Conversations With Mr. Prain (20 page)

He has gone to Camden enough, I thought.

I roused myself and felt restless. My stomach was rumbling painfully.

“Use your wits,” the imaginary Jane Austen had said. So perhaps it was time I did. Given Edward Prain’s unconsciousness, this would be an opportunity to find Monique, and try to prise information from her. I would not be confrontational. Mysterious Monique: could she tell me anything more? I kept remembering her knowing look. I wanted to make sure I knew everything.

Carefully I slid out of the bed, put on my clothes, and also donned Monique’s cardigan. Edward Prain’s breathing was slow and steady and he did not stir. Then I crept out of the room in bare feet and felt my way down the few steps to the corridor, and along to the main hallway. There were long windows at both ends, and, in the moonlight, it was lighter than I had expected. I could make my way onwards to the stairwell without needing a switch. Soon I was on the ground floor, and I padded down the corridor that led to the kitchen, where there was light and the sound of clanging cutlery.

I could smell food. This was a bit of luck: Monique and food in the same place.

I opened the door slowly, and this time Monique noticed my entrance. She was stacking the dishwasher in a monochrome kitchen that was clearly the last word in chic design—black, white and metallic—straight out of a glossy brochure, yet somehow deeply reminiscent of an operating theatre. Where there might have been an operating table, below a low-hung range of spot lamps, there was a breakfast bar with tubular steel stools. My first impression was that Monique was clutching a mass of surgical instruments in her rubber-gloved hands, when she was actually holding knives, forks and spoons.

“Good evening,” she said, smiling cordially, not unduly surprised to see me. At this point, however, I realised I had done nothing with my Medusa hair and wished I could rewind the action, as in a Jean Cocteau film, and walk backwards to the bedroom, where I would tie it up neatly.

“Hello,” I said, combing loose curls through with my fingers and hoping they were not springing up at right angles from my head.

“You have left him again?” she asked, teasing a little. But she showed no discomfort. He must have told her briefly about what had been said in the drawing room when he went to borrow her cardigan. She could guess the rest. She seemed almost a little satisfied, as if she had been anticipating just this turn of events. There was nothing prudish about her, or jealous. She was pleased I had succumbed to erotic activity.

“He’s upstairs asleep,” I said.

She smiled slightly and returned to putting the remaining dishes and cutlery in the machine.

Had she been his lover once? I felt I had to establish whether this had been the case, but I could not ask her outright. First, however, I wanted food. “Could I possibly make myself a sandwich?” I asked.

“Ratatouille?” she suggested. “I have eaten. There is a ratatouille I have made in here for you and Monsieur Prain.” Monsieur, again. She pointed to an oven built into the wall. The kitchen was stream-lined with every possible appliance and convenience, neatly hidden behind white cupboards, so that unless you knew where the microwave or fridge were located, you would be vainly pulling out roller drawers and opening shelves of glasses and tableware. It was as well-groomed as Monique herself. She suited the place. She suited him. I was so blowzy and unsophisticated in comparison. Her image and his went together perfectly. But I was their antipodes: the total opposite.

“Ratatouille …” I said, noting that I was not pronouncing it in her proper French fashion, the accenting that created a kind of rushing “wee” noise finished with air hissing through back teeth, rather with the “oo” and an “ee” distinctly said at the front of the mouth. “I should wait until Edward wakes up,” I said. “A snack would be great though.”

She opened a cupboard and extracted a small packet of pretzels, which she held up invitingly.

“OK,” I said, and she threw them to me across the room.

I sat up on a bar stool and opened the insufficient packet, while she began to wipe down the mottled marble surfaces around the double sink and hob.

What should I say? A part of me felt amoral and careless. There was something rather frightening about this mood; it was the kind of state in which one could raise matters that would otherwise never be mentioned. I tried stamping on this aspect of myself, while munching on the pretzels, and could think then of nothing very important to say at all. “England is very beautiful in summer. It must be nice living here in the countryside,” I said, which must have been about the sixth time I had expressed this sentiment that day, and it was sounding tired.

She smiled in an amused way. “Yes,” she said. “But the French countryside is beautiful too.”

