can do a job like that, probably nobody else in the world. How do you think I prove I’m boss around here?’
Gently shook his head. ‘It’s as good a way as any… I daresay Somerhayes is duly impressed.’
‘Somerhayes!’ Brass chuckled. ‘Didn’t he call you to a session last night? I could see it coming off from the moment he clapped eyes on you.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Why, you’re his natural soul-mate. Our lordship just yearns for some Tiresias or Christ-type to pour out his sorrows to. I’m no bloody good — he knows I’d laugh my head off. But you, well you’re born to it, with that father- confessor look of yours. How far am I wrong? Go on — you tell me.’
Gently put a match to his pipe, which was as cold as the prevailing climate. ‘And you fancy him?’ he said. ‘You fancy him for a suspect?’
Brass was pulled up in a moment. His expression changed completely. ‘Enough!’ he replied severely. ‘Enough, Mr Chief Inspector. I’m still eating his salt, and I’m not prepared to discuss business. The most I’d say about his lordship is that he’s as barmy as a coot… Now if you’ll just come through here, I’ll show you how a craftsman dyes his wool.’
CHAPTER TEN
Gently left Brass amongst his vats and turned his steps towards the north-east wing again. The omnipresent chill seemed to be eating into his bones, and he yearned to straddle before a really scorching fire. A grave of a house. Had it ever been warmed? Would the crater of Etna suffice to make habitable its dead and frozen beauty? Even its brilliant architect had admitted the futility of trying to live in it, had tucked the inhabitants away in possible