“You miss it?”

“Of course. It is my homeland. I come from the Auvergne. Do you know it?”

“No. I only know Paris.”

“Ah well. You have to go to the Auvergne one day. It is beautiful. I love the green hills, and all the villages and old churches, with red roofs. My family is there. I want to go back now.”

“You were in Paris when Edward discovered you, weren’t you?”

“Ah yes, but an artist must live in Paris, I thought. I hated it. I know … that is crazy … to hate Paris! But it was very hard for me there. I was not happy. I was starting to ‘make my name’, but personally it was not good. So I met
him and he asked me to work for him, and he would pay for materials, and for a small salary, and transport, and it seemed very good to me. I wanted to be in England and to see my teacher again, before he died. I had not been here before.”

“You couldn’t work in the Auvergne?”

“Not enough people buy sculpture there, and my work is too heavy to move cheaply. Do you want something to drink?” she asked. “I have opened some wine.” She had completed her cleaning operations and now held up a bottle of blood-red pinot noir.

I accepted. “Thank you.”

“But you are from New Zealand, I hear. That is far away, and also beautiful.”

“True.”

“And why did you leave New Zealand?”

I shook my head. “I wanted to find something that was missing. I wanted creative stimulation, and the excitement of living in a large city like London, where there are so many cultural things happening. I had to expand my experience somehow. I suppose I felt like Katherine Mansfield when—” I stopped myself. “I do miss New Zealand sometimes,” I said, a thought that I had not admitted to anyone else, a thought I was not really aware of having. “It’s a very scenic country and all that and it’s clean and wild, but I guess more than anything I just miss that sense of home. Here I am always an alien. I don’t know how the English mind works.”

“Yes. I understand what you mean,” she said, pouring the wine.

Did she? I didn’t know if I did. I felt a bit as if I was brainstorming, freewheeling through an idea I was not sure of at all. She handed me a glass. “But I’ve never thought of a good enough reason to go back. My life is here now really.” I sipped the wine and then said, “Cheers.”

“A
votre santé
,” she said, sitting down on a bar stool opposite me. “It is not enough just to go home because you want to?” Her manner had become friendly and rather open. Perhaps she was relieved that things were now clear and she did not have to continue to hide and play games. She had been doing it out of loyalty to him, but now she could relax and be more herself.

“No,” I said, and sipped again.

She seemed thoughtful at this reply and stared into her glass for a moment.

“You’re going back to France simply because it’s home?”

“Yes.
La patrie
, we say. The homeland. She calls me back.”

“You’re not leaving to escape from him?” Now I had to ask what I really wanted to know.

“No, no. Not at all.” She smiled a little at the odd question. “You must understand. He rescued me. I owe him very much. But there is no problem between us.”

“He’s never tried to exploit you?”

“No.”

“I mean … you know what I mean.”

She smiled and shook her head. “He is my patron and my employer, but not my friend … and not my lover. I know the gardener has told you this.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Eh bien
. He tells the local people such things, and that I am taking all his money. And yet I think Monsieur Prain prefers they believe this. I knew from the beginning that my place is here.” She drew an imaginary line in the air. “And he is here.” She drew another as far up as she could reach. “He is a very rich English gentleman and I must respect certain things like this.” She smiled slightly, realising that the rules did not seem to apply to me. “And then … perhaps I should tell you. It is not to men that I am attracted.”

Oh my God, I thought. I know you are always supposed to take such revelations without any show of surprise or timidity. But
oh my God
. I saw myself in her studio, standing there in Venus pose, naked, one leg slightly bent, arms carrying a robe that I had removed from my body. I felt a tinge of concupiscence rushing around my skin. What would she do? I imagined her moving me, changing my pose, as artists and photographers sometimes did, running her fingers over my arms and back. I had always gone along with that kind of thing—even though artists were not supposed to engage with you—because when you are a life model you start to see yourself as an object, and your real self is somewhere else.

“And I had finished with a woman who was my lover for five years. I wanted to be alone,” she said.

“You’ve been alone ever since?”

“Of course. It is good for me, and for my work. A woman can waste so much time on love.”

“And also a man,” I said, ambiguously, thinking of him, wondering if he loved or not.

“Yes.” She looked at me seriously, knowing what I meant. “I understand he has told you everything?”

“Has he? He told me what you suggested, when you saw the photograph.”

She made a face. “You know, I have known him for three years, and he has had lovers who came here for weekends sometimes, but they did not change him, and he was bored with them very soon. Then a few months ago he started not to come here so much, and when he came I saw that he was unhappy. I thought it must be for a woman—he was not made unhappy like this by his business. So I thought—ah, this one is special. Then one day he was here I saw him with the photograph of you. He was sitting in the room where you drank tea this afternoon, and he had gone to sleep with the photograph on the knees. I was coming to ask him a question, but when I saw this I did not disturb him, so I went out. I knew the photograph came from the gallery. So, a little later, when he was here again, I asked for us to play our game of chess in that room for a change, to refresh the brain.

“So we set up the board in the gallery, and he was … he was very unhappy. He could not play. He was drinking. I saw him look sometimes at the photograph. So, then, while I was waiting for him to move, I got up to walk and I stopped in front of it for a closer look. He asked for my opinion, and I said this was like the goddess
Vénus
.
I saw that he was impressed by what I said. And then he told me about you. Perhaps he would not have done this, if he was not drinking.”

“Did you say the photograph was like Venus because you meant it, or because you thought it was something he wanted to hear?” I was suspicious. She was not so loyal to Edward Prain as to confess she had seen him with the photograph before now.

“I meant what I said.” She cast a sidelong glance at me, at which point I felt a weird discomfort and wondered again about the state of my un-aphrodisiac hair. “When I said to him that I would like to make the sculpture of Venus, it was true. I was not proposing that because I believed he wanted it. You see, I had in my mind that I would make the Venus, and get a model, sometime, but it would be not in the way he wants it to be. When he told me you may be the model in the picture, I said, ‘Well, if she will model for me, I will use her for my Venus.’ He liked the idea. I thought maybe this will help him. Perhaps he can cross these lines for you.” She drew them in the air again.

Cross the lines.

“Why do you want to do a sculpture of Venus?” I was testing.

She leaned ever so slightly closer to me. “Well … why? She is the goddess of love. She is important. She is a woman and she is more. She is nature, vitality, erotics, and love. But this is not an age for her. This is the age of
Mercure.”

“Mercury?”

“Yes. Mercury. Hermes. He is the god of commerce, stealing, eloquence, and the media. Venus is under threat. Do you know the pictures and sculptures by Jim Dine, of the
Vénus de Milo
?”

“No.” I knew Dine was a pop artist.

“Everywhere, he has her with saws and hammers. Hard colours. A red heart, and yet it is death.” Monique frowned deeply, seeing it all in her mind’s eye, looking past me, and gesturing. “He made her into a doll and painted her with violent colour. Sometimes she is large, on her own, and sometimes small, like a mass production. But, of course, he makes cheap things important and important things cheap. What I understood, for myself, was that it is a great danger for her. I want to show that in my work, but not to show that she is violated or degraded. She must be beautiful, mysterious and strong.”

She was now looking at my lips. I noticed hers, reddened by the wine. “And is it dangerous for me here, Monique?”

She shook her glass in small circles and watched the wine swirl around. “I do not know,” she said. “That is for you. That is not for me to say.”

“You said before he was lonely.”

“Yes. He is lonely. When you are lonely some things become … too big in the mind.”

“But you have used this … obsession of his, then? You suggested to him that you would give him the sculpture, and then return to France.”

“Ah no, not exactly,” she said.
“He
said that if I do this sculpture then I will not need to try to sell it—he will buy. So I agreed. I will make my own sculpture, but I will also give him another that he wants. Then I will have repaid him a little, and I can go. So you can stay in the house during the week and be my model. He wanted you to be away from your friends, so you could work, because he thought you had real talent, and he could help you. Well, this is practical for me, of course, so I like the idea. And then he told me how he wanted things to happen today, because he did not want to frighten you away.”